It Never Ends...

It seems like the world is spinning around and around and heading for the drain with no regard for reality and certainly no commonsense. There have been several noteworthy events over the past week that I need to comment on. These are:

• The shooting in Tucson is a tragedy that unfortunately happens time to time all over the world. When this event took place it took the political hacks on both sides of the spectrum about 2 minutes to start blaming it on the other sides hateful political rhetoric. Once they got that off their chest their next sentence was filled with even more hateful political rhetoric.
• After about 20 minutes worth of investigation it was determined the shooter was a mentally impaired psychopath who had not been hiding his true self to anyone around him before this incident. Everyone from his parents to his many associates knew the guy was off his rocker but did nothing to help contain this person. You really can't blame these people because it is hard for a normal person to envisage this sort of massacre taken place until it actually happens. The shooter may be a loon but he did not have a history of violence that would have led people to believe he was capable of doing something like this.
• 20 minutes later the anti-gun lobby entered into the fray looking to place the blame on the US gun laws. These people have been irritating me for years to say the least. Do they honestly believe that a prohibition on citizens owning firearms would reduce violent crime? It would be just as effective as when the government outlawed alcohol. The law did not stop people from imbibing. All the law did was make a lot of criminal organizations wealthy and powerful from smuggling alcohol. This smuggling also led to unprecedented violence as the criminal organizations fought over market share and distribution rights. If the US was to outlaw firearms the only people who would have guns would be the criminals and the underground organizations who would take over and control the gun trade. Then there is the problem with collecting the guns people already own, you can't put this genie back in the bottle. I think the government would have quite a problem on their hands if they attempted to de-arm the population. After all the 2nd amendment was put in place so citizens could protect themselves from the government if necessary. I have no problem with prohibiting certain types of firearms like fully automatic assault weapons and other similar weapons that are more suited for battlefields but don't come asking for my 30.06. 
• I read a recent posting by a dedicated Marxist hack named Oscar Heck. He publishes lengthy screeds on the evils of capitalist governments in general and the US in particular. He has predicted with certainty that the US and other capitalist based countries will collapse into barbarism over the next couple of years and leave countries like Cuba and Venezuela running the western hemisphere. Boy I can't wait for this! Of course he has been predicting this for the past 30 years. I think someone ought to look into this guy and make sure he isn't planning on showing up at a shopping mall armed for war and looking to advocate Marxism as humanities saviour.
• I came across a posting this morning that said Iran, Venezuela, and Libya had no problem with charging $100 per barrel for oil. I actually hope they do this. The sooner the price of oil increases the sooner the US will initiate alternative energy services. It is only the cost of oil that is keeping the US from changing over to alternative sources of energy. Currently oil is the cheapest energy available. However, if the price raises just a bit more this will no longer be the case. While it will take time to convert the entire country off of oil the US does have some resources of it's own that could eliminate the need to aquire oil from other countries. The shale fields in the western US holds the same amount of oil as Saudi Arabia. We have not tapped this resource because of costs and valid environmental concerns. It is still cheaper to use th eoil than harvest the shale. Harvesting the shale used to require strip mining and costly processing to get the oil out of the shale. However, there is new technologies and methods that make it possible to retrieve the oil trapped in the shale without strip minining. Basically they drill a shaft, lower a heating element down the shaft to heat the shale in the ground , and then pump up the resulting oil residue out of the ground. Whenever the major oil suppliers in the world threaten to raise the price the US can and should threaten right back and say OK we don't need your oil. I'd love to see the faces of the members of OPEC then.  I really hope this happens in my life time. We have taken so much BS from the midle-east I would love to cut off all ties and let them slip back into desert tribalism. Face it, they would not have very far to fall.  
• People complain that the wealthy US oil industry magnates are blocking the use of other energy sources but I don't think this is a valid point. These rich folks did not make their fortunes by being stupid. Oil is a finite resource and as the supply lessens and the price rises they will start looking ahead. By investing in alternative energy sources they will practically guarantee their profits in the near future. They have the money to invest and the return on that investment looks very promising indeed. They would also benefit because of the effect on the environment. Right now their biggest foes are environmental groups. Switch to a less damaging energy source and their biggest critics go away.
• The world has been howling about the US fighting wars so they could steal oil. This has been the one of the most idiotic theories floating around. The US did not steal any of Kuwait's oil when we fought to get them back their country. US oil companies did not get any oil contracts in Iraq either, it was European and Chinese companies who grabbed those riches. The world acts like the US is the only country in the world that uses oil when in fact everyone does. What the US will fight for is for those countries who have the oil to be able to continue selling that oil to the world at large.  The Iraqi army did cross into Saudi Arabia and seize some towns when they invaded Kuwait. If the US had not gotten involved I have no doubt that Iraq could have taken Saudia Arabia's southern oil fields after locking down Kuwait. That would have given Iraq control of 1/5th of the worlds total oil supply.
• It is rumored that Osama bin Laden's biggest beef with the US was it's involvement in protecting Saudi Arabia during the first Iraqi war. He had offered the Saudi government the services of his valiant mujahadeen to fight off the Iraqi invasion. Of course the Saudi government said thanks for the offer but we've got it covered. The mujahadeen would have been slaughtered by the Iraqi army. Fighting in the open desert is not like fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan, Pakistan, or even Chechnye. There is no where to run and hide. Air power combined with ground based armour would have leveled the mujahadeen in record time. All of the previous mujahadeen battles were fought where the terrain severly limited it's opponents use of air power and tanks. The desert battlefield offers none of these advantages. Even though the US made defeating Iraq look easy the Iraqi army in the first war was a formidable force in both size and armaments and brutality.  In hind sight maybe the US should have let Sadaam wipe out as many mujahadeen as possible before going in to take over. Sort of like the way we let Iraq and Iran go at each other for over 8 years.