 Can we all shake hands, salute our glorious flag, and join in saying, "You don't have to love the oil companies to love America"? Apparently not. But the White House held a nifty photo op yesterday, President Bush kicking the tires of ultra-efficient hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles from Ford, Chevy, and Daimler-Chrysler (none of which will be on the road for 18 months, while un-American Toyota and Honda hybrids that citizens are driving today were snubbed).
By contrast, reporters were not invited to the Administration's all-out, arm-twisting campaign to get votes for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling — just as Vice President Cheney & Co.'s scores of energy policy planning meetings with energy companies are sacredly secret and executive-privileged, even to the point of fighting a lawsuit from the nonpartisan General Accounting Office, but the task force's one and only meeting with environmentalists was trotted out for camera crews.
Nor did anyone at the photo op remark that, if we actually used the real-world technology shown on the South Lawn to improve fuel economy standards to 39 mpg over the next 10 years, we'd save 15 times as much oil as we could ever get from the Arctic Refuge. Heck, speaking of kicking tires, simply making sure the replacement tires Americans put on their cars are built as well as today's new-car tires would save 70 percent more than the Refuge could yield.
But conservation, as Vice President Cheney famously sneered, is merely "a sign of personal virtue"; we're at war and we need to drill in the Arctic Refuge now, because when its oil starts flowing no sooner than 10 years from now, its no more than six months' worth of U.S. oil supply will make us energy-independent, boost America's share of world oil production to well-nigh 4 percent so the OPEC nations can no longer set energy prices. (The conservative Cato Institute has called this "not just nonsense, but nonsense on stilts.")
Why is the Administration's energy policy like its Star Wars missile defense scheme? Because all evidence indicates that it will not work, is simply a bad idea that would flunk even the most conservative business manager's cost/benefit analysis, the only Americans it would profit are the oil and defense contractors (respectively) who'd get billions of taxpayer dollars. Why is it different from Star Wars? Well, letting the missile boys play with their rockets doesn't really cause colossal harm to the environment.
Ah, well, at least best-selling author Michael Moore deftly parried right-wing blowhard Bill O'Reilly; it's fun to read how O'Reilly opened with, "So how liberal are you? Are you a socialist? A communist?" (of course, O'Reilly begins all his interviews with Republicans by asking, "How conservative are you? Are you a reactionary? A fascist?"); snarled in frustration, "I know where you're coming from, Moore. You can't fool me, all right?" as the liberal gadfly dodged his simplistic sound-bite traps; and was reduced to sputtering incoherently, "If Janet Reno were Attorney General [actually, she was], those guys would have been out investigating cows someplace."
Yep, good old Fox News, which can't broadcast five minutes without shredding its claims of "fair and balanced," which continues to report that Ken Lay stayed overnight at the Clinton White House, that outgoing Clinton staffers trashed the White House and Air Force One, that Al Gore says he invented the Internet, etc., just as Dick Cheney says his energy plan includes 11 of 12 Sierra Club suggestions, just as George W. Bush says his "economic stimulus" plan isn't skewed wildly toward the wealthy. When did the perfectly honorable tradition of holding conservative views change to constant, baldfaced lying about those views and trying to fool listeners? Probably when American conservatism changed from supporting citizens' rights and smaller government to supporting unlimited windfalls for big corporations.
10:42:29 AM 
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