By Deborah Durkee on 12/30/2008 6:43 AM

McConnell: What’s in the stimulus bill?

 

Pelosi and the Dems want a stimulus package ready even before Obama takes his oath of office. McConnell says, not so fast:

 

Congressional Republicans on Monday said they would work with Democrats to craft a plan to stimulate the economy, but only if GOP ideas are considered for a bill that could cost as much as $1 trillion.

 

"We need the right mix of tax relief and other measures to grow the economy," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a statement.

 

The Democrats' plan to pass a yet-unwritten stimulus bill before President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration next month gives Congress too little time to consider what's in it, he said.

 

"Taxpayers are in no mood to have a single dollar wasted, but it's not yet been explained how their tax dollars will be protected...in a rush to spend their money," McConnell added. Snip –

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By Deborah Durkee on 12/29/2008 9:44 AM

2008: The year global warming was disproved.

 

From Christopher Booker in the U.K. Telegraph:

 

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada...

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By Deborah Durkee on 12/27/2008 9:38 AM

More problems with “green” energy.

 

Thomas Lifson of www.americanthinker.com lists some of the problems with so-called “green” energy chronicled in (of all places) the New York Times:

 

...in regions where homeowners have long rolled their eyes at shoveling driveways, add another cold-weather chore: cleaning off the solar panels. "At least I can get to them with a long pole and a squeegee," said Alan Stankevitz, a homeowner in southeast Minnesota.

 

So after a big snowstorm, your electricity supply is reduced or terminated, if you are depending on solar. Be careful when washing those panels - wouldn't want to damage them. They're expensive

 

In January 2007, a bus stalled in the middle of the night on Interstate 70 in the Colorado mountains. The culprit was a 20 percent biodiesel...

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By Ted on 12/26/2008 8:05 PM

Chief Justice Robers has identified the pay of federal judges as an emerging crisis – stating that low pay is failing to keep them on the job and hinders our ability to lure talented lawyers from private practice to the federal bench. 

Committees in the House and Senate this year voted nearly 30 percent salary hikes for federal judges, but neither house of Congress acted on the measure. 

Judges last received a substantial pay raise in 1991, although they have been given increases designed to keep pace with inflation in most years since then. 

For 2009, though, judges are alone among federal workers -- members of Congress included -- in not getting a cost-of-living adjustment. Lawmakers get their COLA (cost-of-living allowance) automatically -- $4,700 for 2009 -- but they refused to authorize the same 2.8 percent bump for judges. 

Federal trial judges are paid $169,300 a year, have lifetime job security and can retire at full salary at age 65 if they have 15 years in the job.

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By Deborah Durkee on 12/26/2008 9:28 AM

Merry Jewish Christmas.

 

Robert Stacy McCain points out an interesting irony in the current war on Christmas. Many popular Christmas songs were written by Jews:

 

My friend Marty Beckerman calls attention to an ironic skirmish in the "War on Christmas":

 

"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" caused a stir at a New Hanover County school. A parent complained about the song's religious reference and got it pulled from her child's kindergarten Christmas show at Murrayville Elementary School. The song was pulled "because it had the word Christmas in it," said Rick Holliday, assistant school superintendent. A Jewish mother, who didn't want her name published, objected to what she called "religious overtones" in the song....

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By Ted on 12/25/2008 10:34 PM

 As we end the year 2008 and ponder what 2009 will be like, we must look for the good things on the horizen.  One of the things that seems to do well when the economy is down is the bewing and consumption of good libations.  I am projecting this as one of the projected highlights of 2009.   Here's to 09!

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/food-and-drink/guinness-to-brew-anniversary-stout-to-mark-250th-birthday-14120472.html

By Ted on 12/24/2008 7:33 PM

 

A Phil Huff response to the initial "Global Warming 2009, The Joke Continues!"

Let me make some comments on this Global Warming Scam and the ten things we can do to improve our environment.



1.      Forego Fossil Fuels – This is just plain LUNACY.

 

When I was a teenager in high school taking chemistry the instructor made a statement that “We are on the carbon – oxygen – carbon dioxide cycle. And this is written as follows:

 

C + O2 = CO2

 

All of you who have taken chemistry will recognize that this is a chemical equation much like an algebraic equation. The laws of the conservation of matter require that if you alter one side of the equation you also alter the other side of the equation at the same time. To my knowledge this equation has not been found to be invalid.

 

So what...

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By Deborah Durkee on 12/24/2008 8:07 AM

Military prepares for domestic disturbances.

 

I found this report somewhat disturbing. From www.newsmax.com:

 

A new report from the U.S. Army War College discusses the use of American troops to quell civil unrest brought about by a worsening economic crisis.

 

The report from the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute warns that the U.S. military must prepare for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” that could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.”

 

Entitled “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development,” the report was produced by Nathan Freier, a recently retired Army lieutenant colonel who is a professor at the college — the Army’s main training institute...

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By Ted on 12/23/2008 6:10 PM

As we prepare to go into 2009 the global waming retoric is about to heat up.  The world's governments are beginning to negotiate an international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that will succeed the much-debated Kyoto Protocol.  So as we prepare to get another hosing from a bunch of self serving political hacks, I thought you might want to see some of the crap thats hitting the wall as undisputed facts that will drive their decision making.

Check out the top 10 places where global warming is already impacting us:  http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=top-10-places-already-affected-by-climate-change .  Tell us your favorite!

So, now that we know what the facts are and how we are being impacted by global warming I am sure our leadership will not...

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By Deborah Durkee on 12/23/2008 12:08 PM

Washington is killing Silicon Valley.

 

This sounds like another Atlas shrugging story to me. From Michael S. Malone in The Wall Street Journal:

 

For more than 30 years the entrepreneurship-venture capital-IPO cycle centered in Silicon Valley has generated new wealth, commercialized innovation, and created new companies and industries. It's also spun off millions of new jobs. The great companies created by this process -- Intel, Apple, Google, eBay, Microsoft, Cisco, to name just a few -- have propelled most of the growth in the U.S. economy in the last two decades. And what began as a process almost exclusively available to scientists and engineering Ph.D.s became open to just about anyone with a good business plan and a healthy dose of entrepreneurial drive.

 

At its best, the cycle is self-perpetuating. Entrepreneurs come up with...

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