John Edwards to Americans: You should give up your SUV
Cross-posted from the Sister Toldjah blog.
El Maestro of hypocrisy himself told a labor group today that he would ask American’s to give up their SUVs:
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. - Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards told a labor group Tuesday that he would ask Americans to make a big sacrifice: their sport utility vehicles.
“I think Americans are actually willing to sacrifice,” Edwards said during a forum held by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. “One of the things they should be asked to do is drive more fuel efficient vehicles.”
The former North Carolina senator was asked specifically if he would tell them to give up their SUVS, he said, “Yes.”
Certainly, Senator. Right after you give up yours.
That photo is courtesy of Ben Smith at The Politico, who has more on Edwards - and other Dem candidates’ - SUV hypocrisy:
But campaigning turns out to be a pretty high-carbon practice. All the candidates ride around, particularly in Iowa, in big cars — Hillary rode an 18-wheeler; Obama rented an RV; and Edwards, whose convoy is often mini-van centric, had this Cadillac SRX Crossover (15 mpg) beside him in Iowa on his arrival from announcing his candidacy for president in New Orleans, according to his Flickr stream.
Actually, Edwards isn’t anti-SUV — he seems to be quite consciously avoiding the trap of appearing to demand that Americans drive only Trabants. His spokesman says he drives a hybrid SUV, the Ford Escape, at home in North Carolina, though the AP reported in April that the family has an SUV and a small truck as well.
His website says, “Edwards believes that everyone should be able to drive the car, truck or SUV of their choice and still enjoy high fuel economy.”
Edwards spokesman Eric Schultz says they buy carbon offsets for the vehicles, and adds:
“John Edwards believes that all Americans need to be patriotic about something other than war, and that means conserving at home, at work, and in the cars they drive. And that includes the Edwards family. They drive a hybrid Ford Escape, but they also still own a Chrysler Pacifica – which they use less often. He is reducing his own impact on global warming by driving a hybrid, building an energy-efficient home, and subsidizing renewable energy to offset the carbon emissions of his home, vehicles, and his campaign.”
ROTFL. And just how many SUVs can you count around the Edwards estate?
Edwards sounds like he’s channeling the Goracle, who pleaded in his Academy Award winning global warming crock-, er, documentary for people to conserve and sacrifice in order to save our planet, even though he himself wasn’t and hasn’t exactly been doing his part to help.
Nor are many of his loyal supporters (scroll).
Same same for Senator John Kerry.
And Senator Dianne Feinstein. And Ahhhnold.
And Arianna Huffington.
Astute Blogger has had enough of the Dem double talk:
THESE HYPOCRITICAL LEFTISTS ALWAYS SEEM TO WANT US TO SACRIFICE. FOR THE COMMON GOOD: higher taxes - for the common good; a draft - for the common good; nationalization of industry - for the common good.
I’d like leftists to STFU - for the common good.
Well, I doubt they’ll do that - but they should at least consider buying some more of those “carbon credits” to offset their frequent bursts of hypocrisy ;)
Topics: shameless opportunism
Posted by Sister Toldjah at 8:35 pm on Wednesday, August 29, 2007
16 Responses to “John Edwards to Americans: You should give up your SUV”
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August 29th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Hypocritical fecker. He can have my (admittedly modest) Sportage when he pries the gas pedal from under my cold, dead foot.
August 29th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Not only does that PIC show several SUV’s..I was just going to link to it…but ya beat my Instapundit link…:).
Notice how wonderfully clear his property is…Did it grow that way…or did John and Lizzie cut all those TREES down…So lemme see…owns SUV’s, Must protect the Gaia…and yet??? Well he is a Dem…nuff said.
August 29th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
There are only 2 explanations for the ongoing highly hypocritical pronouncements of people like Algore and the Breck Girl.
1. Our constituencies are so dumb they won’t notice the hypocrisy;
or
2. The self -anointed noblesse tells “people” how to live without having to live that way itself.
In Washington DC, members of Congress are regularly driven across the street in their chauffeured SUV’s.
