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Posts Tagged ‘Environment’

Forget global warming. The greatest threat to human civilization is a zombie infection. According to recent study on infectious diseases, a zombie infection could potentially wipe out our civilization if not properly addressed. According to the study, the only viable solution to a zombie infection is instant eradication of the infected.  Which gives me an idea for a bumper sticker: “Save the Earth, Kill a Zombie.” Pretty catchy.

Here is a link to the article on the study. I tried to get a copy of the study, but it isn’t out yet.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/zombies/

And here is a little Bob Hope humor which is appropriate for this article and this blog:

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I had always read excerpts of the Communist Manifesto, believing that was sufficient to understand the folly of this philosophy and the reason it failed. It was not until I fully read it that I became aware the folly was in my belief that it failed.

Here are the objectives Karl Marx believed were necessary to bring about a Communist revolution within a state. It seems that America has slowly headed down the path of Marx one step at a time.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. (Through eminent domain the needs of state always has priority over the rights of the individual. And under Kelo v. New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005), the state can decide who has more rights to property among private individuals.)

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. (Today the top marginal rate is 35%. But in 1980, the top tax bracket was paying a marginal rate of 70%. And many believe it may have to reach that point again to pay for the increased government spending. http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html )

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. (It appears that this only affects the rich in this country. Who would have thought you can lose rights by making more money. Interesting study on impact of estate tax http://www.ctj.org/pdf/afbfreportssummary.pdf )

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. (This results in gangster government. That could never happen here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thR-lVuztIY&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fbabalublog%2Ecom%2Fpage%2F2%2F&feature=player_embedded )

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. (This could never be a consideration in this country. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/business/worldbusiness/16iht-16banking.19415086.html )

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. (ICC, FCC, OPP. Wait, one of these doesn’t belong.)

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. (Try building anything without government approval. And wait until the building regulations of the cap and trade bill go into effect.)

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. ( An agricultural army once existed in this country in the form of the CCC. Today we are talking about creating green jobs and ‘mandatory’ volunteer service for all. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92288 )

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. (The equal distribution is being done unintentionally. Cities scare inhabitants away through high taxes.)

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. ( The Communist Manifesto came out in 1848. The U.S. created free public elementary schools in the late 19th century. Coincidence? Today elementary schools are free. But that freedom comes with a price. The government tells you where you can receive this free education.)

“We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.”
–Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959

~ Chuck

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So what do you do when the market crashes, unemployment is high, and production is low? Well, you simply pass laws to exacerbate the situation, that’s what you do. And that is exactly what the 1,200 page Global Warming Bill is  going to do. 

The  Global Warming Bill will have the same impact on our economy as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. It will kill it. The Smoot-Hawley Act, through protective tariffs, killed demand for American products world wide. This lowering of demand hindered America’s economic recovery. The Global Warming Bill is meant to reduce emissions, but the only thing it will reduce is  our chance of an early economic recovery. 

The Global Warming Bill will have one significant imapact, it will increase the cost of production. But the corporations will not feel this increase in production cost, because they will transfer the cost to their employees, who will be laid off, and the consumer will pay higher prices.

Initiatives like the Global Warming Bill, which is basically a cap and trade, have been attempted in other countries and have been dismal failures. If we can not learn from the experience of others we are simply traveling down the road of insanity.

And to be honest, the Global Warming Bill has already done more harm than good to the environment. Hundreds of trees have been chopped down and tons of hot air has been spewed to defend it.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D992F2QO0&show_article=1

* And I know the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was pass in 1930. But the title won’t be as catchy with that year.

~ Chuck

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Well, the 100 first days of HopeandChange are behind us. Every day that went by felt like a first date, we did not know what to expect and we were not sure if we wanted another one.

I found this great post by kathcetera at http://www.usnews.com/blogs/god-and-country/2009/4/29/gallup-poll-obama-closes-god-gap-further.html  that will help remind us of those first “enchanting” 100 days.

1. Calling for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act on the White House website.

 

2. Listing on the White House website a call for an expansion of the definition of federal hate crimes to include homosexual behavior.

 

3. Calling on the White House website for policies like the “Fairness Doctrine” that could silence conservative and Christian talk radio.

