Saturday Morning News & Notes

It's cold in the northeast and most of the country. Good snow-making weather though.

Anyway, here's what's new:

-The EPA was created partly because Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring about DDT being used to kill mosquitoes was harming bald eagle eggs and potentially wiping them out. Ironically, global warmingists have come full circle and have requested a permit to kill eagles to create clean energy:

CHEYENNE — One of the biggest wind energy projects under development in the U.S. got closer Thursday to securing a federal permit to kill a limited number of eagles without penalty.A final plan released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would help ensure the Chokecherry-Sierra Madre wind farm in south-central Wyoming doesn’t kill too many bald and golden eagles with its hundreds of spinning turbine blades.

You real can't make this shit up. 

-Does anyone really think this would've been ordered had Hillary won? I'd be really pleased to find out why the Dept. of Homeland Security was trying to hack into the state of Georgia's secured site. Perhaps the man who has been president for 8 years should have been asked why the system is so broken and hasn't been fixed while he served his two terms.

-Well, I guess China is responding to the president of Taiwan calling President-elect Trump:

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Chinese military aircraft on Saturday flew over waterways near Taiwan as part of long-range exercises, Taiwan said, the first such flights since a telephone call between Taiwan's leader and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump irked China.China claims self-ruled Taiwan as its own and has never renounced the use of force to take back what it deems a wayward province.Trump's call with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Dec. 2 was the first between a U.S. president-elect or president and a Taiwan leader since President Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition to China from Taiwan in 1979.

The media will make a big deal of this but this is just saber-rattling. 

-Some asshole electoral college electors have said they would not vote for Trump even though he won their votes fair and square. They are attention whores who should be shamed, tarred and feathered then shamed again. 

-One of the reasons Trump won was because he responded to his critics immediately via social media or in-person. He's bypassed the normal Sunday morning shows and takes his opinions right to the American public. That's scares the hell out of media who see themselves as gate keepers. With Trump they man the gates and he walks through the front door completely ignoring them. This is a great example of Trump being Trump. 

California Reaps What It Has Sown

My old home state is feeling the blow back after years of enacting every liberal policy they could. Bowing to the unions and giving them insane retirement benefits? Check. Allowing illegal aliens to have rights and burden the counties and municipalities with enormous costs? Check. Passing ridiculous environmental policies with no basis in fact? Check.

California's least detestable senator is up in arms because the price of gas has spiked to unheard of levels in the last few weeks. $6 per gallon gas is not so unthinkable now. Sen. Feinstein knows full-well that it is the environmental lobby that has led her state to this point but has opted to try to score points by blaming the gas companies. She's not once broached the subject that the gas blends sold in California are so restrictive that making any type of profit is difficult.

The best-case scenario is that gas from other neighboring states can be trucked in to help increase supply and knock the price down somewhat. However, neighboring state gas does not meet the standards set forth in California and can't be sold there.

Besides, remember when Obama's energy guy seemed to think that rising gas costs are a good thing? His own policies are playing a part in this as well. Hell, if I were a refiner, I'd abandon the state altogether. Why submit to the oppressive regulatory hassles when you can turn around and make more with a lot less annoyances elsewhere.

And for the record, the governor of California agrees with me as he has ordered the state to relax smog rules so that refineries can start running faster. I would say that is the greatest proof that the policies enacted by him and the lefties in thee state are causing the problem.

Unfortunately for those of us living outside DC, this is, in effect, a tax that has been thrust upon us by the policies Obama has put in place. Listen, it hurts me since I drive a long way to work, but imagine you are one the lost souls living in Obamanation who can't find a job and live on the crumbs thrown you by the administration. Do you think those poor folks can afford to pay more than double what they did when Obama took the oath? Me neither.

This is just another example of the shambles that California has become. I love that state and want it to be the national leader again. Alas, the chance of that happening again are slim and none and the real energy has shifted to red states like Texas where freedom is abundant and regulations are not.

The Failed Obama Energy Policy

There has been a great many failures under Obama ranging from economic policy to his abysmal record on instituting policies that encourage job growth. I could go on but the failures have been chronicled here for the last four years.

