Welchie's Website (Not THAT one) And The "Man On The Moon"

We admit it: up until this point we at WW have been focusing on some pretty rough stuff about ole' Welchie. You know, stuff that Vermont's 4th estate (which consists of oh, about 8 people) just doesn't care about, or doesn't want to point out for fear of losing access, or is afraid to see in print because well, that's the kind of thing that just shakes stuff up a bit too much. You know, little stuff, like Welchie bailing on his campaign pledge to "demand a timetable" for withdrawal of troops, or about how his claim of being able to "change the course" in Iraq crumbled like cake in the rain when he actually got to Washington. We guess that's just the kind of stuff we're supposed to do around here, simply because others refuse to do so. Besides, we're just so good at it.

Today, however, we'll look at some stuff that Welchie has been up to a bit more recently. Congressional stuff, like votin', kickin' services to the peeps, and all that. Stuff Welch actually does, as opposed to stuff he says he will do when he is campaigning, and then doesn't, which when we think about it, is alot. Which leaves us with relatively little to write about. Slow news day? Hardly.

We decided that a good starting point for all of this was Welchie's brand spankin' new website. It's pretty good, for being new and all. There's a section on the site about all of the bills that Welch has sponsored and cosponsored in the first few days of the new Congress. Thought we'd take a look at a few of them. Here's one of the items that the new Congress is really getting down with. That's right, it's not a typo: we're talking about the "man on the moon" people. Now that's legislating!

After a quick perusal of this hard-hitting piece of drafting we can glean two things: 1) the term "man on the moon" is about as antiquated as it gets, legislatively speaking, and 2) this legislation is essentially meaningless. What, we wonder, is the precedent of "the magnitude, creativity and sense of urgency of the 'Man on the Moon' project?" How creative and how urgent was this program? Is there anyone alive who knows?

To get some background we did a little bit of research, starting with this Fox News article to give us the basic gist of things. From there we proceeded to this teacher's article in the hope of determining what the "man on the moon" project entailed, exactly. Pretty interesting. According to the piece, the Man on the Moon project was, well, big. JFK, who had the idea that the US should lead space tech essentially for propaganda, called the MOTMP "the highest kind of national priority," and allocated funding the same: maybe around $27B. And that's in 1967 USD. Not cheap.

This is not to say that the US should not spend a good amount of time and research on the peak oil problem, but really; the "Man on the Moon?" A "national priority" for studying the peak oil problem? What about what seems to be that other national problem, the one that Welchie and the D's couldn't stop talking about last Summer: what the heck we're going to do about the Middle East! Is this really the time we need to be pouring literally tens of billions into a federal program to figure out what's happening with the peak oil problem?

According to one of the witnesses at the hearing before Congress, the whole peak oil problem is a little further away from developing than say, today. Or even tomorrow, or next week. The "world is not running out of oil imminently, or in the medium term," this guy, who also wrote a book about oil production capacity told the committee. He said it wouldn't be "for about three or four decades or so." Interesting. Well then, Mr. oil news analyst guy, what factors are contributing to our oil problems, if you're so smart? "The major risks to this outlook...are not below ground geological factors, but above ground geopolitical factors." Ehem, well, they're looking into all of that too. Soon. They promise.

The only other noticeable remark that WW has to bring your way today stemmed from Welchies website. No, not that website. His old website. For "Welch, Graham and Manby," the firm where "winning is no accident." Yep, if you check it out here, you'll find that the URL is still the same, www.wgmlegal.com, but the contents have changed dramatically. No more references to dog bites, slip and falls, mesothelioma, etc. And wait, no more references to Welchie! Vanished. Why? Well, it wouldn't be very seemly for a sitting Congressperson to engage in that type of behavior, would it? Unless, you know, he made his entire life's career of it or something. Whatever. There are probably some Congressional rules about these things as well. But if that's the case, what does the "w" in "wgmlegal" stand for? Should not Robert Manby Jr have to change the URL to fully remove any vestige of Welchian influence over the firm? We don't know, but we'll keep an eye out.

In the meantime, where will all of those Vermont dog-bite victims go for representation? Sadly, we'll never know.