Imagine you are on a game show. Three doors are presented. Behind one door is a car, behind each of the other two doors is a goat. You pick a door. The host, who knows what is behind each door, opens one of the other doors to reveal a goat. He then gives you the option to either stick with your original pick or to pick the other unopened door.

Say you pick door #1. The host opens door #3 to reveal a goat. Do you stick with door #1, or do you switch to door #2? Why?

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“We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anyone tell you different!”
-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., “Timequake”

It has been said that “possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

How about a new one? “Perception is nine-tenths of the truth.”

How else could people like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama convince people that they aren’t elitist and out of touch with the vast majority of the country? How else could John McCain claim to be a conservative? Bailing out predatory mortgage lenders is a good thing? A windfall tax on oil company profits will reduce gasoline prices or somehow help the citizens of America? More government control is good?

WTF?

The future doesn’t look bright, regardless of who ends up where. Either way, we end up with the same garbage in Washington that has been there for years, even if they have different offices and sit in different chairs.

Unfortunately (for us), the perception is that they’re full of crap, and perception is nine-tenths of the truth.

It is being reported on Drudge and Fox News that House Democrats, or more specifically, Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), think the answer to our energy issues is to nationalize the oil refineries.

Says Rep. Hinchey, “We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market.”

Well, they’ve done such a bang-up job with Social Security, welfare, and border security, why not venture into the oil industry? After all, nothing motivates like a lack of accountability.

Apparently politicians think the way to win votes is to promise to take profits from large companies. The politicians have demonized these companies, implying they are solely to blame for the price of a gallon of gasoline. I’m not even going to touch the issues with speculation for now.

The latest mantra is that the big oil companies haven’t invested enough of their profits in alternative energy. Here’s an interesting little thought: Why don’t we let companies decide for themselves what to invest in? I personally think it would be a good idea, but my opinion is hardly law, and the same goes for potential Presidents. The reason I think it’s a good idea is because I’m a fan of capitalism and the free market. The reason they think it’s a good idea is because it may get them more votes, and apparently they’re willing to presume to tell companies how they should do business.

Oil is currently trading at over $130 per barrel, and gas is over $4 per gallon. I don’t think those prices are sustainable. Necessity is the mother of invention, and if those prices don’t come down, the push for alternative energy will gain enough momentum and brainpower to come up with something that eclipses oil. If that happens, companies who still rely on oil will find themselves obsolete and will fold, regardless of how many billions they made last year.

That is why the Saudis are now apparently willing to increase their supply in an attempt to bring prices down; they know that if prices don’t come down, people will find an alternative to oil, and their cash cow will die.

The big problem is when the government tries to step in and tell people how to innovate. The government is the last place I’d look if I wanted to find someone to come up with a new idea. They say ethanol is the future, but really they just jumped on the coattails of the first thing that came along and threw a bunch of money at it.

Oil companies are oil companies. They sell oil and oil products. It’s what they do. If they choose to remain oil companies (as opposed to energy companies) and not to spend any of their record profits on developing other means of turning a profit, that’s their poor business sense. If they do choose to innovate, that’s their choice as well. The government’s place is not to dictate which ventures a business undertakes.

Of course, what’s the motivation? IF they come up with something and make a ton of money, the government will try to slap a windfall profits tax on them and take it away. Way to encourage innovation!

Well, this certainly has been a fun little odyssey. By “fun,” of course, I mean stupid. At this point I’d rather just forget about it, but I may end up having to move to a different host. That all depends on what my current host does in the immediate future. The ball is in their court. It’s a good thing I can count my readers on one hand, or there would have been more than a couple people upset that I was down.

It has been especially frustrating due to the astronomical amount of recent jackassery in the world.

Hopefully I’ll be able to sort some of it out and put something coherent together in the form of a post.