But no failure has been greater or had a greater impact than Obama policies on energy.

Back four years ago, the environmental lobby had power. People still rated environmental issues rather highly among their concerns and a lot of the reason was global warming hysteria stoked to a high level by what started as far left thinking but eventually became neo-leftist dogma. The planet was suffering from rising temps and it was all going to kill us all unless we all paid a tax to supports those poorer among us who would be effected. The biggest redistribution scheme ever perpetrated was close to passing and Obama was the one who was going to push it through.

Then a funny thing happened, Obamanomics kicked in and we all got poorer. Instead of fretting over the poor polar bears, we were worried about our daily survival and keeping our jobs.

Obama had run on a policy of green jobs and green tech. These, said The One, were the steady and long-lasting jobs of the future. The interesting thing was that none of us who were in the business at the time had any idea what he was talking about.

So Obama rammed through the stimulus and instead of targeting money for industries that were solid and sustainable--like coal, petroleum extraction and production and natural gas, Obama sent our tax dollars to companies like Solyndra that could never hope to compete and had no established business model.

In the case of natural gas, a resource that American companies learned to exploit in ways never thought imaginable, was targeted by environmentalists and by the Obama EPA. Any president with experience in business would have seen the great opportunities for the nation and worked to allow for the maximum return to our economy. Instead, the EPA started releasing bogus reports about the dangers of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" in western Pennsylvania and the dangers of extracting previously unrecoverable crude in other areas. The fact that many of the studies and anti-fracking stories came from those with a seriously vested interest in the matter remain uncommented upon by the MSM.

EPA head Lisa Jackson is one of the most ideological agency heads in our history (when you are featured in a good light by the Guardian, you are far left). At every turn she restricted the exploitation of our natural resources and refused to hear any other discussion than that she espoused. Barack Obama threatened to shut down coal mining operations and he set Jackson on that course from day one. She's a zealot of the worst sort. She believes that she's right and anyone who questions her is wrong. Jackson exemplifies the sheer elitism of the Obama years and she trusts people who share her ideology.

But never in the last five years has either Obama or Jackson explained how we were going to feed our ever-increasing need for energy--whether it be for propelling planes and cars to firing power plants. They haven't budged on nuclear, sue coal-fired plants and issued brutal regulations of manufacturing through emissions standards that are expensive and restrictive.

Juxtapose the situation in Canada and our own. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has vision, he saw that Canada has a future as an energy giant. They sit upon oil that has previously been difficult to extract but now--thanks to technology developed by energy companies-can be removed and sold. He offered the US reduced rates if we built a pipeline to transfer the oil to refineries and assured us that we could slash our reliance on Mid East oil by a huge margin. Of course, Obama voted present, made no firm decision (a hallmark of his presidency) and eventually said no. Canada said okay and sold the oil to Chinese interests for a higher rate.

This is long-winded but the issue of energy is a big one. There exist more jobs in energy as a sector than most others. States that have been derided because they provide coal and other natural resources are finally back in a position to have their say. States like Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia can now speak up and say that Obama's energy policies hurt real people. Ridiculous regulatory burdens instituted by a northeast liberal sitting behind a desk in DC and answering to no one have had a profoundly horrible effect on these states and driven them back instead of moving them forward. Funny that the EPA would change their policies on key issues once they saw that it would hurt Obama politically but I digress.

On January 20, 2013, when Obama moves out of the White House, the vision of him and EPA Secretary Lisa Jackson being booted is one that I will savor. President Romney can do us all a favor by putting every single regulatory burden she instituted on hold and evaluating all of them on their merits. I'm guessing that most will not survive.

Are "Green Jobs" The Biggest Government Scam Ever?

As someone who has been in the environmental business for twenty years, I used to chuckle when Obama and other liberals used to talk about what was first referred to as "green tech" and eventually became "green jobs". There was no such thing or at least not enough out there to qualify as an actually sector of the job market.

