Today the Obama administration brags about its “all of the above” energy policy, but two years ago it temporarily banned oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill, a move that cut oil output and cost thousands of jobs.
At the time, the Interior Department report called its recommendations “peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.” But that was not true. None of the seven advised a drilling ban then.
[..]
Interior’s estimate was that well closures temporarily cost 8,000-12,000 jobs and $1.2 billion in economic activity. Mason put job losses at 13,000-19,000, lost wages at $800 million and lost tax revenue at $200 million.
When Interior said the engineers backed the ban, the engineers were shocked. The idea of a moratorium never came up in their sessions and was not recommended, five of the seven told IBD. There was no need to stop other wells, they said.
Y2Kyoto: Ve Haf Vays Of Making You Varm
The number of in-orbit and planned Earth observation missions by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is projected to drop “precipitously” from 23 this year to only six by 2020
That means the number of instruments monitoring Earth’s activity is expected to decline from a peak of about 110 last year to fewer than 30 by the end of the decade.
First they came for the thermometers….
h/t Bemused
The Caldwell Folk Music and Art Society
Dance taxpayer, dance!
In March of last year, the [Brandon Folk Music and Art Society] submitted a 200-page funding application to the federal Department of Canadian Heritage, seeking a contribution of $2,088,066 from the Harper government toward the projected cost of the project. The balance would come from the provincial government ($1,114,065), the City of Brandon ($474,000) and from society fundraising ($500,000)
[…]
In addition to a copy of the society’s articles of incorporation, which show that BFMAS was incorporated by [Brandon East NDP MLA Drew Caldwell] and others several years ago, the application also contains a feasibility study which identifies Caldwell’s taxpayer-funded constituency office as a committed tenant of office space in the building.
Also in the application is a copy of a letter (on “Manitoba Legislative Assembly” letterhead) signed by Caldwell, in his capacity as MLA for Brandon East, in which he strongly endorses the project. It does not disclose that his wife is chair of BFMAS.
In NDP Manitoba, there’s a word for these schemes – “Thursday”.
Related: “Winnipeg Free Press reporters making an access to information request to the provincial government are told it will cost 1.9 million dollars to fulfill.”
O, Sweet Saint Of San Andreas
It’s Probably Nothing
The IDF has issued emergency call up orders to six reserve battalions in light of new dangers on the Egyptian and Syrian borders. And the Knesset has given the IDF permission to summon a further 16 reserve battalions if necessary, Israeli media reported on Wednesday.
h/t mike
QOTW
“Similarly, the dog he ate was a composite too. It wasn’t one dog, it was an amalgam of many breeds, like casserole.”
Related: “It was striking to me that when Genevieve met Obama he was a 22-year-old college graduate, but hadn’t yet figured out what his name was.”
Don’t blame Obama. Blame the author.
Reader Tips
Everyone has heard Elvis Presley’s 1960 version of “Are You Lonesome Tonight” but not many people realize that the song was already an older-than-oldie at the time he recorded it. Tonight, we listen to one of the earlier versions, delivered in a bracing Presbyterian burr that makes the old-timey melody that much more persuasive: From 1927, here’s Canadian tenor Henry Burr singing Are You Lonesome Tonight?
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
More Pavilions At Folkfest
Life in Dearbornisbad..
Via
Les Enfants Terribles
Here’s a 19 minute audio essay by Charles Adler that brilliantly mocks today’s Occupy Entitlement generation. It’s a follow-up of sorts to Margaret Wente’s recent column about the rioting Quebec students.
Y2Kyoto: I’ll Miss The Polar Bears
When did they learn to do this!
The study, published Tuesday in the Canadian Journal of Zoology, tracked 52 female polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea off Alaska. Between 2004 and 2009, a period of extreme summer-ice retreat, about a third of those bears made swims exceeding 48 kilometres in distance, according to the study results.
The 50 recorded ultra-marathon swims averaged 155 kilometres, and one bear was able to swim nearly 354 kilometres, according to the study results. The duration of the long-distance swims lasted from most of a day to nearly 10 days.
I blame the overcrowding.
h/t Mike
Let’s Erect A Plaque At 787 Dundas St W To Remember Jack Layton
Mulcair compared Black’s case to that of Gary Freeman, an American-born man who has been denied re-entry into Canada because of a criminal record. The 63-year-old was involved with the Black Panthers, and was extradited to the U.S. in 2008 and pleaded guilty to shooting a police officer in 1969.
Forward!
Why would GM cut R & D, the source of its future growth, in order to show profits in the short run? Is something happening in, say, November, for which the 26%-government-owned entity might want its balance sheet to look artificially rosy?
The Rise Of One World Trade Center
h/t marc in calgary
Reader Tips
Hey, did Corb Lund ever tell you the one about the time the Truck Got Stuck?
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Hashtag Of The Entitlement Generation
“Congratulations on another stunning public-relations victory, Occupy.”
The Tyranny of Cliches
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Rich Lowry, April 6th – Needless to say, no one at National Review shares Derb’s appalling view of what parents supposedly should tell their kids about blacks in this instantly notorious piece here.
Virginian-Pilot, May 1st – “Church and Brambleton. Church and Brambleton. Church and Brambleton.”
(Editors Note – the top quote was originally attributed to the wrong author. Post has been corrected.)
Y2Kyoto: The Final Solution
All programs of the left follow the same trajectory;
Sterilisation has been mired in controversy for years. With officials and doctors paid a bonus for every operation, poor and little-educated men and women in rural areas are routinely rounded up and sterilised without having a chance to object. Activists say some are told they are going to health camps for operations that will improve their general wellbeing and only discover the truth after going under the knife.
Court documents filed in India earlier this month claim that many victims have been left in pain, with little or no aftercare. Across the country, there have been numerous reports of deaths and of pregnant women suffering miscarriages after being selected for sterilisation without being warned that they would lose their unborn babies.
Yet a working paper published by the UK’s Department for International Development in 2010 cited the need to fight climate change as one of the key reasons for pressing ahead with such programmes. The document argued that reducing population numbers would cut greenhouse gases, although it warned that there were “complex human rights and ethical issues” involved in forced population control.
All of them.
h/t Bemused
Free Ethical Oil!
It’s Probably Nothing
“Ontario is telling sellers of shotguns and rifles to keep paper records of all the people who buy long guns at their stores… “
A Return To None Of Your Business As Usual
Oh, the humanity!
Fiscal restraint is rippling through Canada’s national statistical agency, prompting it to start slicing surveys and warn staff of cost cuts and impending layoffs in what it calls a “year of sacrifice” at the organization.
Not only is Statistics Canada facing reductions from the federal budget of about 8 per cent, it is also grappling with an “unprecedented” drop in revenue from other government departments that fund surveys, its chief statistician says.
h/t Maz2