REMEMBER JANUARY 3, 2007: The Day Everything Went To Hell

From email...

The day the Democrats took over was not January 22nd 2009, it was actually January 3rd 2007, the day the Democrats took over the House of Representatives and the Senate, at the very start of the 110th Congress.
The Democratic Party controlled a majority in both chambers for the first time since the end of the 103rd Congress in 1995.

For those who are listening to the liberals propagating the fallacy that everything is "Bush's Fault", think about this:
January 3rd, 2007 , the day the Democrats took over the Senate and the Congress:
The DOW Jones closed at 12,621.77
The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5%
The Unemployment rate was 4.6%
George Bush's Economic policies SET A RECORD of 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS of JOB CREATION!
Remember that day...
January 3rd, 2007 was the day that Barney Frank took over the House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd took over the Senate Banking Committee.
The economic meltdown that happened 15 months later was in what part of the economy?

BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES!
THANK YOU DEMOCRATS (especially Barney ) for taking us from 13,000 DOW, 3.5 GDP and 4.6% Unemployment...to this CRISIS by (among MANY other things) dumping 5-6 TRILLION Dollars of toxic loans on the economy from YOUR Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac FIASCOES!

(BTW: Bush asked Congress 17 times to stop Fannie & Freddie - starting in 2001 because it was financially risky for the US economy). Barney blocked it and called it a "Chicken Little Philosophy" (and the sky did fall!)

And who took the THIRD highest pay-off from Fannie Mae AND Freddie Mac? OBAMA

And who fought against reform of Fannie and Freddie?
OBAMA and the Democrat Congress, especially BARNEY !!!!
So when someone tries to blame Bush...
REMEMBER JANUARY 3rd, 2007....THE DAY THE DEMOCRATS TOOK OVER!"

Bush may have been in the car but the Democrats were in charge of the gas pedal and steering wheel they were driving the economy into the ditch.

Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party.
Furthermore, the Democrats controlled the budget process for 2008 & 2009 as well as 2010 & 2011.

In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.

For 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the 2009 budget .

And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete 2009.      Let's remember what the deficits looked like during that period:

If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets.

If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself .

In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is "I inherited a deficit that I voted for,
And then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th."

Silent Night/O Holy Night - Celtic Woman - via John Scotus

Via John Scotus

Issa Explains Basic Flaws of #SOPA Legislation

List of Obama's Accomplishments - via John Scotus

Taxpayer Funding Used for Cocaine, Dead People and Billy Dee Williams - John Hull, Yahoo! News

Want to know where we can cut expenses? Here are 100 places to start...

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., released his 2011 Waste Book Tuesday, detailing preposterous uses for your hard-earned money.

While Democrats, including the campaigner-in-chief, want to raise taxes on employers, the federal government is spending billions on drug-themed hippie pizzerias, promoting animal cruelty and booze for parties.

The report shows that the federal government has spent $35.38 million to "help pay for the stages, confetti, balloons, food, and booze for their political conventions." Both parties receive $17.7 million for these lavish soirees. What benefit, exactly, are the taxpayers receiving from this? Read more at news.yahoo.com

American Crossroads: "Great"

H/T The Tree Of Mamre - John Scotus Some of the accomplishments of America's fourth greatest President compared to those who didn't make the cut... This is nauseating… 

“You definitely have some impressive accomplishments.” 

“Why thank you, Steve.” 

"Everywhere is Barack Obama country once Barack Obama's been there." BO (And I'm not just referring to his initials...) 

"You're gonna be successful if you can get your ego out of it." BO 

Somebody hand me a bag. Never mind… Too late.

Tax payers footing the bill for the Chevy Volt

And we're paying $7000.00 per car for rebates - And mostly "rich" people, municipalities, the Federal Government and GE are buying them. We paid billions to develop the thing and now we're paying people to buy them.

Shocking...

Well, maybe not..

From www.youtube.com

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The Past and the Present - Thomas Sowell

A few points from a very good article.

 From townhall.com

If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office.

This is not just another election and Barack Obama is not just another president whose policies we may not like. With all of President Obama's broken promises, glib demagoguery and cynical political moves, one promise he has kept all too well. That was his boast on the eve of the 2008 election: "We are going to change the United States of America."

