Bored yet?

Well, I've probably bored most of you to tears with the semi-political diatribe/debate of the past two blog posts.

Interestingly, my "site visitor" count has increased dramatically since making that first "Here & Now" post. I'm a fairly sporadic blogger, so it's nice to see the number go up quickly (well... quickly for me).

Most of the people I know from various countries who also know my blog, have written and thought it was interesting to see the "Point/Counterpoint" topics. They don't always have that level of information on the news topics/points of interest in the USA.

My Brit friends seem to think it's all much ado about nothing. They hate Bush, but then they hate anyone who's not from the UK, and most of them too. That's okay though, it's nothing they think can't be fixed by a good draught and a bit of nosh (food).

My Aussie friends think all of us Yanks (though I have explained I'm not fond of being labled a 'Yank') could do with a bit of the piss taken out of us. They don't like Bush either. They didn't like their own John Howard much. They also don't like Obama. I'm pretty sure they don't like any political leaders and would prefer to simply wash their hands of all of us. At least until the next America's Cup, or Ashes comes around.

My Thai friends say we should all just relax, at least we don't have to deal with Thaksin and his team of bizarre cronies. A point well taken.

My friends in India think it could all be solved if we'd just sell the whole country to one of their industrial mega-corps, and go work in a call center somewhere. Much less stressful, and they get to torment uptight callers with overly dramatic accents which they find very funny.

My Japanese friend denied Pearl Harbor ever happened. That it was a CIA plot to misinform the American public in order to launch into a war that no one wanted so we could depose the freely unelected governement and nail the terrorists that were... no... wait... that was someone else. Buniu-san simply suggests we drive smaller cars... preferably Toyotas. :-/

So, anyway I have received quite a number of emails on the topic. Everyone felt emails rather than comments were better for some reason. Even the friend that posted the original dissenting opionion decided to reply to my "Here & Now part II" in a form other than the Comments.

I read his reply over on his blog. I admit I only scanned it, but I did go back and re-read just to be sure I understood the points he was making. It was really loooooooooooonnnnnnnggg. His blog doesn't allow comments, so just a few quick items in response from me here.

Yes we agree on some points, and we disagree on others. Funny how we still seem to argue on the ones we agree on. You're "boo hoo" comment about $4.00 per gallon gas bothers me. It shows a complete disregard for people less well off than you. What about people on limited incomes? People on minimum wage? People who have good jobs but don't make a lot of money - like a few former retail managers I know. Not everybody makes a six figure salary. Of the entire debate that shocks me more than any of the other bits.

I'd rather hear your suggestions for energy prosperity than the bragging about your cars getting so little MPG. So, if I missed it somewhere, what's your solution? Higher taxes? Punish the polluters? Everything I stated was pointed toward one goal - energy independence - and what we can do to get there. Taxes and fees aren't answers, they're just "disincentives".

The only point that really matters in the entire discussion: the USA needs to enable every possible resource gathering industry and tap the resources we have available. Even if it's only to buy time. That time can be used to ramp up the production of alternate fuel vehicles (in whatever form they take), alternate power generation (maybe more coal, nuclear, and bio and less NG and Petroleum), build up the Coal-to-Oil production, increase our burn of waste (trash) for more BioFuel power generation. All those things are acheivable with technologies present "Here & Now" but, require time to build infrastructure. And that pursuit is a very worthy and critical goal.

Lets focus more on solutions and less on sematics.