As I roll through these days of pre-election bullshit and of wars being fought far far away (thank you, GWB), it has occurred to me that there are some Really Big Issues which no one is talking about with any regularity. Let me show you a couple.

1. The economy. Yes, I know that everyone's talking about jobsjobsjobs like that's all there is to the economy, but that's not the point. Fuckface babbles on about how he'll lift the economy by creating a trillion new jobs in the first ten seconds as President, and GWB talks about the Dow and also jobsjobsjobs, but both of them ignore the first of the Elephants In The Living Room: the price of oil.

Here's the bottom line: if the price of gasoline was about $1.10 a gallon (instead of the $1.76 I paid yesterday), this economy would be going to the Moon, Alice. It is, in fact, the only thing which is preventing a 1990s-style boom from taking place. Why, then, are neither GWB nor Fuckface talking about it?

Because they both know that no matter who, the U.S. President can't do a damn thing about it.

All the other parts of a robust economy are in place: new housing starts, factory orders, retail sales, a stable and effective work force -- all are slightly positive (in terms of trend -- I'm not interested in monthly hiccups). What's holding everything up is the brake on personal consumption which a high oil price creates. When it costs $50 to fill up the SUV, and your electricity bill is $1,000 instead of $350, people don't have much spare change to fling around -- and for producers, who also have to bear those high costs, the answer is to increase prices, which further dampens demand. Note too that the airlines (another economic belwether) are struggling; when the price of oil goes up by $1 a barrel, it can add $5 million a month to a typical airline fleet's overhead. You have to sell a lot of $400 tickets to earn sufficient profit just to break even on the $5 million. And business travelers, on the advice of the accountants, are video- or teleconferencing rather than pay the $1,400 business fares.

And, as I said earlier, the President can do nothing, nada, bupkes about it. No wonder they yammer on about the effects (jobsjobsjobs) rather than the causes (oil prices).

Fuckface, of course, dances around the topic like a ballerina in a minefield -- his answer is to "lessen our dependence on foreign oil" (by, one assumes, harnessing gamma rays or creating gasoline from fairy dust, but NEVER allowing us to drill for domestic oil deposits where we actually know they exist). The real solution, of course, would be to build fifty new nuclear power stations around the country, but Fuckface's Greenie buddies would have the vapors if he even breathed of such a thing, and GWB is terrified of scaring the "moderates" (soccer moms and similar morons) by so much as mentioning the word "nuke-a-ler".

2. Our trade imbalance with China. Never mind that China is, at the end, the real enemy. The fact of the matter is that instead of dealing with other (and non-Communist) countries like India, Pakistan or Taiwan, all of whom have large (and cheap) labor forces who would be able to produce all the cheap crap our society demands, the stupid fucking Commerce Department continues to support Most Favored Nation status for China, even as the fucking Chinese threaten to invade Taiwan, test nukes which could reach the U.S., and with their outmoded industries pollute the atmosphere in a manner which makes 1960s Pittsburgh look like Lake Tahoe on a winter's morning.

I'm not arguing about the pros and cons of "outsourcing jobs", which is how the lying bastard politicians prefer to frame the exercise. The plain fact is that Hanes can't make $2 T-shirts in the United States because of (union-inspired) high labor costs, (Green-inspired) environmental regulation, and (greedy government-inspired) high taxation. Of course Hanes is going to look elsewhere to have those T-shirts made, when Wal-Mart insists on paying no more than a dollar per.

But if we acknowledge that the factory job toothpaste is out of the tube, and that we have to buy the cheap T-shirts from someone else, it makes no sense to buy the stuff from a regime which is trying to destroy us.

Now, Fuckface can't say that, because his bunch of Lefties (aka. the Democrat Party) depends on the Chinese for campaign funding and also discretion (because the Democrats sold our country's nuclear and technology secrets to the Chinese for said funds back in the Dark Times).

GWB can't say it either, because then he lays himself open to charges of "saber-rattling" and other such bullshit from the Left, which in turn terrifies the soccer-moms and morons referred to above.

But the plain fact is that we do ourselves a great disservice by continuing to trade with China to the extent that we do -- both in the short term and in the long. Just don't expect any politician to step on that viper.

3. The chasm. I keep reading articles about the growing divide which separates the Democrats from the Republicans, and the anger and intransigence which characterizes it.

