The Grasshopper and the Ant
By Anonymous Liberal Friday Aug 01, 2008 8:00pmYou remember the fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant? The grasshopper spends the warm months--when food is abundant--singing, dancing, and generally enjoying himself while the ant works hard to store up food for the colder months, which he knows are coming. And sure enough, when winter comes, the ant is prepared and the grasshopper starves.
Well in the world of politics--and particularly when it comes to energy policy--there are a lot of grasshoppers and very few ants, and unfortunately, the grasshoppers have been setting policy for a long time now.
Almost three decades ago, on July 15, 1979, President Carter (one of the ants) delivered an important speech. Knowing that our nation's energy policy was unsustainable and that we were becoming increasingly dependent on oil from hostile foreign countries, he proposed a bold plan:
In little more than two decades we've gone from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half the oil we use comes from foreign countries, at prices that are going through the roof. Our excessive dependence on OPEC has already taken a tremendous toll on our economy and our people. . . .
This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our nation. The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them. . . .
To give us energy security, I am asking for 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. . .
He also called for a "bold conservation program to involve every state, county, and city and every average American in our energy battle."
This speech was greeted by the grasshoppers--whose ranks included virtually every Republican politician in the country--with nothing but derision and mockery. They laughed and made fun of the cardigan Carter wore when he delivered the speech. And before long, that was all anyone remembered about the speech.
In the nearly thirty years since Carter delivered that speech, any politician that has ventured into similar territory has been similarly mocked and derided by Republicans. Barack Obama was mocked viciously just yesterday--and explicitly compared to Carter--because he pointed out that filling your tires with air reduces fuel consumption. Over the years, leaders of the Republican Party--like Dick Cheney--have been openly hostile to the very concept of conservation and have allowed lobbyists for the oil companies to literally write our nation's energy policies. And during that time, almost three decades, we've become far more dependent on foreign oil, and our government has made little if any effort to encourage the development of alternative energy sources or even to take simple steps to improve energy efficiency (such as raising CAFE standards for automobile makers).
In short, for the last three decades, the Republican Party has been a party of grasshoppers, blissfully encouraging the consumption of ever greater amounts of oil while doing absolutely nothing to prepare for the winter ahead. Indeed, they've done everything in their power to marginalize those who have warned that the good times can't last and that we need to embrace conservation initiatives and develop alternative energy sources.
And now that the long-awaited winter has finally come and we're all suffering under the weight of sky-high oil prices, what is the Republican response? They seize upon an imaginary quick fix--off-shore oil drilling--and they all rally around it, accusing their opponents of being the obstacle to lower gas prices. They preen and pose, convening fake sessions of Congress to show that they are the ones who really care about gas prices. They ignore what their own government experts have acknowledged, that allowing further off-shore drilling won't produce a drop of new oil for at least a decade and, even then, will do little if anything to reduce gas prices.
Apparently in the Republican version of the fable, rather than admitting that he'd been short-sighted and reckless in not preparing for the winter, the grasshopper pretends that there's actually a winter's worth of food located just beneath his feet and that the only thing keeping him from digging it up is that damn ant.
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I told my father that Jimmy Carter was a visionary. But like many other people in the seventies, they didn't want to listen. Then along came Reagan, who, to this day, somehow is still reflected as a God of some sort. It is ironic isn't? A man the Repugs think was the absolute worst (Carter), to being the man who was right. Ironic? Yes. Tragic? Definately!
Americans are morons. If gas ever dipped below $3 a gallon, they would immediately go racing back to their precious monster SUVs. The lifestyle shift to less driving and more public transportation or walking would be instantly forgotten.
Idiots.
Yes, the strategy of not putting all your eggs in one basket. How outre.
Great analogy. Guys like this could learn a lesson from it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FThEISHOnd0
Carter was vilified for his vision and his stance.
Now, with his plan so quickly dismissed, we are on the road to ruin, it will be a road littered with SUVs.
I just traveled 175 miles round trip at 60 mph, I did not pass one single vehicle, they all passed me. At that speed I get better than 45 mpg.
