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Those numbers are "extremely outdated," said Pathstone's Jeffrey Lewis.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I'm starting to sense a defense mechanism at work here, the "numbers are outdated" excuse.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.

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.

The official unemployment rate dropped from 9.4% to 9.0% in January. Here's the good news from the Bureau Of Labor Statistics (BLS):

The unemployment rate (9.0 percent) declined by 0.4 percentage point for the second month in a row. (See table A-1.) The number of unemployed persons decreased by about 600,000 in January to 13.9 million, while the labor force was unchanged.

Total nonfarm payroll employment changed little in January (+36,000).

Strike up the band !!! The good times are here again……..hey, wait a minute. If only a paltry 36,000 jobs were created in January, and unemployment fell by 600,000, that leaves 564,000 people who don't have jobs but aren't being counted as unemployed anymore. What happened to those people ?

The answer is, most of them have been unemployed so long that they've run out of unemployment benefits. Unless you're receiving unemployment benefits, you don't count as being unemployed. Many other people have simply given up looking for work. This is reinforced if you look at employment statistics as opposed to unemployment statistics. Looking at employment, you find that only 58.4% of people aged 16 and over are currently employed. This is the lowest January total since 1983. When Obama took office in January 2009, that number was 60.6%. Employment has dropped by 2.2% since Obama became President. Employment in January 2011 is lower than it was in January 2010.

In addition, if you look at the BLS category of people looking for work, that number has increased by nearly 500,000 over the past year, and has increased during both years of Obama's reign. That is NOT a sign of decreasing unemployment. It is a sign of increasing unemployment.

Democrats spin this into "this administration has created or saved millions of jobs". Obama has also introduced the "supported" jobs category in order to further spin the unemployment picture. I can hardly wait for him to introduce an "imagined" jobs category. Oh wait, he's already done that. He calls them "green jobs". We're going to have millions of those too.

Amazingly, some people actually believe these Democrats. I call such people liberals. They aren't very good with math…or economics…or truth. They think the truth is some evil right-wing plot, or something. Lord knows. I can't keep up with their dissembling.

But whatever they think, the truth remains, and the truth is, unemployment is still rising. If you don't believe me, ask the 564,000 non-persons from January who are unemployed but no longer count as being unemployed by the BLS.

Among the reasons cited for the slow January job growth was the weather:

The government noted that severe weather could have affected construction payrolls, which dropped 32,000 last month. There were also large declines in the employment of couriers and messengers.

Hmmm. Maybe we should pump some more CO2 into the atmosphere to get global warming into high gear to create jobs. That would also increase the length of the growing season and maybe ease the pressures of rising food prices. But I guess liberals are more interested in keeping people out of work and starving. That's why they propose legislation like Cap And Trade, a guaranteed job killer and price riser.

As you listen to the media and the White House trumpet it's great successes on the jobs front…now you know the truth.

Hey, maybe it we quit counting ALL the unemployed people…Voila! Problem solved. We could get the unemployment rate to 0%. I'm surprised the Democrats haven't thought of it yet.

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.

A left-wing enviro-nut armed with a gun and metal canisters looking like bombs strapped to his chest entered the Discovery Channel headquarters outside Washington D.C. yesterday. The gunman, James J. Lee, took three hostages, and was eventually killed by the police. Fortunately, nobody else was hurt.

Lee was mad at the Discovery Channel because he felt Discovery wasn't featuring enough left-wing enviro-nut programming. He was a regular protester of Discovery, and following a 2008 arrest for disorderly conduct, Lee said he was "awakened" to his true enviro-nut calling after watching Al Gore's global warming scare film "An Inconvenient Truth," (which is filled with inaccuracies, btw).

Mr. Lee has a manifesto published on the internet. The news media has been categorizing his beliefs as radical, but to me they sound like standard lefty schlock that you might hear promoted by educated liberal elitists on college campuses. The only difference is that the educated liberal elitists aren't as direct in their lunacy as Lee. They use more esoteric rhetoric. Lee's beliefs are a litany of the beliefs of the left, as follows:

Overpopulation:

- Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilization building STOPS and is reversed!

