Be Patriotic! Guzzle That Gas!

You may have heard the radio ads that the oil and gas industry and these monster polluters are sponsoring. The oil and gas patriots want Congress to be careful, lest we turn the clock back to the '70s with the long gas lines (not to mention disco) by imposing price restrictions (i.e., windfall profits tax) on the poor, struggling Mom & Pop oil companies. It's astonishing, isn't it, that as soon as Congress starts scheduling hearings on oil company profits and an energy bill is introduced, the escalating gas prices level off and start dropping (from about $3.20 a barrel just before the hearings were announced, to $3.03, national average, now)? What a strange (but not related!) coinkydink!

The hog-drivin' fools and their SUV Association of America are telling us that Congress needs to be careful not to pass too stringent fuel economy standards for these over-powered ego-massagers. These patriots use the logic of their NRA brethren ("To make this country safer, we need more people packing more guns, not less!"), saying in their logic-defying ads that to mandate stricter fuel economy standards means making vehicles smaller and less safe! No, what makes vehicles less safe is for cars to share the road with ever-larger land battleships that pollute, guzzle gas, and ensure that in a collision, the genes of these nimrods are passed along while you and I go to the happy huntin' grounds.

It's hard to imagine a Congress so closely divided (especially with Dems like Rep. Dingell, and Sens. Levin and Pryor representing the auto manufacturers in their states) that decent legislation will come out of this session. These ads, and others like them to follow, show that the other side is organized, focused and funded.