Please, I won't accept any royalties. Sign the check over to NovaM Radio, since this board first published the answer.

My magic energy invention will produce the equivalent of 200 barrels of light sweet crude oil per second, or 720,000 barrels per hour, or 17,280,000 barrels per day of energy. I will give it to the American People for free, just out of loyalty. That's twelve Exxon Valdez tankers every day, free, to the People of the United States.

And it only requires paper.

Here it is:

Cut the oil utilization by the United States Military by 10%

Oh, dear, you might say - we wanted something with plates, and wires and stuff, and terms like thermohydroelectic fractionation. I'm sorry. Perhaps it is too subtle.

It was said that the Soviet Union failed because the KGB was unable to steal the secret for bread. Now, the United States is on the brink of failure, because it cannot discover new sources for energy.

Here, I have given you the answer. It will cripple the oil sellers, and the speculative market will crumble. The price of oil will plummet, as will that of gasoline. No wells need to be drilled, no solar panels installed, no turbines on wind generators.

Shall we consider it? Or is it "politically inexpedient," and the prize money awaits someone with skills at basement crafting of whizbangs?

I second this emocon!

oh..typo.
Go Steve!!
Got my vote.

One of the depressingly universal signs of tyranny is that the part of the Government which has the guns, lives off the fat of the land, while the peasants starve. This was true upon the invention of firearms - before that, it was the branch with whip and horse. Not for nothing does the New Testament frown upon the Tax Collectors for the Roman Empire.

In order to induce even more irrational Freeper screams, let me propose a simple solution that could have come out of a now-extinct species, a small-town Republican banker from the Midwest.

We all know, of course, as the price of oil rises, the budget for oil must automatically rise for all Government utilizers - it's in the Government's nature.

Simply calculate the utilization rate of oil by the military (about 2000 bbl/sec) and multiply by $!00, to allow for (only! GASP!) $2,000,000 per second to be budgeted for military oil expenditures - no matter how the free market manipulates the price. Should the price of oil rise to $150.00 (note to Government types - it actually did) then the Military can spend no more than $2,000,000/sec on oil, which cuts their utilization by 33% - JUST LIKE IT HAPPENS IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR!!

Oh my God, that's insane, that's exposing our cherished freedoms to IslamoFascism, isn't it? We will still have a military the size of the REST OF THE WORLD'S. We might be forced into conservation and thrift, and I suggest leaving the insane war in Iraq as a possibility for the same dandy cost-savings that the rest of the populace wrestles with.

I suppose I should be waterboarded for this. I'll change into my Speedo.

PS: And here's how I want my payoff for the prize. Get Grampappy John to buy NovaM airtime at Superbowl rates - $2 million per second, same as the savings rate that I "invented." Give him 2½ minutes to blither 'n' dither on the radio about how the prize was achieved. That's three hundred million smackeroos.

The risk is that with 2½ minutes of unadulterated Grampy on the radio, people will slip into comas, airplanes fall from the sky, cars crash from somnolent drivers, and the whole thing looking like the Mad Mad Mad World of the Tim LeHaye genre, drivers raptured not into Heaven, but into somnolence.

Man, they use that much oil>?

Good post.

Dayum good post cowboysteve!

If US demand for oil equals X, then US military demand for oil equals half of X. Yup, that much frigging oil. WE know the Military has a history of abusing the blank check it gets and I seriously doubt cutting their demand by 10% will threaten our security.
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Kudos Cowboy Steve

oh oh...gotta close the loophole this could create...that 10% reduction can't be transferred to a 10% increase in demand by Blackwater/Halliburton et al. It could cost us a hell of a lot more if they just shift the demand.