- All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs' places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed

Anti-war:

- All programs promoting War and the technology behind those must cease. There is no sense in advertising weapons of mass-destruction anymore. Instead, talk about ways to disassemble civilization and concentrate the message in finding SOLUTIONS to solving global military mechanized conflict. Again, solutions solutions instead of just repeating the same old wars with newer weapons.

Anti-religion, Anti-oil, anti-expansion of civilization:

- Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down! This is your obligation. If you think it isn't, then get hell off the planet! Breathe Oil! It is the moral obligation of everyone living otherwise what good are they??

Anti-capitalism:

- Develop shows that will correct and dismantle the dangerous US world economy. Find solutions for their disasterous Ponzi-Casino economy before they take the world to another nuclear war.

Humans are wrecking the planet:

- Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what's left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture.

Save the wildlife:

- Saving the environment and the remaning species diversity of the planet is now your mindset. Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels.

Well, yes, OF COURSE, the squirrels. That goes without saying.

But humans are dispensable:

- The humans? The planet does not need humans. You MUST KNOW the human population is behind all the pollution and problems in the world

Anti…..food ? Okay, these may be a bit extreme even for the left:

- Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people's brains until they get it!!

- All human procreation and farming must cease!

Except for that last bit about 'farming must cease,' I find Lee's beliefs entirely in the mainstream of lefty thought. There is one part in Lee's manifesto where he rails against immigration as part of his overall anti-human creed, which leads me to wonder whether MSNBC and Media Matters are calling Lee a right-wing extremist inspired by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement. I haven't bothered to check.

As for the title of this post, I really DON'T blame Al Gore. My title was just a shot at my demented blogger counterpart, the Reverend at the Blog Of Mass Destruction. The Reverend recently blamed a Sarah Palin tweet about the Ground Zero mosque for a protest against a mosque being built in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He called his nutty post, 'What Palin Has Wrought,' even though Palin had nothing to do with the Murfreesboro protest and had not commented on it. I figured turnabout was fair play, though I can't truly blame Al Gore for the actions of a nut. Unlike the left, I can't be so disingenuous and still live with myself. I believe in free speech.

The title of my post is also a shot at all the left-wing media in this country that has intentionally and falsely stirred up fears of right-wing violence in this country over the Tea Party movement. My friend the Reverend's over-top lunacy doesn't really originate from him. It originates with the propaganda he laps up on the internet.

Al Gore is free to say what he wants without being blamed for the actions of a nutball like James J. Lee. What the left needs to learn is…Glenn Beck, Fox News, etc. have that same freedom of speech without being blamed for the actions of any nut who might be listening to their broadcasts. Thus far, the left has not learned the lesson. Not even close.

On the bright side, James J. Lee got his wish. He wanted less humans on the planet, and now that the police have taken him out, there is one less. Mission accomplished, Mr. Lee.

P.S. – Has ANY mainstream media outlet called Lee a "left-wing" radical yet ? The media never fails to use the term "right-wing" or "conservative" whenever possible, so it'll be interesting to observe.

Proactively taking swift action (if "swift" means slower than molasses, and 'proactive' means reactive), President NewsCycle (or is it President Kick-Ass now ?) has scheduled a meeting with BP executives on June 16th, 58 days after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion began spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf Of Mexico. Who can possibly accuse Obama of sitting on his kick-ass while the Gulf was dying now ?!?! The meeting was requested in a letter from Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen to BP headquarters in London. Bloomberg reports:

“The BP Deepwater Horizon spill has had a profound impact on Americans living in the Gulf region and time is of the essence in resolving these issues,” Allen wrote in the letter.

BP has received the invitation “and an appropriate senior delegation would of course be glad to attend,” company spokesman Max McGahan said in a telephone interview.

Svanberg and BP officials will meet with senior administration officials and Obama will participate in a portion of the session, Allen wrote. It would be Obama’s first direct communication with BP representatives since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 people and triggered the spill.

I applaud President NewsCycle for taking this initiative. He has stepped forward after nearly two months, in an audacious attempt to prevent his poll numbers from sinking any lower. That's leadership, my friends.

