Interesting Items - Monday Dec 19, 2011 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 Dec 19, 2011 Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy – In this issue:
1. EPA Frac 2. Chukchi 3. NTSB 4. Light Squared 5. Recall 6. Voter ID 7. Tallbloke 8. SOPA 1. EPA Frac. With great fanfare, the EPA released a report a couple weeks ago finding that the use of hydraulic fracing in the Pavilion natural gas field in Wyoming indeed did befoul the local water table. Industry involved in the field pushed back last week, demonstrating quite clearly that the EPA committed fraud on the American public with their report. Encana Oil & Gas USA reported that the EPA drilled a pair of deep test and monitoring wells, 800’ – 980’ deep and were shocked, simply shocked to find natural gas at the bottom of the wells. Normal water wells in the area are not deeper than 300’ and have a long history of hydrocarbon fumes. By drilling as deep as they did, the EPA drilled into the top of the natural gas formation, ensuring they would find hydrocarbons in the wells. There is no way they could not have found natural gas with the test wells. And it is with this conclusion that they found fracing was dangerous for local water wells, and by extension for all wells in the nation. Such is peer reviewed science in the Obama administration. The EPA report is preliminary, but was rushed out into the media in an attempt to damage the use of hydraulic fracing as much as humanly possible nationwide. You can read the Encana response here: http://www.encana.com/news-stories/news-releases/details.html?release=632327 2. Chukchi. The environmentalist and Obama administration war against Shell Oil’s attempt to drill exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea continued last week with a conditional approval of their drilling permits. The new condition was a limit to the approved drilling that would cut about a third of the available time for drilling in the Chukchi Sea . BOMRE’s excuse for the new and outrageous limitation was they wanted sufficient time for Shell to drill a relief well should they encounter a blowout. Total time available for drilling is just over three months between ice out to ice in and the feds have cut about 38 days from the end of that time. Salazar’s Department of the Interior is killing offshore oil and natural gas exploration and production via the death of 1,000 cuts. The Alaska congressional delegation has screamed bloody murder at the new limitation and is working to get it lifted. To date, Shell has spent nearly $4 billion over the last five years trying to get drilling permits approved, indicating they believe there is significant oil and natural gas under the Chukchi. In parallel with this, the greens are busily trying to list three different species of seals in the Chukchi as endangered. Rationale for the listing is the same as the listing of polar bears – that the seals will all die because there will be no ice on the Arctic Ocean due to manmade global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions. More likely, the seals will end up being endangered because they are being eaten by an overabundance of polar bears around the northern coasts of Alaska and Canada : Federal mismanagement of wildlife via the Endangered Species Act. Nice. 3. NTSB. Ray LaHood’s National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) trotted out a unanimous recommendation that all cell phone use in moving vehicles nationwide should be banned. The excuse for the proposed ban was a multiple vehicle accident in Missouri when a 19-year old who was busily text messaging friends rear ended a pickup truck and was in turn rear ended by a pair of school busses. Two were killed and over 38 were injured. The NTSB did not comment on the problem posed by school bus drivers following too closely and being unable to stop or maneuver around an accident in front of them. Interestingly enough, text messaging while driving is already illegal in Missouri . Like all attempts to ban cell phones elsewhere, the NTSB report completely ignores all other forms of distracted driving – eating, drinking coffee, passengers, changing radio stations, etc. But facts do not matter much to the feds these days, do they? Rodney Balko writing in US News notes that the number of cellphones in use has increased by a factor of eight and the amount of time spent on cell phones has increased by a factor of 58 since 1995. Over that time, the accident rate has fallen slightly. Looks to me like cell phones are not a problem. They may even be a solution. 4. Light Squared. Light Squared is another of Obama’s crony capitalist frauds. This one has the Obama donor trying to turn a low powered satellite based data communications system into a high power terrestrial data system operating via cell phone towers. The problem comes with the frequency band they plan to operate in, which sits right next to military and civilian GPS receivers. Critics of the system believe that it will interfere with military and civilian GPS receivers. Light Squared claims that military receivers properly filters will not have a problem. Testing last week found that Light Squared interferes with over 75% of all military systems. Additionally, it wipes out completely all civilian receivers. Congress is getting involved with Charles Grassley (R, IA) demanding documents out of the WH and the FCC showing how Light Squared managed to get their use of the frequency spectrum approved. The Obama administration is stonewalling the requests as they normally do. Grassley has responded by putting a hold on all Obama FCC appointments. This is going to be pretty ugly before it gets solved. 