Anger is the prelude to courage…

Eric Hoffer wrote the above in his 1979 memoirs.   It remains true.   if you don’t care,  it doesn’t matter,  and you do nothing.  The  very first night  of the GOP convention was described by Monica Showalter as a “ragecat GOP convention with a fierce message of ‘fight.'”    Democrats are always angry and aggrieved,  but theirs is a bitter,  sour anger.   The GOP is on fire,  but it is grateful for our nation and hopeful.

The late Andrew Breitbart was often called a happy warrior,  because he was passionate,  often angry,  and always happy to be in the fight.   He enjoyed being in the fight because he knew his skirmishes were important and he had the fortitude and vision to carry it on until his untimely death.   He always encouraged others to be like him.   You should be and you can be.   Righteous anger helps you find the specific tools you need.

You  can look  at Democratic Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones,  who bashed  his party and fearlessly told you exactly what is wrong with it.   Yes,  there was a big  pitch made  to black voters,  featuring a stunning candidate,  Kim Klacik,    football  great Herschel  Walker,  and a  sitting Senator,  Tim Scott.

Big media was no doubt pulling its collective hairs out because the event  was quite  effective,  despite  media panning it instantly.    It conveyed life and energy and optimism,  and was plagued by very few of the technical glitches and hiccups which plagued the DNC throughout last week.   You can judge its success  by celebrity  reactions.   I am happy to say that I have not watched anything any of the listed twisted were in.

 

 

 

 

Dollar diplomacy…

The  term is  not a new one,  and one certainly used by previous presidents,  but America’s new energy independence makes it an even more formidable tool for Pres. Trump.  Instead of threatening to unleash military power,  Trump can threaten other countries with the stick of sanctions,  or encourage an action by the promise of rewards via increased trade and prosperity.   Don’t confuse this with the “soft diplomacy” proclaimed by the Obama Administration,  which consisted largely of speaking softly and carrying a big sack of money to buy miscreants off temporarily.

Remember when His Oneness was president,  Democrats always whined  “We can’t drill our way out of this,”  but that is precisely what  we have  done.   We listened to  “Drill,  baby , drill!”  instead of fascists of the Obama bunch,  and we succeeded.

T. Boone Pickens, R.I.P.

Pickens  began changing  the American energy industry in the 1950s,  and only retired as an active participant in 2018,  due to declining health.  A longtime maverick,  he wanted to decrease his country’s dependence on foreign oil,  and he lived long enough to see it happen.   An interesting man,  an interesting life.

 

 

 

Sleep standards…

The federal government thinks your thermostat should be set  to 82 degrees  when you sleep?   Have any of these blithering idiots ever been to the Deep South?  At that temperature,  you’d probably sweat yourself off the bed,  assuming your didn’t drown first.

UPDATE:  Energy Secretary Rick Perry just told us to set our thermostats  wherever we  like.    There is a shred of common sense left in the Swamp.

 

Fracking to freedom…

The U.S. just became the world’s largest oil producer.   It was the headline everywhere:  “Stunning  12.16 million barrels  of oil every 24 hours”.   You remember seeing that all over the place,  don’t you?  No,  you don’t,  because MSM won’t report it.   Like the Democratic presidential candidates,  they want you to believe the economy is terrible,  or it’s about to become terrible.   Yet they also have admitted they will take rescind the Trump tax cuts,  then increase your taxes to pay for all the goodies they want to give to illegal aliens,  so they must not really believe the economy is in the tank.

Fracking is the prime force in the increased oil production,  and is likely to propel the daily total to 13 million barrels by the end of the year.  Monthly natural gas production (in the lower 48 states) also rose to a fresh new record high 100.27 billion cubic feet per day in April.

Yes,  America is energy-independent.  Yes,  no one is going to tell you about this milestone,  because if you think you are free you might start acting like it and get uppity.  The global elites thrive on semi-educated serfs  —  people who can accomplish tasks but lack the mental muscle  or moral impulsion to demand more.   You think I exaggerate?   Look around at most of the public education students you see and proclaim your disagreement with a straight face.

