gasoline

In May 2008 the Big 3 domestic automobile manufacturers posted double-digit losses in car sales. They claim it is the cost of gasoline that is destroying their sales.
Ba-a-a-d gasoline.
Honda Motor Corporation, home of the Civic, posted a double digit increase in US sales for the same time. Hmmmmm. Gasoline didn't destroy their sales, too?
Maybe the gasoline that is bought for a Civic is different than the gasoline that is bought for a 19-mpg F-150?
Surely it has nothing to do with the persistent attitude among US Execs about moving behind the lines of innovation, letting other companies do the cutting-edge R&D, then gobbling them up or purchasing their patents... surely not that.
I mean, that would be bad business, to spend that much money developing a product that people might want, in fact... selling the first few years at a loss instead of marketing bucks, to get your vehicle on the road? What does Toyota know about hybrids, anyway? Nobody's gonna want a Prius, not when we can change the cupholders on our new Chevy Silverado truck, right? I mean... trucks are cool... trucks are good... for God's sake-- trucks are American! (except that Japan truck sales are capturing even more market-share here, too). Besides, how else am I going to haul all that hay and saddles and engine blocks to my downtown, high-rise, air-conditioned office ?
Surely current economics has nothing to do with Corporate Elites upping their proxy-validated share of the pie so they can buy more resort properties for their multiple families, while the working wage of most Americans has not changed in the last few decades. Surely it has nothing to do with protecting the current unspoken caste system, right?
And I haven't even started on the tactics perpetuated by Oil America to keep our culture petroleum-dependent. Energy ExecutivEs would never fleecE their EmployEes and sharEholdErs for the sakE of cooking thEir books and making a bundlE for thEir offshorE accounts, right?
I live in a culture that has at its core an "entitlement to excesses". My President repeatedly uttered his war-cry, "...to protect the American WAY OF LIFE." And we sheep still click our red heels and chant "there's no place like home, there's no place like home."
We are spoiled consumer/sheep!
If a family member cannot find a Wii at BestBuy, well, SOMEBODY's gonna hear about this!!
If a cell phone cannot text, play a movie and serve as a GPS simultaneously, then it must be a piece of crunk and unworthy of consumption.
Unworthy of consumption...?
Is that where we are? doing others favors by using them up?
Is that what "american" means to Corporate USA?
That smacks of suggesting bread-less people eat cake; and the leaders lost more than their minds. No wonder "change" is a winning platform so far.
For the near-term, I predict the Congress and President Obama will perpetuate the madness of "burning the furniture" (aka, tapping Strategic Reserve and drilling in fragile ecosystems) in order to protect Detroit, all the while spinning it as "for the little guy who can't afford gas." It will be a beautiful fiction... stay tuned as we once again lose another window to better our long-term society for the sake of short term stupidity.
So the next time you fill your personal vehicle with $5 gasoline, with all those empty seats and hay-less truck beds, internal combustion engines and non-regenerative brakes, just remember... we have satellites still exploring our solar system and universe with technology developed when they launched decades ago.
There is no gasoline in space.
This is not a stupid statement; it is an accusation.