Perhaps if Obama had resurrected the Superfund or offered a tax incentive for businesses to clean up the environmental messes they made, we'd have seen an actually green sector evolve but it sure as hell wasn't coming from solar cells and windmills. A true push for remediation of contaminated sites would have cost nothing out of pocket but returned a huge amount of jobs in remediation construction, demolition, engineering and new construction on the formerly contaminated sites.

Instead we get this:

 The Obama administration distributed $9 billion in economic “stimulus” funds to solar and wind projects in 2009-11 that created, as the end result, 910 “direct” jobs -- annual operation and maintenance positions -- meaning that it cost about $9.8 million to establish each of those long-term jobs.

It took $9.8-million to create jobs that probably pay on average less than $50,000 per year. So where did the money go? To Obama cronies of course who lined pockets and ran away like Solyndra and the myriad other companies that Obama showered our tax dollars on.

Obama could have easily given a $9-billion tax cut and gotten a shit load more of a return.

New Hot Air writer Erika Johnsen notes that the Obama administration's definition of "green jobs" is very loose and still it couldn't come up with more than 910:

Obama: Hey, We Should Really Focus on Climate Change as an Issue

Please do Mr. President, please do:

President Obama is vowing to make the case for action on global warming during the 2012 campaign. 

“I suspect that over the next six months, this is going to be a debate that will become part of the campaign, and I will be very clear in voicing my belief that we're going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way,” Obama told Rolling Stone magazine in a newly published interview. 

Obama’s comments follow a first term that saw global warming legislation collapse in Congress but several administrative steps to address climate proceed, such as tougher auto mileage rules and first-time greenhouse gas standards for new power plants. 

“Part of the challenge over these past three years has been that people's No. 1 priority is finding a job and paying the mortgage and dealing with high gas prices. In that environment, it's been easy for the other side to pour millions of dollars into a campaign to debunk climate-change science,” Obama said.

Got that? Because of Obama's lame policies, people are more focused on helping their families survive than focus on a theory that has been thoroughly disputed over the last few years. But you see, it's not a flawed theory, it's those evil corporations who "poured millions of dollars" into a campaign to enlighten folks about global warming climate change while Obama was diligently focused--laser-like--on reviving the economy...and playing golf.

 No, it couldn't have been the released emails that showed the leading advocates of climate change legislation urging other scientists to "hide the decline" or the complete obliteration of the work performed by CRU. Oh no, it was those evil one per centers who were trying to fool you. Not only do those rich bastards hate the environment but they hate, you, gays, minorities and puppies (although they've never had them with barbecue sauce like the Commander in Chief has) but they want the oceans to rise and temperatures to soar (albeit it's only one half of one degree centigrade).

 I really hope Obama makes this a central issue of his campaign, but really, what else can he talk about that was successful?

 Exit question: What issues are really important to Americans? Hmm, climate change doesn't seem to be fairing very well.

Cap and Tax Craters

That sound you heard earlier today was the sound of a million liberal skulls exploding in unison. They got a watered down (yet still horrific) healthcare bill, Gitmo is still open, Obama increased troops in Afghanistan instead of bringing them home and now the Dems are selling them out on their long-held and most desired wet dream:

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Senate is shelving efforts to pass legislation that would limit emissions of heat-trapping gases linked to climate change, dealing a major blow to one of President Barack Obama's top priorities.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said Thursday that neither he nor the White House had persuaded 60 senators to support even a limited proposal seeking to restrict emission from electric-power companies. Mr. Reid offered no timetable for action on such a bill, but said Democrats would continue trying to build support for such legislation.

Mr. Reid said the party's leadership will push instead for more limited legislation, aimed at holding oil giant BP PLC "accountable" for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Specifically, he said the measure would include a provision to remove the cap on economic damages paid to residents and small businesses by oil companies after oil spills. Mr. Reid said the bill would also include incentives to encourage the production and purchase of vehicles fueled by natural gas, and to fund various land and water-conservation programs.

It's all bullshit as anyone with a brain knows. The public has no patience for a new law that will increase energy prices potentially 30-50%, will cause a drastic rise in consumer prices, destroy what ever profits small business makes and, in light of the Climategate scandal, will probably serve no good purpose.