What do the SUVs get at 75 mph or more.
I'm born in 1969, so I haven't experienced his tenure as president very concious. I wass still in my childhood years and the world was big at the end of the street. No care in the world....
In hindsight, don't you think Jimmy Carter was a bit underrated?
They've been doing everything in their power to "prepare for the winter ahead" .. but only for themselves, not for the nation, and not for the global population either.
Selfish bastards all.
Whitehouse @ 6:
Age wise, I'm basically in the same boat as you. My take is that Carter was too good of a person to be an effective president. Too smart. Too honest. Too reflective. It got Carter into trouble and allowed his enemies to take advantage of him.
'Major discovery' from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution
If I remember the grasshopper and the ant parable correctly, the grasshopper doesn't starve. He just begs and begs the ant for food. Despite the ant being totally pissed off, he just can't let the grasshopper starve and he gives half his stash to the grasshopper. The grasshopper is very thankful and promises to work hard in the future (but the reader is left with doubts as to the sincerity of this).
The real moral is, live recklessly with no plan for the future and rely on the hard work of others to bail you out when you get in trouble. Also known as "The GOP Way".
Well, hells bells! That's putting it succinctly!
Jimmy Carter is a man and a President deserving of much respect.....
http://www.sonyclassics.com/jimmycartermanfromplains/
A documentary worth checking out....
The Truth Hurts@8, Ditto. I was born in 1966. I our household REAGAN was a god! And Carter? A wimp. Back in those days when a gallon of gas was less than a dollar, I guess our leaders thought it wasn't macho to conserve. Look at Jimmy Carter now, a humantarian, a Noble Peace Prize winner. Kind of puts everything into perspective.
It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long, the grasshopper kept burying acorns for winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns and also he got a race car. Is any of this getting through to you?
I am old enough to remember PRES.CARTER speech & I also remember how he was made "fun off". (I am still a democrat & proud of it } I was a "low information voter" in those days ,only reading the headlines & nightly news because being self-employed , I had to work from dawn to dust to earn a living. But, because of his speech,I learn to pay attention to gas mileage & the vehicle's I purchased.Also, I built five building for personal use both as home's & business use & always paid attention to the overhead due to the yearly energy & utilities cost. I was always accused of being too "fussy" & going "overboard" concerning my vehicles & buildings but I am sure that I "saved" thousands of dollars in overhead thought out the years.
I HAVE TO CREDIT PRESIDENT CARTER & HIS SPEECH FOR CREATING IN MY MINE TO SAVE ENERGY{ie; MONEY}
NOTE; To all the Republicans who made "fun" of President Carter & his dress down coat,
WHO HAS THE LAST LAUGH NOW ??????????
#9, it certainly has promise but science is a long term process so we won't be seeing much benefit from this for some time. It's good that the early work is being done though.
Carter has always been a pretty smart guy. His problem was he told the truth to much. People don't generally like the truth because as the old saying goes "It Hurts" Also the Iranian revolution didn't do him any good either. Reagan and the Republicans were able to crush Carter with it. Of course Reagan turned out to be a complete crook when he dealt with Iran.
Carter may have been the most decent human being ever to serve as president.
it's going to be very difficult to awaken the American public
especially the reichwingneocons gop and the 29%'ers to
the face what they have sown in ignorance. i suggest that
every member of the gop/reichwingerneocons that continue
with this madness be invited to a cheney style
huntingdecoy skeet shoot. let's see just how fast they they try to dodge
bush's favorite immune group, blackwater.
uptonogood @ 14:
Futurama?
Grasshoppers are like locusts. They eat everything in their path. When all the food is gone, they die.
Ants store food way underground, enough for the winter.
We would do well to emulate the ants.
And buy lots of guns cause the locusts are going to be out of food soon.
Orangutan. @ 9:
Hmm, not to minimize their idea, but that seems like a good use of known science, not a "major discovery". That said, sign me up, electrolysis + hydrogen storage combined with fuel cells is a great solution to the "darkness problem" with solar.
