Our priorities

So let me get this straight. The president wants us to get over our oil addiction by cutting our Middle East imports by 75%, but he didn't really mean it.

He's going to do this by improving hybrid batteries and using more ethanol (a red state commodity). But he's not going to increase fuel economy standards, because that would be interfering with the market. Never mind that existing technology could easily produce cars that would completely wean us from foreign oil in five years.

No oil imports equals no meddling in Middle Eastern affairs, which means no more terrorism directed at us, which means we wouldn't need to wiretap our own citizens. Clearly there's a hierarchy of priorities: at the bottom are our civil rights. Next comes national security. At the top is the right of industry to as it damn well pleases without interference from the government.

So government interference with the market is a no-no, but government interference is just fine when it comes to our most sacred rights as Americans.