I was writing something pretty close to this and decided to link to the Great Orange Satan.

KOS:

There will be much number-crunching tomorrow, but preliminary numbers (at least in Virginia) show that GOP turnout remained the same as last year, but Democratic turnout collapsed. This is a base problem, and this is what Democrats better take from tonight:

1. If you abandon Democratic principles in a bid for unnecessary "bipartisanship", you will lose votes.

2. If you water down reform in favor of Blue Dogs and their corporate benefactors, you will lose votes.

3. If you forget why you were elected -- health care, financial services, energy policy and immigration reform -- you will lose votes.

Tonight proved conclusively that we're not going to turn out just because you have a (D) next to your name, or because Obama tells us to. We'll turn out if we feel it's worth our time and effort to vote, and we'll work hard to make sure others turn out if you inspire us with bold and decisive action.

The choice is yours. Give us a reason to vote for you, or we sit home. And you aren't going to make up the margins with conservative voters. They already know exactly who they're voting for, and it ain't you.

Health care should have been passed by the August recess, but to have it go on and on has been a huge mistake. And waiting until next year only makes it worse.

From the department of You Can't Make This Sh*t Up:

Republican Rep. Tom Price, of Georgia, has introduced a House resolution that would, if passed, express the legislative body's "gratitude and appreciation" to Tea Party members who marched on Washington on Sept. 12 to "show their love of liberty and their grievance with recent government actions."

The proposed resolution is co-signed by more than 70 members of the House.

The proposed resolution would single for praise the "hundreds of thousands of American patriots, who refuse to sit idly by as the Federal Government advances skyrocketing deficits, taxpayer-funded bailouts, pork-barrel projects, burdensome taxes, unaccountable policy czars, command-and-control energy policy, and a government takeover of health care, came to Washington, D.C, to show their disapproval ..."

So let me get this straight...Price wants to pass a resolution that would praise anti-government, right wing extremists who want to overthrow their president? Really? If one single Democrat votes for this garbage, you can be sure we will call them out and ridicule them mercilessly.

Just to be clear, there weren't hundreds of thousands of people at that joke of a march on September 12th. And this was not an anti-tax march, this was a well funded hate-fest that was organized by Fox News and Glenn Beck.

You can read Price's entire resolution here. For added entertainment, click through to the original article and check out some of the comments. Didn't they learn anything from our Jon Perr's 10 Lessons for Teabaggers?

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David Sirota on CNN's American Morning explaining why the White House throwing Van Jones under the bus was such a terrible idea. They've done nothing but show the right wing that they will cave if they decide to attack a progressive working in the White House.

ROBERTS: The president hired Van Jones to find more green jobs, putting more Americans back to work and helping the environment. Now, Jones is looking for a job himself. He has been under fire for some pointed comments about Republicans and a petition that he signed back in 2004 questioning what the Bush White House knew about 9/11. He has now resigned.

To talk more about that, let's bring in syndicated columnist David Sirota and David Frum, the editor of newmajority.com and former speech writer for the Bush White House.

David Sirota, let's start with you, because you wrote quite a scathing column that appeared on the newleft.org and as well on the huffingtonpost.com, saying you're absolutely outraged by the way the White House handled this.

SIROTA: Van Jones is a national hero for his work on green jobs. He's known as an expert on energy policy, on economic policy. He's somebody who made a mistake, who acknowledged that he made a mistake a long time ago, and he was tossed out by this White House.

And I think what we can learn from what happened is what this White House values and what this White House doesn't value. The White House stuck by Tim Geithner as Tim Geithner was involved, the treasury secretary, in a tax scandal. He's accepted gifts from the banking industry. The White House stood by him.

The White House has stood by other people, like Ben Bernanke, who has really been at the heart of our economic problems. And they're basically putting Van Jones out to pasture because of something Van Jones said was a mistake.

And I think what's going on here is that the White House is listening to the white right wing's political terrorists, people like Glenn Beck, people like conservative activists who have targeted Van Jones because Van Jones is an African-American with a progressive movement background working on behalf of social justice.

