MaxRedline

Baked Alaska

Alaskans have had just about enough of the East Coast environmeddlists. Accordingly, their legislators have introduced a bill that would declare New York City's Central Park "to be a wilderness area and to prohibit any further improvement or development of Central Park unless authorized by an act of Congress."

Republican state Rep. Kyle Johansen told the New York Times that he is trying to point out the "hypocrisy" of "those East Coast folks who write a lot of checks to shut down Alaska, while in their own backyard, Manhattan has been turned from a pristine wild island supporting an amazing Muir web of life to having only Central Park left as a green belt."

They have a point: when explorers landed there some 400 years ago, Manhattan was home to at least a thousand species of plants and animals. And most of the folks interfering in Alaska's affairs have never been there. It's not as though the state's planning to turn their lands into Manhattan II. Heck, the east-coast environmeddlists fought for years against they Alyeska Pipeline, claiming that construction and operation would kill off the caribou.

They lost. The pipeline was built. And what of the all-important caribou?

They didn't buy into the environmeddlists' arguments either: apparently drawn by the added warmth (the line's heated so the oil can flow freely), the ingrates chose to use areas along the line as a nursery. They gave birth there, more calves survived, and caribou populations increased. Naturally, our old friends at the ever-litigious Sierra Club were dumbfounded.

Many people suddenly developed a passionate concern for the mating habits of Alaska caribou and campaign noisily against intrusion of Arctic pipelines into this essential activity, reported The Christian Science Monitor on Oct. 10, 1972. The New York Times on Oct. 14, 1973, said the question is whether the caribou will go the way of the buffalo.

Reality: Thirty years later we can see the effects of the pipeline on the caribou. Walter Hickel, a former U.S. Secretary of the Interior and governor of Alaska, said that the caribou herd has not only survived, but flourished. In 1977, as the Prudhoe region started delivering oil to America's southern 48 states, the Central Arctic caribou herd numbered 6,000; it has since grown to 27,128. 

The portion of the environmental debate with the biggest symbolic impact took place when discussing the pipeline's impact on caribou herds.^[38] Environmentalists proposed that the pipeline would have an effect on caribou similar to the effect of the U.S. transcontinental railroad on the American Bison population of North America.^[38] Pipeline critics said the pipeline would block traditional migration routes, making caribou populations smaller and making them easier to hunt. This idea was exploited in anti-pipeline advertising, most notably when a picture of a forklift carrying several legally shot caribou was emblazoned with the slogan, "There is more than one way to get caribou across the Alaska Pipeline".^[39] The use of caribou as an example of the pipeline's environmental effects reached a peak in the spring of 1971, when the draft environmental statement was being debated.^[39]

This is why it's a waste of your resources to support professional environmeddlists like Sierra Club, Audubon Society, Wilderness Society, and most of those kinds of "societies". Essentially, they exist to enrich themselves, and to litigate. They rarely know what they're talking about, but they'll talk for years, stirring up as much hysteria as possible in the process.

 

Related articles

• Alaska rep urges federal takeover of Central Park (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Alaska says, mind your own business (timesunion.com)

The Latest EPA Lie

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is pushing hard in defense of their $10 billion-a-year (to as much as $100 billion, by real-world estimates) plan to kill coal-fired plants and cause your energy bill to skyrocket sound and necessary regulation to protect children from airborne mercury emissions, arguing earnestly that it's "fair". Environmeddlists like Sierra Club are fully on board, falsely stating “When this little girl grows up her world will have significantly less mercury pollution because President Obama and the EPA stood up against polluters and established the first-ever clean air standards."

Never mind that the air in the USA is cleaner than that in any other country. Never mind that mercury emissions, already miniscule, are of little consequence to humans - it does impact aquatic species, and it can bioconcentrate in toxicity as it's passed through the food chain. However, EPA itself estimates that the new mercury regulation serves to protect America’s population of pregnant, subsistence fisherwomen, who eat 300 pounds of self-caught fish reeled in exclusively from the most polluted bodies of water.

