My madder than hell diary. And I point fingers.

[beachmom]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/4/25/113657/530?new=true

[beachmom]

1. The Field (Al Giordano) just went after me.

But clearly, he CARES more about immigration reform than climate. The truth is dailykos is obsessed with the Arizona bill. The truth is they don't care about climate change.

Sigh.

[karynnj]

11. Totally true - Daily Kos has never cared about any thing on the environment

I tried to be polite countering him, because I do respect him. If he is correct that they are just repackaging the Kennedy bill, the real question is why would the result be different? I know we have more Democrats, but many of them are from purple or even red states. I have no idea why the ones who voted no would switch to yes - and I doubt all the new ones would vote yes.

We certainly will not get significant Republican support.

[wisteria]

14. That doesn't surprise me. There seems to be a one -up you mentality over their.

That they don't understand the significance of Climate Change and passing something now, and the futility of undertaking immigration reform right now, just goes to show what they are thing with.

[MH1]

2. I'm mad as hell too

and headed over to read your diary.

[MH1]

3. ok I need to treat my blood pressure now

I know I am in disagreement with a lot of liberals on this, but I think a) the AZ bill should be addressed by the courts and b) many people would see it differently if the lived in AZ _and_ did not have a strong concept of human rights and ethics. Unfortunately not many schools really teach about human rights and ethics as far as I can see. And when you have news stories about ranchers being murdered by drug runners who are 'illegal aliens' and you constantly see the employment issues ... well they want things FIXED and they don't care HOW.

which is all a long winded way of saying I agree with you that climate change should be a priority over immigration reform. By far.

[blm]

4. I agree with you

.

[wisteria]

13. It is a matter for the courts. I agree with you. n/t

[beachmom]

5. Check out this timeline from Think Progress:

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/04/25/climate-bill-derailed/

Damning.

Basically, the commenters who disagree with my diary fall into two camps:

1. Those who care MORE about immigration reform than climate, many of whom think it is politically advantageous.

2. Those pie in the sky people who think you can do BOTH before the 2010 midterm elections(absurd on its face).


I think it is clear that this wasn't just pushed by Reid & Schumer but the White House, too. God this sucks. We will get neither bill passed and lose in a bloodbath in November. Ah, the JOYS of being a Democrat . . . .

[karynnj]

8. Unfortunately, I agree with all your conclusions

(One politically incorrect comment - I'm glad that there wasn't a viable 2008 candidate who would have been better on this than Obama because between this and the way the SoS pick was done, I would regret my support.

[wisteria]

17. I feel that way sometimes too. n/t

[wisteria]

16. Yes it is damning and I am going to add the White House onto my poo list. n/t

[beachmom]

6. Again. Lindsay Graham is makin' sense while Dems aren't:

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/04/graham-and-climate-bill

Per his letter:

I know from my own personal experience the tremendous amounts of time, energy, and effort that must be devoted to this issue to make even limited progress.

In 2007, we spent hundreds of hours over many months with President Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, and nearly every member of the U.S. Senate searching for a way to address our nation’s immigration problems. Unlike this current “effort,” it was a good-faith attempt to address a very difficult national issue.

Some of the major provisions we embraced in 2007 — such as creation of a Virtual Fence using cameras, motion detectors and other technological devices to protect our borders — have been scrapped for the time. Other issues we found agreement on at the time, such as a temporary guest worker program, have unraveled over the past three years.

Expecting these major issues to be addressed in three weeks — which appears to be their current plan based upon media reports — is ridiculous. It also demonstrates the raw political calculations at work here.

Let’s be clear, a phony, political effort on immigration today accomplishes nothing but making it exponentially more difficult to address in a serious, comprehensive manner in the future.

Exactly what Karynnj was saying in the diary and what I was thinking about already. Remember, BUSH supported immigration reform with a decent Republican majority in the Senate PLUS Ted Kennedy. And HE couldn't get it done. Very telling.

[karynnj]

9. His comments are excellent here

Will they be update 3.

I remember listening to right wing radio in the days before what became a 45 to 53 cloture bill - failing by 14 Senators with Baucus, Bayh, Bingaman, Sherrod Brown, Byrd, Dorgan, Harkin, Landrieu, McCaskill, Nelson, Pryor, Rockefeller, Stabenow, Tester and Webb voting against it.

