Speed!

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No, not the kind that comes in pill form, or any other ingestible form. I am talking about good old fashioned speed, as in "putting the pedal to the metal." What has happened here? I recently took a trip to visit relatives for the Easter holiday, and once again I was appalled at the speed with which "responsible" citizens were careening down the interstates. It is disgusting the complete ignorance demonstrated by these drivers, and apparently they are all just "tools." Sorry, but like the old saying goes, "If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck." You folks...and you know who you are...are tools. In case all you wanna-bee "Speed Racers" out there hadn't noticed, the US is stuck in a terrible war in Iraq at the moment. Like it or not, that war is more about oil and our access to it, then it is about anything else. Every extra gallon you consume while barreling down the highway at grossly illegal speeds just makes it harder for us to walk away from places like Iraq, and to give the finger to shady allies like Saudi Arabia. You really need to consider that next time your speedometer is barreling past 70! Also, in case you hadn't forgotten, the speed limit in the US was lowered after the Arab oil embargo way back when in order to do two important things: save oil and save lives. It succeeded in both respects. Now all that has been thrown away, and we are again hurtling toward despair by ignoring the example that was set all those decades ago. If you don't care about all the billions of dollars we are sending to the Gulf states that they are using to build palaces, when we could be using the money to lower taxes and create new business, then look at it from another point of view - driving slower reduces the amount of pollution created per mile by your car. Global warming is here. Not withstanding the irrelevant attacks of Senator Inhofe and his cadre of professional skeptics, we ALL need to change what we do in an attempt to stave off the worst of the looming crisis. One of the easiest things to do is slow down! Taken for all in all, there is NOONE so important that they can't get where they are going a few seconds later, and with traffic the way it is today, that is usually all you are gaining by excess speed. So, slow down. Save gas. Save lives. Save the world. The car companies, and the federal government also bear responsibility for this ongoing plague of speed. Here is one example: A well-known Japanese car company recently introduced a hybrid powered sport sedan that generated over 430 horsepower! What message does that send? That kind of power is ONLY useful for traveling at speeds well above the legal limit. But, marketing trumps EVERYTHING I guess. Don't agree? Let's hear it.