Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

As I hinted at the other day there are some pretty big changes coming to Ladies Logic. The first one (that I will let you in on anyway) is the implementation of a new comment system. I am moving the comments away from the Blogger platform and over to the JS-Kits platform. Yes it will mean yet another log-on, but then again if you have a Haloscan account you will need to change it anyway since JS-Kit just bought Haloscan and is in the process of migrating all of those accounts over TO the new platform.

So for those of you engaged in the conversation in the comments to the "Cheaper Than What Exactly" post, it is possible that those comments will no longer be seen. If necessary, I can copy those into the new system as I will still have access to the old system.

Stop by later this evening - big changes are coming!

Cheaper Than What Exactly?

Curious that I find this story today of all days.....

For the past decade, Austin's ambition to become the world's clean-energy capital has been best exemplified by one effort: GreenChoice, a program that sells electricity generated entirely from renewable sources such as wind.

Now the nationally renowned program is struggling to find buyers — the latest allotment is 99 percent unsold after seven months on the market — and Austin Energy is looking for ways to bring down the rising costs...Austin Energy officials say that times have changed and that the nation's most successful (by volume of sales) green-energy program, which offers the renewable energy only to those who select it, might no longer be the best way to carry out the city's goals. It now costs almost three times more than the standard electricity rate.

Hmmm and yet I was just told today that wind and solar were the "cheapest"....what is causing these increases? In part the cost of building the wind farms....

Steel, concrete, copper and labor have all gotten more expensive, in turn making wind-farm construction more costly.

and in part the cost of getting the power from the wind farm to the city that needs the energy...

Texas doesn't have enough transmission lines to carry all the electricity generated in West Texas to the state's big cities. This in turn means Austin has to pay more to get its wind energy here.

One of the reason that there are not enough transmission lines is the fact that environmentalists are fighting the construction of the transmission lines that are necessary to getting the power out of the wind farms.

“We want smaller-scale projects closer to where load is and where there would be less harmful impacts,” Citizens Energy Task Force attorney Paula Maccabee told Greenwire on December 1.

The problem with that (as I was told by a Public Utilities specialist in Minnesota) is that the quality of the wind in the urban areas is not good enough to provide the needed power!

All of this helps belie the talking points of the "green" movement. Their concern is not providing energy - it is taking energy options OFF OF THE TABLE in order to drive the economy further down. It is a dirty little secret that the clean energy crew hopes we never figure out.

Ch-ch-Changes

There are some big changes coming to Ladies Logic in coming days. Not too many hints but the scenery is going to be much better.

More On The Coup That Never Was

Last week my friend Ed Morrissey asked why the Honduran government did not simply arrest Manuel Zelaya instead of deposing him and kicking him out of the country (thereby leading to the impression that this was a doup de tat). In today's Opinion Journal, Mary Anastasia O'Grady attempts (and I think succeeds) to answer that burning question.

If there is anything debatable about the crisis it is the question of whether the government can defend the expulsion of the president. In fact it had good reasons for that move and they are worth Mrs. Clinton's attention if she is interested in defending democracy.

Besides eagerly trampling the constitution, Mr. Zelaya had demonstrated that he was ready to employ the violent tactics of chavismo to hang onto power. The decision to pack him off immediately was taken in the interest of protecting both constitutional order and human life.

Two incidents earlier this year make the case. The first occurred in January when the country was preparing to name a new 15-seat Supreme Court, as it does every seven years. An independent board made up of members of civil society had nominated 45 candidates. From that list, Congress was to choose the new judges.

Mr. Zelaya had his own nominees in mind, including the wife of a minister, and their names were not on the list. So he set about to pressure the legislature. On the day of the vote he militarized the area around the Congress and press reports say a group of the president's men, including the minister of defense, went to the Congress uninvited to turn up the heat. The head of the legislature had to call security to have the defense minister removed.

In May there was an equally scary threat to peace issued by the Zelaya camp as the president illegally pushed for a plebiscite on rewriting the constitution. Since the executive branch is not permitted to call for such a vote, the attorney general had announced that he intended to enforce the law against Mr. Zelaya

.A week later some 100 agitators, wielding machetes, descended on the attorney general's office. "We have come to defend this country's second founding," the group's leader reportedly said. "If we are denied it, we will resort to national insurrection."...

It was this fondness for intimidation that prompted Mr. Zelaya's exile. Honduras was worried that if he stayed in the country after his arrest his supporters would foment violence to try to bring down the interim government and restore him to power.

