A) So the fuck what. There are at most three of them. Three more bigass gas-guzzling truck-oids on the road won't amount to a hill of beans, especially considering how much fuel Air Force One consumes just taxiing to the runway for takeoff. (Yet no one would seriously consider suggesting that the President fly commercial.)
B) There is no hybrid vehicle on the market--not even the Mercury Mariner, as suggested by name in the article--which can haul around the kind of load all that armor plating and safety gear amounts to. The article mentions that the thing had to be built on a truck chassis--do you know how much weight the GMC 2500 truck platform is designed to carry? You can option a 2500 such that its GVWR approaches the limit for an Illinois Class "D" license, which is about 11,500 lbs.
C) Obama doesn't get a choice in this matter. Until he leaves office, his life is not his own. This is one of the little downsides to being President: there are still things you have no say in, and your safety and security are at the top of that list, because you're too important. That means that even if Obama chose to ride around in hybrids (and he wouldn't, because he expended a lot of effort to get that massive limo and everything) the SS would tell him, politely yet firmly, "No, sir, we can't do that."
D) I'm pretty sure the specs for this thing were established before the election. This kind of thing doesn't happen overnight.
E) Liberals always do this anyway: they come up with rules for everyone else and exempt themselves from them.
Obama's personal vehicle, however, is fair game. The guy drove a Chrysler 300 with a Hemi V8 until he was called on it; then he supposedly traded it on a really expensive Lexus hybrid. Neither of these vehicles are the kind of vehicle he would like to force the rest of us to drive.
Just remember, now that gas is cheap, some Democrats want to raise taxes on gasoline so that it'll be prohibitively expensive again. That is the real hypocrisy.
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NBC shows callous disregard for safety and health of its employees. You know what? This is a perfect justification for my refusal to watch the big three networks.
Other than that little fact that, y'know, everything they show is utter shit, I mean.
Smallville, Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica when they're not in rerun, and my car shows--this is all the television I routinely watch, unless I remember that I enjoy watching House, MD in time to watch it. None of these shows come from the "big three". None of them.
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Let the punishment fit the crime...perfectly. My only worry is that the ACLU will sue because of "cruel and unusual punishment".
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Vox Day on the coming depression. I'm not so sure things will be that dire, but he makes a pretty good case.
I think/hope that it'll only be about as bad as the Carter years.
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My niece turned 18 a couple days ago. She was born on Nov 22, 1990--Thanksgiving Day--and I was watching a videotape of Back to the Future III when it happened.
A couple of days later my Mom and my oldest sister went up to Maine to help out the new mommy.
It's really not that long ago. *sigh*