Mother Jones: Did Obama Kill the Climate Bill?

[amborin]

Did Obama Kill the Climate Bill?

The Senate's climate bill is officially dead. And given that Democrats will almost certainly hold fewer seats in Congress next year, major action on the climate is unlikely to be revived anytime soon. Andrew Revkin, Joe Romm, and Tim Dickinson place a fair share of the blame on Obama. From Dickinson's widely-quoted Rolling Stone piece yesterday:

Handled correctly, the BP spill should have been to climate legislation what September 11th was to the Patriot Act, or the financial collapse was to the bank bailout. Disasters drive sweeping legislation, and precedent was on the side of a great leap forward in environmental progress. In 1969, an oil spill in Santa Barbara, California – of only 100,000 barrels, less than the two-day output of the BP gusher – prompted Richard Nixon to create the EPA and sign the Clean Air Act. But the Obama administration let the opportunity slip away.

Early on, Obama failed to challenge blowhards such as Senator Jim Inhofe who distorted the science of global warming. Revkin points out that the president has not invited researchers and climate analysts to the White House (as even Bush did). And after BP's well blew out, Obama's infamously milquetoast address from the Oval Office never connected the disaster with the need for a cap on carbon. All of this wasn't for a lack of pressure from his allies. Nine high-profile environmental groups wrote a letter to the president pleading that "nothing less than your direct personal involvement" will break the logjam in the Senate. Al Gore ultimately said what Obama wouldn't:

snip

http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/07/climate-bill-dead-harry-reid-obama

[xchrom]

1. ruh-roh. nt

[zipplewrath]

2. One can only conclude

That Obama doesn't WANT the climate bill passed right now. Any number of potential reason, including issues of political capital. But he had a chance and let it pass which can only mean he didn't want to do it, or he would have seized the opportunity.

[joeybee12]

6. He doesn't seem to want anything that might do some good passed...

...on any number of topics.

[jpak]

20. oh please

:rofl:

[Bluebear]

24. /ignore. Stupid responses with derisive emoticons do nothing for me.

[jpak]

25. Sorry - inane anti-Obama comments make me laugh

they really do

[Warren DeMontague]

29. You need to respect that Mother Jones took time out from enabling James Dobson

to tackle this egregious Obama sell-out.

[Bluebear]

31. Protecting women from porn victimization = enabling James Dobson. OK. ..ignore you too!

enough.

======
But by far the most compelling argument came from Shelley Lubben, who during the 1990s performed under the name "Roxy" in such screen gems as The Cumm Brothers 3 and Beaver Hunt. She eventually left the business, found the Lord—Lubben showed up at the event with Bible in hand—and founded the Pink Cross Foundation, a nonprofit that offers support to adult industry workers.

Lubben described how her porn career left her with incurable herpes, papilloma virus, and ultimately cervical cancer. She is anemic, she added, due to hemorrhaging from reproductive injuries sustained during filming. "The last thing I want to do, people, is talk about porn," she said, dabbing her eyes with tissues. "I have been hit, spit on, penetrated in every orifice imaginable."

She also worked for a while as a prostitute: "At least with prostitution, you get a dinner sometimes." Her story had the kid sitting next to me weeping. Beyond pimps and porn producers, Lubben spoke of an epidemic of suicides and other violent deaths of film stars, and talked forcefully about the doctors who collaborate with the industry to keep the performers "wasted" most of the time on prescription drugs. "This isn't happening underground," she said. "This is happening in America."


http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/06/federal-porn-regulation-shelley-lubben

[Warren DeMontague]

35. Okay, so consenting adults can make their own decisions, except when they can't.

As for the "ignore"... can't say I'm surprised. Fling endless amounts of Obama-bashing poo, then ignore all opposing viewpoints. Very brave. Might as well get a subscription to MJ, clearly they're trying to appeal to that dwindling, aging demographic of the so-called "left" that consists of pearl clutching, authoritarian, would-be morality police.

[Warren DeMontague]

37. More from this fun article: Like, "technology has made the right's argument far more compelling"

Compelling to whom? People inclined to ban it anyway, people who have spent the past 30 years buying into Andrea Dworkin's bullshit about all hetero-sex being rape?

I'd like to know who the "several academic types" were... you know, the ones who "compared porn to drug addiction".

(and what's an "academic type"? Is that the sort of credential you can put on a resume?)

