Oil

Lord, have mercy.  The news about the oil spill in the Gulf is so depressing.  I had been ignoring it for a few days since I was out of the loop in Erie with my brother.  And the right wing in this country seems clearly unable to handle the fact of the massive spill, given that it so contradicts their ideology, so they are trying to distract everyone with talk of sabotage. 

Who knows, maybe it was sabotage, but by environmentalists who want to try and save the environment by destroying it?  Unlikely.  Maybe there's a branch of Al-Queda on the Gulf Coast.  It's not impossible.  In any case, there are over 3,500 oil rigs out there, I hear.  Plenty of targets for them, if that's what they want to do.

There are no good answers.  If we continue to use as much oil as we have in the near past, then we'll have to both import massive amounts from the Middle East, and we'll have to protect it by our military, which will burn up a good percentage of it.  Also, our trade deficit will continue to skyrocket, causing a few problems with our currency.  We'll also have to 'drill, baby, drill', everywhere and take the risks that go with that.

Or we can begin to conserve and become more energy efficient, and cut down on the amount of oil that we use, plus go with alternative fuels.  Difficult for us, because we think abundant oil is our birthright.  But it's not.

Meanwhile, the stock market continues to rise, or should I say, levitate.