(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
Sometimes all you can do is bear witness. Will this get any coverage on the morning talk shows, I wonder?:
In the summer of 2010, it was Harry Reid, the Senate’s Democratic leader, who squelched his party’s efforts to pass a climate change bill, declaring it could never attract enough votes to pass. In the years since, he has rarely spoken publicly about the issue.
But on Monday night, an impassioned Mr. Reid took to the Senate floor to kick off a nearly 15-hour climate-change talkathon by about 30 Senate Democrats, part of a campaign by a new Senate “climate caucus” to make it a politically urgent issue…
The all-night session was the latest effort by the group, which is working with a parallel House caucus, to elevate the issue of global warming. The members know that serious climate change legislation stands no chance of passage in this divided Congress, where many lawmakers in the Republican-majority House deny the science of human-caused global warming.
Climate caucus members say their objective is to raise the urgency of global warming and build toward a time when the political landscape may have shifted enough that a bill could pass. They argue that there are signs that the political winds may already be changing.
“It’s aimed toward the day when something more concrete can be legislated,” said Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, a veteran of climate and clean-energy policy battles.
In addition to Monday’s overnight session, members of the group give regular speeches on the floor of the House and the Senate about the urgency of fighting climate change. They hold weekly meetings with environmentalists, lobbyists and some corporate leaders who support their policies. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat and a leading member of the caucus, is planning a trip to Iowa centered on events related to climate change, in the hope of elevating the issue before the 2016 presidential caucuses…
Good for my Senator (and former Rep) Markey. (Yep, Senator Warren was scheduled to be there as well.) I will point out, in Senator Reid’s defense, that in 2010 he was being leaned on by all the good “centrist”, pro-business Democrats to lay off the climate-change talk for fear of losing the midterms to the Repubs. You all know how well that didn’t work out for our side, so good on Harry for ditching the apologists and joining the coalition of the sane.
Ari Philips at ThinkProgress has a list of the 28 senators from the Climate Action Task Force planning to participate, along with a selection of the local problems that will impact each of them.
***********
Apart from fighting the good fight, what’s on the agenda today?
Not Adding Much To The Community
It’s Saturday for me (yay, service industry schedules) so I will be lounging about once I finish sleeping in. Then off to Loews for stuff to turn my little patio into a meditation area/smoking lounge. Exciting, no?
NotMax
Whole lotta hot air.
Not Adding Much To The Community
Also, better late than never for Harry. He’s my Senator and I’ve learned not to underestimate him. There’s a reason he’s survived this long as a Democrat in Nevada, where “keep the government off my federal land” libertarians vie with nativists and conservative Mormons to run the state.
Mustang Bobby
NPR had clip of that idiot Inhofe denying that climate change is real. In his case, evolution couldn’t be proved by his existence.
Here in South Florida, I had some rooftop squawkers last night. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein: “Peacocks on the roof, aloof.”
NotMax
@Not Adding Much To The Community
Great for keeping his seat, not all that great for a majority leader.
Rope-a-dope can be effective as a one-on-one strategy. Beyond that, all it is at best is a holding action which affords increasingly diminishing benefit.
raven
Cat Attacks Family, they call 911!
Portland police rescued a family penned into a bedroom by a 22-pound house cat after the cat had attacked a baby Sunday night.
Cole alert
PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) –
A fat cat with a bad attitude attacked a baby and forced a Portland family to hide in a bedroom before calling 911.
Baud
Harry’s right that it wouldn’t have passed. It also wouldn’t have made any difference in the election one way or the other. The only thing that might have happened is that the climate change could have taken the air our of some other bill that did pass. Who knows?
Not Adding Much to the Community
@NotMax: Well, I didn’t say he was great, nor do I believe that he -is- great. But he’s no Tom Daschle. Yes that’s an amazingly low bar, but still.
WereBear
So for evil to be fought, it is necessary for not-so-good men to get out of the way?
Okay.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: My niece was attacked by a cat once. 87 stitches.
Jerzy Russian
Kepler (the spacecraft) rules!
NotMax
Oy Sinuses were acting up so much that succumbed and took a pill. Now the inside of the head is playing the conga drum solo of “Babalu.” Turned up to 11.
Higgs Boson's Mate
How cool is this? First I get to complain that they aren’t doing anything. Then when they do something I get to complain that it isn’t enough or that it’s too late. There are some minor obstacles; the majority in the House is fighting as hard as it can to undo existing environmental regulations and, even if our Majority Leader was Jesus and our Majority Whip was the Buddha, they still couldn’t round up enough Democratic votes to pass a comprehensive climate change bill. I will not allow those little things to preclude me from bitching.
