Say Anything Blog

I saw this doozie at the Washington Post.

On the campaign trail, McCain is more than eager to go toe-to-toe with skeptics of global warming who attend his town hall forums. When a man in Michigan asked him last week why the United States was not drilling in the Arctic refuge and off California’s coasts, McCain replied that, as a federalist, he thinks states have the right to make those decisions.

“I can’t say we should drill in the most pristine parts of America,” he told the questioner, adding that he believes in finding new sources of oil, “But I also believe sooner or later we have got to become energy-independent, we’ve got to reduce greenhouse gases. That means nuclear, wind, solar, tide, et cetera.”

Holtz-Eakin said McCain is flexible in his federalist approach when it comes to the question of drilling because, while many Alaskans support opening the Arctic refuge to oil and gas exploration, the senator has concluded that it’s not worth exposing 250 species of wildlife there to damage.

For the most part, McCain follows a fairly instinctive approach to deciding environmental questions. In recent interviews he has said he thinks the government should list polar bears as endangered because shrinking sea ice threatens their survival, that sharks deserve protection because they’re a crucial part of the marine food web, and that the nation needs to act on climate change because it risks an environmental catastrophe if it doesn’t.

Is this the depth of his understanding of the issue.  He claims it’s a states rights issue and his advisor has to go out there and contradict his bosses statement in order to reconcile his actions (voting against development in ANWR) with his statement. 

Meanwhile the candidate thinks that Polar Bears are endangered.  Except that there are more of them than we’ve seen before. PLUS they managed to survive previous warm periods just fine. 

Does this guy care about the facts or just his rhetoric?

There are those who speculate that government spending on alternative energy subsidies is justified by the simplistic notion that this will make us less dependent on fossil fuels and “Mid East tyrants.” Apparently they believe that government control of economic decisions and resources is a better methodology than free market capitalism.

Nonsense!  These are some of the same people and the same ideology that told us that LBJ’s multi-trillion dollar “War on Poverty” would eliminate poverty in the US.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is an independent federal agency, which, according to the WSJ, tried to quantify government spending on energy production in 2007.

The agency reports that the total taxpayer bill was $16.6 billion in direct subsidies, tax breaks, loan guarantees and the like. That’s double in real dollars from eight years earlier…

An even better way to tell the story is by how much taxpayer money is dispensed per unit of energy, so the costs are standardized. For electricity generation, the EIA concludes that solar energy is subsidized to the tune of $24.34 per megawatt hour, wind $23.37 and “clean coal” $29.81. By contrast, normal coal receives 44 cents, natural gas a mere quarter, hydroelectric about 67 cents and nuclear power $1.59…

The same study also looked at federal subsidies for non-electrical energy production, such as for fuel. It found that ethanol and biofuels receive $5.72 per British thermal unit of energy produced. That compares to $2.82 for solar and $1.35 for refined coal, but only three cents per BTU for natural gas and other petroleum liquids.

All of this shows that there is a reason fossil fuels continue to dominate American energy production: They are extremely cost-effective. That’s a reality to keep in mind the next time you hear a politician talk about creating millions of “green jobs.”

Meanwhile, the average price of a gallon of unleaded regular in Europe is $7.24.

A fiscal conservatives worst nightmare.

Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and defeated contender for the GOP presidential nomination, is currently at the top of John McCain’s short list for a running mate. At least that’s the word from a top McCain fundraiser and longtime Republican moneyman who has spoken to McCain’s inner circle. The fundraiser is less than thrilled with the idea of Huckabee as the vice presidential nominee, and many economic conservatives—turned off by the populist tone of Huckabee’s campaign and his tax record as governor—are likely to share that marked lack of enthusiasm.

McCain isn’t going to get elected without fiscal conservatives, and if he names Huckabee as VP on the heels of a high-profile speech calling for new taxes in the name of global warming Obama could win the election with Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright as his VP and Bill Ayers as his Secretary of Defense.

Well, maybe not that bad.  I actually think Obama is emerging from his primary fight with Hillary so wounded he doesn’t have a chance anyway.  Which is perhaps why McCain is feeling free to engage his inner populist at a time when he needs to be wooing conservatives.

The media engaging in a bit of self-serving reporting?  Who would’ve thunk it?

I don’t think it’s a secret that The New York Times tends to be particularly one-sided when reporting on matters of concern to The New York Times. Given that, perhaps everyone expects that a Times story on conservative support for a federal reporter’s privilege is going to be as much a work of advocacy as a work of reporting. Still, isn’t it a bit odd that Saturday’s story on the reporters’ privilege doesn’t disclose that both of the credited authors, Eric Lichtblau and Philip Shenon, have been personally involved recently in high-profile DOJ leak investigations?

