Noblesse Oblige

Obama’s First Six Months: The Fail

Domestic

Even being kind and peering through rose-colored glasses won’t give the appearance that President Obama has succeeded in his major policy initiatives – especially when you look at real data from his first two quarters in office.

The biggest challenge he talked about in the final days of election season was the economy and his policies and initiatives have fallen well short of promise. It could be worse than just the bare unemployment figures indicate.

While there are mild signs of recovery, the overall data after two fiscal quarters of Obama’s Presidency indicate the big fail on most promises. States are the beggars next in line to come after US Taxpayers and you should expect to see lots of lobbying from them during the second half of the year.

He promised not to raise taxes on the middle class, but he certainly has. With tobacco taxes as first step and the coming Cap and Trade Bill, pretty much every person in the US will see some impact to their budget in the form of a hidden energy tax.

The effects on industry are likely to quell the mild recovery mentioned above, but he’s pressuring the Senate right now to get it passed pronto. Let us hope the Senate stops this monstrous blow on the economy and your wallet. This might also impact the balance of power in congress, as vulnerable Dems come under fire for voting for Cap and Trade.

If Cap and Trade doesn’t stall the economy, then his health care reform plan will, and that looks headed into a maelstrom of congressional indecision. Congress will take this up right after the holiday break and you should expect some major contention. It seems that everyone wants universal health care, but not many want to pay for it.

In other areas he’s appearing like Bush III rather than a Democrat president, indeed the biggest “change” might be hypocrisy.

On ethics President Obama’s promised transparency in government has been displaced by realpolitik, and the end of influence he promised has been tossed in favor of pay to play and patronage. Congress doesn’t seem to mind since they are the new jet setters on our dime, and for now the MSM is still backing the President’s plays.

Foreign

When it comes to the war on terror, Obama is a series of reversals and that’s the only reason he gains a passing grade. Here are but a few:

• He promised to stop warrant less wiretaps, but has reversed on that.
• He promised to end unlimited gitmo detention, but reversed on that
• He promised to close gitmo, but now runs into the same rock and hard place Bush did.
• He promised to release Abu Ghraib photos, but wisely reversed after counseling on that.

In every major challenge to the US from tinpots and tyrants, he’s talked softly and wielded a feather boa. The only reasons he gets a C in foreign policy are his firm prosecution of the war in Afghanistan and his follow through on the Bush policy and negotiations in Iraq. He is clearly on path to alienate some allies such as Israel, Columbia, and Japan from his soft stance and passive/agressive meddling.

The recent Honduran issue shows clearly that he is as isolationist as any hard core paleocon rightwinger, although his approach is passive / aggressive rather than blunt as a paleocon’s would be. The mixed message of “not a coup but not legal” and the pressure through OAS that our state department is sending sure isn’t impressing our allies who are opposed to Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution in Central and South America.

I am certainly not one of those who are hoping for Obama to fail and consider it stupid for anyone to wish for that – but it appears that in many areas he is not succeeding. Hope and Change has metamorphosed into Hypocrisy and Carterdom.

Light

Tonight’s Moon

Here is tonight’s moon, I’ve got something set wrong on the camera that I can’t find, these are coming out a bit dimmer than they used to. I’ll fiddle about and find it eventually, most likely it’s average white balance or something like that.

Ok, I have the dimness thing figured out, the other night I was trying to photograph firefly traces, and set the AWB method / setting to shade. Fixed now.

Virgin CEO Branson Fully Favors Nuclear Energy

Richard is somewhat halting in public speaking but what he says here is very pertinent and right on the money.

This is exactly in synch with what oil economy specialists say, especially in light of the new restrictions on shipping diesel fuel. The sooner we can free up more light sweet crude from power production for transport, the better.

Quick Hits

With the withdrawal of US Troops from Iraqi cities negotiated by the Bush administration we see the last major Iraq policy initiative of the previous President. If anything breaks in Iraq after this, it’s on Obama.

In Pakistan the Taliban are still retreating in a hard backwards slog where they are killing their own wounded, the refugees are still fleeing, and it appears that Pakistan is really serious again about combating terror. I might even start rooting for them again if they continue and don’t fall back to more hudna-centric Peace Accords that only aid the Taliban.

In Afghanistan the Marines have finished pouring into the South, and I expect to see big changes in Helmand over the summer; meanwhile US forces continue to pound the Haqqani network in Eastern Afghanistan.

In Honduras they are telling Obama and the Organization of American states to go pound sand because Zelaya is not coming back.

Sun and Moon

The sun this afternoon and tonight’s moon, these were both shot with the Canon at medium size so the detail might not be as high as you are used to if you come here often:

But would you pay for it?

This CNN segment cuts to the essentials of the health care and cap and trade bill debates:

Anchorage to Fairbanks on the Denali Star

Here’s a bunch of photos I took on the trip compressed in photoshop, then again by uploading to Youtube. If you see one you like pause it quick because each lasts a second or so. Also if you have the bandwidth click on the Youtube icon to blow this out of frame and watch from the Youtube site where you can click the HD button and see much more detail.

