Defiance is a Duty and an Honor-

Defiance IS a Duty and an Honor. But what we need to go along WITH that is to also actually CONTRIBUTE something CONSTRUCTIVE toward ACTUALLY LAUNCHING that "Green-Collar Revolution" to reconstitute this society's screwed-up economy.

At this point, probably the most USEFUL thing ANYBODY could do would be to get busy and ACTUALLY BUILD AND PRODUCE the OLD "new" innovative technological initiative exemplified by GMs Chevy VOLT --- and now also its European equivalent, which is being jovially dubbed the AMPERE (and which is, by the way, now AHEAD in the "development derby", having been recently "unveiled" at a major European Auto Show --- besides which GM may soon very well "go belly up").

For those who may not yet have "caught on" to what that whole initiative is really "all about", the VOLT is an ELECTRIC / I.C.E. "CHIMERA". Mostly, it is an ELECTRIC car, with a battery that will carry it FORTY miles. And fully THREE-FOURTHS of all automobile usage will "FIT" within a forty mile power budget! You go to the store, the doctor, the bank, and you come home and PLUG THE CAR BACK INTO THE WALL --- THE GASOLINE ENGINE NEVER RUNS! So NO gasoline derived from expensive imported oil (or even equally expensively extracted from the 30% of "our OWN" remaining, declining reserves that are now confined to low-capacity "stripper" wells or under water or north of the Arctic Circle or WAY deep), is consumed --- PERIOD, EXCLAMATION POINT! Now THERE is FOREIGN OIL INDEPENDENCE FOR YOU!

Once the battery runs down, a (gasoline-powered) internal-combustion engine kicks in (automatically) --- so that you will NOT be stranded off in Limbo. But when that engine DOES run, it is NOT coupled directly to the wheels in the manner to which we have so long been inured. Rather, it drives a GENERATOR that powers the ELECTRIC motors that actually propel the wheels.

Sadly, such a concept probably comes across to most people as some kind of "new, alien, exotic" technological notion --- a fact which ITSELF testifies to the tremendous technological IGNORANCE of many, many people. For BOTH the drive "paradigms" incorporated into the "chimera" ARE NOT NEW AT ALL! Battery powered cars have been around since the EARLIEST days of the automobile. And the I.C.E. "fallback" component has been around FOR ABOUT SIXTY YEARS NOW ALREADY, on the RAILROADS and also in the LARGEST SHIPS on the HIGH SEAS. Anybody ever hear of the DIESEL-ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE?!

Moreover, the concept also SIMPLY ELIMINATES the whole elaborate, expensive, troublesome TRANSMISSION and DRIVE TRAIN! There just ISN'T ONE on a Diesel-Electric Locomotive! "We" couldn't BEGIN to engineer a sufficiently heavy-duty CLUTCH for such loads. That is why the ELECTRIC-drive paradigm was developed --- LONG AGO --- for really heavy lifting. Notwithstanding the idea that seems to have been generally "cultivated" among "consumers" of automobiles, BIG-MUSCLE machines rely on relatively UNbreakable MAGNETIC-FORCE drive elements rather than on mere fallible mechanical ones!

The mean, nasty, ugly, God's-Honest truth, folks (however unthinkable and HATEFUL anybody may find it to be) is that there really is no TECHNOLOGICAL reason on God's Blue-Green Earth why this sort of alternative, which really involves only very OLD technology, could not have been introduced YEARS AGO already! --- but for the fact of "our" MISguided (or maybe more like MISBEGOTTEN!) MIS'leadership" ("political", "economic", and/or otherwise) preferring to CLING TO their OWN little FINANCIAL "oil empire"! And the DEPREDATIONS of that bunch are, after all, precisely what has ENGENDERED the murderous vengeance of an "al-Qaida" in the FIRST place, and which actually SPONSORED and BANKROLLED a Saddam and his ilk --- through "us" BUYING so much of that which he had to sell!

Now HOW MANY HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF IRAQI LIVES, and also a substantial number of AMERICAN ones as well, would have been SAVED if our past MIS"leadership" had actually LIVED UP TO ITS RESPONSIBILITIES to this society and its membership and done the RIGHT thing --- "maximizing" the QUALITY OF THE PRODUCT rather than merely the MONEY!!

I submit that THAT is what people REALLY should now be very MAD about --- rather than letting their wrath and ire be "harmlessly" diverted off to and dissipated on SURROGATE "issues" like the "bonuses" paid to a few scores of "executives" at financial institutions like AIG --- which are, in reality, as an "issue" MINUSCULE by comparison!

Frank Hummel St. Louis, MO area