The truth about clean coal

September 24th was a bad day for Joe Biden. In less than 24 hours, he negated his own campaign's ads, claimed FDR was both president in 1929 and went on (chronologically impossible) television to lead America through it, and presented a schizophrenic position on coal energy. On coal, Biden said,

No coal plants here in America... Build them, if [The Chinese] are going to build them, over there. Make them clean.

[snip]

We’re not supporting clean coal.

Quick to jump on this new weakness, the McCain campaign formed the Coalition to Protect Coal Jobs. According to the campaign, the coalition

will spread the message about the importance of clean coal technology and the advantages of tapping the country's vast coal reserves. The group will also speak out to protect critical coal jobs when they come under attack from the most anti-American energy ticket in history.

Regardless of the impact of coal, this was a completely ridiculous move on Biden's part. Not only is he contradicting both he and Obama's position on clean coal, but this might bury the Dems in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia; states Biden was brought on to deliver for his ticket.

The BBC offers a crash course in the technology.

However, clean coal has detractors who don't have a perpetually surprised look on their faces. Greenpeace is probably the most prominent in the movement against clean coal. They offer a 5-point manifesto against the technology.

1. Clean coal cannot deliver in time to avoid dangerous climate change

If time was a factor, then Greenpeace could not, in good conscience, support any of the renewable sources of energy traditionally supported by environmental groups. The inrastructure currently in place for coal extraction coupled with the vast domestic resources make clean coal far more conducive to the urgency of possible climate change.

2. Clean coal wastes energy

This is a legitimate grievance. However, like all new forms of technology, this is constantly being improved. Greenpeace is not concerned with wasted energy and its carbon impact for fuel cells or recycling plants

3. Storing carbon underground is risky

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) can reduce carbon emissions by up to 90%. Meanwhile, the technology of storing CO2 has gotten to a point where the threat of its leakage is virtually nonexistent. When the carbon emissions are almost eliminated and the risk is nearly irrelevant, it should be considered a viable technology and its storage is demonstrably safe.

4. Clean coal is expensive

This is a valid point. Clean coal, like all new sources of energy, is expensive. The same can be said for virtually all the sources of energy that Greenpeace and other more idealistic environmental groups extol. The advantage of clean coal is that significant infrastructure already exists for the extraction and production of coal.

5. Clean coal carries significant liability risks

There's no doubt that coal mining is at times a dangerous activity and there must be protections for the employees who put themselves at risk each time they enter a mine. However, it's biazarre to argue that by eliminating coal as an option is somehow helpful to them.

At the heart of it, Greenpeace's points are not environmentally-driven, they are economically-driven. They know that all of the immediate environmental risks associated with coal have been all but eliminated. Strip mining, for instance, is an ugly practice in which dynamite is used to literally detonate chunks of mountaintops in order to extract coal in the aftermath. But both candidates have voiced their opposition to this and other intrusive coal extraction methods.

WHO reignited the culture war?

I would link a story, but I don't need to. Nearly all major news outlets have made the claim in one segment/article or another: Sarah Palin's nomination revived the culture war. First the major media outlets overplayed select aspects of Palin's record, then staged a tantrum that a "war" was taking shape when her supporters came to her defense. McCain is a moderate who never put much stock in the phony "conflict" that draft-dodging journalists and College Republicans have been propagating ever since Pat Buchanan choked out his last breath of relevance in at the Republican National Convention in 1992. For him, an war with actual elements of danger and death was quite enough. What makes this "culture war" so much fun for those who fight is that the only casualties are the reputations of public figures and no exercise of any kind is required. Unless you count the tired process of your average news cycle, but that's not the type of exercise I mean. Observe:



So, we can all agree that the guys who use the term culture war want to censor those they disagree with and shut them and their families off from dissenting opinions. For them, this is a war that is won by never seeing or hearing from your enemy.

With that unfortunate example of neoconservatives and paleoconservatives embracing out of the way, the question remains: Did Sarah Palin bring it back? I first began supporting Palin for VP in May of this year, and started this blog a week or so before the nomination. What brought me to this conclusion was not her stance on abortion or evolution, but her record as governor of Alaska. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find her religious views expressed anywhere if one searched articles pertaining to her in the Summer of 2008, as I did.

Instead, there were bountiful examples of a brash independent streak that had won her enemies on both sides of the aisle. According to Bloomberg News

Ms. Palin threatened to evict Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's biggest oil company, and partners BP PLC, Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips Co. from a state-owned gas field, winning their promise to increase Alaska's natural gas output 17 per cent.

