I think you're being hypocritical to say the least.

Main Entry: hyp·o·crite
1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

Given that 1). I have never, ever defended the current administration; and 2). This was a story specifically discussing the actions of Democrats with respect to high gas prices, how, pray tell, is it that I am being hypocritical? To say the least.

Well...hmmm..."useless political posturing"...I believe the Democrats learned from the Republicans that this is how people get elected these days.

I never indicated that politicians of both parties haven't engaged in posturing/bloviating to to get elected. The results speak for themselves. Since the democrats seem to be following the republican lead in this, they're rendering themselves just as useless.

I think that you construed my comments as an ad hominem attack on the democrats. It wasn't. I was merely stating that I don't agree with the many who seem to feel that a change in leadership this November will ultimately mean much in regard to the most pressing issues facing this country being addressed.

My, my...so tell me who in the recent past has displayed that they can do those things. Certainly not the current administration.

To me, it really doesn't matter whether politicians in the recent past have displayed that they can address issues like Peak Oil. What matters is that what happens now. If the current crop can't get the job done, then they need to be replaced. That refers to members of both parties. Someone obviously needs to forcefully articulate the fact that this country is headed for disaster and measures need to be proposed to help steer the boat towards the shore, and away from the precipice. Posturers and bloviators are not going to get the job done.

Finally, I do think that in the past (if not the recent past) politicians on both sides of the aisle have addressed the serious issues at hand, and displayed guts and vision in advocating for drastic changes. If its happened before, it can happen again.

All of that in turn fit the agenda of the Project for a New American Century, calling for America not just to maintain military superiority, but to destroy any society, democratic or not, that dared challenge American supremacy.  Access to oil could allow a rising Asian industrial power to do that.

I think Cheney at the very least was waiting for an incident to overwrite this aggressive ideology on the views of "normal" capitalists who aren't very different whether they are Republicans or Democrats.  Think of it as an artificial attempt to do here what occurred in Britain between the early Victorian era (free trade) and the late Victorian era (world conquest and Christianization).  Both are the result of an aging society with declining ability to make anything useful.  The Neocons may have had a sick fantasy that a neo-Victorian America could civilize the world by grabbing at the levers of power, and mourned the sort of constrained democracy that existed in late Victorian Britain, where church, state and capital worked together to brainwash a formerly restless population (the Chartist movement, Luddism) into supporting imperialism and militarism through a meaningless 2-party system.  To me, that is as bad as a dictatorship, because it is harder to identify and oppose.

Cheney didn't expect China to grow so quickly, or Iraq to be pacified so slowly.  That created a danger that many mainstream capitalists would defect like they did in 1992.  The administration's moves at authoritarianism at first were not out of line with what you'd expect in Europe in the late Victorian age (everyone had an Interior Ministry and spied on reformers).  Since 2004, the restraints are all off.  The stupid neo-cons probably wanted to create a Victorian age that went on forever without that unfortunate 1914 matter, but now like the authorities of that age, the leaders of this project must now preach militarism, perpetual armament, aggressive Christianity, exaggerated grievance, and fear of terrorism (it was Anarchists back then).  That paved the way for August 1914.

The Democrats would not have initiated this process even if they had understood the threat of Peak Oil because the process was designed to create a very extreme end point.  They would have muddled their way into the resource wars like they muddle their way into everything.  It took the Europeans maybe 40-50 years to get from imperialism to resource competition to war.  But ironically, the very desire of the neocons to use "shock therapy" to accelerate neo-Victorian America into unstoppable might before it was too late has accelerated both the growth of tyranny and the certainty of its failure.    We could reach 1914 in only a few years, or a few months, and this time we've all got nukes.