We already know about the failure of Obama's stimulus investment in Solyndra, which cost the American taxpayers $535 million.

We found out a few days ago about the failure of Ener1, another Obama stimulus-funded alternative energy company, which has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The taxpayers put up $118 million for that one.

Another stimulus-funded alternative energy company, Beacon Power, also failed. The taxpayers lost $43 million on that deal.

That's three failures in less than three years…how many more will there be ?

And now this – the inspector general for the Labor Dept. is calling for an end to Obama's green job training program. Why ? Because it isn't working. There aren't enough green jobs:

House Republicans are expanding their probe into the Obama administration's energy programs, investigating $500 million in green job training grants that placed just 10% of trainees in jobs, according to a government report.

The program's goal was to train 124,893 people and put 79,854 in jobs. But 17 months later, 52,762 were trained and 8,035, or roughly 1 in 10, had jobs. Those numbers come from an audit by the Department of Labor's inspector general, which recommended that the administration end the program and return unspent money.

Sounds like those green jobs aren't panning out so well, but some disagree:

Assistant Secretary of Labor Jane Oates defends the initiative, saying the inspector general's audit used old numbers and that it was never designed to provide immediate results.

"It's like coming to me three days after I join Weight Watchers and yelling at me because I didn't lose 62 pounds yet," she said. More recent numbers are still being compiled, Oates said.

Okay, but it's been 17 months, not three days, and if "more recent numbers are being compiled", whose fault is that ? It's not the Inspector General's fault for using the numbers the Labor Dept. gave him.

Here's one example of the green job shortfall:

One group Issa singled out is the Pathstone Corp., a Rochester, N.Y. non-profit that spent $2.3 million of its $8 million grant and had trained only 25 people — far short of its 660 goal, auditors found.

Those numbers are "extremely outdated," said Pathstone's Jeffrey Lewis. But he conceded that job placements have been much slower than anyone would have liked. "This grant came just as the recession heightened," he said.

I'm starting to sense a defense mechanism at work here, the "numbers are outdated" excuse. That raises this question – why don't the recipients of stimulus-funded training dollars know how many people they trained with the money ??? Why doesn't the Dept. Of Labor know ??? Where's the accountability ??? Or are they merely engaging in obfuscation ???

As it turns out, the government's own bureaucracy has gotten in it's way:

Bureaucracy also slowed the process. As part of its grant application, Pathstone needed to line up employers to take its graduates. But by the time it won the grant, one employer in Scranton, Pa., stopped hiring after a moratorium on natural gas drilling…

And who implemented the natural gas moratorium ??? President Obama did, though it seems he might now be reversing course, according to comments from his State Of The Union speech:

In his speech, Obama said America’s natural-gas reserves could meet the nation’s energy needs for 100 years and provide 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade.

“The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don’t have to choose between our environment and our economy,” Obama said.

Good move for energy production and job creation, but there will be controversy here, and it's name is "fracking":

The Bureau of Land Management estimates 90 percent of natural-gas drilling on public lands involves hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which a mixture of chemicals, sand and water is injected into shale formations to open fissures and allow the natural gas to come to the surface.

Environmental groups are against fracking (environmental groups are against EVERY method of energy production that will actually work to supply America with the energy it needs):

Groups such as Protecting Our Waters say hydraulic fracturing — in which a mix of water, sand and chemicals are shot underground to break apart rock and free gas — is tainting drinking water and causing more pollution than is cut by the cheap gas. The broad new federal legislation and regulation the groups advocate would tangle up fracking in miles of red tape, industry leaders counter.

The EPA agrees that fracking causes groundwater pollution, and because the EPA is basically an autonomous government authority answerable to nobody who can make it's own law, the "miles of red tape" prediction sounds likely. In fact, I think America's energy policy of the last thirty years should be called "miles of red tape". Nothing much ever seems to get done.

In summary, Obama's grand prediction of "millions of green jobs" seems far from becoming reality, but not to worry, the government has plenty of YOUR money to burn on Obama's quest. Speaking of which, the CBO just said the federal deficit will top a trillion dollars again in 2012. That makes four straight years with deficits over a trillion under President Obama. Funny how he didn't mention that in his State Of The Union speech. It's a pretty big deal. I guess he just forgot.

I keep hearing the Republicans are "The Party Of No", but it's the Democrats who keep rejecting legislation passed by the Republican-led House. Earlier this year, the Democrat-led Senate rejected the House budget proposal. In August, the Senate rejected the House's Cut, Cap, And Balance plan to raise the debt limit and balance the budget. Now, the real Party Of No is at it again. It has rejected a House Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government and provide relief for victims of Hurricane Irene and other disasters. Thus, we face ANOTHER possible government shutdown, because the real Party Of No, the Democrats, can never seem to agree on a budget. They haven't passed one in 2 1/2 years. They didn't even agree to pass Obama's budget. They rejected it unanimously.

The reason the Party Of No gave for its rejection this time is it's usual reason – Democrats don't want to cut spending, even though federal spending is far higher than usual and our deficit is astronomical.

The Senate on Friday rejected the GOP-led House's bill to avert a government shutdown, intensifying a partisan standoff that many in Congress hoped to avoid. The vote was 59-36.

Democrats in the Senate, who are in the majority, oppose Republican efforts to roll back "green" energy programs to pay for aid for victims of Hurricane Irene and other disasters. They say disaster aid, usually a bipartisan issue, should not require cuts elsewhere — especially to programs creating green jobs — as the GOP majority in the House now demands.

The two sides are racing the clock, as the Federal Emergency Management Agency is expected to run out of disaster money Monday.

It's deja vu all over again. This also makes me wonder how in the world Democrats are ever going to agree to the $1.5 trillion in spending cuts the Super Committee is supposed to recommend as part of the debt ceiling deal.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), ever the double-talking politician, had stressed the urgency of passing the CR on wednesday, but after the House passed a bill on friday, which Reid and company rejected, he changed his tune:

Earlier this week Mr. Reid was adamant that FEMA’s account was on the brink.

“The agency that rushes to help when disaster strikes will run out of money on Monday. I repeat, Monday,” he said Wednesday as he was pushing for quick action.

But by Friday he said he had been assured there was more time.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, Republicans’ leader in the chamber, tried to speed the vote up to Friday afternoon, but Mr. Reid objected, saying he wanted the cooling-off period.

“Cool off a little bit. Work this through. There’s a compromise here,” Mr. Reid said Friday, minutes after the Senate blocked back a bill drafted by House Republicans that would have replenished the disaster fund accounts through Nov. 18.

The CR would have kept the government running until 2012 had the Dems not rejected it:

The disaster money fight is tied to a broader bill that would keep the government open into fiscal year 2012, which begins Oct. 1. Congress has not passed any of the dozen spending bills required to fund basic operations, and without a stop-gap bill much of the government would shut down after Sept. 30.

In other words, we could have avoided this entire mess in the first place had Senate Democrats not rejected every budget placed before it while not offering any budget of it's own. The Senate has been in dereliction of it's basic duty for years.

In typical fashion, the fiscally irresponsible Democrats want the FEMA funds to be added to the deficit rather than display any shred of responsibility, which might harm their re-election chances:

Mr. Reid has called for a Monday vote on a new bill he wrote to accept the House-passed FEMA funding level, but to tack the additional spending onto the deficit rather than find cuts elsewhere.

Anybody remember the PAYGO legislation the Democrats passed a couple years ago, where the Dems proudly crowed about how federal spending would all be paid for now ??? The Democrats forgot all about that legislation the moment after it was passed. They scammed the American people. We've added $4 trillion to the debt in the 2 1/2 years Obummer has been President. The Democrats consistently vote for more fiscal irresponsibility, as they are doing here. They aren't just The Party Of No. They are The Party Of No Honor. Their lies flow like a river.

There's another reason Harry Reid wants a "cooling-off period" over the weekend:

Senate Democrats also have a major campaign event to raise money from high-dollar donors at the luxurious Kiawah Island in South Carolina this weekend.

Party on, Democrats. We know whose money you really care about…your own. While the Democrats wine and dine their well-heeled cronies (like the green entrepreneurs who funded Solyndra) on paradise island this weekend, I guess the business of the people can wait. Who cares if FEMA runs out of money on monday ? If that happens, I'm sure the Democrats can spin things to make it seem like the GOP's fault. That should be easy for a political party that has spent the last three years blaming everything on Bush, while it simultaneously destroys the economic future of this country.

Speaking of Solyndra, Barry's pals from Solyndra testified before Congress yesterday, if you can call pleading the 5th testifying. Here's a small example of the transparency and forthright honesty displayed by the Solyndra boys:

"Was the White House duped by Solyndra, or did they ignore the information to put green energy in a better light, or for more onerous reasons," asked Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry, a Republican.

One of Solyndra's main financial backers was also a big fundraiser for Obama in 2008 and lawmakers have questioned whether that played a part in the loan guarantee.

Lawmakers wanted to know the nature of several meetings between the Solyndra executives and White House aids over the last couple of years.

"On advice of my counsel, I invoke the privilege afforded by the fifth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and I respectfully decline to answer any questions," was the response from each executive to every question.

Peachy. I guess the Solyndra boys had two choices – either plead the Fifth or say "I don't recall" like Hillary Clinton and the other Clintonistas did when asked about their scandals. The faulty memories of all those smart Clinton folk was known as Arkansas Alzheimer's back in the day.

I'll end with one comment about the Republican Fox/Google debate the other night. I'd vote for anybody on that stage over Barack Obama in 2012. Democrats keep talking about how Republicans would rather defeat Obama than help the American people. In my view, defeating Obama and helping the American people are the exact same thing. There is no distinction between the two.

Actress Daryl Hannah, co-star of the 1990 movie Crazy People, was arrested in a protest outside the White House on tuesday. Hannah and other environ-mental-ists conducted a sit-in to protest against the planned Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would transport oil from Canada to the Gulf Of Mexico. The actress told reporters she wants to be free from fossil fuels. She's a fan of biodiesel.

I'm all for alternative energy sources, but I have to say, these enviro-nuts don't seem to have two brain cells to rub together. We are nowhere near to getting off of fossil fuels, and protesting against a Canadian pipeline when we are shipping half of our oil in on boats across the ocean (wasting a lot more energy than a pipeline would) is asinine. Oil and coal provide the majority of the energy used in this country. If we did what dingbat protesters like Ms. Hannah wanted, it would destroy our economy in about a month. Ah, I can picture Daryl Hannah's fossil fuel-free "utopian" dream world now – no fuel to transport food and other goods to the stores. No fuel for you to drive to work. No electricity in most of the country. Businesses collapsing. Unemployment at about 70%. Mass starvation. Utter chaos…….wouldn't it be lov-er-ly ??? But at least we wouldn't be causing global warming !!! There's that. Here's a little song for my fair lady, Miss Daryl Hannah…

Lots of chocolate for me to eat,
Lots of coal makin' lots of heat,
Warm face, warm hands, warm feet,
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly ?

Hannah was once quoted as saying, "I've never been good in the financial and business arenas. I handle the creative side of things". I'll drink to that. Tell you what, Ms. Hannah. You stick to playing mermaids and strippers in the movies, and leave the business side of things to people who have a clue.

While I'm on the subject of "green"…Solyndra, a major manufacturer of solar technology, touted by Obama as a source of all those green jobs the President envisions, is closing it's doors and declaring bankruptcy:

"I was told by a security guard to get my [stuff] and leave," one employee said. The company employs a little more than 1,000 employees worldwide, according to its website.
Shortly after it opened a massive $700 million facility, it canceled plans for a public stock offering earlier this year and warned it would be in significant trouble if federal loan guarantees did not go through.

Solyndra was touted by the Obama administration as a prime example of how green technology could deliver jobs. The President visited the facility in May of last year and said "it is just a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism and the fact that we continue to have the best universities in the world, the best technology in the world, and most importantly the best workers in the world. And you guys all represent that. "

The federal government offered $535 million in low cost loan guarantees from the Department of Energy. NBC Bay Area has contacted the White House asking for a statement.

Some Republicans have been very critical of the loans. "I am concerned that the DOE is providing loans and loan guarantees to firms that aren't capable of competing in the global market, even with government subsidies" Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns told the New York Times.

Sounds like the taxpayers are on the hook again. The lesson here is, you can't force a company to be profitable if it can't compete in the marketplace. You can prop it up with taxpayer dollars for awhile, perhaps even indefinitely, but since when is it the responsibility of all the citizens of the country to support private businesses ??? It isn't, even though the government forces us to do it all the time. The government subsidizes so many things these days that it's hard to even keep track of them. I always thought the free market was supposed to be the place where companies succeeded or failed on their merits. That's how we improve. The best are supposed to rise to the top. I always thought we believed in freedom in this country, not centralized control of industry. We still believe in freedom here…don't we ??? I'm no longer sure.

How much do you wager that the word 'Solyndra' doesn't come up in the President's jobs address to the nation next week ? I bet we'll still hear about those "millions of green jobs" though. What Obama doesn't bother to mention is that those millions of jobs won't exist for another 20 years, or that 3/4ths of them will be overseas. While you're waiting around for those green jobs to materialize, perhaps you can fill your idle time by renting the movie My Favorite Martian, with Daryl Hannah.

