Obama's Track Record

This video compares Obama's worthless promises to his actual track record as president...

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=626431014085686

Thoughts on Obamacare

From Charles R. Kesler (Author of I Am The Change:  Barack Obama and the Future of Liberalism)… 

“The problem with Obamacare is not merely that it will ruin health care, but that it undermines the whole notion of rights – natural rights – that come not from government but from our own nature and from God. Yes, it is unfair, unworkable, and unaffordable. But to leave the argument at that leaves the Constitution out of the picture. So when denouncing Obamacare, let’s hear more about its unconstitutional aspects. 

The fattest target is the Independent Payments Advisory Board (IPAB), which is unconstitutional on its face. IPAB consists of 15 members who are not elected by the people but appointed by the president. Their job is to make recommendations to limit Medicare’s budget by reducing reimbursements to doctors. Unless both houses of Congress overrule IPAB by passing their own equal or greater cuts to Medicare, IPAB’s proposals automatically become law. What’s worse,  Obamacare conspires to make IPAB permanent by mandating that no resolution to repeal it can be introduced before January 1, 2017. In other words, the Constitution would be operational for one month only – and even then the repeal must pass by August 15, 2017, in order to be valid, and it could not take effect until 2020! 

Congress could presumably unravel these restrictions and undo IPAB anytime it wanted. Nonetheless, the spirit and the letter of this kind of regulation suggest just how averse (and adverse) to the Constitution Obamacare really is. To think that Congress couldn’t repeal it, except for one month, and that even then repeal wouldn’t take effect for three years afterwards, is astounding.”

Where Does the Carbon Dioxide Really Come From?

More common sense answers to the phony global warming scam...

Ian Rutherford Plimer is an Australian geologist, professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, and the director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies. He has published 130 scientific papers, six books and edited the Encyclopedia of Geology.
PLIMER: "Okay, here's the bombshell. The volcanic eruption in Iceland . Since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet - all of you. 

Of course, you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress - it’s that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans and all animal life.

I know....it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kids "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cent light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs.....well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days. 

The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in just four days - yes, FOUR DAYS - by that volcano in Iceland has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud at any one time - EVERY DAY. 

I don't really want to rain on your parade too much, but I should mention that when the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth. 

Yes, folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over One Year - think about it. 

Of course, I shouldn't spoil this 'touchy-feely tree-hugging' moment and mention the effect of solar and cosmic activity and the well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keeps happening despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate change.

And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud, but the fact of the matter is that the bush fire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year.

Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping carbon tax on you, on the basis of the bogus 'human-caused' climate-change scenario.

Hey, isn’t it interesting how they don’t mention 'Global Warming' anymore, but just 'Climate Change' - you know why? It’s because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming bull artists got caught with their pants down. 

And, just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme - that whopping new tax - imposed on you that will achieve absolutely nothing except make you poorer. It won’t stop any volcanoes from erupting, that’s for sure.

 

Obama's Life Before Politics

What Is It, Exactly, That We Owe Mexico's Illegal Immigrants?

California's Drought Isn't Due To Global Warming, But Politics

http://news.investors.com/print/ibd-editorials/021414-690216-failure-to-use-water-infrastructure-is-destroying-farms.aspx

Posted 02/14/2014 07:18 PM ET 

Water Wars: President Obama visited California's drought-hit Central Valley Friday, offering handouts and blaming global warming. But the state's water shortage is due to the left's refusal to deal with the state's water needs.

Following legislative action last month by Speaker John Boehner and California's Central Valley Representatives David Valadao, Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy, whose Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Emergency Water Delivery Act was designed to resolve the long-standing problem of environmental water cutbacks that have devastated America's richest farmland, Obama is grandstanding in California, too.

His aim, however, is not a long-term solution for California's now-constant water shortages that have hit its $45 billion agricultural industry, but to preach about global warming. Instead of blaming the man-made political causes of California's worst water shortage, he's come with $2 billion in "relief" that's nothing but a tired effort to divert attention from fellow Democrats' dereliction of duty in using the state's water infrastructure.

The one thing that will mitigate droughts in California — a permanent feature of the state — is to restore the water flow from California's water-heavy north to farmers in the central and south. That's just what House Bill 3964, which passed by a 229-191 vote last week, does.

But Obama's plan is not to get that worthy bill through the Senate (where Democrats are holding it up) but to shovel pork to environmental activists and their victims, insultingly offering out-of-work farmers a "summer meal plan" in his package.

"We are not interested in welfare; we want water," Nunes told IBD this week. He and his fellow legislator Valadao are both farmers who represent the worst-hit regions of the Central Valley in Congress and can only look at the president's approach with disbelief.

"He's not addressing the situation," Valadao told us.

"They want to blame the drought for the lack of water, but they wasted water for the past five years," said Nunes.

The two explain that California's system of aqueducts and storage tanks was designed long ago to take advantage of rain and mountain runoff from wet years and store it for use in dry years. But it's now inactive — by design. "California's forefathers built a system (of aqueducts and storage facilities) designed to withstand five years of drought," said Nunes.

"We have infrastructure dating from the 1960s for transporting water, but by the 1990s the policies had changed," said Valadao.

