Gimmickry

Dale has given me permission to post while old C-SM is transitioning to new C-SM, which is a good thing, 'cuz I was going nuts with all that's going on -- leading off with gimmickry.

By now you know that Obama said McCain's call for more drilling is just a gimmick. I'll go this far: McCain's call for a $300 million prize for the perfect electric car battery is pure gimmickry and certainly should have been called as much by Obama. But Obama's a guy who loves to needlessly hand out government money, so he actually supports that lame-brained idea.

(Lame-brained you ask? Of course it is. If anyone invents the perfect electric car battery, the free market will reward him so generously that $300 million, impressive as that number is, will be chump change.)

Anyway, here's my question to Obama: If calling for the drilling of more oil is a gimmick, why are you not calling for the immediate drilling of less oil? Wouldn't that be un-gimmicky? If more oil won't drop prices, then less oil certainly should, at least at the Obama School of Leftist Economics, right?

C'mon, Big O! Do the right thing! Stand up tall in support of less drilling! Even better, make your announcement at a press conference in front of a gas station selling regular for $4.29 a gallon. That's the ticket!

Setting Up A Winning GOP Campaign Strategy

In his Saturday address, President Bush handed McCain the campaign theme most likely to keep the White House in Republican hands:

The fundamental problem behind high gas prices is that the supply of oil has not kept up with the rising demand across the world. One obvious solution is for America to increase our domestic oil production. So my Administration has repeatedly called on Congress to open access to new oil exploration here in the United States. Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal. Now Americans are paying the price at the pump for this obstruction.

Delivering the Dem response to the prez's radio address was Nick Rahall, chair of the Natural Resources Committee, which is the Senatorial power broker in this debate. His response:

This week, President Bush and his Republicans allies rallied behind the oil industry's political agenda once again and advocated opening more of America's federal land, including coastal areas, to drilling. This proposal will not bring the type of relief Americans deserve at the pump.

So we're told that supply and demand for some mysterious reason won't work with petroleum. Yet we're told that this same supply and demand does work with the cornerstone of the Dems' horse in the energy race, alternative fuels: We'll increase supply of alternative fuels and the price of energy will drop.

Everything the enviros have said since gas prices started spiking -- heck, everything they've ever said about energy pricing -- ignores supply and demand in favor of government controls through incentives, punishments,cap and trade programs and government take-over. It's not surprising since its basic socialism.

Also inherent in Rahall's response is a problem over the definition of federal lands. He criticizes Bush for calling for "opening more" federal land (and seas) for resource development. The name of Rahall's committee is "Resources," a word the Dems and their green special interest supporters have come to define as "something that should not be touched," but traditionally means "a source of supply, support or wealth."

What exactly is this "America's federal land" Rehall's talking about? The Bureau of Land Management has under its jurisdiction 258 million surface acres and 700 million acres of subsurface mineral estates. The surface holdings represent about 13 percent of all the US, and BLM states its purpose as management first and conservation second. The land it manages represents just 40 percent of all land owned by the Federal government.

And it's profitable stuff:

The public lands provide significant economic benefits to the Nation and to states and counties where these lands are located. Revenues generated from public lands make BLM one of the top revenue-generating agencies in the Federal government. In 2007, for instance, BLM’s onshore mineral leasing activities will generate an estimated $4.5 billion in receipts from royalties, bonuses, and rentals that are collected by the Minerals Management Service. Approximately half of these revenues will be returned to the States where the mineral leasing occurred.

These are the lands Bush -- and most of the rest of us -- are interested in opening up, which is the right thing to do, since it's the federal land purposed for productivity. The other federally owned land includes military bases, prisons, nuke storage sites, Washington DC -- and land owned and managed by the Department of Interior's wildlife guys for the Dem definition of "natural resources" -- critters and plants that just could not survive without our loving protection.

But to Rahall and the special interests he serves (Earth First!, the Center for Biological Depravity ... oops, Diversity, etc.), all federal land should be treated as this subset of DOI-managed land: preserved for critters and none of it leased for resources. It doesn't matter if the impact of production on land is large (as in oil shale) or small (as in drilling); no level of impact to Gaea is allowable.

You can't blame Rahall and the Greenies for the current energy situation; you can only blame them for part of it. How much is a matter of debate; they would say the impact of their anti-petroleum, anti-nuclear position is minimal, and that it would be less then minimal if only we would get our hearts behind alternative energy.

But our hearts have been behind alternative energy since the gas shortages of the 1970s. Billions of dollars are going into alternative energy and we have little to show for it beyond higher food prices thanks to ethanol production.

McCain, like all savvy politicians is a proponent of alternative energy -- after all he can read polls that say 98% (!) of usbelieve a goal of 25% alternative energy sources by 2025 is a good one. (Of course, the poll question didn't attach a cost to that effort or say reaching the goal might cause some discomfort and displacement.) But he can also read the frustration of voters who are paying over $4 per gallon of gas, and seeing the price raise every week, so he changed his position on drilling. Albeit, not far enough, since he's still stuck in a no position on ANWR, but unlike the Dems, he changed.

And the left pounced, with the Dem party strutting and crowing about McCain's Offshore Drilling Flip-Flop: "McCain caves, once again, to the special interest." We've been through the special interest allegation already, but in this particular case, the special interest isn't the dreaded "Texas oil," which was guilty of the great sin of helping make America the most powerful, wealthiest, comfortable nation on earth, it's the people at the pump.

With "flip-flop," the Dems are trying to paint McCain with a Kerry brush, but they fail. McCain is looking at an economic policy, seeing a changed global condition brought about by soaring demand and stifled production and refining capacity (see this lengthy PowerPoint for a good explanation of all that), and a futures market that's betting that price increases will continue, and he simply deduced that changed circumstances support changed policy.

Kerry, on the other hand, was looking at an Iraq where nothing was changing -- it was early in the war, instable and violent, and potentially could get worse or could get better. What was changing was not the situation, but the power and funding capacity of the anti-war faction of the Dem party. McCain saw a changed world and changed his policy. Kerry saw a changed Dem power elite and changed his.

It boils down to this: $4 gas gives the GOP a glimmer of hope in November because we have the right policy and, finally, a candidate who has signaled that he's with us on that policy. The Dems have a candidate who appears not to care about the plight of the people; he'll put the supposed plight of the polar bear first.

Congress, thanks to Bush's challenge to open up more land for drilling, needs to deal with this. My guess: The Dems will go on August recess without acting. McCain better be putting on his pouncing shoes.

An Interesting Juxtaposition

Two news items crossed paths this morning, creating some excited synapse-jumping in my brain. First this:

BAGHDAD (NYT) — Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

This de-nationalization of oil is, unquestionably, great news for the people of Iraq and more evidence that we are winning the war and -- remember this idea? -- building democracy in the place of totalitarianism in the Middle East. Oil production will be freed of bureaucratic incompetency and corruption, capitalism will reign, and the democratic Iraqi government will begin reaping financial benefits it can use to defend itself, rebuilt infrastructure, care for refugees, etc.

The left doesn't see it that way, of course.

The NYT, forgetting for the moment that it was American blood that freed Iraq, wonders why Chinese and Russian bids were shunted aside and whispers conspiratorially that American advisors are at work in the Iraqi oil ministry.

