Links For Sunday

Germany goes solar coal for cheap energy.

U.S. exports coal to China for their cheap energy - while at the same time Obama and the EPA conduct their own war on coal and our energy infrastructure. We do not have an energy policy in this country, and it is very shortly going to bite us in the ass - hard. As usual, those who suffer most will be those on the low end of the economic scale, the people the left supposedly represent.

At Nature, they are discussing what to expect in 2011. Among the hot topics:

. . . The North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) project reached bedrock in July 2010, at a depth of more than 2,500 metres. The fruits of that effort should soon be seen, now that researchers are analysing gas and particles trapped inside the ice core to reveal details of the climate of the Eemian interglacial period (130,000–115,000 years ago), when the average global temperature was about 5°C warmer than today.

That is a whopping 9 deg. Far. hotter then today. Nine degrees when there was no appreciable human contribution to carbon dioxide. And NASA's resident nut, Jim Hansen, is trying to convince us that 2010 is the "hottest year on record." Talk about requiring a willful suspension of disbelief.

Sage advice to the new Congress from Prof. Glen Reynolds:

. . . [R]emember that fortune favors the bold. It's true that ordinarily in politics, most progress occurs at the margins. But it's also true that these are not ordinary times. Big money-saving and government-shrinking proposals in the House, even if they're shot down by the Democrat-controlled Senate, will nonetheless establish a tone.

They're trying to hide it, but the Inside-the-Beltway permanent-government political class is currently scared. Keep them that way, while showing the public at large that you're serious. . . .

The NYT notes that the public is waking up to the toxic scam of public sector unions. Let us hope that the debacle in NYC, where lives were lost while the public union slow rolled clearing snow, becomes the icon for ending the pox of public sector unions on America. It is a fifty year old exercise in corrupt Dem. politics that needs to end before it buries us. As John at Powerline notes:

Enough is enough. Legalization of public employee unions has been a disaster. It is time to end the experiment and make them illegal once again, at both the federal and state levels. I expect that this will become one of the great political issues of the next decade.

And while we are waiting for that sea change, the next big step is to pass the legislation proposed by California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes (he's a lonely guy) that will require states to account for the degree to which their public sector pension funds are undercapitalized while also establishing a ban on federal bailouts of public pension programs.

The AP finally comes around to the position that the entitlement state is a disaster.

At the American, a fascinating article on how the government caused the Great Recession. In particular, they point to "a potent mix of six major government policies that together rewarded short-sighted collective risk-taking and penalized long-term business leadership." As an aside, it is worth noting that Obama's "bipartisan" Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is finally set to release its fictional report in January, 2011. The Commission refused to consider the role of Fannie and Freddie in the crisis. Indeed, so useless is the report that Obama felt no need to wait on it before passing new financial regulations ostensibly intended to fix the causes of or financial meltdown.

Commenting on the MSNBC interview with GOPROUD chairman, Chris Barron, shown below, John at Powerline remarks: "[L]iberalism is all about screwing certain people so that others can enjoy a windfall, and trying to cobble together an electoral majority out of that corruption. Conservatism, on the other hand, is all about building a better society for everyone." Amen. And that indeed is a point that needs to be hammered home to each of the victim constituencies that the far left relies on for their power base. We want them to emerge from victimhood, the left, to survive, needs to keep them there.



And on this day in history, in 1492, the Reconquista of Spain was complete when the last Muslim ruler of Granada, Muhammad XII, surrendered his kingdom to Isabella I of Castile.

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Obama's Ridiculous Economic Meme

The biggest lie told over the past century is that the Democratic left are better stewards of the economy than Conservatives. It worked to in 2008. And Obama is trying to sell to America that the right "can't be trusted" to control our economy as "Bush got us into this mess." As proof thereof, he cites to deregulation and "Wall St. greed."

We are now stuck with a President who believes that the profit motive is immoral, that businesses should be soaked of their wealth for redistribution, and that the economy can be successfully micromanaged from Washington. And we are stuck with a far left Congress that is the most profligate of all time.

The truth is that our economy fell apart because of social engineering by Democrats. Over a roughly 15 year period, they ruined our credit rating scheme as part and parcel of a massive push for "affordable housing." Instead of pursuing this laudable goal by market-based programs, they did so by means of punitive, race based social engineering. At every turn, they used the race card to protect the scheme. And in the end, they created a bubble with Fannie and Freddie that got so big that when it burst, it took our economy into the tank.

So either Obama is lying about all of this, or the right is. How can you possibly know which is which? It's easy.

