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American Environmentalist
Environmentalism Without Government

February 28, 2011

Wind power: questionable benefits, concealed impacts

EPA trumpets dubious shale gas risks – but ignores environmental impacts of wind turbines

Paul Driessen

America is running out of natural gas. Prices will soar, making imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) and T Boone Pickens’ wind farm plan practical, affordable and inevitable. That was then.

Barely two years later, America (and the world) are tapping vast, previously undreamed-of energy riches – as drillers discover how to produce gas from shale, coal and tight sandstone formations, at reasonable cost. They do it by pumping a water, sand and proprietary chemical mixture into rocks under very high pressure, fracturing or “fracking” the formations, and keeping the cracks open, to yield trapped methane.

Within a year, US recoverable shale gas reserves alone rose from 340 trillion cubic feet to 823 tcf, the Energy Department estimates. That’s 36 years’ worth, based on what the USA currently consumes from all gas sources, or the equivalent of 74 years’ of current annual US oil production. The reserves span the continent, from Barnett shale in Texas to Marcellus shale in Eastern and Mid-Atlantic states – to large deposits in western Canada, Colorado, North Dakota, Montana and other states (and around the world).  

Instead of importing gas, the United States could become an exporter. The gas can move seamlessly into existing pipeline systems, to fuel homes, factories and electrical generators, serve as a petrochemical feedstock, and replace oil in many applications. States, private citizens and the federal government could reap billions in lease bonuses, rents, royalties and taxes. Millions of high-paying jobs could be “created or saved.” Plentiful gas can also provide essential backup power for wind turbines.

Production of this much gas would reduce oil price shocks and dependence on oil imports from the likes of Gadhafi and Chavez, while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Talk about a game changer!

What’s not to like? Plenty, it turns out. The bountiful new supplies make environmentalist dogmas passé: the end of the hydrocarbon era, America as an energy pauper, immutable Club of Rome doctrines of sustainability and imminent resource depletion, the Pickens’ Plan and forests of wind turbines.

What to do? Environmentalists voiced alarm. HBO aired “Gasland,” a slick propaganda film about alleged impacts of fracking on groundwater. Its claims have been roundly debunked(for instance, methane igniting at a water faucet came from a gas deposit encountered by the homeowner’s water well – not from a fracking operation). But a politically motivated Oscar is likely.

The Environmental Protection Agency revealed a multiple personality disorder. Its Drinking Water Protection Division director told Congress there is not a single documented instance of polluted groundwater due to fracking. (Studies by Colorado and Texas regulators drew the same conclusion.)

EPA’s Texas office nevertheless insisted that Range Resources was “endangering” a public aquifer and ordered the company to stop drilling immediately and provide clean water to area homes. EPA officials then failed to show up at the hearing or submit a single page of testimony, to support their claims.

Meanwhile, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced plans to conduct a “life-cycle” or “cradle-to-grave” study of hydraulic fracturing drilling and gas production techniques, to assess possible impacts on groundwater and other ecological values. Depending on whether the study is scientific or politicized, it could lead to national, state-by-state or even city-by-city drilling delays, bans – or booms.

The industry and many states that have long experience with drilling and are confident the needed regulations, practices and testing procedures are already in place. They voice few worries, except over how long a life-cycle study could take or how political it might become. In fact, it’s a very useful tool.

But if a life-cycle study is warranted for hydraulic fracturing, because drilling might pass through subsurface formations containing fresh water, similar studies are certainly called for elsewhere: wind turbine manufacturing, installation and operation, for instance.

Turbines require enormous quantities of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and rare earth minerals – all of which involve substantial resource extraction, refining, smelting, manufacturing and shipping. Land and habitat impacts, rock removal and pulverizing, solid waste disposal, burning fossil fuels, air and water pollution, and carbon dioxide emissions occur on large scales during every step of the process.

