CAPTION CONTEST: The Official Portrait of Richard Windsor, I mean Lisa Jackson, Which Only Cost You $40,000

Courtesy of Sean Hackbarth, who writes:

The EPA spent 40,000 of our tax dollars on this oil painting...


Begin...

Matt offers: "Thanks to Climosil, I feel fresher than ever."

BUT HE'S NOT BITTER: By conceding in 2000, Al Gore says he averted a "violent revolution"

Al Gore may have a gift for grift, but he is an exceedingly dimwitted individual when it comes to law and the Constitution.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV from the Milken Global Conference in Beverly Hills, former Vice President Al Gore claims American democracy has been "hacked." Gore also opined on former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor recently commenting that she regretted her decision in Bush v. Gore.

"[America] has been hacked. That is a computer term when the operating system of a computer is taken over and the computer does things the owner does not want it to. That is what has been happening to American democracy. You have 90% of the people in favor of background checks for gun purchases [sic] and the congress is incapable of doing what the American people want.

They have not been able to regulate these phony baloney financial derivatives that caused the financial crisis [sic]. They voted to invade Iraq even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Unfortunately there are a lot of examples. They can't pass a budget. I can't keep the country from facing financial danger and the main reason is simple, the influence of the money is at un-healthy levels..."

While addressing Bush v. Gore, the former Vice President said "there is no intermediate step between a final Supreme Court decision and a violent revolution."

"I did not know she was going to say it. I made the decision in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision 12 years ago, to respect the rule of law. I strongly disagreed with their opinion, said so, but the rule of law is the bedrock of American democracy. There is no intermediate step between a final Supreme Court decision and a violent revolution. what was best for the country, the answer was very simple, to respect the rule of law and avoid undermining it and dragging the court into a partisan squabble where the outcome would not change in any case. So I am going to stand by my decision to respect the judiciary," Gore said.

Violent Revolution? Pot-smoking hippies vs. Bible-thumping, gun-owning bitter clingers? Gee, who would I put my money on?

As Constitutional attorney Mark R. Levin has patiently explained -- repeatedly -- once Governor Jeb Bush certified the names of the electors, there was no way Al Gore could "win" the election. Not the Florida legislature, not the Florida Supreme Court, and not even the U.S. Supreme Court could change the Constitution's process.

Gore could have challenged the election of George W. Bush in court post facto, but only after Bush had won the election.


Hat tip: BadBlue News Service.

Old People Just Don't Get the 'Green' Thing [Papa B]

Papa B:

In the queue at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment."

He was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Papa B adds, "Remember: don't make old people mad. We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off."


Related: How did we survive?.

BIDEN: Corn Syrup, Coal Power More Dangerous Than Terrorism

Mr. Peabody, set the Wayback Machine to 2007.

BILL MAHER: Senator Biden, forgetting about the upcoming Iowa Caucus for just a moment, which would you honestly say is more like to contribute to the death of your average American: a terrorist strike, high-fructose corn syrup, or air that has too much coal in it?


BIDEN: Air that has too much coal in it, corn syrup next, then a terrorist attack, but that is not to diminish in any way the fact that a terrorist attack is real. It is not an existential threat to bringing down the country, but it does have the capacity still to kill thousands of people. But hundreds of thousands of people die and their lives are shortened because of coal plants, coal-fired plants, and because of corn syrup.

One. Heartbeat. Away. From. The. Presidency.

Stand up, Chuck!


Hat tip: BadBlue News Service.

Kim Snarkashian Award for Obliterating the Progressives' CO2 Scam

Over at the uber-serious science site Ace of Spades, we discover the following NASA disclosure:

There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73%). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days... Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008... Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year's 90 days (87%).

It adds up to one inescapable conclusion: "We're experiencing a very deep solar minimum," says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center... "This is the quietest sun we've seen in almost a century," agrees sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

Clearly now is the time to regulate the economy through a carbon cap and trade system in an effort to offset, um something (freedom and prosperity mostly).


