Obama to Africa: Only "clean energy" for you, or planet will "boil over"

According to Obama, global warming constitutes “the biggest challenge we have environmentally,” one greater than all other environmental calamities like “dirty water, dirty air.”
However, the President’s statements do not reflect statistics released by the United Nations: Based on a data released in October, 2012, the World Health Organization estimated that “Global warming” is responsible for approximately 140,000 excess deaths each year.
By comparison, as many as three million people died from indoor and outdoor air pollution - in other words, over 20 times the number of alleged victims of global warming, according to the Word Health Organization.
The list of victims of unclean drinking water is even more staggering.
According to UNESCO, unsanitized water causes billions of preventable diseases annually, from diarrhea (4 billion), cholera (120,000), malaria (300-500 million), intestinal parasites (25% of world’s population), typhoid (12 million), trachoma (6 million), and schistosomiesis (200 million). list from highest to least affected
The president gave short shrift to these more traditional health concerns during his visit to the continent. Instead, Obama implied several times that the U.S. would only encourage growth in Africa should it be grounded in “clean energy strategies” and not in “corrupting” energy economies that gave rise to unprecedented levels of health and prosperity among Western nations.
- See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-planet-will-boil-over-if-young-africans-are-allowed-cars-air-conditioning-big#sthash.cGlbloI9.dpuf
According to Obama, global warming constitutes “the biggest challenge we have environmentally,” one greater than all other environmental calamities like “dirty water, dirty air.”
However, the President’s statements do not reflect statistics released by the United Nations: Based on a data released in October, 2012, the World Health Organization estimated that “Global warming” is responsible for approximately 140,000 excess deaths each year.
By comparison, as many as three million people died from indoor and outdoor air pollution - in other words, over 20 times the number of alleged victims of global warming, according to the Word Health Organization.
The list of victims of unclean drinking water is even more staggering.
According to UNESCO, unsanitized water causes billions of preventable diseases annually, from diarrhea (4 billion), cholera (120,000), malaria (300-500 million), intestinal parasites (25% of world’s population), typhoid (12 million), trachoma (6 million), and schistosomiesis (200 million). list from highest to least affected
The president gave short shrift to these more traditional health concerns during his visit to the continent. Instead, Obama implied several times that the U.S. would only encourage growth in Africa should it be grounded in “clean energy strategies” and not in “corrupting” energy economies that gave rise to unprecedented levels of health and prosperity among Western nations.
- See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-planet-will-boil-over-if-young-africans-are-allowed-cars-air-conditioning-big#sthash.cGlbloI9.dpuf

Jet-setter-in-Chief Barack Obama motorcaded in to Johannesburg the other day for a "town meeting" with a hand-picked crowd and condemned their continent to third-world status for the sake of his alternative-energy ideology:

But the existential challenge that we face has to do with a warming planet. And your generation is the one that’s going to be the most severely affected. Now, the United States and other highly industrialized, developed countries over the last 50, 100 years have been pumping up carbon emissions into the atmosphere. And slowly, this has been building up and it is warming the planet, and we may be reaching a tipping point in which if we do not solve this problem soon, it will spin out of control and change weather patterns in ways that we can’t anticipate, with drought, floods, much more severe natural disasters. And unfortunately, in those situations it’s often poorer countries that are affected the most by these changing climate patterns.

The only thing heating up is his fevered imagination. There's been no warming since 1998. But who cares about facts? The planet is going to BOIL OVER!

Ultimately, if you think about all the youth that everybody has mentioned here in Africa, if everybody is raising living standards to the point where everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will boil over -- unless we find new ways of producing energy. And tomorrow, or the next day, when I visit Tanzania, I’m actually going to be going to a power plant to focus on the need for electrification, but the need to do it in an environmentally sound way.

By that, he means in ways that are prohibitively expensive, must be heavily subsidized by government, and, well . . . don't work. One might wonder, what are the advantages of that? To the consumers of these magical forms of energy, zero. But for big government, a beautiful excuse to regulate everyone and everything. If the people of Africa have to go without air conditioning, houses, and cars, well, I'm sure they don't really mind. Perhaps, like the American president, they like it on the warm side. Anyway, Barack Obama is not his brother's keeper. Literally.

