Maddow Has A Point!

- And I'm contributing another one -

The past three days have had a sequence of events. First, on the morning of June 15, 2010, I published the article, "Obama's Missed Opportunity." Actually, I was predicting that President Obama would miss an opportunity with his first-ever prime time address to the nation from the setting of the Oval Office.

Later that evening, Obama delivered that speech and missed that opportunity.



What opportunity? --He could have read the tea leaves, and taken this occasion to insist that oil is passe. To insist that the nation will move beyond it's nearly exclusive use of oil for transportation.

In a land of freedom, why aren't there more choices for ways to power your car? Why aren't some models all electric, or powered by hydrogen, natural gas, or ethanol? Or even by cold fusion or zero point electromagnetic energy? If jets can run on kerosene, and cigarette lighters can run on butane, why not cars? Based on having a free market, we should expect to see a variety of such cars already on sale.

Ethanol powered cars are already on sale -- in Brazil. They aren't common here in America, and that absence is suspicious. How free is America's free market? Due to corruption, not very. What forces could stifle a free market? Answer: collusion between big oil and big auto -- working within a corrupt justice system that rewards those with deep pockets and steamrolls the new guy, the little guy, the start up entrepreneur -- the inventors and innovators.

President Obama could have chosen to sweep away these obstacles, and placed America on course to a new energy future, in his speech on June 15.

Immediately after the speech, it encountered a buzzsaw of criticism. The President didn't stop the use of Corexit, the chemical dispersant which is more toxic than the oil itself. The speech showcased indecisiveness. He made a tepid headfake in the general direction of energy independence -- more than 30 years after the 1970s, a time when we already knew that we had an energy crisis -- and, at a time when Brazil already has energy independence.

This country's "left side of the aisle" immediately criticized the speech. Keith Olbermann, Robert Reich, and Rachel Maddow seemed to feel shortchanged.

Yes, they were shortchanged. My article said, "In a just America, it would be the end of big oil. Period." About the use of Corexit, the chemical dispersant, I wrote, "This incident is certainly playing Russian Roulette with life as we know it. I’d like to see the U.S. President stop spinning the chamber of that metaphorical gun."

On June 16, more events occurred. The top executives of BP went to the White House, where Obama secured their commitment to fund an escrow account to the tune of 20 billion dollars. That is welcome news for the victims of the oil disaster to whom reparations will, we expect, be paid.

And, on the evening of June 16, Rachel Maddow gave her own version of "what Obama should have said" in the Oval Office address of the previous evening.

I've previously taken exception with how Maddow veers away from substance, and engages the right wing with bickering about superficial points, guilt-by-association conflation (tarring and feathering), and dubious inferences.

(I could digress. When the left says bad things about Beck, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, and Coulter -- they're right! And, when the right says bad things about Olbermann, Reich, and Maddow -- they're right too! What's objectionable is that each side continues to sling mud as if their own shit doesn't smell. I could stop digressing now.)

But, this time around, I appreciated Maddow's "Fake President" speech. So much so, that I listened to it twice. She too mentioned Russian Roulette and made a great point that the oil companies privatize the gains while socializing the losses from their activities. Their disaster isn't taking food off of their own tables; instead, it is the oil workers, fishermen, and tourism operators who are experiencing a loss of food from their tables.

Maddow and I are in alignment that this BP oil disaster should spell the end of big oil. We agree on that much of substance. I continue to grumble that she has been a propagandist for a left wing that failed America as did the right wing. And I'm speaking as a former fan of Nancy Pelosi, back in the old days before Pelosi joined the Sith. I'm speaking as one who campaigned against Ronald Reagan and for Jerry Brown. I have higher respect for paleo-liberals than I do for neo-liberals (and neo-conservatives!) who deserve to become as discredited as the Nazi party in Germany.

Yes, I was once the 18-year-old candidate for U.S. President. That 1984 occasion allowed me to campaign against both Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale. And, in 1992 when I campaigned for Jerry Brown, that allowed me to campaign against two Sith lords -- both George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton. And don't get me started about Baby Boomer Presidents, whom I may think of as "neo-American neo-Presidents." Sith, Sith, Sith.