Reid knew full-well that this bill would have been used like a club to beat incumbent Dems with and would have ensured the loss of both chambers.

Sorry libs, greens and watermelons (green on the outside and red on the inside) but your dream of forcing us to pay exorbitant prices for energy have taken a backseat in the name of politics.

Global Warming Belief Melting Away

In the seven years I've been writing this blog (damn, 7 years is an eon in the blogosphere but I digress) I've pointed out numerous instances where the facts presented about global warming just didn't add up. Let's just say I was one of the sceptics back when being a sceptic made one a pariah--especially in the environmental business in which I make my living. It was kind of like eating a roast beef sandwich for lunch while working for PETA.

Anyway, in the last six months or so, we've seen the carefully constructed "science" behind the case for man-caused global warming be obliterated. From the "hide the decline" e-mail leak to the Himalayan glacier embarrassment, it's been a non-stop rebuke to those who made their name and their money from perpetuating this myth. Somewhere along the line, too many governments and too many universities got in on the act and it snowballed to the point that it was no longer about the science but about the cash one could make by adjusting the numbers and calling it science.

When the Climate Research Unit e-mails were released, we got an unprecedented look at just how important it was to those who were leaders in global warming studies to make the data fit their preconceived notions--about as unscientific as anything can be. Science is disproving things and looking at all the data to determine a hypothesis, not fudging numbers to make your work look better. These guys were the world leaders on climate science and billions if not trillions of dollars have been spent by nations around the world based on what these guys wrote and passed off as legitimate science. That's billions of dollars, shekels, rupees, euros, pesos and pounds that could have been spent on needy places like Haiti and Ghana. Instead the money was moved in the biggest Ponzi schemes ever devised in an effort to redistribute money from the 1st world to the 3rd. A liberal wet dream is there ever was one.

But now the jig is up and the news is out, the world is starting to catch on that we've been had. The Brits have been huge supporters of carbon emissions reduction and belief in the Great Global Warming Swindle but that's changed dramatically and just in the last three months:

The Populus poll of 1,001 adults found 25% did not think global warming was happening, a rise of 8% since a similar poll was conducted in November.

The percentage of respondents who said climate change was a reality had fallen from 83% in November to 75% this month.

And only 26% of those asked believed climate change was happening and "now established as largely man-made"...

"It is very unusual indeed to see such a dramatic shift in opinion in such a short period," Populus managing director Michael Simmonds told BBC News.

"The British public are sceptical about man's contribution to climate change - and becoming more so," he added.

"More people are now doubters than firm believers."

This is from the very liberal BBC I should note.

I know that weather and climate are two mutually exclusive things but people are out in weather every day and have discerned that it's not been getting warmer in the aggregate, but getting colder. I know that the fot of snow I'm looking at right now outside my window is what it's always been; winter precipitation and nothing more. But when we get hit with two huge storms in a month and a half, people start to get sceptical. Add to that the fact that these global warming zealots have said it's because of global warming that we are having these storms and the average persons bullshit meter pegs at eleven.

Climate change politics and global warming rhetoric is not dead but it's waning. Once more people realize that it's OK to ask questions and not be labeled a "flat earther" or some other such garbage, the more people will realize they've been had. Once that happens, the money will start to dry up and the issue will fade until the next one comes along and the next after that.

Until that battle, we are seeing the beginning of the end of the Great Global Warming Swindle.

Update: California Republicans have launched a ballot initiative that would suspend greenhouse gas emission rules in the state until the unemployment rate improves to 5.5% or better. I bet it will pass too.

Obama Doing Everything He Can to Destroy American Business

Obama's gone full bore since the inauguration to either sink what industry we have left or take it over. Today, he sealed the deal and allowed his Environmental Protection Agency to start regulating a gas that is a requirement for life on the planet:

Officials gather in Copenhagen this week for an international climate summit, but business leaders are focusing even more on Washington, where the Obama administration is expected as early as Monday to formally declare carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant.

