There are two small problems with the Biden administration’s grandiose plan to fight climate change, notes columnist Bill Moloney. We’re not told how the immense tab gets paid—nor why the panicky hurry, when the new book Unsettled by eminent scientist Steven Koonin shows there’s no urgency at all.
Get off the couch
This great country -- and I do mean EXCEPTIONAL -- is in the grips of a domestic enemy. Let's leave aside the politically correct platitudes and politeness for a moment and be honest. The left is the enemy to traditional American values of individual freedom, personal liberty and entrepreneurship.
They want to create a Nanny State, where the government runs your life. Health care is a big piece of this puzzle. Next will come the kind of car you drive, the light bulbs you use and which colleges you can go to. They want to tax and control every breath you take.
And make no mistake about it: the left is now firmly and fully in charge of the U.S. government. There is not a single (as in ONE) moderate or conservative Democrat in the U.S. Senate, and very few in the House. The White House is inhabited by Marxist revolutionaries -- and that includes the guy in the Oval Office.
We are being led by radicals.
That's the truth. And Democrats and Independents (and many so-called "Republicans") who voted for "Hope and Change" may feel hoodwinked, but the reality was there for all to see. The President of the United States is a Saul Alinksy operative with radical friends. That doesn't happen by accident. Americans liked the cut of the guys jib and the fact that decades of race-guilt could be slayed in a single pull of the voting lever, and so the nation took a leap into the great unknown.
Off a precipice, and into an abyss.
And then insult got added to the injury by putting the likes of Al Franken (hey Minnesota -- politics is not really a JOKE!) in the Senate, giving the left a massive majority and the 60 votes needed to ram home big-time change on a purely partisan basis.
And that's really the main message here: this is a President and a Congress that thinks that a straight party-line vote is democracy in action. There was no pretense of bipartisan accommodation or compromise, only a "shove it down your throat" Chicago-style politics. The left is so certain they are right that they simply don't care what YOU think.
Nice, huh?
We are in for a very rough ride. But it isn't hopeless. We can take back the House in 2010 and put Nancy Pelosi out to pasture. We can defeat Harry Reid in Nevada and give him the good old Tom Daschle treatment.
We can change this in 11 months.
But to do so, you have to get OFF THE COUCH.
You have to start giving -- in money, time and energy -- to Republican candidates. Money is the life's blood of politics, and to win in 2010, conservatives need to raise cash. And if you can't contribute money, then volunteer for a candidate. Stuff envelopes. Walk precincts. Host voter meetings in your living room.
We can't be passive. The enemy is organized, zealous and unbelievably vicious. We must parry their every thrust.
We can't afford to lose this country for another generation. Please do WHATEVER you can. I am working with a Republican Congressional candidate here in Colorado -- Diggs Brown. He's a very good man and a solid conservative.
Find someone -- anyone -- who you can support running for Congress in a swing district. That's the way we can change this -- by putting solid conservatives in office in 2010.
We must do more than complain. We must ACT!!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.
Let's make 2010 the year we TAKE BACK THIS GREAT COUNTRY!!
Al Gore & the Aztec Priests
By William Watson When the Spanish first arrived in Mexico, they discovered that Aztec high priests sacrificed 10,000 still-beating hearts to the god Quetzalcoatl every December 22nd in order to cause the days to stop growing shorter. This religious belief was confirmed, as the days began to grow longer again. Al Gore is the high priest of our new religion, global warming. He insists that if we sacrifice our standard of living, our economy, and millions of American jobs, that we can save the planet and stop global temperatures from increasing. Unfortunately for him but fortunately for us, global temperatures began to drop before he was able to perform his sacrifice.
Throughout the 1990s I believed in global warming and taught it as fact in university geography courses, mostly due to the liberal media and education which I received at the University of California. It wasn’t until I read Senator Inhofe’s 2005 speech before the Senate, that my faith in Global Warming began to be seriously challenged. Inhofe called Global Warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” I then began to reconsider my position on the issue.
I learned of the Medieval Warming Period, that Vikings farmed in Greenland and the earth continued to warm until the 14th century. This Medieval Warming Period was ignored by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a way reminiscent of Joseph Stalin erasing Bolsheviks who fell out of favor by simply erasing them from photographs. Instead the IPCC invented the “hockey stick” graph claiming that the earth’s temperature was basically unchanged until the 19th century when it began to drastically increase.
The data (which we now know was falsified by environmental “scientists”) shows that after the Medieval Warming Period, the earth began to cool until the Little Ice Age of the 16th to 18th centuries. Then it began to warm again through the 19th and 20th centuries. Al Gore insists this was caused by human activity, but I began to wonder what degree humans could complete with heat produced by solar radiation. I became convinced that any contribution by humans would be infinitesimal compared to the energy produced by our sun.
In 2007 I heard the Danish climatologist/economist Bjorn Lomborg speak to the Denver World Affairs Council on the costs of implementing the Kyoto Protocol. He reminded us of the importance of doing a cost/benefit analysis, warning that “we are in danger of implementing a cure that is more costly than the original affliction: economic analyses clearly show that it will be far more expensive to cut carbon dioxide emissions radically than to pay the costs of adaptation to the increased temperatures." Shortly thereafter, I read Christopher Horner’s “Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming”, and while on a fellowship to Oxford that same year saw the UK documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle.” Most convincing was their graph showing the correlation between solar radiation and average global temperatures, confirming my hunch that the sun was overwhelmingly the major contributor.