Internationally, it is worse. A president who has pulled the rug out from under our allies, whether in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, tried to cozy up to our enemies, and has bowed low from the waist to foreign leaders certainly has not represented either the values or the interests of America. If he continues to do nothing that is likely to stop terrorist-sponsoring Iran from getting nuclear weapons, the consequences can be beyond our worst imagining.

Against this background, how much does Newt Gingrich's personal life matter, whether we accept his claim that he has now matured or his critics' claim that he has not?

Those who want to concentrate on the baggage in Newt Gingrich's past, rather than on the nation's future, should remember what Winston Churchill said: "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." If that means a second term for Barack Obama, then it means lost big time.

Read more at townhall.com

Flashback 2009: David Ogden Announces New Efforts For ‘Project Gunrunner’, ‘Directed By the President’ via Breitbart TV

The Obama administration told the world about Gunrunner in 2009, but they just heard about it recently? Seriously? Maybe somebody should get them some Ginkgo Biloba for Christmas..

Ex-President Carter sends condolences to Kim Jong-un

Success at what?

From www.washingtontimes.com

Former President Jimmy Carter has sent North Korea a message of condolence over the death of Kim Jong-il and wished "every success" to the man expected to take over as dictator, according to the communist country's state-run news agency.

North Korea is routinely labeled as one of the world's most oppressive governments under an eccentric personality cult surrounding the Kim family. Harrowing reports from defectors describe North Korea as a dirt-poor nation filled with concentration camps and Communist propaganda. Kim Jong-il ran the reclusive country according to a "military first" policy since the mid-1990s, after a famine that may have killed as many as 2 million people.

The former U.S. president also downplayed a 2010 North Korean attack on a South Korean island and disclosure of a uranium enrichment facility, saying the acts were merely "designed to remind the world that they deserve respect in negotiations that will shape their future." Read more at www.washingtontimes.com

I'm the fourth best president in American history ~ Barack Obama

Buwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha... Ha... Even 60 Minutes couldn't play this...

From www.youtube.com

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Obama Makes Ex-Planned Parenthood Board Member Appeals Judge

No conflict of interest there, no sir...

From www.lifenews.com

Last week, the Senate confirmed the nomination of Alaska Supreme Court Justice Morgan Christen to become a member of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals,one of the most left-wing federal appeals courts in the nation.

The confirmation has President Barack Obama adding yet another pro-abortion judge to the nation’s judicial system. Although Christen had to wait months to be confirmed, she will now serve on a court that will decide pro-life legislation coming from Pacific Coast states — usually declaring it unconstitutional.

When she submitted her application to become a state Supreme Court justice, Christen made no mention of the fact that she is a former board member of Planned Parenthood and served the pro-abortion group in the mid 1990s. Knowing that information, Jim Minnery, the director of the Alaska Family Council, a pro-life group, opposed her nomination because she would become “another activist on the Court.

Read more at www.lifenews.com

DEBT LIMIT - A GUIDE TO AMERICAN FEDERAL DEBT MADE EASY

How much easier can it get?

From www.youtube.com

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Governor Christie: Meet the Moment

Kim Jong-il: Proof that hard work CAN kill you...

My dad always told me that hard work never killed anybody. Well, now, after having worked hard for over 43 years of my life, I find out that's not true..

Now I'm scared...

"North Korean state TV reports that their Dear Leader, the murdering psychopath Kim Jong Il, died while on a train trip last Saturday, of “physical overwork”. Presumably, he was carrying the train on his back when this occurred.” - John Scotus, The Tree Of Mamre

From rightonpolitics.wordpress.com

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that “The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the leader [Kim Jong Il] ‘passed away from a great mental and physical strain’ at 8.30am [12:30 AM UTC] on Saturday”. Read more at rightonpolitics.wordpress.com

Biden: "The Taliban is not our enemy"

Uhhh.. What? Not that we're not in immediate danger from enemies here at home, but WHAT???

If the President and his administration are not enemies of the Taliban, that makes them on the same side.

