Dishonest denial of nuclear energy

Denver Post readers were recently treated to some of Ted Turner's advice to Obama ("Address causes of climate change", Nov. 30). Turner wrote as chairman of the United Nations Foundation, which manyColoradans will remember has as its president former U.S. Sen. Tim Wirth (D-CO).

So I went to the foundation's website to see what it has to say about energy. Right at the top is a recent article by Wirth, blather that could have come out of the environmental movement 35 years ago supplemented only by mention of the new bugaboo, that nasty carbon stuff.

In close to 900 words, this man who long ago drank the global warming Kool-Aid never mentions "nuclear." Nuclear-electric power has achieved a safety record unmatched by any other industry since the Industrial Revolution, and the plants do not emit any of the so-called "greenhouse gases" that are blamed (falsely) for global warming (that may no longer be occurring).

Here's the deal: Tim Wirth, Ted Turner, Al Gore, et al, have the resources to know that nuclear energy must be used far more extensively if they are serious about a transition away from fuels that produce carbon dioxide. Until they advocate nuclear energy, their worry about global warming should be considered a flat-out lie and ignored.

Crafty like a fox

After a bit more than a month away from the partisan battles, I'm back in my blogger chair. I've had a chance to ruminate on the 2008 election results, and to my great surprise, the sun continues to rise in the East and set in the West (though I'm sure global warming alarmists will soon say that this, too, is in mortal danger). The real impact, of course, of the decisive Democrat victory won't be seen for years to come. I have to hand it to the President-elect -- he's crafty like a fox. His early appointments were designed to give him cover from attacks from the right, and reflect the sober reality he now faces in dealing with both the financial downturn and the ever-present terrorism and security threat. His appointments of Geithner and Summers were reassuring to the financial markets which are now expecting a high-level of government intervention. For those of us who still believe in free markets, its not good news, of course.

The financial bailout undertaken by the Bush Administration and Paulson/Geithner before the election has ushered in a whole new era of government intrusion into the private sector. And Barack Obama, with his predilection for "spreading the wealth around" is just the guy to take maximum advantage of it. The government will own banks, auto makers and insurance companies before it is all through -- and tax payers will be on the hook for it all in the end.

Of course, Obama's early appointments don't give a full picture of what is yet come -- for his next appointments will surely be grist for the far left of the party, still smarting over Obama's decision to keep Bush Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Interior, Energy, EPA -- all of these will be given to a left-wing ideologue who will seek to roll back environmental regulations in pursuit of greenhouse gas restrictions. All that "Drill here, Drill now"? You can forget about all that; now that gas is back to $1.50 a gallon, you can bet we'll be returning to the days of alternative energy investments and ever stricter emission standards -- all just as the auto makers are seeking a multi-billion bailout. Makes no sense -- but, then again, the global warming religion is based on faith, not facts.

Take a look at this piece in the Wall Street Journal -- a great example of the above:

Mr. Obama...(is) a student of the late radical thinker Saul Alinsky, who argued that you do or say what's necessary in a democracy to gain power, while keeping your true aims to yourself. Mr. Obama's novel contribution has been to turn this exploitation on his supporters on the left (who admittedly are so wedded to their hero that, so far, they don't seem to mind).

His next big challenge is an upcoming conference updating the Kyoto targets. Mr. Obama has not backed off his overwrought climate rhetoric, but listen carefully to Al Gore. Now that Democrats are on the verge of power, he's backing off cap-and-trade and carbon-tax proposals (i.e. visible energy price hikes for consumers) in favor of a new approach -- massive government subsidies for 'green technology'.

That's right -- open up the spigot. As long as we're spending a few $Trillion on the banks, bad mortgages and all, why not throw a few tens-of-billions at alternative energy? Start the presses! It's only paper, after all!!

In the end, of course, there will be a limit to all this largesse -- and it will come when taxes rise to support the massive debt we are now taking on for our children to deal with. Remember when "balanced budget" was the cry in Washington? Those days are long, long gone. In its place we have socialism in all its European glory.

