Carbon Use And Prosperity – A Striking Relationship

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photo credit: cgp greyIn his inaugural address on January 21, President Obama invoked great ideals of human dignity, equality, and most especially “progress” to justify his second-term agenda, a cornerstone of which will be a crusade to limit humanity’s use of carbon.

In fact, nothing could be more antithetical to the goal of advancing the human condition than restricting carbon consumption. A look at the relationship between living standards and humanity’s carbon utilization over the past 200 years, as shown in Figure 1, below, makes this perfectly clear.

Fig. 1 Average global GDP per capita as a function of carbon use, 1800 to 2010. GDP in 2010 dollars.

The story that Figure 1 tells is remarkable; it is, perhaps, one of the grandest stories ever told. It shows how, over the past two centuries, by using carbon in ever-increasing amounts, the human race has lifted itself out of hopeless poverty and misery to achieve a modicum of dignity and happiness. Look at that line reaching up, in direct proportion to global carbon use, from an average global income of $180 per person in 1800 to $2,200 in 1960 to $9,000 today; that is progress.

Of course, we still have a ways to go. The current $9,000 average world income is just a fifth of the $45,000 U.S. average, yet we still have some poverty here. Still, the achievement is incredible. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt campaigned for president on the promise of “a chicken in every pot,” and millions found the offer compelling. Today, in the United States, minimum wage is $7 per hour, and chicken sells for less than $2 per pound; so, a person working at minimum wage can buy a pound of chicken with about 17 minutes’ labor. This is freedom from want, indeed, delivered not by the New Deal, but by the terrific expansion of our use of carbon.

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Letter to Obama: “We the People” Will Never Surrender our Guns

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Mr. Obama,

What part of ”SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED” do you not get? Actually you and your ilk know very well what that means, you just don’t like it. You’re trying to dupe ”We the People” out of our God given right to protect ourselves against your regime. Look in the mirror Mr. Obama. Do you see God?

The inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness includes the right of the people to bear arms. The founders of our great Constitution knew that folks like you would come along. Our Constitution which you declared ‘fundamentally flawed’ legally secured these rights many years ago. The right to bear arms is not up for debate. The Constitution, the ‘Law of the Land’, shall prevail and the 2nd amendment will stand regardless of your foolish attempt to ‘change’ it.

To control the narrative though, you and yours are using ‘distraction’ as a tactic to mask your true agenda. But not all of your ‘subjects’ will fall for your deception. There are two main distractions we’ve identified. One distraction misdirects us to the argument of which kinds of arms and accessories etc. we should be legally allowed, while the other one misdirects us to the ‘legal’ relationship between such things as the Supremacy clause, the Commerce clause, Congressional and Executive powers, Nullification, the 10th, 14th and 2nd amendments. These distractions define your ‘sleight of hand’. Here’s some bad news for you and yours, Mr. President, it won’t work. Your distractions are being recognized as such by increasing numbers of Americans every day. You won’t get away with disarming ‘We the People’!

It ‘s true that some unsuspecting citizens have taken the bait and are engaging in conversation about what may become socially acceptable limits on the 2nd amendment. We hear arguments about what kinds of firearms and magazine limitations your ‘subjects’ should be allowed under your regime. Some lawmakers are unable to resist these tactics and are proposing ‘feel good’ legislation which would only whittle away at our right to bear arms and assist you in achieving your ultimate goal. Your administration is nothing if it isn’t transparent. ‘We the people’ are drawing attention back to the real issue before us. Your administration is employing incrementalism and distraction in order to deny law abiding, American patriots our right to bear arms, any arms if you get your way!

In case you missed it earlier, the 2nd amendment is not up for debate. The Constitution did not ‘grant’ Americans the right to bear arms. It just ‘legally’ secured that right and only through due process can citizens be denied their legal rights. Your anti-Constitutional declarations, executive orders or any other legislative action contradicting the 2nd amendment will never fly!

You and yours are burning the very Constitution you promised to preserve, protect and defend. History will not look fondly upon a President who at every opportunity tested the will of the people. We Americans recognize and will defend our rights. You’ve managed to make this the critical issue of our time.

Remember when you said ”They cling to guns err religion err” as part of your lecture on how the bitter small town folks in the Midwest deal with hardship? There are plenty of Americans in and beyond the Midwest who understand why the 2nd amendment is so important. History shows that there have been many millions of innocent, unsuspecting citizens murdered by tyrants who successfully disarmed them. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Castro are a few of the tyrants on that list. A question on the minds of many Americans is whether your name, Mr. Obama, will be added to that list.

The enumerated powers of Congress in article 1 of the Constitution do not include infringement of the 2nd amendment, and neither do the powers of the President. The Supremacy and Commerce clauses do not negate the right to bear arms, nor does the 10th amendment. It would be just as unconstitutional for a state to deprive its people of the right to bear arms as it would be for Congress or you to do so.