That's something, unfortunately, that is apparently, according to the right wing, not allowed in this country.

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Take one cherry-picked quote, say that a newspaper has been "hiding" it when it has been on their website all along and hype the result through several different rightwing noise-makers. Result - a scandal which says that Obama would like to drive the coal industry bankrupt. One good enough for Sarah Palin to tout on the stump.

The original quote, presented in a cropped clip of an Obama interview that discussed his policy on climate change and carbon "cap and trade", looked terrible for Obama. Especially in places like West Virginia and Ohio:

That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants are being built, they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted-down caps that are imposed every year. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches.

But it's just the Right cherry-picking its quotes again to fabricate a smear out of whole cloth.

This from the same interview - and unmentioned by the unethical smear-merchants at Newsbusters, who first floated the rightwing's version of the truth:

"But this notion of no coal, I think, is an illusion. Because the fact of the matter is, is that right now we are getting a lot of our energy from coal. And China is building a coal-powered plant once a week. So what we have to do then is figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon. And how can we sequester that carbon and capture it. If we can’t, then we’re gonna still be working on alternatives."

Shows clearly that Obama meant only plants not using clean-coal technology would be hit.

And that is also McCain's position.

On June 21, 2005, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) told McCain in a Senate debate that his legislation to curb climate change would "put coal of out of business." McCain didn't contest that claim. Indeed McCain agreed that his legislation would "require sacrifice" acknowledging that critics said it would cost "thousands of jobs."

But you won't be hearing that from Newsbusters, Drudge, Malkin, Fox News, Palin or any of the many others who climbed on this "November Surprise" bandwagon.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

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Nate over at fivethirtyeight.com has a great post about a proposed energy plan that he argues -- quite persuasively -- Barack Obama would be wise to sign on to. The bipartisan legislation includes:

* Opens additional drilling areas in the Gulf of Mexico, and allows Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia to elect to permit drilling off their coasts. Existing bans on drilling off the West Coast, including in the ANWR, would be preserved.

* Dedicates $20 billion to R&D on alternative fuels for motor vehicles.

* Extends a series of tax credits and incentives, such as for the purchase of hybrid vehicles.

* Funds the above -- at total cost of about $84 billion -- by closing tax loopholes for petroleum companies, in conjunction with licensing fees. 

This is a compromise I would definitely be willing to consider. Although I am strongly opposed to offshore drilling because of its limited short-term impact and failure to address the larger issue of dependence on fossil fuels, the tax incentives, investment in alternative fuels, and closure of tax loopholes for oil companies are well worth the trade off. As Nate notes, McCain opposes the bill because of those tax loopholes. By supporting the legislation, Obama can show he is willing to tackle the energy crisis in a bipartisan fashion that ensures investment in future technologies, all the while showing how McCain is beholden to Big Oil. Sounds like a winning strategy to me.

Be sure to read the entire post, as it breaks down precisely why this would be a huge, perhaps election-sealing, gain for Obama, and catastrophic loss for McCain.

Benen adds his thoughts.

After all the stupidity and charade surrounding the GOP's attack on Obama --including this lampooning by Stephen Colbert -- for proposing a common sense approach to increasing fuel efficiency, McCain is forced to admit that it's a pretty good idea.

Reuters:

The surprise came during a telephone town hall meeting McCain held on Tuesday with voters in Pennsylvania.
    
“Obama said a couple of days ago says we all should inflate our tires. I don’t disagree with that. The American Automobile Association strongly recommends it,” McCain said.

But he kept up his broad criticism of Obama on energy: "I ... don't think that that (inflating tires) is a way to become energy independent."

Would that be another flip-flop, McSame?  Contrary to the Team McCain attacks, Obama never suggested that properly inflating your tires and keeping your engine tuned alone will make us energy independent. But as is always true with the Republican distortion machine, facts and context never get in the way of a good smear... even when the attacker admits that the target of the smear was right all along. 

