Throughout the bulk of the campaign season, Hillary Clinton's been full of tough talk about cracking down on the oil companies. She's also repeatedly, and correctly, criticized Barack Obama's vote in favor of a pretty bad industry-friendly 2005 energy bill. But now that the campaign's shifted to Texas, it seems she wants us to know that she "recognizes the continuing vital role of the oil and gas industry".
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Clinton Hears Big Oil
18 Feb 2008 04:39 pm
Comments (37)
It doesn't count as pandering if Hillary does it.
Call the WHAAAAAMBULANCE, Tim K is mad!
Let's not have another New Hampshire feel-like-suicide night. Start phonebanking in TX now.
C'mon, Matt. She could say whaever she wanted in all of those states before Texas, because they didn't count anyway.
Ok, I didn't say that. Do Obama supporters really think it is mature to impersonate another commenter? I don't think it's very funny.
Ah, Matthew. What a joke that Hilllary Clinton is. Hypocrite. Panderer. Now you can see sweats of desperation as she is trying to get any last vote she can from her dying campaign. What else is there to say about her last desperate tactics in Texas? Nothing. Nothing at all. My silence on the subject is deadly. Can you not hear it?
Is the title of this post supposed to be "Clinton Hearts Big Oil"?
I'm personally outraged and intend to file a complaint directly with The Atlantic's editor for name impersonation. Outrageous!!
Ah, Tim K. Somebody impersonated you? That is so funny. Yes, we Obama supporters do think it is very funny. Keep going Fake Tim K!
Anybody who supports a candidate who carries water for the ethanol from corn industry really has little reason to complain about the pandering of other candidates.
who carries water for the ethanol from corn industry
What does that mean?
Didn't she try to say that lobbyists were important as well during YearlyKos?
I like laughing at Hillary as much as anyone, but this is pretty much run of the mill politics. Now, that guy who called Democrat delegates from red states second-class citizens. That's special.
Lobbyists may not be "important", but it is ridiculous to think they don't have a role to play, given the wide array of political and business interests directly affected by the decisions made in DC.
The SEIU has lobbyists, a ton of them. And there is nothing wrong with it.
What's your point? That all lobbyists are bad?
Would you include NARAL, the Sierra Club, NOW, the AFL-CIO?
Trolls here are pretty bad...
What Bill and Hillary think of as the "oil and gas industry" is actually the "oil and gas lobby" -- Washington-centric concession-tenders -- lawyers and paper-hangers mostly.
People here in Texas use the term "Oil Patch" to describe themselves as "Trash". Both campaigns are not well advised to confuse a lobby in Washington with and industry in Texas and around the world.
The perspectives of people on the ground here relative to energy, environment, economy, and security are definitely not the same as the corporate and financial lobbies.
::JRBehrman
Trolls here are pretty bad...
What Bill and Hillary think of as the "oil and gas industry" is actually the "oil and gas lobby" -- Washington-centric concession-tenders -- lawyers and paper-hangers mostly.
People here in Texas use the term "Oil Patch" to describe themselves as "Trash". Both campaigns are not well advised to confuse a lobby in Washington with and industry in Texas and around the world.
The perspectives of people on the ground here relative to energy, environment, economy, and security are definitely not the same as the corporate and financial lobbies.
::JRBehrman
Jorge, Obama support ethanol from corn subsidies, quite possibly the most nonsensical government program in operation. Anybody who strongly supports Obama sounds very silly when criticizing another candidates' pandering. Look, with the exception of McCain, who has his own issues, they all support the corn to ethanol boondoggle, and if you feel compelled to vote, ya' just have to hold your nose and do it when you pull the lever for someone, but could we spare the rhetoric from the supporters of candidate x about how awful candidate y's pandering is? Sheesh, it sounds like the fan of a NASCAR driver complaining about the excessive speed another driver engages in.
Shorter Will Allen:
Obama is almost as bad as my candidate.
@Tim K: Completely irrespective of my support for Obama, that was very funny. Actually, when I first read it and thought it was you, I was like, "Man, Tim K is a lot funnier than I thought he was."
It's worth noting that both Durbin and Obama voted for the 2005 bill, and it's also worth noting that the bill had a provision to stop drilling in the Great Lakes. Polluting the Great Lakes has been a big policy concern in Illinois, and made the bill hard to vote against for Durbin and Obama.
It still was a bad bill, but that provision in it is worth thinking about.
moff:
Irrespective of your support of Obama, indeed.
"Jorge, Obama support ethanol from corn subsidies, quite possibly the most nonsensical government program in operation."
