Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Al Qaeda's No. 2 condemns Obama's Mid East policy

Watta ya know?

Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second top leader, denounced US president Barack Obama's Middle East policy as "nothing but a new stage in the Crusader and Zionist campaign to subjugate and humiliate us… and our religion"

I have heard of preaching to the choir, but who is this guys audiance?

in a statement posted on an Islamist website Monday, Dec. 14.

OK, got my answer.

He also slammed Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Saudi king Abdullah and Jordan's monarch as "Arab Zionists."

http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=6418

Sorry people, this was just to rich to pass up.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Copenhagen climate summit; Private Planes and Limos

How do I get into the global warming business in which garnered Al Gore so much money.

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges

On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.

WOW
Right place at the right time.

Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel.

Even so, how many are small cars that the rest of us are suppose to drive?

And this being Scandinavia, even the prostitutes are doing their bit for the planet. Outraged by a council postcard urging delegates to "be sustainable, don't buy sex," the local sex workers' union – they have unions here – has announced that all its 1,400 members will give free intercourse to anyone with a climate conference delegate's pass. The term "carbon dating" just took on an entirely new meaning.

I won't touch that with a ten foot pole.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6736517/Copenhagen-climate-summit-1200-limos-140-private-planes-and-caviar-wedges.html

Carbon Bomb Fizzles

To start with, this post has nothing to do with global climate, but rather the extent of the Environmental Protection Agency's limits of power.



Of course, controversy concerning regulating agencies is nothing new.


This move by the EPA is extraordinary not only it's cost to the American people, also importantly it is a vast expansion of regulatory power beyond that authorized by Congress.

The EPA's Carbon Bomb Fizzles


In the high-stakes game of chicken the Obama White House has been playing with Congress over who will regulate the earth's climate, the president's team just motored into a ditch. So much for threats.

I am shocked, just shocked!

The thing about threats, though, is that at some point you have to act on them. The EPA has been sitting on its finding for months, much to the agitation of environmental groups that have been upping the pressure for action.


Hate to say it, but that is not news.

President Obama, having failed to get climate legislation, didn't want to show up to the Copenhagen climate talks with a big, fat nothing. So the EPA pulled the pin. In doing so, it exploded its own threat.

DOUP!

From the start, the Obama team has wielded the EPA action as a club, warning Congress that if it did not come up with cap-and-trade legislation the EPA would act on its own—and in a far more blunt fashion than Congress preferred. As one anonymous administration official menaced again this week: "If [Congress doesn't] pass this legislation," the EPA is going to have to "regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty."


That boy is well beyond his dept.
Far from alarm, the feeling sweeping through many quarters of the Democratic Congress is relief. Voters know cap-and-trade is Washington code for painful new energy taxes. With a recession on, the subject has become poisonous in congressional districts. Blue Dogs and swing-state senators watched in alarm as local Democrats in the recent Virginia and New Jersey elections were pounded on the issue, and lost their seats.





But now? Hurrah! It's the administration's problem! No one can say Washington isn't doing something; the EPA has it under control. The agency's move gives Congress a further excuse not to act.

What more can we expect from a leadership greatest achievement is that they floated to the top of the bowl.

All the more so, in Congress's view, because the EPA "command and control" threat may yet prove hollow. Now that the endangerment finding has become reality, the litigation is also about to become real. Green groups pioneered the art of environmental lawsuits. It turns out the business community took careful notes.



Industry groups are gearing up for a legal onslaught; and don't underestimate their prospects. The leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit in England alone are a gold mine for those who want to challenge the science underlying the theory of manmade global warming.


But the EPA's legal vulnerabilities go beyond that. The agency derives its authority to regulate pollutants from the Clean Air Act. To use that law to regulate greenhouse gases, the EPA has to prove those gases are harmful to human health (thus, the endangerment finding). Put another way, it must provide "science" showing that a slightly warmer earth will cause Americans injury or death. Given that most climate scientists admit that a warmer earth could provide "net benefits" to the West, this is a tall order.


Then there are the rules stemming from the finding. Not wanting to take on the political nightmare of regulating every American lawn mower, the EPA has produced a "tailoring rule" that it says allows it to focus solely on large greenhouse gas emitters. Yet the Clean Air Act—authored by Congress—clearly directs the EPA to also regulate small emitters.


This is where green groups come in. The tailoring rule "invites suits," says Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), who has emerged as a top Senate watchdog of EPA actions. Talk of business litigation aside, Mr. Barrasso sees "most of the lawsuits coming from the environmental groups" who want to force the EPA to regulate everything. The agency is going to get hit from all directions. Even if these outsiders don't win their suits, they have the ability to twist up the regulations for a while.


Bottom line: At least some congressional Democrats view this as breathing room, a further reason to not tackle a killer issue in the run-up to next year's election. Mr. Obama may emerge from Copehagen with some sort of "deal." But his real problem is getting Congress to act, and his EPA move may have just made that job harder.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703514404574588120572016720.html#printMode