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   Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gnter Grass still thinks reunification was a bad idea.
 Forty years of writing from Taylor Branch, James Fallows, Katherine Boo, Marjorie Williams, Joshua Micah Marshall, and more.
 With help from Washington, the for-profit college industry is loading up millions of low-income students with debt they'll never pay off.
 The best recent memoir from republican Washington is a hoax. That should tell you something.
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May 19, 2009
HOW MAVERICKY.... Even during the 2008 presidential campaign, no matter how far he shifted to the right, John McCain was generally pretty good about acknowledging the climate crisis. "We need a successor to Kyoto, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner," McCain said in 2008. Now, the specifics of McCain's cap-and-trade proposal were pretty absurd -- it was basically cap and trade without the cap -- but at least he'd occasionally talk a good game. Now, the Arizona Republican is poised to help kill a compromise measure that the nation really needs.
Keep in mind, while reconciliation rules are in place for health care, center-right Democrats made it so that Republican obstructionism can kill climate-change legislation. To get to 60, Dems are going to need quite a few votes from those handful of Republicans who take science and global warming seriously. McCain was supposed to be one of them. That now appears unlikely. McCain had an opportunity to help bolster his tarnished reputation, regaining the stature he enjoyed after the 2000 campaign. Instead, he's throwing the opportunity away. He's gone through a variety of personas over the years, but it now seems he's sticking with the one rejected by the country in 2008. —Steve Benen 3:45 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (12)Comments
If Congress won't play ball it'll just be done administratively via EPA regulation of CO2 as a pollutant, just as we've already got the new CAFE standards without needing Congressional action. We need legislation on CO2 emissions only to make it harder for a future Republican administration to reverse course, and we can worry about that later when we have a better Senate. Posted by: Steve LaBonne on May 19, 2009 at 3:50 PM | PERMALINKHey you co2 molecules -GET OFF MY LAWN. Posted by: Im John McCain and I approved this message on May 19, 2009 at 4:16 PM | PERMALINKPlease excuse the capital letters. But, WHY, OH, WHY DOES EVERY FRAKKING THING THAT GOES THROUGH THE UNITED STATES SENATE NEED SIXTY FRAKKING VOTES TO PASS?????? Posted by: kevin on May 19, 2009 at 4:19 PM | PERMALINKBah, John has it on good authority that CO2 is not a carcinogen. Posted by: doubtful on May 19, 2009 at 4:26 PM | PERMALINKJohn McCain sure is spending a lot of time whining about the GOP's lack of moderates while he does pitch-perfect imitations of a fringe-right freak. Posted by: shortstop on May 19, 2009 at 4:26 PM | PERMALINKWhat Steve LaBonne said above. EPA regulation can get us started between now and 2011, when a Senate with ~65 Dems can pass a strong cap-and-trade law. Posted by: low-tech cyclist on May 19, 2009 at 4:26 PM | PERMALINKWHY, OH, WHY DOES EVERY FRAKKING THING THAT GOES THROUGH THE UNITED STATES SENATE NEED SIXTY FRAKKING VOTES TO PASS?????? Because the conservatives in the senate consider "liberal" government to be illegitimate and anti-American and will rationalize any means or strategem they can think of to keep it from functioning. If you were an alderman who thought your city government had been taken over by the mob or the street gangs, would you sit around and let them vote the city into corruption and ruin? Of course not. Next question? No, it doesn't make any rational sense. Neither did South Carolina seceding from the Union back in 1860. You aren't dealing with rational people, here. Next?
Lets me fair here. The John McCain we see here is the Real McCain. The "Maverick" was just something he adopted after the Keating scandal to woo the press. Posted by: DR on May 19, 2009 at 6:34 PM | PERMALINKFlippity, floppity, flip All the more reason that Americans should be soooo very thankful that John McCain is not our president. McCain's about face about climate change and cap and trade is just the latest in a series of serious fake outs. The most unforgiveable is on the subject of torture. For a man who endured torture and lives with its lasting and limiting physical effects, pretends to oppose torture, and grilled the CIA and DOD on torture in 2005, McCain has made his opinion quite clear that America should simply ignore the Bush Administration's war crimes and move on. He was involved in the savings and loan scandal, and in the years between 2000 and 2008, AIG was a significant donor of soft money to McCain's war chest. There is little question why, last September, McCain suspended his campaign to return to Washington to look out for the banking industry giant. The maverick is and always has been a fraud. Posted by: CarolA on May 19, 2009 at 10:05 PM | PERMALINKThe true beauty of this moment is that the current version of version of the climate legislation that is bottled up in committee is indistinguishable from climate legislation that McCain sponsored a year ago. As a policy wonk who prefers legislation that actually walks the walk instead of just talking the walk, and as a climate advocate who is terrified of the consequences of not getting it right, right now, the current iteration of Waxman-Markey is worse than nothing at all. I want this iteration to die, and try again with something real next year. For me, Republican idiots like McCain are manna from heaven. They kill a bill that gives them everything they want, because they can't stand to even *pretend* to do the right thing. They look like blithering idiots, and get all of the blame for standing in the way of doing the right thing. The forces of truth and niceness get another bite of the apple next year, hopefully a little more sadder and wiser in their understanding that the inside game doesn't work - we need to control the message. Posted by: converger on May 19, 2009 at 11:31 PM | PERMALINK The forces of truth and niceness get another bite of the apple next year, hopefully a little more sadder and wiser in their understanding that the inside game doesn't work - we need to control the message. New York will be underwater long before the Dumbocrats learn that lesson. Posted by: Steve LaBonne on May 20, 2009 at 12:14 AM | PERMALINK
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