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So, did you know that oil prices, which were actually really uncomfortably high a few years ago and only fell back largely as a result of a global recession (to which they most likely contributed), have been rising lately and, especially in conjunction with but perhaps even without the effect of “unrest” in the middle east, may well choke off economic recovery?

Especially here in the United States where, largely as a result of taxes making up a relatively microscopic portion of the price paid for petroleum by consumers, the economy is both highly dependent on oil and thus really staggeringly dangerously vulnerable to high oil prices?

Yeah. Amazing. Who would have imagined…?

Tell you what. Mr. President? I like your “we are not going to keep refighting the same battle over and over” approach to health care reform. Can we start taking a similar “we are not going to keep blithely putting our foot into the same trap over and over” approach to energy policy? Some time? Acknowledging that no it’s not really your fault but that, at the same time, it will at least start to be if you leave office having deferred this problem to the next administration just like your predecessors have been doing for 30 or 40 years? (Also acknowledging that while I like the high speed trains, they aren’t really going to be of adequate scale or timeline as a solution, by themselves.)

What’s that you say? Americans have turned from the oil-industry-friendly party to shift power toward the oil-industry-fanatically-worshipful-I’m-talking-literal-blood-sacrifices party?

Oh. Right.

Christ almighty god. America collectively may well deserve the full consequences of the absolutely determined intentional fucking stupidity which has led us to this pass, but personally I do not. Dear fucking lord.

I suppose we’d probably better just hope that these guys iron out the minor little “technical details” and change history, then. (Not holding my breath for that, either.)

What a weird, weird week this was. I think it’s worth writing a summary of the bizarre incidents just for a record.

In Libya, the ongoing “unrest” in the Arab world has come close to making a believer out of me. Colonel Kadaffy is apparently still in power in part of the country, but by no means all (unfortunately he still controls plenty of weapons for attacking the Libyan people).

It is, in any event, debatable how in control the man is of his own faculties, given his increasingly-bizarre rantings. Early in the week he seemed to be taking a page from John Boehner by dismissing large protests as the work of “agents” and therefore not representing any genuine expression of popular discontent. By the end of the week, however, he was forging ahead with conspiracy theories involving bin Laden slipping drugs to the unwary.

And this really should have been quite enough surreality for one week, by itself, but reactionaries here in America struggled mightily to keep pace. (more…)

I’ve been busy lately, but that’s not prevented me from attempting to post. I’ve started what, five, six posts in the past week or so that just never came together? Part of the problem is that everything just seems remote and blurred-together lately. The problems all seem big, and distant, as well as played-out from a commenting standpoint; so I’ve not really felt a compulsion to vent about something.

And then when it comes to one of America’s current brief fixations, unions, the issues feel even more abstract.

Despite having a mechanic and a teacher for my parents, I didn’t grow up with any direct union “presence” in my life. And now I’m a 32 year old freelance graphic designer; the other day I was unexpectedly confronted with the possibility that I’m arguably one of those much-ballyhooed “knowledge workers” in some sense, even.

So the fights playing out over unions are of interest to me, but it’s a very abstract and hypothetical interest.

On the other hand, if unions themselves feel like a foreign concept to me, the belief and expectation that I should really resent them draws even more of a blank stare. (more…)