Michael Oberndorf
Fast and Furious, indeed
By Michael Oberndorf
Fast and Furious could easily be used to describe events of the past week. Each day found my jaw hitting the floor as my mouth dropped open again and again. Sometimes it was at good news, sometimes at bad, and sometimes at plain old OMG unbelievable.
At long last, after months and months of foot-dragging and obstructionism by the Republican Establishment misleadership, Eric Holder is going to be charged with contempt of Congress. The sad part is that he should be charged with negligent manslaughter, too, for the deaths of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, ICE Agent Jaime Zapata, and a couple of hundred Mexicans, and with perjury for lying to Congress on multiple occasions. Where are the demands from these RINO fools for independent counsels, special prosecutors, and grand juries? Seems Establishment Republicans are missing the part of the spine that enables them to do this.
A secondary result of bringing contempt charges is that Obama-Soetoro almost immediately claimed executive privilege in the Injustice Department's refusal to turn over tens-of-thousands of subpoenaed documents. The upside of this is that this amounts to an admission that in spite of earlier claims and testimony to the contrary, the Fraud in the White House was indeed directly involved in Fast and Furious, quite possibly making him, too, guilty of negligent homicide. The downside is that the RINOs managed to delay this so long that we will be half-way through Romney's first term before a court rules on any of it. However, the scandal is coming out, regardless, and should go a long way toward waking up even die-hard Dummocrats to the corruption and incompetence of these people. One hopes, too, that the families of Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata will bring wrongful death suits against Holder et al. in civil court.
On the unbelievable side, all this activity has gotten Nutsy Pelosi worked up and into an apparent psychotic break. She claimed that the contempt charges were to stop Holder from going after Republicans for suppressing the minority vote, nationwide. The comment caused one normally sedate Republican congressman, Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, to publicly call it "mind-numbingly stupid." She also thinks the Supreme Court ruling on ObamaCare has something to do with broccoli, and that Republicans want to distract congress from creating jobs because they are "laissez, laissez, laissez, laissez, laissez, laissez, laissez faire." This woman needs to be removed from office and put into a nice, secure mental institution. OMG, indeed.
There was some good news, too, this week. The U.N.'s Rio+20 Conference, a confab of environmental extremists and eco-fascists that was supposed to overwhelmingly come out in support of Agenda21 and "sustainable development" was an utter failure. Developing nations were having none of it. They wanted nothing to do with restrictions on their ability to pursue industrial development and feeding themselves in the process. Look for the already crumbling support for "alternative energy" in Europe to disappear entirely, as reality finally sets in. Global warming is out, and common sense and sanity are in.
Well, not quite. The last jaw-dropper is one that will have really bad effects, both immediate and long-term. And once again, we have Senate Democrats and running dog RINOs to thank.
The always-up-to-date Senate this week, with the complicity of five RINOs, voted down a resolution that would have put an end to the EPA's Utility MACT, which imposes costly new mercury regulations for coal-fired power plants. The Utility MACT Rule sets up maximum achievable control technology standards for emissions of hazardous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants. Supposedly aimed at reducing mercury, the rule comes with an EPA-estimated annual compliance cost of $9.6 billion. This is Obama-Soetoro's threat to bankrupt the coal-powered energy industry, made good.
This is outrageous on a number of fronts. First, it allows the Usurper once again to unconstitutionally by-pass Congress. Second, it will cost upwards of a million jobs, as the economic damage ripples spread. Third, it will drive up energy costs which in turn will drive up the cost of everything else. And of course, the middle class and the poor that Democrats and RINOs claim to have such deep concern for, will suffer enormously from this.
Perhaps the most outrageous part of this is that mercury, the main target of MACT, is at levels far below what is considered dangerous. Indeed, the EPA has never presented any — repeat, any — evidence that mercury in fish or anywhere else is harming anyone, much less the women and children they claim are the victims. Mercury occurs naturally in the environment, and forest fires emit more mercury than power plants do. In fact, most of the mercury in the U.S. actually comes from industrial emissions in China. OMG.
November can't come too soon.
© Michael Oberndorf
June 24, 2012
Fast and Furious could easily be used to describe events of the past week. Each day found my jaw hitting the floor as my mouth dropped open again and again. Sometimes it was at good news, sometimes at bad, and sometimes at plain old OMG unbelievable.
At long last, after months and months of foot-dragging and obstructionism by the Republican Establishment misleadership, Eric Holder is going to be charged with contempt of Congress. The sad part is that he should be charged with negligent manslaughter, too, for the deaths of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, ICE Agent Jaime Zapata, and a couple of hundred Mexicans, and with perjury for lying to Congress on multiple occasions. Where are the demands from these RINO fools for independent counsels, special prosecutors, and grand juries? Seems Establishment Republicans are missing the part of the spine that enables them to do this.
A secondary result of bringing contempt charges is that Obama-Soetoro almost immediately claimed executive privilege in the Injustice Department's refusal to turn over tens-of-thousands of subpoenaed documents. The upside of this is that this amounts to an admission that in spite of earlier claims and testimony to the contrary, the Fraud in the White House was indeed directly involved in Fast and Furious, quite possibly making him, too, guilty of negligent homicide. The downside is that the RINOs managed to delay this so long that we will be half-way through Romney's first term before a court rules on any of it. However, the scandal is coming out, regardless, and should go a long way toward waking up even die-hard Dummocrats to the corruption and incompetence of these people. One hopes, too, that the families of Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata will bring wrongful death suits against Holder et al. in civil court.
On the unbelievable side, all this activity has gotten Nutsy Pelosi worked up and into an apparent psychotic break. She claimed that the contempt charges were to stop Holder from going after Republicans for suppressing the minority vote, nationwide. The comment caused one normally sedate Republican congressman, Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, to publicly call it "mind-numbingly stupid." She also thinks the Supreme Court ruling on ObamaCare has something to do with broccoli, and that Republicans want to distract congress from creating jobs because they are "laissez, laissez, laissez, laissez, laissez, laissez, laissez faire." This woman needs to be removed from office and put into a nice, secure mental institution. OMG, indeed.
There was some good news, too, this week. The U.N.'s Rio+20 Conference, a confab of environmental extremists and eco-fascists that was supposed to overwhelmingly come out in support of Agenda21 and "sustainable development" was an utter failure. Developing nations were having none of it. They wanted nothing to do with restrictions on their ability to pursue industrial development and feeding themselves in the process. Look for the already crumbling support for "alternative energy" in Europe to disappear entirely, as reality finally sets in. Global warming is out, and common sense and sanity are in.
Well, not quite. The last jaw-dropper is one that will have really bad effects, both immediate and long-term. And once again, we have Senate Democrats and running dog RINOs to thank.
The always-up-to-date Senate this week, with the complicity of five RINOs, voted down a resolution that would have put an end to the EPA's Utility MACT, which imposes costly new mercury regulations for coal-fired power plants. The Utility MACT Rule sets up maximum achievable control technology standards for emissions of hazardous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants. Supposedly aimed at reducing mercury, the rule comes with an EPA-estimated annual compliance cost of $9.6 billion. This is Obama-Soetoro's threat to bankrupt the coal-powered energy industry, made good.
This is outrageous on a number of fronts. First, it allows the Usurper once again to unconstitutionally by-pass Congress. Second, it will cost upwards of a million jobs, as the economic damage ripples spread. Third, it will drive up energy costs which in turn will drive up the cost of everything else. And of course, the middle class and the poor that Democrats and RINOs claim to have such deep concern for, will suffer enormously from this.
Perhaps the most outrageous part of this is that mercury, the main target of MACT, is at levels far below what is considered dangerous. Indeed, the EPA has never presented any — repeat, any — evidence that mercury in fish or anywhere else is harming anyone, much less the women and children they claim are the victims. Mercury occurs naturally in the environment, and forest fires emit more mercury than power plants do. In fact, most of the mercury in the U.S. actually comes from industrial emissions in China. OMG.
November can't come too soon.
© Michael Oberndorf
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