The problem with a shield law for journalists is that it transfers the power to keep government secrets from our elected leaders - you know, the people we actually vote for - and hands it over to the government bureaucrats (who we don’t vote for) and the journalists they leak to (who we also don’t vote for).

Now, being a person who is rather distrustful of government in the first place, I’ll freely admit that politicians are often self-serving in deciding what information is public and what isn’t.  They cover things up for themselves and their buddies and there’s nothing good about that. But that being said, I prefer that imperfect situation to one where our elected leaders are constantly being undermined by politically-motivated underlings and reporters through leaks which are often selectively cherry-picked in nature.

The political elite may often be corrupt and arrogant, but I don’t see where the media elite are any less prone to those things.

From “Jolly Old” England...where else?

A new ruling has granted pagan inmates in British prisons the right to keep twigs in their cells for use as wands, the U.K.’s Daily Mail newspaper reported Monday.

The policy, announced by Justice Reform Minister Maria Eagle, gives prisoners the right to carry and decorate the twigs for use in their rituals, the Mail reported. It’s the latest in a string of reforms to protect the religious rights of prisoners.

“Prison service policy is to enable prisoners of different faith traditions, including paganism, to practice their religion,” Eagle told the Mail.

The “wands” will join items such as prayer mats as acceptable religious artifacts.

A prisons spokesman said the ruling sounds “like an April Fool’s Day joke.”

There is a lot here for conservatives to dislike:

Some of the most compelling evidence of global warming comes to us from NASA. No longer do we need to rely on guesswork and computer modeling, because satellite images reveal a dramatic disappearance of glaciers, Antarctic ice shelves and polar ice sheets. And I’ve seen some of this evidence up close. A few years ago I traveled to the area of Svalbard, Norway, a group of islands in the Arctic Ocean. I was shown the southernmost point where a glacier had reached twenty years earlier. From there, we had to venture northward up the fjord to see where that same glacier ends today – because all the rest has melted. On a trip to Alaska, I heard about a national park visitor’s center that was built to offer a picture-perfect view of a large glacier. Problem is, the glacier is gone. A work of nature that took ages to form had melted away in a matter of decades.

To lead in this effort, however, our government must strike at the source of the problem – with reforms that only Congress can enact and the president can sign. We know that greenhouse gasses are heavily implicated as a cause of climate change. And we know that among all greenhouse gasses, the worst by far is the carbon-dioxide that results from fossil-fuel combustion. Yet for all the good work of entrepreneurs and inventors in finding cleaner and better technologies, the fundamental incentives of the market are still on the side of carbon-based energy. This has to change before we can make the decisive shift away from fossil fuels.

Actually, it’s worth noting that carbon-dioxide is not the worst greenhouse gas.  Methane emitted through livestock flatulence and defecation is actually 20 times worse than carbon dioxide.  But SUV’s are a more politically convenient target than cows, so I guess McCain will ignore that bit of inconvenient truth.

As for glaciers/ice caps melting, I don’t think anyone is trying to argue that the globe isn’t warming.  Global temperatures are, absolutely, getting higher.  What’s being disputed is mankind’s impact on that warming.  Are fossil fuels really to blame, or is the current warming trend just part of a global warming/cooling trend that has been taking place for millions of years before man even walked the earth?  How do we explain past rises and declines in global temperatures which took place at times prior to the advent of the automobile?

These questions, and literally hundreds of others, have not be answered in an decisive way by the global warming faithful and that’s what’s most troubling about McCain’s speech.  He wants to base broad, landmark public policy on science that is still very much up in the air.

McCain would saddle us with new taxes and regulations that would burden our lives with no guarantees that those taxes and regulations would succeed in their objectives.  Or any evidence which would suggest that those objectives need to be met in the first place.

McCain isn’t a stupid man.  He has to know about these questions, yet he’s pushing ahead anyway.  Which means that he’s just getting behind the issue as a way to get himself into office or he’s using it as an excuse for a government power grab.

Neither of those two options are attractive.

Barack Obama and the Democrats are determined to raise your taxes.  Putting aside the fact that doing so will NOT save Social Security and Medicare, will NOT do much of anything for the federal budget deficit, and will certainly NOT help foster the sustained, long-term economic growth this country will desperately need in the years ahead.  What’s a person to do?

Donny Baseball has the answer:  legal tax avoidance.

Barack Obama: “I will raise taxes.”

Donny Baseball: “I will shelter income.”

Totally legally of course. IRAs, HSAs, 529s. Plenty to work with there. Build up a stash now, so maxing out all these contributions during an Obama presidency won’t hurt you. Got some equity in your house? HELOCs are going cheap…

There’s more, of course.  The point is, those who are successful get that way by planning for the future and sticking to their plan, as circumstances warrant.  Democrats are going to raise taxes.  It’s who they are and what they do.  Plan now.  Be ready.

