“We will create jobs by the millions, save money by the billions, and unleash energy investment by the trillions”

Promises, promises. 

What comes after a trillion? Whatever it is, that’s what we’ll end up paying in taxes and lost jobs if this makes it through Central Planning. Call it the Pay up Suckers, Kiss Prosperity Goodbye, Trust us you Fools Act of 2009:

Chairman Henry A. Waxman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and Chairman Edward J. Markey of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee today released a draft of clean energy legislation that will create jobs, help end our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, and combat global warming. The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) is a comprehensive approach to America’s energy policy that charts a new course towards a clean energy economy….

ACES?  Not in my deck.

UPDATES:

1. Speaking of ACES.  From Ace of Spades HQ headlines:

Revealed: working design sketch of new Government Motors ultra high mileage, 100% eco-friendly, low cost passenger car.

2. In a post about April Fools Day tax increases, Ed Morrissey notes:

The increase in “fees” charged to energy producers will hit the lowest income earners the hardest as energy costs will skyrocket.  It will eat up the disposable income of working-class families, some of whom may have to choose between heat and food in winter, thanks to the decrease in production and the rise in prices as producers pass along costs to the consumer.

Related:

EPA set to declare essential element of life a pollutant

Obama issues decree to Chrysler: Merge with Fiat

Fiat \Fi"at\, n.  An authoritative command or order to do something; an effectual decree.

Perfect.

…Fiat has been in negotiations with the Obama administration’s task force, and the government said on Monday that Fiat is viewed as the only route to survival for Chrysler….

…Without a Fiat deal, the administration said Chrysler won’t receive any more taxpayer dollars. The administration expressed confidence GM can survive with more drastic action….

…If Fiat and Chrysler reach a definitive alliance agreement, the government would consider investing as much as $6 billion more in Chrysler….

P.S. 

…GM was also told in no uncertain terms that it must learn to make money on smaller cars–not just trucks and sport-utility vehicles…

Is that like telling a bank it must learn to make money by giving loans to people who can’t possibly pay them back?

White is the new black

That was quick. The wondrous era of “post-racial politics” is over in less than 100 days.   Last week, Brazil’s President blamed “white people with blue eyes” for the financial crisis, while meeting with Gordon Brown.  Not to be outdone, the President of France is getting on the blame the Anglos first outrage train:

President Sarkozy yesterday threatened to wreck the London summit if France’s demands for tougher financial regulation are not met.

France will not accept a G20 that produces a “false success with language that sounds good but contains no commitments”, his advisers said.

Asked if this meant a possible walk-out, Xavier Musca, Mr Sarkozy’s deputy chief of staff for economic affairs, said: “A basic rule with nuclear deterrence is that you do not say at what point you will use the weapon.”

The French threat dramatically raised the temperature hours before President Obama arrives in London today. If carried through, it would ruin a summit for which Mr Brown and Mr Obama have high ambitions, believing it vital to international recovery.

Mr Sarkozy, who blames the “Anglo-Saxons” for causing the economic crisis, told his ministers last week that he would leave Mr Brown’s summit “if it does not work out”.

You know, they have a point. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barney Frank, and Chris Dodd, all of whom facilitated the housing crisis, fit that description.  Well, maybe not Barney Frank exactly, but he represents Massachusetts so we’ll throw him in the pot.  Franklin Raines?  Maxine Waters?  Not so much. As for me, I admit it!  Guilty as charged, but unlike that bunch, I had nothing at all to do with any of this mess.  Perhaps there’s an attic we can hide in until this anti-Anglo/anti-banker hysteria passes; ideally, one safe from bus tours conducted by groups like the Working Families Party.

Is it only a matter of time before Obama joins the chorus (sotto voce of course)?  After all, it should be easy for him – what with 20 years in the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “church”, a wife who thinks America is just a mean country, and a campaign season ripe with stark references to “bitter clingers”, and oh-so subtle references to being hoodwinked and bamboozled. Indeed, Obama never fails to remind us he “inherited” this mess. Coincidentally the person to whom he ascribes all the blame is, you guessed it, a white person with blue eyes.

Alas, I guess we’ll have to keep Barack’s Anglo-Saxon family tree our little secret. No more emphasizing his Kansan roots. Nope, it’ll be “Who’s your daddy” all the way from here on in.   At least until these storm clouds pass over. And there’s another election that needs financing, from the donor-rich streets of San Francisco, to the tall buildings of Wall Street-  assuming there’s anything left, that is.

