Yes everyone...brace yourself for the dreaded news: BP (British Petroleum) has decided to scrap its alternative energy initiative, and return to producing only oil.

Now hold on- before you all go hysterical - here's what essentially led up to the company's surprise announcement:

BP had been all set to move to alternative energy, such as solar, hydrogen fuel cells, biofuels, and carbon-capture and storage. 

Now before everyone shouts, "Just another greedy big oil company," the oil giant had really given alternatives its best shot. 

In 2005, BP allocated $8 million to create BP Alternative Energy; then another $80 million each year through 2008. 

But they might as well have spent the money refining whale oil, (which was once used to light kerosene lamps). BP was to only discover what all the others found: Nothing's on the horizon that can substitute for petroleum.

With oil's unique molecular structure, no scientist yet has any idea of how to replace or improve upon it.

But the BP story has a deeper, more ominous ring to it: if a huge company like British Petroleum failed at commercializing alternatives, what does that say?

Simple.  No matter how much money/ time / effort etc. is expended, you cannot INVENT new forms of energy. And oil- like it or not- will be around for at least the next hundred years- perhaps longer.

Compare America 's irrational energy policy to that of other oil-aggressive nations (China-India). They’re not going forward with green energy, but expansive, worldwide oil production.

But here we are in the United States, courting an all-out energy disaster:

Currently we are importing 67% of our oil; but each year, U.S. domestic production in the Southwest and the Gulf declines at approximately 2%, meaning by 2020, we will then be importing almost 90% of our oil- NINETY percent!

So now, the "oil clock" is ticking:

As we continue to produce less domestic energy- but import ever-larger amounts of foreign oil - the national debt keeps going up.

As our national debt keeps rising...interest rates go up.

As interest rates go up...our economy goes south.

As our economy goes south, there's less revenue to run government- hence, taxes keep rising.

As taxes keep rising, profits decline...corporations move overseas, or disintegrate altogether.

As corporations disappear, our manufacturing base shrivels; then we've hit the bottom of a risk spiral- the point of greatest vulnerability.

Meanwhile our enemies are on the move:

OPEC gets wealthier (Iran in particular).

The cash-rich Chinese are buying up the Panama Canal in stages- plus oil assets of other countries around the world (Brazil-Mexico-Nigeria)

Now, the oil cataclysm suddenly emerges: 

What if war suddenly erupted in the Ukraine, or in Asian Georgia? Should one of our allies be involved, would we even be able to honor our NATO commitment?

Or how about some flashpoint in the Mideast? What if Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz, and the U.S. was completely cut off from Mideast oil? What then?

Meanwhile, with very limited steel production- and a small manufacturing base- how could we properly engage a long conventional war?

Now the Strategic Petroleum Reserve runs dry- what would all the liberals say then? Without oil, our entire military would literally be grounded!

And what about solar-powered tanks, and wind-powered F-18's? How well would we do fighting with those fantasies?

But this is exactly what our enemies are seeing: an idiopathic, ever-weakening USA, ripe for defeat- the ONLY country in the world that has declared its own domestic energy supply virtually off limits.

When the 2nd Iraqi War began in March 2003, only about 2 percent of the Army’s 110,000 Humvees were armored. Our soldiers quickly discovered that roadside bombs could decimate their vehicles, and Congress quickly allocated $400 million for armored Humvee production.

But so depleted was our manufacturing capabilty, it took a full year and a half before enough specialty-steel, armor bolt-on kits could arrive .

And only two companies  O'Gara, (now called Centigon) and Armor Works, were able to supply newly designed "up-armored" Humvees; and at a pitiful rate of 300 vehicles per month,

Our soldiers, meanwhile, had to jerry-rig Humvees with sandbags and steel plates to absorb the blasts, until new vehicles finally arrived. But in the interim, hundreds of our soldiers were killed or maimed unnecessarily, simply because  America lacked the capacity for production.

And since then, we have learned NOTHING. 

So in a future war, would we subcontract Mexico to make our tanks? Or how 'bout the French? America has entered into a new era of national stupidity- pretending there will never be another major war, and that CO2 is the real enemy to conquer.