Over 95% of global rare earth production occurs in China and Mongolia, using their technology, coal-fired electricity generation facilities and environmental rules. Extracting neodymium, praseodymium and other rare earths for wind turbine magnets and rotors involves pumping acid down boreholes, to dissolve and retrieve the minerals. Other acids, chemicals and high heat further process the materials. Millions of tons of toxic waste are generated annually and sent to enormous ponds, rimmed by earthen dams.

Leaks, seepage and noxious air emissions have killed trees, grasses, crops and cattle, polluted lakes and streams, and given thousands of people respiratory and intestinal problems, osteoporosis and cancer.

In 2009, China produced 150,000 tons of rare earth metals – and over 15,000,000 tons of waste. To double current global installed wind capacity, and produce rare earths for photovoltaic solar panels and hybrid and electric cars, China will have to increase those totals significantly – unless Molycorp and other companies can rejuvenate rare earth production in the US and elsewhere, using more modern methods.

Made in China turbines are shipped to the USA, trucked to their final destinations, and installed on huge concrete platforms; new backup gas generating plants are built; and hundreds of miles of new transmission lines are constructed. That means still more steel, copper, concrete, fuel and land. Moreover, the backup power plants generate more pollution and carbon dioxide than if they could simply run at full capacity, because as backups for turbines they must operate constantly but ramp up to full power, and back down, numerous times daily, in response to shifting wind speeds.

Wind farms require roads and 700-1000 ton concrete-and-rebar foundations, which affect water drainage patterns in farm country. The 300-500 foot tall turbines affect scenery, interfere with or prevent crop dusting over hundreds of acres, and kill countless birds and bats. Farmers who lease their land for wind turbines receive substantial royalty payments; neighbors are impacted, but receive no compensation.

Despite these ecological costs, wind farm projects are often fast-tracked through NEPA and other environmental review processes, and are exempted from endangered species and migratory bird laws that can result in multi-million-dollar fines for oil, gas and coal operators, for a fraction of the carnage.

Perhaps worst, all this is supported generously by renewable energy mandates, tax breaks, feed-in tariffs, “prioritized loading orders,” and other subsidies, courtesy of state and federal governments and taxpayers. In fact, wind power gets 90 times more in federal subsidies than do coal and natural gas, per megawatt-hour of electricity actually generated, according to US Energy Information Administration data. And wind-based electricity costs consumers several times more per kilowatt-hour than far more reliable electricity from coal, gas and nuclear power plants.

Simply put, the wind might be free, when it blows. But the rest of the “renewable, green, eco-friendly” wind energy system is anything but.

It might be far better all around to simply build the most efficient, lowest-polluting coal, gas and nuclear generating plants possible, let them run at full capacity 24/7/365 – and just skip the wind power.

Life-cycle studies would be a positive development – for all energy sources. In fact …

“Think globally, act locally” might be a very good motto for EPA and wind energy advocates.  

____________

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.  

 

 

   February 20, 2011

 Environmentalist fraud and manslaughter

In the name of banning DDT, GEF bureaucrats are consigning millions to death from malaria

by Paul Driessen

 

Many chemotherapy drugs for treating cancer have highly unpleasant side effects – hair loss, vomiting, intense joint pain, liver damage and fetal defects, to name just a few. But anyone trying to ban the drugs would be tarred, feathered and run out of town. And rightly so.

The drugs’ benefits vastly outweigh their risks. They save lives. We need to use chemo drugs carefully, but we need to use them.

The same commonsense reasoning should apply to the Third World equivalent of chemotherapy drugs: DDT and other insecticides to combat malaria. Up to half a billion people are infected annually by this vicious disease, nearly a million die, countless survivors are left with permanent brain damage, and 90% of this carnage is in sub-Saharan Africa, the most impoverished region on Earth.

These chemicals don’t cure malaria – they prevent it. Used properly, they are effective, and safe. DDT is particularly important. Sprayed once or twice a year on the inside walls of homes, DDT keeps 80% of mosquitoes from entering, irritates those that do enter, so they leave without biting, and kills any that land. No other chemical, at any price, can do this.

