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Energy Leninism? Or Just Plain Leninism?

Energy Leninism? Or Just Plain Leninism?

leninAs goes Energy, so goes the country.
“The worse, the better,” Vladimir Lenin is said to have observed. What Lenin meant was that the worse social conditions became in Russia, the more likely he and the Bolsheviks could foment a communist revolution. President Barrack Obama’s White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel recently updated Lenin’s maxim, saying, “Never allow a crisis to go to waste.”Last Friday, the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives took those maxims to heart when they pushed through their 1,200-page American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act by a vote 219 to 212. The bill is supposed to address the twin crises of economic recession and climate change by creating millions of new “green” jobs. Instead of an old-fashioned Soviet-style five-year plan, ACES can be thought of as 50-year plan to radically transform how Americans produce and use energy.
…Well, look, Ron Bailey, this entire administration seems to me to emulate the tactics of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, in all things, not just energy… and in my view we’ve not seen nearly the worst of it yet. (A Depressing thought as we come to July 4th, isn’t it?) So why should Energy be any different? Energy, after all, is the key to our country and it’s prosperity. Which of course was why I raised such holy hell when the first thing Obama did upon being sworn in was to reverse President Bush’s sign off on offshore drilling. That action is the major reason oil prices have better than doubled in the last 6 months. The question that Ron asks, though, seems to me pertinent:
Will Americans tolerate such sweeping interventions into their lives and workplaces? … The 1994 mid-term election became a referendum on [...]

The Tiller shooting: The response is unreasonable.

There's much to discuss in terms of implication, as regards the shooting of abortionist George Tiller, none of them particularly complimentary to those claiming to take up Tiller's side. Even from the outset, my instinct was that the reaction to the Tiller story was overblown... intentionally so. Whatever else might be said, we're talking about one man's death. Absent the issue of Abortion, and in light of the seven men in Chicago alone, shot in the same 24 hour period, one man being shot just isn't national news, sorry. It also and most certainly doesn't rise to the level of 'terrorism' as some have been loudly claiming. It's interesting, too, how the word "'Terrorism" has been rediscovered by the left, to be applied to this thing, isn't it? Let's examine this, for a moment: Since back in 1993, there have been seven abortion clinic workers killed as such. If this constitutes an organized bit of terrorist activity, I suggest it to be so far below the radar as to be invisible. This is a misapplication of the term terrorism, in light of the much larger terrorism we've seen in the last decade... terrorism that for the most part, the left ignored. They also ignore that the killing of Tiller has been condemned by every mainstream pro-life group. Their entire response seems out of the bounds of reason. So unreasonably loud is the howl over this one in fact, that one cannot help but wonder if it wasn't orchestrated so. If we take what we see on the web as indicative, for the most part these are leftists.... who are people already used to making noise far in excess of their actual numbers. I think we can take this level of noise as an indication of the number of organized mouthpieces on the web right now. (And I think that has implications for our political future.) There are a goodly number of left-of-center bloggers that have [...]
Honor them, today.

Honor them, today.

Have you ever been to Arlington ?memorial-day2 It's a place like very few others on the planet. It's true enough; the world would be a better place if places such as Arlington weren't required to be a part of it, but man is fallible. Our freedoms that so many of us take for granted , come at a very high price. What you see in front of you is but a small part of that price. Something there is about humans that causes us not to want to be indebted to anyone. It's perhaps why some are so anti-military. Yet we are indebted to these individuals, and millions more like them, buried on battlefields all around the world. We are indebted in a way that is wholly unique. This is not just about that they died. It's what they died for, and whom. It's been a long time since [...]
Obama And the USSC

Obama And the USSC

obama3I am disturbed, but not surprised by some of the comments made by Barrack Obama as regards the role of a Justice of the Supreme Court and thereby, what we will get in the replacement for Justice David Souter, who is retiring, next month. Those comments give us a frightening view of what we have in store from anyone Obama might nominate. There are many, including the Washington Post… hardly a bastion of liberal thought… who have counseled Obama to look for judicial restraint:
Alas, the once-dominant species of liberal proponents of judicial restraint has relatively few surviving members. Obama should find them - why not Jose Cabranes, the excellent judge whom President Clinton appointed to the 2nd Circuit? - and help revive the species.
It appears that Obama will be moving in the opposite direction, making that restraint even more of a rarity. Comments made while Obama was still just a candidate, as early as 2001, in an WBEZ interview, are exemplary:
But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the [...]

Fairtax: The Video

This is good. It's less than 3 minutes, the winner of a contest put on by The Fairtax folks, and makes the point about the importance of the Fairtax and the distinct value of American Capitalism. Watch it.

Honor them, today.

Phillips Rescue: Not So Fast, Leftie Spinners

So, how much credit does Barrack Obama deserve for the rescue of Captain Phillips? The efforts of Obama and his supporters to claim Obama was the reason behind this rescue, Black Five says… Not so fast.
The AP is reporting that President Obama gave the order to use military force to rescue the hostage, that is misleading.

WASHINGTON (AP)—Administration officials say President Barack Obama approved the military operation that rescued a U.S. captain held hostage by Somali pirates.

The officials say Obama ordered the Defense Department to use military resources to rescue Richard Phillips from a lifeboat off the Somali coast. He did affirm the military’s authorization to use force if the captain’s life was in danger, but they already would have had that authorization as part of their standard rules of engagement. If there are innocents about to be slaughtered the same reasoning that authorizes self defense also covers an [...]
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