And some are claiming that the additional oil from this domestic pumping could lower oil prices by as much as $63/barrel.

I’m not sure I buy into that estimate, but I certainly think it’s going to be hard for the politicians to argue against the expansion of oil production in the face of high - and getting higher - fuel prices.  Americans aren’t dumb, and there’s only so long that the “greedy oil companies” schtick is going to work.  Eventually people will wake up and realize that the biggest expense at the pump isn’t gasoline but government.

It’s springtime.  The tomato plants are in (in fact, mine have already flowered!) and pretty soon our attention will be focused on the ritual of graduation, and with it the pompous effluence that is most commencement speeches.

Not to worry!  In true free market capitalist fashion, P. J. O’Rourke has this one admirably well under control:

1. Go out and make a bunch of money!

Here we are living in the world’s most prosperous country, surrounded by all the comforts, conveniences and security that money can provide…

There’s nothing the matter with honest moneymaking… In a free society, with the rule of law and property rights, no one loses when someone else gets rich.

2. Don’t be an idealist!

…Who does more for the redwoods and society anyway—the guy chained to a tree or the guy who founds the “Green Travel Redwood Tree-Hug Tour Company” and makes a million by turning redwoods into a tourist destination, a valuable resource that people will pay just to go look at?

So make your contribution by getting rich. Don’t be an idealist.

3. Get politically uninvolved!

All politics stink. Even democracy stinks…the problem isn’t politicians—it’s politics. Politics won’t allow for the truth… Imagine what even a little truth would sound like on today’s campaign trail:

“No, I can’t fix public education. The problem isn’t the teachers unions or a lack of funding for salaries, vouchers or more computer equipment.  The problem is your kids!”

4. Forget about fairness!

We all get confused about the contradictory messages that life and politics send.

Life sends the message, “I’d better not be poor. I’d better get rich. I’d better make more money than other people.” Meanwhile, politics sends us the message, “Some people make more money than others. Some are rich while others are poor. We’d better close that ‘income disparity gap.’ It’s not fair!”

Well, I am here to advocate for unfairness. I’ve got a 10-year-old at home. She’s always saying, “That’s not fair.” When she says this, I say, “Honey, you’re cute. That’s not fair. Your family is pretty well off. That’s not fair. You were born in America. That’s not fair. Darling, you had better pray to God that things don’t start getting fair for you.” What we need is more income, even if it means a bigger income disparity gap.

There is more, of course, so by all means, go read the whole thing.

From the North Dakota Policy Council:

Despite having a much smaller population, the Bismarck School District has more enrolled students than Fargo.  However, the Fargo School District spent over $16 million more in 2006-07.

Sounds like people in Fargo need to start asking some serious questions of their school administrators.

Playboy is posting a loss.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Adult entertainment publisher Playboy Enterprises Inc posted a quarterly loss on Tuesday because of weaker publishing and domestic television revenue and forecast more trouble during the year, pushing its shares down 8 percent.

The worse-than-expected results illustrate the trouble that Playboy and other publishers and television companies face as more people get their entertainment online, and often for free.

If porn can’t cut it in print, nothing can.

Confirming something most of us already knew.

LOS ANGELES - A memorabilia dealer who profited from O.J. Simpson for many years is the latest former crony to write a tell-all book, this one alleging a groggy Simpson, high on marijuana, confessed to killing his ex-wife after he was acquitted. . . .

He said Simpson had smoked pot, took a sleeping pill and was drinking beer when he confided at his Brentwood home weeks after his trial what happened the night of June 12, 1994. Simpson said he went to his ex-wife’s condominium, but did not bring a knife with him. Simpson told him Nicole Brown Simpson had one in her hand when she opened the door.

In a soft mumble, Simpson told him: “If she hadn’t opened that door with a knife in her hand ... she’d still be alive.”

“Nothing more needed to be said,” Gilbert writes. “O.J. had confessed to me. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

A sketchy source, to be sure, but then what intellectually honest person still doubts OJ’s guilt?

Private enterprise seeking largess from the government has become so pervasive in North Dakota that both private business owners and politicians have taken to completely ignoring the law when it’s inconvenient for them.

Heh.

Awkward political moment? 

Or proof that the Bush family isn’t the bunch of racist, hate-mongering demagogues the liberal left makes them out to be?

I’m not very surprised.

Setting aside all the alarmism about global warming, I think we can all agree that we want to live in a clean environment.  None of us wants to breathe polluted air or to fish in polluted waters.  But what the green people need to realize is that the public isn’t going to act collectively to “save the planet” out of pure altruism.  Most people make energy decisions based on money first, convenience second.  Each individual is looking at his/her bottom line, so the best way to get them to go “green” is to find alternatives that offer some sort of cost savings.

