It's not clever if it looks clever...

Today's title is a quote from George Will on This Week.  And though he was using it to describe Hillary Clinton's double-speak during the most recent Democratic party debate, it strikes me as an apt summation of the neocon agenda -- that it has proven so very not clever.

For example, even if one could somehow imagine democratic passage of the Iraq Oil Law -- essentially granting 30 year ownership of Iraq oil fields to multinational corporations -- a fraud that blatant guarantees a backlash resulting in ever higher oil prices -- even if Iraqis are so exhausted by civil war as to choose oil protectorate status under perpetual U.S. occupation.

As usual, the only benefactors of such preposterous schemes are the friends of Bush and Cheney.  And though the neocon agenda is cloaked in a veneer of bumper sticker slogans like "death tax", "fair tax " and "production sharing agreement" (PSA), an unprecedented 75 percent of Americans recently polled want a new direction in U.S. policy.

If nothing else, it's a simple pocket book issue.  Oil traded under $40/barrel when the Supreme Court voted and gave Bush the Presidency in 2001.  Today it trades at $96.  These charts illustrate that Bush's popularity is inversely correlated with the price of gasoline in the U.S. 

Finally, prices for publicly traded shares of alternative energy companies have skyrocketed this year -- an indication that investors believe that governments as well as consumers may be poised for a green revolution.

So even if John Mclaughlin can muster an argument that the Iraq War debacle could somehow morph into brilliant U.S. economic policy on the part of Bush-Cheney and a 30 year supply of $1 gasoline, his panel's response was obvious and predictable -- laughter.

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