UPDATE:

1.  Obama obsequiously flatters Lula at the G20 love fest:

“That’s my man right here,” President Obama said this morning at the G-20 summit as Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva approached him. “Love this guy. He’s the most popular politican on earth. It’s because of his good looks.”

Lula, it should be noted, is hardly the George Clooney of the G-20. But beyond that, the moment was quite telling in terms of the understanding that these leaders have for one another’s domestic political considerations.

A few days ago, Lula said that the global economic crisis “was fostered and boosted by irrational behaviour of people that are white, blue-eyed, that before the crisis looked like they knew everything about economics.”

‘Now they have demonstrated that they don’t know anything about economics,” said Lula, adding that “no black man or woman, no indigenous person, no poor person” can be held responsible…

Perhaps Lula reminds Barack of his erstwhile mentor,  the racist/Marxist Jeremiah Wright.  He must dearly miss his avuncular presence and steady guidance.  (H/T: Hot Air headlines)

2.  Michelle Malkin notes that Barack is loco for Lula!

Terrific! Rick Wagoner out; Labor Secretary Hilda Solis to help direct GM’s “recovery”

Behold the Orwellian closing paragraph of a characteristically deceptive work of propaganda and political opportunism from our Teleprompter President:

DIRECTOR OF RECOVERY

I am designating a new Director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers to cut through red tape and ensure that the full resources of our federal government are leveraged to assist the workers, communities, and regions that rely on our auto industry.

Edward Montgomery, a former Deputy Labour Secretary, has agreed to serve in this role. Together with Labour Secretary Solis and my Auto Task Force, Ed will help provide support to auto workers and their families, and open up opportunity in manufacturing communities. Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and every other state that relies on the auto industry will have a strong advocate in Ed.

Read about Hilda Solis here and here.  Note her voting record, as well as her favorite causes and associates. Surely we can trust Ms. Solis to be tough as nails with Ron Gettelfinger of the U.A.W. 

 

Yep, there’s nothing like the Bureaucrat-in-Chief from Central Planning bragging about how he plans to cut through the red tape, as he plans to create miles and miles of it with the assistance of Labor Union activists and a warranty program supported by… the 100% red tape-free TARP program:

The plan calls for the creation of cash accounts that would equal 125% of the projected costs of paying claims related to warranties on each new vehicle sold by General Motors (GM) and Chrysler while they are in the midst of a government- led restructuring.

The U.S. Treasury will contribute 110% of the cash required for the accounts while the automakers contribute the remaining 15%. A special purpose company holding the funds would be run separately from the automakers, allowing it "to continue paying warranty claims even if the auto manufacturer goes into bankruptcy or goes out of business."…

—Treasury will support the program through its Troubled Asset Relief Program, a $700 billion dollar financial industry rescue effort that is estimated to hold $ 135 billion in remaining funds.

Details of how they plan to “open up opportunity in manufacturing communities” are no doubt pending, although we do know that he will “work with Congress to identify parts of the Recovery Act that could be trimmed to fund such a program, and make it retroactive starting today.”  Gee, there was absolutely no way that Congress could have “trimmed” the “emergency” Porkulus Bill earlier, but a new crisis presents a new opportunity. Of course my definition of “trim” and Barack’s definition are quite different; in Obama’s lexicon “trim” means “transfer”, while my dictionary defines it as “cut”.

I’ll get with the program eventually.  All I need is a few decades at Camp Obama and gallons of Obama’s Kool Aid.

Nanny Statist Barack Obama busy micromanaging Joe Biden’s menu; working hard for the American people.

Sheesh. Steve Diamond was right. He’s an authoritarian.  And when Michelle Obama told us that “Barack Will Never Allow You to Go Back to Your Lives as usual”, she wasn’t kidding.  You will do exactly what Barack wants you to do, and that includes eating what Obama wants you to eat.

The Times reports:

WASHINGTON — When President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. meet for their standing Friday lunch engagement, Mr. Obama always picks the cuisine — a subtle break from previous administrations in which the president and the vice president typically ordered off a menu, and a reminder, if any was needed, about who is in charge.

Subtle? Not so much.

“The dietary bar is set by the president,” said Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, who recently fielded a prelunch query from the White House kitchen about whether Mr. Biden wanted sour cream with his tacos (he did). “Biden eats anything. He’s a pretty easy guy that way.”

Right. Like he has a choice in the matter.