Environmental special interests managed to dismantle the system by diverting water meant for farms to pet projects, such as saving delta smelt, a baitfish. That move forced the flushing of 3 million acre-feet of water originally slated for the Central Valley into the ocean over the past five years.

That hasn't helped the smelt any. But that doesn't seem to matter to Obama or his environmentalist friends.

The shutdown has been made worse by the inaction of California's Democrats, who for years have refused to build adequate storage facilities so that rainwater and snowmelt runoff can be stored for use by a growing population during dry years, another element of the earlier system. With no storage, the rain goes wasted.

"We can't make it rain, but what we can do is (conserve water) and save it for today, and we did not do that for two years," said Valadao, citing a recent wet year.

"We went into 2013 with reservoirs 80% full and ended the year at 20% full, and now we have 0%," said Valadao, citing the failure to build adequate storage for water. "We had lots of opportunities to prepare," he noted, but Democrats "blew it."

Nunes said the problem is serious and calls for concrete solutions, not dreamy social re-engineering efforts based on the unproven science of global warming.

"It's not global warming that led us to this problem, but math and engineering, because we let 3 million acre-feet of water go wasted over the past five years," Nunes said. "If we had that water, we would not be in an unmitigated disaster."

But that's right where California finds itself now. 

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The Endangered Species Act provides water for fish but not humans

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/13/schiff-federal-regulations-leave-california-high-a/print/

Thursday, February 13, 2014
llustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times more >
 
With that famous phrase at his 1981 inauguration, Ronald Reagan called out the federal government for overregulation that helped drive the economy into a ditch.

For Californians today experiencing a severe drought, Reagan's words should once again hit home.

Of course, the weather is the prime culprit. Until a desperately needed storm moved in this past weekend, it had been a dry winter, — and the storm hasn't compensated for the months without rainfall.

However, the damaging effects have been magnified by destructive regulations. Federal policies under the Endangered Species Act are making things worse, not better.

The scale of "this present crisis" — what Gov. Gov. Jerry Brown warned could be a "mega-drought" — can be seen in some compelling numbers. Seventeen rural communities were put on a watch list for severe water shortages, and for the first time, water agencies serving 25 million people were told they won't receive any of their allocation from state-run reservoirs.

This past week's rainfall will help, "but we need more," as a meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services told the San Jose Mercury News.

It's not surprising that President Obama has scheduled a visit to Fresno this Friday for a firsthand evaluation.

While rationing has been promoted in many communities, and vast areas of farmland have been removed from production, people ought to be asking: Where is the water that should have been saved for a non-rainy day?

Answer: Millions of gallons were diverted from human use because of federal regulations intended to help a tiny fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the delta smelt.

The smelt is listed as "threatened" under the federal Endangered Species Act, and the feds claim it benefits if less water is available to be pumped south to the San Joaquin Valley, Los Angeles and San Diego.

For example, from December 2012 to February 2013 alone, more than 800,000 acre-feet of water that could have been conserved behind dams was allowed to flow to the sea. That water could have provided for the needs of 800,000 families. It could have irrigated 200,000 acres of cropland.

This flushing of torrents of water to the sea is a new practice in California, threatening to make not just the current drought, but every future one, far more painful than necessary.

The trigger for this destructive new policy was the feds' 2008 "biological opinion" for the smelt, which essentially said people's needs for water may not even be considered.

Result: The state's water "treasuries" were raided.

In the era before the Endangered Species Act was controlling California's water supply, management formulas were calibrated to ensure water for dry times. Like money in the bank, water was husbanded, and deliveries to users were based on fall and winter rainfall and storage from previous years.

Even in what the media calls "the great drought of 1977," San Joaquin Valley farmers still received a water allocation of 25 percent. Why? Because reservoirs had been used for one of their intended purposes — to capture water that might be needed in the future.

Now, after one dry year, 2012-13, and the current year that's shaping up as critical unless we get many more storms like this past weekend's, water users have been told to brace for no deliveries — thanks in significant part to federal biologists pulling the plug on California's traditional water-storage practices.

The smelt regulations have also been imposing significant taxes on urban users. Southern California's Metropolitan Water District, which gets much of its water from the delta, raised charges on its scores of member cities and water districts by 20 percent after the smelt biological opinion was first issued.

"The [feds'] environmental decision has impacted the flow of water to Southern California by approximately 35 percent," a water manager in the Orange County city of Garden Grove told the Orange County Register in 2009. Remember — that was five years before the current drought.

Ironically, while the harms for cities and farms are real, the benefits for the smelt are speculative — as the "biological opinion" concedes. Numerous factors have contributed to the species' long decline, and holding back water from people has not reversed it.

Let's not water down the truth: California has suffered not just from a lack of rain, but also from a drought of common sense among federal bureaucrats. Congress is also on the hook for giving Endangered Species Act officials too much leeway, allowing the ignorant or ideological to push destructive agendas.

In a wrongheaded environmental strategy that harms humans without helping the environment, they opened California's rainy-day reservoirs and deliberately let the precious contents spill away.

Damien Schiff is a principal attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation. Julie MacDonald is a former deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks at the U.S. Interior Department.