In spite of Obama's ancestral ties to the continent, Africans, like so many others, miss George Bush. Even the Washington Post has to acknowledge it: Bush AIDS policies shadow Obama in Africa:

But across this continent, many Africans wish Obama was more like Bush in his social and health policies, particularly in the fight against HIV/AIDS — one of the former president’s signature foreign policy aid programs.

Bush poured billions of dollars into the effort to combat the spread of the disease that once threatened to consume a generation of young Africans, and as Obama has spent two days touring South Africa, the shadow of his predecessor has trailed him. [. . .]

For Obama, the success of Bush’s program has proved a tad awkward, as he has been mindful to praise his predecessor even as he tries to push forward on his administration’s own plans for new programs based on private investment from U.S. businesses. Flying to South Africa from Senegal this weekend, Obama told reporters that Bush “deserves enormous credit” for the fight against HIV/AIDS, acknowledging that the program likely saved millions of lives.

In South Africa, the success was extraordinary. AIDS killed roughly 2.3 million in South Africa — once one of the worst-affected countries in the world — and orphaned about a million children there, according to the United Nations. Today, rates of infection have fallen to 30 percent, and nearly 2 million people are on antiretroviral drugs.

But AIDS advocates on Sunday said that Obama administration budget cuts that have slashed hundreds of millions of dollars from PEPFAR threaten to turn back years of progress in the fight against the AIDS epidemic. Last year, the administration unveiled a budget that reduces AIDS funding globally by roughly $214 million, the first time an American president has reduced the U.S. commitment to fighting the epidemic since it broke out in the 1980s during the Reagan administration.

CNS News Ryan Kierman reports on the reality-based threats to Africa:

According to Obama, global warming constitutes “the biggest challenge we have environmentally,” one greater than all other environmental calamities like “dirty water, dirty air.”

However, the President’s statements do not reflect statistics released by the United Nations: Based on a data released in October, 2012, the World Health Organization estimated that “Global warming” is responsible for approximately 140,000 excess deaths each year.*

By comparison, as many as three million people died from indoor and outdoor air pollution - in other words, over 20 times the number of alleged victims of global warming, according to the Word Health Organization.

The list of victims of unclean drinking water is even more staggering.

According to UNESCO, unsanitized water causes billions of preventable diseases annually, from diarrhea (4 billion), cholera (120,000), malaria (300-500 million), intestinal parasites (25% of world’s population), typhoid (12 million), trachoma (6 million), and schistosomiesis (200 million). list from highest to least affected

The president gave short shrift to these more traditional health concerns during his visit to the continent. Instead, Obama implied several times that the U.S. would only encourage growth in Africa should it be grounded in “clean energy strategies” and not in “corrupting” energy economies that gave rise to unprecedented levels of health and prosperity among Western nations.

The video is here, if you can take it. I, for one, could easily live the rest of my life without watching another prefabricated "town hall" performance by any politician. The inane, embarrassing, and hypocritical "boil over" comment comes near the end of the appearance at about 1:10 in. The transcript is here.

Bonus Obama, on the topic of the war on terrorism:

But what we won’t do is just stand by if our embassy is being attacked or our people are in vulnerable situations. And we expect countries to work with us to try to deal with some of these threats. And this is a global issue; it’s not just one related to the United States. Okay. All right.

So, new policy there. Good to know.

*Baloney.

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Some comments on yesterday's DOMA decision; "Stunning intellectual decline" has made moral decline possible

Pres. Barack Obama:

On an issue as sensitive as this, knowing that Americans hold a wide range of views based on deeply held beliefs, maintaining our nation’s commitment to religious freedom is also vital. How religious institutions define and consecrate marriage has always been up to those institutions. Nothing about this decision - which applies only to civil marriages - changes that.

Justice Antonin Scalia:

I promise you this: The only thing that will "confine" the Court's holding is its sense of what it can get away with.

@MarkSKrikorian:


@Campion1581:

And if you liked Western civilization, you can keep that, too, right?

Rich Lowry on Justice Kennedy's opinion:

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has contempt for a swath of his fellow citizens.

If you disagree with him about gay marriage, indeed, if you merely think the federal government should continue to define marriage the traditional way while the states define it however they want, then you are a bigot. Your views deserve no political representation.