Now, does anyone notice in that graph Drew posted that sunspot activity is oddly congruent with late nineties warming followed by cooling throughout the 2000s? Look at this chart. Which does warming seem to track with more closely -- solar activity (or inactivity) or rising or falling CO2 ("The Invisible Assassin") levels?

I have to quote the commenter again who wrote this:

If only there were some... natural explanation for falling and rising temperatures. Such a hypothetical source of warming would have to be massive, however. On the order of magnitude of our own Sun.

And in Obama's presser, he just said if China's and India's citizens used same average amount of America's do, "we'd all be melting by now".

Sure we would. How dumb do you have to be to vote Democrat, anyhow?

That's a rhetorical question, of course.

Obama Department of Energy grants loans based on careful technology review and campaign contributions, but mostly campaign contributions

Watchdog group Cause of Action offers the following illustration that perfectly depicts the corruption laced throughout the Obama administration:

Cause of Action was able to determine, through publicly available data combined with a FOIA production, that for corporations who have received a loan guarantee of any amount, the likelihood that it made campaign contributions increases significantly. Of the data available, 95% (.95) of DOE loan recipients with less than $1 billion in annual revenue documented political contributions by the organization or senior level staff. Comparatively, only 31% (.319489) of similarly sized organizations that did not receive loans made political contributions in one way or another...

...The program itself, while touting its ability to create jobs, has proven riddled with pitfalls and failures and may in fact be taking away jobs from other areas of industry—ones that may prove more valuable to the citizens who fund DOE LGPs with their tax dollars.

As if to highlight this abuse of the public trust, Obama's failed electric car company Fisker is essentially closing its doors, having burned a fifth of a billion dollars. $200 million of your money.

Once again, the American public lost when the Obama administration attempted to pick “winners and losers” in the free market. Today the electric car company Fisker Automotive, which received nearly $200 million in taxpayer money, is laying off three-fourths of its U.S. workers.

The Anaheim, CA-based start up has failed at pretty much every level – especially when it comes to the company’s ultra expensive luxury electric hybrid, the Karma (what a name!), which is assembled in Finland and received a green-energy loan to transition the assembly to the U.S., something that never happened.

This losing tax-subsidized venture joins other past losers like the Obama-subsidized Volt that gets 40 miles per battery charge, or like the Obama-subsidized Tesla that turns into a “brick” when the battery completely discharges and then costs $40,000 to repair.

This is really just the latest manifestation of the administration’s crony capitalism as their green energy buddies benefit from this atrocious waste of taxpayer money. Americans really need to get outraged by these wasteful ventures. As we’ve seen time and time again, We the People are always stuck subsidizing the left’s “losers.”

So what’s the solution and where do Americans go with our outrage? Stand up against the crony capitalism and elect only those who understand and will let America’s marketplace dictate economic successes, instead of letting politicians (some who have never run any business nor even worked in the private sector) choose free enterprises’ winners and losers. Take a stand, friends. Nothing will change unless you do.

- Sarah Palin

When the complete history of the Obama administration is written, it will make Nixon's years in office look squeaky clean by comparison. I kid you not.


Hat tip: Seth.

"We mapped the human brain way before Obama's BRAIN Initiative"

The peerless People's Cube mapped the progressive's brain long before President Obama announced his ill-fated, $100 million "BRAIN Initiative" (Sequester? What Sequester?).


In related news, Debbie Wasserman-Schlitz (who was apparently asked to lay low after the DNC got her Q-scores) is whining that "a spare $250 million is a little tough these days."

This is, of course, one of the central nincompoops responsible for $3.2 trillion in "Stimulus" spending (and counting, since the original $800 trillion Stimulus is now baked into the baseline budget).

Washerman-Schlutt has it tough: President Obama, in comparison, is still handing out billions of our money in "green energy" scams, deficits and Sequester notwithstanding.