Related:

Barack Obama’s Authoritarian streak reveals itself again

Was Earth Hour an epic fail?

A roundup

Reporting from Chicago, the epicenter of hopenchange:

This year’s event had substantially less impact on the Chicago area’s electrical use compared to last year, according to a preliminary estimate from Commonwealth Edison Co.

About 1 percent energy reduction, not adjusted for weather, was logged from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., said ComEd spokeswoman Rachel Gerds. That is equivalent to saving about 100 megawatt hours, she said.

The 2008 Earth Hour cut the Chicago area’s electrical use by roughly 7 percent, Gerds said. Adjusted for weather, ComEd customers then saved more than 800 megawatt hours, she said.

"We’re not quite sure why" the disparity occurred, Gerds said, but she suggested Saturday’s cold and rain might have caused more people to stay home and use appliances.

Ah, they await the super-reliable “weather-adjusted estimate”:

A weather-adjusted estimate for the 2009 Earth Hour should be available Monday or Tuesday, she said. ComEd’s preliminary estimate for last year’s Earth Hour put the Chicago area’s energy reduction at 5 percent.

FAIL.

How about in Green crazy, California?

Was Earth Hour a bust? So it appeared in the San Fernando Valley of California, as demographically close to Middle America as anywhere.

I  stood on my balcony before the witching hour of 8:30 p.m., overlooking a vast landscape of twinkling lights, illuminated apartment buildings, pizza parlors, supermarkets and suburban bungalows.

I waited. Even hoped.

The minutes ticked by. I squinted. Could I even see a single light winking off in the distance?

Nope.

I glanced up the hill behind my house. Every home’s lights were ablaze. The outdoor bulbs in the garden of my neighbor, a hairdresser, gleamed defiantly. A bright glow issued from the windows of the neighbor across the street, a hospital technician.

8:40 p.m. … no change.

9 p.m….no change.

More evidence that this was a bust in California, including a handy dandy chart here:

There you have it, scientific data showing that the Earth Hour was a total bust in California.  If you look close, you can see a little bump up above the forecast demand, which tracked very closely with actual power consumed prior to the witching hour 8:30 to 9:30. But, it is clear that power consumption did not drop, it stayed up. Maybe all those protesters forgot to turn off the lights.

FAIL.

Reporting from Australia:

Earth Hour crashes to Earth (pretty charts included)

And…

City sees light in darkness:

Clearly, not everyone heeded the message. The lights still blazed at Scots Church, the Athenaeum Theatre, the Shrine and in empty office buildings all over town.

But more than 1000 people braved the chill and the rain to see Premier John Brumby and Lord Mayor John So lead the countdown to 8pm. The Premier said the event was a call to action for people who believed they could make a difference. "This is all about sending a message to the world," he said. "But it is also an action that will make a difference."

At the top of the Rialto, a small crowd had a sense of anticlimax when there was no widespread blackout at 8pm. In fact, across the CBD rows of illuminated office windows, with little sign of beavering workers behind them, showed not everyone had read the memo….

Of course not everyone switched off. Across at Telstra Dome perhaps 40,000 fans watched the floodlit clash between Carlton and St Kilda, the decision made for safety reasons. But minutes after the first ball was bounced, the stadium’s external signs were extinguished.

And in Fiji, while most towns and cities embraced darkness, one remote village demonstrated its support by leaving the power on. Isolated Visoqo Village had never enjoyed the benefits of basic electric lighting but last night was lit up courtesy of its brand new solar power plant.

FAIL.

Reporting from New York City:

NYC Earth Hour Kind of a Bust..

FAIL.

Hey, surely things went better in Canada!:

And www.ieso.ca confirms the disappointing news. Ontario witnessed a 400 megawatt spike of energy consumption during Earth Hour instead of last year’s roughly 500 megawatt dip. Check out this graph from ieso.ca.

FAIL.

UPDATES:

1. From Jordan:  A disappointing Earth Hour in Amman.

FAIL.

2. Ha! Newsbusters reports, with a vision of an environitwit’s Utopia:

“North Korea celebrates Earth Hour 24/7”:

SUCCESS!

3.  National Review’s Planet Gore submits photographic evidence that Earth Hour failed in New York City…

FAIL.

4.   Earth Hour a bust in New Zealand:

The lights dimmed tonight but Christchurch failed to match its previous power-saving effort for Earth Hour

Orion New Zealand estimated the electricity saved in the city during the lights-out event was 8.1%, well short of last year’s 12.8%.

