Bloodthirsty Liberal

No surprise here that the party of namby-pamby is the party of nimby:

The Obama administration signaled a sudden urgency yesterday to resolve the nine-year dispute over building a wind farm off Cape Cod, as US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced he would summon key parties to a meeting next week in hope of concluding the decision process within two months.

The announcement was made minutes after the Cape Wind project appeared to suffer an unexpected setback, when the National Park Service agreed with two Native American tribes that Nantucket Sound is eligible to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places because of its cultural and spiritual significance to the tribes.

The decision caught many by surprise, because listing in the Register, which affords extra protection against development, is normally reserved for structures or smaller, more specific locations.

Yeah, I wondered where they got that idea (false modesty very much regretted):

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) says she plans to introduce legislation today to establish two national monuments on roughly 1 million acres of Mojave Desert outback that is home to bighorn sheep and desert tortoises, extinct volcanoes, sand dunes and ancient petroglyphs.

Its centerpiece, Mojave Trails National Monument, would prohibit development on 941,000 acres of federal land and former railroad company property along a 105-mile stretch of old Route 66, between Ludlow and Needles.

…

Some congressional Republicans accused Feinstein of engaging in a not-in-my-back-yard campaign when her plans for legislation restricting renewable energy projects in California deserts surfaced earlier this year.

Feinstein must be smacking her forehead and saying “Injuns! Why didn’t I think of injuns!”

Declaring scrub land like this as a national monument is an audaciously hopeful idea:

So it’s dead certainty that this vista should be off limits as well:

Look, build your [bleeping] windmills or don’t, capture the sun’s mother[bleeping] power or not. I don’t give a [bleep]. Just don’t get between me and the next mahogany log I’m about to throw on the fire—and don’t… waste… my… [bleeping]… time.

Cool, you might say. Great idea:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) says she plans to introduce legislation today to establish two national monuments on roughly 1 million acres of Mojave Desert outback that is home to bighorn sheep and desert tortoises, extinct volcanoes, sand dunes and ancient petroglyphs.

Its centerpiece, Mojave Trails National Monument, would prohibit development on 941,000 acres of federal land and former railroad company property along a 105-mile stretch of old Route 66, between Ludlow and Needles.

Awesome, right?

Look again: what part of Dianne Feinstein don’t you get?

Some congressional Republicans accused Feinstein of engaging in a not-in-my-back-yard campaign when her plans for legislation restricting renewable energy projects in California deserts surfaced earlier this year.

The senator countered that she “strongly” supports such projects, but only if they are built on “suitable” lands.

In an effort to avoid conflicts, BrightSource Energy Inc. and Stirling Energy Systems recently scrapped plans to build massive solar and wind farms on a panoramic stretch of the proposed Mojave Trails monument known as Sleeping Beauty Valley.

“We had a project within what we understand to be the boundaries of the monument, but we recently decided to withdraw it,” said Sean Gallagher, Stirling’s vice president of marketing strategies and regulatory issues. “We’re trying to be respectful of what Sen. Feinstein has been doing in that area of the desert.”

Translation: we knew better than to cross Knuckles Feinstein.

Funny how they thought they they could get practically unlimited solar power from the desert. But Sen. Feinstein was just following Ted Kennedy’s example. So what if the wind blows consistently in Nantucket Sound? Doesn’t mean we got to put windmills in his back yard.

Oil in Alaska? Leave it there; we’ll buy Saudi Arabia’s. Coal in West Virginia? Why don’t they get green jobs?

Hope you’re happy, America. If the wait for the MRI under ObamaCare doesn’t kill you, the cold from our energy policy will. But you will have died for the sand dunes and the extinct volcanoes, so it will have been worth it.

Hard to know what to say when there isn’t much to say:

A gunman shot and wounded two men in the parking garage of a San Fernando Valley synagogue early Thursday and Jewish schools and temples were put on alert in case it was not an isolated attack.

Two men in their 40s were shot in the legs near the Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic Orthodox synagogue in North Hollywood, Deputy Police Chief Michel Moore said.

The men, both members of the synagogue, had arrived in separate cars for the morning service shortly before 6:30 a.m. when the gunman approached one and, without speaking, shot him and the other man, Moore said. The men were hospitalized in good condition.

Police later detained and handcuffed a man less than a mile from the synagogue.

The youth, believed to be about 17 years old, matched the “very loose” description of the attacker, who was described as a black man wearing a hoodie, Moore said.

…

“We have to assume, because it was a synagogue, it was a service (and) that there was no other apparent motive, we’re looking at it as a hate crime,” Lt. John Romero said.

