Which "America" Does John Edwards Live In?

John Edwards from a 2004 speech:

Today, under George W. Bush, there are two Americas, not one: One America that does the work, another that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks. One America - middle-class America - whose needs Washington has long forgotten, another America - narrow-interest America - whose every wish is Washington's command. One America that is struggling to get by, another America that can buy anything it wants, even a Congress and a president

To his credit, John Edwards never said which America he belonged to. Now it is obvious. I hate rich socialists who are "champions of the poor." They are called limosene liberals or champagne socialist. If they were so concerned about the poor, wouldn't they live more modestly? Donate some? He could live very nicely on one acre with a 5,000 sq ft house. He could donate much of the land to the homeless. He could use funds to build houses.

RALEIGH - Presidential candidate John Edwards and his family recently moved into what county tax officials say is the most valuable home in Orange County. The house, which includes a recreational building attached to the main living quarters, also is probably the largest in the county.

The Edwardses residential property will likely have the highest tax value in the county,- Orange County Tax Assessor John Smith told Carolina Journal. He estimated that the tax value will exceed $6 million when the facility is completed.

The rambling structure sits in the middle of a 102-acre estate on Old Greensboro Road west of Chapel Hill. The heavily wooded site and winding driveway ensure that the home is not visible from the road. "No Trespassing" signs discourage passersby from venturing past the gate.

Don Knight, Orange County building plans examiner, told CJ that, including the recreational building, the Edwardses' home would be one of the largest in Orange County.

Knight approved the building plans that showed the Edwards home totaling 28,200 square feet of connected space. The main house is 10,400 square feet and has two garages. The recreation building, a red, barn-like building containing 15,600 square feet, is connected to the house by a closed-in and roofed structure of varying widths and elevations that totals 2,200 square feet.

The main house is all on one level except for a 600-square-foot bedroom and bath area above the guest garage.

The recreation building contains a basketball court, a squash court, two stages, a bedroom, kitchen, bathrooms, swimming pool, a four-story tower, and a room designated "John's Lounge." Carolina Journal

Liberal Q&A on Global Warming

Liberals should come a point when they realize their desire of global socialism will never be a reality. They ignore the failures of communism. C.S. Lewis once eloquently opined:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

What I've come to realize from discussions with liberals is that "Global Warming" is just vehicle to usher in global socialism. As soon as you start talking about global warming and the fact there were several warming and cooling periods throughout history, the topic quickly moves into the fact that the US has so much and others don't. It's never really about that the ice caps will melt and flood coastal lands. Liberals seem to all garner a few talking points. So I've listen some of them with possible responses:

"People think that the US and the EU deserve more resources just because we are wealthy and powerful. It is one reason everyone hates us so much."

The US and the EU don't "deserve" more resources. We find them, drill for them, or buy them at market prices (actually above true market prices when you consider OPEC).

If Americans figure out a way to drill for oil 3000 feet below the surface, why should they be forced to hand it over to the third world? "Fairness?" What would happen then? No one would try to drill the next hole, because you wouldn't be recover your costs of drilling and technology research. What happens then? Supply of oil drops and prices rises. What happens then? People, always the poorest, go without heat. What happens then? Poor people die.

Besides, who has developed the technology to obtain those resources in the first place? The US and the EU. If it were not for the Americans and the Europeans, would the Indians, Arabs, or Chinese know how to drill miles down and recover oil, then process it so it can be used in mechanical equipment, which was also invented by
Americans and Europeans? Its the Americans and the Europeans who have driven industry, science, and technology. So why should they all of a sudden stop their industry, because some people think its unfair to the Chinese?

"The US has 5% of the world's population and consumes 25% of its resources"

People give Bush flack for imposing democracy on Iraqis who know no such concept. However, in order to make it "fair", we are to impose technology and science on tribes in Africa? What if they like their customs and traditions? Should we force them to buy and drive cars, so we can fufil our moral sense of fairness? How insensitive!

