Quote of the day

"We had the Republican equivalent of a two-term Carter presidency." —Andrew Sullivan

What a difference 30 years does not make

reason:

“Voters want action on energy,” one congresswoman told The Washington Post. “They don’t really care how much it costs.” A Democratic president was on the verge of signing “the most important energy legislation in a decade,” with tens of billions of dollars dedicated to jump-starting a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels and helping the United States achieve “energy independence.” For too long, most analysts agreed, America had put off the hard choices necessary to prevent the next oil shock and wean the country from petrodictators in the Middle East. Now was the time for bold investment and leadership from Washington.

The year was 1979. At the time I was a low-level regulator in President Jimmy Carter’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It was a boring agency, but I got to work in its most exciting division: the special cases branch dealing with exotic new sources of power. From that perch I witnessed firsthand the sad, expensive, and now-forgotten saga of the Great Plains Coal Gasification Plant in Beulah, North Dakota. Like many projects being discussed in Washington today, Great Plains was hailed as the vanguard of a new domestic alternative to foreign oil.

In 1979, as lines at gas stations snaked for blocks, the House of Representatives, by a vote of 368 to 25, created the U.S. Synthetic Fuels Corporation, an “independent” federal entity charged with creating new fuel sources by spending $20 billion in seed money ($57 billion in 2009 dollars) during its first five years. Originally, the Synfuels Corporation was projected to spend $88 billion ($250 billion in today’s dollars) over 12 years to build the capacity to produce the equivalent of 1.5 million barrels of oil per day from coal.

That was just one element of Carter’s ambitious energy plans. In July 1979 he announced, “I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation’s first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.” In 1980 Congress authorized the Department of Energy to spend $1.3 billion on ethanol research and loans to produce fuel for automobiles. In May of that year, Carter declared, “For the first time in our nation’s history, we will have a national energy program to put us on the road to energy security. It’s more ambitious than the space program, the Marshall plan, and the Interstate Highway System combined.”

Sound familiar? I'll say this for liberalism: it's consistent about aiming the federal money hose at ambitious, hope-filled projects.

Link blag

Why DOMA Must be repealed: Reason offers yet more reminders.

Cato: Obama promised to post bills online and wait 5 days between passing and signing them. So far, he's 1-for-11.

Why do Republicans think the public perceives them as obstructionists? Because of the media, of course.

Gays begin to marry in Iowa; world keeps spinning.

Jimmy Carter is just another clueless advocate of gun control.

The Federalist Society is now pro-torture?

Calling Carter

Bartle Bull:

The wheels are already coming off Obama’s Trojan horse revolution. Will he, like Jimmy Carter, be seen as a one-term disaster? [...]

Thus the big question in Democratic circles today: “What does Hillary do about this?” Her supporters still feel that the election was stolen from her. With capital on strike, states rebelling against the president’s dependency agenda, the treasury secretary probably soon to be replaced, many top jobs still unfilled, the liberal press anxious and poll numbers plummeting, Hillary Clinton’s departure could sink an administration that already feels like a listing ship, leaving her a clear path to the Democratic nomination for 2012.

Jay Nordlinger:

During last year’s presidential campaign, Obama and his people kept saying that McCain was running “for George W. Bush’s third term.” And McCain had a very good comeback: “Well, he’s running for Jimmy Carter’s second.” But as Obama implements his policies, at home and abroad — McCain’s quip seems just a little less funny and a little more . . . true. At least I think so.

Do these people live in the same universe as us? Obama is not Carter, he's some amalgam of Kennedy and LBJ.