South and Central American politics has a history of violent power struggles. The Honduran Supreme Court and Legislature did what they thought would help save lives and prevent yet another violent change of power.

President Obama took a lot of heat for not "meddling" in affairs in Iran and yet here he has no problems meddling in the affairs of Honduras. This is why the US has such poor reputation in Central America. We piously refuse to meddle in some countries while we continue to meddle away in our own backyard. It's not new, but for someone who said that he was going to change things in DC and who was going to "restore America's reputation in the world" he sure has done a bang up job of keeping the status quo in Central America.

Tolerance On Parade

One of the major problems that I have with the gay rights movement is their insistence that the rest of the world show "tolerance" for their beliefs and yet they (the gay rights movement) shows a complete and total disregard for tolerating anyone elses beliefs. Todays case in point comes from an altercation that a gay couple had with LDS security while the gay couple was ON LDS PROPERTY!

Wearing bright red lipstick, Isabelle Warnas smiled and planted a big kiss on her husband's cheek, something she said she has done often under the spires of the LDS Church's Salt Lake Temple.

"Nobody has said a thing to us," the 50-year-old Salt Lake City resident said.

This time, though, they had an audience of more than a hundred. They were gathered for a "kiss-in" staged Sunday morning near Main Street Plaza to show support for a gay couple, Derek Jones, 25, and Matthew Aune, 28, who say they were detained by Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints security guards after one man had kissed the other on the cheek Thursday. They had argued with the guards and were later cited for trespassing.

That is the key point here - this gay couple was trespassing ON PRIVATE PROPERTY! They were not on "government owned" property, they were on property owned and maintained by the LDS Church.....

"My husband and I cannot understand the discrimination," Warnas said. "This is not right."

You are correct that discrimination is wrong Mrs. Warnas - so when are you going to speak out against the RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION that the gay community shows to the religious community (it's not just the LDS Church that the gay activists have targeted in the past).

If their movement were really a "live and let live" type of movement, my more libertarian side would say go ahead - if you want to put yourself at risk from a multitude of sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS it is (very literally) your funeral. As a Christian I will pray that you come to a relationship with Christ, but I understand that I can not force you to do anything that you do not what to do. When are you - the supporters of the gay rights movement - going to afford me and the millions of others who share my beliefs the same courtesy?

Offering Solutions

One other thing that I saw yesterday while perusing the Sunday chat fests (besides the ongoing obsession with Sarah Palin) was the democrats talking point mantra that the Republicans are "just saying no" to President Obama. Besides being just a tiny bit disingenuous (remember the Democrats said "NO" to President Bush plenty of times - especially on judicial nominees) it is also horribly untrue. I have mentioned before some of the solutions that are coming out of the House GOP caucus in the past, and there is a new one that came out yesterday that needs to be highlighted. This time it is from my dear friend and former representative John Kline (MN2).

For those of us in Washington concerned about job creation, the first Friday of each month has always been a notable occasion. That’s when the U.S. Department of Labor issues its monthly employment report detailing how many jobs were gained or lost in the previous month, along with the current unemployment rate. When I first came to Congress, these reports generally brought good news. In fact, from 2003 through the end of 2007, we saw a record 52 consecutive months of job growth. Unfortunately, that all changed in early 2008, when we saw the first job losses in more than four years. Since that time, the U.S. economy has steadily shed more jobs as the recession has deepened. Just last week, we learned that an additional 467,000 jobs were lost in June of this year, and the unemployment rate has reached 9.5 percent, its highest level in more than a quarter-century.

From the moment we saw those first 17,000 jobs lost in January of 2008, it was clear to me that we needed to embrace pro-growth policies. Now, about a year and a half later, more than 6.5 million jobs have been lost and evidence is mounting that the tax-and-spend policies advanced by congressional Democrats are not only failing to stem the tide of unemployment, they are actually making our economic problems far worse.

The Democrats love to yammer about the "failed policies of the past" but remember, they controlled Congress for the last two years of the Bush Administration and policies that they enacted (and to be fair President Bush signed) in 2006 lead to those early job losses in 2008 so when they talk about "failed policies" we need to remember THEIR culpability in the failed policy generation.

I serve as the Senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee. It’s ground zero for legislation that impacts American workers and employers, and under the control of Democrats, I believe it has failed to project jobs and promote economic growth. From legislation that will increase litigation in the workplace to the notoriously anti-worker card check scheme, Democrats in Washington have put special interests ahead of the people’s interests. Add to that a failed “stimulus” that cost close to $1 trillion yet still hasn’t produced the jobs it promised; a national energy tax in the form of cap-and-trade; and the impending government takeover of our health care system, and a future of permanent economic stagnation seems almost inevitable.