Jimmy Carter was, in fact, a great president. If I'd been a few months older in '76, I'd have voted for him, and I did vote for him in '80. He wasn't successful in his bid to be reelected because he made the cardinal mistake in American politics: he told people the truth instead of what they wanted to hear. He was right about energy, and he was right about a lot of other things. He was one of the most intellectually gifted people who ever held the office of president (though, ironically, he was known to say "nuke-you-lar" now and then). I hope that those who evaluate history will point out that he was a good man, that he made a difference, and that he was honest with the American people. Republicans may ridicule Obama by comparing him to Carter, but as far as I'm concerned, Obama could be even more like Carter and it could only lift him in my esteem.
This is a great post; kudos to its author (Amato?). Carter was more prescient than he is given credit for. The clear and present danger to which he referred became actual harm in all of the terrorist attacks that after this speech. Because of our failure to heed his warnings, we paid the piper by cozying up to corrupt 'governments' who controlled middle-eastern oil, and supported state sponsored human rights abuses designed to keep those governments in power. Saddam's Iraq was among these, but so are Saudi Arabia, the Gulf emirates and Egypt. We even have a thriving commercial relationship with Chavez's Venezuela (not that I'm offended by that relationship, but the hypocrisy!) It is galling to me, an American proud of the principles on which this country is based, that we had to ally ourselves with nations so offensive to those principles. And it is even more galling that these unholy and unamerican alliances led to the murder of so many Americans and other innocents in the marine barracks in Lebanon, in the Kobar Towers, in the embassies in east Africa, and, of course on September 11. And now this war.....
If only we had listened.
Jersey Jon @ 23:
Many of us did listen but our voices were drowned out by the babbling bible cult of Armageddonists .
Many of us did listen but our voices were drowned out by the babbling bible cult of Armageddonists .
yeah, I'm with you. I actually worked on the Carter campaign, and I wasn't even old enough to vote then.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmtSprLhfKI
This reminds me of the Disney classic. And yes all the global warming deniers, all the people that poo-poo energy and oil conservation... they fit this very well.
Rp
The two best votes, and the two votes I'm proudest of, were the two times I had the honor and priviledge to vote for Jimmy Carter for President. Two votes that I will never regret.
Here is an issue we all need to wrap our arms around. I campaigned for Carter and am proud of it. The notion that he was the "worst president we ever had" - the mantra of the right-wingers - repeated so often that it became accepted by those "low information voters". Obama is reported to have come out in favor of handing off-shore leases to the oil companies. When will dems learn they don't win elections trying to run as Repubgs. Gotta run as a democrat and he will do fine. We all have to encourage Obama to be the man he professes to be and adopt a responsible energy policy and stick to it!
Carter's biggest problem was too much heart and smart and not enough cojones. He messed up with Congress right out of the gate because he was out to kill too many pork barrel projects and when he compromised with Congress he hung his allies out to dry. He should have stuck to his guns and we'd have had a balanced budget before he left office.
He also mishandled the hostage crisis, from the political perspective, because while the hostages were alive in captivity it would be on the news every night. Had he launched a full out assault on Iran the hostages would have probably all been killed but the story would have gone away and Carter would have been viewed as a decisive leader.
Plus, there was that hemorrhoid thing.
I was born during the Carter administration so I remember nothing. I do remember my history teacher saying that Carter was widely despised because he was considered a wimp. At 5'9", he did not match the physically imposing requirements needed to president. He spoke of peace, instead of doing things the American way (kicking ass). Hidden behind his exterior, was a man of solid principles and vision.
To tell you the truth, during the primaries when everyone mocked Dennis Kucinich for his size, I couldn't help but think of Jimmy Carter.
It's always been one of the most obvious and yet unnoticed (or least I've never seen an observation made of it in the U.S.) that the difference between Democratic and republican ex presidents is that the Dems stay involved in their fellow citizens endeavours (Carter - habitat for humanities, Clinton - third world aide, both are doing concrete things, not just spokesmen), while repubs seem to work at making as much money as possible and use their past position as President to embellish themselves. It speaks volumes about their character and attitudes toward their fellow travellers on the planet.
