Listen Up Marines! R. Lee Ermey has a few things to say!

Ignore the lame-o house band doing the Stones cover.  R. Lee Ermey comes out, says a few nice things, then let's us know what's on his mind.

Stolen from Ace

You guys probably know this scene well, but here's R. Lee Ermey in his prime being an Old School Marine

May not be kosher in the new gay-friendly military.

Dr. No predicts "Apocalyptic Pain" is headed our way.

(I intend for this post to sound a little sarcastic.) Here is some paranoia from Dr. No who is actually Senator Tom Coburn. He made this statement when referring to our Nations debt and overall economic situation.

'Apocalyptic pain' from an out-of-control debt could cause 18 percent unemployment and a massive contraction in the economy that would destroy the middle class, a leading Republican deficit hawk said in an interview that aired Sunday.

[...]

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who recently issued a report on government waste, warned that the U.S. only has about three or four years to get its fiscal house in order or it could find itself facing austerity measures seen in Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and earlier in Japan.

'The history of republics is they average 200 years of life. And they all fail in the history over fiscal matters. They rot from within before they collapse or are attacked,' Coburn told 'Fox News Sunday.'

'The problem that faces our country today, the last 30 years we have lived off the future, and the bill is coming due,' he added.
[...]
'I think you'll see a 15 to 18 percent unemployment rate. I think you will see an 8 to 9 percent decline in GDP. I think you'll see the middle class just destroyed if we don't do this. And the people that it will harm the most will be the poorest of the poor, because we'll print money to try to debase our currency and get out of it and what you will see is hyperinflation,' Coburn said.

'If we didn't take some pain now, we're going to experience apocalyptic pain, and it's going to be out of our control. The idea should be that we control it,' he said.
[...]
'I don't care if you're rich or poor, liberal or conservative. If we don't fix the problems in front of us, everybody is going to pay a significant price,' he said.

If the Republicans can't get the Country's finances back in shape in the next couple of years, what has been happening in Europe could be headed our way according to Coburn. You use to only hear this type of dire prediction by talk show hosts. Now it is coming from our Senators. Senator Coburn did pledge to not run for another term, so maybe that is why he is willing to be so honest about the situation our Country faces. America is special and we don't have to worry about the fate that has befallen other nations in the past as noted above. Our government is like the con artist who gets a loan and then pays for this loan with another loan and so on. (My economic textbook said that national debt is not anything to worry about as the government can just roll over its debt and pay for its existing debts by issuing more debt in the form of treasuries. But if the markets loose faith in the governments ability to pay back that debt, they will demand higher interest rates which will make the cost of servicing this debt prohibitive. This is what happened in Greece and Ireland.) It seems as if the economic con game that is our nations economy is coming to an end of sorts. Pain is about to befall us. Stay out of debt.

Merry Christmas! Go Ducks!

What a great time of year. The Ducks are going to the National Championship, the Seahawks are still in the playoff hunt (I would bet on them winning the division), my fantasy football team is in the championship ($180 to the winner), beer to be drunk, presents to open, the house is being taken over by republicans, I just found out that we will be having another glorious son, and my family is in good health. Lets not let trivial political issues affect us this Christmas and toast a drink to the good life!

PS Ducks are gonna kick some southern ass. Ducks win 38-34. You heard it here first.

Oregon - Where the Socialist Dream Lives On

As the Republican wave swept over the country, liberal enclaves on the West Coast and the Northeast held onto the Obama dream, at least a little while longer.  No place more so than Oregon, where the makeup of the House & Senate members remained unchanged (4 Democrats/1 Republican in the House, 2 Democrat Senators), and where an ex-two term liberal governor was elected to the post again.  Oregon hasn't had a Republican governor since the '80's.

In January 2010, while the country was slipping into a deep recession and Tea Party mania was sweeping the land, Oregon stood strong and voted in favor of Measure 67, which according to Ballot Pedia:

increase(d) taxes in the state by $733 million through increasing the state’s corporate minimum tax, raising taxes on the state’s high-income individuals and raising income taxes on businesses.

I don't recall the ballot measure, but I know that in 2009, as the state unemployment rate was skyrocketing, my own Multnomah County voted on a property tax hike to make sure the teachers got their 3% pay raise, even while everyone else was headed to the unemployment lines. Such is the perspective of most Oregonians that anything and everything must be done to keep the State government unions fully funded and in power.

Oregon's success in implimenting its socialist policies is reflected in its unemployment rate, which is a full 3% higher than the already way-too-high national average.

Now the Wall Street Journal has come out with an article showing how the taxation of the rich has led to a loss of tax income for the state, a result that will surprise no RTP&GGer (the link is to the TaxProf blog as you need a subscription to see the actual WSJ article):

Oregon raised its income tax on the richest 2% of its residents last year to fix its budget hole, but now the state treasury admits it collected nearly one-third less revenue than the bean counters projected. ...

In 2009 the state legislature raised the tax rate to 10.8% on joint-filer income of between $250,000 and $500,000, and to 11% on income above $500,000. Only New York City's rate is higher. Oregon's liberal voters ratified the tax increase on individuals and another on businesses in January of this year, no doubt feeling good about their "shared sacrifice."

Congratulations. Instead of $180 million collected last year from the new tax, the state received $130 million. ...

How could this socialist policy fail? Taxing the rich is the way to prosperity for all, right? As Obama said, "I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody", and "I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money". Well, that kind of deep, perceptive thought, that could only come from the Ivy League-educated, results in this:

One reason revenues are so low is that about one-quarter of the rich tax filers seem to have gone missing. The state expected 38,000 Oregonians to pay the higher tax, but only 28,000 did. Funny how that always happens. These numbers are in line with a Cascade Policy Institute study, based on interstate migration patterns, predicting that the tax surcharge would lead to 80,000 fewer wealthy tax filers in Oregon over the next decade. ...

Barack and you other socialists, maybe you should make sure you imprison the wealthy so they can't pick up and leave before you rape them of their hard-earned or easily-earned dough.

The sad thing is, the majority of Oregonians embrace these kinds of policies.  Heavy sigh.

The Government Now Has The Power To Regulate The Internet .

Net "neutrality" has passed which will help to make the Internet a public utility and regulated as such. Congress voted against this and the courts ruled that this was not legal. Well that does not matter to those with "The Unconstrained Vision". The current administration will just bypass all of the traditional restraints on government power. When restraints on the government's power prevent it from doing beneficial things, then these restraints are viewed as a negative thing by those wishing to remake a better society and must by destroyed or bypassed as in this case. The Congress is becoming irrelevant just as it did during the downfall of the Roman empire. Net "Neutrality" was passed under the guise of protecting the consumer and giving them more choice. As President Obama said about the new rules, it"'will help preserve the free and open nature of the Internet while encouraging innovation, protecting consumer choice, and defending free speech.'" That is double speak straight out of the novel "1984" as these new regulations do the exact opposite. As Rush Limbaugh stated, "It is a solution in search of a problem". He did a concise over view of the topic far better than I could and I won't repeat it. These new rules basically allows the government to regulate content on the Internet. The same argument that is used for controlling the "public airwaves" for the purpose of regulating talk radio--which happens to be the governments biggest obstacle to ramming through its agenda of having more power that will enable it to do good more things for us--is being used for regulating the Internet . These new rules will led to the government controlling content on the Internet and regulate dissenting voices that might get in the way of the government doing good on our behalf. Putting Net Neutrality into the broader context, the free flow of information is always a threat to governments that need more power--to do good in the eyes of Liberals, read "A Conflict Of Visions" by Thomas Sowell--to help people out. There are those that truly want more power to do what they view as beneficial things for humanity and there are those that use this excuse to increase their power. The worst elements, such as those that seek power in and of itself, rise to the top in such a welfare system that is created with the intentions of helping people as it eventually collapses and necessitates and leads to totalitarian power to make the whole system work, see the example of health care and the government forcing us to buy insurance and telling us what to eat. In the case of controlling the Internet, it will be this totalitarian power that will be using this new control in the future.

