News

Obama continues to block oil drilling as gas prices rise

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From left-wing Politico.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration late Friday appealed a judge’s orders directing the Interior Department to act on several Gulf of Mexico deepwater drilling permits.

The appeal is the latest salvo in the ongoing fight over the speed with which Interior is – or isn’t – letting oil drillers get back to work after last year’s BP oil spill.

Gulf state lawmakers and the oil industry have accused the department of enacting a “de facto” moratorium against new drilling, while Interior says it needs to ensure safety and environmental protections are in place.

Friday’s appeal challenges rulings by Judge Martin Feldman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, who on Feb. 17 gave Interior 30 days to make a verdict on five pending deepwater drilling permits applications. He later added two additional permits to that order.

The Washington Times re-caps Obama’s record on energy policy.

Excerpt:

President Obama has intentionally hamstrung domestic energy production under the delusional theory that the U.S. economy can thrive on so-called green power. As Mideast turmoil threatens the oil supply, the price of domestic crude has jumped above $100 a barrel and gas at the pump now exceeds $3.46 a gallon. This shows just how dangerous the Obama administration’s economic and energy policies can be to our wallets.

There can be no doubt that the president took deliberate action to block access to the nation’s energy resources. A federal judge recently found the Interior Department in contempt for ignoring his order overturning the oil-drilling moratorium the administration imposed following the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. On Feb. 22, Judge Martin Feldman upped the pressure by insisting that the department act on five pending permits within 30 days. Permits that would, under normal circumstances, be processed in two weeks have been ignored for four to nine months. “Not acting at all is not a lawful option,” Judge Feldman wrote. The department had no choice but to issue the first permit since the spill on Feb. 28.

Interior pinned the blame for delays on technical problems. Yet, as the department dithered, oil companies atrophied and employees lost work. According to a study released in January by the business alliance Greater New Orleans, Inc., the moratorium cost Louisiana about 25,000 jobs. Houston-based Seahawk Drilling, the most recent victim of the drilling ban, announced Feb. 18 that it had filed for bankruptcy and agreed to a buyout from a competitor. The jobs of the company’s 494 employees are in jeopardy, according to USA Today.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama’s fiscal 2012 budget proposal calls for imposing a $4 per acre fine on oil and gas companies for land on which they currently hold leases but are not drilling. This gimmick helps the O Force imply that the industry is holding off on drilling in the hope that shortages will drive up prices.

Gas prices are up near $5 in parts of the United States.

When you reduce the supply of a commodity without a decrease in demand, prices go up. This is economics 101. But Obama doesn’t know economics 101, and that’s why we have a 14 trillion dollar national debt, and a 1.65 trillion dollar budget deficit.

Make no mistake – this is a tax on business and individual consumption. We are losing jobs because of Obama’s refusal to allow companies to increase the supply and reduce the prices that Americans pay for energy.

News

Republican senators introduce bill to defund NPR and PBS

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From CNS News. (H/T Michelle Malkin)

Excerpt:

Two Republican senators on Friday introduced a bill to stop taxpayer subsidies to public radio and television.

Since 2001, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has received nearly $4 billion in taxpayer money for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said with the nation on the brink of bankruptcy, some decisions to cut spending are difficult — but not this one:

“Americans struggling to make ends meet shouldn’t be forced to fund public broadcasting when there are already thousands of choices for educational and entertainment programming on the television, radio and Web,” DeMint said. “President Obama’s own bipartisan debt commission proposed ending these unnecessary subsidies to public broadcasting. NPR boasts that it only gets 2 percent of its funding from taxpayers and PBS gets about 15 percent, so these programs should be able to find a way to stand on their own.”

Coburn called subsidies for public broadcasting “indefensible.” “The federal government has no business picking winners and losers in today’s highly competitive media environment. NPR and CPB will do just fine without largesse from Washington,” Coburn added.

CPB was incorporated as a private, nonprofit corporation under the authority of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, and its first taxpayer subsidy in 1969 was $5 million. In the current fiscal year, CPB is slated to receive $430 million from taxpayers, and President Obama recently asked for an increase to $451 million, the senators said.

PBS President Paula Kerger received $632,233 in compensation in 2009, according to the tax forms that nonprofits must file, while NPR President Emeritus Kevin Klose received more than $1.2 million in compensation.

DeMint and Coburn also noted that in 2010, NPR accepted a $1.8 million grant from the Open Society Foundation, backed by liberal financier George Soros, to hire 100 reporters. Additionally, NPR has an endowment of over $200 million, they said in a news release.

These are tough times and we have to cut spending… on liberal propaganda.

News

Teacher union promotes sexualizing children at United Nations conference

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Robert Stacy McCain is covering a very strange story about how the United Nations is promoting sex to children. (H/T Hot Air)

Over the long-term, I think it is probably better for a child to learn about marriage than sex, because they shouldn’t be alone and childless for the last half of their lives. Instead of learning how to have sex outside of marriage, so that they can use people and be used by people for temporary fun, it might be a better idea to research what challenges are encountered in a long-term stable marriage, what character and skills a spouse should have, and what policies and laws promote marriage.

