….Soon after Shadid’s kick-off rally on August 15th, The McCarville Report published an in-depth examination of the rally, calling it “perhaps the most left-of-center political event in Oklahoma City mayoral history.”
Since that time, Shadid has continued the pattern.
On September 1st, an Oklahoma atheist leader who describes himself on Twitter as the co-host of the “Oklahoma Atheists Godcast” revealed that Shadid is actively and personally courting the atheist vote.
[….]
And this past weekend, Shadid Tweeted a photo of himself with a group of children wearing t-shirts that said “penis” or “vagina”.
Says one longtime Oklahoma politico of Shadid’s campaign so far, “It’s as if Shadid thinks he’s running for mayor of Berkeley. Promoting himself as the candidate for atheists and advocating property tax increases are things that I would normally consider political suicide. I have never seen a supposedly credible candidate break so many rules of Oklahoma politics.”….
Now if only Shadid would stop talking about how he wants to raise property taxes and taking pictures with children wearing shirts with the words “Penis” and “Vagina” on them, he might have a better chance of winning this thing.
(CNSNews.com)– To fund a solar power system for his alpaca farm, an Alabama farmer combined a $40,648 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant, federal tax credits, and a $142,500 federally funded loan with a 1-percent interest rate.Cozy Cove Alpaca and Llama Farm in Gurley, Alabama is now generating its own power and is selling the excess electricity at above-market prices to a corporation owned by the U.S. government.
Alpaca farm owner Tony O’Neil received a USDA “Rural Energy for America Program” grant of $40,648 as part of his effort to install a solar power system to generate electricity for his farm. Cozy Cove is now generating its own power and selling the excess power to the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is owned by the federal government.
“The TVA had a program going,” O’Neil tells CNSNews.com. “There’s an incentive if you put solar panels on your farm or on your house, they would buy all the power from you for 12 cents (per kilowatt hour) above the normal rate that you pay.”
“In our case, that equates to about 22 cents a kilowatt hour, as we would pay about roughly 10 cents a kilowatt hour for power. So, they would agree to purchase the power for 10 years at 22 cents,” O’Neil says, “Then it was explained to me that you get a 30 percent federal income tax rebate as part of the incentive to go solar.”
O’Neil also received a 1-percent interest rate loan of $142,500 using funds from the AlabamaSAVES program for his solar project.
The AlabamaSAVES website says, “The program, funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, provides extraordinary financing solutions for commercial and industrial energy-efficiency and renewable-energy projects in Alabama and is administered by Abundant Power Solutions, LLC.”
O’Neil expects to earn about $15,000 per year by selling his electricity to the TVA.
“It’s roughly going to be $15,000. So far, since it’s been in operation about six months now, it’s generated about $8,000. Of course, it’s been the longest days of the year. As it’s towards the winter time, it’s going to get less and less, hopefully it will all turn out to be close to $15,000 per year.”
Six tropical systems have formed in the Atlantic since the season began June 1 and none of them has grown to hurricane strength with winds of at least 74 miles (120 kilometers) per hour. Accumulated cyclone energy in the Atlantic, a measure of tropical power, is about 30 percent of where it normally would be, said Phil Klotzbach, lead author of Colorado State University’s seasonal hurricane forecasts.
“At this point, I doubt that a super-active hurricane season will happen,” Klotzbach said in an e-mail yesterday.
Al Gore was recently taken to task for exaggerating claims involving the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. The latest weather news makes his misrepresentations look all the more ridiculous.
For the first time since 2002, this year there will be no hurricane activity before September 1.
Reports indicate this is only the 25th time in 161 years that has happened.
The first hurricane of the season has formed on or after September 1 only 25 times in the past 161 years. Since the satellite era began in the mid-1960s, there have only been five years without a hurricane by August 31. The last time a hurricane failed to form before September 1 was in 2002 when Hurricane Gustav formed on September 11.
It would be foolish to make fun of anything involving such potentially dangerous storms and it’s also possible we could still see many late developing storms. However, given all the misleading information passed off on the topic by Gore, his allies and a fawning media, hopefully any lack of serious storm activity won’t be buried by the media for political reasons.
Remember the physical assault of the female mine-worker? Well, Gogebic Taconite Company was forced to hire armed guards to secure their drill site from far left eco-terrorists. Guns and masks are now the new norm… Obama must be proud. I bet no death threats whatsoever were communicated to the mine company — yeah right!
An alleged member of a radical environmental group connected to a series of arsons and other crimes has been arrested for putting spikes in trees to destroy logging equipment.
Frank B. Ambrose, 26, is accused of driving 10-inch spikes into trees last June in an area of the Morgan-Monroe State Forest slated for logging.
Authorities believe Ambrose is affiliated with the Earth Liberation Front, a loosely knit group that claimed responsibility for spiking the trees.
