Al Franken: Another Bad Joke from Minnesota

Having been born in Minnesota, and spending much of my adult life here, I continue to be embarrassed by some of the candidates we manage to scrape up to run for public office.

Granted, most of the buffoons come from the ranks of Democrats and Independents (who can forget Jesse "The Body" Ventura), but the Republicans have not been completely immune (Sen. Coleman comes to mind, but keep in mind he's really just a Democrat in remission.)

The most recent Bad Joke brought to us by the DFL is comedian Al Franken.

He was never all that funny as a comedian, and he's even less impressive as a politican.

His most recent stroke of brillance is his idea for addressing the high cost of gas by selling 50 million barrels of oil from the strategic oil reserves.

Hmmm....let's see. We use 20 million barrels a day here in the U.S.A., so this is about 2.5 days worth of gas.

Of course, like all good Democrats, he's against actually getting more oil through drilling off-shore or in ANWR, claiming it will take 20 years to see the benefits.

For some reason, the pay-off time on oil exploration continues to grow among Democrats. Ten years ago Clinton opposed drilling for more oil because it would take ten years to see any oil.

Gee...seems like we'd be realizing those benefits right about now! Way to go, Clinton! (That's alright, Bill. We know you had your mind on other things back then. How's Monica doing, by the way?)

What don't these idiots understand about "speculation"? It's not based on what the oil supplies are today! It's based on what they "speculate" they'll be in the future! If we're aggressively going after MORE oil for the future, the speculators will bid down the price TODAY!!

None of them were bright enough notice the immediate drop in oil prices as soon as Bush rescinded the executive order banning off-shore drilling. That drop occurred without ONE new well being drilled!

If a largely symbolic gesture by the President gets that kind of immediate result, just imagine what actual congressional action to open up more oil exploration would do?

Unfortunately, the inmates are running the asylum these days, and are effectively blocking any and all rational attempts to work our way out of this energy crisis.

Al Franken wants to join them to bring us more of the same. I'm not laughing, Al.