Publisher's Note
print
August 22, 2008
Where’s the Vision?
Andrew A. Buerger
Publisher
Let me write this right up front: I thought Al Gore was a terrible candidate for president. He was stiff –– so stiff indeed that one time I was watching him on TV without the sound and thought it was a still photograph. He waffled. He made outrageous claims. Anyone remember the one about “inventing” the Internet?
Al Gore was such a bad candidate for president, I never knew what his candidacy stood for. I even disliked the way he spoke.
Now, I miss Al Gore. Where is Al Gore? Bring back Al Gore.
Just the other day, I realized that we need someone running for the highest office in the land who has a singular focus: Get America off of its oil addiction. It won’t cure all our ills like our health care crisis, crime or drugs. However, a tunnel vision focus on finding alternatives to petroleum will be good for the world, country, state and for Israel.
You think Russia would be invading Georgia if oil were back at $40 a barrel like it was five years ago? Or is Putin now flexing his well-oiled muscles because his country was emasculated before it had any money?
Would China be supporting the genocide in Darfur if it weren’t adding 20,000 cars a day to its smog-filled cities?
Where would Iran be getting the money it’s paying North Korea to develop its nuclear weapons that Iran talks about launching on Israel –– certainly not from any other service or industry other than oil.
Or, where would Hezbollah’s funding come from to wage terror on Israel? It wouldn’t be possible for Hezbollah to run a nation within Lebanon without Iran’s oil payola. Hezbollah wouldn’t have the sophisticated missiles to kill Jews in Northern Israel if Iran were just another desert nation with high unemployment. Hamas’ funding would dry up as well.
Yet our two presidential candidates talk more about opening up offshore drilling to lower today’s price at the pump than any type of long-term strategy. (With fairness to Obama, McCain started to score political points by wrongfully telling working class Americans that the offshore oil, which won’t be at a gas station near you for another five years, would help them tomorrow. So, politically Obama had to play along. Now even Nancy Pelosi is forced to sing that same tune.)
Sadly, myself included, the presidential campaign becomes a beauty pageant. Why else would our country pick Clinton over Dole, Bush instead of Gore? The long campaign trail with TV cameras constantly rolling is no place for a visionary.
I admit I was glad that Gore decided not to run again, but now I want to add his name as a write-in. It’s time for an unlikable visionary to help get our country moving again. Acquiring the technology to become energy independent will yield economic results similar to what NASA spun off going to the moon –– in addition to Tang.
Was it only me –– in between Michael Phelps’ gold medals ceremonies, were you just a little embarrassed by what China is doing with technology to advance its country? It made me question who was the poorer nation. They have a Maglev train in Beijing. We have no advances in mass transit, but we have plenty of new federally funded highways.
We can depend on Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela to get our oil, or we can produce it in Silicon Valley. Of course we can buy the lie that off-shore drilling will help the average American or move the needle an
inch in the war on terror. According to Fortune magazine, there are an estimated 18 billion gallons of oil in the waters off Southern California –– which would add another 3 percent to the 86 million barrels consumed a day –– 25 percent by the US. The soonest it would be on the market would be 2013. That’s not a typo; that’s five years away. By that time, more innocent Israelis will be killed and Iran will have acquired a nuclear weapon.
If we could get off oil soon, one buy-product would be cleaner rivers, lakes, and our own Chesapeake Bay.
Would you vote for a candidate who is likable but will bring us down the same road, or an unlikable guy who will actually cut the money supply from Islamic terrorists and clear our bay? In this election, we’ll never know.