And of course, don't forget health care -- the next great socialist experiment that is coming your way, like it or not. As the WSJ again shows in a brilliant editorial today, Tom Daschle is going to reform your health care -- like it or not:

Tom Daschle, the former Senate Majority Leader who Barack Obama has tapped to run Health and Human Services. "I think that ideological differences and disputes over policy weren't really to blame," he writes of 1994 in his book "Critical," published earlier this year. Despite "a general agreement on basic reform principles," the Clintons botched the political timing by focusing on the budget, trade and other priorities before HillaryCare.

President-elect Obama will not make the same mistake. Congressional Democrats are already deep into the legislative weeds, while Mr. Daschle is organizing the interest groups and a grassroots lobbying effort. Mr. Obama may be gesturing at a more centrist direction in economics and national security, but health care is where he seems bent on pleasing the political left.

According to Mr. Daschle, because of the Clintons' hesitation, "reform opponents succeeded in confusing and even frightening Americans about what change might mean," and this time the Democrats mean to define the debate. Consider the December 2 letter to us from Senator Max Baucus, who is upset that a recent editorial on his health-care plan did not use his favorite terms of art (his style being surrealism). "It will require affordability, but premiums will not be set," he writes. So the government will merely determine "affordability" -- which might as well be the same thing.

You see the pattern here: the issue in health care reform is style, not substance. Forget any discussion of the merits, the 1993 initiative failed because it wasn't sold properly, not because there are any inherent flaws in the concept. And lest you think that there will be proper study and debate before such a bill reaches the President's desk for signature, think again -- for the Democrats, so sure are they in the righteous of their cause, aren't wasting any time:

Most disturbingly, Democrats are talking up "budget reconciliation" to pass a health overhaul. This process was created in 1974 and allows legislation dealing with government finances to be whisked through Congress on a simple majority after 20 hours of debate. In other words, it cuts out the minority by precluding a filibuster. Mr. Daschle writes that reform "is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol," and Mr. Baucus has said he's open to the option.

Any taxpayer commitment this large ought to require a social consensus reflected in large majorities, but Democrats are determined to plow ahead anyway. They know that a health-care entitlement for the middle class will never be removed once it is in place; and that government will then dominate American health-care choices for decades to come. That's all the more reason for the recumbent GOP to get its act together.

Like Saul Alinsky and the other radicals in Obama's background, the ends always justifies the means. Ram it through at all costs -- the goal of social justice can't be hung up on the niceties of dissent and debate.

Yes, elections have repercussions. And this one more than most.

As I've said many times, folks: Hang on to your wallets!

Glass way more than half full

This Thanksgiving season, no one has more reason to be grateful than us. Though the media, politicians, Hollywood and a growing number of cap-in-hand special interest groups would like you to believe otherwise, Americans enjoy an unrivaled degree of prosperity. Even the 12.5 percent of Americans identified by the census bureau as poor are well off by world standards. Forty-three percent of all poor families own their own homes. The average poor American enjoys more living space than the average Londoner or Parisian. Three quarters of poor families own a car. Ninety-seven percent have a color television (more than half of the families have two or more televisions). A majority have cable TV, a VCR or DVD player, a microwave oven, and air conditioning.

These government statistics, compiled by the Heritage Foundation, paint a different picture of the downtrodden than does the nightly news, but the facts do not tell the whole story. Without a comparison of how other people live around the world, Americans have no real sense of just how grateful they should be.

Unfortunately, Americans don’t get out much. Roughly a quarter of US citizens hold passports. I’m probably safe in assuming that more of my countrymen watch American Idol than BBC World News. American myopia creates a skewed perception of reality. America’s poor families have homes, cars and televisions. The poor in most of the world have little or nothing. Completely destitute in America means finding a shelter where you can have a warm bed, a meal and the help you need to get back on your feet. In Haiti, the poor are baking dirt into cookies to fill their stomachs.

