The new disappointment

With the health care debate largely over and only the scope and size of the public option left to get to get blindingly angry about, the choice of whether to allow people access to it was successfully fobbed off onto states (states rights, bitches! eat it Lincoln!), and the spectacle of largely conservative, right wing states enacting a hilarious process of screwing their own citizens on health care with the tacit tea bagging approval of those citizens, Congress now moves on to a new debate for us all to get immensely worked up over inevitably leading to anger and disillusionment in government as intelligent plans based on science and research are diluted and made terrible by the dumbest and most politically craven members of the Democratic Senate caucus: the environmental debate! The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee starts public hearings on climate change bills! Whooo!

With a clearer picture on health care, the Obama administration and Congress today are pivoting toward climate change legislation.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee began hearings this hour on Chairman Barbara Boxer's bill, with President Obama's Green Cabinet expected to testify.
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With just over a month before climate change negotiations begin in Copenhagen, environmental advocacy groups have been pressuring the White House and Congress to take action so world leaders have a framework to build upon.

Administration officials have stressed for weeks they are comfortable with negotiators using the House-passed bill as a starting point, but the activists closest to the issue say that's not enough.

Sorry activists, hope you like getting less than what's in the House bill you think is inadequate. Hell, I hope you like getting less than what's in the Kerry/Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S.1733) that the hearings are going to be about. Because the lesson around here, and we try to impart it on a daily basis, is that the Senate is a stupid place and legislation only goes there to be made worse. The climate bill has been ordered to pass through the land of wind and ghosts and we can only hope that it emerges from the other side in a manner that doesn't worsen climate change, only fails to inadequately and effectively address it and fails to help set up the American economy to grow and expand into green technologies.

It matters not that people support cap-and-trade measures by a 60% to 37% measure and that the numbers are even higher for people under the age of 50. They felt the same way about a robust public option and we all saw the bruised, battered, and dismembered body that is still trying to drag itself out of the US Senate's shame basement. No, the future of America is clearly coal, so coal state Democrats (and God there are more of them than the ones who opposed a strong public option) will make sure that climate change legislation reflects the wishes of the coal industry that will fuel our economy into the 22nd century. Get ready, we've found the next Country Polarizing Thing To Hate that everyone on both sides can get angry about: climate change legislation! Get your teabags and haikus about Mother Earth ready.