Shock, Consternation: Chevy Volt Sales Plummet

The much ballyhooed "green" automobile -- ostensibly one of Barack Obama's success stories -- is, as any 16-year old male could have predicted, an abysmal and catastrophic failure.

The Chevy Volt has inarguably been the poster child for President Obama's push to electrify America's auto fleet. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent to produce and subsidize the plug-in electric car. For years we have heard about the supposedly amazing technology for the Volt which would lead America to energy independence, be a "game-changer" for General Motors and provide a multitude of new green jobs. Proclamations were made that supply for the wonder-car could not keep up with the demand. Well, March's sales figures are in and give further confirmation that the lofty claims were all lies.

March's sales for the Chevy Volt plunged over 35% from last year to a paltry 1,478 units. To put that in perspective, that's about one Volt sold every two months per dealership. The number is also down from an only slightly less paltry 1,626 sales in February. GM's excuses for the poor performance seem to be drying up as quickly as the demand for the Volt. During GM's sales conference call, management claimed that sales are "stable" and that they are "feeling good about the trend." Such dishonesty brings into question GM's credibility.

In the past, GM claimed that lack of supply was the reason for low Volt sales. In addition, GM indignantly blamed a Republican conspiracy to hurt Volt sales as a contributing factor to the dismal sales figures for the car. Regarding supply, a recent search on cars.com showed that 6,804 new Chevy Volts are available nationwide. That's about a five months supply...

GM and the Obama Administration have done what they can to prop up sales of the Volt and give the false appearance of success. Lease terms were manipulated to manufacture demand, as GM even admitted. Crony Corporation General Electric (supplier of charging stations) agreed to purchase 15,000 of the vehicles. Localities, and even the military, used taxpayer dollars to purchase Volts. And worst of all, wealthy buyers of the Volt receive a federal tax credit of $7,500 each to purchase (or lease) the vehicles.

So, now we have one more indicator that the Chevy Volt hype has all been a farce. Yet there is still no admission nor is there any accountability for the hoax that cost taxpayers billions of dollars. The lie lives on as few will criticize the politically-sensitive green failure. The Congressional Budget Office reported that electric vehicle subsidies will cost taxpayers about $7.5 billion over a few years for little benefit...

As the nation faces imminent bankruptcy, will anyone in legacy media report on this idiotic and utterly predictable failure? That's a rhetorical question: we don't have a real media any longer; we have an established Beltway pundit class, more interested in getting invited to the right cocktail parties than actually doing their job.

Which also describes the RINO establishment.

THE UTTER BRUTALITY OF THE SEQUESTER: EPA Outlawing Sales of Wood-Burning Stoves by Private Citizens

Because there's nothing to cut, don'tcha know?

Our ever so helpful government has decided that your wood burning stove is now a danger to the world. In another attempt to outlaw the off grid lifestyle, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the same agency that was recently caught using drones to spy on Americans, is now going after home owners who use Wood Burning Stoves to heat their homes.

Shortly after the re-election of President Obama, the agency announced new radical environmental regulations that threaten to effect people who live off the grid. The EPA’s new environmental regulations reduce the amount of airborne fine-particle matter from 15 micrograms to 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air.

This means that most wood burning stoves would now fall into a class that would deemed unacceptable under these new draconian measures. The EPA has even launched a nifty new website called "burn wise" to try to sway public opinion.

On their site, while trying to convince people to get rid of their old stoves and buy the new EPA-certified stoves, they state that these older stove must be scraped and cannot be resold...

The local air pollution agency says I can’t sell my old wood stove to help pay for an EPA-certified wood stove. Why is that?

Replacing an older stove with a cleaner-burning stove will not improve air quality if the older stove is reused somewhere else. For this reason, wood stove changeout programs usually require older stoves to be destroyed and recycled as scrap metal, or rendered inoperable.

