Smirk and sneer: I'm a couple of days late in linking (for some reason, clicking articles at WorkingForChange.com is just reloading the front page instead of the article), but the inestimable Molly Ivins this week managed to be eloquent while being dumbfounded by the Bush Administration's response to its own Environmental Protection Agency report to the United Nations:
Throwing around words like "fantastic" and "stupefying" is considered bad form outside the tabloid press. But I'm damned if I know what else to say about the news that the Bush administration has decided that global warming is indeed taking place and they are planning to do exactly nothing about it.
Asked to comment on the EPA's conclusion that the U.S.'s addiction to fossil fuels will cause sea levels to rise through the 21st century, flooding Southeastern coastal communities while cities and semiarid regions face more heat waves and drought; the Great Lakes drop to levels affecting navigation and water supplies, not to mention wildlife; Vermont maple syrup becomes a Canadian import; and water supplies and snowpack dwindle in the West; President Bush gibed, "I read the report put out by the bureaucracy."
Of course, Vice President Cheney — sought for questioning about the Enron-like results of his leadership of Halliburton Co. — has already dismissed any thoughts of energy conservation as only for "personal virtue" pussies; a steady flow of leaks and reports has shown that the administration's energy policy was literally created by asking oil and nuclear industry execs, "If you were king of the world, what would be your policy?"
Never mind that even a growing number of conservatives are asking exactly why the U.S. should continue to be the House of Saud's bitch, or what's so wrong about slightly better gas mileage (eminently achievable even for SUVs). While previous GOP leaders were at least shrewd enough to publically downplay their ties to corporate fat cats, the Bushies continue to wear oil-company logos on their suits like NASCAR drivers, to brazenly proclaim it's government by the top 0.5%, for the top 0.5% — and if not for 9/11 patriotism, might already have been swept away by the storm of populist rage that's building, not among lefty liberals but real Americans tired of reading more every day about unbelievable CEO salaries and unaffordable health care.
But of course, exploiting 9/11 is the only card this administration's got; as today's N.Y. Times reports, "Although the White House is cooperating with a joint investigation of the Senate and House intelligence committees, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has said Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had earlier asked him that there be no investigation at all."
And the lefty liberals can usually be counted on to look like simps, wimps, and idiots: Michael Webb reports that Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich is pushing for a Cabinet-level Department of Peace, with a U.S. Secretary of Peace and a Peace Academy akin to West Point.
8:07:11 AM 
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