 

4. Repealing limitations on taxpayer-funding of human embryonic stem cell research.

 

5. Repealing limitations on taxpayer-funding of abortions overseas.

 

6. Pledging $50 million to the United Nation’s Population Fund, which supports China’s draconian one-child policy.

 

7. Proposing new rules to gut conscience clause protections for pro-life doctors and other medical personnel who don’t want to be forced to perform abortions or other procedures that violate their values.

 

8. Proposing increased funding for the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.

 

9. Calling on the White House website for “a goal that all middle and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year,” (mandatory volunteerism).

 

10. Inviting homosexual families to the White House Easter Egg Roll.

 

11. Allowing his attorney general to call for the reinstatement of Clinton-era restrictions on the Second Amendment.

 

12. Breaking his promise not to appoint lobbyists to his administration. He hired 17 in his first two weeks.

 

13. Breaking his promise to sign legislation only after a five-day period of public comments.

 

14. Asking that the monogram for Jesus Christ be covered up during a televised speech at a Catholic university in which Obama quotes the Sermon on the Mount.

 

Undermining Our National Security

 

15. Apologizing for America in Europe and Latin America.

 

16. Bowing before the Muslim king of Saudi Arabia.

 

17. Pledging to base America’s foreign policy toward Iran on “mutual respect” in a video to the Iranian people and Iran’s Holocaust-denying dictator.

 

18. Returning the bust of Winston Churchill given to George Bush after 9/11 by our British allies.

 

19. Giving British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the leader of America’s most loyal ally, a box of DVDs that don’t work in British DVD players.

 

20. Ordering Guantanamo Bay closed without any idea of where to send the terrorist suspects held there.

 

21. Suggesting that some of those terrorists now at GITMO may kill again, but may also be released onto U.S. soil and set up with welfare benefits.

 

22. Caving to communist Cuba by relaxing travel restrictions and remittances for Cuban Americans before any Cuban political prisoners have been released.

 

23. Shaking hands with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

 

24. Sitting silently though a 50-minute anti-American diatribe by Nicaragua’s communist president, Daniel Ortega.

 

25. Releasing Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the suspected mastermind the 2000 suicide bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

 

26. Releasing classified CIA memos outlining our interrogation techniques.

 

27. Telling our CIA agents not to be discouraged when he acknowledges their “mistakes.”

 

28. Declaring a new openness to “truth commissions” and prosecuting intelligence officials involved in enhanced interrogations of terrorists.

 

29. Proposing to send a $900 million foreign aid package to Palestinians in Gaza.

 

30. Asking Congress to relax the law so that some of that money could go to the terrorist organization Hamas.

 

31. Calling for the U.S. to eliminate its nuclear weapons.

 

32. Telling Russian President Demitri Medvedev that America’s commitment to missile defense is negotiable.

 

33. Dropping the term “enemy combatants” for GITMO detainees.

 

34. Dropping the term “terrorism” for “man-made disaster.”

 

35. Dropping the term “Global War on Terror” for “overseas contingency operations.”

 

36. Giving his first interview as president to the Arab language network Al-Arabiya.

 

37. Telling the Muslim world that his “job” was to communicate “that the Americans are not your enemy,” when it’s Muslim extremists who have declared war on us.

 

38. Proposing that military veterans use private insurance for the cost of a service-related injury before they would be eligible for coverage through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

 

Undermining Free Enterprise

 

39. Signing the trillion-dollar plus so-called “stimulus” bill, which the Congressional Budget Office said would actually hurt long-term economic growth.

 

40. Saying Caterpillar wouldn’t lay off workers if his trillion-dollar stimulus bill passed Congress. Obama signed the bill on Feb. 17th. On March 17th, Caterpillar laid off nearly 2,500 workers.

 

41. Hosting a “Fiscal Responsibility Summit” one week after signing the trillion-dollar “stimulus” bill.

 

42. Railing against “outrageous recklessness and greed” of AIG bonuses that were legally protected in the so-called “stimulus” bill he signed four days after it passed, not five as he promised.

 

43. Breaking his promise on earmark reform by signing the $410 billion “omnibus” spending bill with billions in earmarks.

 

44. Proposing a $3.6 trillion budget that doubles the national debt in five years and triples it in ten years.

 

45. Proposing a “carbon cap and trade” scheme that will raise energy taxes by hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars.

 

46. Burning more than 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to fly to Iowa for Earth Day to promote “wind power.”

 

47. Proposing $634 billion in higher taxes for socialized health care.

 

48. Proposing to raise taxes on small business owners.

 

49. Saying the White House is open to the idea of taxing employer-sponsored health care benefits as income.

 

50. Signing a massive expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, calling it “a down payment on my commitment to cover every single American.”

