That thing was an editorial on the front page.

GIVE MEDICARE/MEDICAID ITS OWN TRUST FUND, call Pelosi @1-202-225-0100. DEMAND SINGLE PAYER.

The "reporter", Ceci Connolly, is a pundit on Fox. Search on Bob Somerby's blog (Daily Howler) for some of her past antics.

Waxman-Markey may not hurt you and Paul Krugman, where you live back east. But I live in a poor smokestack town, and I expect that we will really be hurt.

If I.F. Stone were in charge of awarding the I.F. Stone Medal, you would get one. Unfortunately, since you aren't officially a journalist, it won't happen.

Adam Green's view:

http://www.openleft.com/diary/13957/ceci-connolly-ridiculous-reporter

If they considered this part of their job, they would have pointed out, for example, that drilling for offshore oil would have never have a substantial effect on the price of oil ever, and none at all for the next decade.

I think that if one checks, one will find that the calculations leading to these specific conclusions about effects on the price of oil themselves rely on a highly misleading assumption: that overall energy supplies will not seriously contract during the period of the projections. While it is useful to oppose the public's exaggerated expectations regarding this-or-that "new energy source," all price projections for the downside of world energy consumption are inherently worthless. I think it is much more important that people be told that the energy needed to support many activities that they take completely for-granted - from winter snow-plowing to air travel to current food-production systems - will become increasingly unavailable.

Note also that Dean describes the bill as one intended to limit global warming. While partly correct, the bill can also be described as one intended to maintain energy supplies at levels that allow the continuation of economic growth. (The latter seemed to be the thrust of Obama's opening remarks at his press conference on the occasion, for example.) While the effectiveness of the bill toward either purpose is highly questionable in my opinion, CEPR seems to have taken the consistent stand of frequently mentioning the global warming issue, while consistently avoiding mention of the prospect of greatly reduced energy availability, and the facts of major regional declines in oil production - e.g, the U.S., North Sea, Mexico.

While I don't know what's in their hearts, there's an obvious motive for this choice of emphasis: their expressed commitment to economic growth. Global warming would bring with it limits to growth, to be sure - for example, if major economic centers find themselves under water in the future - but such future prospects are rather akin to nuclear war in that concern over them in one compartment of the mind need not compromise one's commitment to progress-as-usual in another. In contrast, a clear recognition of the fundamental basis of modern industrial economies in the "drawdown" of "phantom carrying capacity" does compromise the ideological commitment to growth.

The Post makes me glad the day of newspapers is over.

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