5. Recall. Election fraud in Wisconsin continues with the signature gathering for next year’s recall of governor Scott Walker (R). Apparently the union droids are having a problem gathering signatures, so they are doing what they always do, and are making it up. Last week, signature gatherers turned in petitions including the names Mickey Mouse and Adolph Hitler. The canvassing board overseeing the signature gathering decided that they did not need to verify each signature and focused instead on making sure each signature had a valid address. Sounds like there is a majority of democrats on the Board. They tossed the Hitler name because the address was in Germany . Mickey appears to have moved from Florida or California and is now a registered voter in Wisconsin . This recall may very well work against the unions and democrats in Wisconsin , as Walker is pretty popular at this time. Democrats are trying to get former Wisconsin US Senator Russ Feingold to run for governor in order to defeat Walker . Feingold has so far declined the honor. Long time Wisconsin senator Herb Kohl (D) announced he would not run for reelection, opening the seat for a possible Republican pickup in 2012. The possibility exists for the Walker recall to trigger a backlash against the unions and democrats that will not only waste tens of millions of union dollars, but turn Wisconsin red in 2012 and elect another Republican from Wisconsin to the US Senate. Probably won’t get that lucky, but stranger things have happened. 6. Voter ID. Eric Holder, while not busy covering up for his Fast and Furious gun running operation announced last week that the (in)Justice Department was going to file lawsuits aimed at overturning voter ID laws in all states that currently have them. This is a clear message that democrats cannot get elected in open and fair elections without committing massive voter fraud. Interestingly enough, one of the blogs ran a photo of a union holding an election. The sign reminded everyone that an ID was going to be required for the union member to vote. Limbaugh also mentioned the photo on his show last week. 7. Tallbloke. Tallbloke is one of the British contributors to Anthony Watts Watts Up With That web site. He was among the first to post links to the second package of e-mails released by FOIA from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University . His apartment was raided by British police last week and several of his computers were seized. The search warrant or what passes for a search warrant in Great Britain was backed by Eric Holder’s (In)Justice Department. Police told him that they were going to make copies of his hard drives and that he was not a suspect at this time. Governments heavily invested in the mythology of manmade global warming due to carbon dioxide have been thoroughly embarrassed by the release of e-mails and computer code demonstrating collusion among climate scientists, government officials funding them and national media cheerleading in their conspiracy to commit a fraud upon taxpayers worldwide. They are searching for messengers to shoot and appear to have seized upon skeptic bloggers as the initial targets for their wrath. Thread on Watts Up With That can be found here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/14/uk-police-seize-computers-of-skeptic-in-england/ 8. SOPA. The latest in a long line of congressional actions intended to control content on the internet is making its way through congress this Christmas season. This one goes under the guise of the Stop Internet Piracy Act in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate. Both pieces of legislation allow Eric Holder’s (In)Justice Department to take down IP addresses, DNS locations, and web sites on simply the “good faith” accusation that the site has made illegal downloads available or has linked to a site that does so. Note that there is no due process. Your entire online presence can disappear simply upon the accusation. This legislation comes from the same Hollywood and entertainment types that brought us the specter of the RIAA suing 14 year olds for tens of thousands of dollars for downloading songs without paying for them. The entertainment industry is funding a large number of congress critters on both sides of the aisle in an attempt to defend their failing business model. And congress critters that have been destroyed by online bloggers are in support of this, as it is a way to eliminate online criticism from the right. This one appears to be real and should be stopped. 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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