[pstrbrc]

Originally Posted by dcb

It's hard for me to understand being willfully wasteful when our sons and daughters are overseas sacrificing everything.

Huh? What dillusional parallel universe do you pretend to dwell in? OK, I see that you live on "3rd rock", which isn't really why they put that "where are you?" thing on the control panel. They put it there so that somehow we might understand where you're coming from, or perhaps understand why can't figure out where you're coming from, and likewise back. So I wonder if you're one of those "I am a citizen of the world" goofballs, as if living in the US of A wasn't specTACularly better than, say, Botswana because of who our predecessors have willed us to be. Which includes, incidentally, being a land of plenty. So our sons and daughters are sacrificing so that we might live free. Including the right to, I don't know, do things that others might, well, disapprove of. So, I'm a minimalist. By American standards, of course. I live in a house that has, heck, 10 times the number of rooms I and my family absolutely need. Yeah, it's a 10 room house. Not counting the 2 bathrooms. And I live on something like 2200-2500 calories a day. And I have several changes of clothes. And I buy a new toothbrush every year.
Now, if your complaint is based on the shortage of petroleum, we (the US of A) sit on larger known reserves than anybody can comprehend, and technology advances make it clear that there are even more reserves than we know so far. But we can't drill because of some damn intellectual elitist treehuggers who are convinced that (contrary to real scientific data) we are "destroying the planet!" Were you there when the Cuyahoga River caught on fire? Have you seen it lately? The part of the world that lies within the bounds of the US of A is so much incredibly cleaner than it was 40 years ago! America is good for the environment. We invented clean technology. Not Europe. Not Japan. Definitely not the Arab world or China. Why? So we can continue to bloody well be Americans. THAT's why my baby daughter served her tour in Iraq during the bloodiest years. THAT's why she found it noble to serve, why she was willing to put up with the sexist abuse of the Iraqi men she was risking her life for. Because she thinks that living in the land of plenty, the home of the free and the brave, was worth risking her ass for. So that her sister and her brothers would have the oportunity to live out the American dream, to make the most out of their life, to raise their kids in a land of blessing. NOT so that we could all live like they live in, say, Somalia. You have the audacity to call somebody driving 80mph "wasteful". And to imply that being "wasteful" is disrespectful of our soldiers. Crawl out from under "3rd rock" and sniff reality. Assuming you live in America (and that's not only a continent, it also defines a country) you might notice that you live in a great country because we are meant to be free from pathetic narrowminded prudish nanny-ism.