Replies

AHHHH. I'm a Mulshine fan and a Hannity fan. The cognitive dissonance is tearing me apart. Ahhhhh!

However, I don't consider myself a boob!

That said, I agree with Mulshine in general regarding SUVs.

Other Mulshine Anti-SUV columns:

SUV drivers go off-road (FR Thread)

The war must be over [Paul Mulshine] (FR Thread)

SUVs: High Rollers, Licensed To Kill (Warning, this links to CommonDreams.Org, an enemy of freedom)

That said, I agree with Mulshine in general regarding SUVs.

I'll give up my SUV's when you can get it out from under my cold, dead right foot!

Oh yea, and when the manufactures start making regular vehicles that 6'6" folks can ride in and drive - comfortably.

Mulshinney is a boob - in my SUV warped opinion.

LVM

Mulshine, along with a lot of other folks who call themselves jounalists these days, is quite ignorant about the whole issue of "oil dependence."

For one thing, the U.S. doesn't "rely" on Saudi Arabia for oil. We get oil from places like Saudi Arabia for the same reason we get electronics from Asia, bananas from South America, and unskilled labor from Mexico -- because these places provide these commodities at the lowest prices.

Mulshine should also do some research and find out how much less "dependent" we have become on Saudi oil over the years. Saudi Arabia is still the single largest foreign supplier of oil to the U.S., but it has now fallen behind the combined Western Hemisphere sources like Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Ironically, the best way to keep the U.S. from buying Saudi oil is to figure out a way to make oil even cheaper. Over the last ten years, oil imports from Saudi Arabia were at their lowest when oil was trading at $12 a barrel. At low prices, the cost of shipping Saudi oil to the U.S. becomes a major factor that makes us a less attractive market to them.

I'd also like to see someone in Mulshine's position find out how much oil is actually used to produce gasoline in the U.S. I may be wrong about this, but I was under the impression that the quantity of oil used to produce gasoline is dwarfed by the oil used to produce things like aviation fuel, lubricants, etc.

We can have huge gas-guzzling vehicles. Or we can start moving to energy independence. But we can't do both.

Why can't we do both? Drill in ANWR, and keep the SUV's and we've "start[ed] moving to energy independence" and kept the SUV's.

Boob.

By the way, I'm amazed at the freepers who want to eliminate SUV's, which would have to be done via government "encuragement" at the very least. So much for freedom, even in this forum.

There's an interesting article in the current "Science" (I think it was) that describes a process that can turn virtually anything with carbon in it to oil for a resonable cost. They've just opened a plant that turns turkey guts from a packing house into high grade oil at $18/bbl. The process will work with shale oil, coal, plastics, garbage, even human $hit. The cost varies depending on what you start with. They think they can get the cost down somewhere around $9-$12

The secret to the process is they don't attempt to "dry" the input substance first, but pressure cook it which recombines molecules befor they feed it into a standard oil cracking system.

Mr. Mulshine, I guess I am one of the "BOOBS" that you are talking about. I own a Ford Explorer that gets about 20 mpg. I will never give it up. I don't care how much we can save riding bicycles. I can afford to put gas in it and will continue to do so. It is obvious to me that if we use more oil than we can produce we will be "dependent" on someone else for our oil needs until we find a new resource to use.

Anyone who attempts to drive a high center of gravity vehicle at high speed is going to eventually have a "rollover". They aren't made to be sports cars. They are made to go through 3' of snow and haul 2000# of cargo. Try that in a Yugo that gets 40 mpg. It doesn't matter how much gas it uses, a Abrams tank gets gpm not mpg but we have them and use them for the application that it is needed for. A tractor trailer gets 5 mpg but if we replace it with 100 Yugo's getting 40 mpg it still won't get the goods to market as efficiently as 1 Kenworth. We will never have energy independence unless we come up with new technology.

Every American has the ability to determine what vehicle is right for them. If they can pay the price what makes it any of your business? Some people have 10,000 SQ. FT. homes that cost more to heat and cool than my 1700 SQ. FT. home, maybe "we" should outlaw them! What self serving bullshit. Go ride your bicycle down the road in the middle of winter in western PA and I will laugh at your obituary and say what a dumb bastard you were. Personally, fossil fuels will eventually rise in price to a point that other fuels will be equal in price. That is how the "free market" works. Rather that than your dictatorial methods of making everyone follow your asinine suggestions. You would make a great Saddam Mini Me. Crawl back under whatever rock you slithered out from under. This is the land of the free not the land that doesn't cost anything.