Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?

Alternative Subsidy 18 Comments

Go ahead. Make my car. (new link)

If the U.S. president told the bank holding your mortgage to cancel your debt and hand you the house free, it wouldn’t make you more productive or efficient. It just screwed someone you owed money to. And clearer than ever is that GM could have survived the Lehman episode with a simple bridge loan. America’s biggest auto maker could have returned to the slog without dishonoring billions of dollars in obligations to bondholders and other creditors.
But the most egregious aspect of the Obama bailout is its annexation of the auto sector to the administration’s green energy schemes. It’s no exaggeration to say the auto industry is being used to fulfill a throwaway line in an Obama speech calling for one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans

Uncategorized 49 Comments

Bye, bye blackbird…

The situation, Petrie says, is that some areas where turbine developments are being constructed and planned are, as he says, “the worst possible places to put a wind power project.” He says that avian and bat mortality rates at improperly placed wind farms are unacceptable. He also says that wind turbine developers and the government have ignored the fact that there will be cumulative ecological impacts associated with placing thousands of wind turbines on the landscape and in the lakes. As a Waterfowl Ecologist, Petrie is particularly concerned that wind turbines are being placed within critically important habitats and on migratory routes with no regard for avian displacement. “When you place a turbine in or very close to critical habitats, and birds subsequently avoid those areas, it is tantamount to habitat loss, and we have already lost 85 per cent of our Great Lake’s coastal wetlands.”

Those Moderate Muslims!

More Pavilions At Folkfest 38 Comments

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Not Mark Steyn, January 2008;

“We’re the ones who will change you . . . Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children.”

Weekly Standard, February 2012;

Last month, German bank WestLB rolled out a new “Islam-compliant” investment product named the Islamic Strategy Index Certificate. The value of the certificate is based on the value of the WestLB Islamic Deutschland Index, consisting of shares of ten German firms “whose business activities are consistent with the ethical rules of Islam.” The WestLB product prospectus explains that the Islamic Strategy Index Certificates “are certified by the Central Council of Muslims in Germany as Islam-compliant [Islam konformes] investment.” The Central Council of Muslims in Germany is an umbrella group of twenty-two Muslim organizations.

It’s Probably Nothing

It's Probably Nothing 17 Comments

Forzanuova’s current cry is “Moneta di popolo!” As far as I can make it out, the communists are wanting that to be a fixed allocation to citizens of internal money, and Forzanuova isn’t even bothering to call for a national currency – it seems to want to issue local currencies. It sure looks like an increasing number of shopowners, farmers and those all-important truckers and cabdrivers are willing to go with it.
See, this is why you should not try to really collect taxes in Italy. If the local shopowners sign up and accept the script, that’s it. Game over. You]ve got small business against big business and rural against city, and they might well develop a dual monetary system. All those lovely policies about limiting cash transactions become ever so theoretical.

Operation Fast and Furious

The One 15 Comments

It’s not the cover-up, it’s the crime;

Operation Fast and Furious was specifically conceived so that “walked” guns would be recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. Their serial numbers would be provided to the ATF by Mexican authorities for tracing. Regardless of motive, the entire operation was premised on weapons being recovered at crime scenes in Mexico, and law enforcement agencies are well aware that criminals primarily abandon weapons only after they’ve been used in serious felony crimes such as murder or attempted murder.
Operation Fast and Furious was conceived knowing that Mexican nationals would be sacrificed in significant numbers if the tracing operation had any chance of working.
Operation Fast and Furious allowed more than 2,000 weapons to “walk,” indicating that those in charge of the operation were willing to let thousands of Mexican nationals die in an effort to identify the ringleaders of a cartel’s weapon acquisition team.

And it could only happen under a Democratic administration, because only a Democratic administration could rely on a free pass by media.
Via Instapundit

Now is the Time at SDA When We Juxtapose

Juxtapose! 25 Comments

One view:

…for the most part, China has behaved responsibly in the World Trade Organization, G20 and climate-change negotiations…

Reality:

…China tells Europe to take its carbon tax and blow it out a jet engine
China, which lectured everyone else about their responsibility to curb greenhouse gas emissions at the latest UN climate conference, says there’s no damn way its planes are paying the carbon tax that will be collected on all international flights in and out of European Union next year…

Before anyone starts screaming I not attacking the Chinese for being soft on global warming. I’m just pointing out how deluded many of our great and good are about the Dragon.

The Sound Of Settled Science

Climate Cult 25 Comments

Germany has now plunged into raucous discord on the heated topic of climate change.

One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”
Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Lüning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found. Well-connected to Hoffmann & Campe, he and Lüning decided to write the book. Die kalte Sonne cites 800 sources and has over 80 charts and figures.

The Problem With The Four Word Solution

Gopher News 38 Comments

“Right To Work Province.”

A Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench justice has ruled the Public Service Essential Services Act to be unconstitutional.
The decision by Justice Dennis Ball was released Monday in the case against two Saskatchewan labour laws. The Saskatchewan Federation of Labour (SFL) launched the constitutional challenge against The Public Service Essential Services Act and the Trade Union Amendment Act, two pieces of legislation passed shortly after the Saskatchewan Party first came to power in 2007.

Related Workers Rights! – Nobody needs to own a Caterpillar plant.
Update: Poll spotting!

The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire

Political Animal 30 Comments

A few months before last February’s citywide elections, Hal Baskin’s phone started ringing. And ringing. Most of the callers were candidates for Chicago City Council, seeking the kind of help Baskin was uniquely qualified to provide.
Baskin isn’t a slick campaign strategist. He’s a former gang leader and, for several decades, a community activist who now operates a neighborhood center that aims to keep kids off the streets. Baskin has deep contacts inside the South Side’s complex network of politicians, community organizations, and street gangs. as he recalls, the inquiring candidates wanted to know: “Who do I need to be talking to so I can get the gangs on board?”

h/t EBD

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation