It seems half a loaf is what Team Obama wants to now settle for instead of a whole.

News reports surfaced yesterday saying the administration will press forward on a carbon cap on just the utility sector, which is responsible for one-third to 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, depending on who is doing the counting.

The rest of the economy will be excluded from the cap. I wonder if some of the ads I have been seeing on TV in recent evenings - against enacting new "energy taxes" and sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute - is having an impact.

The problem with focusing on "just" utilities is that Obama may be losing some Democratic Senate votes from coal producing states. Who says that there is a good chance the entire effort at carbon cap will fizzle in the fall as every mouse in Congress scammers to find his or her re-election cheese?

Meanwhile, Obama is finding new merit in suggestions by T. Boone Pickens - who captivated a recent EnergyBiz Leadership Forum - the pied piper of natural gas powered transport.

Heck of a way to run a country.