Even better, DDT has few adverse side effects – except minor, speculative and imaginary “risks” that are trumpeted on anti-pesticide websites. In the interest of saving lives, one would think eco activists would tone down their “ban DDT” disinformation. However, that is unlikely.

Anti-DDT fanaticism built the environmental movement, and gave it funding, power and stature it never had before. No matter how many people get sick and die because health agencies are pressured not to use DDT, or it is totally banned, Environmental Defense, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Pesticide Action Network, and allied activist groups will never reform or recant.

Government agencies – including the US Environmental Protection Agency, National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, and Agency for Toxic Substances and Diseases Registry – will likewise continue pouring hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into anti-DDT research, in futile attempts to prove DDT causes some sort of meaningful harm. And the malaria death toll will continue to mount.

Worse, they have now been joined by the United Nations Environment Program, Global Environment Facility and even World Health Organization Environmental Division – all of whom share the avowed goal of ending all DDT production by 2017, and banning all use of DDT in disease control by 2020.

A recent GEF “study” demonstrates how far they are willing to go, to achieve this goal, no matter how deadly it might be. The study purported to prove DDT is no longer needed and can be replaced by “integrated and environment-friendly” alternatives: for example, mosquito-repelling trees, and non-chemical control of breeding sites and areas around homes that shelter insects. 

The $14-million study claimed that these interventions resulted in an unprecedented “63% reduction in the number of people with [malaria], without using DDT or any other type of pesticide.” However, as analyses by malaria and insecticide experts Richard Tren and Dr. Donald Roberts clearly demonstrate (see Research and Reports in Tropical Medicine and AEI Outlooks), the study, conclusions and policy recommendations are not merely wrong. They are deliberately misleading and fraudulent.

GEF did its 2003-2008 study in Mexico and seven Central American countries – all of which had largely ceased using DDT and other pesticides years before the GEF project. Instead of chemical sprays, these countries now employ huge numbers of chloroquine and primaquine (CQ and PQ) pills to prevent and treat malaria: 2,566 pills per diagnosed case in Mexico; 22,802 pills (!) in El Salvador; 50 to 1,319 pills per case in the other countries, according to 2004 health records.

It was these powerful drugs, not the “environment-friendly” GEF interventions, that slashed malaria rates. Indeed, they had begun to do so before GEF even arrived. This terribly inconvenient reality was further underscored by the fact that malaria rates were the same in “study” areas and “control” areas, where GEF did nothing – and that the number of malaria cases increased when the number of pills per case decreased. In other words, GEF could have gotten its same results using one bed net or one larvae-eating fish. 

GEF’s fraudulent claims were then compounded by its insistence that the results and conclusions are relevant to other malaria-endemic regions. They are not. Malaria parasites in Latin American countries are Plasmodium vivax; in Africa and Southeast Asia, they are the far more virulent P. falciparum.

CQ and PQ are effective in preventing and treating vivax; they rarely prevent or cure falciparum malaria. Moreover, the eight Latin American countries have 140 million people. Sub-Saharan Africa has 800 million and a woeful medical and transportation infrastructure; Southeast Asia has 600 million people. Both have infinitely more malaria. Getting adequate medicines that work (far more expensive Artemisia-based ACT drugs) to 1.4 billion people would be a budgetary, logistical and medical impossibility.

But apparently none of these facts occurred to the bureaucrats who did this study. That’s hardly surprising, since the project was designed and directed, not by disease control experts, but by the UNEP and radical environmental groups – which also spent millions distributing and promoting the study and other anti-DDT propaganda all over the world, ensuring that they received substantial media attention.

Anti-pesticide fanatics know this “study” is fraudulent. They just have a very high tolerance for how many malaria cases, brain-damaged people and dead babies are “acceptable” or “sustainable.” They just don’t care enough to bother learning basic facts about malaria, CQ versus ACT, vivax versus falciparum. They need to get out of the malaria control policy business and let medical professionals do their jobs.