Net "Neutrality" is about controlling voices of opposition to the government's agenda,

Now, Copps,' one of the Democrat commissioners, "said that he wanted to ensure that the Internet doesn't travel down the same road of special interest consolidation and gatekeeper control that other media and communications industries like radio, TV, film, and cable have traveled.'

They are worried to death that the Internet is gonna become the next conservative talk radio and Fox News, and that's what they're not gonna permit. That's what so-called net neutrality is all about: To make sure that the voices of minorities and the displaced and the dis-financed and the disabused and the whoevers are equally heard. 'What a historic tragedy it would be,' Copps said, 'to let the fate,' that fate, meaning what's happened to talk radio and Fox News, 'befall the dynamism of the Internet.' That's from an earlier app story. Yeah, so we would really hate to see that -- and by the way, they don't have any regulatory authority over cable TV and they haven't asserted it, and that's what galls 'em about Fox. They are trying to control Fox on the basis that Fox does news.

One thing that is worth noting is that Google supported this. Why would big business support government regulation? Would this not hurt big business? A lot of the negative attributes that people ascribe to capitalism is actually the result of the collusion of big government and big business--corporatism. This collusion started under our first modern President Teddy Roosevelt. Big businesses like government regulation because it gives them certainty and an unfair advantage against their smaller competitors because they can afford to comply with the regulations while the smaller businesses can't. Government regulation also helps to prevent competitors from popping up because of the onerous and costly effects of the regulations. Government also likes big business and wants to enact a partnership with them for the purpose of achieving their beneficial goals. Both parties benefit in this Corporatist Fascist model while the people's freedom is the loser. America is not a free enterprise system and has not been for some time now. It is a mixed economic model with free enterprise and government control. This system started out with the free enterprise being the dominate element and the government control being the subordinate element. For quit some time these roles have been in the process of being reversed so that now the government control is becoming the dominate element and to eventually the the only element.

Our health care system and one sixth of our economy has been completely overhauled into a government-controlled model, the financial and banking industry has been basically taken over along with the car industry, the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy has been repealed, the Internet has now fallen under the regulatory foot of the government, and the START treaty looks like it will be passed. President Obama and the Democratic Congress has been very successful in "Fundamentally Transforming" America. The foundation for a new system has been and is in the process of being built, to paraphrase a Congressman referring to Obamacare. This new system is vastly different in a negative sense, change in and of itself is not a negative thing, from what this Country was founded as. All that can be done to these achievements by the new Congress and the new future Republican President, this is still up in the air, is making little reforms in the newly created structure and not getting rid of this structure or replacing it with a free market one. The full effects and force of this fundamental transformation won't be felt for another couple of decades.

This is rock #10

When I was first getting in to music these were the few christian bands that really rocked. I remember going to bed to the Supertones album every night for like a month.
Supertones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFQKequLo3A
DC Talks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQZVzKKfVhw
Officer Negative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A83pZxL2cvo

Federal Budget Update

No time for much talking, just a quick note that fiscal conservatives won a very good (but not great) victory in the big budget battle that just was resolved. From the Washington Examiner via Hot Air

