I hope I have enough energy to talk about this subject.

It seems that the political misleaders of our great country have come to a sudden, shocking, realization. After decades of not even trying to put together a cohesive and responsible energy policy it appears that America's energy chickens have come home to roost. Sorry, I couldn't help laying that egg.

All of a sudden our elected officials and even the general public have come to the belated conclusion that we have less than adequate supplies of, or lack the infrastructure to use just about every source of energy that you can name. Shall we name names? Oil has to come first of course, but is far from the only problem area. Nuclear, natural gas, coal, hydrogen, wind, water, solar and ethanol/biofuels are all sorely lacking in their capability to help adequately feed the machine at present.

It's not like we haven't had sobering and repeated warnings about the dire consequences of not having a stable and secure source (our own) of the most crucial energy commodity at present, which is of course, oil.

So what happened? A series of unfortunate events. It seems that when you combine perpetually unstable middle eastern countries (who also hate us, as an extra added bonus) with a Democrat leadership that would seemingly rather kowtow to the most extreme radical elements of the environmental movement rather than put their own country's best interests first and foremost, throw in China and India sucking up more oil all the time, and mix with a dollar falling faster than the government can print more of them, and you have a bona fide recipe for gasoline surpassing four dollars a gallon without even slowing down this Summer.

For a country so dependent on energy to be caught in such a situation is unfathomable, to say the least. Terrorists needn't waste their time bombing our cities. All they have to do is ensure that the US has to continually (and singlehandedly) be forced to protect the entire world's oil supply in the Middle East. This, of course, is without so much as a “thank you” from all the countries who wouldn't even dream of helping assure they receive their allotted share of oil. This will continue until we either give up or run out of money, at which point the terrorists will assume control and the game will be over.

What to to do? Well, first off, the environmental extremists who are so determined to drive this country to it's knees should be taken out and shot as the traitors that they are. OK, maybe not. How about we just ignore them instead? I just find it amazing and also more than a little bit suspicious that such a relatively small group can be so effective in blocking any and every conceivable effort on our part to reduce our dependence on foreign supplies.

At least in the short term, we could ease the strain considerably by turning the oil companies loose to drill in ANWR, off both coasts and in the gulf. Yes, the same gulf where the Chinese are drilling. There is also more shale oil available than we could use up in several lifetimes. This would be far more effective than any idiotic plan to tax windfall profits. Why not let the oil companies do what they do best? If we go full steam ahead on nuclear energy, coal could also be converted into motor vehicle fuel, and again, we have more than we could use in several centuries. Along with natural gas (which we have plenty of) biofuels, wind and water, we're not lacking energy, we're just being methodically prevented from using what we have. We're to the point where that can't continue to happen without dire consequences.

The best part of this plan is that once we're all comfy and cozy on our own energy supply, we can bring all our military forces home and let the rest of the world procure and defend their own damn oil for a change. We could save untold billions of dollars by doing so, and invest it in new energy technology rather than wasting it securing supplies for foreign countries who could care less about us.

It's nice to dream, anyway.