I give you the straight talk. That is my job.
The Corner is nervous:
We’re hearing some very bad things about the President’s likely unconditional surrender on global warming today. One senior source suggested that the last line of sound defense had been breached and that “It will be very bad.” I’d imagine he will request, against all evidence from Europe that this does anything but make consumers poorer and utilities richer, a cap and trade regime for energy utilities.
I cannot emphasize too much how idiotic this is. At a time when the poor of the country and the world are feeling the twin crunches of credit being withdrawn and food and energy prices rising, jacking up energy prices farther will just add insult to injury.
Woah- I thought the economy was fine over there at the corner and the housing crisis was much ado about nothing that the Dem-o- RATS and the LIE-berals were just making up in an election year.
Jen
Due to my concern about the poor of the country and the world, I always check to see what the National Review has to say. I think I speak for all of us when I say that Bill Buckley’s most enduring legacy is how he gave voice to the poor and oppressed.
4tehlulz
HAHA OH WOW Like the Corner gives a shit about the poor.
It really does not get much more disingenuous than that. Nicely done, Corner. *golfclap*
TheFountainHead
Wow. That’s….special. On the one hand, they’d probably be mostly correct about the short term economic impact of such legislation, on the other hand, they ought to be ashamed of themselves for having noticed an economic crisis sitting in their lap.
bittern
Please note that if you give limit CO2 emissions but give away the tradeable permits to today’s polluters free, when the price of energy goes up, ALL that money is kept by the people with permits to trade. Regardless of motives, NR’s statement is true.
Why should they get permits and not me?
One good solution would be to auction ALL the permits, and split the proceeds EQUALLY. That way the average energy consumer doesn’t get walloped and nobody runs away with a gravy train.
Zifnab
It is doing fine, John. And it’ll keep doing fine so long as we keep a Republican in the White House and Global Warming Denial as our bastion of belief. But the moment those bulwarks slip, NRO will immediately announce we are in recession, the economy will crash, millions will become unemployed, waves of angry Obama rioters will mob the streets, and civilization as we know it will collapse as a New Supreme Caliphate rises to replace it.
So vote Republican or Iain Murray swears to god he’ll pull that trigger.
Caidence (fmr. Chris)
I see some people are having trouble with The Corner and their idiosyncrasies… Let me help.
Does that help any?
calipygian
Byron York lamented yesterday that divorce was costing America over 110 Billion dollars a year. I sent him an e-mail saying fine: I’ll give up supporting same sex marriage if the Corner starts crusading for an abolition of the REAL enemy of heterosexual marriage – divorce.
Someone should really start a website – you can call it kornerkanhazcheezburger.com and it can consist of nothing but LOLSteyns, LOLYorks, LOLDoughyPantLoads and LOLK-Los.
Zifnab
You would say that, you dirty little communist hippie.
Caidence (fmr. Chris)
That’s not a bad idea, but Bush isn’t too sure. First of all, he’d like to know why were interfering with this “ko-two” stuff (also, why are people farting this “ko-two”?).
He’d also like to know where this “gravy train” is so he can put some soldiers preemptively on the the location; he’s cooking a turkey on Sunday and he loves him some gravy.
(keep your wish list for the next president)
nightjar
Poor wingnuts. So much love and no one to share it with. Well, maybe Bob Barr? Drat, he’s against spying without warrants and torture. Just another elitist Rino.
Jon H
I’d frankly rather that Bush would just do nothing.
If he enacts a cap-and-trade system, his flunkies will put the cap ridiculously high, so that the price will plummet because nobody really needs to trade credits.
That’s what happened in Europe, actually.
jake
The poor? Are these the same useless dirtbags who caused the mortgage meltdown by forcing lenders to give them houses? It can’t be the poor who sit around popping out fatherless children who run amok in our fair cities so they can stay on welfare. No, they must be referring to some wholly hypothetical “poor,” in the same way those cretins are always screaming “Support the Troops!” until an actual soldier says something they don’t like.