Let’s hope this doesn’t fall under the jurisdiction of the newly created Department of Homeland Security Environmental Justice Units? The next thing you know we might all be getting a knock at the door….. Your Neighbor reported that you might be burning some wood, do you mind if we take a look around?

The federal government bureaucracies are completely out of control. You can't buy light bulbs, or shower heads, or toilet tanks, or automobiles, or baby strollers, or insecticide, or anything else without the unelected fourth branch of government having its say so.

Cutting 80 percent of the non-defense and intelligence bureaucracy would go a long way to healing some of our economic woes in this country.


Hat tip: BadBlue Prep.

WARMAL COLDING: United Kingdom suffers longest winter in 50 years, deep freeze said responsible for 5,000 deaths

The chubby grifter Al "Gorezeera" Gore hardest hit.

[England] is on track to suffer its coldest March in more than 50 years as conservationists warned that the prolonged winter weather was damaging wildlife... The unrelenting cold weather is showing no signs of slowing this week as snow continues to fall across the North.


...Friday will see a return of heavier snow storms, which will spread further south to the Midlands. The Central England Temperature – covering an area bounded by Lancashire, Bristol and London – shows temperatures have been 2.8C lower than normal for the month.

The last time March was so cold was in 1962, when the average temperature was 2.4C (36F) – or 4.1C below the norm...

Every prediction made by the climate crooks has been wrong. They can't tell us what the weather will be on Wednesday, but they can predict what will happen to temperatures decades from now?

CHART: Despite federal government, oil production booming in ND

In spite of a radicalized, lawless EPA, North Dakota's oil production is fracking booming:

It's no secret that North Dakota has been in the middle of an oil boom since about 2008, but a new chart from the North Dakota Industrial Commission, Department of Mineral Resources, shows just how steep the increase has been...


...As of 2006, the state was only producing about 100,000 barrels of crude oil per day, putting it on par with other mid-tier oil producing states like Kansas, Colorado and Montana. But new hydraulic fracturing techniques and the opening of the massive Bakken formation to drilling changed all that, and as of January 2013 the state was producing an average of 770,000 barrels of crude per day, for a total of 23,834,000 barrels per month. That's double the amount the state was producing just two years ago.

It is a lot of oil, to be sure, but even with this recent explosion in production North Dakota is in just third place nationally. Texas produces a staggering 2,220,000 barrels per day, and the rigs that operate in the U.S. Federal Offshore region account for another 1,389,000 barrels per day. North Dakota currently accounts for about 10% of all U.S. crude production.

And virtually all of this production is occurring in spite of the federal government. In fact, in 2012 alone, "oil production on federal land decreased by 11 percent."

It would appear that the EPA is -- now that the election is over -- bound and determined to stop fracking at all costs.


Hat tip: BadBlue Financial News Network.

Advanced Levity Commences as Global Warming Con Game Implodes

Every. Single. Prediction. Every single one by the Climatards (which is the term they prefer, I hear) has turned out wrong, but none as spectacularly as this:

No, the world isn't getting warmer (as you may have noticed)... [and] official predictions of global climate warming have been catastrophically flawed ... the ‘scientific basis’ for [reshaping the] economy and spending billions in taxes and subsidies in order to cut emissions of greenhouse gases...

Steadily climbing orange and red bands on the graph show the computer predictions of world temperatures used by the official United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The estimates – given with 75 per cent and 95 per cent certainty – suggest only a five per cent chance of the real temperature falling outside both bands.

But when the latest official global temperature figures from the Met Office are placed over the predictions, they show how wrong the estimates have been, to the point of falling out of the ‘95 per cent’ band completely...

The graph shows in incontrovertible detail how the speed of global warming has been massively overestimated. Yet those forecasts have had a ruinous impact on the bills we pay, from heating to car fuel to huge sums paid by councils to reduce carbon emissions.