Although it was hateful, it was well focused and they rallied their people to call to defeat that cloture vote. They clearly spelled out that voting for cloture and then voting against the bill was not enough. The people calling in were pretty scary in their hatred. But, they now start with a higher base level of hate. Then, they thought they were still really in control of the country - even as we gained control of Congress. Since November 2008, their anger has been close to pathological. I really don't see any Republican who will have the guts to fight it.

Given all Graham has taken, I would not blame him if he refused to work on this immigration bill.

[beachmom]

12. The diary is no longer on the page, so I'm not bothering with any

more updates. You know, I'm not naive: Graham is not all that trustworthy either. But in this case, he's making more sense than folks with this vague notion to SUDDENLY take up immigration when we're not ready for political advantage in November. 1) It's NOT ready and 2) I am not sold that this is a good political issue the way, say, financial reform is (and for which Dodd has been working for MONTHS on it and is not running for re-election so can totally focus on it).

[Inuca]

28. Yes, Graham is 100% correct here

I may not agree with him 90% of the time, but he is a Senator who is taking his job seriously, and unfortunately there are too many on both sides who don't. Very frustrating. I am not so intense about climate issues as most of you here, I do care but for whatever reason it does not get me all fired up as other issues do, but nevertheless this this feels completely WRONG.

[karynnj]

7. Fantastic diary!

Like, the name sake of the group, you seem to only get better when angry.

The Friedman comment in your update's time line is fantastic - it is a travesty.

[beachmom]

10. The Atlantic Wire has a roundup:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/The-Unraveling-of-a-Climate-Bill-3354

Interestingly the different viewpoints were apparent in my diary. Except the last one, presumeably a winger happy to see climate change bill die.

[beachmom]

15. Okay, sad to say, the WH is playing as cute as Reid:

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/94203-summers-white-house-isnt-playing-favorites-with-immigration-climate-change?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Summers: White House isn't playing favorites with immigration, climate change
By Ben Geman - 04/25/10 02:42 PM ET
Over on our main site, Ian Swanson reports that the Obama administration is claiming it wants to pursue both climate change and immigration legislation. White House economic adviser Larry Summers said Sunday that there is "no either/or" between the two issues, which are "both important."

Guys, clearly "a decision was made" by the higher echelons of the Democratic party, i.e. the WH itself to do this. I wonder what Kerry thinks about this.

And Washington CW has spoken. Joe Klein:

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/04/25/a-big-favor-from-lindsey-graham/

Lindsey Graham effectively killed the Senate's looming cap-and-trade package by yanking his support from the bill--and thereby did the Democrats a favor. I'm all in favor of combating global warming, although I think a straight-ahead carbon tax (refundable in the form of reduced payroll taxes) would do the job far more efficiently than cap-and-trade. But if I'm a Democratic strategist, I'm thinking Augustinian thoughts: Lord, make me energy independent, but not just yet.

Why? Because the public has had quite enough, thank you, of government activism this year...and, after Wall Street reform is passed, any further attempts to pass major legislation will add to legitimate conservative arguments that the federal government is attempting to do much to do any of it well. Health care and Wall Street reform were certainly worth doing--but only if caarefully managed and it remains to be seen whether the Obama Administration, which has succeeded in legislating, will have equal or better luck when it comes to actually governing. In any case, public skepticism about the Democratic Party is bound to increase if another humongous piece of legislation, which effectively guarantees higher energy prices, is passed this year.

Well, that is that.

[wisteria]

18. So they are going to undertake Immigration Reform and that is not a hot button issue.

Klein never liked Kerry and he is an idiot, delivering a idiotic message.
Obama is now on my shit list too.

[JI7]

19. Schumer has some personal problem with Kerry ?

it's always him

[karynnj]

23. To me it seems that Schumer has "sharp" elbows with everyone

He has yet to deny the "Game Change" account that behind the scenes he encouraged Obama to run - all the while publicly backing Hillary.

There were accounts in 2005 and 2006, that he was angry that Kerry would not give him - as head of the DSCC his email list. Kerry had very good reason not to so. The first was that he had said in 2004 that he would not sell/give the emails given to him to others. If you remember, in 2008 there were tons of angry people accusing him of having given the list to Obama. The other reason is that list would have been valuable had he run in 2008 and when he didn't the fact that he can still raise money for others does give him some power. In addition, Schumer was likely angry that Kerry was raising money independently - instead of through the DSCC.

