Gleefully filled with salacious tales of celebrity mischief, raucously defending environmental rights and reviling industry , unquestioningly accepting doomsday announcements of ethnogencally caused climate change our democracy stumbles on. Is it possible, as one amazed and disgruntled observerver suggested to me, that congress is purposely working against the best interests of the nation ?
When I rejected this notion he became quite agitated, suggesting I couldn't find my rump with both hands, and began to enumerate unfortunate policies and acts of the governing powers. First he insisted look at the latest priorities of congress, investigating use of steroids by athletes, objecting to a world famous physician touting a lifesaving drug,and protecting polar bears. They attend to these zephyrs of importance while the hurricane winds , of militant Islam , China, energy policy, the decreasing value of the dollar,illegal immigration,and social security reform go unattended or given pathetic attempts at solution.
Turning to recent actions , he referred to the "tax rebate" to almost all taxpayers and non-taxpayers wondering how borrowing more money from China to give to citizens so they could pay for higher priced food and gasoline was accomplishing anything other than buying votes and contributing to the decline of the dollar which is largely responsible for the higher prices.
Speaking of buying votes turned his attention to the "energy bill" which instead of looking to a future where we might free ourselves to some extent from the threat of blackmmail by the likes of Chavez and Saudi Arabia they completely capitulated to
Archer Daniel Midland and "Big Corn" by requiring increases in production and use of ethanol in spite of studies showing it is more deleterious to the environment than gasoline and in spite of evidence that using food for fuel is causing unbearable price increases in food. This stupidity was compounded by a provision in the bill to phase out incandescent bulbs in favor of flourescents as an energy saving measure completely ignoring the problems that arise from disposing of these mercury containing bulbs or the difficulty of remedying breakage. Nowhere in this bill is a plan for energy production, no where a call for nuclear plants, or clean coal, or even for increased drilling of oil wells..The bill is a sop to the environmentally correct; full of feel good measures, that might after fifty years have some effect on our energy problem. Now the latest move is to remove tax incentives on production of oil and move more money to additional "research" on alternative energy sources which may reduce our needs at some mystical time in the future. How do we heat our homes and drive our cars and keep production going from our factories and farms until the millenium arrives.
Congress has totally embraced the radical " chicken little " global warming scenario. If that scenario is correct and global warming is ethnogenicly caused anything our country does to ameliorate the cause is about as effective as sweeping back the tides. World population is growing therefore more greenhouse gases just from bodily fnctions.
. China builds a new coal burning power plant every 6 days, India is building cheap automobiles for its population therefore our turning down thermostats is a joke. Most scientists, who believe in ethnogenicly caused warming think we have already reached the point where no action will reverse the process, scientists who don't agree with human caused warming point at the futility of such efforts. What might be useful is a program to prepare for the consequences of warming rather than trying to negate it.
With the dollar falling to new lows congress still acts as if we were a creditor nation rather than one in deep debt to foreign countries . Witness the "Millenium Bill " just rushed throgh the senate . This gem requires us to give .07% of our gross national product to foreign handouts about an additional 30 billion to what we already do, these sums might be better used for health insurance here at home. The bill also has some very peculiar language that seems to allow the corrupt U N great power over our deliberations.
Social Security is a program on the way to extermination. Thhere are not enough workers to support recepients. Yet the congress added a drug benefit to an already under funded program.Select Social Security recipients are taxed on social security payments but instead of those taxes going to fund social security ,they are put in the general fund to be earmaked for pork projects. Congress refuses to reform the program.
Illegal immigration is a major problem but the government does very little to stem the tide of illegals. Elected officials are afraid of losing the "Hispanic vote". However most citizen hispanics do not approve of illegals. There are laws but they are not enforced. Of course there is a coalition of employers who want the cheap labor. It is up to goverment to find ,enact and enforce a solution.
The litany was losing steam so he glossed over he the failures of the intellegence community which led us into Iraq, the politically correct rules that deny security from "Homeland Security", and congress' total lack of ability to act coherently on anything.
, I had no answer to this tirade except that it was probably stupidity not intentional. I checked AOL celebrity gossip, joined the rest of the lemmings, and headed for the cliff.
