Category Archives: Bush

‘Commies Cars,’ I.E. Electric Cars, Trash The Environment

Bush, Energy, Pseudoscience, Republicans, Science, Technology

“The benefits [of electric cars] to the consumer are few, much less to the environment, unless a steady discharge of lead, cadmium, and nickel—the byproducts of batteries—is a blessing in disguise.” So I wrote in “Commie Cars,” in 2002. Another pesky matter about the junk science undergirding electric cars, alluded to in the same piece, concerns the source of energy. This leftist blockheads (including so-called right wingers) have proven incapable of tracing in their minds:

Perhaps the biggest obfuscation in the gimmick-car racket—which President Bush has fallen for, if to judge from his energy plan—has to do with the source of the energy. Whether a vehicle is propelled by hydrogen-powered fuel cells or electricity, both electricity and hydrogen don’t magically materialize in the vehicle. They must first be generated. Be it coal, natural gas, nuclear or a hydroelectric dam, these cars are only as clean as the original source of energy that generated the vim that powers them.

(“Commie Cars.”)

This understanding is finally catching on: “Business World Columnist Holman Jenkins Jr. reports on a new study that shows electric cars pollute far more than gas-powered vehicles.” Via Wall Street Journal comes this terrible transcript of a video segment worth watching:

The National Academy of Sciences has a new report out with some surprising revelations … about battery powered cars & their environmental impact … business World Columnist Holman Jenkins Junior stays with us now … battery powered cars are good for the environment right? … unfortunately the whole … environmental impact from cradle to grave of these that are being manufactured … that they are more than gasoline powered cars might wake … well … for one thing … hidden dangers toxic materials … or is that in a forty percent from the scene is actually comes from coal … these are all burning cars the net … and open title of worst pollution especially in articulates in the metals … and at the gasoline motor or so basically you’re just trying to turn the location of pollution and making it better making words … all men … the falling oil prices causing some of these academics to reconsider the economics of green … in color arts … consumers to be considered the economics of it it’s intimate to government subsidies on the cards look even more ridiculous … what really undercuts the political … according to county records is reports like this one which says that the … environmental impact worse not better … all the people who bought these cars now as tokens of virtue are going to have to live under that … the number of this … report is that you not helping and burning hurting at … all … let’s say you are an environmentalist if you cannot … buy a battery … powered car and Tesla are ever … in what should you be doing … well if you’re concerned about global warming is due to the network … American cars anyway … they’re tiny fraction of the problem we should focus on power plants and … or replacing coal with nuclear if you really believe that global warming is a threat that’s the only realistic solution … the major source of the problem is our plants in the … end of major solution to … the renewal Wallace or wind or solar extended the nuclear button … a lot of great people don’t like nuclear it there’s this stock and bond when they haven’t faded away … it … plays out like the Obama administration that’s their declaring war on coal and power plants … but that subject for another day business World Columnist Holman Jenkins Junior thank so much.

Guess Who Warned Against Invading Iraq?

Bush, Foreign Policy, Iraq

Who offered the following astute, if utilitarian, analysis, in mitigation of an invasion of Iraq, in 1994?

… if we had gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. It would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over and took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down the central government in Iraq, you could easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have, the west. Part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim. Fought over for eight years. In the north, you’ve got the Kurds. And if the Kurds spin loose and join with Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

Bush’s Vice president Dick Cheney, one of the architects of the invasion of Iraq in 2002, had advised against it in 1994. His predictions as to the destabilization of Iraq—he doesn’t mention the bloodshed, because Cheney was never one to count bodies—have come to pass.

UPDATED: Don’t Get ‘Grubered’ By W’s Groupies

Barack Obama, Bush, Conservatism, Constitution, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Media, Natural Law, Republicans

The current column, “Don’t Get ‘Grubered’ By W’s Groupies,” now on WND, is just in time for Barack Obama’s logically “broken” address on immigration is . An excerpt:

On Fox News’ “The Five,” one female host energetically involved in genuflecting to George Bush turned to another, a former prosecutor and lingerie model, to solicit her “constitutional take”—those are shudder quotes—on President Barack Obama’s impending executive amnesty. A better constitutional authority on presidential powers than Kimberly G-string is Jonathan Turley, professor of law at George Washington University. …

… Barack Obama’s cringe-factor has crescendoed—so much so that conservatives feel comfortable about dusting off an equally awful dictator, Bush 43, and presenting him and his dynasty to the public for another round. However, when James Madison spoke of “war as the true nurse of executive aggrandizement,” he was speaking not only of Obama.

“Speak softly but carry a big stick—the stick being executive power,” preached another Republican tyrant, Teddy Roosevelt. While Turley will be tackling the constitutional quagmire posed by Obamacare, immigration is the latest legislative stick with which Americans are being stuck.

Greg Gutfeld, the one and only neoconservative on that current-affairs show mentioned who entertains and occasionally edifies, is correct about the “broken” inchoate verbiage: “Our immigration system is broken” is a euphemism for the refusal to enforce immigration law (against certain ethno-racial groups). It is statist semantics; Orwellian Newspeaks; a linguistic trick to lead Americans to believe urgent action is required. …

Read the rest. The complete column is “Don’t Get ‘Grubered’ By W’s Groupies,” now on WND.

UPDATE: A reply to a critic, here:

The time to be a follower of Bush ditto-heads is over. Ask the Bush groupies why they ooze over and promote a mass murderer and his ugly art, on what is supposed to be a current-affairs program. This column was simply reporting what’s discussed on these multiplying panels of pig-ignorant loudmouths. (By the way, strong language is not vitriol.) Moreover, why confuse sexiness with smarts/ideas?! There is a reason Ann Coulter and Ms. Malkin don’t get a TV show: they are too clever for the cable master’s comfort. It is up to the consumer of this dross (“The Five,” “Outnumbered”) to know he is being entertained and not edified by most cable and nitwork shows. If he does—he should be OK.

Jonathan Turley Not Enough Of An ‘Anti-Executive Power Extremist’

Bush, Constitution, Democrats, Media, Republicans

When their guy is in power, both dyed-in-the-wool Republicans and Democrats—and the military-media-congressional complexes attached to each political affiliation—shun truth and justice. When Bush was in power, Fox News did a poor job of holding him accountable (they had “TUNED-OUT, [WERE] TURNED-ON, AND HOT FOR WAR”). MSNBC did the opposite; they held Bush accountable. The position was framed by a Facebook friend as follows:

Stephen James Bernier: How is it when you point out the obvious faults of George W. Bush you are a “Bush hater”? When you point out the faults of Barack Hussein Obama you are a “patriot”?

A hint of this is found in the response at Powerline to the choosing by House Speaker John Boehner of Jonathan Turley, prominent “constitutional scholar,” “to represent [the House of Representative] in a lawsuit against the Obama administration. The suit challenges changes the administration made to Obamacare without congressional authorization.”

The liberal law professor is pretty impartial when it comes to Obama. Yet Powerline worries that Turley is too much of an extremist on this issue, as “he believes in severely restricting presidential power.”

This first became clear during the Bush years, when Turley became a hero of the left, and a constant presence on such shows such as Keith Olbermann’s and Rachel Maddow’s, by consistently claiming that the president’s counter-terrorism efforts were lawless and unconstitutional. Turley went so far as to accuse Bush of committing war crimes and advocated prosecuting top administration officials for their approval of harsh interrogation techniques.

Essentially, Powerline begrudges Turley for having applied to Bush the same constitutional principles he is applying to Obama.

MORE.