The American Spectator

Another Perspective

In an off-the-teleprompter comment from Springfield, Missouri, the less-than-one-term Illinois Senator, Barack Obama, recently remarked that Americans could save as much fuel as might be obtained from offshore drilling merely by tuning up their cars and keeping tires properly inflated.

Since the MSM hasn't seen fit to accurately publicize this amazing insight, I must insist that the senator's complete Obama-fuels program be immediately broadcast to the nation. This bold nine-point initiative will make both oil imports and new domestic drilling completely unnecessary by the end of Barack's eight-to-ten-year presidency.

In addition to tune-ups and tire inflation, Senator Obama also proposes the following transformative energy measures:

Point two: Diet and exercise. If Americans lose, on average, ten pounds per person, each national car trip will be lighter by three billion pounds -- saving enough fuel in a year to offset weeks of ANWR oil production. This healthy-choice initiative will also allow Michael Moore and Al Gore to make outsized personal contributions to energy independence.

Point three: Turn off the auto A/C. Car trips made without activating the air compressor not only save barrels upon barrels of petrol, they also contribute to national fitness targets -- especially in Southern states where drivers and passengers can only obtain sauna relief by rolling down their windows.

Point four: Don't roll down car windows. This simple aerodynamic tip, if followed religiously in gun-toting and bible-clinging regions, will not only marginalize the oil output of a "tiny country" like Iran, it will also bring home to Sunbelt motorists the mortal dangers of global warming.

Point five: Kill the motor when sitting in a drive-through queue and plan half as many trips to fast-food restaurants. This two-pronged fuel- and weight-reduction strategy will make Hugo Chavez's oil reserves seem as trivial as the ten-year national supply that lies untapped off America's own shores.

Point six: Roundabouts and tap-the-brake intersections. By transforming busy cross-streets into roundabouts and employing "California stops" at other interchanges, inertial fuel savings throughout the 58 states will more than compensate for the trillion barrels of oil shale available in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. Moreover, accidents resulting from these traffic modifications will decrease driving hours in damaged vehicles -- further reducing the need for new domestic production. Drivers should remember, however, to kill their engines while waiting for collisions to clear.

Point seven: Charge for petroleum-based water bottles distributed on airplane flights. Fortunately, airlines have already begun to institute this "change we've been waiting for."

Point eight: National Ride-your-bike-to-work Day. Even with only fifty percent compliance, this program could save almost half-a-day's supply of gasoline -- enough to fuel all the cars in America for about thirty minutes. Imagine the extra savings if Al Gore and Michael Moore participate. Moreover, if only twenty percent of Americans make this fitness activity a regular choice, it won't matter what country decides to drill for the stuff that's killing us only sixty miles off the coast of Florida.

Point nine: Subsidies for fuel-savvy driving. By going with the gravitational grain, the nation's auto fleet can get vastly better mileage than by defying Mother Nature. Indeed, experts have estimated that if all auto trips were downhill, Americans could travel in open-air soapboxes and eliminate oil imports in a matter of days.

This extraordinary program represents the kind of visionary thinking that no typical politician has had the audacity to propose. It's a vision that looks different from the economic policies and presidents of the past. It's a "yes, we can" initiative that brings all Americans together around the goal of energy independence without drilling for oil, without importing oil from hostile countries, and without constructing CO2-free nuclear reactors. To all those grim alternatives President Obama isn't about to say, "Merci beaucoup."

Combined with a global warming policy that includes breath retention, antacids for cows, and Jimmy Carter snuggle sweaters, this incredible "energy package we can believe in" will make Americans, for the first time in their miserable lives, "really proud" of their country -- proud of a trim, sweaty, bicycle-riding, non-nuclear, petroleum-averse, inertia-loving, nature-respecting America that's only going downhill.

topics:
Barack Obama, Global Warming, Iran, NATO, Energy, Oil