It's official. Obama's latest lie is a matter of record.
Last summer, the rookie Senator from Illinois promised to restrict his Presidential campaign, if he became his party's nominee, to public funds, if his opponent would agree to do so as well.
Today, Obama 'changed' his tune. And lied. He demonstrated that what he says at one point in time about something he can control, can change whenever it suits him.
Is this change you can believe in?
Or merely politically expedient change you can count on?
The latter, I think is now clear.
Obama's a liar and a conventional backroom-dealing, expedient politician.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Why The Fuss Over Tim Russert?
Okay- Tim Russert died. Big deal.
I don't understand what all the hoopla is about.
Like his Irish Liberal Democratic media colleague in the NBC/Universal world, Chris Matthews, Russert apprenticed to a well-known Irish pol- Pat Moynihan.
But Russert is no Pat Moynihan, just like Matthews is no Tip O'Neill.
Being part of the ultra-liberal NBC family of media brands, Russert never got much viewership from me. I think the most I ever saw of him was with Tom Brokaw on the election night coverage of November, 2004.
What I saw turned my stomach so badly that I never bothered to view Russert for more than a few seconds of accidentally running across his Sunday morning interview show.
Every time that Brokaw, the prototypical NBC liberally-biased news anchor, would solemnly intone some liberal opinion about Kerry's evolving loss to President Bush, as if it were fact, Russert's jowly face would nod vigorously up and down like some big, live bobble-head.
If he were smaller, he could have sat on Brokaw's lap and looked like Charlie McCarthy. As it was, he just aped whatever Brokaw said or did, grinning in that somewhat idiotic fashion he seemed to sport the few times I saw him on air.
Just because Russert grew up in a non-white collar family in Buffalo, and wrote a book about his father, people seem to feel he has some special claim on how 'America' feels.
Well, judging by his politics, he never represented my feelings. And I was not from a particularly wealthy or elite class, either.
Instead, rather than being raised in the type of blue state liberal household that blamed others for what we didn't have, I came from a Midwestern home where education and opportunity were seen as there for the taking, to do with what you would and could. Lack of performance was and is seen as a failure of the individual, not the system.
Thus, Russert's tear-jerking rise from humble origins was nothing special from where I hail.
It's not like he was, say, David Brinkley or Chet Huntley- real NBC news titans. Russert seemed to me to be just another one of those modern day, pale, third-generation talking-head descendants of the once-great, first television newsmen of the 1950s and '60s.
Perhaps that's why I find the sentiments over his death so misplaced.
I don't understand what all the hoopla is about.
Like his Irish Liberal Democratic media colleague in the NBC/Universal world, Chris Matthews, Russert apprenticed to a well-known Irish pol- Pat Moynihan.
But Russert is no Pat Moynihan, just like Matthews is no Tip O'Neill.
Being part of the ultra-liberal NBC family of media brands, Russert never got much viewership from me. I think the most I ever saw of him was with Tom Brokaw on the election night coverage of November, 2004.
What I saw turned my stomach so badly that I never bothered to view Russert for more than a few seconds of accidentally running across his Sunday morning interview show.
Every time that Brokaw, the prototypical NBC liberally-biased news anchor, would solemnly intone some liberal opinion about Kerry's evolving loss to President Bush, as if it were fact, Russert's jowly face would nod vigorously up and down like some big, live bobble-head.
If he were smaller, he could have sat on Brokaw's lap and looked like Charlie McCarthy. As it was, he just aped whatever Brokaw said or did, grinning in that somewhat idiotic fashion he seemed to sport the few times I saw him on air.
Just because Russert grew up in a non-white collar family in Buffalo, and wrote a book about his father, people seem to feel he has some special claim on how 'America' feels.
Well, judging by his politics, he never represented my feelings. And I was not from a particularly wealthy or elite class, either.
Instead, rather than being raised in the type of blue state liberal household that blamed others for what we didn't have, I came from a Midwestern home where education and opportunity were seen as there for the taking, to do with what you would and could. Lack of performance was and is seen as a failure of the individual, not the system.
