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It is getting harder and harder to make sense of life on this side of the Looking Glass.  Let me see if I can get this clear.  It would be wrong for the United States to “meddle” in Iranian elections, even if half the people in Iran are begging for support.  BUT it is okay to tell Israel where they can and can not build houses.  Meddling with a regime that has been killing Americans for 30 years bad.  Meddling with a loyal US ally good.  Criticizing the Mullahs who have been killing US soldiers in Iraq for 6 years now is wrong.  Criticizing the Democratic ally is right.  Is that it?

Obama is so upside down and inside out you don’t need an x-ray to see if he broke his arm.

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Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy -

In this issue:

1. Crap & Trade
2. Science
3. Kensington
4. Iran
5. Drone Strike

1. Crap & Trade. Nancy Pelosi’s House passed 1,200 – 1,500 page Waxman – Markey (or Taxman – Malarkey) Cap & Trade legislation Friday. It is intended to control carbon dioxide emissions here in the US as a way to control manmade global warming. The legislation marks the first time the US government – now completely out of control under the leftists and a fascist majority in congress – has dared to designate a vital part of the environment as a dangerous pollutant. The legislation was not even completely written, as Waxman (D, CA) dropped a 300-page amendment on the table at 3:09 AM Friday morning. As it was, eight Republicans voted for the bill nobody read, and 44 democrats voted against it. It passed 219 – 210 and goes to the Senate for consideration in September. This legislation represents a huge transfer of wealth from working Americans and businesses into the hands of the non-producers. Additionally, tax incentives will serve to increase our dependence on imported foreign energy, as it will be a dime cheaper per barrel to import than produce domestically. The Obama administration is referring to this as a jobs bill that will move people to so-called green jobs. Unfortunately for those of us that work for a living, Spanish experience with green jobs has been awful. Spain currently has draconian environmental laws in effect. They have determined new energy production sources and have heavily subsidized them – think solar and wind. Spain currently has unemployment around 18%. And their experience with green jobs has shown that for every single green job created; around 2.2 real jobs are destroyed. We are following the Spaniards down the rabbit hole. Finally, it appears Pelosi’s leadership and the state-run media pulled a little game with this legislation, as we heard throughout the last several weeks that they didn’t have the voted to pass this POS. But they did. Now they are saying that there is no way this will get out of committee in the Senate. Bet they have the votes in the senate also. Phone calls were running 9:1 against passage in the House, which didn’t seem to matter a lot to members of the 219 House members that voted for the unread and unwritten legislation. If this passes, it will have a huge and incredibly expensive impact on our lives. It must not be allowed to pass the senate and every single congress critter that voted or votes for it must pay a painful, awful price for that support.

2. Science. The Competitive Enterprise Institute unearthed a 98 page internal EPA document that took exception with their finding earlier this year that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant. The EPA slammed through the finding, which gives the EPA latitude under the Clean Air Act to write rules and regulations controlling carbon dioxide in less than a week, allowing only five days for internal comment. If the author of the opposition report, which the EPA buried until the release of internal e-mails, was able to put this together in less than five days – all 98 pages of it – don’t you suppose that there are significant scientific data in opposition to the notion that carbon dioxide, specifically manmade carbon dioxide is causing global warming? From the Powerandcontrol blog Saturday:

The EPA report (designating carbon dioxide as a pollutant) is based on the last IPCC report which is now 3 years out of date.

These new findings have not been taken into account:

a. Global temperatures have been trending downwards for 11 years
b. The consensus on Atlantic Hurricane behavior has changed
c. Greenland is probably safe from melting
d. The economic downturn has reduced CO2 emissions
e. Empirical evidence supports negative feedback for water vapor
f. Solar variability may account for 68% of warming
Mr. Carlin (the author of the suppressed report) also points out that the EPA has a history of doing its own evaluations of science and does not rely on outside organizations (such as the IPCC) to determine its conclusions. The EPA in this case has not done its own independent investigation.

3. Kensington. The SCOTUS found last week that a mine near Juneau could proceed with their plans to dump mine tailings – crushed rock – into a lake as approved by an Army Corps of Engineers permit for the mine. The permit also requires the mine to remediate the lake following the end of mining operations, and restore the fish population in the lake afterwards. Southeast Alaska greens as usual were apoplectic, as they were hoping to use the courts to shut down mining throughout the region. The game the greens were playing was with definitions of mining waste. If that waste – normally crushed rock (the same thing that comes off the ends of glaciers and is suspended in glacial runoff streams – is designated as fill, it only has to comply with normal runoff rules. On the other hand, if it is designated as mining waste, downstream water quality must improve to a level approaching distilled water downstream. Greens are pushing the Obama administration and congress to retroactively rewrite the rules for mining and dumping crushed rock. This was a great victory, but will not stop the green assault on mining here in Alaska as long as one of them continues breathing.

