Perhaps because we've failed to invest in refineries and infrastructure to support any immediate drilling?
That silly Republican engine is panting hard, but they still keep shoveling in the same old coal and wood - with a goodly portion of horse manure in the bargain from the so-called Maverick team of McCain and Palin.
Mavericks always take the path less traveled. But McCain has concurred with Bush far too long to disavow his allegiance. This Indian scout, like an old dog, "Just cain't hunt!"
McCain, apparently, agrees the winds of change are blowing, but, as he sticks his nose into the wind, his olfactory senses fail to discern that the United States has reached an impasse - one which belittles the continued politics of distrust and fear, with only token sensation of what must be done. Neither can he find the compass to lead us out of the woods into which his fellow Republicans led us!
At first, Americans may not have heard the tree fall in the forest. But now, in reality, not just existentially, they know it teetered and collapsed to earth.
And misled we have been all along.
When? When Richard Nixon lied and became a documented crook. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again! His first act was to veto the National Defense act, leaving me without loan money at University of Colorado, Boulder fee payment!
When? When Ronald Reagan quoted FDR and JFK, while firing the Air Traffic controllers; when he proclaimed economic recovery while rigging the unemployment system to reflect figures that ignored workers no longer collecting compensation and mistakenly assuming them re-employed; when Reagan furthermore took credit for the release of Iranian hostages while President Carter had done the requisite footwork; when he simply fell asleep at the wheel as the engineer of the steam engine with incipient Alzheimer's; when his administration blandly denied the sale of drugs for arms, and no special prosecutor could possibly be appointed by a Republican Congress. I spoke to a Vet in Pueblo who had friends who'd witnessed such transactions. And he furiously said to me: "Reagan should have been Impeached!"
And also when: Gerald Ford honorably but ineptly discharged the office of President as the first appointed Vice President ever to assume that office, because Spiro Agnew had also been a crook!
Beyond Ford came the Bushes. Where Clinton left surplus, they created an abyss of debt - this current one unparalleled.
So while having traveled "Back to the Future" with Michael J. Fox longing for stem cell research, we have witnessed the damn little engine denying simple facts beyond any ethical consideration: unfertilized fetuses continue to be wasted in sperm banks, while people pine away for the breakthroughs science might bring through them.
This "little engine" is straight out of the "Twilight Zone" and only stops at the dead station of "Willoughby."
Mark every deception and consequence: foreign relations in tatters with our former allies unsure of us; a besieged and exhausted military turning duty after duty with no assurance of adequate health care for post traumatic stress syndrome or physical injuries; a legal system which now favors corporations so intensely that they now are taking bonuses from bail-out money while common citizens have to endure not just six but thirteen years without credit to recover loss and credit; a history of torture and abuse to an extent never seen before by and from our proud country; multi-national banks and firms gobbling up each other, poising themselves now like vultures.
One could go on, but it is all past. Yet, as Joe Biden said in the debate with Sarah Palin: "The past is prologue." Let us the forgive, but never forget.
When something breaks in your house, you've got to fix it.
Government too is broken.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
