Dispatch reader explains high gasoline prices

"It really steams me that not one presidential candidate has addressed the price of gasoline." So begins a letter to the editor of today's Columbus Dispatch, written by Jack Crowley of Nelsonville, OH.

Crowley has hit our country's economic problems head-on by enumerating the ways in which the United States government, at the behest of President Bush, is screwing Americans in the pocketbooks and in the comfort zones because he holds this magic wand over gasoline prices. It is universally explained away as the effect of "supply and demand," though such principles can apply only to an open, unfettered and unregulated marketplace.

It is astonishing that the Presidential candidates never mention the price of gasoline and diesel fuel as the basis of our economy's present catastrophe; nor does Congress; nor do mainstream media; nor are there demands for reform from citizens.

This sham operates from behind the smoke and mirrors called "supply and demand." That it goes unchallenged demonstrates the incredible degree of incompetency of our society. (For a plethora of thoughts on this theme, go to the search box above and type in "gasoline.")

We are simply eating the Big Weenie of Bush and his buddies - as though it's to be expected with an oil-rich President and as though nobody can reign him in.

Only one other person in the entire U.S. seems to understand that, and his name is Jack Crowley. Go read his letter.

McCain: How abrasive can he get?

The depths to which "statesmanship" has sunk under the regime of George W. Bush is exemplified in the recent statement by McCain that he hopes for the early death of Fidel Castro. Here's the Reuters report.

If we are to have any chance to repair our damaged world image, it will take someone with an iota of common sense and a lip that can be brought under control. McCain has neither.