Month: March 2011

Once Again, HotAir.com lies about Ron Paul

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I like these guys; but when they resort to lies, I most expose them.

Ron Paul gave an interview with the News Real Blog, which is owned by the Neo-Conservative goon David Horowitz; who also, by the way, was a former far-leftist. Some would argue that he still is. Anyhow, It appears that this blog wanted to do a follow up.

Here is what Ron Paul really said about Israel:

NRB: David Horowitz and others have been critical of the effect that your foreign policy would have upon Israel… How would you describe a libertarian vision for alliance that could support democracies where people want to determine their own course while under threat by external forces?

Ron Paul: We’ve been involved a long time, since World War II, especially since we’ve inherited or developed our empire. We strongly supported all the dictators that surround Israel, and sometimes we buy peace and pay for it. But it’s unstable. And that instability has always been a threat to Israel. Now, when it’s coming apart, and our financial system’s coming apart, Israel is in worse shape than ever because of our so-called protection.

I believe in non-intervention. I believe we should treat all other countries alike, and that we should be friends. Israel is very, very powerful. If we weren’t in there, they could do what they want to protect themselves, and they wouldn’t have to ask us permission, and we would never have to be dragged in if something happens over there. I think they’d be much better off, and that would be a constitutional position.

NRB: Is there a point where the existence of Israel being under threat would compel even a libertarian to take action to protect her?

Paul: First off, they’re under threat because we’re there. We’re a greater threat to them, and our polices, because they have assumed that we’ll [intervene] if they don’t do the right things for themselves.

I don’t know of anybody who can militarily threaten them. They have 300 nuclear weapons. Nobody’s gonna touch them. This notion that we have to support them over the Palestinians – we shouldn’t favor one over the other. It’s a very different problem over there. If you’re a Palestinian-American, you might not like [America’s position on Israel]. I’m not saying you should support the Palestinian side or the Israeli side. I’m saying let them work it out.

…and what does HotAir.com put in their headlines as what Ron Paul said? This:

Ron Paul: We shouldn’t favor Israel over the Palestinians

Thus proving what I have believed about Neo-Conservatives since I have been blogging. That nothing matters to them, as long as the agenda of defending Israel to the death is followed —– even telling the truth. Ron Paul simply said, “Treat them all the same.” The way that headline was written, one would think Paul was anti-Israel or even Anti-Semitic.  To be fair, I disagree with this part here myself:

I believe in non-intervention. I believe we should treat all other countries alike, and that we should be friends. Israel is very, very powerful. If we weren’t in there, they could do what they want to protect themselves, and they wouldn’t have to ask us permission, and we would never have to be dragged in if something happens over there. I think they’d be much better off, and that would be a constitutional position.

The problem here is, there are more Arab nations and Israel is one small Country. If all these Arabs Nations were to decide to gang up on Israel; the results would disastrous. Now that, would not be a good thing to any normal, sane, rational person. That is, unless you are some sort of White Nationalist or Jew-Hater — and a good amount of Ron Paul followers are Jew-Haters, Conspiracy Kooks and just plain old weirdos. I personally, if Ron Paul were running, would not vote for him. Ron Paul is not going to run to actually win the election; he is running to spread his message. Some of Ron Paul’s biggest supporters admitted that to me. Plus, I do not agree with Paul’s strict isolationism.

My point here is this; I can understand someone not agreeing with Ron Paul’s policy stance; but when you resort to writing bogus headlines to make someone look like someone that they are not, you lose any sort of credibility. I also will say that HotAir is not the only blog to do this; it happens everywhere in the right wing Blogosphere. I try and shy away from that. Link baiting is a easy cheap way of getting hits. But the harder way is to write good content; I try to stay with the latter.

 

Oh Brother: Black liberal Congressman say that GOP’s budget cuts will put the hurt on the brother!

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(H/T Insty)

Sorry about that title, that’s my ghetto coming out a bit. 😉

Via The Hill:

Black lawmakers on Monday said GOP-proposed budget cuts would move the country in the opposite direction of the civil rights movement.

The lawmakers, all members of the Congressional Black Caucus, used the last day of Black History Month to argue the GOP-backed cuts would fall hardest on black Americans.

“It’s really especially poignant that this year during Black History Month, the Republican leadership has proposed a budget for fiscal year 2011 that will fall most heavily, mind you, on the backs of the most vulnerable in our society: African Americans, Latinos, and poor, those who have been shut of the American dream,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who described the cuts as ill-timed and destructive.

“At a time when we should be remembering and uplifting the accomplishments and contributions of African Americans, to the history, culture, civil rights and economy of America, we are literally during this month debating steps that will severely undercut and undermine that legacy,” she said.

