Chevy Volt Battery Plant Floundering Despite $151 Million from Obama

-By Warner Todd Huston

Another in a long list of Obama-touted and tax-supported “green energy” companies is on the verge of going out of business, this time in Michigan.

Two years ago, President Obama visited the LG Chem battery plant in Holland, Michigan. Obama then hailed the plant saying, “You are leading the way in showing how manufacturing jobs are coming right back here to the United States of America.”

But today, those LG Chem jobs Obama claimed were “coming back” are seeing intermittent layoffs instead of growth.
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Chevy Volt Battery Plant Floundering Despite $151 Million from Obama”


Illinois Blogger Threatened With Lawsuit by Anti-Free Speech Democrat Jack Franks

-By Warner Todd Huston

Blogger Cal Skinner of McHenry County Blog is under attack by another anti-free speech Democrat — not that any Democrat is pro-free speech, of course. Democrat State Rep Jack Franks has sent Mr. Skinner a threatening letter essentially telling him to stop writing about him, or else.

Now, Democrat Franks wants us to feel sorry for him as any reading of his threatening letter can see. In his letter Democrat Franks is pretending that blogger Skinner is trying to post images of his family and invading their privacy. Democrat Franks also claims that Skinner is “not credentialed” as a “journalist” so he shouldn’t be allowed to write criticism of the public official.

First of all, Cal Skinner has never posted any photo of Jack Franks that wasn’t obtained during a public event and Skinner has no interest in Jackie boy’s family — just about Franks’ public policy decisions as a State Rep. Secondly, legal case after legal case all across this great land is coming down in favor of bloggers. So, Franks’ attempt to shut a blogger up is running counter to American right of free political speech, not just in the spirit of the First Amendment (that part of the Constitution that Democrats hate with a passion) but even counter to emerging law concerning the status of bloggers that is being set all across the country.

But Democrats hate, hate, hate being dogged by Internet journalists. Democrats just aren’t used to seeing bad press, after all. I mean, the so-called “real journalists” out there never write a bad word about them, so it’s no surprise that Democrats get alarmed when conservative bloggers begin to write about them in a critical manner.
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Illinois Blogger Threatened With Lawsuit by Anti-Free Speech Democrat Jack Franks”


Climate Nazis

-By Alan Caruba

What is it with the “warmists”, Al Gore and his clones who keep insisting the Earth is warming, that too much carbon dioxide (CO2) will be the death of us, and that we have to immediately stop burning “fossil fuels” if we are to save the planet? They are the most relentless liars on the face of the planet.

They want us to cover the surface of the U.S. with solar panels and the mountains with wind turbines to generate the energy needed for everything we do. These Green energy alternatives are so wonderful they are producing a mere three percent of our current needs, require government subsidies and loan guarantees to exist, and tend not to be all that great when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.

So why are we still hearing from this discredited and disgraced bunch of charlatans and buffoons? In early May, The New York Times published “Game Over for the Climate” by a major offender of the truth, Dr. James Hansen, who for some reason is still the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), despite having pocketed big bucks beyond his humble government salary. In 2007 he split a million dollar Dan Davis Prize with someone else and in 2001, received a $250,000 Heinz Award. Former GISS employees want him fired.
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Climate Nazis”


A Blogger at NATO 2012, What I Saw on Day One

-By Warner Todd Huston

I was awarded press credentials for NATO’s 2012 Summit in Chicago and, having no idea what to expect, what I found on day one was a study in contrasts. What occurred was sometimes amusing, often mundane, and sometimes even violent. But it was all democracy in action.

Early on the morning of day one, Sunday, May 20, I boarded a western Metra train under threat of having my equipment bags confiscated or at least me prevented from boarding the train with them. I was not ruffed up the “the man,” though and downtown I went riding high on the rails. Literally. I took a seat on the top tier of the train.


The Summit didn’t start well as the NATO advance video called Chicago the Illinois Capital (It isn’t) and the place where Obama grew up (Again, it isn’t).

Upon reaching the gathering point for the press in beautiful downtown Chicago I boarded the super, double, secret press shuttle bus that took us down the service streets, steering well clear of the surface roads, straight to Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center, site of the NATO Summit.

Of course, before I was allowed on the super, double, secret press bus, bomb-sniffing dogs were loosed to make sure I had no underwear-bomb on my person or in my equipment bags. After I was officially cleared, I boarded the bus with local Chicago TV newsreader Jay Levine.