But I can't help thinking that if Bush was still the President, and he had reacted to this oil spill as Obama has, they'd be roasting him on a spit in the middle of the National Mall by now.

The letter to BP officials also contained other reassuring words:

“As the president has said, our administration is not going to rest or be satisfied until the leak is stopped at the source, the oil in the Gulf is contained and cleaned up, and the people of the Gulf are able to go back to their lives and their livelihoods,” Allen wrote.

Right on, Mr. President. You go, girl ! Another correct decision ! I'm so happy Obama didn't go with Plan B, which was to let the oil leak out until it runs it's natural course, and screw the Gulf Of Mexico and all the people and wildlife living in the vicinity. This President is shrewd, alright, and making these types of no-brainer wise decisions is why we elected him.

In other spill-related news, a Washington Post-ABC News poll said 81 percent of Americans gave BP low marks in handling the oil spill. These polls always amaze me. If 81 percent gave BP low marks, that means 19 percent DIDN'T give BP low marks. Who are these 19 percent ? Have they been in a coma for the last 7 weeks ? Following is one completely true made-up phone call from a poller to one of those 19 percent:

[Ring ! Ring !]
Citizen: Hello ?
Poller: Hello, sir. I'm from ABC, and I'm conducting an opinion poll on the BP oil spill in the Gulf Of Mexico.
Citizen: On the what ? (puff, puff).
Poller: The oil spill.
Citizen: Somebody spilled some oil ?
Poller: Yes, lots of it. In the Gulf Of Mexico. It's spilling due to the British Petroleum oil rig explosion 50 days ago.
Citizen: Bummer. Wait a minute. Did you say you were from ABC ? Am I on TV right now ? (puff, puff).
Poller: Um, no sir. This is a telephone opinion poll.
Citizen: Yeah, but am I on TV ?!?!
Poller: No, sir. May I ask you a question about the oil spill, sir ?
Citizen: I guess. Will I win a prize if I say the right answer ?
Poller: No, sir. There is no right answer. This is just an opinion poll.
Citizen: Bummer (puff, puff). Okay, go ahead (cough).
Poller: In your estimation, is British Petroleum doing a good job of plugging the oil leak and cleaning up the environmental damage caused by the leak ?
Citizen: I guess so. The BP station down the block has some pretty good Slurpies, and the chick working behind the counter is way hot. BP seems to be pretty together.
Poller: Thanks for your cooperation, sir.
Citizien: Party on, dude.
[Click]

You can also find these sorts of people on television game shows like Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader ?, as follows….

That's sooo dumb. Everyone knows there are only 312 feet in a yard.

Until next time….

New York Times columnist and Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman wrote the following on his blog. It's called Why Libertarianism Doesn't Work, Part N. I quote it in it's entirety (though I must have missed parts A thru M):

Why Libertarianism Doesn’t Work, Part N

Thinking about BP and the Gulf: in this old interview, Milton Friedman says that there’s no need for product safety regulation, because corporations know that if they do harm they’ll be sued.

Interviewer: So tort law takes care of a lot of this ..

Friedman: Absolutely, absolutely.

Meanwhile, in the real world:

In the wake of last month’s catastrophic Gulf Coast oil spill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski blocked a bill that would have raised the maximum liability for oil companies after a spill from a paltry $75 million to $10 billion. The Republican lawmaker said the bill, introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), would have unfairly hurt smaller oil companies by raising the costs of oil production. The legislation is “not where we need to be right now” she said.

And don’t say that we just need better politicians. If libertarianism requires incorruptible politicians to work, it’s not serious.

The first question to answer is whether Krugman is properly voicing the position of the Libertarians on the BP oil spill and product safety in general. The answer is, NO, he is not. The Libertarians would not only endorse Sen. Menendez' bill, they would go even further and remove the the maximum liability cap completely to incentivize companies like BP/Transocean/Halliburton to maintain the most stringent safety standards possible. The following quote comes from an article called Liability Limits Make Oil Spills Worse, posted on the Libertarian party website:

The New York Times has reported that federal law limits BP's liability to $75 million, and Transocean's liability to $65 million.

