Index for posts concerning Energy

The 2008 Colorado Election by Darth B'strad
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Sarah Palin Gets the Veep spot! by Darth B'strad
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The Empire Strikes Back! by Darth B'strad
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Another Obama Post! by Darth B'strad
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The Spectacle of the DNC by Darth B'strad
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I told you so! by Darth B'strad
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Polar Bears got listed on the Endangered Species Act! by Darth B'strad
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Things Hidden from the Foundations of Time by Pacifist Muse
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Nuclear Power: The most probable solution for saving the environment by Bieren Skidels
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The 2008 Colorado Election

Posted on October 9th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Energy, Environment, Ethics, Law, education, Economics, Local.

Man! We have a lot of things to vote on this year with 14 amendments and 4 referendums to vote on this year! Of course we have Obama vs. McCain on the ballot as well as Bob Schaffer Vs. Mark Udall for Senator. So since there are a good number of amendments I thought it would be a good idea to put up each of them up here so that we can debate them here. So here is the page with all of the amendments and referendums. These are all the exact wording that you will see on your ballot, it just came straight off of my mail in ballot. Once we put up a post on any particular amendment or referendum I’ll link it up under that particular amendment. You can keep track of what we post up by just going straight to the page on the side tab unless you are using Internet Explorer. IE is a bad bowser and it doesn’t work well with our site so do yourself a favor and get Mozilla. Then you’ll be able to see all of the pretty things we have posted up at the side. You can download Mozilla free here. After the election I’ll put up what passed and failed and we can continue on from there.

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Sarah Palin Gets the Veep spot!

Posted on August 30th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Energy, Environment, Party System, Philosophy, Media, Republicans, Democrats, Economics.

An absolutely brilliant political maneuver by John McCain and it’s sure to stir things up! Thursday while Obama was preparing for his speech there were plenty of rumors going around about who McCain’s running mate will be. He had the media all rilled up with Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Tim Planity all rumored to be headed to Ohio to accept his nomination and then this morning he pulls out Sarah Palin of Alaska to be his running mate! Now I now that I have had plunty of prevous posts saying that she needs more experience and should stay in Alaska another four years to get it, but now that he has picked her I really am happy and I must say that I am starting to get impressed by John McCain. I starting to really look forward to seeing her take on Joe Biden! I mean come on now! This lady will tear Biden a new one! This is really starting to expose a big flaw in the Obama camp in the fact that he went with the normal Democrat running mate when he should have gone with Hillery (of course then again he would have to have plunty of secret service around him at all times a even need to hire a taste tester too if he did that.) Slow Joe Biden is not going to get Obama anywhere and now it just looks like all of the thunder that he amassed yesterday was just stolen by Sarah Pailn. Hugh Hewitt has six reasons why this pick was a good one up at Townhall.com.

First, over the past month we have gone from hoping Senator McCain would win to thinking he might actually be able to win. With the selection of Governor Palin most of us are convinced he will win. Which means the country will be well led on the war for at least another four crucial years. The reason behind this new confidence leads us to the second factor.

Although I am going to be more humble and not say that McCain/Palin is a sure win but new confidence is exactly right!

Sarah Palin is a real deal conservative, down the line, on all of the issues. This has the immediate effect of energizing the base to battle to keep the White House and to close the gap in or take back the House of Representatives. It is especially important that she is ardently pro-life, and the story of her family is certain to resonate with those values voters who prize faith and family as the center of life.

Amen!

Third, the Palin pick guarantees that the party will remain a conservative party long-term. If Senator McCain had picked a pro-choice Republican or had asked his friend and great American Joe Lieberman to run with him, the party would truly have been split. That didn’t happen, and Matt Cunningham summarizes the response among conservatives party activists:

McCain took a major step forward in exciting the GOP’s conservative base at Rick Warren’s forum. For example, I spoke with a prominent local conservative activist who was so enthused by McCain’s performance who bought a plane ticket for Minneapolis the next.

The Palin choice boosts and accelerates that process. Like me, Palin is 44 years old. She came of age politically during the Age of Ronald Reagan. To a conservative movement that has grown tired and enervated, she has demonstrated you can run, win and successfully govern on conservative principles in the face of the government-accommodating Republicanism that has infected so much of the party.

Most defiantly was necessary for McCain to ensure to his base and the fact that he will have a conservitive voice in his administration will ease the concerns of, well really all the conservatives in the party.

Fourth, the GOP already owned the energy issue and and the energy issue dominates and will continue to dominate the next 60 days. Even if Sarah Palin doesn’t persuade John McCain to come out for exploring ANWR now, a vigorous exploration/conservation strategy has an ideal spokesperson in Palin.

It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

Fifth, she is not a Beltway Republican. The modern GOP is the party of Reagan and Bush –both westerners, and very outside-the-Beltway. Neither ever succumbed to the Beltway’s many poisons.

John McCain is clearly outside of his party’s recent tradition, much more of the Eisenhower, above-partisanship nationalist than the movement conservative, comfortable as a Beltway big, on easy terms with the permanent political elite of the country from both parties and the Beltway-Manhattan media elite.

McCain, of course, understands the war and is the steel for the next crucial few years of resolve that victory in the war requires. A Vice President Palin will be a voice for the conservative movement in the Administration and for the party outside of the Beltway. The long run of Congressional power drained a lot of the energy from the GOP when it came to the battle of ideas, and Palin is a representative of the non-Beltway GOP that wants very much to get back into that fray. Winning the war remains the first priority, and Supreme Court justices after that, but on a host of key issues Governor Palin represents the reagan wing of the party, and that’s a great thing.

That’s looking to cleaning up Washington!

Sixth and finally, she is young enough to be a bridge to the next generation, and with five kids, she has been living in the world of young moms and technology-dependent teens. This advantage will be hard to quantify, but when she is out on the trail talking about her kids and her family’s path, it will be a huge counterpoint to the Obama’s narrative, one that underscores that millions of American families are conservative, traditional, proud of their country and full of optimism about the future if the government’s burdens do not grow to large and the country’s enemies are kept in retreat.

There is a lot of enthusiasm out there, and given these reasons, it will endure until November.

Absolutely right! That certainly helps out a lot. Even James Dodson is getting on this band wagon:

Prager: Plenty, plenty of people care and that’s why I am having you on. I care, many people care and you have a lot of followers. You have earned the right to that respect. So are you prepared to say, “Folks, look, given this pick and all I have learned about what would happen with a Democratic victory we have no choice, but to enthusiastically work for the McCain-Palin ticket?”

Dobson: You know, I have only endorsed one presidential candidate in my life and that was George Bush in the second term after I had watched him for four years. I did not do that in his first term. So I’m very reluctant to do that. You marry a politician you can be a widow pretty quickly.

Prager: That’s right.

Dobson: But I can tell you that if I had to go into the studio, I mean the voting booth today, I would pull that lever.

Prager: Well this is a very big deal.

Dobson: And that’s a long way’s from where I told you a year ago.

Prager: No kidding. No kidding. I am honored that you used this show to make that statement.

Dobson: You know, Dennis, the things that concern me about John McCain are still there. I made those comments not just based on emotions, but based on his record and some of the things that took place—embryonic stem cell research, and other things, the campaign finance, and other things. Those are still there. So, there’s still concerns. But I tell you, when I look at the choices that are ahead and what the implications are for this country, and now especially with this selection, with just an outstanding V.P. candidate as a running mate, I tell you what I am relieved and very excited.

Prager: Well, if you’re very excited given your previous reservations then I have to believe, and certainly based on the handful of calls I’ve been able to take the first hour before my “Happiness Hour,” I took the calls and people were so excited, palpably excited. Jim Dobson, and I got to tell you… if your base is energized then that is the biggest nightmare that the left has.

