Unplugged

Why is a hydrogen-electric hybrid automobile a Really Bad Idea? Is it because producing enough free hydrogen for public consumption requires breaking the non-covalent bonds between hydrogen and oxygen which make up sea water -- which process only functions as an energy deficit? Or is it because the only other viable means of producing large quantities of hydrogen is by breaking down hydrocarbon compounds -- a job for which existing gasoline and diesel engines are far better suited?

Perhaps it's because the majority of electrical power used to charge the car's battery comes from coal- and oil-fired power plants -- since the scientifically ignorant, bedecked in sandals and protest signs, won't let us build any more dams or nuclear power plants? (They have, however, ungraciously and begrudgingly allowed us to continue making hydrocarbon-fired plants. After all, they need electrical power in order to post on their internet forums and protest the evils of modern American civilization...)

While all of those are excellent reasons that a hydrogen-electric hybrid is a bad idea, none of them are the most important reason. This is:

Credit Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally with saving the leader of the free world from self-immolation.

Mulally told journalists at the New York auto show that he intervened to prevent President Bush from plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of Ford's hydrogen-electric plug-in hybrid at the White House last week.

"I just thought, 'Oh my goodness!' So, I started walking faster, and the President walked faster and he got to the cord before I did. I violated all the protocols. I touched the President. I grabbed his arm and I moved him up to the front," Mulally said. "I wanted the president to make sure he plugged into the electricity, not into the hydrogen. This is all off the record, right?"

Blowing up the President of the United States may be the one thing that could actually make Ford's stock worth even less.