To: sylvester80 who wrote (186039 ) 5/2/2006 2:10:19 PM From: Hawkmoon Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 281500 Hawk, U.S. is nothing without oil. Actually, the US economy has taken great strides towards diversifying to the point where oil prices have a decreasing impact on our overall economic growth. What you should REALLY be saying is that the US is nothing without ENERGY (electricity, primarily) since everything electronic requires electricity to operate). The nations that will be most impacted are the developing nations, many of which have become exporters to the US markets of goods that have been outsourced to their nations. Or course, in their case, wages are lower, so this partially offsets higher energy prices, so long as they can continue to be cost competitive in exporting to our markets. But yes.. oil prices will effect US economic growth.. Just not to the degree that it will impact the growth of other nations, such as China.Maybe instead of being a right wing pinhead you should be trying to convince your greedy hypocritical right wing republican friends, the ones that are driving the behemoth SUVs, to instead start conserving rather than consume it like it's nothing. Maybe if you and your liberal dipsh*t environmental wackos would permit oil exploration in places where WE KNOW we have oil reserves, as well as permitting oil refineries to obtain permits, we wouldn't be in this situation to the degree that we are. Can you explain to me why we haven't built a new oil refinery in the United States in the past 30 years?? And oil conservation, while a worthy cause, is not going to solve the problem of the huge increase in demand from nations like China and India. They don't seem to be showing much oil conservation. Btw, I'm all for alternative energy. But I'm not for subsidizing its commercial production with taxpayer funds, except for the purpose of research and market development. Alternative energy has to stand by itself against Fossil Fuels.. Take hydrogen fuel, for example.. Great idea and we're making major inroads towards commercial viability of a hydrogen powered car. The only problem is that hydrogen is primarily derived from natural gas, a fossil fuel. And the reason for this is because the liberal environmental dipsh*ts are unwilling to permit nuclear power plants to be built (preferably "Pebble Bed" style) so that sufficient electricity would be available to convert water into hydrogen. Maybe if you'd get off YOUR @SS and recognize that the path to energy independence must be paved with long-term nuclear generation capacity that permits cost-effective conversion of water into fuel, we'd obtain that state of energy independence. But no.. it's NIMBY @ssholes with your "anywhere but here" attitudes who have placed us in this situation. Hawk