It's about time!

While I do some occasional commentary on the political scene, I usually don't go into a lot of analysis of the news---I leave that to those more qualified than me and then reprint their stuff. But this recent flap over Obama's remarks concerning things we as individuals can do to alleviate some of the gas problems we have been facing seems to point to something quite obvious, but which I haven't seen in most of these commentaries about it.

The way McCain and the Republicans have been ridiculing Obama, using tire gauges and sarcasm, betrays a fundamental difference between the two men, and between the old politics and new politics. The McCains and Bushes of this country want us to feel helpless and scared---there is nothing we as individuals can do to change the dangerous and costly things of this world. We need Big Daddy (politicos, corporations, government) to save us from these things. Oh, don't worry about trying to take mass transit or getting a smaller car, we can solve it all with BIG SOLUTIONS (war, oil drilling, nuclear reactors.) This leaves the general populace feeling weak and impotent, and forces us to look for centralized solutions that cost more money and eventually are ineffective and lead to more problems.

Obama says "Yes, we need to look for some big solutions, but all of us must take part in this." Big Daddy has never saved us, and in fact Big Daddy is a drunken and abusive lout. Big Daddy IS THE PROBLEM!!! We all need to work together on this, and together we can solve it. By inflating our tires to a proper pressure and tuning our cars up, we can save more gas than drilling in this country will get us RIGHT NOW!!! Of course, no big companies make any money on that (in fact, they make less), but it's an immediate action all of us can take. And that is power to the people.

This difference is a difference that could change the whole dynamic of this country, from a corporate oligarchy to a participatory democracy. Make fun if you will, but the times they are a changin' . . . .

It's about time!