Think any of them were this lady? Dr. Judith Reisman, the Bush/Christian Right funded "researcher" who came up with the dubious, half-baked notion that looking at pictures of naked humans produces something called "erototoxins" in the brain, and as such, must must MUST be controlled like crack cocaine? (Wouldn't regular sex do it, too? Paging George Orwell, your Anti-Sex League is on line 1)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/jul/14/farout


So, really, I'd like to know- consenting adults watching other consenting adults fuck... should it be legal? "erototoxins" and all? What about gay porn? Does that "harm women", too? Or should we only be censoring the hetero stuff? And at what other point, when obstensibly consenting adults make choices we personally don't approve of, do we get to say that they're obviously not capable of making their own decisions?

Really, I'm curious.

[Warren DeMontague]

39. I'll see your woodchuck, and raise you a giant

Help! Someone doesn't agree with me! Ignore! Ignore! Bwwwwaaaaaaakkk!

[hedgehog]

3. If so, and I don't necessarily agree with the premise,

was it an accident, manslaughter or murder?

[Jackpine Radical]

4. I think you are about to be overwhelmed by enraged

(but nevertheless sensible) woodchucks.

[Bluebear]

5. Mother Jones never really loved him!

:cry:

[Karmadillo]

7. Well, he was the Senate's most enthusiastic supporter of subsidies for liquid coal.

nt

[ProSense]

8. Oh brother,

In 1969, an oil spill in Santa Barbara, California – of only 100,000 barrels, less than the two-day output of the BP gusher – prompted Richard Nixon to create the EPA and sign the Clean Air Act. But the Obama administration let the opportunity slip away.

The spill didn't prompt Nixon to do shit. The massive protests did.

From The Hill:

Liberal and environmental activists say that Democrats will not suffer in November because of their failure to pass Senate climate change legislation.

Charles Chamberlain, political director of Democracy for America, an advocacy group founded by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, said liberal voters are happy that a climate bill sponsored by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) was shelved.

“The reality is that the base didn’t have a lot at stake in the climate bill,” said Chamberlain.

“After the BP disaster, all we’ve heard from our members, the No. 1 issue is climate change and offshore oil drilling and oil,” he said. “But we polled our members about whether we should be fighting for the bill and it wasn’t even close. The answer was no.”

<...>

People don't seem to know what the hell they want. They've spent the last several months slamming Kerry's bill and now want to blame the administration for killing it?

Good grief.

[babylonsister]

9. Now share the correct title, not what you wish it was.

:eyes:

[Uncle Joe]

12. Scroll down to the second column on the link.

"Did Obama Kill the Climate Bill?

By Josh Harkinson"

[babylonsister]

14. Thanks, I saw it, but also saw the first. nt

[katandmoon]

10. K&R

[Uncle Joe]

11. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, amborin.

[jpak]

13. Well of course The Bad Obama is to blame - who else would we blame?

Republicans?

nahhh...

[Bluebear]

15. Anything to comment on in the article itself?

[jpak]

16. Yeah it was typical Obama hatin' - no republicans to blame

nope

[Bluebear]

18. Yes, Mother Jones has a reputation of hatin' Democrats.

:silly:

[jpak]

19. I read the article - how hard were they on the GOP opposition to the climate and energy bills?

they hardly mentioned it - and they never once used the word "republican" in that stupid smear piece.

Obama didn't kill the climate or energy bills - it was GOP opposition in the Senate.

yup

[Ignis]

21. Doesn't it just?

Why, I remember when MJ was shilling for the IRW and defending insane bonuses for bailed-out banksters, don't you?

:freak:

[Bluebear]

22. They've always been pro-Corporate and anti-worker.

:shill:

[dflprincess]

38. They're just following in the footsteps of their namesake

no one in history was ever more pragmatic than Mother Jones herself. :wink:

[Warren DeMontague]

26. Last article I read from them, they were echoing the American Family Ass argument to ban adult porn.

So, really, I'm dubious as to whether they have any sort of coherent, intelligent agenda going right now--- beyond simple shit-stirring.

If we want to put the blame on the climate bill squarely where it belongs, we need look no farther than the framers of the US Constitution, specifically the part that gave unequal power in the United States Senate- power which is weighted heavily towards rural, conservative voters (not to mention, say, the interests of coal producing states)

Who 'killed' the Climate Bill? The Senate.

[Bluebear]

30. Their article on porn was not religious, it was because porn is anti-woman.

So, really, I'm dubious whether they are "shit-stirrers" or whether you are just an apologist. Bye.

[Warren DeMontague]

34. Oh, yeah, no one has ever tried that tack before.

"Porn" is one of two things, if anything: It's either in the eye of the beholder a la Potter Stewart, or it's consenting adults watching other consenting adults fuck.

