Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

How do we measure the worth of an elected leader?

In the beginning, we are impressed by his manner and his ability to say what we want to hear.

Ultimately, however, we have to live with what he produces.

Here is what we have from the last four years of Obama leadership:

For every person added to the Job Rolls since January 2009, 75 people were added to Food Stamp rolls.

2012 Presidential Debate at Hofstra University on Oct 16 - transcripts

 

Last night's debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney was claimed as a victory by both sides. Candy Crowley was supportive of Obama as expected and gave him additional time, but both candidates had a chance to show their degree of preparedness. "Fact checkers" on both sides had a wonderful time pointing out errors made by the candidate on the other side.

Fortunately, there were running transcripts of the remarks made during last night's debate and you can read them and decide for yourself if your candidate presented himself as you hoped he would.

I have links for the final transcripts by the New York Times and The Washington Post so you can compare them and see if there are omissions or alterations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/us/politics/transcript-of-the-second-presidential-debate-in-hempstead-ny.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/2012-presidential-debate-president-obama-and-mitt-romneys-remarks-at-hofstra-university-on-oct-16-running-transcript/2012/10/16/be8bfb9a-17dd-11e2-9855-71f2b202721b_story.html

They will probably not stay up forever, so you might want to download these transcripts for future reference.

 

 

Germany's Wind Power Chaos Should Be A Warning To Everyone

Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Germany has gone further down the "renewables" path than any other country and now it's paying the price. Back-up fossil-fuel plants must run constantly and inefficiently to pick up the slightest slack in wind power.

Christopher Booker, The Telegraph | Sep. 23, 2012, 6:19 AM | 6,319 | 37

WAstateDNR - Department of Natural Resources via flickr

On Friday, September 14, just before 10am, Britain’s 3,500 wind turbines broke all records by briefly supplying just over four gigawatts (GW) of electricity to the national grid. Three hours later, in Germany, that country’s 23,000 wind turbines and millions of solar panels similarly achieved an unprecedented output of 31GW. But the responses to these events in the two countries could not have been in starker contrast.

In Britain, the wind industry proclaimed a triumph. Maria McCaffery, the CEO of RenewableUK, crowed that “this record high shows that wind energy is providing a reliable, secure supply of electricity to an ever-growing number of British homes and businesses” and that “this bountiful free resource will help drive down energy bills”. But in Germany, the news was greeted with dismay, for reasons which merit serious attention here in Britain.

Germany is way ahead of us on the very path our politicians want us to follow – and the problems it has encountered as a result are big news there. In fact, Germany is being horribly caught out by precisely the same delusion about renewable energy that our own politicians have fallen for. Like all enthusiasts for “free, clean, renewable electricity”, they overlook the fatal implications of the fact that wind speeds and sunlight constantly vary. They are taken in by the wind industry’s trick of vastly exaggerating the usefulness of wind farms by talking in terms of their “capacity”, hiding the fact that their actual output will waver between 100 per cent of capacity and zero. In Britain it averages around 25 per cent; in Germany it is lower, just 17 per cent.

The more a country depends on such sources of energy, the more there will arise – as Germany is discovering – two massive technical problems. One is that it becomes incredibly difficult to maintain a consistent supply of power to the grid, when that wildly fluctuating renewable output has to be balanced by input from conventional power stations. The other is that, to keep that back-up constantly available can require fossil-fuel power plants to run much of the time very inefficiently and expensively (incidentally chucking out so much more “carbon” than normal that it negates any supposed CO2 savings from the wind).

Our playboy president does not handle crises well

Reposted from: The Hip-Hop President: All Swag, No Cattle by Michelle Malkin September 14, 2012 09:14 AM

The third and fourth victims of the blood-boiling Benghazi jihadi attack have been identified. Americans Tyrone (Ty) Woods and Glen Doherty were former Navy SEALS who worked as private security contractors. It’s also now been confirmed that the attack was an elaborate, two-part planned operation — timed to 9/11 with the stupid movie as pretextual cover, just as I told you late Tuesday night. And as I noted on Wednesday night, President Obama left our embassies and consulates unfortified — skipping out on intel briefings and heading to Vegas instead.

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Late as usual, the president ambled up to the podium 15 minutes behind schedule on Wednesday morning. Teleprompter-less, he spent the majority of his fleeting five-and-a-half-minute appearance with eyes downcast on his script.

  

With a grim Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looking over his shoulder, Obama delivered a flat, obligatory tribute to the murdered Americans. And then he read these words, drained of any iota of outrage, as if reading a local weather forecast. Or a fifth-grade book report. Or a dinner menu:
“The United States condemns (pauses, looks down) in the strongest terms (pauses) this outrageous and shocking attack (monotone). We’re working with the government of Libya to secure our diplomats. I’ve also directed my administration to increase our security at diplomatic posts around the world.”

Punctuated with noncommittal “uhs” and a pedestrian lilt, he read some more: “And make no mistake (eyes looking down). Uh. We will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people (eyes down, flipping page).”

In a bland and unconvincing recitation, Obama stated perfunctorily: “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.” Looking down at his script again, he hurried along: “We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.”

Detached, diffident, aloof and resigned, America and the world saw a eulogizer in chief, not a commander in chief. It was as if something more important were occupying his mind at the time.

