What we've been Tweeting

"This is not Dick Cheney we're talking about here" - President Drone Strike convinced of his own infallible benevolence.

1. What did Dick Cheney have to do with drones, again? 2. We need to come up with the liberal equivalent of Godwin's law whereby the longer a conversation extends, the more likely a Dick Cheney comparison/reference will be made.

That statement by the President to Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) looking for some answers with respect to the President's own drone program proves the man still rents space in liberals' heads.

Statist logic: building a pipeline won't create jobs but food stamps will.

Don't believe us? Over the years, we've had fun documenting how much folks believe food stamps are an economic stimulant with multiplier effects and what not when we thought the whole idea was to get people off food stamps. How silly of us.

Dear, East Coast, get ready for some West Coast hoptasticness.

San Diego's very own Green Flash brewery will soon be breaking ground for their brewery in San Diego East, Virginia Beach, Va.

"Americans are huddled together next to their dead friends under the blue plastic." #North Korea

"Americans drink coffee made of snow. The warm snow is nice."

"There are no birds (in America) save for these in the trees. They will be eaten on Tuesday. They are yummy."

A series of tweets linking to an epic Soviet-style propaganda video from the Norks lamenting the deplorable state of living in America.

Surpise... #Sequester won't interrupt collection of #ObamaCare taxes

#Benghazi was such a big fat nothingburger that no one has yet been able to speak to the survivors.

In that respect, we have been able to learn as much about Benghazi from those who survived the terror attack as we have from Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Ridiculous.







And speaking of Godwin's law...

Terrific... Aussies go full #Godwin

Pro tip: when confronted with a question about Hitler or Nazi Germany just run away as fast as humanly possible. There is nothing good that will come of it.


To quote a famous military leader who would know...

Yep. Gun violence still only a problem when it's just white kids getting shot up.

Three words: Adam. Corolla. Rant.

WTF is Algore doing at #SXSW. Oh crap, that's right: Wonder Bread-white, liberal, skinny jean confab. His people.

Dirty oil money-besotted Al Gore was at the music festival to attack NRA as "fraud". There are some things you just can't make up and this would be one of them.






OK, that's enought social media navel-gazing for today. We'll probably take tomorrow off but be back Saturday. Hope to see you then.

Quickies

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A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.




Thank Gaia, Obama and the Democrats retained the Oval Office and the Senate from those wascallwy WePublicans and all the crazy shtuff they were saying about abortion and everything. Now, at least, we have some adults with some adult ideas regarding our spending habits and the debt ceiling*.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler has an admittedly "out of the ordinary" solution to the coming fight over the debt ceiling.

"There is specific statutory authority that says that the Federal Reserve can mint any non-gold or -silver coin in any denomination, so all you do is you tell the Federal Reserve to make a platinum coin for one trillion dollars, and then you deposit it in the Treasury account, and you pay your bills," Nadler said in a telephone interview this afternoon.

I asked whether he was serious.

"I'm being absolutely serious," he said. "It sounds silly but it's absolutely legal. And it would normally not be proper to consider such a thing, except when you're faced with blackmail to destroy the country's economy, you have to consider things."

(italics, ours)

Silly? It’s absolutely and positively unserious and unmoored from logic. And even that does not make it exclusive from legal.

Hey, if a trillion dollar coin is good then why not a $100 trillion coin? That’d be much better, right? And totally legal also.

Yep, as we were saying, it’s good to know the adults are back in charge in Washington.


*You know the idea absolutely sucks when the article declines to state holder of sucky idea's party affiliation. Nadler is a Democrat.






A little less in the paycheck there on Friday, huh?

The temporary payroll tax holiday may not have been such a hot idea to begin with as it defunded an already cash-strapped Social Security program but that $1,000-$2,000/year hit to your income due to the expiration of that tax doesn’t seem like such a hot idea either in these recession-like times.

Technically, the payroll/Social Security tax just went back to its original rate, so one can debate whether or not this was an actual “tax hike”. However, the bottom line is that Americans look at their take-home pay in aggregate, so if there is less in that paycheck than was in the previous paycheck, the natural and rational reaction is, whiskey-tango-foxtrot?

The good news is that Friday’s lackluster jobs report indicates that there are still tens of millions of Americans out there that won’t feel the pinch of that payroll, ahem, tax hike.

Hey, it's the new normal.

Guns for me but not for thee...

The New York state newspaper that took it upon itself to publish the names and addresses of pistol permit holders in 3 downstate counties has seen fit to go guns-up at their headquarters.

A Clarkstown police report issued on December 28, 2012, confirmed that The Journal News has hired armed security guards from New City-based RGA Investigations and that they are manning the newspaper’s Rockland County headquarters at 1 Crosfield Ave., West Nyack, through at least tomorrow, Wednesday, January 2, 2013.

[Update 1/4/13-the guards will now be present indefinitely]

According to police reports on public record, Journal News Rockland Editor Caryn A. McBride was alarmed by the volume of “negative correspondence,” namely an avalanche of phone calls and emails to the Journal News office, following the newspaper’s publishing of a map of all pistol permit holders in Rockland and Westchester.

Due to apparent safety concerns, the newspaper then decided to hire RGA Investigations to provide armed personnel to man the location.

You see, gun control laws are for the little people, the unwashed masses, if you will and the 2nd amendment should only be applied so as to not infringe upon the rights of those vanguards of the 1st amendment.



And getting away from the hypothetical absurdity of this, if you are asking what could possibly go wrong... well, this.

Law enforcement officials from a New York region where a local paper published a map identifying gun owners say prisoners are using the information to intimidate guards.

Rockland County Sheriff Louis Falco, who spoke at a news conference flanked by other county officials, said the Journal News' decision to post an online map of names and addresses of handgun owners Dec. 23 has put law enforcement officers in danger.