I don't care what the alleged justification is, censorship is censorship.

[SidDithers]

17. No...nt

Sid

[BzaDem]

23. Anyone who claims that "leadership" can win over Republicans is a joke.

"The Senate, exhausted in the wake of its tough votes heath care and financial reform, might have never overcome a filibuster. And, to be fair, Obama has already done more for the climate than any president before him. But no matter: The confluence of a huge Democratic congressional majority and a huge ecological catastrophe wrought by the fossil fuel industry could have presented a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rewrite the rules of climate politics."

Might?

MIGHT?

ARE YOU SERIOUS?

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

These "reporters" need to be fired.

[meow mix]

27. starting to miss ol lefty nixon

as our failboat continues on..

[bvar22]

28. K&R......another missed opportunity

"But the Obama administration let the opportunity slip away."

That will be the epitaph for the Obama Administration.

In 2008, The American People gave the Democrats:
*A filibuster-proof MAJORITY in the Senate
*A HUGE Majority in the House
*The White House
*and, most importantly, a huge POPULAR MANDATE for "CHANGE".
A Once in a Generation Opportunity for REAL REFORM...

What Obama gave back was Centrism, protecting the Status Quo, "seeking Bi-Partisan Consensus", incrementalism, and a few minor adjustments around the edges.

"But the Obama administration let the opportunity slip away."

"If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for,
at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them."
--- Paul Wellstone

[Proud Liberal Dem]

32. Obama is apparently supposed to walk on water and be able to do anything

Therefore, one can reasonably conclude that if something considered "good"- by which I mean anything suitable to or advocated for by the vast majority of progressives in this country- is killed, "watered down" to an unacceptable point, dropped, or simply not advocated for "enough", then Obama didn't really want it or care enough about it to use his MASSIVE political clout to do something about it. There are 59 Democrats in the Senate, and a majority in the House. They are completely nothing compared to the power of "The Obama"!

:sarcasm:

Does this sound about right???? :eyes:

I also see that some people seem to either really think Obama is like Bush or should be more like Bush. I personally didn't like how Bush and his fellow Republicans hijacked September 11th, 2001 for their own political ends and I do NOT want Obama doing the same with this oil spill out in the gulf or any other tragedy that might unfold during his Presidency.

[AtomicKitten]

33. or "Why Lindsay Graham Killed The Climate Change Bill"

http://theweek.com/article/index/203882/why-lindsey-graham-killed-the-climate-change-bill-3-theories.com">LINK

The moderate Republican ditched his own climate and energy bill because it curbed offshore drilling. What was he thinking?

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) says he no longer plans to vote for an energy and climate bill he wrote with Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), because it doesn't allow enough room for new offshore drilling. Angry proponents of the bill, which would institute a carbon cap-and-trade system to lower greenhouse gases, say that Graham has effectively killed any chance the bill will pass this year, or for many years to come. Why did Graham change his mind? (Watch Graham push his climate bill just a few months ago.)

Here are three theories:

1. Graham was never serious about the bill. When will Democrats pick up on Graham's "nasty habit of betrayal"? asks Steve Benen in Washington Monthly. He's like Lucy, in Peanuts, "who always pulls away the football and puts Charlie Brown on his ass" — and we, the nation, are Charlie Brown. "If something important needs to get done, and it's entirely dependent on Graham working seriously towards a policy goal in good faith, prepare to be sorely disappointed."

"Lindsey Graham pulls away the football, again"

2. He saw it wasn't going to pass, and saved himself needless pain
"Graham was serious about doing this if he thought it could be done," says Ezra Klein in The Washington Post. But when he saw that a carbon-pricing scheme, already unpopular with his base, wouldn't get the necessary 60 votes in the Senate, fighting for the bill became "foolhardy" politics. In this election year, says Ed Morrissey in Hot Air, even Democrats are reluctant to back what amounts to "an economy-killing energy tax that will stifle what little growth we have at the moment."

"Lindsey Graham and the failure of the 'lone Republican' theory"

3. He's as confused about what to do as the rest of us. Graham's defection means our best hope is an energy-only bill that offers "subsidies to every special interest you can imagine" and "accomplishes very little," says Kevin Drum in Mother Jones. But that's what Americans say they want, according to polls — large majorities believe in global warming, and want the government to do something, as long as it doesn't involve taxing anybody. Thanks to Graham, we're "getting exactly the government we deserve. A government of children."

"R.I.P. climate legislation"

[Warren DeMontague]

36. Let's be honest: If it had passed, the SAME people would be saying it's a "giant sell-out" and

a "massive corporate giveaway".

:eyes: