Charles Krauthammer, whose name is only slightly less cool than Wolf Blitzer (though he surpasses the Communist News Network host on every other level), shows the way on Energy Independence:

There are three serious things we can do now: Tax gas. Drill in the Arctic. Go nuclear.

That’s the really important part. You can stop reading now if you like, and go on to the next post. Still here? Well, he gets down to the details:

First, tax gas. The president ostentatiously rolled out his 20-in-10 plan: reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years. This with Rube Goldberg regulation — fuel-efficiency standards, artificially mandated levels of “renewable and alternative fuels in 2017″ and various bribes (er, incentives) for government-favored technologies — of the kind we have been trying for three decades. Good grief. I can give you a 20-in-2: tax gas to $4 a gallon. With oil prices having fallen to $55 a barrel, now is the time. The effect of a gas-tax hike will be seen in less than two years…

This also works on another level… The best way to wean people from a behavior that the government decides is BAD FOR THEM, is to TAX IT. Just look at Cigarettes… And those that continue to indulge, pay the freight. This will give the government some revenue that can be used to create a prize for the first practical process to create Hydrogen Gas, that costs less or pollutes less or uses less energy than it consumes, or something like that. Or fuel cells, or a Pocket Nuclear Reactor. Whatever.

No regulator, no fuel-efficiency standards, no presidential exhortations, no grand experiments with switchgrass. Raise the price and people change their habits. It’s the essence of capitalism.

Second, immediate drilling to recover oil that is under U.S. control, namely in the Arctic and on the Outer Continental Shelf. No one pretends that this fixes everything. But a million barrels a day from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 5 percent of our consumption. In tight markets, that makes a crucial difference.

Combining these two, we should be able to cut our 60% reliance on imports to 1970ish levels (say 35%).

No one has a remotely good idea about how to make any difference in global warming without enlisting China and India, and without destroying the carbon-based Western economy. The obvious first step, however, is an extremely powerful source of energy that produces not an ounce of carbon dioxide: nuclear.What about nuclear waste? Well, coal produces toxic pollutants, as does oil. Both produce carbon dioxide that we are told is going to end civilization as we know it. These wastes are widely dispersed and almost impossible to recover once they get thrown into the atmosphere. Nukes produce waste as well, but it comes out concentrated — very toxic and lasting nearly forever, but because it is packed into a small manageable volume, it is more controllable. And it doesn’t pollute the atmosphere. At all.

I have expanded on this topic in the past. Anyone interested can go to the old American Empire page and check the Energy category. I really like the finish too:

So much easier to say ethanol. That it will do farcically little is beside the point. Our debates about oil consumption, energy dependence and global warming are not meant to be serious. They are meant for show.

Check out Whackynation.

Here’s one reason why:

I am amused by the pledge drive going on at Horses Ass.

It seems a liberal blogger can’t survive without the public paying his bills.

How pathetic.  Yet, how democrat.  You want others to pay your bill.

I’d shoot myself first.  I have too much pride than to beg.

Yet, the pathic liberal community has given almost $2400, according to to blogger David Goldstein.

P.T. Barnum was right.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

As the Senate begins a debate this week on whether to oppose President Bush’s “new way forward” in Iraq, many lawmakers are balancing what they see as competing constitutional responsibilities – and stepped up pressure from voters long weary of a war that most Americans no longer think can be won.A first step is the debate over a non binding resolution to oppose the escalation of the war in Iraq. But should that vote succeed, Democrats expect to move next to curb defense funding.

You must remember that because of the Seniority system, the majority of Congressman and Senators in true positions of power now are from the 60’s generation. They remember the heady days when they were young, blooming flower children, protesting the war in Vietnam. Some of them were even in the House and Senate at the time.

And when the Democrat Party gained power in the early 70’s, the used it to quickly cut off funding to the South Vietnamese government, ensuring the triumph of the North Vietnamese, and through them, their overlords from the Soviet Union.

In the ensuing spasms of falling dominoes, more than 2 Million people died, and entire nations were devastated.

Not content with their past glory, the fellow travellers want one more sip from the well.

Of course, despite the best efforts of the Commissars of the Education Unions, many Americans can still read and, more importantly, think. Many can still remember the after effects of the last time the Democrat Party cut and ran.

“But Democrats also have this internal debate over just how far they can go. They are still afraid of being perceived by the American people as being antitroops or antipatriotic,” he adds. A strong showing from antiwar voters – expressed in e-mails, phone calls, or turnout at protests – “could provide an extra prod for Democrats to go that step further,” Mr. (pollster John) Zogby adds.

So they will tiptoe into this, with their eager supporters repeating the same winning strategy from the 60’s, holding protests, and gleaning as much coverage from the like minded media as they can, in an attempt to indoctrinate the supporters of the action in Iraq that they are in the minority, and should either opppose the war, or shut up.

But if the Democrat Party members in Washington think they can do this slow and stealthy, they are going to find the true moon-bat wing of their party forcing their hand.

“The president is irrelevant at this point. We are not going to change his mind. Thank goodness we have a Congress that is a co-equal branch of government,” says Tom Andrews, national director of Win Without War and a former Democratic representative from Maine.

“We’re going to use the Internet to make it absolutely clear who is doing what. Members of Congress need to know that we have their back when they’re attacked, and if they are against us, they will feel the heat.”

How many millions will die this time, due to the failure of the Democrat Party to recognize that Appeasement and Defeatism only emboldens totalitarians and religious extremists?

How can it be that the Party that enthusiastically slaughtered Christians in Waco, cannot recognize the same type of megalomania in Iran and other Muslim extremist leaders?