If this President has never made the statement that the Taliban is not our enemy, why not? And if he believes that, why?

If, in fact, the Taliban is fighting to collapse the existing government and we are fighting to prevent that, how are they not our enemy?

I guess that the only way we can declare an enemy our enemy is for them to defeat us first.

From weaselzippers.us

Biden was interviewed by the Daily Beast and dropped this turd, which I’m sure will come as quite a surprise to our troops fighting and dying against the Taliban on a daily basis:

Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us. Read more at weaselzippers.us

Jeb Bush: Capitalism and the Right to Rise

The freedom to succeed is ALWAYS accompanied by the freedom to fail. I've started, failed and succeeded at several small businesses. When I succeeded it was great. When I failed, it was a learning experience. Personally, I don't believe you can succeed without failure. You learn from failure - your own and that of others, if you are smart.

If you don't learn how to fail, you can't learn how to truly succeed.

From www.theminorityreportblog.com

In freedom lies the risk of failure. But in statism lies the certainty of stagnation. By Jeb Bush

Congressman Paul Ryan recently coined a smart phrase to describe the core concept of economic freedom: “The right to rise.”

Think about it. We talk about the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to assembly. The right to rise doesn’t seem like something we should have to protect.

But we do. We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And we need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck.

The right to rise does not require a libertarian utopia to exist. Rather, it requires fewer, simpler and more outcome-oriented rules. Rules for which an honest cost-benefit analysis is done before their imposition. Rules that sunset so they can be eliminated or adjusted as conditions change. Rules that have disputes resolved faster and less expensively through arbitration than litigation.

In Washington, D.C., rules are going in the opposite direction. They are exploding in reach and complexity. They are created under a cloud of uncertainty, and years after their passage nobody really knows how they will work.

Read more at www.theminorityreportblog.com

Vote worker tied to fake petitions

I wonder how many times guys like this actually vote...

From www.southbendtribune.com

Mishawaka man denies any inolvement.

SOUTH BEND -- A Mishawaka man has been linked to some of the pages filled with fake signatures submitted as part of Barack Obama's petition to be on the 2008 Indiana primary ballot. A forensic document analyst hired by The Tribune and Howey Politics Indiana identified Dustin Blythe, 37, by matching the handwriting on his voter registration card and two political petitions with that on nine suspicious pages from the Obama petition.

Example: See similarities between suspect signatures on the petition and a vote worker's handwriting.

Blythe isn't the only person whose handwriting reoccurs on the suspicious petition pages. Speckin said it appears Blythe and three other people filled more than 20 pages of the Obama petition

Read more at www.southbendtribune.com

Headlines From BigPeace

Ding dong...

From bigpeace.com

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com.

News alert: North Korea’s president Kim Jong-il is dead Egyptians shocked by video of army beating veiled woman protester Hamas moves away from violence in deal with Palestinian Authority Rumors abound that Turkey’s Erdogan is seriously ill from cancer Iraq’s government destabilizes after Americans’ departure American withdrawal from Iraq widens rift between Turkey and Iran Iraq headed for further political chaos China announces restrictions on Cantonese broadcasts Video of Egyptian woman beaten in Tahrir Square Read more at bigpeace.com

35 Inconvenient Truths - Lord Monckton, Science And Public Policy

A bit old, but a good reminder...

From scienceandpublicpolicy.org

The errors in Al Gore’s movie

A spokesman for Al Gore has issued a questionable response to the news that in October 2007 the High Court in London had identified nine “errors” in his movie An Inconvenient Truth. The judge had stated that, if the UK Government had not agreed to send to every secondary school in England a corrected guidance note making clear the mainstream scientific position on these nine “errors”, he would have made a finding that the Government’s distribution of the film and the first draft of the guidance note earlier in 2007 to all English secondary schools had been an unlawful contravention of an Act of Parliament prohibiting the political indoctrination of children.

Al Gore’s spokesman and “environment advisor,” Ms. Kalee Kreider, begins by saying that the film presented “thousands and thousands of facts.” It did not: just 2,000 “facts” in 93 minutes would have been one fact every three seconds. The film contained only a few dozen points, most of which will be seen to have been substantially inaccurate. The judge concentrated only on nine points which even the UK Government, to which Gore is a climate-change advisor, had to admit did not represent mainstream scientific opinion.

