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News for this May 25th in 1942 was hopeful and cautious. Reports from Moscow told of the Russian Army regaining Kharkov after fierce fighting and that advances were being made along the Eastern Front.

From Australia it was reported Allied Bombers struck at Japanese airfields in Rabaul, New Guinea with the loss of one U.S. bomber and extensive damage to Japanese planes stuck on the ground. Also from Australia came news of a substitute being devised for gasoline by way of burning coal. Sounded messy, but according to reports, it worked in a pinch.

From London came news of RAF Bombers heading off to Cologne for a significant raid on that German city. There was also news of the Labour Party holding a conference that weekend, discussing stepped up Government aid in the war effort.

From Stockholm came reports that the Finnish Front was wavering, even though it had gotten back all the territory it had lost to Russia in the 1939 war. News that some 20,000 Finnish refugee Children were heading to Sweden amid reports of widespread starvation.

On Capitol Hill - reports of attempts to come up with a solution to the gasoline shortage by way of substitutes. It seemed the Australian coal-burning solution was being considered. Also being discussed was the possibility of extending the draft to include 18 and 19-year olds. And some circles were claiming the Allies would achieve Air Superiority in the war sometime in 1943. Some even went as far to say victory could be achieved by then. Although some were skeptical, saying 1944 was a more realistic estimate.

In any event, the war dragged on as reported by NBC News Of The World for May 25, 1942.

(In case you were getting all dewey-eyed for the 70s)

Before George P. Schultz landed in the Reagan Administration as Secretary of State, he served for a while as Treasury Secretary under Richard Nixon, right during the fabled Energy Crisis of the 1970s.

Granted, we hadn't gone through this kind of thing before. It was 1973 and we were about to be distracted in a big way by Watergate, but the thought of skyrocketing gas prices, panic buying at the pumps and oil companies raking in massive profits just hadn't happened this way before or to this extent.

And so everyone, including Schultz was busy scratching their heads wondering what to do as is evidence by this exchange during his appearance on Meet The Press from December 2, 1973.

Irving R. Levine (NBC News): “Would not higher prices for gasoline favor higher income groups to the disadvantage of lower paid people?”

Schultz: “Not necessarily. The . . obviously you have a family budget with so much purchase of gasoline and fuel oil, and to the extent that lower income groups use proportionate to their income a little bit more than higher income groups, it has some of that effect. But I don’t think it’s a major problem in the family budget.”

Levine: “ But would not a lower . . .

Schultz: “It’s much more of a problem than if we don’t pay the price that is necessary and we don’t have any fuel.”

Levine: “But would not a person with a big income feel free to buy whatever amount of gas is necessary to do the driving that he wishes to do, where a lower income person would not be able to?”

Schultz: “That is true of all kinds of things that are reflected in the buying power of people at different incomes.”

Levine: “ Do You oppose rationing entirely, even as a last resort?

Schultz: “Well I said it should be the absolute last resort, and I’m not really sure that it is a genuine alternative in the sense of being really a workable type of system. Of course there are various kinds of rationing, and depending on how its designed it could work better or worse. I think it is worth remembering that toward the end of World War Two we had patriotic fervor and so on, we had six thousand people in OPA, enforcing . .getting after people in the black market, which I think gives you an idea the difficulties of a rationing system.”

Okay, no simple answer. But the disconnect associated with "well, only higher income people drive" strikes me as typical Republican response. Even during the course of the interview, Schultz offers a few snide asides about higher and lower economic brackets. And of course, he was very much in favor of letting the marketplace go insane.

Remember the definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over expecting different results - or as a friend put it, doing the same thing over and over and knowing what the results are going to be.