Replies

I warmly welcome Sarah Palin's emergence as an effective cudgelist for the conservative side. As one who felt that Sarah Palin had taken herself out of national politics with her abrupt announcement of resignation, I will be delighted to be proven wrong.

Incidentally, the references in the following quoted post to Peggy Noonan and William F. Buckley Junior are meant as figures for a New York crowd representative of Rinos across the country who are still part of the party and who do vote. I don't think anyone believes that William F. Buckley Junior himself will ever be won over Sarah Palin.

Equally, the observations made about motivating the base seem archaic at best. Who knew that Barack Obama himself would do more to motivate the conservative base than any other man or woman alive?

That said, here is a post written before the inauguration which echoes other posts from before the election encouraging Sarah Palin to stakeout strong policy positions on issues, especially energy, to establish the gravitas necessary for national candidate. I had foreseen that she should make weighty speeches before venues like The National Press Club but I was probably only betraying my age in an age of Twitter and Facebook:

I believe that Sarah Palin's problem is not that she is "miserably uninformed" but that she is perceived to be uninformed. The media has virtually destroyed her on this issue. Saturday Night Live probably more than any other outlet. To be uninformed is not normally a fatal defect for a politician. By way of example, Vice President elect Joe Biden is miserably misinformed, demonstrably dishonest, and the thief of other man's thoughts, a plagiarist. Nevertheless, he carries the honorific, "Vice President elect Joseph Biden."

Biden gets away with it for two reasons, the media favors him and sounds authoritative. In his debate with Palin he misspoke numerous times but it affected the race not at all. What counts is how the television shows the individual. Biden showed authoritative and Palin, apart from the debate in her interviews with Couric and Gibbons, showed nouveau.

Hence, my suggestion that Palin hire a forensic coach to address the perception problem.

I disagree emphatically that now is too early for Palin to make her mark on the energy issue. She must do the spadework and now so that she can speak from a well-established position of authority when these matters go before the Congress. It will be too late then to both gain recognition and persuade. Let her speak now from a prepared text on the full range of energy issues. It is not merely a question of the price at the pump but of jobs in the coal mines and factories and the price of bread and milk for the kids. The energy issue is a gold mine for conservatives. If we wait we will lose the March.

As much as I agree with you about your assessment of Sarah Palin, I am afraid I must disagree with you about the state of play. We are two years away from the next election and there is no need now to mobilize the base. The need now is to come to Jesus, that is, to find out in our soul what it means to be a conservative. That is the first step. We would be proceeding wrongfooted if we set out looking for a savior. First we have to have a philosophy. I do agree that very likely the leader of the party will be the man (or in this case a woman) who can articulate a philosophy which can, Reagan -like, stitch together the disparate elements of the party, fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, national Defense conservatives, into a coherent fabric which will pull together instead of pulling apart as they are doing now. But, have a care, I do not mean that the spokesperson (I hate that politically correct term I meant to say a "spokesman") should be someone who appeals to only one third of the conservative base. I want a leader who can represent all three legs of the conservative stool. Any fewer will condemn us to another electoral defeat.

In this context, I would prefer Sarah Palin because she has the makings of all three legs of the conservative stool in her biography if she can put away a regrettable tendency toward populism. But I am not going to anoint Palin, I want her to emerge from a Darwinian contest as the clear winner of the ideological consensus which moves the majority of Americans. The very worst scenario would be to impose someone, for example Sarah Palin, on New York's fiscal conservatives who will bolt because they feel she is too provincial. Let her win over the Peggy Noonan's and the William F. Buckley Jr.'s by getting out there and changing her image. If she cannot do so she must fall by the wayside. I am not going to sacrifice the conservative movement to appease social conservatives. We just did that for national defense Conservatives [because George Bush put away the veto pen on spending in a kind of quid pro quo to keep the war in Iraq going] and it cost us the last two elections, it put us in the wilderness for perhaps a generation, and it may well have exposed the country to a Manchurian Marxist who will ultimately sabotage both the national Defense of the United States and Israel which were main motivations of the neocons in the first place.

George Bush came to us and said he was a "compassionate conservative." I did not know what the hell it meant, I have learned over eight years to my sorrow what it means. I do not want the party again to be led down a path by a piper who only shows us some part of his character. I want it committed conservative who will serve all three legs of the conservative movement. I want him tested and I want him proven. We only had two years to do it so we better get on with the job now so that when we need to motivate the base of the next election we will have a real base to motivate.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aogq9sBiBhYo

Petrobras May Borrow $5 Billion From U.S. Ex-Im Bank (Update2)

By Helder Marinho and Joshua Goodman

July 30 (Bloomberg) — Petroleo Brasileiro SA said it may more than double its borrowings from the U.S. Export-Import Bank to as much as $5 billion, following a $10 billion loan from China.

Petrobras, as the state-controlled oil company is known, may increase the loans from $2 billion now, Chief Financial Officer Almir Barbassa said today at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro. The initial loan made in April was an “opening amount,” Fred Hochberg, president of the U.S. bank, said earlier today in an interview in Rio.

“The Export-Import Bank met yesterday with Petrobras, and it offered more resources to the company,” Brazilian Energy Minister Edison Lobao said at the press conference.

