…and should have their jobs taken away from them and given to people who are not politicians. The President also should be an impartial party who does not hold ties to any industry, particularly companies with a significant amount of power as it is (like, oh, I don’t know, oil companies).
President Bush has gone off and done what all Republicans and Democrats do: blame someone else for what plagues the country. Rather than accepting responsibility for the fact that he and his party have done practically nothing to alleviate the economic stress forced upon the average American by oil companies who refuse, for some reason, to make significant leaps into the reusable fuel infrastructure, he has gone one step into stupid land and declared the following:
“It’s time for members of Congress to address the pain that high gas prices are causing our citizens,” the president said. “Every extra dollar that American families spend because of high gas prices is one less dollar they can use to put food on the table or send a child to college. The American people deserve better.”
And:
Bush said that Democrats are at fault and that “Americans are increasingly frustrated with Congress’ failure to take action.”
No, what Americans are frustrated with is a government that doesn’t give a flying f*ck about them. We’re tired of fuel costing us $4+ a gallon. We’re tired of there not being economically viable alternatives. We’re tired of the government’s and this administration’s failure to put adequate pressure on oil companies or on the industry itself to provide these alternatives. We’re tired of hearing about how you want to drill in Alaska and ruin beautiful, vital natural habitats that maybe some of us would like to get to see without having to look at those ugly oil rigs. We’re tired of getting screwed in the butt because you and your lackeys are more concerned with lining your pockets with more money or spending your time dealing with what you perceive to be moral issues of society when you could be spending your time helping the country become better (as opposed to driving it into the ground and not giving a fig about it). We’re tired of our politicians bickering all the time (yes, that means you too Democrats) rather than doing what they’re supposed to do: compromise when reasonable.
Mostly, we’re tired of you and your administration and everyone else who claims to represent the public’s interest because you aren’t doing what we hired you for. We’re paying your salary and you have failed us repeatedly. The fact that the United States is not in a state of civil war (or, at the very least, a conflict of proportions akin to the protests during Vietnam) shows that Americans have considerable restraint. We’re being extraordinarily patient and lenient right now.
All we want from you is the following:
- Stop fighting. Seriously, just stop it. I don’t care if someone is a Democrat or a Republican. You all suck. Yes, I’ve said it. Every single one of you suck. There may be good Dems or Reps, but in the end, it’s the same old yarn over and over and Dems doing this and Reps doing that and both hating each other for virtually no reason anyway. You are hired to do a job. DO IT. Bickering is wasting our taxes and we’re sick of it.
- Stop telling us that it’s someone else’s fault that you failed to do something (like, oh, I don’t know, driving the cost of oil down). Bush, I’m talking to you. Get out of your fantasy world where the Democrats are evil and you can blame them for everything. You are just as bad.
- Stop trying to push for drilling in pristine locations like Alaska. I don’t care if there is oil there. Seriously, I don’t. Just because there’s something there that you want doesn’t mean I want you drilling there. Leave it alone. We already destroyed the Native Americans and stole their land. Leave some for nature please. Contrary to what you might think, Mr. Bush, Americans actually do like pretty scenery.
- Stop violating our civil rights to make you feel better. I don’t feel safer. I feel violated when you make new laws that toss the Constitution out the window. I’d rather live in the dark without intelligence agencies, because the fear of being spied on for essentially no valid reason is more terrifying than getting bombed.
- Stop cramming moral garbage down our throats. I don’t care if someone is gay and neither should you. If you don’t like gays, don’t associate with them. Stop trying to make laws that turn them into second class citizens just cause you get the hee bee gee bees. The Bible belongs in Church and, if you’re one of those types, in the home. It doesn’t belong in politics. Use common sense instead. Should we kill people with our bare hands? Probably not. Should we violate young children or do nasty things to innocent people? No. Common sense wins.
- Stop being an *sshole. That goes for all of you politicians. Stop it. There are more important things than your ego. Here are a few very valid and good examples: education, immigration, the economy, the wars (yes, plural, I know, you didn’t know Afghanistan was still going on did you?), civil rights, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and even the Special Olympics, because all of those things are more important than your petty personal opinions about things. It’s okay, really. In fifty years you’ll likely only be remembered for being a jack*ss anyway.