Beware. Liberals are about to "help" us peons again.

A few years ago, then Senator Obama said electricity rates would "necessarily skyrocket" if his energy policies were implemented. In spite of this, for some odd reason, we decided to elect him President. Not our wisest move, America, because here comes the skyrocket:

Consumers could see their electricity bills jump an estimated 40 to 60 percent in the next few years.

The reason: Pending environmental regulations will make coal-fired generating plants, which produce about half the nation's electricity, more expensive to operate. Many are expected to be shuttered.

The increases are expected to begin to appear in 2014, and policymakers already are scrambling to find cheap and reliable alternative power sources. If they are unsuccessful, consumers can expect further increases as more expensive forms of generation take on a greater share of the electricity load.

"Each generator will have to decide for itself whether the investment required to meet environmental requirements can be justified based on its projection of market prices and the cost of its capital. In any case, those costs will be passed through to consumers," said Mark Pruitt, director of the Illinois Power Agency, which procures electricity for Illinois.

American Electric Power, one of the country's largest coal-burning electricity generators, said Thursday it will retire nearly a quarter of its coal-fueled generating capacity and that it will spend up to $8 billion to retrofit remaining units to meet regulations that start taking effect in 2014. Those moves will have an impact.

"The sudden increase in electricity rates and impacts on state economies will be significant at a time when people and states are still struggling," AEP Chairman and CEO Michael G. Morris said.

Coal plants that account for roughly a fifth of Illinois' electricity generation could exit the market as a result of the new emissions rules, the Illinois Power Agency told state legislators in a memo last month.

More than 8,000 megawatts of coal-fired generation capacity has been retired in the U.S. since 2005, according to data from industrial software company Ventyx. Generators have announced they plan to retire another 21,000 megawatts in the near future, and some industry consultant studies estimate 60,000 megawatts of power, enough for 60 million homes, will be taken offline by 2017.

2014 is shaping up to be a banner year. Not only will our energy bills skyrocket, but we'll all be forced to purchase high-end health insurance via ObamaCare that same year. If the feared double-dip recession doesn't happen earlier, the Obama-nauts want to make sure it kicks in before too long. A recent study showed that up to 30% of employers would drop employee provided health insurance when ObamaCare arrives in full, showing further how much liberals love us peons.

If I know liberals, and I do, they will respond to the coming high energy bills by proposing yet more new government programs to "help" the people solve the financial hardships liberals created in the first place. And when Republicans object to the new energy welfare programs liberals propose, liberals will call the Republicans mean, uncaring racists who only care about the rich.

What new energy sources will replace the coal plants ? Beats me. We know liberals won't go for nuclear energy. I hear talk of solar and wind, but…I assume liberals are just pulling our leg about that. They're not serious, are they ?

As our capacity to produce electricity diminishes dramatically due to liberal regulations, the deep-thinking liberal geniuses also want all Americans to start driving, what else?…electric cars !!! Thanks, libs. You'll be driving demand for our shrinking supply of electricity through the roof. Guess what effect that will have on energy prices ? More skyrocketing, of course, assuming the electricity will even be available. What will the liberal solution be to that liberal-created problem ? Maybe they'll start promoting Conestoga wagons next. Those are quite green, along with a sizeable amount of brown, if you know what I mean. I think we should just say neigh, before everything turns to sh…well, you know.

Last month, President Obama attempted to blame the oil companies for not doing more drilling and exploration in America, as follows:

There is more we can do, however. For example, right now, the (oil) industry holds leases on tens of millions of acres — both offshore and on land — where they aren’t producing a thing. So I’ve directed the Interior Department to determine just how many of these leases are going undeveloped and report back to me within two weeks so that we can encourage companies to develop the leases they hold and produce American energy. People deserve to know that the energy they depend on is being developed in a timely manner.

This striles me as a bizarre statement. Obama is more or less saying that American oil companies aren't interested in making more profits by doing more drilling. I find that pretty hard to swallow. If I'm not mistaken, oil companies are in business to drill for oil. Why would they NOT do it ? Could Obama be correct ???

Actually, Obama is technically correct. The oil industry does hold leases on lots of land that isn't producing oil, but Obama's remarks are still entirely misleading. Either Obama doesn't understand how oil exploration works, or he's engaging in his typical blame-shifting partisan behavior. Here's an explanation from the oil industry:

“The process of looking at an area that might have oil and gas potential and narrowing your search over time and over a sequence of steps to actually producing oil and gas involves kind of casting a big net first and over time through geologic work,” Ranger said. “You prioritize some over others, you may be lucky on those first ones you drill, you may not — then you drill prospects further down your priority list.”

Ranger also explained it’s not always a cut-and-dried situation. Some areas will have oil and gas, some won’t and some might have it, but it may not be economically feasible to pump it out of the ground.

“When you drill, you have results that are either sufficient oil or gas to allow production or a dry hole or somewhere in between where you think we may have production but we may need some further work to determine whether this formation, this target, is economic to produce. Those steps consume several years from the point of leasing to a point of decision.”

Just because the oil industry holds leases on land, it doesn't mean that land holds big oil deposits, and even if it does, oil exploration isn't cut and dried. It takes time to develop those deposits. The idea that Obama's Interior Department is going to make a determination on the oil-worthiness of tens of millions of acres of leased land in two weeks just because Obama ordered them to is ludicrous.

This leads me to another Obama proposal. The President has called for an end to the $4 billion in subsidies for oil companies:

The president, in a letter to congressional leaders, said that “our outdated tax laws” have provided the oil and gas industry more than $4 billion per year in subsidies “even though oil prices are high and the industry is projected to report outsized profits this quarter.”

“We simply can’t afford these wasteful subsidies,” he said.

Even though Obama always refers to these oil "subsidies", they are actually tax breaks oil companies get to do OIL EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION, which I thought Obama was trying to encourage. Personally, I'm fine with ending oil subsid…, I mean, tax breaks, but that ain't exactly going to bring the price of gas down. If anything, it will cause it to increase a bit. And don't believe for a second that Obama wants to use that $4 billion in savings to reduce the deficit. No sir. Obama wants to take the oil company "subsidies" and use that money to subsidize other energy sources:

President Obama urged Congress Tuesday to end “unwarranted” tax breaks to big oil and gas companies and to invest the savings in alternative-energy sources.

Notice how when the President likes a subsidy, it suddenly morphs into an "investment". Obama loves the word "invest" when it suits him. Obama would take the oil company "subsidies" and use it to "invest" in wind and solar energy.

The fact is, the government subsidizes just about every energy source we have. I'd be fine with stopping that completely, but it's not going to happen. Democrats and Republicans won't let it.

Now let's take a look at which energy subsidies are the most efficient. The following chart is from Reason TV:

As you can see, we get a lot more energy bang for our buck from oil. If the President wants to talk about "wasteful subsidies", well, wind and solar are the most wasteful, by far. But that's where he wants to subsidize, er, I mean, "invest". It doesn't quite add up to me.

While I'm on the subject of subsidizing oil, let's not forget that Obama loaned $2 billion to Brazil to finance that country's oil exploration, leaving Americans to wonder why we are financing another country's oil instead of our own. Good question.

The White House, Republicans, and the American Petroleum Institue are all arguing over statistics on oil production. Obama is claiming that he ramped up oil production, but the other two groups are disputing that claim:

Obama administration officials have been pointing to a jump in domestic oil production and federal lands leased for development to beat back claims that it has slowed offshore work in the wake of last year’s Gulf oil spill.

But the administration is unfairly taking credit for long-term decisions that were made long before President Barack Obama took office, said Erik Milito, upstream director for the American Petroleum Institute.

“It’s completely disingenuous to say that offshore production has increased due to anything this administration has done,” Milito said. An increase in public land leased for oil and gas development is “attributable to these decisions to lease almost a decade ago.”

Milito also took aim at Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s claim before the House Natural Resources Committee that there were 126 drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico last month, compared to 120 in February 2010 and 116 in 2009.

Rig counts may have gone up, Milito said, but that doesn’t mean they’re working.

According to rig counts provided by Baker Hughes, there were 55 rotary rigs drilling offshore in the Gulf of Mexico four days before the Deepwater Horizon explosion last April. Last week, that number of working rotary rigs in the Gulf had dropped to 25.

Oil industry leaders have consistently accused the administration of throwing up roadblocks to new production, even before the Gulf of Mexico spill. Milito said there has been “decision after decision that shows they are not trying to promote oil and gas as part of the U.S. energy (portfolio and policy) going forward.”

Last week, Salazar told the natural resources panel that the government has expanded the amount of public lands and federal waters available for oil and gas production, even as U.S. imports of foreign oil have decreased. Analysts have attributed the drop in imported oil to a decrease in U.S. oil demand because of the economic recession.

A White House blog post earlier this week highlights the jump in oil production from the outer continental shelf over the last two years, from 446 million barrels in 2008 to 600 million barrels of estimated production in 2010.

Staff for Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee sent a “fact check” style e-mail to reporters accusing the administration of “attempting to take credit for actions they had nothing to do with.” Instead, the Republican staff said, “the strong production in the Gulf was due to leases issued in 1996-2000 under the Deepwater Royalty Relief Act — long before Obama took office.”

They noted that the government’s Energy Information Administration projects a slight decline — of about 150 million barrels — from the Gulf of Mexico in 2012, in part because of last year’s five-month ban on some deep-water exploration.

The squabbling over statistics shows no sign of abating. The administration has prepared a fact sheet on oil and gas development laden with stats touting increases in domestic production and flagging the amount of onshore and offshore leases that aren’t producing. For instance, though 41 million acres of public lands now are leased for oil and gas development, just 12 million acres are producing.

This President loves to take credit for things he didn't really do, but I guess Obama at least gets credit for not killing the pre-existing oil leases, other than in the Gulf Of Mexico, where he did kill them. In the Gulf, Obama has even defied a court order to lift the moratorium, and former Presidents Bush and Clinton are both criticizing Obama for delaying oil production.

As they say…DRILL BABY DRILL. We should have been doing it all along. Liberals were very contemptuous of that phrase, but as usual, liberals were wrong. I dont know why anyone would listen to them anyway. They are the ones who have stifled energy production in this country for the last 35 years. Look where that has gotten us, more dependent and less secure.

"Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe [$6-$7 per gallon]" – Obama Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

As the price of gas reaches $4 per gallon in some parts of the United States, placing additional financial hardships on all of us, it is worth remembering that high gas prices have been promoted by liberals (because liberals are for the working man, or something). Liberals believe high gas prices are the way to wean us unenlightened neanderthal-like human knuckle-draggers off of our fossil fuel addiction and onto alternative energy sources, like electric cars. No word from liberals on where the additional electricity for all those electric cars will come from. Liberals mumble a bit about solar and wind power, but that is little more than a pipedream fantasy. Those energy sources don't come close to providing the necessary energy requirements. I rather doubt they ever will, not that I'm against them. I'm not. I'm for them, but they are marginal energy sources. We need major energy sources.

Let's review the major energy sources…

We have nuclear energy, but liberals are against that.

We have offshore oil drilling and additional American onshore oil drilling (such as in Alaska), but liberals are against that.

We have natural gas, but that requires drilling, so liberals are against that.

We have reams of potential oil from oil shale in this country. We have the world's largest deposits, but that requires mining, so liberals are definitely against that.

We have coal, but that also requires mining, so liberals are against that.

We have ethanol, which I think liberals support, but that's more expensive than oil, and also requires putting our food supply into our gas tanks, which may end up causing more problems than it solves. But at least we'll be able to drive our hybrids and Nissan Leafs to the grocery store, though the grocery store won't have any food on the shelves, or if it does, an ear of corn will cost five bucks. Bonus ! And it's not just the drivers of the Nissan Leaf that will be able to drive to empty grocery stores. The ten people who bought the Chevy Volt will also be able to drive there. As an additional bonus, it takes more energy (gas and electricity) to produce a gallon of ethanol than the ethanol produces. No wonder liberals are for it. It doesn't make any sense at all.

Basically, liberals are against any major energy sources that….work.

But there is one energy source that has been largely overlooked by liberals. It's renewable and doesn't emit any scary armaggedon-inducing carbon, though it does leave a footprint…

That's right, liberals ! We can go back to the green future by riding horses. Now, that's what I call progressive. We'll progress right back to the 19th century to solve all our modern energy problems. The answer is so simple, I'm only surprised liberals didn't think of it sooner. And think of all the green jobs that riding horses would create. Why, the pooper scooper jobs alone…I bet it wouldn't be long before the Democrats created the Federal Department Of Sh*t…well, never mind, though the notion seems fitting. And when Republicans wanted to cut funding for the Department Of Sh*t, the Dems could wail about how the GOP is trying to kill people and wants sh*t to pile up in the streets. Think of the possibilities, Democrats. This sh*t could happen.

Oh, wait. I forgot about PETA. Darn. It turns out liberals are against horses too. Man, what a picky bunch. Looks like it's back to the drawing board. Sh*t. I thought I was onto something.

