Today's Bizarro is brought to you by the Straight Talk Express.The day this cartoon ran, I got a couple of letters from soldiers who were angry that I was making fun of our troops. I politely explained that I was not making fun of the troops or anyone else, but rather pointing my satire at the Bush administration, who began and continue this war because of oil.
One wrote back to me and claimed it is not Bush, but Al Gore and the environmentalists who are responsible for the high price of gas. At least that's what I think his nearly random arrangement of letters and punctuation was trying to convey. (not all right-wingers are illiterate, of course, but this poor fellow is damn close.)
I explained to him that Bush, Cheney, and their hoard are oil men and that they and their cronies are making billions off the current crisis. I asked him to Google "oil company profits." He wrote back and said that he had, and found nothing.
I'm guessing Google had as much trouble interpreting his scattershot English as I did.
9 comments:
That should be "horde of oil men" rather than "hoard..." - the former is a wanton group, the latter a pile of treasure.
One wrote back to me and claimed it is not Bush, but Al Gore and the environmentalists who are responsible for the high price of gas
I've heard that argument before. The (mistaken) belief is that if laws to protect the environment were removed allowing oil companies to turn Alaska and other parts of the US into parking lots to drill for more oil, then the US would have all of the oil it needs, produced domestically.
Even if this was true, it would only buy a few years worth of fuel. Even if it wasn't true, the increased oil output would only lower prices for a few years.
Thanks, Matt, for keeping me from being the permanent spelling scold around here! Although, come to think of it, "hoard" does have a certain poetry in that sentence.
the sad truth shall be revealed in november when the IEA forces the oil producers to revise their "known oil reserves" but there is no oil in ANWR. the oil companies have drilled 10 dry holes there so far. sorry to be so serious here but i used dan's carton on my blog yesterday and thought i would share the news here. on a lighter note GOOGLE let me comment Dan!!!! hahahaha oh you can see my posts at www.censys.org/blog/
"...they and their cronies are making billions off the current crisis"
Yes—it's simply that Americans and Iraqis are dying for what is essentially war profiteering. When will people wake up?
I just hope Americans don't think it's a problem now because they have to pay at the pump. It's one facet of commodity speculation, and other people are paying far more dearly for inflate food prices.
But I won't misappropriate your blog for another of my diatribes.
This panel reminds me of the one with the jock dude showing off "awards" on his varsity jacket.
it's true, many of the soldiers and a great many americans still believe the war is about terrorism and that the gas prices are because "the arabs are blocking our oil." yes, someone actually told me that.
When I saw this particular comic in my paper, I just knew you would get letters about it.
I think it's funny. Funny because it's true.
it's very much the group mentality that there is a singular reason for why our pocketbooks are currently being raped. "those damn environmentalists!" yea- because the people who care about the health of the planet, who have no control over the oil taken from the middle east, are the ones driving the prices up. because they're the ones that benefit from our agony, right?
i've also heard from the people who want to drill in anwar (sp?) say over and over "i don't care about the caribou! that land is a wasteland that needs to be exploted!" what a destructive group mentality. i'm not sure what caribou offer the land, but i know all species hold an environmental niche, otherwise they would not exist. these people think that knocking out one species (or threatening the environment certain species live in) doesn't have an affect on anything because it's just one animal. they don't understand that caribou are just as important as any other animal because they actually serve a purpose, regardless of whether we can physically observe that niche or not. did you know that we would not exist without plankton?! of course, that's a pretty blanket statement because we wouldn't exist if a lot of species didn't exist, but plankton! they provide photosynthesis to over 40% of the food we consume on land! how crazy is that?! and we're destroying the ocean with our plastic island in the pacific (amongst several other factors) and nobody even cares. i'm sick of it.
and btw dan-- ever since you mentioned the common use of environmental names for giant apartment complexes/business districts. i see them all over the place! there's a place right down the street called "habitat condiminiums" and another place by my school called "eagle highlands." the latter is hilarious because a) of course there are no eagles, and b) the land is FLAT and contains about 2 trees.
I’ll try to keep it brief.
Dan, I loved this cartoon. I printed out a large color copy and put it up in my office. BTW, I met you once back when you lived here in Dallas. You ought to remember; I’m very important and special. LOL. But I digress (and I promised to keep it brief, ack!) ...
These arguments for drilling in ANWR and offshore make me shake my head in near disbelief at the gullibility of the human race. Setting aside environmental arguments (not because they aren’t valid, but because you can’t win over someone who doesn’t care about the environment with an environmental argument anyway) — the U.S. only possesses 3% of the world’s oil. The supposed 21 billion barrels of oil John McCain trumpeted about yesterday in Houston would only last about three years at current U.S. consumption rates (i.e., about 21 million barrels of oil a day). And that’s assuming no growth in demand (unlikely), and it’s ignoring the fact that it would take probably a decade to begin bringing that oil online (naive).
We’ll be in a world of sh*t long before that. Wake up, people. Peak oil is in our rear-view mirror. It’s time to start ramping up alternative energy sources (and no, I don’t mean switchgrass). Otherwise, this may be our future ...
While I’m preaching to the choir, let me recommend James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency. Sobering, but important reading.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled Bizarro broadcast already in progress ....
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