I’ve held off as long as I can with commenting on the presedential election, as it tends to suck all the oxygen right out of the room, but this issue needs to be aired. There’s more to Obama’s energy plan than bankrupting coal power plants. He also intends to make energy prices “skyrocket”:
This doesn’t sound sustainable to me. Hat tip to Jon Jewitt.
UPDATE: here is video from the San Francisco Chronicle of the actual interview:
Hat tip to Fred for this one.
Mary:
“I think he’s done a pretty good job of it! Your economy is a mess and foreign policy a joke. How could a once great nation make such a hash of it in only eight years?”
Let me understand this correctly. You don’t live here in the U.S….but you’re so well versed in our politics and history, that you know for certain that Bush is to blame for the economic woes we’re experiencing? That’s fascinating.
Also pretty presumptive, I’d say. There’s plenty of information available which pretty clearly shows there’s plenty of fingers in the pie, and plenty of blame to go around.
One of the things that intelligent discourse should provide us all is the desire to open our minds a bit…even if just a tiny bit… so that we might examine various points of view and various possibilities.
Without that, it just boils down to who has the biggest club, or the most clubs.
Jim
davidgmills,
Read Obama’s words carefully. If he makes “energy prices skyrocket” (his own words) there won’t be many businesses to nationalize.
They will relocate to countries that want to do business.
Well, Anthony, looks like you hit some people’s hot spot. The funny thing is that you are correct in that I did not find that you endorsed one over the other. Strange, but the Fox crew had the better asessment than the other talking heads. It was also suprising how honest Obama is in discussing what his cap and trade with 100% on the auction block and yearly decreasing goals. It is unfortunate that Obama does (did?) not realize that many of the companies that own coal plants are required by regulation and law to produce electricity and pass the costs to consumers plus 10%. Simple math, if costs of producing electrity double, then the company will double their actual profits without spending another nickel on infrastructure. It is definetly an ill wind indeed, that blows no one good.
When the majority of Americans wake up and realize what the Hansonian energy plan will do to their utility rates and taxes, this nonsense will come to a screeching halt – even with Obama in office.
Tomorrow it’s all over……I thank Anthony for having this topic, it is after all about CO2 and killing the Coal Fired Electric Plants. I live between Louisville, Ky and Cincinnati, OH and I can think of about 6 of them here. Obama can shut them all down and the complete area can go dark for all I care. Of course millions of people can go without jobs, food and heat. I am just about sick of the USA, anyone have a thought on where I can relocate?
Great, just what we need. Another lawyer (chicago) in Washingto to “rule over us”.
One thing we can all be sure of tomorrow. Regardless of whether Obama or McCain wins cap and trade will come. Both have promised they will implement it.
I find it more than a bit disingenuous that McCain (or Palin) would cry foul about Obama stating the obvious repercussions of adopting cap and trade.
Make that a double talking Lawyer from chicago.
DavidMills..very well said. I also find irony in how “unconservative” so-called “conservatives” these days truely are! Dem-darned “liberals” are blamed for “tax and spend”, and “redistribution of wealth”.
In actuality, during the last 8 years, the Bush Administration has borrowed more money from foreign countries (and your Grandchildren) and spent more borrowed money than all presidency’s in U.S. History..combined! We are borrowing $1Billion per day from China just for Crude Oil imports, and we’re pushing more than $1 Trillion, much of it borrowed, for what many argue are energy-related wars.
These, My Friends, are no conservatives. So Dem-Libs are Tax-And Spend, and “redistributors”..I get it. But, so-called Conservatives are Borrow-and-spend, with redistribution going international and multi-generational. Kinda funny if it weren’t so ironically-sad.
By the way, sure would like to have been a fly on-the-wall during Cheney’s Energy Policy meetings, which he has yet to release the records of…Go Figure.
John D.
Its unfortunate to wish/hope both McCain and Obama are lying to us and to also cheer for an ass kicking cold winter in the event they are not.
I think he’s done a pretty good job of it! Your economy is a mess and foreign policy a joke. How could a once great nation make such a hash of it in only eight years?