The only thing that I think sexualization of children will do is raise social costs, increase government, and break the bonds between children and parents. That will just open up children to being influenced more by government and less by their parents. Furthermore, I guess some people who are perverts and predators would also benefit from sexualizing children. They would be less likely to be exposed to moral judgments and shame if young people are indoctrinated to think that perversion is normal, and more likely to find lots of children to have sex with. So I guess that this is the agenda that teacher unions, the United Nations, and the Democrats who fund both of them are pushing.

Anyway, here is the first story from Robert Stacy McCain.

Excerpt:

“Experts” have determined that what’s wrong with our education system is that kids aren’t taught enough about sex:

“Oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms need to be taught in education,” Diane Schneider told the audience at a [United Nations conference] panel on combating homophobia and transphobia. Schneider, representing the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the US, advocated for more “inclusive” sex education in US schools. . . . She claimed that the idea of sex education remains an oxymoron if it is abstinence-based, or if students are still able to opt-out.

Comprehensive sex education is “the only way to combat heterosexism and gender conformity,” Schneider proclaimed, “and we must make these issues a part of every middle and high-school student’s agenda.” . . .

A panel sponsored in part by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) advocated for “comprehensive sex education” not only as a tool to combat “gender oppression,” but also as the key to achieving all of the Millennium Development Goals.

Diane Schneider has done work for the National Education Association, and she is also employed by the gay rights group GLSEN, which promotes sex to children. The NEA is the largest teacher union in the country, and they basically own the Democrat party. The sexualization of children is part of the Democrat agenda. They don’t like marriage – they don’t like parents. They want children to be having sex. They want children to reject the morality of their parents, especially fathers. And they don’t like “heterosexism”. Traditional marriage is “heterosexist”. Only feminists use words like “gender oppression”. This is a feminist initiative.

Keep in mind that the teaching profession is dominated by women. Around 80% of classroom teachers are women. The unions are likewise dominated by women at all levels. So why are women pushing this agenda into classrooms? Why is there no revolt to teaching sex outside of marriage to children? Is it because women do not want children who engage in risky, immoral and dangerous activities to feel badly about it? Is it because children resent fathers setting moral boundaries on children? Is it because they think that if everyone sins, then no one will be able to make any judgments, and then no one will feel bad? Is it because they think that the problems that result from risky behavior should just be solved by taking someone else’s money, instead of making better choices?

Isn’t it weird that single, unmarried women who vote Democrat think that they will one day get married and stay married for their whole lives? I find that weird. I am not sure how encouraging men to have sex with women they have NO INTENTION of staying with for life will make men into husbands. I think that feminists think that some charming, loyal, faithful man is going to come along and protect and provide for them and love them into their old age and raise children with them. But then I look at stories like this and I wonder – are women who vote Democrat capable of linking the things they are voting for to their own plans for their lives? Or do they just expect to degrade themselves with others until they turn 30, knock out a couple of fatherless children at taxpayer expense (IVF) and then go on welfare for the rest of their lives with no man ever giving them a second look. That seems to be what will happen. Men don’t marry women who cannot be faithful, who cannot be unselfish, and who cannot stop voting more and more of their money out of their wallets.

McCain writes:

Of all the problems affecting the world, America’s leading organization of teachers is urging the United Nations “to combat heterosexism and gender conformity” by teaching “oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms”? Because that’s exactly what’s needed by impoverished villagers in Bolivia, Botswana, Belize and Burkina Faso.

Meanwhile, you will be pleased to learn, in her official statement to the U.N. conference, Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues (and “one of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ’s closest associates“), devoted separate sections to “Women and Green Jobs” and “Gender and Climate Change.”

So that’s the “women’s agenda” the United States is now promoting worldwide: Orgasms for kids, green jobs and fighting climate change.

You can find out more about Diane in McCain’s first post.

But there’s more in the second post, which talks about Girl Scouts and the United Nations.

Excerpt:

Pundette was writing about the latest United Nations outrage — teaching kids masturbation and oral sex to combat “heterosexism” — and in the process linked to this U.N.-related story you might have missed:

The World Association of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides hosted a no-adults-welcome panel at the United Nations [in March 2010] where Planned Parenthood was allowed to distribute a brochure entitled “Healthy, Happy and Hot.” . . .
The brochure claims, “Many people think sex is just about vaginal or anal intercourse… But, there are lots of different ways to have sex and lots of different types of sex. There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!” . . .
The Girl Scouts, along with the YWCA have been co-moderating a young women’s caucus that included an “Intergenerational Conversation” side event on “universal access” and “reproductive health.” One recent Girl Scout project “aims at securing the right of women, men and adolescents aged between ten and twenty-five, to better reproductive and sexual health.”

If this is what women want, then they need to realize that this is mutually exclusive to marriage. You can spend the first 30 years of your like as a left-wing anti-family activist and then blame men for not marrying you and taking care of you in your old age. Women are doing this to themselves, and man-blaming is not going to fix the situation. Feminism and the sexual revolution isn’t something that men pushed on women. It’s something that women push on themselves. Just because they don’t like it doesn’t mean that they didn’t choose it.