Dobson: I was just with about 300, maybe 400 people in a large auditorium, and they put Sarah Palin’s speech on the screen and we sat there and watched. I’m telling you it was electric. These were conservatives, you know. They were mostly Christian, but not all of them were. I mean to tell you, it set that crowd on fire. If that’s any indication, I think we are going to see some things.

Prager: We sure are. Well, you made my day. I just want you to know that.

Yep that was sure! Here is the key to her speech:

I was just your average hockey mom in Alaska. We’re busy raising our kids and serving as the team mom and coaching some basketball on the side. I got involved in the PTA and then was elected to the city council. And then elected mayor of my hometown, where my agenda was to stop wasteful spending and cut property taxes and put the people first. I was then appointed ethics commissioner and chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. And when I found corruption there, I fought it hard and I held the offenders to account. Along with fellow reformers in the great state of Alaska, as governor I stood up to the old politics as usual, to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the big oil companies, and the good old boy network. When oil and gas prices went up so dramatically, and the state revenues followed with that increase, I sent a large share of that revenue directly back to the people of Alaska. And we are now embarking on a $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.

I signed major ethics reforms and I appointed both Democrats and Independents to serve in my administration. And I’ve championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said, we’d build it ourselves.

Well, it’s always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk. To just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn’t get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not why the ship is built. Politics isn’t just a game of competing interests and clashing parties. The people of America expect us to seek public office and to serve for the right reasons. And the right reason is to challenge the status quo and to serve the common good.

Now, no one expects us to agree on everything. Whether in Juno or in Washington. But we are expected to governor with integrity, and good will, and clear convictions, and service (ph) heart. Now, no leader in America has shown these qualities so clearly or present so clear a threat to business as usual in Washington as Senator John F. McCain.

This is a moment when principles and political independents matter a lot more than just the party lines. And this is a man who has always been there to serve his country, not just his party. And this is a moment that requires resolve, and toughness, and strength of hearts in the American president. And my running mate is a man who has shown those qualities in the darkest of places. And in the service of his country.

That’s exactly what we need! Someone to make sure that the conservitive principals have their voice in the white house and now conservative will be very comfortable voting for them. So what did Obama have to say?

What — what is that American promise? It’s a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have obligations to treat each other with dignity and respect.

It’s a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, to look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

Ours — ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work.

That’s the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation, the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.

That’s the promise we need to keep. That’s the change we need right now.

(APPLAUSE)

So — so let me — let me spell out exactly what that change would mean if I am president.

(APPLAUSE)

Change means a tax code that doesn’t reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.

(APPLAUSE)

I’ll eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

(APPLAUSE)

I will — listen now — I will cut taxes — cut taxes — for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.

(APPLAUSE)

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

(APPLAUSE)

We will do this. Washington — Washington has been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years. And, by the way, John McCain has been there for 26 of them.

(LAUGHTER)

And in that time, he has said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil than we had on the day that Senator McCain took office.

Now is the time to end this addiction and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution, not even close.

(APPLAUSE)

As president, as president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I’ll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America.

(APPLAUSE)

I’ll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars.

A lot more of big government taking care of you little people. Is that what we really want? Do you really want a government that will take care of you and make sure that you have everything that you need? Or would it be better that we just take care of our selfs and thous around us and we (not the government) will move this country forward. If you want to get taken care of then Obama/Biden is defiantly your vote and if you want to achieve something for yourself then McCain/Palin is your vote.

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The Empire Strikes Back!

Posted on August 13th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Energy, Ethics, Europe, War, Terrorism, Philosophy.

Just as you thought that things this year really couldn’t get all that more crazy this year you get slapped down with yet another crazy event that just makes life in this world just that much more absurd and much more dangerous. We are having the most absurd election in a long time (the DNC of this is also going to be in my hometown), we have an energy crisis (that Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats are forcing down our thoughts because of their environmental lobby), we have had possible wars breaking out in Colombia and Venezuela (Also something that Nancy Pelosi has had a hand in), we have a very real possibility that Israel will bomb Iran (that could lead to some really bad repercussions), not to mention all of the weird things that have been going on in my personal life and now in the mists of the Olympic games in China, we have Russia blowing up Georgia! No, not our state here in the US but the Country Georgia just south of Russia (you know! one of those countries that gained independence after the Soviet Union fell.) Well the Russians are back at it again! They’re trying to rebuild the Empire and that’s going to make things even more strange before this year concludes. This from the Washington Post:

Russia escalated its war in Georgia again Monday, sending troops and tanks out of friendly separatist enclaves to stage the first major invasion of undisputed Georgian territory. One armored column seized a town and major military base in the west of Georgia, while another menaced the central city of Gori.

The Georgian government abandoned Gori and ordered its troops to fall back to defend against a possible drive on Tbilisi, the capital, 40 miles away. In scenes of chaos, retreating Georgian army trucks shared the highway to the capital with cars and pickups loaded with frightened civilians. Other vehicles, victims of Russian attacks, burned by the roadside.

Georgian and Russian officials confirmed that Russian soldiers took over the western city of Senaki and its base, about 25 miles from Abkhazia, a disputed separatist zone where Russia has been massing troops in recent days. The seizure effectively opened a second front.

There was confusion Monday night over the status of Gori, with some reports saying it was already in Russian hands. The country’s main east-west highway, which passes through the city, was cut, Georgian officials said, and rumors swirled among residents of the capital that Russian soldiers would soon be on their streets.

In a television address, President Mikheil Saakashvili accused Russia of the “preplanned, coldblooded . . . murder of a small country.” His government, among the most pro-American in the region, appealed again to the outside world for help.

Well I’ll say so! This is crazy!

In Washington, President Bush toughened his rhetoric. “Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century,” Bush said.

Well that will really scare the Russians!

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin used sharp language as well, accusing the West of supporting Georgian leaders who he contends committed genocide when their troops swept into the separatist zone of South Ossetia last week. The soldiers wiped out 10 villages, Putin said. “The very scale of this cynicism is astonishing,” he declared.

Putin also condemned the United States for airlifting Georgian troops home from Iraq on an emergency basis. Still dressed in desert fatigues, the Georgian soldiers stepped off a U.S. Air Force transport at a Georgian airport Monday.

I guess we at least did something! Doesn’t seem like much to me!

Moscow’s intentions remained a mystery. Russian soldiers, riding tanks and armored personnel carriers, were on the move even as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev seemed to suggest that the military operation was nearing its end, and a Russian general said there was no plan to take territory outside Georgia’s two pro-Russian separatist zones. Senior European officials flew into the Georgian capital to try to mediate a cease-fire plan that so far the Russians have ignored.

Repeat after me: “He’s K-G-B!” It’s all about power and dominance with them!

Over the weekend, Georgian leaders declared a unilateral cease-fire. But with Russian troops operating outside the country’s two separatist zones on soil the central government has always controlled, at least some Georgian forces were again in combat mode. Reporters witnessed Georgian troops and six helicopter gunships opening fire near the border of South Ossetia, one of the zones.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s and have formed close relations with Russia. Last week, Georgian forces launched a major offensive that captured the South Ossetian capital in an effort to reestablish central government control; Russian forces drove them out two days later.

Let me see here? A little county call Georgia decides they need to get some control over their rebels and then that gives Russia permission to completely blow that country up!

The Russian news agency RIA-Novosti, quoting Russian Defense Ministry officials, confirmed the seizure of the Senaki base and said that Russia sent “peacekeepers” there on a “preventative mission.” Another Russian official, speaking in Moscow, said the seizure was designed to prevent Georgian forces from using the base to re-group and launch new attacks on South Ossetia. Russia accuses Georgia of continuing to shell South Ossetia.

Preventative mission! Why would Georgia have any reason to strike at Russia. Their not insane like the Jihadist!

The Russian news agency Interfax later reported that Russian troops had pulled out of Senaki after “eliminating” the potential to shell South Ossetia.

Senaki is several hours’ drive from South Ossetia and had been a concern for separatists in Abkhazia, not South Ossetia. Completed in 2006, the base was built to meet standards of the NATO alliance, which Georgia aspires to join.