"They have inmates coming up to them and telling them exactly where they live. That's not acceptable to me," Falco said, according to Newsday.

Robert Riley, an officer with the White Plains Police Department and president of its Patrolman’s Benevolent Association, agreed.

"You have guys who work in New York City who live up here. Now their names and addresses are out there, too," he said adding that there are 8,000 active and retired NYPD officers currently living in Rockland County.

Got a beef with a guard on the inside? No problem. If that particular guard is on that newspaper's list maybe one of your buddies on the outside can take care of that problem for you.

It's been a long time since we've seen such an egregious abuse of the freedom of the press and of sunshine laws for the stated purpose of "public safety".








And that tax hike we Californians voted for back in November working out pretty much how those of us who voted against it expected it to.

On Tuesday, California released a report that revealed state tax revenues have plummeted even further below Gov. Jerry Brown’s (D) estimates, even after residents voted to increase taxes via Proposition 30 in November’s elections.

At the end of November, “taxes were 3% short in the fiscal year that started in July,” which is “a gap of $936 million.” The state was 0.7% short a month before.

H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Finance, spun the poor numbers by saying Facebook’s stock vested earlier than expected, and “boosted October taxes higher, while decreasing November revenue.”

But the report found that tax revenues were below estimates nearly across the board, as total “year-to-date revenues are $936 million below the initial forecast.”

According to the report, personal income tax revenues were “$827 million below the month’s forecast of $4.387 billion.” Sales and use tax receipts “were $9 million below the month’s forecast of $1.601 billion” and the year-to-date sales tax revenue was $8 million below forecast.


Not surprisingly, corporate tax revenues were also down, $175 million below the month’s estimate and year-to-date corporate tax revenues were $441 below estimate.

As more of California’s taxpaying residents and businesses flee the state due to its burdensome taxes and regulations, California’s government loses out on their tax dollars. Meanwhile, the state government continues to spend more on various programs even as the state has fewer taxpayers to pick up its tab.

All the class warfare aside, you simply cannot tax your way to prosperity.






And a news item that needs no commentary:

Enviro-guru, Al Gore, sells Current TV to Al-Jazeera of crude oil-besotted Gulf state, Qatar; nets himself a cool $100 million.

B-Daddy of the Liberator Today is in a reflective mood and ponders some re-branding of the tea party:

I started this blog to champion the principles upon which our nation was founded, as informed by my Christian belief. I intend to champion free markets, free trade, and freedom of speech, equal justice for all human beings and a constitutional republic with powers of the government strictly limited. I will propose paths forward for those who believe that expanding government is the chief threat to the freedom and wealth of the world today.

Again, we've never capitalized "tea party" as we've always felt the movement to be about ideas rather than any sort of corporate entity much less a wing or a subset of the Republican Party. Go to the link as B-Daddy fleshes our shared opinion of the matter.




OK, gang, that's it for today. We'll see you all tomorrow.


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Quickies

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A round-up of articles, news items, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.





Don Draper, where have you gone?

A glass of something fizzy over lunch with an American executive now means sparkling water. The three-Martini lunch fell into decline in the 1970s, the victim of sober economic times that demanded clear-headed executives, and also of political pressure: Jimmy Carter made it an issue in the 1976 presidential campaign. Morgan Stanley’s New York bankers, for example, were instructed to avoid the drinks cabinet except when entertaining European clients (who could hardly be expected to make it through the day without a snifter). Many modern contracts expressly forbid the consumption of alcohol.

After years of having an occasional beer with lunch on a Friday, say, our organization instituted a zero-tolerance policy on booze. It certainly would appear that the kill-joys have beaten booze entirely out of the American work place.

Was it Oscar Wilde who said: work is the curse of the drinking class?






You may not have heard of George Lakoff but he is an academic and the architect of the President's "You Didn't Build That" campaign battle cry.

Sir Charles of DooDoo Economics has an excellent take-down, here, of a piece he wrote for The Huffington Post.

As you will see, Lakoff is firmly in the camp that our individualism springs forth as a result of the efforts of the collective. There is no starker contrast to the ideals of freedom and individual liberty and initiative than what is represented by this guy. We commented to Charles as such:

The contention that we don't become "individuals" until we build enough roads and bridges or something would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerous.

It confounds me that the ideas of someone who is so ignorant of our founding documents can inform the philosophy of this country's president.

Be sure to check out Sir Charles' site and pick up some cotton while your there.






We know it's the dog days of August but... dude.

The shocker among all the films was Rocky Mountain Pictures’ political documentary 2016 Obama’s America which opened July 13th in very limited release and expanded into theaters across America this weekend. It wound up in 4th place Friday and 8th place for the weekend. That’s stunning because it was playing in 2/3 fewer theaters across North American than the other wider release films. (See below for more details). Due to its hot pre-sales, the pic proved frontloaded which explains why its ranking started out #1 and then fell steeply by end of Sunday. But the doc’s new cume of $9.2M makes it the #1 all-time biggest-grossing conservative political documentary, besting Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed’s $7.7M. And the 6th all-time biggest political documentary behind liberal docs by Michael Moore and Al Gore.

It's coming after you, fat boys!




And speaking of cotton:

Also related: from Iowahawk: "Paul Ryan represents Obama's most horrifying nightmare: math."


Math wins. Math always wins.






W.C. Varones has some thoughts on a readers' poll from the San Diego Union-Tribune asking them to pick the five greatest Americian Presidents.

We won't give it away but the readers also picked the worst Presidents: Obama, GW Bush, Nixon, Carter and LBJ.






How about a visual?

Yep.



