Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste

Now that global warming has been exposed as a hoax, and “cap and trade” has been exposed as a huge new tax on everything that will kill hundreds of thousands of American jobs, the career politicians in Washington have gotten the message, and they know what to do about it: That scam didn’t work, so let’s try again. Only this time, we’ll use the Gulf oil disaster as a convenient way to gin up angst, and we’ll rename “cap and trade” to something that sounds good, like “cap and dividend”, or something real fancy like “Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s Renewal Act”, CLEAR for short. Yes, we’ll call it the CLEAR Act; that’ll get everyone on board. Then we’ll make all sorts of outlandish claims about the astonishingly good effects this bill will have. Those ignorant peasants out there in “in between” land will believe it all and go along with it. By the time the true effects become apparent, it’ll be too late. Voila! With this bill and the government run health care bill, Washington will have seized control of virtually every aspect of life in America. Then we wise rulers will be able to make those cretins and miscreants known as the American people live the right kind of life, the kind that we dictate.

Senators Maria Cantwell from Washington state and Susan Collins from Maine have proposed a new carbon tax bill called “cap and dividend”. As they describe it, this bill will cause money to start raining down like manna from heaven onto American families. This bill will unleash economic growth on a scale never before seen. Untold numbers of new, ultra-high paying jobs will be created. There will be massive investments in new technology!! We’ll stop using coal and oil and start using windmills and solar panels, tomorrow. Energy costs will not go up. Things will be right in the world.

All of this economic benefit will happen just because Congress passes a law; every ecological problem in the world will be solved to boot. It will be wonderful!! We’ll have our cake and eat it too. Utopia will have arrived!!!

Why didn’t someone think of this sooner? Thank you Senators Cantwell and Collins; we are so blessed to have such wise, magnanimous, benevolent leaders as you. Your apotheosis will begin immediately. As an encore, I’m sure you’ll solve world hunger, in your spare time.

In describing the bill in a Washington Post article, the good Senators proudly point out that “researchers at the New York University School of Law found that the legislation would generate good, ‘green’ jobs’ ---.” Researchers at a law school? A law school?!!! Not researchers at a technology school or an economics school or the National Academy of Engineering or the National Science Foundation, but at a law school?!!

The Senators also indicate that another benefit of the bill is that it will reduce “emissions in agriculture”. Emissions in agriculture – what is that? It can’t be plants, because plants consume CO2 rather than emitting it. No, they can’t be referring to corn or hay or wheat or tomatoes or any of those things. They must be talking about animals. It must mean that animal emissions will be reduced. That’s it, bovine flatulence! Yes, finally we can rid the fruited plain of the scourge of bovine flatulence. There will no doubt be the bovine flatulence police to enforce this. They will perform a great service to the populace by going around to every cattle farm, large or small, to verify that appropriate cow emission reduction procedures are being followed. If not, your cows will be confiscated and turned over to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) where they will receive tender, loving care, along with the chickens that were rescued after falling off the truck on its way from the chicken farm to the Colonel Sanders factory. PETA will also humanely capture the cow emissions and store them ---- somewhere safe, I’m sure.

Let me makes sure I’ve got my mind around this. At a time when Iran is nuking up, North and South Korea are on the verge of war, we have a disaster of unprecedented proportions in the Gulf that is not under control, the economy is still in the tank in spite of trillions upon trillions in “stimuli” of one sort or another, unemployment is stuck at around 10% and showing no signs of coming down, the situation in Afghanistan is starting to disintegrate, Iraq is tenuous at best; in the midst of all of this, the people running the country are engaging in energy and economic fantasy and worrying about bovine flatulence.

How do these boobs (no pun intended) keep getting elected? Are U.S. Senators really so stupid as to believe that a bill passed by Congress will get us all to economic and environmental Nirvana, or do they know it’s a charade but think we’re too stupid to figure it out?

My head is spinning! I can’t take it any longer. Stop the world, I want to get off!

An attendant drapes a cape over my shoulders and leads me off stage, as I sob. Then, I throw off the cape, run back on stage, grab the mike and get down on my knees, fervently pleading, “Please! Please! Please!” --- more sobbing --- “Please! Please! P-l-eeeee-a-s-e don’t go. America, you know I love you so.” (Apologies to James Brown.)

Washington has turned into a circus and the clowns are in charge. Nancy Pelosi is in Ring 1, Harry Reid is in Ring 2, and Ringmaster Obama is in the center. Robert Gibbs is the barker. There are side shows on energy, jobs, the economy, illegal immigration, and others to come. There is Little Egypt the belly dancer, the Lady Godiva impersonator, Ahab the A-rab with his precision spitting camel, the two headed cow, the five legged sheep, the fat lady, the giant, the dwarf. Step right up, only one thin dime, one tenth of a dollar! Step right up!

P.T. Barnum said that you can fool some of the people all the time, and you can fool all the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time. Let’s hope he was right, come November.

In the meantime, I’m checking out. It’s good-bye cruel world, I’m off to join a real circus. I’ll clean out the elephant stalls. Or they can put me in a cage. Shoot me out of a cannon, I don’t care. Let the people point at me and stare. I’ll tell everyone how that crazy, insane, inane Washington made a crying fool out of me.

It will be my ablution.

Someday I’ll return, and Washington will seem sane.