 

51. Establishing the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research to give bureaucrats the power to ration health care and tell your doctors what care you can and cannot have.

 

52. Signing the 2009 Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which the Sierra Club praised specifically because it “will safeguard millions of acres … from oil and gas leasing.”

 

53. Suggesting he has found $1.5 trillion in bogus “savings” by not spending money in Iraq that we were not planning to spend years from now.

 

54. Ordering his Cabinet to “cut” $100 million in spending in 90 days, after proposing nearly $5 trillion in spending in his first 90 days.

 

55. Proposing to limit tax deductions for home mortgage interest.

 

56. Proposing to limit tax deductions for charitable donations.

 

57. Refusing to allow banks to repay TARP money.

 

58. Bailing out AMTRAK with a 10% increase in its taxpayer subsidies.

 

59. Bailing out the United Auto Workers Union with billions of taxpayer dollars to GM and Chrysler.

 

60. Bailing out the United Auto Workers by giving it a majority ownership stake in Chrysler. Yes, the union will own the company.

 

61. Bailing out Big Labor by issuing an executive order mandating that infrastructure projects paid for with “stimulus” funds must use union labor, guaranteeing higher costs for the taxpayer.

 

62. Bailing out Big Labor again by repealing regulations requiring the disclosure of how union dues are spent. So much for “transparency.”

 

63. Saying, “The United States government has no interest in running GM,” then vowing that the government will back auto warranties.

 

64. Saying, “The United States government has no interest in running GM,” then firing the CEO of General Motors.

 

65. Allowing states to set their own fuel efficiency and emissions standards, making it harder for struggling auto makers to compete.

 

Personnel Is Policy

 

66. Nominating Timothy “The Turbo Tax Evader” Geithner as Treasury Secretary to oversee the IRS.

 

67. Nominating as attorney general Eric Holder, who urged Bill Clinton to pardon tax evader Marc Rich and 8 FALN terrorists.

 

68. Nominating David Ogden, a prominent attorney for the pornography industry, to be Deputy Attorney General.

 

69. Nominating Tom Daschle, who owed more than $140,000 in back taxes, as Health and Human Services Secretary.

 

70. Nominating Kathleen Sebelius, who is ardently pro-abortion and owed $8,000 in back taxes, to be HHS Secretary.

 

71. Nominating Janet Napolitano, who said, “crossing the border is not a crime per se,” as Homeland Security Secretary.

 

72. Nominating Steven Chu as Energy Secretary. Last September, Chu said, “Somehow, we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” which at that time were roughly $8.00 a gallon.

 

73. Nominating Ron Kirk, who owed more than $6,000 in back taxes, as Trade Representative.

 

74. Nominating Bill Richardson, who was embroiled in an ethics scandal, as Secretary of Commerce.

 

75. Nominating Nancy Killefer, who also owed back taxes, to be the government’s “Efficiency Czar.”

 

76. Nominating Rosa Brooks, a leftwing acolyte of George Soros, as an advisor to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.

 

77. Nominating Harold Koh, an ardent supporter of using international law in the interpretation of our Constitution, to be the top legal advisor to the State Department.

 

78. Nominating Carol Browner, who was a member of the Socialist International, to be “Climate and Energy Czar.”

 

79. Nominating John Holdren, an environmental extremist and advocate of population control, as the White House Science Advisor.

 

80. Nominating Dawn Johnsen, who is so pro-abortion she once compared pregnancy to slavery, to direct the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.

 

81. Nominating Charles Freeman, an anti-Israel, pro-Arab apologist, to be head of the National Intelligence Council.

 

82. Nominating Tony West, who represented American Taliban John Walker Lindh and exposed the Bush Administration’s terrorist surveillance program, to the Justice Department’s Civil Division.

 

83. Nominating Annette Nazareth to be Deputy Treasury Secretary, who withdrew after a month-long probe into her taxes.

 

84. Trying to nominate pro-abortion Catholics to be ambassador to the Vatican, a move even John Kerry opposed.

 

85. Appointing Ellen Moran of the pro-abortion group Emily’s List as his White House communications director.

 

86. Appointing Melody Barnes, a board member of Emily’s List and Planned Parenthood, as his director of the Domestic Policy Council.

