Lying, in fact, is the best-case scenario. What happened is that Dick Blumenthal, when asked point-blank whether he supported cap-and-trade, told a constituent ‘no.’ Surprisingly unambiguously, as the video below shows:
Note the ‘cap-and-trade is dead’ bit: it’ll be important later. Continue reading Dick Blumenthal (D CAND, CT-SEN) lies on cap-and-trade support.
Because of the Democrats’ decision to make immigration a priority.
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) decision to walk away from Senate talks on climate change and energy legislation – at least for now – has prompted the measure’s remaining architects to scuttle Monday’s planned unveiling of the bill.
[snip]
Graham is upset over Democratic plans to take up immigration legislation this year – he accuses Democratic leaders of pushing forward immigration “haphazardly” and calls it an election-year political gambit.
Of course, it’s an open question about how broken up Senate Democrats really are to not have to take up that particular piece of pandering to religious fanaticism just quite yet. It will be also interesting to see how this will affect the immigration bill debate: considering that even John McCain is sounding like he’s had a Road to Damascus (or road to the Arizona primary) moment, it is going to be very weird if Graham ends up supporting the immigration bill. Continue reading Graham torpedoes cap-and-trade bill rollout.
Now that the elections in NJ and VA are over – and now that there’s going to be some really critical votes coming up on both cap-and-trade and health care rationing – I just wanted to greet some members of the two states’ Congressional delegations.
(Link)
(Link)
Hi!
WE SEE YOU.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
‘Senator’ capitalized because the insecure often require that special little emphasis. In this case, SENATOR Boxer is demonstrating same by making a fairly pointless gesture that’s apparently fueled by pique:
Barbara Boxer may not only force her climate bill through the Environment and Public Works Committee without any Republican votes; aides say she could also do it without any Republicans in the room at all.
Boxer (D-Calif.) could exploit a loophole in committee rules that will allow her to approve the bill with a simple majority of the 12 Democrats on the committee, even if no Republicans are present. Republicans have vowed to boycott the proceeding.
This end run around Republicans — ignoring the usual rules that require at least two Republicans to be present for a quorum — could further hinder the chances for an already troubled cap-and-trade bill.
The problem here is that Senate Republicans are tired of Democrats forcing through legislation without analysis, deliberation, or in some cases, an opportunity to even read it; so they’re going to boycott the markup until they get a full EPA analysis. No attendance, no quorum, no markup. But SENATOR Boxer wants a bill to impress all those sophisticated Europeans at Copenhagen in December, so she’s going to alter the rules so as to force her version of the bill out via a rump committee. As the Politico article notes, this has other Democrats swearing, because: a, there was little likelihood of cap-and-trade being passed in a SENATOR Boxer-friendly form to begin with; b, there was not previously much chance of any version of cap-and-trade being passed by December anyway; and c, there is now effectively zero chance of either happening before the New Year. It’s trivially easy to slow legislation down to a crawl in the Senate, and there are now several motivated Republicans to demonstrate how to do that.
Marvelous work, SENATOR Boxer.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
Fair’s fair: if the previous administration had to take the heat for refusing to flush the American economy down the toilet for the sake of that nonsensical treaty, then so can this one. This one goes out to every voter whose primary motivation for voting Democratic was climate change:
The United States never ratified the agreement because it doesn’t require any action from the developing world, including China, the world’s largest emitter. The Bush administration considered that a fatal flaw. And so does the Obama White House.
“The notion that we should have an agreement which looks explicitly and exclusively at a handful of countries, doesn’t seem right. The whole purpose of this is to move the world to a better place, not to move one set of countries down that road,” said Jonathan Pershing, a top U.S. negotiator.
Odd how this never came up during the campaign; in fact, quite the opposite. Of course, now that the President’s in charge he has to actually do something besides pander to religious extremists like the Greens; so a more… nuanced stance becomes necessary. Besides, it’s not like “It’s Bush’s fault” isn’t this administration’s handy-dandy, one size fits all excuse anyway.
Via Ronald Bailey of Reason Hit & Run (via Instapundit), who wants to know when Waxman-Markey’s going to go away now. I assume that he’s being sarcastic: there’s too much money earmarked towards Democratic allies in that monstrosity to make it disappear right away.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
Washington Post: The Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill is popular, as long as it doesn’t cost people more than $25 a month. Then it craters (Via The Conservatives.com).
Rasmussen: The Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill is unpopular, with the people who hate it really hating it and the people who like it only kind of liking it (Via The Campaign Spot).
Senate Democrats: The not-particularly-sudden death of Senator Kennedy requires that the bill be delayed again (Via Don Surber).
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Senate Democrats have already made up their own minds over whether they believe Rasmussen, or the Washington Post.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
For the benefit of any hypothetical researcher from, say, the 2050s or so – hey, how are you folks doing, up there? Have the Cubs won a World Series yet? – let me just note the two major mistakes that the current administration made that seem to have seriously complicated the passage of their health care rationing bill.
No, not a typo.
[UPDATE]: I’m hearing that Scott Rigell will be working with the NRCC. Another good recruitment pickup for next year.
It’s amazing how quickly Democratic Congressmen pick up the bad habits of their older colleagues. In Glenn Nye’s (VA-02) case, shameless double-talk. The NRCC is happy to point out how you can’t really be proud of getting a cap-and-trade bill passed that you cynically voted against:
It actually gets even better than the campaign commercial says: according to this Democratic site, Rep. Nye bragged about his support and opposition to the cap-and-trade bill to the same person (via Jim Geraghty). Just in case the posts go away later, here are the screen captures:
Seldom does one see this level of self-serving nonsense by a Democratic Congressman be so brilliantly expressed.
Moe Lane
PS: He has a GOP challenger, of course. Scott Rigell, a local auto dealership owner, former Marine, and long-time Republican with one heck of a buyer’s remorse at this point. Cook has the district at Rep+5, and this one’s on everybody’s list. Remove yet another seat from the Safe Democrat list: that’s been happening a lot lately, huh?
Crossposted to RedState.
(Via Hot Air) Plenty enough for cloture.
So they can go ahead and pass that damned cap-and-trade bill of theirs already, and stop bugging the GOP on it. We have midterm elections to prepare for.
Oh my yes, we have midterm elections to prepare for.
Crossposted to RedState.
Part 4 and Part 5 of his cap-and-trade review are up. Part 4 goes in quickly about the differences between the cap-and-trade restrictions of Waxman-Markey and the Clean Air Act (very quickly: it’s the difference between carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide); Part 5 discusses the problems that W-M is going to give Texas specifically. Still remaining: the Chinese connection and how people can get involved.
Energy policy is going to loom rather large, running up the 2010 elections; should KBH resign her seat to run for Governor, it would be helpful to have this guy in there. Heck, I wouldn’t mind having him in there now.
Moe Lane
PS: He’ll be at the RS Gathering.
Full disclosure: I am in regular contact with the Michael Williams campaign, and I endorse him as a replacement to Senator Hutchison, should she resign her Senate seat.
Crossposted to RedState.
