It Will All Come Down to Religion and Gas

All the happenings in the Muslim world, called "The Arab Spring" by Western periodicals, will most likely come back to religion before too long. Someone will remember that the US is the infidelest of all the infidels, and then a new regional strongman or two will gather the newly liberated together with the newly unliberated, and unite them in their hatred of anything that isn't Muslim.

This isn't to say anything good or bad about Islam, just that it's going to happen. The annoying thing is we wouldn't have to worry one hangnail about it if we just had the courage to put ourselves on a course to rid ourselves of our dependence on oil. That's all we'd have to do -- and the Sheikhs and Emirs and Ayatollahs could have the place to themselves, sell their oil to the French and Germans and we could be done with them all.

Blackmail us? How are you gonna do that, Sheikh? Keep your oil. Got extra? Use it on your hair.

Like Economist Ducknik has pointed out, every time the Chinese buy a VW or a Ford, they have to fill it up with gas. Everytime the Indians buy a Honda or one of their own Indian cars, they have to grease it with oil. There are a billion people out there who all want cars. What can possibly happen in the future to the price of gasoline? And as that price goes up and up and up, who gets richer and who gets poorer? Where do our people get the money to pay for it?

Look down the road ten years and do you see seven dollar gas? Nine dollar gas? An economy in tatters as we produce less and less, and we are supposed to pay that kind of money to keep our two hour commutes possible?

So don't tell The Great Plotnik we can't afford to suck it up now to give ourselves independence later. An article in the Bird Wrap this morning says Chevron made a $6.2 BILLION profit the first QUARTER of this year. Selling gas. And how much of that money went into paying for congressional and senatorial and presidential campaign contributions?

How long can we stand for this kind of thing? The Coasters said it 50 years ago:

Wake me!
Shake me!
Don't let me sleep too late!