You’ve gotte give the President credit for one thing. He’s mastered the fine art of insincere hand-wringing :

President Bush on Friday rejected calls by some lawmakers for a tax on oil company windfall profits, saying the industry should reinvest its recent gains into finding and producing more energy.

“The temptation in Washington is to tax everything,” Bush said in an exchange with reporters in the White House Rose Garden. “The answer is for there to be strong reinvestment to make this country more secure from an energy perspective.”

Okay, fine, and how exactly are you going to try to ensure that reinvestment actually happens?? Don’t just sit there with your thumb in your ass pretending that you’re powerless, George.

I’m tired of all of the disingenuity from conservatives when it comes to regulating businesses. If you truly believe that oil companies should be should be reinvesting their profits to help make this country more energy independent, then back up your words by working with Congress to pass legislation that ensures the outcome you’re pretending to favor. Rolling back oil industry tax cuts and replacing them with tax credits for money spent on infrastructure improvements or whatever, but don’t just sit there and act like there’s nothing you can do.

You’re a two-faced liar, Mr.President. You public face is that of a concerned public servant who hopes that the business community will put the best interests of the American people over their own profit margins, but behind the scenes you haven’t done a goddamn thing to ensure that the rhetoric matches the reality. If you wanted to make sure rich people reinvested their tax cuts back into the American economy or that deregulation actually cut the amount of poison dumped into our environment or that corporations actually created jobs with their government handouts, you could make token efforts to write those promises into the legislation that you favor, but the big government conservatives never do.

The Republicans have been in charge for far too long to make any more promises.