Canada says no thanks to cap and trade but still into regulation

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Canada has for the moment succumbed to regulating their atmosphere but will hold off on cap and trade, which even the UK Guardian admits should end.

1/26/11, "Minister rejects national cap-trade system," Montreal Gazette, by Mike De Souza, Post Media News

"Canada's new environment minister, Peter Kent, is rejecting the advice of a government advisory panel that has urged him to moved ahead with made-in-Canada climate change policies, despite uncertainty about United States measures and regulations.

In a report titled Parallel Paths: Canada-U. S. Climate Policy Choices, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy said Tuesday that Canada's plan to harmonize its climate change policies with the U.S. is "sensible and realistic."

But it also recommended the government implement

• transitional measures,
  

such as the introduction of a national cap-and-trade system in which large industrial polluting companies would be required to buy credits from greener companies that are reducing emissions

• at a price set by the market....

Kent, who was in Washington for meetings with his U.S. counterparts, said the Conservative government is not interested in setting up a Canadian cap-and-trade system on its own.

"We have no plan to do that at the moment," said Kent, who took on his new portfolio

• following a cabinet shuffle in early January.

"We've chosen to move ahead with regulation and we believe that we're seeing early results."...

He noted that his government has already worked with the U.S. on regulations to limit tailpipe emissions in vehicles and is continuing to develop regulations for trucks, while it is ahead of the U.S. in terms of planning regulations to crack down on emissions from coal-fired electricity.

The coal electricity draft regulations are expected to be introduced in the spring."

via Climate Depot

733 ObamaCare waivers given to date, 1/26/11

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1/26/11, HHS.gov, "As of today, a total of 733 waivers have been granted for 2011. ...

• Annual limits waivers are temporary. In 2014 annual dollar limits will be prohibited...

"Approved Applications for Waiver of the Annual Limits Requirements

Updated January 26, 2011

All Applicants Listed have had 1 or more plans/policies approved.

Approved State applicants are listed separately below"...

Establishment Republicans believe they would not survive without accepting the Left's agenda. Sarah Palin is different-Caroline Glick

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What makes Sarah Palin different from other Republican politicians is "she does not seek to win over leftist elites. She seeks to unseat them. "...

1/26/11, "The Aim of Blood Libels," JewishPress.com, Caroline B. Glick

"In the case of her use of the term "blood libel," Palin exposed the Left's attempt to criminalize conservatives and make it impossible for conservatives to either defend themselves or pursue their alternative policy agenda. A blood libel involves two things: First, an imaginary crime; second, the accusation that an entire group of people is guilty of committing that crime that never occurred.

Classically, of course, blood libels have been used against Jews. Anti-Semites accused Jews of killing non-Jews for ritual use of their blood. Jews had murdered no one and Judaism has no ritual involving the use of human blood. Yet, repeatedly entire communities were criminalized and persecuted based on these blood libels.

By criminalizing the entire community based on false allegations regarding a never-committed crime, anti-Semites made it impossible for Jews to go on about our lives. If we sought to deny the charges, we gave them credibility. If we ignored the charges, our silence was interpreted as an admission of guilt. And so no matter what we did, the blood libel firmly attached the stench of murder to a completely innocent Jewish community.

Just as its Israeli counterpart did in the wake of Rabin's assassination, so the American Left seeks to attach a sense of criminality and violence to the American Right in order to make it socially and otherwise unpalatable to support or otherwise identify with it.

By calling the Left out for its behavior, Palin exposed its agenda. But the logic of the blood libel remained. Trusting the public's ignorance, and the liberal Jewish community's solidarity, the leftist media in the U.S. immediately condemned Palin for daring to use the term, hinted she was an anti-Semite for doing so, and argued that by defending herself, she was again inciting violence.

Many conservative thinkers and politicians have long viewed Palin as a liability. By remaining in the spotlight, they allege, Palin is helping the Left. They argue that the media have already destroyed her ability to communicate with non-conservatives. Since she is viewed as a conservative leader, by failing to shut up she is making it impossible for other potential leaders whom the media don't despise to connect with the swing voters they will need to unseat Obama in 2012.

While alluring, this position does more than harm Palin. It renders the 2012 election irrelevant.

It matters not whether these conservative thinkers support Palin. What matters is that by telling her not to defend herself from libelous attacks, they are accepting the Left's right to criminalize all conservatives. If she is not defended against a patently obscene effort to connect her to a madman's rampage in Tucson, then conservatives in the U.S. are signaling they really don't want to control U.S. policy. They are saying that if a Republican is elected in 2012, he or she will continue to implement Obama's radical policies.

In certain ways, Palin is a revolutionary leader and the Tea Party movement is a revolutionary movement. For nearly a hundred years, the Left in its various permutations has captured Western policy by controlling the elite discourse from New York and Los Angeles to London to Paris to Tel Aviv. By making it "politically incorrect" to assert claims of Western, Judeo-Christian morality or advocate robust political, economic and military policies, the Left has made it socially and professionally costly for people to think freely and believe in their countries.