And there’s the real reason! Russia doesn’t want the west to gain more reliable allies in their back yard. So their going to blow up a little country so that they can maintain dominance. It’s just Russians reverting back to being… Well, Russians!

The French and Finnish foreign ministers visited Tbilisi on Monday as part of a diplomatic push to end the fighting. They visited Gori as well, where they inspected a bombed apartment building. Bernard Kouchner, the French minister, said he wanted to get a “strong picture” of events on the ground. Finland’s Alexander Stubb was present in his country’s capacity as rotating head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The Fins remember getting invaded by Russia back in 1940 and I am sure that they are looking at this quite seriously along with the rest of the countries in the former eastern bloc.

Saakashvili joined them in Gori. Toward the end of the visit, the sound of an airplane overhead caused panic among his security detail. Shouting “air, air” in Georgian, his bodyguards pulled him to the ground and covered him with flak jackets for protection. They later bundled him into a sport-utility vehicle that sped off.

Earlier Monday, Saakashvili signed a peace proposal offered by Kouchner, which calls for a cease-fire, the withdrawal of forces to positions held before the start of the recent hostilities, an international peacekeeping presence in South Ossetia, and the respect of Georgia’s territorial integrity.

It is unclear whether the plan will be acceptable in Moscow. Russians have said that Georgia must sign an agreement not to use force against the two separatist enclaves, which under international law are part of Georgia. Other Russian officials have suggested that Georgian troops near the enclaves would have to surrender their weapons to the Russians.

Well that’s a great deal for Georgia! Well, they don’t have many options. They have to hope that Russia will keep it’s word that they have already broken before.

Russian officials continued Monday to defend their country’s actions. Grigory Karasin, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said Monday that “we want television screens in the West to be showing not only Russian tanks and saying Russia is at war in South Ossetia and with Georgia, but also to be showing the suffering of the Ossetian people, the murdered elderly people and children, the destroyed towns of South Ossetia, and Tskhinvali. This would be an objective way of presenting the material.”

Yea, Ok! Whatever you want.

The Russian claims of atrocities have not been independently verified. Some of them appear to echo hearsay accounts provided on Russian television by South Ossetians who fled a Georgian military assault on the capital, Tskhinvali.

Some of the few reporters who have visited Tskhinvali described a devastated city with large numbers of dead. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said in a CNN interview Monday that 2,000 people had died in South Ossetia during the recent Georgian offensive.

Honestly, I really don’t know enough on this but Russia broke it’s word and they are asserting dominance over this region again and now to mention that they are the main suppliers to Iran, This situation makes me sick.

Western countries, particularly members of the European Union, are far from united about the conflict. East European and Baltic countries have been harshly critical of Russia’s action.

Major powers such as Germany, France and Britain have called for an end to the fighting, but they have avoided directly condemning Russia. Italy, whose prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is a friend of Putin’s, is sympathetic to Russia’s position.

“We cannot create an anti-Russia coalition in Europe, and on this point we are close to Putin’s position,” said Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, speaking to the newspaper La Stampa. “This war has pushed Georgia further away . . . from Europe.”

Yea for the Italians! Man this is really starting to get bad! Now we have a Russia that is starting to turn fascist and is reasserting control over the former easter bloc countries and not to mention the oil situation we have going on makes this a big power grab for Russia. That is a massive stretch that Russia is just doing this to help the poor South Ossetians how are being brutalized by Georgia due to the fact that there is a massive oil pipe running through Georgia and oil just so happens to be at 140 bucks a barrel. This is sure to test the McCain and Obama on if they are ready to actually able to run this county. As expected McCain takes a more hawkish stance:

The candidates’ responses to the crisis were initially very different in tone. Sen. McCain forcefully blamed Russia, a country he has taken a hard stand on in the past. He has called for ejecting Russia from the Group of Eight leading nations and has mocked President George W. Bush’s statement that he saw goodness in former Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sen. McCain said that when he looked into Mr. Putin’s eyes, he “saw three letters: K-G-B.”

“Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory,” Sen. McCain said Friday morning. He credited Georgia for having called for a cease-fire.

While Obama takes his usual talk it through stance:

Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama opposes excluding Russia from the Group of Eight industrial nations, as suggested by Republican rival John McCain, saying Moscow’s cooperation was needed in the fight against nuclear proliferation.

“It would be a mistake,” Obama told CNN in an interview when asked about McCain’s proposal. CNN on Saturday released excerpts from the interview that will air on Sunday.

“Look, if we’re going to do something about nuclear proliferation, just to take one issue that I think is as important as any on the list, we’ve got to have Russia involved,” the Illinois senator said.

“The amount of loose nuclear material that is floating around in the former Soviet Union, the amount of technical know-how that is in countries that used to be behind the Iron Curtain, without Russia’s cooperation, our efforts in that on that front will be greatly weakened.”

Man this is just getting insane! What’s next? China starts invading Taiwan? India starts invading Pakistan? Heck! for all we know maybe Iran already has a nuke ready and has it set up to lunch at Israel! And with that great Iranian Ballistic engineering; maybe it’ll just go haywire and just hit Egypt instead! This just seems to be the year for really crazy stuff to come out! (I wanted to curse right there but I thought I should try to stay professional.) We are most cleanly living the Chinese curse (and it’s ironic that the Olympics are in China.) “May you live in interesting times.” I hope that things will get really boring really fast but that’s not the current trend today!

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Another Obama Post!

Posted on July 8th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Immigration, Energy, Environment, Abortion, Party System, War, Law, Constitutional Law, Terrorism, Republicans, Democrats, Iraq, Israel, Economics.

Yes yes, that’s right! I’m posting on Obama again because this is just too important to pass up. Townhall.com has had two of my favorite talk show hosts: Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Prager. I’ll start with Prager’s article first:

My bottom line is this: The gulf between John McCain and conservatives is miniscule compared to the gulf between John McCain and Barack Obama. This is true regarding virtually every issue of significance to America. The America that a President Barack Obama would shape, with the help of a Democratic Congress and a liberal Supreme Court, would be very dissimilar from the America shaped by a President John McCain.

Conservatives who will not vote for McCain are well-intentioned utopians. They are comparing McCain to a consistently conservative candidate. The reality, however, is that McCain is not running against a consistently conservative candidate. He is running against a consistently left-wing candidate. And America cannot afford to have its first leftist president ever. It can afford liberal presidents — such as Bill Clinton, or Jimmy Carter (who governed as a liberal but became a leftist after leaving the White House), or John F. Kennedy, or Lyndon Johnson, or Harry Truman — i.e., all the Democrats who have been president since World War II. But the Democratic Party has moved well to the left of liberalism. And Barack Obama is at the left of that left-wing party.

Furthermore, given the strong possibility of a Democratic House, a Democratic Senate, and a liberal Supreme Court for decades to come, given the number of Supreme Court appointments a Democratic president will be able to make, an Obama victory will move America more radically leftward than ever in its history.

The Supreme court is good reason in it’s self! It’s taken a long to just to get it to a swing court. An Obama presidency will ensure that it stays a swing court and possibly reverse what we have wanted all along. The next president has the possibility of picking the next six supreme court justices.

That is why the argument that an Obama administration will be so destructive that Americans will reject the left and then elect a real conservative to undo the damage done in an Obama presidency is deeply flawed.

First of all, other than impeachment, there is no way to undo Supreme Court appointments, two or three of which a President Obama would likely make. And given how active most liberal judges are, it won’t matter much if the country has some conservative epiphany and then elects a Republican president and Congress. Because even if the Congress and the president will not pass liberal legislation, a liberal Supreme Court will. On almost any social issue that matters — the right to bear arms, late-term abortion, the definition of marriage, capital punishment, and many others — a liberal Supreme Court will rule on these issues, and there will be nothing that a post-Obama Republican president, even with a Republican congress, will be able to do about them.