The Soros-funded Think Progress isn't letting any editorial feelings slip with this illustration on its coverage of the story, eh?

Matthew Yglesias lays it out for the lefties:

I think the evidence is clear that the Bush administration went to war in Iraq because it's run by crazy people. The oil money more plausibly comes into play in explaining the desire to stay at war forever.

Hmm. Last time I checked, American multinationals prefer working in peaceful countries. Then Yglesias cues up the next story that caught my attention with this:

Nationalization, you see, is a substantial risk of doing business -- especially natural resource business -- in unstable countries. But a given government is much, much, much less likely to nationalize western countries' assets if it's dependent on external U.S. military support and especially if its security services are nicely enmeshed with the U.S. military.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., a country whose security is also nicely enmeshed with the U.S. military, there's this:

Link: sevenload.com

The clip, courtesy of Hot Air, shows NY Rep Maurice Hinchey calling for the nationalization of oil refineries; he was one of several Dems who yesterday spouted similar socialistic rhetoric. (I understand the DNC is considering a name change to DPP, Democratic Peoples Party.)

Watch the clip because Hinchey comes and goes quickly, followed by an interview between Neil Cavuto and an Obama supporter Malia Lazu that will blow your mind. Lazu says it was a mistake for the U.S. to allow oil to be a free market industry in the first place, and that this grievous mistake -- evidenced, I suppose, by the horrible state of our oil infrastructure and government's continuing inability to allow an increase supply or new refineries -- and that "we won't find out" that oil will just get more expensive under government ownership because "when Congress can set prices it can set prices."

Her excuse for destroying a system that's served us well for over 100 years despite all of government's efforts to screw it up: "It's our oil." Follow that line of this Obamaniac's thinking -- which ignores royalties BTW -- and it's our forests, it's our lakes, it's our coal, it's our clay in the bricks you built that factory with, Capitalist Pig.

Fortunately, we are already a democracy, so Hinchey and his fellow travelers can vomit out Communist party talking points with no real effect on the rest of us. And in Iraq, another step has been made down the road that will allow the Mohammed el-Hincheys to be just as ridiculous, just as threatening to our stability, with no real effect on their government.

hat-tip: memeorandum

My ANWR Photo Gallery

Brace yourselves. Now that President Bush and John McCain are both pushing for more drilling, you'll be hearing a lot about ANWR (which as you know stands for "Any Nitwit Will Rant"), and the environmental movement will be doing their talking with pictures like this:


Very nice, very beautiful ... and very misleading. This is not the look or the landscape of the area where drilling's proposed. That's an area about the size of a large metro airport tucked into ANWR's 19 million acres, an area that's larger than the area of 10 of our Union's states.

Nope. The area where drilling would occur looks more like this:

Or this:


But wait. I'm really showing the area at is best, at the peak of summer when Mother Nature's done all she can to beautify the place. Poor baby. She must be so exhausted and so disappointed with the results.

No, ANWR really looks like this:


But of course, that's not really it either, because the sun's shining ... which doesn't happen during the winter. Which is most of the year. This ain't Yosemite, folks. It's a big, empty place where drilling can happen with minimal consequence to what minimalistic nature's up there.

Oh, and by the way, for the coastal crybabies who think they shouldn't have to actually look at energy being produced even though a lot of them use more than their fair share of it, I offer up this:


Pretty, isn't it? You don't think so? What makes it less pretty than say, the sails of a schooner, or the twinkling lights on the peninsula across the bay?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, eh? And all of us agree there's nothing too pretty at all about this picture:

Drilling Through Obama's Rhetoric

Obama looks at oil as foreign policy:

"Oil money pays for the bombs going off from Baghdad to Beirut, and the bombast of dictators from Caracas to Tehran." (WaPo)

What a bizarre ... no, what a leftist ... view. Commerce is evil. Big commerce is big evil.

The Dem presumptive also refers to oil drilling as "a failed policy." Failed? Look at what oil drilling has accomplished for our world. It changed us from a globe of far-flung, isolated peoples to a global community. It gave us new medicines and materials that have improved our lives. It made it possible to get to the hospital by ambulance or helicopter instead of horse and carriage. It fuels our economy, creating jobs and wealth.

One drawback: It makes it possible for one Barack Obama to campaign relentlessly across our very large nation.

But to him, oil and drilling for oil are nothing more than a failed policy -- even though all the alternative energy forms, that have been spouted relentlessly since the 1970s, have failed to deliver even five percent of our national energy needs.

Not only does Obama support failed energy sources, he supports failed methods for making alternative energy just energy. His plan is to use money raised through an auction of greenhouse-gas emissions credits (i.e., an energy tax) to bolster research and development projects, which have been bolstered for three decades now with little to show for it.

Meanwhile, he wants to force alternative energy into the economy by imposing requirements on how much renewable energy public utilities would have to buy. Ve have ways ov making you buy! Never mind whether its available, never mind whether its cost effective. What people have to pay for energy is of no concern to Mr. Elite, because it's a hidden tax.

Meanwhile, McCain's laying out an energy policy with some positive energy behind it: Drill now in America. Go nuclear. Conserve. Use alternate fuels. This is a sound and diverse plan that actually would cause America to be less dependent on foreign oil

Drill now? Obama actually said that there's no point in drilling now because it'll be ten years until offshore oil wells deliver. Clinton said the same thing about drilling for ANWR oil -- ten years ago. If he had been a visionary instead of reflexively pushing alternative fuels, ANWR oil would be moderating prices today. Alternative fuels certainly aren't.

Of course, Obama's not alone in calling oil drilling "failed policy." Here's the DNC:

The Democratic National Committee responded that Mr. McCain’s speech “will cave in to his friends in the oil and gas industry’’ and that he would be offering “more of the same failed Bush policies that have driven energy prices through the roof.’’ (NYT)

Note to Dems: Fuel prices under Bush in 2001 were the same as they were in 1995. After Sept. 11, they started a slow climb -- but they didn't start soaring until the Dems took over Congress in 2006.

Sunday Scan

Triple Crown

Jockey Kent Desormeaux summed up yesterday's Belmont Stakes pretty well, saying of Triple Crown contender Big Brown, "I had no horse." Big Brown finished a distant, distant last, and another year goes by without a Triple Crown winner.

I didn't even watch the race because I've soured on all forms of gambling, but it reminded me of 1977 and Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew, who I saw very up-close at the Kentucky Derby.

The not so incredible ex-wife was a photographer at the Louisville Courier Journal and I was her Derby photo assistant. She buried an auto-drive Nikon so the lens was at dirt level under the rail about 10 yards past the finish line. She focused it on the finish line, and handed me a cable remote.

"Push it when they reach the last pole before the finish and hold it down until the last horse is past you," she said. And that's what I did.

As the pack tore past me, I heard the jockeys yelling and the leather creaking and the whips slapping, I felt a hot rush of air, and was spattered with horse sweat. It was one of the most intense experiences of my life. After they blew past, I let the shutter button go and remembered to start breathing again.

In the process, I took an image of Seattle Slew crossing the finish line, all four feet in the air. It became somewhat famous; in fact, when a commemorative plate company selected one image of Seattle Slew for a series of plates on Triple Crown winners, they selected my Derby picture. Here it is:

I can't claim it as mine; it's credited to my ex-wife. But it's a heck of a lot better than the crummy one of the Belmont at the top of the post, isn't it?

