Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Kagan: Speech is free if government decides it has more value than 'societal costs'
Subject: txt lgl bdd -
Freedom of speech, religion and other First Amendment issues are likely to be among the most visible during the coming Senate confirmation hearings on President Obama's nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan for the U.S. Supreme Court. As an illustration why, consider this quote dug up by the First Amendment Center's David L. Hudson, who found it in a government brief signed by Kagan in United States v Stevens:
“Whether a given category of speech enjoys First Amendment protection depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs.”
[Which part of the Constitution says that?]
READ MORE.
Cap-and-Trade is Back
Subject: txt grn engry action -
On Wednesday Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) plan to introduce legislation designed to inflate the cost of energy, strain family budgets, and decimate America's manufacturing sector -- all in the name of supposedly saving the climate.
Kerry and Lieberman have been revamping legislation that narrowly passed the House of Representatives last year. The House bill imposes oppressive limits on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and establishes a complex cap-and-trade scheme in which the federal government determines how much CO2 a business may emit.
Not to worry though: in the name of saving the planet, if a business exceeds its allowance it may purchase additional ''carbon credits'' from an exchange...
READ MORE
Then >
"OPPOSE ALL CAP & TAX LEGISLATION "
Whitehouse: 'opinion line': 202.456.1111
mailto:president@whitehouse.gov
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
YOUR Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Californians:or: Speed Message them with your personal distribution list...
Barbara Boxer web mail http://boxer.senate.gov/en/contact/policycomments.cfm
Dianne Feinstein webmail
http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMe
and as always,
pass it on...
.
Anti-fraud investigators swoop on EU emissions traders
Subject: txt owg grn crpt - engry - intl -
Traders involved in Europe's flagship climate change programme, the Emissions Trading System - some of whom work at Germany's biggest banks and energy firms - were the focus of a series of raids and arrests by British and German prosecutors in part of a massive pan-European crackdown on CO2-credit VAT fraud.....
A total of 25 people were arrested amid a blitz by authorities on hundreds of company offices in the two countries, including Deutsche Bank and energy firm RWE, in a case involving the theft of an estimated €180 miillion from government coffers...
['Government coffers' = taxpayer dollars.]
READ MORE
Shale Gas Will Rock the World
[HT:MH]
There's an energy revolution brewing right under our feet. Over the past decade, a wave of drilling around the world has uncovered giant supplies of natural gas in shale rock. By some estimates, there's 1,000 trillion cubic feet recoverable in North America alone—enough to supply the nation's natural-gas needs for the next 45 years. Europe may have nearly 200 trillion cubic feet of its own. [Note the disparity: 5x in N. America]
We've always known the potential of shale; we just didn't have the technology to get to it at a low enough cost.
Now we do...
READ MORE
OIL - You Better Sit Down
.
The U. S. Geological Service issued a report in April 2008 that was a
revision to a report thathadn't been updated since 1995 on how much oil was in
this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota, western South Dakota, and
extreme eastern Montana.
The 'update', ignored by the media, came in at 25 times the land based oil and gas reserves than were previously identified... [snip]
The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe
Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign
oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion
barrels... [snip]
We have more oil inside our borders than all the other proven reserves on earth. Here are the official estimates:
- - 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia
- - 18-times as much oil as Iraq
- - 21-times as much oil as Kuwait
- - 22-times as much oil as Iran
- - 500-times as much oil as Yemen
James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we've got more oil in
this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION
barrels untapped. That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in
the world today, reports The Denver Post.
READ MORE
An idea that's picking up steam I think a generally good one: Off-shore drilling of natural gas only - not oil.
As infrequent as oil platform spills are the consequences are potentially dire because of their ability to spread. Natural gas doesn't present the same problem in that an equivalent 'leak' keeps rising to dissipate in the atmosphere.
However, this policy is only an option of we fully develop our on-shore oil reserves - which we've more than enough of, and have the huge benefit of being containable should accidents occur.