Ms. Kreider then states, incorrectly, that the judge himself had never used the term “errors.” In fact, the judge used the term “errors,” in inverted commas, throughout his judgment. Next, Ms. Kreider makes some unjustifiable ad hominem attacks on Mr. Stewart Dimmock, the lorry driver, school governor and father of two school-age children who was the plaintiff in the case. This memorandum, however, will eschew any ad hominem response, and will concentrate exclusively on the 35 scientific inaccuracies and exaggerations in Gore’s movie. Ms. Kreider then says, “The process of creating a 90-minute documentary from the original peer-reviewed science for an audience of moviegoers in the U.S. and around the world is complex.” However, the single web-page entitled “The Science” on the movie’s official website contains only two references to articles in the peer-reviewed scientific journals. There is also a reference to a document of the IPCC, but its documents are not independently peer-reviewed in the usual understanding of the term. Ms. Kreider then says, “The judge stated clearly that he was not attempting to perform an analysis of the scientific questions in his ruling.” He did not need to. Each of the nine “errors” which he identified had been admitted by the UK Government to be inconsistent with the mainstream of scientific opinion. Ms. Kreider says the IPCC’s results are sometimes “conservative,” and continues: “Vice President Gore tried to convey in good faith those threats that he views as the most serious.” Readers of the long list of errors described in this memorandum will decide for themselves whether Mr. Gore was acting in good faith. However, in this connection it is significant that each of the 35 errors listed below misstates the conclusions of the scientific literature or states that there is a threat where there is none or exaggerates the threat where there may be one. All of the errors point in one direction – towards undue alarmism. Not one of the errors falls in the direction of underestimating the degree of concern in the scientific community. The likelihood that all 35 of the errors listed below could have fallen in one direction purely by inadvertence is less than 1 in 34 billion. We now itemize 35 of the scientific errors and exaggerations in Al Gore’s movie. The first nine were listed by the judge in the High Court in London in October 2007 as being “errors.” The remaining 26 errors are just as inaccurate or exaggerated as the nine spelt out by the judge, who made it plain during the proceedings that the Court had not had time to consider more than these few errors. The judge found these errors serious enough to require the UK Government to pay substantial costs to the plaintiff

Read more at scienceandpublicpolicy.org

Obama's campaign trawls for Republican email addresses as his 'unfavorable' rating hits a high - Daily Mail

Can you say 'Spam"?

From www.dailymail.co.uk

With his popularity plunging to a new low in the polls, President Obama is trawling for more support – from Republicans.

The Obama campaign is collecting GOP email addresses by asking supporters to taunt their friends and political rivals.

The idea is that the Obama fund-raisers want to know which Republicans inspired their friends or associates to donate money to the president's re-election campaign.

Then – having obtained the Republican supporters name and email address – the Obama team will send a mischievous message 'letting them know they inspired you to make a donation to the Obama campaign.

Read more at www.dailymail.co.uk

A Voter's Guide To The Evil Republicans

Finally! The evils of the Republican Party clearly exposed! It's about time...

From www.youtube.com

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Biggest Fear is Big Government

Including a large percentage of Democrats.. And check out the graph at Heritage.

Personally, I only fear 'Big Business' when they are in cahoots with Big Government.

From blog.heritage.org

Americans’ Biggest Fear? Big Government.

Despite all the noise coming from the Occupy Wall Street crowd–and the rhetoric coming from President Barack Obama–it turns out that it’s not big business that most Americans fear, but big government. Gallup reports:

The 64% of Americans who say big government will be the biggest threat to the country is just one percentage point shy of the record high, while the 26% who say big business is down from the 32% recorded during the recession.

Interestingly, across party lines, fewer Americans are fearing big business, too. But those sentiments are a sharp contrast from those being voiced from Zuccotti Park in New York City, to the port protests on the West Coast, to President Obama’s speech in Osawatomie, Kansas. Read more at blog.heritage.org

Monckton to pursue fraud charges against Climategate scientists

Lord Monckton makes an effort to point the blame in the right direction. The police arrested the person who blew the whistle on the folks who committed the fraud and they ignore the real perpetrators.



Time to fix that.

From www.climatedepot.com

Fmr. Thatcher advisor Lord Monckton to pursue fraud charges against Climategate scientists: Will present to police the case for 'numerous specific instances of scientific or economic fraud' Visit Site

Making the police state work for you

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in London

There is a good reason why the police have gone after the whistle-blower and yet have not moved against those whose far more serious crimes the emails he released expose. Though the University of East Anglia has complained to the police about the “thief”, no one has complained about the climate crooks whose crimes the University seems so zealous to conceal.

What offenses have been committed? Serious frauds, that's what. Some of the most prominent Climategate emailers appear, on the face of the evidence in the emails, to be engaged with each other and with others in an elaborate series of connected deceptions calculated to enrich themselves and their associates, impoverish everyone else and destroy key industries and national economies wholesale by systematically and often greatly exaggerating the supposed threat and costs of anthropogenic “global warming”, the certainty of the science that underlies the IPCC's claims, and the effectiveness of the various methods proposed for the attempted mitigation of anthropogenic “global warming”, while correspondingly understating the benefits of that warming and the costs of its attempted mitigation.

The true significance of “hide the decline”, for instance, is not at all evident on a superficial reading of the emails. The police will not, therefore, read the emails with our eyes, unless we help them to understand their shocking significance.

In the United Kingdom, the Fraud Act 2006 has given fraud a very detailed, statutory definition, which may be summarized as the obtaining of a temporary or permanent gain (whether by keeping what one has or by getting what one does not have) or the infliction upon another of a temporary or permanent loss (whether by not getting what one might get or by parting with what one has), the gain or loss being in money or other real or personal property (including things in action or other intangible property), with the intent either of obtaining a gain for the offender or for another or of causing loss to another or of exposing another to a risk of loss, whether by dishonestly making an untrue or misleading express or implied representation that the offender knows is or may be untrue or misleading; or by dishonestly failing to disclose to another person information which the offender is under a legal duty to disclose; or by dishonestly (by act or omission) abusing a position in which he is expected to safeguard, or not to act against, the financial interest of another person. Read more at www.climatedepot.com

New law negates Constitutional protections of citizens

Who gets to say who is an enemy combatant? And what are the qualifications that would make you one?

From www.examiner.com

Anthony Martin Conservative Examiner

A new law approved by Congress and signed by Barack Obama yesterday essentially negates the 4th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, regarding unreasonable searches and seizures, the requirement for a warrant prior to arrest, and the prohibition of arrest and detainment without due process of law.

Called 'the National Defense Authorization Act' (NDAA), the new law allows the military to detain U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism indefinitely, without a trial. For the first time since the Civil War the U.S. military will have the authority to engage in the pursuit and detention of suspected criminals on American soil.

Although the specific language of the original bill does not expand the powers of the President to detain citizens indefinitely without a trial, proponents of the new law say that in its final form it is designed to codify recent court decisions that would do exactly that, giving the President the authority to designate citizens as 'enemy combatants' who could then be detained without a warrant or trial, and sent to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba along with some of the most dangerous terrorists in the world.

Read more at www.examiner.com

Unions Bully Teacher Who Publicly Supports Scott Walker

Public employe unions, in this case the teachers unions, are a cancer... They attack anyone who doesn't completely fit into their mold with the intent to destroy by any means that they can. To them it's not a question of right or wrong, but of power and money. They don't display anything remotely close to common decency.



Not to mention American ideals..
 

From www.breitbart.tv

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Hitler and Mickey Mouse Approved Signatures On WI Recall Petition

Why not? They are probably registered voters...

"Judge Thomas Barland, a GAB board member, asked what was being done to prevent the temporary workers being hired to review the petitions from attempting to sabotage one side or the other. All people hired will be subject to the same background check that GAB staff are to ensure they don’t have a partisan background, Buerger said.

“Our overarching priority for the staff we are hiring is that they are coming at this from a nonpartisan basis,” he said. "

Uh... Yeah.... I wonder to which non-party Mickey and Adolph belong...