Lee also criticized Republicans for saying “so be it” when asked their reaction to the idea that cuts to government spending might hurt U.S. job growth. “So be it,” she repeated. “That’s not what the Civil Rights movement was about.”

I cannot fathom how they are making that stretch. But they are.

Again, More Prayer please. We need it, badly.

Possibly Coming to your pump? — $5.00 a gallon Gas?

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(H/T Insty)

Looks that way…

Via the Boston Herald:

Beleaguered Bay State drivers could be staring down the barrel of $5 a gallon gas in a matter of weeks, if the political firestorm raging in the Middle East keeps spreading to more oil-rich, autocratic nations, energy experts warned yesterday.

“Imagine what would happen if Saudi Arabia goes offline — $5-a-gallon gas is not out of the question,” Mark Williams, an energy risk expert at Boston University, told the Herald, noting that gas prices have already spiked 25 percent this year even though only a handful of small countries have slowed oil production.

Middle East watchers are keeping a nervous eye on the tightly controlled kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where there have been grumblings of discontent, including a reported Internet call for a “day of rage” next week in the wake of bloody popular power struggles in Egypt and Libya, violently suppressed demonstrations in Bahrain and protests in Yemen.

“The major oil-producing countries have been largely untouched up to now,” said Jonathan Haughton, an economics professor at Suffolk University. “The country to watch is Saudi Arabia. If political disruption occurs there, then we’re talking $5.”

Bay State gas prices hit an all-time high in the summer of 2008 at $4.11. But in the past week, prices have jumped a whopping 17 cents to an average of $3.30 for self-serve regular, according to AAA Southern New England.

Mary McGuire of AAA Southern New England said the political disruptions in the Middle East and North Africa are definitely driving oil prices up. “Oil markets do not like instability and uncertainty,” she said. “And we have both in play in Libya, North Africa and the Middle East, because there is concern the political turmoil will spread to other more key oil-producing nations.”

This will continue as long as the Obama Administration continues to BLOCK drilling attempts. Again, more prayer please.

Local Story: Oh Brother! Detroit’s Resident No-Talent idiot honored by race-baiting organization

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How absurd.

Via WDIV-TV:

DETROIT — Rock is being honored at the Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner, sponsored by the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People’s Detroit chapter.

Chapter president the Rev. Wendell Anthony said at that Rock will get the group’s Great Expectations Award at the 56th annual dinner at Cobo Center on May 1.

Anthony says Rock is “a champion” for his community and says the Michigan musician has started businesses in the city and “heralds the positive side of Detroit.

Great. An artist who’s much overrated; is being honored by an organization that is lived much past its shelf life.

But, that’s Detroit. 🙄


Good Advice: Michael Reagan Urges Believers to Pray for President Obama

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Possibly one of the better bits advice I have seen regarding the President as of late.

The story comes via The Christian Post:

Michael Reagan, a political consultant and commentator, urged Americans to pray for their president regardless of political differences.

“It’s easy to pray for your friends. It’s hard to pray for your political opponents,” wrote the son of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan in a commentary for Fox News. “But that’s just what Jesus tells us to do: Love your enemies and pray for them. We disobey our own Scriptures if we don’t pray for our political opponents.”

Reagan reminded Christians to put public interest before personal favoritism, especially when presenting their opinions.

“We need to keep our dialogue focused on issues, not personalities,” he urged. “Yes, we still oppose and expose the harm our opponents are doing to our country. I want to critique my opponents without hating them.”

Referring to 1 Timothy 2:2 – where apostle Paul asked believers to pray “for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives” – Reagan urged Christians to pray for President Obama even though they may not share his political view.

In the light of the unrest in Egypt amongst other nations in the Muslim world, Obama is now facing enormous challenges around the globe, Reagan pointed out.

“I pray for President Obama, while I oppose his agenda,” he wrote. “In fact, our prayers have never been more urgently needed than right now.”

I happen to agree with this; I admit, it is kind of hard to keep a Christian perspective about all of this. There are times, when I lose my perspective about all of this. Anyhow, yes, we as Christians ought to keep the President in our daily prayers.

However, it is a little hard to do that, when you have stuff like this going on. From WorldNetDaily a story on a city official trying to take a Church’s tax exempt status away, for a lack of cleanness?:

A New Hampshire city official has taken the old saying “cleanliness is next to godliness” one step too far in a battle now raging over the tax status of a church building, determining that cleanliness is godliness, according to a legal team in the midst of the fight.

The dispute concerns Liberty Assembly of God, now called Destiny Christian Church, over its decision to use its building to feed the hungry and help the needy, and the resulting impact on its building.

It appears a city official didn’t like clutter, and concluded the church couldn’t be religious with it there.

