Recently, Beverly Perdue, Democratic governor of North Carolina, said this:
“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make.”
She now says she was joking. Listen and you decide:
Really?
America’s changing, and not just Friday’s credit downgrade. President Obama is now the only President to reside over a lowered credit rating. That’s a legacy.
It’s the face of America I’m interested in here. Look at these statistics from Pew Research:
I could draw conclusions, but that’s not what this post is about. I’ll let you read the data and make up your own mind.
67% Oppose Upcoming ‘Ban’ on Traditional Light Bulbs. One-in-five Americans (20%) say they or someone they know has bought large quantities of traditional light bulbs to use when those bulbs disappear off store shelves next year under new federal light bulb regulations, according to a Rasmussen poll.
I don’t usually comment on religion, but this is priceless. If you’re agnostic or atheist, you may appreciate these even more than us religious folk:
I found this through fellow Scribdner, Irma. This luxury yacht is 58 meters long and 38 meters wide, 3400 square meters (36600 sq.feet) with 900 square meters (9700 sq. feet) of solar panels. Do we applaud Mukesh Ambani for his green-ness or throw up over what Thorsten Veblen calls ‘conspicuous consumption’?
Your call. What do you think?
I love our planet. Personally, regardless the politics, I want to see it thrive under man’s stewardship. We can be curmudgeonly and self-centered, but every once in a while, we humans figure out how to do what’s right for our beloved homeland.
In this case, I’m talking about the atmosphere. Much debate centered around how to protect it, with Dems and Republicans drawing their lines in the sand. In the end, the free market did its job. No government controls (though I’m not
libertarian, I respect their sentiments). Just good old Yankee capitalism:
US HAS CUT EMISSIONS…WITHOUT CAP AND TRADE
While the federal Environmental Protection Administration is about to impose regulations and taxes on carbon emissions by executive fiat – in the name of stopping global climate change – the United States has already dramatically cut its emissions and probably has already complied with the Kyoto/Copenhagen goals for reduced emissions. And this has been done without taxes, without regulations, and without government intervention.
Source 1996 2009Coal 52% 45%
Natural Gas 13% 23%
Nuclear 20% 20%
Renewable 2% 4%Source: US Energy Information AdministrationThe free market, free enterprise system has responded to persuasion and incentives like it does in free societies without the heavy hand of taxation, government regulation, and coercion.These data expose the basic truth: Cap and trade or carbon regulation is not necessary to lower U.S. emissions. The government bureaucratic/environmentalist alliance want these measures to increase public control over our economy, not to fight global warming. Just as the Obama stimulus package was designed to increase public spending, not to stimulate anything, so the environmental regulations are exploiting public concern over climate change to ratify a growth in government power and oversight.And that’s the inconvenient truth!
| In 2007, the U.S. emitted 6.12 billion metric tons of carbon. In 2008, emissions fell to 5.92. In 2009, while Obama was promising that the U.S. would cut its emissions to 5.0 by 2015, the American economy and public – on their own – cut the emissions to 5.5 billion. Most likely, by the time the 2010 measurements are in, we will have reached the Obama goal.While many attribute cut to the recession which, presumably, will end sometime, the fact is that emissions dropped before the recession hit and have continued to fall. A big part of the reason is the reduction in the use of coal to generate electricity.
As we explain in our new book Revolt! (to be released on March 1), coal accounted for 52% of electric generation in 1996 but only for 45% today. In the past twelve months, coal’s share has dropped form 49% to 45%. Natural gas has almost doubled its share from 13% in 1996 to 23% in 2009 while renewables have risen from 2% to 4%. |
Here’s a disheartening story I read from Education Week:
American students’ science performance climbed to the average for leading industrialized nations, while their mathematics performance remained below the average, despite gains in that subject from the last round of testing in 2006, based on results released today from a prominent international assessment.
In reading, meanwhile, U.S. performance was roughly flat compared with earlier testing cycles, with 15-year-olds staying at about the average for the 34 nations that are part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Continue reading ‘US Finally Reaches… Average. Ho Hum’
The New Oxford American Dictionary has named “refudiate” as the Word of the Year, defining it as a “verb used loosely to mean ‘reject:’”
An unquestionable buzzmaker in 2010, the word refudiate instantly evokes the name of Sarah Palin, who tweeted her way into a flurry of media activity when she used the word in certain statements posted on Twitter. Critics pounced on Palin, lampooning what they saw as nonsensical vocabulary and speculating on whether she meant “refute” or “repudiate.”
Fascinating analysis by Pew Research of the huge number of people who won’t be voting on Tuesday. Is this you?
Understandably, most of the attention in this fall’s elections has been on likely voters, not on those unlikely to cast a ballot.
Almost certainly, however, there will be far more nonvoters1 than voters this year.
Turnout in midterm elections typically is less than 40% of the voting age population (in 2006 it was 37%), and there is no reason to expect that it will be dramatically higher in 2010.
Who are these likely nonvoters who constitute a majority of the American public this year?