That no such individuals exist is irrelevant: the EPA, by its own admission, has issued a regulation that is specifically designed to "protect" a nonexistent population - while eliminating an inexpensive source of energy for some 22 million Americans at a cost of between $10 and $100 billion annually, together with the elimination of hundreds of jobs at coal-fired power plants. EPA gamely insists, however, that the regulation will be a "job creator"; galvanizing the emissions-control industry.

You will live in mud-and-straw huts, and you'll be darned thankful for that.

 

Related articles

• "Dream Big" Thanks to New Mercury Protections (sierraclub.typepad.com)
• EPA's Big Mercury Lie Already Killing Jobs (junkscience.com)
• Factbox: EPA's looming clean air rules (reuters.com)

Rockobama

His talent knows no bounds.

 

There's Always Room Under The Bus

Image via Wikipedia

Were it not for the fact that he's an incompetent racist, the kind of guy who impelled the development of contraceptives, you might feel somewhat sorry for Eric. Because, make no mistake - he's going to be joining the other bodies under Obama's bus very soon; likely by the end of the week. AG Eric Holder has become more than Barry can afford. There's an old saying that observes that a fish rots from the head, and Barry's been buying up a lot of newspaper in a desperate attempt to wrap this stinker up before the campaign gets heated and no amount of refrigeration will help.

Unsurprisingly, one of the few Amendments that Barry's made no effort to disembowel over the course of the past three years is near and dear to him: the 5th. Patrick Cunningham, an Obama/Holder/Burke confidant and ally, used that one last week before bailing entirely. When Eric heads into the congressional mixed-martial arts battle this Thursday, he'll really have only one thing to say:

Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant. "Hail, Leader, we who are about to die salute you."

It was customary for Roman gladiators to thus salute the Emperor prior to engaging in battle, back in the day.

Eric doesn't have that kind of class - he's a petty, vindictive, conniving little weasel (no offense to weasels intended), and although initially useful in the effort to emasculate the 2nd Amendment, he's become, well, a bit of a bother. He'll be trying to play the race card right up until the moment the rear wheels of Barry's bus hit him.

Death To Acronyms!

The Senate on Monday voted 93-2 to move forward with the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, legislation that would prevent members of Congress from making investments and trades based on non-public information.

Is there something in a congressman's job description that requires him (or her) to come up with some dumb-ass name for every bill, specifically so that it can be turned into a cutesy acronym? If so, we need that job description changed, pronto. And if not, we should be allowed to shoot them.

What we really need is an entirely unique bill; one that's never before been considered, but which is grossly overdue:

Stop Harassing Innocent Taxpayers. Let it hit the fan.

Confusion At The Columbian

Eric Florip, writing at The Columbian, demonstrates the complete lack of comprehension that has characterized the 'zine when it comes to transit - he gets it wrong in the very first sentence: 

In the still-evolving debate over how to pay for maintaining new high-capacity transit systems in Vancouver, C-Tran leaders are so far sticking with Plan A.

That’s sending a sales tax measure to voters in November, which the agency’s board committed to last year.

Sorry, Eric, but light rail isn't "high-capacity", and although you briefly pay lip-service to flexible solutions like bus rapid transit, as you note yourself - Much of the conversation has centered around light rail. In other words, much of the conversation has centered around inflexible low-capacity, two-car fixed-rail toys.

Money could come from a fare-based model leaning heavily on riders, for example, or a city motor vehicle license tax. We know which option the politicians and planners are going to shoot for: fare evasion is rampant on light rail, so you know darned well that "riders" aren't going to be paying; it only makes sense, therefore, to steal yet more money from vehicle owners by adding another fee to their load. Drivers, after all, are already accustomed to having their fuel taxes and other fees diverted to pet projects like multimillion-dollar bicycle bridges; they'll just roll their eyes and hand over their wallets again.

Hey, the liars' budget is only $2.5 million a year to operate the choo-choo from the state line to Clark College. That has to be, like, four whole miles.

 

Infidels Must Die!

