ouch! anyone else's wallet in pain?

[AKA_Monet]

Originally Posted by jon1856

Brother;
You might enjoy this:
Our Own Oil Cartel
Terrence Jeffrey 6/4/2008
Contemplate this the next time you spend $60 or more filling up your tinny little car with gasoline made from imported oil: The U.S. government knows where it can get its hands on more untapped petroleum than exists in the proven reserves of Iran or Iraq, which have 136 billion barrels and 115 billion barrels, respectively.

This unexploited stock of crude is greater than what the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports is in the proven reserves of Russia (60 billion barrels), Libya (41.5 billion barrels) and Nigeria (36.2 billion barrels) combined.

It is more than Hugo Chavez's Venezuela has (80 billion barrels).

It is more than is now known to sit beneath the waters and sands of Kuwait (101.5 billion barrels) or the United Arab Emirates (97.6 billion barrels).

So, where is all this oil? And why aren't they pumping it?...............
http://www.caglepost.com/column.aspx?c=6622&pg=1
And would like to know what you think of this:
At $4, Everybody Gets Rational
Charles Krauthammer 6/6/2008
This is insanity. For 25 years and with utter futility (starting with "The Oil-Bust Panic," the New Republic, February 1983), I have been advocating the cure: a U.S. energy tax as a way to curtail consumption and keep the money at home. On this page in May 2004 (and again in November 2005), I called for "the government -- through a tax -- to establish a new floor for gasoline," by fully taxing any drop in price below a certain benchmark. The point was to suppress demand and to keep the savings (from any subsequent world price drop) at home in the U.S. Treasury rather than going abroad. At the time, oil was $41 a barrel. It is now $123.......................
http://www.caglepost.com/column.aspx?c=6664&pg=2

Jon--dude may be right, but, the damage to the environment is so destructive that it would NOT be worth to drill this oil up. Yes, $4 a gallon. Should we be leaving a Carbon footprint that large when something other fuel source is on the cusp of discovery? I would rather make it "Mother Necessity of Invention"--and guess what, to be competitive, I think the US brain power is intelligent enough to make it a necessity to change how we all, globally use fuel...

Not saying dude is wrong, but I disagree with his tactic. I don't want any more platforms off California's coast... And you definitely won't get them off Washington state's coast--too many Greenpeace/ELF lunatics...