What if Japan consumes 5% of the world's fish, but only has 0.1% of the world's population. Would that be not be fair? Should they give up some fish consumption? They are consuming an unfair amount of the world's fish populations? That leads to overfishing and flipper getting caught in nets. We should then also have a "fin credits". Japan then could buy "fin credits" from a country like Chad?

"If we could just all cut back, people would have more."
"People are forced to live in abject poverty because of the wastefulness of others."

Eat your veggies because there are children starving in Africa - that argument may have worked on a 5 year old, but its not good national policy

If I use 10% less electricity in my house, and everyone else uses 10% less electricity in their house, that will mean that the power plant will burn 10% less coal. (yes most power plants are coal based.) However, that alone does not heat homes n Africa. Surplus coal in the US is not going to magically appear in Africa.
You would need to transport it, have/build the infrastructure to transport it off the ship and then transport it to its destination. Then you need a coal fired power plant and electrical distribution network in order to power Africa homes. It also takes thousands of people skilled and trained to operate and maintain the plant and
network into order safety operate all of this. All of that is billions of dollars in capital and thousands of trained people.

"The polar ice caps are melting, which in turn creates massive cloud systems that rapidly cool the earth, producing erratic weather and massive storm systems."

The earth warmed and cooled many times before the automobile. Viking grew crops in Greenland and ice covered much of North America at various times. Until these can be explained, I ignore junk science.

The Global Warming Farce

Global warming is the greatest farce in the news today. If it's hot out, people cry global warming, but if it's cold, they find a way to tie it to global warming... like "well global warming is actually moving the gulf stream south, so global warming is actually making it colder."

There are three main drivers of global warming.

1. The climate scientists. After decades of being in a unfufilling industry, they now have news media constantly throwing attention upon them and organizations offering grant money for studies. No global warming, no grant money. Follow the money trail and it tells a story. It's like a doctor who doesn't want to cure his patient because his income stream will dry up.

2. The media: "Everything is Okay" is not a headline that sells newspapers. While many accuse the pharmaceutical industry of making up diseases to sell drugs, few fault the media. In the 1970s the media warned of global cooling.

3. There are people who hate that the US is the lone superpower in the world. American industry has spent billions of dollars reducing levels of real pollutants such as Carbon Monoxide CO, Nitrigen Oxides NOx, Sulfur Dioxide SO2. However, CO2 is the byproduct of complete combustion. The only way to reduce CO2 is to reduce combustion. If the US doesn't want to shut down its industry, make them buy "carbon credits" from the Congo or some other third world country. Essentially it's an international tax against the U.S. for its economic success. While I'm not prone to conspiracy theories, I haven't found an explaination as to why China was exempted from the rules of the Kyoto treaty. If global warming was a real global problem, why should any country be exempted? If it was a real problem, the only solution would involve every country trying to solve it.

Then there are all the naive followers who think they are helping the world, but just unwitting lackies of one of the two above groups.

Why Citgo Needs to Go

Citgo has been owned by PDVSA, the Venezualan State Oil Company since 1990. However, until Hugo Chavez, it was run by Americans. Now Chavez's purge is complete. For a history and explanation of PDVSA, Citgo, and Chavez, the below article by Mac Johnson was excellent (read the whole thing).

I don't think many people know Citgo is owned by Chavez. I have stopped buying gas at Citgo for over a year now. If you feel sorry for the "Moms and Pops" that operate the stores... they always can switch just like 7-11 did back in September.

Among the first Chávez loyalists to be installed was Antonio J. Rivero, who was appointed to Citgo in 1999. Rivero, a graduate of Venezuela’s military academy who had participated in Chávez’s failed 1992 putsch, had no experience in the petroleum industry. And he seemed to have no duties at Citgo, other than reporting upper management’s goings-on “directly” to Hugo Chávez. “He was like the old Soviet commissar. He was here to make sure we were doing things politically correct, and was passing back information to Venezuela,” said Robert Funk, a former Citgo executive.

