You know who Young Johnny McCranky is starting to remind me of? Remember the nutty right-wing guerrilla leader in Woody Allen's "Bananas"?

"Hear me. I am your new president. From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now 16 years old."

-- the accidentally victorious right-wing guerrilla leader
in Woody Allen's Bananas

Don't you think this whole McCranky business -- I mean, the very idea of him as a serious candidate for public office of any kind -- is kind of getting out of hand? It would be funny if . . . well, it it were funny. But this guy thinks he should be president of the United States, and managed to get a major-party nomination by positioning himself in a field of candidates so far off their rockers that he passed as the sane one.

But now we have to deal with the reality, and the reality is that when Young Johnny McCranky opens his mouth -- anytime, anyplace -- it's like bang! a starter pistol goes off. The next thing you know, all over the country (all over the world, for that matter, given the global village we now live in), squadrons of computer nerds are hauling up video clips of the Crankyman staking out the exact opposite position, sometimes a bunch of years ago, sometimes a couple of years ago, sometimes as recently as in his previous breath.

Bonus points are always available for contestants who can pull up clips documenting more than one contradictory position on the issue, positions that contradict each other as well as the new one.

So now, presto!, Young Johnny has an energy policy. And sure enough, he's managed to turn his back on his surprisingly principled past stands against coastal oil drilling. ("Coastal" drilling, it's being suggested, is a more descriptive phrase than "offshore" drilling.) And by golly, while Senator McCranky hasn't yet abandoned his opposition to drilling in the Arctic Wilderness Refuge, he's now all gung-ho for offshore drilling. Why, he's apt to turn up any time with an oil rig at a coast near you.

As Sam Stein points out over at Huffington Post, as recently as three weeks ago our McCranky, when asked about offshore drilling, was saying:

"[W]ith those resources, which would take years to develop, you would only postpone or temporarily relieve our dependency on fossil fuels. We are going to have to go to alternative energy, and the exploitation of existing reserves of oil, natural gas, even coal, and we can develop clean coal technology, are all great things. But we also have to devote our efforts, in my view, to alternative energy sources, which is the ultimate answer to our long-term energy needs, and we need it sooner rather than later.

But that, remember is an old McCranky position. Three weeks? My goodness, that's ancient history.

For a moment I'd like to set aside the substance, or speciousness, of the coastal-drilling argument. Right now I'm simply flabbergasted by the Whiplash Flip-Flop Gallery that appears to be the sum and substance of Johnny McCranky. I mean, he opens his mouth and literally any damned thing could come out.

I don't know what to expect next. Have you ever seen a major-party presidential candidate recite Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Excelsior"? Or sing "I'm a Little Teapot"? Or impersonate Boris Badenov cluing in his sidekick Natasha about his latest nefarious scheme to get moose and squirrel? Or review the on-board safety procedures for our aircraft this afternoon? Or strip naked and see how many goldfish he can swallow?

Well, stay tuned. Who's to say that any or all of these things won't happen by the time Election Day rolls around?

Just today I was thinking about this, again, and it suddenly occurred to me who McCranky has come to remind me of. Of course I've already tipped it.

Yes, I'm thinking of the newly installed right-wing guerrilla president of San Marcos in Woody Allen's gloriously insane Bananas. You recall how poor, pathetic Fielding Mellish becomes embroiled in the rather pathetic guerrilla movement of the banana republic he's visiting? And how, totally accidentally, the rebels wind up overthrowing the brutal dictator? Only to discover that the new president is, well, completely nuts -- announcing that "from this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish" and that "underwear will be worn on the outside."

I suppose the McCranky handlers will do everything they can to make sure their guy never appears in front of an audience that might respond normally, which would mean pointing derisively and howling with laughter, and possibly hurling the occasional rotten tomato or cream pie.

It comes down to this: How is it possible any longer for any clear-headed individual over the age of about six to listen to the guy with a straight face?

