All posts by Ross

Media, Politics

Fossil Fuels Out-Green Biofuels

You gotta love this. If they would ever see it, it would just drive the environmental wackos (you know who you are) nuts. Did you know that it is greener to burn our fossil fuels than to produce and burn biofuels? I think this would be a hard sell to Robert Kennedy Jr. but if it’s the environment that we’re trying to impact less, then we need to get serious about actually getting more of our own oil and gas so we can be less dependent on foreign suppliers. All in one fell swoop we could increase our national security, lower the price of gasoline at the pump, and help the environment. It’s a win win win.

Increasing production of biofuels to combat climate change will release between two and nine times more carbon gases over the next 30 years than fossil fuels, according to the first comprehensive analysis of emissions from biofuels.

Biofuels look good in climate change terms from a Western perspective, said Dr Spracklen, but globally they actually lead to higher carbon emissions.

The reason is that producing biofuel is not a “green process”. It requires tractors and fertilizers and land, all of which means burning fossil fuels to make “green” fuel. In the case of bioethanol produced from corn – an alternative to oil – “it’s essentially a zero-sums game.”

NewsBusters: New Study Recommends Against Burning Biofuels to Solve Global Warming

Will be interesting to see what play, if any, this gets in your mainstream media. And I wouldn’t hold my breath for Kennedy to get on board either. Not with BIG OIL.

h/t Amy Ridenour’s National Center Blog

Politics, War On Terror

And Then There’s Pakistan

In a geopolitical sense, I don’t think there has been a more sensitive time with so much at stake. Like in Pakistan for example. A nuclear (bomb) power. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is not popular and both the good guys and the bad guys want him gone, one way or the other, depending on the critic.

Uncategorized

Flogging Of The Day

You get 80 lashes with a cane stick if you are caught abusing alcohol and having sex.  If this were the United States, well, the line forms here.  But this is Iran.  And from the pictures of the crowd present, how much of it is fascination and how much of it is for religious consumption?  The laws demanding this punishment were issued by a “religious” court.  Would that be the so-called religion of peace, Islam?

MRIOTD, Uncategorized

Moose Adds To Global Warming

Imagine that. You have to admire the talent and scientific acumen required to determine that aNow poor moose are being blamed for global warming. moose burp affects the earth’s climate. What a genius. He must be related to the guy who figured that if we all change our clocks we’ll have an effect on the global climate. Frankly, it’s intimidating knowing that there are such smart people walking the streets. Here it is under Global Warming Fears, Norway’s Moose Population in Trouble for Belching.

The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change, with researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of methane a year — equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey. Now poor moose are being blamed for global warming.

Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting.

Spiegel Online link

Filed under MRIOTD, most ridiculous item of the day.

2008 Election, MRIOTD, Politics

Stupidest Question Ever

Especially for a man who wants to be President and change the health care system in the country. At a Democrat debate over the weekend, John Edwards took a question whether he liked the Cuban model of health care. His response . . .

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports, “When an Iowa resident asked former Senator John Edwards whether the US should follow the Cuban health care model, Edwards deflected the question, saying he didn’t know enough to answer it.” The Breck Girl said, “Well, I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t know a lot about Cuba’s health care system. Is it a government-run system?”

Is the Cuban governments health care system run by the government? Fidel Castro’s Cuba? Forget about how to spell potato(e). Wonder what his wife will say in defense of such a stupid statement?

Media, Politics, Russia, Uncategorized

Desperate Socialists

And socialism marches on, speaking about the dictator in Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez. Affectionately called here the hemisphere’s idiot. Now he is clearing way to be president for life, ending term limits for himself by changing the constitution he made in 1999. The changes . . .

would strip the Central Bank of all autonomy, allowing the government to spend the country’s foreign reserves. The government would be given power to expropriate private property by decree, and to promote co-operatives and state enterprise.

State governors and mayors will still be subject to term limits—otherwise they might become caudillos, Mr Chávez said recently, without irony. They will be sidelined by new communal councils, dependent on the presidency. Another proposal is to reduce the maximum working day to six hours. “Now we are headed straight towards socialism,” Mr Chávez said. But first the plans must be approved by referendum.

Chavez has come a long way since the corrupted election that put him in office. Jimmy Carter will tell you how corrupt it was, even though he didn’t have the courage to tell the Venezuelan people and the U.N. the truth about it at the time he was ‘overseeing’ it. He took it upon himself to deceive the entire country. But that’s another story. So, one would expect this referendum to pass with a 99 % majority.

