Rush has been known to say things about the best times in Washington, DC, is when they are on vacation or they are gridlocked in some debate. It just means they are not voting some law in to mess us over.
This week...welcome to more gridlock. Senator Mitch McConnell has ponied up on his promise to hold up the Senate until an energy bill dealing with offshore drilling comes passed them. Way to go Mitch!
-Colonel Steve
Today was the funeral for Claudia Faye Wadlington and Riley Jane Lawrence, the victims of Saturday's hit-and-run accident. Our prayers are with the families of the two girls.
Yesterday's Courier-Journal carried an interview with the hit-and-run driver's mom. She is quoted as saying that he was "a good guy" who "was just at the wrong place at the wrong time."
No disrespect intended, but this guy's rap sheet does not jive with the quote. Any place this guy is at is the wrong place. One who is a good guy doesn't run over three people, killing two of them, then run from the scene.
He obviously has not learnt from his previous jail time.
-Colonel Steve
The Wall Street Journal editorializes recently on the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) union's coerced fund raising for it's Political Action Committee (PAC). I agree with them....the Federal Election Commission should be all over these guys.
-Colonel Steve
John McCain's campaign is slamming Barack Obama's decision not to visit the troops in Landstuhl, Germany when he couldn't take his campaign staff.
James Joyner at Outside the Beltway takes issue with this being a weak attack on Obama. I disagree. I think McCain should keep these issues in the forefront while they are happening. I think there are those watching TV who are hearing these issues for the first time as they are likely not blog readers.
Also, I heard a good point on a talk show this week. Obama's campaign claimed that his Berlin visit was not political. Yet, his campaign is using it to raise campaign cash. Visiting injured troops should be even more non-political than the Berlin visit. So why not visit without cameras?
I'd say he lost his chance to make ANY inroads with troop votes with his dissing of the visit. I'd say John McCain was right to remind everyone just what happened. I think there are more of the undecided voter camp that just might swing McCain's way, if they happen to hear of the switch of Obama's.
-Colonel Steve
You would normally think a magazine entitled BusinessWeek would be pro-business, for free markets, and against big government. A write-up in their August 4th edition suggests otherwise.
In the cover story entitled "The Real Question: Should Oil Be Cheap?", the author John Carey makes the argument that oil prices should have a floor to them.
But Amite Foundry's resurgence is just one of countless examples of a deeper truth: Expensive energy, in many ways, is good. Why? When the price of oil goes up, people will use less, find substitutes, and develop new supplies. Those effects are just basic economics. Things are so painful now, many economists say, because of the past two decades of cheap oil. Prices stayed low in part because they didn't reflect the full cost of extras such as pollution, so there was little incentive to use energy more wisely. If those extras had been counted, the country would be better prepared for both today's soaring prices and the day that global oil production begins to decline.
That's why there is growing interest, from both the left and right, in a policy that uses taxes to put a floor under the price of oil. Above a certain level—say $90—there would be no tax. But if the world market price dropped below that, taxes would kick in to make U.S. users pay the target amount.
Expensive energy is a powerful medicine. It may hurt when taken, but it brings long-term cures for a host of ills. It compels companies and people to put fewer miles on the car, ditch the SUV, or install more efficient heating, as Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor did: The hospital saves $1 million annually with a system it installed two years ago. Higher costs are beginning to nudge America away from its traditional traffic-congested suburban sprawl to denser, less car-dependent communities. Utah has a government-sponsored bike-to-work program. "When the Republican governor of the reddest state in the union is promoting bicycling as a preferred mode of transportation, you know people are paying attention to the price signals," says Keith Bartholomew, professor of urban planning at the University of Utah.
Sounds like just another argument to use the IRS tax code to prod U.S. citizens to do what the government mandates. This time, it's mandating better gas mileage. It's better when the free market itself moves people to do things. That's what is really occurring now. It's been said that necessity is the mother of invention. When people actually need to, they find ways around problems. Right now, that problem is high fuel prices. If the problem was high taxes, they'd find another solution. I don't think we'd like the consequences created by higher taxes if it was the cause of high fuel prices rather than some part the free market being the cause.
-Colonel Steve
Last night's Jefferson County GOP picnic resembled a sort of minature Fancy Farm picnic. Food, speeches, and campaign stickers galore.
Two of my favorites:
There were the standard representatives there for Mitch McConnell and Anne Northup. Anne herself was one of the speakers, giving us all an insight into the directions she is wanting to head. The second sticker above covers that topic real well. She reminded us all of the oil-blocking representative we currently have representing us in John Yarmuth.
This picnic was a good move on the part of the local GOP. Setting up local grassroots activists is always a good idea. Sure, the $1,000-plus campaign fundraisers like McCain's recent visit are also good moves. But getting the "common folk" involved may not gain the same dollars. Just more important stuff.....votes. A good way to shop for votes in a local setting. Not where people can't vote for you, like say, oh, Berlin?
-Colonel Steve
Might have to do some shopping of my own today. Amazon is having what they label a "Sci-Fi Blowout Sale
See you in virtual aisle 7.
-Colonel Steve
No, not The Messiah, but a messiah. Gerard Baker, of the UK's The Times, nails it with his parody of Barack Obama.
-Colonel Steve
According to "McCain rejects 'audacity of hopelessness for Iraq" by Tom Raum, AP writer, McCain pointed out the fallacies of Obama's plan for troop withdrawal while speaking to Hispanic military veterans.
Mr. Raum also said the "side-by-side images of Obama and McCain this week were not pretty." One would think that this race was for President of the World, since Obama was in Iraq, other Mideast locations, and Berlin. McCain was in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Maine. Sounds like McCain was where he should have been - meeting with Americans. Novel idea, isn't it?
With Obama's big speech in Berlin this week, perhaps he might consider staying there since he obviously feels the need to apologize for his... or perhaps I should say "this" country while there, and values being a citizen of the world. Whatever that is?!
- Lady Colonel
I've noticed lately that our liberal press likes to label great energy finds with low-ball numbers. Take this story about the oil and natural gas found in the arctic. It's entitled "Arctic's oil could meet world demand for 3 years."
Another case of confusing you with the facts. Sure, if the arctic area in question was the sole source of oil, it would supply the world for only 3 years. But how much of it would really be leaving North America? One would have to read further into the story to see this:
But the Arctic's oil is not intended to replace all the supplies in the rest of world. It would last much longer by boosting available supplies and possibly reducing U.S. reliance on imported crude in the future, if America developed the resources.
The Arctic accounts for about 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil, 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas and 20 percent of the undiscovered natural gas liquids, the agency said in the first publicly available petroleum resource estimate of the entire area north of the Arctic Circle.
More than half of the undiscovered oil resources are estimated to occur in just three geologic provinces: Arctic Alaska (30 billion barrels), the Amerasia Basin (9.7 billion barrels) and the East Greenland Rift Basins (8.9 billion barrels).
More than 70 percent of the undiscovered natural gas is likely to be in three provinces: the West Siberian Basin (651 Tcf), the East Barents Basins (318 Tcf) and Arctic Alaska (221 Tcf), the USGS said.
Some of these areas are North American natural resources. By using these vast resources ourselves, we can actually replace the oil and natural gas being shipped in from overseas. We'd be getting back to depending on ourselves.
Nothing like self-reliance for getting ourselves back on our own economic feet.
-Colonel Steve
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