Even though liberal "elites" have been pressing for higher gas and energy prices for years (remember when Obama said energy prices would "necessarily skyrocket" under his Cap And Trade plan ?), now they are complaining about high gas prices. Go figure. You'd think they'd be happy now that they are getting what they asked for, but no. The would-be energy price skyrocketer Obama is pretending to be outraged, and has ordered his Justice Dept. to investigate possible abuse by oil speculators, though he doesn't have any evidence of illegal activity:

On Thursday, my attorney general also launched a task force with just one job: rooting out cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices, including any illegal activity by traders and speculators. We’re going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the American people for their own short-term gain. And another step we need to take is to finally end the $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies we give to the oil and gas companies each year. That’s $4 billion of your money going to these companies when they’re making record profits and you’re paying near record prices at the pump. It has to stop

Don't be surprised when Obama's "investigation" comes up with nothing. This is just another populist ploy by the President. His own preferred policies would lead to the same high energy prices he is complaining about. As I stated in my last post, our President is just a politician, nothing more. He adopts whatever policy will put him in the most favorable light come election time, even if he contradicts himself in the process. This is yet another example of it.

I do have one surefire method for reducing gas prices by about 50 cents per gallon – the government could stop taxing the hell out of gasoline. Click on the link to view per gallon gas taxes by state.

At the preceding link, you'll find that Ohio's government gas taxes come to 46.4 cents per gallon. That's about the average. Liberal California's gas taxes are the highest at 66.5 cents per gallon, with liberal New York running a close second (it's because liberals are for the little guy, or something). Conservative Texas only charges 38.4 cents per gallon (because conservatives only care about the rich, or something). Alaska has the lowest gas taxes at 26.4 cents per gallon (probably because Sarah Palin is a hate-mongerer, or something. Liberals, like children, say the darnedest things).

What's interesting is how gas prices vary around the world. Our current gas prices look pretty good to Europeans, who pay about twice what we pay. The big oil-producing countries in the Middle East pay a fraction of what we pay. In Saudi Arabia, gasoline costs like 45 cents per gallon. Maybe it would be a GOOD idea for America to produce as much of it's own oil as we can, you know ? China pays less than we do, which leads me to the devaluation of the dollar. We've been printing money like crazy in this country and borrowing money like crazy. That devalues our fiat currency, which is backed by nothing other than the "full faith and credit" of the United States (which ain't saying a lot these days). When the dollar is devalued, prices go up, and that's what is happening. We find ourselves in the debt-riddled economic doldrums with prices rising at the same time. Food prices were already rising beyond economic growth before the oil price spike, and now things will only get worse. An old word from the 70's is beginning to creep back into my mind – stagflation, but this time with the additional economic burden of crushing debt. I wish I could be more optimistic….but….as I also stated in my last post…we're the Titanic, and the iceberg approaches. It's getting very near. I sure wish we had a leader, but unfortunately, we're stuck with Obama, for now at least.

On the bright side, Obama has finally released his original Birth Certificate, not that I give a damn. It's about time. Maybe now the Birthers will shut up so the media can focus on something meaningful for a change, not that I actually hold out much hope for that. Then again, maybe the Birthers will claim the Birth Certificate is a forgery. Enquiring minds want to know…or something.

Irony of the global warming variety:

7 Dec 10 – With the UN Climate Change Conference underway in Cancun to discuss the dangers of Global Warming, the resort host location is experiencing its third straight day of record cold temperatures…

Today the mercury fell to 53F in Cancun. The record for this date – 57F – was set in 2000.

Yesterday, the temperature in Cancun fell to 53F, a new record, and on Dec 5th it fell to 51F, yet another new record.

On a related note, global warming stopped fifteen years ago:

Last week at Cancun, in an attempt to influence richer countries to agree to give £20billion immediately to poorer ones to offset the results of warming, the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute warned that global temperatures would be 6.5 degrees higher by 2100, leading to rocketing food prices and a decline in production.

The math isn't complicated. If the planet were going to be six degrees hotter by the century's end, it should be getting warmer by 0.6 degrees each decade; if two degrees, then by 0.2 degrees every ten years. Fortunately, it isn't.

Actually, with the exception of 1998 – a 'blip' year when temperatures spiked because of a strong 'El Nino' effect (the cyclical warming of the southern Pacific that affects weather around the world) – the data on the Met Office's and CRU's own websites show that global temperatures have been flat, not for ten, but for the past 15 years.

They go up a bit, then down a bit, but those small rises and falls amount to less than their measuring system's acknowledged margin of error. They have no statistical significance and reveal no evidence of any trend at all.

Hmmm. Somebody better call Al Gore. I thought he said we had reached the tipping point, not the leveling off point. What did I do with that IPCC hockey stick graph ? Ah, here it is. This is the IPCC's 2001 prediction of future world temperatures:

Wow. That's waaay off. If you drew a straight horizontal line from 1996 to 2010 it would more accurately reflect global temperatures. The upward temperature trend the IPCC predicted has not happened.

Surely, the scientists have an explanation, correct ? I mean, heck, they're SCIENTISTS, and the IPCC says there's a "consensus" on global warming, and all skeptics are little more than flat earther cavemen.

…Phil Jones, the CRU director at the centre of last year's 'Climategate' leaked email scandal, was forced to admit in a littlenoticed BBC online interview that there has been 'no statistically significant warming' since 1995.
One of those leaked emails, dated October 2009, was from Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the US government's National Centre for Atmospheric Research and the IPCC's lead author on climate change science in its monumental 2002 and 2007 reports.

He wrote: 'The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment , and it is a travesty that we can't.'

Hmmm. That was an inconvenient truth, alright. I'm no climatologist, and lord knows I don't want to sound all flat earthy and caveman-like, but…is it possible that CO2 isn't that big a threat ? Is it possible the effects of CO2 are somewhere between none and mild ? Is it possible that something else caused the recent warming and halt to warming…like…say…THE SUN…or…water vapor ?:

A decade-long plateau in global warming appears to have occurred in large part because the stratosphere – the layer of atmosphere that few but airliners enter – got drier.

That’s an explanation by a team of atmospheric scientists from the United States and Germany. They’ve studied trends in stratospheric water vapor over the past 30 years and calculated the effects of those trends on temperatures.

A decline in stratospheric water vapor between 2000 and 2009 followed an apparent increase between 1980 and 2000, according to balloon and satellite measurements that the team used. The decline slowed the long-term growth in global average temperatures by some 25 percent, compared with the warming one could expect from rising concentrations of greenhouse gases alone, the team estimates.

"There's not a lot of water in the stratosphere. It's extremely dry," says Susan Solomon, an atmospheric scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., who led the team. "But it packs a wallop" in terms of its climatic effects, she says.

Other factors probably played a role as well in the temperature plateau, the team acknowledges.

Another contributor could have been sulfate aerosols from the rising number of coal-fired power plants in China, point out researchers such as Drew Shindell, with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.

Still, he and others agree, the new results indicate that stratospheric water vapor, especially in the lowest regions of the stratosphere, can have a significant impact on global average temperature trends when viewed in decade-long time frames.

Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. By some estimates, it accounts for anywhere from 36 percent to 85 percent of the atmosphere's greenhouse effect, depending on whether clouds are included.

What I just read there says water vapor could have caused the warming, and a reduction in water vapor could have caused the warming to stop. So why have we been told CO2 is the problem, a relatively minor greenhouse gas when compared to water vapor ?

But wait, there's more:

Another potential contributor to variation in stratospheric water vapor: fine particles that result from burning biomass for fuel or to clear farmland in the tropics. In 2002, atmospheric researcher Steven Sherwood described how increases in particles can lead to increases in stratospheric water vapor.

One of the "grand challenges" that researchers now face is trying to figure out whether the variability that Solomon and her colleagues have identified represents a natural swing in climate or whether it represents a broader climate feedback that might over the long term offset the effects of what scientists say is human-triggered global warming.

Um, did I just hear that our groovy new green energy source, biomass (i.e. ethanol), could be contributing to global warming ? Oh my. I always thought putting food (corn) into our gas tanks was a really bad idea, but now it may be harming the environment as well ? Rats. What's an environmentally-conscious fellow like myself to believe ?

It's all so confusing….and that's one of the many reasons why Cap And Trade is a scam. It tries to impose solutions to questions that have not been answered yet.

Now you'll have to excuse me while I go knock the icicles off my gutters. Bye.

The latest "great success" of the Obama administration is the newly announced Chevy Volt, a plug-in electric/gasoline hybrid automobile from General Motors (a subsidiary of ObamaCorp).

The Obama Volt has all the luxurious amenties of a Honda Civic, but at twice the price. Retailing at $41,000, the Volt is sure to be a big hit with wealthy Al Gore greenies all across the country, though it's price will be beyond the range of most buyers. Who knows, the Goreacle himself may purchase one to drive from his Gulfstream private jet to one of his mansions. That's just the way the "energy-conscious" Goreacle rolls. One of his swimming pools uses up more energy than an average person's house. The Goreacle is clearly committed to the cause (not sure what that cause is, other than to further enrich himself).

The Obama Volt is so attractive to prospective buyers that ObamaCorp is offering a $7,500 tax credit to lure people into buying one. ObamaCorp is offering another $1,000 tax credit for homeowners who install a charging system for the Volt. The free market is great, isn't it ? Those who don't have a way to charge the Volt at home, such as apartment dwellers, can go to their local charging stations to get their Volt buzz on. One slight drawback there – the charging stations don't exist (another $50 billion ObamaCorp subsidy should fix that).

Barack Obama, the President and CEO of ObamaCorp, said he wants a million plug-in electric vehicles on the road by 2015. If his vision comes true, that would cost taxpayers $8.5 billion (or maybe the Dems can cut food stamps a third time to pay for it). In fact, Obama's vision may be a bit blurry. GM only plans to produce 40,000 Volts in 2013. I don't know how you get to a million vehicles that way. Perhaps the President will be "forced" to use his command-and-control powers to buy other major automobile manufacturers in order for his vision to be made real.

A fully-loaded Obama Volt would cost nearly $45,000. The Volt will run 40 miles on a fully-charged electric battery. After that, the gasoline backup engine extends the Volt's range to 340 miles. As an additional bonus for the non-wealthy, the Volt's engine runs on premium gasoline. What genius decided to do that ? Sounds like ObamaCorp wants to discourage trips longer than the 40-mile battery range.

Naturally, the "right-wing noise machine" has been critical of the Obama Volt. Here's one of those radical right-wing naysayers against progress and all things holy, Edward Niedermeyer of the…New York Times ??? Wait a minute, that can't be correct. The Times is a noted left-wing newspaper. Hmmm. Anyway, Niedermeyer (wasn't he in the movie Animal House ?), explains what a deal America is getting with the Volt in his op-ed column, GM's Electric Lemon:

Three and a half years — and one government-assisted bankruptcy later — G.M. is bringing a Volt to market that makes good on those two promises. The problem is, well, everything else.

For starters, G.M.’s vision turned into a car that costs $41,000 before relevant tax breaks … but after billions of dollars of government loans and grants for the Volt’s development and production. And instead of the sleek coupe of 2007, it looks suspiciously similar to a Toyota Prius. It also requires premium gasoline, seats only four people (the battery runs down the center of the car, preventing a rear bench) and has less head and leg room than the $17,000 Chevrolet Cruze, which is more or less the non-electric version of the Volt…

In the industry, some suspect that G.M. and the Obama administration decided against selling the Volt at a loss [like Toyota did with the Prious] because they want the company to appear profitable before its long-awaited initial stock offering, which is likely to take place next month. For taxpayers, that approach might have made sense if the government planned on selling its entire 61 percent stake in G.M. But the administration has said it will sell only enough equity in the public offering to relinquish its controlling stake in G.M. Thus the government will remain exposed to the company’s (and the Volt’s) long-term fate.

So the future of General Motors (and the $50 billion taxpayer investment in it) now depends on a vehicle that costs $41,000 but offers the performance and interior space of a $15,000 economy car. The company is moving forward on a second generation of Volts aimed at eliminating the initial model’s considerable shortcomings. (In truth, the first-generation Volt was as good as written off inside G.M., which decided to cut its 2011 production volume to a mere 10,000 units rather than the initial plan for 60,000.) Yet G.M. seemingly has no plan for turning its low-volume “eco-flagship” into a mass-market icon like the Prius.

Quantifying just how much taxpayer money will have been wasted on the hastily developed Volt is no easy feat. Start with the $50 billion bailout (without which none of this would have been necessary), add $240 million in Energy Department grants doled out to G.M. last summer, $150 million in federal money to the Volt’s Korean battery supplier, up to $1.5 billion in tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives, and some significant portion of the $14 billion loan G.M. got in 2008 for “retooling” its plants, and you’ve got some idea of how much taxpayer cash is built into every Volt.

In the end, making the bailout work — whatever the cost — is the only good reason for buying a Volt. The car is not just an environmental hair shirt (a charge leveled at the Prius early in its existence), it is an act of political self-denial as well.

Now for the good news. GM says it will only cost the average American who drives less than 40 miles $1.50 per day to charge the Volt. That comes out to a low, low energy price of $547.50 per year. That sounds pretty good. Let's compare that to the comparable Chevrolet Cruze gasoline-powered car. For someone who drives 12,000 miles per year (32.8 miles per day), the 2010 Cruze, which will get 45 miles per gallon, would cost $666.67 per year if gasoline averages $2.50 per gallon. The Volt would save around $120 per year, if my calculations are correct. Obviously, the difference is more or less depending on the variable prices of gasoline and electricity. At a savings of $120 per year, the Volt ($33,500 after tax credit) would pay for itself over the Cruze ($17,000) in a little over 137 years, assuming maintenance costs are the same. I hope the Volt comes with a really great warranty. Of course, without taxpayer assistance, it would take longer by half for the Volt to pay for itself. Without the taxpayers propping up the Volt, it would take around 200 years to pay for itself.

