Carbon-Tax Advocate Pays $32k to Lobby Obama for 2 Minutes So He Can Sell More Electric Cars

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Photo Credit: Paul Scott

A Los Angeles car salesman and electric car advocate is shelling $32,400 out of his retirement savings so he can make a pitch directly to President Obama at a “private, off-the-record” Democratic fundraiser next week.

Paul Scott, 60, says he isn’t a rich guy. He’s a $50,000-a-year Nissan salesman who plans to rub elbows with 24 bigwigs in a private luncheon that he says will put a crimp in his retirement plans.

But he says the goal is worthwhile. He wants to make a few points to Obama about on how to better support electric cars — a cause that Obama already embraces — and thought the private audience would be a fine way to do it.

So when a solicitation came for the fundraiser, Scott says he was told that he’d get a chance sometime over the luncheon to offer his advice directly to the president. “That was something I had to confirm before I wrote the check,” Scott says. At least two minutes, probably no more than four, he says he was told.

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Shale Oil Boom Rattles OPEC

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Photo Credit: joern_kh

At a critical Friday meeting in Vienna, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will set production policy. For the first time, they will be grappling with the challenges of shale oil, even none of the member states are major shale oil producers.

The shale boom began in the U.S. as a ripple in North Dakota and Texas. Some thought its impact would be limited and regional, not global. Now that uptick on our domestic production curve has triggered a tsunami with geopolitical implications.

That’s because the U.S. does not need 100% energy independence to get OPEC’s attention. Due to production but also conservation and a protracted recession, our need for imported oil has contracted from 60-70% of consumption to about 40%, headed south. As the world’s largest crude oil market, changes in our domestic supply picture must necessarily reshuffle the import mix. Remember how skeptics argued that the shale boom is “a mirage“? I have often maintained that domestic supply increments of 500,000 barrels per day can be significant in a worldwide 90 million bpd marketplace. We’re starting to see that play out, albeit in some surprising ways.

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Marco Rubio Touts Chris Christie in Fundraising Pitch

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Photo Credit: AP

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s PAC has sent an email to his supporters praising New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as a “conservative leader” in the blue state where he’s running for reelection.

The pairing of Rubio and Christie is interesting for a few reasons, including that both are often mentioned as potential 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls. Christie has been hit by conservatives for appearing with Obama during the final week of the election after Hurricane Sandy, a move critics said unnecessarily undermined Mitt Romney.

And Rubio — one of the party’s brighter young stars after he defeated then-Gov. Charlie Crist in the tea party wave of 2010 — has been dinged by some conservatives over his work on the immigration reform bill that recently cleared a Senate committee.

“Conservative leadership is hard to find these days, but the voters in New Jersey have seen it firsthand,” Rubio writes in the email from his Reclaim America PAC.

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Dems Rebel Against Obama’s Environmental Agenda

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Democratic governors of Montana and West Virginia are rebelling against the Obama administration and challenging federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions, opting out of what critics are calling the Environmental Protection Agency’s “war on coal.”

“The EPA’s proposed limits on greenhouse gas emissions threaten the livelihood of our coal miners to the point of killing jobs and crippling our state and national economies, while also weakening our country’s efforts toward energy independence,” said West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin.

West Virginia and Montana are joining Kansas in filing an amicus brief to urge the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a challenge to rules that give the federal government the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The states want the court to rule that the EPA misinterpreted its authority under the Clean Air Act and has overreached.

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GOP Divide Between Senators Paul and McCain Over Syria Grow Deeper

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Photo Credit: AP/REUTERS

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Arizona Sen. John McCain are once again banging heads – this time over whether to arm Syrian rebels – in the latest dispute that underscores a divide in the GOP and intensifies the fight over what the party will represent in 2016 and beyond.

Paul, a first-term senator and Tea Party favorite surging in popularity, took the latest shot by opposing aid to the rebels – a key part of McCain’s plan to end the two-year Syrian civil war in which 70,000 civilians and others have been killed.

“It is very clear that any attempt to aid the Syrian rebels would be complicated and dangerous, precisely because we don’t know who these people are,” Paul wrote in an opinion piece earlier this week. “The situation in Syria is certainly dire. … Al Qaeda is making confirmed inroads into the country. No one wants to see Syria become a bastion of extremism. But like other American interventions in the past, U.S. involvement could actually help the extremists.”

But McCain, fresh off a secret trip to Syria, on Friday upped his call for intervention — telling the Associated Press the opposition needs heavy weapons.

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NYC May Give Non-Citizen Immigrants the Right to Vote

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Photo Credit: AP

A controversial proposal in New York City to give voting rights to hundreds of thousands of non-citizen immigrants could make them into a key vote in America’s largest city.

