From NOW on PBS--Power Struggle. More available here.

This is what I hate having to explain to my relatives and friends abroad in Europe about politics in the US. We know that global warming is a fact. We know that our actions, if they didn't cause global warming, definitely exacerbate it. We know that we must reduce our dependency on oil, for both ecological and political/strategic reasons. And yet, what we are able to do is hampered so predictably by the Republican party:

Here we go again. James Inhofe, the most prominent climate change denier in the United States Senate, has concocted a new and innovative strategy to thwart the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. To wit, he and his Republican colleagues on the Environment and Public Works Committee have worked up a plan to simply not show up for next week’s markup:

But Boxer cannot hold the markup unless at least two Republicans show up, and EPW ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) signaled that he has unanimous support among the panel’s minority members to boycott the session until they get more data on the legislation from U.S. EPA and the Congressional Budget Office.

Inhofe said he will wait for Boxer to file an official notice of the markup — expected today — before responding with his own declaration of the GOP’s markup strategy.

“As soon as we find out what her announcement is and what she wants to do, we’ll have our response,” Inhofe told E&E last night. “We’ll have our unanimous expression ready.”

Sadly, this is a continuation of the GOP’s longstanding strategy of delaying clean energy legislation:

• As Chairman Markey shepherded his American Clean Energy and Security Act through the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Republicans employed multiple parliamentary tricks to — as Politico put it — “nitpick the bill into legislative oblivion.” Brian Beutler called these nefarious stall tactics, and noted that Democrats responded by hiring a speed reader.
• Last year during the debate over the Climate Security Act, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell demanded that the entire 491 page bill be read on the floor of the United States Senate. A strategy memo was leaked at the time detailing the Republican strategy for delaying the bill as much as humanly possible.

While this Republican obstructionism is not necessarily surprising, it is especially egregious this time. Here are a few things about this episode that struck me:

1. Despite the fact that Senator Inhofe has been working to orchestrate this obstruction for a week now, Republicans are pretending the effort is being led by the two moderate Republicans on the committee. Politico handled the stenography.

The Politco, acting as a mouthpiece for the Republican Party? Say it isn't so!

Can you imagine how much further we'd get in this country if we didn't have so many idiots in office?

Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue gave an interview to the Politico yesterday, the majority of which is your basic claptrap posturing after the White House put the Chamber of Commerce in its place and called it a lobbying group: the White House is wrong, membership is stronger than ever, yadda yadda yadda. Apparently, all those companies that have left the CoC, like Nike, PG&E, Exelon, PNM Resources, and Apple over their climate change stance are just penny-ante companies not worth worrying about.

But showing that they are firm in their resolve to not budge from their 20th century industrial age thinking here in the 21st century, I noted this little nugget from Donohue:

Under pressure from MoveOn.org and other groups, Apple, PG&E and Exelon have left the Chamber over the issue — and Nike resigned from its spot on the board. And pressure on others to follow suit is often intense.

Donohue refused to say if he believes the science behind global warming. “Is the science right? Is science not right? I don’t know,” he said.

Interesting. Especially considering his comments last week:

“We have not, are not and will not” challenge the science behind climate change, he added, noting that the Chamber has for years called for comprehensive climate legislation “that is workable.”

Uh huh. We go back to yesterday's Politico interview:

What he does know, though, is that he’ll fight anything that the Chamber believes would unfairly harm business, especially if the Environmental Protection Agency moves forward, while Congress haggles, with its authority to regulate the release of greenhouse gases.

“If we got the EPA one, then we are in deep sh-- as a country,” he said. “You want to see unemployment? You will see some.”

Good to see your priorities straight. Who cares about poisoning the planet (and us with it) if it means unemployment?

MoveOn's campaign encouraged Prius-owning members to send pictures of their cars to Toyota to express their displeasure with their continued membership in the CoC. If you're a Prius driver, you may want to consider adding your picture as well.

The opening to the movie version of Hitchhiker's Guide, not as good as the BBC version, imo, but then this movie version had a bigger budget. It turns out** that's not always a good thing in entertainment.

**Douglas Adams in The Salmon of Doubt: “Incidentally, am I alone in finding the expression ‘it turns out’ to be incredibly useful? It allows you to make swift, succinct, and authoritative connections between otherwise randomly unconnected statements without the trouble of explaining what your source or authority actually is. It’s great. It’s hugely better than its predecessors ‘I read somewhere that...’ or the craven ‘they say that...’ because it suggests not only that whatever flimsy bit of urban mythology you are passing on is actually based on brand new, ground breaking research, but that it’s research in which you yourself were intimately involved. But again, with no actual authority anywhere in sight.”

