Get Energy Smart! NOW!

A Virginia Republican leader and member of the McCain Virginia leadership team recently wrote an ugly OPED seeking to link every shallow form of ignorant bias in the direction of hating Barack Obama and, well, black Americans. Bobby May, treasurer of Buchanan County Republicans, wrote that he is

listing for your consideration the platform of Barack Hussein Obama as best as I can figure it out after ventining all the hot air, straining out the honey and removing the smelly substance similiar to what the old bull left behind.

This OPED, which should never have been published, is filled with invective and disgust (and disgusting material). When it comes to religion, for example, the distilled platform is supposedly:

Freedom of Religion: Mandatory Black Liberation Theology courses taught in all churches — raise taxes to pay for this mandate. Put Reverand Jeremiah Wright in charge. Condemnation of homosexuality from the pulpit will become a Class 1 felony.

It is hard to figure out what is most outrageous of all this. That a newspaper would choose to publish it or that, in fact, the reality that some people will actually believe some of it.

Why, however, do these pages dedicate to the discussion of energy and global warming issues even raise this piece? Because Bobby May speaks from the heart about energy issues.

According to Bobby May,

HIGH GAS PRICES: Inflate your tires.

The lie and disdain associated with this is multifaceted even beyond simply being not even a farse in discusing Obama’s energy plan. 

1.  This shows the utter disdain for sensible solutions, real solutions, that is extent in too much of the reality-denying know-nothing wing of the Republican Party. Guess what, inflating tires could have a real impact on individual’s requirements to pay for gasoline and on national requirements for oil. For every 1 pound below recommended pressure in tires, a driver loses about .4 percent of tires.  There are drivers with 15 pounds or more of underinflated tires, the equivalent of paying about 20 cents per gallon more for gasoline.  Across the United States, the average is in the range of 8 lbs, or roughly 3.2 percent. Thus, Americans are paying over 10 cents more at the tank simply through underinflated tires. In other words, if Americans would actually do this, we could cut oil demand by over 300,000 barrels a day via just this measure.  Will inflating tires “solve” America’s oil addiction? Absolutely not, but it would reduce accidents, making riding in cars more comfortable, and save people money.

2.  Instead, of course, we should focus on “Drill, Baby, Drill”.  As opposed to just inflating tires, this would save about 1 cent per gallon … in 2030.  And, offshore drilling might account for about 200,000 barrels per day.  If “Drill Here, Pay less, Vote GOP” was such a great solution, we would have seen a massive drop in gas prices in the past few days as the ban on offshore drilling ended 1 October. Oh, when it comes to “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less,” please remember that this all comes about in about 2030 in terms of maximum production and maximum impact on fuel prices: a 1 cent, 1 percent, in 20 year solution to today’s problems.

Hey, Bobby May, there are many things to do besides drilling that would have a real impact but if we really were going to do just one thing (which only Republicans seem to be advocating), inflating tires would have more and faster impact than drilling.

ENERGY SOLUTIONS: NO coal. NO drilling. NO nuclear power. Use solar power and wind turbines to power cell phones and iPods; walk everywhere you go; buy a bike if you have any money left after huge Obama tax increases are implemented.

Well, Bobby, those three “NOs” are derived from your know-nothing approach to discourse. They simply don’t exist within the Obama-Biden Energy Plan, which is a holistic plan to move America into a global leadership issue on something other than wasteful use of massive amounts of fossil fuel. Even so, the Obama-Biden plan would actually (for example) emphasizes putting quite a bit of money into the misnamed and deceptive “clean coal“.  There is nothing there, nothing, that states those three “NO” statements.  And, well, the attempt to dismiss solar and wind as something for Birkenstock-wearing hippy liberals ignoring the world due to their love affair with iPods shows a desire to collaborate with those seeking to weaken America’s economy in the face of 21st century competition for advantage in developing green technologies.

Bobby, you are doing a real disservice there for communities like Buchanan, where moving to renewable extraction via wind turbines often represent far better economic prospects than the dead-end realities of coal extraction, as the wind will always blow (not all the time, but as long as humanity is on the earth) and coal in the mountains will run out … soon.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT:  Keep buying foreign oil and sending billions to Muslim countries that hate us and want to destroy us.

Bobby, it is a sensible national objective to drive down, ASAP, imports of oil.  It is weakening us (the US and all of us) on so many levels from economic to environmental to security.  Let us ask, however, what has eight years of Republican leadership done to this situation. Oh, that’s right, worsened it.  And, what does the McCain-Pain ticket offer? “Drill, Baby, Drill” which, remember, would do less to reduce our purchase of foreign oil than a decision to “inflate your tires” and do it twenty years later. 

Bobby May, like John McCain, simply “doesn’t have a clue” when it comes to energy issues or, well, seemingly anything else.

Across the board, this oped is despicable and merits the title that Not Larry Sabato has given it: “Racist trash.”  From Not Larry Sabato,

You need to read this column to believe it.

In “humor” he accuses Obama of wanting to paint the White House black, supporting reparations, changing the national anthem to the “black national anthem”, teaching “black liberation theology in all churches”, and replacing the flag with a “star and crescent logo”.

Why has the Virginia McCain campaign not removed this guy already and publicly rebuked him?

Yes, why not?