As I wrote in a recent Little Miss Chatterbox comment section:

DRILL NOW, BUILD NOW and, as the new graphic to the RIGHT side of my blog indicates, CUT NOW.

We all know the energy challenges facing us now, and NO one facet shall quell the crisis facing us at this point. Conservation, individually, is not the answer. Conservation won’t run my car in the interim. Good thoughts won’t run my car in the interim. And this country cannot abandon petroleum wholesale anyway — too many other items (besides vehicles) require oil, to include just about everything in our world as well as various chemicals required for the medications we need — heating oil, jet fuel, fuel oil, LPG, diesel. Vehicles are just one element of the oil situation.

The answer consists of the following multi-faceted attack:

And here is why:

Constant brownouts and some major blackouts are in our immediate future. The Demorats’ saying NO to EVERY chance to build ANY form of infrastructure has ASSURED this conclusion.

If you think runaway oil prices are upsetting, just wait for what’s in store for electricity. Similar forces are in play. Demand is rising fast; supply is not. The cost to get coal and natural gas out of the ground is going up, and to that expense must be added the cost of the carbon permits that Congress and the presidential candidates are contemplating. Environmentalists are getting power plants scotched. China is sucking up energy. Leave such dynamics in play long enough, and price spikes in electricity follow. But that’s just the beginning. We may be facing brownouts (voltage reductions) and even rolling blackouts.

Mark Mills in Forbes wrote:

By as early as next year our demand for electricity will exceed reliable supply in New England, Texas and the West and, by 2011, in New York and the mid-Atlantic region. A failure of a power plant, or a summer-afternoon surge in the load, could make for a blackout or brownout. “There really isn’t any excess in the system,” says Rick P. Sergel, chief executive at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).

Mr. Mills, who writes the Energy Intelligence column for Forbes.com. concludes:

Recall the summers of electric discontent for California in 2000 and 2001? Wholesale electricity prices skyrocketed, reflecting tight supply conditions (conditions that were exploited, but not created, by traders at Enron). The consequences were a bankruptcy filing by the state’s biggest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (amex: PCG.PR.A – news – people ), and the early departure of a governor.

Multiply by dozens of states. Add in brownouts. Buy candles.

Again, what I’ve been writing for quite some time: we desperately need more infrastructure. OIL is only ONE point on the chart, albeit a large point. As I wrote on March 13th:

Again, remember who placed the country onto the path it’s obviously taking: lacking the energy necessary to keep it running; namely: The Demorats.

In “Infrastructure” I proffered a quote from Fornicalia Senator Tom McClintock:

The Governor’s (Schwarzenegger’s) crusade against “greenhouse gases” is, in fact, the single greatest impediment to the era of public works that he has promised, and the crusade for public works construction is the biggest impediment to reducing “greenhouse gases” that he has promised.

On August 20th of 2007 I wrote:

In my opinion, for the past 20+ years Americans have sacrificed infrastructure for social programs that have yielded little if any benefit — except perhaps to create an entire “needy” class dependent on government and to eliminate males entirely from black families. And, of course, to ensure we keep the constant flow of worker drones (i.e., Mexican laborers) funneling into our country so as to continue the consistent underclass.

In that amount of time, however, we have done our level best to ensure that the necessary infrastructure to accommodate all the additional people has been seriously curtailed.

I created my then-list of requirements:

You can thank the Enviros, the Religious Left and the Demorats for it all.

And I’m not so sure that isn’t what the Enviro and the Religious Left really want.

Actually in decent shape physically, with a white exterior and blue interior (and with blue indoor/outdoor carpeting cut and glued into the bed by its previous owner — I’d acquired the Courier at an Auto Auction [never again!]), the Courier was loud, buzzy, leaked, and featured the Miraculous Singing Dash, an extra added bonus I’d never sought. The MSD would pitch up in volume on the freeway as some kind of obstruction, part or series of parts commenced first to rattling then transitioned to a grating, ear-piercing whistling when the vehicle reached breakneck speeds of — oh, say, 50 or 55 mph. I once took the truck to 70 but I quickly determined, after it displayed the agility and braking distance of the Exxon Valdez, to let that be a lesson to me.