There also were those rumors back in early 2005, of the "leadership" angry that Kerry considered himself to be a Democratic leader. As he was the party's most recent standard bearer - who came within about 59,000 votes of winning the Presidency, he earned that role - independent of his role as a Senator. As Kerry pursued an agenda that was to the left of the leadership - wanting to filibuster Alito and to speak against Bush's use of torture and wiretaps and to set a deadline to end the war, they thought their less aggressive stances were better. They then trashed Kerry to the media behind the scenes - without their names being used.

I would take all of these as simply power plays - done to diminish his power because he has some - more than his position itself gives him. It might not be personal at all.

[wisteria]

20. Someone just suggested that I don't understand what Beachmom is saying

at Kos. Go figure.

[beachmom]

31. Oh, that was someone from here responding to a different person's comment. nt

[wisteria]

38. Thank, I did go back and see the correction. I guess I misread it. n/t

[MBS]

21. I loved everyone's comments, here and at Daily Kos

Go, beachmom, karynnj, MH, wisteria, and blm!!! And keep up the good fight, JK!
The Think Progress and Climatechange blog links were great, too.. . and, as beachmom noted, even more devastating.


If only everyone had the good sense and smarts that we do ;)

[wisteria]

22. Some new info from Politico about continuing talks.

Frankly I think this is just BS to string us along- not from Kerry of course, but from the administration and Reid.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/36324.html

[Luftmensch067]

24. I don't think it's BS

I'm taking my cue from JK and until he or his office says it's over, I'm not going to believe it. A lot of things go on behind the scenes that we never know about -- and even if a lot of those things are knives in the back, some of them are also persuasive conversations and legislative negotiation within the caucus and across the aisle (and with the WH.) This is a lesson I take from Teddy about not giving up and I'm glad JK isn't giving up. It may come to that, but it hasn't yet.

[wisteria]

26. A part of me is still optomistic, but I do not want to get my hopes up. n/t

[karynnj]

25. Here's a link to a reasonable WP article that has some perspective

One thing they note is that this is a low priority item - not in its importance, but in how voters see it. That has always been the case. One proof of that is what we see on Daily Kos and on DU.

It is amazing that we could get more recommends when Kerry does something like writes a letter on DADT or if he were to waste time blasting Rove than when he was on the verge of legislation that could impact the planet.

[wisteria]

27. It was a high profile issue not to long ago. Gore helped to make this issue a household talking

point. we need some of that same PR now because the RW has been able to take one small e-mail incident and tag it with a name like climate-gate suggesting that this incident was proof positive that climate change was all made up. I still believe though, that most people believe on one level or another that we need to address this issue and also our dependency on foreign oil.

[karynnj]

29. Even then when you polled voters on issues, it did not poll very high

This really is a case where we can't b poll driven.

Here are a variety of polls. The ones I find most interesting are a 2007 poll that was open ended so people could chose anything asking for the top 2 issues (Most polls done this way ask for only one.) In addition there are polls that ask individually how important each issue is. Here environment and global warming are near the bottom of the list - and they were even in early 2007 which was when many were still hoping Gore didn't really rule out running.

Here are the polls from 2007 and earlier - http://pollingreport.com/prioriti2.htm
More recent: http://pollingreport.com/prioriti.htm

It is interesting that in the more recent polls environment/global warming and energy are usually combined, where they weren't before. You can see a Gore impact, but it is nowhere as big as it would have seemed from being on this board. I suspect that here, its prominence was because of people, who supported Gore for President. (You will also note that "poverty" as a stand alone category does not exist - though you would not have guessed that on this board as all the ex Edwards people insisted that none of the other candidates addressed it.)

But, I completely agree with you that we need to counter the RW lies, but the real difficulty is that anything done still is reported in the phony even handed way - some say this; some disagree. The good news from the polling is that most people still believe it.

