Insanity-Doing the Same Thing Over and Over and Expecting a Different Result

The creative side of my head keeps telling me to draw a cartoon depicting a hybrid semi-truck. Before I go to the trouble to make the drawing, I felt it wise to find out how much oil truck use as compared to cars. The current gov’m’n’t  push is to conserve oil by telling us buy expensive hybrids that will increase gas mileage from 29 mpg to 48 mpg.

Now, more than ever, I am convinced the USA can live without the Department of Energy. For the last week, I have been researching the Internet for data regarding the amount of fuel used by various modes of travel. This should be easy, I thought; just go to the DOE site and search. Wrong. I needed to visit many websites for each type of transportation to find one simple number. How much fuel do the cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes in the USA consume within one year?

What I have learned is that every time Barack Obama or one of his denizens begins spewing rhetoric about man-made global warming and the oil shortage, it is best to change the channel. Another reason for channel flipping is any dialog about the urgency to sell your gas hog in favor of a hybrid.

There is one thing this research did for me. It made the USA Energy Policy stand out. The policy is to make everything run on oil.

Oil is the organic compound breathing life into the modern era.

The hybrid trade off for me is about 170 horsepower and a lot of comfort. Hybrids with high mileage are tiny puddle jumpers that run on four cylinders and weigh less than three thousand pounds.(A puddle jumper in my day weighed 1800 pounds, how did the  Prius get so fat? Batteries?) I spent twenty years driving puddle jumpers at a time when even the most Left person in the country had not awakened to the fact that maybe burning gasoline will pollute the air.

At my current age, I want enough horsepower to climb a hill without the need to downshift four times and have to crawl to the top. I also prefer a seat large enough to handle my wide body, air conditioning to minimize discomfort, a quiet cabin, and a trunk large enough to carry my luggage.

Here is the chart I made using the data gleaned from many sources. Even I have a hard time believing what I see.

Chart by Grumpa Joe May 18, 2011, Data from various Internet sources

Here are some questions to ask:

  1. Why on earth are we picking on cars to save oil when trucks, ships, and trains consume more than cars?
  2. Why isn’t Obama pushing the truck industry to buy hybrids?
  3. Is there such a thing as a hybrid truck?
  4. Why do we buy oil from the other side of the world when the largest polluters are the ships hauling the oil?
  5. Why is Obama pushing high-speed passenger service when he should be pushing high-speed electric freight?
  6. Is Obama aware that the country’s average mileage for a car is 18 mpg? (Most likely tilted to the low end by illegals buying two hundred dollar cars that are low mpg.)
  7. If diesel-electric locomotives are so fuel efficient, why don’t we use the same principle on semi-trucks?
  8. If all electric trains are so much more efficient than diesel-electrics why aren’t we pushing for that?

The questions can go on and on, but no one is asking them.  Instead, we get a bunch of BS from our leader about the urgency to trade in the SUV.

Two Barry’s

 

My Flag Flies Everyday

My Flag Flies Everyday

Have you ever heard of Barry? I’m not speaking of Barack “Barry” Obama, I speak of Barry Goldwater. Mr. Goldwater was a US Senator from Arizona in the nineteen sixties.  Goldwater was the most conservative Senator ever to be elected in the modern USA. His book “Conscience of a Conservative” was a best seller, and is considered to be the credo of the conservative political movement.

I learned of Barry Goldwater from a colleague at my first job out of college. My friend was also a recent college grad. He had become a staunch conservative after reading Senator Goldwater’s book. We spoke often of the Constitution and the principles of conservatism; love of God and country, small government, low taxes. We spoke of  the vision the founding fathers had for this new country. They had had it with a dictator king, and the unfair taxes imposed upon them. They were tired of the King deciding what was good for his subjects, and how to worship.  They wanted liberty to determine the course of their own lives. The idea of the king deciding for them was an atrocious concept.

The new citizens coming to the soil of North America were from many countries. They were immigrants. They fled their homelands in search of religious freedom. They came from England, Holland, France, Spain, and Germany. All across europe the citizens were unhappy with the way the kings ruled, and kept their subjects in abject poverty, while the aristocracy became fat.  The only way out was to revolt, or to leave. Many revolted, others left. The ones that left formed the greatest country in the world. The ones that revolted, suffered at the expense of the kings. Eventually, European countries backed away from monarchial rule and formed governments ruled by the people. Many kept thier monarchies as figure heads of the past.

One of the largest revolutions occurred in Russia. Lenin and Stalin imposed an even greater evil upon the people in the form of socialism. Yes, they forced the country from a monarchy into collective socialism.  They made it happen by slaughtering millions of good Russian people. Along came another great idealist. His name was Hitler. He decided that the people of Germany needed a change. The German people were sick of being ruled by the Kaiser. Hitler wanted the people to have socialism. He wanted it so much that he went to war over it. He wanted to convert all of Europe to his style of socialism, even Russia.

By this time the little country formed by immigrants from all of these countries had to step in and stop the mayhem. It was called World War Two. The USA, founded on the principles of a belief in God, and Liberty, had to become the salvation of the western world. The USA beat Hitler at a huge cost of blood and lives. Instead of challenging Russia, we made them allies in order to defeat Hitler.  Eventually, Ronald Reagan beat communism in the nineteen eighties. The great Soviet Union went broke trying to convert the world to socialism at the expense of their people.

Now we have a new “Barry.” He is Barack “Barry” Obama. This man should know better having been educated in the best schools in the USA. Like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, he too espouses the concept of “socialism.” He hasn’t learned from history that socialism,  and a welfare state is a failure. Instead, he insists on changing our great country into a socialist state as fast as he can.  He has used the economic meltdown as a shield to force congress to pass legislation that will create  government so huge it will self destruct.

 It may be my warped mind, but all I  can think is that the subjects of  history, and political science are being slanted  by socialist leaning liberal college tenures. In the fifty years since Barry Goldwater wrote his conservative credo, our scholastic instituions have created several generations socialist leaning  people. At the same time, our government, in all of its benevolence, has done an outstanding job of creating a population of uneducated welfare recipients.

The result is that Barry Obama is leading the citizenry of the USA,  with an army of socialist college grads, and welfare dependents toward atheism, and total  government subjugation under the manifesto of “Change We Can Believe In.”.

When will we wake up and understand that we are being led down the path toward a new era of modern slavery?