Here's the third Great Big Elephant In The Living Room: it's not about Democrats and Republicans; it's about socialism and republicanism. While the Democrats could continue along their merry little way, planting socialist seeds with gay abandon, everyone was happy. Liberal judges were appointed, state schools become models of socialist / collectivist indoctrination, industry became subservient to enironmentalism, and so on. Everyone was happy, of course, except conservatives, but as the Left controlled the media, only we conservatives knew about it.

Then four things happened which finally broke the peace.

Firstly, Ronald Reagan (a conservative) became President, and his policies led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and its Commie satellites. As the shortcomings of communism became more and more apparent, the Left discovered that their "shining city on a hill" was instead a dark, mean and grubby place. When a religion is comprehensively proven to be a pack of lies and nonsense, you can expect its acolytes to feel angry.

Second came the Republican Revolution of 1994, where conservative Republicans were finally able to win control of Congress, and start a program of rolling back government. To the people for whom government is the sine qua non of an orderly society, this was anathema -- but it was tempered by the fact that the Executive Branch was headed by one of their own: a charming, amoral collectivist who worshipped power for its own sake, and was ready to deal away some of their cherished principles (eg. unlimited welfare) to hold onto that power.

Third was the blow which set the Left stove temperature to "broil": the impeachment of Clinton as a liar and molester, and the subsequent election result which delivered Executive power to a [gasp!] conservative Republican.

Remember, however, that conservatives had been feeling their own anger towards the Left: Clinton's horrible collectivist agenda (eg. national health care under his wife -- another collectivist, and unthinking obeisance to environmentalists and the gun control lobby, to name but three).

The fourth event was the loosening of the stranglehold of "mainstream media" over the issues of the day: first by the growth of conservative talk radio (thank you, Rush) and then the Internet, which drove a stake through the heart of the media monopoly. For the first time, the Left realized that not everyone felt the same way about the world as the editorial committee of the New York Times (and they were terrified by the extent of the oppposition); and conservatives realized that they were not alone, and that there were millions of others to whom the word "progressive" was NOT a Good Thing.

So here's where we stand (but don't expect any politician to say it): the divide and anger which separates the two philosophies is caused by a realization on both sides that we have reached an impasse.

Socialism / progressivism / collectivism (in its American form of government control and collectivist thinking) and conservatism (Constitutional constructionism, free markets etc.) have reached the stage where people have come to realize that there is no reconciliation between the two philosophies.

Indeed, the battle lines have been drawn, and the War On Terrorism is really just a sideshow -- a big, important sideshow, but a sideshow nevertheless.

At stake is how this country will be run in the future: along the Big Government, European-style "soft" socialist model, or as a constitutional republic as originally envisioned by the nation's founders.

Incidentally, this is why the Left is angrier than the Right. The Constitution is an established institution in the United States, overturning it is extremely difficult, and conservatives have (finally) woken up to its gradual subversion by liberal politicians, judges and organizations.

And finally, this is why neither GWB nor Fuckface will address this issue: there is no "compromise", there is no "unifying" and there is no way to continue without making a choice about the philosophy to support.

This is why both candidates are bobbling around in the middle, trying desperately to get to November 2 without alienating too many people in the middle, all the while attempting to avoid alienating their core supporters.



This may be one of the last battles between socialism and conservatism in this country. Our candidates won't say it -- they dare not -- but it's nevertheless the truth. More than in any other time in our country's history, this election -- this election -- will determine whether we remain a constitutional republic, or whether we slide towards something else, something more like the rest of the world.

Those are the stakes.

That sounds like a wonderfull solution.

Please go back to Uranius.

most electricity in the U.S. is produced by coal, cheap abundant coal from the coal capital of the world--America!.

gas from oil, not coal or nuclear, is better when it's sweet-crude, like from saudiarabia, venezuela and iraq, vs. dirty crude(higher cost to clean), from the U.S., Canada, etc. can't be gotten from any other source economically.

going to 50/50 gas-ethanol might make the saudis reduce oil prices, assuming other countries hold their consumption(heh), but..going to 10-90 gas/ethanol(this has been proven to work) might make opec reconsider the risks of oil production/greed/politics and drop prices a lot., or we could invest in pastures and equines.

Going biofuel would be a good first step toward reducing greenhouse gasses. Increasing the diversity of fuels we use would probably raise the overall cost of fuel, but stabilize the market. A stable market obviously has a lot of intrinsic value.