Totally related:

Seagate Technology Plc (STX.O), maker of hard drives and storage devices, has agreed to pay $90.3 million for the former manufacturing plant and headquarters building of bankrupt Solyndra LLC, which was financed by a controversial government loan, according to bankruptcy court documents.

Seagate's offer will be considered an initial bid, or "stalking horse," which could be topped by a competing offer of at least $1 million more when an auction is held, according to court documents filed late Wednesday. A hearing to set the terms and date for the auction and declare Seagate's offer the stalking horse has been set for September 24.

Solyndra's Fremont, California, building cost more than $300 million and was completed in 2010, according to prior court documents.

How can we be blamed for piling-on Solyndra when they keeping giving us this 30 cents on the dollar awesomeness?



OK, gang. That's it for today. We'll catch up with you all tomorrow.


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Your California high-speed choo-choo update

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Since we didn't put our marker down, we can't take any credit for seeing this one coming but we really should've seen it such was the predictableness of it all.

In what looked like merely shuffling of the deck furniture when the California High-Speed Rail Authority swapped out HMFICs, turns out to be quite juicy if you're into political intrigue, arm-twisting, conflicts of interest and cronyism.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority on Tuesday named Jeff Morales, an executive for a contractor working on the bullet train project, as its chief executive, filling a position that has been vacant since early January.

Morales, a former Caltrans director, had been working on the project as an executive of Parsons Brinckerhoff, the project manager for the rail authority.

Morales, a 1983 biology graduate of George Washington University, was appointed Caltrans director by then-Gov. Gray Davis. Morales left Caltrans 31/2 years later when Davis was voted out of office. Morales has also served as executive director of the Chicago Transit Authority, the Obama transition team and former Vice President Al Gore's attempts to improve federal efficiency.

Of course, he did.

And what of the outgoing boss?

Morales will fill the job that was last occupied by Roelof van Ark, who had shunned the political aspects of his post and attempted to focus on the engineering challenges. But that approach led to a wholesale loss of confidence in the Legislature, and ultimately Gov. Jerry Brown asserted greater control over the project, jettisoning Van Ark in January.

For the largest engineering/construction project in this nation's history and all the troubles that have befallen it, the previous paragraph illustrates perfectly how it's no longer about building the skids rather greasing them.



Back to the article:

The hiring of Morales appears to further strengthen the ties between the rail authority and its top contractor, Parsons Brinckerhoff. The contractor, which was a major contributor to the 2008 campaign to approve a $9-billion bond for the bullet train, has hundreds of employees assigned to the project, compared with fewer than 50 for the authority.

Outside activists say that although Morales may be a good choice, they are increasingly concerned about the tight relationship the authority has created with Parsons Brinckerhoff and the larger revolving door between the authority and its contractors.

"Those lines are becoming more blurred every day," said Elizabeth Alexis, a co-founder of Californians Advocating Responsible Rail Design.

(italics, ours)

... further strengthen the ties...

Yes, that would be one way of putting it.



Skepticism is bipartisan:

"The rail authority claims it conducted a nationwide search just to end up with an executive from its biggest contractor?" asked state Sen. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale). "How can we expect this insider to provide an independent review of the project, when he helped write the plan that's already doubled the cost to taxpayers? It's difficult to believe that Mr. Morales can be counted on to drive a hard bargain with the company that has been paying his salary."

Senate transportation committee Chairman Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) said, "I am troubled by the relationship. It is hard to separate the conflicts."

Good god. Does this all stink to high heaven or what? Massively over-budget, massively behind schedule and massively understaffed so they do the only thing they can do at this point: they bring in a politically-connected fixer from the project's largest contractor to get this thing done by hook or by crook regardless of the shady appearances it bears.

Of course, they did. Of course, they did. And we never saw it coming. Shame on us.

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More great moments in the history of crony capitalism

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Who's up for a Fisker update?

You all remember Fisker, right? The Al Gore-backed recipients of a $529 million loan guarantee from the federal government in order to build $100,000 electric sedans in Finland. Let us know when this stops looking like a business model in which to poor that amount of tax-payer money because it just keeps getting better.

It would appear that there really is nothing greener than a car that doesn't run.

Here's the test drive report from Consumer Reports:

Our Fisker Karma cost us $107,850. It is super sleek, high-tech—and now it’s broken.

We have owned our car for just a few days; it has less than 200 miles on its odometer. While doing speedometer calibration runs on our test track (a procedure we do for every test car before putting it in service by driving the car at a constant 65 mph between two measured points), the dashboard flashed a message and sounded a “bing“ showing a major fault. Our technician got the car off the track and put it into Park to go through the owner’s manual to interpret the warning. At that point, the transmission went into Neutral and wouldn’t engage any gear through its electronic shifter except Park and Neutral.

We let the car sit for about an hour and restarted it. We could now engage Drive and the same error message disappeared. After moving it only a few feet the error message reappeared and when we tried to engage Reverse the transmission went straight to Park and again no motion gear could be engaged. After calling the dealer, which is about 100 miles away, they promptly sent a flatbed tow truck to haul away the disabled Fisker.

We buy about 80 cars a year and this is the first time in memory that we have had a car that is undriveable before it has finished our check-in process.

(italics, ours)


Because nothing says boondoggle like not even test driving your own vehicle before handing it over for a third-party assessment.


Think about it: billions upon billions of dollars in green technology subsidies and the prices are going in the wrong direction and, in this case, for products that don't even work unlike other areas of the tech sector (computers, TVs and smart phones) where no subsidies were received and real skin was in the game and the market determined the winners and losers.




* As an unintended safety feature, Karma drivers will enjoy the increased visibility.

Smack of the day

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Has it really been two years? Two years since the much-hyped international global warming conference in Copenhagen which was rightfully named Hopenchangen for its aspirations and for which predictably (and thankfully) nothing of substance was achieved.

After all, for the faith-based global warming zealots, it's not really about global warming. This from last year's conference in Cancun:

Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist and co-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change (say that twice), told the Neue Zurcher Zeitung last week: "The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War." After all, redistributing global wealth is no small matter.

Edenhofer let the environmental cat out of the bag when he said "climate policy is redistributing the world's wealth" and that "it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization."

Reducing the planet to a ring of 3rd world socialism seems more the goal of the AGW zealots but that wasn't the smack. After the complete debacle that was Hopenchangen that signified the apparent demise of the global left's attempts to shackle the industrial West, it's no small surprise that no one wants to talk about this year's confab in Durban, South Africa... except Senator Jim Imhofe (R-OK).

Hello, I am Senator Jim Inhofe, Republican Senator from Oklahoma. Today, I’m happy to bring you the good news about the complete collapse of the global warming movement and the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, as world leaders meet for the United Nations global warming conference in Durban, South Africa. For the past decade, I have been the leader in the United States Senate standing up against global warming alarmism and cap-and-trade, which would have been the largest tax increase in American history. This victory is especially important today, as families in America and around the world continue to face tough economic times. Tossing out any remote possibility of a UN global warming treaty is one of the most important things we can do for the economy.

I am making this announcement from Washington DC – where I am confident that the only person left talking about global warming is me. The message from Washington to the UN delegates in South Africa this week could not be any clearer: you are being ignored. And you are being ignored by your biggest allies in the United States: President Obama and the Democratic leadership in the Senate.

There is good reason for this – just two years ago, President Obama, along with members of his administration, several members of the Congressional Democratic leadership, and Al Gore, travelled to Copenhagen to tell the world that the United States was ready to join the United Nations efforts and implement costly global warming regulations through cap-and-trade legislation. Knowing this was nothing but a lie, I made the trip to Copenhagen as a one-man truth squad to inform the 191 countries in attendance that there was no way the United States Senate would ever pass global warming cap-and-trade. They didn’t like it, but I was right and they were wrong. Now, two years later, my colleagues are nowhere to be found at the latest conference.

Nice.




We'll have more on Fast and Furious later today or tomorrow... info that is a smoking gun and pretty much confirms our suspicions that Fast and Furious was merely a crudely cynical plan to lay the groundwork for stricter gun control laws.

Yet another green technology (overseas) boondoggle

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On the bright side of things, we guess we should be thankful that they have not yet gone out of business like Solyndra or are massively in debt like SunPower.

With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.

Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department's $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the job of assembling the flashy electric Fisker Karma sports car has been outsourced to Finland.

"There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle," the car company's founder and namesake told ABC News. "They don't exist here."

This really is old news as this loan to Fisker and the fact the cars would be built over in Finland was reported out on these very pages over two years ago..


And political connections, you ask? But, of course:

The loan to Fisker is part of a $1 billion bet the Energy Department has made in two politically connected California-based electric carmakers producing sporty -- and pricey -- cutting-edge autos. Fisker Automotive, backed by a powerhouse venture capital firm whose partners include former Vice President Al Gore, predicts it will eventually be churning out tens of thousands of electric sports sedans at the shuttered GM factory it bought in Delaware. And Tesla Motors, whose prime backers include PayPal mogul Elon Musk and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, says it will do the same in a massive facility tooling up in Silicon Valley.

Tens of thousands of luxury sedans and mass-produced sedans at... $97,000 and $57,400 a copy? Let us know how that works out.


And proving just how affordable green technology is becoming, the reported prices for those cars two years ago was $89,000 and $40,000, respectively.

And here's what was said with respect to the prices of the cars at the time (link above):

The Karma will target an exclusive audience -- Gore was one of the first to sign up for one. Mr. Fisker says all new technology starts out being expensive. He pointed to flat-screen televisions that once started at $25,000 but are now affordable to the mass market.

And our response:

It’s not entirely clear to us that $40,000/unit falls under the mass audience category but who the hell cares about the masses when one of the main beneficiaries of your largesse has dutifully signed up to have that thing sit in his driveway?

Think about it: billions upon billions of dollars in subsidies and the prices are going in the wrong direction unlike other areas of the tech sector (TVs and cell/smart phones) where no subsidies were received and real skin was in the game and the market determined the winners and losers.

Federally-subsidized green technology: Rising consumer prices, shipping jobs out of country and hooking up your buds... What's not to like about that?




* The Karma, Fisker's luxury sedan at the San Diego Auto Show in December of 2009. Yep, Karma's a bitch.

And now, some words of inspiration and wisdon from Al Gore

Earlier this week, Al Gore was on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" and with respect to the debt ceiling deal that had just passed, he thought it cause for a “reinvigoration of democracy” or an “American spring,”:

"[I]want to focus on one particular suggestion you had about using the wonderful digital tools that are newly available for the reinvigoration of democracy,” Gore said. “Now, they have been around for a while, but they are spreading far and wide and more people are getting involved. We need to have an American spring — you know, the Arab spring. The non-violent part of it isn’t finished yet, but we need to have an American spring, a kind of an American non-violent change where people on the grassroots get involved again. Not the, you know, not in the Tea Party-style.”

Gore took his attack to favorite left-wing targets: the Fox News Channel, and David and Charles Koch.

“There are people who are genuinely upset in the Tea Party,” Gore continued. “I understand that, but that movement was funded with seed money from right-wing billionaires, the Koch Brothers, and promoted on Fox News and turned into a stalking horse for this right-wing agenda that a lot of people have been trying to push on this country for a long time.”

After reading this, it struck us: What it is algore desires is a call to arms to.... protect the status quo. Imagine that: a revolution to keep things just as they are!

