A Stopped Clock Is Twice Right

President Obama occasionally gets things right. In his State of the Union address he called for more "safe, clean nuclear power plants." And yesterday he called for $54 billion of federal loan guarantees to those who would build this new generation of nuclear power. See: Loan Guarantees. IF we can take him at his word (the big "if" is on purpose), then this would be an important step forward in the U.S.'s attempt to achieve energy independence. In this speech he also mentioned more offshore drilling for gas and oil. This would be wonderful if it happened, but my cynicism takes over here and such a development (ANWR too?) I'm afraid, is even more suspect.

It would seem to this author that the real path to our nation's energy independence might require the following steps:
1) Build as many new nuclear power plants as can be economically financed and open up Yucca Mountain for long-term nuclear waste disposal (if required).
2) Aim to generate all our electrical needs from nuclear energy (east and west coast) and from coal-fired plants (middle America). No more natural gas and oil-fired electrical power plants should be given permits.
3) Encourage all Americans to heat their homes with natural gas and help build the infrastructure and offer the tax incentives to accomplish this. The objective should be no more oil-heated homes.
4) Specify that kerosene, diesel fuel, and gasoline are the most desirable fuels for transportation vehicles (air, rail, and ground). Offer the necessary incentives to achieve better mileage in these vehicles (including hybrid technology). Investigate liquefied coal as a long-term vehicular fuel option.
5) Set a national goal of ceasing all foreign oil imports within ten years (using the above methodologies and including oil recovery from our vast oil shale deposits.) I predict that the price of Mideast oil would plummet as a consequence of just such a goal setting.
6) Stop wasting federal funds on solar, tidal, geothermal, and wind-power projects and use these funds instead on the above items. Let the private sector fund any of these "green" projects that make any economic sense (likely very few).

I can dream can't I? Tick ... tick ... tick.

Pinocchio

Barack Obama is sure to try to dazzle us with his State of the Union address tonight. I doubt that any attendee will be shouting out "You lie!", but I still suspect that mendacity will creep into his rhetoric. Ben Shapiro has written an insightful piece in "Town Hall.com" to help us decipher what will oil its way out Obama's cigarette-stained lips tonight. See Obama's Lexicon of Rhetorical Devices. This is one of the funniest columns I have read in quite a while. May I suggest that you print it out and keep it by your side if you plan to watch or listen to Obama's teleprompter tonight. (Thanks to Howie Carr for pointing this column out to us.)

Stealth Socialism

While our nation's attention is diverted toward the Scott Brown upset victory in Massachusetts, the White House and the Senate are quietly pushing forward more of their stealth socialist agenda. Not satisfied with owning two auto companies, keeping the banking industry under its thumb, attempting to become the country's only health-care insurer, and maneuvering to tax the U.S. utility industry out of existence (with Cap-and-Trade), the Obamites are now on the verge of grabbing the $100 billion per year student loan business. See student loan takeover ... and also please click through to the "Wall Street Journal" article to read more of the details.

This sotto voce move by Tom Harkin (with the clear approval of President Obama), will finish what comrade Nancy Pelosi started back in September and will surely squeeze the private sector out of the student loan business in a very few years. To paraphrase P.J. Clark, "If you thought student loans cost the U.S. taxpayers a lot of money, wait until our government runs everything."

By the bye, what makes these transplanted Chicago thugs who currently run our Obamafied government think that they can ever manage the U.S.'s $14 trillion economy when they have never have run so much as a corner candy store?

Head(s) Should Roll

President Obama recently called it a "screwup" in the U.S. intelligence community over the Nigerian Islamic terrorist's attempted crotch-bombing of an airliner over Detroit. Now our President is pointing his finger at these same intelligence agencies for their inability to connect the dots. But as the old canard goes: "When you point your finger outward, three more fingers point back at you." By this I mean that Obama's National Security Czar, John Brennan, after a dismal performance on Fox News this past Sunday (see: Dodge and Weave), has, up until now, evaded any culpability for these "systemic failures" (also Obama's words).

But, what hasn't been generally reported is that John Brennan was the primary person responsible for the software and database that was built to connect these dots, see: the Rest of the Story. He,"having designed and built our multi-agency terrorist threat integration center", now is charged by our empty-suit (but stuffed-shirt) of a President to fix things. From 2005 to 2008 he was the CEO of Analysis Corp. (see: The Analysis Corporation) which spent $50 million of taxpayers funds to build the terrorist-screening system that was supposed to be the ultimate in dot-connectors. Oops.

