MANCHIN GETS THE “CLIMATE BILL” LAST LAUGH: “The climate measure President Joe Biden signed Tuesday bypasses the administration’s concerns about emissions and guarantees new drilling opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. The legislation was crafted to secure backing from a top recipient of oil and gas donations, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, and was shaped in part by industry lobbyists.”

Plus: “The most amusing part of this story is perhaps not the underlying news about new oil and gas leases, but the language the AP reporter chose to employ. After the CBO report came out, along with multiple analyses from economists, they’ve basically given up on calling the recent legislation the ‘Inflation Reduction Act.’ In the title of the article, they simply call it the ‘climate bill.’ They then go on to call it the ‘climate measure.’ You have to dig down to the third paragraph before they bother mentioning the actual name of the bill as it was crafted.”

So they’ve basically admitted that as an inflation bill it’s not one, and now it turns out that as a climate bill it’s not one either. But as a graft bill it’s still tops, so everybody goes home pretty happy. But it’s a Democratic bill, so don’t expect the Associated Press to note that.