Having just watched the spectacle of the Obama coronation in Denver, I have a few questions for the Senator from Illinois about his prescripted "solutions."
How pray tell will the Federal government affect the number and salaries of teachers. The last time I checked secondary education was the responsibility of the states and local communities. My property taxes pay for local schools and the feds have nothing to say about curriculum, new schools, teacher hiring or teacher salaries. His claim that he will increase the number of teachers is a high sounding but empty promise.
Another laugher was his "promise" to eliminate the US dependence on mid-east oil in ten years. Note he was very specific here to use the term mid-east as opposed to foreign oil. As I have noted in earlier blogs the US today is not heavily dependent on mid-east oil. The US imports only about 15% of its total petroleum products from the mid-east (specifically Saudi Arabia and Kuwait). Our imports are mostly from Canada, Venezuela, Nigeria and Mexico.
In other words Obama's objective is easily achievable with only a modest increase in US production (Drill, Drill, Drill) and a shift to more imports from friendly countries with growing reserves like Canada (Alberta oil sands anyone?) and Brazil. The real challenge, and one that he knows he cannot achieve, is to eliminate our dependence on "foreign" oil in the near term. The real irony is achieving his stated objective will be much easier with McCain in the White House and not Obama.
This is just another empty political promise that takes advantage of the ignorance of the American public on the whole energy security issue. I might note that others play the mid-east oil card directly and indirectly to promote their own agendas. Among these scaremongers is T Boone Pickens by talking about the transfer of wealth to unnamed foreign governments. The unstated but implied destination of all this money is the middle east which is not completely true.
On a related note, have you seen the frequent TV ads from a Gore-backed green energy group called We Can Solve It? Once again these folks are disingenuously pushing the notion that high gasoline prices are the result of the way we produce electricity.
Now the fundamental objective of We Can Solve It is to move the country to non-carbon producing sources of electricity. This is fine as far as it goes but one would think if they were really serious, nuclear power would be number one their list of alternatives, but it doesn't even appear on their radar screen. The problem once again is that except for emergency power back-up generators, the US does not produce electricity from petroleum or petroleum distillates. In other words we could convert the entire US energy infrastructure to wind, solar and hydro and this would not affect the US demand for oil used in transportation or the price of a gallon of gasoline one whit. You'd never know that from their ad campaign.
Finally can you believe the incredibly empty boast that BHO made about his willingness to take on JSM anytime about who is ready to be Commander-in-Chief. As I recall, JSM repeatedly challenged the Obama campaign to agree to a series of town hall meeting beginning in June. Not surprisingly Obama demurred. I guess he really isn't ready to debate his fitness to lead after all. In fact I would wager that were it not for the fact that it is now expected that the Presidential candidates will debate prior to the election BHO would run from any face-to-face debate with McCain as fast as possible.
Bottom line is that after listening to all the bloviating at the convention culminating with the master bloviator himself, I have concluded that BHO is the biggest empty suit I have ever seen in politics. Nice suit though.
Just a few thoughts on the DNC as I note the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate. Great choice! Start your engines this will be a fun race to Nov 4.
P.S. - Can you believe that the first shot across the bow from the Obama campaign about Sarah Palin is her lack of experience?! What chutzpah! A convincing case could be easily made that her executive experience as a mayor and a governor (and by the way Commander-in-Chief of the Alaska National Guard) makes her eminently more qualified to be President than Obama himself. Unbelievable.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
The T Boone Travesty
I don't know about you but I am fed up to here already with the T Boone Pickens' TV ads on his "solution" to the oil situation. Let's review a few basic facts from one of my earlier blogs. Except for emergency purposes the US does not produce electricity with petroleum. This point cannot be made strongly enough. T Boone is playing on the ignorance of the general public by implying that converting 20% of our national electric grid to wind will "solve" the oil issue. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I have said before absent putting sails or solar panels on cars and trucks neither wind nor solar will lessen our dependence on oil for transportation.
His end game proposal is to use this 20% of wind driven electricity to replace the 20% of natural gas now being used to fire power plants producing base load and peaking electricity. Putting aside for the moment the real issue of the non-reliability of wind as a 24/7 source of electricity, one has to ask why is T Boone pushing this "solution." This is his dirty little secret. T Boone is not only invested in wind farm technology but the real payoff for him is to use the natural gas now being used for electricity production for transportation. And guess who is heavily invested in the natural gas industry. Why Mr. T Boone his very own self. Long story short T Boone's plan is not about American energy independence. It is about making T Boone even richer than he already is.