A new analysis by a group of federal-spending watchdogs shows a striking imbalance between the parties when it comes to earmark requests. Democrats remain raging spenders, while Republicans have made enormous strides in cleaning up their act. In the Senate, the GOP made only one-third as many earmark requests as Democrats for 2011, and in the House, Republicans have nearly given up earmarking altogether — while Democrats roll on.
The watchdog groups — Taxpayers for Common Sense, WashingtonWatch.com, and Taxpayers Against Earmarks — counted total earmark requests in the 2011 budget. Those requests were made by lawmakers earlier this year, but Democratic leaders, afraid that their party’s spending priorities might cost them at the polls, decided not to pass a budget before the Nov. 2 elections. This week, they distilled those earmark requests — threw some out, combined others — into the omnibus bill that was under consideration in the Senate until Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled it Thursday night. While that bill was loaded with spending, looking back at the original earmark requests tells us a lot about the spending inclinations of both parties.
In the 2011 House budget, the groups found that House Democrats requested 18,189 earmarks, which would cost the taxpayers a total of $51.7 billion, while House Republicans requested just 241 earmarks, for a total of $1 billion.
Where did those GOP earmark requests come from? Just four Republican lawmakers: South Carolina Rep. Henry Brown, who did not run for re-election this year; Louisiana Rep. Joseph Cao, who lost his bid for re-election; maverick Texas Rep. Ron Paul; and spending king Rep. Don Young of Alaska. The other Republican members of the House — 174 of them — requested a total of zero earmarks.

Republican Senators didn't behave so honorably, but, still the overall result is very good. Another win for the Tea Party: though out of power in the White House and both Houses of Congress, fiscal conservatives were able to impose their will on the ultra liberals (as in liberal with taxpayer money) that currently theoretically control our government. Let's hope Republicans can step it up to the next level in the next Congress.  They better, or else!

Viriginia Gov Proposes Cancelling Govt Funding of Public Broadcasting

Jeff started a media series.  I've got a couple here in my hip pocket too, so here's the 1st one:
In Nov 2009, we saw the 1st indication that the luster was coming off the Obama halo when Virginia and New Jersey elected fiscally conservative governors.  Virginia is a traditionally conservative (though not traditionally Republican) state that has been trending liberal lately.  New Jersey was a Republican state when I was young, but it has been deep blue for decades now.  New Jersey elected Chris Christie, who needs no introduction to RTP&GGers.  Virginia elected Bob McDonnell, who I don't know that we've mentioned before.  Well, he's just given us a reason to honor his election:

“Public broadcasting is a wonderful resource, providing quality programming that is cherished by many,” McDonnell said. “However, in our modern media world there are thousands upon thousands of content providers operating in the free market. They compete with each other, and viewers and listeners have their choice as to what to tune into or turn on. Simply put, it doesn’t make sense to have some stations with the competitive advantage of being funded by taxpayer dollars. The decision to eliminate state funding of public broadcasting is driven by the fundamental need to reestablish the proper role of government, and budget accordingly.”

I agree completely with him. I actually watch a lot of the Oregon Public Broadcasting TV, I love the Mystery shows, and also, at least used to listen to NPR religiously. I used to donate regularly to Oregon Public Broadcasting too.  I still think they do a thorough job reporting, though you've got to take the reporting with their heavy liberal bias.  NPR and Mystery should be able to market themselves in the real world, not depend on taxes, state or federal, for survival.  If they can maintain their broadcasting strictly through donations, more power to them, but people who don't choose to listen to those stations shouldn't have to pay for them, particularly in the modern media world and the modern fiscal world.

If McDonnell can succeed here, this will be a tremendous example for the rest of the country!

The Government Now Has The Power To Regulate The Volume Of Audio On Commercials.

I first saw this news on Fox News. I thought is was interesting as it represents the broader goal of the government to control the Internet and all other forms of media through net neutrality. I wonder what kind of precedent this new power will set and how it will be used in the future.

President Obama on Wednesday signed into law a bill that will regulate the volume of television commercials. According to the White House, the 'Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation' or 'CALM' Act 'requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to prescribe a regulation limiting the volume of audio on commercials.' The regulation applies to 'television broadcast stations, cable operators, and other multichannel video programming distributors.' Under the new law, commercials can be only as loud as the decibel level of regular programming.

The "Calm" act sounds lovely and soothing. I am glad that the government is there to protect us from loud commercials. I have not read anything that stated the rational behind this new regulation. It simply appears to be a power grab by the government. Maybe a lot of people called the FCC to complain about loud commercials. This is a perfect example of the type of tyranny that America is headed for: a soft-mild-loving-caring tyranny.