Open thread below.

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(And some still think otherwise)

It's incredible that at this late date there are people still convinced the idea of Global Warming is the thing of hoaxes and myths. Even more incredible to think we had an administration so wrapped around the fingers of the Petroleum Industry that the EPA, an agency brought about for the protection of just plain folks, was gutted to the point of extinction because arrogance had the upper hand and propaganda still pollutes the discussion.

In 2004 BBC Radio 4 ran a series of documentaries on Global Warming where much of the fault was laid at the odoriferous feet of the Bush Administration and the arrogant denial anything could possibly be wrong. And anyone with the audacity to question was sent packing.

Jeremy Simons (former EPA chief under Clinton): “Often in the climate change debate new scientific studies emerge, and there was a new scientific study at the time that was funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute. It’s been very controversial. They wanted that study referenced and they wanted to take out language that had been approved by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences that said climate change was a real and established threat. They wanted to basically sow confusion into the debate on the science . . . there has definitely been a growing rift between the White House and EPA. EPA really is an agency in crisis right now. Because the White House has an agenda, they know what their environmental agenda is – it’s closely aligned with what Industry wants it to pursue, and that doesn’t often match up with what the sciences . . .EPA staff objectives are actually fairly straightforward; it’s to get good information out, and that’s been a conflict with the spin that the White House has wanted to put on environmental measures.”

And five years later . . .

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This post should have gone up the other day, but I accidentally deleted it. Anyway, many Republicans in Congress think that the teabaggers are just your average extreme wingnut who has been radicalized by FOX, but still loves them their conservatives.

Well, Lindsey Graham got a taste of what has been going on far more times than the media will ever mention. Part of the teabagger base has no love for the warmongering Bushies either. They are too ignorant to apply the same rules for Beck and Hannity because they need leaders to focus their hatred for them, but Lindsey does not have such a luxury. They want the country to be made up of militia-style right wingers that are heavily armed and want no part of the black president.

Brad Johnson fills us in.

Right-wing activists across the nation are enraged by Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) decision to work with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) to craft comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation. In an op-ed published in Sunday’s New York Times, Graham and Kerry discussed their agreement on a framework for mandatory global warming pollution reductions linked to government support for the nuclear, coal, and natural gas industries. The Natural Resource Defense Council’s Dan Lashof embraced the announcement as a “game changer.” Bill Scher noted that Graham has “crossed the climate Rubicon,” abandoning denialist conservative activists by recognizing the threat of global warming and working with Democrats.
--
Graham held a town hall meeting in Greenville, South Carolina in which local Tea Party activists accused him of “going to bed with John Kerry” and making a “pact with the devil,” accusations which generated tremendous applause by the assembled crowd. This unhinged response is reflected in the conservative blogosphere, where Graham has been called a “fake Republican,” “RINO” (Republican in name only), a “traitor,” “disgrace,” “asshat,” “democrat in drag,” and a “wussypants, girly-man, half-a-sissy”

You can expect this behavior for a long time. If Dick Armey were still part of the Republican congress, he too would be getting the same treatment if he tried to help solve some problems facing America today with any Democratic politician. Instead, he's out there helping organize these characters -- at the behest of the insurance companies. Guys like Graham get to deal with the beast they've unleashed.

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From the Rachel Maddow Show Oct. 5, 2009. Rachel reiterates this report from TPMDC--The GOP's New Foreign Policy: Undermine American Diplomacy:

An interesting pattern has been emerging in the Republican Party's handling of foreign policy: Individual GOP officials are now making a regular point of not only formulating an alternative foreign policy, to be presented to the American people and debated in Congress -- they're acting on it too, and undermining the official White House policies at multiple turns.

• Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is visiting Honduras in order to support the recent military coup against a leftist president, which has been opposed by the Obama administration and all the surrounding countries in the region. (Late Update: DeMint's office says he is not taking sides during his visit to the current Honduran leadership, denying the New York Times reports that this was his intention.)

• Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) will be going to the upcoming climate change conference in Copenhagen, bringing a "Truth Squad" to tell foreign officials there that the American government will not take any action: "Now, I want to make sure that those attending the Copenhagen conference know what is really happening in the United States Senate."

