Oh, isn’t it cute! Our chief commanding decider shrub is speaking. Let’s listen to his words of insight:

When the going get’s tough, the tough charge it! Lift the drilling ban–it will mean we pay 4 cents less a gallon for gas in 10 years. If someone has a year or two free, perhaps you can example fungibility to the shrub. On second thought, by the time he understands, he’ll be out to pasture.

In other exciting news, the “do not fly” list now contains over 1,000,000 people. Keep up the good work, TSA! If you get to 100,000,000 maybe you’ll start to realize that the list is useless. Because, you know what? Then market pressures will take over. You think that the airlines are going to put up with 1/3 of the US population not being able to fly? I think not. (I call this the Stroger Paradox. There is a limit to the amount of mis-representation that citizens will allow. Politicians will attempt to ignore that limit whenever possible.)

Poor politicos. Even pandering isn’t working any more. The people of this country are just tired of hearing the same old rhetoric over and over and over. (See this months Reason for a good article about this.) We’ll cut gas taxes over the summer! (Audience laughs.) We’ll drill for oil along the coast! (Audience laughs.)  This is where technology really helps, as your stupid comment from a year ago can be replayed 10,000,000 times. Mission Accomplished, indeed.

On the bright side, while the D-minus students who run our government are working on More Of The Same, I do feel that we’re really on the cusp of something great. There are so many extraordinarily complicated things happening right now that we have only two directions to go in. To use the space analogy, we’re either going to blow up on the pad, or we’re going to land on the moon. We’ve got 5.6M pounds of propellant under us. Explode or fly? It’s up to us.

While it’s easy to get suckered into the Doom and Gloom of it all, the simple fact is that the bedrock of our society is made up of hard working people, trying to be successful in their own little way, often while raising a family. These people don’t want to see their kids living in squalor, do they? I think not.

I say we’re on the cusp of something great because of the great re-birth of DIY that has been happening over the last couple of years. Couple that with strong pessimistic view toward government solving anything and a good dose of economic instability, and you’ve got (forgive the cliche) The Perfect Storm.

Smart, clear-thinking, people are working on problems NOW. Doing it on their own, without waiting for funding, without filling out forms, without getting approval. From mini hydroelectric plants (made from a 5 gallon paint bucket) in Central America, to personal wind farms, to pedal powered washing machines in China, people are DOING stuff and it’s wonderful.