Those Racist Clintons

"Sometimes your opponent just runs a good campaign," lamented Hillary's campaign chief Mark Penn in an NYT op/ed today.

I thought you paid geniuses like Penn millions of dollars, as Hillary did, so that your candidate would run a better campaign.

Penn raises many excuses for Hillary's failure, boiling it down mostly to money -- another responsibility of the campaign chief -- but the most interesting paragraph in the piece is this one:

The Clintons have spent their lives fighting as much as any leaders in their generation for greater equality across racial and gender lines. I believe nothing they said was ever intended to divide the country by race. Any suggestion to the contrary was perhaps the greatest injustice done to them in this campaign.

All in all, I have to agree with him, even though I can't stand it, and even with the famous Bill-ism about the only reason why Obama is running a fairy-tale campaign is because he's black, and the famously misinterpreted Hil-ism about Bobby Kennedy's assassination.

Back in February, I wrote a post titled In A PC Nation, How Will The GOP Run? that raised the issue of hyper-sensitivity on race issues:

Even if there were a line fine enough to appease the keepers of political correctness in the black, feminist and media communities, and there's not, the GOP will be charged with crossing it. There is no way the GOP can get to November without being called every "ist" in the book.

Still true, more true, today. As it turns out, even the Clintons couldn't pass this test in the face of the Obamaniacs who are found in high positions in the media and the DNC. The challenge for that old white guy with his blond cutie-pie of a wife has not gotten any easier.

China, The Nation That Keeps On Giving

Toys with lead paint, tainted dog food, and of course who can forget bird flu? China is such a generous nation! So giving! And since bird flu was such a hit last time around, it's now time for bird flu redux:

HONG KONG (WSJ) -- Hong Kong authorities slaughtered 2,700 birds and banned live poultry imports from mainland China for up to 21 days, after a routine inspection Saturday found chickens in one of the city's poultry markets infected with the dangerous H5N1 bird-flu virus.

While there's little immediate threat to humans from the infected birds, the discovery revives fears that the disease could still be a problem with poultry flocks in southern China -- although it isn't yet clear whether the infected birds came from local or mainland Chinese farms."

And what does the generous, giving People's Republic have to say about all this? Ever the humble gift-giver, they deferred:

An official with the General Administration of Quality, Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said the agency needed to consider questions about the matter before responding.

Can you say "chicken?"

Those Pesky Thermometers

Yesterday I wrote about NASA cooking the books on its US temperature data, a story Warmie cultists would no doubt reject as tales of denial by Warmie heretics. Well, if they had pipes and if they burned those little bowls of carbon-based plant material, I'd tell them to put this in their pipes and smoke it:

A perfect illustration is found when comparing the USHCN (U.S. Historical Climatology Network) temperature records from Central Park in New York City to those taken a mere 55 miles away at West Point. Readings in Central Park have been regularly measured since 1835 when the city's population had just surpassed 200,000. Today, surrounded by a metropolis of eight million people filled with some of the world's tallest buildings, a massive underground subway system, an extensive sewer system, power generation facilities, and millions of cars, buses, and taxis, the Central Park temperatures have been greatly altered by urbanization. And, as one might expect, the Central Park historical temperature plot illustrates an incredible warming increase of nearly 4øF.

The West Point readings have also been meticulously maintained since 1835, but the environment surrounding the thermometer shelter has experienced significantly less manmade interference then the one in Central Park. The West Point readings illustrate a significantly lower warming increase of only about 0.6øF over the same 170-year period. This is remarkable given that the year 1835 is considered to be the last gasp of the Little Ice Age -- a significant period of global cooling that stretched back several hundred years.

Cries of out of control global warming become more dubious when one looks at the hottest decade in modern history, the 1930s. The summer of 1930 marked the beginning of the longest drought of the 20th Century. From June 1 to August 3, Washington, D.C. experienced twenty-one days of high temperatures of at least 100ø. During that record-shattering heat wave, there were maximum temperatures set on nine different days that remain unbroken more than three-quarters-of-a-century later. (emphasis added; source)

How long can the global warming myth stand up to the temperature facts? It's an unanswerable question because global warming is the science of hysterics and hypnotism, and is therefore outside the realm of rational deduction.

hat-tip: Greenie Watch

Forever Reuters

No one can slip subjectivity into journalistic objectivity like Reuters. Here they are again, reporting on the meeting of G8 energy chiefs in Japan:

Japan, the United States, China, India and South Korea -- who together guzzle nearly half the world's oil -- said that they had agreed on the need for greater transparency in energy markets and more investment by consumers and producers both, while stopping short of calling on OPEC to pump more crude today. (source)

"Guzzle" is defined as "to drink especially liquor greedily, continually, or habitually." The U.S. and Japan should not be included with the guzzlers; we are more and more merely consumers. Greed simply isn't a part of our oil consumption; efficient output is. We consume ever more efficiently, investing billions in ways to make our automotive fleet, our homes and our industrial operations more efficient.

An objective Reuters (oxymoron) would have used the word consume. If it wants to look for oil-guzzling whipping boys, it should have stopped the list at China and Inda, which have put economic growth far ahead of environmental protection, and have put the acquisition of oil ahead of the efficient consumption of oil. In fact, both countries still subsidize the price of fuel to their populations, and refused reasoned calls to stop the practice in the name of greater fuel conservation.

Excitable Electrons

Confession time: I never understood this Mohamed ElBardei guy, and could no see the top UN nuke monitoring guy as a Nobel Prize winner than ... say ... Al Gore.

His mini-interview in Spiegel (the full interview publishes on Tuesday) gives me no further insights.

On Iran:

"The readiness on Iran's side to cooperate leaves a lot to be desired," he said. "We have pressing questions." Iran's leadership, he said, is sending "a message to the entire world: We can build a bomb in relatively short time."

On Syria:

But the general director of the International Atomic Energy Agency also said he expected "absolute transparency" from Syria.

On stopping proliferation by military action:

"With unilateral military actions, countries are undermining international agreements, and we are at a historic turning point."

What's difference between Iran and Syria might explain why ElBardei expects complete transparency from Syria, but not Iran? The only thing that comes to my mind is that there's been military action against Syria's nukes but not Iran's.

Hyper-Hysteria

Fear is rising with a bullet on the list of global motivators. Plastic baby bottles, genetically engineered food, cell phones ... all feed the hysteria machine, ultimately producing stories like this:

South Korean politics are on the brink of meltdown after spiralling public hysteria over “mad cow” disease in American beef unleashed a weekend of mass protests and pitched battles between demonstrators and riot police.

Police vehicles were today attacked by angry mobs armed with sticks and police lines were reportedly charged after the 40,000-strong crowd of peaceful protesters thinned-out to leave a smaller group of activists.

With the violence threatening to continue for another week, and the calls for his resignation being screamed by students on the streets of Seoul, President Lee Myung Bak now faces a series of potentially crippling departures from his immediate circle of allies. (Times of London)

How many recent cases of BSE have there been in the US? One.

How many recent cases of BSE in the US were discovered before the cow was slaughtered for beef? One.