Moreover, the argument that Americans will have a conservative epiphany after four years of an Obama presidency is predicated on America being greatly damaged by his policies. What kind of mindset welcomes such damage to the country it loves for the sake of potentially gaining politically after the damage is done? Is it, for example, really worth a considerably weakened economy (which Barack Obama’s tax and other economic policies would likely lead to), with its widespread suffering and unforeseeable social and political consequences, just to — hopefully — get a conservative into the White House four or eight years later?

And the damage won’t necessarily be undone. Even Ronald Reagan, the most popular conservative to ever serve as president, could not roll back most liberal creations. He never could get rid of the useless Department of Education, for example. Nor could a then-popular President George W. Bush do a thing about Social Security even when he had a Republican House and Senate. And how will Barack Obama’s successor undo the damage done to Iraq, the Middle East, the War on Islamic Terror, and the credibility of America’s assurances to allies once Iraq slides into chaos as a result of America’s precipitous withdrawal from Iraq?

Therefore, as well meaning and sincere as many conservatives are, this mode of thinking — let the country suffer under a left-wing president, Congress, and Supreme Court and then it will come to its conservative senses — will likely lead to a downward spiral from which it is hard to see the country escaping for a generation, if it is lucky.

There is one person who can prevent this unhappy future — John McCain.

He will not raise taxes, the last thing we should be doing in a weakened economy.

He will reduce government spending, and thereby prevent the state from controlling even more of American life.

He will ensure that America wins in Iraq. That will make one of the biggest and richest Arab states the freest of the Arab states. And it will hand Islamic terrorists the biggest defeat they have ever suffered. It will teach potential enemies not to attack America (whether Iraq did so directly is irrelevant to the point). And it will reassure America’s allies around the world, many of whom, as in Iraq, risk their lives for America and liberty, that America will never abandon them.

He will appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court and to federal benches, thereby depriving the left of its most powerful weapon in reshaping America in its image.

He may attract enough Hispanic votes (while securing the borders) to prevent that critical constituency from identifying with the Democratic Party, something that would ensure left-wing victories for decades to come.

He will develop nuclear power, environmentalist (read leftist) opposition to which has been morally indefensible. We would all love to have a solar powered or wind powered country. However, on planet earth at this time, nuclear power may be the cleanest source of energy we have. That is why France, not heretofore known as politically conservative, relies on nuclear power for nearly 80 percent of its electricity.

Now to Hugh Hewitt’s bit:

The key: McCain will pursue victory in the war, deter our enemies because of his reputation for strength and defend the country via aggressive pursuit of terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever they are, and get most of the judicial nominees right. He’ll keep taxes where they are if he can.

Obama, on the other hand, is just now coming into focus for other than the already committed Obamians. He had a stumbling, bumbling close to his primary campaign, and the opening weeks of his general campaign have been marked by flip flops and lurches left.

Here’s the core of Obama:

He’s hard left.

He wants the marginal rate on total federal taxes, including his social security tax hike, to immediately rise at least 57% on the highest earners. Obama wants to raise taxes even in a weak economy, though this is a recipe not just for recession but worse. Obama also wants to raise taxes on dividend income and to return the death tax to its highs of eight years ago.

Obama has proposed more than a trillion dollars in new spending.

Obama is going to absolutely destroy this economy even worse than it is.

Obama wants to cut and run from Iraq, with withdrawals of crucial forces beginning immediately upon his entry into office. Obama has never met one on one with General Petraeus and has not been to Iraq in more than 900 days. He is indifferent to the incredible progress made by our troops and the Iraqi Defense Forces and the Iraqi government in the last 18 months.

He supports the decision extending habeas rights to Gitmo detainees and he thinks the most liberal member of the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is a great model for future Supreme Court appointments.

Obama supports gay marriage, and opposes the California constitutional amendment to restore marriage to the definition overturned by a 4-3 vote of the California Supreme Court in May. He supports abortion on demand, including partial birth abortion.

If any of you care about abortion and gay marriage, Obama’s going to shove it down your through.

Obama has the slightest grasp on history, and routinely makes the sort of errors about basic facts that shock knowledgeable observers, like arguing the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit in Vienna was an example of the benefits of one-on-one diplomacy.

Obama is not a strong friend of Israel. He spent 20 years in a church that was openly hostile to Israel, and he reversed himself on Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel after one day of criticism by Palestinians.

Obama is running a dirty campaign, and the serial assaults on John McCain’s service, most visibly by Wesley Clark but by many others closely associated with Obama, is repulsive. These are not hits by independent 527s but by close associates and advisors of Obama.

Michelle Obama’s campaign rhetoric has been very divisive, is full of anger and resentment about “moving the bar,” and not being proud of the country, and has led to her high negatives with the public.

Obama’s close friends, mentors and associates are deeply troubling: the radical pastor Jeremiah Wright, the unrepentant terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, the convicted swindler Tony Rezko, and now a long line of “public housing developers” who took the money and failed to deliver on promises of safe and secure housing for Obama’s poorest constituents.

Obama’s judgment on key appointees is suspect, and he has had to fire the head of his vice presidential search team because of ties to the subprime mess and dump numerous “foreign policy advisors” for their hostility to Israel.

Obama’s deal with the Teamsters to end federal oversight of the union smells very bad indeed and telegraphs the sort of cronyism we could expect from an Obama Adminsitration. Obama’s mentor and real estate partner is Rezko, who helped the Obama’s buy their home, a home on which the Obamas received a mortgage that looks to many like a sweetheart deal.

Obama, like the other leaders of the Triple D Democrats –the Don’t Drill Democrats– doesn’t care about the price of gas, and refuses every initiative to increase supply and thus bring that price down.

Obama has broken his word on his commitment to public financing of the campaign and to meet John McCain in frequent debates. Obama can’t be trusted to keep even high-profile promises he made even only weeks ago.

Away from a teleprompter Obama stumbles and stutters and lapses into a closed circle of cliches that betrays almost no reading or curiosity about the world around him,and a massive ignorance of the war in which we find ourselves. Even when he works from a prompter he says nothing at great length with wonder phrasing but zero substance.

His crowds are enormous and his coffers overflowing, the products of a highly energized and vitriolic left that expects –believes it will be owed, in fact– the spoils of the election. If Obama wins, the sharpest lurch left in American history is ahead of us.

Barack Obama is not only the most radical nominee of a major American political party in history, he is also the least prepared and the least informed. He has spent less than four years inside of the United States Senate, and much of those years have been spent away from his job and away from the capital he wants to lead. But he is protected and his campaign nurtured by a MSM that swooned for him long ago. The prolonged and serious scrutiny of his background and his proposals will not be forthcoming in any consistent way between now and November.

And that’s the argument against Obama. So what’s the argument for him? Oh, yea that’s right: he’s for change! Well if you are looking for big changes to where the government is in control of every aspect of your life then Obama is your man. I’ll pass on that! I’m voteing for McCain.

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The Spectacle of the DNC

Posted on June 27th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Energy, Environment, Ethics, Beer, Media, Creative Writing, Democrats, Economics.

If you didn’t know already the Democratic National Convention is coming here to Denver in late August and man is it causing trouble here. Here’s what the Wall Street Journal as to say about it:

As the Mile High City gears up to host a Democratic bash for 50,000, organizers are discovering the perils of trying to stage a political spectacle that’s also politically correct.

Consider the fanny packs.

The host committee for the Democratic National Convention wanted 15,000 fanny packs for volunteers. But they had to be made of organic cotton. By unionized labor. In the USA.

Official merchandiser Bob DeMasse scoured the country. His weary conclusion: “That just doesn’t exist.”

That’s always great! We need to come up with something completely new to keep this green.

Ditto for the baseball caps. “We have a union cap or an organic cap,” Mr. DeMasse says. “But we don’t have a union-organic offering.”

Why does it need to be organic anyway? Has anyone asked this in the first place? No! We need to keep this green.