I mean, by the time you're getting bitch-slapped by the likes of that sleazy Inside the Beltway phony George Will (in his column yesterday ridiculing the Crankyman's denunciation of the Supreme Court's latest thumbs down on the Bush regime's unconstitutional Guantanamo detainee policies) -- and he's right! -- man, you must have screwed up something fierce.

Now there's no mystery as to why we're suddenly hearing about offshore drilling. It's suddenly dawning on Republicans that they're staring into the abyss. Their party could face extinction if a country choking on skyrocketing oil prices should happen to turn its wrath on them. Now they will do or say any damned thing they can think of to wriggle out from under.

And then here's Young Johnny McC, trying to burble out his stupefying claim that Hurricane Katrina proved that there are no environmental negatives to coastal drilling, and sounding so nitwittishly disoriented that he seems to be pleading, "Does anyone have a clue what the fuck I'm whining about? 'Cause I sure don't."

As usual when the Greed and Selfishness Right, whose normal environmental philosophy is "Let's rape the shit out of it for profit and fun," tries to broach environmental issues, it's all lies, delusions, and obfuscations. Even if we were prepared to countenance the environmental horror of large-scale coastal drilling, the amount of oil that would come online would have an insignificant effect on the supply-and-demand situation, and therefore all but no impact on the portion of the oil-price rise that's market-based, and self-evidently no impact at all on the portion of the price rise that has to do with the crony capitalism that has been at the heart of Bush regime policy for nearly eight years.

As Keith Olbermann was pointing out last night on Countdown in conversation with Richard Wolffe, the oil companies never, ever increase production in order to lower prices. I doubt that it has ever happened, and I don't believe there's even the remotest possibility that it ever can or will happen in the future. The only times those companies increase production are when by doing so they can cash in on rising oil prices. Period, end of story.

Now the rise in energy prices is indeed a complex issue, and a lot of the rise is unavoidable, a legitimate result of limited supply coming up against out-of-control demand -- nowhere more out of control than in the U.S., of course, but now with a wildly increased contribution from vast new energy-consuming economies like those of China and India. The fact is that higher prices are a permanent reality, and eventually have to be used as a wake-up call for a new set of policies generated by new ways of thinking about our energy needs and the way we waste it -- something the Bush regime has defiantly refused to address, thereby totally wasting eight years that neither we nor the world could afford to waste.

But again, that's only part of the story of those skyrocketing energy prices. We know perfectly well that a good chunk of the increase is, pure and simple, corporate profiteering. And we know that the corporate profiteers have not only been abetted by the Bush regime, they have in large part set the policy of the Bush regime.

Remember, back at the dawn of the regime, when capo di regime "Big Dick" Cheney called his cronies in to huddle and hammer out an "energy policy"? The conspiracy was so secret that the Dickster has spent all these years since then fighting off legal challenges to force him to reveal the identities of his coconspirators. Naturally we had a pretty good idea that the agenda they arrived at would aim at maximizing energy-company profits. But who could have guessed that the vice president of the United States was prepared to wage such ruthless, take-no-prisoners class warfare against almost all of his countrymen -- everyone, that is, except the rich and (especially) the super-rich?

Remember the great California energy crisis of 2000-01, which turned out to have been caused in large part by collusion among energy suppliers to drive prices up? And remember that that collusion, whose existence was derided as loony conspiracy theory by the business community, turned out to be so blatant that smoking guns were found in internal e-mail trails? That's essentially the working model for the Bush regime's energy policy.

Right now, what Republicans don't want Americans thinking about is the fact that while the economy is being thrown into turmoil by energy price leaps, and more and more Americans find themselves having to make choices between, say, paying for fuel or feeding their families, the energy companies are not only making record profits, unprecedented in corporate history, but making profits that a person would once have been institutionalized for even imagining.