They should be ground underfoot by the five mightiest and most broadminded people in the land, presiding from their temple of rationality and tolerance at the United States Supreme Court.
Kennedy wrote Wednesday’s majority decision striking down the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman for purposes of federal law. The decision declared a position that had been held by President Barack Obama until the day before yesterday a relic of barbarism and set the predicate for the court — in its wisdom, nay, in its heightened state of enlightenment — to enshrine its view of marriage as the law from sea to shining sea.

The majority held that DOMA inflicts an “injury and indignity” on gay couples so severe that it denies “an essential part of the liberty protected by the Fifth Amendment.” It is motivated by a “‘bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group.’” There is, in short, nothing to be said for it or the point of view of its supporters. Period. Full stop.

Read the rest.

Mark Steyn on that:

What connects the above to today’s decisions in Washington is the slapdash contempt of Anthony Kennedy’s opinion. Whatever the merits of gay marriage, it ought to revolt anyone with a decent respect for self-government that this incompetent jurist could find no other way to frame the issue than to besmirch the motives of those who oppose him. As Justice Scalia wrote:

To defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution. In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement… It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race.

What I always objected to in Canada about Section 13 was its casual contempt for the citizenry, the same contempt on display today in Washington and London. Like Theresa May, Justice Kennedy would rather impute motive than engage argument. The need to delegitimize those who disagree does indeed “demean this institution”, and is profoundly disturbing.

Indeed. Read the rest.

Peter Kirsanow sums it up:

A strong and perhaps unimpeachable case can be made that never in our lifetimes have so many lies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations been told by so many politicians and officials from so many levels of government to so many people on so many significant issues in such a concentrated period of time as in any random month in the last twelve.

This cannot end well.

Nope. We're sinking fast.

***
Father Joseph Fessio comments:

"If you can define your own concept of meaning," added Fr. Fessio, "well, I suppose you can play Alice in Wonderland with any concept you want, including marriage. So at least Justice Kennedy is consistent in his self-contradiction, and this decision is simply a consequence of the earlier principle. However, he even goes farther here and apparently can read hearts, since he claims that the 'purpose' is to 'disparage and to injure'. So one man sets himself against the wisdom of all recorded history which recognizes the obvious: a marital union can do what no other union can; further it is not only a benefit to the state, but the state cannot exist without it. Giving it special status and protection does not disparage or injure anyone; it simply recognizes an empirical fact that only the willfully blind can fail to see."

And this:

"People, myself included, lament the moral decline of America," reflected Fr. Fessio, "Without this stunning intellectual decline—where one can claim that an unborn baby is not a human person and that man-to-man copulation is equivalent to marital union—we could not have sunk so low. With this decision we are about to sink even lower. God help us." He said that he thinks it is clear that the rulings are "going to make it far more difficult for those who defend marriage."

Asked how the rulings will affect the Catholic Church in the United States, Fr. Fessio remarked that they "will call forth saints and scholars who will 'shine like the stars in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation'. They will also be humiliated and very likely, in time, persecuted. Welcome to the Brave New World."

Exactly right. Oremus.

***

Linked by Father Z -- thank you.

***
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A high price

Today's must-read is David French's piece, When Love Grows Cold, on the toll feminism has taken on our most intimate and important relationships:

One of the worst aspects of modern feminism has been its determined effort to turn mothers against their own children — to deem children not blessings to be loved but instead threats to all-important careers and self-fulfillment. My post yesterday — linking to the terrible story of a woman [Penelope Trunk] who aborted her child (late in her pregnancy) to preserve a short-lived volleyball career — is an extreme example, but the phenomenon crops up in other contexts as well. [. . .]

An amazing thing happens to many millions of parents — they experience an intense love and deep bond that is difficult to explain to those who’ve not had children. It’s overpowering, and — critically — it’s lifechanging. For millions of women (not all, of course), it creates an intense desire to care for their children, to be in their presence as much as possible. For millions of men (not all, of course), it triggers a similarly intense desire to protect and provide — causing many of us to take our career responsibilities truly seriously for the first time. Not as the ambitious dreamer of our pre-child life, but as the more serious and dutiful provider who recognizes that our family’s security depends on the outcome of our work.

Given that reality, is it any wonder that many women pull back in their careers, even as men push forward? And given that this action reflects the deep longing of both their hearts, is it actually a cultural problem? Make no mistake, there are women across this land who are deeply engaged in their careers not because it fulfills them, but because they must work to make ends meet. Many of them long for the financial freedom to return home. Similarly, there are men across this land who desperately wish that they made more money, that they were more successful, so their wives could be their children’s primary caregiver.

