HOAX#4,253*: Gore Did Nothing on Alternative Fuels
*It could be only 4,252. You tend to lose count after 4,000.
You kind of get the feeling that one day Bill O'Reilly will tell you that Bill Gates is giving away money to test his e-mail system or that little Penny Brown is still missing
It's what Bill does almost as many times as you get an opportunity to make ten million dollars from the benevolence of some Nigerian widow.
This morning Bill reminded the Folks that "most in the media don't know Jack," saying that "if Saddam would have let the inspectors in," we wouldn't have been in this mess. My 12 year old son said that he thought Saddam did let the inspectors in. That it was George Bush who ordered them out. I assured Casey that he must be wrong because Bill tells it like it is.
Yesterday Bill chose to throw out another of his favorites; that Al Gore was a phony because he and Bill Clinton did absolutely nothing during their eight years in charge to advance the cause of alternative fuels.
And just like when he tells his callers that if they're going to make an accusation they better come armed with the facts, Bill backed up his Gore hit with... Okay, bad example. It's the surprise interview busy season and it's not easy to have your crack research team chase down the facts when they've got some evil prosecutor to chase through a parking lot.
To help out "I'm an Independent" Bill, I enlisted my crack research team of my 12-year-old Casey and 13-year-old Kelly to search the Internet to support Bill's latest charge against Gore. But after an intense thirty or forty seconds on the job, they found that what Bill has alleged was...da-da-dum...false.
In fact, a Clinton Executive Order (remember when they were actually followed?) reduced the amount of petroleum consumed in Federal vehicles by using alternative fuels. And it had the U.S. Postal Service purchase alternative fueled vehicles, advanced hybrid vehicles, displacing petroleum with alternative fuels, promoted markets for alternative fuels and encourage new energy efficient and cleaner fuel technologies. They also had the General Services Administration develop and implement financing options to encourage the purchasing of alternative fuel vehicles and use alternative fuels.
After taking a Gatorade and cookie break Kelly and Casey went back to the Google coal mines and found that during the Clinton-Gore administration, 200,000 AFVs fueled by ethanol, natural gas, propane, electric, et al, were put on the road; that Clinton-Gore introduced legislation to increase business opportunities for cleaner transportation technologies and alternative fuels and to produce low-cost, lightweight materials for vehicle frames, batteries and inexpensive fuel cells for use in hybrid vehicles.
Another key stroke and Kelly and Casey discovered that President Clinton and Vice President Gore presented a national government/industry research program including research support for alternative fuels for automotive suppliers, universities, and small businesses.
It was about this time that Casey started to open his mouth exposing a smush of chewed cookies to Kelly who is grossed out by Casey's sophisticated satire. Anyway I needed to download some new Paris Hilton leaving jail pictures, so helping out Bill from lookwould have to wait.
Seems that Bill's oft-used "Everyone knows...," "No one can dispute that....," ot this morning's "I am completely right on this," admonitions would have a lot more validity and make him seem less of a complete ass if he considered adding Kelly and Casey to the crack Factor team. Maybe then I can have my computer back.
Steve Young is author of "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful" (www.greatfailure.com) and his "All The News That's Fit To Spoof" appears in L.A. Daily News opeds every Sunday (www.dailynews.com/steveyoung), right next to Bill's...really.