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There's an old saying that everything becomes funnier if you add "on ice!" to the end of it. Walt Disney… on ice! Nuclear winter… on ice! John Kerry… on ice! Pauly Shore… on ice! Okay, the last one is never funny, but you get the idea.

Anyway, John McCain seems to be taking a similar approach to climate change legislation. Come up with whatever expensive regulatory scheme you want, and then just add the words "market-based." Suddenly, it's all good! So here he is telling the New York Times today that he'll "propose a domestic cap-and-trade system that will mobilize market forces to develop and commercialize alternatives to carbon-based fuels." It's as if he believes a massive regulatory intervention will somehow become more palatable if you repeat the word "market" as many times as possible.

topics:
Trade, John McCain