Much of the hand-wringing can be blamed on Denver’s Democratic mayor, John Hickenlooper, who challenged his party and his city to “make this the greenest convention in the history of the planet.”

Thanks Hick! More taxes for me.

Convention organizers hired the first-ever Director of Greening, longtime environmental activist Andrea Robinson. Her response to the mayor’s challenge: “That terrifies me!”

She should be!

After all, the last time Democrats met in Denver — to nominate William Jennings Bryan in 1908 — they dispatched horse-drawn wagons to bring snow from the Rocky Mountains to cool the meeting hall. Ms. Robinson suspected modern-day delegates would prefer air conditioning. So she quickly modified the mayor’s goal: She’d supervise “the most sustainable political convention in modern American history.”

Man they really did some weird stuff back in the day.

Now, she must pull it off.

To test whether celebratory balloons advertised as biodegradable actually will decompose, Ms. Robinson buried samples in a steaming compost heap. She hired an Official Carbon Adviser, who will measure the greenhouse-gas emissions of every placard, every plane trip, every appetizer prepared and every coffee cup tossed. The Democrats hope to pay penance for those emissions by investing in renewable energy projects.

Perhaps Ms. Robinson’s most audacious goal is to reuse, recycle or compost at least 85% of all waste generated during the convention.

And how are they going to do it!

The Trash Brigade

To police the four-day event Aug. 25-28, she’s assembling (via paperless online signup) a trash brigade. Decked out in green shirts, 900 volunteers will hover at waste-disposal stations to make sure delegates put each scrap of trash in the proper bin. Lest a fork slip into the wrong container unnoticed, volunteers will paw through every bag before it is hauled away.

Have 900 people stand around and yell at you “Hay don’t put that there! Put it in that one!” Man that’s has to be really efficient and of course us Coloradans will pay for it. Still wouldn’t it be better just to round up a bunch of bums and have them scour out all the trash and stuff left on the sidewalks so they can go sell it to the recycling plaints? That might save you some money but then again it’s not too pretty. You can’t have that at the DNC.

“That’s the only way to make sure it’s pure,” Ms. Robinson says.

Naturally

Republicans are pushing conservation, too, as they gear up for their convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Like the Democrats, they’re cutting down on printing by doing as much work as possible by email; using recycled office furniture; and urging employees to walk or take public transportation to work. The Republicans also encourage vendors to be as environmentally friendly as possible.

everyones gotta’ be green! Well, except me of course.

But Matt Burns, a spokesman for the Republican convention, looks on with undisguised glee at some of the Democrats’ efforts — such as the “lean ‘n’ green” catering guidelines.

This might be just too funny to miss.

Among them: No fried food. And, on the theory that nutritious food is more vibrant, each meal should include “at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white.” (Garnishes don’t count.) At least 70% of ingredients should be organic or grown locally, to minimize emissions from fuel burned during transportation. “One would think,” says Mr. Burns, “that the Democrats in Denver have bigger fish to bake — they have ruled out frying already — than mandating color-coordinated pretzel platters.”

Why exactly do thous certain colors mean healthy! Can someone explain that to me? Really! Why these colors? Just leave me a comment here.

Democrats say the point is to build habits that will endure long after the convention. To that end, the city has staged “greening workshops” attended by hundreds of caterers, restaurant owners and hotel managers. “It’s the new patriotism,” Mayor Hickenlooper says.

Thanks again Hick!

Laura Hylton, general manager of Biscuits & Berries catering, agrees in principle. But she has been testing her recipes using local ingredients for weeks and still can’t get the green peppercorn sauce right when she uses white Colorado wine. The state’s high-altitude wine industry took off in the early 1990s and produces some award-winning labels, but Ms. Hylton says diplomatically, “It’s a little…lacking. Our wineries out here aren’t what you’d see in California or France.”

OOOh! So our Coloradan wines are not good enough for you! We aren’t California or France! Well Ms. Hylton you should know since your from here that as alcohol goes we’re sort of like Germany. You come to this state for Beer not wine. You should try something special from Great Divide. That will turn out good and that will bing in the great culture of Colorado into this.

Joanne Katz, who runs the Denver caterer Three Tomatoes, will take one for the green team by removing her fried goat-cheese won tons with chipotle pepper caramel sauce from the menu. But she questions whether some of the guidelines will have the desired earth-saving effects.

That’s right! Take one for the team here! Hey wait! I may want some fried goat-cheese won tons. That kind of sounds good right now.

Compostable utensils, she says, are often shipped from Asia on fuel-guzzling cargo ships. As for the plates: “Is it better to drive across town to have china delivered to an event and then use hot water to wash it, or is it better to use petroleum-based disposables?” she asks.

These are really hard decisions. I wouldn’t want her job.

The convention’s greening gurus say they’re doing the best they can with the most current information available.

but of course, and now to the Coors Conflict!

Coors Conflict

But it’s almost inevitable that principles, politics and profit will conflict. To wit: Coors Brewing Co., in Golden, Colo., will donate biofuel made from beer waste to power the convention’s fleet of flex-fuel vehicles. A green star for the convention — but it has rankled die-hard liberals, who boycotted Coors in the 1960s and ’70s to protest hiring practices that they said discriminated against blacks, Latinos, women and gays. Heirs to the Coors fortune have long been active in conservative causes and Republican politics.

See! thous of us in the conservitive movement want you to have a good DNC in our city. We’re compassionate! But will you take it?

Convention officials say Coors is a good corporate citizen. And a Coors spokeswoman says the donation was a gesture of civic pride, not politics.

No matter, grumbles Anna Flynn, a longtime union member from Denver who objected to the donation. “Any way you put it, it’s still Coors,” she says.

Hell NO!

Chris Lopez, a spokesman for the host committee, says that securing a diverse group of sponsors is as much about showcasing the regional economy as promoting sustainability. He added that Democrats are nudging sponsors to “think green” by participating in an eco-festival and cutting back on paper fliers stuffed into delegate goody bags.

Please don’t start bringing up body bags!

Watching the greening frenzy from afar, Fred L. Smith Jr., president of the libertarian Washington think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, suggested the Democrats could really shrink their footprint by staging a virtual-reality convention: “Just have everyone stay at home with their laptops, sitting in their pajamas, interacting through their avatars.”

Yea, don’t start causing trouble downtown, do it online! Sounds good to me.

Ms. Robinson, the greening director, says big showy conventions are part of the American political tradition, and thus worth a few emissions here and there. Also, she hates to be a killjoy.

Wait a minute. She’s a liberal! Isn’t that her job?

True,

See!

she did try (unsuccessfully) to get bottled water banned from the convention hall. But remember those balloons? She checked the compost heap last week — and found them still intact. She has added more liquid to try to get them to degrade.

Well that’s great. The balloons don’t work right.

And if they don’t? “The balloons will be there,” she promises.

So we’ll spend a lot more on that balloons that are supposed to degrade anyway! Even though they really don’t work. I can hear my wallet shrinking now.

So will the fanny packs — made in the USA of undyed, organic fabric. Mr. DeMasse vows to get a union shop to print the logo, but he says the ink will be petroleum based. Unless, that is, he decides to get the logo embroidered — with biodegradable thread.

That’s great. I was thinking of just sitting this one out due to the recreate 68′ group from the good ol’ People’s Republic of Boulder, promising to start riots in downtown during the convention. But after reading the sort of spectacle the Dems have waiting for us downtown, I’m now start to think that this will just be too good to miss or rather to funny to miss. Besides with Hillary being snuffed out of the race and Obama “assured” to win this it probably won’t be bad at all. Besides they’re just leftys from Boulder! They wouldn’t know how to riot if they had to. And if things get a little out of hand I just start hanging out with the conservatives over by Dennis Prager and Hugh Hewitt. They’ll have some guns there and I’m sure they’ll defend one of their own. Although I might still want to bring my knife with me, just in case. But just keep that between you and me here I don’t want to get in trouble with any of the cops. Wink,Wink.