Earth Day 2018…

The man who still proclaims himself the founder of Earth Day is a convicted murderer currently  serving a life sentence.   Most activists credit Wisconsin Sen.  Gaylord Nelson  instead.   It is no accident that April 22nd,  Vladimir Lenin’s date of birth,  was selected for Earth Day.   His s  communism is more indicative of the eco-Nazis  tactics and views than that of naturalist  John Muir,  whose birthday only one day earlier would seem a better fit for people proclaiming their love of the earth and nature.

President trump is quite correct when he  says that  the environment and the economy go hand in hand.  Steven Hayward powerfully expands the argument here.   Reality requires both recognition and the application of some common sense,  both dangerously lacking in the environmental movement.  For example,  you have seen a thousand stories about President Trump pulling out of the Paris Agreement,  an Obama disaster which did nothing more than transfer a lot of our tax  money to the rest of the world.  You have seen only a handful pointing out that the US leads the world in  decreasing carbon  emissions,  and it has done so largely without government mandates,  and certainly without the hectoring of Obama and his cronies who happily took taxpayer funds for their companies,  which went bankrupt.

Creativity in the energy industry will always produce more meaningful results than New York’s efforts  to ban  single-use plastic bags,  which will expose many more people to  bacteria from  reusable shopping bags.

Tim Worstall  explains why  you should be a capitalist free-marketeer if you care about the planet enough to want to actually do something for it instead of merely running your mouth and trying to persuade the government into forcing idiotic policies onto the populace.   Do you know any environmentalists?   Have any of them ever managed a plot of land larger than a flower pot?   Probably not,  but that never stops them from telling everyone how to manage the entire earth.

Let’s end with a contribution from  Twitchy,  the social-media monitoring site,  giving us the 10  dumbest tweets  of the day.

 

 

Renewable energy fails again…

This time it’s a Spanish company which is going the way of Solyndra,  but U.S. taxpayers are  on the hook  for the $2.7 billion worth of loan guarantees,  courtesy of the Department of Energy Section 1705 loan guarantee program,  the same program that funded Solyndra.  You can thank His Oneness and his lust for green energy,  along with Queen Hillary and her unwavering support of the Export-Import Bank for the latest assault on your wallets.   This debacle will  make Solyndra look like small change…

 

 

 

SCOTUS blocks Clean Power Plan…

This is HUGE!   The Supreme Court has ruled  in favor  of the 27 states and various companies and business groups  who sued to stop the regulations under the administration’s Clean Power Plan from going into effect while the legality of  the plan is litigated.   I had not been hopeful for this result when the U.S. Appeals Court ruled against them,  but perhaps the judicial system is beginning to wake up and remember its real job.

His Oneness planned to get the crippling regulations in effect and let the case spend years in litigation while he put the coal industry out of business and made energy as expensive as he promised he would.

 

 

 

Hezbollah approaches bankruptcy…

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah  is dead,  but the succession was already set before his death,  so the kingdom should not suffer much disruption because of the event.   He  wasn’t to  my taste,  mainly because of his two-faced behavior with terrorists,  and his successor will have a shadow regent for a variety of reasons,  but it could be much worse.   The  bow His Oneness made to the King doesn’t seem to have persuaded him  to like our president.   Perceived weakness never engenders respect,  something His Oneness has never learned.

There  is good  news.   The lowered price of oil is having an effect on the terror groups,  on Iran’s ability to support them,  and on Russia.  The side benefit is that it helps the American consumer.   Will our energy sector lose some jobs?   Yes,  but many of those laid off will have skills which translate to other areas,  and one hopes that,  like the wildcatters of old,  they saved wisely during the boom times.

Lump of coal…

The GOP’s weekly address in response to the President’s can be somewhat tedious,  but Rep. Mike Kelly does a really good job with  this one,  managing to display some fine sentiments for the Christmas season after chiding His Oneness for his single-minded determination to kill the coal industry.   If you have time,  read all of it.