Climate change, wind turbines & higher energy costs. Obama's laughing all the way.

It's a done deal. Global warming - or is it climate change...wait, I think it's now called climate disruption - whatever the name, President Obama has declared it's real, it's here now, people are dying, and we all have to pay the price for it.

Of course since not everyone in Congress (or America in general) believes this climate hoax, Obama has been unable to get his coveted Cap and Trade legislation passed, which would simply raise taxes exponentially on average Americans - without doing a thing to actually impact the earth's temperature. No worries. He'll just bypass Congress to get what he wants. He's been doing it since he's been in office, so why stop now?

In this instance, Obama is unleashing the unbridled power of the Environmental Protection Agency on existing power plants to impose drastic carbon-dioxide emission restrictions on them this Monday. It doesn't matter that this will not diminish the earth's temperature (which is a good thing, since we've been in a cooling pattern for years), but the regulations will indeed increase prices for all of us. 

Unfortunately, uninformed citizens believe that renewable sources of energy are the answer. In fact, on Memorial Day, the Detroit Free Press published results of a Sierra Club poll declaring that more than 3 in 5 DTE Energy customers and Michigan voters support replacing the state’s coal-burning power plants with renewable energy sources. 

But as pointed out by a very knowledgeable engineer I know whose career was in climate systems at Ford, how many of these same people would choose renewable energy sources if they were informed that doing so would double or even triple their electricity rates, and that such renewable resources mean blanketing the Michigan landscape with tens of thousands of wind turbines (want a visual of how those wind turbines would look? Click here.) 

The bonus is that all these wind turbines would generate only intermittent (e.g., unreliable) power while they effectively kill thousands of birds that fly into their path. Imagine trying to power all of Michigan's air conditioners in August on a typically non-windy day in a Michigan summer - all while paying exorbitant fees for traditional energy sources.

As for the EPA regulations set to be put on existing energy plants this coming week, only 1100 pounds of Co2 per megawatt-hour of power will now be allowed to be emitted by power plants. About 40% of America's energy comes from coal, and current well-running power plants are at about 40% efficiency, which equates to about CO2 of 2605 lbs per megawatt. To achieve the EPA’s 1100 lb requirement, the plant would need to reach 95% efficiency. There is currently no viable commercial energy source that comes anywhere close to that level, nor is there a viable method to capture CO2.

But plants required to do everything they can to meet government mandates means skyrocketing electric rates for all of us (see a snapshot from Heritage.org below). This will hurt consumers, businesses, jobs and, of course, the overall economy in general. And for what? To calm the hysterics of those who are completely uninformed that climate change is a complete hoax good for nothing more than propaganda to terrify people into accepting higher costs and a lower quality of life.

Obama promised he would bankrupt coal mines and increase energy costs for all of us. Those are about the only two promises he has kept since taking office - that and the one about fundamentally transforming America.

Do we really want to kill traditional energy sources in favor of useless ones?

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Obama's healthcare directive helps the wealthy, hurts the poor

The Obama administration approved last week a measure that will allow insurers and employers to to put a hard dollar limit on what health plans pay for some expensive procedures, such as knee and hip replacements. This means that whatever a hospital charges for a procedure, the health plan will only pay so much and the patient will have to pay the difference Obama's team says this will reduce costs and help keep premiums in check. What it really does is hurt lower income people.

Encouraging patients to shop around for a facility that will perform a procedure for the lowest cost sounds good, but when it comes to your health, would you really feel confident in choosing a surgery performed by the cheapest place around? Under Obama's directive, if you're middle class or below, you may have no choice. The wealthy, no doubt, will continue to pick the higher priced - and likely higher quality -- facilities and doctors.

It's amazing how often I still hear people say they are willing to overlook many of Obama's policy failures because "he's for the poor." Yes, he's for the poor alright - as in keeping the poor poor, while certain policies of his serve only to help the wealthy. Of course these blind followers of Obama are the same ones who repeat the false notion that it's the Republicans who are only interested in the wealthy, while Obama's supporters continue to give him and his party their votes.

If only they knew the facts, maybe they'd stop voting for liberals like Obama who depend on the poor in order to stay in office.

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War on women in America...really?

A pregnant Sudanese woman who married a Christian man was sentenced to death yesterday after she refused to recant her Christian faith. Meriam Ibrahim, whose father was Muslim but mother was an Orthodox Christian from Ethiopia, was convicted of "apostasy" on Sunday and given four days to repent and escape death, said her lawyer, Al-Shareef Ali al-Shareef Mohammed.