Those values and longings are not universal, nor should they be cultural or political mandates, but they are virtuous. They are good for families and children. They are not the only way, but they are a good way - a very good way.

Why then must feminists try to shame women out of embracing the deep desires of their heart? Why must even mothers and friends lobby their daughters and sisters into hiring doctors to commit ultimate acts of violence — to utterly reject even the most basic obligations of caregiving and love?

My emphasis there. It takes a certain amount of courage and independence of mind these days for young women to embrace traditional femininity and maternity. Read the rest of French's post and pass it on to young women and men in your acquaintance, who may never hear anything like it from anyone else they know. When she got pregnant the first time, Penelope Trunk seems to have received only one kind of advice from everyone, including her mother -- get rid of the baby. She ends her piece with a question:

I think about the men I was with when I had the abortions. They were not bad men. One is my ex-husband. So much of life is a gamble, and I think I might have had as good a chance of staying together with the first guy as I did with my ex-husband. And I am not sure that my life would have turned out worse if I had had kids early. I am not sure it would have turned out better. I'm not even sure it would have been that different.

You never know, not really. There is little certainty. But there are some certain truths: It's very hard to have an abortion. And, there is not a perfect time to have kids.

And I wonder, are there other women out there who had abortions in the name of their career and their potential? What do those women think now?

There are more than 600 comments but I don't have the time, or the heart, to dive into them.

***
Many thanks to Pewsitter for the link.

***
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President Obama comes out against Catholic education in Ireland

Unreal:

President Barack Obama (above), repeated the oft disproved claim that Catholic education increases division in front of an audience of 2000 young people, including many Catholics, at Belfast’s Waterfront hall when he arrived in the country this morning.

“If towns remain divided—if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden—that too encourages division and discourages cooperation,” the US president said.

The US politician made the unfounded claim despite a top Vatican official spelling out the undeniable good done by Catholic education in a speech in Glasgow on Saturday and in his homily at Mass on Friday.

Father Z comments:

And this is his business... how? Trick question. It isn't. It is part of an agenda he has for the public square in the USA. He is trying to destroy conservative institutions.

Of course. And his comments in Ireland are consistent with his actions in America. His HHS mandate is surely going to destroy some Catholic educational institutions.

On top of that, it's just who he is. He seems to see himself as a philosopher king, morally and intellectually superior to the rest of us. Which would be annoying even if he weren't an ignorant narcissist with the heart of a tin-pot dictator.

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Fringe elements

Remember a couple of weeks ago when Michelle Obama thanked "members of fashion elite" for helping her “become the poised and stylish woman that I am”? They were apparently unable to accompany her to Ireland:

Was there no one in the regal entourage who possessed a can of hairspray and a vestige of common sense, or mercy? Irony alert:

The first lady is said to be staying in the Princess Grace Suite, named for the Hollywood film star and princess who had an attachment to the room.

You've probably already heard about the Obama family's upcoming trip to Africa. It's going to cost the taxpayers a pretty penny, so it's a darn good thing we're in such great financial shape, right?

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"Marriage is the institution that binds men to their children"

From W. Bradford Wilcox: Happy Fatherless Day:

. . . most proponents of the “live with it” approach conveniently ignore, or are in complete denial about, the most fundamental consequence of the American retreat from marriage: growing rates of fatherless families. In our public conversation about how best to accommodate today’s family diversity, what usually goes unsaid is that fewer marriages also means fewer fathers in our nation’s homes.

That is because marriage is the institution that binds men to their children. There is no substitute. Cohabiting couples with children are much more likely to end up on the rocks than their married peers (even in Sweden). Divorced and never-married fathers often have difficulty getting or making the time to stay in regular contact with their children once the relationship with the mother of their child is over. By contrast, fathers who are married to the mother of their children are much more likely to enjoy the day-in-day-out relationships with their children that enable them to give their kids the attention, discipline, and affection they need to thrive.

Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there. You're needed more than ever.

Related: Suzanne Venker on What Men Want. (Hint: It begins with R and ends with E-S-P-E-C-T.)

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Wishful thinking?

Probably. But from here, it sorta looks like things are coming apart at the seams for the Obama administration.