So much for the good ole' country boy, I'm only in this for the good of the country theme of his infomercials. He is being disingenuous with the American public and they need to know it.
Now I am in favor of wind and solar energy and believe that they should be use where ever and when ever economically possible, and I am in favor of tax credits and limited government subsidies to encourage R&D in these technologies. The truth of the matter is that we cannot and should not rely on these for our energy future. We also need to develop nuclear, clean coal and all our potential oil resources including the off-shore, ANWAR and oil shale properties as rapidly as possible.
As I have said in an earlier blog, the real solution to American oil independence is a full speed ahead NRA type program to develop clean (i.e sequestered CO2) coal technology and fast tracking the building of more nuclear plants so that we can convert to an all electric powered ground transportation system by 2050. Like T Boone likes to say about his program it is our problem to solve and we can do it!
His end game proposal is to use this 20% of wind driven electricity to replace the 20% of natural gas now being used to fire power plants producing base load and peaking electricity. Putting aside for the moment the real issue of the non-reliability of wind as a 24/7 source of electricity, one has to ask why is T Boone pushing this "solution." This is his dirty little secret. T Boone is not only invested in wind farm technology but the real payoff for him is to use the natural gas now being used for electricity production for transportation. And guess who is heavily invested in the natural gas industry. Why Mr. T Boone his very own self. Long story short T Boone's plan is not about American energy independence. It is about making T Boone even richer than he already is.
So much for the good ole' country boy, I'm only in this for the good of the country theme of his infomercials. He is being disingenuous with the American public and they need to know it.
Now I am in favor of wind and solar energy and believe that they should be use where ever and when ever economically possible, and I am in favor of tax credits and limited government subsidies to encourage R&D in these technologies. The truth of the matter is that we cannot and should not rely on these for our energy future. We also need to develop nuclear, clean coal and all our potential oil resources including the off-shore, ANWAR and oil shale properties as rapidly as possible.
As I have said in an earlier blog, the real solution to American oil independence is a full speed ahead NRA type program to develop clean (i.e sequestered CO2) coal technology and fast tracking the building of more nuclear plants so that we can convert to an all electric powered ground transportation system by 2050. Like T Boone likes to say about his program it is our problem to solve and we can do it!
Monday, August 11, 2008
The Liberal MSM and Maureen Dowd in particular
Where to begin? We all know very well that the MSM is in the pocket of the Democrats if not the most extreme liberal wing of that party (e.g. MSNBC and most especially Chris Matthews). It is a proven fact that most MSM reporters are registered as Democrats so this bias is not a surprise.
What prompts me to take keyboard in hand for today's blog is the outrageous column by Maureen Dowd that ran in the August 11, 2008 edition of the Houston Chronicle. Unbelievably she attempts to excuse the philandering of democrats Edwards, Clinton and Spitzer (echos of Ted Kenndy anyone?) as a mere artifact of their narcissistic super-striver personalities. Where is the outrage from the feminist community?? As evidenced by this op-ed, nowhere is answer. They will not cut off their nose to spite their face.
To be fair to Ms. Dowd she clearly frowns on this behavior, but here's where she went off the tracks. Since she couldn't find any such dirt GWB, she made the unbelievable stretch of moral and personality failing equivalency (at least in her mind) that GWB was just as bad because he turned over his presidency to Cheney. Can you believe it!?
This is all part of the liberal MSM's attempt to portray GWB as puppet (since he clearly isn't bright enough in their view to have an intelligent thought). First it was Carl Rove as GWB's brain. Now that Rove is working for FNN and no longer lurking the halls of the White House to deliver GWB periodic Vulcan mindplants, the MSM is now dredging up the old and clearly discredited notion that the VP is running the county.
What absolute rubbish! What's worse is that it is used as an attempt to diminish and detract from the true moral failings of the Democratic leadership. Note that I am not saying that the Republicans can take the moral high ground on the sex issue. Witness Larry Craig. That being said one can only guess what would have happened had Edwards actually received the nomination or more interestingly what if this had this come out nine months ago. What affect would it have had on the primary season? Could Hilary be preparing her Denver acceptance speach? Things that make you want to go hmmmm.........