There are more Colbert/Stewart videos on the campaign available at Indecision '08.

  Who knew Nancy Pelosi was such a straight-shooter? When Wolf Blitzer tries to pin part of the blame for the current energy crisis on the Democratic Congress, Pelosi shoots back by saying her House did everything it could to institute a sensible energy policy, only to have "run into a brick wall" in the form of Senate Republicans -- you know, the ones who broke the filibuster record for a full term last year.

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"The price of oil is... is attributed to two oil men in the White House and their protectors in the United States Senate."

While it might be easy (and typically accurate) to blame everything on President Bush and Vice President Cheney, I don't think it's unreasonable to lay the current crisis at the White House's doorstep. Sure, there are some uncontrollable market forces at work, but both Cheney and Bush are oil patch guys; it would be the height of naivete to assume that they would have an energy policy that didn't benefit Big Oil.

From Day One, Dick Cheney was plotting how to take over Iraq oil fields. Before the war, it was obvious to everyone that the invasion or Iraq, and the instability it would caused in the region, would only drive prices up further. For all the lip service President Bush pays to his commitment to renewable energy, the fact is spending has been on the stagnant since the mid-1990's.

What we really need is a leader with the wisdom to acknowledge the magnitude of the problem and the courage to tackle it head on. "Green Screen" John McCain is clearly not that leader.

  What else would you expect from a southern-Senator-turned-energy-lobbyist? Lott and his lobbying partner, former Louisiana Senator John Breaux, appeared on MSNBC today to make the joint case for drilling our way out of the energy crisis, and stressed that we need to start, like, yesterday. And if they have to lie in order to help their Big Oil clientele? So be it.

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One point since we're both from the gulf area. We didn't have one drop of oil spilt when we had the biggest hurricane in recent history, Hurricane Katrina.

Oh, the Big Oil apologist lie that won't ever die.There were, in fact, at least 124 oil spills as a result of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. But just like how "the Chinese are drilling off Florida!!", some of these talking points are just too useful to discontinue.

On another important point, Lott and Breaux represent perhaps the most vivid example of what's wrong with the current culture in Washington. All too often, we see former lawmakers retire (or in some cases leave office before their terms are even finished) so that they can take cushy positions at prestigious firms lobbying their former colleagues on behalf of the interests who can afford the biggest sum.

I like Al Franken's common-sense proposal: Extend the one year waiting period to a lifetime ban. Such a policy could only have beneficial results.

If this isn't instructive of how seriously the Republicans take the "War on Terror"™ and the horrible economic situation that their policies have put us in, I don't know what does. The RK blog found this lovely gem. On Friday's Fourth of July parade in Scottsville, VA, Democratic congressional nominee Tom Perriello threw candies at bystanders while riding in a trailer pulled by a bio-diesel fueled tractor.

How did GOP incumbent Virgil Goode (he who is petrified of Muslims being elected to Congress) participate in the same parade?

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Chart depicting the cost of crude oil, from 2004 to today.

The thread is now open. Today marks the one year anniversary of the passing of blogger Steve Gilliard. He was a great friend to C&L. We miss him.

During his nonsensical press conference today, President Bush argued that the best way to help the struggling economy and the staggering price of gas was to either start drilling immediately in ANWR or to get him a magic wand.

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Somehow if you mention ANWR it means you don't care about the environment. Well, I'm hoping now people, when they say "ANWR," means you don't care about the gasoline prices that people are paying.

[...]

I think that if there was a magic wand, and say, okay, drop price, I'd do that.

The sad reality is that this President has done nothing over the past 8 years to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, leaving us beholden to the skyrocketing prices -- which are due in large part to the instability we have created in the Middle East. It's a truly vicious circle.

Imagine if we had invested a fraction of what we spent in Iraq on sustainable energy. Gasoline could be well on it's way to being a relic of the past instead of one of the primary causes of the current recession. Considering both Bush and Cheney's extensive ties to the oil industry, I guess this shouldn't come as a big surprise.

Full transcript below the fold:

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