...Academics are revising their views after acknowledging the miscalculation. Last night Myles Allen, Oxford University’s Professor of Geosystem Science, said that until recently he believed the world might be on course for a catastrophic temperature rise of more than five degrees this century... But he now says: ‘The odds have come down,’ – adding that warming is likely to be significantly lower... Prof Allen says higher estimates are now ‘looking iffy’.

...The graph confirms there has been no statistically significant increase in the world’s average temperature... Its source is impeccable. The line showing world temperatures comes from the Met Office ‘HadCRUT4’ database, which contains readings from more than 30,000 measuring posts. This was added to the 75 and 95 per cent certainty bands to produce the graph by a group that amalgamates the work of 20 climate model centres working for the IPCC.

...In the Seventies, scientists and policymakers were just as concerned about a looming ‘ice age’ as they have been lately about global warming – as the Time magazine cover pictured here illustrates... Temperatures had been falling since the beginning of the Forties. Professors warned that the trend would continue and food crises were going to get worse because of shorter growing seasons.

Newsweek magazine reported that evidence of cooling was so strong ‘meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it’. But, it lamented, ‘scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections’. It said the planet was already ‘a sixth of the way towards the next ice age’.

While recently every kind of extreme weather event has been blamed on warming, in the Seventies the culprit was cooling. One article predicted ‘the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded’, along with ‘droughts, floods, extended dry spells and long freezes’...

The recent leak of the Climategate 3.0 emails offers additional evidence that global warming is about as genuine as a mother-in-law's hug.

Not that any evidence would dissuade the lawless extremists at the EPA.

SURPRISE! Democrats' Green Power Sources Will Crush the Budgets of Lower- and Middle-Class Families

I apologize for using the language of the left. America, of course, has no static class structure. Every day some of "the poor" become rich and some who are rich lose everything and become poor. But I digress: the point of this post is to highlight the effects of the Obama Democrats' green energy agenda.

In short, every form of power they advocate will be more expensive -- in some cases, five times more expensive -- than clean fossil fuels like natural gas.

The cost of generating electricity includes the capital cost, the financing charges, and the production or operating costs (including fuel and maintenance of the technology) at the point of connection to an electrical load or the electricity grid. When determining what new plant to build, a utility company will compare all these costs [i.e., "the levelized costs"] across the slate of available generating units...

...EIA provides an estimate for the levelized costs for each technology it represents in the National Energy Modeling System—the modeling system used to produce the forecasts for the Annual Energy Outlook. These estimates are provided here and in the graph below. The agency provides the costs for dispatchable technologies (such as coal and natural gas) and for non-dispatchable technologies (such as wind and solar) separately because they are not directly comparable...


...If the wind stops blowing or the sun stops shining, a dispatchable technology must be available to supply the demand. Thus, non-dispatchable technologies supply energy, but not capacity since they cannot be counted on continually to meet demand...

...An example of this situation occurred recently in California when the state hit its highest demand at 5 pm, when wind was producing a mere 350 megawatts out of an installed wind capacity of 4.3 gigawatts (8.1% of installed capacity). Other technologies had to be called on to supply power at California’s peak load. Wind generation is generally the greatest during the night when demand for electricity is the lowest, so it does little for providing power when that power is most needed...

If the eco-tards are able to fulfill their mission of locking away Americas' vast treasure trove of energy -- estimated to last for centuries -- they will not only cause the price of power to skyrocket. Every good and service will see immense price spikes, from grocery stores to laundromats, as the Marxist left continues its war on capitalism.

GRAPH: 400,000 Years of Warmal Colding

In the extremely unlikely event that anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming is actually occurring, it may be rescuing us from another Ice Age:

...in terms of the geologic time scale, human history is the blink of an eye compared the 4.5 billion year age of the earth. The end of the last ice age, a monumental, undeniably non-anthropogenic warming event, happened about 12,000 years ago; to a geologist it may as well have happened a week ago last Thursday. Yet climate scientists rarely address the implications of that warming event on their modern-day warming theories.

