Rhinocrisy

Charismatic megafauna ate my food stamps. And my student loan, my utility regulations, and my Medicaid. Did I mention my child support payments?

The Alaska National Wildlife Refuge is home to an important caribou herd. There is no excuse for disrupting its existence — and the existence of the Gwichi’in Indians who eat the animals — for the sake of a few barrels of crude. There is also no excuse for the liberal establishment to protect ANWR at all costs, even if that means sacrificing other possibly bigger principles.

I recently spoke with the global warming campaigner for one of the biggest environmental groups in the country. I asked her why I hadn’t heard a peep out of her group when Congress was about to approve the dreadful energy bill in August. She said she didn’t know. I asked why I had received mailings and press releases trying to get ANWR drilling out of the bill. Was that the group’s only priority, I asked. She agreed that they had spent far more time on ANWR than on anything else. As a result, this bill will markedly increase global warming, which will probably do more to wipe out the caribou than an oil drilling operation.

But hey, they “protected” the charismatic megafauna.

In general, if you see the Republicans putting ANWR oil drilling into a bill, you can go to the bank knowing that the bill contains many far more heinous provisions. And you can count on the Democrats to use all their political capital and parliamentary tricks to kill ANWR drilling while simultaneously sacrificing all the other policies.

The Repubs last week dropped ANWR drilling from a spiteful, mean-hearted budget-cutting measure. They left behind the cuts to “Medicaid, food stamps, student loans and child support enforcement,” according to the Anchorage Daily News. The entire “budget-cutting” measure would have saved less money (about $10 billion a year) than the Repubs plan to spend by permanently repealing the I-guess-I-should-have-given-away-the-money-before-I-died Tax (more often called the Estate Tax).

The good news is that the Must-Drink-More-Oil wing of the Republican Party was so pissed at the loss of the ANWR drilling that they killed the rest of the bill. So I guess sometimes stopping ANWR drilling can have a bigger effect, especially when Karl Rove is in the doghouse.

White House says:
No Evidence Bush Lied About Iraq
Bush Administration officials denied earlier today that pre-war intelligence was manipulated or that Congress did not receive the complete picture. Speaking from his position knee-deep in a BFI dumpster behind the White House, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley told reporters, “Look, guys, if that were true, we would have been lying, right? And if we were lying then, then we’d be lying about lying now. Which would be a double negative. And as we all know, that’s just not possible in English. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve, uh… lost… my… wedding ring… in here somewhere.”

Vice President Dick Cheney, cornered en route to his home with two large, rustling garbage bags full of “table scraps” for his “new alpaca, Cecil”, further commented, “Some of these Democrats who are kicking up a fuss were the same ones who voted for the war. If we knew then what they know now, then we should have been against the war. But we weren’t.” More questions proved impossible as reporters were terror-stricken by Mr. Cheney’s determined grimacing.

I hope I’m not the only one to worry upon seeing that this guy is advising the Jordanian government on counterterrorism. Wasn’t he the first of Bush’s crony-nominees to get the axe? Sadly yes. He’s the one who botched the training of Iraqi police and used his 9/11 budget bump to set up a bedroom for booty bumps. And now… the NY Times says:

“This is going to lead to a lot of good intel,” said Bernard B. Kerik, former New York City police commissioner, who has been advising the Jordanian government on security issues. The bombing was “a demonstration that this is not about Zarqawi’s hatred of America but about his hatred for his own people,” Mr. Kerik said of the Jordanian-born militant.

And in other news, I wonder what the arrest of an embittered Iraqi woman will do to those who knee-jerkedly blamed Israel for the Jordan bombings. If only enmities were so simple.