(To learn more about stopping malaria, see Tren and Roberts’ book The Excellent Powder, Dr. Rutledge Taylor’s documentary film “3 Billion and Counting,” and the website for Africa Fighting Malaria.)

The final report claims its authors submitted manuscripts to prominent peer-reviewed medical journals. However, nothing was ever published. That suggests that they lied, and never submitted any manuscripts; or they did submit papers, but the manuscripts were rejected as being shoddy, unprofessional, unscientific, or even on par with Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent vaccine-and-autism work. 

To cap it all off, the bogus GEF project appears to have been conducted using funds diverted from already insufficient malaria control budgets. The GEF, UNEP, Stockholm Convention Secretariat and radical environmental groups are using money intended for malaria control to launch anti-pesticide programs in countries plagued by malaria, and gain control over public health policies, insecticides and programs.

Overall, the GEF has spent over $800 million on efforts to eliminate DDT and other “persistent organic pollutants” (POPs). It budgeted nearly $150 million in 2007 alone on its campaign to ban DDT production and use – but spent a lousy $22 million researching alternatives to DDT for vector control.

Until an equally effective and long-lasting substitute for DDT is developed – one that repels, irritates and kills mosquitoes – this vital weapon needs to remain in the disease control arsenal.

The GEF, UNEP, POPs Secretariat and WHO need to withdraw the study; discipline the people who perpetrated this fraud; retract World Health Assembly Resolution 50.13, calling for malaria-infested countries to slash their use of public health insecticides; and issue a statement making it absolutely clear that this “study” was erroneous and deceptive, and should not be considered in setting malaria policies.

Donors to the GEF and radical groups must be exposed. For activists and agencies to continue promoting this study or demand that malaria-endemic countries stop using DDT and insecticides, and adopt bogus “eco-friendly” GEF “solutions,” is gross medical malpractice – and deliberate manslaughter.

Malaria can be controlled, and even eradicated in many areas. We simply need to use every available weapon – including DDT, pesticides, nets, window screens, drugs and other interventions – in an orderly, coordinated and systematic manner; and ensure that mosquito infestations, disease outbreaks, malaria control successes and problems are monitored and evaluated accurately and honestly.

If we do that – and end the anti-pesticide hysteria – we can get the job done.

 

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death 

 

February 19, 2011

 

Democrats Flee Conflict in Wisconsin
The Ugly Face of the Unions Unmasked in Wisconsin
 

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
 
One of the truest of all truisms is -- when the chips are down it is then that you learn the metal of a man/woman.

In Wisconsin it could not be any clearer. When the “defecation hit the rotary oscillator,” all the democrats in that state’s legislature boarded buses -- and headed for parts unknown.

I rest my case!

What we clearly see here is a demonstration of the kind of courage the democrats bring to an issue. When the pitchforks and torches come out, they “get the hell out of Dodge!” (Actually – Wisconsin)

This is the kind of courage that lands our country in trouble time and time again when the Democratic Party is in power.

As of this moment, America is in serious trouble -- nationally and internationally.Our national leader is of the party, which, in Wisconsin, boarded buses and took off.

It would be funny were it not for the fact that this is serious business.

I am STILL not over the fright Obama threw into me -- and a huge number of Americans by his vacillating, “democrat two-step,” during the early stages of the ongoing Middle East fiasco. He clearly did not know what he was doing. He clearly did not know WHAT TO DO. He clearly did not have a plan of action for the US in the event the Mubarak government in Egypt fell, and he clearly has no idea what to do, even now.

Americans should note one important thing as they observe the furor and rage of the Unions in Wisconsin. Those are OBAMA’S PEOPLE! The Unions threw massive amounts of money and manpower into the election of Obama. It is important to know WHO those people in the streets really are.

I have news for the unions. They are not as powerful as they think they are. What is happening in Wisconsin now will have -- no -- has already had an effect on the American people as they have seen the unions with their façade down.

The more the unions riot, the less support they will have among the American people. And the better America will be as a result.

