What the hell does a morphing unicorn have to do with the price of anything?

Okay, so if I was supposed to be impressed by the oil company CEOs taking seats on Capitol Hill to allow Senators trying to score common man outrage points, I didn't get the memo. Of course, all I get from the so-called two major parties is requests for moneys, so I probably wouldn't have opened the damn memo even if it had magically appeared in my inbox. At any rate, I was fully prepared for a dog and pony show proper to kick of the summer months.

Okay, so while I was not impressed, they failed to disappoint. Hell, Sen. Orrin Hatch raided his game room and brought a portrait of a dog riding a pony. Sen. Charles Schumer compared the credibility of such an industry receiving those breaks to that of proclaiming a unicorn's arrival in the hearing room. Not to be outdone in the center ring, Sen. Pat Roberts saw Schumer's unicorn and raised him by saying unicorns could morph into rhinoceros.

Of little consolation was Sen. Max Baucus chickening out on wearing a rainbow wig and waving a 'Ruck Fules' sign.

Wait...what the fuck? Unicorns, if they did exist...can morph into a rhinoceros? Where did Sen. Roberts pick up this information, and how long has he known this? I mean, this is a national security concern if ever I heard. Even the double rainbow guy would need Chuck Norris to cope with that kind of encounter. Isn't that the kind of crap our Senators should be convening panels on? I don't know about you, but I'm perfectly willing to pay $4.15 a gallon if our mighty government-as-usual can protect me from morphing mythological creatures.

And what did this puffery, this manufactured outrage over high gas prices and tax incentives (they aren't subsidies, people) wind up accomplishing? The same less than nothing we have come to expect anymore. Who in their right mind thought differently? You have a collection of politicians who haven't pumped their own gas in years, not to mention probably beholden to three or four oil lobbies a piece, symbolically slapping CEOs' hands to gin up public support as some chase six more years of this crap. For all the answers being demanded, we the people already knew the answers. Wait, somebody did at least ask questions, didn't they?

We all know damn good and well there is little to next to nothing our government can do about the situation. With the average attention span of the American voter plunging faster than some fame-desperate teenager's neckline, in a matter of days (if not already) the public will have moved on to their next outrage, probably about a 16 and Pregnant or Dancing With the Stars story. Sure, they'll still bitch about the problem, but prepare for the thousand yard stare when you mention last Thursday's hearings.