About 21.7 megawatt hours of electricity was saved – about what two New Zealand homes consume each year – which is the equivalent of 4.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

 

FAIL.

5.  Say it ain’t so!  Did Al Gore fail to observe Earth Hour?   (H/T: Hot Air headlines)

Words FAIL.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey calls Earth Hour “Curse the Light” Hour and delivers the goods on Al Gore’s stunning hypocrisy.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Upon reflection, I decided to remove the Earth First video I posted originally. It’s not offensive, but the title is NSFW.  If you’re longing for some greeniac humor, click on Earth First homepage.

Previous post on Earth Hour:

Attention Useful Idiots: Are you ready for “Earth Hour”?

Related:

Joke of the day: How many Useful Idiots does it take to screw in a Compact Fluorescent lightbulb?

Obama brings change to White House Easter Egg Roll; families lose all hope of getting tickets

 

  

This may seem unduly nitpicky to some, but I see this as metaphor for the Obama Administration’s congenital incompetence. Seriously, can they do anything right?  Don’t they have anything better to do than trying to change everything?  Try staffing the Treasury Department, Barack.  Your administration is timing out.

The Enlightened Redneck reports:

Change has come to the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, and our family is not happy about it. The end result is that we won’t get to go for the first time in nine years.

President Obama thought outside the box and decided it was better to move the ticketing process online — and predictably, the system didn’t work as advertised. I know because I tried off and on all day to get free tickets for the event. Most of the time I couldn’t even access the system; the two times my wife and I did, we were booted from it right as we placed our orders.

By 7:45 p.m. Thursday, we were rewarded for our efforts with this message: “Tickets are no longer available for the 2009 White House Easter Egg Roll.”

Washington’s local NBC station reported on the problems during the day Thursday. And here’s a recap from The Washington Post the next day:

The White House’s Internet distribution of tickets to this year’s Easter Egg Roll appears to have begun with a splat. …

Several people said that they were unable to log on to the White House ticket site or that when they logged on, tickets weren’t available. Some resorted to Craigslist to find tickets, for as much as $50 apiece.

Kristin Vergis of Garden City, N.Y., said she was up until midnight to see whether the ticket site was active. She went to the site again at 6 a.m. and tried to reserve tickets throughout the day, to no avail. “At one point, I got through the verification process and then was timed out,” she said in an e-mail to The Post. “I wish the ticket process had been left the way it was.”

Read the rest here.

And color me skeptical, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this computer set-up wasn’t just another mercenary attempt to get more names and addresses into their handy dandy computer database. 

UPDATES:

1. Essential Getty Images Photo of Secret Service member added above… 

2. The Enlightened Redneck has a roundup of “What others are saying about the egg roll”…including yours truly…

Joke of the day: How many Useful Idiots does it take to screw in a Compact Fluorescent lightbulb?

Ha! Many highly educated Goreacles have faithfully followed the Green Agenda, and purchased Compact Fluorescent Bulbs, because incandescent light bulbs are killing the planet, dontcha know.  Shockingly these bulbs don’t deliver as promised and (here’s where the joke comes in) they’re kinda hard to screw in properly.

The New York Times reports from San Francisco:

It sounds like such a simple thing to do: buy some new light bulbs, screw them in, save the planet.

But a lot of people these days are finding the new compact fluorescent bulbs anything but simple. Consumers who are trying them say they sometimes fail to work, or wear out early. At best, people discover that using the bulbs requires learning a long list of dos and don’ts.

Meet the Zuerchers:

Take the case of Karen Zuercher and her husband, in San Francisco. Inspired by watching the movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” they decided to swap out nearly every incandescent bulb in their home for energy-saving compact fluorescents. Instead of having a satisfying green moment, however, they wound up coping with a mess.

Later we learn:

Better labels might have helped the Zuerchers, the San Francisco couple. Initially, they put regular compact fluorescents in virtually every socket in their home, including enclosed ceiling lamps, dimmable fixtures and areas where lights are turned on and off frequently.

But some of those applications require specialized, more expensive bulbs, something the Zuerchers say was not made clear on the label of their Feit bulbs or on any sign they saw posted at Costco.

“We’re both college-educated and pay attention to labels we read,” Ms. Zuercher said. “It feels like someone forgot to put a place to find the information.”

Read the rest here.