The FBI also responded to the scene, and police alerted nearby Jewish schools and temples and put extra patrols in place. There are several synagogues in the area.

“We are being vigilant for any follow-ups that may occur,” Moore said.

…

The attack occurred 10 miles from Jewish community center where white supremacist Buford Furrow wounded three children, a teenager and an adult, in 1999. Furrow later killed a Filipino letter carrier on another street.

Furrow, who is serving a life sentence without chance of parole, told the Daily News of Los Angeles in a letter last month that he had renounced his racist views and regretted the pain he had caused.

I suppose that’s good news, and I wish him and his newly discovered conscience well in whatever dingy dungeon where he currently rots.

Via HotAir, an Obama voter (I feel confident in asserting) describes the California she’s dreaming of:

I’m sorry, it was cruel of me to link to this—but people like her elected this president.

I think people should be allowed to do what they want with their lives, whether it’s to sit on the sofa and eat Doritos, or to climb sheer rock faces without safety equipment.

I know which I’d choose (Nacho Cheese over Cool Ranch any day).

John Bachar, a legendary figure in the obscure and close-knit world of rock climbing, died Sunday after a fall near his home in Mammoth Lakes, Calif. He was 52.

Bachar perished after falling while climbing alone on Dike Wall outside Mammoth Lakes. Nearby climbers heard the fall and quickly reached Bachar, who was rushed to Mammoth Hospital, where he died shortly afterward from severe injuries.

Bachar, who was born in Los Angeles in 1957 and attended UCLA, became famous largely for his exploits as a free-soloist. The form of climbing he practiced was considered the most dangerous because it does not involve ropes or safety equipment.

…

Phil Bard, a friend of Bachar’s and a renowned climbing photographer, recalled the days in the early 1980s when Bachar routinely scaled 5.10- and 5.11-rated routes.

“It was always breathtaking to see John gliding effortlessly upward on tiny knobs or with only the first knuckles of his fingers in a crack 100 feet off the ground.

…

Bachar was single, and his survivors include a son, Tyrus. Services are still being planned, Bard said.

I’m glad he died doing what he loved, I’m glad he was breathtaking, I’m glad he was a legend.

But can we not also agree that he was a selfish son-of-a-bitch? He’ll tell you so himself:

“People looked at me like I was very weird for a couple of months,” Bachar recalled in April for an article in Colorado’s Daily Camera newspaper. “They thought I was crazy or something.”

…

Bachar repeatedly acknowledged the danger of climbing without ropes. But he once described the feeling as addictive and like that of flying or being on another planet.

I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who feels this way:

If you spend enough time in mountain communities, the harsh reality you learn quickly is no one is invincible, regardless of their talent or experience. Bachar joins a too-long list of mountain athletes who are now gone, victims of the simple fact that there was no margin of error in their chosen career. Mountain guide Doug Coombs was considered one of the best skiers in the world until the moment he slipped on ice and fell off a cliff while guiding in France in 2006. Gifted skier Shane McConkey, one of the pioneers of ski-BASE jumping, lost his life in a Ski-BASE accident in March. Like Bachar, both men left behind children who won’t grow up with their fathers at their sides.

…

Yet even though each of these men had long ago made peace with the fact that they could die doing what they loved, it’s their loved ones whose hearts are broken when they make a mistake, or just get unlucky. This was heart-wrenchingly illustrated this week on the climbers’ forum, SuperTopo, when Bachar’s son shared his grief with the online community his father also frequented.

The raw pain shared by Tyrus Bachar left an ache in my heart, and forced to the surface the same questions I ask myself every time I hear about another death that comes from high-risk mountain pursuits. Why can’t these athletes scale back their activities out of consideration for their children? Why wouldn’t they more actively manage their risks (start using ropes, for example) after already proving what they are capable of? When is enough, enough?

Tyrus’ message:

My dad, a great man…..will be missed. Jul 5, 2009, 11:22pm PT

Dude I’m soo sad right now my dad is dead he fell of of the dike wall. I knew it was a bad idea to go soloing today. I knew it.

JB 09 I LOVE YOU DAD…..

I was curious how old Tyrus was, and I found a picture (I don’t know how recent):

I’ve probably said too much already, but this guy was my age (roughly), as was Michael Jackson. Maybe they wouldn’t have changed a thing about the way they lived (or died), and maybe just being alive wasn’t enough for them.

