Preznit hypocrisy alert – Dirty energy will stimulate economy

That’s the big message from today’s press conference by President Bush.

Bush said we need to burn more coal to help us out of the current economic “situation,” which he still refuses to call a recession.

After that came the litany of other Big Oil and Big Coal goodies — drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, more oil refineries, heading the list. But, as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pointed out, ANWR’s oil reserves would lower our oil costs by about a penny.

Rhetorical question: If the economy is not in a recession, Mr. Preznit, then why are you so worried about it?

That said, he’s right that the farm bill could use yet more tweaking. But, when Bush is talking about cutting payments to millionaire farmers, I know there’s a catch somewhere; I just haven’t figured it out yet.

Where dirty energy intersects the farm bill, Bush defended the use of ethanol, despite plenty of information that corn-based ethanol may actually be a net energy loser, is a big cause of the soaring food prices he decried, and is environmentally unfriendly as well, between the fertilizers and pesticides of Big Ag on the one hand and the refining process on the other.

Yet, the farm bill has at least a token 6-cent cut in ethanol subsidies, much of which winds up in the hands of folks like Cargill or ADM and not individual farmers. But, Bush supports ethanol.

Besides the word “recession,” the word “conservation” was also missing from Bush’s lips.

In a sidebar, Bush backed off earlier State Department criticism of former President Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas. Why? He knows Carter has State dead to rights, especially after Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas protested about Bush doing nothing to speed the peace process.