Take a look at this info graphic and see if you can spot what is missing. If you said “coal” then congratulations. You read the headline above. Yes, apparently the Obama administration’s “All of the Above” approach to energy is in need of an asterisk: *except coal. But green energy is the future right? And the future is now! I mean how much does coal even constitute as a portion of energy consumption in America? This much. It’s no surprise that good old fashioned coal is omitted from Obama’s “everything” list. He announced as a candidate that he intended to bankrupt the coal industry and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has been more than happy to oblige . Between the EPA’s Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), Utility MACT rule, and cap-and-tax New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), an all out war on coal has been raging between the lifeblood of our economy and this administration. The EPA serving is serving as the administration’s very own Secret Police (that should get me some hate mail) bent on crucifying any opposition . And no amount of faulty research or projected job losses will get in their way. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has introduced a Congressional Review Act (CRA) joint resolution of disapproval aimed at preventing implementation of the Utility MACT rule, which is scheduled for a June 12th vote. “The failure of the United States Senate to rein in the Obama-EPA is having a devastating impact on the pocketbooks of American families and threatens the jobs and livelihoods of millions of Americans,” Senator Inhofe warned. “Over the past year, more than a dozen Senate Democrats have claimed that they want to stop EPA’s destructive agenda, yet when the time comes, they hide behind alternative bills they know will never pass…Today the United States Senate can look forward to having one more opportunity to stand up to President Obama’s war on affordable energy: I am introducing a legislative measure that will put a halt to the Obama-EPA’s Utility MACT rule – one of the most expensive environmental rules in American history, second only to his proposed cap-and-trade rules that failed to pass legislatively.” Interestingly, an administration that is constantly screaming about a lack of bi-partisanship in Washington, finds that once again, bi-partisanship exists only in opposition to his agenda. The CRA swing votes include the usual suspects – vulnerable Democrats who perpetually try to ride the line between appeasing the environmentalist left and distancing themselves from Obama’s unpopular policies as they face reelection. Interestingly, each comes from a state highly dependent on coal, including five from the top ten states in coal usage. 1. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) · Coal provides more than 85% of Ohio’s electricity · Ohio ranks 3rd in US coal usage · Coal accounts for more than 19,000 high-paying Ohio jobs and a combined payroll of more than $800 million dollars. 2. Jon Tester (D-MT) · Coal provides more than 62% of Montana’s electricity · Montana ranks 5th in US coal production · Minerals and non-metal mining accounts for more than 13,000 high-paying Montana jobs 3. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) · Coal provides more than 80% of Missouri’s electricity · Missouri ranks 6th in US coal use · Coal accounts for more than 4,600 high-paying Missouri jobs and a combined payroll of more than $160 million dollars 4. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) · Coal provides more than 60% of Michigan’s electricity · Michigan ranks 10th in US coal usage 5. Jim Webb (D-VA) · Coal provides more than 43% of Virginia’s electricity · Virginia ranks 13th in US coal production · Coal accounts for more than 31,600 high-paying Virginia jobs and a combined payroll of more than $1.4 billion dollars. 6. Bob Casey (D-PA) · Coal provides more than 52% of Pennsylvania’s electricity · Pennsylvania ranks 5th in US coal usage · Coal accounts for more than 49,100 high-paying Pennsylvania jobs and a combined payroll of more than $2.2 billion dollars 7. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) · Coal provides more than 62% of Tennessee’s electricity · Tennessee ranks 20th in US coal production · Coal accounts for more than 6,100 high-paying Tennessee jobs and a combined payroll of more than $220 million dollars. With a Senate map that could go either way based on 2-3 seats, Democrats are likely to face increasing pressure to distance themselves from the Obama EPA’s job-killing, price-raising energy policy, particularly in these coal-heavy states. West Virginia Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin has already stated that Obama may not get his vote. “[The president] has apparently made it his mission to drive the backbone of West Virginia’s economy, coal and the energy industry, out of business…I do not believe that either candidate has a real understanding of what is important to West Virginia. As governor, I go to work every day to stand up for West Virginians and create jobs. As governor, I know that I must work hard every day to earn the trust and the votes of my constituents. Neither President Obama nor Governor Romney has earned my vote at this point.” Sen. Joe Manchin has made similar comments . “Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who has done more than any other Democrat up for reelection this year to distance himself from President Obama, said he does not know if he will vote for Obama or presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney in November. ‘I’ll look at the options,’ Manchin said this week. The last three years “have made it pretty rough” for his state, he said.” Luckily, they have other options . Update: Yes, I realize the list includes “clean coal” but that’s little consolation to the traditional coal industry and it’s existing production plants.
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Coal? What Coal?
