Ronald Wilson Reagan, born on February 6th of 1911, the 40th president of the United States, held two presidential terms (1981 to 1989) and passed away on June 5th of 2004 at age 93.

I can only write this about Mr Reagan:

As opposed to some, I encountered my strongest days — and lived through — Mr Reagan’s terms. I was young, virile, in my 30s and 40s whilst he presided. I can tell you this: I never felt more proud of my country than when Mr Reagan held sway. Never. I was sufficiently privileged to have cast my vote for Mr Reagan. I considered it my honor to have served in a law enforcement capacity during his years, protecting my local community. Again and again.

His words will never diminish. And that I can determine, there is no “Reagan” awaiting in the corridors these days, no matter how much we may wish it.

I could go on with quotes and quotes. Many others will.

I should simply care to pay tribute:

BZ

This is the third recent major ruling by a federal court which has, essentially (and rightly so), resoundingly slapped the Obama Administration for overstepping its boundaries and, further, acting illegally. From Bloomberg News:

The Obama Administration acted in contempt by continuing its deepwater-drilling moratorium after the policy was struck down, a New Orleans judge ruled.

Interior Department regulators acted with “determined disregard” by lifting and reinstituting a series of policy changes that restricted offshore drilling, following the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, U.S. District Judge, Martin Feldman of New Orleans ruled yesterday.

“Each step the government took following the court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance,” Feldman said in the ruling.

“Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the re-imposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium, and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this court with clear and convincing evidence of the government’s contempt,” Feldman said.

President Barack Obama’s administration first halted offshore exploration in waters deeper than 500 feet in May, after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off the Louisiana coast led to a subsea blowout of a BP Plc well that spewed more than 4.1 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

You won’t, naturally, find this information plastered over the DEM/MSM because, after all, it conflicts with the general view that the Obama Administration can do no wrong.

Concurrently in Egypt, regarding American reporters, an ABC newsman was threatened with beheading after the vehicle in which he and others were riding was carjacked.

The men released us only after our camera man (who was Muslim. -BZ) appealed to the generous spirit of the Egyptian people, hugging and kissing an elder,” he added in a subsequent tweet.

At the same time, attempting to limit drilling for our own petroleum independence, Mr Obama’s EPA began enforcing new emissions rules in January whilst, in February, providing General Electric with an exemption from these same emissions mandates. Payback, anyone?

From The Washington Examiner‘s Timothy P. Carney:

Last month, the Obama EPA began enforcing new rules regulating the greenhouse gas emissions from any new or expanded power plants.

This week, the EPA issued its first exemption, Environment & Energy News reports:

The Obama administration will spare a stalled power plant project in California from the newest federal limits on greenhouse gases and conventional air pollution, U.S. EPA says in a new court filing that marks a policy shift in the face of industry groups and Republicans accusing the agency of holding up construction of large industrial facilities.

According to a declaration by air chief Gina McCarthy, officials reviewed EPA policies and decided it was appropriate to “grandfather” projects such as the Avenal Power Center, a proposed 600-megawatt power plant in the San Joaquin Valley, so they are exempted from rules such as new air quality standards for smog-forming nitrogen dioxide (NO2).

There’s something interesting about the Avenal Power Center:

The proposed Avenal Energy project will be a combined-cycle generating plant consisting of two natural gas-fired General Electric 7FA Gas Turbines with Heat Recovery Steam Generators (HRSG) and one General Electric Steam Turbine.

Maybe GE CEO Jeff Immelt’s closeness to President Obama, and his broad support for Obama’s agenda, had nothing to do with this exemption. But we have no way of knowing that, and given the administration’s record of regularly misleading Americans regarding lobbyists, frankly, I wouldn’t trust the White House if they told me there was no connection.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper gets thumped-on in Egypt:

Anderson Cooper was attacked in Egypt Wednesday.

CNN producer Steve Brusk Tweeted, “Anderson said he was punched 10 times in the head as pro-Mubarak mob surrounded him and his crew trying to cover demonstration.”

Cooper then escaped to the roof of a nearby building, where he said on air that he and his crew were trying to get to a neutral zone between protestors and pro-Mubarak supporters when they “were set upon by pro-Mubarak supporters punching us in the head. The crowd kept growing, kept throwing punches, kicks…suddenly a young man would look at you and punch you in the face.”

CNN’s Christine Amanpour (from her blog) — whom the Egyptians should love because she sympathizes with Islam predominantly, is from the Left and CNN — gets threatened:

As we were trying to film on the bridge into Tahrir Square an angry mob of pro-Mubarak protesters surrounded us and chased us into the car, shouting that they hated us and America.

We jumped into our car but some of the protesters kicked in the car doors and broke our windshield as we drove away.

The worst clashes since Friday erupted today in Cairo with pro- and anti-Mubarak mobs facing off in Liberation Square. Shots have been fired and there have been reports of injuries.

And our embracing, all-revelatory, transparency-loving White House shuts out reporters, who have filed formal complaints:

After being shut out of the President’s Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) is appealing to the White House to give the press corps access to an event that’s been called one of the President’s most important foreign policy priorities for almost a year – the signing of the START Treaty. In a letter to Press Sec. Robert Gibbs, the WHCA Board complained about their lack of access to the President throughout the crisis in Egypt and outlined their request to open today’s treaty signing to the White House pool.

Ah yes, does the phrase “reaping what one sows” potentially come into play at this point, do you suspect?

