Pictures worth well over 1,000 words…State Police estimate over 5,000!!!

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

You can get update information and background information from the Heritage Foundations original post.  The actual graph was produced by the Washington Post…and the liberals believe everything they publish…so it must be true…and Heritage helps back it up…love it!

Easter egg preparations at the Anuzis household are done.  We tried to make some look like these, but didn’t:)

Have a happy and blessed Easter!

The Atlantic Monthly has a sobering article about the financial crisis that is worth reading.  It’s a bit long, but it makes some very important observations and challenges some conventional thinking.

The IMF’s advice would be, essentially: scale up the standard Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation process. An FDIC “intervention” is basically a government-managed bankruptcy procedure for banks. It would allow the government to wipe out bank shareholders, replace failed management, clean up the balance sheets, and then sell the banks back to the private sector. The main advantage is immediate recognition of the problem so that it can be solved before it grows worse.

 

…Cleaning up the megabanks will be complex. And it will be expensive for the taxpayer; according to the latest IMF numbers, the cleanup of the banking system would probably cost close to $1.5 trillion (or 10 percent of our GDP) in the long term. But only decisive government action—exposing the full extent of the financial rot and restoring some set of banks to publicly verifiable health—can cure the financial sector as a whole.

This may seem like strong medicine. But in fact, while necessary, it is insufficient. The second problem the U.S. faces—the power of the oligarchy—is just as important as the immediate crisis of lending. And the advice from the IMF on this front would again be simple: break the oligarchy.

Oversize institutions disproportionately influence public policy; the major banks we have today draw much of their power from being too big to fail. Nationalization and re-privatization would not change that; while the replacement of the bank executives who got us into this crisis would be just and sensible, ultimately, the swapping-out of one set of powerful managers for another would change only the names of the oligarchs.

…The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump “cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.” This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression—because the world is now so much more interconnected and because the banking sector is now so big. We face a synchronized downturn in almost all countries, a weakening of confidence among individuals and firms, and major problems for government finances. If our leadership wakes up to the potential consequences, we may yet see dramatic action on the banking system and a breaking of the old elite. Let us hope it is not then too late.

 

The “New Source Review” regulation administered by the U.S. EPA and supported by many environmental groups is a sham.

Some of the more extreme environmentalist, are working to totally get the U.S. “off” from any use of carbon including coal.  These groups are being  intellectually dishonest when they insist that renewables can immediately replace coal which accounts for 50% of the electricity produced in the U.S. at prices that help to make our manufacturing sector cost competitive with foreign companies.  

Currently renewables minus hydro equal at most, about 4% of our needs and they are not reliable as a base load due to their dependence upon external factors such as wind and sun!  To ensure we have electricity when we turn on the light switch or maintain medical equipment, we need a base load that is reliable.  At this time, renewables do not afford that reliability.  Therefore, to advocate we can do away with coal is dishonest.   

Coal fired power plants have the ability to develop more efficient operations but are precluded from doing so because of the “New Source Review” regulation.  This requires any non maintenance improvement at a facility to make additional improvements which are prohibitive due to the high costs versus simply investing in the efficiency only upgrade.  This needs to be changed because the environment is missing out on some easy low hanging chances to reduce carbon emissions due to the rule which is considered sacrosanct to the “environmental” community.  

To gain a perspective of the scale of coal’s opportunity to contribute, consider this: if we were to improve the efficiency of the existing coal power-generation fleet by only one percentage point, that is to increase from 32% to 33% efficiency (which is well within the present technology’s capability to do), we would save more energy than we would gain by expanding existing wind generation capacity twelve fold! This increase in efficiency would also result in a 3% reduction in CO2 released from coal-powered generation for the same amount of power delivered.

Going further, if we aggressively improve efficiency by 4 or 5 percentage points, then emissions could fall by 25 MMmt 0, or about 13% of last year’s CO2 emissions from coal power (n.b. another example of why reducing carbon intensity is a worthwhile goal, but stymied by NSR problems).

Extrememist in the environmental movement don’t want incremental, practical change.  Chaos, controversy and excessive pollution helps their cause…and hurts our society and environment.  Their “politics” of extremism is bad for America and bad for the world we will leave behind to our children.

So when you hear them pitch their new “Cap & Trade” policies, the devil is in the details and for all practical purposed, Cap & Trade is designed to be one of the biggest tax hikes in America’s history.  If they really wanted to see carbon emissions reduced, there are practical alternatives available now!

You can see the whole report on the effects of reducing carbon emissions  here:  http://www.netl.doe.gov/energy-analyses/pubs/CFPP%20Efficiency-FINAL.pdf

In a very interesting and disturbing article in the American Spectator, Quin Hillyer writes:

Trying to handle the crisis, the Fascist government nationalized the holdings of large banks which had accrued significant industrial securities. The government also issued new securities to provide a source of credit for the banks and began enlisting the help of various cartels…. The government offered recognition and support to these organizations in exchange for promises that they would manipulate prices in accordance with government priorities. A number of mixed entities were formed… whose purpose it was to bring together representatives of the government and of the major businesses.… This economic model based on a partnership between government and business was soon extended to the political sphere, in what came to be known as corporatism.… The Fascists began to impose significant tariffs and other trade barriers.… Various banking and industrial companies were financially supported by the state.… [The national leader] created the [New Governmental Entity]….[which soon] controlled 20% of [the nation's] industry through government-linked companies.… [The national leader] also adopted a Keynesian policy of government spending on public works to stimulate the economy.… Public works spending tripled to overtake defense spending as the largest item of government expenditure.

As much as that description sounds like U.S. government policy begun under George W. Bush and now greatly expanding under Barack Obama, the above passage of course describes the economics of fascist Italy in the 1930s, as summed up by Wikipedia. (A quick Google search produces plenty of similar summaries of “economic fascism.”) Furthermore, “The Fascist conception of life,” Mussolini wrote, “stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. It is opposed to classical liberalism [which] denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual.”

…All of this economic intervention and government expansion, all of this use of collectivist language and collectivist goals, combined with the first big steps towards Obama’s goal of “a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the American military, is straight out of Mussolini’s playbook.

Then you combine it with the Obamanation of a growing, Il Duce-like cult of the leader. The stadium speeches in front of a Greek emperor’s columns. The permanent campaign, the deliberate ubiquity. The “public service” radio ads with the president himself urging national service upon us. The iconic imagery on campaign materials. The millennial language about his own election as the moment when seas stopped rising and Earth started healing and about the need to “save the planet.” The traveling abroad with an official entourage of 500 people (and a limo nicknamed “The Beast”). The fawning media. The simplistic slogans chanted over and over.

See the full article in at the American Spectator...economic fascism maybe where we are heading?

I Am A Tired American

PA Pundits International reports:

Putin: Obama an “Idiot” For Adopting Socialism

MOSCOW (SR) – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has warned the Obama administration against adopting further socialism, saying Russian history clearly proves it is a recipe for failure.

“Any fourth grade history student knows socialism has failed in every country, at every time in history,” said Putin. “President Obama and his fellow Democrats are either idiots or deliberately trying to destroy their own economy.”

Economists say Putin’s comments serve to illustrate how worldwide markets have made even economic adversaries dependent on each other’s financial stability.

An Obama spokesman dismissed Putin’s claim, saying, “We’re going to do socialism better.”

You can see the original post here…so close to the truth, it’s really not that funny?!?