Honduran Coup

There’s been a coup this morning in Honduras against one of Hugo Chavez’s allies, President Zelaya. Normally I don’t care for military coups, but this one appears to be enforcing current court decisions and their constitution over a Chavez style referendum to rewrite said constitution. The best coverage and round up of the ongoing change is found at Fausta’s Blog.

UPDATE:

There was a court order to detain the president for insisting on holding a referendum that had already been declared unconstitutional. More at Patterico.

Dandelion

Cap and Tax Under Hot Debate

Update: The bill passed 219-212

The Waxman-Markey Cap and Tax bill is under hot debate on the house floor right now, the bill will introduce a huge hidden energy tax to middle class americans, and do pretty much nothing to stop emissions. It’s turned into a huge patronage deal with massive pollution credits going to Dems in coal states to gain their votes. Here’s Representative Dave Camp, MI speaking on the effects of the bill:

The quickest way to stall the world economy that I know of is to introduce more draconian regs like this. The diesel regulations in Europe directly contributed to the recession we are trying to come out of now.

With the coming regulation of shipping diesel fuels, the future is looking pretty grim.

More from Representative Ryan:

What’s New

We’ve just returned from a family reunion in Fairbanks, Alaska — the get together was great and seeing all of my family again was wonderful. We had planned to hit the Midnight Sun Game, but we talked too long into the bright night and missed it. Time can be deceptive when the sun doesn’t go down except to kiss the horizon near midnight. [click on the thumbnail to the left, this was taken 11:56 PM Fairbanks time on 6/17 four days before actual Solstice. Taken from the Steese Highway near the Chena Hot Springs cut off.]

Between the Sony and the Canon I took about 3,000 photos and will be posting some more of them over the next few weeks.

The trip back was pretty grueling, the plane’s flight computer went out, and the back up computer would only allow us to fly within Radar range – that turned out to be a cancelation since they are conducting military air excercises and we didn’t have enough fuel to establish a route around those that would stay within range of radar. So 36 hours later we got home, still in the same clothes. Waiting on the rebooked red eye flight did give us a bit more time for family however so we all hit the Alaska Salmon Bake.

Glacier Overflight

While flying up to Alaska we saw quite a few signs of past glaciation in the Rockies, everything from hanging cirques, to tarns, to moraines in the plains leading to the mountains. It wasn’t until we got further north that we saw actual glaciers however. This series of photos were snapped while my aisle mate went to the restroom and I was able to get to the window. Just judging from the flight plan and the poor resolution pics of the areas in Google Earth, I believe most of these were snapped South of the Kluane icefield, with some of the mountains on the Canada side of the border, and some South on the Alaska side. I’m sure someone on the right side of the plane got to see Mt. Logan, but I did not.

Here’s hoping you enjoy the gallery below, the last two were taken through the fisheye lens in the exit door of the plane so there is some color shift and distortion in them:

Trumpeter Swans

Here’s a pair of Trumpeter swans I photographed from the Alaska RR train enroute to Mt. McKinley (AKA Mt. Denali) As always, click on the thumbnail for more detail, more photos from our journey to come this week.

Kasey Fur

Here’s a close up of Kasey’s fur, if you look close you can see some blue green highlights. She doesn’t use dye.

I’ll be extremely busy the next week, with only rare chances to pop in so comments will be off for awhile again.

Iran Erupts Over Election Results

This is the most unrest that’s been seen in Iran in a decade, there’s a lot of people in Iran unhappy over the election results that were announced. (h/t Michael Totten please stop by, he has several more videos posted)

The Big Swindle – Global Warming Denial Film Debunked

This video created by an ally of my nemesis, Al Gore, pretty much destroys the main tenets and blunders of the movie “The Global Warming Swindle”. While I’m still not an alarmist, and I still think Al’s selling a carbon ponzi scheme that will cause great stress in third world countries, I do like truth. So here it is, real data and finished charts from authoritative sources.

The jump to enact to cap and trade is the saddest part of this, while it’s true that we must do something sometime this century or early next, cap and trade does nothing. It’s already been shown not to work in Europe, where fossil fuel use rose under the system. Waxman and cohorts have turned cap and trade into a patronage game, trading credits for votes. This just makes it appear like congress is doing something when in reality they are just reshuffling the deck aimlessly. On top of that if you tell them they aren’t going to accomplish much with cap and trade, they will come after you.

Amazing Nanotech Breakthrough

IBM scientists have made an amazing breakthrough in Nanotech: they can now measure charge on single atom. What this portends for microscale computer technology remains to be seen. Here’s the video.

Why We Can’t Solve Global Warming Without China

Whether you are an alarmist, a denier, or in the luke warmist camp like I am, you have to understand the contribution of coal and the challenge we face with China and other developing nations. Here’s a good lecture from a Sino expert that you should watch.

Nancy Says “Everything is on the Table” including Taxes

When it comes to how to pay for their health care plan costs the Democrats are being vague as you can see in this interview with Nancy Pelosi. When asked about taxes her only reply is “everything is on the table… everything is on the table.. ” For Nancy that really means everything is on the table except questions about her lies about the CIA, and working with the Minority on health care reforms. Those must be under the table, in the other room, or perhaps outside and down the block underneath a dumpster or something.