HoodaThunk?

Sharing made easy.

As the continued evolution of the blog commences, I’m adding more bells and whistles. Today’s addition is at the bottom of every blog post. It’s a button labeled “Share” and it’s your portal to drawing the attention of your cyber friends and neighbors to a post here that interests you. Simply mouse over the button and it will expand to show a number of social networking sites including Digg, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and a slew of others. Click on the network of your choice and it’ll take you to that page with the link to the post you’re interested in pre-loaded and ready to share out.

Thanks to the people at AddThis for this fine tool.

May 12th, 2009 Posted by ricjames | Blogging | no comments

Obama Administration knows greenhouse gas limits will damage economy (Updated!)

(Fascinating update down at the bottom: Apparently they’re questioning the thought that greenhouse gases and global warming links have been sufficiently proven!)

There’s no cover for the Obama administration now. They know full well that what critics of the President’s cap-and-trade fiasco are saying is true. We know they know because they’re saying so in their internal memo’s. Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air points us to this Jake Tapper report at ABC:

Advice in an Obama administration interagency review memo to the Environmental Protection Agency warns that government regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act (CAA) will hurt the economy, and questions whether such a “precautionary” move would too expansively open up the door for government regulation.

“Making the decision to regulate CO2 under the CAA for the first time is likely to have serious economic consequences for regulated entities throughout the U.S. economy, including small businesses and small communities,” says one comment in the memo, which was officially sent by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

To say nothing of the fact that attempting to do any such thing without the cooperation of other highly industrial nations like India and China will do little good, it’s kicking the American economy while it’s down. As Morrissey says:

This memo destroys the argument made by Obama often over the last two years that cap-and-trade would wind up being an economic boon.  Obama had argued that a renewed emphasis on green energy production would be akin to landing on the moon, a big government program that boosted employment in pursuit of an ambitious goal.  The difference between the two is that the space program didn’t impose massive burdens on the airline industry to pay for it, or on the auto industry, or Amtrak.

Indeed.

Update: The Hill has also reported this memo but mentioned something ABC did not:

An EPA finding last month that greenhouse gases are a danger to public health rests on dubious assumptions and could have negative economic impacts, a memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) warned.

The memo has no listed author but is marked “Deliberative–Attorney Client Privilege.” A spokesman for OMB told Dow Jones Newswires that the brief is a “conglomeration of counsel we’ve received from various agencies” about the EPA finding, the conclusions of which would trigger regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

The author(s) of the memo suggest the EPA did not thoroughly examine the relationship between greenhouse gases and human health.

Emphasis mine. The memo goes on to note that the EPA made its finding based on alleged harm resulting from substances that “have no demonstrated direct health effects” and that these allegations, “scientific data that purports to conclusively establish” that harm, come from outside the EPA as opposed to any research and conclusions the agency reached on its own.

Sounds like that Gore consensus isn’t so much a consensus, doesn’t it?

May 12th, 2009 Posted by ricjames | Economy, Energy, Environment, Politics | no comments

Getting a bit over-jumpy about those flying machines?

A couple of weeks ago an extremely low-level flight of one of the 2 aircraft performing duties as Air Force One on the Presidential flights over New York City caused quite the panic. I can understand why: a large aircraft, commonly in use in the commercial aviation sector and seen quite often arriving and departing the major New York airports was seen seriously deviating from known flight paths and heading directly toward the city with a fighter jet in close pursuit. It scared a lot of people unnecessarily.

It could have been handled way better, especially since the flight shouldn’t have been considered some kind of classified operation. It was a P/R photo op. There should have been no issue announcing it to the public a few days early so the flight could have been permitted and, perhaps, even enjoyed by the city’s residents.

But to suggest that every single flight of any aircraft at all that’s not on the airlines’ scheduled service needs to be treated the same way is a bit much. That’s why this story about the FAA denying permission to a US Navy P-3 Orion to overfly the city has me shaking my head:

The Federal Aviation Administration turned down a U.S. Navy request to fly a patrol aircraft past Manhattan on Monday, two weeks after a nerve-racking Air Force photo shoot over the Statue of Liberty caused a brief panic.

The agency said it refused clearance for the flight down the Hudson River because the Navy had given it only a few hours notice of its plans.

The P-3 Orion reconnaissance plane from the U.S. Naval Air Station in Brunswick, Maine, was to have flown past the city, then head back north, sometime around 10:30 a.m.

FAA officials said the four-engine, turboprop admittedly had a low probability of attracting attention. It was to have flown no lower than 3,000 feet, well above New York’s tallest skyscrapers, in an air corridor where planes of a similar size are a common sight.

But after city officials were informed and higher-level FAA officials learned about the request, they declined permission for the flight, saying unannounced military flybys were a bad idea.

So an aircraft that’s clearly of military make (see here for a picture of the P-3 and you’ll notice it doesn’t look line any airliner in common use by US carriers today) would be flying 3000 feet above the height of the tallest buildings in New York in a corridor in use by commercial aviation today and that’s to be equated to a 747 buzzing the city at levels far below normal flight paths? I’m sorry, that’s just ridiculous. And the FAA’s excuse that they weren’t given sufficient notice rings a little false when you consider how many aircraft a day they get into their airspace that didn’t appear on their manifests until that morning when the pilot filed a flight plan.

Are New Yorkers now to be considered so frail, so faint-hearted that they cannot bear the sight of a military aircraft flying in their presence? Can they no longer be considered strong enough to deal with an unscheduled flight within their viewing range that they were not carefully advised of a week in advance? Hey, Empire State – advise your elected leaders that you’ve still got the stones to be able to look up and see an aircraft flying the colors of the mightiest military ever to walk the face of the earth and not quail in fear. There are our boys and girls up there getting the training they need. It’s OK and our governmental agencies should be OK with it, too.

May 12th, 2009 Posted by ricjames | Aviation, GWOT, Politics | no comments