Yesterday, I made this post including this video which covered the racial aspect of things. There was so much to comment on in the video, however, that I felt I had to make this post, too, covering economic issues and the Socialist wasteland Comrade Obama is set to bring on our flourishing free market democracy. So, again, you have been forewarned.
One of my favourite parts of this video had to do with one of these women talking about how Obama is going to tell you what lightbulbs to buy and how the government is going to come take over your life and make you eat government cheese when Obama's socialist uptopia sweeps into power.
What really blows my mind about people who have bought the Republican line these last eight years is that they somehow believe that the US economy is a truly free market and they can buy whatever they want. Well, I hate to break it to them, but when you shop at Walmart, your choices are being limited in the same way as (probably worse than) a socialist utopia, only instead of limiting choices for the benefit of the masses, your choices are being limited by a company that has only its shareholders interests in mind. When you go to the store to buy a lightbulb, the fact that you couldn't buy an energy efficient bulb for so long was a limitation of your choice.
For a while (since the beginning of the States, really), we have been able to live as though are resources are not shared or public. We have been able to do this because there was so much available and we only had to move further West to get more. The world, however, is changing and whether or not you want to live in a global economy or not, you are now sharing oil with a guy from China. And you will soon be sharing oil with 200 people from China. You no longer have the ability to demand cheap, unlimited energy and tell everyone else to fuck off. That time is just done. Won't ever come back.
So who's role should it be to make sure energy is used wisely and shared appropriately? You can say, Well, that's nobody's responsibility, let the market decide, but then the top 1% are going to live very comfortably well the rest of us suffer. And you really don't believe that because you start complaining to your government when gas goes up to $4. You want a free-market when you think it benefits you.
It's like this off-shore drilling. Everyone agrees that it won't bring the price of oil down. It won't be available for 15 years and when it does become available it will be sold on the world market to China. So who benefits from off-shore drilling? If you say, the oil companies, you get a cookie. If you say the American people, you, again, get your driver's license taken away.
Or the Freddie Mac/ Fannie May thing. Let's get rid of government regulation, the Republicans say. It is not American to regulate. So we take away regulation--the companies collapse and the same people start demanding that we bail them out to say our economy. And who gets paid? Certainly not you and me.
Luckily, given enough time, everyone has to deal with reality, they just change the words. Global warming? Bush says climate change. Troop withdrawl timeline? Troop redeployment horizon. Iranian dimplomacy? Well, that one is just Iranian deplomacy, but apparently it's not appeasement anymore.
When you are hearing McCain talk about energy independence, say what you want, it means the country is moving in the right direction. If you get people in the Bible belt to conserve energy because they are afraid of Muslims coming and killing them, well, I'm just happy that energy is being conserved.
There is no oil in our future. There is no more basically free energy. There is living closer together, sharing more, and lots of walking. And I couldn't be happier with those prospects.