Over the past several years ice caps and glaciers have begun to grow again. Even my heating bills show that 2009 was colder than 2008, which was colder than 2007. Yesterday it snowed in Houston, setting a record. Those who are convinced that humans really make a difference to global temperature now should encourage us to burn coal and oil to save the planet from a coming Ice Age. However, it is more likely due to the regular fluctuations of solar radiation, which we should learn to live with, rather than allowing dishonest scientists and politicians to sacrifice our global economy, or for that matter 10,000 still-beating hearts.
Young skulls full of green mush
As any visitor to Cuba will tell you, slogans like "Hasta la victoria siempre" (towards victory always) or "Socialismo or muerte" (socialism or death) are dotted here and there all over the Caribbean island for fear that the long-suffering local population might lose sight of the ill-fated goals of the communist revolution that took place there under the leadership of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in 1959. The way things are going in France right now, pockets of little Cubas are very likely to sprout up all over the country as the summit on climate change in Copenhagen next month looms larger and larger. I personally know of one such Cuban-like ideological treadmill: the High School in Lyon, France’s second-largest city, where I am completing my third year as a teacher of Anglo-American Studies.
About two months ago, straight from the French Department of Education came a diktat to the effect that all public schools in the country had to organize teaching activities aimed at promoting so-called environmentally-friendly sustainable development, i.e. socialism. I have been asked to participate. Needless to say that I have sustainably declined.
One of the ideas some of my colleagues have come up with, though, is to translate the speeches President Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown are expected to make in Denmark next month, and to flash up bits of the speeches on large TV screens dotted here and there all over the school for fear that the students might lose sight of the ill-fated goals of the green revolution that is currently taking place in France under the leadership of President Nicolas Sarkozy. With so much hot air coming out of the screens, I guess temperatures will rise exponentially all over the school and melt what little critical thinking is left in the French education system.
As the episode illustrates, descriptions of President Sarkozy as a conservative are misleading. On global warming, as in many other policy areas, Sarkozy is just about as conservative as Newt Gingrich sitting on a couch with Speaker Pelosi touting misguided bipartisan efforts to save the planet.
The green revolution currently going on in France is being every bit as destructive of individual freedom and responsibility as the ominous events of 1789 there, or, for that matter, those in Cuba more than 150 years later. In other words, welcome to the new land of scorching propaganda, brainwashing, intellectual goose-stepping and, I almost forgot, youth duly decked out in Guevara accessories and apparel as the latest fashion dictates.
Are you sure you want to be next, America?
Own a house? Beware climate bill
If you will ever consider buying or selling a house, you need to beware of the Democrats' "cap and trade" bill that recently passed the House of Representatives. It could dramatically lower the value of your property and/or make it very difficult for you to sell it without very expensive and time-consuming upgrades. (Story linked here, with full text below.) They call it a national "retrofit" policy. If it becomes law, you will not be permitted to sell your property until it meets federal energy standards that Congress has not seen fit to define.
In this bill Congress asserts enormous additional (and unconstitutional) power for the federal government, but delegates the practical details to the environmental zealots and other bureaucrats in the EPA and in state governments. Thus nobody in particular can be held accountable for requiring building retrofits that could bankrupt many homeowners and businesses.
Congress is unleashing regulatory pit bulls on unsuspecting citizens while preserving its own ability to deny any wrongdoing. Politicians do know how to cover their posteriors while doing great damage.
If you have ever sold a house, you know how much stress is involved, especially in a weak housing market such as we already have. This bill is all we need to destroy the market and force us to visit Congress with torches and pitchforks.
If the Senate also passes this abomination, President Obama will sign it. But you still have a little time left to influence the Senate vote. I suggest you get to it pronto.
And be sure to remember this insanity in November, 2010.
CNSNews.com Democrats’ Cap-and-Trade Bill Creates ‘Retrofit’ Policy for Homes and Businesses Wednesday, July 01, 2009 By Matt Cover
(CNSNews.com) – The 1,400-page cap-and-trade legislation pushed through by House Democrats contains a new federal policy that residential, commercial, and government buildings be retrofitted to increase energy efficiency, leaving it up to the states to figure out exactly how to do that.
This means that homeowners, for example, could be required to retrofit their homes to meet federal "green" guidelines in order to sell their homes, if the cap-and-trade bill becomes law.
The bill, which now goes to the Senate, directs the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop and implement a national policy for residential and commercial buildings. The purpose of such a strategy – known as the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance (REEP) – would be to "facilitate" the retrofitting of existing buildings nationwide.
"The Administrator shall develop and implement, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, standards for a national energy and environmental building retrofit policy for single-family and multi-family residences," the bill reads.
It continues: "The purpose of the REEP program is to facilitate the retrofitting of existing buildings across the United States."
The bill leaves the definition of a retrofit and the details of the REEP program up to the EPA. However, states are responsible for ensuring that the government’s plans are carried out, whatever the final details may entail.
"States shall maintain responsibility for meeting the standards and requirements of the REEP program," the bill says.