I remember this truck for two distinct scenarios involving cats. At the time, I had three cats in the house. One day, in a horrendous downpour, I pedaled the truck ala Fred Flintstone to a restaurant to meet my union president, about 35 miles from the house, involving mostly freeway driving. When I stopped in the parking lot I heard a loud meow from the bed. My young and thoroughly soaked tabby cat, Homes, had ridden the entire distance in the bed and somehow managed not to be flung to his death. I credit the carpet.

In the second scenario, I started the truck, backed out of the duplex driveway, and engaged first gear, heading to the corner. But immediately, something sounded very strange in the engine compartment and its acceleration was even less enthusiastic than normal. As I looked in the rearview mirror I observed what appeared to be either a puff of smoke or something light and fluffy emanating from the back of the truck. I knew that the empty lot next door had a lot of summer weeds, the kind with the puffballs at the ends. I thought: uh-oh, I’ve run over a clump of weeds and the truck is damaged.

I stopped immediately and looked under the truck. My first sight was that of a thin, shaven, formerly-orange cat tail hanging quite vertically and limply near the radiator. I opened the hood to find my orange tabby Elwood knocked senseless, laying on a flat piece of metal less than an inch below the whirling fanblades above, his body riddled with a series of random and very thin slashes where his fur was absent. Oddly enough, he never slept in my engine compartment again.

Damn. Reminds me of another Homes The Cat story:

Not long after, I couldn’t find Homes. I couldn’t find him for days, at least 5 or 6. I was convinced he was gone. At the time, a new house was under construction directly across the street from my duplex. One of the construction workers drove an old former CHP black-and-white car, a huge 1971 Dodge Polara (see photo). One afternoon I thought I heard a cat meowing but it sounded as though the cat was far away and in a tunnel. It appeared the sound was coming from the construction site. As I got closer to the car, I continued to hear the meowing. On a whim I queried: “Homes?” and acquired a series of long and tortured meows. The sounds were issuing from the right front fender. It took the two of us two hours to dismantle the Polara to the point where I could reach in and extricate my dessicated and emaciated cat. He had apparently sought a sleeping spot in the car, couldn’t get out, and spent almost a week communting to and from the job site in the fender of the Polara. And no, Homes wasn’t hurt, just thirsty and hungry.

I was going to tell you about the adventures of my second-worst car, a 1974 MG-B, but I’ll save that for another time.

I have been on Blogger for 4 years now. I began this blog on June 19, 2004.

I have managed to survive longer than 98% of the blogs extant.

In 2004 some major Life-Changing events occurred to me: a longstanding relationship ended, and I embarked upon a political road that I currently traverse today; this new current also managed to enable me to acquire my now-wife.

Life required that I let loose a mental, physical and fiscal drain because, after all, Life is quite short; my current wife is nothing but a mental and physical BLESSING to my Life. Imagine that.

At a time when I sought something solid onto which to cling, I not only created but enabled and proffered to the Blogosphere my Bloviating Zeppelin blogsite.

I threw my unexpurgated thoughts and emotions into the Blogosphere. I had no idea what would return. I literally bared my soul. And continue to do so today.

President Bush made a speech this morning from the White House, dealing with energy and this nation. When he has made poor decisions I have taken him to task, and I am not generally a large supporter of the man; in fact, he is the sole reason I’ve stopped sending checks to the RNC or the GOP.

There are few people who can irritate me to the degree of President Bush and many times I’ve questioned not only his thinking, but wondered if he was a “covert” Demorat. Okay, perhaps not that bad, but Dubai Ports, his stance on illegal immigration, his refusal to seal our borders, Harriet Miers, his labeling of the Minutemen as “vigilantes,” his refusal to adequately prosecute the war in Iraq, his refusal to even stand up for not only himself but the GOP — pretty much inexcusable.

He still will stand, in my estimation, as one of The Worst Presidential Communicators in the history of the Presidency.

Which makes his newest speech on Wednesday all the more confounding and frustrating. From the speech regarding energy, these salient excerpts:

High oil prices are at the root of high gasoline prices. And behind those prices is the basic law of supply and demand. In recent years, the world’s demand for oil has grown dramatically. Meanwhile, the supply of oil has grown much more slowly. As a result, oil prices have risen sharply, and that increase has been reflected at American gasoline pumps. Now much of the oil consumed in America comes from abroad — that’s what’s changed dramatically over the last couple of decades. Some of that energy comes from unstable regions and unfriendly regimes. This makes us more vulnerable to supply shocks and price spikes beyond our control — and that puts both our economy and our security at risk.

