I was reading the other day where some members of Congress and the punditocracy think that a cap and trade bill is dead in the aftermath of the Gulf Oil Spill. Huh? A bill designed to limit the long term damage being done to our environment (read, the place we all live in) by slowly changing our energy infrastructure, is at risk because of an event doing massive damage to our environment. Does the term, ice cream headache, mean anything to the good folks we elect as our representatives? Admittedly, the politics of passing a bill as involved as cap and trade are daunting; stranger bedfellows than John Kerry and Lindsey Graham are hard to imagine. But this whole episode is hard to swallow; days on end of politicians straining to turn themselves inside out in search of political brownie points.
A couple of weeks ago, liberals were incensed that Obama cleared the way for expanded off-shore drilling. In the aftermath of the disaster, Rush Limbaugh went on the air to describe a conspiracy theory involving Obama, SWAT teams, and the intentional detonation of the rig…at the President’s direction and with the intention of helping environmentalists. This idea friends, represents the depth of insanity and clearly describes how Limbaugh and others think. Power and glory are so important to them, that they could imagine the President ordering the literal destruction of a major ecosystem and staple economy, all to help a bill designed to safeguard the environment.