Life's Inanities and Ironies

With or without our consent the powers that be in our supposed House of Representatives once again said they don't care what the majority of their constituents want and passed H.R. 2454: The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 Here’s a PDF link to the bill passed by congress today and heading for the Senate. HR 2454 BTW, the vote was 219-212 with enough Republicans crossing the aisle to pass it. I would openly like to thank my own Congressman Joe Donnelly for having the sense and the intestinal fortitude to go against his party. Only 2 Indiana Representatives, Democrats Andre’ Carson from the 7 th district and Baron Hill from the 9 th , voted for HR 2454. Want to see how your Congressman voted on this bill? And here are some highlights of the 300 page amendment tacked on in the wee hours of the morning. It was amazing to listen to Boehner run down the 300+ page amendment to the bill that got dumped on Congress at 3 AM Friday morning. Among th...

Below is a copy of the message I have sent to my Congressman Joe Donnelly "Representative Donnelly, HR 2454, the "Cap-and-Trade" bill scheduled to come before you for a vote very soon, is nothing more than a thinly disguised energy tax that will hit every single American. I have called and left a message to let you know That I personally am against this and as my representative I ask that you take this into consideration when you vote. If those I have been talking to locally are any indication a large majority of your constituents have no clue as to the impact this is going to have on their lives if passed. I am hoping that you sir ARE aware. Even tho the goal of this bill is a lofty one and it may force a change in the way energy is produced in this country, it's counterparts around the world have failed miserably. President Obama himself claimed in several campaign speeches before the election that if this plan was put into effect it would rais...

TOMORROW (Friday June 26 th , 2009), the House will vote on the Pelosi/ Obama-pushed massive carbon tax -- what the Wall Street Journal today is calling the "biggest tax in American history." That means we have just a few hours left to voice our opposition. The Journal says the bill "defies the laws of economics" and then lambasts the Congressional Budget Office for totally ignoring the negative effects on the economy this bill will cause. For example, Heritage Foundation’s estimates that the cap-and-trade Carbon Tax will: "Reduce aggregate Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by $9.6 trillion" "Destroy up to 2.5 million jobs in some years" "Raise electric rates 90%, gasoline prices by 74%, and natural gas prices by 55% after adjusting for inflation" "Raise a typical family's average annual energy bill by $1,500." I am asking everyone to take immediate action in two ways: #1 --...

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, says he was dismayed that Congress passed the war supplemental appropriations bill so easily last week. “An economic collapse seems to be the goal of Congress and this administration,” Paul said during his weekly radio address Monday. “Washington spends with impunity, domestically bailing and nationalizing basically everything they can get their hands on,” Paul said. Mocking the idea that Obama was a “peace candidate,” Paul pointed out that his administration will be sending another $106 billion it doesn't have "to continue the bloodshed in Afghanistan and Iraq without a hint of a plan to bring American troops home." Paul noted that many of his congressional colleagues who previously voted with him in opposition to every war supplemental request under the Bush administration seem to have changed their tune. He maintains that a vote to fund the war is a vote in favor of the war. “Congress exercises its constitutional prerogatives ...

From CNN’s Alex Castellanos ( click for the complete commentary ): Imagine if, a week before he dispatched John McCain in November, Barack Obama had stood before the American people and told them what he would actually do. “My fellow Americans, if you elect me president next Tuesday, I propose to grow our government to unprecedented size, increase federal spending to never-imagined levels and double the debt in our country. I will support $1.3 trillion in new taxes even as our recession deepens. I will take advantage of the crisis to expand federal control of health care, the energy industry, banks, Wall Street and the car business, fire GM’s CEO and sign a stimulus bill with nearly 9,000 earmarks. “I will undo much of Bill Clinton’s welfare reform by giving ‘tax cuts’ to non-taxpayers. I will propose a crushing tax on energy, making it more expensive to drive to work or cook dinner. I will choose men who have not paid their taxes as my key economic advisers and will have no ...

TODAY the Senate is voting on yet another massive spending bill -- the $410 billion omnibus appropriations bill that contains more than 2,900 pages! Worse yet, the bill is laden with 8,500 pork-filled earmarks totaling more than $7.7 billion including: --$1.8 million for pig odor and manure management --$200,000 for a "tattoo-removal violence-outreach program" in Los Angeles --$1.9 million for a water taxi service in Connecticut (this is actually being called the taxi to nowhere) --$473,000 for National Council of La Raza (which has supported radical Mexican nationalism within our borders) --$951,500 for "Sustainable Las Vegas" --$300,000 for the Montana World Trade Center --$238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Honolulu, Hawaii. --$280,000 for alternative uses for tobacco --$400,000 to combat bullying in Montana --$2 million "for the pr...

For some of us, it’s that time of the year again when we ask “ when does daylight saving time end ?” even when it has just started. It’s probably the only disliked idea that came from Benjamin Franklin, who thought of Daylight Saving Time ( DST ) or Summer Time originally. Dislike might even be a weak word for it since Google searches has smatterings of “ abolish daylight saving time ” and “ demonstrations against daylight saving time .” Demonstrations… . One of the rationale used for implementing DST is energy conservation. We are supposed to save energy from being less inside our homes and therefore using less appliances and consuming less electricity. Daylight Saving Time had some backing from a U.S. Department of Transportation research done in the ’70s that cited a small but significant (1%) savings in energy consumption… if all goes well. Problem is, not all researches point that way. I need those here in the Hoosier State to pay attention...especially "My Man Mitch...

I've got a '95 Chrysler Concorde, 3.5L 6 Cylinder 214 hp, that I have been running a 50/50 mix in off and on for the last year with no issues. I started out adding a gallon of E85 more at each fill up till I hit the 50/50 mix. Only thing I've done is change the fuel filter, but even that was in regular maintenance schedule. System is running cooler according to the gages and mileage dropped 2 mpg on the highway but it went up 2-3 MPG in town. My average overall stayed aprox the same and I love the added oomph when I hit the "gas" to pass. Why am I telling you all this? Because of what happened at my last fill up and a question I was asked by the station attendant at the local ststion where I buy my E85. Keep in mind that I have been buying E85 at this station for nearly a year or better with no problem. I did my normal “fill”, (half a tank) at the regular pumps then pulled over to the E85 pump to put in the other half. The pump wouldn’t come on…flip...

If you live in the United States, you probably think that your household wages land you squarely in the category most of us call "middle class." Most people in the U.S. tend to identify themselves this way, even when their incomes are greatly above or greatly below the median level. For example, if you watch the news, you know that households that make over $100,000 consider themselves middle class and say so, often while fretting about how much they will have to pay in taxes in the course of the coming years. In fact, during the last presidential campaign, some people were very upset that Barack Obama wanted to rescind the Bush tax cuts for households earning over $250,000. They argued that in America today, $250,000 is a solidly middle class income, and that making people who earn this much go back to paying more in taxes was a direct attack on the middle class. According to data collected by the U.S Census Bureau in 2005, only 15% of the households in the United Stat...