Thus, Russert's tear-jerking rise from humble origins was nothing special from where I hail.
It's not like he was, say, David Brinkley or Chet Huntley- real NBC news titans. Russert seemed to me to be just another one of those modern day, pale, third-generation talking-head descendants of the once-great, first television newsmen of the 1950s and '60s.
Perhaps that's why I find the sentiments over his death so misplaced.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Liberal Energy Policy Lies
I was reading Outside magazine this weekend while on a train ride home from NYC. Being such a liberal rag, I don't find all that much of the monthly very appealing. I originally subscribed for the outdoor activity and adventure coverage, then for some of the physical conditioning articles.
However, this month's issue contained an article that really caught my eye.
Recently, as I discussed in this post, on my business blog, Boone Pickens extolled the potential of wind power in the American west. He estimated it could replace up to 20% of American electrical power generation by other fuel sources.
The Outside magazine piece alleged that number is 33% from North Dakota alone.
Now, when a capitalist like Pickens actually puts his money down on a project, I'm going to tend to believe his outlook more than a bunch of wild-eyed Geenies writing for Outside.
The difference is very important, because, by extension, the Outside piece, if accepted uncritically, sort of has you imagining that, gee whiz, maybe could replace all our electrical generating capacity with clean wind, instead of smelly, polluting coal and natural gas!
Not likely in the real world.
Then the Outside piece dismissively noted,
"Despite a few certifiably crackpot questions- for example,
'Didn't the eruption of Mount St. Helens spew more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than mankind has ever produced?' - everyone seems to be genuinely interested in finding the best solution."
While I doubt that the question's ultimately true answer is 'yes,' the question and the person who asked it raise a reasonable point.
Even the also-liberally-tilting History Channel has recently aired a few programs noting that mega-volcanoes which have reshaped our planet would simply wipe out nearly all human life if one occurred now or in the future.
So the point about volcanic eruptions is well-taken. Nature can actually quite easily offset anything man can try to do to influence the Earth's climate.
It's quite possible that a huge amount of the effects of converting human energy sources from petroleum-based to renewable could all be erased in one good blow of a volcano.
To ignore these realities seems to be a hallmark of the Green movement. Overstate, i.e., lie about, the benefits of the green movement's proposals, then catcall and discredit legitimate questions as to just how much control man really has over nature.
It seems liberals now do this all the time in the area of energy policy.
However, this month's issue contained an article that really caught my eye.
Recently, as I discussed in this post, on my business blog, Boone Pickens extolled the potential of wind power in the American west. He estimated it could replace up to 20% of American electrical power generation by other fuel sources.
The Outside magazine piece alleged that number is 33% from North Dakota alone.
Now, when a capitalist like Pickens actually puts his money down on a project, I'm going to tend to believe his outlook more than a bunch of wild-eyed Geenies writing for Outside.
The difference is very important, because, by extension, the Outside piece, if accepted uncritically, sort of has you imagining that, gee whiz, maybe could replace all our electrical generating capacity with clean wind, instead of smelly, polluting coal and natural gas!
Not likely in the real world.
Then the Outside piece dismissively noted,
"Despite a few certifiably crackpot questions- for example,
'Didn't the eruption of Mount St. Helens spew more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than mankind has ever produced?' - everyone seems to be genuinely interested in finding the best solution."
While I doubt that the question's ultimately true answer is 'yes,' the question and the person who asked it raise a reasonable point.
Even the also-liberally-tilting History Channel has recently aired a few programs noting that mega-volcanoes which have reshaped our planet would simply wipe out nearly all human life if one occurred now or in the future.
So the point about volcanic eruptions is well-taken. Nature can actually quite easily offset anything man can try to do to influence the Earth's climate.
It's quite possible that a huge amount of the effects of converting human energy sources from petroleum-based to renewable could all be erased in one good blow of a volcano.
To ignore these realities seems to be a hallmark of the Green movement. Overstate, i.e., lie about, the benefits of the green movement's proposals, then catcall and discredit legitimate questions as to just how much control man really has over nature.
It seems liberals now do this all the time in the area of energy policy.
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