If the Democrats were actually right, then their solutions to our ailing economy would have worked. Instead, the opposite has occurred. They have used our economic crisis to engage in even more social engineering between healthcare, labor regulations, massive favortism to unions, and new financial regulations. And our economy is on life support. It in serious trouble. Real unemployment is well into double digits and shows no sign of easing. Yesterday's housing report on sales of new and existing homes was the worst in well over a decade. Every day, we are accruing debt at record levels. CNBC reported today that, according to at least one respected economist, we are now in a depression. Indeed, the word incompetent doesn't begin to describe this President and Congress.

This today from John Strossel discusses the current economic situation:

Why isn't the economy recovering? After previous recessions, unemployment didn't get stuck at close to 10 percent. If left alone, the economy can and does heal itself, as the mistakes of the previous inflationary boom are corrected.

The problem today is that the economy is not being left alone. Instead, it is haunted by uncertainty on a hundred fronts. When rules are unintelligible and unpredictable, when new workers are potential threats because of Labor Department regulations, businesses have little confidence to hire. President Obama's vaunted legislative record not only left entrepreneurs with the burden of bigger government, it also makes it impossible for them to accurately estimate the new burden.

In at least three big areas -- health insurance, financial regulation and taxes -- no one can know what will happen.

New intrusive rules for health insurance are yet to be written, and those rules will affect hiring, since most health insurance is provided by employers.

Thanks to the new 2,300 page Dodd-Frank finance regulatory act, The Wall Street Journal reports, there will be "no fewer than 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies." These as-yet unknown rules will govern lending to business and other key financial activity.

The George W. Bush tax cuts might be allowed to expire. But maybe not. Social Security and Medicare are dangerously shaky. Will Congress raise the payroll tax? A "distinguished" deficit commission is meeting. What will it do? Recommend a value-added tax?

Who knows? But few employers will commit to a big investment with those clouds hanging over our heads.

"As much as I might want to hire new salespeople, engineers and marketing staff in an effort to grow, I would be increasing my company's vulnerability to government," Michael Fleischer, president of Bogen Communications Inc., wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

Nothing more effectively freezes business in place than what economist and historian Robert Higgs calls "regime uncertainty."

"(A)ll of these unsettling possibilities and others of substantial significance must give pause to anyone considering a long-term investment, because any one of them has the potential to turn what seems to be a profitable investment into a big loser. In short, investors now face regime uncertainty to an extent that few have experienced in this country -- to find anything comparable, one must go back to the 1930s and 1940s, when the menacing clouds of the New Deal and World War II darkened the economic horizon."

Uncertainty created by Obama's legislative "successes" are comparable to the Depression and World War II? This does not bode well for job growth.

Higgs says: "Unless the government acts soon to resolve the looming uncertainties about the half-dozen greatest threats of policy harm to business, investors will remain for the most part on the sideline ... consuming wealth that might otherwise have been invested."

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Lyin' and Legislatin'

Trusting a politician tell you what is and is not in bill - or what the bill will do - is the equivalent of trusting a used car salesman when he hands you a pen and tells you there's no reason to read the contract. Understand that a court asked to interpret legislation looks to the plain language in the bill and, if the language is clear, than nothing else matters. The bottom line, what a politician tells you about legislation in a speech on t.v. is utterly meaningless. You have to read the bill to determine whether it does or does not do what the politician claims.

With that in mind, here is a bit of late blogging on two lyin' legislators - Congressman Jim Obertar and our President, Obama. Both are spinning utter fantasy for the public and lying through their teeth in the process.

Congressman Obertar is first up. He wants to modify the Clean Water Act by changing the jurisdiction of the federal government from all "navigable waters" in the U.S. to all "waters." Oberatar claims that this will not act to fundamentally alter the reach of the government. Anyone who believes that is an utter fool. It would be harder to imagine a more extensive power grab. It would erase federalism and give the federal government stand alone power to regulate the vast majority of the land mass of the U.S. This from the panel at Fox News:



(H/T Hot Air)

Then there is Obama, telling the nation that anyone who claims that his proposed financial regulations contain virtually unlimited bailout authority is lying. Actually, the plain language of the bill clearly contains provision that do precisely that. It allows Treasury to act unilaterally to nationalize any business it sees fit and take over their debts, bypassing Congress and the bankruptcy courts. This marks a major change to our regulatory structure, it give the federal government permanent bailout authority, and when Obama demagouges the issue, he is lying through his teeth.



(H/T Hot Air)

When you look at things like this, it is hard to believe that the polls show that the number of people who trust our politicians today stands at 22%. I don't know who makes up that 22%, but they are kool-aide drinkers indeed.

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