If I gotta get to Oregon from Tennessee, I ain't goin' by rail....OK?

I'm gonna fly, especially if it is fairly cheap, cuz I KNOW it is gonna be fast. Rail can not compete with air. Rails are meant to deliver coal from place to place. Rails carry heavy, really HEAVY stuff....and they do that fairly well. But they ain't no panacea in a country of this size, and they ain't no replacement for aviation travel speeds.

And you are not correct is absolute terms that we can not buy oil from places that will not sponsor terrorism. We certainly CAN dig up oil ourselves. And sad to say? We NEED IT, man. Americans, for the most part, do not want to hang out in a subway from work to home. New Yorkers can do it, and they do....but most of America commutes. I don't see that changing much, to be honest. Folks want to drive their OWN car into work, and drive home. They don't like being inconvenienced by the carpool phenomenon. Tons of folks who have TRIED carpooling hated it, and went back to driving themselves.

Now, there may be a future for hybrid cars, solar cars, whatever.... but unless we get TAXED bad at the pump (and I mean enough to RUIN those SUV owners) then folks ain't gonna buy no 50 MPG aluminum box with UGO wheels on it. Americans like horsepower; we don't dig the euro paradigm of champagne prices for petro.

I see the oil industry as powerful, and not getting less powerful any times soon. Folks in America want CHEAP GAS, Oil is God. They want to be able to drive their SUVs, and big trucks, and Corvettes, and Z28s. And they are vocal about it in the choices they make. Now, we may get a left admin in there that adds a hefty gas tax to balance the fed budget, which makes it harder for SUV drivers, but I think it may be a weird status symbol to drive an Escalade anyway.

One small part of the solution WOULD BE that gas tax, though. A big hefty GAS tax to pay for health care, social security, a balanced budget, medicare, education? You could have those big block trucks be worthless pretty much overnight; they'd be in ruins. You couldn't sell one if ya had one. Because no one could afford the gas to go in it. The RV market (recreational vehicles, like Winnebagos) would be devastasted, and keep in mind the trucking industry that brings your bread to the local Kroger. All transportation costs will be passed on in higher prices.

I vote to get cheap oil, and increase airport security, and deport every freakin' alien we got here.