Algore (”keepin’ the faith alive”) just recently announced some hundreds of millions more in the effort to raise the awareness that, apparently, those hugely wasteful concerts didn’t raise.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Has John Edwards ever put out an environmental impact statement on the amount of polycarbonates that he uses in his hair?
August 29th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
“El Maestro of hypocrisy”
Oh, come on. The Goreacle is his master.
August 30th, 2007 at 12:34 am
It isn’t about the SUVs. It isn’t even about creating the biggest fraud since Ponzi strode the earth–carbon offsets. It all about power. Have you noticed that the conversation isn’t about whether global warming is truth or not, or if it is caused by humans. The conversation is all about the hypocracy of elite viros. All of this means that the viros are still controlling the conversation. Meanwhile they just keep gnawing away at our property rights.
All that’s really going on is a bunch of frustrated petty tyrants have glommed onto something they think they can use to convince the proles that is as big as the war. I’ve think Al Gore is pissed that his perceived destiny didn’t pan out, so he’s pushing something that is bigger than anything that damned Bush uses to make himself feel important. Edwards wants to redirect our “patriotism;” he thinks he can do that because he doesn’t know what patriotism is.
I always grab my wallet when I hear a politician demand that I sacrifice something. You can always bet he’ll be the one waiting around the corner to collect the benefit. Guys like Edwards are always happy to make us all mules to carry the burden of whatever make them feel good.
August 30th, 2007 at 3:01 am
You can have my SUV when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers!
Oh, wait, I don’t have an SUV. But I do have cold, dead fingers. Want to feel them?
August 30th, 2007 at 5:22 am
I’ve been thinking hard about the timelines of congressional insanity, and I’m a bit stumped as to when this all began. Has it always been like this and the only difference is our exposure to it? (Thanks to Algore’s intermanet). Corruption, power-brokering, hyper-elitism, imperialism. I’m thinking it’s just more of the same. Politicians (left and right) are “concerned” with whatever will get them elected or re-elected. And that’s it. There are no ideals in Washington aside from gaining and retaining one’s office, and knocking the other party’s candidate from their’s. The chief requirement for holding public office is that you shed your soul. If you can’t throw your mother under a bus, you need not seek office. So, to desolve into indignation over the hypocrisy of our congressional body is a fool’s errand. The entire assembly rests on a foundation of hypocrisy. Energy would be better spent on stopping the tides.
Eh, but on the other hand, I suppose throwing eggs at politicians is as old and time-honored of a tradition as is political corruption. Let the floggings continue!
August 30th, 2007 at 8:32 am
Tar and feathers and then a ride on a rail are the traditional consequences of the kinds of scams being pulled on us by our politicians. Used to, of course, way back when, they just called them what they were: snake-oil salesmen.
August 30th, 2007 at 8:45 am
Nothing says success like carbon offsets.
Grimmy, keep those things on your side of the stall.
August 30th, 2007 at 8:49 am
Carbon is the new Black.
August 30th, 2007 at 9:09 am
heh,
AlGore from Tennessee, BreckGurrl from North Carolina, Hillary from Arkansas, don’t these self-appointed “new aristocracy” folks understand that they LOST the Civil War? We fought that war to destroy any chance of an aristocracy gaining power and returning us to a subect status such as England.
Now, here we are 146 years after lincoln took office, still fighting that fight. Look at how the Dems are trying to force social-classes upon us through “multi-culturalism”, “diversity” “afirmative action”, etc. They don’t want the melting pot of America. they abhor it. they want to live as white overlords in their mansions, bossing everyone around and making certain that no one else has a voice, that no one else gets up on that big hill.
John Edwards telling the working men and women that THEY must sacrifive. How THEY must give up their dreams for the “common” good. Of course, he’s NOT a ‘commoner” so the rules won’t apply to him. What a maroon.