Other Venezuelan cronies began flooding into the company, and did not stop even when Rivero and fellow Chávez sycophant Luis Marin, the CEO, were eventually forced to resign for corruption. Indeed, by that point the takeover was fairly complete, with all power controlled by the Chavistas through puppet committees and a “culture of intimidation.” When Jim McCarthy, the VP for Government and Public Relations, discovered that his computer files regarding the Venezuelan embassy were being tampered with, his home was vandalized and he subsequently resigned. “I got the message,” he said later. “I was afraid for my family.”

....

I refer here to Citgo’s Chávez-initiated program to provide subsidized heating oil to states where the congressional delegation is friendly to Chávez. This program, which is named (in rather Tarzan-like English) “From the Venezuelan Hearts to the U.S. Hearths,” has several apparent political aims.

One is to buy good publicity for the class warrior Chávez by showing him to aid America’s poor when American oil companies have not. The fact that the money for this program comes out of the pockets of Venezuelans (per capita GDP: $6,100) in order to help Americans (per capita GDP: $41,800) is somehow omitted from the Robin Hood-themed press releases.

Chávez has also used the program in an attempt to tap into American racial politics. Jesse Jackson and Danny Glover are leading trumpeters of the program, which is targeted especially at African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods and Indian reservations. Chávez draws heavy support in Venezuela from Indian and other minority groups, whom he has declared historical victims, under his benevolent protection. To further his dream of an anti-American world revolution, he seemingly hopes to exploit America’s race issues so as to philosophically co-opt a portion of the divided population.

Finally, Chávez hopes to influence congressional policy and interfere in American elections with the program, which was engineered in concert with Congressman Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts and is administered (in part) through Citizens Energy, a non-profit cooperative founded and run by former Massachusetts Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II.

By doling out Chávez’s stolen oil at a 40 percent discount in liberal Congressional districts, and allowing the incumbent representatives to take credit for it, I believe Chávez seeks to alter the makeup of Congress and indebt Delahunt and other compromised Congressmen to him. He has, essentially, turned pork-barrel politics into oil-barrel politics, and is buying votes for his sympathizers with a new brand of imported pork. SUV drivers are not the only ones with a costly addiction to foreign oil. Certain congressmen, having gotten the first hit for free, are now paying a price for the “free” oil with which they have bribed their constituencies

....

The Citgo sign towers proudly over Kenmore Square in Boston, and Americans – who were concerned to learn that Chávez seeks an alliance with Iran and North Korea, or were incensed when Chávez called our President “the devil” at the U.N. – continue to mindlessly fill up at Citgo, giving Chávez not only profits from Venezuela’s oil (unavoidable), but also profits from retail sales of fuel (easily avoidable).

It has become clear that Chávez’s Citgo is no friend of America. What is less clear is why America is still so friendly toward Citgo. Energy Tribune

On Gerald Ford's Passing

Former President Gerald Ford died on December 26th at age 93. For the past week, there has been lots of media coverage on TV. The most often said item was that his September 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon was the primacy cause of his defeat in 1976 election. The other item is that he "healed America."

I disagree. I think that's what the MSM and liberal Democrats would like us to believe. Partisan Democrats didn't like his pardon as a trial would have continued to drag down the Republican party. I think many Americans realized that Ford could not effectly govern with a big trial going on. However, Ford only barely survived the Republican nomination (1187-1070) after a strong challenge from Ronald Reagan. That says there was a lot of conservative Republicans who were not happy with Ford. Since Ford lost only by 57 electoral votes, and the popular vote was 40.8M to 39.1M. 47M people voted Republican in 1972 and 44M in 1980. That means only a minor amount of conservatives needed to stay home. While he gained no friends by pardoning Nixon, his "moderate" policies likely lost him some conservative friends.

It resembles Bush's approval ratings today, which however around the mid 30s. Liberals have always hated GW Bush. However for a few years now, Bush has been drifting leftward. This has caused him to lose support of conservative. However, liberals still hate him. His leftward lurches has won him no new friends.