Freedom Line Blog

I think we can all agree that this is probably the death rattle of American liberty. From the Washington Examiner:

President Obama’s eco-friendly EPA inked a green partnership deal with high-octane NASCAR Monday to promote recycling and environmentally-friendly products to the sport’s millions of fans.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, NASCAR will encourage fans to buy “sustainable concessions” at races, expand the use of “safer chemical products,” conserve water, reduce waste, promote recycling, push products approved by the EPA that have a small enviro footprint and encourage suppliers to get an “E3 tuneup” aimed at promoting sustainable manufacturing.

Yes, you read that right: NASCAR. Civic religion of the red states. Featuring cars that reach speeds around 200 MPH, with fuel economies as low as two miles per gallon.

We’ve gone ’round the bend, ladies and gentlemen. All we can hope is that someday this will be included in the chronicles of the last, delusional days of the Obama Administration.

In my column last week, I focused on how the Obama Administration’s energy policies harm the economy by subsidizing “clean fuels” that are not viable at market while handicapping the energy sources that actually work (and are affordable) in the here and now. An editorial in today’s Washington Examiner drives the point home:

The number of approvals for drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico — which accounts for a third of all U.S. oil production — under Obama has plunged from more than seven per month to only three. Measured in terms of how long is required for the government to consider a permit application, the average for the five years before Obama was 60.6 days. The average is now almost 110 days, according to the Institute for Energy Research. Viewed in terms of the percentage of all permits sought that are approved, the five-year average before Obama was 73 percent. Today under Obama, it is 23 percent and falling. In other words, it is almost certain that the oil-drilling rig count will head back down in coming months, but it will be in response to government interference rather than as a result of price fluctuations. And the price of gas at the pump will continue to go higher.

Read that again. A 2/3 reduction in the number of permits issued and a doubling of the time it takes to get said permits. And the president really wants us to believe he doesn’t have any “silver bullets” for gas prices?

Think of it as the “demon sheep” ad of the Super Bowl (though with much better production values).

During last night’s NFL championship– an event that has become an annual testimony to the incompetence of Madison Avenue ad firms — German automaker Audi aired a commercial intended to showcase that their A3 model is both stylish and green. Boy, did it backfire.

Rather than talking about the closing seconds of the ad, where the A3 breaks out of gridlock to show off its moves, the public focused more on the first 90 percent of the ad — which showed a world dominated by “green police” monitoring the public’s every environmental trespass. It took some pretty tin-eared writing to pitch a green car with the right’ s narrative of environmental statism. It doesn’t work as advertising — but it was a delightful change of pace for those of us who are sick of the MSM hawking global warming ad nauseam.