Sudan's penal code criminalizes the conversion of Muslims into other religions, which is punishable by death. A number of Sudanese have been convicted of such apostasy in recent years, but they all escaped execution by recanting their new faith. But 26 year-old Ibrahim, who is eight months pregnant – refused to recant her faith and now faces death.

Ibrahim and her husband were married in a formal church ceremony in 2011 and have an 18-month-old son, who is with her in jail. As in many Muslim nations, Muslim women in Sudan are prohibited from marrying non-Muslims, though Muslim men can marry outside their faith. By law, children must follow their father's religion.

Amnesty International has condemned the sentence, calling it "abhorrent", and the Obama administration said it was "deeply disturbed" by the sentencing and called on the Sudanese government to respect the right to freedom of religion.

Unfortunately I doubt anything from the US government will carry much weight, especially since it refuses to acknowledge freedom of religion right here in America by forcing religious people to pay for contraception and abortifacients, and by forcing private business owners to partake in homosexual unions that the Bible deems sinful. Those are just two examples.

The Christian persecution taking place all over the world is real. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration’s tepid condemnation of the Sudanese sentencing will do as much to quell persecution of Christians as Michelle Obama's twitter campaign will help free those kidnapped girls in Nigeria.

As for the American women who whine that there is a war on women in America because some people don’t want to pay for their contraception, shame on them. They should try living in Sudan. I bet they wouldn’t last a week. Literally. 

But if they did, maybe when they returned to America they would finally value what real freedom is -- while we still have some semblance of it, anyway.

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The left doesn't want to end racism...it thrives on it

Two recent incidents -- the US Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Michigan’s ban on affirmative action and LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s bigoted comments – underscore what the left so badly wants us to believe: that white America is inherently, hopelessly racist. Unfortunately it seems the left – which ignores racism committed by non-whites -- wants to use racism to impose draconian control measures on private citizens, while convincing minorities the left is their only hope for justice.

The Court’s ruling on Michigan’s affirmative action ban should be considered a victory to anyone claiming to want a color-blind society that judges people on character, not skin color. The Michigan law rightly says racism is wrong and therefore race cannot be considered in university admissions. But, defying logic, liberals call this racist. In her dissenting opinion, in fact, Justice Sonia Sotomayer said the Court’s ruling strengthens the barriers erected against racial minorities.

But Sotomayer ignores statistics that show minority enrollment in public university systems is up, even where bans on affirmative action are in place. In other words, institutions can and do implement outreach efforts without being forced to do so.

Still Sotomayor stresses that equality can only be achieved through artificial means and that minorities should be held to a lower standard to achieve this so-called equality. News franchises across America were quick to celebrate Sotomayor’s “passionate” opinion, denounce the “conservative justices” for their “racist” views, and further promote the idea that only artificial intervention can bring about equality. But what does this accomplish other than to promote division and anger on both sides by underscoring the idea that minorities are helpless victims of white society, and that only the left is interested in making things right?

The media are salivating even more over the vile comments made by Donald Sterling to his girlfriend, who illegally secretly recorded their private conversations. Saying he didn’t want his girlfriend bringing black people to basketball games, Sterling’s comments were ugly and people are right to be offended. But does it really warrant the 24-hour coverage it’s getting? Well, yes, if it can serve the purpose of painting all whites as racists. Even President Obama felt it worthy to weigh in on the issue all the way from Malaysia.

But if Obama is really offended by racism, why hasn’t he said one word about Michigan resident Steven Utash, the white man severely beaten by a mob of black men?

Obama once said if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin, the black teen who was killed in a 2012 altercation with “white Hispanic” George Zimmerman. Obama had no trouble exploiting the death of a teenager to stoke the embers of America’s smoldering racial tensions -- and probably garner sympathy votes to boot in what was then an election year. But would Obama think Utash’s assailants look like his would-be son, or does that case not evoke the same type of emotion Obama can use to his party’s benefit in this election year?

Obama vocally condemned Zimmerman as part of America’s race problem, but says nothing about his good friend, rapper Jay-Z, who publically wears a coaster-sized medallion of the Five Percent Nation, an offshoot of the Nation of Islam which holds that white people are “weak, wicked and inferior.”

Likewise, Obama has never denounced Spike Lee’s frequent and hateful anti-white rants, nor has our president meaningfully condemned the horrible “knockout” game where black youths randomly punch white people, some fatally so.