These kinds of artificial liability limits distort the markets, and basically create "moral hazard" by encouraging companies to act in riskier ways than they would otherwise. If BP's well causes damage to property, then BP should be fully liable for all of the damage. It is BP's reponsibility to "make whole" whoever gets damaged.
If Congress hadn't limited BP's liability, it's likely that BP would have acted differently. Knowing that a spill could cost them billions, BP might have demanded additional safeguards for their well, or tested their safeguards more thoroughly. These choices would have been expensive, but they might have prevented the huge costs that the spill area is now facing.

The Libertarians also point out that the government itself is a great polluter, and the government has sovereign immunity, meaning it cannot be sued. This is yet another example of the government setting different rules for itself than it does for the rest of us.

Krugman sums up his misguided tirade with his most inane statement of all – "And don’t say that we just need better politicians. If libertarianism requires incorruptible politicians to work, it’s not serious."

This is precisely why Paul Krugman can't think. If he thinks Libertarianism, the philosophy of limited government, requires incorruptible politicians to work, then Krugman's favored big government socialist philosophy requires the same to a far, far, far greater degree, because it is ubiquitous in our lives. Krugman's form of government is much more powerful than the Libertarian model, and therefore much more subject to corruption. As they say, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But I do agree that Krugman's philosophy, to quote Krugman, is "not serious." It's a lot more dangerous than that.

Something I think people of all political stripes can agree upon is this – a primary responsibility of the federal government is to keep us safe, to provide national security.

Yet, it seems the federal government has become involved in so many different areas that it has lost sight of it's legitimate and primary focus. It seems the priorities of the federal government are misplaced. We saw evidence of it in the inferior flood protection in New Orleans. We saw evidence of it in the government-engineered financial crisis. We saw evidence of it in Obama's crazy quilt of a stimulus package.

If you don't believe me about the stimulus package, consider this – the stimulus package, the poster child for wasteful government spending, contained over 57,000 pork projects. It spent over $643,000 for a public housing parking lot in Illinois that nobody wanted. Akron, Ohio got $1.5 million for a suicide prevention fence on the Y-Bridge. Indiana University got $356,000 to study how kids perceive foreign accents. Memphis got $250,000 to repair a dilapidated laundromat. Lexington, Kentucky got $4.7 million for a trail connecting downtown to a horse farm. Florida got $3.4 million for a wildlife eco-passage to transport animals over a roadway. Oklahoma got $1.15 million for a guardrail for a lake that doesn't exist (it's a dry hole). There was $800,000 for the little-used John Murtha Airport (three flights per day, all of them to D.C.). Murtha's airport had already received tens of millions in previous government funding. There was $10 million to renovate an abandoned train station that hadn't been used in 30 years. The town of Union, New York, got a $578,000 grant it did not request for a homelessness problem it claims it does not have. A National Forest in Missouri received $462,000 to replace toilets. The “Microsoft Bridge” in Seattle received $11 million. The bridge connects different areas of the Microsoft campus. Microsoft is estimated to have over $20 billion in cash reserves. Tualatin, Oregon, will spend $2.5 million on a “train-horn-free” zone. Montana’s state-run liquor warehouse will receive $2.2 million in stimulus cash to install skylights. Pawtucket, Rhode Island is spending $550,000 on a skateboard park. Yale and the University of Connecticut are receiving $850,000 in stimulus for research “to study how paying attention improves performance of difficult tasks.” Maine will spend over $1.3 million on “government arts jobs,” including $30,000 for basket makers, $20,000 for story telling, and $12,500 for a music festival. The National Institute of Health is giving Yale University $680,100 in stimulus funds to study the effectiveness of diet and exercise at reducing obesity.

The list of stimulus spending goes on and on and on and on and on. Obama spent money on everything from the mating habits of tree frogs to roadway signs telling us how great the stimulus package was.

But somehow, even with all our incredibly irresponsible exploding government spending and expansion, what follows was left out. And it would have contained the BP oil spill, saving us from a potential environmental disaster.

If U.S. officials had followed up on a 1994 response plan for a major Gulf oil spill, it is possible that the spill could have been kept under control and far from land.

The problem: The federal government did not have a single fire boom on hand.