Everywhere I went there were knots of security personnel. A LOT of security personnel. The last time I saw that many security people I was in Cancun, Mexico during the 2010 UN Climate Conference.

There were members of the FBI, Homeland Security, Chicago Police, the U.S. Marshals as well as U.S. Airmen and Army officers all there on duty to make sure our tender media people were safe and secure.

I was later to learn that out on the streets of Chicago the number of security of all sorts made the way to McCormick Place seem like it was lightly guarded!
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A Blogger at NATO 2012, What I Saw on Day One”


WV Dems Not Thrilled About Anti-US Energy Obama, Voted for Felon Instead

-By Warner Todd Huston

President Obama had an opponent in the West Virginia Democrat Primary and the fella did pretty well, too. Democrat Keith Judd was Obama’s primary opponent for the Democrat nomination for President on Tuesday and he garnered 40% of the cote, too. I’d say that’s pretty good for a convicted felon that is still serving time in a Texas jail, wouldn’t you?

Oh, I am not pulling your leg, dear reader. Make all the jokes you want (the first one that comes to mid is that all Democrats are criminals) but it really happened. Mr. Judd ran against Obama and got 40% of the vote.

Judd, who is serving a 210-month sentence in Texas for making threats at the University of New Mexico in 1999, ran his campaign from jail. Amusingly, since he got over 15% of the vote, he qualifies to get a delegate to the Democrat National Convention — though no one has filed to be a Judd delegate.
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WV Dems Not Thrilled About Anti-US Energy Obama, Voted for Felon Instead”


An Example of Pointless Greenieness

-By Warner Todd Huston

NBC has created an entire phalanx of videos centered on environmental issues to show its fealty to the religion of greenism. There are celebrities, trite slogans, and all sorts of absurd promises on what going green can do for us all. But are these “solutions” really any good? Let’s look at one of NBC’s claims to see if it makes much sense, shall we?

The subject happens to be one of green fascism’s favorites: light bulbs. The ad, you see, claims that if every American household gets rid of incandescent light bulbs to be replaced with an energy savers, why… well, here is the voice over of the ad:

If every home changes one of these (image of an incandescent light bulb) for one of these (an energy saving light bulb), we’d save enough power to light up New York City for a year. Broadway, Wall Street, Central Park. Just one light bulb. You don’t have to do a lot to do a lot.

But let’s think about this.
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An Example of Pointless Greenieness”


Costs of Energy Killing Small Businesses

-By Warner Todd Huston

Maria Tworek owns and runs the Brass Monkey Sports Bar in Omaha, Nebraska. It takes a lot of electricity to keep her business going, a commodity whose price just seems to rise. With a greater reliance on coal for electricity, America can keep prices affordable for people like Maria. Clean Coal. Now Is The Time.

Of course, we should always remember that this is exactly what Obama wanted. He said so himself when he was running for president the first time.
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Costs of Energy Killing Small Businesses”


Genocidal Green Quotes

-By Alan Caruba

As Earth Day 2012 occurs on Sunday, April 22, I offer a selection of quotes from leading figures in the environmental movement that are worth reading so that you can draw your own conclusions.

In 1970, the first Earth Day generated the following quotes:

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” – George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.” – Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” – New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day
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Genocidal Green Quotes”


ANWR: It’s Been ’10 Years,’ We Could Have Been Reaping Rewards Now

-By Warner Todd Huston

Ten years ago this month the Democrats defeated the bill that would have allowed us to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve (ANWR). So it’s happy anniversary to the loss of our energy independence once again.

It turns out that the tenth anniversary is known as the “tin” anniversary in that wonderful list of gifts one gives to celebrate such things. Tin is the perfect alloy when one notes the “tin ear” represented by the constant refrain the left always trumpets whenever we talk about drilling for oil, namely that it is pointless to do because we won’t realize any benefits for up to 10 years.

To that point, Democrat Representative Maria Cantwell disgorged that very talking point during that 2002 debate:

I believe there is no way to justify drilling in ANWR in the name of national security. Oil extracted from the wildlife refuge would not reach refineries for 7 to 10 years and would never satisfy more than 2 percent of our Nation’s oil demands at any one time.