Record debt and deficits? Apparently, they're all for it. Unsustainable entitlement programs? More, please. Increased government power? Right on, man. Power to the people? Hell, no.

It shouldn't surprise anybody then that it would be Al Gore at the intellectual spear tip of the most counter-intuitive democratic uprising in history. No change!

All this begs the question, then: who are the real progressives in this battle we have seen joined over the past 2-1/2 years with respect to the growth and influence of government power? Who are the progressives who are demanding change and who are the, and we hate to do this but, who are the "conservatives" who are fighting tooth and nail for the good ol' days when it was cool to saddle future generations with insurmountable debts and when in the name of "equal access" and "affordability" everyone thought it quite righteous that the government force its citizens to purchase a service from a private entity such as health care insurance?

In the effort to prevent the Leviathan of the federal government from imploding on itself and thus taking the entire country with it, the lexicon of political terminology has been turned on its head.

Quickies

A round-up of articles, columns, news items and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.




Say it ain't so. A pub crawl ban in the NYC?









With more waning domestic political support on the horizon, expect more mid-90s-white-supremacists-in-the-flyover-provinces-scare-journalism from the legacy media. Here.





Walter Russell Mead on the train wreck that is Al Gore:

Once out of office, he assumed the leadership of the global green movement, steering that movement into a tsunami of defeat that, when the debris is finally cleared away, will loom as one of the greatest failures of civil society in all time.

Gore has the Midas touch in reverse; objects of great value (Nobel prizes, Oscars) turn dull and leaden at his touch. Few celebrity cause leaders have had more or better publicity than Gore has had for his climate advocacy. Hailed by the world press, lionized by the entertainment community and the Global Assemblage of the Great and the Good as incarnated in the Nobel Peace Prize committee, he has nevertheless seen the movement he led flounder from one inglorious defeat to the next. The most recent, failed global climate meeting passed almost unnoticed last week in Bonn; the world has turned its eyes away from the expiring anguish of the Copenhagen agenda.

Wait, there was a climate confab in Bonn and we missed it? Whatever flaming wreck the faith-based AGW movement is currently on the world stage, we are living with the real-world consequences of it here in California with AB 32, CARB and its agenda-driven, jobs-killing sham of an existence.



And here's Prince on religious freedom and tolerance:

Prince, the Grammy Award-winning artist behind “Purple Rain,” told the Guardian in an interview that women forced to wear burqas in Islamic countries are happy to wear them.

“It’s fun being in Islamic countries, to know there’s only one religion,” Prince told the British newspaper. “There’s order. You wear a burqa. There’s no choice. People are happy with that.”

Religious fundamentalism is dandy for other folks, we suppose.








Don't forget gang, the SLOBs (San Diego Local Order of Bloggers) has a continually-updating aggregator site giving copious amounts of love to the radical and extremists notions of free markets, limited government and personal responsibility. We've got it rolled in the right-hand margin but why wait when you can click and check, right here and right now.




Hey, Southern Californians (minus those in Los Angeles County), who's up for seceding from the rest of the state?

Southern Californian culture (is) the land of materialistic con-artistry with a paper thin veneer of pop enlightenment overlaid upon some few who would pretend to be other than parasites looking for a host.

Probably does not have an ice cube's chance in succeeding but we can dream, can't we? Besides, it's always nice to rattle some chains every once in a while. Left Coast Rebel has the details, here.



OK, so the President shouldn't be referred to as a "dick", especially on national television, but Leslie over at Temple of Mut believes that he does rate equivalence to another part of the body that, well, uhh... as Leslie puts it:

a vestigial organ that serves no significant function, yet under certain circumstances can cause life-threatening health problems that need prompt treatment.

OK. That's it for now unless we check in later in the day. Please enjoy the rest of this glorious July 4th weekend.

Quote of the day

Against the backdrop of an unwarranted and unnecessary release of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve and a troop draw-down in Afghanistan informed, in part, because of "waning domestic political support" , Victor Davis Hanson wonders just who are the socialists?:

All this raises some questions. The strangest things about the global statist crack-up are socialists’ unhappiness with their socialist utopia, and their subsequent efforts to avoid the consequences of the very redistributive state that they themselves once so gladly crafted.

This discussion is, of course, a belabored example of why and how socialists do not like socialism. Indeed, statism is not a desired outcome, but rather more a strategy for obtaining power or winning acclaim as one of the caring, by offering the narcotic of promising millions something free at the expense of others who must be seen as culpable and obligated to fund it — entitlements fueled by someone else’s money that enfeebled the state, but in the process extended power, influence, and money to a technocratic class of overseers who are exempt from the very system that they have advocated.

Who are socialists?

There are none. Only technocratic overseers who wish to give someone else’s money to others as a means of winning capitalist-style lifestyles and power for themselves — in a penultimate cycle of unsustainable spending. When this latest attempt at statism is over, Barack Obama will enjoy a sort of Clintonism, a globe-trotting post officium lifestyle of multimillion dollar honoraria to fund a lifestyle analogous to “two Americas” John Edwards, “earth in the balance” Al Gore, a tax-exempt yachting John Kerry, a revolving-door Citibank grandee like Peter Orszag, or a socialist Strauss-Kahn in $20,000 suits doling out billions to the “poor.”

That is just the way it has been and will always be.

So, Marx had it wrong. It has turned out that statist-inspired entitlements are the opiate of the masses.

Apparently, no one took away any lessons from the Cold War. That wasn't just the global brand of the Soviet Union that was defeated. One of the take-aways should've been the acknowledgement of the unsustainable nature of over-regultated, top-down, command and control economies that guarantee a "right" to work, housing, health care and pensions.

Some 20 years on, looks like we're playing some catch-up on the lesson plan.

More green on green violence

Yet one more reason to be suspicious of/absolutely loathe ethanol.