• House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) traveled to Israel, where he spoke out against President Obama's opposition to expanded settlements. He also defended Israel on the eviction of two Arab families from a house in east Jerusalem, which had been criticized by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

• Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) boasted in June that he told Chinese officials not to trust America's budget numbers. "One of the messages I had -- because we need to build trust and confidence in our number one creditor," said Kirk, "is that the budget numbers that the US government had put forward should not be believed." Since then, he has declared his candidacy for U.S. Senate.

Anyone remember this statement by Trent Lott when some Democratic Congressmen dared to visit Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion?

Lott raps U.S. congressman in Iraq:

Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, who is one of three House members visiting Iraq to urge Iraqi officials to avert war by allowing U.N. weapons inspectors back in, has acted irresponsibly, Lott said.

"For him to be in Baghdad, the center of one of the most dangerous dictators in the world, with all kinds of weapons of mass destruction, to be questioning the veracity of our own American president, is the height of irresponsible," said Lott, R-Mississippi. "He needs to come home and keep his mouth shut."

Or these attacks on Nancy Pelosi for going to Syria? Pelosi's Syria Trip: Media Advancing Right-Wing Spin.

As always, IOKIYAR.

Update. Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

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Countdown's Worst Persons segment for Oct. 5, 2009 with winner Rep. Paul Broun. Runners up George Will and Rush Limbaugh.

Majikthise: Population economists take note: Madame Curie had her Nobel Prize first, her baby second.

Bay of Fundie: Sadly, yes. Plus some awesome book reviews.

Rev. Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping: A Peace Activist Thinks about G-20.

Phydeaux Speaks: Poll numbers say whuh?

Wonkette: I think we've got our campaign video for 2010. Vote Progressive or vote with this guy.

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Real Time's New Rules for Sept. 25, 2009.

Maher: And finally if America can't get off its back and get something done it must lose the bald eagle as our symbol and replace it with the You Tube video of the puppy that can't get up. As long as we're pathetic, we might as well act like it's cute.

Now, this doesn't even make sense. Because if it was a threat to national security, the Republicans would have taken care of it already, right? RIGHT?

WASHINGTON — The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.

An exercise last December at the National Defense University, an educational institute that is overseen by the military, explored the potential impact of a destructive flood in Bangladesh that sent hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming into neighboring India, touching off religious conflict, the spread of contagious diseases and vast damage to infrastructure. “It gets real complicated real quickly,” said Amanda J. Dory, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, who is working with a Pentagon group assigned to incorporate climate change into national security strategy planning.

Much of the public and political debate on global warming has focused on finding substitutes for fossil fuels, reducing emissions that contribute to greenhouse gases and furthering negotiations toward an international climate treaty — not potential security challenges.

But a growing number of policy makers say that the world’s rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest.

So last week the Thune Amendment was thankfully defeated. A group I work with, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, took on the task of defeating this insane legislation, which only had a chance of passing due to the extremism of the NRA/Birther crowd and the ever-present cowardice of the usual Blue Dog Democrats.

I guess they weren't busy enough trying to destroy health care reform or climate-change legislation, so overriding state laws trying to prevent criminals from enjoying the right to concealed carry seemed like a good idea.

Thankfully, the NRA lost a gun battle for the first time in five years, but no thanks to squeamish Blue-Dog Democrats. Take Colorado Democratic Senators Udall and Bennet, for example. They waited to the end to vote, as if calculating which way to go right up until the last possible moment, and then voted with the gun nuts. Interestingly, two Republicans from generally pro-gun states, Senators George Voinovich of Ohio and Dick Lugar of Indiana, didn't feel a need to cave to the Bonkers Wing of the GOP. Nor did some other Democrats from pro-gun states, like Senators Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Bill Nelson of Florida and Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

In response, a Columbine dad, who suffered what is the nightmare scenario for all of us with children in school, decided to remind these two men about what is and is not leadership in today's Denver Post. It says everything that needs to be said on this issue, as well as a host of others the Blue Dogs continue to practice duck & cover.

Sadly, the biggest threat to rational legislating right now is not from Republicans, who are and should be irrelevant, but from Blue Dogs. These people need to be taught not to fear their big contributors, but We The People.

(**As I stated in the piece, I am working with Mayors Against Illegal Guns.)

