Dems drafting energy bill in secret, too [Politico]

Joe Lieberman’s crappy version of a climate change bill has made it out of his subcommittee, over the objections of Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and two Republicans (for very different reasons, of course).

Global warming bill advances in Senate [Yahoo News]

Tracking Lieberman-Warner: What’s Next? [Gristmill] 

I’d much prefer to see Democrats and the environmental community wait until 2009 and pass a much stronger climate change bill, than wheel and deal their way to a much weaker one in the current Congress.

Why is this? Primarily, it’s because he is just a likable guy. Down-home Southern likability was a big part of how the media played up Bush in 2000. Huckabee tells jokes, he plays bass, and he even played ping-pong with the folks at NPR! He also refuses to engage in fear-mongering on foreign policy or play the 9/11 card ad nauseum. He may not believe in evolution, and may be an extreme social conservative, but he’s an economic populist much in the same way as John Edwards. He might lose the vote of the most libertarian or free-market Republicans who call him a “nanny-stater” (he advocates a nationwide smoking ban, and talks up the obesity epidemic often), but he would keep the Christian evangelical vote to a far, far greater degree than any other Republican front runner.

So basically, Huckabee keeps the entire social conservative/values voter base, steals the Democrat’s thunder on economic populism, and wins over any independents or undecideds who pay more attention to personality than anything else. He is by far the hardest opponent for the Democratic attack. It’s just hard to get someone to dislike Mike Huckabee! I disagree with him on almost everything and yet I’d still like to go get a beer with him! Too bad he doesn’t drink.

Second toughest opponent would be Romney, because he would keep at least some of the Christian evangelical vote on board, firmly keep the free-market wing of his party, probably win over the more business-minded of the independents and maybe even the Democrats, and have the press go all ga-ga over his dashing good looks and creepy tan.

This, of course, is all in contrast to Rudy Giuliani, who would lose almost all of the Christian evangelical and values vote, possibly to a third party candidate, doesn’t seem even remotely likable to anyone, and basically scares the shit out of everybody to the left of Condoleezza Rice.

Yes, silly silly things like, you know, shooting children for fun!

 Politico Falls for Hoax Blackwater Press Release [Wonkette]

Just in the past week:

• Wisconsin bow-hunter suffers treetop mauling
  

  Schultz says he met the bears while bow hunting a few miles outside Tony, Wisconsin. He says he began hearing noises, then saw four bears under his tree stand. One of them, a cub, began to climb up towards him and the mother followed.

  “That’s when I started getting nervous. She got about to where my feet were and after that it was all big commotion I’m not sure exactly what happened in what order but I tried to fight her off with my bow and I tried to kick her, then she really started grabbing me, trying to pull me out of tree stand.”

  Schultz says his stand safety belt kept him from falling 14 feet to the ground. But it didn’t help him stop the clawing, biting bears.

  “I’ve got puncture wounds in my leg, but my arm right here is the worst. There’s a big kind of a hole and I can feel all the stuff inside, but wasn’t even able to see it back then.”

• Grizzly mauls Montana bird hunter
• Boy scout escapes bear attack by playing dead
  

  The commission has been trapping and relocating bears out of the park when possible, but the bear population in Pennsylvania has been on the rise. It is estimated to be about 15,000, the highest in 150 years.

  A black bear has never killed anyone in Pennsylvania.

• Hunter killed in bear attack on Swedish-Norwegian border, other hunters exact revenge
• Bear attacks 71-year old man in his own garage
  

  “The bear slashed through the back of his jacket,” she said, noting that it was a particularly heavy jacket that likely prevented the bear’s claws from doing greater damage. The bear latched its jaws on Clark’s arm at one point, and “he actually punched the bear.”

And bears aren’t always the instigators: Three Marsican bears, a subspecies with only 30-50 remaining in the world, were poisoned and found dead in the mountains of central Italy.