Meanwhile the Chinese are prepared; the Russians are preparing; and the North Koreans continue to tweak America 's nose.

But what do we do? We strangle our economy with cap 'n trade, promote windmills and sunpower, and keep paying OPEC  for our oil -- enriching our enemies even more.

What was it Karl Marx once said about..."selling us the rope with which we will hang ourselves?" Now  subsitute "OPEC oil" (for rope) and we have all but already accomplished it.

In 1973, during the Yom-Kippur War, the Arabs completely cut off  their oil imports to the US; and you'd better believe, if the opportunity ever arises, they'll do it again.

The old Roman general, Publius Flavius Vegetius, said it best..."Si vis pacem para bellum"-- "IF YOU WANT PEACE, PREPARE FOR WAR."

To neglect our abundant oil reserves, in lieu of alternative energy, portends an apocalypse; at best a declining economy; but in a worst-case scenario- a calamitous, military defeat.

America must realize the oil clock is ticking, while we continue to walk a "carbon free" path to alternative energy disaster.

www.keenobserver.blogtownhall.com

Has Mr. Obama ever been confronted with ANY crisis? A commander in chief must make unwavering decisions when lives are at stake; What I perceive Mr. Obama doing is to basically use his Joint Chiefs of Staff as subcontractors for any crucial military decisions.

Every president faces international crises. Kennedy and the Cuban missiles. Johnson and the gulf of Tonkin; Nixon and the Pueblo incident; Ford and the Mayaguez crisis; Carter and the hostages; Reagan and Korean flight 007; Bush I and Saddam's Kuwait invasion; Clinton and Kosovo in the Balkans; Bush II and Sept 11. A president must always be ready to answer the zero-hour call for either decisive action, or inaction to avoid war. There is no time to negotiate. You can't vote "present", appeal to the UN, or hide in the Whitehouse.

Look back at our recent history. The last time our country was disgusted with a Republican administration, our nation chose to make a 90* turn. The public voted for an inexperienced liberal named James Earl Carter, a peanut farmer, who tortured our nation with 444 days of indecision during the Iranian hostage crisis. The man meant well, but he waffled in the Whitehouse, consulted with the U.N. and the World Court, and froze in his tracks, while our hostages were tortured and badgered until Reagan brought them home.

Examine my opponent's LATEST position on Iraq. He's had several. Yes he was against the war in 2002. Since then he's been dependably inconsistent. But now, the situation has decidedly changed. History is about to prove that we made the right decision. We are about to achieve a near-miracle accomplishment, a stable functional Muslim democracy, in the center of what was previously an area of instability and hostility. And Senator Obama wants us out. He would have us not only forfeiting our hard fought victory, but also he would be forfeiting the great peace dividend we are about to reap that could go on for the next hundred years.

Yes my friends, the war has been costly, but eventually we may recoup our expense a hundred-fold. As we speak, foreign investors are preparing a surge of their own. A United Arab Emirates developer will soon break ground in Baghdad on a 30-story $270 million hi-rise tower. It will house shopping malls, office space, and apartments. The cessation of sectarian tensions, and the dramatic improvements in security have attracted developers worldwide to Iraq.

The Mayor of Baghdad, Saber Nabat el-Essawy, is positively exuberant: His vision is to one day look across the city and see billions of dollars worth of malls, luxury hotels, apartment towers, outdoor amphitheaters, gardens, stadiums, and parks.

At our 80-acre military base at Rashid, a massive 5 billion dollar development has already attracted 16 foreign bids. This will include a state-of-the-art medical center, apartment complexes, hotels, shopping centers, and a sport stadium. A sports stadium? Apparently the Iraqis are planning on some long term stability, which well might last A HUNDRED YEARS! Now that the fighting has subsided, the Iraqi people are demanding cars, satellite dishes, phones, I pods, computers, and high definition TV's. Cell phone use has surged to over 70% in Iraq.

The future possibility of Iraq becoming one of our main export markets is there for the taking. The abundance of Iraqi oil is a resource for the capital they would send us to buy American goods...appliances, software, hardware, prescription drugs, airplanes, food, electronics, beverages, and whatever other markets we could develop.