The "In-Situ Burn" plan produced by federal agencies in 1994 calls for responding to a major oil spill in the Gulf with the immediate use of fire booms.

But in order to conduct a successful test burn eight days after the Deepwater Horizon well began releasing massive amounts of oil into the Gulf, officials had to purchase one from a company in Illinois.

At federal officials' behest, the company began calling customers in other countries and asking if the U.S. government could borrow their fire booms for a few days, he said.

A single fire boom being towed by two boats can burn up to 1,800 barrels of oil an hour, Bohleber said. That translates to 75,000 gallons an hour, raising the possibility that the spill could have been contained at the accident scene 100 miles from shore.

"They said this was the tool of last resort. No, this is absolutely the asset of first use. Get in there and start burning oil before the spill gets out of hand," Bohleber said. "If they had six or seven of these systems in place when this happened and got out there and started burning, it would have significantly lessened the amount of oil that got loose." < former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oil spill response coordinator Ron Gouguet -- who helped craft the 1994 plan -- told the Press-Register that officials had pre-approval for burning. "The whole reason the plan was created was so we could pull the trigger right away."

Gouguet speculated that burning could have captured 95 percent of the oil as it spilled from the well.

I'm not placing all the blame on Obama, of course. That wouldn't be fair. The government failed to produce the fire booms for sixteen years. It is notable, however, that in a stimulus package that literally threw money in every direction the government could think of, nobody thought of those booms, which would have contained a major oil spill like this one. Is there nobody in government who thinks to prepare for such disasters ? How can that be ? How can we be spending money to study the effects of diet and exercise on obesity (well, DUH) over this ?

Or maybe the government is just hell-bent on destroying Louisiana for some reason. This is the second massive government foulup affecting those poor folks.

Here's the kicker. The cost of the fire booms is a few hundred thousand dollars each. Chicken feed when compared to an $876 BILLION stimulus package.

But at least now we know proper diet and exercise can prevent obesity, and Rhode Island will have it's skateboard park.

Way to prioritize, government.

I can't believe it. The next time you hear a government official say they are doing everything possible to address the BP oil spill…..no, they didn't. Again.

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.

Let's get the crazy train rolling at high speed right off the bat with this first quote…

“The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.” – Democratic National Committee communications director Brad Woodhouse (link).

Let me get this straight. After years and years of Democrats attempting to undermine President Bush at every turn in the War On Terror, er, I mean the Overseas Contingency Operation, including attempts to lose the Iraq war, a DNC spokesman now has the nerve to say Republicans have thrown in with the terrorists because some Republicans opined that Obama didn't deserve the Nobel Peace Prize (which he most assuredly didn't, as Obama himself even said). Wow-freakedy-wow-wow. Words fail me. I literally can't think of a negative adjective strong enough to convey how wrong this remark is. I can't even think of a way to equate an opinion on the Nobel Prize with throwing in with terrorists, but evidently Brad Woodhouse can.

And Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) seems to agree. I expect this stuff from dolts like Keith Olbermann or the other lib-nuts on MSNBC, who routinely compare Republicans to jihadis, but not from Democratic Senators or the DNC.

Also, somebody better hip Woodhouse to the fact that the Obama administration has decided the Taliban isn't our enemy any longer. Or Hamas either, for that matter. I bet that'll do wonders for the morale of our troops who've been fighting against the Taliban and dying in Afghanistan for the last seven years. Acceptance of the Taliban is also a major step backwards for human rights, especially from a President who just won the Nobel Peace Prize here on Planet Orwell. Sigh. Is the world turning on it's ear, or is it just me ?
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Next up is this very conscientous Democratic Senator, who is fully committed to doing his job:

"I don't expect to actually read the legislative language [of the health care bill] because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I've ever read in my life." –Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE)

Yes, being a Congressman is soooo hard, and now they expect Sen. Carper to read AND understand the legislation he's voting upon ? What's a poor Senator to do ? Study or something ? I presume Carper's state of confusion over the legislation won't prevent him from voting "Yea" on the health care bill. You just don't see integrity like Carper's anymore. On second thought, yes you do, all the time on Capitol Hill, and that's the problem.
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Now we move on to another patriotic Senator, John Kerry (D-NVA). Here's what Kerry said about cap-and-trade legislation:

"Let me emphasize something very strongly as we begin this discussion. The United States has already this year alone achieved a 6 percent reduction in emissions simply because of the downturn in the economy, so we are effectively saying we need to go another 14 percent."