How many humans have been infected from BSE in US beef? None.

Frankly, being in that crowd of angry Koreans looks far more dangerous to one's health than eating U.S. beef.

Quote Of The Day: Gas Wars Edition

"We're in a difficult position where we have a lid on production and we have increasing demand in the world. I would devoutly hope we see a reduction of the use of oil in the world on the one hand, and an increase in the supply so we can see some mitigation in the pressure on price,"
-- U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman

What?! No talk of cutting taxes on gasoline or subsidizing wind farms? Just supply and demand?

The shock! From a federal official yet!

Let's put this all in perspective with the help of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a "special interest" -- specifically, a national no-growth environmental litigation and lobbying practice. Last night on Hannity and Colmes, one of the guests was an energy policy spokeswoman for the NRDC, and the dialog went something like this:

Hannity: Do you support drilling for oil in ANWR?

NRDC: No, but I support alterna...

Hannity: Do you support drilling for oil off the coast of Florida or California?

NRDC: Yes, but not in the area of current leases. [Translation: No.]

Hannity: Do you support new nuclear power plants?

NRDC: Not with federal subsidies. [Yet she supports federal subsidies for less productive "alternative" technologies]

Hannity: Do you support extracting oil from oil shale in Montana and Wyoming?

NRDC: No.

Hannity: Do you support new oil refineries?

NRDC: No.

Hannity: Do you support increased coal mining?

NRDC: Only if clean coal technologies are available [with only the NRDC's definition of "clean" acceptable].

Bodman, speaking at a meeting of G8 energy chiefs in Japan, represents one end of the spectrum in the energy argument, calling for solutions that may not get sprinkled with Gorian holy water, but will solve the current short-term energy crisis that is hurting more people today than global warming is.

Ms. NRDC represents the other view: Lament high prices, but put the perceived global warming "crisis" ahead of the very real economic crisis, even if the long-term view ignores human suffering and threatens economic stability.

This is a tipping-point situation. Either the world is going to tumble head over heals into a deep recession caused by global warming hysteria, or it's going to slap down the Warmies and fix the oil biz.

I felt a bit "tippish" yesterday, when I paid over $4 for gas -- $75 to fill up my tank vs. $40-something a few months back. I feel it (and am adopting a more reserved driving style as a result), and I'm in better economic shape than most. Representing many of those who aren't in particularly good economic shape is the famous civil rights group, the Congress of Racial Equality, CORE. Here's what they have to say on the matter:

De Facto “War On The Poor” Being Waged By Environmental Extremists

Congress of Racial Equality Charges That Polar Bear Listing, Climate Change Schemes Are Disproportionately “Enslaving” Low-Income Families

Anchorage, AK (June 4, 2008) – Environmental extremists in Alaska and across the Lower 48 are waging a de facto “war on the poor” through policies such as the threatened species listing of the polar bear and climate change proposals like the Lieberman-Warner-Boxer legislation, according to Roy Innis, Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality.

"Those who are pushing these extremist policies are trying to hamstring Alaska’s and America’s ability to produce American energy,” Innis said in a keynote address to the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Resource Development Council of Alaska. “That will raise the price of energy and the basic cost of living. And that amounts to de facto war on the poor.”

Innis explained that that higher energy prices disproportionately impact the poor. “The average medium income family in America devotes about a nickel on the dollar to energy costs,” he said. “The average low-income family devotes 20 cents on the dollar to energy cost. Truly poor families must spend up to 50 cents on the dollar. And, here in Alaska where we rely so much on diesel fuel for electricity, the burden is probably even higher for many native Alaskan families.”

"In Colorado, a recent study found that homeless families with children cited high energy bills as one of the two main reasons they became homeless," he said.

Low-income families and working poor will be the “biggest losers” from both the polar bear listing under the Endangered Species Act and climate change legislation such as Lieberman-Warner in Congress.

“There are seven deadly sins against the poor inherent in the polar bear listing,” Innis explained.

1. It is based on faulty data and highly speculative science.
   
   
2. It will hurt the polar bear as a species, because it will tie up locally led polar bear conservation efforts into the straightjacket of the highly inflexible Endangered Species Act.
   
   
3. It will deal a body blow to consumers because of it will constrict energy supply and raise prices on virtually everything that we buy.
   
   
4. It will deal a body blow to our economy because of the flood of destructive lawsuits it will unleash.
   
   
5. It will visit the worst economic harm upon the low-income families and further handcuff the poor into the bondage of poverty.
   
   
6. It will put environmental groups and radical lawyers in charge of America’s climate change policy instead of our duly elected political representatives.
   
   
7. It will weaken America by limiting our ability to provide American energy to Americans. That makes us more dependent on foreign nations that are downright hostile to our nation and who give our petro-dollars to terrorists who target and kill Americans.” ...
   

“Too many government leaders have bought into the predictions of environmental Armageddon that we hear from radical environmental groups,” he said. “Instead, our government leaders need the same moral courage we had in the 1960s. We cannot allow environmental radicals to pass economic Jim Crow laws on their way to ending the American dream."

(I got this excerpt via email and can't find the transcript on the CORE web site. Here, however, is the contact info from the email if you would like to verify this or request more information: Brian McLaughlin, bmclaughlin@core-online.org.)

This is a terrible situation that needs a fix, but it can't be fixed as long as the NRDC and their many friends -- basically every Dem in Congress -- stubbornly stick to arguments that were only marginally viable when gas was under $3 a gallon.

In another CORE statement (this one on-line), Innis looks at first, the ineffectiveness of black Congressional leadership on energy, and then at the Obama view on energy:

The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation recently hosted its annual legislative conference in Washington. A keynote session – billed as an “energy brain trust” – promised a lively three-hour discussion by top executives from oil companies, associations, government agencies and universities. It would “transform dialogue into action” and “bolster the relationships between the energy industry and African-American community.” Unfortunately, the session moderator squandered the opportunity and failed to explore ways America’s energy policies could be improved.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas knows the oil business and stressed that “energy is the foundation of our economy, the engine that drives the world.” But she showed up 40 minutes late, posed for photos, bemoaned oil industry shortcomings, and only then introduced the speakers. The session was half over.

The first panelist noted that many “public policy barriers” restrict exploration, production and delivery of needed energy. Several said more minorities and minority businesses must be involved in the energy industry, while others noted that US laws and policies raise energy prices, make excellent prospects off limits to drilling, and reduce opportunities for businesses and employment. Rep. Lee did not pick up on any of these critical issues, but nodded as her “good friend,” the CEO of CITGO Petroleum, extolled Hugo Chavez’s generosity to Katrina victims and pontificated about “building bridges” between Venezuela and poor US communities.

Most speakers kept to five minutes, to leave time for questions and debate. But after each talk, Mrs. Lee introduced various “good friends” in the audience – and her son, who “needs a job” – frittering away more time. There was little dialogue, much less an effort to analyze US energy needs or improve industry-community relationships.

An hour later, presidential aspirant Senator Barrack Obama declaimed that climate change is the most serious threat facing African-American families, and “environmental justice” demands that factories not be built in minority communities, because they might pollute. The message was politically correct, reminiscent of Democratic Party and Sierra Club talking points. But it was the same deficient analysis that brought us child welfare mothers “raising” children in fatherless families, schools ruled by incivility and violence, and uneducated youths suited for gangs but not jobs.