Do you find this reassuring? Me neither:

What? -- you don't trust Congress, federal judges, or the ever more powerful and less accountable executive branch? Can't imagine why.

A sampling from Drudge:

NSA SNOOPERS SUCK DATA 'FROM 50 COMPANIES'

Whistleblower's NSA warning: 'Just the tip of the iceberg'...
CODE NAMED: Boundless Informant...
Top Spook Blasts 'Reckless' Media and Leakers ...
Justice Dept Fights Release of Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance...
USA spends $80 billion year on secret information gathering...
Postal service photographs front and back of EVERY piece of mail it processes...
Limbaugh: 'We are in the midst of a coup'...
SAVAGE: NSA snooping 'biggest scandal of your entire life'...
Government to open criminal probe into leaks about leaks...
Leno: 'We Wanted a President That Listens to All Americans - Now We Have One'...

Don't forget to read your Steyn.

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PRISM: Big Brother really is watching you

If that reeks of fevered, right-wing paranoia, blame the Washington Post, which reports the following:

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.

The highly classified program, code-named PRISM, has not been disclosed publicly before. Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy. Even late last year, when critics of the foreign intelligence statute argued for changes, the only members of Congress who know about PRISM were bound by oaths of office to hold their tongues.

An internal presentation on the Silicon Valley operation, intended for senior analysts in the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, described the new tool as the most prolific contributor to the President’s Daily Brief, which cited PRISM data in 1,477 articles last year. According to the briefing slides, obtained by The Washington Post, “NSA reporting increasingly relies on PRISM” as its leading source of raw material, accounting for nearly 1 in 7 intelligence reports.

That is a remarkable figure in an agency that measures annual intake in the trillions of communications. It is all the more striking because the NSA, whose lawful mission is foreign intelligence, is reaching deep inside the machinery of American companies that host hundreds of millions of American-held accounts on American soil.

The technology companies, which participate knowingly in PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: “Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” PalTalk, although much smaller, has hosted significant traffic during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war.

Gotta love this part:

Firsthand experience with these systems, and horror at their capabilities, is what drove a career intelligence officer to provide PowerPoint slides about PRISM and supporting materials to The Washington Post in order to expose what he believes to be a gross intrusion on privacy. “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” the officer said.

Read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post hurls the ultimate insult at their guy, calling him "George W. Obama," and the New York Times proclaims that "the Obama administration has now lost all credibility." LOL. And that was based merely on the Verizon meta-data collection, not the vastly more invasive alleged PRISM snooping, which is all about content. For the record, Facebook, Apple, and Google seem to be denying PRISM involvement.

Stay tuned, kids. We sense a bumpy road ahead for Obama and company.

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Video: Rep. Trey Gowdy on IRS: "A cultural, systemic, character, moral issue"

Watch the whole thing:

And at exactly the same time that young government employee single mom was borrowing money for a child's birthday present, other government employees were staying in $3500 a night rooms. Other government employees were spedning more money on promotional materials than that young woman makes in a year. . . .

But with all due respect this is not a training issue, this cannot be solved with another webinar. . . . We can adopt all the recommendations you can possibly conceive of. I just say it strikes me, and maybe it's just me, but it strikes me as a cultural, systemic, character, moral, issue. The IRS has . . . had 100 years to figure out that while your fellow Americans are losing their jobs and their health insurance and their homes, you do not spend four million dollars at a conference for which there is no accountability. You do not hire people to make meaningless speeches or artists to paint paintings of Bono. When your fellow citizens, the ones who pay your salary, are struggling, that is a character issue. Training cannot fix that. They sent more than 25 employees on a scouting trip to see whether or not the hotel was okay. That's not going to be fixed with training. . . . There's not a webinar in the world that's going to fix that.

So Mr. Inspector General, reality, it just strikes me that we just need one single recommendation: start over. This entity has not only targeted citizens that it was supposed it was serve; it's allowed itself to be used as a political tool. Not only does it have access to our financial information; it will soon have access to our health information. Those are details that we don't share with people that we do trust, and we are going to be asked to share it with people who are so disconnected as to spend this amount of money while our fellow citizens are struggling mightily in the fall of 2010. I don't think training's going fix it. I think replacement might.

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Video: Rep. Paul Ryan at yesterday's IRS hearing

This speaks for itself:

Hot Air has a couple of videos of Rep. McDermott's remarks.

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