Then there’s Hillary hoping to make the White House the “new Tara”. She’s already got Rhett Butler for a husband. She’s got a passle of sychophants to sub for the house servants.
And AlGore the Southron Firebrand! Spewing his vitriol about glow-bull warming instead of seccession. Unable to admit the lie of his paid-for pseudo-science, willing to destroy the nation if needs be to build it up in his image.
These people are a clear and present danger to our Constitution. They would tip over the melting pot and replace it with a rainbow where each color is seperate and has it’s place. No mixing allowed, unless it leads to more power for the self-chosen elites.
Respects,
August 30th, 2007 at 10:57 am
“Has it always been like this and the only difference is our exposure to it?”
My take is that picayune power-brokering has always defined goings on in the annals of so called political leadership.
And that our “exposure” has, of course, increased with the proliferation of media and the accompanying idea that, if people are sticking a bank of microphones under your nose, your words must be sacrosanct.
However, my take is also that intelligence, civility and a sense of the “moral order” of things haveshot craps. And that fewer and fewer emitters of said cacophonous verbiage have any sense of awareness or chagrin at their perfidy.
I just see a really, really dumb conversation going on out there. “People” and ex-spurts summoned before the great Congress to give testimony that ought to be common sense to any Congressman who has done his homework at all.
But if your real business is working the phones, issuing tons of useless paper, working deals for your constituency so you can get your a$$ re-elected, taking “positions” as a function of capturing the White House in ‘08 and trying to make sure you keep a leg up on your backstabbing cronies, you can hardly be expected to have time to intelligently conduct “the people’s business”.
OTOH, I don’t think these serious emitters of cover your a$$ noise have any notion of how entertaining they can be. It’s like nonstop live theater.
I don’t take John Edwards or his SUV/Two Americas blah blah blah pronouncements seriously. The only intriguing thing about him is that he’s dumb enough to keep doing it & apparently, all he’s got. He appears to be trying to co-opt that shtick that has been owned by Teddy Kennedy for so many decades. Trying to cast himself in the Kennedy aura, after all, he has “the hair” for it.
August 30th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
These people are touted as the smartest folks around by the most presitigious media and academic sources, educated at the best schools, etc, etc.
Why is it then that every idea they ever have seems to boil down to “redistribution of wealth”? And somebody else’s wealth at that. From tax policy to education to, well heck, their claims that they can control the weather, it is always based on redstributing wealth from people who earn it to their elite special interests. It is never about the sacrifices they are personally willing to make on behalf of said interests.
While I disagreed with Sen Wellstone on virtually everything, at least he lived what he preached, and I grudgingly admired him for that.
August 30th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Vanguard,
Ya know, there is the big difference between us and most of the leftists.
We can disagree vehemently with much of their rhetoric, there stupid ideas and short-sighted policies. However, we also can ecognise a worthy, honorable adversary. One who lives the life he asks others to observe. There is, in fact, such a thing as a noble adversary. I do NOT have to respect his views to respect him or her for having them, for parsing their lives to coincide with them.
What I detest are those who are merely saplings, bending in the wind of public opinion, who hold no views but that derived from polls and market surveys. They are a shallow lot, forever condemned to mediocrity at best, living the life someone else chooses for them.
I hated what the Soviet Union stood for, but I admired those who earnestly believed what they preached, and mourned for those who lost their lives in Cold War struggles, especially the Soviet Submariners and Naval Aircrews. It was a good competition, and one most always fairly met and fairly played.
Sheehan & Fonda? ANSWER & Code Pink? Not so much. Losers and charlatans, engrossed in the game and unable to see beyond their own noses. They bring shame to politics, and to the American ideal of fair play.
Respects,
August 31st, 2007 at 3:09 am
I read where St. John of the Healthy Hair has decided to make his new 28,000 sq. foot home “energy efficient”. Just how energy efficient can a building that size be? Meanwhile Dubya’s middle class house uses geothermal heating and cooling and he is scolded for hating the environment.
I used to just think Democrats were wrong. I’m starting to hate them.