OK you say - where are these solutions you talk about? Here they are....

It doesn’t have to be this way. Republicans are committed to pro-growth policies that will get our economy back on track without saddling future generations with unmanageable debt. We offered a stimulus plan that would have created twice the jobs for half the price. We have developed a health care proposal that will make health care more affordable, reduce the number of uninsured Americans, and increase quality – all at a price our country can afford. And we plan to continue acting as the party of better solutions, rejecting Democrats’ plans to expand government at the expense of individuals and pushing for commonsense, bipartisan solutions to the many challenges we face. With the right policies, I’m confident we can return the first Friday of each month into an occasion worth celebrating once again.

Whether the topic is job creation, restoring savings, cutting government spending, stimulating the economy, health care reform, solving the housing crisis, energy or any other issue that this country is facing, the House Republican Caucus HAS been putting forward solutions - not just saying "NO" to the President. Anyone who propogates this talking point is flat out lying to the American people. Haven't we had enough of that?

Smell Our Dairy Air!

The State of Wisconsin is known as "Americas Dairyland" - their license plates say so. Well the good folks at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) want to change that...

June 29, 2009

The Honorable Jim Doyle
Governor of Wisconsin

Dear Governor Doyle:

On behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and our thousands of members and supporters across Wisconsin, I am writing to ask you to endorse an alternative to the ubiquitous "America's Dairyland" license plate out of respect for the many Wisconsinites who do not wish to support animal abuse on factory farms. Instead of the "America's Dairyland" slogan with the quaint barn in the background, we'd like to see a new license plate that reads, "Wisconsin: America's Cow Hell" and has a more realistic image, perhaps depicting sick cows in a cramped, filthy factory-farm shed...

The letter goes on (and on and on). You have to give Ingrid Newkirk credit here for having huevos. Either that or a seriously warped sense of humor. Either way....

Seriously - does Ingrid really think that she stands a snowball's chance of getting this done?

This is why PeTA, as an animal rights or welfare organization, is worthless. They have (to use a TV term) jumped the shark. They long ago quit being about taking care of animals which is why they are irrelevant. Which in turn leads them to pull stunts like this that are designed to do one thing only - get attention.

Great work Ingrid.

Did You Mean Funny HaHa or Funny Ironic

When the cap and trade bill passed out of the House a couple of weeks ago, many were appalled and outraged (myself included) that none of the legislators that voted on that bill (or the stimulus bill for that matter) were given the opportunity to read the bill before voting on it. Well get ready for more of the same from the Pelosi/Reid/Obama Transparency team.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that the health-care reform bill now pending in Congress would garner very few votes if lawmakers actually had to read the entire bill before voting on it.

Did you get that? If our Legislators actually did their job and read the legislation that they passed, this bill would garner "very few votes". But WAIT - there's more.....

In fact, Hoyer found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. “I’m laughing because a) I don’t know how long this bill is going to be, but it’s going to be a very long bill,” he said.

So it is funny that we should expect transparency from the Legislative process and to expect our Legislators to read what they vote on???? But isn't transparency what Nancy Pelosi promised voters when she took over the Speakers gavel?

THIS is Nancy Pelosi's idea of transparency? I don't know about you but it sure is not MY idea of transparency......

Sunday Morning Thought

Watching the Sunday Morning chat fests, I have to wonder....if resigning from her position as governor was such a bad idea - why are we still A WEEK LATER talking about Sarah Palin and her prospects for 2012? She couldn't BUY the amount of time on the air that she is getting from the media as result of this.

Paging Margaret Sanger

The NY Times has an interview in it's upcoming Sunday edition with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg that is generating a lot of buzz (HT Powerline). Most of the interview focused on Justice Ginsberg's feelings that the Supreme Court "needs" another woman. However, the quote that has everyone buzzing is this comment on Roe v Wade...

Q: If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.

Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

Emphasis mine. Populations that we don't want too many of? A good reporter would have followed up with "and what populations ARE those Justice Ginsberg????" and yet the NYTimes reporter lets that pregnant comment slide right on by.