Is the EPA ignoring their own laws in order to push ethanol production into heretofore protected grasslands?

The NWF (National Wildlife Federation) alleges that crafting the Renewable Fuels Standard, which requires a certain amount of transportation fuel sold in the United States to contain renewable fuel, Congress limited biofuel feedstock production and harvesting to agricultural lands. Natural ecosystems such as grasslands, are not supposed to be converted for agricultural uses, they claim. However, the report notes, the EPA is flaunting this important provision by adopting an “aggregate compliance approach”, which allows protected ecosystems to be destroyed for biofuels production.

“Plowing up our nation’s last remnants of native grasslands to grow more corn for ethanol is like burning the Mona Lisa for firewood,” says Julie Sibbing, Director of Agriculture programs for the National Wildlife Federation.

(italics, ours)

Nice analogy.


It's telling that our heavily-subsidized and inefficient head-long plunge into renewable energy also requires breaking the law.


And just how bad is ethanol? Even the high priest of Big Green, Al Gore, thinks its a crappy idea.

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."

Wishing to drive up the price of food worldwide in return for an alternative energy that you know is bad policy is just the sort of craven behavior a man needs to display in order to be President, we suppose.


For more reasons on why ethanol is quite possibly the worst idea ever, check out B-Daddy's itemization, here.

The most wonderful time of the year

With the weather turning cooler and tomorrow kicking off the beginning of the holiday season there is an unmistakable feeling of good will towards mankind in the air. Why, just this past Monday, we reported out on the fact that Al Gore finally admitted that corn ethanol was a horrible idea (no doubt before moving on to the next subsidized green get-rich-quick scheme).

And, also just the other day, we've figured it all along but one of the leading acolytes of the faith-based AGW movement came out and admitted that international efforts to combat global warming/climate change have nothing to do with global warming/climate change.

Just in time for the movement's big confab down in Cancun next week, here's Ottmar Edenhofer:

Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist and co-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change (say that twice), told the Neue Zurcher Zeitung last week: "The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War." After all, redistributing global wealth is no small matter.

Edenhofer let the environmental cat out of the bag when he said "climate policy is redistributing the world's wealth" and that "it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization."

The spectacular failure that was the climate change conference in Copenhagen last year (remember Hopenchangen?) gets another go around but this time the AGW zealots are dropping any pretense of wanting to do anything towards thwarting climate change and instead will attempt to implement a global wealth redistribution plan.

Edenhofer claims "developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community" and so they must have their wealth expropriated and redistributed to the victims of their alleged crimes, the postage stamp countries of the world. He admits this "has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole."

It's as if these Marxist AGW zealots figured out they junked up the science so much the public no longer believes them so they look around and say, "Well, we don't have much credibility anymore with the "AGW" thing but we still have our "Marxist" and "zealot" chops intact - let's roll with that.

Again, we are appreciative of the honesty and good will that is bursting out all over the place, of late.

And may Cancun '10 be every bit the laughable spectacle that Copenhagen '09 was.

Al Gore: Hey, sorry about that whole ethanol thing

Alternate headline: I pimped corn ethanol for the votes, otherwise corn ethanol is a complete loser.

Maybe it's the fact that the man has no designs of ever getting back into politics or perhaps it's because he has now made millions off of taxpayer-subsidized green investment - because whatever it is, this recent bout of truth-spasming, though, quaint is too little, too late.

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore said support for corn-based ethanol in the United States was "not a good policy", weeks before tax credits are up for renewal.

U.S. blending tax breaks for ethanol make it profitable for refiners to use the fuel even when it is more expensive than gasoline. The credits are up for renewal on Dec. 31.

Total U.S. ethanol subsidies reached $7.7 billion last year according to the International Energy Industry, which said biofuels worldwide received more subsidies than any other form of renewable energy.

"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol," said Gore, speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank.

"First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.

"It's hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."
He explained his own support for the original programme on his presidential ambitions.

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."

Wishing to drive up the price of food worldwide in return for an alternative energy that you know is bad policy is just what a man has to do in order to be President, we suppose.

A food-versus-fuel debate erupted in 2008, in the wake of record food prices, where the biofuel industry was criticised for helping stoke food prices.

Gore said a range of factors had contributed to that food price crisis, including drought in Australia, but said there was no doubt biofuels have an effect.

"The size, the percentage of corn particularly, which is now being (used for) first generation ethanol definitely has an impact on food prices.

"The competition with food prices is real."

A slow clap for this tool is definitely in order.

He supports 2nd generation biofuel technologies, however, as it does not compete with food. 2nd generation technologies such as cellulosic technologies which use chemicals or enzymes to extract sugar from the fiber in wood, waste or grass, as examples.

As we will take a look at later, however, these 2nd generation technologies are just as energy intensive or even more so to produce than corn ethanol. Forgive us for thinking then, that this supposed "come to Jesus" moment is less that than Big Al signaling he's merely moving on to the next big taxpayer-subsidized gravy train.


H/T: Hot Air

Winning friends and er, influencing people

As you will find out at the end of the clip, this video was made by the faith-based AGW set in support of their carbon-reduction initiative.




Charmed, we're sure, because nothing garners support for your cause like absolute intolerance of dissent of your cause especially in such a grotesquely violent nature.

If you're asking yourself, "what were they thinking?", don't bother because thought had nothing to do with it as this represented, rather, the logical if extreme conclusion to Al Gore's shrill "The time for debate is over".

When they told us that indifference or inaction to faith-based AGW would bring dire consequences, they weren't lying.

And as much as moderate greenies out there will denounce this ad, we sense that much like moderate Muslims with respect to speaking out against terrorism, there will be the "yes, but..." rationalizations that follow.