Millions of gun owning, law abiding citizens across America won’t allow you or anyone else to deprive them of their 2nd amendment right. ‘We the people’ recognize the great sacrifices of those who’ve defended our Constitution and will not let their sacrifices be in vain. We stand with the founders of the Constitution and shall retain our God given right to bear arms!

Sincerely,

‘We the People’

Study: HHS Adds $9.1 Billion in New Regs in January

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The Department of Health and Human Services passed three new rules over the course of just four days, adding $9.1 billion of regulatory burden during the first month of the new year, a new report claims.

According to a study by the American Action Forum released Friday morning, the new regulations will “account for 797 pages, $9.1 billion in new costs, and 10.6 million additional paperwork burden hours.”

One of the major costs came from the expansion of Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the state-based health insurance exchange programs, all mandated under the Affordable Care Act. The total price tag is $2.6 billion with a paperwork burden of 518,432 hours. HHS only allowed 17 working days to submit comment on the nearly 500-page overhaul of Medicaid and SCHIP programs.

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Egypt Protests: Morsi Issues State of Emergency After Dozens Killed in Riots

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A curfew was to begin Monday after Egypt’s president declared a state of emergency in three Suez Canal provinces hit hardest by a weekend wave of unrest that left more than 50 dead and plunged the nation further into turmoil.

President Mohammed Morsi’s declaration was reminiscent of the tactics used by the country’s ousted regime to get a grip on discontent. This time, the anger is fueled by his Islamist policies and the slow pace of change.

Angry and almost screaming, Morsi vowed in a televised address on Sunday night that he would not hesitate to take even more action to stem the latest eruption of violence across much of the country. But at the same time, he sought to reassure Egyptians that his latest moves would not take the country back into authoritarianism.

“There is no going back on freedom, democracy and the supremacy of the law,” he said.

The worst violence this weekend was in the Mediterranean coastal city of Port Said, where seven people were killed on Sunday, pushing the toll for two days of clashes to at least 44. The unrest was sparked on Saturday by a court conviction and death sentence for 21 defendants involved in a mass soccer riot in the city’s main stadium on Feb. 1, 2012 that left 74 dead.

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Obama Threatens Fox News, Rush Limbaugh

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In a sycophantic interview with The New Republic, conducted by former campaign staffer Chris Hughes and leftist writer Franklin Foer, President Obama suggested that he had all the answers to the pressing issues facing America and therefore no compromise was necessary with Republicans. He added that Republicans should compromise. And if those Republicans don’t compromise, Obama suggested that the fault would lie at the feet of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh – and that the calculus had to be changed to force Fox News and Limbaugh to stop holding Republicans accountable to conservatism.

Here’s Obama on how he’s going to fix the country:

“The truth is that most of the big issues that are going to make a difference in the life of this country for the next thirty or forty years are complicated and require tough decisions, but are not rocket science. We know that to fix our economy, we’ve got to make sure: that we have the most competitive workforce in the world, that we have a better education system, that we are investing in research and development, that we’ve got world-class infrastructure, that we’re reducing our health care costs, and that we’re expanding our exports. On issues like immigration, we have a pretty good sense of what’s broken in the system and how to fix it. On climate change, it’s a daunting task. But we know what releases carbon into the atmosphere, and we have tools right now that would start scaling that back, although we’d still need some big technological breakthrough. So the question is not, Do we have policies that might work? It is, Can we mobilize the political will to act?”

Despite the fact that Obama’s policies have been abysmal failures on virtually every front, the question for Obama is not what to do, but how to swindle the American people into doing it. And Obama said he would not be focusing on how to get things done in Washington, D.C.; instead, he’d be attempting to drum up public support on every issue. Obama then compared himself to Lincoln for such tactics:

“I always read a lot of Lincoln, and I’m reminded of his adage that, with public opinion, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish; without it, you’re not going to get very far. And spending a lot more time in terms of being in a conversation with the American people as opposed to just playing an insider game here in Washington is an example of the kinds of change in orientation that I think we’ve undergone, not just me personally, but the entire White House.”

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Henry Kissinger Says Iran Nuclear Crisis Near

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Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has warned that a crisis involving a nuclear Iran is in the “foreseeable future”.

The Nobel Peace laureate, 89, was speaking about prospects in the Middle East at the World Economic Forum.

He said nuclear proliferation in the region triggered by an armed Iran would increase the chances of an atomic war – “a turning point in human history”.

He also urged the US and Russia to co-operate in resolving Syria’s conflict.

“There has emerged in the region, the current and most urgent issue of nuclear proliferation. For 15 years, the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) have declared that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable, but it has been approaching,” he said.

