Libertarian Leanings

Scott Brown For Senate

Sissy Willis has turned optimistic about Scott Brown's chances for capturing Ted Kennedy's Senate seat.

Is Massachusetts GOP senatorial candidate Scott Brown finally getting it? The Tea Party Movement, with its growing arsenal of media and social networking tools, including talk radio, Twitter and Facebook, could help propel him onto the national stage as a major player "knocking down the Dems ahead of schedule," as Right Klik colorfully headlines a link-rich blogpost. We were encouraged to see the Bay State Senator's tweet (above) picking up on Bill Kristol's suggestion last week — blogged here yesterday — that Brown's senate race be framed as a "referendum on Obamacare." As the Boston Globe reported this afternoon, "Brown blasted his Democratic rival in the US Senate race today for her support of a national health care plan that Brown says would raise taxes and fees on Massachusetts residents and businesses without providing any benefits":

I could be the 41st senator that could stop the Obama proposal that's being pushed right now through Congress," Brown… said at a news conference in the state Republican Party's headquarters in downtown Boston. "I could stop it and they could bring it back to the drawing board."

We may be about to witness one of the biggest upsets in Massachusetts electoral history.  How huge would that be!

The Unlikeliest Solution

Mark Williams of the Associated Press recently wrote an article about an unlikely source of energy that could solve the global warming crisis.

An unlikely source of energy has emerged to meet international demands that the United States do more to fight global warming: It's cleaner than coal, cheaper than oil and a 90-year supply is under our feet.

It's natural gas, the same fossil fuel that was in such short supply a decade ago that it was deemed unreliable. It's now being uncovered at such a rapid pace that its price is near a seven-year low. Long used to heat half the nation's homes, it's becoming the fuel of choice when building new power plants. Someday, it may win wider acceptance as a replacement for gasoline in our cars and trucks.

I'm not sure why Mr. Williams thinks natural gas is such an unlikely solution.  People have been talking about it for years, converting cars to run on it.  For transportation purposes what has been lacking is a reliable distribution system.  When's the last time you saw the natural gas option when you pulled up to the pump to fill your tank?

But natural gas is one of the pillars in the T. Boone Pickens energy plan, which was so highly touted not so long ago.

The Pickens Plan.

There are several pillars to the Pickens Plan:

• Create millions of new jobs by building out the capacity to generate up to 22 percent of our electricity from wind. And adding to that with additional solar generation capacity;
• Building a 21st century backbone electrical transmission grid;
• Providing incentives for homeowners and the owners of commercial buildings to upgrade their insulation and other energy saving options; and
• Using America's natural gas to replace imported oil as a transportation fuel in addition to its other uses in power generation, chemicals, etc.  [my emphasis]

I can tell you why I think natural gas is such an unlikely solution.  I anticipate significant barriers to the development and distribution of our natural gas energy resources.  OPEC will resist and drop prices accordingly.  But more importantly there is the political resistance that will rise up to oppose increased US development and production.  

The political resistance comes in two flavors.  Primarily there is ideological resistance.  You might be tempted to think that global warming science seeks to reduce global temperatures, but you would be mistaken if you did.  In reality, Anthropogenic Global Warming is a justification for redistributive social justice. 

Delegates, NGOs Respond
Just as climate talks hit their lowest point, Hillary Clinton descended on Copenhagen like a deus ex machina, putting on the table a $100 billion-per year package of worldwide climate aid starting in 2020, provided that a deal can be reached with China... "I understand the talks have been difficult," said Clinton, who was heading into talks with the Chinese prime minister. "There is a way forward."

That's what everybody in Copenhagen was waiting for.  Show them the money.  Hillary's pledge of $100 billion a year brought immense relief on the left and turned the failed conference into at least a partial success. 

So, for the sake of argument let's pretend that the damaging emails that were leaked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia had never been written.  Could we still believe that Anthropogenic Global Warming might actually be real?  I'd be willing to bet, no. 

If wholesale conversion to natural gas were undertaken, and it reduced US emissions of CO2 by 80% lefty ideologues would still oppose it.  The point of Copenhagen was to make developed nations, the US in particular, pay lefty dictators restitution for the sin of wealth.  A unilateral reduction in so called greenhouse gas emissions by the US would simply defeat that purpose.  

And then for another impetus for resisting natural gas development, there is the good old profit motive.  Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit, was said to have raked in roughly $22 million in grants on its behalf from 1991 to the present.  The amount of money devoted to its study is directly related to the perceived severity of the global warming crisis.  The more severe the crisis the more money it deserves. 

As it turns out there are other individuals and organizations making millions on Anthropogenic Global Warming as well.  For them, yet another goal of the Copenhagen climate summit was achieved.  Keep the cap and trade gravy train rolling.

