Coal

The EPA has just released new regulations regarding CO2 emissions that will change the coal industry. No new coal fired power plants will be built and existing plants will switch to natural gas and this will reduce CO2. The production of coal in places like West Virginia will continue and the coal will be shipped overseas to places like China and a new emerging market in Africa. In times past western countries were condemned for taking natural resources from places like Africa and now we are sending them back. As the use of coal increases in Africa so will the contamination of the air and water. This is our way of saying thanks. We can all now brag to the world on how we have cleaned up our air and water but let’s not go into the details of we did it. And I thought colonialism was dead.

VA patients

The President says that the problem with the VA is getting appointments but once you get in the service is OK. How does he know this? Is he relying on the same people who told him that the scheduling was on time? There have been anecdotal examples of people once in the system still not getting proper care. Will any news agency investigate this or will they just accept the word of The President. The only way this will happen is if people start going public with their complaints. It is a lot of work to investigate but it is easy to copy and paste someone’s complaints. I am not content just to blame some general or the president. I think the oversight committee in congress dropped the ball as did the press which has become a bunch of lazy people who read news from the teleprompter. About the only reporting we have comes from the NY Time and the WSJ and much of what they get comes from leaks which means more copy and paste.

Stupid

The President indicated that he learned of the long delays in the news. Here is a clip from the LA Times in 2010. There are many other articles saying much the same thing. I don’t mind the disinformation because I know better but I do mind that these people must think I am stupid. Some veterans wait up to six months to get their initial VA medical appointment. The typical veteran of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars waits 110 days for a disability claim to be processed, with a few waiting up to a year. For all veterans, the average wait is 161 days. The VA says a ruling on an appeal of a disability rating takes more than 600 days on average. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, or IAVA, an advocacy group, says the average delay is 776 days. Up to 17% of veterans' disability ratings are incorrect, the VA says. Thousands of dollars in disability payments hinge on the ratings, which are determined by the VA. The agency says it hopes to eventually cut the error rate to 2%.

Press VA

The past two days we have been given a sterling example of what is called the press. One by one on station after station the talking heads have announced that the problems with the VA have been going on for decades. The main responsibility of the press is to search out problems in government and report on them to the public. My question to all of these talking heads is where have you been?

Ukraine

The President is often criticized for not going to the aid of the Syrian rebels like he did in Libya but I think it more appropriate to compare Obama’s approach to Libya with his views on Iraq. He said in his recent speech that force should only be used when we have allies which he had in Libya even though he acted without congressional approval. When Bush went into Iraq he had 30 allies and congressional approval. In both cases they worked through NATO. New subject: The news about The Ukraine seems to have forgotten about the US promise to Ukraine that if they gave up their nuclear weapons we would protect their borders. A deal was signed on February 5, 1994, by Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, John Major and Leonid Kuchma—the then-leaders of the United States, Russia, United Kingdom and Ukraine—guaranteeing the security of Ukraine in exchange for the return of its ICBMs to Moscow's control. Russia marched in and took Crimea and didn’t suffer any consequences which tells the world that our agreements are not worth the paper they are printed on.

Rich and poor

A consistent theme under the Obama administration has centered around income inequality which has grown significantly the past five years. During his first term medium family income fell 4.4%. Polls show that 67% of Americans are upset with this and today Hilary Clinton referred to this as the cancer of income inequality. This sounds like a campaign slogan. After all of this talk about income inequality where the rich are vilified by terms like fat cat bankers, I would like to see a poll asking the following question: When a 25 year old comes up with a new gadget for the Internet and walks off with 10 billion dollars would it be acceptable for the government to step in and take 9 billion and redistribute that to people who are hungry.

Big government

I have friends who work for large corporations and they often point out the problems associated with bigness. We often see cases where corporate deficiencies erupt when one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing. The most recent example is General Motors where the new CEO who has worked her way up through the ranks over the past 30 years testified in congress that she was unaware of serious problems that have been going on for ten years. There is no company that compares in size with the federal government and it is time to ask the question, is the government to big. We have basically the same system that we had when the population was much smaller. Perhaps a group should be challenged with the task of proposing ways to overcome this problem of bigness as it will not get any smaller in the future.

