Got a Funny Feeling?

Survival books, whether they be outdoor survival, or about surviving in the city, tell you to trust your instincts.  We can all sense danger, it's just that we usually ignore our instincts.  As Americans, we trust until we are given a reason not to trust.  That makes us easy targets for everything from e-mails from Nicaraguan check-cashing scams, to 9/11 terrorists taking flying lessons in our country.  Or for that matter, immigrants entering our country illegally, counting on us to let them stay.  Our trust makes us an easy target.

So, let's put a couple of things in writing and see if it gives us a "funny" feeling.  I'm not even going to list all our president's socialist/communist/maoist advisers.  That's so old that we don't even get any feeling about it.  So let's start with the president's reaction to the incident involving the D.C. police and Harvard professor Gates.  When asked for a reaction, President Obama said, "I don't have any details, but it is apparent that the police acted stupidly."  I don't have any facts, but I have a strong opinion anyway.  Kind of funny coming from the most powerful leader in the free world, huh?  

President Obama on his cap and trade legislation, changed to green job creation legislation, now changed to American energy independence legislation:  "under my plan, the cost of electricity would necessarily skyrocket."  What politician in their right mind would say his plans would make any utility cost, not just increase, but "skyrocket?"  Seems like he is not worried about our support.  It's like the issue has already been decided.  And why would he want it to take effect during the worst recession of the lifetime of the average American and before an already hotly contested midterm election?  A little funny, huh?  Then we learn that the president was the conduit for the Joyce Foundation's grant to start the only energy exchange in the United States, and that he worked on the grant while still an unknown state senator.  A little funny.  A little, very little actually, research is required to learn that other investors in the Chicago Climate Exchange are a company with Al Gore on the board (An Inconvenient Truth, huh Al?); a bank, Goldman Sachs, who not only was a major contributor to the economic recession, but also received huge taxpayer funded bailouts; and several of the board members of the Chicago Climate Exchange came from Goldman Sachs.  Funny.  

Exxon-Mobil decided a couple of years ago not to form a separate department to do research for alternate forms of energy.  They decided it was best to do what they have always done, look for oil.  Seeing how fast the world is changing, it seemed a little funny that they would not at least hedge their bets by starting to adapt to future alternative energy demands.  Fuji Films and Kodak are examples of how quickly an established company can go from the top to broke by not being on the leading edge of innovation.  But Exxon-Mobil seemed oblivious to the danger of falling behind.  Funny.

One of the president's first acts when he took office was to freeze leasing on shallow water offshore oil drilling, and a federal takeover, or much tighter restrictions of western land where drilling was planned, or already taking place.  No freeze on deepwater drilling though.  Oil companies complained a little, but were strangely quieter than you would expect about the restrictions.  Some just adapted and went to more deepwater drilling projects.  Now we all know what happened with British Petroleum's well in the Gulf of Mexico.  Strangely enough, the president was very reasonable in his early reaction.  He said BP would be responsible for the clean-up and loss of business revenue caused by the explosion and leak.  Again, strangely enough, BP has seemed relatively unconcerned about the cost of the lost rig, its eleven employees killed, the loss of sales of a minimum 5000 barrels of oil a day, at $70+ per barrel for more than 40 days and counting, that turns into real money pretty quickly.  Kind of funny how calm and reasonable BP has been about this loss, and the potential cost of the clean up.  Funny too how unconcerned about the huge decline in their stock market value they have been.

Now, all offshore drilling leases have been frozen for a minimum of 6 months.  Effectively a minimum of a year for projects off the coast of Alaska where many projects had been planned.  Land-based drilling restrictions still have not been eased to compensate.  The cap and trade bill in the senate has now been re-named an American Energy Independence bill, and it still will cause costs to skyrocket.  But little to no complaints or comments from the media or oil companies like Exxon-Mobil or British Petroleum who would potentially be hurt the most by the legislation.  Funny.

The Chicago Climate Exchange estimates business transactions of $10 trillion a year if the legislation passes.  They stand to make a boatload, make that an oil tankerload, of money if the legislation passes.  Yet, only a couple of days after the Canadian Free Press ran stories showing the suspicious links of the Exchange to the president, his backers and advisers, to Goldman Sachs, to Al Gore, and more, the founders of the Exchange sold their controlling interest.  Funny.  Sold their interest to an Atlanta based company called Intercontinental Exchange (ICE on the New York Stock Exchange).  Thirty minutes on their site and a couple of business news sites and you will learn that major shareholders in ICE include Exxon-Mobil.  Funny.  British Petroleum holds a large share.  That's funny.  Why isn't MSNBC investigating?  General Electric holds a big piece of ICE.  General Electric owns all the NBC networks.  Now that's funny.

