MAMMOTH CAVE, KENTUCKY — Choosing a venue for today’s meeting with President Obama in his home state of Kentucky, rather than in the White House as previously reported, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell summoned President Obama to give him his marching orders. The meeting took place here in the deepest recesses of Mammoth Cave National Park. A solitary reporter was a reluctant observer.
“Boy,” McConnell said, “here’s the legislation we’re about to pass requiring you to authorize the Keystone Pipeline.”
“This is where you get to cave in to all our demands,” McConnell told the president.
From the shadows emerged Oklahoma’s senior senator, James Inhofe, who is the new Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Inhofe does not believe that human activities cause climate change.
Inhofe often repeats his claim that human-influenced climate change is a hoax because, in his own words, "God's still up there" and it is "outrageous" and arrogant for people to believe human beings are "able to change what He is doing in the climate."
Just as McConnell and Inhofe were explaining that fact of life to Obama, along came 40-year-old Cory Gardner, newly elected junior senator from Colorado, who told the president that he should authorize the Keystone Pipeline right through the heart of Denver, because Denver voters went for his opponent, Mark Udall, by 70%.
McConnell emerged from the meeting with a smile. The president was escorted safely out of the cave by Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez, whose department enforces the Mine Safety and Health Act.
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