Ethanol Update

I'm pretty sure National Review editor Rich Lowry browses RTP&GG because this article he just wrote at Real Clear Politics could have been lifted right out of our article, and Jeff's comments!  He adds some follow-on information if you read the whole thing, that tends to confirm Jeff's fears that Republicans aren't going to be able to rein in the goverment bloat.  However, remember this is still the lame duck Democratic Congress.  I am still confident this thing will be brought under control, at least to a certain extend.  Anyway, some quotes from Lowry's article that may seem oddly familiar:

When Al Gore drops an environmental fad, it has truly reached its expiration date.

In his wisdom, the Goracle recently acknowledged what almost all disinterested observers concluded long ago: Ethanol is a fraud. It has no environmental benefits, and harmful side effects. The subsidies that support its use are an object lesson in the incorrigibility of Washington's gross special-interest politics. It is the monster that ate America's corn crop.
"It is not good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," the former vice president and Noble Peace Prize recipient said, referring to corn-based ethanol. He called the fuel "a mistake," and confessed one reason he fell so hard for it is that he "had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa." These farmers vote in the First in the Nation caucuses and practically insist that their favored presidential candidates drink ethanol at breakfast and hail it as the nectar of the gods.

The Porkmeisters pushing hard for this now are a bipartisan group: chiefly, the two Senators from Iowa, Democrat Tom Harkin and Republican Chuck Grassley. This budget proposal with the ethanol subsidies looked like it was going to pass with Republican support as well as President Obama's. But, after the full extent of the pork has been revealed, many Republicans are backing away from this initially-bipartisan effort that at first look didn't seem unreasonable.

More:

The multiple layers of subsidization have their own perversity. Since there's already a mandate to blend ethanol into gasoline, the tax credit is giving away money for something that would happen anyway. Environmental groups say this pads the bottom line of Big Oil. Harry de Gorter of the free-market Cato Institute has a more complicated take -- the subsidy decreases the cost and therefore the price of gasoline, effectively subsidizing its consumption. Your Congress at work.

But, read the whole thing if you're interested in this and if you want to see how close we came to Lowry's article!

Eco-Tyranny #3 About to Fall?

[Author's note-this post has been re-written in light of the math error made in the original article and the subsequent change in economic benefit]  Another scam effort at Federal Government tyranny that has been creeping along and was about to become a real pain to forced on the common man may be about to subside.  Not go away, but subside:

Republican Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan – the man running against Texas Rep. Joe Barton to be Chairman of the Energy and Commerce committee in the next Congress– has reversed his position on CFL light bulbs. The move is significant not only because Upton wants to be chairman of one of the House’s most powerful committees, but also because he championed the incandescent bulb ban and switch to CFLs just three short years ago.

I guess I had sort of heard that they were going to phase out incandescent bulbs, but I didn't really think they would do it. Evidently, this liberal Republican from Michigan, has introduced a bill that was passed that would sunset incandescent bulbs. I knew that some states were doing that, but I didn't think the Feds were going to try to do that.

I detect a sleezy politician here: not 'til the nation got rocked by the Tea Party does this slimeball see the infringement on an individual's right to run his life and the obligation of the Federal government to keep their nose out of business they have no constitutional mandate to stick it in. Rack up another victory for the Tea Party, at least hopefully, soon.

