Archive for May, 2010
Kerry, Lieberman and other congressional climate alarmists have some ‘splaining to do
Paul Driessen
The new Kerry-Lieberman climate bill mandates a 17% reduction in US carbon dioxide emissions by 2020. It first targets power plants that provide reliable, affordable electricity for American homes, schools, hospitals, offices and factories. Six years later, it further hobbles the manufacturing sector itself.
Like the House-passed climate bill, Kerry-Lieberman also requires an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050. Once population growth and transportation, communication and electrification technologies are taken into account, this translates into requiring US emission levels last seen around 1870!
House Speaker Pelosi says “every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory,” to ensure thatAmerica achieves these emission mandates. This means replacing what is left of our free-market economy with an intrusive GreenNannyState, compelling us to switch to unreliable wind and solar power, and imposing skyrocketing energy costs on every company and citizen.
Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is implementing its own draconian energy restrictions, in case Congress does not enact punitive legislation.
It’s time to ask these politicians some fundamental questions. Read the rest of this entry »
Is San Fransisco's reaction to Arizona's new anti-illegal immigration law cause for alarm for San Fransisco's residents? Since the federal government does not want to protect the legal citizens in our country, Arizona was left with no choice with all the violence and killings along their border with Mexico.
State Senator Russell Pearce, the author of SB1070, which was signed by Governor Jan Brewer writes in FrontPageMag.com:
. . . Why did I propose SB 1070? I saw the enormous fiscal and social costs that illegal immigration was imposing on my state. I saw Americans out of work, hospitals and schools overflowed, and budgets strained. Most disturbingly, I saw my fellow citizens victimized by illegal alien criminals.
The murder of Robert Krentz—whose family had been ranching in Arizona since 1907—by illegal alien drug dealers was the final straw for many Arizonans. But there are dozens and dozens of other citizens of our state who had been murdered by illegal aliens. Currently 95 illegal aliens are in Maricopa County jail for murder. When do we stand up for Americans and the rule of law? If not now, when? We are a nation of laws, a Constitutional Republic. . .
And in regards to San Francisco's boycott attempt with Arizona:
In 2008, San Francisco began a campaign to encourage illegal aliens to take advantage of the city’s public services. Mayor Gavin Newsom stated, “We have worked with the Board of Supervisors, Department of Public Health, labor and immigrant rights groups to create a city government-wide public awareness campaign so that immigrants know the city won’t target them for using city services.”
The results were tragic. A few months after the campaign, Edwin Ramos, an illegal alien and member of the MS 13 gang, murdered San Francisco resident Tony Bologna and his two sons who he mistook for rival gang members. Ramos had a lengthy criminal record including a felony assault on a pregnant woman. He was arrested on gang and weapons charges and promptly released just three months before the murder. Not once did San Francisco report him to immigration authorities.
One month after the murder of Bologna, illegal alien Alexander Izaguirre stole Amanda Keifer’s purse and then intentionally ran her over with an SUV, laughing as she hit the pavement and fractured her skull. Four months earlier, Alexander Izaguirre had been arrested for felony dealing of crack cocaine. Not only did San Francisco refuse to turn him over to immigration authorities, they expunged his record and helped get him a job, which is criminal in and of itself.
Read the full article at FrontPageMag.com
The Department of Labor has released the latest unemployment figures, and it looks like the highest peaks have been during Democratic administrations of high spending and taxing. This almost breaks the unemployment record of the Great Depression under the FDR Democratic administration!
World Net Daily reports:
Unemployment was declared to be 9.9 percent in April, but the real unemployment rate – measured to include those who want work but have given up looking and those part-time employees who prefer full-time work – hit 17.1 percent, rivaling October's 17.4 percent, the highest since the Department of Labor began keeping these statistics in 1994.
Nearly half the unemployed, 46 percent, have now been out of work for 27 weeks or longer. . .
. . . A 21 percent unemployment rate nearly reaches peak jobless rates of the Great Depression, when unemployment reached 25 percent in 1933. . .
Learning (the right lessons, hopefully) from the Gulf of Mexico disaster
by Paul Driessen
Transocean’s semi-submersible drilling vessel Deepwater Horizon was finishing work on a wellbore that had found oil 18,000 feet beneath the seafloor, in mile-deep water fifty miles off the Louisiana coast. Supervisors in the control cabin overlooking the drilling operations area were directing routine procedures to cement, plug and seal the borehole, replace heavy drilling fluids with seawater and extract the drill stem and bit through the riser (outer containment pipe) that connected the vessel to the blowout preventer (BOP) on the seafloor.
Suddenly, a thump and hiss were followed by a towering eruption of seawater, drilling mud, cement, oil and natural gas. The BOP and backup systems had failed to work as designed, to control the massive amounts of unexpectedly high-pressure gas that were roaring up 23,000 feet of wellbore and riser.
Gas enveloped the area and ignited, engulfing the Horizon in a 500-foot high inferno that instantly killed eleven workers. Surviving crewmen abandoned ship in covered lifeboats or jumped 80 feet to the water.
The supply boat Tidewater Damon Bankston rushed to the scene and helped crewmen get their burned and injured colleagues aboard. Shore-based Coast Guard helicopters tore through the night sky to brave the flames and take critically injured men to hospitals.
Thirty-six hours later, the Deepwater Horizon capsized and sank, buckling the 21-inch diameter riser and breaking it off at the rig deck. Three leaks began spewing some 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) of crude oil per day into the ocean. As the oil gathered on the surface and drifted toward shore, it threatened a major ecological disaster for estuaries, marine life and all who depend on them for their livelihoods.
Thankfully, after getting rough for a couple days, the seas calmed. Industry, Coast Guard, NOAA and Minerals Management Service (MMS) crews and volunteer from Louisiana to Alaska had some time to recalculate the spill’s trajectory, deploy oil skimmer boats and miles of containment booms, and burn some of the oil off the sea surface. They lowered ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) to cap the end of the riser and spray chemicals that break down and disperse the oil.
Aircraft sprayed more dispersants over floating oil, and technicians hurried to deploy cofferdams specially designed to sit atop the broken riser and BOP stack, fix the ice crystal (hydrates) problem, collect the leaking oil and pipe it up to tanker barges. Drill ships are on the scene, to drill relief wells, intersect the original hole, cement it shut and permanently stop the leak. ExxonMobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips and many other companies have offered BP, Transocean and Halliburton assistance on all these fronts.
How bad will the disaster be? Much depends on how long the calm weather lasts, how quickly the cofferdams can be installed, and how successful the entire effort is. There is some cause for optimism – and much need for prayer, crossed fingers and hard work.
But it will take weeks to years of uncontrolled leakage, before this spill comes close to previous highs, such as the: