Bill Scher: Obstructionpalooza

[babylonsister]

Obstructionpalooza

Submitted by Bill Scher on December 13, 2007 - 8:10pm.


Quite a week for progress-haters.

President Bush vetoes, for the second time, health insurance for millions more kids.

The conservative minority in the Senate (and oil-drenched Dem Mary Landrieu) scraped up just enough votes to block investment in renewable energy by ending handouts to Big Oil. (Alleged environmentalist Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., could have cast the critical 60th vote, but decided to skip town.)

A stripped down version of the energy bill -- inoffensive, but amounting to a very small baby step -- is expected to pass instead.

The arm of obstructionism reached halfway around the world to Bali, where White House officials are throttling the international effort to combat global warming. As the president of the Union of Concerned Scientists said:

The best we hoped for was that the U.S. would not hobble the rest of the world from moving forward. Our delegation here from the States has not been able to meet that low level of expectation.

In the face of all this obstruction, yesterday's New York Times played up the conservatives' obstructionist strategy as "muscle flexing" and "tight defense," reducing the legislative process to sports entertainment.

Of course, such a media narrative is unsurprising and predictable.

more...

http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/obstructionpalooza?tx=...