Posted on 11/03/2008 1:45:06 PM PST by pissant
In the closing hours of the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain attacked rival Barack Obama Monday over comments made in January about the coal industry.
“We found out yesterday what Senator Obama really thinks about coal,” McCain said Monday during a campaign stop in Blountville Tennessee, which borders southern Virginia. “In a new video talking about his policies on coal, he told — guess who? — the San Francisco newspaper — and this is what he said, ‘If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them.’ Now, how out of touch is that?”
“Now, I believe — and you know, and you do, too — that we need to control emissions,” McCain continued. “But I'm not going to let our coal industry go bankrupt. I'm not going to tell — I'm not going to let coal workers lose their jobs. And I'm not going to let energy prices increase any more for our families.”
McCain was referring to an audio recording that surfaced over the weekend of Obama telling the San Francisco Chronicle in January about his support for a cap and trade emissions policy, under which companies can emit pollutants, but if they want to release amounts over their caps, they have to buy emission credits from other companies.
“If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can,” Obama says on the recording. “It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.”
The recording spread quickly with the help of conservative bloggers and has been seized upon by the McCain campaign.
In the same interview Obama called the idea that his energy policy would exclude coal “an illusion.”
“The fact of the matter is that right now we are getting a lot of our energy from coal. And China is building a coal-powered plant once a week. So what we have to do then is figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon,” the Democrat said.
On Sunday, McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin highlighted Obama’s nearly 10-month-old comments during a campaign stop in Marietta, Ohio.
“He said that, sure, if the industry wants to build coal-fired power plants, then they can go ahead and try, he says, but they can do it only in a way that will bankrupt the coal industry, and he's comfortable letting that happen,” Palin said.
The Alaska governor has kept up her attack on Obama over the remark on the campaign’s final day, linking it to Obama’s “bitter” comment also made in San Francisco during the Democratic primary.
The Obama campaign has countered the attacks by saying that the comments were taken out of context and by pointing out the Democrat’s position on coal varies little from McCain’s.
“After John McCain said he’d like to ‘transition away from coal entirely,’ his campaign is hardly in a position to criticize a coal-state Senator like Barack Obama, who has outlined a $150 billion investment in clean coal and other technologies to create jobs and build a new energy economy,” Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (D) said in response.
LOL! Only if they know noone is paying attention anymore..I noticed theres more "balanced" coverage the last couple days, now that the election is in the bag for Senator Emptysuit. .No one can says theyre not fair!!
...related.
McCain campaign jumps on Biden’s clean coal comments ( Sept 24 , 2008 )
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2123981/posts
It’s getting almost funny. I can see it now. “I didn’t say that.” “Yes, you did say that.”...”Hey, look. I didn’t say that you said that I said that!”
Look for moving tributes to Obama’s granny for the next 24 hours nonstop.
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