It was several years ago that the foundations of the problem were set in place, when Concord, N.H., officials decided that if the church used its building to house the homeless and meet missionaries’ needs, it would no longer be a church because those weren’t “religious” purposes.

A subsequent room-by-room inspection of the facility was conducted by city officials, and their determination was that such activities were not religious, so the legal experts with the Alliance Defense Fund jumped into action. They now have pending a tax appeal for the church’s 2008 taxes as well as a lawsuit over the 2009 taxes.

A ruling in the 2008 case could be coming any day, but it’s uncertain whether that will resolve the complications that arose following comments from Kathryn Temchack, the city’s director of real estate assessments, who said the church must be stripped of its full tax exemption because its rooms were not clean.

Stuff like the above, can really mess with a person’s perspective. Although, I do believe it is a good thing to continue to prayer for our Government and our Country as a whole. When we give up on the power of prayer, we have lost the battle.  So, pray for your leaders, daily.

 

Video: Quote of the Day

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We’ve been getting the low end of the electric-only range, usually between 23 and 28 miles, undoubtedly due to this winter’s deep freeze. The car’s electric range is very susceptible to cold weather, primarily because the heater runs on electricity. We also found that an extended highway cruise shortens the electric range.

The Volt’s appeal in terms of fuel economy depends largely on your driving pattern. The more often (and farther) you travel beyond the electric range, the closer your overall energy use drops toward 30 mpg. That’s what we’ve been getting when the gasoline engine is running.

Counting just the energy used, not its cost, the Volt has been averaging close to 2 miles per kilowatt-hour, which, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, is the equivalent of 65 mpg. But that’s for the first 25 miles or so, when the car is running on battery power alone.

It is typical to see artificially high mpg numbers on the car’s trip computer. For example, let’s say you make five trips in a week. Four of them are 25 miles without needing the gas engine. On the last trip, 55 miles, the car uses 1 gallon of gas beyond the 25-mile electric range. The trip computer would calculate 155 miles on 1 gallon of gas, or 155 mpg. That might contribute to the feel-good factor, but the figure is misleading because it doesn’t count the electricity used.

GM says that recharge times are about 4 hours with a 240-volt supply and 10 to 12 hours with 120 volts. Our Volt has been taking in almost 13 kWh in about 5 hours every time we charge. We suggest that Volt buyers purchase a 220-volt (or Level 2) charger.

At the national average rate of 11 cents per kWh, the Volt would cost about 5.7 cents per mile in electric mode and then 10 cents a mile beyond that (assuming gas is $3 per gallon). By contrast, a Toyota Prius costs 6.8 cents per mile, and a gas-powered Honda Fit subcompact costs about 10 cents a mile in gas. But its price is less than half of what the Volt costs.

In some regions, such as the Northeast, you might pay a lot more for electricity. In Southern California, where rates increase with higher electrical consumption, there are special plans for EV owners that lower rates to as little as 11 cents per kWh.

There are evident compromises in passenger comfort as a result of the Volt’s battery layout. Because the battery takes up the center rear-seat area, the car can hold only four people. Also, the rear seats are tight and the sloping roofline can make it easy to bump your head while getting in. Our engineers complained that the air from the heater was tepid, leaving them uncomfortably cold. The electric seat heaters help, but not enough. When the temperature dips below 26 degrees, the engine will turn on even during the electric portion of a trip to produce more heat.

The dashboard has a center screen that houses the standard navigation system, and slick graphics display various energy-use information. The center console consists of small, touch-sensitive buttons on the dash that control the climate and the radio. We found them hard to tell apart.

So far, the Volt works as an electric car with a gas backup, but it’s not really much of a money saver in many places. Cheaper electricity or more expensive gas could tip the scales in its favor. For now, it seems that owning a Volt is an expensive way to be green.

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Let’s see… taxpayer money is being dumped into a car that the public can’t afford and/or doesn’t want. Demand for the expensive product is to be created by high gas prices combined with goading the public into buying one by scaring them with a mythical crisis pushed by an enviro-hypocrite who goes around in a private jet telling everybody the oceans are going to rise and flood the same coastlines where he recently invested millions in a seaside mansion. In a nutshell, the theme park impresarios who proposed “Six Flags Over Chernobyl” had a more solid business plan.

The Volt is in part the brainchild of politicians who expect everyone to believe that we need to spend money to keep from going bankrupt, so was the “economic sense” of the thing ever really in question?

They say it’s called the “Volt” because “Massively Expensive Union Bailout” wouldn’t fit on the hood. If the batteries continue to perform poorly in cold weather, don’t look for the Volt to be scrapped, but rather for several billion taxpayer dollars to be spent on a “Winning the Future” extension cord program.