Why our country is in trouble

[Guest Truth Teller]

For thirty-five years, we have been giving trillions of dollars to the oil companies to satisfy our addiction to oil, even though we knew exactly what they were doing to us. By now, we could have developed wind, solar and geothermal energy, and perhaps hydrogen. Nuclear could also be promising, though concerns remain about nuclear waste. We refused to try because the oil companies talked us into sticking with them. Not only has this cost us trillions of dollars directly; it has also cost us additional trillions in so-called "defense" spending, which is a euphemism for using the U.S. military to ensure that the oil flow remained uninterrupted.

Future generations will wonder how we could have been so selfish and so stupid at the same time.

[Guest Guest]

We have been addicted to oil for more than thirty-five years. The truth is, the automobile industry has for about eighty years, been pushing the use of oil based products in the powering of their various vehicles. When we had street cars, driven by electricity, GM pushed to get rid of them to get us to ride buses. The electricity was produced by coal and natural gas. We should have been working to get the most out of our coal by improving the burning of it--we have a great deal of coal in our country and we are not using it, why because we missed the boat on cleaning up the burning of it.

The oil we use in our country is not imported 100 percent from the middle east--a great deal of the oil comes from Canada. They have great deposits of oil contained in the shale found in their country--we have the same type of shale in our country. It is time to get oil from our own country and start looking for other power sources to drive our cars--electricity may not be the answer. Better yet, while we are exploring new sources, make our automobile companies come up with better engines that can get more miles per gallon out of the oil products that we are using. Over the years, we have heard of engines that could get terrific milage but the big automobile companies or the oil companies bought out the patents and never put them to use.

As for being stupid--we really have put a great deal of trust in our government. We need to get people in government to start to look out for us rather than their lobbying friends who donate vast amounts of money to them. We have always had great minds in our country--great inventors, and entrepreneurs, with the ideas and the money to solves problems. We should be giving them the freedom to explore the avenues of energy to come up with creative methods to improve our world with clean, cheap energy. We must get people in government who care about us--the people who pay their salaries.

[Guest 2smart4u]

For thirty-five years, we have been giving trillions of dollars to the oil companies to satisfy our addiction to oil, even though we knew exactly what they were doing to us. By now, we could have developed wind, solar and geothermal energy, and perhaps hydrogen. Nuclear could also be promising, though concerns remain about nuclear waste. We refused to try because the oil companies talked us into sticking with them. Not only has this cost us trillions of dollars directly; it has also cost us additional trillions in so-called "defense" spending, which is a euphemism for using the U.S. military to ensure that the oil flow remained uninterrupted.

Future generations will wonder how we could have been so selfish and so stupid at the same time.

I'm wondering right now how you got so stupid.