A conservative think tank had to have their yearly meeting in an undisclosed place due to threats of violence, Michael Steele had Oreo cookies thrown at him, conservative speakers like Ann Coulter need body guards when going on to a campus when speaking (the reverse is not true of liberal speakers), eco-fascists (like the above) put nails in trees so when lumber jacks cut through them they are maimed, from rapes and deaths and blatantly anti-Semitic/anti-American statements and threats made at occupy movements, we are seeing Obama’s America… divided, more violent, forcing Christians to photograph, make cakes for, and put flower arrangements together for same-sex marriage ceremonies… to pro-choice opponents with jars of feces and urine taken from them after chanting “hail Satan” and “fuck the church,” a perfect storm is being created for a real culture war… all with thanks to people who laugh at terms like “eco-fascists” and “leftist thugs.” The irony is that these coal unions asked their members to vote for Obama. Well, the chickens have come home to roost.
I am reading a great review of a book on my reading list in the Journal of Creation, Volume 27, Issue 1 (Published April 2013) entitled, “Metaphors for mankind? A review of Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism, by Robert Zubrin” ~ Book Review by Marc Ambler. I loved the review, and it is right up my “religio-political alley. Here is an excerpt (pp. 27-29) that I found fascinating and will undoubtedly add to the general knowledge of the reader:
From Darwin to Dachau
Eugenics and belief in racial supremacy eventually led to the horrors of Nazism on the European continent. In a later chapter, Zubrin argues that the evil deeds of the Nazis in occupied Europe, far from being done under cover, and without the awareness of the majority of the German population, was carried out with the complicity and knowledge of the majority. Thoroughly indoctrinated by ‘scientific’ racism, the German people would see Hitler’s actions as at minimum a necessary evil, or even for the ultimate ‘good’ of the Nordic Aryan people. Hitler is quoted as saying in 1941, “The law of existence prescribes uninterrupted killing, so that the better may live” (1. 984). As proof of his argument, Zubrin relates that
“At the height of the Third Reich, there were over 20,000 death camps, and most were discovered by Allied forces within hours of their entering newly liberated territory-as the stench of the camps’ crematoria made them readily detectable. Hundreds of thousands of Germans were employed operating these facilities, and several million more were members of armed forces or police units engaged in or supporting genocidal operations”
The idea that the general populations of Germany and other European countries where this was being carried out were unaware of the Holocaust stretches credulity.
As a further proof of the acquiescence of these peoples due to social Darwinian indoctrination, the writer gives the account of the White Rose resistance group. These Munich based, college students, mainly Lutheran and Catholic, began a campaign of leaflet distribution throughout Germany in 1942.5 Some quotes from their leaflets illustrate their awareness of what was going on:
“Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible crimes-crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure-reach the light of day?”
“Since the conquest of Poland, three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way. Here we see the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the whole of history. For Jews, too, are human beings … . All male offspring of the houses of the (Polish) nobility between the ages of fifteen and twenty were transported to concentration camps in Germany and sentenced to forced labor, and all the girls of this age group were sent to Norway, into the bordellos of the SS! Why tell you these things, since you are fully aware of them? … . Why do the German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? … . Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!”
These brave students were captured and tortured in 1943 and some beheaded, some imprisoned. By highlighting this awareness, Zubrin is preparing us for what is possible when men lose their perception of who we are through Darwinian (he would not use the term evolutionary) indoctrination. As another White Rose leaflet declares,
“… when of his (man’s) own volition he leaves his place in the order of Creation as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil … . We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!” The thesis of Zubrin’s book is that, under the same belief system as the Nazis, genocide has taken place throughout the world over the decades since the war, though by different, less obvious means.
Eugenics in America
Eugenic societies and ideas also began to increasingly manifest themselves with a `back-to-nature’, `Darwinian antihumanism’. Notable disciples in America were such influential individuals and families as the Roosevelts; Henry Fairfield Osborn; and Margaret Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League who argued for legal abortion as a means of “eliminating undesirable racial stock”. In the build-up to WWII, blind eyes were turned in America to what Hitler was doing. Eugenic and population concerns lead to the obstruction of European Jews trying to flee, and even to refugees being turned back from American shores, as it turned out to the ovens of German. The Darwinian, Malthusian, eugenic influence continued after the war, though subdued due to the devastating fruits seen during the war, in such organisations as Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club and the Club of Rome, as well as many influential global organisations such as the World Bank and UN.
One of the recurring themes of this book, is of how pseudo-scientific, eugenic books and publications such as that of Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race, which Hitler referred to as his ‘bible,’ became populist propaganda tools under which devastating policies were justified and implemented. Grant was the vice president of the Immigration Restriction League and a trustee of the Museum of Natural History. This use of eugenic-inspired media was also key in ‘numbing’ the public to other policies later described in the book Man and Earth, a neo-pagan tract written in 1913, was influential in the birth of another child of Malthus’s theory of limited resources—”This twin was environmentalism” (1. 1056), closely linked philosophically to eugenics in both Germany and the USA. It was reprinted in 1980 as one of the founding documents of the West German Green Party, whose founder and first chairman was August Haussleiter, a former SS officer.