Where are Eric Holder and Jessie Jackson on these incidents? Where are the vigils, the marches, the presidential press conferences? The left wants us to believe they’re opposed to racism, but largely remain silent when it’s committed by non-whites, yet are the first to speak out when they can use it to their benefit. In fact, to date, the only time Obama’s Department of Justice has charged someone with a “hate crime” for the knockout game was when it was once perpetrated by a white man against a black man.

Sterling, meanwhile, is facing million dollar fines, lifetime suspension from the NBA, and demands that he sell his private property, the LA Clippers francshise. His disgusting comments violated NBA league rules, but it’s important to remember they were made in private. Detestable as such bigoted speech is, like it or not, citizens still have the right to speak freely in the privacy of their homes – don’t they? If not, we are all on a dangerous slippery slope toward total speech and thought control in America.

While no one is defending Sterling for his racist comments, the actions taken in this case will no doubt be used to further apply other control measures against American citizens for expressing views and beliefs that don’t fit approved speech codes and politically correct structures, while other forms of blatant racism are completely ignored.

But where will it stop? Not with racism, that's for sure. Already there is talk to force the owners of another NBA team to sell their team because they believe in traditional marriage. The CEO of Mozilla was recently ousted because he supported traditional marriage in 2008 (as did President Obama, by the way). HGTV just cancelled a new show designed to help families in need because the show’s hosts, the Benham brothers, publicly announced they are pro-family, pro-traditional marriage, and pro-God.

The left may claim it opposes racism, but what it actually opposes is anyone who doesn’t follow its agenda. Racism is merely a convenient cover for them to use to inflame emotions while blatantly stripping Americans of their individuality and freedoms. 

If the left really wanted to end racism, for starters, at least, it could try encouraging racists to turn to God for deliverance from their hatred, but of course liberals want God removed from all corners of the public square. The truth is the left thrives on racism because they can use it to deepen divisions, control citizens’ actions, and secure political power by painting themselves as the champions of equality. 

Of course, exploiting racism this way accomplishes many things. Unfortunately, unity isn’t one of them.

 

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Truth about Benghazi finally comes out. How will Obama's team spin this one?

The Obama Administration is finally having to answer for its despicable non-actions on the night of Sept. 11, 2012, when it refused to help Americans under attack at our consulate in Benghazi. It's about time.

Hours after the Sept. 11 attack, in which four Americans were killed --including our US Ambassador  -the Obama Administration spun a web of falsehoods and deflections - hiding the truth from the American people - in the weeks before President Obama's re-election. Specifically, Obama and senior members of the White House tried to blame the attack on a random protest over a ridiculous, amateur YouTube video that poked fun at Islam and the prophet Mohammed. Administration officials continued to blame the Libya attack on the internet video despite messages from intelligence officials that the incident was planned by a radical Islamist terrorist group with ties to Al Qaeda. 

On the day of the attack, two Navy SEALs who were part of a team at the CIA annex near the consulate heard shots being fired. When they realized our embassy was under attack they made a request for military backup - the request was denied. Ultimately they made three urgent requests for military backup during the attack, all of which were denied. They were also denied permission to help the Ambassador's team at the consulate, being told to wait. Being the real heroes they are, the Navy SEALs ignored those orders and went anyway to the consulate to try to help, and were eventually killed in trying to do so. 

Following the attacks, then U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice made the rounds on all the Sunday news shows claiming the Internet video was responsible for the attacks, and when pressed in Senate hearings about whether the administration knew there had been warnings of an Al Qaeda attack, presidential wannabe Hilary Clinton testily hissed, "What difference, at this point, does it make?!" Well, Ms. Clinton, I bet it makes a lot of difference to the loved ones of those killed. 

Finally, though, this week a new email from National Security Council communications adviser Ben Rhodes surfaced which shows Susan Rice was coached to lie on the Sunday news shows “to show that these protests were rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy." Not surprisingly, Obama's press crony Jay Carney is doing his spin-master best to dilute the truth on this revelation, and you can bet Obama will be more fixated on Donald Sterling's racism than the dead Americans in Benghazi.

Obama and his fellow Democrats have clearly defined their enemy: it's not radical Islam. Nor is it Iran or North Korea, or any other country. The real enemies of the US are Americans, especially those demanding truth. Obama is engaged in a full on battle with the truth-seekers, while plugging his ears and closing his eyes to the breathtaking acts of evil and destabilizing anti-American sentiments around the world. 

I only hope that Obama and his team will finally be held accountable for actual truth in the face of the bold lies they have been caught in telling. Our fallen Americans in Benghazi, their families, and our country deserve at least that.

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