Mad Magazine did a parody of the ant and the grasshopper where both were workers in a large business. The ant worked hard, and did all assigned work. The grasshopper goofed off, hung out at the coffee maker, harassed the secretaries - and started a rumor that the ant had been seen in a red ant hill. (This was just after McCarthyism) The grasshopper was promoted and continued his partying ways, while the ant toiled on, lucky even to still have a job.
To update this, the grasshopper need merely accuse the ant of links to Al Qaeda, whereupon the ant is hauled off to Guantanamo and the grasshopper gets the ant's stored food.
Jeeeezzz.
Watching young stupid republicans in Georgia on why they are voting for McCain.
The grasshoppers haven't changed at all. They just talk like ants.
Jimmy lusted in his heart.
Reagan steamrolled his way through in 1980, and the rest is history. The beginning of the end.
We were warned by many people many times since the 60's. However up until now anyone with such concerns were labeled as Hippies, Wackos, Pinkos, Alarmists, etc. They were always wrong. Of course they were not. They were visionaries. Mr Gore proposes to end our energy dependence in 10 years. Will we do it, will we even try? Not likely. Mr McCain wants to drill more, which is wrong for so many reasons. Even Mr Obama is talking about drilling. It seems it is going to take a major ecological disaster in a major developed nation to get any action. By then it will be too late. Good luck to us all, we are going to need it.
mike @ 31:
Democrats win Nobel Peace Prizes and Oscars for their work to help the poor and the planet. When was the last time a Republican president or Republican presidential candidate did anything selfless enough to be awarded anything? All they know how to do is get a government salary to use our tax dollars to enrich their financial coffers and those of their well connected cronies and they can't even do that well and efficiently. Halliburton and Big Oil's war has already cost us half a trillion.
How could Carter have been so wrong?
Back in the seventies, e still had another 30 or 40 years of oil left.
Richard M. freaking Nixon, way back in 1971, said that the biggest national security problem for the United States was its dependence on foreign oil. Back when foreign oil was less than 30% of the oil used in the U.S.
Just think how far ahead we would be if we had done as Carter (and Nixon before him) had asked: conservation; solar panels on new construction; research into alternative energy sources; smaller and more efficient vehicles; balancing the budget.
Instead, we get the stupid presidents--Bush I, Bush II, Reagan. I swear, if Obama doesn't win in November, I'm going to get real serious about moving somewhere else. Canada, Australila, Iceland, Sweden, France--somewhere with sensible people and medical care for all.
Nancy @ 38:
Iceland is looking good to me. Tons of geothermal energy and far enough north, when we start to bake the temps will be quite mild!
and when he became prez
the wingnut god reagan ripped that energy policy into little bits
remind your wingnut pals about that
remind them that their god was a traitor to this country just so he could make sure his pals in big oil made a buck
oh...and my former gov brown attempted to institute the same things in cali...and was also laffed at
The Rude Bellman @ 29:
carter had balls!
He stood up the the MilIndus-plex and was demonized by the press, just like Dukakis and later Gore. the press has been attacking progressives since noxin.
Don't get confused between fact and hearsay. Carter put solar cells on the WH roof. Raygun is the asshat who took them down.
Uncle Joe Mccarthy @ 41:
that like carter and gore was a function of the press, not of fact.
CoIntelPro for Pronktastic Victory Over SCLM, DIEBOLD, ESS and SEQUOIA! @ 42:
Reagan cashed in the solar panels so Nancy could buy some Royal Doulton with hand-painted periwinkles. With Republicans its all about keeping up appearances.
Brazil took Carter's words to heart and got busy. Now, they are completely independent.
