Interesting Items - Oct 17 Come visit us at our new web site: www.interestingitems.org Leave your thoughts, comments and opinions. We look forward to hearing from you. Interesting Items Alex Gimarc [email protected] Monday Oct 17, 2011 Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy – In this issue: 1. Romney 2. Oz 3. Fire Island 4. Recall 5. Subpoena 6. Occupy 7. Icebreakers 1. Romney. The race for the Republican presidential nomination continued over the week with the latest televised debate on Bloomberg. Latest conservative heart-throb Herman Cain did decently, as did former MA Governor and GOP front runner, Mitt Romney. Texas Governor Rick Perry answered all questions tossed his way but was beat up for not being sufficiently forceful or animated in the debate, apparently giving the play to Romney who phoned his performance in. Note closely the use of the term “performance” to describe what is expected from the debaters. The media and the Republican establishment are doing everything possible to anoint Romney as the putative nominee as soon as possible so as to control the actions of the Tea Party, whom they have declared war against in this election cycle. One of the techniques to do this is to move the early primaries up as soon as possible, which will definitely hurt Cain and is thought at least by the Romney campaign to harm Perry. Unfortunately for the Romney camp which is busily fighting the Good Fight via the kind reportage of the State Run Media, the Republican nominee is not going to be selected by the media, democrat interlopers in open primaries, or establishment RINOs. He is going to be selected by Tea Party friendly voters, who are busily taking over the party for conservatives. My understanding is that the vast majority of primaries and caucuses this time around are all proportional delegates. This means that the Electoral College style winner take all outcomes will not play in the Republican primaries. Romney may win here, there and yonder, but he will not be able to build an overwhelming delegate lead. Whoever comes in second, third or fourth place in the primaries will also take delegates to the convention. At this point in the campaign, Cain does not have the resources for that sort of long term fight. Neither does Newt. Neither does Ron Paul. On the other hand, Rick Perry appears to be well positioned for the long fight. This one will not be over until April at the earliest, perhaps even as far as the convention. The second bit of Romney news was a Michael Isikoff hit piece in Newsweek that had Romney advisors in several meetings with the Obama WH discussing how to implement ObamaCare. One of the meetings even had The One in attendance. Tough to make a conservative case for repealing ObamaCare if your guys are busily working to implement the most hated and reviled piece of legislation since the Volstead Act (Prohibition). Couple that with Romney’s vigorous support of manmade global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions and you have the seeds for his massive, epic fail in upcoming primaries. Remember that in this stage of the 2008 primaries, Rudy Giuliani was the leader with over 30% polling and Fred Thompson was second at over 20%. As long as he continues to raise money and work the local level, Rick Perry may be well positioned to take the whole thing. 2. Oz. The Gillard government in Australia (Oz) committed economic suicide last week, voting for the passage of a carbon tax and trading scheme for Oz. The vote was 74 – 72. Gillard replaced the former Australian PM last year when his pursuit of a the green Nirvana got the best of his coalition. Gillard was a green True Believer who was installed as PM by her party on the promise that there would be no carbon tax or cap and trade. She lied. Sensible Aussies were apoplectic in the runup to this particular legislative fraud, rolling out all manner of protests, included a nationwide over the road truck protest. All of this was to no avail to the green True Believers in parliament, as they passed the legislation in much the same way as democrats passed ObamaCare over here. The legislation passed is particularly perverse, with inclusion of a number of poison pill provisions intended to make it all but impossible to repeal – again, not unlike ObamaCare. Expect Labor and the Greens to be tossed out of office in large numbers in 2013 during the next parliamentary elections unless there is a vote of no confidence in parliament forcing early elections. Gillard is toast, as are the greens. 3. Fire Island. The Regulatory Commission of Alaska (RCA) approved the power sales agreement between Chugach Electric and CIRI over a 17 MW wind farm on Fire Island, 3 miles west of Anchorage last week. The approval marks significant capitulation of the RCA to political supporters of wind energy in the state and among the congressional delegation. It was one of the most gutless actions of the body in recent memory. Instead of taking the next four months to evaluate the awful assumptions and unsupported claims of expensive natural gas into Anchorage, they bent to political pressure and went for the renewable gold. As a result, our electrical rates will increase, allowing us to pay more money for less reliable, less available power. This is going to backfire on both CIRI and the democrats infesting the Chugach Board of Directors. The local fishwrapper quoted a few of my public comments against the project in the article announcing approval of the agreement. You can find their article here: http://www.adn.com/2011/10/11/2115692/regulators-ok-sale-of-wind-power.html 4. Recall. The Republican majority in the Alaska House had a problem with a pair of canoodling legislators last session. One demanded the other be made