The Big Apple proposal, though, could resonate with other municipalities, inspiring them to follow suit — and, if Congress approves an otherwise unrelated immigration overhaul, the number of newly eligible immigrant voters could swell into a potent voting bloc on the local level.

That’s because the national overhaul being considered in Washington creates a so-called pathway to legal status for millions of illegal immigrants. By itself, this does little in the near-term to give non-citizens the right to vote. But if New York City approves its plan to give its 800,000 legal immigrants a say in city politics, illegal immigrants could eventually join the voter rolls there as well. And they wouldn’t have to wait for citizenship to vote.

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Florida Public School: Christianity Causes Islamic Extremism

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Photo Credit: Newsmax

International terrorists are motivated to acts of unspeakable violence because they suffer from low self esteem, students at an internet-based public high school are being taught.

Violent influences from Christianity also contribute, says a world history lesson plan offered by the Florida Virtual School.

The plan asks students to think of “what comes to mind” when talking about the concept of fundamentalism in a religious context. Then, they are told to think about how “this type of fundamentalism” has played out in Islam, according to Fox News.

“Common traits that psychologists have found in terrorists are that they are often risk-takers and many suffer from low self-esteem,” the lesson plan states. “Sometimes joining a terrorist group provides these individuals with a sense of belonging.”

It then implies that Christianity may have influenced the violent nature of Islamic fundamentalism saying that the transition from Christianity to Islam “softly could imply Christianity may be affecting (therefore causing) Muslim extremism.”

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Feds Threaten Prosecution for Anti-Muslim Speech

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Photo Credit: Anuradha Sengupta

A U.S. attorney in Tennessee is reportedly vowing to use federal civil rights statutes to clamp down on offensive and inflammatory speech about Islam.

Bill Killian, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, was quoted by the Tullahoma News this week suggesting that some inflammatory material on Islam might run afoul of federal civil rights laws.

“We need to educate people about Muslims and their civil rights, and as long as we’re here, they’re going to be protected,” Killian told the newspaper.

Killian, along with the FBI special agent that runs the Knoxville office, are set to speak next week to a special meeting with the local Muslim community, informing them about their rights under federal law.

“This is an educational effort with civil rights laws as they play into freedom of religion and exercising freedom of religion,” Killian said about the meeting. “This is also to inform the public what federal laws are in effect and what the consequences are.”

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Little Recovery from Americans’ Massive $16 Trillion Loss in Wealth

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Photo Credit: Washington Post

American households have rebuilt less than half of the wealth lost during the recession, leaving them without the spending power to fuel a robust economic recovery, according to a new analysis from the Federal Reserve.

From the peak of the boom to the bottom of the bust, households watched a total of $16 trillion in wealth disappear amid sinking stock prices and the rubble of the real estate market. Since then, Americans have only been able to recapture 45 percent of that amount on average, after adjusting for inflation and population growth, according to the report from the St. Louis Fed released Thursday.

In addition, the report showed most of the improvement was due to gains in the stock market, which primarily benefit wealthy families. That means the recovery for other households has been even weaker.

“A conclusion that the financial damage of the crisis and recession largely has been repaired is not justified,” the report stated.

The study is part of a growing body of research on the role of household wealth — or lack thereof — in amplifying the impact of the recession and slowing the rate of recovery.

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Author Stephen King: I Believe in God

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Photo Credit: NPR

NPR recently interviewed worldwide best-selling author Stephen King. During the course of the interview, he was ask about his belief in God. Here’s what the horror novelist said:

“I choose to believe it. … I mean, there’s no downside to that. If you say, ‘Well, OK, I don’t believe in God. There’s no evidence of God,’ then you’re missing the stars in the sky and you’re missing the sunrises and sunsets and you’re missing the fact that bees pollinate all these crops and keep us alive and the way that everything seems to work together. Everything is sort of built in a way that to me suggests intelligent design. But, at the same time, there’s a lot of things in life where you say to yourself, ‘Well, if this is God’s plan, it’s very peculiar,’ and you have to wonder about that guy’s personality — the big guy’s personality. And the thing is — I may have told you last time that I believe in God — what I’m saying now is I choose to believe in God, but I have serious doubts and I refuse to be pinned down to something that I said 10 or 12 years ago. I’m totally inconsistent.”

Mr. King also commented on the type of church service that he’s attracted to:

what I want is down in the ‘amen’ corner, Jesus jumping. I want that big choir with the people swaying from side to side, ‘Ooooh, God,’ and I want the electric guitar. Then I want the preacher where the guy’s going to walk back and forth and not just stand like a stick behind the pulpit. He’s going to, you know, shake his fist a little bit in the air and then he’s going to smile and throw his hands up and say, ‘God’s good! God’s great! Can you give me hallelujah?’ I just adore that. And it’s really only about two steps from the carny pitchman, because I like that, too.”

Read more from this interview HERE.