But their children might have wished that they had, and that it was:

We should have seen this coming:

Fleeing the Great Depression and a drought unprecedented in American history, a vast wave of Oklahomans and Texans dubbed “Okies” loaded everything they could onto crowded vehicles during the 1930s and headed west for California. Today, in huge numbers, their grandchildren are moving back…

…From 2004 through 2007, about 275,000 Californians left the Golden State for the old Dust Bowl states of Oklahoma and Texas, twice the number that left those two states for California, recent Internal Revenue Service figures show. In fact, the mid-South gained more residents from California during those four years than either Oregon, Nevada or Arizona. The trend continued into 2008.

As a result, it’s easy to find Californians – even former Sacramentans – living and working in Oklahoma City, a capital of the American heartland.

Let’s just hope that they leave their liberal politics behind. Massachusetts has hemorrhaged citizens to New Hampshire, fleeing confiscatory taxation, but they brought their moonbat political views with them. Now the state that made Ed Muskie cry is itself a bastion of bleeding hearts which seems to believe that the motto “Live Free or Die” is an invitation to go on welfare.

That couldn’t happen to O-k-l-a-h-o-m-a, could it? That would definitely not be OK.

This just in:

The California Supreme Court has upheld a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage, but it also decided that the estimated 18,000 gay couples who tied the knot before the law took effect will stay wed.

The decision Tuesday rejected an argument by gay rights activists that the ban revised the California constitution’s equal protection clause to such a dramatic degree that it first needed the Legislature’s approval.

The announcement of the decision caused outcry among a sea of demonstrators who had gathered in front of the San Francisco courthouse awaiting the ruling.

To repeat my stance: I support gay marriage, but I don’t condemn, dismiss, or threaten those who disagree. And I don’t like the anti-democratic ways supporters have resorted to in furthering their cause.

But I’m thinking over what Penn Jillette said on Glenn Beck the other night:

JILLETTE: What about social stuff? Do you think the government should have anything to do with marriage?

BECK: I think you should have the right to have your civil unions, et cetera. I don’t care what you do in your personal life. I don’t really care.

JILLETTE: I’m totally against straight marriage — even though I’m married. I don’t think heterosexual marriage is any of the government’s business. I think you make any contract you want, you know, if you want to marry several women, several men, you want to marry another man, another woman, anything — make a contract, make a civil union and get the government out of the business of who we have sex with.

His last point is false: it’s not about whom we have sex with. It’s about marriage—not the same thing. [Rim-shot] I’m not convinced the government (expressing the collective will of the people) has nothing to say about marriage.

I never thought I’d have to say this, but a state full of blondes is smarter than we eggheads here in Massachusetts:

Of the six propositions offered, only one passed — the one to freeze pay raises for legislators when the state’s running a deficit — despite Arnold and his allies having outspent critics 10 to 1 in pushing the initiatives. To paraphrase a hip-hop classic, California knows how to tea-party:

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was dealt a crushing defeat as voters rejected a series of ballot initiatives designed to help plug the state’s spiraling budget deficit…

Schwarzenegger had warned that failure of the proposals would leave California grappling with a budget shortfall of around 21.3 billion dollars.

But weary voters were unwilling to heed Schwarzenegger’s deficit warnings and came out broadly against the ballot proposals, by margins of around 60-70 percent to 40-30 percent, local media reported.

That margin, 70-30, marks the exact same margin by which we recently defeated (sob!) a ballot measure to abolish the state income tax. We, too, were tortured with apocalyptic visions if the measure passed, and the pro-tax gargantuas massively outspent the anti-tax lilliputians.

But Californians said “consider that a divorce” to their State House, while we said “thank you sir may I have another” to ours.

Yes, we may:

The state Senate voted last night to increase the sales tax, lift the sales tax exemption on alcohol, and allow cities and towns to raise meals and hotel taxes, brushing aside criticism that higher taxes would hurt Massachusetts businesses by driving consumers over the border, particularly to tax-free New Hampshire.

The Senate plan, which cleared the House in April, would push the sales tax from 5 percent to 6.25 percent, while generating an estimated $633 million to offset deep cuts in services for the poor, elderly, and disabled.