An "endangerment" finding by the Environmental Protection Agency could pave the way for the government to require businesses that emit carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases to make costly changes in machinery to reduce emissions -- even if Congress doesn't pass pending climate-change legislation. EPA action to regulate emissions could affect the U.S. economy more directly, and more quickly, than any global deal inked in the Danish capital, where no binding agreement is expected.

Many business groups are opposed to EPA efforts to curb a gas as ubiquitous as carbon dioxide.

An EPA endangerment finding "could result in a top-down command-and-control regime that will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project," U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said in a statement. "The devil will be in the details, and we look forward to working with the government to ensure we don't stifle our economic recovery," he said, noting that the group supports federal legislation.

Mark my words that the US Chamber of Commerce is about to have an even worse jihad leveled against it. Several high profile corporations have already bailed under the heat The One has placed on them but they ain't seen a damn thing yet; but I digress.

So Lisa Jackson wasn't happy just driving business out of the state of New Jersey. No, she wants to destroy industry in the US as well and give India and China a leg up. Ask anyone who tries to conduct business in the the Garden state how oppressive the environmental regulations are.

Background: I'm in the environmental business and have worked in the two toughest states environmental regulation-wise--California and New Jersey. I watched as industry gave the Golden State the finger because of insane environmental policies and went south to Mexico or east to Nevada or Arizona. I believe in sane environmental policies--policies that actually protect people and the environment. Examples would include Superfund cleanup and elimination of actual air pollutants that could cause harm like lead and benzene. Lisa Jackson was a horrid leader on remediation and allowed hazardous sites to remain un-remediated and kids to live near them while cozying up to the companies that impacted the sites.

Jackson was slammed by that noted conservative site The Huffington Post for her shady record on cleaning up Superfund sites. She was like everyone else in the Obama administration: close to those they are supposed to regulate. Geithner, Bernanke, Jackson...Get the point? Now she passes legislation that furthers an unproven scientific finding. By the way, she's still not pushed to clean up Superfund sites that are leaching heavy metals, organic toxins and dioxins into the water and land now that she's on the federal level. I'm a conservative and would re-institute Superfund immediately if I had the chance.

Think I'm joking? How can one explain this? How about a site that was allowed to be capped and made into a golf course (where a PGA event was played] next to a sports field and a luxury condo development). Capping is essentially putting a plastic cover over acres of contamination:

A 2004 investigation by the Newark Star-Ledger found that Honeywell Inc., PPG Industries and Maxus Energy Corporation, the companies responsible for the chromium pollution, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbying and millions of dollars on their own scientific studies to convince the state of New Jersey that its chromium standard was too stringent.

According to the investigation, when the lobbying effort began, New Jersey considered chromium levels in soil at 10 parts per million to be safe; by the end of the companies' lobbying campaign the chromium standard was raised to 6,100 parts per million: one of the loosest standards in the country, allowing the companies to save millions on cleanup costs.

But jeez, carbon dioxide? This is a policy that gives Obama temporary street cred in Copenhagen but sentences his nation to a decade (hopefully) of effectively conducting commerce with a ball and chain around their checkbook. All for a supposed problem that is far from proven.

We are witnessing a major turning point in the economic outlook of the nation. Anyone who is out of work or loses their jobs because of this can feel free to take it out on their elected representative even though Obama subverted the Constitution and did this through the EPA simply to save them from actually having to vote as the Founding Fathers intended.

The Stimulus & Green Jobs Myth

In the lead up to the stimulus signing, Obama talked of pumping money into environmental causes and "green" jobs. It seems as though he talked the talk but doesn't quite walk the walk.

This from the EPA website where $7.2-billion was set aside for the EPA to implement these vague programs, we have an interactive map that shows state-by-state allocations and how much they've spent thus far.

Let's look at a few states:

New Jersey has $8,177,256 allocated. They've spent $7,589 or a measly or 0.092%.

Hmmm, that's a small amount. But wait, what about a state that really needs increased spending like Ohio where they are losing jobs like no other place. Surely they have had a massive amount of money spent on these mythical "green" jobs to replace the dwindling car industry and other positions. Let's see:

Allocated: $297,223,862, spent: $21,962 or 0.007%.