When lying about and fudging the facts won't do, simply fast forward to totalitarian threats and intimidation to impose your agenda.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.” –C.S. Lewis

H/T: Hot Air

Quickies

A round-up of news articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.




Uh-oh. We're being lectured again. First Newsweek, then Katie Couric and the Washington Post and now, Vanity Fair... Vanity Fair! infers just what is proper thought for polite company.

Palin is the only politician whose tweets are regularly reported as news by TV networks. She is the only one who has been able to significantly change the course of debate on a major national issue (health-care reform) with a single Facebook posting (in which she accused the Obama administration, falsely, of wanting to set up a “death panel”).

(emphasis, ours... just in case you were not getting the message that Vanity Fair was telegraphing, you worthless wingnuts)




Again, Democrats are about to have their hats handed to them in November so the only reasonable explanation for this is that it's the result of a temper tantrum.

1994... and now, ladies and gentlemen, Eugene Robinson:

According to polls, Americans are in a mood to hold their breath until they turn blue. Voters appear to be so fed up with the Democrats that they're ready to toss them out in favor of the Republicans -- for whom, according to those same polls, the nation has even greater contempt. This isn't an "electoral wave," it's a temper tantrum.

To Robinson's credit, he does make a good point about our collective unwillingness to confront our entitlement programs which are completely unsustainable and apart from current run-away spending have the single-handed ability to break us.





Rich Lowry writing for NRO on the bourgeois revolution:

The much-analyzed speeches at the Glenn Beck Lincoln Memorial rally weren’t as notable as what the estimated 300,000 attendees did: follow instructions, listen quietly to hours of speeches, and throw out their trash.

Just as stunning as the tableaux of the massive throngs lining the reflecting pool were the images of the spotless grounds afterward. If someone had told attendees they were expected to mow the grass before they left, surely some of them would have hitched flatbed trailers to their vehicles for the trip to Washington and gladly brought mowers along with them.

This was the revolt of the bourgeois, of the responsible, of the orderly, of people profoundly at peace with the traditional mores of American society. The spark that lit the tea-party movement was the rant by CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who inveighed in early 2009 against an Obama-administration program to subsidize “the losers’ mortgages.” He was speaking for people who hadn’t borrowed beyond their means or tried to get rich quick by flipping houses, for the people who, in their thrift and enterprise, “carry the water instead of drink the water.”

The tea party’s detractors want to paint it as radical, when at bottom it represents the self-reliant, industrious heart of American life. New York Times columnist David Brooks compares the tea partiers to the New Left. But there weren’t any orgiastic displays at the Beck rally, nor any attempts to levitate the Lincoln Memorial — just speeches on God and country. It was as radical as a Lee Greenwood song.

We're hesitant to conflate the tea party with the folks attending the Restoring Faith rally but at the end of the day... there is heavy overlap. Heavy.







Jessie Jackson's hoopdie gets boosted in the Motor City?

Following the embarrassing news that Mayor Dave Bing’s GMC Yukon was hijacked by criminals this week, Detroit’s Channel 7 reports that the Reverend’s Caddy Escalade SUV was stolen and stripped of its wheels while he was in town last weekend with the UAW’s militant President Bob King leading the “Jobs, Justice, and Peace” march promoting government-funded green jobs.

Read that again: Jackson’s Caddy SUV was stripped while he was in town promoting green jobs.

Or just consider it an involuntary act of eco-obedience. Afterall, in Al Gore's world this was merely a servant of Gaia sent to reduce Jessie Jackson's carbon footprint. Rejoice!




And speaking of the Big Three and Big Labor...prospects for Government Motors going public?

The U.S. government is likely to take a loss on General Motors Co [GM.UL] in the first offering of the automaker's stock, six people familiar with preparations for the landmark IPO said.

The U.S. Government? We're looking at you, tax payers.

B-Daddy has more, here.




And finally:

Barack, can we, uh, talk for a few minutes?

Oh, nothing. It's just that it just seems we haven't had a chance to talk for a while. I mean, I know we've both been busy for the past year or so. You with your fundraisers and golfing and stuff, and me with all those appointments at the unemployment office. But you know I think it's important in a relationship like ours to keep the lines of communication open.

So anyway, I've been think that... look, this is really hard. God. Do you remember when we met at that big party in Denver back in 08? I mean when I saw you across that crowded convention floor, it was like, Oh My God. I don't think I ever saw anything like you before. I was on the rebound from a bad relationship and you were so tall and articulate and, well hot. And then I couldn't believe that of all the democracies in the room you picked me out!

Yeah I know my some of my friends warned me you were trouble, and that it was the alcohol talking. But I knew that if we gave it a chance we could make it work. You and me, together. And after you moved in, I really think we did for a while. I mean, you've really helped me get over my inhibitions and hangups, and I like to think I've really helped you grow and discover yourself. Like last year when I lent you $800 billion to pay for your demo tape and new rims for the Cadillac.

No worries. Paul Krugman says he's good for it. More here from Iowahawk

Saturday at the auto show

Saturday we spun on down to the San Diego Auto Show which was being held at the convention center. With the opportunity to check out some cool wheels we were also very interested to see how our tax dollars were being spent, particularly at the General Motors displays.

Long story short, heavy on the Camaro, Corvette and their SUVs.

Here’s a nice look at the Camaro at one of GM’s central displays.




And here’s the Chevy Tahoe Hybrid.

You know, for $54,000, we better be getting more that 22 highway and 21 city.
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It gets better.

For a mere $59,000, you can roll off the lot in an ethanol-burning Tahoe getting 21 highway and 15 in the city.


And while we’re on a green theme, here’s the Fisker, available in the fall of this year. Fisker you will recall is an automotive company backed by Al Gore which received a $529 million U.S. government loan to manufacture in Finland this little hybrid gem upon which you are affixing your gaze.