Well, it’s ten years, folks, and because the Democrats continually defeat new efforts to drill or explore for oil on American soil we are once again out of luck for exploiting our own sources of energy. Thanks to Obama and his party we stay dependent on foreign sources of energy.
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ANWR: It’s Been ’10 Years,’ We Could Have Been Reaping Rewards Now”


Outrage Outage: Why Solyndra Fails to Spark Anger

-By Daniel Clark

After all the anger, rational and otherwise, that was directed at Enron after it went bankrupt several years ago, one might have expected Americans to be incensed by the failures of Solyndra and other federally-subsidized “renewable energy” companies. So why aren’t we?

For conservatives, the answer is fairly simple. To us, the Solyndra fallout has been the proverbial spilled milk. It’s not as if we thought these “green energy” ventures would actually pay off. The real offense was the taxpayer-financed investments that Obama made in these companies through his gargantuan stimulus package, at which we really were angry, and still are.

Since liberals championed the stimulus package, it stands to reason that they are undisturbed by Solyndra, assuming that they didn’t expect it to pan out, either. If the subsidies were meant primarily as a symbolic expression of liberal ecological sensitivity, then they have already served their purpose, regardless of whether or not they yield any real-world results.
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Outrage Outage: Why Solyndra Fails to Spark Anger”


Fox Business Network Special Report: Gas Price Shock!

-By Warner Todd Huston

The price of gasoline getting you down, bunkie? I don’t blame you because it is hitting us all hard in the wallet. Oh, there’s lots of finger pointing, to be sure. The left wants to blame the Republicans sold out to the oil industry, the right blames Obama for refusing to allow us to explore for and go after our own sources of energy because he is sold out to the disastrously failed “green energy” sector.

But there are more than American politics at work in the wildly rising costs of gasoline. China, Europe, the Mid East, they all have a hand in this situation, not to mention the commodities market and the buyers, sellers, and speculators there.

It is definitely not as simple as just blaming either of our political parties.

So, just what the heck is going on here? Tune in to the Fox Business Network tonight and find out.

On Thursday at 7 PM Central Time, FBN’s Gerri Willis presents her special report, The Willis Report: Gas Price Shock. Willis explores the rising cost of gas and oil in the United States and will examine the key influences causing the spike in gas prices enlisting a panel of experts to offer solutions along the way.

Guests will include: Gulf Oil CEO Joe Petrowski; AAA Expert Robert Sinclair; Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Robert Bryce; Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R-ND); Dr. Michael Burgess (R-TX), among others.

Tune in to Fox Business Network on Thursday March 22nd, 7:00 PM/CT and find out what is going on.
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Fox Business Network Special Report: Gas Price Shock!”


EXCLUSIVE VIDEO — Newt Responds to President: Let Obama Be the Saudi Oil and Algae Guy, I’ll be the American Jobs Guy

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Newt Responds to President: Let Obama Be the Saudi Oil and Algae Guy, I’ll be the American Jobs Guy
-By Warner Todd Huston

Republican Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich appeared at Otto Engineering in Carpentersville, Illinois this afternoon and had a few choice words for Barack Obama. Newt told the president than he can be the fantasy algae guy and he, Newt, will be the science candidate.


Newt Slams the President as a member of the “Flat Earth, Sierra Club Society.”

Earlier today Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland, President Obama claimed that anyone attacking his absurd reliance on wind power and algae to solve our massive energy problems are members of the “Flat Earth Society.”

Obama even went so far as to attack “one of my predecessors,” Rutherford B. Hayes who Obama quotes as saying that telephones are great but “who would want to use them”? “This is why he isn’t on Mount Rushmore,” Obama quipped. But Hayes was hardly a Luddite in the White House. For instance, on May 10th 1877 Hayes was the first president to install a telephone in the White House, so who knows what Obama is rambling about?

For his part, Newt is ridiculing Obama’s failures on energy.
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EXCLUSIVE VIDEO — Newt Responds to President: Let Obama Be the Saudi Oil and Algae Guy, I’ll be the American Jobs Guy”


Lower Than Pond Scum

-By Alan Caruba

Between 1955 and 1959 I was a student at the University of Miami. It was perhaps the best four years of my life and remembered fondly for its combination of fun and learning. On Thursday, February 23, President Barack Obama was on the UM campus to tell the biggest bunch of lies about energy in America I have heard compressed into a single speech.

This President has already set records wasting taxpayer’s money on a range of so-called clean energy and renewable energy “investments”. Solyndra, the solar panel company that went bust and stuck taxpayers with a half-billion in loan guarantees is just one of those “investments” and I keep waiting for someone to ask why public funds are being flushed down the toilet when, if the companies involved were viable, they could not raise private venture capital?