More on the VA

One of the first things to come out of the Senate when the VA scandal broke was to increase the budget. The idea of spending more to solve problems is often times wasteful but just as important it allows the congress to believe that the problem was solved. Here is some info about the VA budget. The Obama administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) expects to have more money for medical care than it can spend for the fifth fiscal year in a row, The Daily Caller has learned. VA expects to carry over $450 million in medical-care funding from fiscal year 2014 to fiscal year 2015. VA received its full requested medical care appropriation of $54.6 billion this fiscal year, which is more than $10 billion more than it received four years ago. VA carried over $1.449 billion in medical-care funding from fiscal year 2010 to 2011, $1.163 billion from fiscal year 2011 to fiscal year 2012, $637 million from fiscal year 2012 to 2013, and $543 million from fiscal year 2013 to 2014.

School food

From 2002 to 2012 I worked at a part time job where I went into 50 schools once per month to check on the boilers. During those visits I had many opportunities to watch how the kids ate lunch and I was always amazed of how much food was thrown out. The custodian stands by a 50 gallon plastic drum and as the kids finish the meal they scrape the left overs into the drum and then place their trays on a table. I estimate that between one-third and one-half of the food is tossed out. In the past few years Mrs. Obama has taken on the challenge of providing healthier food for school kids and it has now become controversial because the cost of the new menu is more expensive and the school budgets are being overtaxed. I believe that before we just start using healthier foods we should find out if the kids will eat these foods since what they are replacing is referred to as junk food and experience has shown that kids prefer junk food. On the bigger picture this is one more example of centralized planning where Washington determines what is best for individual school districts. We know that recent attempts to improve academics out of Washington with programs like, No Child Left Behind, Race To The Top and now we have Common Core have not been well received by local school

School lunch

I subbed at Twin Bluff Middle School in Red Wind today and part of my duties included lunch room. I watched once again the amount of food being thrown away which I estimate at 25% but there seemed to be a lot of green beans. I investigated and found out that the student must choose one vegetable or one fruit. Today the choices were green beans and/or apple sauce. They are required by law to make this choice but they don’t have to eat it. They are also required to take milk and many did not drink that. I think that Mrs. Obamas girls probably eat what they are told and it is a healthy diet but many parents may not be as concerned as Mrs. Obama. Before we just mandate certain food it would be prudent to find out if the students will eat it.

VA

The VA hospitals and the poor. Many veterans who have certain skills and better educations come out of the service and get jobs that provide health care in the private system. These vets are not adversely affected by the VA mess. The poorly trained and poorly educated must rely on the VA system for health care and they are the ones who are on the waiting list. The waiting list is the expected result of the way the system is designed. The VA is given a certain amount of money and told to provide services as dictated by the government. If they cannot meet the needs of their patients they are forced to delay treatment. The firing of a few people will not solve a problem that is built into the system.

Glaciers

The discovery that the glaciers in Antarctica were moving toward the sea and a faster rate than anticipated triggered an alarm within the climate community. They concluded that this was caused by warmer air pushing warm surface water down to the base of the glaciers where it melted the base ice and caused the glacier to move more rapidly. They concluded that this warmer air was the result of global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Upon further reflection the question of why warm water which is lighter than cold water would defy gravity and move down into the depths and go under the glacier was asked. Then someone recalled that last year an active volcano was discovered in that area and perhaps that was the cause of the warming. In the articles presented by the scientist there was no mention of the volcano. It is this type of reporting that causes skeptics to wonder if this is agenda driven science.

Gas

I have always thought that we must make the transition away from fossil fuels but we must do so in a common sense way. The obvious plan is to move from coal to oil to natural gas while developing the technology to use hydrogen. Here are some comparisons. One pound BTU’s per Pounds of CO2 Sulfur Nitrogen Of pound per Kilowatt dioxide dioxide Coal 12,000 2,200 13 6 Diesel 20,000 1,600 12 4 Natural gas 21,000 1,100 0.1 1.7 Hydrogen 55,000 0 0 0 Another advantage of moving from coal and oil to natural gas is the elimination of almost all sulfur and nitrogen compound. These are the cause of acid rain. In addition natural gas and hydrogen both have zero heavy metals, things like mercury and lead. Recent developments in the coal industry have produced what is called clean coal. While this requires extensive plant improvements the concept is to capture the gases released and keep them from getting into the atmosphere. This will keep even the CO2 from escaping. At this time the cost is prohibited and most companies are just changing the coal plants to natural gas. Currently 1.5% of our energy comes from solar and 4% from wind. These are only functional because we have the electric grid which is supported by other sources of energy mainly fossil fuels and nuclear. These two sources are currently unreliable since they are dependent on sun and wind.