For as long as I can remember, oil prices have gone up around Memorial Day, as Americans hit the road for summer vacations.  Oil prices traditionally go up when hurricane season arrives in June and potentially threatens to interfere with our coastal refineries and oil shipments.  Oil prices always go up with increased regulation, like the recent offshore freezes by the president.  Oil prices always go up when tension in the middle east increases, like it has with the recent incident with Israel blockade of Gaza.  So, in the past 60 days, we have had the worst offshore drilling accident in U.S. history, followed by tightened government restrictions, followed by the arrival of summer vacation season, followed by the start of hurricane season in the Gulf, topped off by extreme tension in the middle east.  Oil prices have gone down in that time.  That's funny.

That's just the oil-related funny feelings.  Throw in the funny worldwide and media reaction to Israel's defending itself against terrorist organizations whose goal is the absolute annihilation  of Israel.  Add the president's funny labeling of Arizona's immigration law as "misguided" before he, his attorney general, his Homeland Security secretary, or anyone else in the administration had even read it.  Add the continued criticism of the law even though an estimated 65% of Americans and over 70% of registered voters nationwide support the law.  Add the passage of a health care law that over 60% of registered voters oppose; a bill whose cost upon analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office keeps going up.  And finally add the seeming indifference to an unemployment rate staying near 10%, even with funny hiring practices by the Census department reducing the number of unemployed temporarily.

We should have a very funny feeling about all this.  Either they have another crisis planned that they will take advantage of to keep and increase their control, or this Democratic/Progressive Congress and President are the political equivalent of a suicide bomber that is just trying to do as much damage and leave as big a hole as possible when all this blows up.  I have a funny feeling that a large hole is not their goal.      

Hear the Crickets??

While looking up sources for yesterday's post about the president's link to CCX, and Al Gore's, and Goldman Sachs', I found one source for a few blogs about the subject.  It was a link to Canadian Free Press' site.  Today, I found page after page after page of links on a Google search.  Want to take a guess how many of them were from American newspaper sites?  How about two?  You would think that a story that links the president of the United States financially to a company that stands to earn $10 trillion annually if his legislation is passed would be front page news all over the country!  Then throw in a 10% share of the company being blamed for the financial crash that cost the country 11 million jobs (according to one congressman in today's congressional proceedings), Goldman Sachs.  Just for added interest, add a 5% stake in the mountain of money to a company headed up by Al "I invented the internet and won an Oscar and Nobel Prize" Gore.  Oh yeah, also link CCX to the United Nations and Fannie Mae, whose mismanagement was the real cause of the country's financial crash.  And not a word from any U.S. newspaper.  Except for the Washington Examiner, who basically summarized Glenn Beck's television program from Monday, with a Youtube video of Beck's blackboard.  And a line from the writer that she had verified as true Beck's claims.  Then the Dallas Morning News shows up on page 2 of the Google search.  The link goes to a comment page about the media's relationship with President Obama.  After scrolling down approximately three pages, there was a comment from a reader asking why no DMN investigation.  That's it.

Front and center all over the nation's media watchdogs, Sandra Bullock has adopted a baby!  How was she able to keep such a big secret????  Shocking!  Next we will learn that Kate Gosselin was voted off Dancing with the Stars.

Today I found several stories from British newspapers about the scandal.  I knew from the site I linked to yesterday that Fannie Mae owned the patent to a device that measures carbon output.  Guess what?  It was modified for use on manufacturers, but was originally designed to measure household carbon output.   Household output.  The plan calls for individual American homes to have a carbon cap.  Just like businesses, individuals can buy additional carbon certificates when they have reached their annual cap.  Buy the certificates from individuals in third world countries that don't create the emissions that Americans do.  According to the site, the cap would be set at 2500 pounds of carbon produced per year.  Over two times the amount produced by the average citizen of a third world country, but coincidentally only half the amount produced by the average American.  So basically Americans would be forced to purchase carbon certificates from people in India or China or South America, through the Chicago Climate Exchange of course.  After taking their cut, CCX would pass that American money on to the citizens of the unindustrialized countries.  In theory anyway.  Want to give odds on how much of that money makes it to the average citizen of Sri Lanka?

By the way, does your electric company give you the option to buy "green" energy, at a higher rate than traditional energy?  Green ain't cheap!  The idea is that it lowers your carbon output, so you won't exceed your cap so quickly.  Pro-choice again, give your money to the electric company or a Bangladesh villager (minus CCX;s cut of course).  Or you can pay to plant a tree, like the Vatican chose to do, in order to be carbon neutral.  Guess what, no trees were planted for the Vatican.  The payments were taken though!  Like Glenn Beck said, scamming the Pope pretty much guarantees some very warm temperatures in your future!