Too many of we Americans have been far too willing to listen to the snakes who tell us the lies we most want to hear. We've been too willing to elect and give credence to the most unworthy among us, because, as leaders, they validate our lowest instincts and most shameful inclinations. We have tolerated, even honored, them, because they give us permission, by virtue of their authority, to remain self-absorbed, short-sighted, thoughtless and supremely selfish. We've been too eager to give power to those who, by the example of their own lives, transform our vices into virtues. Like children, we invariably seem to prefer the path of least resistance, and have elected or allowed to be installed the very worst among us, that they might to lead us down that path. Look who we've had since Carter: a succession of 3 amoral criminals and 1 corporatist who played the role of "Centrist". A thousand opportunities pissed away. But, they allowed us to continue to behave as a nation of children. And while we indulged ourselves playing the role of spoiled, irresponsible children, they took us and the nation to the cleaners. The current state of our energy affairs is only one outcome of that process.
We could change things anytime we wanted, if we wanted. If we continue as a nation to indulge in the fantasy that actions have no consequences, sooner or later, the consequences of our indulgences as a people will overtake us all.
Carter offered us a chance to respond as a rational people who, if given the chance, would choose that which assured our nation's well-being in more than just energy concerns. We blew it, and it looks like far too many of us have failed to learn anything in the interim. I think that collectively, we have been giving those who won't even be born for another hundred years ample reasons to curse our memory.
If I remember right, Jimmy Carter set new COLA MPG goals for the manufactirers to meet shortly after that speech. After Reagan took office the car companys asked Reagan for extension which were immediately granted and eventually the the new goals were discarded as "Unnessecary". The Car companies started building and pushing BIG Cars again and eventually SUV's. If the Car Companies had met Jimmy Carters goals by 1990 we would have been far ahead of where we are today.
Does anyone know whether I am correct about this or what Jimmy Carter had in fact done about COLA's in his administration.
I voted for Jimmy Carter Both Times and always considered hime the Best President in My Lifetime (1944-) although I get a lot of funny looks when I say that today.
Thanx for the post. I tried looking up Carter's plan but I couldn't find it.
As regards GOPers being the grasshoppers, there's a reason why grasshoppers a called pests.
The weinie of a man Glen Beck called a Carter a waste of skin. Beck should be deleted from CNN, for the pea brained disservice he performed to America. But according to CNN outrage sells and thought and perspective isn't worth the airtime.
So the Elmer fudd lookalike gets more time and the media continues fill s the air with garbage.
You know, if we all started repeating this, and calling the Republican party the GRASSHOPPER party, and the Democratic party the Ant party, it might actually catch. If you don't, you allow TWEETY to frame the Democratic party as the MOM party, and the Republican party as the DAD party. While Tweety might think this is an accurate and neutral metaphor, it actually plays right into the Republican narrative of painting themselves as the party of stringth and decisiveness, while the Democrats are for 'motherhood' as a symbol of unrealistic idealism.
Grasshoppers and Ants. I like it.
I have a question for anyone out there. Does any member of the voting public actually understand whats happening to your country or are you just looking for nice words from one party or the other?
sooner or later you will have to deal with the problems
Once upon a time being a conservative meant being conservative by believing in and practicing conservation. Or so the fables say. Funny how it's being used to mean the opposite these days isn't it. Well not funny as in funny but as in damn odd.
Whitehouse @ 6:
A bit underrated? I believe he was totally underrated! He is a good, moral, TRULY Christian man who continues to do more good in the world than that phony pseudo-Christian, morally bankrupt THIEF who presently resides in the white house. He is MUCH, MUCH more intelligent than chimpy mcflightsuit as well.
If he had been listened to about energy back then, we wouldnt be in the DIRE straits that we are currently in. If we had our own sources of energy, our troops wouldnt be fighting in an ILLEGAL oil war today and our economy wouldnt be in the tank.
The country is doomed, and "we the people" are the ones who through our ignorance and laziness doomed it.
We had our chance, but too many people listened to the propaganda and voted for people whose only concern was money.
Sad but true!
The Truth Hurts @ 8:
Carter's only transgression was to not understand the mentality of the american male. He correctly pointed out that if every american household turned their thermostat down to 68 degrees from 72, and slowed down to 55mph from 70 on the highway, those two things alone would save as much oil as america was importing. He didn't understand that, to the average american male, asking him to slow down 55 from 70 is the same as asking him to cut two inches off his penis.