These are critical issues. African America cries out for thoughtful leadership. Our country hungers to embrace a strong black candidate for national public office. Instead, our Black Caucus mouths platitudes and marches in lockstep with activists and legislators whose policies are disastrous for low income and minority families.

Is the McCain campaign and the NRC listening to this? Why is McCain mouthing Warmie propaganda when he has the opportunity to speak for the multitudes that are fed up with the current policy, and are aching for a leader who will dial back the cost of energy?

If the current situation remains or worsens (a good bet), the election will turn on energy policy. The GOP must be the party that promises more production, more refining and sufficient environmental protections, leaving the Dems to be the No Change Party, the party of no more production, no expanded refining and continuing overly robust environmental regulation.

Italy's New Nukes And Our "No Nukes!"

Italy began the process yesterday of raising its arm toward OPEC and giving them the celebrated Italian version of the finger.

ROME (NYT) — Italy announced Thursday that within five years it planned to resume building nuclear energy plants, two decades after a public referendum resoundingly banned nuclear power and deactivated all its reactors.

“By the end of this legislature, we will put down the foundation stone for the construction in our country of a group of new-generation nuclear plants,” said Claudio Scajola, minister of economic development. “An action plan to go back to nuclear power cannot be delayed anymore.”

Italy joins Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Germany and others in reversing its long-held anti-nuclear position ... and results in the unpleasant reality that Europe actually is performing more intelligently than America. Do we all have to become liberals now?

Environmentalist opposition to nuclear power is thermo-hypocritical. They attack it because, although there's a fine place to stash spent rods under Yucca Mountain, there's no technology to convert the rods into a benign byproduct. Yet they want us to stop our reliance on oil and nukes in deference to a host of technologies that are technologically proven to be nowhere close to being able to fill the gap.

Do they want technological proof of solutions or not?

Three things stand in the way to greater US reliance on nukes: environmentalists, Harry Reid and production capacity.

We've covered the former, although the discussion is not complete without a reference to The China Syndrome, the post-Three Mile Island film starring Hanoi Jane as a crusading TV bubblehead. The film is as anti-capitalism as it is anti-nuke, and it turned a generation against nuclear power. The new generation hasn't seen this awful film, thank God, so maybe nukes can begin to move forward here ... unless Hollywood regurgitates it.

As for Harry Reid, he has his own hand gesture for nuclear power, standing defiant in his opposition to the nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain in one of the more bleak and desolate parts of his bleak and desolate state.

His opposition underscores the environmental and NIMBY battles that would be fought for years over the placement of a nuke anywhere in America. If we haven't built an oil refinery since the 1970s what makes anyone think we can actually get the national gumption to build a nuke in the spineless thou shalt not offend era in which we live today?

And finally, there's the market. Decades of doldrums in the nuclear industry has had its impact on reactor manufacturing capacity, and as the industry starts to wipe the sleep from its eyes, that capacity is maxed.

Given the environmentalists, NIMBYs and Reid, investing in nukes is a highly speculative proposition. So even if we played all our cards just right -- and we won't -- don't expect America to follow Italy any time soon ... especially without an honest and comprehensive energy policy.

The Oil Bubble

Breathless. That's the word that comes to mind on reading today's NYT coverage of the big oil story. A couple other words come to mind. Frightened and sensationalistic. Stupid is another. Here's the lead:

Worries that world oil demand will outstrip global supplies intensified on Thursday, sending ripples through the global economy as oil prices leaped above $135, a new record high.

The price spike occurred overnight, and by Thursday morning oil had fallen back slightly to $132.87, down 30 cents from its close on Wednesday.

But the leap capped a rally that has seen oil rise nearly $5 a barrel in two days, underscoring the dire implications of the current price run-up for businesses across the globe.

Let your memory range back ... way back ... to 2006 and all the stories about home prices. What one word comes to mind as you recall those stories? Was it "bubble?" It sure was for me, but I have not yet read anything about an "oil bubble."

And why not, considering this:
If I had found a chart that was a bit more current, you would have seen the current spike reversing its early 2007 downturn and heading skyward again, but that's not what's relevant. What's relevant is the very evident peaks and valleys in OPEC oil revenues since the early 197os. It tells us that when oil reaches unsustainable prices ... well, then those prices aren't sustained.

I've made the point in the past that much of the spike in oil prices is due to new demand from developing nations, and if that were wholly responsible for the price of oil today, we couldn't expect a drop. But it's not wholly responsible; speculation, lagging production and refinery undercapacity are all factors as well.

Seventeen paragraphs into the NYT story, we find this:

But [Michael Masters, a portfolio manager at Masters Capital Management] cited data showing that the increase in demand from index speculators over the past five years is almost equal to the increase in demand from China.

Speculators were also very evident in the run-up of the housing market, when it was not uncommon for the percentage of speculator buyers in new home developments to be in the double digits -- and they were mostly buying resale homes, not new ones. When they sensed the market had reached its peak, they left like rats leave a sinking ship, and they'll do it with oil, too; probably pretty soon.

Oil refinery capacity won't do anything to help the current situation because it takes too long to bring new refineries on line, but what of production? Certainly, the Middle East could increase its production by hundreds of thousands of barrels a day if it wanted to -- but why would it want to? Hard crash, soft crash, what difference does it make to them with the cash reserves they've got?

As stewards of a finite resource, the OPEC nations are always more motivated to under-produce than over-produce. Not only does it ensure a good price; it also ensures that they'll have oil to sell for longer. But OPEC isn't the only story in oil, by a long shot.

Hillbilly White Trash nails the production aspect of the story:

The United States has untapped reserves of oil in Alaska, off the West Coast, the East Coast and the Gulf Coast and we are unwilling to drill for them. We also have around 1.5 - 2.6 trillion barrels of oil in oil shale deposits. This gives the United States at least three times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.

In addition to this there is a process for liquefying coal and turning it into a motor fuel which is interchangeable with petroleum. The Germans developed the process during the Second World
War and South Africa continued development on the process, using it to supplement their own supplies of petroleum. We have more coal than the Saudis have oil.

If the United States had spent the money which it has wasted on impractical technologies like wind and solar power (not to mention the money we've poured down the ethanol rat-hole) on perfecting the liquefaction of coal and the extraction of oil from shale we would not only be energy independent but the world's largest exporter of of oil and oil substitutes.

As long as we're not willing to exploit our resources, he asks, why should the Saudis and their friends exploit theirs to protect us? You'll look hard for a good reason.

The current run-up in oil prices should have unlocked some of our energy resources, but with the Dems in control of Congress, it will not happen. So the bubble will burst again before we begin to once again take production seriously, and we will continue to be beholden to the world market for the oil which drives our entire economy.

Oil prices will fall, and will rise again. Maybe by the next upturn, we'll finally be willing to get serious about taking care of ourselves by utilizing the wealth of resources God gave us.

