Name:
Location: Granite Falls, North Carolina, United States

I'm an ordained United Methodist minister no longer pastoring churches, a former media producer with skills ten years out of date, a writer trying to sell my first novel, and a sales associate keeping body and soul together working for the People's Republic of Corporate America. I'm married to the most wonderful woman in the world, who was my best friend for 17 years before we married.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Thoughts on various and divers subjects

I am sick over the stupid Democrats in Congress going further than the Republicans did in giving Bush carte blanche to violate the Fourth Amendment and protect the giant telecoms that broke the law cooperating with him.

I'm also sick that Barack Obama didn't stand up and denounce this unconstitutional move, and furthermore , according to Brother Greenwald, recorded a radio endorsement of one of the Congressmen from southern Georgia that helped make this abomination possible. He was supporting a "Blue Dog" white candidate whose primary opponent is a black woman who is involved in the community in the largely black district. So, I won't be contributing to Obama's campaign, after all.

But with all the anger and disappointment I feel, I still am going to vote for Obama because I want the Democrats--the REAL Democrats to take Congress back over next year. Then we can get some stuff done, pressuring the White House incumbent into doing more to help this country than even he realizes can be done.

Let it be, Lord.

Now, about oil. I'm fortunate that two gas stations near me are competing to have the lowest prices for gas. I have been filling up for at least a nickel a gallon less than the low-price stations where I used to fill up.

Some want to drill in ANWR for more oil (which would lower the price of gas a penny a gallon--ten years from now, if it doesn't all go to Japan the way most Alaskan oil does), but I want to know why they don't go ahead and drill on the land they already have next door to ANWR, which has even more oil under it than ANWR does. And why don't they drill in Wyoming? They have plenty of oil land leased there. In fact, I read on the Huffington Post yesterday that the oil companies have 65 MILLION acres of leased land they are not drilling on. So why do they want to make the entire U. S. coastline look like Galveston?

When those questions are answered, I'll listen to arguments about the drilling they are asking for. Meanwhile, conservation can save more energy than more drilling can provide.

I may have said this before, I haven't looked back lately, but in the '70s when the first gas crises hit there was a lot of research into alternative fuels. When St. Ronald Reagan took over he ended that and got the price of Saudi gas down, making us more dependent than ever on the Arab financiers of 9/11.

Unfortunately, the "Drain America First" approach isn't enough to cover the needs of this petroleum-based economy. We need something else to propel us and provide the plastics that we depend on.

God help us.

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