Jimmy Carter al la Jerome

Here's a fellow I would like to meet. Jerome a Paris is a frequent contributor over at the Daily Kos. He is one of the resident energy experts there. Today he paid a little tribute to Jimmy Carter who I have always thought was a visionary president.

Says Jerome...
"This is a President who has vision, who has the best interests of his country and of ALL his citizens in mind, who has ambitious goals and did not shy from asking for all to contribute to them. In essence, he was launching a "Manhattan Project" for energy (and that was after having already created the Strategic Oil reserve, launched house insulation efforts, kickstarted solar energy development, and reinforced CAFE standards). He said it would require efforts and sacrifices from all, but that it would be worth it in terms of efficiency, quality of living and jobs - and freedom."

This, however, is not a visionary President.



It would be incredibly easy, and oh so cathartic, to wax political on this blog. There is so much material out there that I would have to quit school just to get out the details of the abject corruption that permeates this administration. I’ll leave it to my fellow Kossacks over at the aforementioned Daily Kos.

One of the things I have come to see is that we cannot fully blame Shrub and his ilk for the impending energy disaster. We were always going to run out of oil someday. A case could be made for the 30 wasted years post Carter having sped the process up significantly. Surely, the sight of the President of the United States holding hands with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah does not inspire confidence. Yeah, right, I’m sure we're looking at alternative energy sources.



Whatever.

We really need to blame ourselves, and we need to hand the blame back several generations. We should never have become so complacent.