UPDATE:

Gawker agrees that “Al Gore’s light bulbs are fail” but blames it on General Electric, who must have stolen Al Gore’s brain:

All those curly-cue planet-saving fluorescent light bulbs that Al Gore made everyone buy even though they cost $30 and cast a sickly pale glow DON’T WORK.

Light bulbs have been a pretty solid and cheap technology for more than 100 years, but General Electric decided to screw it up by making a new kind that lights rooms and offers its users a feeling of smugness. But they are very expensive, kind of like when the record companies made you stop buying $5.99 LPs and start buying $25 CDs.

f.w.i.w., I think that vinyl versus Compact disc analogy is fail too.

Hey!  It occurs to me that we can put Obama’s generously funded army of paid “volunteers” to work screwing in C.F. light bulbs for hapless Goreacles like the Zuerchers.  All we need to do is hire gazillions of bureaucrats to establish Green Learning Academies on National Service Campuses, which will teach the art screwing in a Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs. Alas, Obama’s window caulking program may have to take a back seat to this vital initiative.  As the saying goes, you can’t walk and chew gum screw in a light bulb and caulk windows at the same time.

And speaking of jokes, check out this photo of a house deemed “badly in need of weatherization”. 

 

More:  People like Roger Ailes are crying foul, saying that the Times story was a poor piece of journalism as it didn’t back up its claims with any data, relied on anecdotal evidence, and so forth.  Roger is also a fan of C.F.L.s and says his work just fine.

Great! It’s a free country and you can use whatever light bulbs you want. Oh wait!  You can’t. Thanks to a horrible piece of legislation, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, “ incandescent bulbs that produce 310–2600 lumens of light are effectively phased out between 2012 and 2014.”  That’s anything more than 40 watts, suckers.

Oh, and as the Times noted:

Experts and bulb manufacturers say that consumers need to play a role in solving the problems by learning more about the limitations of compact fluorescent bulbs. The Federal Trade Commission has begun to study whether it should force improvements in the labels of the bulbs.

Translation from Bureaucratese into English: You will have no choice in what kind of light bulbs you can buy, but “experts” will find ways for you to educate yourself about their limitations so you won’t be too terribly disappointed if you determine that they suck . And we’ll make better labels too so you don’t become the butt of a light bulb joke.

Mark Ambinder: White House wants Limbaugh to succeed

How’s this for spin?

Limbaugh’s ratings have surged since the White House made him the subject of their derision, which is exactly what the White House wanted.

Sure thing, Marky.  Why the next thing you know the White House will be working overtime to, say,  boost Fox News’ ratings, and maybe steer Americans toward conservative websites like Hot Air or Michelle Malkin (who, like Rush, reliably provide news and information the MSM seems congenitally incapable of covering).

Calling all British mobs: Are you ready to riot like it’s 1649?

March 27 (Bloomberg) — Mark Barrett, a professional tour guide, spent last Saturday painting Barack Obama’s election catchphrase “yes we can” on a banner that protesters will carry as they try to occupy London’s financial district April 1.

Barrett is helping organize a protest outside the Bank of England, one of several called to express anger against banks and bankers and mark the arrival in London of leaders of the Group of 20 nations — including Obama, now president.

“We want a very English revolution,” he says from a café near his home in north London. “The first English revolution in 1649 was about winning sovereignty for parliament over the king.” Now, protesters are campaigning for sovereignty for everyone.

Are you swelling up with National pride?:

All police leave has been canceled to increase security and financial workers have been told to wear casual clothes amid warnings that protests could turn violent.

“There are a lot of hacked-off people,” said Mike Bowron, commander of the City of London Police. “There’s potential for disruption and certain individual groups see violence as their raison d’etre.”

How very Robespierre.

Class War, an anarchist newspaper, has produced a special edition to promote the protest with an image of former Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc CEO Fred Goodwin, whose house was vandalized this week, on a guillotine under the headline “Ready to Riot.” Another shows people dancing around a fire with the slogan “How to keep warm in the credit crunch — Burn a Banker!” Public anger erupted at Goodwin’s 703,000 pounds annual pension after RBS was bailed out by the government.

The English Revolution culminated with the beheading of Charles I in 1649, ending the so-called divine right of kings in England. Today’s protesters say they draw inspiration from 17th century radicalism.

Read the rest here.

(Hat tip: Drudge)

UPDATE:

1. Michelle Malkin reports in depth on the guillotine-happy mob here. 

2.  April 1st. The violence begins.