The amount of money involved isn’t trivial. According to Richard North at the Daily Mail, the carbon trading market last year was worth about £129 million (or about $205 million U.S.) and was heading toward trillions of dollars by 2020. So it’s probably not a coincidence that, for all the discord in Copenhagen, the one thing to which all the parties did agree was to extend the Kyoto cap and trade system. The market in carbon offsets or CER would continue.

Who benefits from this?

An interesting question. Of course, it’s well known that Al Gore is heavily involved in the carbon offset market and in other environmental ventures. There is speculation that Gore could be the world’s first green billionaire.

Another beneficiary is the UN itself. All of these international processes happen under the supervision and control of the UN and UN-chartered nongovernmental organizations.

There is huge money to be made, and global warmists are not about to let such a lucrative crisis go to waste without putting up a fight.  Even if by developing and converting to natural gas the US could eliminate global warming, expect environmentalists to fight it tooth and nail.  And that, in itself, will be revealing.  Environmentalist opposition to US natural gas development will be as convincing testimony as you'll want that Anthropogenic Global Warming is not about the weather and not about the climate.  It's about redistributive social justice.  In other words, they just want the money.

Rice Says Global Engagement Is Working

In a recent interview with the AP Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that President Barack Obama's promise to work with other countries is getting results.

Nearly a year after becoming the top U.S. diplomat to the global body, Susan Rice said in an interview this week with The Associated Press and AP Television News that challenges remain, though she sees evidence every day "that the world is responding differently and much more openly to the United States of America."

I admit, I'm forced to agree with Ms. Rice.  The world is responding much more openly.  Wasn't it just last week that President Obama was openly snubbed by China at the world climate summit in Copenhagen?  And how about those Iranian's?  Didn't we just this past year learn that Iran had been operating previously undisclosed nuclear enrichment plants?  And then there were those ballistic missile tests by both Iran and North Korea.  As I recall, neither country made a big secret of them.  Here is what came out of the AP interview with Ms. Rice on the subject of Iran.

Looking ahead to 2010, the question of what to do about Iran's nuclear program looms large.

On Tuesday, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed a year-end deadline set by the Obama administration and the West for Tehran to accept a U.N.-drafted deal to swap enriched uranium for nuclear fuel.

Rice said Iran has a choice between engagement or increased pressure which could include new sanctions.

"In the new year, absent some significant changes in the posture of Iran, I think we believe that the time will be ripe for serious consideration of additional pressures," she said.

But she said the United States will also have to deal with many other challenges next year.

The most notable other challenge that the Obama administration will face next year is ramming through a health care reform bill that a clear majority of Americans oppose.  In the meantime Iranian citizens are being shot down in the streets by the repressive regimes with whom Obama seeks engagement. 

More than 300 arrests were confirmed, amid reports of violent clashes in cities and towns across Iran.

In a departure from previous incidents, opposition demonstrators retaliated furiously against the security forces. Eyewitnesses described how many officers were attacked and stripped of their uniforms and beaten with their own batons. A video posted on YouTube showed one security agent being surrounded by an angry crowd while other footage showed a police officer with a bloody head wound after being mobbed.

Plumes of smoke billowed above Tehran after numerous police cars and motorcycles were set ablaze, and the city's main boulevards were covered in stones that had been used as missiles.

Security forces opened fire on demonstrators gathered in some of the city centre's main squares and thoroughfares after failing to disperse crowds with tear-gas and warning shots.

"When people started attacking them, the forces were ordered to kneel, take aim and shoot at people directly," said one witness, Muhammad, 25, an economics student. "We were on Kolaj bridge and people started attacking. The security forces began shooting at people. I saw one guy with his brains blown out."

On a positive note, the AFP reports that the Obama administration condemns the suppression.  Our condemnation comes from a National Security Council spokesman. 

White House condemns 'suppression' in Iran

(AFP) – 16 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The White House on Sunday strongly condemned "violent and unjust suppression" of civilians in Iran, following a fierce government crackdown on opposition protests.

The blunt statement contrasted with careful initial responses by the White House following post-election protests in Iran in June and came as the nuclear showdown between Tehran and world powers reached a critical point.

"We strongly condemn the violent and unjust suppression of civilians in Iran seeking to exercise their universal rights," National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer said in a statement.

"Hope and history are on the side of those who peacefully seek their universal rights, and so is the United States.

"Governing through fear and violence is never just, and as President Obama said in Oslo -- it is telling when governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation."

It's not surprising that the president didn't take time off from his Hawaiian vacation say it himself.  An unkind word toward the Iran's murderous theocracy could upset his strategy of engagement. 

Many nations felt that former president George W. Bush's administration did not have a strong commitment to working with other countries, and they complained that U.S. power as the world's richest nation and a veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council was disproportionate.

