Blair Is Back...But Not Up To Full Speed

Tim Blair is out from under the knife and back home recovering. Probably to his bemusement, and even slight dismay, Blair has had to admit that :

Leftist bloggers have been extremely kind and encouraging in comments about my illness.

Most of them. I deleted three anonymous comments from a previous post about Blair's cancer battle, but they were so over-the-top and ridiculously vile they could have only come from someone wanting to supply material for a later "Lookit! Lookit those sick Lefties so full of hate! Hate I tell you!"

Of course Evil Lefties don't want Tim Blair to log off permanently. Where's the fun in that?


I'll put it down to his no doubt hard and painful recovery, but Blair has been completely suckered in by a heavily parsed quote from Bill Clinton where he supposedly said :

We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.’

It's the kind of Evil Lefties Want To Destroy World Economies money shot quote that gets the anti-progress Righties all het up and frothy.

Bill Clinton's a bloated old windbag, but even he wouldn't be stupid enough to give the anti-progress, anti-renewable energy chorus such a ammo dump of a quote. Here's what Clinton actually said :

"And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada -- the rich counties -- would say, 'OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.' We could do that.

But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world's fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.”

I expect Andrew Bolt will be suckered in by this heavily parsed Clinton quote as well.

UPDATE : Tim Blair gets the message :

The US ABC network’s Jake Tapper, source of the Clinton quote, has badly misrepresented him - as have I by repeating it.

....there’s no way (Clinton) could fairly be accused of urging an economic slowdown.