I've developed a really bad habit. I get up around 5:00 a.m. to watch the last hour of Morning Joke on MSNBC. It's on from 6 to 9 east coast time, which means 3 to 6 here. This bad habit ensures that a) I will not get eight hours of sleep each night, and b) I will be pissed off by about 5:45.
This morning was no exception. I'm pissed. One of the guests was Larry Kudlow, who mostly makes me want to vomit. This morning was a bit amusing, however, in that regular commentator Pat Buchanan, who also usually makes me want to vomit, was actually arguing with him over the immoral multimillion dollar salaries and benefit packages for CEOs. That part was actually refreshing.
What angered me, though, was Kudlow's insistence that we begin drilling immediately off the coasts and in Alaska, as - he claims - it will lower the price of gas immediately. According to Kudlow, once the oil producing companies realize Americans are going to get their own oil, they will release more of their supplies and that will lower the price. Supply and demand.
This is typical supply side Republican economics and politics. Think only of the ideological economic principles you embrace so that American business can reap huge profits, and pander to the people so you can get your guys in office to continue the raping of the middle class.
Kudlow thinks only in terms of dollars, and completely ignores environmental concerns. For decades now we have been watching our climate change and our environment deteriorate. For years politicians have paid lip service to finding renewable sources of energy and weaning this country off of oil. For years they have done nothing.
The technology exists to move us from an oil based economy to an economy that takes advantage of wind, sun, plants and even nuclear based energy. Yet we remain stuck in our dependency on oil, which not only continues to harm our planet, but holds us captive to a destructive and violent foreign policy. Drilling for oil will only give us a false sense of security and waste time we should be spending on implementing long term solutions, environmentally friendly solutions.
We have wasted eight years while two oil men ran the country, started wars for oil, and ignored the looming crisis. McCain is proposing the same policies that these oil men are calling for: more drilling. Why? Not because it would mean we could change our foreign policy - McCain wants more wars in the Middle East. He envisions being there for 50 or 100 years if necessary. No, McCain wants more drilling because it's a good campaign issue. Why is it a good campaign issue? Because people are mad that they have to pay so much for a gallon of gasoline.
During these past eight years, when American auto makers should have been manufacturing more fuel efficient cars, and the people should have been demanding them, the car companies sold expensive gas guzzlers, the Bush administration gave tax breaks for the purchase of large vehicles, and the people bought them to show off. We have all been stupid, but it's time to get smart, and that is not what McCain is proposing. He is proposing something incredibly stupid: retain our dependency on oil, but find the oil here in America.
If we go along with Larry Kudlow, and elect John McCain, we will be signing our planet's death warrant. Even if he only serves four years, we can't afford those years.
This is it boys and girls. We must start changing now. We must switch over to other sources of energy as rapidly as possible. The only candidate promising to do that, the only candidate capable of doing that, is Barack Obama.