- Stop doing things for your personal interests or the interests of business. Start doing things for the people, because that’s your job.
- Stop halting research into science because you don’t understand it. Just because you’re an uneducated moron who doesn’t know what gravity is doesn’t mean you should ban something from happening. If you don’t want to educate yourself on science, then you have no right to make policy dealing with it.
- Stop with stupid airport regulations. They don’t work. It’s proven.
- Stop with standardized testing in schools. Just like airport regulations/security, they don’t work. They stifle creativity and innovation and recreate knowledge by cramming, which basically means we end up with a lot of people who can quickly remember random junk and eventually forget it (so, stupid people who aren’t even good enough to be on Jeopardy).
- Stop…well what do you think they should stop doing?
And to compound the issue further, Mr. Bush is now taking a stand to lift bans on coastal drilling and practically any form of drilling that has been banned in the past (which basically means he wants to drill in places that look pretty and that shouldn’t be drilled in the first place). I have one question to ask:
Will this solve the problem?
The answer?
No. It will not. All this will do is force us to ignore the fact that oil is not a sustainable resource. We can’t keep using it for a reason. It will dry up and we need to ask ourselves whether we want change NOW or twenty years from now when gas is a scarce resource and costs up to $15 a gallon. And you know what would be a big problem with that?
- We don’t have the public resources to put into place effective public transportation systems that can be used by anyone.
- Not having the public resources means when people start making the switch to public transportation in droves there will not be a system that can handle such an overload, which means that public transportation will become useless. A lot of cities aren’t even willing to invest in public transportation, such as Santa Cruz, which should be putting bids on extending the BART system in San Francisco to here.
- With public transportation not being an option for a lot of people, that means many, in fact tens of millions of people will be forking out a lot of money to fuel their cars. Most people will not have hybrid cars because they can’t afford them and because hybrid cars are not effectively reducing demand on oil (they seem to have next to no effect at all, in my opinion, although I will admit that I love hybrid cars, but if we all don’t drive them they’re pretty much pointless). What this means for the U.S. is that when oil dries up and we actually realize “oh, hey, maybe we shouldn’t have wasted all that time drilling for new oil and instead put significant investments in viable, reliable replacement vehicles that don’t rely on oil” it will be too late. It won’t matter at that point if the U.S. starts putting significant support into alternate options because the only people who will be able to afford it are the rich, who are the least likely to be buying new things like electric cars anyway (except, perhaps, those nifty electric drag racers). So, if we don’t start acting now, we won’t be acting later either, and even if we try later it’s not going to matter because the people who would love to have such fuel efficient vehicles won’t be able to afford them because all their free money will go into paying for gas.
- Perhaps it should occur to Mr. Bush that most people actually like the idea of there being pretty green things and nice stretches of ocean. You know, I’m not sure if he realizes this but one of the biggest tourist trades in the country happens to be anything and everything to do with the coast. Yup, people flock by the millions to visit Hawaii, California, Florida, and other coastlines. Will they flock in the same numbers if we stick ugly oil drilling facilities there? Probably not. They’ll go somewhere else. Which means you’ll effectively decimate entire segments of the country that rely on tourism as a means of economic support and won’t have stifled the use of fuel anyway (since those folks who would have driven to the beach or taken an airplane will use that fuel to go someplace else).
We absolutely, positively need alternatives to gas. Period. There is no question about this. We cannot survive on oil. Sorry, we can’t. Mr. Bush may live in a bubble where that fantasy is true, but the real world is right in front of his face and it is telling him, over and over, that it doesn’t matter if there are untapped resources that can be used to “supposedly” reduce the pressure on oil companies (which probably doesn’t exist anyway) because those resources will run out too. We don’t need more time to develop alternatives. We have the technology. You can read about it all over the Internet. Wind power, solar panels, and dozens of other interesting options are out there right now to reduce the cost of power at the home (some of which are fueled by non-rejuvenating sources) and we know that we can create electric cars and other types of cars that can reduce the burden of paying for gas in the average household.
So, to the government: snap to it, chop chop!
