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I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute.
I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit.

Me too. While solar and wind may never fully replace oil and coal, they can
put a serious dent in our need for either. We seem to have entered a binary
world where things are either black or white. No gray allowed. "If taxing
the rich like they used to be taxed doesn't *immediately* solve the money
crisis, then there's no sense in doing it at all" seems to be the mantra of
many who forgot we got in this mess one day at a time and it's going to take
time to get out of it.

A similarly nonsensical position is to believe solar, wind, tidal and other
sources of power shouldn't be explored because they are not going to replace
oil and coal instantly. Even if the Feds have to pony up some seed money,
it's better to have the idle machinists in Detroit building *something*
useful instead of sitting home doing nothing.

But the real issue is being prepared for the future.

We're hearing all this crazy deficit talk as if we're creating a problem
for our children. I think using up resources on the only planet we have
is much more important.

Finally!!! A person who gets it!!! Why is it OK to steal resources from our
children's future but not OK to put them into debt? The answer is, of
course, that neither thing is good to do. It's just that the national debt
situation makes for good political theater. Maybe if we got smart and
didn't hand over billions of dollars to a country that gave safe-haven to
Osama bin Laden we could save our way back to prosperity.

I don't seem to recall anyone clamoring over how much it cost to start the
two wars we have no chance of winning. I don't even recall anyone clearly
elucidating what we stood to gain from these wars. What have we gained? So
far it seems to me the only thing we have to show for those wars is a large
group of horribly wounded soldiers that the CBO estimates might cost ANOTHER
trillion dollars to care for duing their (often) miserable lifetimes. I
don't know about you, but if I spend two or three trillion on something, I'd
like to get at least some value.

Obama and Bush were equally stupid about these wars, thinking they could
deny Al-Qaeda "training camps." Someone should have told them it's an
awfully big world out there and we don't have enough troops to keep it all
terrorist free. We weren't able to stop McVeigh on our own home turf. What
does that say about the sanity of thinking we can lock terrorism down
worldwide? The terrorists are laughing themselves silly at us because we've
spent ourselves into near bankruptcy chasing down ghosts and goat herders.
That's just what they wanted - to terrorize us into not thinking clearly -
and it just BURNS me that we've allowed them to succeed to the point where
we're near broke and openly fighting amongst ourselves.

Both parties have people in them with good ideas but they're getting drowned
out and run over by leaders who believe that winning is the ONLY thing.
It's more important than getting the country back to prosperity. If there's
a SINGLE economist who thinks the plan to default on the US debt is a *good*
idea, I haven't come across them. Universally they seem to be saying that
going into default has the potential to double our trouble by raising the
cost to borrow money and paying the added costs of dealing with the chaos a
government shutdown would cause.

Ironic, considering it was two wars, the TSA and a pro-business Medicare
drug plan that have helped drive us so deeply into debt. All that happened
under someone else's watch. We've reached the uneviable situation where
political leaders are saying, in reality, "we would rather see the baby cut
in TWO rather than have those devils in the OTHER party get it all!"

--
Bobby G.