Put A Blogger In Your Tank

"I'm no hero! We'd all be heroes if we stopped using petroleum!"

~~ Mark Wahlberg, I Heart Huckabees

I can score you some coke
And some grade one grass
But I can't get a gallon of gas."

~~ The Kinks, 'A Gallon Of Gas'

Who needs the zoo when you have Congress? Only this zoo is full of one specie of side-show carnival animal. And it looks like an elephant, only it's stupider.

Yes folks, that’s right. Time once again to step off my high pedestal of “all politicians represent some form of domestic terrorism” and point out, with a whuppin’ stick o’ words, that Republicans seem to have suffered some sort of reality stroke, forever damning them to some warped wonderland where We Need A Fence (yes, they’re serious) between the U.S. and Mexico to keep the terrorists out. And illegal immigrants, because frankly, they look like terrorists. Who can tell these days?

It only costs an estimated $8 billion – way to cut back on federal spending, GOP.

This fantasy world is not the Mr. Rogers fun world of make-believe. No, this is more like Big-Top-Pee-Wee-meets-that-big-hairy-spider-from-Lord-of-the-Rings terrifying.

I have a friend who is a genius, but can also be extremely pessimistic. His theory is that the world is going to have to get really fucked up before it starts to get any better. So every time something morbid happens, he says, "good." Because the way he sees it, it's just speeding things up to the point where people will take action.

Example:

Sketch: The U.S. has secret military bases all over the world where they house terror suspects.

Friend: Good.

Actually, that was a hypothetical. Here's a real example:

Sketch: What about nuclear war? What if human beings bombed each other off the face of the earth?

Friend: Good. Then some other species can evolve and take over.

Fortunately, there's at least one area where my friend can currently take great pride in the Bush Administration: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Yessiree, even though moderate Republicans blocked efforts to open the refuge to oil drilling on the congressional budget bill in November, there are renewed efforts to attach the measure to the Pentagon budget bill before Congress adjourns for the holidays.

And frankly, I think that's great. What this country really needs is ... more oil!

And what a vast sum of oil lies beneath that cold, crusty surface! TEN BILLION BARRELS OF OIL!

That's sweeter than a hunnert dollar tax-cut check.

Ten billion barrels! Imagine, if you will, what ten billion barrels could DO for the U.S.!

Wait, better than imagining it, let's use Bush Administration estimates to figure out what it could do! Why? Because I love conservatives, especially with their liberal (PUN!) estimates of how much oil can be recovered from ANWR.

So according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), we could recover up to 16 billion barrels of oil, though a more realistic estimate says we'd get less than 10. But hey, I'm feeling generous.

16 BILLION BARRELS OF OIL!!

EIA also estimates the U.S. uses around 7.3 billion barrels of oil per year at the current rate. Of course, EIA also predicts oil consumption will hit 9.1 barrels by 2025, when ANWR would be running full force.

So, by opening ANWR, we could fuel the United States energy demands for ... TWENTY-TWO GLORIOUS MONTHS! That's nearly two whole years!

Of course, silly liberals freak out over statistics like these. They just don't understand that a lack of oil means higher gas prices, and higher gas prices means poor people suffer.

Roughly 25% of the income of families at the poverty level is spent on gasoline.

So you see, driving up oil prices is just hurting the poor, and these bleeding-heart liberals think the poor should just keep on being lazy and working 16-hour-a-day jobs just to afford value-menu fast food meals for their families.

So sure, ANWR would take 10 years to open, and another 10 to ramp up to full production, and produce a mere 16 billion barrels of oil. But what these statistics ignore is the SAVINGS.

And there's nothing more American than saving.

So, back to EIA estimates. With ANWR fully operational, the oil could reduce prices per barrel by ...

30 to 50 cents a barrel.

And there's 42 gallons of crude oil in a barrel, which translates to a whopping 20 gallons of gasoline. That means Americans, including the poor, save a grand total of about two pennies a gallon.

But hey, multiply that by 300 million Americans, and you have yourself one heckuva underground coupon, my friends.

So fuck shit yeah, Congress. Let's drive a big ol' metal drill into the virgin wells of Alaska.

And fuck the environmentalists, who are screaming some shit about caribou, if they try to stop us. Some people just have no common sense. I mean, how do you logically explain to these eco-freaks that what we really need to do is sink more money into non-renewable resources, and protect the poor oil industry, who posted its largest profits ever after jacking up oil prices in the wake of Hurricane Katrina?

This is AMERICA, people. We have to do BUSINESS here. And if Congress wants to make an (inflated) estimated $2.5 billion in leasing revenues by opening up ANWR, so be it.

And what's worse, eco-nutbags are constantly yapping on and on about global climate change. And with what evidence?

Just because we had a record number of category 5 hurricanes this year,

and just because we had a record number of tropical storms overall this year,

and just because the earth has seen the sharpest increase of carbon in the atmosphere in history, most of which took place since the industrial revolution,

and just because sea surface and atmospheric temperatures are rising at a dramatic rate,

and just because the polar ice caps are melting at measurable yearly quantities now,

and just because the president of the National Academy of Sciences and the director of the National Climatic Data Center both testified before Congress in July that climate change is occurring at a tremendous pace and is caused by humans,

and just because the rest of the world (let's be real, only 160 countries) signed the Kyoto protocol and the U.S. didn't,

and just because the rest of the world agreed to take stronger action at the Montreal climate conference and the U.S. didn't,

these people think the climate change conspiracy is real!

HURRICANES AND THE GLOBAL CLIMATE FLUCTUATE ON A NATURAL CYCLE PEOPLE. It's all just a coincidence!

And do you know how I know that? Do you know how I can point to all that compelling scientific data and scoff?

Because Michael Crichton did the exact same thing in his July testimony to Congress. (yes, this actually happened)

Look, if a guy smart enough to write a fiction book about time travel says global climate change is bunk, well, then, dammit, I do too.

So if you're stupid enough to believe environmentalists and liberals and foreign government officials and the leaders of the scientific communist conspiracy, well then, don't come crying to me while I sit in my posh coastal home, drinking gasotinis, reading State of Fear and laughing at you.

As my friend would say, "good."

Peace and love,

Sketch E.