Seems to me he's more interested in pushing sugar cane based ethonol.
http://obama.senate.gov/news/050517-brazil_offers_model_for_ethano/
@Tim K: That's it -- my love for Barack Obama is so strong that it cannot possibly be that I find something funny on its own merits as a joke, regardless of whom the joke was played on. Get a life, man, and a sense of humor.
Energy companies are evil. They pay their employees (including their blue collar employees) well, and give them great benefits. They accomplish tremendous feats of engineering to get us the oil and natural gas we need from hard-to-reach places. They pay billions of dollars in taxes. They pay billions of dollars in dividends to the pension funds, endowments, and individual investors that own their stock. It's good that lefties are reflexively against all of this.
Yeah and Obama told Idaho peeps before super tuesday that he believes in the second amendment and how important it was, etc., etc. I didn't hear you talk about "pandering."
Ya apagate brother, tus inconsistencias aburren. Que decepcion.
Davebo, from the piece you linked to....
"Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is among the senators trying to promote ethanol made
from corn by increasing the availability of E85."
A Senator who promotes ehtanol made from corn is by definition a hack. Period.
Real Tim, what on earth suggested to you that I have a preferred candidate? I was merely commenting on the fatuousness of supporting a candidate who supports ethanol form corn, while complaining about other candidates' pandering.
moff:
If you had to put up with half the crap I've had to put up with on this blog you wouldn't find much to laugh at either.
You're preaching to the choir, I'm not. It's a lot tougher not to.
I don't get this one, Matt. Does Obama believe the role of oil and gas industries will no longer be vital?
This is standard grade political pandering, especially considering she's not actually proposing anything here.
right: "I don't get this one, Matt. Does Obama believe the role of oil and gas industries will no longer be vital?"
right, of course Matt realizes the oil and gas industies will be kinda important for a kinda long time.
Clearly you, however, don't recognize that everything HRC does is motivated by rank political considerations, as opposed to Governor Patrick, I mean Senator Obama.
I kid, I kid...
She has been trying to change the "conversation" on so many levels today; however, she is now talking up the economy in her stump speech and how we need to focus on it.
Okay, this- from someone who had every advantage and can't even handle her own campaign finances?
"it seems she wants us to know that she "recognizes the continuing vital role of the oil and gas industry"."
She's not pandering to the oil companies, she's conning them. After all they're just words, they don't accomplish anything. The oil companies should know that she can never deliver on her vague, empty suggestions that's she'll continue massive government handouts to oil companies. She's cruelly getting their hopes up, don't you see?
Did someone accuse Hillary of pandering. Obama panders to the young with constant talk about a new generation of leaders, meaning vote for me bacause I'm young.
And change, change, change. Right. Obama has never passed a bill or held a meeting. The Clintons have made more actually change in Washington than Obama could do with 70 bulldozers and a battalion of interior designers.
Clinton will be obeying Big Oil and the AIPAC crowd, too, when she attacks Iran (assuming Bush doesn't do it first.)
The only reason Clinton talks about "cracking down" on Big Oil is to extort money from them. After she gets the campaign contributions - or the outright bribes - she'll be down there in Houston and Dallas giving them blowjobs just like every other politician.
They can buy and sell her any time and they know it.
Moff:
If it strictly optional why don't you stop commenting then. Isn't there something equally unhealthy about having to come to a blog to read your own opinions reinforced over and over and over again?
Obama loves extractive industries, especially Illinois based coal companies, and was happy to point this out to reporters in Nevada.
The recent mining reform billed passed by the U.S. House is "not optimal" and should be rewritten to reduce the economic burden on mining companies, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama said Tuesday.
During a conference call with Nevada reporters to present his rural agenda, Obama said he would seek a better compromise on the bill now that it is in the U.S. Senate.
"What's clear to me is that the legislation that has been proposed places a significant burden on the mining industry and could have a significant impact on jobs," he said. "We are going to have to keep on working to find the kind of legislation that is going to provide fair compensation for these federal lands and also enhances environmental protection (and) cleans up abandoned mines." Reno Gazette-Journal 11/7/07
From TAPPED "Obama on Mining"
Obama is showing a marked lack of principle here. The 1872 Mining Act is one of the nation's worst laws. Environmentalists have been fighting it for decades. It allows mining companies to rape the land and pay next to nothing to the government. When mining companies stake a claim, they have to pay about $5 an acre to the government. It doesn't matter how much gold, uranium, silver, or whatever is underneath. $5 an acre. It amounts to the nation giving away its minerals to private companies for free.
I checked the MY archives and did not find any condemnation of Obama's political pandering in Nevada.
Is this the bad energy bill we're talking about?
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s2005-158&sort=party
Because I see both Hillary and Obama in the 'aye' column.
Comments closed March 03, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
I hate you.
Posted by Tim K | February 18, 2008 4:51 PM