Our Plundered Planet, written in 1948 by Fairfield Osborn, the son of Henry Fairfield Osborn. was a 3-million copy bestseller “which became the founding manifesto of the postwar environmentalist movement” (I. 1185). These movements and foundations such as the Conservation Foundation, Sierra Club and the Environmental Defence Fund, had population control as their primary focus. This was especially for developing nations, but was also promoted in post-war Japan where key American eugenic advocates were placed in influential positions, and forced ‘population control’ measures on the Japanese people.
Commissioned by The Sierra Club, The Population Bomb, written by Paul Ehrlich in 1967 amidst much publicity (figure 2), became the “new Malthusian bible for modern times”. Typical of this type of propaganda, prophecies of impending doom were used to induce a popular panic which became a smokescreen for increased government interference in people’s lives.
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death … . We must have population control at home, hopefully through changes in our value system, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail” (1. 1584). –A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people … . We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense” (1. 1605).
Under the hysteria of this type of propaganda (proven false by history), measures were taken throughout the world to coerce people into population control measures. As an example, Zubrin documents the World Bank’s making loans to third world countries, often ruled by corrupt leaders. The loans were subject to the implementation of broad, coerced programs including abortion, sterilisation and involuntary insertion of IUD’s. These programs often meant that while normal healthcare facilities were neglected and underfunded, `population control’ staff, facilities and resources were state of the art.
Anti DDT, Nuclear, GM and CO2; pro-nature or anti-human?
The writer begins in Chapter 6, entitled “In Defence of Malaria”, to document another post war implementation of eugenic ideology. Most telling is a quote from Alexander King, a co-founder of the Club of Rome, who said “my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it has greatly added to the population problem” (1. 1350). DDT began to be used by the Allies in WWII in areas where malaria threatened to derail the campaign against the Nazis and Japanese, with dramatic effect. After the war, DDT programs in the Southern USA, Ceylon, South Africa, and other countries reduced malarial deaths and incidence to almost zero. Alarmed by the implications to population growth, particularly in third world countries, alarm bells again began to be rung by influential eugenicists. If eradicating DDT programs had been overtly sold as a means of reducing population, Western sensibilities would not have accepted it. In what has become a predictable routine, an environmental reason was given to halt DDT use. The marine biologist and nature writer, Rachel Carson was contracted to write Silent Spring (figure 2). In it she warned of the dangers of DDT to wildlife, particularly birdlife. The evocative title says it all, if DDT programs were continued, one day mankind would awake to a ‘silent spring’ bereft of the sound of birdlife. Zubrin goes on to show that the various claims were totally unscientific and cites a number of scientific studies to document this. The environmentalist campaign was successful and DDT was banned in western countries and aid to third world countries again made subject to their suspending the use of DDT. Today, “Malaria kills more than a million people worldwide each year-90 percent of them in Africa; 70 percent children under the age of five.”‘ This is more deaths than due to AIDS, but receives far less media attention; while the cheapest and most effective remedy available to African countries, DDT, is denied them.
The next leftist, environmental cause that Zubrin examines is ‘The Anti-Nuclear Crusade’ …
In his first address as Secretary of State, John Kerry said we must safeguard “the most sacred trust” we owe to our children and grandchildren: “an environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.”
Even the IPCC and British Meteorological Office now recognize that average global temperatures haven’t budged in almost 17 years. Little evidence suggests that sea level rise, storms, droughts, polar ice and temperatures or other weather and climate events and trends display any statistically significant difference from what Earth and mankind have experienced over the last 100-plus years…
[….]
1) Influence peddling.
Over the past three years, the Tides Foundation and Tides Center alone poured $335 million into environmentalist climate campaigns, and $1 billion into green lobbies at large, notes Undue Influence author Ron Arnold. Major US donors gave $199 million to Canadian environmental groups just for anti-oil sands and Keystone pipeline battles during the last twelve years, analysts Vivian Krause and Brian Seasholes estimate; the Tides Foundation poured $10 million into these battles during 2009-2012.
All told, US foundations alone have “invested” over $797 million in environmentalist climate campaigns since 2000! And over $19.3 billion in “environmental” efforts since 1995, Arnold calculates! Add to that the tens of billions that environmental activist groups, universities and other organizations have received from individual donors, corporations and government agencies to promote “manmade climate disaster” theories – and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
Moreover, that’s just US cash. It doesn’t include EU, UN and other climate cataclysm contributions. Nor does it include US or global spending on wind, solar, biofuel and other “renewable” energy schemes. That this money has caused widespread pernicious and corrupting effects should surprise no one.