Justice Ginsberg's comments do give a hint back into the origination of Planned Parenthood. You see, Margaret Sanger the founder of Planned Parenthood, like Adolph Hitler, was a firm believer in eugenics. Unlike Hitler, Sanger was more worried about the "b "black" and "yellow" peril." While Planned Parenthood has tried really hard to step away from that past but they can't step too far from it. A vast majority of their abortion clinics happen to be located in minority communities. The African American Community, which makes up roughly 15% of the US population, has over 30% of the abortions performed in America! It is not a pretty picture. In Planned Parenthood you have an agency who will gladly accept donations designated to go directly to "killing black babies". Are these the populations that you "don't want too many" of Justice Ginsberg?

Before we can have an HONEST debate on abortion in America, we have to wrestle with some very ugly, very real facts about the practice of abortion and the people behind it. Planned Parenthood needs to come clean about it's past, it's present and what it will do to change the illegal practices that it engages in (failure to report statutory rape for example) instead of suing those that expose the illegal and racist activities.

However, given that they have tried to hide these ugly facts for as long as they have, I am not holding my breath that this kind of change will ever happen.

Cap And Trade Postponed

In light of Brave Sir Harry postponing a vote on cap and trade until after the summer recess (in hopes of people forgetting about it no doubt) I thought I would bring you even more documentation as to why this is a bad bill that must be stopped at all costs.

First comes this from the Washington Post.

The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the resulting increases in consumer prices needed to achieve a 15 percent CO2 reduction -- slightly less than the Waxman-Markey target -- would raise the cost of living of a typical household by $1,600 a year. Some expert studies estimate that the cost to households could be substantially higher. The future cost to the typical household would rise significantly as the government reduces the total allowable amount of CO2.

Americans should ask themselves whether this annual tax of $1,600-plus per family is justified by the very small resulting decline in global CO2. Since the U.S. share of global CO2 production is now less than 25 percent (and is projected to decline as China and other developing nations grow), a 15 percent fall in U.S. CO2 output would lower global CO2 output by less than 4 percent. Its impact on global warming would be virtually unnoticeable. The U.S. should wait until there is a global agreement on CO2 that includes China and India before committing to costly reductions in the United States.

This is not $1600 per year for the family making over $250,000 a year - this is for the AVERAGE FAMILY OF 4 and the average family of 4 living in the United States of America makes a whopping $61,000 a year! So much for that campaign promise.

Meanwhile, The Heritage Foundation found this little gem.

At yesterday’s hearing before the Senate Environment Public Works Committee,

EPA Administrator Jackson confirmed an EPA analysis showing that unilateral U.S. action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would have no effect on climate. Moreover, when presented with an EPA chart depicting that outcome, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said he disagreed with EPA’s analysis.

“I believe the central parts of the [EPA] chart are that U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels,” Administrator Jackson said.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) presented the chart to both Jackson and Secretary Chu, which shows that meaningful emissions reductions cannot occur without aggressive action by China, India, and other developing countries. “I am encouraged that Administrator Jackson agrees that unilateral action by the U.S. will be all cost for no climate gain,” Sen. Inhofe said. “With China and India recently issuing statements of defiant opposition to mandatory emissions controls, acting alone through the job-killing Waxman-Markey bill would impose severe economic burdens on American consumers, businesses, and families, all without any impact on climate.”

So let me get this straight - it will cost us $1600 per family AND it won't impact the climate one iota????? If that is the case then why are we even dealing with this? Jason - Richard, any defense of this???????

UPDATE: Another "cure" for global warming gets shot down (HT HA).

It’s a beautiful theory — highways full of electric cars emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants after being plugged into an outlet in our garages overnight. The problem, according to a new Government Accountability Office report, is that the effort may only shift the problem somewhere else.

“If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country’s electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?” asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: “Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy.”

The GAO report says a plug-in compact car, if recharged at an outlet drawing its power from coal, provides a carbon dioxide savings of only 4% to 5%. If the feeling of saving the environment from driving an electric car causes people to drive more, that small amount of savings vanishes entirely.

It's a point that I have tried to make in the past. I'm glad to see that the GAO has the data to back it up!

Four Little Words

A couple of weeks ago - my friend Gary Gross wrote about the jobs that were created or saved in Minnesota as a result of the ARRA.

It’s a good thing I was sitting down when I read this Strib article. If I hadn’t been sitting down, I might’ve been knocked over by a feather.

Though much of the stimulus plan was sold on the strength of road and highway investments, records released by Congress last week show that only 37 transportation and infrastructure projects were underway in Minnesota as of May 31, creating or sustaining 124 jobs.

Well Gary is not the only one noticing how many jobs were created by ARRA. Utah's very own Jason Chaffetz has noticed it as well.