The conservative corporate-elitists saw an in on this issue, sent a rabbit bunnyrabbit to attack him, made sure it was caught on video, and then labeled him a 'wimp.' It worked. Ronnie Raygun was elected next, and the first thing he did was kill the GASOHOL program (that's right, Carter tried to do in 1978 what everybody is whining that we need now. Start a wheat-to-ethanol conversion program), remove the SOLAR PANELS from the White House roof (again, that's right. Carter was trying to break america's 'addiction to oil' by encouraging SOLAR ENERGY in 1978), and drop bombs on Libya to remind the uppity Arabs who's boss. The second thing he did was to re-flag all the Iraqi oil tankers (yes...SADDAM'S oil tankers. He was a 'good guy' in those days) with american flags in order to stop the Iranians from harassing them, and sent a carrier group to the Persian Gulf to make sure. The third thing he did was sign a bunch of bills allowing drilling in national parks etc. Well, the increased drilling, and the throwing of american weight around the Persian Gulf worked to lower prices for a little while, but as you can see, it did nothing to address the issue of 'america's addiction to oil.' In fact, as any pusher will tell you, a temporary drop in price will only ensure that the junkie gets hooked even worse!
Eventually, after the 'respectable' junkie has re-financed his house, sold his car and his life insurance policy to buy more drugs, and has run out of invisible things to sell, his addiction will start to get ugly. America is entering that phase now. We're now getting to the point of being the shaking, bug-eyed junkie who is smashing the windows on other people's cars and stealing their CD players to hock for drugs. It's not pretty, and it's only going to get uglier unless we try something different to break the addiction. The 'let's drill off of Miami Beach' gang is just offering to lower the price of our crack for a little while. But again, it doesn't address the problem.
Sadly, if Carter showed us anything, it's that americans have absolutely no desire to start acting like ants! In fact, they'll KILL any politician like Carter who even mentions that we should start THINKING about acting like ants!
So, if Obama's suggestion to inflate your tires to get better gas milage sounds similar to Carters suggestion to slow down a little, it's because it is. And you can bet the conservatives will try to pull all of the same shit on Obama that they did on Carter. I'm pretty sure the next Republican attack add will probably show a picture of Obama morphing into a picture of Carter.
Carter's energy policy was far-sighted and immediately dismantled by Republicans when Carter was not re-elected. One of the first things that great Republican Icon, Ronald Reagan did upon becoming president was to remove the solar panels which Carter had installed on the roof of the White House. Not only a symbolic act, but a clear message to the petroleum industry: Don't worry, we've got your back. We'll never let energy independence get in the way of your profits. Oh, yeah, and to hell with conservation, clean air and all that.
It was actually Carter's economic program that Ronnie Retard didn't mess with the 1st 2-3 years of his crappy presidency , that allowed the US to regain strong economic footing.
"Reaganomics" , that crappy trickle-down your leg theory or whatever the hell it is , has proven to be the biggest crock of shit ever falsely promoted by any group ; that Carter had an energy plan far superior , too , isn't much of a surprise.
Ronnie Retard is celebrating in hell that Chimpy the Wonder Monkey came along , to remove his name from consideration of worst president in US history........
Sadly, President Carter will have his case to answer for (if not in this life, then the next) about all the right wing death squads his government propped up in South America. Yes, the Republicans were doing it as well (before and after his administration) but we expected better from him.
"In the summer of 1977, the US Senate passed legislation prohibiting military aid to Argentina if by 1979 the regime had not improved its human rights record. One of the documents released—a letter to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance from Senator Edward Kennedy—suggests that the Carter administration was skirting the law by rushing to transfer military equipment to the junta before the legal deadline
A July 1977 memo from the Buenos Aires Embassy to Assistant Secretary of State Terrence Todmann on the eve of his visit to the Argentine junta spells out the attitude of the Carter administration. It advised Todmann to tell the dictators that the US was “encouraged by Argentine official statements that the war against terrorism is well along toward winning.”