If you want some more explanation of how this offshore drilling nonsense is irrelevant to the price of oil, dday over at Hullabaloo has sifted through the standard lies, delusions, and diversions more patiently and exhaustively than I can. For the record, the Department of Energy's Annual Energy Outlook 2007 reported:

"The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030... Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant."

Meanwhile, the Republicans' great nightmare is that Americans will begin to see the connection between regime policy and the economic strangulation they're feeling from oil-price shock. In this connection, as Keith Olbermann and Richard Wolffe discussed last night, there is rich irony in Young Johnny McC announcing a new energy policy that would almost immediately be certified -- as Chimpy the Prez did today -- as merely an extension of the Bush regime energy policy. This comes at a time when McCranky seems to be trying his darnedest to separate himself, at least in independent voters' minds, from regime policies. (Except when he isn't.)

One factor that's often left out when observers try to understand Johnny McCranky's more and more common habit of speaking mealy-mouthed gibberish is that when he addresses actual policy matters, as opposed to merely trying to stab at emotional hot buttons, he is trying to take, more or less simultaneously, centrist and right-wing policy positions. When these positions directly contradict each other, as they generally do (which is after all the problem the Crankyman is trying to grapple with), it pretty well defies logical possibility to produce even minimally coherent policy discussion.


AND THEN THERE'S THAT MATTER OF THOSE FIENDISH CHINESE
DRILLING FOR OIL IN THE FLORIDA STRAITS -- ONLY THEY'RE NOT

Appended to the George Will column I referred to above, in which the little toad gutted Johnny McCranky like a dead mackerel, was the following paragraph:

In a previous column, I stated that China, in partnership with Cuba, is drilling for oil 60 miles from the Florida coast. While Cuba has partnered with Chinese companies to drill in the Florida Straits, no Chinese company has been involved in Cuba's oil exploration that close to the United States.

In fact, George, if we can revisit the world of fact for a fleeting moment, there isn't any Chinese drilling anywhere in the region, not least off the shores of Cuba. That didn't stop the story from being trumpeted by some of the scuzziest blowhards of the Right-Wing Noise Machine -- in addition to our George, there was Vice President "Big Dick" Cheney, Fox Noise liar-for-hire Sean Hannity, and (on the floor of the House of Representatives) DWT fave "Mean Jean" Schmidt, whose principal consideration in her public discourse seems to be making sure the level of her vitriol matches that of her ignorance (a huge challenge).

Give Florida Sen. Mel Martinez credit for being a rare voice of sanity among Republicans, for simply pointing out that the story happened not to be true, just nothing to it. Meanwhile, as the civilized world once again piled on Mean Jean, screaming at her to apologize the way they always seem to be doing, as usual Mean Jean seemed stunned. In her confusion, she blurted out something about fellow southern Ohioan John Boehner spewing the same lie, as if that somehow made it better. It seems unlikely that the House minority leader appreciated this particular bit of attention, and this time when he turned deep mahogany, we suspect it may have been not so much embarrassment as anger at his loose-cannon neighbor's bit of finger-pointing. Ratting out your leader isn't usually considered genteel House etiquette.

It's odd to be thinking about Mean Jean on the very day when outstanding progressive Donna Edwards was expected to take up the Maryland congressional seat she won in yesterday's special election to replace her defeated-and-now-resigned Democratic primary opponent, Al Wynn. ("I'm going to move in quickly," she said last night, "as soon as they give me the keys.") It's hard not to remember that voters in OH-02 have an outstanding candidate of their own in Victoria Wulsin. If she'd gotten some support from the national party against Mean Jean in 2006, she might have pulled one of the year's most astonishing upsets in that deeply red district. Now the DCCC seems to have gotten the idea, and district voters have the rare opportunity to trade in one of the House's worst members for one of the best.

Of course Victoria -- and all the Blue America-endorsed candidates -- still need all the help they can get. These folks are what we mean when we talk about the need for better Democrats in Congress. We encourage you to take a look at the fights they're waging and consider chipping in.

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