Yeah, baby ! We're fundamentally transforming America !!! If we can only make this recession a lot worse, and make it last forever, we can help the environment ! And golly gee, if we go into a full-fledged permanent Great Depression II, maybe we can even reach the Kyoto emission standards ! Victory is at hand ! Yes We Can ! Yes We Can ! Yes We Can, Destroy The Economy !!!! C'mon, everybody sing !

"Obama ! mmmm mmmm mmmm."

I can't stand it. Where did I put that hammer ?

Upon taking office, President Obama vowed to "restore science to it's rightful place."

Enter John Holdren, whom Barack Obama recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Holdren's informal title is Science Czar (and as you shall see shortly, "Czar" is definitely the correct description for Holdren).

The following ideas come from the 1977 book Ecoscience, co-authored by Holdren, and illustrate what our radical new Science Czar thinks is the "rightful place" of science. Passages from this book read like the fiction from Huxley's Brave New World, or the ravings of a tyrranical lunatic. According to this book, Holdren is a totalitarian, a eugenicist, and an environmental extremist. What he proposes is simply beyond belief. Here are some direct quotes from Holdren's book:

Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.

Hmmm. I don't remember reading anything in the Constitution that would allow the government to mandate forced birth control or forced abortions. I wonder who "concluded" that ?

One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.

Forced marriage, forced adoption. Holdren isn't quite up to speed on the ideas of liberty or freedom of expression, is he ? I'm pretty sure the Constitution DOES say something about those concepts.

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.

Sterilize the population via drinking water, as long as it doesn't harm the livestock. Sure, Mr. Holdren. Was it Thomas Jefferson who first spoke those inspiring words, or was it Abraham Lincoln during his Gettysburg Address ? I can never remember.

a program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.
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The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.

Maybe they can combine the sterilization implant with the National ID implant chip. The totalitarian two-fer. I'm glad Holdren left open the possibility that some of us peons MIGHT be able to have children with the permission of the government. Of thee I sing.

If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.

I wonder how the government will determine which people are causing "social deterioration" ???? Eugenics, anyone ? Btw, the government is already trying to require us to "exercise responsibility" in our "resource-consumption patterns," in case anyone was wondering if this type of stuff could ever really happen.

Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. Thus the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market.

The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.

One worlders unite !!! I don't know why Holdren mentioned the Constitution in that previous passage from his book, because he clearly could care less about it. He wants to throw it out the window in favor of a planetary governing body. Holdren doesn't recognize any limitations on the power of the state. At least we won't have to worry about maintaining the integrity of sovereign nations any longer, because there won't be any sovereign nations. It's Big Brother gone global. What could possibly go wrong ?

If such things are science's "rightful place," well, I'd rather go back to where it was before. What kind of lunacy are we ushering into being here ? Where is America going ? The former fringe radicals are taking the seats of power, and that is truly frightening. What's next, Bill Ayers as the Education Czar ? It wouldn't be much different. We have to stop these people.

“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 ?

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 !

Warning – Reading this post requires a heavy duty tin foil hat. I also recommend a face mask.

I don't want to scare anyone, but there is convincing evidence that the swine flu came from……Barack Obama !

Check it out.

The swine flu outbreak in Mexico started at the same time President Obama was visiting Mexico, and a Mexican anthropologist who was introduced to Obama died of swine flu THE VERY NEXT DAY. From Bloomberg:

The first case was seen in Mexico on April 13. The outbreak coincided with the President Barack Obama’s trip to Mexico City on April 16. Obama was received at Mexico’s anthropology museum in Mexico City by Felipe Solis, a distinguished archeologist who died the following day from symptoms similar to flu, Reforma newspaper reported.