 

87. Appointing Harry Knox of the Human Rights Campaign (the largest homosexual rights lobbying group) to the White House’s Faith Based Advisory Council.

 

88. Appointing Adolfo Carrion as Director of White House Office of Urban Affairs, even though he is under investigation for kickbacks in a scandal nearly identical to one that cost GOP Senator Ted Stevens his election.

 

89. Nominating David Hamilton as his first appointment to a federal appeals court. Judge Hamilton has issued a number of controversial rulings, including prohibiting the Indiana House of Representatives from opening sessions with prayers in the name of Jesus.

 

Other Obama Outrages

 

90. Telling congressional Republicans to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.

 

91. Coordinating attacks on Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer out of the White House.

 

92. Hosting weekly parties at the White House, serving up $100-a-pound Waygu beef during what Obama called, “the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”

 

93. Laughing it up on 60 Minutes as the country is mired in a recession.

 

94. Allowing Air Force One to buzz the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan, creating panic in New York City.

 

95. Disparaging Special Olympians on the Tonight Show.

 

96. Allowing his Department of Homeland Security to issue a report accusing pro-life, smaller government conservatives and returning Iraq/Afghanistan veterans of being “rightwing extremists.”

 

97. Promising to push for comprehensive immigration reform, i.e., amnesty.

 

98. Killing the school voucher program in the District of Columbia, while sending his two daughters to an elite private school, rather than D.C.’s public schools.

 

99. Moving the Census out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House.

 

100. Relying too much on his teleprompter.

I know you can not judge the direction of a Presidency by the first 100 days of its administration. But by the actions taken in the first 100 days, you can tell what principals it will apply through out the remainder of its adminstration.  And right now, I don’t like what I see.

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Next time you see yourself discussing the merits of drilling for oil within the U.S., and trust me it will happen, you will be ready to debunk some of the myths told by the left. The following are the alleged “truths” about drilling for oil and the proper response to them.

(Myth #1) Drilling is pointless because the United States has only three percent of the world’s oil reserves:

  • This refers only to known oil reserves and is based on old data gathered by outdated equipment.
  • In 2006, the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) estimated that the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) could hold 45 billion barrels worth of oil.

(Myth #2) The oil companies are not using the leases they already have:

  • According to MMS, there were 7,457 active leases as of June 8, 2008; of those, only 1,877 were classified as “producing.”
  • However, many leases cannot meet the requirements to be considered “producing” (an estimated 130,000 barrels of oil a day), yet they still do exploratory drills and build the infrastructure necessary to market the oil.

(Myth #3) Drilling is environmentally dangerous:

  • Between 1993 and 2007, there were 651 spills of all sizes at OCS facilities that released 47,800 barrels of oil.
  • With 7.5 billion barrels of oil produced in that time, that equates only to 1 barrel of oil spilled per 156,900 barrels produced.

With this information, you are now ready to face your day knowing that the left can’t pull a fast one on you.

Washington Post Editorial: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102145.html

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You can breath a sigh of relief, Candidate Barack H. Obama has solved our energy crisis. Inflate your tires. It seems that if you inflate your tires, America will be energy independent without the need of drilling. Now I have heard about pulling ideas out of thin air, but oil, that’s a new one.

Link to eloquent speech: http://www.breitbart.tv/html/142113.html

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Looking over the E.ON/Netz report, it becomes clear that wind power is not a sustainable source of energy.  Here are some of the highlights:

  • Only limited wind power is available. In order to cover electricity demands, traditional power station capacities must be maintained as so-called “shadow power stations” at a total level of more than 80% of the installed wind energy capacity, so that the electricity consumption is also covered during economically difficult periods.
  • Only limited forecasting is possible for wind power infeed. If the wind power forecast differs from the actual infeed, the transmission system operator must cover the difference by utilising reserve capacity. This requires reserve capacities amounting to 50-60% of the installed wind power capacity.
  • Wind power requires a corresponding grid infrastructure. The windy coastal regions of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony are precisely the places where the grids have now reached their capacity limits through wind power. At present, just under 300 km of new high-voltage and extra-high voltage lines are being planned there in order to create the transmission capacities required for transporting the wind power.

The 2005 report concludes that: “Wind energy cannot replace conventional power stations to any significant extent…The more wind power capacity [on] the grid, the lower the percentage of traditional generation it can replace.”

http://www.countryguardian.net/eonwindreport2005.pdf

 ~ Chuck

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