Thursday, March 6, 2008

Borrowing from Carter

by Julie Walsh on March 6, 2008

I just happened upon the text of President Jimmy Carter's "malaise" [actually, the "crisis of confidence"] speech from 1979 when he counseled Americans to adopt their own energy policy along the lines of the once-and-again fashionable "put on a sweater and sit at home in the dark" variety.  No talk about curly lightbulbs, though.

He did set forth the "goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade" and "To give us energy security…the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel — from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun." It really is time we began investing in those things, you know.

He also opened with what would become a familiar, signature refrain from a new kind of Democrat a decade-and-a-half later:

"I promised you a president who is not isolated from the people, who feels your pain…"

Now, about those complaints that Obama lifts riffs from other peoples' speeches…

Byrd-Hagel Redeux

by Julie Walsh on March 6, 2008

President Bush has just reaffirmed the unanimous Byrd-Hagel position established by the Senate in 1997, as its (otherwise unsolicited) Article II, Section 2 “advice”.

Let’s see if this is also how the warmists portray it, including aspiring occupants of the Oval Office, three of whom hail from the Senate one of whom was serving in ’97 and voted for the resolution.

Particularly galling is that Mr. Bush had the temerity to flatly state what the establishment media have so far refused to print, “We’re in the lead when it comes to new technologies. We’re in the lead when it comes to global climate change, and we’ll stay that way”. No no no, we need to “begin ‘investing’” in these new technologies!

That is, all have refused to reveal such things except the Washington Post, once, in a piece last fall wonderfully titled “White House Taking Unearned Credit for Emissions Cuts” – a week or so after our emission reduction was announced and only for the purpose of saying that (suddenly) U.S.-only emissions aren’t the important point and besides Bush shouldn’t get credit anyway.

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