May I humbly suggest that John Brennan's head clearly should be the first to roll ... closely followed by Janet Napolitano's.

Signal Flags

How is it that the Bush/Chaney administration carried this country through seven years terrorist-attack free while the Obama/Biden duo has had three serious events in its first eleven months? Personally, I don't believe that our operational intelligence apparatus has appreciably changed. However, what has changed is the signals that this administration is sending to Al-Qaeda, viz: the planned closing of Gitmo, no more waterboarding, turning terrorist acts into criminal offenses, renaming the "war on terrorism" into "overseas contingency operations", the non-existence of our "High Value Detainee Interrogation Group" (HIG) ten months after Obama announced its creation, making a Girl Scout leader the head of Homeland Security, closing down military tribunals, moving the KSM trial to New York City, the president's slow, low-key responses to each terrorist act, sending Chinese Islamic terrorists to Bermuda, refocusing our government on global-warming/health-care/fire-hose domestic spending, and finally blaming everything that goes wrong on Bush.

One other point that needs to be reiterated: during the Bush years the war in Iraq was a magnet that drew disenchanted Muslims from around the globe to sacrifice themselves there in the name of Allah. Now, that Iraq is being deemphasized, many more venues have become attractive to would-be martyrs ... including unfortunately the U.S.A. This last reason clearly is not of Obama's doing alone, but our haste to leave Iraq may turn out to be a gigantic mistake ... witness the dramatic increase in terrorists bombings there recently.

So, it may be that style is just as important as substance in combating the terrorist threat we suffer. And, if Obama does not do a convincing 180-degree turn in his rhetoric, we may be in for three more years of "isolated incidents".

Surf's Up

Never being one to resist an opportunity to criticize Barack Obama I note that he has just decreed that many previously classified government documents shall be open to public scrutiny ... even over any objection by our intelligence community. See: Classless Declassifying

Our ever alert administration in its war on "overseas contingency operations" (as exemplified by its surf's-up response to Al-Qaeda's recent attempt to take down a Detroit-bound airliner) has once again softened our country's defense posture (need I list here all their linguine-spined, knuckle-headed moves?). The question I have is (actually its a question my wife had this AM when we heard this news on "Morning Joe") -- Does this declassification by Obama also apply to the thousands of pages of text of our new health-care legislation?

Ye Olde ...

My 50th college reunion is coming up and one of the ideas to entertain us crotchety old men is to publish a list of things that weren't around when we were pea-green freshmen -- personal computers, GPS systems, etc. I, on the other hand, believe that an equally entertaining compendium would be those things that were there then but now are missing. So, I have attempted to recall a number of them in hopes readers will follow suit. Basically, the game is to list things that were commonplace in the 1950's but are now not to be (or at least rare).

Here goes: dial phones, Blatz beer, crinolines, white-wall tires, canasta, Uncle Miltie, Ipana toothpaste, women's girdles, the Rhinegold girl, rabbit-ear antennas, statesmen politicians, the "Hit Parade", real silver U.S. coins, seamed stockings, portable typewriters, S&H green stamps, necker knobs on steering wheels, motor scooters, belt-in-the-back chinos, DUZ ("does everything"), 45/78 vinyl records, white-buck shoes, radio soap operas ("Portia Faces Life"), "Gunsmoke", Vitalis hair tonic

What do you reminisce about?

Merry Christmas ...

or the Holiday of your choice.

(Painting by Grandma Moses)

Snow-Bound

"Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snowflakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores."

John Greenleaf Whittier

Pity Citi

Citigroup has just been granted a $18 billion tax break by the IRS (Treasury Dept.) in order that it might repay its TARP loan with a massively reduced tax liability. See Citi Tax Break. Now the fact that Tim Geithner is the Secretary of the Treasury (and an admitted personal tax cheat) and is a long-time protege of Robert Rubin who is attached at the waist with Citigroup (a former Chairman of the Board) and picked Geithner for his job has nothing to do with this Treasury travesty. Basically it appears to this blogger that our government is effectively giving Citigroup money so that it then can turn around and give it back while at the same time eliminating much of its TARP liability. This is absolute BS with a capital "B.S." When are we, as those wimps electing these political poltroons, going to rise up and say "NO"? Geithner should not only not enjoy his august status in Washington, but he should be the first prisoner in that high-security prison that our other corrupt Washington pols are buying in Illinois (co-incidence) to house the Gitmo prisoners.