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I told you so!

Posted on May 27th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Energy, Environment, Law, Economics.

This polar bear listing is starting to heat up! Just last week Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska started her charge against the listing. This from breitbart.com:

The state of Alaska will sue to challenge the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species, Gov. Sarah Palin announced Wednesday.

She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state’s northern and northwestern coasts.

Palin argued that there is not enough evidence to support a listing. Polar bears are well-managed and their population has dramatically increased over 30 years as a result of conservation, she said.

I think I’m falling in love here! Oh, wait. She’s already married. Well, I’ll get over it.

Palin and other state officials called arbitrary a decision to list a healthy species judging by what they deem uncertain modeling of future climate change and unproven long-term impact of any future climate change on the species.

State Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Irwin said it could have wide economic effects.

“Inappropriate implementation of this listing decision could result in widespread social and economic impacts, including increased power costs and further increases in fuel prices, without providing any more protection for the species,” he said.

And he’s exactly right and now I have proof for you. This is just in from azstarnet.com:

This month’s listing of the polar bear as a threatened species was the biggest victory in the 19-year history of Tucson’s Center for Biological Diversity.
It was also the single biggest step to advance the cause of global warming on the worldwide stage of public opinion, according to the environmental group’s friends and foes alike.

They aren’t kidding on that point.

One legal observer, University of Denver law professor Fred Cheever, likened it to the effect of the endangered-species listings of the bald eagle and peregrine falcon, which led the U.S. to ban the pesticide DDT a quarter-century ago.

“If you had to rank them, what single thing has brought the most attention in the U.S. to the climate-change issue?” asked Oliver Houck, a Tulane University law professor who specializes in environmental law.
“Would it be Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize, the movie ‘Inconvenient Truth,’ or a picture of a polar bear on shrinking ice? I say maybe the picture would win.

“That image is so much in the public mind that the Bush administration didn’t want to list it but had to. Not listing it would be like killing Flipper or Smokey Bear,” Houck said.

But like scores of other species-protection cases won by the Center for Biological Diversity in the past, this is but the first step in a long, arduous process to translate the listing into action.

The center petitioned for the polar bear’s listing back in 2005. It later sued along with Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list it.

The center’s blueprint for saving the polar bear is ambitious and complex. It includes:

And here is the key to everything!

● Challenging offshore oil and gas leasing in Alaska within six months.

● Launching a large-scale challenge to the licensing of coal-fired power plants around the country sometime after that.

● Finally, challenging large-scale, local government development plans in major cities.

See! I told you so! I knew they wouldn’t just sit back and do nothing. No they’re going to go after oil and drive gas prices up. Not to mention they’re going to cut power to your house! but it gets better:

Summer sea ice shrank last year to a record low, about 1.65 million square miles, nearly 40 percent less than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000.

If temperatures continue warming at their current pace, in five or six years there might be so little sea ice frozen during the winter that there would be none left in the Arctic at the end of summer, scientists say.

If global warming continues as expected, two-thirds of the polar bear population would be gone by 2050, the U.S. Geological Survey has said.

Many legal experts said the listing could be a political boost for those fighting global warming, by prodding Congress to pass a law limiting carbon dioxide emissions.

And they call us the fear mongers.

Based on what longtime federal climate scientist James Hansen has said about global warming, there is a compelling case to be made for not allowing any more coal-fired plants, said Suckling, the biological diversity group’s executive director.

Hansen, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, recently wrote that the world must cut atmospheric CO2 concentrations by nearly 10 percent, “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted.”

Hansen has also argued against construction of new coal-fired plants that don’t capture and store CO2 instead of releasing it into the atmosphere.

Do these guys really hear them selfs talk when they say things like this?

But if the Fish and Wildlife Service decides that a project won’t jeopardize the bear’s existence, overturning that ruling may be difficult. “Who wants to be the judge who says all new federal highway funding is prohibited by the ESA?” Doremus asked.

The Center for Biological Diversity has won some legal cases involving warming. In northern New Mexico, it successfully pushed the Fish and Wildlife Service to consider effects on greenhouse gases from a proposed power plant.

In San Bernardino, Calif., its lawsuit prompted local officials to add requirements for alternative energy and public transit to approved development plans.

“We’re going out on a cutting edge, making this law happen,” Suckling said. “We’re way out in front of the law clinics and law schools on this. When it comes to climate, the real action is in the courts, not the classroom.”

They’re not going to take my advice, they’re going to push this to the limit.

But critics warn that the polar bear protection will bring unprecedented bureaucratic interference into humans’ daily lives.

Political columnist George Will wrote that this listing gives the Endangered Species Act unlimited application.

“Want to build a power plant in Arizona? A building in Florida? Do you want to drive an SUV? Or leave your cellphone charger plugged in overnight? Some judge might construe federal policy as proscribing these activities,” Will wrote in The Washington Post.

Law professor, radio broadcaster and blogger Hugh Hewitt of Southern California wrote that any activity in the Lower 48 states that requires a federal permit could be delayed or have costs added.

That’s because the Endangered Species Act requires that a federal permit be judged to see if it could affect the bear.

Coastal building programs requiring federal flood insurance, federally financed highways, flood-control permits for new developments and joint NASA-private industry initiatives could be affected, wrote Hewitt, of Chapman University Law School.

That’s because it’s true!

That’s fear-mongering, counters Suckling, who said he has seen critics’ similar claims fail to materialize after other species-protection debates.

This time, the biological diversity center will go mainly after large-scale greenhouse gas emitters, to get the biggest bang for the buck, he said.

“The Endangered Species Act has never on its own completely solved any environmental problem,” Suckling said.

“What they’re imagining is that every aspect of global warming will be regulated by ESA and people will be ordered out of their homes. That is wrong, duplicitous and stupid.”

What foolishness! We never said that you would take our homes but that you will make it so expensive that we will have to leave our homes! These guys are off on a charge that they have no idea what the repercussions of it will be. This whole idea that we could destroy this planet just by emitting CO2. I don’t know if they have heard but plants need that to live. Not to mention that just this year the earth has cooled down just as much as it has heated the past 10 years. The sea temperatures are cooling not warming and they don’t have a clue why! They say that it’s an open and shut case but still Wikipedia has a list of scientists that are opposed to this whole scare. Frankly, I think these people are arrogant! How do they even know that the current temperature of the Earth is the perfect one? I think that it might be better if the Earth is actually warmer. more people die from harsh cold than harsh heat and I and tired of these massive cold spells that we have been getting this year. We just had two tornadoes tear through our start a few days back. One of them was just several miles from my house. They have absolutely no way they can prevent them. And now they have the hubris to tell me that getting in my truck everyday and going to work is causing it. I’ll consider it when they get rid of their jets and stop their hypocrisy.

With how the economic situation is right now, you have China eating up a lot of gasoline but a big reason for this is China is subsiding gasoline and as prices go up then China will not be able to keep on doing that. Thus they’ll have to cut back and will release supply to us and prices will go down. Also all of the other oil producing countries are upping their production that will also help. However with how these environmentalist are starting to go after offshore drilling in Alaska, that’s going to cut supply severely and will keep the prices high. If they succeed at sewing the oil company and getting them to shut down the offshore rigs then prices will at the very least say where they are at all summer long. And you will know the reason why! The oil companies want to dill it but congress won’t let them. It’s really out of phase with reality when you see millionaire senators asking the oil companies how much money they make. And what’s even worse is the oil companies are the one’s making their money legitimately while the senators do shady deals to make their money. Now don’t get me wrong here, I do think that big business is A-moral and would sell their mothers if they could. However, with money as their god you can always force their hands to do what is right but these senators on the other hand think that they are going to save the world by making life hard on you! All the while they sill take your money from you and live in their mansions with total disregard to the environment. And to think that all this happened because of a picture of a polar bear that’s stranded on ice. But the really odd part to that story is the polar bear really wasn’t stranded he was just playing on it and he was fully capable of swimming to his home and living another day. The reality is these polar bears don’t need us to protect them and even if they did there is nothing that we could do to protect them. Global Warming is an effect of the sun and nothing we can do can change that! The effect of CO2 on the warming is minuscule to the effect that the sun has and we will all see one day that this was all just one big scare that has no basis is reality and we will destroy our economy over it.