What distinguishes Palin from other conservative leaders in the U.S. and makes her an important figure worldwide is her indifference to the views of the Left's opinion makers. Her capacity to steer debate in a way no other conservative politician can owes entirely to the fact that she does not seek to win over leftist elites. She seeks to unseat them.

The same can be said of the Tea Party. The reason it frightens the Left, and the Republican leaders who owe their positions to their willingness to accept the Left's basic agenda, is because it does not accept the Left's policy platform....

The Left's campaign against Palin is not just about Palin. If she is discredited for standing up to blood libels then no one in the U.S. or anywhere else can expect to succeed in moving past the failed and dangerous leftist policy agenda. But if she is defended, a world of possibilities opens up for all of us."

via Gateway Pundit

The Americans with Southern accents Obama keeps in the attic out of shame, feeding them nothing but bread and water, media silent

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In the ongoing de facto ban on drilling in the Gulf...Obama and the media hide Americans with Southern accents in the attic out of shame. A convenient, wholesale slaughter.

1/26/11, "Ongoing disaster in the Gulf," American Thinker, George Scaggs

"While the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the Obama administration's subsequent six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico are common knowledge, the fact that the federal government has turned the tragic accident into

• an ongoing economic calamity seems to be drawing scant attention.

Though the drilling moratorium was officially lifted three months ago, it has been replaced with an ongoing de facto ban. But the full scope and damaging consequences of the federal government's reactions to the gulf spill

• go well beyond deep-water drilling.

While the moratorium was limited to deep-water rigs, the work stoppage in the Gulf was not. Due to new regulations and ever-evolving permit processes, many shallow-water oil and gas

• drilling operations have been effectively shut down as well.

Mind you, there is no evidence that the rigs being prevented from operating

• are anything but safe.

During the six-month hiatus, though most companies decided to ride out the situation (believing the work stoppage was for a fixed period of time),
no fewer than five of the 33 deep-water rigs in operation at the time of the spill moved to foreign shores to fulfill their intended purpose.

Now rig owners, the contractors who lease them, and tens of thousands of workers find themselves subject to an indefinite waiting game as the federal bureaucracy mills about. As rigs continue to sit idle, pressure is mounting

• for contractors to void existing leases, and an increasing number of jobs are under threat.

Indeed, just this month, Marathon Oil terminated its contract on the Noble Corp's Jim Day rig that arrived in the Gulf in September. Similarly, deep-water rigs built by Pride International and the Maersk Group which were intended to set up operations in the Gulf

• have been redirected elsewhere.

Less oil drilling in the Gulf means less oil production in the Gulf. In addition to drilling rigs sitting dormant, many of the hundreds of production platforms operating in the Gulf have also been affected. From there, the ripple of

• economic death extends out to equipment, transportation,

fuel and food suppliers, and other businesses that support the region's oil industry and its workers.

The frustrations of Gulf Coast residents affected by the federal government's actions were on full display earlier this month (seen here and here) as Oil Spill Czar Feinberg held a series of town hall meetings in Mississippi and Louisiana coastal communities. Many local businesses harmed by the oil spill

• are still suffering due to the government shutdown of the oil and gas industry in the Gulf.

With no recovery in sight for our nation's private-sector job market and government revenues (at all levels) consequently stagnating, if not declining, it is troubling to find the federal government in the business of killing private-sector jobs, and many of them

• good middle-class jobs, in wholesale fashion.

Though it has been estimated that some 20,000 jobs have been lost due to the federal government's actions, Lee Hunt, President of the International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC), contends that

• job losses are only a part of the overall economic impact resulting from the continued ban.

The massive deepwater rigs that operate in the Gulf generate about $500,000 per day in revenues, though numerous owners have reduced daily rates by as much as $200,000 to keep companies in place while the shutdown continues. Additionally, Hunt estimates that

• "companies spend approximately another half million a day for consumables, transportation, maintenance operations and other costs" per rig.

All told, Hunt conservatively estimates that there is a direct "$30 million a day negative impact to the economy" due to the deep-water shutdown alone. However, he said that considering factors including

• lower dividend payments,
• stock prices,
  
• lost wages and
  
• investment dollars,
  

"the total enterprise loss is incalculable."

Texas Railroad Commissioner Elizabeth Ames Jones, who is one among three commissioners overseeing Texas energy policy, agrees, commenting that

• "[p]eople should be up in arms[;] it's not as though we [America] can afford this much longer."

So where are the Democratic Party and Big Media on this development? The self-proclaimed

• champions of the "little guy" have fallen strangely silent,

considering the dramatic impact on jobs and prosperity in the Gulf Coast region.

When thousands of jobs are lost due to corporate layoffs, it is the stuff of headlines. When the jobs of local and state bureaucrats are threatened unless they receive federal "stimulus" funding, a hue and cry goes out across the land. But when the government kills private-sector jobs, the sufferings of average Americans

• are suddenly of no import whatsoever.