U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, is no fan of the federal stimulus package. He thought it was a waste when it was passed in February. And he thinks now that it has produced too few jobs - 150,000, by the latest White House estimate - for the $57 billion that has been spent nationally so far.

When Gov. Rendell appeared before him yesterday at a hearing on Capitol Hill, Chaffetz asked, "How many jobs have been created in Pennsylvania by the stimulus?"

Governor Rendell's answer was almost as overwhelming as the Minnesota figures.

Though he had no precise jobs figure to offer, Rendell guessed that "a couple of thousand" jobs had been created by the $1 billion spent to date in Pennsylvania, and that 5,000 to 10,000 jobs had been saved.

It is this lack of jobs created that has caused the President's approval to plummet in recent days. He can no longer claim that this economy is someone else's fault. He went into DC promising that the faster ARRA was passed the faster people will get back to work and that is just not happening! While jobs is not the only reason when you couple it with the out of control deficit spending and the realization that there is no WAY that the President could keep his promises of not raising taxes on people who make under $250,000 a year...

President Barack Obama promised to fix health care and trim the federal budget deficit, all without raising taxes on anyone but the wealthiest Americans. It's a promise he's already broken and will likely have to break again. Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress have already increased tobacco taxes — which disproportionately hit the poor — to pay for extending health coverage to 4 million children in working low-income families.

Now, lawmakers are looking for more revenues to help pay for providing medical insurance to millions more who lack it at a projected cost of $1 trillion over the next decade.

The floated proposals include increasing taxes on alcohol, which could raise $62 billion over the next decade, and a new tax on sugary drinks such as soda, which could raise $52 billion.

Emphasis mine. As an aside I have to give the AP mad props for pointing out two of the REGRESSIVE taxes that the Democrats are proposing...

The bloom is most assuredly off of the Obama rose. The question is, will the RNC take advantage of the situation and quote the ragin' Cajun James Carvelle and start chanting "IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPID!!!!!"

Casualty Of Peace

The Los Angeles Times/Chicago Tribune ran a rather disturbing story today (HT the Logical Husband" about a mentally ill young man and a years long deception that he ran.

Retired Marine Capt. Rick Duncan carried a list of phone numbers of those in the business of helping veterans. One was for the VA clinic in Colorado Springs, and in 2008 he pressed it upon Mike Flaherty, a young Army veteran struggling with depression.

He understood, Duncan told Flaherty. He'd been to Iraq three times. Attacked in Fallouja, he'd returned home with a metal plate in his head and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Except that "Captain" Duncan was no captain - nor did he serve in Iraq or even the Marines. "Capt" Duncan was actually Rick Strandloff - an anti-war protester and convicted felon who is also bipolar. I want to go on the record now and say that his having bipolar disorder should not be used as an excuse for his bad behavior or thought of as "normal" behavior. I have a very, VERY dear friend back in MN who is bipolar and while she does have some things that she struggles with, this kind of deception is not even close to being this egregious. I have also learned from this dear friend that when you are dealing with bipolar disorder, nothing is "normal" - they are all individuals with individual brain chemistry misfires.

All that said, I live in a military family. My husband served in the Army as does my brother in law. My late father in law was in the Air Force and was buried with full military honors. My father tried to enlist, but could not due to health issues. The list goes on and on. Besides being married to the military, I was employed by the Army as support staff. Needless to say, the military and military issues are near and dear to our household.

The reporter does a fantastic, indepth job of reporting this story and creates, in Mr. Strandloff, a compelling and sympathetic figure. However, buried deep in the story is a brief comment by Mr. Strandloff that belies his claims of "I didn't know what I was doing or why I did it"....

"Any good production has to have a compelling character," he said.

And that in a nutshell shows that he knew a little more about what he was doing then he led on. It should also be noted that this is not the first time that the anti war movement was taken in by a fake. Michelle Malkin has run a number of stories by people claiming to be anti-war veterans. While I have no doubt that there are real "anti-war" veterans out there (heaven knows that no soldier really WANTS to go to war) the sheer number of these stories leads one on the outside to suspect that the anti-war movement wouldn't know the real thing if jumped out in front of them. Either that or...

Yet Strandlof also said that he had a greater effect in his antiwar efforts as Duncan the veteran than he ever did as Strandlof the liberal protester.

Does the end justify the means? And if it does, why have the anti-war protesters been so silent since January 20? If you are against wars after all.....

Founders Morning Quote

"It behooves you, therefore, to think and act for yourself and your people. The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail."

--Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, 1775