Energy Nonsense

In an April 4 Newsweek guest editorial, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu also proved that — his Nobel Prize notwithstanding — common sense and rudimentary knowledge are lacking. First he did not offer one sentence on securing the 87 percent of energy supplies that the US needs other than to discuss “advanced biofuels.”

Not to be outdone in slogan-style exaggeration, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar chimed in…Salazar, the Wall Street Journal reported, “raised eyebrows when he said offshore wind farms could replace 3,000 coal-fired plants.” Never mind that the US only has 600 of them. He also claimed that offshore wind in the Atlantic could deliver 1,000 gigawatts of capacity – approximately equal to the entire electric generation capacity of the US…Salazar’s statement should raise a lot more than eyebrows.

clipped from www.energytribune.com The Obama Administration seems to be unmoved by the fact that according to almost all estimates, by the year 2030, while the world energy demand will increase by 50 percent, oil, gas and coal will still account for 87 percent of world energy. The EPA of course does not offer solutions to the 87 percent problem and defers to Congress to do so. Surely Congress will find the right solution from a position of knowledge as demonstrated by the honorable Nancy Pelosi who on NBC’s Meet the Press said “I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels,” and lest one thought she misspoke, she went on to say in the same interview that natural gas “is cheap, abundant and clean compared to fossil fuels.” Let me make two predictions which for most who understand energy may generate chuckles for the dearth of daring: By the end of Obama’s first term, oil consumption in the US will rise and the imported portion of that consumption will increase.

Great Moments in The Obama Presidency: Caterpillar Edition

February 11, 2009:

Obama said Caterpillar’s CEO has told him that if the stimulus bill passes he would be able to rehire some of those employees.

February 18, 2009:

President Barack Obama signed his $787 billion economic stimulus package into law Tuesday, with an upbeat speech emphasizing the road to recovery.

March 18, 2009:

Caterpillar Inc, the world’s largest maker of construction and mining equipment, notified an additional 2,454 workers in three states on Tuesday that they were losing their jobs as the company continues to try to bring production in line with plummeting demand.

Brown and Obama – VisionQuest

I ran across a great review of Gordon Brown and The Holy Messiah’s visions for the future by Janet Daley in the UK Telegraph:

Mr Obama – who gives the impression of being considerably out of his depth in the economic maelstrom – talks of an “opportunity” to “reorganise our priorities”. He gave a major speech last week in which he actually seemed to suggest that the present crisis had been caused by America’s failure to develop a universal health care system and to attend to the impending environmental disaster of global warming (“we made the wrong choices”), and that by focusing on these matters a way can be found out of the country’s economic problems.

Is he quite mad? Does he really believe that the banking crisis and the recession were some kind of divine retribution for the absence of universal health care, and excessive carbon emissions? Or is he suggesting that a practical solution lies in spending money on health care and the development of alternative energy sources?

Its a power grab and everyone knows it who is actually paying attention.  Here’s Mr. Brown’s vision for the future:

In Gordon Brown’s fantasy, this is an “opportunity” to exercise control over the whole world. Not just stricter regulation by national governments of their own economic institutions, but a wondrous new level of international regulation by supranational functionaries – to be appointed by whom? A World Government agency accountable to no electorate and with no democratic mandate from the populations over whom it will wield such power? Trotskyists used to say that Stalinist Russia had failed to achieve Utopia because it had embraced “socialism in one country” rather than going for “world revolution”. Now, we are being told that Labour’s market-led social justice programme failed because it opted for “regulation in one country” instead of understanding the need for “world regulation”.

Maybe being an ex-Marxist is a bit like being a lapsed Catholic: you never quite get rid of the old thought patterns.

In the more overheated renditions of the Brown theme, there is talk of a “global vision for fairness”, in which the very poverty that is being visited upon all the developed economies will somehow make it possible to redistribute wealth to the developing world.

And these wonderful visions of destroying rich countries in order to make everybody equally poor have been voted into office by a bunc h of idiots who somehow think they will get everything for “free”.  Free health care, free mortgages, car tires automatically inflated to the right pressure, free food, and all done by taking the money from the six evil rich people who control all the wealth.

Horse Pellets and Hockey Sticks.  We get what we deserve.

Your future power generator

Botchmen

Thanks Instapundit.

Somebody Actually Listened To the Nitwit Last Night

Thanks to Robert Tracinski who waded through last night’s good and dribble to come up with the main points The Messiah and His Minions will do in destroying America:

• The government will take over lending directly.

• The government will take over lending indirectly.

• The government will vilify and punish bankers. – show of hands, who wants to graduate and go into banking today?  thought so

• No one can know when all of this intervention is going to end or how much bigger it’s going to get.

