No Energy (or statesmen)

So gas is at $3 a gallon, Big Oil is swimming in net revenue, our "friends" in the House of Saud have extra billions to fund more Madrasas and the Bushies are waking up to the fact that, in lieu of a comprehensive energy policy, conservation is of vital importance. This coming from the gang who's only energy policy has been "use all the oil we want and drill in Alaska."

US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said today, "Most of us have viewed energy availability as a kind of right of citizenship," and we might have to rethink that. Well duh! If Americans have viewed it that way, it may be in part due to a President who presented that as perfectly OK. It wasn't too many years back (yes folks, these people have been in power for years now) former presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer was asked whether Americans' heavy energy demands required any lifestyle change. "That's a big no," said Fleischer. Indeed Darth Cheney called conservation a "personal virtue," not a sound energy policy. Well Dick (I really mean dick), it might be in our best interest if we all got virtuous rather quickly.

A 10% reduction in our oil consumption would eliminate the need for the oil we import from that rancid boil on the butt of humanity called the Persian Gulf. Doesn't seem like too much to ask of Americans in order to benefit our national security and extricate ourselves from the ever more dangerous Middle East now does it? A true statesman would launch this country on a Manhatten Project type effort to do just that.

But then, a statesman doesn't occupy the White House.