http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/5/18/135612/593/#comment10

Eye opener

Our cars are more than just transportation or even status symbol.  They represent some basic level of adult independence and ability to function within society.

Brilliant.  Only someone in touch with real reality can inform the conversation like this.

It puts me in mind of another observation.  Was it here?  Not sure. It was to the effect that, riding the bus is the ultimate embarrassment to inner city dwellers.  It infers a total lacking in the rider, a dependence.  It is the exact opposite of sticking out your thumb for a ride.

A sign that you are not needed or wanted, but rather a burden to civilization.  To a mighty empire of power that runs on greed, gunpowder, blood, and oil.  The only way out?  Become cannon fodder and take your chances.  "Be all you can be?"

"We must be the change we wish to see in the world." -- Mahatma Ghandi

That statement bears repitition.  Over and over and over in a zen chant by our whole movement to save the living planet.

Corporate leaders won't let US manufacture our way out of oil dependence.  They would rather move every factory offshore than give up the huge profits they reap from gas guzzling and fossil fuel destruction of the planet.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/5/17/151725/397#13

Ameri..CAN
Or ameri..can't.

We know we can, but this corporate class running things from the whitehouse, congress, and the boardroom can't.

When coal miners went on strike and then mine owners locked them out, crippling the nation's economy, national guard troops were sent in to operate the mines.

Real leadership in DC would send in the national guard right now.  To take over corporate boardrooms and get this energy revolution going.

We can't afford this lockout by the corporate elite, they are closing down america's manufacturing capacity to keep their lock on power.  And that is killing the living planet that we all depend upon for life itself.

Put Gen. Karpinsky in charge of the GM boardroom, for instance.  She knows the wrath that oil war has wrought, first hand.

Call in the national guard, this is a real emergency.