Cover via Amazon

Soros-funded Leftist organizations such as "thinkprogress" and the various offshoots have taken the Religion of "Man-Made Global Warming" to its logical end: they're going after Deniers. They've noticed that most meteorolgists don't buy into their religion and don't believe that human activities exert any significant impact upon planetary climate. This is heresy, and these people need to be "held accountable". How very Orwellian.

The second link above, an outfit called foreskin the facts (or something like that) has a nifty little q&a atop their homepage, asking if you believe that the planet is warming. Provide the "wrong" answer, and they tell you that you're part of a growing trend of people who don't buy into it. Then, they tell you how 2011 was THE WORST YEAR EVER for bad weather.

Now, just a few months ago, if you brought up weather, these very same folks snorted in disdain and condescendingly informed you that weather is not the same as climate. Today, they're desperately trying to make the case that they are, in fact, the same. Facts don't matter to these people; they just want to make money - and gain power - out of fear-mongering, and they'll say whatever they think they can get away with in pursuit of these goals.

Their latest effort: stifle the majority of television, radio, and print meteorologists who don't subscribe to the Religion. They must be silenced by any means necessary: censorship, ridicule, pressure to remove them - all valid approaches as far as the priesthood is concerned. If deemed necessary, there's no reason to believe that they wouldn't countenance kidnapping egregious Deniers and sawing their heads off. They are, after all, tolerant™ Leftists.

Related articles

• Global warming activists: Get those "deniers" out of meteorology (hotair.com)
• Liberal group compiles hit list of TV meteorologist climate change skeptics (junkscience.com)

Cycle 25!

You probably thought, "Oh, it's a Portland blog. This is gonna be about the latest trend in Saving The Planet™ by bicycle." Wrong.

It's actually about the latest trend in Anthropogenic Global Warming - which, oddly, doesn't seem to be happening, so forget about booking that tropical vacation in Wales for now. As it happens, the Science isn't quite settled, for some reason. Inconveniently for AlGore and other leaders of the Religion, it appears that the planet hasn't been warming for 15 years.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Oddly, scientists seem to have concluded that the sun may play some role in regard to planetary climate. Indeed, many now warn that the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

Although some claim that human-released carbon dioxide will prevent significant cooling, others dispute that view; noting that these individuals are relying upon the same computer models which thus far have proven erroneous. They argue that it's entirely possible that the River Thames will freeze again, as shown above.

‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’

In the next few years, it's entirely possible that a whole lot of "scientists" leading the AGW parade are going to find grant funding hard to come by. They may have to kiss their careers goodbye, but the EPA and other agencies are certain to find a new angle to enhance their control, which will undobtedly prove fruitful grounds for the next set of grant-dependent "scientists" to explore.

The Latest From Sustainable Susan

I swear this is a guy. Okay, maybe a trannie. But I'm not buying that Sustainable Suzy from Portland City Hall is a woman. On the other hand, I also don't buy "her" lies:

Just like when Portlanders first started curbside recycling, it takes time to create and establish new food scrap collection routines for your household. Residents in a year-long pilot program found that after a little practice, they were able to make the system work and reported high rates of satisfaction.

Well, there's a lie, right there: out of 2000 "surveys" they sent out to those folks who were stuffed into the "pilot program", only 300 were returned. And the "survey" - which they can't seem to locate right now - was slanted. You're not supposed to remember that there were three boxes that could be checked: "somewhat satisfied", "moderately satisfied", and "very satisfied". Gee - you don't suppose they were shooting for a "high satisfaction rate", do ya?

And they have some handy tips and tricks to share with you idiots:

• 
  Set your green roll cart out for pickup every single week — even if it’s not full. The food may not look like a lot in the big green Portland Composts! roll cart, but it really adds up when every Portlander participates.

• Consider saving some of the last fall leaves to line your cart throughout the winter. If you don’t have leftover yard debris, you can still keep the bottom of your cart clean by lining it with a few sheets of newspaper, a paper bag or a take-out pizza box.

• Lining your kitchen compost pail will also help keep your green cart clean. You can tie off approved compostable kitchen pail bags to keep your food scraps from touching the inside of your green roll cart. Check out the list of approved compostable pail liners here.