Based on an analysis of a September national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, nonvoters are younger, less educated and more financially stressed than likely voters.2
Nonvoters are significantly less Republican in their party affiliation than are likely voters, and more supportive of an activist federal government.3
Despite their more difficult economic circumstances, nonvoters express greater satisfaction with national conditions than do likely voters, and are more likely to approve of Barack Obama’s job performance.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% of Adults believe America today has become too politically correct, while just 23% say the country is not politically correct enough. Eleven percent (11%) say the balance is about right.
What do you think? Me, when they start removing the American flag from a veteran’s monument over some PC issue–yeah, we’ve gone too far.
A democracy depends upon its people to be informed about the issues, willing to seek out answers and participate in the process of government, of elections. According to Rasmussen Reports, 67% say they are better informed than ten years ago.
A recent Pew Research Center survey asked 742 U.S. adults whether the use of torture against suspected terrorists can be justified.
The overall results (leaving out the popular rarely justified category to keep this simple. Full results here.):
Here’s more detail: Continue reading ‘Sunday Statistics: Is Torture Justified’
Thanks Greenethumb for this analysis
I’ll let you draw your own conclusion:
NASA’s top priority now isn’t science, rather improving relations with Muslims? Then who’s job is it to get us into space?
Read this and tell me if you see it differently.
Published July 05, 2010
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his “foremost” mission as the head of America’s space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.
Though international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA’s orbit, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel.
“When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering,” Bolden said in the interview.
The NASA administrator was in the Middle East last month marking the one-year anniversary since Obama delivered an address to Muslim nations in Cairo. Bolden spoke in June at the American University in Cairo — in his interview with Al Jazeera, he described space travel as an international collaboration of which Muslim nations must be a part.
“It is a matter of trying to reach out and get the best of all worlds, if you will, and there is much to be gained by drawing in the contributions that are possible from the Muslim (nations),” he said. He held up the International Space Station as a model, praising the contributions there from the Russians and the Chinese.
However, Bolden denied the suggestion that he was on a diplomatic mission — in a distinctly non-diplomatic role.
“Not at all. It’s not a diplomatic anything,” he said.
He said the United States is not going to travel beyond low-Earth orbit on its own and that no country is going to make it to Mars without international help.
Bolden has faced criticism this year for overseeing the cancellation of the agency’s Constellation program, which was building new rockets and spaceships capable of returning astronauts to the moon. Stressing the importance of international cooperation in future missions, Bolden told Al Jazeera that the moon, Mars and asteroids are still planned destinations for NASA.
In July, Arizona will begin enforcing a new law that requires law enforcement officers to check someone’s immigration status if they have reason to suspect that he or she is in the country illegally. Do you think this is a good idea?
Hold on. MSNBC misrepresented what the law says. I know because I read SB 1070 (which is colloquially called the Arizona Immigration Law). Here’s what it should have posted: Continue reading ‘Sunday Stats: MSNBC Poll on Arizona’s Immigration Law’
63% Consider Fourth of July One of Nation’s Most Important Holidays.
And only 21% of voters nationwide believe that the federal government now enjoys the consent of the governed.
According to a Louisiana District Court ruling, the Administration can’t prove that whatever caused the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is likely to cause another. The ruling handed down June 22, 2010 contends that the fact that one oil well collapsed doesn’t mean others will, as much as the fact that Toyota’s brakes failed doesn’t mean we must now recall Fords and Chevys (I know–I’m supposed to call them Chevrolets, but I’m too ornery).
How do I know this? I didn’t read news reports from MSM or the Other guys. Instead, I went to the primary source–I read the the court ruling that overturned the Admin ban on all offshore drilling over 500 feet. President Obama wanted time to figure out what caused BP’s problems. The court said, do it without shutting down other drilling.
The reasons the court cited are: Continue reading ‘Did the Administration Act ‘Arbitrarily and Capriciously’?’
SB 1070, the Arizona effort to control the tsunami of illegals that threaten to upend their state, has become a lightening rod to factions within our country. Congress gave the President of Mexico a standing ovation when he condemned it (and by proxy, the nation), even though polls show a majority of Americans agree with controlling illegal immigration (up to 75% on the last one I read) Continue reading ‘SB 1070 Treats Illegal Aliens Almost Like Citizens’
Most anti-Arizona Immigration Law pundits say something like this:
Now that Arizona has toughened illegal immigration laws, will the border crossings stop? Not until we look at the business end of immigration… If you seriously want to stop illegal border crossing, you have to hit where it hurts: the wallet. There are two reasons that Americans let illegals cross over in the first place: we don’t want to spend $25 on tomatoes, and we don’t want to get caught growing our own pot or making our own drug factories because that’s illegal and highly enforced. Continue reading ‘Take a Stand or Shut Up (and sing)’
There’s a lot of emotion swirling around the new Arizona immigration law. Arizona feels a desperate need (made critical when illegals killed a popular rancher on his own property and shot then left for dead a law enforcement officer) to protect their borders. The Feds have a law but they’re not enforcing it, so Arizona has stepped up to the plate and agreed to use state resources to enforce the Federal law. Continue reading ‘The Devil is in the Details: The Arizona Immigration Law’
Fact and Fiction about Early Man
