Sunday morning roundup

Mark Kilmer reviews the Sunday morning talk shows over on Red State and I have to quibble on one small matter. On “Fox News Sunday” New Mexico governor Bill Richardson did not say we need a “Marshall Plan” for energy independence. He said we needed an “Apollo mission Marshall plan” which caused me to laugh out loud: we’re going to rebuild the economy on the Sea of Tranquility?

Richardson, who used to be the energy secretary during the Clinton years, was a joke. I’ll have to find a transcript but his prescription for energy security bounced between the old “alternative fuels” saw to releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Here’s a tip: whenever a politician talks about tapping into the SPR, they’re engaging in populist nonsense (and everybody in D.C. knows it). I used to be concerned about Richardson as a Democratic governor south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but no more. He’s a hack with fewer answers than Kerry, if you can believe that.

Update - Fox News just posted the transcript:

RICHARDSON: Yes and only the president can do it. He can announce an Apollo-like Marshall plan to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and to deal with gas prices. Only a president can do it.
How do you do it? One, by jawboning OPEC and having them increase production. I would go into the strategic petroleum reserve, take 10 percent, put it out in oil markets to lower the price.

"Jawboning OPEC" - great plan. Does anybody else find it unseemly for the United States to go begging to Saudi Arabia or Hugo Chavez's Venezuela for help? Why not drill in the frozen tundra of Alaska? No, we can't upset the caribou. Oh well.