Interesting Items
Alex Gimarc
<[email protected]>
Monday, February 8, 2010
Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
1. Toyota
2. Nukes
3. Unemployment
4. Retards
5. Conoco
6. Penn State
7. Wind
8. Coeds
1. Toyota. Upon further review, it appears that the Obama administration’s
problem with Toyota is a union-inspired hit. The timing is priceless. Within
a couple days after Toyota announced closure of its only union factory here in
the US, Ray LaHood’s Department of Transportation “discovered” problems with
Toyota’s vehicles. LaHood went farther late last week, advising Toyota owners
to park their vehicles and not drive them, suggesting that they needed to get
something else to drive. Quite the fascist little government the UAW and the
trial lawyers have managed to purchase. Time to downsize it and while you’re
at it, buy Toyota.
2. Nukes. Obama’s awful budget has a bait and switch for fans of clean
nuclear power. On the one hand, it has $54 billion worth of loan guarantees
for power companies wanting to build new nuclear power plants. On the other it
completely shuts down our national spent fuel repository at Yucca Mountain,
NV. The Obama administration is also taking steps to withdraw the permit that
will allow Yucca Mountain to operate. In response, Energy Secretary Chu and
Energy Czar Carol Browner announced formation of a new panel to study yet again
the problem of nuclear waste disposal. Malkin Friday described this as
paralysis by analysis, for we already have a solution to the problem of nuclear
waste in this country – the storage facility at Yucca Mountain. Note that the
problem of nuclear waste is entirely another in a long list of artificial,
government caused problems for the energy sector. Over 30 years ago, the
Carter administration decided
that we here in the US would no longer reprocess spent nuclear fuel rods. The
expressed concern at the time was fear of nuclear proliferation. When nuclear
fuels are “burned”, the active uranium isotope is not completely used up. In
most cases, over 90% of the isotope is left. Reprocessing would remove the
waste and repackage what was left into new fuel rods ready for use. The little
bit remaining is highly radioactive and can be turned into a glassy solid and
stored for the decades to centuries until it loses its radioactivity. Note
also that saving the waste for an extended period of time will also allow
private industry to figure out a way to use that waste in other ways for future
profit-making businesses. This administration is not serious at all about
energy independence.
3. Unemployment. The latest lie out of the Obama administration concerning
unemployment was the announcement last week that the overall unemployment rate
in the nation had dropped from 10% to 9.7%. At best, this is fuzzy math, for
their trick this time around was to drop the total number of employed Americans
by 541,000. In other words, the Obama administration has simply decreased the
total number of employed Americans and redid the math. If you were to apply
the new numbers against the earlier number of jobs, the current unemployment
rate would be 10.8% and the total unemployment rate including those that have
quit looking for work completely would be over 18%. We no longer have a free
country when the government feels comfortable with lying to the general public,
and the government supporting media goes along with it completely.
4. Retards. Such is the power of former Alaska Governor Palin s to drive the
national debate is the dust up over Obama’s chief WH advisor Rahm “The
Ballerina” Emanuel epithet-laden tirade against those democrats opposing
Obama’s health care machinations last summer. Normally, when those on the
right utter the politically incorrect verbiage in public, they are hounded from
office by the state-run media and democrat attack ads. Look at former VA
governor and US Senator George Allen and “macaca.” Those on the left are
always given a pass. This time they weren’t. While I absolutely despise the
notion that some words are only allowed to be used by some people and not
others, it is slightly amusing to see Emanuel get hoisted on his own petard.
But it does not do a lot to further our cause. On the other hand, illustrating
absurdity by being absurd, Limbaugh set both his critics and the WH up by using
Emanuel’s “retards”
comments time after time after time early last week. It triggered the
expected response, meaning that he understands the left completely.
5. Conoco. The Obama administration’s war on Alaska continued last week with
the denial by a permit to construct a bridge across the Colville River on the
Alaskan North Slope. The permit would have given Conoco – Philips and Anadarko
permission to build the bridge so that they could access their lease in NPR-A,
to the west of the Prudhoe Bay oil field complex. The oil companies had
invested over a half billion dollars in expectation that the permit would be
approved. The list of excuses given by the Army Corps of Engineers for denying
the permit contained all the expected green mealymouthings: disturbing
overwintering fish habitat; disrupting subsistence; over 80 species of birds
nest on the Colville River delta and a bridge would disturb all of them; etc.
Of course, there are other ways that Conoco – Phillips and Anadarko can conduct
their exploration. These include directional drilling but as usual would
require brand new permits
from the Corps. Meanwhile, our Boy Senator Mark Begich spent the Pro Bowl
weekend in Miami with his fellow democrat senators and dozens of his favorite
lobbyists. Nice work protecting the state’s interests, Mark.
6. Penn State. Penn State University PSU) is home to the creator of the
Hockey Stick graph “proving” manmade global warming caused by carbon dioxide
emissions, Michael Mann. In the aftermath of the release of e-mails, computer
code, and other proof of fraud by government funded climate scientists, Penn
State announced an investigation into Mann’s participation in the fraud. They
announced the results of the first phase of the investigation, and while there
was some significant disagreement among the members of the committee, they
found nothing remarkable or actionable. But they did announce a new team to do
a second phase of investigations. It appears the academics at PSU are closing
ranks around their boy, Michael Mann and that whatever comes out of the
investigation will be a complete whitewash. If Bernie Madoff defrauds
thousands of investors, he ends up in jail, where he also got beat up and sent
to the infirmary late last year.
But when government funded academics commit scientific fraud, participate in
wasting $97 billion of our dollars, scare hundreds of millions of their
countrymen, and set the stage for a government takeover of the energy sector,
he is completely exonerated. Nice racket, that.
7. Wind. Fun story out of Minnesota last week. Wind turbines are all the
rage among fans of green energy and they have been sprouting like enormous
toadstools in green parts of the nation. One such area is Minnesota, where it
gets very cold at times. This winter has been pretty cold and the wind
generators are not turning. Ed Morrissey in Hot Air Sunday wrote that the
special, low temperature hydraulic fluid in eleven wind turbines was
sufficiently ossified that the generators weren’t turning, weren’t generating
clean, cheap, reliable (snort) green energy and needed heaters installed to
keep the fluid from congealing. Locals in the Minneapolis – St. Paul are
referring to them as a No Spin Zone.
8. Coeds. Last story comes out of the University of Alaska Southeast campus
via the local fishwrapper Monday. It has a student being held on a rape charge
after doing the deed on his female roommate in a coed dorm room. Yep, we can
sure make things better by eliminating all distinctions between men and women
at the University. Good show, guys – putting our daughters at risk while
putting our sons in positions they shouldn’t be in and wondering why, oh why
has something bad happened. The only surprise from this story is that it
doesn’t happen more often.
More later -
- AG
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better
than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not
your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your
chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our
countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia
State House, August 1, 1776.
Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations:
The Alaska Standard http://thealaskastandard.com/
MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuvalleynews.com
District 28 http://www.dist28.com/
subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/
and the home page: http://home.gci.net/~agimarc
Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column:
http://www.thevanguard.org/
To read Alex Gimarc’s columns, go to http://home.gci.net/~agimarc/
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