Wow, thank goodness they supported Obama, huh?

OK, the greenest state of all, the Golden State has to be spending money hand over fist to get their folks back to work and help close that huge deficit they have. How much?

Er...They've spent $5,827,399, an absolute fortune when compared to the other states but what percentage is that? Uh, how about 1.195%.

So the stimulus was so important that to go against Obama was akin to being not only un-American but to be be a blasphemer has released a piddling amount of money for the projects he championed the most.

About the way we expected things to happen on the right side of the blogosphere.

The Real Cost of Global Warming & Deficits

It's all out in the open now. Obama's Treasury Secretary has now let the cat out of the bag with regard to the administration's thinking on China, global warming and what responsibility they believe the American people have in the alleged environmental ailments our planet is suffering:

But yesterday, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said something amazing—U.S. consumers should pay for part of Chinese greenhouse-gas emissions. From Reuters:

“It’s important that those who consume the products being made all around the world to the benefit of America — and it’s our own consumption activity that’s causing the emission of greenhouse gases, then quite frankly Americans need to pay for that,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

And there it is; America is a huge consumer of energy and thus a major polluter in their eyes. That means we have to pay to help clean up the nations we import products from. Forget the fact that China would be an oozing cesspool of chemical and biological waste even if we didn't import a single product from them. Just as the former Soviet Union raped and pillaged the planet from the former Czechoslavakia to the Ukraine, the Chinese are doing the same. Communism and environmentalism are not compatible in the least.

But the real key here is that China holds enormous amounts of our debt. Obama knows that they and the rest of the world are a bit edgy about the state of our economy and we needed to assuage some of their weariness. What better way then to say we'd pay for their pollution? It's a win-win for the Peoples Republic. But truth be told, Obama knows that we will need China to but our paper to pay for socialized medicine and he is flat out bribing them by taking this tack.

The idea that rich-country consumers should pick up the tab for some of China’s industrial emissions has been gaining currency lately—but not from within the Obama administration. The argument is that many of China’s factories churn out cheap stuff for the West, not for domestic consumption, so those consumers are actually responsible for the emissions. China, of course, loves the idea.

When is the Obama administration going to get it? China is a rich country and they got rich by industrial production. They made their own mess and now we're offering to clean it up for them.

I have a shirt made in Vietnam, pants made in El Salvador and numerous product made in Taiwan; are we going to pay for their emissions as well?

This could just be another area for trade tensions with China over the environment. The House climate bill includes a provision for mandatory “carbon tariffs” on dirty imports from countries such as China, which might be illegal under international trade law and which have riled up Beijing. President Obama and Senate leaders have frowned on hardline trade measures.

Of course they have, why should we pressure China to clean up their own mess when the decreasingly affluent Americans can do it for them.

Watch how quickly this sputters out as Obama puts pressure on Nancy Pelosi to strike the provision and essentially gives China the right to pollute at will. The American public has reached a breaking point with Obama and this would be enough to put us over the edge. The Chinese want more latitude in the region and want to control the area from their northern border to Singapore. They have built up their naval forces to do just that and our leadership is cow-towing to them at every turn.

Obama's deficits are going to cost us more than we ever imagined. We need China to support his agenda and if we have to pay for their emissions, it's but a small price in the long run to implement his policies and plans.

Welcome to the new America, welcome to Obamanation.

More here.

Media Starting to Question Global Warming "Science"

The USA Today has gone off the media reservation and actually dares to look at the veracity of those who push the global warming issue without taking into account the science that says it may not be carbon that's causing it or that it may not be happening at all:

Could the best climate models -- the ones used to predict global warming -- all be wrong?

Maybe so, says a new study published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The report found that only about half of the warming that occurred during a natural climate change 55 million years ago can be explained by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What caused the remainder of the warming is a mystery.

"In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record," says oceanographer Gerald Dickens, study co-author and professor of Earth Science at Rice University in Houston. "There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models."