Another thing of note: The more money the unions spend on the sort of activity we are seeing in Wisconsin, the less they will have to insure their puppet is reelected in 2012. Now – THAT is a GOOD thing!

Come on, America! We all know Obama is a hand puppet for the unions in America.

There may have been a time in America’s past when labor unions were of some help to the working class in America, although you will have a difficult time trying to convince me. Even if that time did exist – it is long since past and today the labor unions are a burden on the workingman and workingwoman, and on the nation as a whole.

Incidents such as the ugly, ugly, demonstrations in Wisconsin simply show America why so many Americans object to labor unions -- and states like mine have “right to work laws.”

It also demonstrates, as clearly as one could possibly hope, the ties between the Democratic Party and the labor unions in America. Take a good look, America. Those rioting unions are the “big club” of the Democratic Party and they will use it to keep YOU in line if we do not purge them from our government.

In November of 2012 we will have another chance to finish the job we began last November. That is to cleanse the US Senate and the Oval Office and put some adults in charge of the government of the United States. It will also give us the opportunity to put the labor unions in their place, which, most definitely, is not in the Oval Office, nor any place in the US government.

Observe how the democrats left town while their muscle covered their backsides as they retreated. There is a huge lesson to be learned from all this ugliness in the streets of Wisconsin. What we are seeing is the left at work.

No matter how the problems with the Wisconsin state budget are finally settled, union members are going to lose. Jobs WILL be lost. When the money is gone it is, well, GONE.

There will be other states in the near future, which will face the same sort of problem as Wisconsin. If the union rioting spreads to other states, look for the taxpayers to take another look, a favorable look this time, at the possibility of states filing bankruptcy. Seems to me that is where this is ultimately headed, anyway.

No. The unions aren’t doing themselves any good, at all, by the actions they are taking in Wisconsin. If anything, in the long run, they are doing damage to themselves that will require decades just for minimal recovery.

So – take a long, hard, look at the “demonstrating” unions in Wisconsin and ask yourself if that is what you want in your state. Because, more than likely, it is coming to your state, and like Wisconsin, it won’t be pretty.
 
J. D. Longstreet 

 

February 13, 2011

Multicultural Suicide, by Alan Caruba

By Alan Caruba

In his famed poem, Mending Wall, the American poet, Robert Frost chided the rock wall that he and his neighbor would mend each spring, replacing fallen rocks. “He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

You can see the Great Wall of China from outer space. It is an astonishing piece of work

Begun in the fifth century B.C. and added to by later dynasties, it succeeded in defending China from invasions by northern tribes. In 1600, it helped the Ming dynasty defend against the Manchu, but when the gates at Shanhaiguan were opened in 1644 by a dissident Ming border general, the Manchus quickly seized Beijing and that was the end of the Ming dynasty.

There has been a growing call for a wall on the U.S. southern border with Mexico. Given the way Mexico has fallen into a state of barbaric anarchy by warring narcotics gangs, including increasing murders of Americans foolish enough to go there, it is a very good idea.

There are currently an estimated twelve million Mexicans and “other” illegal aliens residing in the United States, enjoying many benefits. Instead of aggressively dealing with the problem, the government under several administrations and the current one has opted to offer “amnesty” and grant them a citizenship they have not earned and do not deserve in the context of our laws.

The only thing these amnesties managed to accomplish was to encourage more millions of illegal aliens to cross our borders, to stay on beyond their visas, and to otherwise flout our immigration laws. They are not “undocumented”. They are criminals.

Naturally, when British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently gave speeches or expressed their opposition to “multiculturalism”, it made news when it turned out they were appalled by the failure of this idiotic concept. Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, had already expressed that opinion.

There was a time when someone was proudly British, French or German. Today, their distinctive cultures are being hollowed out by waves of immigrants who have no desire to assimilate or adopt the values of their new homelands.

All of which raises the question of why, here in America, you have to “press one” to conduct a conversation in English, Islamic foot baths have been installed in the Kansas City airport, why ‘Islamic immersion’ classes have been inflicted on children in a California school district, there was a demand an Arabic public school in New York and a mosque within sight of Ground Zero, and why government documents are often printed in foreign languages.

