Thursday, May 1, 2008

Fill 'er up with that stuff that worked so well for the Hindenburg

Poor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Santa Monica city council may ban jets from landing at the local airport. Arnold uses that runway to commute to his day gig in Sacramento.

I saw Arnold on Leno last week touting Earth Day. The only thing green about Schwarzenegger is his money and the tie he wore on Leno. Why does he commute back and forth the length of the state on a daily basis in a private jet? Simple. He can afford to.

Schwarzenegger stomps around the formerly-golden state leaving his Terminator-sized carbon footprints everywhere, spending millions of taxpayers’ dollars to build hydrogen refueling stations for cars that exist mainly in his imagination, and calling for state-funded universal health care while the California budget is about $20 billion in the hole. Arnold, dip into that billion-dollar personal bank account, log onto eBay and see if Nero's violin is for sale.

•••

Am I the only person how has noticed that Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Pastor John Hagee have the same biblical perspective with regards to God’s judgment on the United States?

Wright said that God used the 9/11 terrorists to punish the United States for this country’s foreign policy. Hagee suggested God used Katrina to punish the United States for its unabashed homosexuality. The politics may be different, but the theology’s the same.

•••

With all the candidates clamoring to be on SNL, Hillary appearing with Bill O’Riley, and Obama’s endless Top 10 lists on Letterman, I think we should cap off this primary season not with another debate, but with a showdown on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? Or if that is too intellectually taxing, have Clinton and Obama appear on Deal or No Deal and instead of money, pack the briefcases with superdelegates.

•••

With gasoline prices pushing $4.00 a gallon and crude oil going for more than $120 a barrel, I think it’s time the current fed chairman do to the hot crude oil market what his predecessor did to the hot stock market in 1996. Addressing the American Enterprise Institute, Alan Greenspan commenting on the steep rise in stock prices said, “But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions…?”

If this crude oil market isn’t being driven by “irrational exuberance” you can run me down with a Prius. So-called economic growth in China and India doesn’t explain why crude has gone up from about $25 a barrel in 2001 to about $125 today. Speculators are running wild.

I also think a good case could be made that would place the blame for the steep increase in crude prices on the war in Iraq. In that case—and I’m no dove when it comes to the war—Americans are paying for the war three times over: with the lives of our young soldiers, with a ballooning budget deficit, and at the gas pumps.

No comments: