Another great series by Khazim Schlackmayer, purveyor of fine 23rd Century Amerimanga, typically featuring lots of well-endowed females. Schlackmayer first became famous, if not notorious, for his hit Anime, "The Boom-Boom Girls," which made its debut on Des Plaines Community Access Holovision in 2234. If I find the teaser ad for it, I'll post it here, for yet more riotious and visually-appealing entertainment.

So...a follow-up to the oil rant from a couple weeks back...

The annual Congressional investigation into gasoline price-gouging has once again commenced. Only this time, there's a Democrat-controlled Congress. This will make things interesting. Not much will likely get done about the problem, but it will be interesting.

There's some talk on Capitol Hill, according to NPR, about breaking up the oil companies, rather like they did with AT&T in the 1980's, and the name of Teddy Roosevelt was evoked. Ironically, Roosevelt was a Republican, but that was back when being a Republican was radical and cool, a far shout from today's Republican party, which is firmly ensconced in the pockets of Big Business and Big Religion. But I digress.

They followed this up with commentary by some so-called "independent analyst of the oil industry," who basically gave a crash lesson in economics - something along the lines of, either increase supply or decrease demand. But the people, as much as they complain, never seem to stop buying gasoline. That's paraphrasing, but essentially it's what he said.

Well, duh!

Here's the problem. Most of us would love to use less gasoline. There are those of you out there (you know who you are) who insist on tooling down the freeway at 90 miles an hour in your H2 with the A/C on and the windows open. But I believe that's becoming more of an abberation. I've noticed in my commutes that, as gas prices climb, people drive slower. As a nation, we are trying to conserve, in whatever way we can. But the reality is, because we have no public transportation infrastructure throughout most of the country, we can't. The only mode of transport available is the automobile, for most of us. We were lured into a suburban or rural life back when gas was plentiful and cheap. Now, we're stuck, and having to pay whatever Big Oil can squeeze out of us. Blood from a turnip.

My boss put it well, and I'm not just quoting him to get brownie points: Car companies have to realize that they're in the transportation business and not the car business. Oil companies have to realize they're in the energy business and not the oil business. Once that happens, maybe we can move forward. The lamest excuse yet for high gas prices? That the oil companies are so strung out developing alternative fuels that it's forcing prices higher. That's a pantload. So are any suggestions that OPEC is behind it. Oil prices simply haven't climbed like gasoline's has.

It's no secret that the oil and car companies quietly put the nation's streetcar lines out of business. It's also no secret, if you can believe that electric car movie, that an oil company owns the patent to the battery technology that would be driving electric cars today, had that not also been killed. You can blame consumers all you want for not breaking their car addictions and their oil addictions, but ultimately, the culprit is plain old greed.

Here's what has to happen: GM, or Ford, needs to partner with GE and once and for all develop either a fuel cell engine or a clean hybrid technology which can power high-speed rail locomotives as well as automobiles, and get into the commuter train business. Through collaboration with oil and energy utilities, develop a real alternative fuel infrastructure. And, we need to give up on this ethanol nonsense. The U.S. Government needs to re-assess its priorities for funding, get in serious talks with Syria, Iran, Isreal and Iraq to convince them to cut out the bullshit, and get our army back home where it belongs. This would free up hundreds of billions of dollars a year which we could spend on mass transit infrastructure improvements and other incentives to get the research going and stop this namby-pamby wishful thinking that gasoline hybrids and ethanol will save us. Once that happens, we'll break our dependence on unstable governments for oil, seriously reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and set the world well on the way toward reversing global warming. We'll save the world, end a bloody, protracted war, and save our major industries, in one fell swoop. It's a bargain!

That isn't so much to ask for. We put men on the Moon while the Vietnam War was raging. We can do this too, but it has to be a national project conducted with the same fervor. Think about what a great world this could be if we pulled it off, and let's get crackin'!

I'm taking a life break next week, so look for new cartoons starting the week of June 4.

Medium: Felt tip on the old company's old stationery.