But what if the price of gasoline skyrockets, as many left-wingers desire (only to HELP people, of course) ??? Well, if the price of gasoline went to $5.00 per gallon, the Volt would pay for itself over the Cruze in just over 20 years. Such…a…deal.

Even the good news isn't so good. I can't see this automobile catching on unless the price becomes much more competitive.

Conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh, who would be hanged as a traitor if liberals got their wish, also weighed in with criticism of the Volt, prompting White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to hysterically claim that Limbaugh wanted a million people to lose their jobs. The Democrat Governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm, called Limbaugh "unamerican" for his criticism. I suppose such nonsensical stances are to be expected from a White House that compared those opposed to the ObamaCare insurance mandate to opposers of the Civil Rights Act (who were mostly Democrats, btw). The more desperate the White House gets over it's unpopularity on political issues, the more of this inanity you can expect from them.

Hey ! I know how Obama can make the Volt become profitable ! A Volt mandate ! I'm sure the Commerce Clause would allow Obama to force us to buy electric cars, since he's already forcing us to buy health insurance. To heck with that mustly old Constitution. Anything goes. The sky's the limit, because Obama won. Yes We Can !

On a related note, government-owned General Motors, which still hasn't paid back it's bailout money, just got into the subprime mortgage business. Nothing could possibly go wrong there, could it ?

Two and a half months until election day, America.

Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) is a great guy. He really likes to use taxpayer dollars to help people…especially if those people are members of the Kanjorski family. Some years ago, Rep. Kanjorski secured earmarks of $9 million in federal grants for an energy company called Cornerstone Technologies LLC. Cornerstone was run by members of the Kanjorski family, including the Congressman's nephew, Russell Kanjorski (remember his name). Sweet deal for the Kanjorski's. It's good to have friends in high places. Even sweeter, Cornerstone ran it's company out of a building owned by Congressman Paul Kanjorski, so all the rent paid by Cornerstone (which was really paid by the taxpayers) went into the Congressman's pocket.

Unfortunately, the Cornerstone Kanjorski's didn't know how to run an energy company. It went bust in 2003. The $9 million in taxpayer funds went down the drain. Here's a Fox News video recounting the entire sordid tale. Try not to throw up on your computer screen as you watch this, because it is sickening:

I especially liked the part where Congressman Kanjorski tried to blame hiw own self-serving corrupt activities on "the Republican machine." Evidently, Kanjorski has a sense of humor in addition to being a crook.

Somehow, Congressman Kanjorski is still in office instead of in prison where he belongs for bilking the taxpayers. Way to go, Pennsylvania voters. I wonder if anyone outside Fox News even reported Rep. Kanjorski's corruption. It's good to be a Democrat, I guess. Things didn't go quite so well for, say, Duke Cunningham.

Now we fast forward to today. President Obama recently announced $2 billion in guaranteed government loans to two energy companies. For those who don't know, a "guaranteed government loan" means if the companies go belly up, the taxpayers are on the hook for the dough. Nice deal for the companies receiving the funds, not so nice deal for the taxpayers.

One of the companies receiving guaranteed government loot is Abound Solar, a startup company that just began ramping up to produce solar panels in 2008. Abound Solar is getting $400 million from Obama. Well, technically, Obama is borrowing the $400 million, because the U.S. government is on it's ass, dead broke.

Now for the trivia question – Guess who is the Vice President Of Marketing for Abound Solar ?

(Cue the theme song from Jeopardy)

De-de-de-de, de-de-de, de-de-de-de-deep, de-de-de-de-de……

If you said, Alex, who is Russell Kanjorski ?, you would be absolutely correct. After bilking the taxpayers with Cornerstone, Russ Kanjorski landed another plum top management job with another company being financed by the taxpayers. Don't that beat all !

The CEO of the Abound Solar startup is Tom Tiller, who previously headed up a company that produced recreational vehicles and atv's. Tiller was made the CEO of Abound about three months ago. He has no experience with solar technology, but he is a Harvard MBA. Abound Solar has other investors besides the American taxpayers. A hedge fund company, an asset management company, former Goldman-Sachs persons, former Lehman Brothers persons, other Harvard grads, etc. have invested $150 million in Abound. The company is also aligned with BP on some biofuels projects. BP used to call itself the "world's first green petroleum company," if you remember, but I doubt anyone living on the Gulf Of Mexico would agree with that description.

The other company receiving big Obamabucks is a Spanish company called Abengoa, who will receive $1.45 billion. Former Democratic VP Al Gore has an investment in that company, though the amount is unknown. It's that transparency thing again. The $1.45 billion investment in Abengoa is to build a concentrated solar plant outside Phoenix, Arizona. The plant is supposed to provide energy for 77,000 homes once it reaches full capacity (there are about 500,000 homes in Phoenix). It will create 85 permanent jobs. That's not a typo. 85 jobs for the $1.45 billion investment.

Speaking of Spain, that country made a big committment to solar power, with heavy subsidies from the Spanish government. What Spain has found is that the solar panels don't pay for themselves. They cost far too much, and require massive ongoing government subsidies. Now Spain wants to cut back on solar power.

But I'm sure that could never happen here. I bet Russ Kanjorski would agree.

On March 30, 2010, President Obama announced plans to open up vast new areas to offshore oil drilling.

Three weeks later, on April 20, 2010, the biggest offshore oil platform explosion (pictured above) in American history is looking like it might turn into the worst oil-related ecological disaster ever in this country.

Now all the new offshore drilling plans are suspended.

Isn't the timing of all this a bit…interesting ?

Ten days after the disaster, all we've heard from the media and the government is that the cause of the explosion is unknown. We haven't even heard any speculation about the cause, despite the fact that 126 workers were evacuated from the sinking oil platform. Has anybody seen any interviews with any of them ? I haven't. Shouldn't at least some of them have a pretty good idea what happened ?

I don't want to jump the gun and become a paranoid conspiracy theorist here, but I can't help but think back to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. That was in 2005. Those events caused many oil rigs in the Gulf Of Mexico to sink, drift off their platforms, or suffer damage, but there were no significant oil spills then. No explosions.

And now they are saying it might take MONTHS to stop this oil spill.

From what I've been able to discover, there are roughly 800 oil rigs operating in the Gulf Of Mexico. Oil companies have drilled in thousands of spots in the Gulf for many decades. There was never a major problem, until now.

Three weeks after Obama announced plans to expand drilling.

Interesting.

Yesterday, I heard several government officials say at a press conference that they didn't know what caused the explosion, but they all blamed BP at the same time. I'm not sure how 'unknown cause' translates into 'BP's fault,' but BP will be responsible for the cleanup costs. Meanwhile, BP's CEO is blaming the owner of the oil rig (BP contracted the rig from it's maker, Transocean).

What I haven't heard anywhere is the word….eco-terrorism.

Not that I'm saying it is that. I don't know, and I sure don't have any proof.

It's just…interesting.

Let me start by saying I agree with several things Obama has done recently – instituting an effort to secure loose nukes is great. Probably the single greatest threat to the USA and the world is a nuke falling into terrorist hands. Obama's move to start offshore oil drilling is a step forward. I supported his surge in Afghanistan (though I'm having second thoughts after Afghan President Hamid Karzai criticized American efforts. We can't possibly succeed without the support of the Afghan government). Obama took a small step forward on gay rights by requiring hospitals to allow patients to designate who can visit them during crucial moments. It no longer has to be a family member. The former policy discriminated against unmarried couples and gay couples who are not allowed to marry, and are therefore not recognized as family. Allowing unmarried and gay partners to visit their loved ones in the hospital is simply the right and humane thing to do. Kudos to the President for changing this longstanding and unfair policy.

But thursday, the President returned to what I termed "full-blown economic retard" mode a couple posts back. At a Democratic fundraiser in Miami, Obama said the following about the tax day Tea Party protests. From the Associated Press:

President Barack Obama said Thursday he's amused by the anti-tax tea party protests that have been taking place around Tax Day. Obama told a fundraiser in Miami that he's cut taxes, contrary to the claims of protesters.

"You would think they'd be saying thank you," he said.

At that, many in the crowd at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts stood and yelled, "Thank you!"

The Democrats at Obama's fundraiser may have bought into this schlock, but anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows better. This was Obama at his worst.

First of all, the Tea Party protests aren't really about current levels of taxation. They are primarily about out-of-control government spending and growth, along with the resulting massive deficits and debt increases. It doesn't take too many brain cells to figure out that higher taxation HAS to follow such fiscal irresponsibility eventually, even if Obama is throwing a populist bone to the taxpayers now. The Democrats who are saying "thank you" to Obama's program of cut taxes/increase spending certainly didn't feel the same way about George W. Bush's same program of cut taxes/increase spending. The Democrats were right about Bush, but they've become incredible hypocrites now that their man is in charge, and in little more than a year in office, their man has increased spending more than Bush ever dreamed. Federal spending in 2011 is scheduled to be nearly a trillion dollars more than it was in 2008. That is astounding, and remember, after that the huge spending increases for ObamaCare start to kick in.

Second, Obama is a tax RAISER, not a tax cutter. He broke his pledge not to raise taxes on anyone making under $200,000 about two weeks after he took office, when he implemented a regressive cigarette tax. Obama's health care reform will implement a slew of new taxes, far more than the TEMPORARY tax cuts he instituted for 95% of Americans last year. Obama's wants to end his middle class tax cuts after 2010. Then he wants to reverse the Bush tax cuts for those making over $200,000. Several of the health care reform taxes will hit the middle class, further violating his pledge not to raise taxes on those making under $200,000 per year. Coming up on Obama's agenda is another huge regressive tax scam known as Cap And Trade, which will drive up everyone's energy costs while doing virtually nothing to decrease CO2 emissions. Obama's economic advisors are contemplating several other tax increases, among them a VAT tax, which would also be regressive.

Yet, Obama wants us to say "thank you" for the temporary tax cuts. I don't think so. The American public has to be smarter than to fall for this bait-and-switch crapola. How our President thinks he can control the economic narrative with such fatuous nonsense is beyond me. Oh wait, I do know how. The mainstream media seldom calls him on his lies. Instead, they are complicit in pushing them. That's how.

President Obama visited the Celgard plant in Charlotte, North Carolina the other day. Obama chose Celgard because they make batteries, and received $50 million in taxpayer funds via Obama's stimulus package. Celgard is using the money for expansion. Obama touted that achievement, though I always thought it was banks who were supposed to loan money to private companies for expansion, not the taxpayers. I also wonder how Celgard's competitors, the ones who didn't get any stimulus money, feel about it. This is the problem when the government interferes in the private sector, picking winners and losers in industry.

But I don't want to talk about what I disagree with in the President's remarks in North Carolina (I disagreed with A LOT). Instead, I want to talk about what I do agree with, and that comes in his overall energy strategy. Here's what Obama said about energy during a Q&A session, when someone asked him if offshore drilling would hamper investment in clean energy technologies:

We are interested in figuring out how we can improve efficiency across the system, both in buildings and in transportation sectors and — you name it, we're all about increasing energy efficiency and finding new renewable, clean sources of energy. It's one of my highest priorities, and I think it's got to be one of our highest strategic priorities as an economy. It has the potential of being an enormous growth industry.

Here's the challenge that we have. We don't yet have the technological breakthroughs that can completely replace fossil fuels. So for the next 10 years, next 20 years, we're still going to be using oil; we're still going to be using coal; we're still going to be using natural gas — we're still going to be using the traditional sources to fuel our cars, to heat our homes, to run our big power plants, et cetera.

The President is exactly right here. We should "drill, baby, drill" at the same time we endeavor to improve energy efficiency and propagate new and cleaner renewable energy technologies. There is no reason NOT to do it, despite the cries of the enviro-wackos and liberal dunderheads. We are going to need the old technologies for a long time to come, so we definitely should produce as much of our own energy as we can.

The President continued:

It's my hope that if we're aggressive over the next several years, we can substantially cut our energy use in every sector while still maintaining our high levels of economic growth. So, for example, at the announcement where I talked about offshore drilling, I did so in front of an F-18, a fighter jet, that is actually going to be run half on biomass. So I was joking with the pilot — I said, so this thing runs on vegetable oil. But they're going to break the sound barrier using biomass as fuel.

So the Pentagon is investing huge amounts in energy efficiency. We are promoting weatherization across the country because this is a win-win situation; you put people to work putting in insulation, putting in windows — most of which, by the way, that insulation and windows is manufactured here in the United States — it saves on the individual's energy bill, plus it means that that power plant has to produce less energy to keep that home warm. So it's a win-win all across the board.

This is mostly correct, though I have a problem with using vegetable matter as energy. I think we're better off using vegetables for…FOOD.