The victory over Europe that the Muslims could not achieve by invasion and which ended with the defeat of a Muslim army outside of Vienna on September 11, 1683, has been achieved by a constant flow of immigrants from the Middle East and northern Africa as Europe opened its doors because their indigenous populations failed to reproduce in enough numbers to maintain their economies.

It is a principle of demographics that, as a nation becomes more prosperous its population tends to replace itself more slowly. Birthrates in America across the racial spectrum are in decline, reflecting those in Europe By contrast, places like China and India are where you find a billion or more people.

In 2008 Los Angeles County, population 10.2 million, was where 42% of workers were paid cash and did not pay taxes; 90% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; more than two-thirds of all births were to illegal aliens; nearly 40% of all inmates in California were Mexican nationals who were there illegally; and, nationally, while less than 2% of illegal aliens were picking crops, 37% were on welfare.

These and a mountain of other statistics testify to the failure of the American government to enforce its immigration laws and deter an army of illegal immigrants from invading the nation.

The argument will be raised that America is “a nation of immigrants”, but that was then and this is now. The earlier flow of immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Germany and Russia were needed in the 1800s to provide workers for the nation’s industrial base and as farmers for its expanding land mass. And they were white and Christian.
 

The importation of Afro-Americans as slaves, starting early in America’s history, led to the Civil War, followed by the horrid “Jim Crow” era until the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. These days they are minority population smaller than Hispanics and, thanks to a variety of liberal welfare programs, are too often a dysfunctional element of American society." 

England, France and Germany’s leaders have finally begun to speak out about and against it. It may be too late. America refuses to even acknowledge it.

 

 

February 12, 2011

THERE CAN BE NO JUSTICE WITHOUT FORGIVENESS. By Jim Poesl

One repeating theme of the President’s and other so called “progressives” is the need for “justice”.   Once an oppressed person  is “free” then any action is okay to achieve this “justice” (and justice is never defined).  In their pursuit of justice they are able to justify:

  • Outrageous reparations for things that happened more than 7 generations ago.
  • A transfer of wealth, which does not lead to sustainable success, or the overall betterment of a class of people, but its leaders are better off.
  • Government bureaucracies that deliberately do not solve problems, but perpetuate them to guarantee government jobs and contracts.
  • Public Health policies that do not respect human life or dignity.

The President’s speech this week  on the Military Coup in Egypt talks about justice, and as and as usual, he never define terms, so your definition is projected onto him (that was his 2004 and 2008 campaign strategy).  But without the population, forgiving 30 years of oppression, conditions will never improve.  Let me be clear this is not a defense of the old regime; they should be prosecuted if any laws were broken.  The first priority should be FORGIVENESS by the population, and then build a prosperous future.

We risk another Lebanese situation where “peaceful” Muslim extremists trick peaceful left-wing leaning people, then build a political coalition that leads to a civil war  (see Brigitte Gabriel Act For America!, ).

In most people’s life, mine included, lack of Forgiveness prevents people from moving on and prevents success.  EGYPT FORGIVE...AMERICA BE VIGILANT. 

 

GOP Still Short a Viable Presidential Contender for 2012, J.D. Longstreet

The Conservative Political Action Conference is in the midst of their three-day meeting in Washington and would-be Republican presidential contenders have been parading in and out the meeting(s).

From the reports I have read those attending have been sort of dipping their toe into the conservative waters checking the temperature and the current of the water, and then -- nervously counting their toes.

To date there has not been a single republican to officially announce he/she is entering the race for the Oval Office.  Not one.

According to various polls there is not even a front-runner among those who are thought to be serious contenders -- even though they are holding back any announcement to that effect.

Out here in the swamps of the southern hinterlands we are overly fond of any of the lot who are “not yet running.”

Donald Trump?  Give me a break, already!

Romney has about as good a chance as did McCain.