This is blasphemy on a grand scale and while Gaia might not strike down author Doyle Rice, he'll be a target for Saint Al Gore who will not let anything that endangers his empire built on lies go unanswered upon.

The global warming swindler's--enabled by a compliant media--have been ramming carbon/warming data down our throats for a decade now and have effectively silenced any opposing viewpoints. The facade is starting to crumble now as people are experiencing colder springs and summers and not seeing rising oceans and environmental catastrophe that was supposed to happen 2-months, 2-years or 2-decades out.

Yes, I know weather is not climate but when it happens over a course of years it becomes a trend.

Two Issues That Will Help the GOP in 2010

The GOP has had a tin ear when it comes to sensing issues that will not rally the base but elicit a response from Democrats and Independents. The last week has given them two.

The first would be the Iranian situation. Obama's tepid response to those who seek only a small semblance of freedom should be point number 1A when it comes to ads during the next cycle. He essentially sold them out and that should be played out to the fullest. Here we saw--in real time--the quashing of the seeds of a revolution where people begged The One to respond in their favor and he punted.

Next we have the Cap and Trade fiasco. Americans are wavering on the entire global warming hysteria and the passage of that bill by the House with--what one can hope is a defeat in the Senate--should be point number one. Obama pushed for a bill that would or could raise the utility prices of the average American dramatically.

If the GOP had any coherence, they'd play it up as a tax during a major recession. Rasmussen has a huge gap between those who think it would help or hurt the economy:

Americans have mixed feelings about the historic climate change bill that passed the House on Friday, but 42% say it will hurt the U.S. economy.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 19% believe the climate change bill passed by the House on Friday will help the economy. Fifteen percent (15%) say it will have no impact, and 24% are not sure.

A majority of both Republicans (56%) and adults not affiliated with either major political party (52%) think the bill will hurt the economy. Among Democrats, however, 30% say it will help the economy, 23% that it will hurt and 21% say it will have no impact.

Hell, only 30% of Dems have any hope it will help and those are the green liberals and Kool-Aid drinkers who haunt the fringe. It's a loser and one that should embolden the GOP going into the health care fight and the next election cycle.

Here's to hoping the bastards don't blow it as they have so many times before.

Midwest and Northeast Way Colder Than Normal...I Blame Global Warming (or George W. Bush)

As soon as Global Warming swindlers realized that they look awful silly making GW speeches in extremely cold temps, they changed it from GW to "climate change". They may have to change it again to global cooling:

One of the reasons for this could be colder-than-normal weather across the northern tier of the country that has suppressed the number of thunderstorms and has significantly reduced the number of tornadoes this year. The number of reported tornadoes so far this year is 685, just over half of the average annual amount, which is 1,297.

According to Long Range Expert Joe Bastardi, areas from the northern Plains into the Northeast will have a "year without a summer." The jet stream, which is suppressed abnormally south this spring, is also suppressing the number of thunderstorms that can form. The ones that do form in areas of the Ohio Valley and West are forming in places with very cold temperatures, which can lead to more electrified thunderstorms than normal this year.

Emphasis mine.

The year without a summer? That would mean temps well below normal and interestingly that corresponds with a dearth in sunspot activity indicating once and for all that there is a correlation. In other words, global temps have a lot are cyclical and are naturally occurring so no amount of money, legislative action or restrictions on carbon dioxide will make a damn bit of difference.

Don't tell that to this guy, though.

In other words, the Great Global Warming Swindle has been exactly that, swindlers using pretzel logic to keep the money flowing from governments and idiotic believers.

Wednesday Morning News & Notes

Still raining, still gloomy, people are sick of it. If they say we are suffering a drought, the backlash will be enormous.

Anyway, here's what's new:

-The Kennedy's are fighting over Teddy's seat even though Teddy is currently alive and still occupying it. These people are shameless. American royalty my ass.

-Anti-gay marriage proponent semi-nude pictures found, Wait for the backlash.

-The Mafia is intruding on the idyllic world of greenies. Hell, the thuggish governments of the world are stealing billions, why should La Cosa Nostra be left out?

