What does man-made CO₂ have to do with global warming? Apparently, nothing (Except maybe lining the pockets of the climate change profiteers).

Crime 1: Another multi-billion dollar subsidy for Government Motors.

When Obama stole Chrysler from its stockholders and gave it to his union cronies, we knew he would take every opportunity to waste taxpayer dollars trying to keep this lead balloon afloat. The Cash for Clunkers subsidy is just particularly egregious, since it works by subsidizing the last people in the world who need a subsidy: those who are well off enough to buy new cars in the midst of a deep recession. Talk about a middle class welfare program!

Crime 2: Eliminating Government Motors’ competition by gratuitously slagging an expected 750,000 perfectly good used cars in the sub-$4500 price range.

The Obamacrats aren’t just subsidizing cars for the well-to-do. They are destroying the cars that the less well-off are in the market for, driving up used car prices as part of their effort to make new cars more attractive:

Some parts may be kept but the engine and drive-train must be destroyed. Specifically the engine will be injected with a liquid glass solution to permanently disable the engine and it will be the responsibility of the dealer to make sure this is done to the engine.

Injected with liquid glass? Sounds like a Quentin Tarentino murder fantasy, and the reality isn’t any prettier. Witness Obama’s procedure for destroying the would-be cars of the non-wealthy:

Here is another one, a spiffy-looking Volvo that holds out for 4-plus minutes. Some clunker, and check out the row of semi-new cars lined up to go next: Read the rest of this entry »

Millions of Americans watch with horror as the Obama administration continues to implement its own version of ‘change.’ Change that involves an unprecedented and systematic devolution of power to the federal government, in direct contravention of the Constitution.

From the pending takeover of 17% of  economy under the auspices of health care reform, to the government takeover and subsequent ownership of automobile companies, to the unconstitutional interference in the formerly private market under the rubric of stimulating the economy. Not to mention the proposed cap and trade legislation which would give the federal government unlimited powers of taxation and regulation under the guise of saving the planet.

Totally ignored by elected officials of both parties is the tenth amendment of the Constitution, which states very clearly, “The power not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Many Americans don’t agree with the left’s idea of a ‘living constitution’, arguing that the intent of the founders should govern the interpretation and application of the Constitution, not the whimsical and politically motivated present day politicians. And, largely unreported by the media, they are starting to stand up to the federal government. Read the rest of this entry »

We have some great animation film talent in Pixar and Disney movies. So what’s that got to do with Obama, the price of gas and health care you ask? It’s a constructive lesson and reminder…. you need to view “the big picture” to understand the plot.

For example, could you grasp the full impact of Nemo, Cars, Shrek etal by viewing merely a single cel (short for a single celluid frame of film) of the animation? Could you grasp the enormity of the ethics complaint assault on Palin by only learning about one or two of them?

But of course not. And much is the same with Obama’s cinemascope production to destroy the US economy… all using single cel trailers and razzle dazzling us with fuzzy math. And until those cells are edited together, the plot of this morbid “cartoon” does not become clear.

The O’faithful show you a single cel of his spending… ala the Stimulus/ARRA, the TARP bailout decisions, cap and trade, or health care, etc. By throwing out a number we are becoming far too comfortable hearing – a few trillion here and a few trillion there – Joe and Josephine Q. Public, as well as the partisan Congress members, merely shrug it off, assuming we’ll figure out a way to pay China back.

The problem is, until you start viewing all Obama and Congress’ spending in full wide screen version, you don’t feel the impact of the extremely flawed fuzzy math used to advance these programs in the media.

Case in point… let’s start with health care. Today the ever stellar Jake Tapper gives us the summary of the cost of health care to our individual pocketbooks. It’s easy to boggle the minds of the voter when you package “free” benefits and unprecedented spending in one national bill, then promise all those rich people and small businesses making over $350K (at least today…) will be paying for it. “Not I, said the Little Red Hen”. That couldn’t possibly affect me.