Gaia Vs. Druidity

Gaia vs. Druidity? Hmmm. That was the subject line on an email my friend Neil sent me rather late Friday night. It started with an interesting interpretation of things and ended with a whacked-out bit of history that could come back all too soon if the Dems win in November, so here goes:

We'll start with some basic economics with a liberal lens:

"At the same time, soaring costs of energy and food are among the ways that a market-based society attempts to maintain equilibrium when supply fails to keep up with potential demand. Rationing by price is a profoundly inequitable way to sort out who gets food and energy in a time of shortages, and who does not, but unless the industrial world goes through drastic political changes in the very near future, it’s the way we’re stuck with, and it does have at least one pragmatic advantage: the ration coupons (we call them “money”) and the entire system of rationing are already in place, ready to use, without massive social engineering."

'Tis true and it can be a cruel system, but the last couple hundred years of human history has proved beyond the shadow of a Krugerrand that there is no better system. When times get tough for folks and they need more "ration coupons," the system provides two solutions: working harder (preferred) or stealing from others welfare (preferred by "progressives").

As it turns out, though, we apparently came pretty close to another kind of coupon in 1974 and 1975, when the wayward government ordered up millions of gas rationing coupons in anticipation of a crazy free-market run on the pumps.

Neil, who worked for the feds for a number of years and developed a healthy sense of humor about them as a result, wraps up the story:

The story gets worse. During Gasoline Crisis I, which brought out the worst in people when I was working at Seat of Government, billions of these coupons were indeed printed. To guard against, and verify, counterfeiting, the Powers that Be, in their Infinite Wisdom, decided to engrave the same George that is on the dollar bill. Anyone could compare the faces and detect a phony.

The story really gets worse. Some enterprising bureaucrat discovered that you could tape the coupon to a piece of paper the size of a dollar bill, run it through a change machine, and get four quarters. The government would be giving away money.

So the Powers that Be exercised more of their Infinite Wisdom and destroyed all the coupons, not realizing that gasoline would soon climb above $1 per gallon and only drooling idiots would trade their coupons for less than face value.

These are the fine people we entrust our freedom, sovereignty, health [NOT YET!], security and economic well being to.

Gaia vs. Druidity? Your guess is as good as mine.

Fatal Energy Policies

"While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost manufacturing jobs in Ohio," writes Thomas Friedman in today's NYT, "no one noticed that America’s premier solar company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest factory in the former East Germany — 540 high-paying engineering jobs — because Germany has created a booming solar market and America has not."

Well, that's a biased way to present good news. It's not like First Solar shut down it Ohio operations and moved lock, stock and barrel to Germany. Rather, they saw a strong emerging market rich with government incentives and expanded their operations.

Friedman's overarching point -- that America needs a sound energy policy -- is correct, but he picks weird way to present it and ends up with a policy that panders to the Warmies and the expense of the consumers.

Friedman starts by picking a lousy example in First Solar. He wants the US to incentivize alternative energy, which is a somewhat good idea, so he focused his example on First Solar's German operations -- but he ignored the company's Malaysian plant because he certainly doesn't want call for cheap US labor.

And neither did he want to write about Ohio's crumbling infrastructure and rustbelt ways to drive up the cost of business. Otherwise, he might have mentioned that First Solar pulled up its roots last week and moved to Arizona.

Still, there's much I agree with in Friedman's analysis, starting with his dislike of the currently voguish drive to cut or eliminate federal gas taxes over the summer. His point -- that we're giving money to China to incentivize us to enjoy ourselves by driving our SUVs to vacation spots -- is sound on the China debt front, but elitist in how he wants to mandate our behavior. (He did not divulge the Friedman vacation plans, BTW.)

He is also correct that if it is our goal to use incentives to quicken the development and market penetration of renewable technologies, incentivizing the use of gasoline is not the way to do it, whether it's the McCain/Clinton tax cut idea, or all the existing credits that go oil's way.

I think reasonable incentives for alternative energy -- accelerated depreciation for alternative energy infrastructure, reduced regulatory burdens for "green" transmission corridors, tax credits for purchases -- are a good idea if they're carefully watched so they don't become permanent subsidies for successful businesses.

I'd go further, though, and say that all politically motivated federal give-aways -- the gas tax cut, Obama's college freebie or the checks the IRS mailed out last week -- send the wrong message. Government isn't in existence to dole out freebies, and whenever it does, it keeps the free market from making the adjustments necessary to sustain a sound economy.

Friedman also acts as if we have only one energy source available to us -- alternatives -- and wants to pretend we can just leave oil behind. Alternative energy is called alternative for a reason. There's a Big Daddy energy and then there are these yapping alternatives that say they can replace Big Daddy, but they're hardly out of diapers.

If we worry, as we should and Friedman does, about our increasing debt to China, then why should we continue to compete against China on world markets for oil? If we're worried about the social and economic consequences of the rising cost of energy, why shouldn't we work to increase all supply?

Friedman says nothing about opening ANWR or the continental shelf to drilling; he's mum on exploration on federal lands; there's not a peep about the benefits of fuel mix standardization or the construction or expansion of refineries -- all things that would greatly benefit America's energy picture and economy.

These are simply discounted with the charge that any use of oil simply increases "our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit."

America is moving dramatically toward more efficient, cleaner use of petroleum, from Priuses and clean-burning diesels to more efficient industrial applications. And as long as the debate on global warming isn't over -- and it's not -- it's perfectly fine to use it, drill it and refine it until the alternatives shed their diapers and are ready to replace Big Daddy.

Get it wrong, and the economy crashes and people suffer. And Friedman gets it wrong.

Sunday Scan

Saul Alinsky's Playbook

What do you make of a quote like this, from Mike Huckabee?

"Many of us who have been Republicans out of conviction . . . the social conservatives ... were welcomed in the party as long as we sort of kept our place, but Lord help us if we ever stood forward and said we would actually like to lead the party."

As a Christian social conservative, I think it's just not true, since there are a lot of conservative Christians in the GOP in positions of authority. President Bush, for example. At NRO, Mark Levin feels the same way, and has found the right way to put it:

Huckabee continues to use his faith as a weapon against those who question not his faith, but his political populism — much of which he shares with secular progressives. And he is clearly hoping to stir up resentment among Evangelical Christians against the other elements of the conservative movement and Republican Party as a way of encouraging them to vote in the caucuses and primaries. This is a tactic right out of Saul Alinsky's playbook. Of course he wants us to believe the Reagan coalition is dead because he cannot win with it intact. But he cannot win either the nomination or presidency with the narrow focus of his appeal. This is why I find Mike Huckabee's tactics and candidacy so deplorable.

In the primaries, we are not voting for who we want to win our local primary; we are voting for who we think should be our next president. That's why Huckabee is not even on the margins of my consideration for the Cal primary.

As much as I wish Huckabee was the pastor of my church, were he just a pastor, I wouldn't have him as the pastor of my church, given the dishonorable way he's running his campaign. (hat-tip: memeorandum)

France Offers Atoms To Arabs

Give 'em an inch of nuclear technology, M. Sarkozy, and they just might take a mile.

Nicolas Sarkozy might be a Bush ally of sorts -- after all, he's touring the Middle East at the same time W. is -- but he has that cavalier Gallic attitude about selling nuclear technology. If it brings money to France, how bad can it be? Read this from BBC and ponder:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has begun a Gulf tour, during which he is due to sign an nuclear co-operation deal with the United Arab Emirates.