I also love the hyperbole in the first graph. I’m surpised the clown who dribbled that onto his keyboard didn’t go all in and claim Bush is going to allow Islahomoecoterrists will chop off our heads.
Gotta push that Bush is a stealth librul meme so they’ll be ready when shit storm hits Gale Force Eleventy Hundred.
vwcat
Republicans have been brainwashed by the pols who are bought by oil money and talk radio.
I’ve heard republicans this morning calling Washington journal saying mcCain had the strongest environmental plan because he will drill for oil.
This is their version of helping with global warming?!?
GSD
Feed the world with Cheetos.
-Jonah Goldberg
bittern
Zifnab, Caidence, I agree with the quote from the Corner. Bit of a stretch to think I include anything W is up to. Obama gets it right up to the auction, but then figures the gummint keeps the proceeds. Not sure even as MUP he can push that string.
Distribute the proceeds like what the dirty Alaska hippies do with their income; see https://www.pfd.state.ak.us/
“That’s what happened in Europe, actually.”
Yes, let’s do like in Europe and turn overseas rain forests into palm oil plantations. Cuz then the global warming won’t have any species left to extinctify.
bago
If a Yalie came to me with a cowboy hat promised me some “straight talk” I’d be pretty freaked. Like way more freaked out than being in a bathroom and realizing you are peeing next to Ouchy . At least you know the man is a professional. The clown with the 18 inch rubber codpeice I mean, not the president.
Tiparillo
Wow – Lowry and KLowBlow better get Kudlow to write one of his raw raw Cindarella economy posts to buck-up the rest of the Cornerites – STAT!
Zifnab
Al Gore rides airplanes! And he keeps breathing! Why does Al Gore constantly destroy the environment?! Remind me again what percentage of overseas rain forests are being converted into palm oil plantations by evil socialist Europeans.
Well, yes. That’s kinda the joke. Everyone agrees with the premise – that implementing a cap’n’trade system when we’re going through an economic downturn will be more painful than if we’d implemented during a stronger economic cycle (like, say, 3 years ago). Everyone, that is, except the Corner itself, which was insist not long ago that George Bush was an economic visionary who could see strong foundations when everyone else was acting like Chicken Little over a mortgage meltdown.
So, we can’t implement Cap and Trade in ’04 because it would hurt the growing economy. And we can’t implement Cap and Trade in ’08 because of the shrinking economy. And we certainly couldn’t do it in ’06 because it would send the precarious economy into recession.
You know, if you replace the words “implement Cap and Trade” with “pull out of Iraq” and “the growing/shrinking economy” with the “winning/about-to-be-winning war effort”, I think I see a pattern. It’s like GOP Mad Libs. This is fun!
RandyH
Woops. Somebody has forgotten their talking points. They are supposed to be forbidden from ever uttering or writing the words “Global Warming.” Their approved script only allows the term “Global Climate Change.”
They’re losing their touch.
The Populist
Nightjar,
If you had told me 10 years ago that Bob frickin’ Barr was going to be somebody I’d find myself siding with on free speech, constitution and anti-Bush sentiments, I’d have called you a nut.
Now, I find myself siding with some of these folks because THEY are what I remember conservatives being…nowadays I see the cons and all they do is support policies for an ever dwindling minority of elite.
Jon H
Er, global climate change *is* the preferred term. ‘Global Warming’ is imprecise, because what’s going to happen is more than a simple warming.
The Populist
These idiots in the White House make Barack Obama a much more attractive candidate everyday.
They call him an elitist but I find even those that take pause with the guy because he’s black are waking up to see he might not be as bad as they thought.
Keep it up Billary, McLame and Chimpy!
LOL, I say this because McLame thinks giving me a small little handout in gas tax savings will make him a wonderful choice for Prez. Problem with this maroon is that in order to “give” me that tax break he advocates destroying my car in the process by taking money allotted to road repair and infrastructure maintenance for some short-term and annoying attempt to pander.
Sorry John. I like roads that are paved and in good condition so I don’t have to have my damn car serviced all the time.
Idiot.
4tehlulz
>>It’s like GOP Mad Libs.
You lost because you didn’t end it with “Besides, Clinton did it first.”
DFH
This type of rhetoric coming from the same people that rushed in, teeth gnashing, to inspect the counter tops in the home of suspected welfare recipients, and now extoll their concern for the working poor and the deleterious effects that addressing global warming? Examing the effect this will have on “the poor of this country and the world” and their luxurious station in life???
You’ve just got to be rich to even think this way!!
The Populist
DFH,
When the elite right sit here wringing their hands for the poor (yeah right) it shows how elite they are, right?
These are the same idiots who get upset when a city dwellar tries to make points about fly over country. Those folks get mad and say that the city dwellar shouldn’t speak for them. Same thing here…these morons could care less about poor and middle class Americans. THEY are worried because it will put some of their buddies out of business so they run and pretend the poor get hurt, blah blah blah.
In the end if better technology can be created, it will create more jobs. If the right want to help the poor, they should stop attacking programs that help them get training for jobs, subsidized food and medicine and give them better tax incentives.
Trickle down is nonsense.
nightjar
In the wise words of Private Gump. “Life is like a box of
chocolateswingnuts – you never know what your gonna get”Zifnab
Oh, don’t worry. They’ll still build new roads. They’ll just build “toll roads” where your $.18 / gallon gas tax gets replaced with a $.25 / mile toll charge. Which, I guess, still benefits the guy getting half a mile to the gallon. But for the rest of us, it’s yet another round in the game of “screw the middle class”.
/me hangs head in shame.
John Spragge
One sentence in the linked posting perfectly exemplifies the insanity of behaving as though politics operates outside the real world.
In a democracy (and even in a dictatorship), people make their choices based on reality, on what works. Political manoeuvres, even decisions and agreements at international conferences, don’t change reality. Concern about global warming, and a willingness to take measures to deal with it, exist because of the actual evidence of global warming.
More and more, I have come to the conclusion that the notion of politics creating its own reality actually does more harm than any specific political idea. Politics, to work, to have any lasting effect as opposed to a scoring of shallow, egotistical “points”, must have a grounding in the actual needs and interests of real people.
bittern
I have no figures on how much habitat has been razed so Europeans can meet some renewable quota. How would I figure that? However much it is, is a victory for the program and a defeat for the environment. The central point Cornerers make is hardly that the timing is bad . . . so the joke ain’t too edgy. If it’s McCain/Lieberman Cap and Trade, we’re all getting screwed, so no thankee in 2004, 2006, and 2008. Zifnab, do you agree with the Cornerers that “all the evidence from Europe is that a cap and trade regime for energy utilities only makes consumers poorer and utilities richer”, or do you agree with me that Europe’s Kyoto Cap and Trade stuff has additional detriments?
The Other Steve
Wait, wasn’t that the report on what single motherhood costs us. Most single mothers I know were never married.
Fledermaus
Well of course an effort to deny the reality of your surroundings usually ends badly. The problem is that the powerful throughout history have had sufficient power to deny reality for a time – “Let them eat cake” to note one famous example. It’s eventually ends when they start believing all the happy lies they’ve been saying, because at heart most people are vain enough to really want to believe that they are doing good. So they soon forget that ‘trickle down’ was just an excuse to give a gift to the investor class, or that ‘free trade’ creates wonderful working opportunities in the US or that the US doesn’t torture innoscent people (wink wink nudge nudge).
dbrown
Cap and trade will not work? Where is the proof? First, define cap and trade that bushwhack was proposing (and also, a detailed account of the European method that failed would be nice) – I also remember that a similar system solved the acid rain issue(Nitrous-oxide (?) from power plants) and everyone on the right (aka wrong) predicted that the economy would collapse (notice that it didn’t and acid rain is mostly gone and we didn’t really even suffer a hit.) While some type of cap and trade may or may not be the solution, I assume that a strong market driven approach was what the wing nuts always want and cap and trade would spur technical solutions?
LiberalTarian
I thought their strategy was to Suck. It. Up.
Wha? No good???
binzinerator
Or as I.F. Stone once said, “All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.”