When looking at a different set of polls on global warming alone, one thing you can see is the impact of the bad economy. Several polls look at the trade off between the environment and the economy. (The polls are designed to say there is a trade off) There is a long history given in the Gallup March 4-7, 2010 poll - what you will see is the state of the economy has far more impact than Gore did. What is really sad is that the 1990s were from this a time when action would have been much easier than now - when we are really at a low point on that.

http://pollingreport.com/enviro.htm

[beachmom]

30. Well, well well. Immigration reform ain't going to fly and now WH is groveling to Graham:

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/terrorism/the-morning-plum-119/

Read all the items.

Here is the WP story perhaps Karynnj was talking about (I didn't see a link):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/25/AR2010042503009.html

By Sunday morning, Kerry and Lieberman -- who does not work on the Jewish Sabbath and therefore was not making calls until Saturday night -- were working on a rapprochement between Reid and Graham on energy legislation, called the American Power Act. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel called Graham over the weekend, while energy czar Carol Browner called Kerry and Lieberman, according to an administration official.

"He's assured me he'll do it before immigration reform, if it's ready," Lieberman said of Reid. "This certainly is not over, and to me, we've got a good bill."

Another item was that Mitch McConnell said no way on immigration reform. Now obviously, that is not where it stops but if pretty much no Republicans want to do immigration reform then it's dead. It MUST be bipartisan. I completely disagree with Al Giordano and the rest at dailykos. I also think it is a mistake to paint all Hispanics with one broad stroke -- some may care more about jobs than immigration reform; it all depends on their economic status, where they are in terms of citizenship (1st, 2nd, 3rd generation?). Some may even care more about taxes. Who knows?

But Reid is GOING DOWN in November no matter what he does. So like with health care, he should do the right thing while he has the power.

[karynnj]

32. Kerry's full statement is in this Hill article (apologies if it is already included elsewhere

“For more than six months, Lindsey Graham, Joe Lieberman, and I have been meeting for hours each day to find a bi-partisan path forward and build an unprecedented coalition of stakeholders to pass a comprehensive climate and energy bill this year. We all believe that this year is our best and perhaps last chance for Congress to pass a comprehensive approach. We believe that we had reached such an agreement and were excited to announce it on Monday, but regrettably external issues have arisen that force us to postpone only temporarily.

“I remain deeply committed to this effort which I have worked on for more than twenty years. We have no choice but to act this year. The American people deserve better than for the Senate to defer this debate or settle for an energy-only bill that won’t get the job done.

“Senator Graham came forward and has made a significant contribution to both the process and the product. Joe and I deeply regret that he feels immigration politics have gotten in the way and for now prevent him from being engaged in the way he intended. But we have to press forward. Lindsey has helped to build an unprecedented coalition of stakeholders from the environmental community and the industry who have been prepared to stand together behind a proposal. That can’t change. We can’t allow this moment to pass us by.

“Joe and I will continue to work together and are hopeful that Lindsey will rejoin us once the politics of immigration are resolved. We will continue to work and we will do everything necessary to be ready when the moment presents itself. The White House and Senate Leadership have told us from the start that this is the year for action, and until they tell us otherwise we’re pressing forward.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/94153-monday-climate-bill-rollout-scuttled-as-graham-walks-away-from-talks

(good that it was just 4 paragraphs :) )

[Luftmensch067]

33. Thanks for this!

As I said, he'll tell us when he thinks it's over. As long as I know he's still fighting, I remain hopeful, though the road may yet be long and full of "roadblocks" (and not just Republican ones!)

[beachmom]

34. Okay, I am going to read between the lines:

I think he is as mad as I am. "The politics of immigration". Exactly. Not policy.

[Mass]

35. When I read it yesterday, these last two lines gave me the same impression

The White House and Senate Leadership have told us from the start that this is the year for action, and until they tell us otherwise we’re pressing forward.”

[beachmom]

36. Exactly. It is barely diplomatic.

And it shows who is to blame: Senate leadership AND the White House.

[karynnj]

37. I think so too - and he should be

Yet, this is still a very graceful statement.

From one of the article's Kerry was said to have had 270 calls or meetings on climate change. An impressive number even without considering all the foreign policy work that he has done - or the work on healthcare and the stimulus package. You also could throw in the fact that the leadership used him and Durbin to keep the caucus from taking away Lieberman's chair. Much as I think that the leadership should have kept Graham informed, they certainly owed it to Kerry to know their decision. There was after all a Thursday meeting with Reid- after the Wednesday meeting with Pelosi. Clearly they were not told.