“One death could have been by natural causes, but with three dead bears in the same area at roughly the same time it’s clear that there has been foul play,” forestry official Luciano Sammarone said.

You may have read about our nation’s crumbling infrastructure, but in addition to gross neglect and the grim prospect of terrorism, bridges also now have BEARS to contend with. Is This Bear a Terrorist?

All attempts at humor aside, such interspecies violence is what happens when we encroach too far into vulnerable habitats in our demand for more housing, food, resources, or recreation. It’s not just bears. Human-elephant conflict in Africa is actually a very serious topic of academic research.

Finally, even when bears prove fertile subjects for interstate cooperation, the law of unintended consequences can still reign. A U.S.-Russia conservation agreement on polar bears whose ranges are shared between the two countries (“shared bears”), may actually force Russia to reintroduce hunting of the bears. Polar bears, of course, rightfully receive much more press than their sub-polar brethren (bear-thren?), both for their pending endangered status and association with global warming.

Indeed, if melting Arctic Sea ice drives the polar bear to extinction, do we not all deserve maulings for our inaction?

8:00 IT BEGINS!!! “It’s all on the line- his career, his HONOR”

8:01 Lauer: “You walked into that bathroom, Senator. Six minutes later you were under arrest.”

8:02 Craig: I became the hurricane that everyone wanted to talk about.

8:05 whoa Larry looked even OLDER in 1982 than today. timewarp? stealing the vitality of young children?

Mrs. Craig is grimacing already. Her name is Susanne?

8:06 Susanne says marrying someone to cover up their repressed sexuality is like “selling your soul”

8:08 oh sweet later on Matt’s going to re-enact the foottapping sequence of events!

8:09: PHEW commercial break. liveblogging is hard!

8:12 of course the footage of Craig calling Bill Clinton a “bad, nasty, naughty boy”

8:13 militant gay bloggers are the bane of a congressman’s existence

There were rumors he was kicked out of the national guard for being gay?

Oh but in fact, he had “a medical discharge, based on [his] feet”

8:15 OH GOD EW Susanne referred to “areas of Larry that only I might know about *wink wink*”

8:17 so who has less hair? Larry’s is more receded but Matt’s is much sparser.

8:19 OK so his wife is Suzanne Thompson. Didn’t take his last name. She’s a modern woman.

8:21 Lauer: “Were you aware, Senator, of the reputation of that SPECIFIC bathroom?”

…

“Matt, I used bathrooms for bathrooms’ sake”

“Well so do I!”

8:22 “So I go to the bathroom, to use the bathroom’s bathrooms”

When Larry checks stalls to see if they’re occupied, he looks through the crack in the door. When Matt looks, he looks under the door at the feet.

8:24 closesup of their shoes as Matt taps his foot. I think Larry is wearing cowboy boots!

…The cop passed a note under the door asking him to step out.

Matt- “The next thing the police report said you said was “NO!”

Larry- “Yes!”

8:26 Larry Craig will never follow the secret bathroom code so closely again now that he knows it’s a secret bathroom code. Honest mistake!

8:30 Larry didn’t MEAN to show the cop his Senator ID card, it just slipped out while he was getting his driver’s license.

8:34 Larry does not even recall tapping his feet at all.

8:37 “Now I know all about profiling. I know how innocent people feel when they get profiled, when they get caught up in things I got caught up in.”

Indeed, Senate Republicans have been trying for YEARS to end the injustices of profiling by police officers.

8:39 Catch his flight, or stay and fight the officer’s claims? “For that moment in time, I was in a panic! And I said ‘Ah! Criminy!’”

8:42 I’m so glad Matt Lauer is a real journalist.

8:43 He didn’t tell anyone about the arrest because he didn’t want to embarrass (in order, I assume):

1. his wife

2. his kids

3. Idaho

4. his friends

8:44 poor suzanne looks in so much pain right now

I did not even realize the interview is taking place in Larry Craig’s living room! You’d think a Senator could afford a nicer sofa.

