Sunday Scan

Kicking Some Ashcroft

Speaking to a large group of home-state Republicans in Missouri yesterday, former AG John Ashcroft defended the president's surveillance efforts:

"The president of the United States has been among the most respectful of all leaders ever engaged in the responsibility of fighting for freedom,'' Ashcroft said, and has been "most respectful in terms of respecting the civil liberties and rights of individuals while engaged in the important task of fighting for freedom."

Ashcroft said Woodrow Wilson monitored "all calls into and outside the United States'' in World War I, while Franklin Delano Roosevelt had "all traffic coming into and going out of the United States'' monitored in World War II.

Wilson's and Roosevelt's policies are a matter of historical record, and they were more intrusive than the more pin-pointed policies technology allows Bush to pursue. I have no doubt that Wilson and Roosevelt would have done the same, if they had the technologies available to them, because presidents tend to believe in the Constitution.

Nevertheless, that didn't stop the BDS crew at Think Progress:

Dirty Hippy: Down is up. Black is white. The surge is working…… Heckuva job. ****heads…….

Ralph the Wonder Lama: Oh yeah, Hitler

Bullsmith: Ashcroft, like Bush, spits on the Bill of Rights when he spews such obvious falsehoods about such important issues.

The first lefty to post a comment included "the surge is working" as one of Bush's lies. He was corrected a bit later by Frank M, noting that it working. That generated:

Crap, just when I thought we might have some peace a poster like Frank MORON shows up. **** off ******.

Some things never change.

A Little More Lefty Looniness

Surely you've read of Toledo mayor Carty Finkbeiner's action against the Marines -- denying them permission to conduct urban warfare training after the troops had ridden for four hours from their base in Michigan to Toledo. Here's the story, if you haven't.

So what's the lead-off commenter on the link above got to say about this sorry state of events? Here's what Neo Conned opines:

Urban Warfare training in preparation for who, the American populous? Good for the mayor- training s/b on on the bases/facilities.

Just another example to acclimate us to a military dictatorship. Oooooh, Al Qaeda gonna get ya- oh i forgot there is no such animal, just false flags prepping us for Haliburton camps.

Military dictatorship? No al-Qaeda? I guess Dennis Kucinich isn't the only certifiable loon to come out of Northern Ohio.

Microsoft (And Curvy)

Isabel Vogel was hired by Microsoft in Germany a few years back -- surprising her because she was a woman with children. Says Spiegel:

She knew that making it this far was already a victory. Despite her stellar background, she wouldn't have stood at a chance at most other companies.

For all its European enlightenment -- so exalted by the Left -- Germany isn't as enlightened as America, and it takes companies like Microsoft to show them the errors of their way by hiring people like Vogel and letting her:

She has served as a shining example for other young women in the company since then -- and as evidence to her employer that its woman-friendly personnel strategy is working. "If we don't manage to recruit women now, we'll be facing massive problems in less than five years," says Achim Berg, the general manager of Microsoft Germany, referring to the challenges of a shrinking population in Germany.

Ah, enlightened Europe! Stop having babies, resist hiring women, keep up the old face ... and let the Muslims procreate, subject their women to serf-like bondage while mocking America all the while.

Speaking Of Power Women ...

In the last week, not one, not two but three books have been published in France charting the romance of president Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni -- and there's some pretty good scuttlebutt about Carla's butt and how very effectively she's used it, like this:

The authors quote Bruni telling a friend that although she would not vote for him, she had “the hots” for Sarkozy during the election campaign last year. The former top model, whose conquests included Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, the rock stars, and Donald Trump, the American property billionaire, told another friend before meeting Sarkozy: “I want a man with nuclear power.”

Whoa ... that puts foreign affairs in a whole new light, eh?

The Next Greenie Gotta-Have-It

What could be greener?

Just strap on your own knee-powered power generator, take a walk, and generate the juice for your next cell phone call, GPS query for the locale of the day's global warming demonstration or electronic nose-hair trimming session!