But first, take some time and absorb some personal realities about the tax rates Mr. Tapper lays out. I want you to close your eyes, and picture the this… taxpayers in the top 50% of tax brackets pay 94% of the nation’s tax bill. The top 1% earners pay 33.7 percent alone, and the top 5% pay 53.8%.

When you remove these “evil rich types” from the equation, there is a hefty amount of entrepreneurial small business types – who hire most of the US workers – that shoulder the current US tax bill for that 6% poverty group to which Obama caters.

Do you have that picture firmly in mind? That we’re not talking about the Bill Gates and Warren Buffetts only here? Okay…

The current buzz is that Obama’s “only” trying to take the tax rates up for group of Americans that support Congressional spending to 39%. After health care, that’s bogus, bupkis and a serious political whopper.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not easy living in the DC area. The place is a 60 square mile enclave bordered by reality, where the phrase “I voted for George Bush” gets you looked at like you have two heads, while being a gay vegan is considered perfectly normal. No, really!

You can imagine how irritating it gets when out trying to enjoy a beer and one of Al Gore’s cult followers begins proselytizing to the cause of Global Warming. But I’ve discovered that like the followers of any other religion, debating someone’s belief system is pointless. Pointing out how Climate Change is based more on belief than fact quickly sets them off, and they usually proceed to cite heavily flawed studies or quotes from an equally unreliable source. You could go back and forth all day, or you can end the conversation fairly quickly – simply state that you don’t debate religion, and if you’re to be expected to treat it like science, your green friend has to do so first. They can accomplish this by answering three simple questions:

1) Given the age of the planet and how widely the temperature has fluctuated over time, what is the ideal temperature that the Earth must be, and how will we maintain it over time?

2) One of the foundations of scientific theory is that it stands up to defeating theories that prove it wrong. We’ve heard how shrinking glaciers prove global warming, growing glaciers prove global warming, more storms prove global warming, and fewer storms prove global warming. What events prove their theories false?

3) Every few years a new threat comes along that threatens our very existence unless drastic action is taken yesterday. Of course, the media provides sensational screaming headlines backed up by irrefutable scientific evidence to promote these scares. Off of the top of my head here are a few from the last 40 years: Read the rest of this entry »

Classifying CO2 as a dangerous pollutant makes about as much sense as asking people not to exhale!

In April, Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (full disclosure: I worked for EPA in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s) signed a finding which declares that “greenhouse gases pose a threat to the health and welfare of current and future generations of Americans.”

It’s one of many steps to advance the political agenda of the global warming movement by giving the federal government more power to regulate and tax CO2 emissions in the lives of every day Americans by calling the gas a dangerous “pollutant.” Since each of us exhales CO2, that makes each of us polluters.

As support for the global warming agenda continues to melt faster than an iceberg in July, Democrats appear hell bent on ramming through the most massive and expensive restructuring of our way of life ever contemplated.

Yet, an internal Obama Administration memo from the Office of Management and Budget highlights the concerns from various federal agencies asked to respond to the proposed finding. It’s a bombshell document (PDF here) just waiting for someone to light the fuse.

Wyoming Senator John Barrasso(R) Rides to the Rescue

On Tuesday, Senator Barrasso lite that fuse. In another fine example of an elected GOP leader fighting back effectively against the leftwing moonbattery that is so in vogue in Washington these days, Senator John Brasso had this exchange with EPA Administrator Jackson:
Read the rest of this entry »

Republican Marsha Blackburn laid into Al Gore today about his motives for his man-made global warming hocus pocus, specifically challenging him on the fact that his firm will make a ton of money if the cap and trade legislation he supports is enacted: (h/t Gateway Pundit)

An article about the exchange:

Blackburn noted Gore’s role as partner in Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm that invests in technology to address global warming.

Blackburn asked Gore if he stood to benefit financially from cap-and-trade legislation, which would force companies to reduce carbon emissions. Companies would likely turn to the kinds of technologies Kleiner Perkins helps develop.