Investment in Brazil’s oil industry is expected to surge to more than $200 billion over the next five years, buoyed by spending on the Americas’ largest oil find since 1976. Petrobras in February secured $10 billion in financing from the China Development Bank Corp.

China replaced the U.S. as Brazil’s biggest trading partner this year, after the global recession choked sales to the U.S. The Chinese bank, which plans to open an office in Rio de Janeiro next year, has also agreed to lend $800 million to Brazil’s state development bank, known as BNDES.

The U.S. and Chinese loans will help Petrobras pay for part of its $174 billion, five-year investment plan to expand output.

High Priority

[more at link above]

“We can’t spare this woman. She fights.”

The origins of this quote:

“Can’t Spare This Man”

(Excerpt)

One night, about eleven o’clock, Colonel A. K. McClure, whose intimacy with President Lincoln was so great that he could obtain admittance to the Executive Mansion at any and all hours, called at the White House to urge Mr. Lincoln to remove General Grant from command.

After listening patiently for a long time, the President, gathering himself up in his chair, said, with the utmost earnestness:

“I can’t spare this man; he fights!”

In relating the particulars of this interview, Colonel McClure said:

“That was all he said, but I knew that it was enough, and that Grant was safe in Lincoln’s hands against his countless hosts of enemies...”
(from Lincoln’s Yarns and Stories , by Colonel Alexander K. McClure)

http://www.rickwalton.com/lincoln/linc125.htm

The quote has been adapted by Sarah Palin’s supporters to stress how important she is to the center-right grassroots.

It’s earliest application to Palin that I can find was by author David Karki in an op-ed for the North State Writers Group April 22, 2009:

http://www.northstarwriters.com/dkk175.htm

The quote, as modified by karki, has become a battle cry for Palin supporters who are convinced that, more so than any other prominent GOP figure, she is showing leadership in opposition to Barack Obama, the Democrats and all that they represent.

- JP

We repeat, from the other day, with modifications:

Drill here, now, everywhere, produce and burn cleanly, more efficiently and eliminate all pollution with no different C02/Oxygen mix than the ambient air. Do it with cheaper, simpler, gasoline and cheaper, simpler, cleaner refining. Produce all gas and use all methane produced by waste for power. Fluidize coal and burn it efficiently. Decentralize atomic power and produce more atom powered ships. Increase offshore production by 3 or more and drill under the Cubans, the Chicoms and the Russkies off our coasts. Create thousands of low head hydropower sites, particularly in areas where their creation can combine decentralized power production with upstream flood control and an increase in local recreation attractions.

Tax incentivize individual hydro, wind and solar in rural areas and the exurbs where they work and encourage at the local level such devices where they have proven workable in the face of restrictive zoning and ownership association restrictions on a local level. Discourage boondoggles that don't work in the marketplace, starting with ethanol and bio-diesel. Start with a level playing field in that regard for innovations such as Bill Talbert's E II patented better gasoline that we have posted about often on this forum and are working on implementing at this point, abroad rather than here because of the obstruction of ethanol, the obsession with which, despite its years of failure, has blocked a number of badly needed innovations within oil by the power of the big-ethanal lobby in their dance with big environment and several of the larger oil companies and auto companies that have been resistant for years to what Dr. Christiansen so aptly has termed "disruptive" technology. The present blocking of innovation within oil is preventing innovation accross the board becausei it means that government and not markets is doing the choosing. People use oil products predominantly so that is where market based innovation will naturally begin if not obstructed.

In this regard you must lead a coalition of governors, mostly from the West, but including the about to be new Republican governor of Virginia that will simply by pass the not only useless but counterproductive Federal DOE with a cooperative agency similar to Alberta's AOSTRA. A handful of states competing with each other but cooperating in the manner of agricultuaral innovators under the Act which launched agricultural research in state universities will succeed where Jimmy Carter's DOE has been worse than a failure.

Put industrial water use on true recycling and stop wasting energy transporting water needed for other essential purposes for industrial use.

See our articles on WND over the years and postings here.

Above all undo the damage at the patent office initiated so outrageously by Clinton/Gore but made worse by Bush and the damage done by a Republican Congress in the '90's which General Sumner testified against to no avail in hearings before Congresswoman Ross-Lehtinen. Restore incentives for inventor/entrepeneurs within the small companies where innovation is the highest in oil and it will then automatically follow in other areas of energy. The government should be completely out of the business of deciding which alternatives to oil we should pursue. Free innovators and the market will decide.

At present we are working in several western states on a combination that would use the inventions of several inventors to produce better/cheaper asphalt in combination with cleaner diesel, aviation fuel (in which we believe that some redesign can be done as Bill Talbert has with E II within gasoline) and E II. Talk to our colleague Scott Brosier in Amarillo.

Lead with E II because it can be used as soon as the refining of it is in place in today's cars as they are and can burn completely cleanly without any pollution, with far lower cost and mileage improvements up to 40% Its use will eliminate most of the engine wear and with a little additional testing can lead to the elimination of the use of the costly catalytic converter and the demonstrable end of car-produced supposed contributions to global warming.

This Friday, several us will be meeting here at a restaurant in Alexandria. General Gordon Sumner ("Marching On") is up with his lovely wife from Santa Fe. Admiral Mark Hill will be there as well. Send someone to eat with us and ask us questions. Kristinn and others here may have thoughts on such a meeting as well.

President Palin has spoken and America needs to listen