But Senator Obama wants to cut and run, because he feels our money would be better spent on the alphabet soup of social agencies he has planned. Mr. Obama would subordinate our free market economy to his own liberal big-government style of socialism. Maybe he should be running for president of Sweden. Who knows?...maybe he could grow their government from the bottom up? But I don’t think that would work very well here!

But now that we've largely solved our problems in Iraq, the next president will undoubtedly be facing an even more menacing situation next door in Iran. How will the next president deal with a nuclear Iran, in the hands of Mr. Ahmadinejad? He's testing missiles. His engineers are spinning uranium into its heaviest molecular form, so it can be used to trigger a nuclear explosion. His first nuclear test could be in less than two years, and it could very well occur in Israel’s backyard.

Mr Obama said he would start negotiations with Ahmadinejad without preconditions. Would he return successful, or would he only succeed in becoming the next Neville Chamberlain? What if Iran then launches a surprise attack on Israel? Or Israel strikes first at Iran? Would Senator Obama agonize in the Whitehouse? Would he waffle, or get involved, and risk a wider conflict by aiding Israel? What if Iran blocks the straight of Hormuz? We would face a fuel shortage overnight, and our military planes would quickly run out jet fuel. 

These Muslim dictators have no moral code. You can't hold them in good faith in any diplomatic agreement. Yes...they will lie, and try to lull us into a false sense of security. That's why you don't negotiate with a dictator or a sworn enemy. An Islamic theocracy and our American democracy are polar opposites. Iran has spent the last five years buying up American technology on the black market, and making electronic detonators for the roadside bombs, which have been used to kill and maim our soldiers in Iraq. This Ahmadinejad character is no friend of ours!

My friends, the best way to assure our own national security is to develop our own resources, so our children don't have to fight any future energy wars. If we were to begin a Manhattan project of new offshore drilling, in the short term, it would put one million people to work! In the long term, it would translate to even more workers, more oil, lower gas and diesel lprices, and we can keep that 700 million we send annually to Opec in this country for new investment in jobs; and enable people to purchase a new car, or washing machine, or home improvements, because people would no longer be spending so much on gas!

Mr Obama would create five million new green jobs in alternative energy. But he must have been quoting from an estimate from the National Council of Mayors, which said five million new alternative energy jobs will be created in the next 30 years! THIRTY YEARS!

That's a long time to wait for a new job.

Mr Obama says we use 25% of the world's oil, but we have only 3% of its reserves, so we should plan on driving less, turn down our thermostats, and reduce our standard of living so the rest of the world can catch up. That's his plan for real change.

My friends, you can't grow the economy without a low cost supply of energy. Our factories run on natural gas...our heavy industries use diesel vehicles, and our airlines run on kerosene. Mass-produced electric and hydrogen cars are years away. 60% of our electricity comes from coal. And I plan on supplying the rest of it with new nuclear plants, that would put many other people back to work. And Mr Obama is against it all. He promises to replace all fossil fuels in 10 years. This would jeopardize our military security. Tanks, Humvees and jet fighters can't run on wind or solar.

Mr Obama is the taxman. He would place a carbon tax on coal plants; a tax on natural gas. Like that old song from the Beatles...he will literally tax your heat! Mr. Obama despises fossil fuels. He will have Al Gore whispering in his ear, as he dismantles our present energy infrastructure.

If you want to know what your Obama future will really look like, just watch the news from Atlanta, and see the gas lines winding around the block. This is what the democrats have done to our country from their anti-American energy policies. No new drilling...no new refineries... tax the energy companies. Blame George Bush. Strangle the free market. Do the bidding of the environmental puppeteers. Pretend alternative energy is just around the corner. Let the people keep paying 4 dollars a gallon, so they can continue to send their money to Opec, instead of to the bank for their mortgage payment.

My friends, as your president, in my first act of bi-partisanship, I will go directly to the Congress, and meet with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. I will tell them that we are going make a maximum effort to drill our way out of this present energy crisis.

We will develop our alternative energy supplies. We will build 45 new nuclear plants, and we will get rid of Opec in ten years after we perfect our shale-to-oil, and coal-to gas domestic energy supplies. There's your five million jobs!...and they're all ready to be filled now under a new McCain-Palin administration.