“This bill is going to fundamentally change the way America works.” Given the magnitude of those changes, I think it’s really important that no suspicion or shadow fall on the foremost advocates of climate change legislation. So I wanted to give you the opportunity to kind of clear the air about your motives and maybe set the record straight.”

Here’s what followed: Read the rest of this entry »

Andrew Klavin of PJTV addresses the position of the Left and boils it down to two words:

See if any of this sounds familiar to you.

Roll the tape:

As the administration and Congress micromanage the production of US auto makers by attempting to dictate the production line, their disconnect with reality calls into question their very ability to make astute marketing decisions.

Part of Obama’s bailout carrot for GM/Chrysler restructuring is revamping their production line to his satisfaction, manufacturing smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.

The president’s auto task force said Chrysler needs to partner with the Italian car company Fiat, which has “committed to building new fuel-efficient cars and engines right here in the United States,” Obama said in a speech at the White House.

“Fiat is prepared to transfer its cutting-edge technology to Chrysler,” he said.

He gave Fiat and Chrysler 30 days to reach an agreement and said the government will provide Chrysler with “adequate capital” to operate in the meantime.

Obama and his omnipotent auto czars are not the only ones demanding changes in the production lines. Madame Speaker Pelosi, saying GM CEO Wagoner had to go, and she was shedding no tears, peppered her spewing criticism of Wagoner’s GM income in salary and pension as undeserved… accusing him of not “foreseeing” that America wanted for fuel efficient vehicles.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Obama administration’s team of a dozen or more auto czars are set to launch a tag team assault on the auto industry with Congress – wresting for not only financial control, but production control. Two stories, multiple developments… all with a common goal. Defacto control over the US auto manufacturing industry and their product line.

At specific risk is another $22 bil in bailout funds for GM and Chrysler, atop the $17.4 bil they’ve already received… a decision Obama promises to reach by next Tuesday after final analyses by his auto czars.

Also at risk is a potential Congressional mandate, forcing all but 20% of vehicles made in sold in the US as Flex-Fuel Vehicles. Let me ’splain…

In a comment INRE the TARP I “auto czar” creation under Bush, I pointed out that Obama fulfilled a promise for job creation (government, at least) by upping the singular czar position to another one of his famous “task forces”. It is their job to “restructure” the auto manufacturers that receive federal funds.

In quintessential Obama style, vetting proved but a fantasy, and the task force is composed of the auto industry inexperienced and the clueless. A WSJ article by Neil King Jr and John Stoll a few days ago documents a somewhat ironic amusement as they follow this group of auto czars thru their frantic crash course in the business…

Also in the article, we get a hint to their perspectives via their composition of “talent”.

Read the rest of this entry »

On March 19th, American Thinker’s Gregory Young hand an article that I archived for future developments titled Global Warming Alarmists Propose Limiting Population … to the Point of Extinction.

In a statistical study entitled “Reproduction and the Carbon Legacies of Individuals,” published in Global Environmental Change by [Paul A, Professor in Dept of Statistics, OSU] Murtaugh and [Michael G., Senior Fac. Res. Asst, OSU's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences] Shlax of Oregon State University, and again published here, the authors propose that the potential savings from reduced reproduction rates among humans are some 20 times more effective than the savings wrought by life style changes.

It is clear that the authors follow the Liberal mantra of the ends justify the means. If we can reduce carbon emissions by reducing the number of children, then we should do it, they gloat. It appears that carbon reductions trump even “life” itself. They summarize:

Much attention has been paid to the ways that people’s home energy use, travel, food choices and other routine activities affect their emissions of carbon dioxide and, ultimately, their contributions to global warming. However, the reproductive choices of an individual are rarely incorporated into calculations of his personal impact on the environment.