Baud
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Nancy Pelosi’s House passed a climate change bill. You see what good it did them.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Good News Department:
Colorado collects $2m in marijuana taxes in January. If taxes on medical marijuana are included the total was $3.5m.
Those numbers might be enough to make a few more state leges reconsider legalization. I live in hope that I will be able to legally torch off a reefer here in CA before I die.
JPL
The Senate sleepover will get scant coverage because there’s no green eggs and ham. imo
cleek
just words. leading from behind. won’t stand and fight like real democrats. good at speechifying.
i’m voting for Nader.
EconWatcher
Reading a book about the politics and culture of 1970s Britain called Seasons in the Sun, by Dominic Sandbrook. It covers the period from 1974 through 1979. It’s a really fun read; I can’t put it down. It helps that I lived there as a kid for part of this time, so it triggers a lot of nostalgia, and explains things that I, on the cusp of adolescence, observed but did not understand at the time.
For anyone who doesn’t get why socialist Britain swung so hard for Thatcher, this book explains it. For me at least, it also helps sort out the difference between good and bad progressive change. It’s absolutely amazing how close Britain came to becoming completely unravelled. In one of his best lines, Hithchens referred to 1970s Britain as “Weimar without the sex.”
Baud
OT: Any brave soul here want to explore this Newsmax gem:
What we need is a dictator in the White House…Oh, wait.
Baud
@EconWatcher:
You could say the same thing about Reagan’s rise, right?
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Baud:
Gah, Harsanyi obviously forgot that you govern with the dictator you have – not the one you wish you had.
Hurling Dervish
Higgs Bosun’s Mate,
It’s not just the taxes. By not arresting people for pot, they’re saving many times that in incarceration costs and all the welfare costs from having to pay for ruined lives with criminal records. Plus, all those people now have higher incomes.
Certified Mutant Enemy
Here’s another appropriate cartoon…
danielx
Iiiiiit’s Tuuuuesday….and time for a David Brooks column, which I regard as an opportunity for shooting fish in a barrel. It doesn’t always pan out – as noted by Digby, out of (at a guess) ninety columns a year even Brooks has to get something right every so often.
This is not one of those times.
Titled The Leaderless Doctrine, this encomium starts off with evidence from Pew Research that Americans believe US influence abroad is on the decline – no great surprises here. It seems that…
And – yes, this is a case of pointing the blindingly obvious:
This of course begs the usual Question: why would this be? Why have Americans lost the faith, as it were? Now we’re getting to the heart of things. La Brooks sayeth that the reason for this is that Americans are putting their faith in something else – to wit, the power of crowdsourcing. Now we’re meandering into Brooksworld, where mention of the blindingly obvious is verboten.
What’s missing here? The elephant in the room (the one in a striking shade of fuchsia) that goes unmentioned is that Americans have lost faith because American institutions and/or those running them, be they political, socioeconomic or cultural, have been dropping the crockery by the numbers for several decades. Take your pick: the corporate world, Congress, Wall Street, the foreign policy/military/intelligence establishment, major league baseball, the Catholic Church; the evidence is in and the evidence shows that each of these (and more) is managed by world class bumblefucks/greedheads/swine .
Corporate America – examples are endless, but one of my personal faves is the Pontiac Aztek, the vehicle that sank an entire GM division. Congress? The soon-to-be-ended current session kind of stands out, but Congress’s abandonment of oversight and supervision and complete submission to corporations and Wall Street are a more long-standing trend. Wall Street? Let’s see, Jamie Dimon gets a 73% raise in the same year in which JP Morgan Chase ponies up $20 billion to settle various mopery and dopery starting in 2005 when Dimon became CEO. How’s that work again?
And so on.
My man Dave’s contention is that Americans have lost of faith in said institutions because…because flash mobs. That’s it! One faith has been replaced by another!
Because it is Villager heresy to suggest or even contemplate that many pillars of American society are rotten to the core, if not for the reasons that those bastards in tricorner hats believe. To do otherwise would imply that the people in charge of many of those institutions are incompetent, corrupt, immoral or any and all of these, and we certainly can’t have that.
What’s an elephant have to do in Brooksworld, to stand up and be recognized? I suggest a paint job (florescent orange) and a roman candle the size of a Saturn V booster. Or possibly just taking off those goggles which naturally form over time when you work at such august institutions as the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Weekly Standard, and reach their final refinement when you get paid – guessing – $5K per column to turn out this swill.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Did you lock yourself in a room and call 911?
jibeaux
@danielx: I eagerly wait his analysis of the Pew data on Millennials. Personally, I think their lack of interest in formal political parties or religious identification has something to do with skinny jeans. Or maybe instagram. But I’ll have to wait to see what he says about it to be sure.
EconWatcher
@Baud:
The preludes to Reagan and Thatcher are superficially similar, but I’m starting to think the similarities are more superficial than real.
We never became the complete basket case that 1970s Britain did. Carter had already started reforming the economy and Volcker was already attacking inflation, so if Carter had survived the pain in 1980, he would have gotten the credit when the economy later turned around. In fact, the 1982 recession probably would not have been as deep, because Carter would have supported a stronger safety net.
But it seems to me the British really were in a different boat. Not saying everything Thatcher did was justified, but they really did have to make some deep changes. They had nationalized vast sectors of the economy (steel, cars, etc. etc.), and the nationalized industries were losing money at a completely unsustainable rate. Some of their most aggressive labor unions were literally run by revolutionary communists; we simply have no equivalent in this country to their likes. They were having violent street confrontations between far-right, neofascist thugs in the National Front and far-left types. Something had to give, in a big way.
Tommy
@Baud: What seems strange to me is at one time Obama is weak, in the next sentence an all powerful King. I mean which is it?
Frankensteinbeck
Political calculus is very, very different now than it was in early 2010. There are a lot less conservadems in congress throwing snit fits. In Obama’s first two years, getting really good legislation passed was just barely possible. The GOP legislature had already gone in full racist freak-out ‘the negro must be punished at all costs’ mode. Everything had to be fought for, hard, so picking battles in the senate was important.
Messaging was also very different. The GOP had barely started the screeching baboon act and showing their asses. Right now, the GOP looking like Clint Eastwood arguing with a chair is the dominant political theme, no matter what the talking heads think. Obama’s ‘adult in the room’ act back then was crucial for paving the way. Now the meme is thoroughly established, and it’s practical to make a public issue of liberal goals. They’re being cemented as the intelligent way to run a country in all the squishies and young newly-politicals backing away from the GOP freak fest. The next two elections will be entirely defined by the culture war, so there’s no real political downside.
danielx
@jibeaux:
Wait for the book by all means, and I suggest waiting until it’s on sale at $2.99 a copy, which should be about thirty days after publication.
Frankensteinbeck
@Tommy:
It’s not as contradictory as you’d think. ‘Weak’ means weak in personality. They view him as a lazy, not-that-bright affirmative action case who gained power because the welfare state has given blacks so much of an advantage over whites that a member of that inferior race can even become president. Now that he has that power (through no virtue of his own) he’s like a toddler, abusing it but not standing up and doing the necessary manly things like spitting on the rest of the world to show everybody who’s boss. It’s not that hard to abuse power you already have. Of course, it’s actually all racists and assholes and racist assholes projecting their own personality onto someone they hate and fear at a raw emotional level because of his race.
Tommy
Just a happy thought. I am a geek. Love gadgets. Picked up a Chromebook the other day and I am flat out stunned by how amazing it is. I can find something to complain about with almost anything, I can’t complain here. If you need a “surfboard” or have a family member that isn’t that good with computers, but wants to get around on the Internet, the best $249 you can spent (I bought the $349 HP version with larger HD screen).
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: I wasn’t there, but maybe they should have. It actually attacked her twice. They got it off her and as they were checking her to see how bad her injuries were, it snuck thru their legs and attacked her a 2nd time. At that point some one finally punted it into the next week. That was app 20 yrs ago when she was 8 and the scars have all faded so one can not tell. But for some reason, she continues to have this inherent and wholly unreasonable distrust of cats.
I just don’t understand it.
Tommy
@Frankensteinbeck: Wasn’t it Jindal yesterday that said in an op-ed that Obama shouldn’t be called smart. I got any number of issues with Obama, not for a second do I think he isn’t smart. But I hear your main point, he is just POTUS cause he is black. Affirmative action. That makes white folks feel better they are still the majority for just a little longer.*
*I am that middle aged white dude I should add.
mai naem
@EconWatcher: Reagan and Thatcher were quite different situations. First, the biggie is the Iran hostage situation. The only superficial similarity was the oil crisis, crappy economy and the unions in the US being seen as corrupt and the unions the the UK being seen as completely out of control. We are talking national strike after national strike. There’s also one more thing in the UK was that the UK was in the process of assimilating a lot of non-white immigrants. I think a lot of white Brits reacted like the teabaggers are doing with Mexican immigrants right now. I’m not sure on UK statistics but I am pretty sure that currently most urban/suburban areas are majority non-white.
PurpleGirl
@raven: That cat and family belongs on My Cat From Hell.
Tommy
@mai naem: I am not an expert on the UK. I used to work in a building in Northern Virginia owned by Cable & Wireless. A British firm. Many were tech folks. Indian. I always felt that if you had, I don’t know, colonies, you might have some citizens that were from those nations.