We should have ToeJamm run another economic analysis for us I am glad ToeJamm checked my math for us, plus, I have since gone to the store and gotten more facts, so am not entirely winging it with some of my figures: No, I'll do it this time.  The cost of electricity in households across the nation varies quite a bit, but I think 10¢ a kilowatt-hour (kWh) is a fair number. Portland probably pays more, because PGE is very expensive, but other places probably pay less. 17¢ a kWh is probably on the high end.  A kilowatt-hour means 1000 watts for 1 hour. That would be equivalent to letting your wife or girlfriend's hair dryer run for an hour: costs you 10¢. Electricity, even now, is quite a bargain for what you can do with it. OK, now I normally use 60W incandescent bulbs in my house. The equivalent-brightness CFL bulb is 20W. So, for me to change to an equivalent-brightness CFL would save me 40W. If I leave my CFL lightbulb on for an hour I've saved myself 40 watt-hours of electricity. Note, not 40 kilowatt-hours, but 40 watt-hours.  So, if my electricity costs 10¢/kWh and I've saved 40 Wh of electricity, how much money have I saved?  By my calculation, I save 0.04¢ an hour by using a CFL bulb, but that calculation is wrong, per ToeJamm, it is 0.4¢ an hour saved.  But still, that's a savings, right?  Well, what about the costs?  A pack of four incandescent bulbs costs about $2, so 50¢ each.  One CFL bulb costs from $6-$8. I bought a pack of four today for $14.00, so $3.50 per bulb  How long does the CFL bulb have to run before you make your money back from your big investment?  Let's choose $6 $3.50 for the CFL bulb, even though they're often more expensive.  $6 3.50- $0.50 = $5.50 $3.00 for the difference between the two.  So, $5.50 $3= ($0.0044/hr) x X hrs.  Solving for X gives 13,750 750 hours or 573 days of continuous use to break even.  My 60W bulb says it will last for 1500 hours.  I did a test once between a 60W incandescent and a 20W CFL on the same light switch, the CFL lasted about twice as long as the incandescent however, the CFL bulbs I bought today say they will last 8000 hours.  I don't believe that for a typical application, as I have tested it out repeatedly in my house and they don't significantly outlast incandescent bulbs. so that modifies the equation a tiny bit,  but, in a nutshell, you will never come close to making your money back.  Now, who's the sucker I mean responsible environmentalist?  Well, I own some CFLs, so count me as one of those suckers people who know the value of a dollar.   But, it was my choice to be a sucker make the purchase.  That's fair.  But, these statist, mother-knows-best, nannies want to force us all to involuntarily lower our standard of living have the government make our shopping choices for us for a very small comparative benefit.  They WILL be defeated.

It's a trend, Jeff!

PS: And that doesn't even take into account the question I raised when we discussed Prius'.  Why is the CFL bulb so expensive?  Again, cost is relative to the energy required to construct, in a nutshell.  My guess is you need to subtract quite a bit from your electricity savings in the whole-earth calculation of your power consumption because so much energy was used to build the CFL bulb as opposed to the incandescent in the first place, but I don't feel like expending the energy to prove that.

PPS: Besides being able to sound our arguments off each other to see where we have significant flaws, we get to learn things through the time we put investigating and discussing our article.  I am very happy to learn that it does make economic sense to buy CFL bulbs!

It Was 30 Years Ago, Today...

He was living in New York at the time, and was very happy there.  He said that he wished he had spent his whole life there.  But, then paid the price. 

I was not impressed with John's post-Beatle production, (The Beatles had been broken up for ten years when he was shot) not just because the music wasn't that great, but because he seemed so bitter.  He wrote some bitter songs in The Beatles too, and that helped add an edge to them, but, it's my old bugaboo, when the bitterness gets one-dimensional, it wears thin.  However, the assasination guaranteed there would be no Beatle reunions.  That added a great deal of downerness to the whole situation, because a whole generation had continued to hope that someday, The Beatles would get back together.

There was a huge vigil in Central Park to honor him,. I think Papa said that he saw it.

The World's Energy Juggernaut?

The Canadian newspaper The Globe & Mail has put out an article titled "North America: The New Energy Kingdom,  that should raise eyebrows of those not deeply knowledgeable of the situation of fossil fuel capacities in the world.  It turns out that the US and Canada actually dominate many areas of fossil-fuel energy production, even now, and they are increasing their share in many areas.  A read-the-whole-thing article if you're interested in this kind of thing, but they're not the kind of facts you'll see in the MSM.  A few choice cuts that may rock your world:

The American Petroleum Institute reports that the United States produced more crude oil in October than it has ever produced in a single month, “peak oil” or not.

But, I thought all our wells were going to play out in the '90's!