Copy price: $89,000.

Hey, no one said going green was going to be cheap. Or ethical. Or sensical.






Jeep had a cool little obstacle course set up.





The man on the left is off-road legend and El Cajon native, Ivan “Iron Man” Stewart. The guy just emanates a rugged, western dudesmanship. People young and old alike were coming up to Stewart, chatting, taking pictures with him and getting his autograph.

Great moments in the history of centrism Pt. III

From William M. Daley, chairman of Al Gore’s presidential campaign and brother of current Chicago mayor, Richard M. Daley:

The announcement by Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith that he is switching to the Republican Party is just the latest warning sign that the Democratic Party -- my lifelong political home -- has a critical decision to make: Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come.

Just wondering what all that talk was about the Republicans being run into the ground by the "extremists"?

In his op-ed piece for the WaPo, Daley goes on to explain what we’ve been preaching all along: that recent Democrat victories in ’06 and ’08 weren’t a result of leaning left but rather capturing the center-right ground that the Republicans, drunk with power, had abandoned during the Bush years.

In a glorious re-enactment of history, the Democrats stand poised to repeat the same mistakes of the Republicans but with even more monumental displays of spending, statism and craven pork-barrel politics that Americans clearly don’t want.

Quote of the day

"That's going to cause us to make some real decisions as to who gets how much health care and when they get it… To the extent we need to raise taxes down the road we're going to have to sort of work our way down that income level starting with people making over $250,000 and maybe even going further down. I hope we don't have to do too much of that."

We actually posted this quote back in April of this year. It’s from Lawrence J. Haas, the former communications director for Al Gore and who, you can imagine, is a big fan of government-managed healthcare.

Consider this a reminder that even before “rationing” and “death panels” entered the rhetorical fray of the healthcare debate, proponents of Obamacare knew in their hearts, even if they denied it in public, that government-managed healthcare would indeed entail the same government picking winners and losers with respect to healthcare services.

Consider this also a reminder of the blatant hypocrisy of a set of people that occupy a band on the political spectrum that have conveniently tucked away displays of bumper sticker politics to the basement of their convictions.

Big Green really is the next green

No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year.

Dude is like Al Gore on steroids. Or, with all the jack that Algore stands to swim in, maybe it’s the other way around. Tough call.

What more is needed to be known about the faith-based AGW zealot wing of the Star Wars cantina scene than the fact that a choo-choo engineer with a doctorate in economics pretty much calls the shots with respect to AGW policy, worldwide?

Speaking of which, how did Copenhagen work out for ya, doc?

And speaking of what more is needed to be known, the EU’s Emission Trading System, which will be the model for any carbon credit trading system should cap and trade survive abortion efforts over here is one giant white collar crime-riddled sham.

The top cops in Europe say carbon-trading has fallen prey to an organized crime scheme that has robbed the continent of $7.4 billion -- a massive fraud that lawmakers and energy experts say should send a "red flag" to the U.S., where the House approved cap-and-trade legislation over the summer amid stiff opposition.

In a statement released last week, the Europol police agency said Europe's cap-and-trade system has been the victim of organized crime during the past 18 months, resulting in losses of roughly $7.4 billion. The agency, headquartered in the Netherlands, estimated that in some countries up to 90 percent of the entire market volume was caused by fraudulent activities.

"These criminal activities endanger the credibility of the European Union Emission Trading System and lead to the loss of significant tax revenue for governments," Rob Wainwright, Europol's director, said in a statement.

We’re way passed “endanger”, pal. And one gets the feeling that the "loss of significant tax revenue for governments" is the real crime.

And something like this couldn’t happen over here because the value added tax (a Ponzi scheme in itself) that was part of the EU’s carbon trading market, won’t be part of the American cap and trade scheme? Think again.

U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said it's no surprise cap-and-trade systems are vulnerable to corruption.

Barton said he recently asked the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to unseal the court file of Anne Sholtz, a former environmental executive who co-created the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market (RECLAIM) in 1999. Sholtz's company, Automated Credit Exchange, provided a market for companies to buy and sell pollution credits under RECLAIM. In 2005, Sholtz pleaded guilty to wire fraud for using counterfeit credits to pocket more than $12 million. Sholtz was later sentenced to one year of house arrest. (Barton wrote about Sholtz earlier this year for TheHill.com.)

When the government attempts to set up an artificial market that the free market wouldn’t normally recognize, corruption and graft is sure to follow.

Here again, we see the nexus of fascism and crony capitalism, terms that are inescapable when you are discussing picking the winners and losers in the national and global Environmental-Industrial complex.

Investment tips from big Al

Back in September we blogged about the investment prowess of Al Gore and how he was able to secure a $529 million loan from the U.S. government (see also: you) in order to build a hybrid sports car in Finland that will sell to the tune of $89,000.

Well, friends, that appears to be mere chump change as the former Veep has been retained as an unpaid corporate advisor for an electric grid component manufacturer in which Gore’s investment firm invested $75 million and which was followed quickly by $3.4 billion in smart grid grants by the Energy Department.

Silver Spring Networks is a foot soldier in the global green energy revolution Mr. Gore hopes to lead. Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.

Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.

Again, we don’t know what all the bitching and whining is about. If there is anything we know about Big Green and the Environmental-Industrial complex is that it has served only for the benefit of the egos and backpockets of the politically connected on too expensive and not-yet-ready-for-primetime technology.
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Socialism, communism, fascism…. Whatever. The more we see, the more we are convinced this administration’s policies really aren’t driven by any particular ideology but rather good old fashion influence peddling in exchange for monetary and political gain that is dressed up in the finery of progressive activism.

Crony capitalism: an allegedly capitalist economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between businesspeople and government officials.