This prototype unit, described in Science Daily, weighs 3.5 pounds and generates a bit more power than it takes to crank it while walking. Figure the units will become lighter and more efficient as good ol' Yankee ingenuity is applied to them, and they may become Greenie as in Army Green.

It's easy to see soldiers being issued these, so after a day of maneuvers, they've got a plug-in device to power their equipment. Pretty cool.

In The Interest Of Accuracy

Here's an actual correction that should help clarify the newspaper's relationship to Mark Steyn:

The Ottawa Citizen and Southam News wish to apologize for our apology to Mark Steyn, published Oct. 22. In correcting the incorrect statements about Mr. Steyn published Oct. 15, we incorrectly published the incorrect correction. We accept and regret that our original regrets were unacceptable and we apologize to Mr. Steyn for any distress caused by our previous apology.

Glad we got that all straightened out. (Source)

Just Your Average Guy

That's me, as average as they come.

I just took the Earth Day Footprint Quiz, answering such questions as how often I eat meat, how many people live in my house, what mileage my car gets and how much do I drive it. I admit, I was expecting to be a modern Atilla the Hun with a global footprint that would slay millions.

But I'm just a 24. And the American average is ... just a 24. That means it supposedly takes 24 acres of God's green earth to support me, and millions like me. Here's my breakdown:

Food: 5.4 acres
Mobility: 3.7 acres
Shelter: 5.9 acres
Goods/Services: 8.6 acres

Lest I be content to just remain average, the good little Greenies at Earth Day spoil all my fun by adding:

Worldwide, there are 4.5 biologically productive acres per person. If everyone lived like you, we would need 5.3 planets.

What the Greenies aren't acknowledging is that just about everyone in the world, especially those getting by on 4.5 biologically productive acres or less, would love to live like me. And unlike my Greenie friends, I would love for them to live like me.

Are we going to build up humankind, never letting our species' aspirations dim, or are we going to try to pick apart our accomplishments, lose faith in the inventiveness of humanity, and go the way of the Greenies?

Dems Sniffing Ethanol In New Investigation?

As reported here Sunday, Gov. Schwarzenegger has purchased over 1,100 ethanol-capable cars in his drive to "green up" California -- but because there's only one ethanol station in the entire state, nary a drop of ethanol has touched their tanks, resulting in more greenhouse gases and big embarrassment for the Gov.

So, of course, the Dems are standing ready to take a serious situation that needs attention and blow it ridiculously out of proportion because it gives them an opportunity to attack a corporation. This has been the Merc News' story since day one, and it continues to report:

A state Senate hearing not only confirmed Wednesday that the governor's administration purchased a fleet of alternative fuel vehicles that have yet to burn anything but gasoline, but lawmakers also suggested the vehicles were purchased to benefit a specific automaker that has a cozy relationship with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: General Motors.

Auto manufacturers and state officials confirmed that the contract specifications for the fleet purchases were dramatically changed two years ago in such a way that only GM cars met the requirements.

"What they did was create a sole-source contract," said Sen. Dean Florez, D-Bakersfield, who led up the three-hour hearing in the Capitol. "This is not about good public policy. This is not about being green. It's about politics that gave GM an edge."

Typical Dem hatred and mistrust of corporations -- unless its their corporate buddies. Obfuscating the real problem here, which is green stupidity, not old-time political hackery, the Dems are doing what always happens in politics: creating so much smoke, so much rhetoric, so many non-issue bunny trails, that the real problem is never addressed.

It does turn out that GM had the only cars that would meet the bid requirements, but that's not a bad thing. Here are the requirements: "Flex-fuel" capability was an option, being able to burn E85 fuel was a must, and here's the kicker: the vehicles had to be certified by the California Air Resources Board (CARB, a pretty funny acronym) so they could be sold in California.

Only the GM cars had the CARB certification.

The gov purchased cars that basically couldn't be fueled in California, which is stupid. The Dem response is to criticize him for not buying cars that can't be bought in California, which is beyond stupid.

(The Merc News really failed on this story because it looked at GM's contributions to the Gov as "evidence" in support of the Dems, but failed to report on Ford's, Chrysler's and the Japanese auto makers' contributions. Very shoddy reporting.)

