We Knew He Was Unethical....

Now Tom DeLay's trying to redeem himself by establishing himself as an idiot.

Two years ago this week, Nancy Pelosi – as part of a concerted campaign of opportunistic mendacity – said she and her party had a “commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices.” Their "plan" conveniently came to fruition after Democrats voted against a comprehensive energy plan that would increase fuel production and open up untapped oil reserves.

Now, you ask yourself, what party controlled Congress during the preceding six year period, and what was their track record for opening up every inch of U.S. soil to oil exploration and drilling? But that's just standard DeLay-type politics - covering up for his own ineptitude and failures (by his own measure) by pointing the finger at others.

So why do I say he's trying to prove himself an idiot?

• He seems to think that exploration for oil involves sticking a straw into the ground and sucking it out. Even if we started exploring for oil in ANWR two years ago, it won't be until the next President is leaving office that there will be significant oil production. And yes, I'm assuming a two term President. Granted the picture would be a bit different if DeLay hadn't been such a complete failure (again, by his own measure) as a Congressional leader, but that only brings us to our second point of idiocy....
• Cars don't run on crude. Cars run on gasoline. Even if Congress found a way to magically teleport crude oil out of the ground, it wouldn't increase the amount of gasoline available during peak season because the refineries are already operating at maximum capacity.
• In what is probably the least idiotic of his idiotic assumptions, DeLay also assumes that other oil producing countries won't react to an increase in oil supply by reducing their own production in order to keep their profits up. Has he never heard of OPEC?

You know, George Bush and Dick Cheney engaged the energy industry in a series of secret meetings, and came up with a secret energy policy that... well, I'm not sure what it was supposed to do, but the only visible outcome was a huge increase in profits for the energy industry. To this day, we're still not allowed to know who Cheney met with while planning out this energy policy - the truth is that embarrassing. DeLay and his ilk went along for the ride.

So it sure is convincing to hear the disgraced Tom Delay squawk, "It's all the Democrats' fault."