Allow me to dust off my crystal ball and reach deep inside, with my razor sharp mental powers, of course, and prognosticate the republican presidential ticket for 2012.

Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann. There.  Feel better?  Can’t say that I do, either.

I have to admit to a certain degree of concern, worry even, that conservatives may have bought into the theory that Obama is so badly liked by voters that he has already secured his place in US history as a one-term president.  I don’t buy that.  And I think anyone who does … is making a huge mistake.

Look.  This is the Democratic Party we are talking about here. Never, ever, sell them short when it comes to elections.  They will pull out all the stops and they will do whatever it takes to win.  Republicans, especially conservative republicans cannot hold a candle to them when it comes to electioneering. Heck, they have been working on Obama’s second term since the Wednesday morning after the election in November of 2008.  They have been working at the state levels, especially the office of the various Secretaries of State through out the nation.  They have been laying a foundation for as much control of elections at the state level as they possibly can.  That is where elections are won and lost.  Think not?  Remember Florida???

Conservative enthusiasm was heightened when Obama supporters stayed away from the polls in November of 2010.  There was a good reason why they stayed away.  Obama was not on the ticket.  In 2012, he will be – and they will be back with the smashing energy of a tidal wave.

Understanding the Democratic Party is akin to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphics – with a Brooklyn accent. It is darned near impossible.  It is an amalgamation of every sort of leftists special interest group in the United States.  Heck, there is even a democratic wing of the Democratic Party, small though it is, shoved into a darkened corner by the socialists, the progressives, and a host of  “single issue” misfits, as well and those “undocumented democrats” we sometimes refer to as illegal aliens.  And we must include the vast majority of the mainstream media in the US who controls so many of the gateways to information the voters need to make informed decisions.

With such an, er, eclectic crowd as that, how is it possible to underestimate their ability to snatch an election even while under the intense gaze of an entire nation? 

The plain truth is – conservatives are just not very good at lying, cheating, stealing, being creative in matriculating ballots.

In my years of covering elections at the local levels, I have seen things you would not believe.  I have sat in rooms with personnel from the US Justice Department, guns strapped to their hips and recorders in hand overseeing recounts and checking election records.  I have witness ballot swapping.  I had seen entire ballot boxes disappear only to be “found” days later in someone’s barn -- way out in the boon docks. And that just scratches the surface. 

The point is, the Democratic parry is deadly in earnest when it comes to winning an election and whatever it takes is not just a motto, it is a plan of action.

Obama will, in all likelihood, be re-elected as President in 2012.  

Why do I say that? 

Because it has been my observation that the GOP is not willing to get down in the gutter and wallow in the political mud and mire and sewage where the Democratic Party reigns.

Politics is distasteful to most conservatives.  It makes them feel dirty.  It makes them want to take a shower to get the stink off. And they don’t like compromising their decency to win an election.  The Democratic Party has demonstrated time and again that they have no such problem.

The GOP has a serious problem finding a Presidential candidate, who can stand up to the vicious, take no prisoners attack, sure to come from the leftists.

With that in mind, I predict the dirtiest, most vicious, presidential campaign in history between now and November of 2012.

Strap in.  The ride is going to be extremely rough. 

 

Happy Birthday Ronald Reagan  February 6, 2011.  Jim Poesl

This past week I was asked what my Reagan Memory was.   

My favorite speech was his First Inaugural Speech.  “Those who say that we are in a time when there are no heroes just don't know where to look……I have used the words "they" and "their" in speaking of these heroes. I could say "you" and "your" because I am addressing the heroes of whom I speak—you, the citizens of this blessed land. Your dreams, your hopes, your goals are going to be the dreams, the hopes, and the goals of this administration, so help me God.” 

Why do I remember those words?  The 5th teachers in Ross Street School in Woodbridge brought in TV’s so the children could watch the inauguration.  This was the part of the speech that I came in on, and it resonated with me, and our homework assignment was writing about what we saw at the inauguration.  I always hope that I am deserving of being called one of the heroes President Reagan spoke about.