Grab your torches and pitchfork!

I just received another ridiculous petition in my e-mail. This one, "signed" by many, many, people, was a petition for President Bush to lower gas prices--complete with instruction for the 2,000th signee to forward it to the president. Oh, brother...

There was no mention of how exactly the president was supposed to lower the gas prices. It simply read, "Petition for President Bush to Lower Gas Prices." And I'm confident that it will be circulated to millions by the end of the week.

I guess maybe we could send some U.S. military troops to the corporate offices of Exxon, Shell, and others demanding their respective CEOs to drop prices. Or maybe we could place troops at neighborhood gas stations to protect the price signs from being tampered with by store employees. You have got to admit that one good sniping incident in the news and no one is raising a price anywhere else.

This type of e-mail slays me. Who doesn’t want lower gas prices? But a crude petition like this is useless and toothless… Do these people actually think President Bush is sitting by the White House laptop waiting to read this and say, “Oh, gee, people want lower gas prices, let’s act!” The president can no more control that than he can control the weather. I’m confident that with his present low approval rating, IF he could figure out a way to lower gas prices, he most certainly would.

My main annoyance is that this group of do-gooders, collectively, is obviously completely ignorant of how government and private business works. Therefore, I've decided to start an e-mail petition demanding the people stop being ignorant. I'll e-mail it to you for your signature... Forward it to everyone you know.