The critters out there are getting deadline savvy. Enemy Central
files each Friday afternoon. Last Friday at about that time, eight
Republican senators chose to make their move to vote against ANWR
drilling, hoping to sneak under our radar (paid for along most
everything else in our shop by Big Oil, which practically writes
our copy each time we defend gas guzzling, offshore oil fields, and
the Cheney-Halliburton connection). But little did that weasely
eight suspect we’d catch up with them a week later, when their vote
had cooled and hardened into a symbol of what’s wrong with the
world as know it.
Let’s line up these honorary caribou. There’s Illinois’s Pete
Fitzgerald, who remains convinced the Alaskan Exxon spill polluted
Lake Michigan. New Hampshire’s Bob Smith said no to ANWR drilling,
but then he says no to everything. Besides, he always sounds like
somebody just back from an unpleasant drilling experience at the
dentist’s. Remember the Maine women, Susan Collins and Olympia
Snowe, who don’t like oil as such (with a name as majestic and
pristine as Olympia’s, can you really blame her?). Maine’s booming
backwater economy is evidence enough of what an oil-free
environment can do to improve local lives. Ohio’s Mike DeWine said
no, perhaps because he couldn’t vote for a tax increase; Oregon’s
Gordon Smith did the same, because he’d heard voices from key
constituents who reside on tree tops. Then there was Rhode Island’s
vindictive, never-before-elected Lincoln Chafee, who refuses to
believe Alaska is larger than his state. The final Republican no
vote was cast by Democrat for Life John McCain, who’s been advised
by key backer Marshall Wittmann that cactus oil is the petroleum of
the future. We always suspected McCain was a tool of the Arizona
Cactus Cartel.
But how to explain the yes votes on Alaskan drilling by Hawaii’s
Senators Akaka and Inouye, who represent the most Democratic state
in the history of the union? A gesture of solidarity by the
nation’s 50th state toward the 49th? A shrewd move to destroy
Alaskan tourism? Anyway, we thought Sen. Inouye stood out at the
Iran-contra hearings and it’s good to know he’s still going
strong.
Tom Daschle was hoping to remain missing in action, but our
veteran agent Jack Hughes caught up with him in Illinois, where the
majority leader has been promising big petrodollars to the Daley
machine in order to begin reconstruction drilling at O’Hare
International, a consortium more powerful than Enron and
Halliburton combined. Our friends at OPEC tell us the O’Hare deal
clinches Illinois for the Democrats for decades to come.
We’ll need O’Hare airport in safe hands, now that Charles de
Gaulle, our favorite landing site in Paris, is soon to be renamed
Jean Marie Le Pen Petain International. Everyone is out to get the
craziest frog (it’s okay now to use such disparaging language,
n’est-ce pas?) since the days of Tartuffe (who actually wasn’t
crazy). But apart from everything else, we never trusted a guy.
Would you trust a male whose middle name is Mary?
We’ve got a bigger problem on our hands, and as we write the
hope is that he’s been subjected to a bit of hands-on branding down
at the ranch in Crawford, Texas. Who is this clown Abdullah, who
comes calling on the President of the United States and accepts his
hospitality while letting it be known that if we do not throw
Israel to the wolves he and all the other self-appointed princes of
Araby will cut us off from their spigots and proceed to behave as
some combination of Osama bin Laden and Colonel Qaddafi? Well, it’s
clear he’s got us shaking in our SUVs. This is the thanks we get
for saving his sorry desert from Middle East developer Saddam
Hussein?
But again we have to assume our President knows what he’s doing.
He’s tricked the guy into turning himself in. Now the next step is
to tell him there’s a presidential ranch in Guantanamo he’d also
like to show him. Then fly him down without waiting for permission
from any military tribunal. Just reassure him he’s bound to feel at
home among the many current ranch hands who coincidentally speak
the same language he does. Could turn out to be the longest
all-paid vacation an Enemy of the Week has ever won.