This and other moves led conservatives to compare her to Hugo Chavez, and her policies to socialism. That was the Sarah Palin I supported and continue to support today. You wouldn't recognize it today, because of all the sensationalism the media has engaged in by pointing out her belief in God or that neither she nor her daughter chose infanticide, a fact she only chose to reveal when the media began suggesting she had faked her pregnancy while Bristol delivered Trig Palin. This is not to suggest that the media is liberally biased. I am wary of such a blanket statement, but it is obvious with every passing day that the media is simplistic and ruthless and is motivated by factoids, not facts, sound bites, not speeches, and profit, not informing. It is no wonder that they would seize upon isolated speech excerpts, trivial meetings and family issues to turn one of the few credible reformers left in this country into an extremist Christian who will lord over McCain the way Cheney was assumed to pull President Bush's strings. Anyone keeping score knows it was the sensationalists, not Palin, who reanimated the rotting corpse of the dishonest culture war.

Obama's taking a beating on all sides

Ever since the Palin nomination, Obama has found himself playing defense in just about every area in which he thought he was on solid ground. His message of Change is finally being put under scrutiny, and the results haven't been pretty. He's losing 8 out of 11 key swing states since the Republican National Convention. Obama's now trying to maintain that the Change message belongs to him alone, while the Palin selection has shored up the base and allowed McCain to be more persistent in his own message of reform. Just when it seemed things couldn't go any worse, he compared the McCain-Palin record to "lipstick on a pig," and all hell broke loose. Now, "lipstick on a pig" is an ancient expression and is familiar to almost all Americans. That's why it's stunning that Obama's defenders point to an 11-month old quote to make Obama appear acceptable. Obama made his comment a little over a week after Sarah Palin said the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull is lipstick. The laughs in Obama's standard exalting audience were laughs of recognition. His supporters made the connection instantly, but Obama would have us believe that his brain trust failed to notice the possible gaffe.

con·text [kon-tekst]
–noun
1. the parts of a written or spoken statement that precede or follow a specific word or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect: You have misinterpreted my remark because you took it out of context.
2. the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc.

And Barry won't recover until he understands that.

Hitchens Brothers find common ground on Palin

You'd be hard-pressed to find 2 people more diametrically opposed than Christopher and Peter Hitchens, yet they will be forever linked by genetics. Christopher, the elder, is a former Trotskyist whose main passion in the 1990s was seeing Henry Kissinger and Augusto Pinochet brought to justice for crimes against humanity while claiming Mother Theresa was a fraud who engaged in forced conversions at her mission. A militant atheist, he has rallied against the forces of jihad by arguing in favor of wars in Afghanistan as well as Iraq. Peter, on the other hand, is a paleoconservative who opposes each previously mentioned war as well as evolution and abortion. Peter favors sovereignty for the United Kingdom while preferring British control over Scotland and Wales. So when these 2 can agree on the merits of McCain's choice of running mate, it's worth our attention.

From big brother Hitchens:

I partly sympathize with all those who have been trying for a week to paint the former Miss Wasilla as a candidate from (fairly nearby, in Anchorage terms) Manchuria. However, as often as I have forwarded some alarming e-mail about her from a beavering comrade, I have afterward found myself having the sensation of putting my foot where the last stair ought to have been and wasn't. Was she in the Alaska Independence Party? Not really. Did she campaign for Pat Buchanan in 2000? The AP report from 1999 appears to be contradicted by her endorsement of Steve Forbes. (Not great, I agree, but not Buchanan, either.) The most appalling thing I have unearthed so far is the answer that she gave to a questionnaire when she ran for governor in 2006. All candidates were asked "Are you offended by the phrase 'Under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?" Her response was:

Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers [it's] good enough for me, and I'll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.
The very slight problem with this—because it would truly be awful if Gov. Palin didn't know that the pledge itself dates from only the late 19th century and that the unwonted insertion of the words "under God" was made in the mid-1950s—is that it is somehow funny. And it's also the sort of mistake that many people can imagine themselves making and thus forgive someone else for making.

I could well be wrong, but I think something similar is involved in the attempt to paint the Palin family as if it were Arkansas on ice or Tobacco Road with igloos and Inuit. Very well, she possibly has had her Troopergate and even trailer-park moments. But whom exactly did the Democrats drown in moist applause, for two nights running, in Denver? The most dysfunctional family ever to occupy not the vice-presidential mansion but the executive one. It's hard to imagine that there will be any more unwanted pregnancies or shotgun weddings when or if the Palins move to the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue, whereas with the Clintons, the very thing that made all Bill's friends turn white and pee green was that they made him the president, and he still wouldn't stop. For me, it is astonishing that the Democrats have been babbling all week as if this point isn't just waiting—indeed begging—to be made in riposte to their "opposition research."