Governor Palin is America's most shining example of the perfect energy czar. She has the experience where America needs it most...solving our energy problem! We are going to find as much offshore oil as we can, which will lower the price of gas, and restart our economy.

And we will go to work on our infrastructure, and construct new corridors of hi-speed rail, and take the burden off our airports and interstates, conserve fuel, and create another job boom in alternative transportation, and put our engineers to work developing geothermal, solar and more efficient wind power.

But my friends, none of this will happen without your support this November. You may not agree with all my policies, but as your president, we'll regain our prosperity and place in the world, because the economy comes first, and restarting it requires realistic policies backed by firm, unwavering decisions. And I ask you to think very carefully about whom you choose to send back to Congress, because a president can accomplish little unless the people and the entire government are all on the same page.

And after you go into the voting booth, and begin to mark your ballots, I'd like you to think of our soldiers abroad, who are serving in Iraq and the Middle East. They're not on the front page any more, or in many news stories, because we're winning: but just the same they are still out there everyday, accomplishing their missions, and securing our freedom back home. Keep them in your prayers. Remember those who have died, or have survived with amputations and terrible burn wounds. We've payed a heavy price, so like Ronald Reagan always said... we must stay the course. 

But hold the phone here for a minute...there seems to be a slight hitch in the numbers. The United Auto Workers peaked at 1.5 million members in 1969. And today, the United Steelworkers Union represents 850,000 workers in both the U.S. and Canada. So let's just do a little adding up here: Uh, yes; the total number of workers in these established industries appears to only exceed 2 million.

But there's one small detail, mister Barack-O...once you make all these windmills, where the heck do they all go? Would you and your wife Michelle, be okay living within sight of one?

At the Democratic convention, during his Thursday night acceptance speech, Obama is on record as saying, "I'll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy". So will Obama have the government in the windmill manufacturing business? Or are they just going to give private industries $150 billion and say, "Git goin' boys, and start making all them hi-tech windmills of the future!" And who would be in charge of picking out the recipients of the $150 billion? Gore? The EPA? The U.N.? Who? The more you examine it, the murkier it gets. 

Government make-work programs go back to the 1930's. FDR's New Deal created the CCC, and the WPA,  putting millions back to work building projects, but did nothing to lift the country out of the Great Depression; it only prolonged it. It seems that Obama is making the classic liberal mistake-- government programs create jobs, but create no actual wealth. If there's no actual markets for the skills or jobs you're creating, then all are eventually doomed. Markets create wealth because every dollar invested in something that's actually useful or needed, has an economic-multiplier effect...it generates more and more investment as those markets continue to expand.

So are we to become the Saudi Arabia of windmills or what? Maybe we can export 'em to the far ends of the earth, because no one wants them anywhere near their property back here. 

But although Obama has never said it publicly, he's totally anti-oil. He shuns any more domestic drilling, and desires higher pump prices as a means of forced conservation. And if we don't drill for more domestic supply, that means more reliance on imports.  So in time of sudden emergency in the Middle East, could we depend on OPEC to come through? How reliable would they be?

Remember 1973? Obama was in grade school then. The Arabs cut off our oil supply right after the outbreak of the October Yom Kippur War. So what would happen if Israel and Iran were to get aggressive in 2 or 3 years with Obama as president? Who's side would OPEC take?  What if they cut us off again? Our insufficient domestic resources would jeopardize our military supply of oil in time of a national emergency.  We cannot expect to have a strong military in this century without the assurance of an adequate oil supply. Tanks can't run on electricity, and jet fighters don't run on wind or solar.

Obama is an undeniably brilliant man, but to this day, remains an enigma. Everyone knows ABOUT him, but besides his wife and family, does any one really KNOW him? He's able to talk entensively about almost anything, but is specific about nothing.

The only people who've been close to Obama as an adult are those back in south Chicago, and they're of highly questionable character. He is a brilliant orator, but keeps talking himself in and out of one political brushfire after another. If he only had a cause or purpose other than himself, a man of such brilliance could certainly be capable of truly great achievements.