Planting a working democracy in the heart of the Middle East is a remarkable achievement. Saddam was causing the deaths of 50,000 to 100,000 people a year for almost a decade before the invasion. Not counting the death squads. Eventually Saddam would have stopped a well deserved bullet and either his insane sons would have taken over or there would have been a civil war to make the current mess look like a playground. Fortunately for the Iraqi people, Saddam is gone and the US, UK (et al.) were there to hold the factions apart until they could work out an exemplary functioning democracy, exceeding all expectation.
And when things looked bad (actually reported to be worse than they were), the surge proved wildly successful, and in spite of direct attempts of the press to ignore the success and even report it as failure, has given the world a huge victory for humanity and democracy.
Such a liberal outcome is well worth the laughs of the ignorant.
Or we could have done nothing, and the slow-motion holocaust of Saddam’s Iraq would still be ongoing, with disastrous future prospects. As Tony Blair said, “Doing nothing IS doing something.” Nobly said! How anybody with a modicum of humanity could possibly have objected to the invasion after the discovery of the mass graves (half a million and counting) is utterly beyond my ken.
As for the economy, Clinton dumped a severe recession on Bush which was exacerbated by the 911 catastrophe. Real revenue dropped 21% from 2000 to 2003, and millions of jobs were lost. The tax cut of 2.6% helped check this downturn. The bulk of the tax cuts occurred after that. In mid-2003, capital gains tax was cut by a quarter–and the loss of revenues (sic) halted abruptly and began to reverse.
Millions of more jobs were created than had been lost. Revenues were up 2.4% in 2004 and 11% in 2005.
Finally, in 2006, there was a 7.4% marginal rate tax cut (from 37.6% to 35%), and revenues skyrocketed 27% from the 2005 take to record levels. All this is adjusted for inflation.
Now we are supposed to blame Bush for a crisis brought on by lending policies pressed on the country almost exclusively by democrats, who blocked attempts at reform and oversight of Fannie and Freddie in both 2000 and 2005.
Those are the facts. And while the press (both ours and the beeb) has grossly obscured and misrepresented them, fact it remains.
Mary Hinge (16:07:44) Cling bitterly to the remnants of your Bush Derangement Syndrome. Bush has had an excellent beginning against the extreme and destructive Islamists, and has presided over the greatest economic expansion of all time. His foreign policy has been marked by real progress in the Middle East, by ground-breaking international trade policy, and the recognition worldwide, including in the ‘Old Country’, of America’s benignity and necessity in the maintenance of a peaceful and civil world. The housing bubble and consequent credit crunch are the fault of the Democrats. Your parochial view of American and international geopolitics is your own fault.
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Excellent retort, evanjones. Really excellent!
Too bad it won’t register on the closed-minded and the ignorati.
Its unfortunate to wish/hope both McCain and Obama are lying to us and to also cheer for an ass kicking cold winter in the event they are not.
Quite.
I am just about sick of the USA, anyone have a thought on where I can relocate?
No. This is it. We have survived worse. As bad as it gets, there is no better option. No cop-outs allowed. (No cop-outs available!)
Too bad it won’t register on the closed-minded and the ignorati.
It will. We must give it time. Recall that Truman was even more unpopular than dubya when he left office. Historical perspective has a way of sorting these things out. What strikes me as strange, though, is that my fellow liberals would take such objection to the greatest blow for liberalism and secularism since the end of the Cold War. My liberals have, in the heat of passion, lost their liberality. It is my deep hope that they will eventually regain it.
The biggest challenge we face is declining availability of liquid fuels from oil exporting countries. See Khebab’s Graphoilogy.blogspot.com Especially fig. 16 and Fig 17.
Top Five Oil Exporters
China is rapidly developing methanol from coal for fuel.
China Mobilizes Methanol While the U.S. Remains Mired in Oil i.e., at $0.66 to $1.00/gal gasoline equivalent.
Obama’s cap and trade coal policy will shut down alternative fuels right when we need a massive war time emergency effort to develop alternatives.