Yes, the strategy is working.  If engagement is intended to weaken the US and reduce American influence, it's working perfectly.

Surest Evidence Of Bad Law

Quasiblog put it so well:

One of the most brazenly corrupt pieces of legislation in American history will soon be passed by a Congress so morally compromised that bribery now includes exempting themselves and favored states from their own laws, on a scale which defies belief.

Could there be a more convincing case against this mess called health care reform that congress just passed than the bribery that went into getting it through?  The Senate bribees got their states exempted from provision of it as the price of a vote.

Skyrocketing Disapproval

Rasmussen has Obama's Presidential Approval Index at -21 today.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 25% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-three percent (46%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21 That’s the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President (see trends).

Do see the trends.  This represents a 9-point jump in his "Disapproval Index" in the last six days.

Behind The Democratic Curve

That describes President Barack Obama.  The death of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri presented him with another opportunity to stand for individual liberty and democracy or embarrass himself again, just as he did last time Iranians took to the streets.  Montazeri had been critical of the ruling mullahs, becoming a spiritual leader of the opposition.  News of his death "brought out tens to hundreds of thousands to Iran's religious capital of Qom."

Which brings us to President Obama. Throughout this turbulent year in Iran, the White House has been behind the democratic curve. When the demonstrations started, Mr. Obama abdicated his moral authority by refusing to take sides, while pushing ahead with plans to negotiate a grand diplomatic bargain with Mr. Ahmadinejad that trades recognition for suspending the nuclear program.

Mr. Obama has since moved at least to embrace "universal values," and in his Nobel address this month he mentioned the democracy protestors by name. The White House yesterday sent condolences to Montazeri's friends and family, which is what passes for democratic daring in this Administration.

Obama is not a champion of democracy, but a champion of power.  Every last thing he has done since inauguration has had the aim of increasing the reach and power of government, from bailouts that transferred ownership of auto companies to the government, to EPA's "endangerment finding" which confers administration power to regulate CO2 (what we exhale) as a pollutant, to health care reform which seeks to take control of one sixth of the US economy.

In Obama's view, it's the American people who stand in the way of progressive goals.  We are the ones who must be overcome.

A Health Care Bill Nobody Wants

Or knows what's in it.

Mr. Obama promised a new era of transparent good government, yet on Saturday morning Mr. Reid threw out the 2,100-page bill that the world's greatest deliberative body spent just 17 days debating and replaced it with a new "manager's amendment" that was stapled together in covert partisan negotiations. Democrats are barely even bothering to pretend to care what's in it, not that any Senator had the chance to digest it in the 38 hours before the first cloture vote at 1 a.m. this morning. After procedural motions that allow for no amendments, the final vote could come at 9 p.m. on December 24.

Debating a Bill That No One Has Seen

Mitch McConnell on health care reform:

“Americans were told the purpose of reform was to reduce the cost of health care.

“Instead, Democrat leaders produced a $2.5 trillion, 2,074-page monstrosity that vastly expands government, raises taxes, raises premiums, and wrecks Medicare.

“And they want to rush this bill through by Christmas — one of the most significant, far-reaching pieces of legislation in U.S. history. They want to rush it.

“And here’s the most outrageous part: at the end of this rush, they want us to vote on a bill that no one outside the Majority Leader’s conference room has even seen.

“That’s right. The final bill we’ll vote on isn’t even the one we’ve had on the floor. It’s the deal Democrat leaders have been trying to work out in private.

“That’s what they intend to bring to the floor and force a vote on before Christmas."  [my emphasis]

Via Drudge:

Wait! It Gets Worse!

From James Delingpole of the Telegraph.co.uk.

What the Russians are suggesting here, in other words, is that the entire global temperature record used by the IPCC to inform world government policy is a crock.

It's more than a suggestion.

Taking The Long View

Howard Bloom, author of "The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism" and founder of The Space Development Steering Committee, takes a different perspective on the subject of climate change.  He takes the very long view.

Climate change is not the fault of man. It's Mother Nature's way. And sucking greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is too limited a solution. We have to be prepared for fire or ice, for fry or freeze. We have to be prepared for change.

We've been deceived by a stroke of luck. In the two million years during which we climbed from stone-tool wielding Homo erectus with sloping brows to high-foreheaded Homo urbanis, man the inventor of the city, we underwent 60 glaciations, 60 ice ages. And in the 120,000 years since we emerged in our current physiological shape as Homo sapiens, we've lived through 20 sudden global warmings. In most of those, temperatures have shot up by as much as 18 degrees within a mere 20 years.

All this took place without smokestacks and tailpipes. All this took place without the desecration of nature by modern man.