It appears that we have seen the last of an American icon, namely the "big block" V8 engine. There could not be a more poignant, even stirring example of the slow steady wimpification of US culture than the passing of this pillar of young male manhood. My brother Jim and I had a phrase for the thrum-thrum noise made by the revving of a big-block V8, we called it the "Happy Engine Song". Singing it required a displacement of no less than 350 cubic inches (about 6000cc's in today's parlance). But that song will now pass into obscurity, the victim of oil prices and economic decline. Global warming may give us a lot more beachfront property, but we'll be driving to those beaches in little tin 15HP hybrid-mobiles. No one will ever sing a song titled "She's real fine my 60mpg 2cylinder-electric hybrid".....meh!

Once again, we see that the core of the environmental movement in reality cares nothing about the environment. Artificially created enviro-panics like the hole in the ozone layer (which hasn't shrunk after 15 years of CFC bans), and the comical global warming hoax (now revealed to be the result of research chicanery and fraud) are in reality all just excuses. They are ruses used in an attempt to panic and frighten the world into dismantling our technological infrastructure and returning to a hunter-gatherer civilization. All in a lunatic attempt to atone for the sin of being human to the demon-goddess gaia. When enviro-kooks develop a head of steam behind a good scare-story, the LAST thing they want is for the problem to be SOLVED through technology. The point is to make us all give up using earth-hostile amenities like cars and electricity, kill off 9/10ths of the human population through starvation and disease, and then go back to living in tee-pees and using our own dung as fertilizer for our maize. Then MAYBE gaia will forgive us for living on her surface and leave us alone. WAKE UP people! Environmentalism isn't science, it's a religion. One of the most barbaric and scary religions on the face of the earth. If they ever get control of public policy their death-toll will make the Taliban look like a kindergarten class.

High student loan interest rates are the result of Bush administration tinkering to increase the profit of lenders. If you believe religiously that corporate profits are the highest moral good possible, there's no end to the suffering you're willing to inflict on regular citizens in order to raise those profits. Bush promoted and signed bills raising student loans from ~2.5% to over 8% in some cases. It's that good-old "loot and pillage" economic theory. If you're a Republican over 50 years old, you don't give a d@mn about the future, as long as you wallet is swelling today....