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OK, pop some popcorn and pull up a chair. Glenn Beck is calling out the dogs … on Republicans.

He ran a special segment last night urging his audience descend en masse upon the “Cap and Traitors” – Republican House members who actually voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill last Friday – all eight of them. With him to seal the deal was the Washington Examiner's Kevin Mooney, who besides being in need of a new suit was also in need of a logic text:

Beck: Now, there are eight Republicans who voted for cap and trade. ... Look at this map that we put up. It looks like all of the votes -- there it is -- it looks like all of these votes -- and we're going to have some showers -- uh -- all of the votes really came, half of the votes, more than half -- from those areas. The West Coast and from the liberal Northeast.

Mooney: Well, Glenn, you're put your finger on it. Uh, the votes, whether they're Democrat or Republican, in favor of this bill, out of the coastal areas, the elite areas of this country, they're areas of the country where the energy prices are already high. Democrats and Republicans voted against this bill in other parts of the country where they already are using other fossil fuels and have lower energy prices.

Beck: Isn't it interesting that those are the areas that are collapsing the fastest?

Mooney and Beck, not to put too fine a point on it, are full of crap. Just by way of example, look at my own home state of Washington, whose delegation voted strongly for the bill, and is included on their list of "coastal states" whose energy prices are supposedly too high. In reality -- somewhere far distant from these guys' residence on Planet Wingnuttia -- Washington's energy prices are among some of the lowest in the nation (for instance, our electricity costs are far below the national average, since we get so much of it from hydroelectric sources. Likewise for Oregon, another "elite coastal" state. Meanwhile, some of the nation's highest electricity costs can also be found in Florida and Texas -- some of the "non-elite" states on Beck's graphic.

And Glenn? Our economy here in Washington is far from collapsing. The housing bubble didn't overinflate as much here as elsewhere -- including, say Florida and Texas. And we have Microsoft and Boeing. So we're hurting, yes -- but we'll be fine. No thanks to the right-wing ideologues like yourself who wrecked the national economy.

Phony methodology aside, it is in any event always fun to see the right savage its own -- because nearly all of the eight Republicans who voted for the bill came from vulnerable districts. Dave Reichert, from Washington's 8th District, just barely survived two tough challenges from Darcy Burner, and did so in part by selling himself as friendly to environmentalists. And indeed, he comes from a district that has never elected a Democrat, but whose growing technology-worker base is a rapidly changing demographic politically -- and particularly big on environmental issues.

So we're happy to see them get hell from the Glenn Beck wing of their party. It just reminds the large mass of swing voters in the 8th District and others like it, once again, why it's stupid to vote even for a "moderate" Republican -- because they will always be overwhelmed by the pseudo-populist Wingnuttians who dominate the GOP at all levels. Especially the pundit one.

NewsHounds:

The headline of the linked article is “House Passes Milestone Energy, Climate Change Bill.” Obviously not happy with the AP headline, the Fox Nation writers, in order to put it in right wing terms the pitchfork gang can understand and appreciate, tweaked it thusly: “Treason? House Passes Direct Assault On Industrial Base.” It is accompanied by a photo of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The AP article is what real journalism is all about, as it describes what happened in the House of Representatives with no reference to “treason.” The Fox Nation headline is a subjective statement of pure right wing propaganda by those who haven’t read the constitution and is aimed at those who are constitutionally illiterate. But then, in Fox Nation, anyone who dares disagree with the solons of right wing dogma are traitors. Republican Rep Michele Bachman claims that Jesus has taken care of global warming, so why worry? BTW, Republican Representative John Shimkus said that "This is the largest assault on democracy and freedom in this country that I have ever experienced.” He didn’t accuse the other side of treason. But it’s ironic, don’t ya think, that the same folks who accused those of disagreeing with Bush administration of being traitors, are now those who are disagreeing with the Obama administration to the point of advocating secession.

I swear, these Murdoch minions will not be happy until there's a full-out civil war in this country.

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While the cable news channels decided that nothing else was going on other than the death of Michael Jackson, John Boehner was on the floor of the House doing his best job to pretend he is in the Senate filibustering a piece of legislation. He was supposed to be using his two and a half minutes alloted to him to wrap up debate on the energy bill and carried on for well over an hour instead.