8:48 After the break- “You have taken several opportunities to say that you are not homosexual. But are you bisexual?”

8:50 I still haven’t learned anything new of any importance (“importance”). This is neither neither much enlightening or much funny.

8:52 Even Mitt Romney threw him under the bus.

8:54 “He didn’t just throw me under his campaign bus, he backed up and ran me over again!”

Some people can’t make eye contact with him anymore. He “gave no quarter for [his] colleagues to stand in.” What does that mean?

8:55 Crap I couldn’t tell what Larry said in answer to the bisexual question. Did he say “it’s notable”???

8:56 “I’m not sure I’ve ever looked at someone else’s lifestyle as great shame.” THEN WHY DO YOU VOTE AGAINST THEM

8:57 The judge refused to let him withdraw his guilty plea, but he’s going to appeal it to another judge. And then another, and another.

8:58 Matt Lauer enjoys taking off his glasses for emphasis.

8:58 Matt: “With all due respect, your father never envisioned gay sex stings in airports.”

8:59 final words: “I’m a fighter… this is the toughest fight of my political life.”

Wow. That was fairly pointless. Have I learned anything? Would I have enjoyed the interview more or less if I wasn’t liveblogging it? What if I was drinking? Will I ever liveblog anything again? Tune in next time…

The Senate passed their version of the 2007 energy bill in June, the House passed theirs at the beginning of August, and since then…? Nothing. Still no conference, to reconciliation of the two or any movement forward of any kind. Pelosi and Reid put energy on the back burner first for the Iraq funding fights, then for SCHIP, and seemingly anything else that came along. Now the most important provisions – increased fuel economy requirements (along with closing the loophole for SUVs), a nationwide renewable electricity standard, and reallocating millions in oil company subsidies to be incentives for renewable energy – may well be left out of the final bill to avoid pissing off Blue Dog Democrats and the auto industry. And Bush may veto it anyway.

It seems like the biggest fight is over increasing CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards, which could very well mean the renewable electricity standard has been abandoned altogether as too politically infeasible. Many southern Democrats are against it because they say solar and wind power are not feasible for their states.

The Senate has enough votes (67) to override, so it’s all up to the House. The Democrats need 15-20 more votes, either by convincing Republicans to vote against their party and President’s wishes, or by convincing the 8 Democrats who voted against the bill to begin with.

Among those Democrats? Dennis Kucinich. Why? Because it denies coverage to children of legal immigrants. Interesting stand. While I respect it, I do hope that if the override came down to the wire and his vote was needed, he would change his mind.

“Hi, my name is Graeme Frost,” began the Democrats’ September 28th radio address. “I’m 12 years old and I live in Baltimore, Maryland. Most kids my age probably haven’t heard of CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program. But I know all about it, because if it weren’t for CHIP, I might not be here today.”The right certainly wishes he hadn’t been on the radio that day. Three years ago, Graeme, along with his sister, Gemma, was badly injured in a car accident. He spent the week after the accident in a coma, and remained in the hospital for five-and-a-half months. He still attends rehabilitative therapy, speaks with a lisp, and moves slowly. His sister, Gemma, is worse off: She endured severe brain damage, and receives state assistance to attend a school for the developmentally disabled.

The Frost family bears a heavy burden, and much sadness. But they are not bankrupt, and were not incapable of procuring care for their injured children. That’s because the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), which extends health insurance to low-income children, covered the costs. The program worked exactly as promised, providing high quality medical care for children of limited means in their time of need.

The right’s response to 12-year-old Graeme Frost was breathtaking: They tried to Swift Boat him. They implied that his family was rich and fraudulently freeloading off the government. They posted pictures of the private school he attends. They repeatedly called his home. In a particularly deranged act, Michelle Malkin drove to his block, tried to eyeball the value of his house, and interrogated his neighbors as to the family’s financial situation.

More – The American Prospect