What is even more gratingly hilarious is that the current Chairman of Citigroup, Richard Parsons, just stiffed Barack Obama (along with the heads of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) when they were supposed to meet with Obama in the Oval Office to discuss increasing loans to small businesses. And Geithner's allowing Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to become "banks" as opposed to investment banks is another of his mortal sins. As a result, both Morgan and Goldman can now borrow money from the New York Federal Reserve (which Geithner previously ran) at effectively no cost ... and then turn around and speculate in the Credit Default Swap and Interest Rate Swap markets with this ill-gotten pelf (as opposed to giving loans to businesses). I want to throw up.

Gate-Crashing-Gate

All the TV networks, cable shows, and the print media are currently obsessed with the White House gate crashing of the Salahis into Obama's first state dinner ... these "15-minute-of-famers" were on the Today Show this morning spinning their self-serving scenario. Other than the apparent lapse in Secret Service security surrounding the President, I find this another preposterous non-story story. Why does our country relish such cotton-candy events with such fascination when there are so many other under-reported and under-analyzed earth-changing events taking place? -- Iran's nuclear ambitions, Climate-gate, the Afghanistan surge, 10%+ unemployment, huge federal deficits, the growing mortgage crisis, Eric Holder's boners (terrorist's NYC trial, continued funding of ACORN, etc.), Charlie Rangel's malfeasance, and so on.

We Americans need very much to get our heads screw on properly and re-prioritize our need-to-know news interests.

CRU Cut

"CRU" stands for Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in England which has been the wellspring of much of the "research" done on global warming. Recently, its computers were hacked by party or parties unknown and 156 megabytes if embarrassing information (e-mails and computer programs among others) were posted on a Russian server. At first, there was much focus on the e-mails (see: UK Telegraph) which displayed a decidedly non-scientific approach to this subject ... exhibiting hubris, obfuscation, mendacity, and cold-heartedness. But soon thereafter, more damaging information came to light as people started sifting through the programmer's code comments (see: Climategate).

Now, having been painted into a corner, the CRU critters have decided to make public the data that was used to arrive at their world-wrenching conclusions about man-made global warming. They should also come clean on any and all of the processes they used to arrive at their results along with the statistical details of their regression models (goodness of fit measures, etc.). We should then see if their results are reproducible by acolytes and skeptics alike. I personally think that there are a lot more things that make the world's temperature go up and down ... many, I believe, much more consequential than CO2. The fact that "man-made" CO2 has become the political focus of the "climate-change" worrywarts is, I believe, another "Madness of Crowds" canard. Man, as it turns out, has a very small effect on CO2 levels ... see this rather old but revealing reference: Man's Effect)

These revelations have hopefully brought about a hiatus ... one that should cause us all to step away from the groupthink that now prevails and which has carried the world's political lemmings to dangerous economic conclusions ... until such time as we know better scientific truths (if in our lifetimes).

O-bow-ma

I'm oh so very sorry about Hiroshima ...

Deficit Hawk

What is $400 billion between friends? Recently, in this blog, I reported that the federal deficit for fiscal 2009 was $1.4 trillion. Well, I was wrong. Bernie Madoff has nothing on the U.S. Treasury Department when it comes to financial shenanigans. It turns out that our country's real deficit is closer to $1.8 trillion ... see The Real Deal. This was because our Government is treating bail-out funds as though they are not money down a rat hole ... kinda like the way Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, et alii dealt with all their "investments" in Credit Default Swaps. This is not just irresponsible, I think it may well be criminal. If Geithner can't figure out his personal income taxes, how can we expect him to keep our federal finances straight? I predict that Obama, on his up-coming visit to China, might have to bob and weave through this deficit legerdemain over his King Pao chicken.