President Bush is correct in terms of these days being the locus and/or a summary of decades of inattention — and finally welling over due to a converging cascade of failure chains.

In the short run, the American economy will continue to rely largely on oil. And that means we need to increase supply, especially here at home. So my administration has repeatedly called on Congress to expand domestic oil production. Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal — and now Americans are paying the price at the pump for this obstruction. Congress must face a hard reality: Unless Members are willing to accept gas prices at today’s painful levels — or even higher — our nation must produce more oil. And we must start now. So this morning, I ask Democratic Congressional leaders to move forward with four steps to expand American oil and gasoline production.

Again, another Truism that NO ONE in the DEM (Defeatist, Elitist Media) wish to acknowledge: the Demorats have CONSISTENTLY REFUSED to help make this country energy-independent. NO to coal-fired plants. NO to more refineries. NO to more electrical generation stations. NO to anything nuclear (and DAMN the 1979 movie “The China Syndrome” for its negative slant on nuclear power!). NO to drilling in the states or off our shores.

President Bush outlined four energy relief procedures:

1) First, we should expand American oil production by increasing access to the Outer Continental Shelf, or OCS. Experts believe that the OCS could produce about 18 billion barrels of oil. That would be enough to match America’s current oil production for almost ten years. The problem is that Congress has restricted access to key parts of the OCS since the early 1980s. Since then, advances in technology have made it possible to conduct oil exploration in the OCS that is out of sight, protects coral reefs and habitats, and protects against oil spills. With these advances — and a dramatic increase in oil prices — congressional restrictions on OCS exploration have become outdated and counterproductive.

2) Second, we should expand oil production by tapping into the extraordinary potential of oil shale. Oil shale is a type of rock that can produce oil when exposed to heat or other process[es]. In one major deposit — the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming — there lies the equivalent of about 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. That’s more than three times larger than the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. And it can be fully recovered — and if it can be fully recovered it would be equal to more than a century’s worth of currently projected oil imports.

3) Third, we should expand American oil production by permitting exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR. When ANWR was created in 1980, Congress specifically reserved a portion for energy development. In 1995, Congress passed legislation allowing oil production in this small fraction of ANWR’s 19 million acres. With a drilling footprint of less than 2,000 acres — less than one-tenth of 1 percent of this distant Alaskan terrain — America could produce an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil. That is roughly the equivalent of two decades of imported oil from Saudi Arabia. Yet my predecessor vetoed this bill.

4) And finally, we need to expand and enhance our refining capacity. Refineries are the critical link between crude oil and the gasoline and diesel fuel that drivers put in their tanks. With recent changes in the makeup of our fuel supply, upgrades in our refining capacity are urgently needed. Yet it has been nearly 30 years since our nation built a new refinery, and lawsuits and red tape have made it extremely costly to expand or modify existing refineries. The result is that America now imports millions of barrels of fully-refined gasoline from abroad. This imposes needless costs on American consumers. It deprives American workers of good jobs. And it needs to change.

But please know this: Maurice D. Hinchey, D-NY, wants US refineries to be owned publicly.

Urgent: House Democrats call for nationalization of refineries
Per Pergram-Capitol Hill
House Democrats responded to President’s Bush’s call for Congress to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling. This was at an on-camera press conference fed back live.

Among other things, the Democrats called for the government to own refineries so it could better control the flow of the oil supply.

This is the first step towards nationalizing our complete energy resources. Perhaps first with refineries; then oil companies in general. Then power companies. Then water companies. Then general utilities. Then communications companies. When all else fails, let’s let the government prove it can’t manage another strata of America. Socialism — it’s always worked for every other nation on earth, has it not?

But here’s the truth: Congressional “approval” is at its lowest: 18% (20% of Republicans approve, versus 16% of Democrats).

This is a chance for a pummeling of the Demorats heretofore unafforded in quite some time.

This is a chance for the GOP to hit the Demorats every hour of every day of every week until November, hitting the airwaves, the written media, the internet, the blogs, every manner of communication possible — telling the electorate about the manner in which the GOP will be:

The Demorats are, in truth, INCREDIBLY WEAK!

They are bent over into the perfect position for their asses to be kicked!

But the Republicans JUST WON’T DO IT — though they COULD!

As a Leader of this country, President Bush predominantly disappoints on many levels.

However, when he’s correct, he’s correct and I’ll provide credit. But, more pointedly: why so late?