[That should read ...Playing Chicken WITH US Energy Policy]

With few exceptions, McCain's campaign ads that address energy policy include lovely panning shots of fields full of wind turbines and solar panels while the voice-overs claim that McCain is the best candidate to help the USA achieve energy independence.

As Thomas Friedman pointed out in the New York Times yesterday (www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/opinion/13friedman.html), John McCain has failed to vote for the single most important Senate bill that addresses alternative energy. It's not just a matter of him being on the road campaigning - he has failed to vote when he was in his nearby Senate office.

There has been a fair amount of work done by the main stream media and places like FactCheck.org to debunk many of McCain's claims about Obama, but I don't see as much work put into debunking McCain's claims about himself.

Achieving energy independence and the conversion of clean energy technology is not something that can be mandated successfully. It takes the kinds of subsidies and incentives that S. 3335 is trying to extend to get the kind of private enterprise money involved in finding solutions.

The NYT story suggests that the overwhelming Republican opposition to this bill stems from either a fear of handing the Democrats an important legislative win so near the election, or a fundamental opposition to renewable energy.

Are Republican party leaders in the Senate really so politically driven that they will oppose legislation sponsored by a Democratic Senator and allow their opposition to bring investment in wind farms and solar arrays grinding to a halt just to score political points?

(More background info at blog.techfun.org/mccain-blows-smoke-on-energy)

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