Here, the author of a book called "God is not Great: How religion poisons everything," whose preoccupation in all of his works is hardline anti-theism followed closely by anti-authoritarianism. Take notice that one of the most brazen men on the planet barely finds her religious views not worthy of any significant attention. More appropriate in his view is to expose the hypocrisy of Obama's DNC mouthpieces to belittle Gov Palin's experience, defend Obama's nearly equal experience, and then feign outrage when she compares mayoral experience to Obama's part-time job.

But Peter's endorsement is more clear:

Which just goes to show that ultra-feminists are not actually interested in promoting women because they're women. They pretend they are, but really their agenda is a campaign against marriage, in favour of abortion and for every other disastrous liberal and socialist cause that ever existed. In which case, they really can't go on pretending that their opponents are women-hating bigots.

Hitchens notes that the supposed feminist agenda is the celebration of womanhood for the sake of womanhood, yet that ideology collapses when exposed to the rigid beliefs that all must follow in order to be called "sister." This is what Peter's older brother would compare to Orwell's Ministry of Love (or Miniluv in Newspeak). Could anyone have predicted a month ago that the all-around conservative governor of Alaska would not only be McCain's running mate, but energizing the entire campaign and bringing the Hitchens brothers together? Somewhere, the moon is turning a shade of azure.

Does Sarah Palin believe the Iraq War is "God's War"?

Alright, I'll spoil it: She doesn't.

It's being murmured throughout the blogosphere and even lurks its way into some legitimate news sources: Sarah Palin believes American soldiers are "on a task that is from God." Any quote that brief should throw up red flags for any objective reader. Here's the unadultered quote in its proper context:

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan.

Not exactly fire and brimstone, is it? She's asking the congregants to pray for wisdom and sound moral judgment from political leadership, not declaring a Holy War.

There remains an effort to cast Palin as outside the mainstream on a host of issues such as abortion and gay rights. What her critics don't realize (or don't want to realize) is that whether or not Palin's views align with theirs, most voters respect the integrity and credibility that her personal experiences bring to the abortion debate. When it comes to gay rights, seldom is it reported that Palin vetoed a bill outlawing same-sex benefits for state employees, effectively guaranteeing benefits to gay state employees. Curiously, however, most of the focus is aimed at Palin's opposition to gay marriage. While this is portrayed as "outside the mainstream," when's the last time anyone characterized Obama's opposition as extremist?

In fact, the issues for which Palin is made out to be an unapologetic ideologue are when Barry is at his most slippery. Here are his views on each respective issue in his own words:

Gun rights

I think there is an individual right to bear arms, but it's subject to commonsense regulation

I would respect his position if he were to interpret the second amendment to say that guns are meant solely for the militia, but he isn't. He acknowledges that gun ownership is a right, then concludes that a right is up for negotiation.

Death Penalty

The community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage

In fairness to Obama, he's also said he wants to limit the number of executions in order to appear to care about the anti-death penalty crowd (see: abortion).

So the accusation the Palin believes she governs Alaska with a mandate from Heaven is provably false. She has done more for gay unions in Alaska (a red state in which gay rights are more difficult to sell to the electorate) than Obama did in Illinois (Non-existent gay union record in the legislature of a solid blue state). Unlike Obama, her message in uncorruptably clear. In fact, the absence of pandering in her rhetoric signals a genuine departure from politics as usual. That's change you can believe in.

Palin Attackers Dispersing

After an unsuccessful media onslaught against Sarah Palin, the partisan attackers are declaring the battle is lost. I don't believe in the culture wars, but they are literally calling for a retreat. It won't be the first or last time this crowd waves the white flag. It started with the slanted Us Weekly coverage:
Then Us was confronted

I could've done without the shameless "Fair and Balanced reporting" line by Megyn Kelly, but this is the professionalism of Us Weekly's editorial board on display. Bradley Jacobs, the marble-mouthed individual being interviewed, is caught with his pants down as he's taken to task for probably the first time in his "journalistic" career. Normally, Hilary Duff and Tila Tequila don't fight back.

Take a good look at Michael Moore's demand that Gov Palin "Show Us the DNA!", because you'll never see that on his site again... Until another astute group of anonymous bloggers bravely take some other 17 year old to task and he runs with the story for a few days then quietly deletes it. He doesn't even get the pseudo-story right. The claim was that Palin was the "grandmother" of her "son". What a faildozer. At any rate, this statement should have been retracted not deleted.


While, he won't truly acknowledge his own mistakes, Moore is advocating that the anti-Paliners cool it. And in the process, glossing over his own role in the initial claims that Trig Palin was Bistol Palin's son:

One hour after Gustav hit land, the McCain campaign announced that Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's teenage daughter is pregnant. I don't want to say much more beyond this, as I agree with Barack Obama that "people's families are off limits, and people's children are especially off limits."

