One Laughs Out Loud

The image of our oilman President travelling the country promoting an alternate energy agenda like he had somehow had a mind-meld with Amory Lovins is pretty risable by itself. But when NPR reported on today's visit to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory as I was waking up this morning, I really did laugh out loud. You may remember that after the State of the Union, it was announced that lab would be laying off scientists because of budget cuts. That's funny, but in a sad sort of way, not laugh-out-loud.

The AP reports the bit that made me laugh out loud.

The lab, with a looming $28 million budget shortfall, had announced it was cutting its staff by 32 people, including eight researchers. But in advance of Bush's visit, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman over the weekend directed the transfer of $5 million to the private contractor that runs the lab, so the jobs can be saved.

It would never do to have HRH's photo opportunity disrupted by lab staff complaining about losing their jobs, now would it?

Keeping these people employed to actually do energy research is too expensive, but to have them serve as props for Dear Leader's photo opportunity money can be found. It so perfectly captures the essence of the Bush maladministration. It's so bald-faced, so shameless, so whole-hearted in using the machinery of government for the purely, crassly, political. And since the whole Bush alternative energy initiative is really nothing more than a PR stunt in the first place, so thoroughly fitting.

I had to laugh.

When I was in college, our dorm had a subscription to the English-language publications of the government of North Korea, which were unintentionally quite humorous. Each month we would get an issue of Korea Today, a magazine full of photos glorifying the Great Comrade Leader Kim Il Sung, and the successes of his Juche Ideal. The pages would bring us the latest motivational slogans, perhaps just as awkward in their English translation as in the original Korean. "Fertilizer is Rice, Rice is Socialism!" was the memorable caption beneath photos of a new fertilizer factory. Each month, photos would show the Great Comrade Leader Kim Il Sung visiting with workers, inspiring them to even greater feats of Socialism. I remember one shot in particular, taken on a visit to a steel plant, where he shook hands with one of the workers. "Great Comrade Leader Kim Il Sung grasps the hand of a greasy forger" read the caption.

Who knew that years later I would get to see propaganda even more awkward and phony produced right here at home?!



Update: The Washington Post brings us the words of the Great Man on that little budget mix-up that led to those people being laid off:

"Sometimes, decisions made as the result of the appropriations process, the money may not end up where it was supposed to have gone," Bush said.

Quite ungrammatically, I would add. I guess it's hard to have a subject in a sentence if it might imply there was someone to blame.

Sometimes, of course, those appropriations mix-ups happen because of what the President asks for.

Eben Burnham-Snyder, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said this year's energy efficiency and renewable energy portion of the budget is slightly smaller than that in the last year of the previous administration. When inflation is factored in, it amounts to a decrease of more than $130 million, he said.