Bob Barr for President?!?!!

OK... so I guess that Bob Barr's "successful" participation in Borat's movie was a big enough incentive for him to launch his candidacy for President of the United States. Where is he exposing himself to more ridicule? During his appearance in the movie, or by launching his candidacy? Scroll down to vote in the poll below. (By the way, I suggest he pick Borat as his spokesperson).
For those who want to remember his memorable appearance at the movie, here it is:

2010 - An Electric Car Odissey

The year 2010 is packed with promises in the field of alternative fuel, more specifically - plug-in cars.

The most exciting promises seem to come from alternative groups, with names such as "Think Global" and "Project Better Place".

Think Global, a Norwegian based company funded among others by Rockport Capital Partners, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Biers (early investors in Google, AOL, and Amazon.com to name a few) and General Electric, is planning to introduce their cars in the US market by the end of 2009. Price tag: about $25,000 and range per charge 110 miles.

Project Better Place, an Israeli based partnership that includes the Government of Israel, Nissan and Renault, led by the visionary entrepreneur Shai Agassi (former President of Products and Technology at SAP AG) presented its working prototype this Sunday in Israel, and is planning to have "large numbers of the fully electric prototype in the streets of Israel at the end of 2010". The price that Israelis will have to pay for the car his yet to be determined, but it looks like it will be in the range of their current sedans, between $25,000-$40,000.

The Project was also launched in Denmark this past March, in partnership Danish company DONG Energy, planning to have the cars available for the public in early 2011. A fully charged battery will have a range of 125 miles.

One can only expect that if between now and 2010 these two projects prove to be in the right direction, we will be seeing massive investments so that larger markets can be targeted.

2010 is also the year when when Toyota and GM with their planned plug-in hybrid cars, Prius and Volt respectively, are preparing to hit the US market. Ford is working on their Escape plug-in hybrid but no date has been set for its planned launch. I am sure that competition will accelerate Ford's plans.

History shows that times of crisis lead to technology breakthroughs. The truth, however, is that this technology has been available for quite a while already. The current oil crisis is just making those technologies resurface as worthy of attention. If not by our government acting more firmly to alleviate the oil crisis, clearly by a consumer driven market.

Food and fuel: Brazil breaks new records

Earlier this year Brazil announced that 85% of the new cars sold in 2007 in that country were flex-fuel. That brought the total number of flex-fuel cars in Brazilian roads to over 50%. Last month, the Brazilian Association of Car Dealers issued its March 08 sales numbers: sales of flex-fuel cars increased by 26.7% compared to the same month last year.

Of course, in order to support this great demand of flex-fuel cars, there must be a high-volume production of ethanol. Not just that, but an increasing volume land used for sugar-cane production. Indeed, this is what happened: consumption of ethanol increased from about 3.5 billion gallons in 2006 to 4.4 billion gallons in 2007. The projected volume for 2008 is 6.4 billion, with exports of ethanol decreasing due to increased internal demand.

Is all this coming at the expense of food production? That's not what the numbers say in Brazil. The figures just released today show that Brazil is moving towards a record-breaking year in crops production, with a 7.8% increase over last year, propelled not just by soybean and corn, but also rice, beans and wheat.

Sugar-cane production in Brazil takes up only about 1% of the total arable land in the country, comprised of close to 750 million acres. It is worth noting that about 17% of this total is "land in rest" to restore fertility for crop production.

So, there's plenty of room for both land for food and land for fuel. When asked last week about the world food crisis, the Brazilian President Lula said: "of course this is bad, because there's a lot of hungry people, but I think it's good news for Brazil, because we can plant and export more food".

Now that it is clear that land for fuel has nothing to do with the food crisis, our leaders need to follow Brazil's example, as it can have a huge impact in in world's politics and economy:

a) By increasing the production of flex-fuel cars, demand for gasoline should decrease, and therefore oil prices should decrease;
b) Oil will stop being a strategic commodity, and therefore the political clout of oil-rich countries should decrease, leading to greater geo-political stability;
c) With oil prices going down, world economy can only gain, as a major component of overall production and transportation costs is energy

Brazil has a long history with ethanol - over 30 years - and during this period we certainly saw the country reaching a new status in world's economy. This should tell us something.