The New York Times observed: “Just as it seemed that the world was running on fumes, giant oil fields were discovered off the coasts of Brazil and Africa, and Canadian oil sands projects expanded so fast, they now provide North America with more oil than Saudi Arabia. In addition, the United States has increased domestic oil production for the first time in a generation.” Further still: “Another wave of natural gas drilling has taken off in shale rock fields across the United States, and more shale gas drilling is just beginning in Europe and Asia.”

and

With rising production from shale fields, the U.S. surpassed Russia last year to become the world’s largest supplier of natural gas. Shale now accounts for 10 per cent of the country’s natural gas production – up from 2 per cent in 1990.

The natural gas one really was a surprise to me; I thought we got most of ours from Canada.

They sum up with

Within a decade or so, North America will almost certainly emerge as the world’s biggest supplier – and exporter – of reasonably cheap energy.

But read it all and get some learnin'.

PS: However, we'll probably also be the world's biggest supplier of stupidly expensive energy too with all our windmills and solar panels, so we probably won't see a benefit in our checkbooks.

Another Eco-Scam Being Thrown Under the Bus?

You might not have noticed, but the successor of the Copenhagen Global Warming conference is happening right now in Cancun, Mexico.  Smart of the organizers to hold it in Cancun, to avoid the sudden appearance of blizzards during their meeting, though, if Al Gore makes an appearance, anything can happen.  Why no coverage?  Why no triumphal attendance by our Glorious President who said,"this is the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal"?

The Copenhagen summit, well covered by RTP&GG in this and other posts, was supposed to be the Global Warmingists' moist, hot, wet dream, where the wealth re-distributions craved by 1st World Socialists and 3rd World Dictators would be finally set in motion, to supposedly finance everyone's reduction of fossil fuel use, and would be signed by the planet's new savior, Jesus I mean, Barack Obama and implemented by the leaders of the world.  It ended in a shambles for reasons covered elsewhere on RTP&GG, and was the 2nd big failure by our One True Messiah after he was elected, and is certainly one of his biggest humiliations (an enterprising RTP&GGer could make a good article titled "The Humiliations of our Dear Leader").  What was supposed to be eco-socialists' crowning achievement actually was the point where the Global Warming movement nosedived into general discredit.  Now, no one is paying any attention to what those scammers are saying or doing in Cancun.  The MSM is avoiding it because it will remind everyone of one of Obama's first big failures, and the humiliation of one of their sacred shibboleths.

But, I'm not here to talk about Cancun.  I'm here to talk about how a tightening budget environment, and the new vigilance being shown on the Federal budget (by Tea Partiers, forced on politicians) is about to kick another huge eco-scam into the dustbin of history.  Ethanol (aka grain alcohol or everclear) now makes up 15% of the gas we put in our cars, by Federal decree, not by any economic value obtained.  It has been a major boon to corn farmers in the Midwest and around the world, who saw the price they got for corn skyrocket once ethanol was made mandatory.  Ethanol was supposed to be a boon to the planet, as it was a 'renewable resource' because of course, we can keep growing corn (the question of how much petroleum product is now used in fertilizer by agribusiness will not be pursued here).  And of course it was pitched that highly processing corn and burning alcohol was somehow being green.  As usual with eco-scams, the technology can't stand on its own feet on the economic merits: according to the Congressional Budget Office, taxpayers pay $1.78 for every gallon of ethanol. 

A report in mid-July by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the subsidy is something of a boondoggle in part because a gallon of ethanol delivers two-thirds the energy content of a gallon of gas.

"Because 1.48 gallons of ethanol are required to provide as much energy as a gallon of gasoline, the 45 cent credit for each gallon of ethanol is equivalent to paying blenders 67 cents for each gallon of gasoline that ethanol displaces," it said.

In all, taxpayers pay $1.78 for every gallon when fuel is made from corn, CBO said.