If Democrats didn’t have the poor, the elderly, and the disabled, they’d have to invent them. Otherwise, the Boston Glob would have to report more fully and fairly (or report at all) on state pension abuses, which cost millions of dollars; hack jobs in government, where unheard-of departments have half a dozen or more state workers pulling down more than $100,000 a year; friends and relations of hack workers getting subordinate hack jobs for $50-75,000 per; fraud and abuse in every “social services” program (Wave from your public housing apartment, Auntie Zeituni!); and outright thievery in most of them (”A wealthy Brookline couple who swindled taxpayers for family health insurance pleaded guilty to fraud and larceny today and face thousands in fines. Joseph Youshaei and his wife, Jila, who are worth an estimated $2 million in homes and commercial buildings, claimed to only have an income of $475 per week, which allowed them to obtain $53,000 in MassHealth benefits over six years.”); and cunning invention of yet others undreamed of anywhere else (welfare Cadillacs). Even so-called successful programs, like MassHealth (our mandatory health insurance program) is a “success” only by virtue of going way, way, way over budget.

Not to mention the strange tendency of our legislative leaders to be forced from office in scandal.

And we just go right on reelecting the same overwhelmingly Democratic state legislature that abuses us so degradingly.

If we have any of those 1970s bumper sticker left over, we can amend them to read: “Beat me: I live in Massachusetts”.

Otherwise, it’s just California dreaming.

Illegally.

But for some reason, he isn’t spreading his cheeks in prison.

I mentioned how the George Soros-funded group, Americans Coming Together, was hit with a $775,000 fine by the Federal Election Commission – the third largest civil penalty levied in the panel’s history — for gross campaign finance violations.

Yesterday, in little-noticed news, California’s campaign finance panel fined Soros directly for failing to disclose a $350,000 contribution that was funneled through the Drug Policy Action Network to help fund a ballot measure undermining the state’s Three Strikes law for criminals.

The California regulators noted that Soros had been a repeat offender, yet fined him a paltry $8,000!

…

Respondent’s violations are stated as follows:

COUNT 1: Respondent George Soros failed to timely disclose a $350,000 late contribution to the Fix Three Strikes Committee in a properly filed late contribution report, by the October 27, 2004 due date, in violation of Sections 84203, subdivision (a) and 84605, subdivision (b) of the Government Code.

COUNT 2: Respondent George Soros failed to timely file a semi-annual campaign statement by the January 31, 2005 due date, for the reporting period January 1, 2004 through December 31, 2004, in violation of Section 84200, subdivision (b) and 84605, subdivision (b) of the Government Code.

…

Respondent has in the past been an active contributor in California politics, qualifying as a major donor committee and filing major donor campaign statements in 1996, 1999, and 2000. In 2002, respondent failed to timely file a late contribution report, and received a warning letter from the Enforcement Division in January 2003.

“Respondent”—I love it. It’s only one step away from defendant. Which is only one step away from convict.

Never gonna happen, I know. Even if he were convicted of serial campaign finance violations (aka bribery?), President Obama would pardon him before you could say “currency speculator”.

Hedge fund executives are still looking for pieces of their shattered kneecaps; bankers are still putting out embers of what used to be their yachts; auto industry leaders need more Clorox to get the horse blood stains out of their bed sheets.

Don Vito Obama made them offers they couldn’t refuse. Now: [Y]ou come into my house, on the day my daughter is to graduate from third grade, and you ask me for stimulus funds. What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? If you’d come to me in friendship, then these labor unions would be suffering this very day. And if by chance an honest man like yourself should make enemies, then they would become my enemies. And then they would fear you.

The Obama administration is threatening to rescind billions of dollars in federal stimulus money if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers do not restore wage cuts to unionized home healthcare workers approved in February as part of the budget.

Schwarzenegger’s office was advised this week by federal health officials that the wage reduction, which will save California $74 million, violates provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Failure to revoke the scheduled wage cut before it takes effect July 1 could cost California $6.8 billion in stimulus money, according to state officials.

…

The SEIU said in a statement that it had asked the Obama administration for the ruling.

Is that what they’re calling it these days, a “ruling”? “Rubout” sounds dated; “greased”, “whacked”, and “clipped” are a little worn out as well. But I just can’t see the Godfather turning to Clemenza or Luca Brasi and asking for a “ruling”.

Schwarzenegger on Wednesday sent U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius a letter urging the federal government to reconsider.

“Neither the Legislature nor I make decisions to reduce wages or benefits lightly, but only as a last resort in response to an unprecedented fiscal crisis,” Schwarzenegger wrote.

Don’t beg, Arnold. Take your “ruling” right between the eyes for the honor of your widow and your children.

PS: Ed Morrissey comments:

The SEIU should have had no place in negotiations between California and the White House on stimulus spending. Their inclusion makes the stimulus bill an explicit political patronage slush fund, given to those states who dance to the White House tune.

Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. It’s the Labor tune to which they’ll have to dance, and everyone else who comes into contact with the Obama White House. It’s the Chicago Way instead of the Beltway these days.