But this week, a new study came out which alarmingly concludes that CO2-forced temperatures are at or near their Holocene (post ice age) maximum... data from the Vostok Ice Core ... affords a look at the last 400,000 years of earth history, encompassing several ice ages.

...The top graph shows CO2 concentration in the atmosphere; the bottom one shows average temperature departure from the 1950 value. Two observations are readily apparent:

• For the last 400,000 years at least, "normal" = "COLD!"

• The warm periods are but brief interludes between ice ages. Wild temperature fluctuations were common before any possible impact of human civilizations. The anomaly is the stability of the moderate temperatures during the Holocene, the last 12,000 years (indicated by my red arrow), when warm weather fostered the development of human agriculture, cultures and civilization.

Consider what a global ice age would mean. Cincinnati, OH and points north would be under a glacier hundreds of feet thick (not necessarily a bad thing, in the mind of some readers and SEC football fans). Agriculture would be impossible in North America. The planet could sustain a tiny fraction of its current population.

Given the writings of the more extreme Climatards (which is the term they prefer, I hear), eradication of the "Human Virus" is the goal.


Hat tip: BadBlue News Service.

STUNNING PHOTOS OF POLLUTION IN CHINA: Could Someone Let the EPA Know About This?

As the EPA tries to micro-manage industrial policy in the United States using unlawful and impossible dictates, the world's worst polluter goes unmentioned in the U.S.:

In China, public anger over secrecy on environment

When China's environment ministry told attorney Dong Zhengwei he couldn't have access to two-year old data about soil pollution because it was a "state secret", it added to mounting public outrage over the worsening environment.

...The environment has already been one of one of the most frequently raised issues at the annual parliament session and China's authoritarian government has admitted it has a problem... China does not usually allow public scrutiny of governance, particularly on sensitive issues such as corruption and security. But public anger over the environment may force authorities to accommodate the public in small ways...


...A choking smog in Beijing in January, far above hazardous levels, has been one of the most dramatic signs of China's environmental problems, but Dong is convinced that soil pollution is the country's "silent killer." ... Citing "state secrets", the environment ministry last month denied a request from Dong for information on data on soil samples that was collected in a national survey that started in 2006 and ended in 2010.

...And just last month, the government acknowledged for the first time that pollution had given rise to "cancer villages", admitting that cancer rates in villages near factories and polluted rivers were far higher than they should be.

In short, while the EPA tightens the screws on America's already clean industries using flatly unlawful tactics, America's policy-makers ignore the elephant in the atmosphere.

New technology could drive zero-emission, clean coal-powered cars; Richard Windsor hardest hit

I wonder what the overstuffed radical named "Richard Windsor" thinks of this innovation?

New technological advances may make it possible in the near future to engineer a coal-powered car so clean that it produces nearly no polluting emissions, including carbon dioxide...

“There are many exciting possibilities for the clean coal technology,” says Liang-Shih Fan, a chemical engineer and director of Ohio State University’s Clean Coal Research Laboratory. “We found a way to release the heat from coal without burning it. This could be applicable for many industries.”

Fan last week disclosed that he had discovered a way to get the energy out of coal without burning it, using iron-oxide pellets as an oxygen source, and contain the reaction in a small chamber from which pollutants cannot escape. The only waste product would be water and solid coal ash -- no greenhouse gases. As an added benefit, the metal from the iron-oxide is recyclable.

The energy creation process is commonly known as “oxidation,” and is the chemical combination of a substance with oxygen. The use of the process is envisioned by Fan and his colleagues as a replacement for old-fashioned coal power plants, which spew greenhouse gases.

If the technology can be successfully miniaturized enough to fit into cars, the fueling infrastructure needed to service them would not be all that difficult to develop, experts say.

My question, above, was rhetorical, of course. We know what "Richard Windsor" and her ilk think of anything that empowers the individual and freedom of movement: they despise it.

