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What’s
with
America?
What the heck has happened to this country? Where did our fighting spirit
go? Americans have turned into a bunch of mealy-mouthed victims. It’s as if
we’re suffering from a collective case of battered wife syndrome. Under the
weight of the constant and severe abuse rendered upon us thanks to Old Texas
Tea-totaller himself, the President Tush, we’ve sunk into mass
depression. We’ve lost all sense of independent action, and like a woman who
undergoes years of physical and emotional abuse, we refuse to press criminal
charges against our abuser.
We’ve
become PETROL-fied!
And no
wonder. Day by day we listen to the news. Iraq, Pakistan, Iran. And now oil
is selling for close to one hundred big ones a barrel. One hundred dollars
for a barrel of crude? What are they juiced? Didn’t we just buy the Iraqi
oil fields with the lives and limbs of our sons and daughters? I just don’t
get it. How could crude prices have soared 42 percent since August?
Forty-two percent! It’s assault and battery!
What
have we heard from our gaseous president on the subject? Not a word. And not
as much as a peep from Congress either. Instead of treating the situation
like the people’s crisis that it is, the clowns in congress sit in their
overheated chamber and listen to that buffoon of a fed chairman Bernanke
dodge answers to questions that have no answers, and toy with the idea of a
possible economic slowdown due to the housing slump and high oil prices. All
while American families don their layers of clothes to keep them warm
because they can’t afford to turn on their heat.
This is real! I cannot count on my fingers the number of people who have
admitted to me that they are keeping their thermostat set at 60 degrees, or
less, because they simply cannot afford to spend their money heating their
homes. And these are middle-class Americans, some even upper middle-class.
Where
is the outrage? We’re being held hostage by the Arabs, the oil companies,
and our own government. If our child was being held hostage would we sit
back and shiver in our under-heated home and wait for someone to do
something? Of course, not; we’d rant and rave and scream and yell, we’d go
to the authorities and demand they do something. Well, our children are
being held hostage, and we’re sitting back in our under-heated homes and
waiting for someone else to come to the rescue.
Here’s
some fuel to add to the fire: while we idly sit by and watch the cost of
energy double and our children freeze in their homes, the lead on two of the
three networks evening newscasts last night was a story on runway safety.
How about a story on how planes can’t afford to fly due to the ridiculously
high cost of fuel?
The
dollar is tanking, the value of our homes sinking, retail sales are
plummeting, and we can’t afford the cost of our commute to work. Still our
elected officials do nothing about it but sit by and idly watch the oil
companies make obscene profits.
They’re
a slick bunch.
~ Halli
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