It would indeed be ironic if this major oil spill jeopardized our best chance to wean ourselves off oil more than 30 years after we lined up to buy gas.

Did you know more than 37 percent of American energy is still supplied by petroleum, compared to just 7 percent from renewable sources?

And most of that slender slice is hydroelectric and biomass, including ethanol – not wind or solar.

Coal, natural gas and nuclear make up the rest.

Consider the 170-megawatt Cape Wind offshore wind-power project in Massachusetts approved last month.

It only took nine years.

Well, there would need to be 3,000 such offshore wind projects to meet projected U.S. electricity demand by 2030 – a pace of almost a plant every two days.

United-Continental merger: Together, they’ll fly 144 million passengers to 370 destinations.

Domestic ticket prices run about 25 percent less than they did 15 years ago.

Continental, which I’ve flown, has a younger fleet.

The new United Airlines, with more than 20 percent of the U.S. airline market, will be based in Chicago with eight hubs, including Chicago and Cleveland.

Marc Cooper in the Los Angeles TImes called for the nomination of an atheist to the Supreme Court.

Chaz Bono: Sonny Bono and Cher’s daughter, 41, is officially a man after undergoing a gender-change operation.

Toni Tennille turns 70! “Love Will Keep Us Together” blared incessantly from radios the week I graduated.

Quips, quotes and qulunkers: “I’m much happier now, to be perfectly candid.”
— Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who dropped out of the Republican primary to seek the U.S. Senate as an independent, like Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who defected from the Democratic Party in 2006.

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“I am glad that the only person whose ratings fell more than mine last year is here tonight.”

— President Barack Obama at the White House correspondents’ dinner on keynote speaker and late-night host Jay Leno

•••
“Should a country that allows 1 percent of its population to control 95 percent of the wealth call itself ‘one nation under God?’ ”

– May 8 letter in the Toledo Blade. Toledo Public Schools filed a complaint against a former administrator with the district for 30 years and his alleged accomplice, a Toledo businessman, in the theft of $658,428. Both men face charges in Cleveland for allegedly conducting a similar scheme with fraudulent invoices for office equipment and services.
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“A small but vocal subculture has emerged on Twitter of grammar and taste vigilantes who spend their time policing other people’s tweets – celebrities and nobodies alike.”
– John Metcalfe,
New York Times

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“The vitriol was so intense that at first I didn’t think they were serious. Because, like, who would care?”
– actor John Cusack,
who tweets with his iPhone

•••
“Democrats tend to be more interested in legislating than in managing. They come to office filled with irrational exuberance, pass giant fur balls of legislation – stuff that often sounds fabulous, in principle – and expect a stultified bureaucracy, bereft of the incentives and punishments of the private sector, to manage it all with the efficiency of a bounty hunter. This has always been the strongest conservative argument against government activism. Traditionally, Republicans were more conservative than Democrats – until the Reagan era, when the ‘government is the problem’ mantra took hold. If you don’t believe in government, you don’t bother much with governing efficiently. You hire political cronies for jobs that professionals should be doing. Eventually, you wind up with the former head of the Arabian Horse Association – the infamous Michael Brown – trying to organize federal aid after Hurricane Katrina.”
— Time columnist Joe Klein

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150: Days it takes to hire new employees in Cabinet departments, according to Office of Management and Budget DIrector Peter Orszag.

5,113: Number of nuclear warheads the U.S. has stockpiled, according to the Pentagon’s second such disclosure in history.

Shanghai, population 19 million, is hosting Expo 2010, a world’s fair which opened April 30 and is expected to attract 70 million over six months. The Chinese metropolis has offices of more than 750 foreign multi-national companies. Its port, busiest in the world, handled 365 million tons of cargo in 2009. Official Chinese media report Shanghai spent $58 billion getting ready.

Obit: Walter J. Hickel, twice Alaska’s governor and an Interior Secretary Richard Nixon fired in 1970 for objecting to the treatment of Vietnam war protesters after the National Guard shootings at Kent State and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, died May 7 in Anchorage. He was 90.

Dann done: Former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, who preached against corruption but succumbed to scandal, pleaded guilty May 7 to improperly paying two aides from political and office accounts and failing to disclose campaign expenses. Besides his $1,000 fine and 500 hours of community service, a plea deal prohibits Dann from holding future public office. The Youngstown Democrat, the first former AG convicted of a crime in modern history, won office in 2006 by promising voters to clean up after a Republican investment scandal that stretched from the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation to the governor’s office. Seventeen months into his first term, Dann resigned due to a sexual harassment scandal involving top aides. He admitted having an extramarital affair with a subordinate. Three former aides and his estranged wife, a journalism professor, were convicted. At this point Dann is trying to salvage his law license.

Over at the Republican National Committee, meanwhile, the finance director and his deputy were forced out May 7 by reports of lavish spending, including a night at a club with a lesbian bondage theme.

The Labor Department’s jobs report released May 7 showed the U.S. economy added 290,000 jobs in April (including 66,000 temporary government workers to conduct the census) – the largest gain in more than four years. So many people, 805,000, resumed looking for work that the jobless rate went up, from 9.7 to 9.9 percent.

John Eby is Daily News managing editor. E-mail him at john.eby@leaderpub.com.