UNFRIENDLY SKIES
“Michigan just experienced its coldest July on record; global temperatures haven’t risen in more than a decade; Great Lakes water levels have resumed their 30-year cyclical rise (contrary to a decade of media scare stories that they were drying up due to global warming), and polls show that climate change doesn’t even make a list of Michigan voters’ top-ten concerns,” Detroit News cartoonist Henry Payne writes in a blog at DetNews.com.
“Yet in an interview with the Detroit News Monday, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) - recently appointed to the Senate Energy Committee - made clear that fighting the climate crisis is her top priority,” Mr. Payne said.
” ’Climate change is very real,’ she confessed as she embraced cap and trade’s massive tax increase on Michigan industry - at the same time claiming, against all the evidence, that it would not lead to an increase in manufacturing costs or energy prices. ’Global warming creates volatility. I feel it when I’m flying. The storms are more volatile. We are paying the price in more hurricanes and tornadoes.’
“And there are sea monsters in Lake Michigan. I can feel them when I’m boating.”
STILL CAMPAIGNING
“Team Obama is suffering from Extended Campaign Syndrome,” Karl Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal.
“In an election, campaign staffers are often just trying to survive until the next week or the next primary. They cut corners because they are fatigued or under pressure. They can be purposely combative and even portray critics as enemies.
“Carrying this mind-set into the White House can get you into trouble, a lesson the Obama administration is now learning the hard way,” said Mr. Rove, who was senior adviser to former President George W. Bush.
“For example, there’s a video being circulated online of Barack Obama telling the Illinois AFL-CIO in 2003, ’I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program … we may not get there immediately’ and then telling an SEIU Health Care Forum in 2007, ’I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be some transition process. I can envision a decade out or 15 years out or 20 years out where we’ve got a much more portable system.’
“The White House now insists that the president doesn’t want to enact a single-payer health care system or eliminate private insurance. What’s more, a White House spokeswoman attacked the video, saying its compilers ’Take a phrase here and there - they simply cherry-pick and put it together - and make it sound like he’s saying something that he didn’t really say.’
“That’s laughable. Mr. Obama’s remarks are straightforward and indisputable. Rather than saying his views have changed as he has worked to create a national consensus, the administration denies what is obviously true.”
’EVIL-MONGERS’
Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, was having second thoughts - or was he? - about the way he had characterized people who are disrupting town halls with ’lies, innuendo and rumor,’ and not letting others speak. They are, he had said, ’evil-mongers,’ “ Jill Lawrence reports at www.politicsdaily.com.
“A day after tossing out the term ’evil-mongers’ in the closing speech of his annual clean-energy conference, Reid was alternating between pride in his coinage and knowing that he probably should be trying to defuse, not escalate, the turmoil erupting at town meetings across the country on health care reform,” the writer said.
” ’It was an original with me. I maybe could have been less descriptive,’ Reid said. He also said, ’I doubt that you’ll hear it from me again.’ But a few minutes later, he couldn’t resist a sardonic little joke. ’I feel I haven’t done anything to embarrass them,’ Reid said of his children. ’Except maybe call somebody an evil-monger.’
“I interviewed Reid Tuesday between stops on a tour of clean energy projects in and around Las Vegas. That morning, a new Republican poll of the 2010 Senate contest here showed state GOP Chairwoman Sue Lowden, a potential rival, 6 points ahead of him. But Reid also had good news - GOP Rep. Dean Heller said he would stay in the House rather than challenge Reid. Biggest threat? ’Yup,’ Reid said. Now gone? ’Gone,’ he said happily.”
THOSE SOUTHERNERS
“Somebody please buy Ohio Sen. George Voinovich a ticket to the real South, preferably on a slow-moving train, so he can observe the country he helps govern,” Sally Jenkins writes in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“Last month, Voinovich charged that Southerners are whats wrong with the Republican Party.
” ’We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns,’ he told the Columbus Dispatch, talking about his colleagues from South Carolina and Oklahoma. ’Its the Southerners. They get on TV and go “errrr, errrrr.” People hear them and say, “These people, theyre Southerners. The partys being taken over by Southerners. What [the] hell have they got to do with Ohio?” ’
“Lets set aside the fact that Oklahomas Panhandle is closer to Santa Fe [in New Mexico] than the South and dwell on what Voinovich meant: The GOP is overpopulated by unrepresentative white fire-breathers isolated from the rest of America.
“When Voinovich refers to ’Southerners’ with such Gone With the Windiness, he conjures images of backward, angry rednecks who scream at black schoolchildren, drive pickup trucks emblazoned with Confederate flags and believe the Civil War was about declaring independence from Northern aggressors.
“These stereotypes all mislead in the same way: They define a unified, homogenous South, with virtually no trace of diversity or dissent.”
PROGNOSTICATOR
“It’s fast becoming conventional wisdom, but statistics wonk Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com reiterated that Democrats should be nervous about the 2010 midterm elections,” Nikki Schwab writes in the Washington Whispers column at www.usnews.com.
” ’I don’t think you should feel at all comforted by 2010,’ said Silver. The political prognosticator predicted a 20- to 50-seat loss in the House for the Democrats and either a one-seat gain or as much as a six-seat loss for the Democrats in the Senate. This comes from the same numbers guru who called the presidential election results correctly in 49 states. ’Don’t be complacent about 2010,’ Silver warned bloggers and activists attending the Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburgh.”
• Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washington times.com.
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