The entire fiasco looked like nothing less than cheap showmanship and games to me, with Michelle Bachmann for the better part of the hour in the background with the rest of the Republican peanut gallery yelling "Yeah!!! You go John!!!...Keep going!!!" every chance she got.

The party of "No" isn't too good at governing when given the opportunity, but they sure are good at theatrics.

You can watch the entire thing at CSPANJunkie's new site: Minority Leader John Boehner On The Clean Energy & Climate Change Bill. I've just got the last few minutes of his freedom lovin' diatribe here.

The bill passed, barely, but all this exercise appeared to be to me was Boehner seeing if he could talk long enough to make a few members of the House get tired of listening to him and leave. Games. Political theater, pure and simple. No one likes this bill on either side and it appears the sausage makers have mucked it up enough that is not a good bill. Boehner didn't need an hour long rant to get that point across.

David Waldman's got a summary of the bill at Congress Matters:
American Clean Energy and Security Act.

He makes a good point that goes to the hypocrisy of Boehner's theatrics yesterday as well. Will the Republicans actually read their substitute bill they're likely to offer? Here's a "Read the Bill" question for you...

I wish I'd been paying closer attention to this, because now I have a whole lot of questions that weren't there before I read Matt Taibbi's latest story for Rolling Stone: "How Goldman Sachs took over Washington by engineering every major market manipulation since the Great Depression."

But first, the "good" news:

WASHINGTON -- Landmark legislation to curb U.S. greenhouse gas emissions was approved by the House of Representatives in a close vote late Friday, securing a hard-fought victory for a cornerstone of President Barack Obama's agenda.

After months of negotiations, the Democratic-controlled House has narrowly passed sweeping legislation calling for the nation's first-ever limits on pollution linked to global warming. Stephen Power explains the bill's implications.

The 1,200 page bill—formally known as the "American Clean Energy and Security Act"—will reach into almost every corner of the U.S. economy. By putting a price on emissions of common gases, such as carbon dioxide, the bill would affect the way electricity is generated, how homes and offices are designed, how foreign trade is conducted and how much Americans pay to drive or to heat their homes.

Talking about how very deeply Goldman Sachs is embedded in the investors that will profit from cap-and-trade, Taibbi says:

Well, you might say, who cares? If cap-and-trade succeeds, won't we all be saved from the catastrophe of global warming? Maybe - but cap-and-trade, as envisioned by Goldman, is really just a carbon tax so that private interests collect the revenues. Instead of simply imposing a fixed government levy on carbon pollution and forcing unclean energy producers to pay for the mess they make, cap-and-trade will allow a small tribe of greedy-as-hell Wall Street swine to turn yet another commodities market into a private tax-collection scheme. This is worse than the bailout: It allows the bank to seize taxpayer money before it's even collected.

"If it's going to be a tax, I would prefer that Washington set the tax and collect it," says Michael Masters, the hedge-fund director who spoke out against oil-futures speculation. "But we're saying that Wall Street can set the tax, and Wall Street can collect the tax. That's the last thing in the world I want. It's just asinine."

Cap-and-trade is going to happen. [Ed. note - this was published yesterday.] Or, if it doesn't, something like it will. The moral is the same for all the other bubbles that Goldman helped create, from 1929 to 2009. In almost every case, the very same bank that behaved recklessly for years, weighing down the system with toxic loans and predatory debt, and accomplishing nothing but massive bonuses for a few bosses, has been rewarded with mountains of virtually free money and government guarantees - while the actual victims in this mess, ordinary taxpayers, are the ones paying for it.

It's not always easy to accept the reality of what we now routinely allow these people to get away with; there's a kind of collective denial that kicks in when a country goes through what America has gone through lately, when a people lose as much prestige and status as we have in the past few years. You can't really register the fact that you're no longer a citizen of a thriving first-world democracy, that you're no longer above getting robbed in broad daylight, because like an amputee, you still sort of feel things that are no longer there.

But this is it. This is the world we live in now. And in this world, some of us have to play by the rules, while others get a note from the principal excusing them from homework until the end of time, plus 10 billion free dollars in a paper bag to buy lunch. It's a gangster state, running on gangster economics, and even prices can't be trusted anymore; there are hidden taxes in every buck you pay. And maybe we can't stop it, but we should at least know where it's all going.

RS hasn't put it online but really, I strongly recommend buying the issue to support this kind of journalism.

You can read some comments on the piece here, here and here.

Oh, and you can read a related Taibbi piece here.