You can't blame him on Iraq ... (0.00 / 0)

if the leadership isn't going to show any spine .. the rest .. sadly ... you are completely right on

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by: Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle @ Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 02:33:43 AM UTC

Sure you can blame him (4.00 / 2)

He can be right independent of leadership.

John McCain opposes the GI Bill.

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by: Lucas O'Connor @ Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 02:53:52 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

But why would a Senator(unless his name is Feingold) ... (0.00 / 0)

stick his neck out if he isn't going to get any support what so ever from the leadership?  It's not like we have a bunch of leaders in the Senate

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by: Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle @ Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 03:02:09 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Jim Webb (4.00 / 1)

is by and large a conservative populist. No doubt about it. He's on our side on populist economics and a few forign policy issues but the guy never became some converted progressive. He's still the same Jim Webb that served under Reagan and endorsed and voted for Republicans most of his life.

He's what the Republican Party used to be before it became a corporate controlled party of extremists.

I'm glad he's part of our party and part of the Senate but the whole idea of him being VP or any national office is horrible.  

John McCain: Beacuse lobbyists should have more power

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by: Populista @ Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 02:47:38 AM UTC

VP made me cringe. (0.00 / 0)

The man has way too much testerone...  

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by: dkmich @ Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 11:59:23 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Populist (4.00 / 1)

Well, sure, because what could be more populist than cutting special education to preserve tax cuts for the rich, voting for the Peru Free Trade Agreement, or calling for MORE media concentration?

You can take the boy out of the Reagan administration, but you can't take the Reagan Administration out of the boy.

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by: AliceDem @ Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 13:18:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Not really surprised (4.00 / 2)

The illusion that Webb was going to be anything close to progressive (along with Tester) was one huge pipe dream the blogosphere had.

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by: PsiFighter37 @ Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 03:46:01 AM UTC

Webb (4.00 / 2)

Jim Webb is the closet version the Democratic Party has to John McCain.  He's likeable enough, he has a military background, he has a reputation of going off the reservation, the media adores him, and oftentimes his reputation doesn't match up with reality.  Although he's a bit too blue doggish for my taste, I'm glad that he's on our team.  You know the republicans would love to have this guy and his resume.

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by: Kane @ Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 04:43:20 AM UTC

Gee (0.00 / 0)

I'm not sure what's really objectionable about this. We have:

1. Expanded drilling - it's inevitable. Including, eventually, ANWR; the political pressure to maintain the American way of life will just be too great, and the aesthetic and environmental arguments against it have no chance of withstanding that pressure. If it doesn't happen now, then it happens when gas is $6/gal, or $8. Might as well figure out how to do it as responsibly as possible before everyone's whipped into a frenzy.

2. Alternative energy - I assume we are all for this, no?

3. Nuclear power - Really? We shouldn't look at nuclear power? Again, if we are to maintain the American way of life, we're going to have to get our energy from somewhere. Nuclear could be at least part of the solution.

4. Clean coal - A bit of a mirage, in all likelihood, but surely it's worth looking into. In fact, it might be just the sort of low probability/high yield/high investment scenario that it would be appropriate for government to promote, since the market might not be able to.

Of course, there is an alternative to proposing these responses to the crisis that is unfolding as global energy supplies shrink: Webb could tell us that we need to change the American way of life - that we need to conserve; develop high-density, mixed-use, mass-transit friendly cities, a national electrified rail system, an end to the perpetual growth paradigm. But since almost no politicians in America are saying such a thing, it seems unreasonable to single out Webb for failing to do so.

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by: Chachy @ Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 07:39:56 AM UTC

"Webb could tell us that we need to change the American way of life" (0.00 / 0)

Thirty years ago Jimmy Carter advised Americans to turn down their thermostats, and he is still being ridiculed for it.

"Clean coal" reminds me of Windows NT.  The whole point of Windows NT was never that it was supposed to work.  It was primarily intended to persuade people not to switch to Unix for a server operating system, and it succeeded wonderfully.  

Similarly, "clean coal" even if it works perfectly as promised will be little more than spit in the ocean against the global warming catastrophe.  But it will convince people that we don't need to do anything silly like wean ourselves off fossil fuels.

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by: Taylor @ Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 11:49:52 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Yeah, we know the energy policy the netroots want... (0.00 / 0)

If you guys had your way, all Democrats would have speak out for 100% of our power coming from rainbow unicorns running in hamster wheels... and until the bugs are worked out with the unicorn technology, everybody rides bikes and heats their homes with all their untapped self-righteousness.

Seriously, I hate coal more than anyone, but since it's the dirtiest yet fastest growing form of electricity generation in this country (and sadly it ain't going away for many decades - it's share in 2030 is projected to keep increasing). So you guys are against the idea of researching how to make this dirtiest possible way of making electricity a little bit cleaner? What, you own condos on Mars?

Nuclear is by far our cleanest and safest short- and especially medium-term alternative to coal. In nuclear technology, we are falling behind France, Japan and even India. While we wait for wide-scale deployment of solar, we should be opening a new nuclear plant every month.

About the offshore drilling, I agree with the criticism. I can't see a justification for that. But seriously, learn more about our energy situation before casting the stone.

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by: spork @ Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 13:15:49 PM UTC

Off shore drilling (4.00 / 1)

As John Stewart of the Daily Show pointed out, the oil companies have plenty of off shore leases they can start drilling on right now today if they wanted to.

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by: AliceDem @ Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 13:20:23 PM UTC