Prez' Press Plop

On my hour long rush hour commute to visit my wife at the hospital (they think it has something to do with electrolytes?), I had the great good fortune to listen to BushCorp™'s CEO attempt to take Bamboozapalooza primetime.

I noted that before he got to his lies about Social Security, he felt the need to calm people's nerves about the continuing growth in gas prices. His message in a nutshell: you're SOL suckers, my DL boy Prince Abdullah's got us by the nutsack (and not in the fun way) and there's not a goddamn thing I can do about it.

Although it was nice to see a moment of what passes for honesty in this administration, Chairman Bush, had enough of the politician in him to lie to us about energy and the future.

Sure, wreck the environment and drill away, there's still no fucking way we can supply-side our way out of this mess. At least not in the near (and by near I mean within a few millions of years) term. Fossil fuels are a limited (as in not unlimited) resource. We're going to run out, sooner rather than later. And even GW's special friend the Prince can't/won't produce enough to take much of an edge off world oil prices.

The only solution that makes any sense in the near (in the next 20 years sense of the word) term is a marked increase in energy conservation measures.

And yet Presidential calls for efforts to drive less, drive slower, use energy efficient vehicles and mass transportation were strangely missing. Nope, what he wants to do is incentivize oil companies that are making billions in profits from the latest surge in prices to empty this nation's oil reserves even faster. Brilliant.

I mean seriously, the Chairman is by his own admission no fuzzy-brained intellectual, but he had a 50/50 chance to get this one right. Gas prices are a simple product of supply and demand. Supply. Demand. Choose one. Supply? Sorry, that's the wrong answer. Good-bye.

Sorry to get into a rant on energy, but it is a favored topic.

On Social Security: "means testing" as described by the Chairman means that the poorest 30%, those making $20K a year or less, won't see a reduction in promised benefits, and why not, we won't be giving them much anyway. But if you have the great good fortune of earning more than $20K a year you're shit out of luck.

On the bright side, the Chairman is doing his darnedest to make sure that more and more of us fall into the "poor" category.