4. Iran. The revolution in Iran continued last week with the Basji, the Revolutionary Guards, other security and imported thugs beat, chopped, maimed and murdered protestors in Tehran and other cities. The Mullahs doubled down, vowing to never give up control of the nation. Interestingly, by weeks end, there were no reports of Iranian military being deployed in the streets, suggesting to some observers that their loyalty to the Mullahs may be suspect at best. This fight is going to be to the death, with the Mullahs and their hired thugs killing and maiming everyone that dares to stand in their way. They have managed to disarm the population to the extent that Basji on small motorbikes with axes are successfully attacking and killing their victims. Should the revolutionaries win out on this one, despite the complete lack of assistance from the US, expect the Mullahs to suffer the same indignities that Mussolini did in 1945. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.

5. Drone Strike. A US drone strike on a funeral for a Taliban chieftain in Pakistan killed over 60 last week. Interestingly, there were no claims of women and children killed in the strike. Both the Pakistanis and Taliban were very quiet afterwards, perhaps indicating that the strike may have been much more successful at removing high value targets from the global gene pool than some previous strikes. The war continues, somewhat successfully, even though nobody in the administration is talking about it any more. In a related story, the new US Commander in Afghanistan announced that Rules of Engagement were going to be changed so that Taliban would no longer be engaged in local housing in an attempt to avoid collateral damage. At first glance, this would appear that an Obama General was now n charge and we were chick-ifying the conduct of the war. However, on the Milblogs, the talk is that the new Commander comes out of the Special Forces world, and is one of the nastier pieces of work out there. They suggest that he has done a cost-benefit analysis of killing small numbers of Taliban hiding behind innocents; has determined that flattening a building with 20 non-combatants; and killing a couple Taliban is not the best use of overwhelming force; and is coming up with another way to deal with them. We will see how this works out.

More later — AG

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found also at the following locations: MatSu Valley News and the home page. Rod Martin’s The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column. Alex Gimarc is a long-time member of the Town Hall Conservative group.

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The current occupant of the US Presidency should learn from President Reagan on dealing with tyrannies.

“In 1983, Ronald Reagan used a word to describe the Soviet Union that some of his advisors who wanted engagement with the Soviets wished he wouldn’t use.

It will anger the Soviet leaders, they said. It will make negotiations impossible.

But Reagan used the word anyway. He called the Soviet regime “evil.”"

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Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy -

In this issue:

1. More IGs
2. Palin
3. Durbin
4. Iran
5. Climate Report
6. Cheerios

1. More IGs. As the week ended, evidence surfaced of the Obama administration obstructing and removing two more Inspectors General. The first was the IG assigned to monitor the TARP program payouts. He has uncovered a large amount of questionable spending and asked for supporting documentation from Geithner’s Treasury Department. Treasury has stonewalled the request, refusing to provide the information. The third IG was at the International Trade Commission. She was fired after a dispute over paperwork. The ITC position is important, as it is where Obama and his Chicago cronies will be rewriting trade agreements that will in the end, benefit them more than the rest of the country. The Americorps scandal is hugely important, as laundering money through ACORN and Americorps is the vehicle that the Obama administration will use to manufacture votes for the next two elections. If you think that massive election fraud is only an Iranian regime artifact, you haven’t seen anything yet. The question is going to be what do we do when the left steals the 2010 and 2012 elections via election fraud, manufactured voters, voter intimidation by the Black Panthers at the polling places, installing themselves as a permanent, illegitimate governing majority?