Then the President made the enviros and libs heads spin in circles like the possessed girl in the Excorcist by saying the following:

That's our biggest priority — energy efficiency and renewable, clean energy. But because we're going to have this transition — unless somebody here invents something tomorrow, which would be very helpful, and if you have it let me know, we'll get it going right away — but what's most likely is we're going to have this transition. And so in the interim we've got to look at our traditional energy sources and figure out how can we use those most effectively and in the most environmentally sound way.

That's why I announced that we were going to start the first nuclear plant in 30 years. Japan, France, other countries have a safe, secure, reliable and effective nuclear — civilian nuclear energy. We essentially stopped 30 years ago. For those of you who are concerned about climate change, nuclear energy doesn't produce greenhouse gases. It's not a perfect energy source because it's got the problem with spent fuel and how that is properly stored, but generally speaking, that's going to have to be part of our energy mix.

Wow. I can't believe a President from the DEMOCRATIC party is actually saying these things. I'm not used to Democrats actually, you know, making sense.

Obama also talked about the limitations he'll place on drilling, and the environmental risk factors:

The decision around drilling — same approach. What we did was we said we're not going to have drilling a mile off the North Carolina coast or two miles off. But 50 miles off, 100 miles off, where it is appropriate and environmentally sound and not risky, we should allow exploration to begin taking place to see if there's certain reserves.

There are some areas that we just completely put off limits, like Bristol Bay in Alaska where it's a huge fishery, environmentally very sensitive. There are some areas off the coast in the Gulf of Mexico which don't make sense for us to allow exploration, even though we know that there are existing reserves there.

But what we did was we tried to look at the scientific evidence and figure out where are areas where low risk environmentally and a high potential upside.

Now, here's the last thing I'll say about drilling, though, because what you have is, you have some environmentalists who just said, don't drill anywhere; and then you've got some of my friends on the Republican side who were saying, well, this is a nice first step but it's not enough — you should open up everything.

I don't agree with the notion that we shouldn't do anything. It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don't cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn't come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore.

But the notion that we could drill our way out of the problem — you'll start hearing about this because you know what happens during the summer. As soon as gas prices start going up — every summer it's the same thing, right? And then politicians start standing up and — "we're going to do something about it" — and these days some of my colleagues on the Republican side, what they'll say is, you got to drill even more.

Count me as one who thinks more areas should be opened up for drilling (can you say 'ANWR,' or off the West Coast ?), but with a Democrat in office, I'm just happy that we might be making progress. Obama is correct that we can't simply drill our way out of the energy problem forever, or at least we can't given our current rates of energy consumption, but that's why conservation is key. The President said we have 2% of the world's oil reserves while we consume 20% of the world's oil.

Obama ended with the most important point:

That's why we've got to get moving on this clean energy sector, but we also have to make sure that we've got enough supply that's regular in terms of these other energy — traditional energy, sources, so that by the time we get to the clean energy sector, we haven't had to sacrifice economic growth along the way.

Absolutely. When clean energy is cost effective and abundant, it will take it's place in our energy supply. Until then, we HAVE to keep the country going, and it's going to take coal and oil to do it. Nuclear energy could be a great help. Why the political left doesn't understand this is anybody's guess. They make no sense at all to me. If we start going to electric car technology, we're going to need a lot more electric energy (coal, nuclear, hydro, wind, solar). We're going to have to upgrade our entire electrical grid, and the most abundant energy sources of electricity (coal, hydro, and nuclear) will have to pick up the slack. It's very doubtful whether intermittent energy sources like wind and solar are up for the job, though Obama seems more confident about this than I am.

But I have to love it when a Democratic President knocks down yet more phony left-wing talking points. You go, Barack. I really hope you are serious about this stuff.

"For those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months." - President Barack Hussein Obama, narcissist, addressing the United Nations, September, 2009.

I'm sure glad Barry came along and fixed the character and cause of this nation after 232 years of American villainy, aren't you ? On the bright side, at least he didn't call pre-Obama America "The Great Satan." And our President spoke these words in front of an audience that included the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, Moammar Gadhafi, and a slew of other human rights violators (many of whom are on the Orwellian UN Human Rights Council).
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"Since Americans can only be prodded into doing something with money, we need to tax crappy foods that make us sick like we do with cigarettes, and alcohol." - pot-smoking comedian Bill Maher, September, 2009.

Unbelievably, Maher calls himself a Libertarian. In reality, he's just another authoritarian left-winger. Someone should familiarize Maher with the words "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It's none of Bill Maher's business who smokes, drinks, or eats what, which Maher would quickly realize if someone took his weed away. Maher's "libertarianism" extends only to his desire to get high. What a hypocrite.
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"Is capitalism a sin ?" - Leni Riefenstahl Award-winning, Castro-loving filmmaker Michael Moore, in a trailer from his forthcoming movie, Capitalism, A Love Story.

The answer from Moore's questionee is "yes," by the way, capitalism IS a sin. Hugo Chavez couldn't have said it better.
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"President Obama didn't make much news on his round of five Sunday talk shows … with one notable exception. The President revealed a great deal about his philosophy of government and how he defines a tax increase. It turns out the President thinks a health-care tax is not a tax if he thinks the tax is for your own good. … Mr. Obama was asked by [ABC] host George Stephanopoulos about the 'individual mandate.' Under Max Baucus's Senate bill that Mr. Obama supports, everyone would be required to buy health insurance or else pay a penalty as high as $3,800 a year. Mr. Stephanopoulos posed the obvious question about this kind of coercion when 'the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don't [buy insurance]. … How is that not a tax?' 'Well, hold on a second, George,' Mr. Obama replied. 'Here's what's happening. You and I are both paying $900, on average — our families — in higher premiums because of uncompensated care. Now what I've said is that if you can't afford health insurance, you certainly shouldn't be punished for that. That's just piling on. If, on the other hand, we're giving tax credits, we've set up an exchange, you are now part of a big pool, we've driven down the costs, we've done everything we can and you actually can afford health insurance, but you've just decided, you know what, I want to take my chances. And then you get hit by a bus and you and I have to pay for the emergency room care, that's…' 'That may be,' Mr. Stephanopoulos responded, 'but it's still a tax increase.' (In fact, uncompensated care accounts for about only 2.2% of national health spending today, but that's another subject.) Mr. Obama: 'No. That's not true, George. The — for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore…' In other words, like parents talking to their children, this levy — don't call it a tax — is for your own good. … Mr. Obama complains that 'My critics say everything is a tax increase,' as if that is his political problem. His real problem is that the individual mandate really is a tax, but the President doesn't want voters to think of it that way, because taxes are unpopular." –The Wall Street Journal, September, 2009.

Yes, of course, Obama's penalty for not having health insurance is a tax, no matter what he wants to call it. Obama probably wouldn't consider his cap-and-trade proposal a tax either, but that's exactly what it is. The creative subterfuge being engaged in by Democrats these days is to pass tax increases without calling them tax increases. Instead, they are called penalties, mandates, fees, carbon allowances, etc. Does this stuff actually fool anyone ? (except for liberals, that is). I hope not. Obama isn't "helping the little guy" one bit, in case anyone hasn't noticed (and the media sure hasn't). He's only raising the little guy's expenses, through both direct and indirect means. This brings to mind Ronald Reagan's quote about the most terrifying words in the english language – "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
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"We understand the gravity of the climate threat. We are determined to act. And we will meet our responsibility to future generations." - Barack Obama, speaking at the UN climate change conference, September, 2009.

"Responsibility to future generations," eh ? More than a tad ironic, coming from the President who is running up the debt faster than every other administration in history combined, thereby irresponsibly ruining the prospects of future generations.
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"It doesn't smell of sulfur here anymore. It smells of something else. It smells of hope." - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, addressing the UN, September, 2009.

The "sulfur" smell was Bush, whom Chavez called "the devil" at last year's UN meeting. The "hope" smell is Obama. It's sure nice that we've won over Chavez, don't you think ? Yes, he may be a tyrannical nut who nationalizes industries, shuts down opposition media, and puts opposition political figures in jail, but that's the socialist way. Because Chavez's version of "hope" would be hope of a worldwide socialist revolution, I wonder what it is he likes so much about Obama ??? I can agree with Chavez on this much – something smells alright.

I mentioned in my last post that President Obama was supporting offshore oil drilling in America.

But only in SOUTH America, not here. Following are the details of that support, from the Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount

So, we're lending Petrobras $2 billion or more. Sure, why not ? The good old USA is loaded ($11.6 trillion in debt) and our economy is doing so darn good (2.2 million jobs lost this year).

Here's a little information about Petrobras, the Brazilian state-run oil company. In 2008, Petrobras made an $18 billion profit. No wonder they need money from Uncle Sam. $18 billion is hardly enough to buy bread. Plus, poor Petrobras has been hit hard by the recession. Their profits are down 20% this year. For the first half of 2009, Petrobras has only made $7.4 billion in profit (link).

So, we're lending $2 billion or more to a foreign oil company that has made $25.4 billion in the last 18 months alone. I'm sure that makes sense somehow, but my little brain can't fathom it, even if big-time financier and left wing slush-funder George Soros can. Soros repositioned his holdings in Petrobras just days before the U.S. loan guarantees to Petrobras were announced. Soros sold 22 million shares of common stock and bought 5.8 million shares of preferred stock, which pay higher dividends. I'm sure Soros didn't have any inside information though. That would be, you know, illegal, and there's nothing at all shady about George Soros.

It would be nice if the USA had it's own offshore oil to invest in, wouldn't it ? We don't know exactly how much we have (lots), because nobody is looking for it. Offshore drilling has been banned off the East and West coasts for years, thanks to the environmentalists and other left wingers like Barack Obama.

I guess the new White House mantra is…….

Drill baby drill, but only in Brazil.

I sure hope we get a President someday who cares about America.

NORTH America, that is.

“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.” – Thomas Jefferson

Allow me to construct a hypothetical set of circumstances. Let's say our country was in the midst of a severe recession, that unemployment was rising rapidly as millions of jobs were being lost, that average people were having an increasingly difficult time getting by, that our industries were having a difficult time competing, that the value of the dollar was dropping, that we were up to our ears in debt……

Okay, that isn't hypothetical at all. That's what is actually happening.

Now, in response to this not-so-hypothetical set of crisis circumstances, what would you think of our government if it passed legislation that would bring about massive tax increases, that would make it even more difficult for our industries to compete, that would cause more job losses, that would raise energy costs dramatically, that would increase the price of practically every product consumers purchase, that would put the average person much further in the hole, and that wouldn't even provide the desired benefit of said legislation ???? (link)

I'd call that government destructive to the ends of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I'd want that government replaced for working against the interests of the American people. That's what I'm thinking today after the House of Representatives passed Cap-And-Trade legislation by a narrow vote of 219-212.

The Cap-and-Trade bill, also known as Waxman-Markey, also known as The American Clean Energy And Security Act, also known as the Let Them Eat Cake Act, is a 1,200 page monstrosity that nobody in the House had time to read, because the final version of the bill wasn't posted until the night before friday's vote, and a 300 page amendment was added at 3:00am on the day of the vote. I seem to remember President Obama saying something about having the most transparent administration EVAH !…….I guess Congress didn't get the memo on that, because they are operating like cat burglars in the dead of night.

Here's a quick rundown of the bad guys and the good guys in the House. The bad guys voting FOR the destruction of America included 211 Democrats and 8 Republicans. The good guys voting AGAINST destruction included 44 Democrats and 168 Republicans. You can find a complete vote tally here. I'd like to single out Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) for praise for standing against this bill. I've maligned Mr. Kucinich in the past, but I'm beginning to think I was wrong about him. He seems to be one of the few in the House who actually stands on his principles. That's noteworthy to me, even if I often disagree with him. The fact that 44 Democrats voted against this bill shows us that the Dems know Cap-And-Trade is a really bad idea, but lots of Democrats caved to pressure from the White House. El Presidente badly wants more control over all aspects of America, and this bill puts him in the express lane toward acquiring that control (but he believe in free markets ! lol).

"We've seen the example in Spain, it's a colossal mistake there, a political and an economic error. This could be the most colossal mistake ever made in the history of the United State Congress." – Congressman Steve King (R-IOWA).

I picked the above quote not only because a guy named King must be right, but because he mentioned Spain. What happened in Spain ?

Spain already implemented cap-and-trade, and has the most far-reaching renewable energy agenda in the European Union. The result ? Unemployment is at 18% in Spain (double the EU average), and there have been 2.2 jobs lost for every green job created. In addition, tons of subsidies are required for green energy initiatives to be competitive. The wind industry jobs created in Spain have come at a cost of $1.4 million PER JOB. (link)

Gee, who wouldn't want to emulate such "success" ???

But my favorite comment on the cap-and-trade legislation came from Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who when asked why he spent an hour reading portions of the bill aloud on the House floor, said, "Hey, people deserve to know what's in this pile of s–t." (link)

Even those who are in favor of restricting carbon emissions know that this cap-and-trade bill is, um, crap. Here's one such person, billionaire Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway:

"I think if you get into the way it was written, it's a huge tax and there's no sense calling it anything else. I mean, it is a tax. And it's a fairly regressive tax. If we buy permits, essentially, at our utilities, that goes right into the bills of the utility customers, and an awful lot of people in Iowa, in Oregon, and Utah, and places where we are, very poor people are going to pay a lot more money for electricity. So I think that can be improved." (link)

Speaking of restricting carbon emissions, which is the stated purpose of cap-and-trade (all it's negative and destructive effects are just icing on the cake), exactly how much of an effect on global warming will this cap-and-trade bill have ? (for the sake of brevity, I'm assuming here that man-made carbon emissions are a significant cause of global warming, an assumption that is itself a source of controversy).

