Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Evil Genius.

Cap and Trade went over like a lead balloon but, like a bad horror movie franchise, it refuses to die.

Now there's an evil new commercial that paints Cap and Trade as the patriotic way to care about our troops in Iraq. See if you can follow this logic:
  • Our troops in Iraq are being attacked by more advanced IEDs utilizing EFP (explosively-formed penetrators) to take out light armored vehicles.
  • The devices are coming from Iran.
  • Iran has oil.
  • Therefore we should build wind turbines and solar farms and tax the crap out of our own coal industry. And if you don't support this, you love the terr'ists and hate our troops.
Follow that?

Now, class, everybody break out your handy pocket Constitution and turn to Article 1, Section 8, where you will find a handy list of everything Congress is allowed to do:. Of the items on that list, which looks like the most appropriate response to finding out that a bunch of wogs are killing American soldiers? Should they coin some money? Establish a post road? Diddle with patent law? Hmmm... I don't see "wind turbines" anywhere on the list.

Now, the Democrats took the Legislative and Executive branches on an "anti-war, bring our boys home" platform, but if they can dangle them in front of roadside bombs for political mileage for a bit longer, well, then that's okay, too.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

At the risk of pedantry, if they're using EFPs now they've gotten away from "improvised" by quite a margin.

(Possibly more useful comment at RX's)

Jim

Tam said...

Didn't the Red Army Faction utilize an improvised SEFOP charge to take out the head of Deutsche Bank back in the '80s?

og said...

Blasted underpants gnomes.

Anonymous said...

"...dangle them in front of roadside bombs for political mileage..."

Well, they've been doing that for seven years...why fiddle with what works?

That is one concise, accurate - and penetrating - indictment right there.

AT

Allan said...

Article I, methinks...

Tam said...

Stupid pinkie finger...

Fixed. Thanks!

Baot Guy said...

How's come Iranian-supplied EFP's being reported in open-source in 05-60 were "rumormongering" and "inflammatory" but NOW we wanna hurt the Iranians with our wind-turbines? If aything I'd suggest we hurt the Iranians by 1) drilling for OIL in ANWR and 2) supporting the legitimate opposition to the theocratic regime.
Typically obfuscating Social Democrat propaganda that will no doubt "resonate" with a hopefully smaller segment of the population.

Bram said...

So we want the Iranians to just use their excess oil to form road-side fuel-air-explosives?

Anonymous said...

Wondered about that. All those days driving along Route Irish, I kept thinking "if only we had some wind mills".... And a M240 gunner named Sancho... :)

Ken said...

Evil is the word. It is not easy, sometimes, to honor non-aggression when one reflects that one's opponents are moral degenerates (and I don't mean that they're libertine).

OA said...

If memory serves, the US gets virtually none of its oil from Iran.

Tam said...

OA,

Shhhh! Whose side are you on? The terr'ists?

Joel said...

You're not getting into the spirit of the thing, Tam. Here, let me help.

1. Evil foreigners kill soldiers with bombs.

2. Dead soldiers can't buy stuff.

3. People not buying stuff affects commerce.

4. Everything commercial affects interstate commerce.

5. Miracle occurs here.

6. Congress gets to pass laws about it.

Anonymous said...

I think its time to use our very secret weapon on all the idiots in washington who have not lisened to us( the citizens who tell them what we want). Its time to VOTE the assholes out!!

Geodkyt said...

EFPs can still be "improvised".

Technically, if it's not mass-produced in a factory, it's "improvised", and we've been teaching our snake-eating soldiers how to do EFPs for a while.

I've got an OLD US Army demolitions manual that talks about a skilled demolitionist being able to hit a 5' square target at better than 50 yards (yes it's old enough it's in "yards", not "meters") with an improvised EFP.

Sigivald said...

Even more importantly, even if the US never imported or burned a drop of oil [nevermind that we don't buy Iranian oil anyway], the rest of the world would continue to happily buy it, thus supporting the Iranian regime.

Some people don't seem to actually understand A) that there are other countries in the world that act to satisfy their own desires and B) that oil is a fungible commodity.

I'd far rather we spend the money we'd waste on "cap and trade" idiocy on, say, securing the Iran/Iraq border, or training ninjas.

Mmmm, ninjas.

Geodkyt said...

I'd rather build nuclear plants, in numbers great enough to take the power grid (at least) off burning petrochemicals and coal.

Maybe even enough to make hydrogen derived from seawater a viable automotive fuel.

Domestic oil production can keep up with those fuel needs where hydrogen or electric are unviable (like military needs) or chemicals derived from oil are needed (fertilizer, plastics).

Nukes for Gaia!!! Let the Arabs eat sand!

Viscount said...

As policy the U.S. does not buy oil from Iran. So shame on them for airing it on TeeWee!!!

-Viscount

Geodkyt said...

No, as Sigviald says, the fungible nature of oil makes it a valid argument, os far as it goes.

Which is why boycotting Venezuelan oil distributors doesn't work, either.

Of course, if we show the First World (and China and India) a reasonable alternative to oil-based power production and transport, they'll hop on board.

Even if it is wasteful of electricity to crack hydrogen out of seawater, if the cost per watt of the seawater is low enough, who cares? Both China and India can certainly afford to go nukes (and tidal power) in a BIG way if it means self-sufficiency of their basic power and transport grid.

Which WILL reduce the demand for oil.

And unlike wind, nuclear is RELIABLE steady-load power.