In America, if you lose your job there are “help wanted” signs up and down the street. The jobs may not be optimal but they’ll do until something better comes along. I’ve certainly done my time behind a register and sweeping a broom and I’ll do it again if I have to.

No such option exists for people in Zimbabwe where the unemployment level is 80 percent. There are no jobs. Government corruption and control of the market have reduced this once prosperous nation to abject ruin. Zimbabwe is far from the only country to strangle its economy with government regulation. The world average for unemployment is 30 percent. In the U.S. it is less than 5 percent.

America’s clean air and water may look dirty if you don’t know better. In Cairo, every breath I took was like sucking off a tail pipe. I found myself smoking Egyptian cigarettes just to get the taste of the air out of my mouth. Cairo took 2nd place in the Progressive Policy Institute’s Smokiest Cities contest with 159 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter of air. By comparison, Los Angeles, America’s most polluted city has 36 micrograms of particulate matter.

Breathing in the Egyptian capital was tough but drinking the tap water was out of the question. I drank bottled water and ate oranges, a fruit hermitically sealed by its own peal. Cairo was a great place to visit and I’ll go again, once my lungs have healed.

Should I need any medical help along the way, I’ll get it here, thank you. Americans have access to the best health care in the world. In developing countries, people die for want of penicillin or routine vaccinations. In socialized European nations and our neighbor to the north, citizens can get decent care if they have the time to wait for it.

According to the Frasier Institute, a Canadian think tank, Canadians wait on average nine weeks between getting a referral from a general practitioner and actually seeing the specialist. They then wait another nine weeks to get treatment. A cancer radiation referral takes five weeks, orthopedic surgery nine months.

My point here isn’t to browbeat readers into gratitude but to give a needed perspective. Ignorance is not bliss. An ungrateful heart is an unhappy one. It leaves people vulnerable to being misled by honey-tongued politicians promising to make them richer, healthier, and happier. In the places where the government tries to give people these things, it inevitably makes them poorer, sicker and less free to seek their own happiness.

This Thursday I gave thanks to God for the many blessings in my life including my beloved country. I joined with those who, in the words of George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, “unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection...for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed...”

Krista Kafer is a Denver-based education consultant, frequent cohost on Backbone Radio, and regular columnist for Face the State.com, from which this is reprinted by permission.

2008 was no realignment

Adding considerable luster to the achievement of the Founding Fathers in building success and stability in the infant Republic is the fact that five of our first seven Presidents not only won and served out two terms but also departed office popular enough to insure the election of approved successors. What was achieved by five of the first seven has eluded all but four of the eighteen men elected President since 1900. Only Theodore Roosevelt (1908), Calvin Coolidge (1928), Franklin Roosevelt (1948-posthumously), and Ronald Reagan (1988) left office with sufficient popularity to effect the election of their chosen successors.

Any hope George W. Bush had of being the fifth President since 1900 to see his party win the White House three consecutive times was decisively crushed last November 4th. Instead he becomes the sixth president since 1900 to see his party driven from the White House, losers in two consecutive Congressional election cycles, and himself under a cloud of immense unpopularity. Thus W. joins Hoover, Truman, Johnson, Nixon and Carter.

Of the initial five history has largely restored the reputation of Truman; LBJ and Nixon have made only slight recovery; and Hoover and Carter are generally viewed as beyond redemption. Some time must pass before History instructs us how to think about George W. Bush.

Beyond the great distinction of becoming our nation’s first African -American President, Barrack Obama also joins FDR and LBJ as the only Democrats since 1900 to win the Presidency in a landslide.

In what Yogi Berra called “déjà vu all over again” the punditocracy is now proclaiming fundamental political realignment and the descent of the GOP, into permanent minority status.

In 1964 when LBJ crushed Goldwater many pundits opined that the Republican Party might like the Whigs disappear altogether. Four years later the GOP was in the White House and Democrats in chaos.

In 1972 when Nixon won forty-nine states and McGovern just one, everybody was reading Kevin Phillips's The Emerging Republican Majority and saying that just as the Civil War had destroyed the Democratic Party in the 19th century, the Viet Nam War had destroyed it in the 20th. Four years later the Dems were back in the White House and the Republicans were in chaos.