chair of the Finance Committee or they would both leave the caucus. Both stormed out of the organization meetings last winter. The Majority Caucus refused to play and did not buckle to the threat, so the pair walked, and were not included as part of the House Majority Caucus last session. They were derisively referred to as the Love Caucus by a few conservative talk shows and blogs. One of the legislators was from Ketchikan, and his malfeasance so enraged the locals that they gathered signatures for a recall petition. Last week, the State Division of Elections Director rejected the recall petition, stating that the rationale for recall did not amount to incompetence or neglect of duties. Apparently, when a sitting legislator allows the little head to do all the thinking for the big head, it is not a problem for the Division of Elections of the State of Alaska. Fortunately, this guy is up for reelection next November. I expect the campaign in Ketchikan to be a full body contract kind of campaign which we tend to enjoy here in Alaska. 5. Subpoena. Rep. Darrell Issa (R, CA) issued full subpoenas against Attorney General Eric Holder over the BATFE / DEA / DoJ Fast and Furious / Gunrunner scandal. The subpoenas hold the force of lawand are demanding Holder produce everything including the kitchen sink to justify his actions in transferring thousands of automatic weapons from the US to the Mexican drug cartels. Holder, the BATFE and DEA have all be furiously covering up their involvement in this action that was intended to provide justification for more gun control legislation here in the US. In response, Holder “discovered “ an Iranian plot against the Saudi ambassador to the US which would have involved blowing up a couple embassies in DC (Saudi and Israeli), and the wanton slaughter of hundreds of Americans. Holder was shocked, simply shocked at the terrorist plot and simply did not have the time to respond to Issa’s subpoena. While outing an Iranian plot here in the US is certainly a positive event, I do wonder how many more he has up his sleeve ready to pull out and hide behind. Holder is going to be impeached or resign. When that happens (and it will), there will be nobody at DoJ capable of covering up for the Obama WH fraud and malfeasance. And Republicans in the senate will not allow another Attorney General to be confirmed until some very pointed questions are answered. Obama’s WH is just about to lose its top cover. 6. Occupy. The Obamaoid vermin constituting the Occupy movement continued its action defiling public places last week. At the top of the list was a march against the homes of WS billionaires in NYC last week. Interestingly enough, they bypassed completely the home of their financial benefactor, George Soros. I ran across a couple blogs last week that made the case that the protests are as much about the outrageous amounts of student loans and an inability to either get suitable employment to pay them off or simply declare bankruptcy and write off the debt. The higher education bubble is another democrat created and exacerbated problem, one that will financially enslave our children and grandchildren for decades to come, all in order to keep the money flowing into democrat supporters on college campuses nationwide. Obama and the Reid Pelosi majorities nationalized all college loanswith the Stimulus and ObamaCare in 2009 and 2010. Part of the legislation nationalizing the loans also made it impossible to write them off, thus indemnifying all universities from loan default and creating yet another government bubble in part of the economy. Want to fix this? Simply allow the students with the loans to declare bankruptcy. This will remove money from the leftists on campus and also will introduce them to the quaint little notion of this thing known as the marketplace. For the product they are selling is too expensive for anyone to purchase. Time to remove student loans from the federal sphere and reintroduce higher education to the quaint little notion of the marketplace. 7. Icebreakers. Anybody else out there know that the US only owns and operates a single icebreaker? I didn’t either. The boat is a 33-year old ship named the Polar Sea operated by the Coast Guard. It appears that the boat is reaching its end of life and the Coasties are planning on retiring it. Not so fast says manmade global warming aficionados Boy Senator Mark Begich (D, AK), Lisa Murkowski (RINO, AK Native Corporations) and Maria Cantwell (D, WA). The three floated legislation to keep the boat afloat until a replacement can be built. Their argument is counterintuitive, in that manmade global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions which they all three strongly buy into is expected to create more need for ice breakers rather than less. Silly me, I thought that warmer temps meant less ice and less of a need for a boat to break it up. Perhaps I have not been in DC long enough. Still, this is probably a good result out of bogus science, as we will need more icebreaker capability during the next couple decades of quiet sun which will cool down the Arctic Ocean a bit. Hope they build enough of them. More later -
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. Interesting Items can be found at the following locations: Our Home Page http://interestingitems.org/ Archives can be found at http://home.gci.net/~agimarc The Alaska Standard http://thealaskastandard.com/ MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuvalleynews.com Subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/ Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column: http://www.thevanguard.org/ -- To join RichsRants, send email to: [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/richsrants?hl=en