What prompts me to take keyboard in hand for today's blog is the outrageous column by Maureen Dowd that ran in the August 11, 2008 edition of the Houston Chronicle. Unbelievably she attempts to excuse the philandering of democrats Edwards, Clinton and Spitzer (echos of Ted Kenndy anyone?) as a mere artifact of their narcissistic super-striver personalities. Where is the outrage from the feminist community?? As evidenced by this op-ed, nowhere is answer. They will not cut off their nose to spite their face.
To be fair to Ms. Dowd she clearly frowns on this behavior, but here's where she went off the tracks. Since she couldn't find any such dirt GWB, she made the unbelievable stretch of moral and personality failing equivalency (at least in her mind) that GWB was just as bad because he turned over his presidency to Cheney. Can you believe it!?
This is all part of the liberal MSM's attempt to portray GWB as puppet (since he clearly isn't bright enough in their view to have an intelligent thought). First it was Carl Rove as GWB's brain. Now that Rove is working for FNN and no longer lurking the halls of the White House to deliver GWB periodic Vulcan mindplants, the MSM is now dredging up the old and clearly discredited notion that the VP is running the county.
What absolute rubbish! What's worse is that it is used as an attempt to diminish and detract from the true moral failings of the Democratic leadership. Note that I am not saying that the Republicans can take the moral high ground on the sex issue. Witness Larry Craig. That being said one can only guess what would have happened had Edwards actually received the nomination or more interestingly what if this had this come out nine months ago. What affect would it have had on the primary season? Could Hilary be preparing her Denver acceptance speach? Things that make you want to go hmmmm.........
Friday, August 1, 2008
Our Do Nothing Congress etc
In the face of overwhelming public approval for lifting the ban on off-shore drilling what does the Democratic leadership in the Congress do but to declare that they can't be bothered with high gasoline prices and will take a six week holiday. Nice. I only wish the rest of us tax paying Americans had that luxury at taxpayers' expense.
I don't care how mad anyone may be at George W over the war in Iraq and the ancillary effects (i.e. abu ghraib, gitmo, FISA, etc.), the fact remains that since taking control of Congress in 2006 the Democrats, under the leadership of Reid and Pelosi, have done zip quat nothing to help the energy crisis which, by the latest polls, is number one issue on the hit parade for the general public.
In any normal election year with such an unpopular President, the off-party challenger should be 20 points ahead and yet BHO is in a dead heat with McCain. Things that make you want to go hmmm.....
It is clear the the enviro-nazis have the Democratic leadership by the "balls". Since Nancy doesn't have any I have to put it in quotation marks. They won't bring the off-shore ban to a vote because they know that a number of moderate democrats in the House will vote in favor in order to get re-elected. In the Senate they are afraid of putting their anointed one - i.e. BHO - on the spot for a vote. Perhaps they shouldn't worry about that too much since he has a very strong record of voting absent.
In any event, recent events, including his embarrassing (for America) speech in Berlin, should convince a majority of Americans that BHO is not ready for prime time. This is not about race, and not about the fact that he doesn't look like previous presidents on our currency ( neither does McCain by the way), but it is all about policy and his policies are the wrong policies for America.
I don't care how mad anyone may be at George W over the war in Iraq and the ancillary effects (i.e. abu ghraib, gitmo, FISA, etc.), the fact remains that since taking control of Congress in 2006 the Democrats, under the leadership of Reid and Pelosi, have done zip quat nothing to help the energy crisis which, by the latest polls, is number one issue on the hit parade for the general public.
In any normal election year with such an unpopular President, the off-party challenger should be 20 points ahead and yet BHO is in a dead heat with McCain. Things that make you want to go hmmm.....
It is clear the the enviro-nazis have the Democratic leadership by the "balls". Since Nancy doesn't have any I have to put it in quotation marks. They won't bring the off-shore ban to a vote because they know that a number of moderate democrats in the House will vote in favor in order to get re-elected. In the Senate they are afraid of putting their anointed one - i.e. BHO - on the spot for a vote. Perhaps they shouldn't worry about that too much since he has a very strong record of voting absent.
In any event, recent events, including his embarrassing (for America) speech in Berlin, should convince a majority of Americans that BHO is not ready for prime time. This is not about race, and not about the fact that he doesn't look like previous presidents on our currency ( neither does McCain by the way), but it is all about policy and his policies are the wrong policies for America.
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