Sunday, May 23, 2010

Progressive ADHD

When Sarah Palin led the mentally challenged in chanting "Drill, baby, drill"!, progressives were all over it, pointing out that off-shore drilling was a danger to the ocean environment and our coasts.

But now that the worst has happened, and an undersea oil gusher spews toxic oil unchecked, progressives have changed their tunes.

All of a sudden, they are talking about BP, and how criminal it is, and how this whole thing could have been prevented by the proper gadget which was left off the destroyed rig.

Yes, progressives like Thom Hartman and Amy Goodman are pretty much implying that off-shore drilling can be perfectly safe, if the right gadgets are installed.

WTF?

This is the time to be talking about getting off of our addiction to oil! Not how to properly build an oil rig.

Clearly, we are pathetically continuing our addiction long past the intervention stage. We are like nicotine addicts, who smoked the carton, and are now rooting through ashtrays looking for butts.

Peak oil, global warming, ocean acidification and oil gushers, wars for oil, what will it take for politicians to stop spending the Treasury on oil based infrastructure?

We need to rebuild our infrastructure to discourage car and air travel. Quit subsidizing the addicted. Why should the rest of us pay for wars, highways, airline bailouts and urban sprawl? Let the cost of oil rise to its true value, and stop the tax handouts.

But Obama's "stimulus" plan mostly involves widening roads!!

What is wrong with these people? Are they homicidal and suicidal?

It is definitely time for some interventions.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

One of the sweetest and most well-meaning persons I have ever known (someone I genuinely think of as my son), recently got a job (as a materials chemist) at the Department of Transportation.

His new salary is double that of his old one, the hours are less, the benefits are more, a partial pension will be his in only seven years, and he will have a tenured job after an unbelievable brief six-month “probationary period.”

As is his nature, he celebrated this new condition by sending his mother to visit his dying grandmother; he paid his girlfriend’s community college tuition, and (for the first time ever) sent some money to a charity. No HDTV’s or vacations for himself.

He is also proud to be helping in the “building of the nation.”

He doesn’t know that the pension will never come, that the salary will go down, nor that the job will itself disappear soon enough. Or if these things do stay, they will remain only because money will be raped away from others.

Worse - in building roads to nowhere he is a destroyer not a builder.

Thus: roads to hell with good intentions.

wagelaborer said...

I'm sure he would be just as happy to have a job in which he could extend the rail lines, or build windmills, or something socially necessary and environmentally responsible.
This is the thing about the US. We need to have jobs to live, but the jobs provided for us are frequently destructive and sometimes downright evil.
We have a depleted uranium plant near my home and people work there building bombs that kill people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, both when dropped and through cancer later. Plus, they cause the heartbreak of deformed children.
But, hey, it's a job! Just like our 14 prisons provide jobs.
There were 2 prisons in 1980, now there are 14.
Hey, it's a job!

Daro said...

The coldest gruel in hell is reserved for those who predict the future, are proved right and get no action taken for their efforts.

Mr. Wage Laborer, I feel for your "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?" posts but you've got to bend your mind to suggesting actions that people could actually take... The British concern on Youtube (the Love Police) are one example.

Daro said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9bfmW3iMqk

Anonymous said...

Oh ….. you had to bring up the glut of prisons. Now my blood is hotter on an already hot day.

There’s an employment racket for you. There’s the hope and future for America’s small towns. Let Monsanto kill the small farms; let McDonald’s kill the family-run restaurants; let Wal-mart kill the small shops. And then let the government save the town with a new prison. Better yet – let the small towns fight amongst themselves over who gets the “honor” of “hosting” the monstrosity.

Sell beer and whisky in every outlet available from a fancy wine shop to a gas station. Advertise it as sophisticated, glamorous, and fun. Then throw every poor-soul drug addict in jail. Great. Keep the underclass under control and create jobs for their only slightly higher overlord guards. Keep the war on drugs going as well, more swag for the police.

Remember old movies about Sing Sing? Who were the inmates? Middle aged white bank robbers and guys named Jimmy “The Knife” Kowalski. In other words, real criminals. Now the prisons act as bizarre and torturous daycare centers for a generation of lost children.

Small town pride indeed.