CNN has a story today titled "Clinton, Obama Take on Big Oil" It's good to see the kids playing nicely for a change. Like their playground counterparts, they have reached an accord by finding a common enemy.

So, who's the enemy? Big Oil, and its tax subsidies. (drumroll, please). The rising gas prices we are experiencing in this county are fueling what many say is a recession-to-be, and what others say is a 'recession-that-is, only-nobody-acknowledges-it. The writing is on the wall, anyway, for anyone to read. We don't want to read it, because we don't have a ready solution at hand. We don't even have a ten-year solution at hand.

Only Big Oil isn't really the enemy. That's right. That's what I said. Big Oil is just a corporate shark. It is what it is, and the real stupidity has come from the American People, via Congress, all these years. It's been a regular feeding frenzy as of late, with politicians feeding the sharks, and sharks feeding the politicians. Problem is, everybody else starves when this gets out of control. 

So, when is a shark not a shark? So far, the answer has been, "When we pretend it isn't, and feed it a little". As anyone with a grain of sense can see, that's a collossally stupid answer. If that answer were viable, we wouldn't have people exploring the Great Barrier Reef in steel cages, now would we?

Congress is full of people who have to get reelected every few years, and they get elected by people who Don't Like Bad News. Short term, those tax subsidies have been good value for money. Almost all industrialized nations subsidize their energy prices in order to keep their economy stable. In other words, we take collective action to protect ourselves from a 'free' market at the national level. No one wants a national economy at the mercy of anything as volatile as a futures market.  While Europeans pay almost ten dollars a gallon, we are crying out when it rises above three.

I think the Democrats have the right idea. Stop calling the shark a teddy bear! Let it be a shark. It's a necessary part of the food chain. The sane approach is to start letting other fish breed, like Green Energy fish. Start feeding them. Start using some of the petro dollars to fund something positive, for a change. We are technologically stuck in the late 19th century as we enter the 21st due to a fondness for short term, bandaid solutions to problems which will require our best minds to work overtime well into the rest of this century.

So far, the Republican solution to every problem is to feed the sharks some more. Collectively, America is now missing a leg as a result of following that philosophy. Let's turn this thing around while we've got one left.. Let's elect Democrats in 2008.