Swiss bank

In the aftermath of the mortgage crisis, where millions of home owners lost their homes and the big mortgage banks were and are being bailed out by the government, there has been an outcry of why hasn’t someone gone to jail. This past week the US Justice Department headed by Eric Holder filed a claim against a Swiss Bank who had little or nothing to do with the mortgage fiasco but was hiding money from US firms and individuals in order to escape taxation. The Bank pleading guilty and accepted a fine of 2.5 billion dollars but the total assets of this bank are 1000 billion. In addition no executives had to resign and the bank did not disclose the list of people whose money they are sheltering. This process of protecting the clients at the expense of the bank further enhanced their appeal and the stock price rose. All this was done so the Justice Department could claim that they took some action against the big banks. The result is a further widening of the gap between the rich and the not so rich affectionately known as the middle class.

Climate Malthus

In 1800 Robert Malthus a demographer predicted that people would soon be starving. He based this on observing population growth over a long period of time and then extrapolated this growth into the future and discovered that food production could not keep up. He was unaware of the coming industrial revolution which mechanized the farming industry to the point where the government started paying farmers not to plant. This idea of predicting catastrophes can bring money in the form of books or grants and has been used many times over the years. This past week a group met at the White House to discuss climate change and once again the predictors were talking about another coming catastrophe. This time it was more than predictions it was statements of fact. This extrapolation was based on three years of observation and collecting data. The six glaciers have passed "the point of no return," Rignot said, which means that total collapse — the melted retreat of the glaciers — cannot be prevented. "The only question is how fast it's going to go." Experts are saying that this data is correct because it was based on past observations and not computer generated models. This, of course, is the same procedure that Malthus used. My guess is that they are following Al Gore’s advice when he was questioned about the many controversial statements in his book and he responded by saying it was necessary to exaggerate to get people’s attention. It is necessary to tackle the problem of CO2 emissions but it must be done in a methodical manner and not in panic mode. If we can just get the politics out of it we can take the steps needed to transition away from fossil fuels. We have already made great strides here in the United States and now we must help countries like India and China to move away from coal to oil and gas.

Police Chief

It was reported today that the Chief of Police in Minneapolis is going to assign additional officers to police minority areas of the city in anticipation of potential problems this summer. Since most of the people who live in this part of the city are honest, hard workers just trying to pay the light bill, the chief’s efforts will be appreciated. Placing more officers in a given area will result in more arrest. After a year or so someone will do a study and find that minorities are disproportionally arrested and a claim of discrimination will be made against the chief. This sort of thing has happened in other cities and the chief will find herself between a rock and a hard place. I wish her the best.

VA

During the run up to Obamacare some critics mentioned the possible down side to a government run health plan and the answer to their concern was that Medicare and VA are both government run plans and both are doing fine. In recent days problems with the VA have been revealed. What is somewhat disconcerting is that we are now told that people have been aware of these problems since 2005. When some elected official uses the VA to illustrate why any criticism of government health care is not accurate the press should have investigated and they would have quickly discovered that there were serious problems but no such investigation happened. Were they lazy or just so enamored with Obamacare that they didn’t want to make waves?

Magic

The owner of the LA Clippers conducted an interview to explain his racist remarks and in the process once again insulted Magic Johnson. That was par for the course for this insensitive man and maybe he will get out of the limelight so we can forget him. As an aside a new caster referred to Magic as one of the most respected athletes in the country. How soon we forget. Magic Johnson bragged about sleeping with 5,000 women and since he had AIDS how many of those women got AIDS from him. I believe it is an example of how President Clinton’s actions have changed the country. For Magic his personal life is of no concern as long as he gets the job done and on the court he certain did that.

Climate change

Proponents of global warming have finally found their home. Global warming went by the way side when the temperatures stopped rising and so the new name became climate change but that didn’t really catch hold but now they are on a roll. Every time we have a storm or a fire or a flood it will be because of climate change and that is a fact. As The President says, the debate is over when it comes to climate change as every day we see examples of climate change. An old Minnesotan I know realized many years ago when he said if you don’t like the weather just wait a while and it will change. Changes in climate caused by the burning of fossil fuels is a long term problem that will be dealt with but to use any storm as a reason to push for wind and solar is a mistake. While wind and solar may be good for certain groups, those who are in the circle of government handing out money and they in return giving money back to certain candidates and causes , it is not the long term solution. It merely diverts attention away from the real solution and that is going from coal to oil to natural gas and finally to hydrogen. When an issue becomes politicized as this one has, logic goes out the window taking science with it.