O-bomb-a

- Unemployment at 10.2%
- 2009 deficit at $1.88 trillion
- $820+ billion of stimulus down a rat hole
- Dithering on Afghanistan military policy
- Profligate government spending
- Ultra-liberal White House inner circle (czars)
- Increasing domestic terrorism
- Multitude of proposed higher taxes
- Deteriorating Iraqi situation
- Russia/Iran nuclear kiss-up ... producing nada
- Guantanamo terrorist prisoner fiasco
- Independent uncovering of ACORN's festering corruption
- Inept response to vast Midwest flooding and power outages
- Trillions of dollars of pork to financial institutions
- Screwing Poland and the Czech Republic on missile defense
- World speaking tours to poor-mouth the U.S.
- Tepid support of Iranian election protesters
- Attempted government takeover of healthcare
- Nationalization of 2/3rds of the U.S. auto industry
- Total lack of promised administrative transparency
- Amateurish delays in delivering H1/N1 flu vaccine
- Support of a constitutionally-deposed Honduran despot
- White House usurping control of the 2010 census
- Attacks on the non-liberal media (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh)
- Cambridge police "acted stupidly" comment

All in just ten months. Did I miss any?

Hobson's Choice

He's alive (and not talking)! Now to find out what's what (accomplices, foreign contacts, future plans, etc.), should it be water-boarding or a polite and giggly interview on David Letterman?

Red Roof Inn

In the nine months since Barack Obama has been our President there have obviously been quite a number of visitors to the White House. Recently, the list of said guests has been released and it contains some interesting tidbits. The Drudge Report mentioned George Clooney, George Soros and Oprah. See: Visitor Records.

I however found a few even more interesting names (number of visits is in parens after the name.) They are Angela Davis (2), Bill Ayers (2), Jesse Jackson (6), Michael Moore (8), Al Sharpton (2), George Soros (4), and Jeremiah Wright (1). (The actor, Will Smith, was there an astounding 33 times. Is there a movie in the offing?) Nor does this list contain many other names ... excluded because of security or first-family privacy purposes. And it is not clear (perhaps purposely so) what all these visits involved or whom was met. However, in every case the leaving time was 11:59 PM which suggests to me that these were overnight stays. I'm sure more on this will come out over the ensuing days in the NY Times and Boston Globe.

Perhaps we should change the name of the White House to the Red Roof Inn?

Flu Fleecers

Walgreens and CVS are selling seasonal flu shots for around $30 a pop ... and this program has proved so popular that both store chains are running out of flu vaccine (and their stock prices are moving up). See: Flu Vaccine Shortage. The purpose of my comments here is to chastise Walgreens and CVS for their sleight-of-hand in offering this program during the public panic about the H1N1 flu outbreak. These drugstores do not make it abundantly clear that these flu shots do not protect recipients against the "swine flu". I conjecture that the vast majority of the public sheep who are getting these seasonal flu shots do not realize that they are not protected against the H1N1 virus and that the vaccine against this strain of the flu virus will not be available to the general public for at least one month.

Also many of these ovines could get this very same seasonal flu shot at their workplaces, HMOs, local community clinics. or fraternal organizations for free. I welcome readers to watch these drug store's ads on TV or read their road signs and find an explicit caveat emptor that these flu shots do not protect against the swine flu. These stores may reveal this fact to those Babbitts in line to be vaccinated ... but, by then, it may to be too late. The Walgreen and CVS Judas goats have already lead these sheep into spending their $30 for something that they think they are getting ... but are not.

Nobly Nobel

In the proud tradition of Jimmy Carter, Mohamed El-Baradei, Al Gore, Kofi Annan, and Yasser Arafat. For more names and irrationales see: Powerline's Take

Horns of a Dilemma

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has just scored the latest Baucus Senate health-care bill and said that it would be revenue neutral -- producing a $81 billion return to the Treasury over a ten year period. This has been a requirement that Obama has imposed on any health-care reform plan ... otherwise he would not sign the bill. However, the CBO also included in its calculations a $404 billion cut to Medicare benefits over this same period (see: Medicare Cuts) -- something else that Obama has vowed to oppose in a well-publicized AARP meeting (see: Obama Vows No Cuts).

So Obama is now on the horns of a dilemma. Does he, with the help of the main stream media, ignore these draconian Medicare cuts hoping that AARP and the U.S. public will not focus on this fiscal slight-of-hand (in my Google search I could find only one news article that even mentioned these Medicare cuts -- the Wall Street Journal)? Or does he refuse to sign the Baucus bill and keep his promise to America's seniors? And, even more interestingly, does AARP campaign against the Baucus bill, pointing out how its membership will bear much of the burden of health-insuring an additional 21 million non-elderly Americans? I think I know how this story will progress ... how about you?