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Sellout: Republican Senators Strike Amnesty Deal With Dems

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A powerful group of senators from both parties has reached a deal on the outlines of a comprehensive immigration overhaul, a development that will drive an emotional debate on a hot-button issue unseen in Washington for more than half a decade.

The group is expected to unveil the basics of its proposal at a Monday news conference on Capitol Hill, essentially laying down a marker on the issue one day before President Barack Obama heads to Las Vegas to unveil more details about his own immigration proposal.

According to a five-page document provided to POLITICO, the sweeping proposal — agreed to in principle by eight senators — would seek to overhaul the legal immigration system as well as create a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s roughly 11 million illegal immigrants. But establishing that pathway would depend on whether the U.S. first implements stricter border enforcement measures and new rules ensuring immigrants have left the country in compliance with their visas. Young people brought to the country as children illegally and seasonal agriculture industry workers would be given a faster path to citizenship.

The broad agreement by the influential Gang of Eight senators amounts to the most serious bipartisan effort to act on the highly charged issue since George W. Bush’s comprehensive measure was defeated in the Senate in 2007.

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Bipartisan House Leaders Urge Obama to Fill State Department IG Job Vacant Since 2008

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Four top members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee representing both parties say the U.S. Department of State has gone long enough without an Inspector-General.

In a letter to President Obama, committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA; ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-MD; Subcommittee on National Security Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-UT, who is chairman of the panel’s subcommittee on national security; and Rep. John F. Tierney, D-MA, urged the chief executive to make filling the long-standing vacancy a top priority.

“The department has not had a Senate-confirmed Inspector General since 2008, which is the longest vacancy of any of the 73 Inspector General positions across the federal government,” the four said in the letter. “During your entire first term as president, you did not nominate anyone to serve in this critical position. This failure evidences a clear disregard for the Inspector General Act and the will of Congress.

“In the context of the upcoming confirmation hearings for Sen. John Kerry, D-MA, as your nominee to become the next Secretary of State, we are sure that the question of who you plan to nominate to serve as Inspector General for the State Department will be a top priority for Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.”

The Issa panel held a hearing on IG vacancies on May 10, 2012, and noted at the time that:
• There are currently 10 vacant IG posts. Of those, eight are at agencies where the IG is presidentially appointed . . .

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How Democratic Operatives Are Accessing 2.9 million Private Voter Records — Right Now

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Fresh off re-election victories, President Barack Obama and his campaign-trail machine show no signs of slowing down. At all.

On Jan. 18, Obama for America (later, Organizing for America) became Organizing for Action; on Jan. 24, the campaign’s former national field director, Jeremy Bird, launched the party’s plan to turn Texas into a battleground; and in the coming weeks, if successful, the president’s Department of Justice will begin the process of turning Louisiana blue.

Just how would they go about doing that? Simple, really: The first step toward winning a state in the modern age is a deep knowledge of who is in that state, allowing organizations to understand how to reach, and sway, those people. And a major, major step in that direction in the Big Easy is obtaining the voter roll information — we’re talking Social Security numbers, license numbers, dates of birth, mother’s maiden names, dates and places of registration, and all changes to updates to registrations — for 2.9 million Louisiana voters, as well as the computer source codes the secretary calls “essential to election integrity,” and turn all that over to the activists and data gurus that won the country for the president in 2008 and 2012. One of these potential recipients is Catalist — an organization the Capital Research Center called “the most powerful weapon in [the left’s] arsenal,” and one that counted Obama for America among its long and illustrious list of (entirely progressive) clients.

Sound nefarious? Well, it is. And this, in real time, is how it is playing out:

The DOJ is suing Louisiana Secretary of State Thomas Schedler, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH), DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein, the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and DCFS Secretary Ruth Johnson under Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires states to register voters at welfare handout locations (they call these “public assistance” programs).

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Video: Warning to Politicians – People Will Fight for Guns

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“Come and Take It,” the song that has rallied gun owners with its remember-the-Alamo-like message, now has an accompanying music video with a special message for Barack Obama and members of Congress.

As WND reported, Grammy-winning musician Steve Vaus, creator of the Buck Howdy character, recorded the song that defies those advocating gun confiscation with one of the slogans of the Texas Revolution, “Come and take it.”

Though the song itself is more vague, the video leaves no doubt who Vaus is talking to in the lyrics.

“Mr. President, members of Congress,” Vaus says in the opening to the video, “you’ve been making a lot of noise about taking our guns away. But you might want to review history.

“1835. Gonzales, Texas Territory,” Vaus continues. “The authorities wanted to confiscate the big gun that protected that colony. You know what the people said? ‘Come and take it.’ Because they were willing to fight for their freedom and their guns. So are we.”

Read more from this story HERE.