Here’s Chavez record on freedom. In his own words. . .

“We have broken the chains of the old, exploitative capitalist system,” said Mr Chavez. “The state now has the obligation to build the model of a socialist economy.”

He has nationalized the oil and energy industries, same with the communications industry including the press and on-air broadcast, put price controls in place on everything from food to fuel. No such thing as private property any more. The result is predictable, no food on the shelves, high (for them) fuel prices. A suppressed media that supports only the Chavez administration keeps the people ignorant and riled up.

Of course there’s no domestic media that considers this newsworthy. It’s the Desperate Socialists club of Chavez, Castro and Putin.

Immigration

Law & Order 1, Anarchy 0

Somehow, and after a full year of being holed up in a sanctuary church in Chicago, illegal alien Elvira Arellano was finally arrested and deported to Mexico again, the place she calls ‘her country.’ Curious distinction since we are told how illegals want to assimilate and be American. Her actions and words prove otherwise. This woman was merely using America, not living it.

So she gets deported to Tijuana, which means she’s probably back in Los Angeles by now.  With all the bleeding heart talk about how deporting illegals separates families, that’s not an immigration problem.  That’s an unfit parents’ problem.  She should have taken her son with her and kept her own family together.  She chose not to do that.   As do all the other illegals that put their families presence at risk by being illegal from the start.  The only anchor in your ‘anchor baby’ is in your mind.  A loving mother doesn’t abandon her kid to use as a political tool.  You take your American citizen child with you.  Instead she left him with the preacher at the church where she was holed up for the last year.  He is now the legal guardian of her son.

I love legal aliens.  Its the illegal ones and their depraved notion of right and wrong and entitlement that has no place in an American society.  The illegals need to fight their fight where the problem is.  Mexico.

Debbie Schlussel link

Media, Politics, War On Terror

War Coverage Down

Coverage by U.S. media of the Iraq war, war on terror, or whatever you want to call it, is down 7% to 15%, down from 22%. Could it be that good news isn’t news to the MSM? Its just another conflict with the their mission, which is to discredit the administration and the war. Reporting of any good news would not advance their position. Its just that simple.

Taken together, the war’s three major story lines — the U.S. policy debate, events in Iraq and their impact on the U.S. homefront — slipped roughly a third, to 15 percent of an index of total news coverage, down from 22 percent in the first three months of the year.

This doesn’t jibe with assertions by progressives that the Right controls the media. The truth seems otherwise.

Fairness Doctrine, Media, Russia

Putin And Freedom Just Disagree

Intent on reliving the Cold War, Russian President Vladimir Putin is ramping up military spending in response to an anti-missile defense system proposed by the United States for the Czech republic and Poland. A system that Putin chose to not be a part of. And now Putin has kicked out the BBC from Russian FM radio. The pattern here is that to Putin, the concept of freedom is evil and dangerous. Something to be squelched at all cost.

Earlier this summer Mr Putin upped the ante by threatening to target US strategic nuclear sites in Europe. Tensions with Britain over the murder of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko have prompted tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats, while on Friday the BBC’s World Service was thrown off Russian FM radio.

As far as freedom of speech goes, Vladimir Putin (Russia) and Hugo Chavez (Venezuela / Citgo) are fully on board with the Fairness Doctrine and execute (no pun intended) it perfectly. And the domestic media doesn’t so much as shrug its shoulders over it. Doesn’t fit the template. The left wants the fairness doctrine as the tool that will effectively gag the right when it comes to radio. Secretly, they’re jealous at the way Putin can do it. They both have similar views on freedom of speech. Which is, if we agree with it then its OK. If we don’t then its hate speech, or in Putin’s case, treasonous speech. There is no debate, just shut them down. That’s the purpose of the so-called Fairness Doctrine.

In true liberal fashion, the Fairness Doctrine goes like this. Because we can’t beat them in the marketplace or the arena of ideas, we’ll get the government to take our side and force them to put us on their airtime. That’s not my idea of freedom of speech.

Uncategorized, War On Terror

And Another Thing

After four years, French diplomat visits Iraq. Political face-time has its place. Oh and Iran’s president also may pay a visit to Baghdad. Keeping your friends close, and your enemy closer.

Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, arrived in Baghdad on Sunday on the highest-level visit by a French official to Iraq since the 2003 invasion.

All while a 60 yr old grandmother was killed by a camel apparently trying to mate, with her.

The 10-month-old male camel — weighing about 330 lbs — knocked the woman to the ground, lay on top of her, then exhibited what police suspect was mating behaviour, Mr Gregory said.