Gasoline and Gonads

With fuel prices climbing higher and higher, truckers are striking, and oil company executives are being called on the carpet—again—by congress to explain why it’s costing more to fill up our tanks.

What does it take to explain it to these egg heads? How many trips to Congress must energy executives make to explain the A-B-C’s of supply and demand, too many people around the world needing fuel, and too little to go around?

How many times must the very government body that has repeatedly denied us access to our own domestic natural resources, be painted the picture that the US is a net importer of fuel because of excessively restrictive exploration policies at home?

You’ve got these morons running around the country whining that they cannot afford to fill up the fuel tanks on 18-wheelers…so what do they do?
Stop working.
How are you going to afford to buy fuel with no income coming in?

In the immortal words of Frank Calliendo as Charles Barkley, "crazy nuckleheads."

Their close-cousins are the Mensa’s who suggest we send a message to the oil companies by boycotting their filling stations…which now are mini super markets, where gasoline is really a loss-leader. The only person that gets hurt in that scenario is the owner/franchisee of the gas station, and any employees he might have to lay off, because of declining receipts.

There are no easy answers.
There are no quick solutions.
We Americans are the most impatient, instant-gratification-oriented culture on the face of the planet, so waiting for the government to let us address this by expanding refinery capacity and encouraging more domestic drilling is not an answer we want to hear.
So let’s strike instead.


We don’t want to forsake our SUV’s, we don’t want to carpool, we don’t want to not jump in the car and run to the store 17-times a week…so let’s boycott the gas station.

We don’t want to make the environmentalists mad, politicians don’t want to cross the lobbyists that feather their campaign nests, and no one—No One—has the cojones in Washington to tell the American people to back off consumption, or tell the tree huggers to get off it on protecting the silver tufted worm warbler, we’re drilling for oil on the east coast, the west coast, in Alaska, and where ever we need to in order to eliminate our need for imported oil.

We may be past the point of no return on that one.

No, instead, the pontificating politico’s are going to demand oil companies explain the math behind their quarterly reports, again, and threaten to eliminate tax incentives for the very companies upon which we depend to light our homes, fuel our transportation, and power our industry.

Meanwhile this stupid, insipid, endlessly un-inspiring election campaign is focusing on minutiae of whether or nor Hillary was dodging bullets in Bosnia, what Obama’s preacher said in the pulpit last Sunday, and whether or not John is too old to lead.

Please.

Would someone please have the ‘nads to tell it like it is?
Would someone please have the vision to steer us through the shoals, damn public opinion and what we want to hear, and tell us, once and for all, what we need to hear?

The age of cheap gasoline is over.
You’re going to have to change the way you live, work, and recreate…maybe even procreate.

How much of the price of gasoline has been inflated by speculators trading oil futures, swapping electronic options for a commodity they're not even going to use, refine, or otherwise develop...save for the purpose of making money.

Nothing wrong with making money.
But if you're griping about what you're paying at the pump, make sure you're not a part of the problem, both in terms of consumption and speculative fervor.

That doesn’t mean America is going to hell in a hand basket.
We’ve got the smarts and the manpower to do anything we want.
What we’ve been lacking is leadership and resolve.
And patience…