In 1988 following three consecutive landslide Presidential defeats many Democrats thought their party had to be reinvented by jettisoning liberalism. Four years after the Democrats were back in the White House and liberalism was very much alive and well.

Finally in 2004 after consecutive Presidential victories and a remarkable three straight victories in Congressional election cycles Republicans were hailing Karl Rove as the Architect of a permanent GOP majority. Four years later -well, we all know what happened in 2006 and 2008.

So, what does all this tell us about American politics?

First, and foremost things can change mighty fast. It is extremely unwise to read too much into even the most stunning partisan triumphs. The American people will punish most severely even those men and parties they have extravagantly affirmed just a few years before.

Second, electoral landslides happen frequently; genuine political realignments occur very, very rarely.

Fully half (13 of 27) of the Presidential elections since 1900 have resulted in landslides.

Yet only twice in our entire history have we seen full-blown political realignment and it required the massive trauma of the Civil War and the Great Depression to trigger those.

Finally the margin between victory and defeat even in a landslide (usually defined as six or more percentage points) is very narrow. If even one voter in twenty voted the “other way” Obama’s landslide becomes a decisive victory for McCain.

Two thirds of the electorate is pretty fixed in their partisan attachment. It is the loosely bonded or independent third in the middle that decides all elections. If just one in seven of those voters switch sides from one election tot the next- pretty likely if the country is experiencing an unpopular war, a sagging economy or both- the entire electoral configuration can be transformed, hence the old adage that “All of American politics is played between the forty yard lines”.

The moral of the story ? It’s a little early to place your bets for 2012 or even 2010.

William Moloney’s columns have appeared in The Wall St. Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, and Rocky Mountain News.

Thanksgiving honors founders' faith

For anyone born in the last 50 years, "separation of church and state" is inculcated secular orthodoxy. I well remember the family discussion during which my dad informed me that the phrase appears nowhere in the Constitution, and I recall spending the next two hours searching my history books in futility to prove him wrong. That government is insulated from faith is a notion that survives only in historical ignorance. Perhaps nothing disproves this fallacy more effectively than Thanksgiving Day, an official government holiday established for the purpose of acknowledging God's blessing of America.

Abraham Lincoln instituted a national day of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November, proclaiming:

"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.

"But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us."

Lincoln deemed it "fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and once voice, by the whole American people."

Secularists, atheists and revisionists try to obscure these declarations of national faith, but Lincoln's sentiments echo those of our Founding Fathers.

The Continental Congress declared the first National Thanksgiving Proclamation on Nov. 1, 1777, so Americans could "express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their Divine Benefactor; and that together with their sincere acknowledgments and offerings, they may join (in) the penitent confession of their manifold sins ... that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance."

When the "father of our country," George Washington, issued a similar decree in 1795, he declared it "our duty as a people, with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to acknowledge our many and great obligations to Almighty God, and to implore Him to continue and confirm the blessings we (have) experienced."

Despite our collective and individual shortcomings, Americans have prospered like no other people, but we are foolishly misguided if we believe that our freedom and longevity is the result of mere chance or that it can persevere without demanding sacrifice, humility and resolve from each of us.

Liberty, equality and freedom have certain biblical roots, and although our forefathers practiced divergent faiths and a few exhibited little faith at all, they were unified by an acknowledgement that only a faithful people is capable of self-governance.

In the 21st century, Americans continue to demonstrate a pervasive belief in God -- a faith that comforts and unifies us when tragedy and adversity remind us of our vulnerability.

Patrick Henry testified to Christianity's role in the birth of this nation and its capacity to co-exist with other faiths: "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity and free worship here."

Our ongoing struggles, though sometimes painful and heartbreaking, are not exceptional when compared to the suffering endured by those early colonists who dared to oppose the global superpower of that day.

On this Thanksgiving Day, we must remember the source of those patriots' strength and cultivate it for future generations.