• Obama will subsidize inefficient and unprofitable “renewable energy” projects.

• Obama will artificially increase the costs of all other forms of energy.

• He will seek socialized medicine. Oooh – question.  Just how many trillions will this cost?  on top of the porkulus and the Social Security Ponzi scheme?

• He’ll soak the rich.

Elections have consequences and we are getting an idea of just how expensive this last election will be for everyone.

Behold the Word of The Messiah

Obama Saves The Economy – Item 1

As expected – the media is looking around and realizing that running down the economy isn’t going to help The Messiah save the planet.  And here’s the first sign that I have seen that we will be seeing lots of  “things aren’t so bad” articles now that The Holy One is in charge:

Yes, car sales are down. Yes, Wall Street’s in the pits. Job losses are dismal and mounting. What about the housing market? Let’s not even go there. But I believe several factors — low interest rates, relatively low energy costs and renewed taxpayer and consumer confidence in the incoming presidential administration — could help ignite at least moderate growth before 2009 winds up.

green shoots ahead – and it will all be because Obama comes to the rescue.

Environmentalists as Idiots

Wash, Rinse, Repeat:

The U.S. government just put polar bears on the threatened species list because climate change is shrinking the Arctic ice where they live. Never mind that polar bears are in fact thriving — their numbers have quadrupled in the last 50 years. Never mind that full implementation of the Kyoto protocols on greenhouse gases would save exactly one polar bear, according to Danish social scientist Bjorn Lomborg, author of the book “Cool It!” Yet 300 to 500 polar bears could be saved every year, Lomborg says, if there were a ban on hunting them. What’s cheaper — trillions to trim carbon emissions, or a push for a ban on polar bear hunting?

The country is being forced to subscribe to a modern version of transubstantiation, whereby corn is miraculously transformed into sinless energy even as it does worse damage than oil.

Plastic grocery bags are being banned, even though they require less energy to make and recycle than paper ones.

But the polar bears make for such cute, cuddly pictures.  I am married to someone who has seen the aftereffects of these little cuties tearing off people’s arms and legs however, so I’m not quite so sure its a good thing to have them on the endangered list.

Boo Hoo – Illegals Finding Work Scarce

The slant of this article is sickening:

Times are tough for the 27-year-old illegal immigrant and day laborer

For the most part, Rodriguez says, he’s doing what hundreds of other day laborers are doing these days: Standing around and waiting for jobs in Santa Cruz instead of actually getting them.

The bad times are trickling down to the lowest rung of the work force: the illegal labor pool, 

And somewhere in Mexico a wife and a family are having a rougher go at it than usual. 

A couple of questions:

1.  If its so tough in the US, why not go back home?  This article implies that the poor illegal hasn’t had regular work since last summer.  How in the wide wide world of sports is he able to live here?

2.  If there’s no work at home – why not?  Just when did it become America’s issue to deal with unemployed Mexicans?

And most of all this:

“Everybody is going to suffer in a recession — from the top on down,” says Patti Decker, a branch manager with Labor Ready in Soquel, whose number of Spanish-speaking customers, she added, has been on the rise in the last few months, in part due to the poor economy.

Labor Ready is an “employment contractor”.  Just why are they able to break the law with impunity and knowingly hire out illegals?

Economic Stimulus Plan Announced

Yet another example of how politicians think they can bribe us WITH OUR OWN MONEY!

clipped from www.imao.us Washington D.C. (AP) President Bush will announce a two phase plan to reinvigorate the nation’s economy at a White House press conference tomorrow. Phase I of the Bush plan calls for removal of the Capitol Rotunda and its replacement with the world’s largest commode. Phase II calls for the collection of $150 Billion of taxpayer money, which will then be thrown into the gigantic crapper and flushed away.

US #1 in economic competitiveness, MSM yawns

Only Investor’s Business Daily thought this was worthy of being news.

Interesting too how those people’s paradises of North Korea and Cuba don’t show up on this list.

clipped from www.weforum.org The United States, Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden take the lead in the rankings of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness index Geneva, Switzerland, 31 October 2007 – The United States tops the overall ranking in The Global Competitiveness Report 2007-2008, released today by the World Economic Forum. Switzerland is in second position followed by Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Finland and Singapore, respectively. The United States confirms its position as the most competitive economy in the world. The efficiency of the country’s markets, the sophistication of its business community, the impressive capacity for technological innovation that exists within a first-rate system of universities and research centres, all contribute to making the United States a highly competitive economy. 1 United States – 5.67 2 Switzerland – 5.62 3 Denmark – 5.55 4 Sweden – 5.54 5 Germany – 5.51 6 Finland – 5.49 7 Singapore – 5.45 8 Japan – 5.43 9 United Kingdom – 5.41 10 Netherlands – 5.40