Enough with review. Today I'll contribute another point into the mix.

If it is cap-and-trade, I'm against it.

This article may already have made it clear that I am not a right-winger, and I don't make my policies to please Republicans. But, I will stand shoulder to shoulder with all of them who fight against "cap-and-trade," "carbon taxes," and the demonization of an element from the periodic table -- carbon. The whole idea of man-made global warming due to CO2 emissions is suspect, in the same way that absence of ethanol cars is a tip-off to corruption taking place in America.

Maddow has paid homage to nerds, geeks, and gear heads -- I believe she's called herself one of them. (One of us?) When I learned to ride a bicycle, and when I learned to program a computer, it was the 1970s and television included such things as Star Trek, and Walter Cronkite reporting on Skylab. The anchormen seemed to be really gee-whiz about science. Was I taught that there would be man-made global warming?

No -- quite the opposite was being educated into American youth. The earth was said to have periodic ice ages, and we were in between an old one and the next one. Global cooling was to be expected, at the occasion of the next ice age. As a fan of the space program, did I study NASA and its doings? Yes. As a fan of Star Trek, did I read science fiction? Yes. My first political advocacy (and first television appearance) was at age 14 in 1980, when I came out in favor of a stronger space program and the objective of solar power satellites, as a way to return clean energy to the earth and recoup a return on investment in the space program.

It should be fair to say that I was reading a good bit of science at the time. I became a supporter of (and a "Senior Associate" for donating to) the Space Studies Institute, where Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill was thinking about space colonies and those solar power satellites. One of my favorite books was "The High Road," a non-fiction work by science fiction author Ben Bova.

Bova decried the "know-nothings in Congress."

But, he did not decry man-made global warming. There were other sustainability issues, such as the fact that fossil fuels would run out. In the long run, we simply have to get off of oil anyway. Suffice it to say, in reviewing lots of the popular literature on science at the time, global warming did not jump out at me as a cause for alarm. I went on to be the teenage candidate for President, and called for hydrogen powered vehicles and more research into fusion.

My energy picks were solar, hydrogen, and fusion. I didn't even have a platform plank explicitly for the environment, because my energy choices were already emission-free. My platform already represented environmental improvement.

In 1985 I was entering college, having been through a presidential campaign and having remained blissfully ignorant to any popular scare-mongering about man-made global warming. It wasn't an issue in those days because there wasn't any popular scare-mongering on the topic. The counterintuitive climate scare has been artificially produced in this "neo-American" age of political correctness -- the era in which Sith Lord Al Gore became prominent. Once he did so, the scare was on.

I smell a rat, and recently the "science" behind global warming has come into question. The Obama and Maddow speeches were careful not to say "cap and trade," and they didn't mention "carbon" as a villain. That is wise. Carbon is a common element in the periodic table, and the scare mongering serves as a pretext for the draconian control and taxation.....of an abundant element in the periodic table?!?!? Puhleeeze!!! Sheesh.

So. Presidents Obama and Maddow have promised a new energy measure. That's seemingly great. But if oil is the problem, then they should tax oil. It is a bait-and-switch if they use the pretext to tax carbon. To me, that would only prove that Alex Jones was right. To go in the direction of cap-and-trade is a very ominous, very Sith, thing to do. As of now, I have to offer words of praise for a move to energy independence. These recent speeches were encouraging. But, it is necessary that all of us "watch em like a hawk," and close ranks to be against any "cap and trade" "carbon taxes," or the like.

To the matter of energy independence, I cannot believe what a red herring carbon is. On energy independence, I bet we could get ethanol cars, and ethanol, with one phone call to Brazil. We could steer business their way, instead of to communists, dictators, tyrants, and monarchs, who were favored so lopsidedly by Bill Clinton. (Tsk, tsk, tsk. Sith, Sith, Sith...)

In addition to taxing oil, the President could make an executive order that clears away some barriers to entry -- a problem for inventors and innovators that was noted above. With an executive order, he could de-classify all of the energy systems that our "national security" apparatus has classified on behalf of the military-industrial complex. To Obama and Maddow, declassify what you have on zero point electromagnetic energy.

And quit pushing bamboozlement through the mainstream media. I can see right through you. :)