“And we’re making investments in the development of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance known as algae,” said the President. “Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17% of the oil we important for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in America.”
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Lower Than Pond Scum”


CPUC: When a Consumer Advocate Isn’t

-By Warner Todd Huston

The California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) is suppose to be a consumer advocate, it’s supposed to be a watchdog agency that keeps California’s public utilities in line so that they don’t rip off rate payers. Unfortunately, as the SF Chronicle’s Katy Grimes says, the regulator is instead responsible for a culture of corruption with the state’s utilities.

It almost seems as if the CPUC is an arm of the rate-hiking utilities instead of their minder!

“The California Public Utility Commission,” Grimes says, “has a history of allowing utility companies to increase utility rates without much proof of need, resulting in some of the highest utility rates in the entire country. Despite gross mismanagement and well-documented negligence, the CPUC has allowed Pacific, Gas & Electric Company to continually increase utility rates, passing tremendous costs on to rate payers.”

Grimes details a lot of the scams and broken promises about rates in California all this quite despite the fact that PG&E is actually responsible for the deaths of at least 8 Californians due to its negligence.
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CPUC: When a Consumer Advocate Isn’t”


Chop Licking: How Obama Uses Falsehoods to Advance His Policies

-By Warner Todd Huston

Last week we all got a great lesson in how the left promotes a lie to make Republicans the enemy and this time President Obama was a chief participant.

This is how the game is played: the left-leaning media establishment makes a claim about how rotten Republicans are and Obama then echoes the claim and presents it as the true state of Republican opposition to his policies. The result is that we have a partisan opinion foisted on the public as truth about how mean the GOP is to this poor, well-meaning president. A false media narrative is established by the partisan press, politician adds said meme to a policy speech, presto-chango, a political “fact” is born. But it’s all just a partisan hit job masquerading as fact.

We are talking, of course, about President Obama’s claim that the GOP is “licking their chops” over the bad news of high gas prices. This is the line uttered by the president in his most misleading energy speech delivered in Florida on February 23.

In that speech, President Obama claimed that Republicans were happy that gas prices were hurting Americans. Obama intended to show that Republicans didn’t care that America was hurting, happy they could use it as a political tool to hurt the president and his well-meaning policies.

Here is what he said:

“Some politicians, they see this as a political opportunity. I know you’re shocked by that. Last week the lead story in one newspaper said, ‘Gasoline prices are on the rise and Republicans are licking their chops.’ That’s a quote. That was the lead. Licking their chops. Only in politics do people root for bad news. Do they greet bad news so enthusiastically.”

Note how Obama uses the partisan slam, published in “one newspaper” written by a left-wing writer and presents this as fact about how Republicans feel about rising gas prices. Note that Obama didn’t quote any actual Republican saying rising gas prices is a good thing. He quoted one of his own follower’s partisan claims and then assigned that false narrative to his political enemies.
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Chop Licking: How Obama Uses Falsehoods to Advance His Policies”


America’s Green Enemies

-By Alan Caruba

It was good news that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the nation’s first nuclear power plants on February 9th, clearing the way for the construction of two reactors by Southern Company at its Plant Vogtle site near Atlanta, Georgia. The bad news is that these are the first new nuclear plants since 1978!

In a nation with a growing population and increasing need for electricity to power homes and businesses, it is nothing less than insane to not include nuclear energy in the mix of providers. Environmentalists immediately attacked the announcement using the usual scare campaigns.

Equally insane is the failure to provide the means to safely store the radioactive materials that result. Highly contested by environmentalists, the Nevada-based Yucca Mountain deep geological repository storage facility for spent reactor fuel was cancelled in 2009. Nevada’s Senator Harry Reid, Majority Leader in the Senate, played a major role in this disgraceful decision. The Obama administration terminated funding for the development of the site in 2011, leaving the nation with no long-term storage site.
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America’s Green Enemies”


Sarah Palin’s Main CPAC Speech Points: Did She Sell Out?

-By Warner Todd Huston

I am just now back home from CPAC and I thought I’d wrap up my CPAC reports with the main points from Sarah Palin’s CPAC speech. I will have video of a dozen or so GOP candidates for Senate and the House over the ensuing days as well as a short video interview with Daniel Hannan, the Member of European Parliament that made himself beloved to Americans for his impassioned speeches in favor of freedom and liberty.

