WASHINGTON — Aiming to keep the focus on climate change legislation, President Barack Obama put a plug in for administration efforts to make lamps and lighting equipment use less energy.
“I know light bulbs may not seem sexy, but this simple action holds enormous promise because 7 percent of all the energy consumed in America is used to light our homes and businesses,” the president said, standing alongside Energy Secretary Steven Chu at the White House.
Monthly Archives: June 2009
Honduras: Everything You Know Is Wrong
Roberto Micheletti, named by Congress to serve out the final seven months of Zelaya’s term, vowed to ignore foreign pressure. He insisted Zelaya’s ouster was legal and accused the former president himself of violating the constitution by sponsoring a referendum that was outlawed by the Supreme Court. Many saw the foiled vote as a step toward eliminating barriers to his re-election, as other Latin American leaders have done in recent years.
Let’s do some dot-connecting together, shall we? Zelaya was a resounding friend of Hugo Chavez, who is essentially President-For-Life in Venezuela. Zelaya was building his bond and political strength linking to Chavez and many believe, myself included, that he intended to make himself pseudo-Dictator in the mold of Chavez, patterned after Castro.
Seeing the death of their Constitution and the fall of freedom, Honduras attempted to retake their sovereignty. A military leader was not installed in place; instead it was a civilian politician who is a Honduran Congressional speaker. That bespeaks volumes in itself.
The world, in the meantime, complained bitterly — as did our Mr Obama. He said, “We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the democratically elected president there.” Had it been another country, Mr Obama clearly would have condemned our own American Revolution seeking severance from Britain.
And who is barking directly alongside Mr Obama? Why, that would be Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
Where is the support for revolt which fights for freedom and against dictatorship and oppression?
[This just in: Juan Diego Zelaya, who is general counsel to the mayor of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, and is an adviser to the National Party, the opposition party to former President Manuel Zelaya — writes this about the Honduran situation. He calls it a CONSTITUTIONAL coup. Please check out the article.]
BZ
The Way We Get By
Thanks to Wordsmith for his post illuminating this film. Please watch the trailer:
Beginning as a seemingly idiosyncratic story about troop greeters – a group of senior citizens who gather daily at a small airport to thank American soldiers departing and returning from Iraq, the film quickly turns into a moving, unsettling and compassionate story about aging, loneliness, war and mortality.
When its three subjects aren’t at the airport, they wrestle with their own problems: failing health, depression, mounting debt. Joan, a grandmother of eight, has a deep connection to the soldiers she meets. The sanguine Jerry keeps his spirits up even as his personal problems mount. And the veteran Bill, who clearly has trouble taking care of himself, finds himself contemplating his own death. Seeking out the telling detail rather than offering sweeping generalizations, the film carefully builds stories of heartbreak and redemption, reminding us how our culture casts our elders, and too often our soldiers, aside. More important, regardless of your politics, “The Way We Get By” celebrates three unsung heroes who share their love with strangers who need and deserve it.
See the film if you can. Even request a showing. You can purchase the DVD on the website.
I was staggered; simply staggered. This cuts way too close, too very damned close to home in my life right now. But I’ll still see it.
BZ
Rally The Troops AGAINST Cap & Trade
What is it that happened in January of 2007? AB 32 took effect and began shutting down entire segments of California’s economy. Let me give you one example from my district. The City of Truckee, California was about to sign a long-term power contract to get its electricity from a new, EPA-approved coal-fired electricity plant in Utah. AB 32 and companion legislation caused them to abandon that contract. The replacement power they acquired literally doubled their electricity costs.
Let’s ignore for the moment the fact that the planet’s climate is constantly changing and that long term global warming has been going on since the last ice age. Let’s ignore the fact that within recorded history we know of periods when the earth’s climate has been much warmer than it is today and others when it has been much cooler. Let’s ignore the thousands of climate scientists and meteorologists who have concluded that human-produced greenhouse gases are a negligible factor in global warming or climate change.
The House Passes The LARGEST Tax Ever
Before (House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio) took the floor, Republicans asked the House to observe a moment of silence for Americans who would lose their jobs as a result of the bill. Democrats objected. Pelosi argued later that the bill would mean “jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.”
Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released their analysis of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill that had proponents of the bill claiming Americans could save the planet for just $175 per household. That was the figure CBO estimated cap and trade would cost households in 2020 alone.[1]
Both the CBO’s analysis and the subsequent legislation are troubled: The analysis grossly underestimates economic costs while the legislation will have virtually no impact on climate.
Overall, there are a number of basic problems with CBO’s analysis:
-Their allowance cost numbers do not add up;
-They ignore economic costs such as the decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) as a result of the bill; and
-The analysis is an accounting analysis, not an economic analysis.
The Pelosi Democrats will try and push through the massive tax hike that is disguised as “cap and trade” today, and the 1200 plus page bill is constantly changing and of course has not been read much less understood by the Democrats voting for it. If this bill or anything remotely like it becomes law, the American economy will be pushed into a deep recession that will make the past six months look like the good old days
Moderates and conservatives are wrong to expect that the Senate will simply kill the bill, though all efforts will have to be switched immediately to the upper chamber if the Pelosi/Waxman/Markey radicals bribe enough Dems with special provisions to pass it today. The so-called Blue Dog Democrats are proving to be worthless as a check on the hard left of their party, and only a huge course correction in November 2010 will keep the country safe from the radicals currently running the Democratic caucus in the House. No one who votes for this bill can claim to be a “moderate Democrat.”
An analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill (as reported out of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce) by The Heritage Foundation found that unemployment will increase by nearly 2 million in 2012, the first year of the program, and reach nearly 2.5 million in 2035, the last year of the analysis. Total GDP loss by 2035 would be $9.4 trillion. The national debt would balloon as the economy slowed, saddling a family of four with $114,915 of additional national debt. Families would also suffer, as the bill would slap the equivalent of a $4,609 tax on a family of four by 2035.[1]