Aussie "Earth Hour" Was Really "Hypocrites' Hour"

They turned off the lights in Sydney this week, eager to save the planet. What a fiasco.

It should have been easy enough. They picked for Earth Hour 7:30 to 8:30 on a Saturday night, when twilight lingered, offices were closed and shoppers had gone home. Still, security lights and street lights remained on, concerts were held, and soccer was played under great banks of flood lights.

Caroline Overington wrote in The Australian of the dreary, defeatist spectacle (if you can have a spectacle in the dark):

Consider this: the great switch-off was televised. No, really: Sky News and the BBC in London went live to the great power outage. Did that not strike anybody as, well, a touch absurd? How can people watch on TV an event involving a power switch-off? Also, the lights on the arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge went out, as did lights on the Sydney Opera House. Sydneysiders, intrigued as to how this might look, promptly got into their cars and drove over the bridge to have a gander.

Surely, that produced more CO2 than all the light-switching saved.

Overington was tasked to interview the mastermind of Earth Hour, World Wildlife Fund's Greg Bourne, about the event the next day but couldn't find him ... he was jetting up to Singapore for an important conference on how to subject the rest of us to this depressing silliness.

In the process, Bourne's plane dumped on the weary planet about a quarter of the C02 that was allegedly saved during Earth Hour. Organisers say 24 tonnes of C02 was saved, but in fact none was saved, just stored, in effect, for later use. And it takes a tonne or three a person to fly to Asia; on the way back, he'd dump the same amount. Now, this may be stating the obvious, but if Bourne is serious about climate change, he should not be flying. He could have been tele-conferencing. Nothing else makes sense. But, then, much about Earth Hour didn't make sense.

Why do the Warmies feel they have the right to subject us to such fare? Overington says it well:

As everybody knows, Sydney is the most vibrant and liveliest of Australian cities, so it's no surprise that dour environmentalists decided that Sydney - glorious, glittering Sydney - should be the first Australian city to suffer through Earth Hour.

To your mud huts, everyone! We've got to regress together if we're going to win this global warming battle. It'll be tough, but don't worry! Our fearless leader Al Gore will be directing the battle from his 20-room, 8-bathroom energy guzzling home with the gaslights lining the drive.

And we'll have as our guiding ... er, ... light Li'l Kim Jong Il, who sees the light ... or lack thereof. Yes, in L'il Kim's North Korea, every hour is Earth Hour!

hat-tip: Real Clear Politics

Prius: More Enviro Harm Than A Hummer

Eat my CO2, DiCaprio! Up your tailpipe, Maher!

Leonardo and Bill are but two of a plethora of Hollywood hype-buyers who drive about in their Priuses with smug superiority, sure that they are greener than thou. But they would be better off driving a Hummer.

That's right. The total cost of energy (that's manufacturing and operating costs) for a Prius is $3.25 per mile over the 100,000 miles you can expect it to run. A Hummer on the other hand is expected to run 300,000 miles (You know the old saying, "GM cars run bad longer than most cars run.") at $1.95 a mile.

OK, maybe you're not going along with that 300,000-mile Hummer. So give the Hummer a 150,000 mile life -- that's still $2.93 vs. the Prius' $3.25.

That's just the conclusion of a fascinating article by Chris Demorro that ran last week in the Central Connecticut University Recorder. Here's the much juicier stuff:

Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.

“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.

All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?

Demorro's piece is damning, indeed, and he doesn't even touch on the energy costs involved in recycling the Prius' batteries once the car goes to the junk yard.

I remain, and probably shall remain for the foreseeable future, a fan of the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine. Gasoline burns incredibly efficiently and engines have become gas-sippers (I get 19.1 mpg in my 325 hp German V8) with very low emissions.

Behind the wheel of your gas-fired car, you may not be Oh, so cool driving down Rodeo Drive among the Prius glitterati, but you'll be driving the smarter car.

hat-tip: Incredible Daughter #1