Those videos will come later, but now, on to Sarah’s speech. As expected, Sarah Palin was met with the most adulatory applause of any CPAC speaker. When she came out onto the stage the house went wild. She had the longest sustained standing ovation of the entire event. Obviously, Sarah Palin is still a rock star to these conservatives.

I live tweeted her speech and following this introduction I’ll repost those live tweets here so that you can see her main points as she delivered them and as I tweeted them. But first my over all impressions.

Palin spent a lot of time smacking President Obama over the head with his smashing failures over the last three years. She made no effort to be coy about it but attacked him head on. As in all her speeches — and I’ve been in the audience for a few of them, myself — she made many allusions to the founders, citing them often. And she ended up with an urgent plea to those watching to fall in behind who ever becomes the GOP nominee “for the sake of our country.” This ending might have surprised, maybe even dismayed her more ideological fans because perhaps she just proved to be just another party woman instead of the ideologically pure representative they’d hoped for.
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Sarah Palin’s Main CPAC Speech Points: Did She Sell Out?”


PG&E Wants Higher Rates Even While Collecting Millions for Improvements Never Made?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Since the several disastrous accidents that claimed the lives of too many Californians, Pacific Gas & Electric has been fighting criticism over its dismal safety record. In response, the energy provider cried poor and said it needed billions for upgrades and repairs and wanted ratepayers to pay even more for its services. But a new report says that PG&E collected millions from ratepayers for repairs and improvements that it never actually made.

Early last year PG&E got a large rate increase, but by August the energy provider was at it again asking for an additional $2.2 billion for upgrades, repairs, and improving its explosion-prone delivery system, a cost to be born on the backs of the ratepayers.

This January, though, the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) reported that PG&E has already collected half a billion dollars that was supposed to go to these repairs and upgrades yet the repairs were never made.
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PG&E Wants Higher Rates Even While Collecting Millions for Improvements Never Made?”


Destroying America by Denying Access to Energy

-By Alan Caruba

It is the crime of the century that America, home to some of the world’s greatest reserves of coal, natural gas and oil, is being deliberately destroyed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior as they do everything in their power to restrict access and drive energy producers out of business.

It is common sense that a nation that cannot produce sufficient electricity to turn on its lights and power its manufacturing sector will be destroyed if current Obama administration regulations and actions continue. Our vital transportation sector and all others that utilize petroleum-based products will suffer, too.

While President Obama babbles about millionaires and billionaires, everyone will be impoverished by the loss of jobs and revenue our energy sector produces now and can produce in the future.

This isn’t an “energy policy.” It’s a “no-energy policy” and it is a guarantee of economic disaster.
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Destroying America by Denying Access to Energy”


Upset about Big Brother’s Ban on Incandescent Bulbs? Buy a Heatball!

-By Selwyn Duke

This is just too good.

Many of you know that in a few days the federal ban on conventional incandescent light bulbs will go into effect. And while House Republicans included a provision in a recent spending bill that will block funding for the ban’s enforcement, it’s said that it will have little effect; manufacturers have prepared for the new standards and will no doubt abide by the law. So does this mean we’ll be forced to buy more expensive LED (light emitting diode) or CFL (compact fluorescent light) bulbs, the latter being those squiggly things said to be loaded with mercury? Not if we follow the lead of German businessman Siegfried Rotthaeuser.

After the European Union banned conventional incandescent bulbs, Rotthaeuser’s entrepreneurial spirit was sparked. He started selling another product: heatballs.

What’s a heatball? According to this Teutonic Knight of Freedom and Light, it is a “small heating device” that compensates for the loss of heat a home experiences when conventional light bulbs are swapped for more energy efficient ones. Here is an image of this novel new product.

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Upset about Big Brother’s Ban on Incandescent Bulbs? Buy a Heatball!”


Obama Crony Capitalism: Navy Buys ‘Green’ Fuel at 4 X Price

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Obama administration has announced its successful purchase of “green” biofules for the U.S. Navy at $15 per gallon. This success story is interesting for the fact that the Navy’s regular fuel cost is just under $4 per gallon. Additionally, one of the companies involved in the sale employs a prominent member of Obama’s 2008 transition team, one T.J Glauthier.

The company in question, Solazyme of California, has also been a happy beneficiary $21.8 million of Obama’s “stimulus” spending.

Read the rest at RightPundits.com.


We’ve Been Had: Reagan’s Words Have Gone Unheeded

-By Daniel Clark

In Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural address, he described America by saying, “We are a nation that has a government, not the other way around.” Thirty years later, that doesn’t exactly ring true.

During the 2008 primaries, Barack Obama told a group of supporters in Oregon that, “We can’t drive our SUVs, and eat as much as we want, and keep our homes at 72 degrees at all times, and then just expect that other countries are going to say, ‘oh, okay.’ That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.” Exercising our freedom as consumers is “not going to happen?” Spoken like the future leader of a government that has a nation.

This September, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack lectured representatives of the National Restaurant Association about the amount of salt and sugar in their food, as part of an intimidation campaign with which several large restaurant chains are already “cooperating.” Of course, salt and sugar cost money, so if it made good business sense for restaurants to reduce the amounts they use, they would have done so already. They haven’t because the food just won’t taste as good, as you’re well aware if you’ve ever accidentally bought a can of low-sodium soup, and then carpet-bombed it with salt in an attempt to make it palatable.
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We’ve Been Had: Reagan’s Words Have Gone Unheeded”


‘Historian’ Gets Mouthy At Congressional Hearing

-By Warner Todd Huston

I meant to get to this last week, but “historian” Douglas Brinkley is so forgettable as a writer that it all slipped my mind. But, it’s a slow news day, so let’s take a look at the temper tantrum this hack threw when he visited the House Natural Resources Committee on Nov. 22, shall we?

Brinkley was there to provide his, uh, “insight” into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, testimony that Alaska Rep. Don Young called “an exercise in futility” because the hearing wasn’t going to be changing anyone’s mind about the subject. I’d have to agree that anything including hack Brinkley truly is an exercise in futility. He’s one of the worst writers of popular history out there.

The fireworks began when Rep. Young accidentally called Brinkley by the wrong last name. This sent the scribbler off into paroxysms of pique and spurred him to interrupt not only Rep. Young, but also Committee Chair Doc Hastings when he tried to restore order.

Rep. Young later told the Washington Post’s Amy Argetsinger that he thought that Brinkley was just trying to get publicity with his outburst.
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‘Historian’ Gets Mouthy At Congressional Hearing”


Actor Ruffalo Wants Obama to Turn Army Corps of Engineers Political

-By Warner Todd Huston

Mark Ruffalo — you know, the millionaire actor that claims to be part of the 99% — may not be a scientist. But he plays one on mass emailings from left-wing advocacy groups. And with that activism Ruffalo is urging President Obama to turn the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from a science-based service to the American people into just another politicized arm of progressivism.

Ruffalo is lending his name to WaterDefense.org, an anti-fracking group claiming that the practice of drilling for natural gas contaminates drinking water wherever it is employed.

The science of the water contamination claim is not exactly proven but that won’t stop this group and actor Ruffalo from claiming it as fact. Clearly more scientific studies are needed to determine what is true and what isn’t here.
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Actor Ruffalo Wants Obama to Turn Army Corps of Engineers Political”


Rancho Cordova Blast Fine Too Low to Assure Future Public Safety

-By Warner Todd Huston

In 2008 a pipeline operated by Pacific Gas & Electric exploded destroying several homes and killing 72-year-old Wilbert Paana. Since that time authorities have been attempting to determine what sort of fines PG&E should face for its negligence. Recently administrative law judge John Wong proposed that a fine of $38 million — and an end to the whole matter — would be enough. But is this enough to assure the protection and safety of California’s ratepayers?

To his credit, Judge Wong rejected an even lower proposal of a $26 million fine noting that if found guilty the utility would face at least a $97 million if found guilty of all the charges and safety violations leveled against it. Yet, he’s willing to let PG&E get away with less than half of what it could face were it to go the distance in the courts.

Whatever is fair or not, though, one thing must be noted. PG&E’s board recently rewarded CEO Peter Darbee with a $35 million severance package even though he presided over multiple violations of safety including that Rancho Cordova incident that took the life of Mr. Panna, not to mention eight more deaths in the San Bruno incident. He also headed up the utility as it wasted $46 million on the ballot initiative Prop 16 which was an attempt to enshrine in law PG&E’s California monopoly.
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Rancho Cordova Blast Fine Too Low to Assure Future Public Safety”


Killing Energy, Killing Jobs, Killing America

-By Alan Caruba

America has been under attack since Barack Obama took the oath of office on January 20, 2009. The primary target has been the nation’s ability to generate energy for electricity and transportation, without which this nation will slide into Third World status and economic decline.

This appears to be the goal of this administration from the President to his Secretaries of Energy and Interior, to his Director of the Environmental Protection Agency. There is no other rational explanation for what they are doing.

We are days away from the latest Environmental Protection Agency assault in the form of the “MACT” rule allegedly to reduce mercury and other emissions that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission says will reduce electricity generation in America by about 81 gigawatts in the years ahead. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial said “this could compromise the reliability of the electric system if as much as 8% of generating capacity is subtracted from the grid.”
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Killing Energy, Killing Jobs, Killing America”


Citing Elmhurst Dillard Calls for Pressure on ComEd

From the office of Ill. State Senator Kirk Dillard (24th District)…

In a Friday, October 14, 2011 interview on WLS radio’s Don Wade and Roma Show, Illinois State Senator Kirk Dillard (R-Westmont) outlined his concerns about the SmartGrid legislation being pushed by Commonwealth Edison.

Voicing concerns relayed to him by local citizens and elected officials, Dillard said on the radio station that the SmartGrid legislation needs improvement. “The status quo is not enough,” Dillard said. “Cities like Elmhurst, which is right in my area, have had severe power outages. We need reliability. We’ve got to do something and we need to look at our electrical grid. In some places it’s old and decaying, so the status quo is not acceptable.”

In response to a question about how Quinn thinks raising electric rates are bad for businesses but thinks a 66% increase in income tax is okay, Dillard said, “I don’t believe in guaranteed rate increases [for utilities] by the Commerce Commission.”

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Citing Elmhurst Dillard Calls for Pressure on ComEd”


Will Warmists Face Justice for their Deceptions?

-By Alan Caruba

When you murder someone the case is never closed. The same holds when you murder the truth. No matter how long it takes, truth is defended despite all the calumnies heaped on those who stand firm against the lies and the propaganda intended to persuade those who have been deceived.

Ultimately, truth is its own defense. There never was a shred of truth in the claim that humans were causing the Earth’s climate to heat up by using so-called “fossil fuels” and engaging in manufacturing and other activities. There was no dramatic “global warming” in the 1980s until the present.

The Earth’s climate has warmed very slightly since the end of the Little Ice Age, dated to around 1850. Five hundred years of extremely cold weather had gripped the northern hemisphere starting around 1300. The much heralded “climate change” is, unlike the weather, measured in terms of centuries, not days, weeks or years. It is used by politicians that do not know what they are talking about. It is also used by charlatans, but I repeat myself.

Under the direction of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) a massive fraud was engineered. The object was to turn carbon dioxide (CO2), a common though minor atmospheric gas, into a commodity that could be traded in exchanges around the world that would issue “carbon credits” to utilities, industrial facilities, and others who would be required to pay for permission to produce energy and products. It was an audacious scheme.
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Will Warmists Face Justice for their Deceptions?”


Roskam Applauds House Passage of the Coal Residuals and Management Act

From the office of Rep. Peter Roskam (R, Illinois 6th District)…

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Peter Roskam (IL-06), Chief Deputy Whip, issued the following statement after the House passed H.R. 2273 – the Coal Residuals and Management Act – a bill with bipartisan support that will allow coal combustion residuals to be used effectively and efficiently while protecting jobs:

“This bipartisan legislation is another commonsense solution to restore confidence in American businesses and workers. This is a regulatory solution that would protect jobs, keep electricity costs low, and keep construction material costs low. The construction and energy industries can’t grow and expand with regulations as these excessive these.

“Americans are looking for answers on how we can turn this economy around, and excessive regulations from Washington are only adding to that frustration. It is initiatives like these that will provide for the kind of certainty and pro-growth environment needed to get businesses hiring again and move our economy in the right direction.”

http://roskam.house.gov/


Ancient Green History: Chevy Volt No Better Than 115-Year-Old Car

-By Warner Todd Huston

It almost seems like a cosmic joke against these greenwits, but a new report seems to show that the Chevy Volt doesn’t get any better mileage than an electric car that was invented in 1896!

The Roberts electric car, circa 1896, got a “solid 40 miles to the charge” when it debuted years before the Wrights Brothers even took their first flight. Amusingly, its the exact same number of miles that the Chevy Volt gets today…

Read the rest at RightPundits.com.