>Yawnnnn... what else is new about the Big O?? Get used to it for next 3 1/2 to 7 1/2 years..... or more.....
>
>If Cap and Trade gets passed, he can forget about a second term because that will deepen the recession by miles. People tend to vote their wallets. The only good thing that can come out of passing Cap and Trade will be that the Dems will definitely get booted out of Congress in 2010.

I don't think most folks understand the possible impact of cap and trade. Here is one blog about it from U.S. News and World Report:

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2009/03/03/what-obamas-cap-and-trade-plan-will-cost-you.html

A study from the George C. Marshall Institute tries to quantify the costs of a cap-and-trade plan to reduce carbon emissions. They're not small, to say the least: And although this study uses 2008 as a baseline, the Obama plan would hit in 2012 and could come in combo with a hike in investment and incomes taxes for wealthier Americans and the creation of a special healthcare tax:

The authors find that the constraints posed by the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade approach is equivalent to a constant (in percentage terms) consumption decrease of about 1% each year, continuing to 2050. Put another way, the cap-and-trade approach is the equivalent of a permanent tax increase for the average American household, which was estimated to be $1,100 in 2008, would rise to $1,437 by 2015, to $1,979 in 2030, and $2,979 in 2050.

Reviewing a host of recent studies, Buckley and Mityakov show that estimates of job losses attributable to cap-and-trade range in the hundreds of thousands. The price for energy paid by the American consumer also will rise. The studies reviewed showed electricity prices jumping 5-15% by 2015, natural gas prices up 12-50% by 2015, and gasoline prices up 9-145% by 2015. As an illustration, gasoline would suffer a 16 cent price increase per gallon at the low end of the estimates to a $2.58 penalty at the high end (using the January 2009 reported retail price of $1.78 per gallon).