President Bush pardoned two turkeys yesterday, one named Pumpkin, and the other Pecan, and sent them to Disneyland aboard “Turkey One”.

My first thought when I heard about this was, okay, which two politicians are we talking about here?  What are their names?  Pumpkin, and Pecan!  What state are they from?!  And what capitol offense are they charged with?

Well, I thought this was a little bit silly, but kind of a cute photo op I guess.  But then I got thinking about presidential pardons seriously.

It seems like President Bush is most merciful and gracious to turkeys.  If you’re a turkey, you’ve got a friend in washington, at least until January 20, 2009.

But I wonder if another pardon might have been better?  Like pardoning Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who were thrown into prison for shooting a drug smuggler in the “rear end” after he tried to flee back to Mexico after being detained with 743 lbs of marijuana in his van.  The smuggler was granted immunity (pardoned) for his crimes in exchange for his testimony against the agents.

To be fair, there were some questions about the conduct of the agents in the case, but later findings revealed that U.S. Attorney Sutton intentionally misled the jury by withholding critical evidence from the jury.  It’s also very curious that Sutton was so aggressive in prosecuting the agents, and yet cared nothing (apparently) about the crimes committed by the bad guy, even letting him off “the hook” in order ensure the convictions of Ramos and Compean.  Clearly, in this case, justice really was not served.  So, if we’re talking about pardons, I think this case might be a good place to start, after we’re done prancing around with turkeys, and acting like children, of course.  I mean come on, Disneyland, and “Turkey One”? — Tax dollars at work!

I’ve been staying up late at night.  I have this terrible inability to calm my mind lately.  I don’t know why, but I just can’t relax.  I keep thinking about my job, money, bills; my inability to accomplish my goals.  Sometimes, I lay in bed, and my heart just races.  I begin to worry about the fact that I can’t get to sleep, and it’s getting so late!  “This is bad”, I think, as I lie in my bed, helplessly afflicted by anxiety.  “I’m only going to get a few hours of sleep before the alarm goes off now.”

And then, mercifully, at some point, I drift away unawares, and the dreams begin.  I never seem to be able to remember what the dreams are, but they must have been good, because I can recall the dreadful intrusion of my alarm clock into what was, at the moment, a very comfortable world – so much more comfortable than the one harassing me into consciousness.  Oh, if only I could stay in that dream.  How I hate to wake up!

Then, crawling out of bed, trying to be smooth and quiet, so as not to wake my sleeping wife, I kick something in the dark, and cause a dreadful commotion.  “Sorry, Dear.  Please go back to sleep”, I whisper, and head for the shower.  I know that she’ll probably be up when I finish my shower, and it will be my fault.

As I go about my day, I am assaulted with an endless onslaught of noise, vibration, and stress.  Is it any wonder that at night I can’t relax?  Sometimes this world seems to run so fast, and push so hard.  It’s hard to catch a breath.  It’s hard to pay attention to the little things that make life beautiful.  It’s hard to keep the promises that I made to myself so many years ago.  That I wouldn’t loose sight of the things that matter.  That I wouldn’t ever let anyone down.  And now, as I sit behind this keyboard, trying to write something that makes sense, not only to me, but to anyone else who might ever happen to read it, I feel like my soul is crying out for release.

I want the world to stop and wait for me.  I want to take a hike, or ride a bike, or walk my dog through a field.  I want to run wide open until I can’t catch my breath.  I want to stand on a hill and watch the world below, with the wind in my hair and my wife by my side.  So many things to do.  But now as I sit here by myself, wishing, thinking, and writing, another desire begins to set in.  I yawn.  It is sleep.  Isn’t that ironic?