Monica

Recent revelations by Monica Lewinsky, have stirred up memories of the Clinton affair. Between November of 1995 and March of 1997 Lewinski had nine sexual encounters with then President Clinton. White house officials suspected something and in 1996 transferred Lewinski to the pentagon. It was here that she confided in a friend, Linda Trip and Trip started to record conversations with Lewinski about the affair. When investigations regarding Clinton and other women came to light, Lewinski submitted an affidavit denying any relationship with Clinton. Many feel the whole affair might have died at this point but a special prosecutor had been appointed to investigate a series of activities carried on by Mrs. Clinton and the Lewinski affair was added to the list. The White House had been using the strategy of “nuts or sluts” and it was working. As each new woman came forth they were crucified with the help of a willing press and women’s group sat silently by. Talking heads and liberal politicians were calling it a witch hunt and most agreed that there was no there, there. The press finally broke the story in January of 1998 and the drum beat of witch hunt continued until the smoking gun in the form of the blue dress came to light and then the whole argument shifted to what it still is today. It became part of the Clinton legacy and it basically said that what a man does in his private life is of no concern so long as he gets the job done. This was a sure winner since many in the new media fall into this category. The good old boys can always be counted on to stick together. This whole procedure was similar to what happened to Richard Nixon in Watergate. Denial, put off, stall coupled with outright lies and in time things will all go away and they would have if it had not been for the tapes. The Obama people are using the same procedures and it will work even better today since partisanship is more prevalent. Those for and against will back their side no matter what the evidence shows and nothing will be resolved unless the smoking gun appears. I’m beginning to believe that even the smoking gun would not make any difference.

Rich and poor

The President is upset with the income gap between the rich and the poor but his economic policies are aggravating the situation. The Federal Reserve has been buying about 85 billion dollars a month in mortgages and bonds from banks since September of 2012 and they are still doing his at the rate of 65 billion. The purpose is to hold interest rates down and that part is working as planned. The problem with low interest rates is that elderly people who rely on interest on investments are not getting much and since interest is low people are pouring money into stocks and the market is making rich people richer. While the poor and elderly who rely on interest on things like CD’s are seeing their pot get smaller the wealthy who are heavily invested in the market are seeing their worth rise to record levels.

Smelt

There is a small fish called the Delta Smelt out in California and a few years ago the government put this fish on the Endangered Species List and as a result water was cut off to farmers in the area. As much as 100,000 acres of farm land was affected causing unemployment in the area to rise to 40%. Over the past few years most of the farmers in this area have gone bankrupt. My first thought was that this was an extreme example of government overreach so I investigated and found that this fish was like the canary in the coal mine, in that it represented possible harm to another dozen species in the area. I thought then that perhaps there was some logic to protecting this area but upon further research I found out that 50,000 species go extinct every year. I suppose this year there will only be 49,988 thanks to the sacrifice of some farmers in California.

Methane hydrate

It is estimated that natural gas available in the United States from fracking is enough to last over 100 years at current usage. In recent months, Japan, a country that must import much of its fossil fuels has pioneered the process of extracting methane hydrate from the ocean floor. This methane, (natural gas) was formed over millions of years as plants and animals died and their remains settled to the floor where they accumulated and through the process of fermentation produced methane. Because of the cold temperatures and pressures the gas combined with the water to form methane hydrate which is a liquefied form of gas water mixture containing about 20% methane. This process will soon be used in other countries including the United States. While Japan was celebrating its success, a less-noticed assessment on America's methane hydrate potential was published in a National Energy Technology Laboratory newsletter. The report by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimated that methane hydrate formations along the U.S. East Coast contain 21,702 tcf of natural gas. The greatest concentrations lie along the outer continental shelf from Rhode Island to North Carolina. America's Pacific coast could hold methane hydrates formations with an additional 8,192 tcf of natural gas, according to the report. An earlier analysis estimated that hydrate fields in the Gulf of Mexico could contain 21,444 tcf of natural gas. That's a total of 51,338 tcf of gas -- a huge resource considering that the United States consumed 24.4 tcf of natural gas in 2011. Researchers are now analyzing data on the methane hydrates potential off Alaska's Arctic shores. That represents 2,000 years of natural gas supply based on current usage. As the world moves toward replacing oil and coal with gas the negative effects on the climate will be drastically reduced and will allow time to move to an even clearer fuel, hydrogen.