From patdollard.com

Wisconsin Government Accountability Board Allows Adolf Hitler and Mickey Mouse to Stand on Walker Recall Petitions

MADISON, Wis. — The signatures of Mickey Mouse and Adolf Hitler will be counted on recall petitions targeting Gov. Scott Walker as long as they are properly dated and include a Wisconsin address, the board charged with reviewing the petitions was told Tuesday.

Suspicious signatures will be noted when the Government Accountability Board reviews the petitions, but reviewers will look to see that signatures are accompanied by a Wisconsin address and are dated as having been signed during the circulation period, board elections specialist David Buerger said.

“We will flag them, but we will not strike them without challenge,” Buerger said after being asked whether Mickey Mouse’s signature would be counted. He noted that in previous recall petitions, Adolf Hitler’s name was struck because the address given was in Germany, not because of the name itself.

The board unanimously approved the board’s plan for reviewing the petitions. Read more at patdollard.com

"What should Africa do? The same thing First World farmers do in this age of technology—use herbicides. In a Nigerian test plot, atrazine on the corn crop doubled yields and cut costs by 60 percent. On peanuts, in Zimbabwe, herbicides cut weed control labor from 100 hours per hectare to one-fourth of an hour per hectare while yields rose sharply."

From www.cfact.org

Add herbicides to Africa's rescue plan!

CHURCHVILLE, VA: Africa is the only continent where food production per capita is falling as its population continues to expand. Three-fourths of Africa’s food is produced on small farms that get radically lower crop yields than its experimental farms.

Even if these little farms got adequate fertilizer and high-yield seeds, they still wouldn’t get the higher yields produced by First World farmers because of the heavy weed populations fostered by Africa’s high temperatures, high humidity, and intense sunlight. A Nigerian field has an estimated 200 million weed seeds per hectare!

African women are courting disabling diseases as they spend 300 hours per hectare per season to hand-weed a field of corn. The weeds also limit too many African families to one acre of low-yield corn per year. The kids are weeding instead of going to school because the family has to eat. The men have gone to the cities because poor roads mean they can’t earn a living selling farm products from their villages, even if they were able to produce extra food for sale. AIDS has cut the available farm labor by at least 10 percent, and malaria by more than that. The healthy must spend their time nursing the ill.

African governments are now pinning hopes on fertilizer as a crucial input to raise food yields and meet its fast-rising food needs without plowing down more wildlife habitat. Putting only fertilizer on a weedy corn plot can, unfortunately, increase yield losses! Weeds can often out-compete crop plants for the nitrogen in the soil. That is why the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) reported as early as 1998 that crop yields in Africa would stay at the subsistence level as long as the hand-hoe is the primary means of weeding. Read more at www.cfact.org

The Wind Power Pipe Dream

When you take into consideration the miserable record of efficiency, the need for 100% backup, the periods of no wind, the extremely high maintenance costs, the lack of maintenance performed at ANY price, the health hazards to animals and people alike, the blight on America's landscape and the fact that this industry cannot survive without tax-payer subsidies; wind power needs to blow away.

As this article states:

"An expert on the detrimental aspects of wind power, John Droz, Jr., has created a website for those interested in the facts. Droz notes that “wind energy was abandoned well over a hundred years ago as it was totally inconsistent with our burgeoning, more modern needs of power, even in the late 1800s.” It is an outmoded source of power comparable to plowing farmland using oxen."

From www.canadafreepress.com

Imagine if you will America’s mountain ranges topped by row upon row of wind turbines and America’s deserts and plains covered by solar panels. How ugly is that?

A recent Wall Street Journal article, “Wildlife Slows Wind Power”, took note of the slaughter of birds and bats by these Cuisinarts of the countryside. The problem has reached such proportions that “New federal rules on how wind-power operators must manage threats to wildlife could create another challenge for the fast-growing industry as it seeks more footholds in the U.S. energy landscape.”

The wind-power industry is heavily subsidized by loan guarantees and mandates, and like solar power is turning out to be a vast pit of wasted funding that also raises the cost of electricity to communities whose utilities have been required to purchase its output.

It is another environmental pipe dream and one intended to enrich those who go into this dubious business. Read more at www.canadafreepress.com

Idaho wetlands case before the Supreme Court

And of course the 9th circuit court was involved...

From www.cfact.org

October 4, 2011 by Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

In one of the most closely watched wetlands cases to come before the U.S. Supreme Court in decades, Mike and Chantell Sackett are facing off against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over whether the couple has been denied due process by the agency. The Sacketts’ efforts to build a home in a residential neighborhood near Bonners Ferry, Idaho have been thwarted by EPA, which demands the couple apply for a federal wetlands-development permit under the Clean Water Act (CWA).The half-acre lot the Sacketts purchased for their home in 2007 is located near, but not adjacent to, picturesque Priest Lake in northern Idaho. The couple obtained all local permits before they began clearing their land in preparation for constructing their home. Even though nothing on the property can be described as being wet – the lot contains no ponds, streams or marshes --, EPA contends the parcel is a federally designated wetland and subject to the expensive and time-consuming CWA wetlands permitting process. EPA ordered the couple to cease grading on the property in 2007.

In the belief the whole thing was some kind of bureaucratic misunderstanding, the Sacketts sought a hearing with EPA officials to clear up the matter. Among other things, they wanted to point out that the neighborhood in question is zoned residential and that their parcel is sandwiched between two other houses. With characteristic arrogance, EPA refused to grant the couple, whose federal taxes help support the agency, a hearing. Read more at www.cfact.org

EPA hypocracy over Mercury - Steve Milloy, GreenHell Blog

From greenhellblog.com

EPA’s Mercurial Hypocrisy

How cynical is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about the potential mercury hazard of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs)?

Last week the EPA issued new guidance for the clean-up of mercury-containing CFLs

Atypically minimizing any potential health risks and arrogantly assuming that people patronize the agency’s web site, the EPA’s media release states,

CFLs contain a small amount of mercury sealed within the glass tubing. When a CFL breaks, some of the mercury is released as vapor and may pose potential health risks. The guidance and brochure will provide simple, user friendly directions to help prevent and reduce exposure to people from mercury pollution. [Emphasis added]

But consider that EPA’s “Mercury and Hazardous Chemicals in Schools: A Manual for Students in Southeast Asia” (April 2008) states that:

Just as there are no safe uses of mercury and mercury-containing equipment in schools, there are no safe uses for these products in homes, either. Tell your parents about the toxic effects of mercury, and encourage them to remove all mercury products from your home.

Also consider that EPA says that eating the mercury from a broken thermometer is safer than inhaling mercury vapor (i.e., how you would be exposed to mercury from a broken CFL)

It is not uncommon for children to break fever thermometers in their mouths. Mercury that is swallowed in such cases poses low risk comparison [sic] to the risk of breathing mercury vapor.

Consider what Brown University researchers had to say in an August 2008 study of CFL breakage published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology:

Some [CFL] lamps are inevitably broken accidentally during shipping, retail sales, consumer use, and recycling and release a portion of their mercury inventory as volatile vapor, which is the dominant mercury form in the early stages of lamp life. Inhalation exposure is a concern because 80% of inhaled [mercury] is physiologically absorbed. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) occupational exposure limit (8 h, 5-day week time average) is 100 [micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3)]. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommended exposure limit is 50 μg/m3, while American Conference of Governmental and Industrial Hygienists recommends 25 μg/m3 under the same conditions. Because children are more susceptible, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) recommends 0.2 μg/m3 level as a safe continual exposure limit for children. As an illustration of the effects of CFL breakage, the release of only 1 mg of [mercury] vapor (~20% of the Hg inventory in a single CFL) into a 500 m3 room (10 × 10 × 5m) yields 2.0 μg/m3 or ten times the ATSDR-recommended level of 0.2 μg/m3 in the absence of ventilation. [Footnotes omitted, and bullets and emphasis added.

Would you rather be exposed to possibly thousands of more times mercury than the EPA says is safe or....

... or would you rather have your power plant emit an extra ounce or so of carbon dioxide per hour of bulb use? Read more at greenhellblog.com