When In Doubt, Punch Those Hippies

With any serious climate bill completely dead even while the worst environmental disaster in American history continues during the warmest June on record, it's nice to know that you can always count on Politico to find some Dirty F'ckin' Hippies to punch over it, and Obama too.

One exasperated administration official on Thursday lambasted the environmentalists – led by the Environmental Defense Fund – for failing to effectively lobby GOP senators.

“They didn’t deliver a single Republican,” the official told POLITICO. “They spent like $100 million and they weren’t able to get a single Republican convert on the bill.”

But many say it was Obama who didn’t do enough to make the climate bill a big enough priority, allowing other monster big-ticket items like the economic stimulus, health care and Wall Street reform to suck up all the oxygen and leaving environmentalists grasping for straws too late in the game – well past the expiration date for other big accomplishments during the 111th Congress.

“The absence of direct, intense presidential leadership doomed this process,” said Eric Pooley, author of “Climate War,” a just-published book that chronicles the past three years of debate on global warming. “We did have a window there, and now the window is shut. It’s more about prying it back open than anything else.”

Going back to Day One, Obama never turned his campaign proposals into formal legislative text, leaving lawmakers to shoulder the load. And when Obama spoke publicly about the issue, it was only with a vague call for “comprehensive energy and climate” measures that did little to help win votes.

Obama’s hands-off approach didn’t matter as much in the House, where Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and, later, Speaker Nancy Pelosi built their winning coalition region by region to scrap out a 219-212 vote just before the July 4, 2009 recess. But it was another story with his former colleagues in the Senate, where carbon caps had never topped 48 votes on the floor.

Here's the real reason why there's no climate legislation:  the Republicans blocked it because they're not interested in helping the environment.  They are however very interested in helping big companies escape costs of cleaning up their pollution and winning political power.  There's nothing Obama, Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid can do if all 41 Republican Senators say no.  Blaming Obama or environmental groups is pointless here...Obama has to get legislation on his desk to sign it.

Well there is, but that would mean getting rid of the filibuster, and the Dems don't have the balls to do it.