For these sixties-retread radicals, it's not about carbon dioxide, or pollution, or global warming, or climate change, or whatever they're calling their religion these days. It's about control over you, the individual. Restricting your movement, controlling the private sector, and setting industrial policy.

As Mark Levin often says, "Green is the new Red."


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

BUT THERE'S NOTHING TO CUT: EPA Spending Up 51% Since 2008

Please note that when the president talks about the horrific effects of the Sequester, he's describing a two (2) percent reduction in spending. That's right: two cents of every dollar.

In addition, please observe that he always paints the cuts in the most demagogic ways possible: autistic children will be beaten, orphans will be thrown into the gutter, baby seals will be left to the nefarious designs of Michael Moore, and poisonous, orange-colored water will flow from your taps.

Because there's nothing to cut.

Federal funding for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is up by more than half – in real dollars -- since 2008, according to calculations based on Treasury Department data.

In 2008, EPA funding was $7,938,000,000, according to the Final Monthly Treasury Statement for fiscal year 2008. That would be $8,464,894,460 in real 2012 dollars, according to the BLS calculator.

The same Treasury report said EPA funding climbed to $12,796,000,000 in fiscal year 2012. That’s a 51.1 percent funding increase from four years earlier.

I sent several requests for interviews to EPA administrator Richard Windsor, but she did not reply by our deadline.

What's the price for getting your own Solyndra up and running? Apparently, around $500,000

If you're a crony capitalist interested in getting a piece of the Beltway action, the going price for access to the Obama administration appears to be a minimum of $500,000. That would be half a million American dollars you'll want to launder through the perpetual Obama campaign.

Unlike a presidential campaign, Organizing for Action has been set up as a tax-exempt “social welfare group.” That means it is not bound by federal contribution limits, laws that bar White House officials from soliciting contributions, or the stringent reporting requirements for campaigns. In their place, the new group will self-regulate.

Officials said it would voluntarily disclose the names of large donors every few months and would not ask administration personnel to solicit money, though Obama aides will probably appear at some events.

...Giving or raising $500,000 or more puts donors on a national advisory board for Mr. Obama’s group and the privilege of attending quarterly meetings with the president, along with other meetings at the White House. Moreover, the new cash demands on Mr. Obama’s top donors and bundlers come as many of them are angling for appointments to administration jobs or ambassadorships.

“It just smells,” said Bob Edgar, the president of Common Cause, which advocates tighter regulation of campaign money. “The president is setting a very bad model setting up this organization.”

When questioned about this nefarious construct by a newly invigorated, post-election press corps, Jay Carney recited a stanza of "Humina Humina Humina."

...White House spokesman Jay Carney fielded real questions from the White House Press Corps today, if you can believe it... I think the corps is angry that they got shut out of the golfing trip last week. They asked if a $500,000 check to Organizing for Action bought special access to the president. Carney shuffled his feet.

We have written before about the new charitable organization associated with President Obama, which was launched over inauguration weekend. We reported that OFA (as it is being called) appears to be essentially a vehicle for businesses and wealthy individuals who seek to curry favor with the administration. If one wants to get in in front of the President one had better be ready to write a big check to the organization. It’s all tax deductible of course.

This sort of scandalous behavior is routine for the Obama administration. Remember, for example, that 80 percent of the Department of Energy's "Green Energy" loans went to Obama's campaign backers.

When the full history of the Obama administration is written, it will make the Teapot Dome Scandal look like a case of shoplifting.

Who needs the Keystone pipeline? Americans are only paying the highest portion of their paychecks for gas in 30 years!

ETF Daily News reports:

...if you exclude the 2008 spike in oil prices (to be fair, seemingly a unique anomaly and unsustained), Americans are paying the highest portion of paychecks toward gasoline prices in the past 3 decades. 30 years.

But Democrats are for the little guy!


Hat tip: BadBlue Money.

The Best Picture From Today's Blizzard

From the front lawn of a climatard, which I hear is the term they prefer:

Via: The Lid.