In the hyperbolic political atmosphere of America today, left-leaning liberals are seen as tofu-eating, Toyota Prius-driving communists, while right-leaning conservatives are depicted as gun-toting, pickup-driving patriots. Thankfully, the real world is a lot more diverse than those caricatures.

Take George Shultz, for example. He served as both Labor and Treasury secretary for Richard Nixon and went on to become Secretary of State for the majority of Ronald Reagan’s two terms. Pretty solid conservative bona fides, we think.

And yet, he drives an electric car. A Nissan Leaf to be precise. On top of that, he generates his own electricity with a tidy little solar array…

Now, one might imagine his motivation for choosing clean energy and transportation has something to do with a strong dislike of mid-east oil. They would be correct. “I’m driving on sunshine. Take that, Ahmadinejad!”, he states in the video…

However, he is also concerned about the disastrous environmental effects our fossil fuel habit is causing. He supports a (gasp!) carbon tax as a way to combat the problem and his car and solar panels are his way of walking the talk

Read the complete interview at the Stanford University site.



  1. bobbo, the pragmatic existential evangelical anti-theist says:

    Using George Shultz and his opinions to show reasonableness only highlights the problem: he is out of date and old news===no longer relevant. The Pukes today are driven by Grover Norquist, Paul Ryan, and Rush Limbaugh to name three luminaries of the New Crackpot Right.

    A truly dispicable bunch of Me First/Hate America xenophobes we have now.

    Doesn’t bode well.

    • bobbo, the pragmatic existential evangelical anti-theist says:

      I apologize. Thats just what your own headline says.

  2. NewformatSux says:

    Funny how now Reagan is seen as a beacon of moderation by liberals. George W Bush is getting there too.

    By the way, is Romney one of those people who wouldn’t be invited into a Romney Administration? His administration in Massachusetts sued for the EPA to limit carbon dioxide, Mass v EPA, and he signed his state up to a regional greenhouse gas initiative that increased people’s energy bills. Only upside was that it turned the Kennedys into enemies of wind power since it would mar the view of their oceanfront compound.

  3. NewformatSux says:

    Who properly fits the headline is Jim Holmes, who is a Tea Party guy in Colorado, and Romney Administration hates the Tea Party. This Jim Holmes was briefly said by ABC and George Stephanopoulos to be the guy who shot everyone at the Batman movie. Sadly, liberals prayers were not answered, and to date the Tea Party cannot be blamed for a mass shooting.

    • McCullough says:

      “ABC also issued an online apology: “ABC News and Brian Ross apologize for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted.” And Ross said on-air: “An earlier report that I had was incorrect that he was connected with the Tea Party in fact that’s a different Jim Holmes. He was not connected to the Tea Party and what we do know about him is he is a 24-year-old white male who went to Colorado for a Ph.D.”

      • NewformatSux says:

        And I’m curious how they made a mistake like that. Jim Holmes is a pretty common name. Did they just naturally decide to search and see if he is connected to the Tea Party?

      • NewformatSux says:

        They are very good at avoiding mentioning when a suspect is black or Muslim, because they don’t want to stereotype. Here the intent was to deliberately stereotype Tea Party people, and may have even been the first instinct. Apologizing for identifying the wrong person isn’t good enough. Especially when you have a name that is so common, at least 1 in 100,000.

  4. Kent says:

    Hey, I’m no granola munching environmentalist either, but I do like electric cars. How better to sneak up on pedestrians.

    BTW, weren’t carbon tax credits an offshoot of Milton Friedman’s idea?

  5. Dr. Mr. horse says:

    Would the ignorant moron who is the web master of this site spen a little more time making it actually function instead of looking for useless liberal propaganda

    Your site will not load in firefox it takes over 2 min to get the page to load. fix it

    • bobbo, the pragmatic existential evangelical anti-theist says:

      Loads in 15 secs for me. Firefox 3.6.18 with gigabit router. Faster and smoother than my old “g” class router that was breaking down after 5 years constant use.

    • spsffan says:

      It opens just fine for me.

      Sometimes, when the site is being updated, it won’t load for a few minutes.

      What do you want for free?

    • Dr. Mr. horse says:

      Im running firefox 14.01 and this has been going on for days ever since firefox updated but this is the only site that has trouble

    • So what says:

      Works fine, don’t like it use internet exploder.

      • Dr. Mr. horse says:

        cdn searchles.com
        that is your hang up your hang up i believe it is some sort of a plug in for wordpress

        check into it

  6. Phydeau says:

    When the Democrats become middle-of-the-road Republicans, the Republicans must go way off into the weeds to distinguish themselves from the Democrats.