Washington Post writer Martin Feldstein lays it out in an article called Cap-And-Trade: All Cost, No Benefit.

The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the resulting increases in consumer prices needed to achieve a 15 percent CO2 reduction — slightly less than the Waxman-Markey target — would raise the cost of living of a typical household by $1,600 a year. Some expert studies estimate that the cost to households could be substantially higher. The future cost to the typical household would rise significantly as the government reduces the total allowable amount of CO2.

Americans should ask themselves whether this annual tax of $1,600-plus per family is justified by the very small resulting decline in global CO2. Since the U.S. share of global CO2 production is now less than 25 percent (and is projected to decline as China and other developing nations grow), a 15 percent fall in U.S. CO2 output would lower global CO2 output by less than 4 percent. Its impact on global warming would be virtually unnoticeable. The U.S. should wait until there is a global agreement on CO2 that includes China and India before committing to costly reductions in the United States.

Waxman-Markey will have NO EFFECT on global warming, but it will have the "benefit" of further destroying our country.

In spite of all this, there are many American corporations ready to jump on the green bandwagon and profit from the carbon credit trading frenzy that El Presidente is trying to unleash on us. You're even familiar with some of these corporations – AIG, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, General Electric…you know, the GOOD corporations that we've all come to know and love so much during the recession. They are ready to jump on the manufactured energy bubble and rake in the big bucks. That these same companies are all recipients of government bailouts is just a big old coincidence, I'm sure. Too bad Enron isn't around any longer. Those guys knew how to run an energy bubble. I bet most of you didn't even know that General Electric got a bailout. Somehow, that hasn't been mentioned by the mainstream media very much. Not only did GE get a bailout, they got a $139 billion bailout, second in size to AIG's bailout. Yet somehow, the enormous GE bailout hasn't been mentioned or condemned by major television networks like……NBC, nor by NBC's retarded cable stepchildren over at MSNBC (aka, The Obama Channel). I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that General Electric OWNS NBC, or the fact that GE is deeply in bed with the Obama administration. I'm sure that can't be it. Everyone knows MSNBC is a group of highly dedicated professional journalists who would never compromise their integrity or ideals for…….LOL. Oh, man. I can't finish this sentence. Sometime I even crack myself up.

But make sure you contact GE for all your carbon credit trading needs. They are primed and ready for all their cap-and-trade lobbying to start paying dividends.

As for you, America, I hope you like cake, because if you don't rise up and stop this Cap-And-Trade disaster in the Senate, cake is all you'll have left. And maybe some government cheese to go with it, if you're lucky.

The House Energy And Commerce Committee has approved the American Clean Energy And Security Act of 2009 (cap and trade). Although no members of the committee actually read the nearly 1,000 page bill, the House did employ a speed reader for a day to read part of the bill aloud (think Pittsburgh Pete), which didn't help inform Congress at all, but did provide some excellent material for all the late night talk show comedians.

The aim of the bill, also known as the Waxman-Markey bill, is to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from automobiles, coal plants, and factories by 83% over the next 40 years. Here's the bill's primary sponsor, Representative Henry "Clueless" Waxman (D-CA), explaining what is in the bill when he was asked the other day:

"You're asking me ? Well, I certainly don't claim to know everything that's in this bill….I don't know the details. We rely on the scientists."

Excellent leadership, Mr. Waxman.

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post describes the cap and trade legislation:

There remains a robust argument over whether the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 represents a crucial step in preserving life as we know it. But there is no question that there are few pieces of legislation that are likely to have a more profound effect on the U.S. economy. It would bring about dramatic changes in the relative prices of energy and goods produced by energy-hungry industries. It would redistribute trillions of dollars in business sales and household income and generate hundreds of billions in government revenue. And it would represent the most dramatic extension of government's regulatory powers into the workings of the economy since the early days of the New Deal.

For all that, there are probably not more than a few hundred people who really understand what's in this legislation, how it would work and what its impact is likely to be.

The other thing to say about it is that it is a badly flawed piece of public policy. It is so broad in its reach and complex in its details that it would be difficult to implement even in Sweden, let alone in a diverse and contentious country like the United States. It would create dozens of new government agencies with broad powers to set standards, dole out rebates and tax subsidies, and pick winning and losing technologies, even as it relies on newly created markets with newly created regulators to set prices and allocate resources. Its elaborate allocation of pollution allowances and offsets reads like a parody of industrial policy authored by the editorial page writers of the Wall Street Journal. The opportunities for waste, fraud and regulatory screwup look enormous.

Sounds just peachy. Sure, cap and trade may cost a million jobs and drive up everybody's energy costs by several hundred to several thousand dollars each year, but we get an enormous new government bureaucracy to boot ! What could possibly go wrong ? Besides, we're in an economic boom period now, right ? Who cares if job losses, costs, and taxes go up ? It's not like we're in a recession or anything, where something like this cap and trade legislation would REALLY hurt.

As if all that isn't enough, here's a little about the 'trade' part of cap and trade from David Sokol of the Washington Post:

If you liked what credit default swaps did to our economy, you're going to love cap-and-trade. Just read Title VIII of the bill, which lets investment banks, hedge funds and other speculators participate in the cap-and-trade market. They don't have emissions to cut; they have commissions to make.

The Waxman-Markey bill imposes a market-based (read: unregulated) trading program on a highly regulated industry that must make enormous long-term and least-cost capital decisions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In an unprecedented and unwise fashion, it turns American industry over to the federal Environmental Protection Agency by giving the agency the authority to change the rules on allowances every five years. Is this sound public and economic policy? I think not.

Well, at least Wall Street will make money, even as American industries and American consumers take it up the tailpipe.

I think this cap and trade legislation could work, but it will require the "nuclear option" to succeed. By that, I mean it could work if we use nuclear weapons to destroy China and India, because that's where the rest of our industries and jobs will go if this legislation goes into effect.

Other than that, it sounds great. And after all this, what impact will cap and trade have on the environment ? Beats me. Maybe a little, maybe none whatsoever. Does that even matter anymore ?

Baffle 'em with you-know-what.

If Washington D.C. has a credo, that must surely be it. The media isn't far behind.

But before I get into that, I'd like to take a moment to thank President Obama for saving us all from last week's swine flu pandemic (worldwide epidemic). Just think, if Bush was still the President, we'd probably all be dead now. Plus, Obama saved the country for the bargain basement price of $1.5 billion, which hasn't even been spent yet. Oh man, that Obama is GOOD.

The media was speculating today that the recession has bottomed out, because we only LOST 539,000 jobs in April. This rosy optimism came because the experts had predicted job losses of over 600,000. The media left out that the government hired 66,000 people to do the census, and the government hired many others as well (which accounts for almost the entire difference between the projections and the actual job numbers). Those government jobs are all on the taxpayer dime, of course, and add nothing to economic growth. The private sector is still hemorrhaging jobs as fast as ever, but I guess the media is looking for something positive to hand their hat on, because Obama is the president now, and that means CHANGE has come. Call me crazy, but I'll say the recession is over when we start CREATING jobs instead of losing them. The media's optimism comes in spite of the fact that GDP shrunk by 6.1% in the first quarter, and that we're $11 trillion in debt, and that we'll be running a $1.8 trillion deficit this year, and that we have massive deficits projected as far as the eye can see, and that Obama is projected to double the national debt in four years and triple it in eight years, and that unemployment is 8.9%, the highest in 25 years, and that we had a Treasury bond auction with demand so weak that we had to pay higher interest rates just to continue selling our long-term debt (which will raise Obama's deficit and debt projections even higher), and that our industrial base is vanishing, and that what's left of it is collapsing, and that we have massive unfunded entitlement liabilities looming on the horizon (growing at the rate of $2 trillion yearly), and that most of our state governments are broke, and that many banks failed the stress tests (they need $75 billion more bailout dollars, with more surely to come), and that credit still isn't flowing after $700 billion spent on TARP, and that companies all across the country are cutting back the hours of the workers they are retaining, and that if you add the folks who have fallen off the unemployment rolls to the unemployed numbers, unemployment comes out close to 15%, and that the federal government is spending dollars it doesn't have at an all-time record pace, and that the government is printing trillions of dollars out of thin air, and that the government has committed a total of $12 trillion thus far in fighting the recession, and that on top of that, Obama wants to raise energy prices through the roof and create lots more entitlements…………

I guess other than that, happy days are here again.

Oh yeah, and we're still fighting two wars, Obama has no idea what to do with the Gitmo prisoners, we're funneling money to Hamas, we're pondering whether to charge Bushco with war crimes, Pelosi's STILL lying about her knowledge of waterboarding even after the leaked CIA information proves she lied her butt off, Obama is looking for a Supreme Court Justice who is "empathetic" to certain groups as opposed to one who follows the law, the price index is rising in while we're in the depths of recession, Iran is almost certain to have nuclear weapons soon, the Pakistan government is in jeopardy (and Pakistan has nukes, which just maybe could be a problem if the Taliban gets their hands on)…

But other than that, everything's coming up roses.

Plus, Obama cut $17 billion from the budget. Golf clap for Obama. What the media left out of that story was that Obama isn't reducing the deficit by that $17 billion, oh no, he's going to use that money for OTHER government programs, so the net savings to taxpayers is ZERO. This is what passes for fiscal responsibility in the new Obama CHANGE era.

But it's all good. Thar's a new sheriff in town, and he reads that thar teleprompter REAL good.

Never mind that in order to avert fiscal armaggedon, Obama is going to have to come up with a tax increase of proportions never before contemplated in this country's history. By my reckoning, it will have to be at least $2 trillion per year to cover the deficits, interest on the debt, and the unfunded entitlements. It's either that or make drastic government spending cuts, and you know our new sheriff ain't 'bout to do that. Only them thar rightwing extremist fellas talk that kind o' crazy talk.

Welcome to the age of universal government.

I've gone on several rants on this blog previously about what a Ponzi scheme Social Security is. I now realize I've been thinking too small. It isn't just SS that is a Ponzi scheme. It's our entire federal government, and that Ponzi scheme is unraveling. The new funds required from the taxpayers can no longer keep up with the demand for funds the federal government requires. Like all Ponzi schemes, even one on as grand a scale as our government, it is destined to collapse.

But remember, put your hand over your mouth when you cough, and wash your hands frequently. Then everything should be fine.

Following are some news stories our esteemed mainstream media just can't manage to find time for, at least not when such pressing issues as whether or not Miss California, Carrie Prejean, has had a boob job are still under investigation. Prejean, the 21-year old liberal hate media target of the week, also had some racy Victoria's Secret modeling photos taken of her when she was 17, so it's perfectly understandable why the media missed the following stories. I imagine they are too busy working up a full-scale profile on the hypocrisy of the entire Christian movement after Miss California had the audacity to politely say she thought marriage should be between a man and a woman. Prejean is obviously worse than Hitler, and must be destroyed, along with that Sarah woman from Alaska. Those b's (or are they c's ?) better zip it, and go bake some cookies. This is the hope and change era, dammit. We can't have these dames going around offering their pretty little opinions, even when asked for them at a Miss USA pageant or a national Vice Presidential debate. It's not like they didn't know what they were SUPPOSED to say. If we don't put these gals in their place, before you know it, women will be running around giving all kinds of opinions about stuff, and not the always the RIGHT ones either. Who wants THAT kind of country ?

On to the news the media can't use.
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The Obama administration has decided not to release the photos from the Scare Force One New York flyover that terrified the residents of lower Manhattan. This sets an interesting standard of what constitutes classified or privileged information to the Obamans. The Bush "torture" memos – NO. The Iraq prisoner abuse photos – NO. Photos that might embarass the President – YES. It appears "the most open administration in history" is only open about OTHER administrations, not it's own.
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Multiple Chrysler creditors are saying the Obama administration engaged in political threats and intimidation to get the creditors to surrender their contractual rights as the Obama administration wants. From Business Insider:

Conversations with administration officials left them [Chrysler creditors] expecting that they would be politically targeted, two participants in the negotiations said.

Although the focus has so been on allegations that the White House threatened Perella Weinberg, sources familiar with the matter say that other firms felt they were threatened as well. None of the sources would agree to speak except on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of political repercussions.

