Are we there yet?

Summertime. If you haven't already taken your summer vacation, now's the time. Before school starts again. Before the days get too short to linger in the dusk. Before you've enjoyed a change of pace. But can you afford it this year?

Are we there yet?

When I was a kid, back in the last half century, we piled in the back of the family station wagon and headed off, usually with a tent. We went East, to visit relatives, and to the NY World's Fair, where we got a glimpse of telephones you didn't have to share on a party line, technology that would take us to the moon. We traveled South, shared a prayer circle with the Cherokee, and walked back in history at Williamsburg and Mt. Vernon. We drove West, threw snowballs in the Rockies in June and pushed on to the Pacific to swim.

It was a time when most people drove rather than flew. It was a time of no air-conditioning but cheap gas. It was a time when you only got fresh vegetables in season, when you shopped at the corner store and shopped in town and what they had was what you got. If you didn't like ruffles and blue, too bad. That was the only dress that fit. And living in a small town, we had cable, yes, but only so we could get two TV channels rather than one. I grew up without ABC:)

I don't think I was deprived as a child. But I certainly wouldn't want to go back to all of that limited choice and seasonal scarcity. I certainly will still want the choices at the mall or on the net--not necessarily in the neighborhood, and not necessarily made in the USA.

We are competing globally now, we have global choices--and so does much of the rest of the world. Populous China and India are growing, old country Ireland is rising fast. We've got to keep up. We need a family-friendly, job-friendly policy approach that keeps the economy on the path to growth, for our future and our children's.

Obama wants to slow, McCain wants to grow.

Whose policies will mean jobs?

The economy runs on energy. We have had a moratorium on drilling offshore for almost 20 years. We haven't built a new refinery for nearly 30. While France has built countless nuclear power plants in the last generation, so that 80% of their power safely comes from clean, green nuclear, we have built none.

In an age where everyone appreciates the enormous technological advances driven by computers, why are we ignoring the tremendous progress made in drilling and transporting oil? Did anyone notice that even the powerful, destructive force of Katrina did not spill any oil in the Gulf? Are you aware that ANWR in Alaska is a fly-bitten swamp the size of a golf course, and the drilling footprint would be as precise as a surgical laparoscopy through a belly button? Can you imagine what it would mean to the rust belt car economy in Michigan if we had our own oil and gas?

High energy costs are a huge tax on working people.

Then there are the high food prices, driven up by Democrat policies that mandate corn be grown for fuel not food. Does this make sense, when almost as much energy goes to grow corn as is supposedly saved by using it as ethanol? Why are we sacrificing now based on the unproven threat of global warming, which even if it exists, even if we did everything Al wants, would barely budge the thermometer? And how does it help the planet to drill in less advanced and responsible countries? Some perspective please.

In the short term we are stuck with oil and gas. We need to drill now. Democrats somehow think it's pie in the sky to talk about drilling for oil when it can't happen immediately, yet they want to take immediate steps to protect against global warming that may never happen. Democrats have been saying this for years--but if we'd started drilling years ago we wouldn't be in trouble now. We can start drilling from existing platforms off Santa Barbara within the year. Another talking point is that oil companies are somehow holding out on us by not drilling for oil on existing leases--but they've spent billions on exploration, and only some of that land has yielded oil. And just the decision to drill today does have a positive impact on prices. Even the left-leaning Washington Post is mostly on board.

Conservation yes, but it's not enough. Alternatives yes, but even maxing out and peppering pristine stretches of the west with windmills will only amount to 20% of what we need. Unless we want our economy and our future to shrink, long term we must have nuclear. Any plan that doesn't include nuclear is wishful thinking, irresponsible, and risky to the well-being of our families and the security of our country.

We need to drill here, drill now—we’ve got to start somewhere.

--crossposted at BlogHer