How's that for redistribution of wealth?  Mainly redistributed straight from your pocket to that of Barack Hussein Obama, Al Gore, Goldman Sachs, and Fannie Mae.  I guess the New York Times has laid off too many "reporters."  They missed this one.  Hear the crickets?  Oh, yeah, Sandra's baby is a healthy 3 month old boy.  And she has filed for divorce from Jesse.  Shocker!

Evil, yes. Stupid, no

It is the end of April.  Two feet of snow today in New York.  High of 35 here in Gunnison tomorrow.  So let's talk about global warming.  Like I wrote in a previous post about redneck snow skis, I know that cold weather halfway through spring does not mean that global warming isn't true.  But surely ten years of cooling temperatures does.  And false data by leading climate change (global warming is sooo 2009) researchers should make even the most rabid Al Gore sycophants wipe off their Kool-Aid mustaches.  

Then there's the cost.  The president himself says that under his plan, electric rates would "necessarily skyrocket."


So what exactly is cap and trade? Manufacturing produces carbon.  Carbon, according to the global warming "experts," leads to warming temperatures.  So, something must be done to discourage manufacturers from producing carbon.  Under this plan, a manufacturer would have a set amount of carbon emissions allowed as a by product of their business.  They would receive a certificate for that amount carbon emission.  If they go over the amount covered by their certificate, they can buy another manufacturer's certificate.  


Let's say that Cathy and I decide to go into the potato chip business.  We register as a potato chip manufacturer and receive our certificate to produce 2 tons of carbon dioxide.  Well, we are not really that into potato chips, so we only make a couple of batches of chips a year.  We didn't produce even an ounce of our allowable emissions.  Frito Lay, on the other hand, is realllly into potato chips.  They have produced all the carbon they are allowed, and they want to make even more chips.  They are selling a lot more chips than Cathy and me.  But they aren't allowed to make any more.  They have no more carbon certificates left.  Well, I'm smarter than the average rock, I'll sell them my unused carbon certificates.  Frito Lay is more than happy to buy them from me.


Small problem.  Who decides how much the certificates are worth?  How does Frito Lay find Larry and Cathy?  Where do they find even more?  It's not like there's an exchange similar to the New York Stock Exchange for carbon certificates.  Now, there would be a money making idea!  Guess what?  There is one!  It's the Chicago Climate Exchange or CCX!  Now there's some forward thinking folks.  If global warming weren't such a scam, I bet they could make some major bucks matching certificate buyers to certificate sellers, and of course taking their commission.  We are a capitalist society after all.  They could sell the certificates of manufacturers in third world countries to U.S. companies and basically give them boatloads of money (minus CCX's cut of course) for producing nothing!  CCX estimates they would process $10,000,000,000,000 in transactions.  A year.  That's $10 trillion a year.  That will buy a pretty nice house, won't it, Al Gore?  What's Al Gore's connection to this $10,000,000,000,000 a year business?  Oh, just a little thing.  He's on the board of a British company that owns a 5% share of Chicago Climate Exchange.  So, that's how he can afford such a non-environmentally friendly estate.  Compare Gore's estate to that of a nature-hating, let's melt the icecaps I love heat anyway George Bush.  When you stand to get even a piece of a 5% share of $10,000,000,000,000 a year, you can stand a little skyrocketing electric cost.

Nice story, but no one is forcing companies like Ford and DuPont, or local governments like the city of Chicago and Miami-Dade county to participate in this wonderful Enron-style scheme (they are already buying and selling certificates voluntarily so they can advertise as "carbon neutral"), right?  Not yet.  But that's the very basis of cap and trade legislation in front of Congress right now!  Requiring companies and local governments to participate.  Forcing the cost of their goods and services to skyrocket.  Amazing.  

So how does a start-up like Chicago Climate Exchange get started in 2003 with no cap and trade legislation on the horizon?  Through charitable, almost untraceable grants from a wonderful foundation called the Joyce Foundation.  They were supported by a Joyce Foundation board member who secured the funding for them.  The board member who was such a forward thinking visionary?  An up and coming Illinois state senator.  His name?  All together now, Barack Hussein Obama, mmm, mmm, mmm.


Now that should give you something to think about.  Here's a link detailing all the viper's nest of ties to the United Nations (where most of the global warming "research" came from).  Just for grins, let's throw in 5 CCX board members from Goldman Sachs, a 10% share in the company to Goldman Sachs, and a compleeeeetely coincidental link to Fannie Mae.  No conspiracy theory.  Facts.  It's mind-boggling.  Almost as mind-boggling as the fact that no U.S. newspaper or news organization has mentioned any of this.  The link refers to a Canadian Free Press site.  Free press, remember when America had one of those?  Another fact, NBC is owned by GE.  General Electric.  Think they might have a stake in this game?