2008 Soap Box Archives

Duh!!!

Okay, me and every other person with enough gray matter to cover a pinhead, who is not in the oil business, desperately wants to end our dependency on petroleum, foreign and domestic.

We're ready for the windmills, the solar power, the cars that run on rose petals or whatever and get two hundred miles to the gallon with zero emissions and all the rest of the gadgets we're told we need to develop to get our gonads out of the hands of the Saudis, et al.

I'm ready. Where are they? Where can I get them?

The truth of the matter is that all that stuff, while possible, doable and will be developed when the market demand is strong enough, is nothing more than pie in the sky as far as the reality of where we stand in relation to our oil mess.

The hard cold facts are this, we can devote every ounce of energy we can spare to developing these products, and we should, but the reality is that it is going to take at least one decade, possibly two or more, before we can actually perfect and mass manufacture enough products and techniques that don't use fossil fuel to break the stranglehold that oil has on our country.

In the meantime, we need oil and I think a lot of people are finally starting to realize it. Unfortunately some of the most powerful politicians in Washington can't seem to get it.

Mr. Schumer, what is so hard about this equation? We need new sources of oil, and it exists in ANWR. Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, has invited us to drill there. The crude can be removed safely. Probably fewer people will see ANWR in their lifetime than will see Antarctica.

When compared to the size of ANWR, the drilling area would be about the size of a postage stamp on a football field.

Mr. Schumer, you say that if we drill in ANWR it will be at least seven years before we start getting the oil. Well sir, in all due respect, what makes you think that we won't need the oil in seven years, in fact with the polices of you and your party continue to put forth, we'll probably be desperate by then.

Ms. Pelosi, this is not brain surgery. There is oil and natural gas off our shores. Other countries are going to come and get it. It's going to be harvested anyway, why not by us? Please give me one good reason why we should let foreign countries sail within one hundred miles of our nation, pump the oil out of the sea floor and take it thousands of miles away to fuel their economy while our economy continues to suffer due to your silly partisan reticence.

Mr. Reid, do you think you could get your head out of the sand - or wherever it is - long enough to realize that as the leader of the Senate, you should be doing something besides blaming everything but the eruption of Mt. St. Helens on the Bush administration.

I don't know what you're going to do when George W. goes out of office, as you seem to have made a career out of criticizing him. When he's gone who will be your whipping boy?

You were wrong about the surge Mr. Reid and you are wrong in preventing us from drilling. You and your kind are trying to set America back decades.

The mantra of the left is, "We can't drill our way out of this." and I agree that in the long run we can't continue to depend on fossil fuels. We're going to run out of them one of these days, but we also can't only conserve our way out of this either. Unless energy fairies come overnight and sprinkle pixie dust to make all our cars run on air.

But in the short term, while we feverishly work to invent and develop new energy sources, whether we like it or not, there are only two answers.

We locate and harvest more crude and build enough refineries to process the fuel we need or sit by while the wealth of the United States is transferred to the Middle East and the greatest economy the world has ever known flounders and fails.

Schumer, Pelosi and Reid are just a few of the obstacles in the way of our become energy independent.

Wake up, America. You don't have to put up with this. Nothing moves Washington like fervent public opinion. Let your voice be heard loud, clear and often.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

July 14, 2008