{"id":180839,"date":"2016-12-16T18:59:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-16T23:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/12\/16\/rick-perry-to-head-department-of-errr-ummm-oops\/"},"modified":"2016-12-16T18:59:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T23:59:00","slug":"rick-perry-to-head-department-of-errr-ummm-oops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/12\/16\/rick-perry-to-head-department-of-errr-ummm-oops\/","title":{"rendered":"Rick Perry to Head Department of \u2026\u2026\u2026 Errr \u2026\u2026\u2026 Ummm \u2026\u2026\u2026 Oops"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What can I say, I know that this is a cheap shot, but when someone <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/energy-environment\/wp\/2016\/12\/13\/trump-taps-former-texas-gov-rick-perry-to-head-energy-department-he-once-vowed-to-abolish\/\">throws me a slow pitch in the middle of the strike zone<\/a>, I will take a swing at it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">President-elect Donald Trump picked Rick Perry to head the Energy Department on Wednesday, seeking to put the former Texas governor in control of an agency whose name he forgot during a presidential debate even as he vowed to abolish it.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Perry, who ran for president in the past two election cycles, is likely to shift the department away from renewable energy and toward fossil fuels, whose production he championed while serving as governor for 14 years.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">His nomination \u2014 announced officially by Trump\u2019s transition team a day after sources leaked the decision \u2014 stirred further alarm from environmental groups and others worried that the Trump administration will roll back efforts to expand renewable energy and give a powerful platform for officials questioning the scientific consensus on climate change.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The Energy Department was central to the 2011 gaffe that helped end his first presidential bid. Declaring that he wanted to eliminate three federal agencies during a primary debate in Michigan, Perry then froze after mentioning the Commerce and Education departments. \u201cThe third one, I can\u2019t. Sorry. Oops.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I would also note that the big jobs of the DoE are nuclear power and nuclear weapons, not fossil fuels, so Perry is even less qualified than he sounds, which kind of buggers the mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What can I say, I know that this is a cheap shot, but when someone throws me a slow pitch in the middle of the strike zone, I will take a swing at it: President-elect Donald Trump picked Rick Perry to head the Energy Department on Wednesday, seeking to put the former Texas governor in &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[873,872,816,851],"class_list":["post-180839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-nuclear-power","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-stupid","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180839"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}