He has arrived in Saudi Arabia and will go on to Qatar and the UAE over the next three days. All three are seeking to develop civilian nuclear programmes.

Mr Sarkozy has said the Arab world should have the same rights to such programmes as other states.

France has already signed nuclear agreements with Algeria and Libya.

Mr Sarkozy said the sale of such technology could foster trust between the West and the Muslim world.

Or a terrifying thermonuclear nightmare of obliterating consequences. Your choice.

But if that's the way it's going to be, then any nation threated by the thought of Sunni theocracies having nuclear power -- be it bombs or reactors -- should also have it. Ethiopia, the Balkan states, Central African states like Kenya and the Congo Republic.

Fine and dandy. Atoms for all. But just this, Nicolas, mon ami, the first time one of 'em screws with an inspection, the whole program must be withdrawn and their facilities destroyed. No more Irans, no more North Koreas.

All That Glitters

Here's a long list of celebrity contributions to political campaigns. Yes, folks, it's true: Movie stars like Obama best. The contribution edge over Dem runner-up Clinton includes such glitterati as Jennifer Aniston, Tyra Banks, Halle Berry, George Clooney, Larry David, Morgan Freeman, Leonard Nimoy and Brooke Shields.

Almost completely, black entertainers are lined up behind Obama. Starlets overwhelmingly put race ahead of gender ... you don't really think they're poring over the issues with the intensity they pore over scripts, do you? Exceptions (not counting those who contribute to multiple campaigns) are: Quincy Jones (Clinton) and ... oh, that's it; Quincy Jones.

GOP donors? Well, that's pretty easy: Pat Boone (Brownback and Romney), Jerry Bruckheimer (McCain, natch), and Kelsey Grammer, Adam Sandler and Ben Stein, all for Giuliani.

It's not at all curious that the most curious contributor was SNL major domo Lorne Michaels, who gave $4,600 to Dodd and $2,300 to McCain. I'm trying to figure that one out.

Now Be Nice!

Sacramento, like many cities around the country, is facing fiscal hard times: Budget shortfall, huge and costly infrastructure needs and various local controversies that are stymieing the city's vision and future.

So here's what Sacto mayor Heather Fargo said in a State of the Downtown speech:

We each need to change one light bulb to a compact fluorescent because it's good for the environment. Oh, and be sure to walk more and drink tap water to promote a "green Sacramento."

If politicians think Greenie platitudes will fix anything, they should ready themselves for legions of voters who are green around the gills with Greenie platitudes. Or, as SacBee columnist Marcos Breton put it:

There is no political risk in promoting the idea of a "Green Sacramento." It's like saying we should all be nice to each other.

Ouch. Breton is right on here, but way off course here:

When you have a room full of large-scale developers, as Fargo did, why not use your pulpit to educate them on how "green" building materials can be cost-effective too? Why not show them that they can still make their money and build projects that are better for the environment?

The arrogant little pencil-chewing twit! Who knows more about the economics and benefits of green development than builders? They started the movement in the 1970 energy crisis, putting their existing and planned buldings through rigorous energy audits and investing in more energy technologies that would pay for themselves.

Who do you think has saved more energy in the last couple decades, free market building owners who are seeking lower costs, or power-hungry bureaucrats who are seeking to force their view of reality on the world? Of course, a newspaper columnist, so far removed from reality, would wrongly think the latter.

Curses, Foiled Again!

Fars, the Iranian Propaganda Ministry news service, is not a trustworthy news source to put it mildly, so I'll give US fencer Ivan Lee the benefit of the doubt, but hardly a pass, on the comments he made while participating in a fencing competition in Iran recently. According to Fars, here's what Lee said:

"If the Iranian people and government posed a problem (for us), the US fencing team would never take a second trip to Iran," Ivan Lee, who is currently in Iran to attend the 2008 International Fencing Competitions in Iran's Persian Gulf island of Kish, told FNA on Sunday.

"Everyone analyzes issues by using his own mind and logic; we know that all the negative propaganda against Iran is unreal and, thus, we attended Iran's international competitions for a second time," he said.

Feint is the word, Ivan, feint. The Iranians showed you something that wasn't real in order to make you miss what was real. Anyone who thinks for a moment that a repressive, totalitarian regime would let any visit get a brush with reality has had one too many épée hits on the cognitive organ. (Yeah, yeah, everyone knows Lee is a saber fencer, but épée is such a cooler word.)

And Now From The Euro-Libs

It's not enough that some SCOTUS members think it's just fine to cite European Community law in their American legal decisions. Now Euro-Libs are asking for the right to vote in US elections. From an editorial in the Brussels rag De Standard, courtesy of Brussels Journal:

American presidential elections are not “home affairs.” American decisions have repercussions all over the globe. The American mortgage crisis affects banks in Europe. The insatiable American demand for oil makes the Arabian sheiks rich. The American refusal to care for the environment causes the North Pole ice to melt and coastal areas in Asia to flood. A weakened dollar and an immense budget deficit affect the global economy.

Hence, the world should be given the right to vote. Because the current situation is a blatant case of taxation without representation, against which the Americans rebelled in 1776.

Never mind that Brussels would be a Nazi nation were it not for decisions we Americans made as part of our "home affairs" sixty years ago; Europe can do no harm. It does not pollute, it does not have financial woes, it has never seen its currencies falter. Its efforts to impose a multicultural political mindset on the planet, and to spend our way out of the alleged human causes of global warming does not, apparently, also represent taxation without representation.

Did we have a say in any of that foolishness? Not that I recall. (hat-tip: What Bubba Knows)

A Chair By Any Other Name

The must-read read of the day is Armando Iannucci's column in The Guardian on Barack Obama and American politics. By the time you read this, at the beginning of the third paragraph ...

So why does Obama, billed by everyone as a cross between Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln, but without the terrible looks of either, just leave me puzzled? Maybe it's because his is a rhetoric that soars and takes flight, but alights nowhere.

... you'll be hooked.

Iannucci does a lovely spoof on Obama-speak by suggesting that this is how Obama would rhetoric to death a chair:

'This chair can take your weight. This chair can hold your buttocks, 15 inches in the air. This chair, this wooden chair, can support the ass of the white man or the crack of the black man, take the downward pressure of a Jewish girl's behind or the butt of a Buddhist adolescent, it can provide comfort for Muslim buns or Mormon backsides, the withered rump of an unemployed man in Nevada struggling to get his kids through high school and needful of a place to sit and think, the plump can of a single mum in Florida desperately struggling to make ends meet but who can no longer face standing, this chair, made from wood felled from the tallest redwood in Chicago, this chair, if only we believed in it, could sustain America's huddled arse.'

The problem with Obama and all our politicians is that that's enough; one must never bother with the harsh facts of what you're actually going to do about the chair, or be brave enough to say nothing needs to be done by government about the chair; one only has to stir the feeling of "chair" that's in all of us.

I can share two more lovely lines from the essay without giving away too much of your future enjoyment of it:

American politicians take time out from their busy lives to makes speeches that sound empty; British politicians fill the emptiness of their lives with words that make them sound busy.

And

The chair, by the way, was made in China.

We're All Gonna Die!

And I'll be 40,000,057 years old when it happens, according to this report in Science Daily.