Here we estimate the extra emissions of fossil carbon dioxide that an average individual causes when he or she chooses to have children. The summed emissions of a person’s descendants, weighted by their relatedness to him, may far exceed the lifetime emissions produced by the original parent. Under current conditions in the United States, for example, each child adds about 9441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average female, which is 5.7 times her lifetime emissions.

A person’s reproductive choices must be considered along with his day-to-day activities when assessing his ultimate impact on the global environment.

Read the rest of this entry »

In my yesterday post on the AGW “skeptic” conference underway in NYC, I said I’d be on media watch.

Well, today the London Times weighs in on a conference… but it isn’t the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change. Instead they choose to highlight an upcoming conference this week in Copenhagen, totally ignoring the competing conference of skeptics.

There is a 50-50 chance of temperature rises reaching dangerous levels over the next century, climate scientists have warned.

Even with heavy cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of 3 per cent a year from 2015, the chance of preventing the temperature rise from exceeding 2C by 2050 is no more than half. And every decade’s delay in reducing emissions will cause temperatures to go up by half a degree.

European leaders have made a commitment to limiting rises to 2C because anything above that is expected to damage people’s lives and the environment. A 2C increase would in itself cause more heat waves and droughts, many of which could be worse than the 2003 heat wave, which killed thousands of people across Europe.

The warning by researchers at the Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, will be made this week at a conference in Copenhagen, which is being held in preparation for a United Nations summit in the city in December, when world leaders will try to agree how to cut gas emissions enough to control climate change.

Read the rest of this entry »

Heard the news? The 2009 International Conference on Climate Change begins today in the Big Apple.

But of course, it’s unlikely you heard. Zip from the mainstream media. Not even a peep taking pop shots at the gathering, likening it to a coven of conspiracists. Pure crickets…

Save one brave soul… the Canadian Free Press, running an article by Dennis Avery, Director of the Center for Global Food Issues. Avery is slated to be one of the 70+ speakers at the Conference.

This year’s theme? “Global Warming: Was it ever really a crisis?

Speakers at this conference will address questions that go to the very heart of the international debate over climate change:

• Does the plateau in global temperatures during the past eight years contradict computer model predictions, and therefore requires a reexamination of the greenhouse theory?

• Do proxy records of ancient climates contradict how computer models characterize the role of carbon dioxide in climate change?

• Does the modern warming have the “fingerprint” of having been caused by greenhouse gases, or is it more likely the result of other forcings?

• Is there a case—either in science or economics—for governments to legislate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions? Should such efforts be suspended until the case for anthropogenic global warming is stronger?

Keynote speakers at this evenings opening dinner are Hon. Vaclav Klaus, Ph.d., “No Progress in the Climate Change Debate”; and Richard Lindzen, Ph.d., Climate Alarm: What We Are Up Against, and What to Do”.

Klaus was the President of the Czech Republic who made headlines in 2007 when he questioned Al Gore’s sanity, and his relentless quest for global warming initiatives.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just last week, we were told by the Obama Administration and the Democrats in the Congress that we needed lots of government spending in order to stimulate the economy. So the liberals in Congress passed the largest spending bill in US history and it was signed by President Obama. This week, President Obama is now telling us that the government needs to cut spending in order to reduce the deficit. In order to cut spending, the government will reduce our military and reduce government spending on health care for the elderly via Medicare and Medicaid.

Essentially, what the liberal Democrats in Congress and President Obama himself are telling us that it is OK for the government to take money out of the US treasury to give to their fat cat friends on Wall Street and organizations like ACORN that stuff the ballot box each election… but that it is not OK for the government to fulfill its promises to pay for grandma’s operation or her medical treatments.

What the liberals are doing is playing a big “shell game”, hoping that we don’t notice what they, the magicians, are doing to take money away from grandma’s health care in order to provide money to the likes of GM, Chrysler, the Big Bank CEOs and the environmental tyrants who are behind the hoax of man-made global warming.

Perhaps Ann Colter was right: liberals think that we Americans have no memory span and that history is what happened after we got up this morning. They are dead wrong. Read the rest of this entry »