Square reality-peg squashed once again into round hole...

This post isn't about President Bush's proposed tightening of Federal MPG regulations [No position. Sorry, can't opine about everything, feel free to comment] but rather the increasingly weird disconnect between reality and the collective unconscious on the Rive Gauche. The unacceptable-to-certain-people fact is that Bush is very "green," and has been all along. But the leftish narrative says that Republicans are environmental plunderers, so that's what must be true.

Of course we all adjust our pictures of the world to fit a story, but what's going on now is a huge distortion. You might want to scan this piece, by Gregg Easterbrook: Give Bush credit for his energy proposal:

...Last week Bush proposed something environmentalists, energy analysts, greenhouse-effect researchers, and national-security experts have spent 20 years pleading for: a major strengthening of federal mileage standards for cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks. The No. 1 failing of U.S. energy policy is that vehicle mile-per-gallon standards have not been made stricter in two decades....

....This should have been Page One headline material—PRESIDENT CALLS FOR DRAMATIC MPG REGULATIONS. Instead, most news organizations pretended Bush's mpg proposal did not exist, or buried the story inside the paper, or made only cryptic references to it....

....What's going on? First, mainstream news organizations and pundits are bought and sold on a narrative of Bush as an environmental villain and simply refuse to acknowledge any evidence that contradicts the thesis. During his term the president has significantly strengthened the Clean Air Act to reduce air pollution caused by diesel fuel and diesel engines, to reduce emissions from Midwestern power plants, to reduce pollution from construction equipment and railroad locomotives, and to reduce emissions of methane, which is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. You'd never know these reforms even happened from the front page of the New York Times, which for reasons of ideology either significantly downplays or fails to report them....

This is a denial-of-reality almost as big as the things needed to fit Iraq into the Vietnam template...