You may be saying, 'King, the first Mexican swine flu case was on April 13th, three days BEFORE Obama went to Mexico City.' True, but the U.S. always sends an ADVANCE TEAM in before the President arrives. The advance team clearly seeded the virus.

Now it has come out that a member of Obama's SECURITY TEAM contracted the swine flu while in Mexico. Do you see ??? They made a containment mistake and accidentally infected one of their own, which in turn has caused the virus to sweep across Washington D.C.

That's why Vice President Joe Biden is so scared, and told NBC that he wouldn't get on an airplane, a subway, or go near any enclosed, crowded places. Biden's an insider. He knows Obama's evil plan, and he knows they've lost control of it.

Obama said in his 100-day news conference that we shouldn't be overly worried about the swine flu, and said he won't close the Mexican border. Obviously, this is to lull Americans into a false sense of security in order to wipe out as many of us as possible. That also explains why Obama ordered childish swine flu prevention methods, such as "put your hand over your mouth when you cough." He knows those ineffective measures won't make a whit of difference. He's OUT TO GET US.

You may be asking, 'why would Obama want to wipe out Mexico and large parts of America ?'

It's elementary, my dear Watson. Think of the problems we face in America. Illegal immigration, drug cartels, unsustainable entitlements, and unemployment. Mexico plays a big hand in all those problems. If the Mexicans die off, the immigration and drug problems are solved, and there are more jobs for Americans. With far fewer Americans, the entitlements magically become more manageable. Remember, it's older people (who collect Social Security and use Medicare) that are most likely to die from the flu. Obama's machiavellian plan is brilliant.

But there's even more. The environmental movement has been contending for decades that the problem with the earth is all us darned people. There are too many of us, according to the enviros. I printed some quotes to that effect in my post yesterday. And now we have the most "green" President in American history. It's not enough to just kill off the Mexicans and the old people. In order to achieve a significant reduction in the man-made carbon footprint, we have to get rid of a substantial number of people all the world over, especially in America, because we have the biggest footprint of all. A pandemic is just the way to accomplish that without arousing suspicions.

If you thought Obama's first 100 days was bad, you ain't gonna like his second 100 days one bit. They're a killer.

Or maybe I'm not thinking straight. Maybe I'm just coming down with a fever or something………………..OH, NO !!!!

Because we're on the verge of riding the cap-and-trade road (to hell ?), paved with good intentions, of course, I thought I'd share some of the not-so-accurate predictions our environmental gurus made on the original Earth Day in 1970. Not that I'm saying Al Gore could EVER be mistaken now. Lord, no. He said "the science is settled," so…that's it. There will be no more science on global warming. Nada. It's over. The science stops here. We know all there is to know. That's the way all scientific achievement has been brought about, by stopping the science…..wait a minute. That doesn't sound quite right…..

Ah, no matter.

Anyway, as Reason Online states, when it comes to predictions, the environmental prophets of doom have not only been wrong, they've been spectacularly wrong.

I give you the 1970 Earth Day predictions from the leading Al Gore's of their day (except the following people REALLY WERE scientists, unlike the Goreacle, who is, in case nobody has noticed, a businessman, heavily invested in (guess what?) green technologies).

Check these out:

"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind" – Harvard biologist George Wald

"By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s" – Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb. Ehrlich estimated that 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the 'Great Die-Off' in the 1980's.

"It is already too late to avoid mass starvation" – Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day 1970. The reality ? Since 1970, the amount of food per person globally has increased by 26 percent, as the International Food Policy Research Institute reported in October 1999.

"Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half…." – Life magazine.

"At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable" – ecologist Kenneth Watt

"Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out" – a 1973 Deparment of Health, Education, and Welfare study about the effects of DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons.

"By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, `I am very sorry, there isn't any" – ecologist Kenneth Watt.

"Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct" – Sen. Gaylord Nelson in Look magazine.

"The greenhouse theorists contend the world is threatened with a rise in average temperature, which if it reached 4 or 5 degrees, could melt the polar ice caps, raise sea level by as much as 300 feet and cause a worldwide flood" – Newsweek, 1970.

"Screened from the sun's heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born" – Newsweek, 1970.

"The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age" – ecologist Kenneth Watt.