Please excuse the giggling schadenfreude. There. Done.

BZ

Ronald Reagan was born 100 years ago, on February 6th of 1911.

He passed away on June 5th of 2004, at the age of 93.

Conservatives wants to be Ronald Wilson Reagan. Everyone wants to quote him and embrace him and utilize him for their futures.

To their diminshment. Because there was only ONE Mr Reagan.

Conservatives want to create/embrace/develop another Reagan.

In vain.

A man like him comes once in a century.

Reagan was. He most certainly won’t be.

Anyone who links to him is a defeatist and shallow, cheap, tawdry, simple, simplistic,

Energy is the Big Question in the USA.

Everyone knows, and I certainly acknowledge, that if it weren’t for oil I wouldn’t care what the Middle Eastern/Islamist brutalists did to themselves. Slaughter their brothers, pit Sunnis against Shias? Go for it. The region begs reduction to shiny, smooth glass. I mostly couldn’t care less. Islam is generally a repressive, ignorant and barbaric religion as practiced by its adherents. As I’ve said for many years now, “Islam is as Islam does.” It would, of course, be the same for Christianity were Christianity even remotely as bloodthirsty and uncivilized as Islam.

But it is Islam that lets the greatest amount of blood and carnage and death around the world. There is a reason that this saying is a constant in the tribalistic world of Islam: “Me against my brother. me and my brother against my cousin. Me, my brother, and my cousin against the stranger.” It is because Islam’s adherents are, at their most fundamental, nomadic, tribal, misogynistic, vicious, unsophisticated, cruel, brutish, inhumane, regressive, sadistic, uncultured and ignorant. With some very few exceptions. The cowardly, the withdrawn, the fearful.

That said, there is an unsurprising recent thrust from Demorats for alternate energy from DC, encapsulated in a massively-misleading article headline “Energy panel leader expects push for production of more US oil.”

From The Washington Times:

The chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee said Monday that the crisis in oil markets sparked by Egypt’s political unrest should not divert Congress from pursuing long-term strategies to develop more clean and renewable energy resources.

Agreed. The US should seek alternative energy sources to include — of course — immediate local drilling and processing sites on US soil and control, as well as drilling within our legal shore limits in the ocean.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico Democrat, predicted that the latest Middle East crisis will amplify calls on Capitol Hill to expand U.S. oil production as a way to ease dependence on unstable foreign suppliers.

“Congress usually gets very interested in these circumstances,” he said. “I’m sure there will be calls for us to ramp up production … but that would occur over a substantial period of time.”

Your Congress is both blind and stupid. You tap what you have first and immediately, and place a crisis-mode timetable upon it. You don’t do this to the nation’s peril. Coming peril. Imminent peril. And FORESEEABLE peril. This is nothing that isn’t in our collective faces NOW.

Mr. Bingaman said his agenda for the new Congress will instead focus on a four-part plan that includes tax incentives and developing markets for renewable- energy companies in the U.S.

Egypt is about to be in control, under Muslim Brotherhood rule, of the Suez Canal.

But the alternative-fuel industry has faced a series of challenges, including financing, uncertainty over the future of tax incentives and finding customers, including conventional power companies, to purchase its energy. Mr. Bingaman said the country’s inconsistent approach has left U.S. producers at a competitive disadvantage.

“Our on-again, off-again tax credits are no match for [overseas] competitors,” he said. He also said that companies will relocate to places such as China and Europe, which are leading the way in alternative energy.

“The marketplace reality is that [companies] will be located closest to where the demand is,” he said.

Mr. Bingaman acknowledged that Obama administration officials have reached out to the committee to help draft his energy policy. But he said Congress is unlikely to take up Mr. Obama’s call during his State of the Union speech last week to curb subsidies to oil companies.

But it is oil companies that hold the key to reacquisition of American dominance. We need to drill and create more refineries. And, at the same time, create an absolute pogrom of electrical generation station building, as well as coastal de-salinization plants. For the future.

We need to focus not on welfare for non-producers and parasites, but on rebuilding our energy and transportation infrastructure.

If non-producers and parasites get kicked to the curb, then so be it. I’ve worked 40+ years as a legitimate producer and taxpayer. I want to see my country succeed. I WANT lines to be drawn.

Mr. Bingaman said he is open to including nuclear power in the mix of U.S. energy sources — as long as incentives continue for renewable-energy projects.

I am shocked at this revelation. I am for nuclear power as long as it is safely built, safely managed and competently managed, protected and supported.

But the bottom line is this: common sense. Realize what we can do when we can do it. Yes, of course, make a plan. But do not cut off one’s energy nose to spite one’s national face.

First, secure our OIL production to attempt as much oil INDEPENDENCE as possible. If we have to rely on OIL and rely on COAL in the process of making a plan, then SO BE IT.

Concurrently, try to support and build our energy future. Make a plan. Many plans.

I subscribe to a national publication entitled “Police Fleet Manager” and other fleet manager websites, as I managed a fleet of 60+ law enforcement vehicles under the aegis of EVOC to include cars, buses and authority motors.

One recent article asked the question: “Electric cars: where to find the power?”

Where, indeed?

If we build nothing but electric cars, where do we get the power?

We are SO far away from our ability to support even the grid we CURRENTLY have.

Much less an immediate future predicated upon Chevy Volts.

Jesus, America. And American politicians.

Wake the fuck up, will you?

BZ