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[clamgulch]

The connection is this: we have a government that isn't doing squat along the lines of what we all see as differing but equally significant priorities, whether it's reasonable health care for those who cannot afford it or whether it's oil for those who cannot afford it either. Both are necessary to support human life. Our congress had accomplished NOTHING to improve either situation- we are the 40 something ranked nation on the list of quality health care in the world, and oil prices are so high due to congress not having a clue that Hugo Chavez is GIVING us oil. Nice- Don't that make ya proud? And as the off-the-wall Michael Moore showed in his last film, some folks can get better health care in Cuba than they can here.

What the hell does it take for people to wake up and realize that we are self destructing? Until we have lawmakers who stop catering to lobbyists, we will continue to drill holes in the bottom of our ship, instead of into the ground to extract the resources we probably already pawned to the central banks.

Yes we should be extracting oil from shale and pumping oil as fast as we can. We should be building our infrastructure to handle the outcome, and we should be selling the excess for a profit. But when you have to compete with Uncle Hugo's price, maybe it's time to question why oil prices here are so stupidly high and who is screwing who.

From the standpoint of the amount of pollution created by burning hydrocarbons, which destroys people's lungs, we should also be supporting alternative CLEAN power sources- and I personally consider nuclear power clean...along with solar panels so long as they aren't creating a foreign superfund cleanup site in the manufacturing process, and I'd like to see wind developed- so long as it doesn't turn out to be deadly to every bird flying through the area. I'd also like to see geothermal and even tide flux power systems. Those things are worth developing and worth creating jobs and technology for. But good luck convincing Pelosi and Chenny and their respective crops of thugs of that.