The audacity of hope. The politics of fear. This is why the government shouldn't run businesses, and why government should be limited, as the Constitution intended. It looks like Obama's Chicago political machine training is coming in handy. Make 'em an offer they can't refuse. One creditor, who voted for Obama, called him "the most dangerous smooth talker on the planet – and I knew Kissinger."
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Recent polling suggests Americans don't believe in man-made global warming, despite the finest scare tactics the left and the media could muster up. A recent Rasmussen poll found that only 34% of Americans believe man is causing global warming. A Pew Research poll found that out of twenty important issues facing the country, global warming ranked dead last, the least important. I'd say maybe Al Gore should make another movie to protect his green investments, but Democrats are pressing forward with climate change legislation anyway. House Democrats say they'll have a bill ready by Memorial Day, and intend to pass it by year end.
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In the $3.5 trillion budget approved by Congress, President Obama's much hyped "tax cuts for 95% of Americans" end after NEXT YEAR. Y'all really didn't believe the hype, did you ? Notably, Bush's tax cuts for the lower and middle classes will be kept (I thought those were "tax cuts for the rich"). Also, the budget stops Republicans from blocking Obama's health care plans (but I'm sure they are blocking the GOP in a "bipartisan" and "inclusive" fashion).
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But I want to be fair to our media. Here is a great story MSNBC broke about Obama and Biden going to a burger joint in Virginia. It seems our Telemprompter-In-Chief and his Gaffemaster VP walked right up to the counter, ordered their own burgers, and waited until the burgers were done. End of story. Do I smelll a Pulitzer in the air for MSNBC ?????

Be the coolest dude or dudette on your block by owning this new environmentally friendly auto from GM (Government Motors) !

Yes We Can !

"Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket" – Barack Obama, 2008

Candidate Obama wasn't kidding when he made the above statement, and now President Obama and the Democrats are preparing to raise consumer energy prices through the roof. It isn't only their cap and trade proposals that will drive up energy costs either. Alternative energies will have the same effect. As the New York Times reports:

experts…estimate that wind power is currently more than 50 percent more expensive than power generated by a traditional coal plant… The cost of solar thermal electricity, made by using the sun’s heat to boil water and spin a turbine, would be nearly three times that of coal and more than twice that of natural gas. (It would be almost double the cost of wind energy, too.)

Carbon dioxide regulations will also drive up the costs associated with producing coal-based electricity, which will be passed along to the consumers as well. Jason Furman, deputy director of Obama’s National Economic Council, has said the annual costs of cap and trade could be $250 billion (other cost estimates are MUCH higher). Government mandates on green energy usage also increase the price. It's no coincidence that California, the state with the highest renewable energy mandates (20%), has the highest energy prices in the nation.

Naturally, those hardest hit by the skyrocketing energy prices will be those among us who can least afford it, the poor and the middle class (but, don't worry, Obama is only raising taxes on the rich ! LOL. Some people will believe anything).

So, what can we do about these skyrocketing future energy prices ?

Not much. You see, our fourth branch of government (and you thought there were only three branches, didn't you ?), the Environmental Protection Agency, has ruled that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health by causing global warming. This gives the EPA the power to control energy under the Clean Air Act. Our cars, homes, and businesses are all subject to EPA regulations and mandates now. Through either EPA mandate or Congressional legislation, the greenies have us boxed in. As Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) put it, "It is now no longer a choice between doing a bill or doing nothing. It is now a choice between legislation and regulation. The EPA will have to act if Congress does not act." Game, set, and match. Get out your wallets, America. It's a darned good thing our economy is humming along so nicely, isn't it ? I'm sure we'll hardly feel the pinch, right ?

As for those "millions of green jobs" President Obama promised, consider this, from Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK):

“It’s estimated by the Heritage Foundation that if they are successful in their [CO2] endangerment findings in the White House, it will cost us 800,000 jobs almost immediately. The jobs, where would they go? They would go China, India, Mexico. They’d go to places where they don’t have any emissions restrictions.

“Consequently we would have a net increase worldwide in CO2, so it just doesn’t make any sense. But when you’re dealing with the Hollywood elitists, the extremist environmentalists, you don’t have to make sense.”

A Spanish study indicated that there were 2.2 jobs lost for every job created by wind and solar power.

If we're not careful in what we are doing in the energy sector, we could jack up consumer energy costs, jack up taxes, lose jobs, and after all that…HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT ON GLOBAL WARMING.

Other than that, I guess there's no problem.

What if Bush or Palin said this ?: "It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There's a lot of — I don't know what the term is in Austrian — wheeling and dealing — and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics" – Barack Obama, who apparently doesn't know that Austrians speak German.

Yes, but freedom fries were before Sarkozy: "In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." – Barack Obama, Apologist-In-Chief. Maybe you didn't notice Barry, but Europe was pretty dismissive of YOU during your overseas lovefest. The NATO countries are bailing on the Afghanistan War. Someone please remind me, why does NATO still exist ?

Um, weren't those JUDEO-CHRISTIAN ideals and values ?: "One of the great strengths of the United States is — although as I mentioned, we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation; we consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values." - Barack Obama in Turkey.

The times, they are a changin': "London hosted a Group of 20 meeting amid chaos. Chinese communists are now the capitalists, France's president is Hungarian, the Anglo-Saxons are being led by a socialist and a Kenyan, and Germany is refusing to send troops into other countries. Astronauts aboard the Space Station report the Earth is spinning backwards." – comedian Argus Hamilton.

This guy knows liberals: "The Huffington Post is organizing "citizen journalists" to attend the protests, allegedly to "report." Which means that they will try to find someone in a crowd who says something stupid, will post it on the internet, and build an argument around it trying to demonize the movement. And left-wing bloggers will react in unison like dogs responding to a whistle, about the "dangerous" and "violent" and "racist" tea parties. This tactic is as old as time; or at least as old as the internet." - William Jacobson, creator of the website Legal Insurrection, describing the pre-emptive faux-horror strategy of the left about the upcoming "treasonous and seditious" tea party rallies. Which reminds me, I'll see you at the Cleveland Tax Day Tea Party rally on April 15th at Mall C from 4-6pm.

And here's the reason why we are having Tea Party rallies: "Finally, what of the claim not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 a year? Even ignoring his large energy taxes, Mr. Obama must reconcile his arithmetic. Every dollar of debt he runs up means that future taxes must be $1 higher in present-value terms. Mr. Obama is going to leave a discounted present-value legacy of $6.5 trillion of additional future taxes, unless he dramatically cuts spending. (With interest the future tax hikes would be much larger later on.) Call it a stealth tax increase or ticking tax time-bomb.
What does $6.5 trillion of additional debt imply for the typical family? If spread evenly over all those paying income taxes (which under Mr. Obama’s plan would shrink to a little over 50% of the population), every income-tax paying family would get a tax bill for $163,000. (In 10 years, interest would bring the total to well over a quarter million dollars, if paid all at once. If paid annually over the succeeding 10 years, the tax hike every year would average almost $34,000.) That’s in addition to his explicit tax hikes. While the future tax time-bomb is pushed beyond Mr. Obama’s budget horizon, and future presidents and Congresses will decide how it will be paid, it is likely to be paid by future income tax hikes as these are general fund deficits." – Michael Boskin.

For science lover's only: "New research from NASA suggests that the Arctic warming trend seen in recent decades has indeed resulted from human activities: but not, as is widely assumed at present, those leading to carbon dioxide emissions. Rather, Arctic warming has been caused in large part by laws introduced to improve air quality and fight acid rain. Dr Drew Shindell of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies has led a new study which indicates that much of the general upward trend in temperatures since the 1970s – particularly in the Arctic – may have resulted from changes in levels of solid “aerosol” particles in the atmosphere, rather than elevated CO2. Arctic temperatures are of particular concern to those worried about the effects of global warming, as a melting of the ice cap could lead to disastrous rises in sea level – of a sort which might burst the Thames Barrier and flood London, for instance.
Shindell’s research indicates that, ironically, much of the rise in polar temperature seen over the last few decades may have resulted from US and European restrictions on sulphur emissions. According to NASA:
Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50 percent. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates." – Lewis Page, The Register.

Snort. I knew those NASA guys were nothing but a bunch of evangelical religious nut holocaust denying flat-earther zealots in the pocket of big oil. Geez. Don't they know the "debate is over," as the pre-eminent [non]scientist Al Gore says ? Enough with this so-called "science." It only confuses people.

A famous American weather forecasting animal, the groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil, emerged at Gobbler's Knob this morning and allegedly saw his shadow. As we all know, that means we're in for six more weeks of winter. Sigh.

I say Punxsutawney Phil "allegedly" saw his shadow because, as it turns out, Groundhog Day isn't just a weather forecasting tool (and a funny Bill Murray movie), it's also a vast Gobbler's-wing conspiracy. It seems nobody really knows or cares if Phil sees his shadow or not every year. The result is determined in advance by 14 poobahs from the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, collectively known as the Inner Circle (sorta like a groundhog Illuminati).

My friends, we've been scammed. The little groundhog can't predict the weather. Double sigh. Say it ain't so.

This brings to mind another famous weather forecasting tool, Al Gore, who recently emerged from his energy-sucking mansion in Tennessee to inform us the earth will only support human life for four more years due to global warming climate change. The Goreacle's Illuminati are referred to by the acronym IPCC, which I think stands for International Purveyors of Carbon Credits (or something like that). The IPCC consists of 2,500 scientists who are certain that global warming climate change isn't just a theory, it's a fact. Since 2,500 scientists could never be wrong (even though they were wrong about global cooling in the 1970's), who are we to question them ? We're just peons, and they are SCIENTISTS. Case closed. As the Goreacle says, "the debate is over." Let's kill all the cows (the number one source of "unnatural" carbon dioxide emissions) and run all our vehicles on solar or wind power (also referred to as "peddling").

Like Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.

Well, except for a few other inconvenient truths I'd like to share, such as…

- The planet has experienced no global warming since 1998. During that time, the Earth has cooled. (link)

- Over 31,000 American scientists say there is no convincing evidence of man-made global warming, or evidence that it will cause catastrophic weather changes on the Earth. (link) This brings up a mathematics question. Are 31,000+ American scientists more than 2,500 IPCC scientists ?

- IPCC scientists have been caught promoting fraudulent data to promote their global warming hypothesis (link)

- The proposition that Greenland's ice sheet is shrinking is suspect, and the Antarctic ice is growing (link)

Now, I'm the first one to admit I don't have the answers, but neither does Al Gore (who is NOT a scientist, btw). The debate is not over, so when you hear the Goreacle say something like this:

"[Global warming] would bring a screeching halt to human civilization and threaten the fiber of life everywhere on the earth….If we stopped global greenhouse gas emissions today, according to some scientists … we would [still] see an increase in temperatures that many scientists believe would be extremely challenging for civilization…If we continue at today's levels, some scientists have said it can be an increase of up to 11 degrees Fahrenheit." – Al Gore testifying in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.

There really should be an accompanying laugh track.

The bad news is, President Barack Obama buys into the Goreacle's future shock scenario, unproven though it is. Obama would implement the onerous cap and trade system to control carbon emissions, and his stimulus bill contains lots of money to combat global warming (how will that stimulate the economy again ? The point keeps eluding me).

But Obama doesn't believe in global warming when it comes to HIS lifestyle. He's been turning up the White House thermostat, because, darn it, it's COLD outside (cue the laugh track):

"He's from Hawaii, O.K.?" said Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod. "He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there."

You see, Obama only believes in global warming when it comes to YOUR lifestyle:

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times, and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK." – Barack Obama, May 2008.

Do as I say, not as I do.

Same as it ever was. It's Groundhog Day all over again.

Time for a little economic straight talk. This week's headlines informed us that Exxon/Mobil made a record profit of $14.3 billion for the 3rd quarter of 2008. Barack Obama immediately added this tidbit to his campaign stump speech to illustrate the unfairness gap between the haves and the have-nots, and also to bash John McCain's tax plan. The Barack Obama's of the world get very upset when private companies make such large profits. They see it as E-V-I-L and G-R-E-E-D-Y. In ObamaWorld, the more money you rake in, the more evil and greedy you are (federal government excepted). What Obama and friends leave out of the equation is this – Exxon/Mobil also paid $11.3 billion in taxes for the 3rd quarter. Isn't that enough ? Isn't that too much ? That money funds those endless government programs Obama loves so much (Obama has proposed increasing spending on no less than 175 government initiatives. I wonder when he finds time to sleep). You see, in order for Obama to redistribute wealth, there must be wealth to begin with, and it's our private sector that creates it. With so many American businesses struggling and/or failing right now, why is Obama holding up for derision the one company that is doing the best ? The reason is, Democrats play class warfare games to get elected, but Obama should realize that killing the golden goose doesn't make for very smart economic policy. It's not like we'd be better off if all our companies were losing tons of money, as the automakers, banks, airlines, and many others are doing. Count me as one who wishes all our businesses were as successful as Exxon/Mobil. That would take care of 98% of America's problems right there. In order to help our businesses be successful, which in turn enables our citizens to become employed, successful, and prosperous themselves, it just might be a good idea to HELP the business sector rather than add ever more hurdles for it to overcome. That's why John McCain's tax/economic policy, which lowers the business tax rate, keeps the capital gains tax rate low to encourage investment, and enables American businesses to be more competitive, is a REAL GOOD idea, while Obama's tax/economic policy, which penalizes business success and adds new business burdens, is a REAL BAD idea, unless we as a nation have some sort of perverse death wish.

While I'm on the subject, let's explode another Obama falsehood, one that he's repeated about 100,000 times by now. McCain's tax/economic policy is NOT the same as George W. Bush's, not at all. Bush cut the individual income tax rates for 100% of us, like Obama is proposing for 95% of us. McCain is NOT proposing individual income tax rate cuts. What McCain is proposing is to cut the business tax rate from 35% (second highest in the entire world) to 25%. I only wish McCain was cutting that tax rate even lower to attract more new businesses and more new jobs to this country. The object of taxation isn't to centralize wealth in the hands of the federal government, it's to help the people. Nothing helps people more than jobs. No government entitlement even runs a close second to employment for promoting the general welfare.

