We Begin With Rick Warren and John McCain...

McCain Interview- I watched the Rick Warren interview with John McCain last night, missed the one with Barack Obama because I was napping... I was unhappy with a lot of the questioning, not much policy and a lot of the easy, suck-up to an evangelistic audience predictive answers. Many times John ignored answering a question just to make sure he got the stories and points he was told to make in. He was paying more attention trying to remember them than looking back at his questioner. And Pastor Warren let him slide when he fudged or went off on a tangent. I did enjoy McCain's sense of humor. I just wish that the John McCain from 8 years ago were running and not this forgetful pod person out on display now...

Olympics- I've been enjoying watching the Olympics on tv, even don't mind Bob Costas so much. I like it that I end up rooting for people and countries that I didn't even knew were in the Olympics, along with our teams from the USA. Here I am at 1 am watching these big ol' women competing in  the super-heavyweight weightlifting competition. The smallest woman from Korea won the gold medal and set a new world record and it was amazing to watch.

Of course everyone likes to talk about the Chinese gymnasts. Did China cheat and lie about their team members ages? Duh, of course they did. Will China ever admit it, even though it's so obvious? No, they never will, it would make their leaders look foolish. Will the IOC take any action? Nope, they are all a bunch of pussies and have no backbone. At every Olympics ever held, there have been countries that have cheated, including the USA. Some were so in-your-face that they drew comment, some got the rules revised. It's just sad that competition also brings out the need to dominate instead of just relaxing and enjoying it. Go Tunisia!

Gas Prices- All of this blustery talk about drilling and breaking up shale rock is fun, but really has nothing to do with the current cost of gasoline. It's part of a dominant agenda to get back at any environmental law that won't let the gas and oil industry do what they want. And there seem to be plenty of puppets here that will regurgitate their arguments. Reminds me of a science fiction story from the 1950's, the Mindless Marching Morons...

In Saudi Arabia gas prices are under one dollar. Iraq has made over 80 billion dollars from oil sales while being occupied by the USA. Exxon and Shell reported a record breaking quarterly profit of 17 billion dollars. If the gas companies would accept a lower profit margin, say, 14 billion dollars every three months, prices would come down immediately at the pump.

If we regulated the speculation of commodities again, at least back to where it was before it was de-regulated by a paragraph that Phill Gramm slipped into some other piece of legislation, prices would come down at the pump. And food prices, clothing prices, asphalt prices, plastic prices would all come down. I want this to happen because coffee prices have gone up over $4 per pound and I would like to see them lower again. I need my cup of coffee in the morning and I can't buy the swill that's sold in the supermarkets, must have freshly roasted beans to grind...

These two things alone could lower prices by at least $2 per gallon. And, as a bonus, if the oil industry donated a couple billion dollars per quarter, we could have every house in the US installed with solar panels and we would have an excess of energy, and, in many cases, the utilities would be paying you to buy your generated electricity... Coupled with wind turbines like T. Boone Pickens suggests, we could quickly be self sufficient for electricity. It's a win-win situation, for our country, and the gas companies still make billion and billions in profits.

- yiquan