Poor self-important freshman Senator Claire McCaskill. She’s been in the Senate for nearly three whole years now and it’s made her tired and sad and maybe everyone should just give Congress a break, because what’s most important to the American people is that every current senator gets re-elected: “I don’t think anyone’s excited about doing another really, really, big thing that’s really, really hard that makes everybody mad. Climate fits that category.” Ugh, AMEN, cause then you’ve got to read it… write it… explain it to people… organize… make up your mind… this is not what Claire McCaskill expected the Senate to be like! It was supposed to just be super easy votes on awesome things like wars and other wars and tax cuts and junk. [Ezra Klein]

• Barack Obama sent himself to Asia to convince everyone over there that he is not distracted or whatever by various goings-on in Afghanistan and Iraq. [New York Times]
• Say farewell to the White House’s rhyming general counsel, Gregory Craig, who is quitting his job today. [Washington Post]
• Nidal Hasan will probably face the death penalty. [Wall Street Journal]
• Ten people died when a suicide bomber bombed a spy agency in Pakistan to death. [AP]
• If Obama goes to Copenhagen for a big climate change summit later this month, everyone will believe him when he says he cares about reducing carbon emissions and the like. [The Hill]
• Turns out when the US gives money directly to villages in Afghanistan—as opposed to the central government—the money ends up in the hands of people not in the central government. [New York Times]

• Maurice R. Greenberg, the impossibly geriatric former head of AIG, has been quietly luring young, unsuspecting insurance execs to his new firm. [New York Times]
• Harry Reid promised out loud that the new health care bill will have a public option, which means it actually might! [Washington Post]
• Like half an hour ago, NASA sent the the largest rocket ever (327 ft.) into space. The moon was unharmed. [CNN]
• Starting nowish, a Senate committee will meet for the next three days in order to figure out some tenable clean energy initiatives. It’s bipartisan, because look: Lamar Alexander! [Reuters]
• Over the last three days, 700 adults were arrested in sweeping sex-with-children raids that spanned 36 cities. [Los Angeles Times]
• The Somali pirates not only continue to exist if everyone pretty much ignores them, they also apparently continue to kidnap British people. [Times Online]

Jesus christ, people are so terrible these days! You know how the corporate lobbyists usually just give lots of money to elected officials, to get them to do “lighten up” a bit? Well nowadays, what with the party of “ethnics” in power, they are FORGING WHOLE letters pretending to be from black and Hispanic interest groups and sending them to fence-sitting Democrats, urging them to vote against things that would supposedly be bad for poor minorities, when really they’re just bad for “Dow Chemical.” MORE »

Did you know that you can help reduce carbon emissions simply by standing with your hand on a ketchup dispenser for two minutes? It’s true! New video footage proves it! Witness the stunning impact a squadron of brave mimes had yesterday on the denizens of the Longworth Cafeteria, who spent upwards of several seconds wondering why some dude was just STANDING by their table before returning to their very important conversation about baseball or whatever. Somewhere in heaven, Al Gore is smiling. [YouTube]

Comical Texas Rep. Joe Barton’s War on Gorillas intensified earlier today when he threatened to force poor, overworked clerks to read the entire 900-page Waxman-Markey energy bill aloud in committee, including his 450 obnoxious amendments about kicking Henry Waxman in the penis. Waxman responded by traveling to the seedy underbelly of Satan’s Hell to contract this secret Hessian mercenary, a “speed-reader,” on retainer, just in case Barton’s jackassery came to fruition. The speed-reader is clearly a muslin terrorist, and it is offensive to Dick Cheney for the liberals to allow him inside the United States Capitol. [TPM]

Here’s your recent Wonkette obsession, Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, fighting the gorilla, which he will do daily as long as this Waxman-Markey energy bill is up for debate. In today’s session, Barton explains that fuel-efficient cars are not fuel-efficient, carbon dioxide is in the delightful beverage Coca-Cola, there is no evidence of higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, and of course, “you can’t regulate God.” Big round of applause for Joe Barton, everyone, because what the gays don’t understand is that God put those coal-fired power plants on Earth himself, shortly after giving pet dinosaurs to Noah and Moses, and they’re guarded by magical force fields so just bugger off already. [Think Progress]

Opossum-eyed Jesus geologist Joe Barton, Republican Congressman from Texas, signaled his intent last month to stop the liberal Waxman-Markey energy bill — the one with cap-and-trade, which is about hamburgers — with traditional adult methods of opposition: “I’m going to be the sneaky little guy that pops up from behind the bush and fights the guerrilla. But guerrilla warfare does succeed sometimes.” (Fortunately for him this world has professional transcribers, because he definitely was saying he wanted to fight a gorilla.) And now he is popping up from behind the bush with a reasonable plan to block the legislation by proposing 450 comical amendments — four-hundred-and-fifty — that will simply be rejected, one by one, during an exhausting process that will embarrass the United States around the world and in Heaven. HAW HAW HAW. MORE »

Oh George Bush is having quite a grand time at the annual G8 conference in Japan. He’s not molesting Angela Merkel this time, but he is embarrassing everyone: “The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: ‘Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.’ He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.” Punched the air? Best George W. Bush imagery ever. NEED SECRET VIDEO. [Telegraph]

Larry Craig attended a Senate hearing on climate change and totally schooled the president of Yale by pointing out the Ivy League university produced more carbon per student than Berkeley. Oh and you know which educational institution produces very little carbon per student? The pinko commies at Boise State, in Craig’s own pinko commie state of Idaho. MORE »

After Al Gore lost the 2000 election because he was boring, he gained 400 pounds and grew a beard. Then America and all the world loved him! He made a movie about how the Earth is melting, and then he won a Swedish Prize, and soon a back-room deal at the Democratic National Convention will make him our president again. That is, unless President Barack Obama decides to give him some sort of shadow government post as the Climate Change Czar. Rumors are already afoot! MORE »