• Empty the contents of your kitchen compost pail, including the compostable liner, into your green Portland Composts! roll cart frequently.  The more often you empty your kitchen pail, the less time food scraps spend in your kitchen.

• When it is not freezing, give your green cart a rinse with non-toxic soap and water. Pour dirty water onto grass or gravel, not down the storm drain.  See how it’s done by watching our instructional videos. Try sprinkling a little baking soda in your clean cart to avoid odors.

Fellow Portlanders share tips about what to do when you have messy, stinky or wet food scraps

“I wrap messy food in newspaper and then place in the pail,” said Montavilla resident Megan Tiede. “The newspaper can be composted along with the food scraps. And even better – it’s free!”

“Rather than putting stinky food scraps, like meat and bones, into my kitchen compost pail, I add them to an old yogurt container I keep in my freezer,” recommends Rebecca Raymond, resident of the Overlook neighborhood. “Then I empty them directly into my green composting roll cart the night before my pickup day!”

“I drain as much liquid as possible from food before putting it in my kitchen compost pail,” suggests George Patterson, resident of the Humboldt neighborhood. “So if my kids have leftover cereal, I drain off the milk before adding it to the pail.”

How have you made food scrap composting successful in your household? Share your tips, ask questions and learn from other Portland residents on our Facebook page or contact us:

Golly! You mean it's possible to be unsuccessful at forced slop-bucketing? Say it isn't so, Suzy!

Tax dollars at work....

Portland is a leader
in imagining the 
future of cities.

That's scary!

Sloperation "Fast and Furious"

Of the many government officials involved in the "Operation Fast and Furious" gun- running scheme, only one has lost his job. On July 10, 2009, President Obama named Dennis Burke as his nominee for U.S. attorney for Arizona. He was confirmed by unanimous consent in the Senate on Sept. 15 of that year. Interestingly, over the course of the previous two decades, Burke was deeply involved in "gun control" legislation, working closely with a White House policy analyst named Rahm Emanuel to draft legislation banning semiautomatic rifles. Introduced by Burke's mentor, then-Senator Dennis DeConcini, a Democrat from Arizona, it was subsequently passed and signed into law by President Clinton in 1994.

Burke continued to work closely with Emmanuel until 1997, at which time he teamed up with Janet Napolitano, with whom he worked for the next decade.

One month after his appointment as U.S. Attorney/Arizona was confirmed, the clandestine scheme known as "Operation Fast and Furious" was initiated under the watchful eye of a long-time gun opponent. Although there is general agreement that Burke ultimately became the fall guy, taking the heat for others in the Department of Justice and the White House, perhaps nothing so deftly illustrates his enthusiastic complicity in the sordid operation as his own words - crafted and sent to colleagues as whistle-blowers within ATF unraveled the scheme: in response to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who informed DoJ of his abiding concerns regarding the operation, Burke denounced the assertions as "categorically false." And he went further, referring to congressional investigators as "stooges" who were beholden to right-wing gun-nuts.

In fact, Burke composed and sent numerous emails to top DoJ officials, bemoaning "bad publicity" and accusing Senator Grassley of lying. Eventually, even one of those Burke was apparently seeking to protect - his boss, Eric Holder - admitted that Senator Grassley's assertions were true. Clearly, Burke's days as US Attorney were numbered.

It seems unquestionable that he hoped to employ the operation as a means toward the end of gutting the Constitutional guarantee afforded by the 2nd Amendment; he may not have been "fast", but he was clearly "furious" over the unraveling of his plan. The deaths of a few hundred Mexican citizens and at least one U.S. Border Patrol agent appear to have been irrelevant to him. And all that's happened to him, thus far, is that he was forced to resign as a US Attorney. Nobody else - not Eric Holder, not Janet Napolitano, nor anyone in the White House has been called to account.

The investigations on two fronts are ongoing.

Related articles

• Justice Department changes inquiry responses to Congress after 'Fast and Furious' (foxnews.com)
• Michelle to Barack: "Get Rahm outta here!" (chicagoreader.com)
• Pleading the Fifth: Gunwalker Witness Refuses to Testify (pjmedia.com)