These taxes are paid both in the direct purchase and in Federal taxes.   That's a lot of money being paid to make you feel warm and fuzzy about doing good things for the environment.  But how green is it?  Even its green attractiveness is finally being called into question, says a professor involved in a study by Stanford University: 

Prof. JACOBSON: Ozone that's formed is formed from the emissions of either ethanol vehicles or gasoline vehicles. And there - or have been technologies that have been introduced that have reduced the amount of ozone significantly. For example, the catalytic converter reduced the ozone. And there are other technologies that potentially could be used to reduce ozone further.

In fact, in this study we assumed there are going to be technological improvements. Just to put in perspective, gasoline vehicles in the United States kill about 10,000 people prematurely each year. Now, if we convert to ethanol, what I found was that this might increase slightly by about 200 deaths per year.

So it's not a large increase over gasoline. But the key is it's not an improvement over gasoline as has been suggested. The key is whether we can do a lot better than gasoline. And there are technologies out there that could eliminate all these deaths, particularly, battery electric vehicles where the electricity is provided by renewable energy such as wind and solar power. And also hydrogen fuel cell vehicles where the hydrogen is produced by wind and solar power and also hydroelectric geothermal power.

That study is not totally convincing to me I suppose.  His conclusions, that electrical powered cars are cleaner where the electricity is provided by renewable wind and solar power is utter bullshit, as there is no place in the United States where the majority or even a significant minority of power is provided by wind or solar power.  This casts doubt onto the believe-ability of the rest of the study, regardless of what prestigious academic institution produced it.  But, assuming he knows what he's talking about, your $1.78/gal in taxes for ethanol is going towards the great green good of killing 200 more people per year than regular gasoline.  I hope you feel good about that.  I wonder if the professor is including the starvation deaths from the increased food prices the ethanol project has produced.  Odd that he didn't mention a true green power: hydroelectric dams.  What's up with these agendas dudes?

Well, I'm wandering...Let's get back on track:

The Goreacle Himself, the snakeoil saleman to the world, has now made a shocking, if not surprising admission:

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president" in 2000.

Imagine, pushing a major change in our gasoline industry primarily to win votes through pork.  Tell me it ain't so, Al!  Next thing you say, is the whole global warming movement is a scam too!  Shocking, but not surprising.  Notice he said "made that mistake".  The mistake was pushing ethanol.  When Al Gore admits it's a mistake, you know the end is near.  [a small aside: credit Tennesseans for knowing a scam when the hear one: if Al Gore had been able to win in his home state in 2000, he would have been president.]  This particular pork project shoved pork to farmers, so probably a mostly Republican group of recipients.  So, of course the bottom will fall out of support for this as the Coastal libs will have no real (ie voter) reason to support it (from Hot Air):

Has the federal government’s appetite for ethanol ended? A bipartisan group of Senators signed a letter today calling for an end to subsidies and tariffs designed to protect and enhance domestic production of ethanol, which has been until recently the darling of the alternative-energy movement. In a sign of how far ethanol subsidies have fallen from favor, the letter addressed to both Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell has the signatures of such liberal luminaries as Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, and the newly-elected Chris Coons

When you've lost Barbara Boxer, you've lost the liberal base. Farmers cry, "goodbye sweet pork-laden scam, goodbye."

Herr Stadler is not afraid to call a Muslim terrorist a Muslim terrorist

If you need to bitch someone out, I think the German language is best for doing it.  Here, a member of the Austrian parliament delivers a severe tongue lashing to the Turkish Ambassador.  If more governmental leaders would act like this, we would solve the problem of Islamic terror in the West.

How do we stop the crazed Odinist fundamentalists?!

It's so obvious who the real terrorists are: blonde, blue-eyed young men who worship Odin and have names like Ingmar Johanssen.  So, why in the heck are we groping old women with names like Maria Gutierrez? 

This humorous article makes its points (that I of course agree with) in a fun way.

Pictured are Odin and his Raven guides Huginn and Muninn (spirit and mind) along with, curiously for a supposed religion of peace, a seaxe.  So an example of Scando-Anglo-Saxon terror.