Much More From the NR Symposium

Including video of Tony Snow's speech. I've focused on the "We won in Vietnam" remark, but let me say, the man is a rock star. Relentlessly, contagiously optimistic, smart, trenchant, funny.

I didn't mention-- first questioner for Tony? Debra Burlingame. Quite a moment.

MKH also lets you know how the the other speakers fared.

Enviro-Bashing: Tony Snow claimed (I haven't vetted this; no idea if it's true) that the US is actually beating Europe -- land of the Kyoto Protocols -- when it comes to carbon dioxide emissions reductions. I don't think I care either way; I'm a fan of CO2. I say let it build up to dangerous levels, so long as I get some SoCal style whether in the Northeast. If it ever gets to be a real problem, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton can rig some CO2 scrubbers out of giant tube-socks and gargantuan notebook covers.

He also coined the phrase "sado-environmentalism," a environmentalism fixated, somewhat sexually, on the virtue of human suffering.

Newt had earlier tossed off a good quip about this. When a questioner -- one of the minority of questioners that kept it brief and actually, you know, had ap oint -- claimed to be an expert in water desalinization and claimed further that the cost per gallon of desalinization would permit us to turn the world's deserts into habitable, arable lands within ten years (!!!), Gingrich scoffed that you'd never be able to get that plan past the EPA, due to the danger of disrupting the environmentally-sensitive drylands of the Saharan sand flea.

Yeah, I know-- the "Sahran sand-flea" quip is old. Still, it says something that he has such a great catalogue of previous hits he can just trot them out whenever needed.

I'm not sure what it says. But it says something.

posted by Ace at 04:08 PM

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