Here in America I think the compact fluorescent light bulbs were doing pretty good in that vein.  They use less energy and supposedly last longer, thus the end consumer not only uses less energy but also sees a cost savings.  On-demand water heaters are another example of this.  Not only do they use less energy because they don’t have to keep 100 gallons or so of water warm all day, they also provide convenience in the form of endless amounts of hot water.

That sort of clearly defined benefit is what is going to turn citizens on to going green, not increased taxes for government programs which manifest no immediately tangible outcomes and usually result in little more than the creation of more costly, public-harassing bureaucracy.

Hilarious:

Ed Schafer is on the front cover of the Washington Times today saying, in his roll as the US Sec. of Agriculture, that ethanol isn’t contributing to the global food problem:

I love Ed Schafer, but he’s flat-out wrong on this.

Food, like any other product, exists in a market and is susceptible to the forces of supply and demand.  By diverting food crops to energy production we’ve reduced the overall quantity of food crops available for human consumption and also reduced the amount of land available to produce food.

Now, we can argue about fuel crops coming from lands that weren’t used for food crops previously and about other things such as weather impact the global food market, but the simple truth is that diverting food crops to fuel production has a significant impact on the global food market.  Even if you could argue that the crops used for fuel were all new crops not taken away from existing food supplies so that the market impact was neutral (and I’m not convinced that such an argument can be made) the fact remains that fuel crops are taking up more land that could have been used to expand production to meet supply shortages.

For faithful supports of ethanol to deny this is for them to deny reality itself.

I think it would do the biofuel industry well to admit that, long term, trying to meet rising energy demand by converting the food we eat to fuel is a boondoggle and that future biofuel efforts should be focused on using raw materials that aren’t food.

Would someone send them a Webster’s dictionary so they can look up the definition of “irony”, please:

(CNSNews.com) - Planned Parenthood, a major abortion provider, is soliciting Mother’s Day gifts for itself.

In a May 3 e-mail blast, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s president, Cecile Richards, asked recipients to “Make a Mother’s Day Gift” by donating to the organization - a solicitation that some critics say is ironic given that many Planned Parenthood clinics perform abortions.

The e-mail reads:

“Dear Friend, Join us! Make a Mother’s Day gift. My daughter, Hannah, recently wrote this for a national magazine:

‘I was raised by strong women. My mom, Cecile Richards, fights daily for women’s reproductive rights and social justice as president of Planned Parenthood. It’s a legacy she got from her mom (my late grandma), Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas. I’ve learned that the most rewarding battles in life are those waged for something you truly believe in.’ ...

“… As Mother’s Day approaches, I am grateful for the opportunity to make a difference and hope you’ll join me. Happy Mother’s Day.”

I’m. Just. Speechless.

Zip over at Weasel Zippers sums it up succinctly:

This is the equivalent of Auschwitz wishing Jews a happy Yom Kippur

In order to prove that carrying their guns wouldn’t cause a panic the way a state politician has said it would, a group of people with lawful carry permits went from restaurant to restaurant to prove that nobody cared if they were armed.

And, as it turns out, for the most part nobody did:

The patrons at Champps in Reston, an upscale restaurant and bar chain, were eating ribs and drinking beer on a recent Saturday when customer Bruce Jackson stood up and made an announcement: He was armed, and so were dozens of other patrons.

The armed customers stood up in unison, showing off holstered pistols. Mr. Jackson said a word or two about the rights of gun owners to carry firearms in Virginia, then thanked everyone for his or her attention and sat down.

And the diners returned to their burgers and Budweisers.

The Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) organized the dinner at Champps to prove a point: that the presence of armed customers in Northern Virginia restaurants would elicit little more than shrugs.

This was an interesting exercise. They went to eight different restaurants over a period of time - Virginia requires that guns be carried openly in places that serve alcohol and food - and in only two of them were they asked to leave. For the most part, nobody cared.

Not to play the part of Captain Obvious, but every time there is a mass shooting it’s in a place where the gunman knows no one is armed, usually a place of employment, a mall, or the “gun free zones” of our schools. Psychos rarely walk into a police station and open fire.

Why?

Because there are people with guns there, that’s why. The mere presence of people with guns who have been trained to use them is a deterrent and is a direct contradiction of the left’s stance that there should be fewer people with guns.

If someone had decided to shoot up one of those restaurants (like Luby’s - remember?) with that group, or any other lawfully armed citizen in there they wouldn’t have gotten very far before their plans came an abrupt end.

I like this display. It goes a long way toward proving a very valid point.