All this brings me to the news item of the day. In Janurary 2008, Barack Obama described his energy policy as follows:

Let me sort of describe my overall policy. What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there. I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches. The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.

Obama plans to bankrupt the coal industry, by design. The coal industry supplies 70% of our electricity. Funny, the Messiah didn't mention his coal bankrupting plans when he was campaigning in coal mining states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, or West Virginia. He pretended to be a friend of coal then.

During the same interview, Obama went on to say, "under my plan, electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket".

And you folks thought Obama was a friend to the middle class. You won't think so when you get your utility bills during an Obama administration. Obama's plans for coal come from the same left wing environmental mindset that have restricted our domestic oil supply and stopped nuclear power, leaving us dependent on countries like Saudi Arabia. If you are naive enough to believe Obama when he says he isn't beholden to special interests, you better think again. The environmental lobby is one of those special interests. Barack Obama will hurt every person in this country to appease them, by his own admission.

Most amazing of all is, Obama said he planned to bankrupt the coal industry and send electricity prices soaring BACK IN JANUARY, yet we haven't heard a word about it until now, on the verge of the election. Millions of people have already voted, and I bet next to none of them knew about this.

Instead of getting substantive information from the media, information that could help us make an informed decision about who should be the next president, we get "hope and change", and we get questions like the ones that Leisa Zigman, a reporter for KSDK-TV in St. Louis, asked Obama during a recent interview:

1.) “Your presidential campaign may go down as the most organized in history. Yet the polls remain tight in Missouri. In the last seven days what else can you say to sway undecided and McCain-leaning Missouri voters?”
2.) “Today, Bob Clark, founder of Clayco Construction, sent a letter to his employees. In part it read, ‘Sometimes, but rarely, a person appears at the right time and the right place to transform ordinary people into thinkers and doers who can accomplish more than they ever thought they could. That truly is the definition of inspiration. Barack Obama has this quality. I have witnessed it personally many times.’ In 2004, Mr. Clark raised thousands for the Bush campaign, but for the past two years, he’s raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for your campaign. Please respond.”
3.) “Who has helped your campaign more: Missouri U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill or Oprah?”
4.) “What was it like when you were in St. Louis in front of 100,000 people? What were you thinking as you looked out from the Arch to the Old Court House and beyond?”
5.) “Many people are worried about your safety. What are your thoughts in light of the alleged skinhead plot?”

One only marvels at how the Messiah maintained his composure under such withering journalistic scrutiny.

Wake up, America. You only have one more day.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Planet) adjourned the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday morning at 11:23am, so our esteemed representatives could go on their five week summer recess. The adjournment vote was along partisan lines, with Republicans voting to stay in session to get an up/down vote on offshore oil drilling (which Congress and 78% of Americans support), and with the Pelosi-led Democrats voting to flip America the bird. The Dems turned off the lights and the microphones. C-SPAN turned off their cameras.

But a group of House Republicans stayed right where they were and kept on talking in protest, in the dark, without microphones, and without the cameras rolling. Some news media, including Politico, stayed to chronicle the events, even though the KGB Democrats were trying to kick them out.

“This is the people’s House. This is not Pelosi's politburo,” said Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.). Amen, brother.

Democratic aides were furious at the GOP stunt, and reporters were kicked out of the Speaker's Lobby, the space next to the House floor where they normally interview lawmakers.

"You're not covering this, are you?" complained one senior Democratic aide. Another called the Republicans "morons" for staying on the floor.

Update: The Capitol Police are now trying to kick reporters out of the press gallery above the floor, meaning we can't watch the Republicans anymore. But Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) is now in the gallery talking to reporters, so the cops have held off for a minute. Clearly, Democrats don't want Republicans getting any press for this episode. GOP leaders are trying to find other Republicans to rotate in for Blunt so reporters aren't kicked out.

Update 2: This message was sent out by Blunt's office:

"Although this Democrat majority just adjourned for the Democrat 5-week vacation, House Republicans are continuing to fight on the House floor. Although the lights, mics and C-SPAN cameras have been turned off, House Republicans are on the floor speaking to the taxpayers in the gallery who, not surprisingly, agree with Republican energy proposals.

"All Republicans who are in town are encouraged to come to the House floor."

Update 3: Democrats just turned out the lights again. Republicans cheered.

Update 4: Republican leaders just sent out a notice looking for a bullhorn, and leadership aides are trying to corral all the members who are still in town to come speak on the floor and sustain this one-sided debate.

The House adjourned about three hours ago, but GOP lawmakers — outraged that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats went home for five weeks without allowing a vote on offshore drilling — have refused to leave the floor. Even though C-SPAN can't show you what's going on (C-SPAN is prevented from showing what's happening on the floor when the House is out of session), Republicans are holding an unprecedented session on the House floor. They have brought in dozens of their members, who are walking up and down the aisles making speeches. They have packed the floors and galleries with staffers. When Capitol Police tried to remove reporters from the gallery, Republicans stopped it from happening. The crowd has repeatedly broken out in chants of "Vote, vote, vote!"

Update 5: The scene on the floor is kind of crazy. Normally, members are not allowed to speak directly to the visitor galleries, and visitors are prohibited from cheering. But in this case, the members are walking up and down on the floor during their speeches, standing on chairs. The visitors are cheering loudly. Some members even brought in visitors, who are now sitting on the House floor in the seats normally filled by lawmakers, cheering and clapping. Very funny.

Democrats faced a choice here: Should they leave the cameras on and let Republicans rip Pelosi & Co. on C-SPAN, or should they leave the cameras off and let the Republicans have their "tantrum," as one Democratic aide characterized it, with the cameras off? So the cameras are off, but Republicans, and the crowd, are clearly enjoying the scene.

Update 6: Republicans are literally hugging each other on the House floor. Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.), not normally known as a distinguished orator, just gave a rousing speech, accusing Democrats of stifling dissent. He referenced President John Quincy Adams, who returned as a House member after being defeated in his presidential reelection bid. Waving his arms and yelling, Manzullo brought the crowd (including a lot of staffers shipped in by GOP leaders to fill up the place), and he left the floor to hugs from his colleagues. You don't see that up here every day.

Update 7: Rep Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) just pretended to be a Democrat. He stood on the other side of the chamber and listed all of the GOP bills that the Dems killed.

He then said, "I am a Democrat, and here is my energy plan" and he held up a picture of an old VW Bug with a sail attached to it. He paraded around the House floor with the sign while the crowd cheered.

Update 8: It's over.

Right at the stroke of five Georgia Rep. Tom Price announced that House Republicans were ending their impromptu protest on the floor of the chamber, ending a five-plus hour rebellion with a round of "God Bless America."

The assembled tourists, aides and members in the chamber gave Price and his compatriots a standing ovation. They left the chamber to shouts of "USA! USA! USA!"

Call this a stunt if you wish, but I think this is exactly the type of stunt we need more of, to awaken America and to force the Democrats to do the right thing. The Republican protest already bore fruit, as Hopey McChangerson (aka Barack Obama, the Human Jellyfish) FLIP-FLOPPED on offshore oil drilling as the Republicans were protesting. Now he's in favor of it. Hopey, of course, only flip-flopped because he's losing votes as the GOP gets traction on the drilling issue, but who cares why he did it. It only matters that he DID do it. The voice of the people still works, but we can't stay silent and think everything is going to work out anyway. If we have to drag Dems kicking and screaming into the light, so be it. Way to go, GOP.

Here's another story the majority of the mainstream media will conveniently forget to report.

In the latest example of the Democrats ongoing effort to destroy America, the Democrats have voted down a proposal to allow offshore oil drilling. The measure, offered by Representative John Peterson (R-PA), was voted down 9-6 by a House subcommittee, strictly along party lines, with ALL the Democrats voting against Americans and ALL the Republicans voting for Americans. If adopted, the measure would have opened up U.S. waters between 50 and 200 miles offshore for drilling. The U.S. Minerals Management Service estimated that 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas can be found along the U.S. outer continental shelf, the area affected by the ban, which has been in effect since 1981. Link

Yeah, who needs 86 billion barrels of domestically produced oil ? It's not like there's a problem with the price of gasoline (over $4 per gallon and rising daily). It's not like there's a problem with the foreign sources of our imported oil (Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria). The Democrats seem to think they can wish this problem away by improving CAFE standards and increasing wind and solar power. In short, the Democrats are idiots, and not just run of the mill idiots either. The Democrats are DANGEROUS idiots who are risking our economy and national security. Just listen to the flimsy braindead excuses the Dems give for not drilling offshore or in ANWR:

"We are kidding ourselves if we think we can drill our way out of these problems," House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI).

No, Mr. Obey, we're kidding ourselves if we think worldwide oil demand is going to do anything but RISE in the future. Drilling is what we MUST do for the shorter term to get ourselves off of our dependence of foreign oil, especially when the sources of that oil include unfriendly and unstable regimes led by nuts like Hugo Chavez or Wahabbists like the Saudis. We have to be crazy to put our economic future and national security in the hands of people like those, but that is exactly what the Democrats have done by prohibiting most domestic oil production for the last 27 years.

"It would take anywhere from seven to 10 years to bring those resources to shore — to have any measurable impact on supply,” Holly Binns, Environment Florida spokeswoman.

Ms. Binns, we aren't going to be off of oil in 7-10 years, so all you are doing is providing the reason for us to get started on domestic oil production RIGHT AWAY, not to mention that you have also unwittingly exposed the catastrophic results of the Democratic ban on domestic oil production for all this time. If not for the Democrats ban, we'd be far better off now.

"There are 68 million acres right now that is available for exploration right now that the oil companies have — an area the size of Illinois and Georgia. We ought to be focusing on doing that", Earl Blumenauer (D-OR).

This is a doozy of an excuse. The oil companies DO have some 3-5 year leases on land, but that DOESN'T MEAN THERE IS ANY OIL UNDER THAT LAND, a fact that Blumenauer leaves out. It doesn't do much good to drill for oil on land that doesn't contain any oil. We KNOW there is oil offshore and in ANWR, so that's where we should be drilling.

Blumenauer is also one of many Democrats who have blamed the oil commodity speculators for driving up the cost of oil. While this is true, Dems like Blumenauer leave out the fact that oil supply and demand is very tight, and worldwide demand is increasing, which leads to the increased price among speculators. The speculation doesn't operate in a vacuum. If the U.S. began producing it's own energy supply, that would drive down the speculated price in the commodity market.

Dems also love to blame Exxon for making big profits, even though Exxon's profit margin (7.5% on the dollar) is less than the industrial average (8.4% on the dollar), even though the government makes more money from a gallon of gas than Exxon does, even though the government doesn't do anything to get the gas to the pump. Exxon DOES.

Why should we be propping up unfriendly regimes by sending our oil money to them, when we have the ability to produce what we need right here at home ? There is NO valid reason. I'm not saying oil should replace renewable energy. Domestic oil should work in concert with renewable energy sources to meet our needs, so we can stop funding worldwide extremists, and so we can secure our own economy. Democrats are standing firmly in the way, and they must be stopped. If we took full advantage of our domestic oil reserves, we could stop buying oil from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Nigeria completely for decades, and probably forever if we do an adequate job with renewable sources to reduce demand. This is vitally important to our country. I can't think of an issue that is more important, because our entire economy is dependent on the price and availability of energy. We should be storming Washington D.C. to stop the Democrats on this issue, but it seems most of us are unaware or misled. When I went down to talk to the blue collar working men at the local pub, most of them actually thought Bush was the one setting the high gas prices, when Bush has little to do with it. Ignorance is NOT bliss. Ignorance is dangerous, and the Democrats thrive on it.

Recent comments by Barack Obama indicate the view that many liberals have had for years – that we needed to drive up the prices of energy in order to force demand down. The NY Times has promoted that view for quite some time. Here's what Obama said about the high gasoline prices during a recent CNBC interview:

"I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing…if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly U.S. automakers, then I think ultimately, we can come out of this stronger and have a more efficient energy policy than we do right now".

Did you get that, people ? Obama doesn't mind the high gas prices, just the abrupt way they rose. That's because the DEMOCRATS WANT GAS PRICES TO BE HIGH. The price of a gallon of gas has risen about $1.50 since they took over Congress in january 2007. That's less than a year and a half. Obama and the Dems WANT the price to be high, so they can get their energy policies forced through. They don't care who suffers in the meantime, and the "meantime" in this instance could last for a couple decades. It's downright evil, and completely unnecessary. It completely nullifies the Democrat's claim to be "for the little guy". They aren't for the little guy at all. They are royally screwing the little guy with their energy policies, and have been for years. We shouldn't have to turn America into a third world country in order to switch to renewable energy sources, but the Democrats policy seems to be exactly that.

Btw, Obama's middle class tax cut of $1,000 isn't going to come anywhere close to offsetting the gasoline price hike, and you poor people, well…apply for welfare, I guess. I'm sure there will be some scraps for you at Obama's big government table. Good luck. You'll need it.