Fair warning: half of this is serious. The other half is not. the two are completely and seamlessly interspersed, so good luck figuring out how much of this I really mean.
(Well, some of it's obvious... like that whole bit about conquering other planets....) It's mostly just a rant that I've only half thought out, so don't worry about refuting me too much. I'll probably disagree with half of what I said within the next couple hours. I also made no attempt to organize this into a readable form.
I have to admit that I haven't been following this discussion much. Too many long posts, and too much homework for me.
Dependence on oil is tricky because many things use petroleum products. All the plastic we use comes from petroleum. It's not just energy stations and vehicles that use gasoline. Alternative energy is needed but it will take time to develop. Take wind energy for instance - it will take years to build enough wind turbines to make a dent on oil consumption (not that we shouldn't do it) but then we have to deal with the environmentalists who'll say the Kansas plains are too pristine and we can't make them look ugly with all that machinery, and then there will be congressional hearings and more government restrictions and bureaucracy. By drilling now and building a few more refineries, we reduce our dependence on foreign oil in the immediate future, which will reduce gas prices in the now, while at the same time building wind turbines and other alternative sources. And by using the oil in the US, global demand will automatically go down.
Actually, there's a massive amount of stuff we use that requires petroleum.
Think rubber tires. Penicillin. T-Shirts. Anything made out of plastic (AKA, 99% of the United States...
)
Wind power? Huh. Oddly enough, one of the times you need a lot of energy to run your air conditioners, or your heaters, is when there's not much wind at all. And how in blazes are we gonna get a Boeing to run on wind power, eh? I mean, by all means, try to develop alternative energy sources. That's great. We want that. But to be honest, THEY'RE NOT READY YET. *Sigh.* It's pathetic that Paris Hilton made more sense than either McCain or Obama here....
Given that freakin' Paris Hilton was able to present a semi-intellegent energy policy, anyone wondering why I'm a cynical, disillusioned maniac with a Nordic-Medieval worldview??? FRONTIER IMPERIALISM! Let's explore and exploit other planets! Someday, that might actually make sense.
Anyway, while I'm on it, the US actually has some of the most enviro-friendly oil drilling in the world. So would we rather get oil from ourselves, with some, mostly contained, damage to the environment, or do we want to keep importing the stuff from places that don't give a d*** about the environment? It's been demonstrated that the environmental impact of drilling in Alaska and then skipping it all down to the main body of the US is a LOT better for the environment than getting the stuff from Saudi Arabia, or Mexico, or something.
Still. Point being, with the general skimming I hath done of Ulmo's post, I heartily agree. Well, I figure his example of the welfare system giving more $ to a family that just got a kid isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I do agree with his point there. In theory, Welfare should be a crutch that is used to get back on one's feet, and discarded once it's no longer needed. Not what happens, though. It's free money. Why bother getting back onto your own two feet? same problem exists through much of Europe as far as military goes. The US is the 'global police.'
I'm not typing the whole thing, because I'm too lazy, but the gist of the problem is that post WW2, the US mantained a military presence in Europe. Now, many of the NATO nations admit that they want the US to stay there, so that they have a free military. A sort of mercenary army from the US that they don't have to support themselves. This has obvious problems similar to the Welfare problems of apathetic dependency which can also be seen, to a smaller degree, in South Korea: lack of ability to stand on their own, a dependency mindset, reduction of technological advancement, self sufficiency, National Sovereignty, et cetera. Difference is, SK has been asking us to reduce our presence substantially. And I'm pretty dang sure the exact same thign is gonna happen in Iraq. Everyone's talking about "when we can eventually pull out of Iraq." We're not gonna. we've been in Europe since WW2. We've been in Japan since WW2. We've been all over the freaking globe for a very, very long time. We're not leaving Iraq any time soon. Not even if the Democrats get elected, and there's gonna be heck to pay for it someday.
Okay, that's my rant. And that's all it is. A rant. You can all ignore me now.
Oh, yeah. and words of wisdom from Douglas Adams:
"...it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
EDIT: Everything below here is new.Oh, while we're at it...
to both Ulmo and Hawkeye for writing long posts that are actually rational.
...oil is now not only rare...
Actually, we're constantly discovering more and more oil. We just can't drill for most of it because the enviros won;t let us. And other nations are constantly discovering more, too. I can cough up a
bunch of news articles about that, if you want.
As for Hawkeye's education comments, I generally agree. Teachers should get paid more, schools less. We don't need more expensive curriculum, more expensive football bleachers, more expensive buildings, more expensive computers, more expensive expenses of any kind; we need more incentive for more good teachers, and to better support the ones we have, so that they can continue to be teachers. But the problem does not exist solely within the education system, the pay of the teachers, et cetera. A substantial amount of the problem is within the culture itself. How does a teacher successfully teach in a culture that is, to steal a line, "comfortable with zero accountability"? The culture of victimhood, the elimination of accepting personal responsibility, et cetera, does not exactly make it easy for a teacher to teach. Learning is somethign the student must do, not have done to them. When people respond to discipline by thinking the teacher/principle is a [insert random insult, probably related to perrentage...] for whatever minor discipline is invoked, when neither the parents nor society (whichever you want, it doesn't really matter for this point in the Status Quo, since neither one does this) try to enforce accountability, then how in heck is our education system supposed to work, anyway?
Topic: Sarah Palin and Conservative America (Read 6331 times)