Moral relativism

Moral relativism is something that has always upset me and this week I finally found a way to make my point. The concept is based on different countries having different customs and cultures and we must allow for these differences. I used the made-up extreme example of some country where babies were thrown up in the air and impaled on bayonets. As ridiculous as that is we found out this week that a group of Muslim extremist have kidnapped 276 girls teenage girls selling them off as wives for $12. Among the reasons given by the kidnappers is that girls should not be allowed in school. Get out your moral relativism card and tell our government that this affair is none of our business. Tell them that this is the custom in this country and they have the right to choose their own values.

Hilary

This week Monica Lewinski in back in the news which means by default Bill Clinton is in the news and extension Hilary Clinton. As I look back on the scandal I see what it ultimately accomplished was to put the last nail in the women’s movement. It exposed all of the women’s groups as people who were more interested in a political agenda than in promoting women. Clinton was a man in a power position who had an affair with a subordinate and that was against everything the movement supposedly stood for but they were willing to go along with nuts or sluts excuse and continue to champion Clinton. If these groups were still active they would now be faced with another dilemma. Mrs. Clinton snagged a husband in college, one that she thought was going places and she rode his tail to the White House. Here her major claim to fame was the now infamous Hilarycare. She then moved to a strong democratic district in New York and used her celebrity status to win a senate seat. Nothing of note was done during her senate years and then she lost the nomination to Obama and he appointed her Secretary of State. Her record there will be debated in the next presidential election but many are concerned that it is not a stellar performance. One thing in her favor she will have more experience than Obama did when he was elected.

Hydrogen

Since the post war years there have been left wing groups of people who felt a certain connection to socialist societies. They were enamored by the Marx doctrine of, “from each according to his means, to each according to his needs”. These people, some of whom were celebrities, liked to be seen with leaders like Castro in Cuba and more recently Hugo Chavez. In the early years of the Soviet Union these groups looked to Russia as a prosperous communist type of government but the Russian leaders lacked charisma and after Nikita Khrushchev were aged rather unpopular types. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and he along with is sophisticated wife were just what these people were looking for and he became their new hero. I had a number of friends who thought more highly of Gorbachev than they did of Ronald Reagan. When Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire these people nearly went into apoplexy and predicted that Reagan had just started WW3. These people were masters at appeasement and felt that the Soviets would grow their economy to one day challenge the US. They were so enthralled with the concept of wealth redistribution that they overlooked the problems associated with central planning. When the Soviet Union collapsed these people were lost and had nowhere to call home so they migrated to the environmental area where they are alive and well today and society has announced that the new red is green. Their cause is being bolstered by our President and a whole bevy of intellectuals under the guise of climate change. There is no doubt that climate change represents a long term problem that must be dealt with, but not by politicizing the issue. The idea that the country can transition from fossil fuels to solar and wind is a pipe dream kept alive by certain groups who profit from government grants and loans. The grants going to scientist who promote the imminent danger and loans to businesses that manufacture solar and wind equipment. If these people could move away from the politics they would quickly realize that the path to solving the climate problem is hydrogen. It is almost providential that just when we needed it most, we have come into a large supply of oil and more importantly natural gas. It is well known that natural gas is cleaner than oil which in turn is cleaner than coal. In just the past few years the US has made great strides in this area by replacing coal fired power plants with natural gas. This not only reduces CO2 but does so in a profitable way. This one change has done more for the environment than all of the government regulations and loans combined. The US has now reduced its CO2 levels below what the Kyoto agreement called for using the force of law. The process to move to cleaner energy is now underway in spite of government efforts to derail it and it will continue as we move away from coal and then oil onto natural gas. There are already many vehicles running on natural gas and a most recent example is the buses in Los Angeles County. The next step is to replace diesel semi’s with natural gas. The cost to replace all 2 million trucks plus to install natural gas pumps at all 6000 truck stops is estimated at 60 billion which is less than half of the 150 billion that has been wasted on government sponsored solar and wind programs. The next step is to change over smaller trucks, buses and cars to run on natural gas and finally airplanes. While this is happening the government needs to open its lands in the west where there is enough oil to run the rest of the world for 100 years and we export that to balance our payments on our imports. By doing this we will invigorate our economy by providing good paying jobs and in the process replacing coal around the world with oil. Most people are not aware that natural gas is not contaminated with sulfates and nitrate and thus does not produce acid rain and with recent improvements in technology the cost has come down to the lowest level since 1970. Recall that a new home in 1970 cost $25,000. Now that heaven has sent us the gift of 100 years to develop an energy system that is pollution free, what will we do with this gift? The answer is hydrogen and the use of an internal combustion engine that runs on hydrogen to power our transportation industry. So the $64,000 question is where will this hydrogen come from and the current answer is three places. First we can develop a microbe that will turn garbage into hydrogen, second using solar power to make hydrogen and the final long term answer, fusion. Fusion not only gives us an almost unlimited supply of hydrogen but it also can change sea water into fresh water meaning all of the desert areas of the globe can be turned into fertile lands to feed the hungry. The mention of using solar to create hydrogen may cause some concern but remember the problem with solar is that you cannot store electricity but you can store hydrogen. For those who are not familiar with fusion it is the conversion of hydrogen into helium with the release a large amounts of energy. It is the process that takes place in the sun. The science for this has been around for some time just waiting for the engineering to catch up and that has always happened and will happen this time. The process of moving to natural gas is underway and will continue but if the government and industry would cooperate it would progress at a much faster rate. Some might question our exporting oil around the world saying we all live on the same planet and that is true but replacing coal with oil is a big improvement. What is currently happening here in the US is counter-productive. We are closing down coal plants here and using natural gas but we are shipping the coal to China. Our coal plants here while dirtier than using oil were better for the planet than shipping to China where there coal plants are not as clean. It is important to step back and look at the big picture and not just react based on some misinformation. In summery the long term plan should be to move from coal to oil to natural gas while we develop a whole new system based on hydrogen.