As always, this too is impermissible to the invoronmoralists and it will be up to product America, which relies on energy to thrive, to 'insist' or so-called representatives in DC represent us.
.
A Game-Changing Weapon
Subject: txt nsec russia -
The Russian company Concern Morinformsystem-Agat is marketing a deadly new weapon, one that can allow a rogue state to overcome the technological superiority of Western militaries. The system can even be used to carry out devastating attacks on the U.S. homeland with little means of defense.
The system, as seen in its promotional video, allows a weak nation to strike the land and sea targets of a superior force by placing cruise missiles into any type of 40 foot container. The video uses a ship, truck and train as examples of potential launching platforms. This means that once this weapon is sold, any of these transportation vehicles have to be seen as missile pads.
It is clear that the weapon is meant for anti-American clients. 
In the promotional video, the military forces preparing to attack include high-tech warships and aircraft, a way of not-so-subtly pointing out to prospective customers that the system can allow them to stand up to Western aggressors. The words of a spokeswoman for the Russian company make it obvious that the Club-K system was made with enemies of the U.S. in mind...
READ MORE
'We're committed to missile defense'
[Today's insult...]
Washington remains determined to deploy its planned anti-missile system in Europe to counter the danger of Iran's nuclear program and its long-range ballistic missiles, US Vice President Joe Biden said. '
'The United States and European Union have stood side-by-side to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons,''
Biden told the European Parliament. [said with a straight face.]
The Obama administration last year scrapped Bush-era plans for an expensive missile defense network based in Poland and the Czech Republic.
READ MORE
'PA negotiating with US, not Israel'
Subject: txt israel -
While Israel has said it agreed to the indirect proximity talks as a corridor into direct talks later, the Palestinian Authority is waiting for final approval from the PLO’s Central Committee.The very fact that the PA had not yet announced that it was entering into indirect negotiations, “while giving various excuses,” raised doubts about the “seriousness of the other side,” Lieberman said.
[No one with the I.Q. of a cabbage has any doubt as to the 'seriousness' of the PA: they've professional victims, they've no intention of really resolving anything.]
READ MORE
'US support for nuke policy eroding'
Subject: txt israel -
Jerusalem is increasingly jittery that cracks are appearing in the nearly half-century-old US policy of upholding Israel’s right to maintain its ''nuclear ambiguity,'' following reports that Israeli nuclear capabilities are, for the first time, scheduled to be on the agenda of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) board meeting next month...
READ MORE
Poll: Obama has Lost his US Jewish Support
Subject: txt israel -
The US Jews polled were asked whether they would: (a) vote to re-elect Obama, or (b) consider voting for someone else. 42% said they would vote for Obama and 46%, a plurality, preferred the second answer. 12% said they did not know or refused to answer. In the Presidential elections of 2008, 78% of Jewish voters, or close to 8 out of 10, chose Obama in '08...
READ MORE
Islam's Nowhere Men
Subject: txt islm -
"A Muslim has no nationality except his belief," the intellectual godfather of the Islamists, Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, wrote decades ago.
Qutb's "children" are everywhere now; they carry the nationalities of foreign lands and plot against them. The Pakistani born Faisal Shahzad is a devotee of Sayyid Qutb's doctrine, and Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, was another. Qutb was executed by the secular dictatorship of Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1966. But his thoughts and legacy endure.
Globalization, the shaking up of continents, the ease of travel, and the doors for immigration flung wide open by Western liberal societies... [snip]
This is a long twilight war, the struggle against radical Islamism. We can't wish it away. No strategy of winning "hearts and minds," no great outreach, will bring this struggle to an end.
America can't conciliate these furies. These men of nowhere—Faisal Shahzad, Nidal Malik Hasan, the American-born renegade cleric Anwar Awlaki now holed up in Yemen and their likes—are a deadly breed of combatants in this new kind of war. Modernity both attracts and unsettles them. America is at once the object of their dreams and the scapegoat onto which they project their deepest malignancies....
READ MORE
Why the Ground Zero Mosque Must Be Stopped
Subject: txt islm -
Planting a mosque just two blocks from where Muslims murdered Americans on 9/11 in the name of Islam is a huge slap in the face.
Why shouldn't Muslims be 'sensitive' enough to realize that a huge mosque planted right near the horrific wound to the U.S. created at Ground Zero by Muslims is outrageous to us?
They claim a right to be insulted by cartoons mocking their prophet, even to the point of beheading people. During a recent Friday sermon, this writer did due diligence as a mosque monitor and heard Rauf deny that Muslims perpetrated 9/11...
READ MORE
NATO rewarding ''courageous restraint'' awards
Subject: txt owg gwot -
A new plan to award soldiers who practice restraint that prevents civilian casualties in firefights is under consideration by NATO commanders, according to the Associated Press: NATO commanders are weighing a new way to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan: recognizing troops for ''courageous restraint'' if they avoid using force that could endanger innocent lives.
''There should be an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the troops who exhibit extraordinary courage and self-control by not using their weapons, but instead taking personal risk to de-escalate tense and potentially disastrous situations''
READ MORE
Trillion-dollar euro rescue won't solve low growth
Subject: txt intl primnypubmny - sclm -
After weeks of dithering, the European Union finally put serious money on the table to prevent its government debt crisis from mushrooming — and sinking the euro, stocks and the global recovery. But the EU still needs to find ways to keep its member governments from spending their way to bankrupty...
[The larger story here is how Europe got into this mess - but don't expect to hear a peep of it no the MSM: the answer is liberalism, Europe's welfare states are crumbling under their own weight, while Obama is working overtime to emulate them.]
READ MORE
HIGH-TAX, HIGH-SPEND MODEL STILL DOES NOT WORK
Subject: txt pubmny -
If states had just kept their spending growth the same as population growth plus inflation between 2002 and 2007, they could have maintained all their services and still provided a $500 billion tax cut. 
Political pressure, especially from government employee unions, is a big part of the reason why states do not have anything in reserve; state legislatures, for instance, have lavishly enhanced pension benefits, but state employees should have little confidence that the states will ultimately make good on those promises.
Only 9 percent of state pension plans have enough assets to be considered safe according to government standards.
Many state legislatures, unwilling to take on the well-organized lobbies for government spending, have resorted to raising taxes on the rich. However, that will only exacerbate the boom-and-bust budget cycles, as Maryland's experience demonstrates...
READ MORE
FANNIE AND FREDDIE FAILURE FOREVER
Subject: txt mny crpt libs -
Earlier in the week Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) told reporters about his financial regulation bill,
"We've ended the 'too big to fail' debate. So no longer do I expect any argument to be made that this bill exposes the American taxpayer."
Sen. Dodd's statements are inaccurate, says the Heritage Foundation:
- Freddie Mac announced this week that it lost another $6.7 billion in the first quarter of 2010 and therefore needed another $10.6 billion in cash from U.S. taxpayers.
- Since formally nationalizing Freddie in 2008, the federal government has already spent $50.7 billion bringing the Freddie bailout total to $61.3 billion so far.
- Combined with Fannie Mae's raid on the Treasury, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the American people will spend $389 billion bailing out the two government sponsored entities by 2019.
So much for American taxpayers no longer being exposed to "too big to fail," says Heritage.
In fact, nothing in the Dodd bill does anything to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
This despite the fact that Fannie and Freddie were the key components in causing the very financial crises Dodd claims his bill will forever prevent....
[Recommended > ]
READ MORE
Sharpton’s Race Card Mocks Civil Rights
Subject: txt bdd vals libs -
The joker in the deck came to Arizona last week to play the race card.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, looking sporting in an orange Steve Nash #13 Los Sons jersey, led a small crowd of marchers to the Capitol building in Phoenix, upset that the majority of Arizonans support the state’s illegal immigration enforcement law.
Sharpton continues to deliberately misconstrue the intent of the law...
[And no one in the MSM corrects him.]