2 comments.

Polar Bears got listed on the Endangered Species Act!

Posted on May 17th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Energy, Environment, Economics.

Well, most of the time something like this wouldn’t really matter all that much. Most of the animals on this act are one that are really in danger so that just means that you can’t shoot them and if they happen to wander in on your property then you’re screwed. For the case of the polar bear (in normal circumstances) that would mean that you can’t go up to the north pole and start hunting them (and that’s something that really wouldn’t appeal to me). However, this is a special case that will have massive impact on our economy because of the reason that the polar bear got listed. This from USA Today:

“This listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting,” Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said while announcing the decision. The Endangered Species Act should not be “abused to make global warming policies,” he said.

Kassie Siegel, a lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the group does not accept Kempthorne’s view.

The act requires federal agencies to take steps to reduce or eliminate those impacts on threatened species, she said. “There is no exemption for greenhouse gas emissions.” If the government fails to address global warming, “we can and will go to court to enforce the law,” she said.

The decision comes three years after environmental groups petitioned to have the polar bear listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The listing of “threatened” means a species is at risk of becoming endangered within the foreseeable future. A species is listed as “endangered” when it is at risk of becoming extinct, according to the act.

And here’s the kicker!

“Although the population of polar bears has grown from 10,000 in the 1960s to 25,000 today, our scientists tell me that polar bears could become an endangered species in the next 30 years,” Kempthorne said.

Polar bears are still reproducing at at good rate! Hugh Hewitt has been all over this on his radio show and his blog and this is what he has to say about this on townhall.com:

After 18 years of a law practice devoted to counseling landowners, home builders and commercial interests affected by the long arm and severe penalties of the Endangered Species Act, I am used to incredulous looks and outraged oaths from clients coming to grips with the Act’s incredible burdens on impacted private citizens.

“Are you telling me I can’t build my Burger King because a Delhi Sands flower-loving fly that has never been seen and is above ground only a few days a year might be near-by?”
“I can’t build a connector road because the noise from construction might damage the hearing of the Stephens’ kangaroo rat thus impairing its reproduction?”

“All construction in San Diego involving impacts to road ruts which might contain Vernal Pool Fairy Shrimp is enjoined? All construction?”

Yes, yes, and yes. The list of situations in which the ESA has stopped otherwise legal and fully permitted projects from proceeding is extraordinarily long and getting longer. With Wednesday’s decision to list the polar bear as “threatened” the burden on the American economy brought about by the ESA grew exponentially.

That alone will earn him a special place in hell for environmentalist and since I support him you guys can throw me in there with him. But here is the key to what this means!

The industries most likely to be pummeled by the polar bear are energy production, aggregates extraction, transportation, and commercial building because each can be shown quite easily to result in increased emissions of greenhouse gases and each routinely requires federal permits to go about some aspect of their business. (The coal industry may be target number one, followed by oil drilling in the lower 48.)

The Act operates simply. Once an animal is listed, it becomes a felony to harm or harass it without the permission of the feds.

Harm or harassment has been defined to include destruction or impairment of the habitat the species actually occupies. (Some more radical views argue that harm to habitat that could be occupied in the future should also be a felony under the Act, but that view has not yet been upheld by a court of appeals.)

Because the polar bear has been listed as threatened due to alleged deterioration of its ice habitat, and because the alleged loss of the ice habitat has occurred because of global warming caused at least in part by the emission of greenhouse gases, environmental activists will argue that all emissions of greenhouse gases that flow as a consequence of the grant of a federal permit of any sort are now subject to review under the ESA and, crucially, that those permits cannot be issued unless and until the United States Fish & Wildlife Service reviews and approves of the requested permit under Section 7 of the ESA, a process which takes at a minimum months and which can cost millions of dollars even if it is successful.

Because of the generous “citizen standing” provisions of the ESA, expect dozens of “60-day” letters to begin to arrive in the offices of Secretary Kempthorne very soon, announcing that unless the Department and the Service act to invoke Section 7 vis-a-vis this or that federal permit, a lawsuit will be filed to force compliance. Expect most of those suits to be filed in the Ninth Circuit, where the appeals court has been very expansive in applying the ESA.

So now on anything that can produce carbon dioxide can be brought up to the courts to review if it can be allowed! This is insanity! So what does Hugh suggest we do about it?

Some will no doubt urge that the listing itself be challenged, but not only will proceeding that takes years, it is likely to be unsuccessful because the courts rightly defer to the exercise of scientific discretion by the agencies charged with protecting the species protected by the Act. It is not a hopeless effort, but it is also not likely to succeed.

The key will be to cabin the reach of the polar bear listing’s impact by pushing for court decisions on the limits of where Section 7 reaches, and to do so in federal circuits much more cautious about the ESA’s intent when passed by Congress and signed by Richard Nixon. In addition to the obvious constitutional arguments about whether the Interstate Commerce power was ever intended to support such far reaching claims of federal regulatory power, and statutory construction arguments on whether the ESA was ever intended to reach future habitat destruction based on predictive models (as well as the obligatory non-delegation arguments which are highly unlikely to be persuasive) the key will be to force the courts to early on confront the limits of causation when it comes to harm to the ice that the act can support. Courts must establish that it is absurd for the federal government to ever argue that project-by-project review of greenhouse gas emissions is required by the ESA or could in any way prevent ice formation or destruction.

Test cases should be brought by industry that argue that various federal permits –import/export permits, private jet landing permits, conservation banking permits– all have greenhouse gas impacts, no matter how small, and thus that they must be subject to Section 7 review. Courts ought to be forced to the far reaches of Section 7 immediately rather than over years so that the agencies do not develop a practice of automatically referring for review just the projects they want to stop. It is vital that affected industries not trust the executive branch to practice restraint or to push back against the most ambitious of the claims of environmental activist plaintiffs.

Push the limits to make this look as absurd as possible! And it is absurd but here are some beautiful examples for what to do.

One caller to my radio show yesterday suggested targeting imports from China entering via federally-regulated ports as an opportunity to argue that the PRC is the real culprit behind skyrocketing global emissions.

Ouch! That’s going to hurt. No more stuff from China! How will Obama be able to make life affordable for the underclass?

Another urged a focus on the private jets that Al Gore and other activists are so fond of using to carry their climate change gospel around the globe.

Lovely! I like that one, start going straight to the heart of the hypocrisy in this.

An e-mailer asked whether the new Yankee Stadium is depending upon federal money or federal permits in any way as surely the traffic to and from the ball games will punch up the plight of the polar bear.

No nice stadium for New York! Well we all hate the Yankees anyway!

While there will be a long list of targets for test cases, the key is that industry not react to suits brought by the very accomplished lawyers of the left but that they force the tempo and choses at least some of the battlegrounds.

Swarming the courts has long been a tactic of the left, but private sector firms and sectors threatened by the threatened polar bears need to do more than sit back and wait for bills to come do and projects to be canceled. Congress under Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid will not be offering legislative relief no matter how absurd the consequences of the listing. The best hope to cut-off the imposition of Kyoto through the rulings of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is through the federal courts, and the time to act is now.