That will shut down the economy, massive unemployment, no retirement etc.
Gov. Sarah Palin is the only one with the practical experience with oil industry and fuels and the only one with credible executive experience to deal with the critical problems coming with peak oil.
So vote for McCain/Palin with a possible chance to bring the economy through after very severe disruptions –
OR
Obama/Biden to properly sink our economy into the biggest financial black ever dreamed up of Carbon Sequestration.
Steven Hill (18:47:37) :
“Tomorrow it’s all over……”
No…not yet.
“…anyone have a thought on where I can relocate?”
There was a movement, some time ago, where people were going to relocate to a state…possibly N.H.?…and take it over, politically…watch for signs of that to be reborn.
Jim
I do not share the opinion that we are running short of oil. I even doubt we are running short of sweet crude. We have been through this before. There has never been a time when the wise old owls haven’t “known” we are “past the peak”, starting around five years before someone stuck a straw in the ground in Pennsylvania back in 1859.
Even if we run short of light crude, we have literally trillions of barrels in shale, tar, and bitumens. It’s likely that the Bakken shale (not actually shale) will yield a half a trillion barrels before we’re done with it. The current “potential” estimates are a bad joke. And even they have increased twentyfold in the last three years. What does one suppose the next three years will bring?
The only way we will run short of oil is if we try really hard to do so. Mostly by pretending it isn’t there. And even then (in spite of the application of considerable time, trouble, and treasure) our attempts to run out may not succeed.
I for ones I think the Russian scientists got it right Oil is not a fossil fuel.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3952
Thought some of you might find this interesting. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/6007
Where can I go to find a place where there are very limited taxes (preferably just a few percent of either income or purchases), where I can pay for my own health care, donate my money to charities or the poor by my own decision, a place where the government handles defense and a justice system and nothing else, and there is a Constitution that prohibits the government from solving anybody’s “problems”?
I currently make about $100K a year. I really think that if I could keep all of my income tax, sales tax, property tax, road tax, vehicle tax, etc. and didn’t have to pay the portion of the multiply compounded corporate taxes and regulation buried within prices of energy, and food, and other goods, then my purchasing power would be closer to $500K a year. I’d be able to pay privately for what are now called “goverment services” for much less than what I pay the government now.
There would be a vast increase in overall wealth. Scientific advances would go wild. It would be a new golden age.
How do we get out of this chicken outfit?
Scott
Hydrocarbons were found on the moon and in some meteorites, were they not? We chuckle at how little mankind new 500 years ago. Wonder what people 500 years from now will think of us?
Getting his cap and trade program in place in the name of saving the planet is crucial for getting his “green” job program up and running. After energy companies pass the buck down to the consumer the average person will be able to justify their 30k to 40k investment in solar or wind power for residential power since they will pay for themselves in a few years vice a few decades as it takes now.
On the civilian defense force this will compete directly with the current military for recruiting and most likely have the same benefits only it will by law not be allowed to participate in any foreign conflicts essentially taking away any type of preemptive or offensive capability.
End state will be an environmentally friendly America that can’t pursue any foreign policy via force.
Or at least that’s what the liberals want to believe will happen
“AEGeneral (08:54:54) :
I’m starting to have serious reservations that this country will still exist 10 years from now. It’s being destroyed from within, and the politicians are the catalyst.”
It is the voters who put those politicians in place.They are getting what they want.
If they are doing it out of lazy ignorance.Then they deserve the smackdown they will get.But the ones who knew that Obama is not a viable choice.Will have to live with it somehow.
I would consider that a scary situation to ponder.
I feel sorry for the really angry posters. Don’t they see the benefit of civil debate? I do not agree with everyones viewpoints, but I am thrilled to be able to discuss it. Some of the best discourse anywhere. Thank you, Anthony !!
Scott R. (20:32:27) :You despair now like many Americans (I assume you are American). Try to come to Australia. We certainly do not equate with your aspirations, but we are closer to them than the future that exists for you now. Distance lends more than enchantment; it lends hope! No doubt in the near future, many of your countrymen and women will look to our shores and see escape!