READ MORE
Los Angeles high school teacher calls for Mexican revolution in United States
Subject: txt immig bdd edu - UPDATE:
Ron Gochez is a high school social studies teacher at the Santee Education Complex in Los Angeles. In his spare time he calls for a Mexican revolution from the steps on the UCLA campus, of which he has determined to be stolen, occupied Mexican land.
La Raza is also mentioned in the video presentation.
By visiting the Santee Education Complex website, I’ve confirmed Ronald Gochez is in the School's department [?] of Public Service and Social Justice...
READ MORE
Beware the Mothers of Child Actors
Subject: txt vals child -
The controversy over the movie Kick-Ass didn't start with whether the film would be cool enough to tempt underage kids to sneak in, but with the 11-year-old actress getting beat up and saying the foulest curse words. On the site Comicbookmovie.com, Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn said it was the actress Chloe Moretz's mother who pushed for her daughter to use the C-word demeaning women: [snip]
At least Vaughn was honest that they were looking to shock-bomb audiences with the profane little-girl assassin.
Of course, Vaughn had contempt for "some people" who objected...
READ MORE
What Bias? Re: Angry Journalists Refuse to Review Anti-Obama Book
Subject: txt msm bias -
One of the worst ways that the lack of ideological diversity in America's newsrooms shows forth is in the media's treatment of sensational accusations against the current president.
Oftentimes, explosive allegations against presidents are either untrue or drastically overstated: George W. Bush deliberately lying to get the U.S. to war so he can cash in or deliberately ignoring Hurricaine Katrina due to his hatred of black people (a la Kanye West), Bill Clinton's supposed involvment in the drug trade, so on and so forth.
In recent memory, though, they have taken a much greater zeal toward stamping out allegations against Democrats, particularly President Obama, a stark contrast to the kidglove or even promotional attitude they took toward books by liberal authors alleging all sorts of anti-Bush absurdities.
World Net Daily-affiliated author Aaron Klein recently discovered this when he sent his new book, "The Manchurian President," to members of the media he hoped would review it. He got some very angry responses.
Here are some of the more colorful ones...
[Note: not reviewing the book negatively, but refusing to review it at all. Evidently our professional book reviewers subscribe to the same high ethical standards as do our TV 'reporters'.]
READ MORE
The Tea Party menace spreads to Europe
Tea Parties? Not in Europe. Never. The pitchfork-toting crowd is a peculiar byproduct of the misinformed, disturbed politics of the United States, where Lindberghs, Limbaughs, and Levins have always proliferated. Protest movements on the continent, like the May 1st protests in Kungsträdgården, under a sea of Cuban flags and photos of Marx and Mao, are a more civilized celebration of dictatorship and egalitarianism.
Or how about the protests in Greece, where Tea Parti…errr…left-wing protesters took to the streets again today to demand that, as the government and economy collapses, that no austerity measures be taken. The result? Three people dead in the firebombing of a bank in Athens. CNN has the chilling details:
Three people died after a fire bomb hit a bank in central Athens, the Greek fire brigade told CNN. The victims, two women and a man, were bank employees, they said.
Protesters were throwing bottles at police guarding the burned-out bank, shouting “torturers” and “liars” because they don’t believe people were killed inside. Riot police were moving in to push the crowd away, CNN’s Diana Magnay reported from the scene.
Thank god there is no Tea Party movement in Greece, right?
READ MORE
Subject: txt hcare fnn - Man explains purpose of controversial billboards
An East Texan is getting his point across with billboards. The signs voice simple thoughts on the Obama Administration. The billboards began in Marshall, with the latest in Longview, taking jabs at the Obama Administration, with phrases like, "Embarrassed yet?" and "Wake up."
Both are identified as paid for by E.M. Citizen. Who is E.M.? Ellis Miller of Gilmer.
"I was frustrated by how things were going with the health care bill and other aspects of the administration,"
Miller explained.
Neither Republican or Democrat, at 69 the mild mannered and soft spoken Miller is a retired doctor in Gilmer...
READ MORE
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