Watergate

The infamous Watergate Scandal began in June of 1972 but the press did not pay much attention to it. Two reporters from the Washington Post continued their search for information but five months later then President Nixon was re-elected defeating McGovern by the electoral vote of 520 to 17. While the Democrats tried to make Watergate an issue the Republicans laughed it off as election year politics. In retrospect many experts conclude that if it hadn’t been for the Oval Office tapes Nixon would never have been caught. This is reminiscent of Clinton and the blue dress. As the democrats are now laughing off the Benghazi affair as election year political posturing, the real truth will be left unsaid unless another tape or blue dress shows up. As a point of interest the two reporters got most of their information from an anonymous single source who was known as “Deep Throat”. Most editors will not go with a single source let alone an anonymous one.

Precious metals

There is another battle between jobs and environment that is getting very little attention and that has to do with solar panels and precious metals. Solar panels use metals such as iridium and platinum and 90% of these metals are found in China. Currently there are plans on the books to start copper mining in Alaska and Minnesota but both places are bogged down in arguments between groups. Precious metals are one of the by-products of copper mining and solar panels require a dependable source of precious metals. In the future certain forms of carbon may replace these metals but that is a long way off. China presently produces more than 95% of all rare earth materials that are vital in the creation of a big variety of electronic technologies including lithium car batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, flat-screen television, compact fluorescent light bulbs, petroleum-to-gasoline catalytic cracking, and military defense components such as missile guidance systems. It also dominates abilities to process them. This enables it to attract product manufactures to operate there as a condition of doing business, ration exports to maximize prices, and punish nations that don’t go along with its policy interests through supply embargoes. Beijing reduced rare earth shipments by 9% in 2010 over 2009, and has recently announced plans to reduce exports by another 35%. Instead of providing mining jobs here in the US we will be sending those jobs to China and of course any pollution that goes along with them. It is what we are doing with our coal. We are becoming NIMBY’s.

Benghazi

Revelations this week have brought Benghazi back in the news and as I listen to the White House reporters complain about the misleading information they received, I am astounded by their naivety. They are upset because they have discovered that Jay Carney was not entirely truthful. Times have certainly changed because not too many years ago reporters were taught not to believe anything the government says. I recall a friend who went to Journalism School tell me that if it is midnight and the government says it is dark outside they would go out and check.