It added, however, that he should tell the junta that “what distresses many of Argentina’s friends are the dramatic disappearances,” citing the case of the abduction of a former ambassador. It expressed no such concern for the thousands of disappeared workers and leftists. Finally, it recommended praise for the junta’s economic policy, declaring “our appreciation of the stabilization taking place.... We are encouraged by improvement in the climate for foreign investments.”
"To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation’s history ..............."
So, looks like GWB followed Carter's advice. He and Cheney and their PNAC, neo-con, fascist buds have invested trillions of our tax dollars and sacrificed who knows how many human lives to give us energy security.....right? Worth the price?
Damn grasshoppers!!
Terrible @ 52:
Hmmm...Newspeak...
I think that is what you are looking for....
Yeah, there is a lot of it being used now...
The Truth Hurts @ 8:
Unfortunately, Carter's own party, the Democrats, stabbed him in the back. They were unwilling to pass any of his initiatives because they thought, being a Washington outsider, he was not "one of them" and was naive in his thinking. They had the corporate mentality even back then and stood in the way of all of his ideas. If we had used his vision and started during his term in office to end our dependence on oil and gasoline, we wouldn't feel the need to keep a military presence in the middle east today. We could tell the Arab nations what to do with their oil and could form a cartel of our own, OFEC, Organization of Food Exporting Countries. That bushel of wheat? $150!!!
The Rude Bellman @ 29:
The federal deficit when carter left office was just over $70 billion. That's less than 1% of what it is today.
The holders of US oil reserves are making money hand-over-fist when the world price of oil increases; that lots of our oil tab flows out of the country doesn't bother them a bit. Also, I suspect they are getting a good bump in profits on the oil they do import.
There will always be people like Carter who are derided and not appreciated during their lives. That's their Cassandra-like fate. In this country, they're usually people who brave the rabble by showing that they are thinkers, and who propose solutions that are not simplistic and are not easily executed by troglodytes through loud grunting and waving a cudgel.
Obama was beginning to convince me that he might be a better President than McCain.UNTIL!!! He started Flip Flopping on his stand about off shore drilling. He must have found out how much money he could pocket if he went in favor of it. Isn"t that the way it works???????/ If it"s going to take Years for the drilling to have any effect,Why doesn"t the US start NOW finding alternative means of energy production? Wind, Solar Power,Cars that run on Steam.etc.? Build oil wells off our coasts & give the terrorists something else to blow up & cause Environmental Havoc. STUPID<STUPID<STUPID.
"...The conservative corporate-elitists saw an in on this issue, sent a rabbit bunnyrabbit to attack him, made sure it was caught on video, and then labeled him a ‘wimp.’ It worked...."
The rabbit attack was a fabrication by the media that was hyped and given a life of its own. No video. Just bull. GOP operatives are good at that sort of thing. It was ten years or more after President Carter left office before any media actually interviewed him about the rabbit story. The president and the secret service men did see a rabbit in the water and thought that was strange, but nothing happened remotely like what was depicted in the media.
I remember every president since Truman. President Carter was one of the few educated presidents (he was a nuclear engineer). He was clearly the most moral and honest one. His last media broadcast before he lost the election (he knew what the outcome would be) focused on the dangers of nuclear weapons. Truth only defeats lies if the audience can recognize the difference.
Personally, I think there is a false assumption here:
"...rather than admitting that he’d been short-sighted and reckless in not preparing for the winter..."
If all you can see is what is in front of your nose, that's all you can see. If my vision only allowed me to see 3 feet in front of me, why worry about a problem a mile up the road? Conservatives mock a progressive talking about such things because they simply cannot see that far ahead.
Nylund @ 10:
Ummm...no, that's a modernized (Disneyfied?) version of the story. As late as La Fontaine (2d half 17th century), the ant tells the grasshopper to f*** off. "You sang all summer,now dance!"
The Truth Hurts @ 8:
lol... you mean like the vast majority of the american public who vilified him at the time...?...
(somewhat like the song) "you don't know what you've got until it's gone and they've put up a parking lot in its place"
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