I always felt that was kind of a “cool” thing. But clearly I can see, how that wouldn’t work out so well here in the US.
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: If you have a pet that scares you, well you are doing something wrong :)!
MikeJ
@Tommy: Good old Unable and Worthless. Tyson’s Corner, right across from the mall? I worked down the street. Felt like I spent half my life getting lines provisioned.
Tommy
@MikeJ: Yes. One of the main reasons I left the area. It would take me an hour to drive a few blocks. I was like I don’t want to live my life this way.
Cervantes
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Thanks. I’m enjoying my little mental picture of Buddha the Majority Whip.
And:
And:
Splitting Image
@mai naem:
To add to the differences, I would also mention that the U.K. was in the middle of dealing with a credible (and reasonably violent) separatist threat in the form of Northern Ireland, and the likelihood of another one (Scotland) looming on the horizon if the first was successful.
Thatcher’s economic recovery in the 1980s was partly based on the development of North Sea oil fields, and a good chunk of those would have walked out of the U.K. with Scotland if the country completely unravelled.
I also wouldn’t underestimate the difference it made to the U.K. that the pound wasn’t the global reserve currency, which prevented the U.K. government from using methods to improve the economy that were available to the U.S. The fact that the pound was not the global currency anymore was an entirely different, but still real, problem.
Tommy
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: My state just put a pilot program in place:
There are almost no news stories on how the process is working.
My gut, polling shows almost 60% of the population just wants pot legal. I think we’ll get there by 2020.
PurpleGirl
@Tommy: I agree. The article didn’t mention that the cat attacked the baby after the baby pulled its tail. That was in the video clip. My Cat From Hell is the cat version of Cesar Milan’s Dog Whisperer. There’s a guy who tries to teach the humans how to interact with their cat.
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: I realize I am preaching to the choir here, but IMHO a pet is a reflection of their owner. I got amazing pics of my niece, when she was an infant, unable to even roll over on her own, laying on the floor with a 160 pound dog next to her. There was never a single concern the dog would do anything to harm her.
This freaked my parents out a little, since they are not pet owners, but made complete sense to me, my brother, and his wife.
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: Oh I should note I know the show. As a cat guy myself, find it hard to watch. Caught like 15 minutes of it once. I am not sure I am a cat whisperer, but I got my little gals as feral kittens. Took me spending weeks of time with them. I’d just sit in a room when them for hours and hours and they wouldn’t come near me. Then they did.
Now they are rarely more then a few feet away from me at anytime.
C.V. Danes
There is no “stopping” global climate change at this point. We are decades late for that party.
The battle now is if we can lock in CO2 at around the current 400ppm level, which is merely disastrous but barely manageable, or if we are going to keep going until we hit 600 ppm (new world order) or 800 ppm (civilization ending) or even higher (extinction).
I wish I could be optimistic at this point, but I think we are just going to keep going until global warming shuts the whole thing down.
GregB
@C.V. Danes:
Mother Earth has a way of doing that, if it is legitimate climate change.
Citizen_X
@EconWatcher:
…but with the Pistols.
And might I add, fuck fucking Christopher Hitchens.
Cervantes
@mai naem:
In 1980 or thereabouts, there was a cover story on immigration in The Economist. On the cover was the legend: “The Empire Strikes Back.”
They’ve used that line innumerable times by now, but never as aptly as that first time.
burnspbesq
Are you actually positing that failure to present a credible climate-change agenda was a cause of the Democratic losses in 2010?
Is there even a shred of actual evidence (as opposed to Fig Newtons of your imagination) to support this hypothesis?
Tone in DC
@OzarkHillbilly:
Bitter LULz.
El Cid
@burnspbesq: It’s unclear, but I read it as suggesting a negative, basically: that such efforts (in the post’s interpretation) of Democrats to avoid appearing too liberal did not aid them in avoiding 2010’s losses. So if you accept the assertion that that is the way Democrats behaved, then it is asserted that this did not help. I don’t think it’s being argued that it actively caused losses.
chopper
@burnspbesq:
i don’t think that’s what she said at all.
Mnemosyne
@OzarkHillbilly:
The situation in the article sounds different, though — the child wasn’t hurt except for a few scratches and didn’t need any medical attention. Hopefully they’ll find a home for it where the owner’s reaction to the child pulling the cat’s tail isn’t to kick the cat across the room.
I got bitten by my brother’s cat and it was scary as hell (though at least I didn’t need stitches). Had to go to the ER and take a quadruple antibiotic for a couple of weeks. So, yes, a cat that wants to do some damage can do a lot in a very short time. I still have my own cats, though, because not all cats are the same.