-Now this is just plain weird.

-Dealing with politics at work in the age of Obama.

Sea Change: 2/3 Believe Global Warming Not Man-Caused

It seems the majority of the country now has discovered what some of us knew all-along: Al Gore is a lying, hypocritical buffoon who has no credibility:

Just one-out-of-three voters (34%) now believe global warming is caused by human activity, the lowest finding yet in Rasmussen Reports national surveying. However, a plurality (48%) of the Political Class believes humans are to blame.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of all likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends, while seven percent (7%) blame some other reason. Eleven percent (11%) aren’t sure.

OK, maybe it doesn't say anything about feelings on Al Gore but it does mark a huge change in feelings on global warming at a time that the Obama administration is pushing very expensive environmental policies. This may be the issue that sets people against Obama in large numbers. I have seen it in my business; two years ago I'd ask my classes who believes global warming is man-made and it was nearly unanimous in the afirmative. Not any more.

The GOP should grab this issue with both hands when Obama uses his office to push new, oppressive and expensive regulations.

Update: That whole thing about polar ice melting...er, nevermind.

On the Environment, Capitalism & Reality

As anyone who has read this blog more than once knows, I own an environmental consulting firm. Mostly centered on remediation and training but as any consultant would tell you, I'll do anything that remotely deals with the environment.

That said, there's a big difference between someone in the environmental field and an environmentalist. I'm not an environmentalist but one that believes in sane environmental policy that will actually, well, protect the environment while not forcing industry to pack up and head for foreign climes.

That also being said, I'm also a capitalist and as such will pursue any work that will make me money. So I'm a bit torn on the Obama administrations sudden, yet expected leftward shift on the environment and environmental issues. I mean, it's a niche that could be highly lucrative but also one that could force good American companies to bolt south or north while leaving good American workers in the lurch. I befuddled and perplexed but as a good conservative and capitalist, I have to pursue the money.

So, the Obama EPA has decided to go balls to the wall and declare "greenhouse gases" a threat to human health that could lead to very strict emissions standards:

By Jim Tankersley WASHINGTON — The federal government's declaration Friday that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health marked a first step toward likely regulation of the tailpipe emissions of cars, power plants and factories that scientists blame for global warming.

The decision by the Environmental Protection Agency was a clear break with the Bush administration, which downplayed concerns about global warming, and set the stage for a possible national standard for vehicle emissions and other federal efforts to curb such pollution.

The Obama administration already is developing a plan to make the U.S. auto fleet cleaner by regulating carbon dioxide emissions from tailpipes. But the move Friday also gives it the capacity to either regulate larger emissions producers such as power plants or prod Congress to set limits, which the administration would prefer.

Now that, of course, flies in the face of this, which says that we are not, in fact, experiencing global warming in the frightful way Al Gore and the Obama EPA want us to believe. A quandary to be sure.

So how to play this; I mean, I could use the administrations actions as cause to scare potential clients into compliance or I could leave this idiocy alone and concentrate on my core business.

What to do?

I guess I'll do what any good capitalist would do. It's ironic that the socialistic Obama administration will help this enemy who is both capitalistic and a global warming sceptic.

Thanks dude.

Global Warming Scepticism Increasing

Whether it was the cold, brutal winter or that people are realizing that Global Warming Swindlers keep moving the goalposts, it's become a trend that every survey done shows that people are growing ever more sceptical:

PRINCETON, NJ -- Although a majority of Americans believe the seriousness of global warming is either correctly portrayed in the news or underestimated, a record-high 41% now say it is exaggerated. This represents the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade of Gallup polling on the subject.

...Apart from these findings about news coverage of global warming, the March 5-8 poll shows in a similar vein that Americans are a bit less concerned about the seriousness of global warming per se than they have been in recent years.

This is intriguing as Obama will now have to continue with his backdoor implementation of global warming policy via the Clean Air Act opposed to overtly instituting draconian, costly policies under the GW classification. It may not be so easy going through the EPA as it would going through congressional legislation.

It bears watching.