Watch out environmentalist because this is going to cause a massive backlash against you! This is going to be the straw that brakes the camel’s back and you’re going to see the American people begin to hate you! Watch your words carefully and bring your suits carefully becuse if you push too hard too fast then the American people will see just how absurd this really is! As people start seeing that we have plenty of oil here and you are the ones stopping it through the courts they are going to get mad at you! And If you use this to start shutting down refineries and oil rigs, we will start seeing gasoline go up to 7,8 or even 10 bucks a gallon and people will know that you are the reason for it. This will make the price of everything go through the roof and then the American people will say enough and elect republicans to destroy everything that you have built up for the last 40 years. Americans, you better start saving your money because if this gets bad enough we will see another depression that will be far worse than the previous one. So much so that not even Gold can save it! Our county as gotten sew happy here and it has had a devastating effect on our economy but ironically the only way to stop this will be through the courts by making suits as absurd as possible so that it will show the American people to throw this out as quickly as possible. However that could be a massive gamble if you have some judges that will be crazy enough to actually rule in favor of some of the absurd suits. Most likely that will not happen but if the Chinese do see this sort of thing happen they may start looking for some other markets to sell stuff to. Now I may be over exaggerating things here but I see a real danger here to my county and this could possibly start some chain reactions that will be bad for the world. America needs to start getting energy independent now by any means possible. Right now I am afraid for my country because we are turning our backs on the principals that made this country great. Just be careful because wars are coming but I pray that I am wrong here.

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Things Hidden from the Foundations of Time

Posted on February 16th, 2007 by Pacifist Muse.
Categories: Energy, Prose, Creative Writing.

By Adam Beach

For Brittany. For teaching me how to see love.

Once, not long after the successful mapping of the human genome, a very special child was born. Eden was her name. Her eyes a striking ivy green, her hair jet-black and curly, her skin rosy and plump. This child was not like other children—not like other humans at all, in fact. That is, very much human, but extraordinary: You see, Eden was blessed with eyes that perceived love, a nose, that could pick up its scent, ears, that could hear it, skin, that felt it in everything she touched and taste buds that burst with joy at the prevalence of love in all kinds of food and drink. In everything and everyone, Eden experienced love with every fiber of her five keen senses. It saturated her existence and defined her daily choices, even when she was young.

Lovely! Oh how lovely! she would coo while walking hand in hand down the street with her mother, Genesis, as they passed a homeless man on the street. Once, Eden dug her hand into the cake Genesis had carefully cooked and battered that morning. Licking her hands she exclaimed, Momma I love this! Her mother swung around with a scowl, furious. Eden had destroyed the cake, yet again, before her playmates had arrived to celebrate her third birthday. Eden! what am I going to do with you?…I’m glad you like it, her mom retorted. No momma, It ‘is’ love. I can taste your love in it. And I love that.

Eden’s parents and friends noticed very quickly that there was something special about her. One thing in particular that began to stick out to Eden’s parents was the way in which she seemed fearless. From the time she was young, if she found a spider in the house or outside she would extend her tiny hand to it, giggle as it squirmed up her arm on to her neck–her giggle would peak to a crescendo of screeching laughter as it traced her neck. Then, with a pause, she would delicately pick it up bring it close to her eyes and gaze at it.

When Eden was five her parents took her to the hospital to visit her grandmother who was struck with a rare and deadly form of lymphatic cancer. As the family entered the hospital Eden seemed awestruck. Occasionally, as they walked past the reception desk or began their trip up the elevator, she giggled. She seemed giddy and purposeful. In the ICU Eden suddenly darted off into a room. Her parents followed in pursuit. By the time they caught up and peaked in the room, Eden was laying on a bed with an old woman, who was obviously in great pain. As Eden stroked the sick woman’s brow; the two seemed locked into each other’s gaze: You can see it too, can’t you? she whispered. The sick woman’s face eased into a wrinkled smile, a peaceful smile. As Eden stared back—her ivy-green eyes blazing with love—the two cried just a few tears. The moment only lasted a few seconds but with it time seemed to pause and expand. The room’s lights flickered just a bit brighter than they normally burned. Eden stared. The walls of the room seemed to bulge, as if the room weren’t large enough to contain the love within it. Eden’s parents were frozen, they had stopped in the doorway. Eden giggled softly as the sick woman peacefully breathed her final breath and closed her eyes. The wrinkled smile Eden’s love had put on her face remained. Eden hopped off the bed and looked at her parents as if nothing particularly unusual had just happened. She paused a moment, looked back, and then looked up at her parents and asked, Can we go see grandma now?

A bedtime story and a goodnight hug and kiss were two things Eden refused to go to sleep before receiving. It didn’t matter how late it was or how tired she was, she always demanded, But MOM I need ‘em, that’s why. The night after Eden and her parents returned from visiting her sickly grandmother, Eden was particularly moody. She wept most the way home, without words. The darkness of her grandmother’s cancer seemed to weigh on Eden’s pure goodness and suppress it in the silent moments between sniffles and sobs. Blessed are the poor in spirit?

Once home and in bed Eden thought and thought and thought. Her mind raced like those tiny picture books that unfold in slow motion as the pages flutter from your fingers tips to other pages below, revealing a story in motion. Iconic: a giant cosmic pool; flashes of light randomly lit its interior in bursts like fireflies in a midsummer’s night. Eden smelled love. At its center a multicolored sphere hung…suspended in what seemed like miles of nothingness. A web of periodic light seemed to dance around it; feeding its perpetual spin. Light of Life. Suddenly the sphere at the center of all things expanded to include everything that is. Eden too was in it. As the world shrunk, Eden looked out beyond the circular walls surrounding her…stars, no…fireflies filled the sky. Inside of everything that is Eden saw herself. She saw her bright ivy-green eyes, burning. Eden saw love. Then in a dramatic reversal she watched as her very sight exploded to include the sphere where she stood that included everything that is. Even the fireflies. Life itself, not contained, but explained and revealed in the eyes of a child who could see love. In the beginning was the Word. Things hidden from the foundations of time exploded in Eden’s mind faster than she could stop to see clearly and comprehend. Defying reason and doubtfully true–as a ray of creative light–Eden’s dramatic vision cleared and settled on a ghastly sight: Cancer…evil as darkness, pure and ceaseless. In her hospital bed, Eden’s grandmother felt a pang of pain ring from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. She sighed as her pain brought her to the edge of life, where death meets its maker and light strains to crowd out the darkness. As her pain receded, light flooded Eden’s grandmother’s lymph nodes, the cancer was gone. Blessed are the pure in heart. Eden awoke to her mother’s face. As the two laid in bed staring into each other’s eyes, they cried. For they shall see God.

Mom?

Yes?

Can you see it?

What?

Everything.

Everything?

Sometimes it’s too much.

What’s too much honey?

Mom?

Hm?

Do you believe in God?

I think so.

My teacher said God has a name.

Oh yeah? What is it?

Eden made shapes in the air with her tiny fingers, forming the mysterious letters of God’s name:

Y-H-W-H. My teacher said it’s ‘unspeakable.’ I love that.

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Nuclear Power: The most probable solution for saving the environment

Posted on November 20th, 2006 by Bieren Skidels.
Categories: Political, Energy, Environment.

Nuclear power is the BEST solution to save the environment from Coal and Oil for the following Reasons (I’ll make this brief):

1. The environment is going bad… lots of ice melting… lots of pollution
( I don’t want to make this political, either side you are on, the environment is worse when coal and oil are burning… just go look at dirty chinese cities)

2. The new Nuclear Technologies and plant designs are so rediculously safe that you would probably be better off with a little reactor in your basement than a gas oven! - The Pebble Bed Reactor for instance (from Wired)

3. Nuclear techniques exist to recycle the spent waste, however, because the Clinton administration wanted to be seen as “anti-nuclear” they cancelled this program, and instead opted to store huge amounts of nuclear waste in the mountains of nevada and never recycle….. yay for being political and not smart.
- reference interview with co-developer of the Integral Fast Reactor (from PBS)

Other articles you should read:

- National Geographic April 2006 - “Nuclear Power Risking a Comeback”

- Wikipedia on Nuclear Power

- National Geographic April 2006 - “The Long Shadow of Chernobyl“

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