Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, to a time almost two years ago, before the HabitableZone, to the old AfterHours Current Events board...

The Rightists were in a gleeful orgy of schadenfreude over California's energy crisis, finding in our pain a vindication of their free market religion and the dogma of deregulation. In the manner of True Believers since the dawn of time, when confronted with a demonstrable failure of their dogma, they blamed the implementation rather than reexamine their dogma. They denied bitterly that those fine upstanding Republican businessmen and Bush campaign contributors at Enron and Dynergy and the rest would ever, ever, cheat. No, never! Inconceivable! They're Republicans, for heaven's sake!

And Cheney's connection with the energy industry? Couldn't possibly be anything shady, no, that dedicated public servant was meeting in secret with his old cronies entirely to promote the general welfare and look out for the best interests of the entire country. How dare anybody question the propriety of his cozy relationship with Enron and Dynergy and the rest? Those Enron and Dynergy executives were as honest as the day is long...well, propriety-by-association is a two-edged sword, isn't it?

Leading the baying pack was good old ebnelson, he who labors in the belly of the beast in the petroleum Mordor of Houston, snarling with pleasure and spraying acidic spittle left and right, cashing his "profit"-sharing checks to vacation in Acapulco. A good time was had by all (outside of California, of course).

Nothing to say now? The silence is deafening....

--Robert