My wife called me today and left an exited voice mail exclaiming that she had just found a gas station selling regular unleaded for $1.98 per gallon!  WOW!  I swear, 6 months ago, I never would have believed that this could be possible!  The latest reports are showing oil at $56 a barrel!  Here it comes, our economic saving grace.  Forget about brain damaged stimulus packages, Nancy Pelosi; these lower energy costs will represent a  M A S S I V E  infusion of actual, real, honest to goodness, earned capital (not financed through taxes and debt) into everyone’s personal economy!  Will it be enough to save Wall Street from it’s seemingly endless downward spiral?  The one that shifted into high gear when the house passed the Bailout Bill, and floored the trottle when Obama won the presidency?  I don’t know.  Wall street investors aren’t stupid.  CEO’s and successfull business people didn’t get where they are by being clueless about the future. Investors aren’t in the business of trying to loose money.  The markets are responding to real threats.   Unfortunately, many of these threats are from our own government, and the American people who are making some astonishingly stupid decisions lately.  We just elected a radical, constitution hating, socialist to be our next president.  This represents a huge threat to capitalism, and could possibly signal the end of wealth and productivity in America.

I’m optimistic, though. I think that oil prices will stay low for a while. The reason I think so, is that many of the big oil producing countries have become accustomed to lucrative crude oil revenues.  They’re losing huge amounds of money over these price drops.  As demand slacks, and prices fall, they’re hurting for revenue.  While OPEC considers cutting production to boost prices, countries like Russia–despirate to maintain their budgets–will happily step in to sell their own oil to keep the money flowing in.  That having been said, things will eventually stabilize, but I think it will be a while before prices make any big gains.  A lot of oil-futures investors have lost their shirts, and will likely be timid about buying up overpriced futures contracts again for some time.

So maybe there’s hope for our economy.  If low energy prices are maintained, eventually the prices of other things like commodities, and food will fall also.  It all depends on how much damage the Obama administration is able to do to capitalism and business during the next 4 years.  If he’s successfull in bringing about the change he desires, he will likely offset the benifits of having affordable energy available to us again.  I hope that he won’t have that kind of power, but only time will tell.  The truth is, while I feel happy about affordable energy, and want to kiss the pump-handle at the gas station when I see the new prices, the threat of Obaminable Government scares me.  Man, what a killjoy!  I just wish I weren’t so uncomfortable about finding out what it was like to live in the old Soviet Union.  The history books don’t make it sound very good, but I guess America has voted, and communism is what the majority wants.  So who am I to complain?  Good luck with that.

I recently learned about a company called Nanosolar that has developed a new process for manufacturing photovoltaic solar cells (used to create electricity from sunlight), that is so inexpensive that these new solar cells are a cheaper source for electricity than coal!  Nanosolar  claims a manufacturing cost of around 30 cents per watt!  They are currently selling their solar cells profitably at around $1 per watt!  So in theory, a 1,800 megawatt coal fired power plant could be replaced by $1.8 billion worth of solar cells, which is less than the cost of building the coal-fired plant!  WOW!  Of course, it would only be operable during the day, so that’s a consideration, but no fuel is required for operation, either!  Nanosolar uses a unique, proprietary, nanoparticle ink which is literally printed onto an aluminum substrate to produce the cells which are thin, flexible, and durable, and can be manufactured at an astonishing rate.  Nanosolar recently created a machine which they say is capable of producing up to a gigawatt (1,000 megawatts, or 1 billion watts) worth of  solar cells anually!

Simply amazing!  As skeptical as I have a been about the idea of solar energy being a useful alternative to burning fossil fuels for electricity, I have to admit that Nanosolar appears to taking a big step towards possibly making solar power a viable alternative in the future.

Sorry everyone for the lack of recent posts.  I have been working very hard at my real job, trying to build a little nest egg for the slow season.  Of course, this resulted in almost all of my extra earnings going to taxes, because I am now evidently “rich” and don’t deserve what I have worked so incredibly hard for.  I’m not kidding, people.  I cried when I saw my paycheck.  It barely increased, yet I have been living in my truck, gone from home for days, and doing nothing but sleeping and working for the last 4 weeks.  And what do I get?  The knowledge that I have “spread the wealth” to a bunch of unnamed couch-potatoes on welfare.  Great!  Well, I’ll be on welfare too, if I am not allowed to save some money for the comming months!  Obama, you can go pound sand!  Come after my guns, and I’ll give them to you barrell first!  All of you who voted for Obama because you think he’s going to solve your problems, and take away my hard-earned money and give it to you, I hope you get what you deserve!  NOTHING!  And the knowledge that you’re a fool and a criminal for holding the ridiculous belief: that people don’t deserve what they’ve earned, but do deserve what they haven’t.