  7. dusanmal says:

    Time to understand that issues this guy and similar Left and Right are pushing are PROGRESSIVE. There are Progressives on the Right (Bush, McCain, Boehner,…) and those on the Left (Obama, Pelosi, Reid,…). What is common is a) opinion that Large Government is one that can solve all and that individual people are stupid b) opinion that we are World citizens first (Globalists) and that good of the many (as decided by Large Government) overrides individual freedoms of any kind.
    These are NOT Right or Left issues. These are individual freedom vs. Collectivism issues. Person in question is Progressive Right. He might bring us to Fascism vs. current Administration who’d prefer Communism. But there is just a slim margin between the two. There more axis in politics than just Left and Right.

    • bobbo, the pragmatic existential evangelical anti-theist says:

      Hey Douche-Anal==please link to one quote from anyone at anytime and anywhere in History that has said that government can solve all problems.

      We’ll call that square one.

      Square two: name anyone at anytime and anywhere in american History that government can solve most problems.

      How many steps until you are shown to be the complete fool we all already know you to be?

      Course==you won’t establish any steps at all==because you are nuts.

      Ha, ha. Stoopid Human.

      • Phydeau says:

        lol bobbo, I don’t play the fanboy very often but that was eloquent and to the point. 🙂

        • bobbo, are we Men of Science, or Devo says:

          Hey phydeau — you are no fanboy to simply recognize the truth of what is apparent: Not my cogent analysis, but the abysmal ignorance of Douche-Anal and the other Deniers of various ilks on this blog.

          what cracks me up is these deniers all become entrenched in their ludicrous positions thru affirmation by the other nuts in their bunches.

          They eschew lucid commentary going for the brown stain.

          “♫..It ain’t me Babe….”

    • Cursor_ says:

      So standing together is only good:

      A) In time of war
      B) In time of disaster

      But if it means you have to work harder and spend come cash for the common welfare, then the team has an I i it.

      Sit down, shut up you self-absorbed spoiled little child.

      We are a republic because we are UNITED. Not because each person gets to do whatever the hell they please.

      Your avarice is showing.

      Cursor_

      • Rick says:

        What if we ended up making the world a better place, and we found out we didn’t have to!

  8. Jason says:

    That’s great for him to be driving a LEAF, I support his choice. I just want Obama to leave me alone and let me continue to drive my gas guzzling ’95 Buick.

    • tcc3 says:

      Yes, that was terrible when Obama personally came to your house and ripped the car keys right out of your hands…oh wait that never happened.

      Driving a 95 Buick is its own punishment.

      • NewformatSux says:

        Cash for clunkers had a similar effect. Not only did they hand out money to people who could afford to buy a new car, they mandated the destruction of the old car. Used car prices are higher, and the parts are drying up for older vehicles.

        • tcc3 says:

          Because that is “similar” to *not letting* Jason drive his 95 Buick…

          Weaksauce.

        • NewformatSux says:

          No, this is the method this administration likes to use to push behavior modification. Cass Susstein is a major proponent. So instead of banning, push for calorie counts on restaurant menus. Increase costs of regular cars. And even there they have a future mandate of over 50MPG, so people wanting to drive cars like the 95 Buick will be stuck with no choice at that point.

  9. Kent says:

    American political parties differ in rhetoric but are the same in practice. Its just “go team go”.

  10. deowll says:

    Electric cars only sell because they are massively subsidized at all levels. The solar cells work well for him but they are massively subsidized. This dude is going to have to pay a mileage tax to make up for the gasoline taxes he isn’t paying. The range is still kind of limited. At most location the electric grid cannot support a change over to electric cars.

    The bottom line is that we can run on electric if we have to but if we try to do it with the rest of world burning more coal (World wide coal use is way up.) we are pretty much going to finish bankrupting ourselves.

    • Rick says:

      Congress was subsidizing Hummer H2 sales too, I’m not sure why other than as a perk to the wealthy.

  11. NewformatSux says:

    California is looking to put GPS monitoring of all cars to tax based on miles driven. Don’t worry, the information collection is not a violation of your privacy.

  12. joe says:

    If you’re driving an electric car to the golf course, you’re either willfully ignorant or a complete farking dumbass. Either way you’re doing it wrong. How many people live in that home with its massive footprint? Baby steps are good but this is nothing more. Baby steps.

  13. Rick says:

    I would like to install solar panels on my house, but the Architectural Committee of my Homeowner’s Association bans all solar panels because they believe it detracts from the beauty of the neighborhood.


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