2) Politicized science, markets and ethics.
The corrupting cash has feathered careers, supported entire departments, companies and industries, and sullied our political, economic and ethical systems. It has taken countless billions out of productive sectors of our economy, and given it to politically connected, politically correct institutions that promote climate alarmism and renewable energy (and which use some of this crony capitalist taxpayer and consumer cash to help reelect their political sponsors).
Toe the line – pocket the cash, bask in the limelight. Question the dogma – get vilified, harassed and even dismissed from university or state climatologist positions for threatening the grants pipeline.
The system has replaced honest, robust, evidence-based, peer-reviewed science with pseudo-science based on activism, computer models, doctored data, “pal reviews,” press releases and other chicanery that resulted in Climategate, IPCC exposés, and growing outrage. Practitioners of these dark sciences almost never debate climate disaster deniers or skeptics; climate millionaire Al Gore won’t even take questions that he has not preapproved; and colleges have become centers for “socially responsible investing” campaigns based on climate chaos, “sustainable development” and anti-hydrocarbon ideologies…
[….]
3) Climate eco-imperialism impoverishes and kills.
Climate alarmism and pseudo science have justified all manner of regulations, carbon trading, carbon taxes, renewable energy programs and other initiatives that increase the cost of everything we make, grow, ship, eat, heat, cool, wear and do – and thus impair job creation, economic growth, living standards, health, welfare and ecological values.
Excessive EPA rules have closed numerous coal-fired power plants, and the agency plans to regulate most of the US hydrocarbon-based economy by restricting carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles, generating plants, cement kilns, factories, malls, hospitals and other “significant” sources. Were it not for the hydraulic fracturing revolution that has made natural gas and gas-fired generation abundant and cheap, US electricity prices would be skyrocketing – just as they have in Britain and Germany.
EU papers carry almost daily articles about fuel poverty, potential blackouts, outsourcing, job losses, economic malaise and despair, and deforestation for fire wood in those and other European countries, due to their focus on climate alarmism and “green” energy. California electricity prices are already highest in USA, thanks to its EU-style programs. The alarms are misplaced, the programs do nothing to reduce Chinese, Indian or global emissions, and renewable energy is hardly eco-friendly or sustainable.
Wind energy requires perpetual subsidies and “backup” fossil fuel power plants that actually produce 80% of the electricity attributed to wind, and blankets wildlife habitats with turbines and transmission lines that kill millions of birds and bats every year. In fact, industrial wind facilities remain viable only because they are exempted from many environmental review, wildlife and bird protection laws that are enforced with heavy penalties for all other industries. Solar smothers habitats with glossy panels, and biofuels divert crops and cropland to replace fuels that we have in abundance but refuse to develop.
Now climate activists and EPA want to regulate fracking for gas that was once their preferred option.
[….]
Symbols Lost
BP goes ‘beyond petroleum’
Then in 2000 BP, now a group of companies that included Amoco, ARCO and Castrol, unveiled a new global brand with a new mark, a sunburst of green, yellow and white symbolizing dynamic energy in all its forms. It was called the Helios after the sun god of ancient Greece. In a press release announcing the change, the group said it had decided to retain the BP name because of its recognition around the world and because it stood for the new company’s aspirations: ‘better people, better products, big picture, beyond petroleum.’
In related news, BP is quitting its 40-years of investment in solar power:
It seems to be a trend now, last October it was Siemens who gave up on solar, now it is British Petroleum, who has been in the solar business nearly 40 years, and has made the last closure announcements, finalizing what they announced in 2011.
In the news today:
(Reuters) – British oil major BP shut down the remnants of its solar unit on Wednesday, drawing a line under the business on which most of its Beyond Petroleum tagline of the early 2000s was premised.
[….]
The company confirmed on Wednesday that it plans to exit its large-scale projects at Long Haven in the U.S. and Moree in Australia.
BP announced plans in July to abandon its household and industrial rooftop solar activities to concentrate on the larger projects but said on December15 that even those were no longer viable.
….Now, I knew Al Gore, I’d interviewed him several times, I was President Clinton’s principal defender during impeachment, so I’d got to know Al Gore, so I meet him in the Fox News lobby, he looks me up and down — and this is to your point, Bill Kristol, on him being sanctimonious — he looks me up and down and he says, ‘Well, look where you ended up,’ ’cause I had gone from NBC News to Fox News, and then he said, and I remember it so clearly, ‘I guess you’ll never bite the hand that feeds you,’ meaning that I had sold out to conservatives for money…. He really just [’tisked-tisked’] me in front of Al Franken in a way that left no doubt that he was feeling very morally superior. The fact is, I didn’t change. He changed. He took the short money from Big Oil [for Current TV].