And it was. Soon after, Obama scurried onto a plane to Las Vegas for a lovefest campaign rally with 8,000 fanboys and fangirls who cultishly screamed, “I lovve youuuuuu” — interrupting his cool POTUS flow momentarily as he dispensed with a line or two about the bloody disaster in the Middle East. Incurably self-absorbed, Obama lamented that “we” had a “tough day” for a second or two. And then he turned quickly back to the central business of getting himself re-elected.

Read the rest on Michelle Malkins blog: http://michellemalkin.com/2012/09/14/the-hip-hop-president-all-swag-no-cattle/

Outsourcer-In-Chief: Obama Of General Motors

Reposted from Forbes - Paul Roderick Gregory, Contributor

 

Barack Obama delivers his “The End of an Old GM, and the Beginning of a New GM” speech on June 1, 2009 in the Grand Foyer of the White House.(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At a Colorado pep rally, President Obama praised his GM bailout as an example for American industry to follow.

“The American automobile industry has come roaring back…So now I want to say what we did with the auto industry, we can do it in manufacturing across America. Let’s make sure advanced, high-tech manufacturing jobs take root here, not in China. And that means supporting investment here. Governor Romney … invested in companies that were called ‘pioneers’ of outsourcing. I don’t want to outsource. I want to insource.” Applause!

According to Obama, GM does everything right. It offers high-paying jobs to American workers. It invests at home. GM put American manufacturing back in the high-tech race on American soil. The new GM is good for America, and America is good for GM, as a former GM chairman declared in 1953. GM is back where it should be.

We need to look no further than General Motors’ own figures to  learn that GM outsources almost two thirds of its jobs overseas. Less than one in five GM vehicles are manufactured in the United States.

Former Cocaine User Obama Attacks Romney Over Event Hosted by Ex-Dealer

Reposted from Breitbart News.

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by Joel B. Pollak 13 Aug 2012

No, wait--seriously? Did the Obama campaign just tweet an Associated Press article about how a guy who owns a juice store that Mitt Romney visited in Miami was once convicted of dealing cocaine, 13 years ago?

Does Barack Obama, who admitted he once had a cocaine habit (has any journalist asked if he still does?), really want to go there? Does he really want us to revisit his history of close association with criminals?

New study shows half of the global warming in the USA is artificial

The USHCN is one of the main metrics used to gauge the temperature changes in the United States. The first wide scale effort to address siting issues, Watts, (2009), a collated photographic survey, showed that approximately 90% of USHCN stations were compromised by encroachment of urbanity in the form of heat sinks and sources, such as concrete, asphalt, air conditioning system heat exchangers, roadways, airport tarmac, and other issues. This finding was backed up by an August 2011 U.S. General Accounting Office investigation and report titled: Climate Monitoring: NOAA Can Improve Management of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network

Posted on July 29, 2012 by Anthony Watts

PRESS RELEASE – U.S. Temperature trends show a spurious doubling due to NOAA station siting problems and post measurement adjustments.

Chico, CA July 29^th, 2012 – 12 PM PDT – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A comparison and summary of trends is shown from the paper. Acceptably placed thermometers (which comply with the USHCN rules) away from common urban influences read much cooler nationwide:

Here is a snippet from the paper. CONUS is Continental US:

A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward. The paper is the first to use the updated siting system which addresses USHCN siting issues and data adjustments.

For the entire article read:  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/

First Positive News I have heard in Months

It's Paul Ryan: Romney picks Wis. Rep. for No. 2

By By KASIE HUNT – 8 hours ago 

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Republican Mitt Romney anointed Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, an ardent conservative and devoted budget cutter, as his vice presidential running mate on Saturday, and the two men immediately embarked on a tour of campaign battleground states vowing to defeat President Barack Obama and repair the long-ailing U.S. economy.

America is "a nation facing debt, doubt and despair," and a transformative change in leadership is vital, Ryan declared to a flag-waving crowd in the first moments after Romney introduced him as his partner for the fall campaign.

"Regrettably, President Obama has become part of the problem... and Mitt Romney is the solution," said the seven-term lawmaker, who at 42 is a generation younger than Romney, 65. Ryan is chairman of the House Budget Committee, the chief architect of deeply controversial budget plans and widely viewed by Republican lawmakers as an intellectual leader within the party.

For more on this story see: http://tinyurl.com/8tjbaj9

National Debt has increased more under Obama than under Bush

March 19, 2012 6:55 PM According to Mark Knoller of CBS News, The National Debt has now increased more during President Obama's three years and two months in office than it did during 8 years of the George W. Bush presidency.

The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office. The latest posting from the Bureau of Public Debt at the Treasury Department shows the National Debt now stands at $15.566 trillion. It was $10.626 trillion on President Bush's last day in office, which coincided with President Obama's first day. The National Debt also now exceeds 100% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, the total value of goods and services.

ASIDE FROM THE BEARS....

Okay... You're Russian and you got this Canadian Marijuana Plantation... and you got 13 bears... and they are, check it out, guarding it and then this Vietnamese pig....

 

Warning!  Drink alert.

Reposted from Gerard Vanderleun's American Digest