2. Palin. As the Letterman – Palin food fight settled down last week, three questions became apparent: Why did Letterman go after Palin? Why are the leftists continuing to go after Palin? Is Palin the conservative answer for the next couple election cycles? First off: Letterman went after Palin simply for ratings; most likely to create a media splash to counter Conan O’Brien replacing Jay Leno. The second question is more interesting, and subject to vigorous debate among conservatives throughout the week. Limbaugh read from an American Thinker article last Monday that suggested the reason for the unending attacks on Palin from the left is because they are afraid of her. The writer notes that on the left, the best and the brightest go into politics. It is what they do, what they live for, and what they are good at. And when their best and brightest continue jihad against a defeated VP candidate that ought to tell us how they perceive her threat to their continued infestation of elective office in the future. The final question is yet to be answered, as we will need to see what Palin does over the course of the next couple of years. We know she is charismatic, can draw tens of thousands of people at the drop of a hat, and that the Republican establishment – particularly the old school beltway types – don’t like her a lot. We also know that she is not well disciplined and does not yet run a tight ship. She, like most of us, has some work to do should she decide to enter national politics again.

3. Durbin. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D, IL) appears to have engaged in some insider trading to protect his investments last September. He walked out of a meeting with Treasury officials and sold $116,000 worth of stock. He rolled the money into Berkshire Hathaway stock. In essence, he dodged the worst effects of the stock market crash last September by rolling his investments from whatever they were in, into a safer investment with Berkshire Hathaway. Note that Martha Stewart went to jail for engaging in insider trading, making stock trades based on information not known by the general public. Culture of corruption anyone? Hot Air, Sun.

4. Iran. Iran may be on the verge of revolution, as the ruling Mullahs inexplicably decided to commit obvious massive election fraud to get their boy Ahmadinejad reelected president. Late last week, the Mullahs threw down the gauntlet to protesters, telling them in essence to sit down and shut up. Information flow out of Iran has been significantly cut off, with Twitter being the best source of information for outsiders and communication with insiders. Foreign journalists have all been taken into custody. There was a reported suicide bomber at Khomeini’s tomb. As of the weekend, it appears that the people of Iran have had enough of 30 years of the Islamic Republic and are going for the gold, staging a revolution. The instruments of terror that the Mullahs have used in the past to retain control appear to be at risk, with the military, the secret police, and others not as vigorously enforcing order as they have in the past. This has led some observers to the conclusion that all is not well on the street, and that the Mullahs may be losing control. There are also reports that the Mullahs have started bringing in Hezbollah and Hamas killers that will do what they are told to do. On our part, President Teleprompter has adamantly refused to stand up for the freedom fighters, not unlike the pass that Bush 41 took on Tiananmen Square in China 20 years ago.

5. Climate Report. NOAA and OSTP released their report on manmade global warming and climate change last week. The report is intended to provide the scientific foundation for Waxman’s cap and trade legislation. AJ Strata in the Strata Sphere noted that the Executive Summary made two conclusions that are demonstrably false. Here are the paragraphs:

Observations show that warming of the climate is unequivocal. The global warming observed over the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. These emissions come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas), with important contributions from the clearing of forests, agricultural practices, and other activities.
Warming over this century is projected to be considerably greater than over the last century. The global average temperature since 1900 has risen by about 1.5ºF.

Yet the temperature graphs included in the report do not show averages. They show maximums and minimums. Since 1880 (Krakatau erupted in 1883, by the way), there were two global minima temperatures. The worst was in 1910 at about -0.3 degrees C. The highest global maximum on the chart was +0.51 degrees C, for an average temperature increase over the period of +0.35 degrees C. Note also that the Twentieth Century was the first full century out of the Little Ice Age, though it was marked by three or four years of solar minima in the 1910s. Over that time, global temperature increases have averaged about a half a degree C. Over that period of time, the amount of manmade carbon dioxide into the atmosphere has changed significantly over time, yet the temperature increases and decreases have not reflected those carbon dioxide level changes. Also remember that the increase in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere decoupled from temperature in 1998 or so, when global temperatures leveled off for a few years, after which they started dropping. If we are the cause of all this, why are global temperatures going down? Why is it snowing in the Dakotas in June? Additionally, the selection of 1880 as the start point for their proof shows yet another game played by the NOAA global baloney climatologists – the technique of carefully selecting start and end points for your data, so that you can demonstrate the worst possible change in temperature so you can blame it on mankind and SUVs.

6. Cheerios. The FDA has declared war on Cheerios, informing General Mills that the recent ad campaign that claims that Cheerios will help cut your cholesterol coverts it from a breakfast food into a drug, which they can then regulate. Nothing like more Hope and Change. And we pay these bozos’ salaries. Hot Air, Sat.

More later — AG

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found also at the following locations: MatSu Valley News and the home page. Rod Martin’s The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column. Alex Gimarc is a long-time member of the Town Hall Conservative group.

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