Interesting ItemsAlex Gimarc [email protected] Monday June 6, 2011 Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy – In this issue: 1. Nukes 2. Magical Mystery Tour 3. Escopeta 4. FCC 5. TSA 6. SWAT 7. SC Boeing 8. Recalls 1. Nukes. Greens infesting the German government managed to get German energy policy changed last week with an announcement that Germany will be shutting down all nuclear power stations within the next 20 years. Germany will be moving to the green Nirvana of renewable energy and jobs that has done so well in Spain over the last decade (20% unemployment, bankrupt government, skyrocketing inflation). Germany produces over 20% of its energy with reactors. The move was couched in the language of the precautionary principle using the natural disaster caused nuclear mess at Fukushima at the excuse. This is a huge mistake, as nuclear is and continues to be the safest, cleanest and one of the most inexpensive forms of energy production worldwide. The big winners out of all this will be the French, who generate over 80% of their energy with reactors. Expect the French to step up with a big smile and a very expensive contract to cover the shortfall in energy production when Merkel’s windmills and solar panels don’t provide what the German greens promise they will provide. Remember that it does get dark and cold in Germany in the winter. This will cost the German people dearly. Hopefully they will take it out on the greens when they figure out the primrose path they have been led down. 2. Magical Mystery Tour. Sarah Palin continued her bus tour in the Lower 48 last week, driving the media absolutely crazy in the process. She has refused to provide them with an itinerary, forcing them to do their job like paparazzi, chasing the bus from stop to stop. She held a rally in Boston an hour before former MA governor Mitt Romney announced his run for president. She rode on a motorcycle in the Rolling Thunder trip to Washington DC to begin the trip. She also fed the media a bit of red meat with a quote about Paul Revere also warning the British that the Americans were coming. This red meat caused an instant explosion of derision aimed at Palin’s lack of knowledge of American history. Unfortunately it turns out that Palin’s version was accurate and that the media completely wrong. She is clearly toying with them; playing them for the partisan vermin they are. And they are not having a good time at all. 3. Escopeta. Yet another example of how the anti-oil crowd running Washington DC these days is using the permitting process to shut down oil and natural gas exploration in Alaska comes with the attempted delivery of a jack-up drilling rig to Cook Inlet to explore for natural gas. The rig is very large and was enroute up the west coast of the US. It stopped over in Vancouver for some refurbishing work. During the stopover, Homeland Security asked the drilling company, Escopeta Oil to re-apply for a permit to enter the US with the rig. Escopeta had an existing open ended Jones Act permit issued by the Bush administration that would have allowed it to reenter the US, but complied with the request anyway. DHS turned down the new permit on the grounds that delivering the rig was not in the best interests of national defense. The company risks having the rig confiscated by the feds when it is offloaded here in Alaska for a Jones Act violation. Lawyers and Obamaoids are trading letters and threats while the clock ticks on Escopeta Oil. Drilling rigs are not inexpensive beasts, often costing more than a million dollars a day to operate. And every single day this beast sits in Canada is a day that it will not be making any money to defray the expense of supporting it. Looks like DHS intends to slow-roll permitting until the money runs out and the ability to drill new oil and natural gas wells in Cook Inlet goes away completely. This is Your Government at work. 4. FCC. The Obama appointees on the FCC are working hard to start regulating the internet via a regime entitled “net neutrality.” There is no congressional direction or legislation that gives them this authority. There was a court case last year that specifically found that the FCC did not have the authority to regulate the internet. But they went ahead with the regulations anyway. Last week, Judicial Watch released FOIA documents this showed Obama’s FCC coordinated their regulation writing with a left wing advocacy group calling itself Free Press. The documentation shows very clearly that the government and the advocacy groups are choosing winners and losers via the writing of legislation. And a government that chooses winners and losers via regulation is by definition a fascist state. Welcome to the Brave new World of Obama Land. 5. TSA. Texas is going after the TSA via legislation that will define intrusive TSA patdowns in Texas as “an offense of sexual harassment under official oppression” with a fine of up to $4,000 and one year in jail for each offense. The legislation passed the Texas House unanimously in May. Last week the Department of (In)Justice sent a letter threatening to cancel all flights in Texas (presumably flights out of Texas) if the TSA was not allowed to continue their gropefest. Interestingly enough, the legislation exempts TSA agents from the law should they have statutory authority, actual legislation passed by congress, that waives the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search of person and possessions. No word yet whether or not this legislation made it through the state senate or onto Governor Perry’s desk for signature. Expect similar legislation out of other states as the TSA continues its idiotic security theater sexual harassment inspections. If Perry decides to run for President and supports this, it will ring true to every single American who has flown for the last few years. Ed note: http://mail.google.com/mail/#search/texas+tsa/1306707464190bf7 6. SWAT. Remember the loudmouth anti-gun Pima County Sherriff Clarence Dupnik who was all over the cable shows blaming the Tea Party for the Giffords shooting in January? Well Dupnik has a real pack of goons working for him. In the middle of the night in early May, a SWAT team roared into the home with a warrant, found one of the residents, a combat veteran, Marine named Jose Guerena with an assault weapon (his military rifle) pointed at the intruders, and put over 60 bullets into him, killing him. They then waited an hour to call an ambulance, apparently concerned for their safety from a mortally wounded Marine dying on the floor. As of this writing, it is questionable whether the warrant was issued on false pretenses or not. This time around, Dupnik is holding all comments and refusing to answer questions behind the excuse that there is an investigation under way. The problem with SWAT teams is that they are getting military training and using military weapons and tactics. Yet law enforcement and military have entirely different missions: one being to protect and serve / defend and the latter being to break things and kill people. When you give a group of wannabee military infantrymen (cops) military weapons and training, by definition whey will look for a place to use those toys and techniques. More often than not, this takes place at the homes of unsuspecting, law abiding citizens who are ripped to shreds when they try to defend their homes from a home invasion. If it were me, I would shut down the SWAT teams completely and change the liability laws so that the judges, the supervisors, and the trigger pullers are personally liable for a home invasion that was launched under false pretenses. 7. SC Boeing. It appears that the Obama-led NLRB attack on Boeing’s South Carolina 787 manufacturing plant is payback against Boeing employees that voted to decertify the Machinists union in 2009. Up until that point, the NLRB had no problem at all with Boeing standing up a manufacturing operation in South Carolina. This puts both the Machinists union and the NLRB itself in a very tenuous position, as their attack on Boeing and South Carolina can now be described as retribution for a legitimate vote to decertify a labor union. You can find a copy of the filing in federal court and a description of the problem that the NLRB has created for itself here: http://www.laborunionreport.com/portal/2011/06/boeings-charleston-employees-enter-the-fight-to-save-their-jobs-from-the-nlrb/ 8. Recalls. The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board certified recall petitions against six Republican state senators last week. The same Board deferred recall of three democrat senators that fled the state during the debate on limiting union negotiation rights for benefits. Spokes-droids for the Board said that there was no politics at play in their decision. What is impressive is that anti-democrat Tea party types in Wisconsin managed to get sufficient signatures to recall democrats in the face of continued lawlessness from Wisconsin union members. This lawlessness included looting of the office of one of the recall petitions, stealing completed petitions. The Republican recalls were as usual funded by union members and national democrat campaign committees. The delay for decision on recall elections for democrats was based on the standard leftist technique to fight everything out in court rather than at the ballot box. Lawyers for democrats to be recalled are arguing that there are “irregularities” in the signatures gathered which need further study. What they intend to do is decouple both elections rather than doing it all at once. Allahpundit, Hot Air, Weds, and Ann Althouse, Fri. More later - - AG "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776. 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