I do feel very sorry that this minor, this child, now has to have her privacy sacrificed because her mother accepted an offer to run for VP. Obama's right -- the children are off limits.

That's really low and embarrassing, even for Moore. Don't ever let this quarter ton land monster ever claim he has a moral high ground on anything.

But Moore isn't alone. Arianna Huffington, who initially summarized Palin as a Hail Mary pass is now calling Palin a "distraction." Look, even if you don't like Sarah Palin, it should be common knowledge at this point that Palin has a legion of loyal followers who consider her the yang to John McCain's yin. It should come as no surprise that they come to her defense, but when your political opposite calls your attackers sexist, they are probably telling the truth. After a week of prodding into everything from her family to a vague connection to the Alaska Independence Party (which isn't necessarily seccesionist), her detractors have finally realized just how badly they've injured themselves in the process.

Washington Post distortions on Federal dollars for Wasilla

The Washington Post is reporting that while Sarah Palin served as mayor of Wasilla, she helped secure [cue sinister music] earmarks for her fair city. According to the report, this undermines McCain's message of cleaning up pork barrel spending.

In fiscal year 2002, Wasilla took in $6.1 million in earmarks -- about $1,000 in federal money for every resident. By contrast, Boise, Idaho -- which has more than 190,000 residents -- received $6.9 million in earmarks in fiscal 2008

So let's examine the Post's comparison. Wasilla's population from 2000 to 2007 grew from 5469 to 7100 indicated almost 30% growth rate, while Boise's population growth from 2000 to 2007 went from 185,787 to 203,600 or 9.5% growth. What nefarious deeds did your hard-earned tax dollars go for?

• $1.9 million for the Wasilla Intermodal Transit Project, to realign rail and bus routes to increase use of public transit in the region.
• $500,000 for Kids Are People Inc., an emergency shelter for youths transitioning out of juvenile detention facilities.
• $15 million for a rail project to connect Wasilla with Girdwood.
• $1.75 million to upgrade emergency communications between authorities at the Wasilla dispatch center.
• $600,000 to upgrade bus stations.
• $900,000 to upgrade water and sewer facilities.

Imagine! We put trust in our elected officials and they use it to improve transportation, bring efficiency to first responders, and rehabilitate juvenile delinquents? FOR SHAME!!! So the money that went to Wasilla was meant for one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country and provide public transportation between Anchorage's suburbs. And the monetary figure used by the Post is an Olympian reach, because sizable chunks of their $6.9 million are shared with neighboring communities. Not pork by any measure. Oink oink, indeed.

Noun + Verb + 4 more years of failed Bush policies

Much has passed since the last time I posted on this blog. Sarah Palin has become McCain's VP, much to the delight of social conservatives, women outisde of NY, Frisco, Seattle, and Boston, and most importantly, reform-minded Republicans.

The tolerant left has shown its progressive and forward-thinking agenda by attacking the second female on a national ticket in history and her daughter, first by claiming that Governor Palin used a page out of the Desperate Housewives playbook and faked her pregnancy with Trig to cover for what was actually daughter Bristol's child. Daily Kos was the first to jump on it, but has since removed the story. Then it was revealed that Bristol is currently pregnant with her fiance's child. Somehow, this was evidence of some type of vague hypocrisy that detractors never explain.

Normally, I am skeptical of the term "liberal media," but many agenda-driven journalists made their views clear as this election cycle moved from the primaries to the general election. This became even more pronounced when the Palin pick was chosen. Immediately questions rose as to whether or not Palin had the experience to be POTUS. Naturally, MSNBC, CNN, and CBS immediately direct them to Obama's own justification

So Palin delivered a speech that was tremendous to all non-Democrats who were watching. in fact, there was a 9% jump for McCain/Palin among independents. So Howard Dean did exactly what all good public servants do... fell back to his talking points.

From Howard Dean:

I think the first half was terrific. I thought she really laid out who she
was. I was fascinated. The second half, she sounded like Dick Cheney, she
really did. The same old attack stuff, the same old canards about Democrats that
mostly weren't true.

Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney are both 1) Carbon-based beings 2) Need oxygen to survive. The similarities end there. Mind you, this accusation comes from a guy whose party nominated Joe Biden for the sole purpose of having an attack dog who could spew venom while the name above him on the ticket could maintain the guise of a cherub. Dean never elaborated on the alleged falsehoods, by the way. As the interview progressed, he did remember to equate McCain/Palin to Bush/Cheney, also without elaboration.

Like the above instances and many, many more examples that you can find by simply turning on your television set, the DNC continues to disappoint the electorate with their overly simplistic formula to piece together a sentence: A noun + a verb + 4 more years of failed Bush policies.