Indeed, though local news outlets thoroughly covered Feinberg's recent visit to the region, one would be hard-pressed to find any national coverage of the

• controversial meetings which took place.

This is a direct contrast to media coverage when the ire of Gulf Coast residents was directed at BP.

Official sources now project a 13% decrease is domestic oil production in 2011, and most industry executives now predict that it will take several years before production in the Gulf of Mexico returns to 2009 levels. Hunt predicts that by the end of 2011, only four to ten deep-water rigs in the gulf will have returned to full operation. These are troubling developments, considering America's already overwhelming dependence on foreign oil.

The shutdown in the gulf will also have a direct impact on the size of the federal government's deficit. Though leftist politicos inside the Beltway routinely demonize the oil industry, in truth, Washington reaps huge windfalls from the industry in the form of

• royalties and excise taxes.

In sum, there are two rather troubling realities which are completely at odds with the present course being pursued by an overzealous federal government and the intrusive "Green" movement that

• sets the tone for much of today's government policy.

First, energy produced from oil and gas is literally the fuel for the world's major economies. As unpalatable as it must be for some, economic prosperity throughout the world depends on oil and gas.

Secondly, much of government's revenues come from the exploration, production, and usage of these hydrocarbons.

Whether the continuing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is due to deliberate government fiat or just gross bureaucratic incompetence, the results are the same. Congress should act immediately

• to end the Obama administration's overreach
  
• into this vital American industry."

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Double Dip in housing market now likely, Reuters

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1/25/11, "Price Drop Points to Likely Double Dip in Housing Market," Reuters, via CNBC

"U.S. single-family home prices fell for a fifth straight month in November and could plumb new lows soon, a closely watched survey showed on Tuesday.

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas declined 0.5 percent in November from October on a seasonally adjusted basis, though it was not as sharp as the 0.8 percent fall expected by economists.

Prices have fallen 1.6 percent in the past year,

• sharper than the 1.4 percent predicted by economists polled by Reuters.

"Everything in this report is unfortunately still sagging and still pointing downward," David Blitzer, S&P 500 Index Committee chairman, said in a CNBC interview just after the report was released....

• Sixteen of the 20 cities showed annual price declines in November, while 19 of 20 cities showed monthly price drops.

The housing market has been struggling since home-buyer tax credits expired earlier this year. To take advantage of the tax credits, buyers had to sign purchase contracts by April 30.

"A double-dip could be confirmed before Spring," Blitzer added in separate remarks. Blitzer defined a double-dip as

• both the 10 and 20-city composite indices setting
  

• new post-peak lows.

He noted that the 10-city index is 4.8 percent above its April 2009 low while the 20-city index is just 3.3 percent higher than its low that same month.

Unadjusted for seasonal impact, the 20-city index fell 1.0 percent in November

• after a 1.3 percent decline in October."...

via Drudge Report

Canada to defend its interests in the Arctic, Prince Charles and Al Gore notwithstanding

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1/25/11, "Canadians 'support more troops to defend Arctic claims,'" BBC

"Canadians feel so strongly about defending their claims to the Arctic that they support increasing troops numbers there, a major poll suggests.

• Some 9,000 people in eight Arctic countries gave views on their nations' relationship with the Arctic.

The Canadian-led research suggests Canadians feel most strongly when it comes to sovereignty issues.

"The Arctic is seen as a crucial ingredient to our sense of national identity," said the study.

The research was published by the Munk School of Global Affairs and the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation.

• Fifty-eight percent of Canadians said they supported a strengthened military presence in the north to protect against international threats, the study's authors' said.

"While Canadians say they are open to working with other countries, at the same time a clear majority of Canadians...want to increase Canada's military presence in the Arctic," its authors said.

Certain parts of the Arctic have been under dispute for many years, including the Arctic sea region and

• parts of the Arctic seas.

Around three-quarters of the Canadian respondents believe the contested Northwest Passage is in Canadian waters, and half of them believe the Beaufort Sea should belong to Canada.

Forty-three percent of Canadians said their government should pursue a firm line in

• defending Canadian sections of the Arctic.

This hard line was echoed by 36% of respondents in Iceland, 34% in Russia and 10% or less in the United States, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.

In response to the survey, Canada's defence minister Peter MacKay said the Arctic was

• "a very high priority for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and our government"."

both maps via BBC article

Summary of Obama SOTU 2011, Beatings will continue until morale improves

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via commenter at RedState.com

Jobless rolls increase in 20 states in December 2010-AP

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"Jobs on employer payrolls fell in 35 states in Dec. 2010."

1/25/11, ""Jobless Rise in 20 States as Workers Still Laid Off," AP via CNBC

"The unemployment rate rose in 20 states last month as employers in most states shed jobs. The Labor Department says the unemployment rate rose in 20 states and fell in 15. It was unchanged in another 15 states. That's nearly the same as in November, when the rate rose in 21 states, fell in 15 and was the same in 14.

Employers in most states didn't add any net new jobs last month.

• The number of jobs on employer payrolls

fell in 35 states in December, the department said."...


via Drudge Report