Well, actually, that will be when Smith's Cloud impacts the Milky Way (the pink burst in the image above). Our sun is noted a bit to the right, so I'll probably have a few more years to spend with the grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grandkids.

Smith's cloud, which if flush with hydrogen (enough to fire up a million suns), is a bit bigger than a puff in the sky: eleven thousand light-years long and 2,500 light-years wide. It's 8,000 light years away and is rushing at us at 150 miles per second (a tad faster than my German V8).

And that's something that's close to us. No wonder SciFi writers have to invent hyperspace and worm holes to get their heroes from here to there.

It's really too bad we won't be around when Smith's Cloud hits, since this is what it'll look like, according to astronomer Felix Lockman:

When it hits, it could set off a tremendous burst of star formation. Many of those stars will be very massive, rushing through their lives quickly and exploding as supernovae. Over a few million years, it'll look like a celestial New Year's celebration, with huge firecrackers going off in that region of the Galaxy.

Shoot. It'll be a real shame to miss that!

The Domestic Downside Of Dems

While much of the focus on the new congressional Democrat majority has focused on foreign policy issues, the Dem domestic policy initiatives are perhaps even more worrying in the long term.

If we are forced by an anti-Bush Congress to abandon the war in Iraq, it will not destroy America. We will have to fight again, and we may end up losing more soldiers and civilians as a result, but we will survive, and unless we're unlucky enough to be one or know one of the Americans who dies as a result of this misdirected policy shift, we'll not be much impacted by it.

Not so with domestic policy. We'll be paying for the change in the minimum wage through a round of price increases for all sorts of products, of course, but there are much more troubling examples, like Rep. Nick Rahall's Energy Policy Reform and Revitalization Act of 2007. The West Virginia Dem has created a Greenie wet dream in this bill -- which, because of a Dem majority, passed through committee and is now pending on the House floor.

How bad is it? Ask the Sierra Club, because they're delighted by it:

The Energy Policy Reform and Revitalization Act of 2007 will help set America on the path toward energy independence, increase accountability in the management of federal energy resources, spur alternative energy sources, and provide the support necessary to help mitigate the impact of global warming on wildlife.

H.R. 2337 reforms many of the ill-conceived provisions in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct). The bill will also establish long-overdue reforms of the federal energy program, including establishing a fee on non-producing oil, gas, and coal leases to discourage speculative lease holdings and generate funds to repair damage to wildlife and habitats. In addition, the bill will protect water resources impacted by energy development and the rights of private surface owners of lands where the U.S. government holds the underlying mineral estate.

Finally, the bill will create a comprehensive national framework to address the impacts of global warming on wildlife. Global warming poses one of the greatest threats to ecosystem integrity and individual fish and wildlife species and their habitat.

Before we buy into that line of thinking, perhaps we'd best check elsewhere for opinion, like with the Republicans on the Natural Resource Committee:

H.R. 2337 is being touted by the Democratic leadership as an “energy” bill but it essentially repeals all of the positive energy measures of the past 12 years. ...

H.R. 2337 has the primary goal of repealing the bipartisan energy policies overwhelmingly adopted in the >Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct), which developed a comprehensive energy policy that increases energy efficiency and conservation, expands U.S. energy supplies and encourages investment in new energy technologies.

H.R. 2337 makes energy harder to produce, more expensive, and less available. Consequently, Americans will have to rely on more foreign imports and pay more for energy at a time when gas prices are currently at an all-time high. Briefly, here’s the essence of the Democratic “energy” bill:

• It makes oil and natural gas harder and more expensive to produce domestically;
• It increases the costs of all energy by making energy corridors tougher to build;
• It makes wind energy projects harder to build and adds more uncertainty to the projects;
• It stops our nation’s largest potential liquid transportation fuel source – our two trillion barrel oil shale resource - dead in its tracks;
• It federalizes the traditionally state-managed fish and wildlife resources under the guise of “global climate change”;
• And it does absolutely nothing for our nation’s other huge resource - coal.

Of course, it doesn't address coal because Rahall's from West Virginia, so he has to be pro-coal. Greenies would have liked to have had similar draconian restrictions on coal production and utilization, but they knew they wouldn't be able to get Rahall to carry their water there, so they've graciously not criticized the bill's lack of restrictions on coal.

(Interestingly, if you search Rahall's site for anything on the bill, you won't find it.)

The second bullet -- making energy corridors more difficult to build -- may not resonate with many, but it's a huge concern. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 authorized the Dept. of Energy to assess the nation's energy corridors, and find areas where electrical transmission systems were so overtaxed as to threaten consumers. National Policy Analysis reports the findings:

According to DOE, the Mid-Atlantic region's tenuous electricity supply is an especially urgent matter. Without increased transmission capacity, "reliability violations will occur" in the northern Virginia - Washington, D.C. - Baltimore area by 2011. The same is true for southeastern New York State. Northern New Jersey and central Pennsylvania would experience similar problems in 2014 and 2019 respectively. ...

The seriousness of the problem prompted DOE to designate two "National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors" in April 2007 for both the Mid-Atlantic region and Southwest region of the country, which is also in need of a critical upgrade. These National Corridors are geographic, interstate areas where necessary, additional transmission infrastructure could be built to solve the regions' congestion woes.

Rahall's bill pretty much would make it impossible to designate these corridors, however, because it would:

• Make it illegal for corridors to be placed within a mile of any land designated by the feds or a state for "protection of scenic, natural, cultural or historic resources," and
  
• Ban any land considered a "sensitive ecological area, including any area that is designated as critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 or otherwise identified as sensitive or crucial habitat, including seasonal habitat, by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, by a State agency responsible for managing wildlife or wildlife habitat, or in a Federal or State land use plan"

That basically means it will be impossible to weave a pathway for these corridors, even if the first bullet makes some sense, if you put feeling good ahead of doing good. Sure, it feels good to look at a pretty landscape without powerlines, but if the powerlines are needed for the country to do well, shouldn't the tough decision prevail?

Besides, armed with this tool, Greenies will go on a spree of scenic, natural, cultural or historic designation efforts, for no other reason than to place roadblocks in the way of the corridors.

The second point, banning corridors in critical habitat, is ridiculous. I've been involved in dozens of critical habitat fights, and in the creation of large-scale Habitat Conservation Plans that have protected hundreds of thousands of acres for endangered species. There is widespread agreement that electrical transmission corridors and critical habitat are highly compatible.

The corridors require minimal maintenance, so there's little human impact under and around them, and they naturally create wildlife migration corridors along their route. There is no biological reason for Rahall to put this provision in his bill. There is, however, a Greenie reason: Greenies equate electrical power lines with growth, and they are vehemently anti-growth.

It doesn't matter that the growth has already occurred and must be dealt with. It doesn't matter that people are still having babies. They will fling themselves against growth until they die ... unless its the house they want to move in to ... because growth besmirches Gaea's veil and therefore is evil in their cosmology.

There's a long path ahead for Rahall's bill, so there's still a chance it will be watered down or lost in the Congressional legislative wilderness. But that doesn't minimize the risk it poses -- not just with its specifics, but also because it shows how dangerous the Greenie-Dem alliance can be.

See also:
Warmie Psychic: Warmies To Be "Shocked"
Greenies Fight To Stop Green Energy

hat-tip: Jim