Marriage is more than just beautiful. Marriage is more than just moral. Marriage is beautiful because it is moral. Indeed it sensitizes people to the beauty of morality, the symmetry and structure and form and nuance and grace of life lived rightly. It often inspires people to moral behavior in other aspects of their lives. It was not the Bible that turned me on to marriage, but marriage that turned me on to the Bible. It offers an intuitive experience that confirms the truth of the odd narrative presented there as the basis for the connubial bond. The Bible makes the startling claim that man and woman were once part of a single organism that then subdivided, a claim echoed by the evolutionists. When you fall in love with a member of the opposite sex, you can actually sense yourself being drawn back into a primordial state of oneness. Maimonides introduces his exposition of the Jewish laws of marriage with a preamble. “Before the Torah was given, a man met a woman in the marketplace, and if they decided to marry they could achieve that simply by moving in together. If one of them moved out, that constituted a divorce.” Later commentaries wonder why he thought this relevant to contemporary marital law as codified in the Bible and Talmud. It seems clear that his goal is to clarify that the institution of marriage is not an invention of the Bible; rather, it is an essential component of the human condition. Man and woman discover each other and merge into their natural unit. They become “as one flesh” with the birth of a child, the fusion of their identities culminating in a new human life astonishingly incorporating the passion of each into an original life force. As secularized as Hollywood has been from the first, marriage between a man and a woman is still its bread and butter. There may be a crude macho camaraderie in chuckling about sexuality, but the better angels in both men and women are touched by wedding scenes. Study Hollywood fare in any random year and you will be astonished to see how many films managed to work a full-dress wedding ceremony into the plot. Producers know this to be a sure winner. The radiance, the innocence, the glow, the anticipation, the tenderness, the hopefulness, the sense of moment, the celebration of past and present and future, the opening of a door to unlimited possibility; all the noblest sentiments of humanity are gathered here in one place. THIS IS A GREAT JUNCTURE in American history. Things have not been going well and we are being called to effect improvements. We have to make ourselves better to make our country better. A good place to start would be by rekindling our devotion to marriage. The good people of North Carolina have heeded this call. They understood the crisis in their hearts and they came together to embrace this vision of beauty and symmetry. Marriage is a sacrament between a man and a woman — a truly simple yet eloquent concept. Now is the time to recommit to this vision. Sadly, the forces of destruction are heading in the exact opposite direction. They want to revive the primitive rite of homosexual “marriage” practiced in ancient times. In fact, the Midrash teaches that this type of nuptials was common before the Flood. The Talmud famously ponders the morality of the countries of its time and finally manages to detect only three virtues they held universally. 1. They did not practice cannibalism. 2. They did not give marriage licenses to homosexuals. 3. They show respect for the Bible. Are we down to just the first of these three? But this is not the time to focus on knocking the other guys, many of whom are gentle folks who are just trying to be nice. Instead let us take strength from the fortitude of North Carolina. We must celebrate the fine people of that State and the spark which ignites their hearts. Marriage is perhaps the most beautiful asset of our culture and I cannot bear to see it squandered by a coalition of the self-indulgent and the indulgent, the political and the polite, the pushy and the pushover. There is beauty here and it is in danger. Is there a prince in the house? A knight? We must be wishful.
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Miss Matches
President Barack Obama acknowledged in an interview with ABC News that he supports redefining marriage to include same-sex couples. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is already trying to raise money off the announcement. Here are the president’s remarks: I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married Hardly anybody is surprised that this is the president’s actual position. He actually filled out a candidates’ questionnaire saying he supported same-sex marriage in 1996, which he subsequently disavowed. As president, Obama has tried to straddle the issue for reasons having to do with his coalition. But Joe Biden forced his hand and his position had become untenable in a party that increasingly supports same-sex marriage. Obama and his advisers obviously calculated that the damage among black voters would be so minimal that it was worth making this announcement to please donors and excite the rest of his base, which has been waiting for him to endorse gay marriage. Black voters have long held more socially conservative views than the politicians who represent them, without the elected officials facing any repercussions. Perhaps the president’s position will move black public opinion on the issue somewhat. But Obama stopped short of arguing that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. He said he favored leaving the matter up to the states.
The rest is here:
Obama Comes Out for Gay Marriage
[Posted by Karl] Earlier today , I wrote that Team Obama had been AWOL on gay rights issues for campaign reasons. This afternoon, Pres. Obama officially “ evolved ” into a supporter of same-sex marriage during an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts: “I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama told Roberts, in an interview to appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday. Excerpts of the interview will air tonight on ABC’s “World News with Diane Sawyer.” The president stressed that this is a personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states deciding the issue on their own. Well, that’s semi -evolved, anyway. I suppose it remains to be seen how progressives will embrace states’ rights. On Twitter (and elsewhere), a number of smart people have suggested that Obama benefitred from yet another distraction from the economy and the debt. Yet gay rights are a classic wedge issue that divides Obama’s prospective coalition, which would seem to be an unwelcome distraction for Democrats. Many have also suggested Obama found himself painted into a corner by comments from people like VP Joe Biden. Allahpundit provides a decent elaboration of this thinking: Looks like his strategy now is simply to get it over with ASAP and then let people forget about it over the next six months. Some key constituencies, like young voters, will cheer. Others, like black voters, might not be thrilled but given their overwhelming support for O the risk that he’ll lose many votes because of this is minimal. Meanwhile, Romney’s unlikely to make it an issue since it’d throw him off his core economic message. (See, e.g., Haley Barbour insisting yesterday that the gay-marriage chatter lately is a Democratic distraction .) All true enough, but I continue to think “The Decision” here is driven less by pressure from Sheriff Joe than by broader campaign considerations. Recall how Democrats think about the demographics : [Ruy] Teixeira, writing with John Halpin, argues in “ The Path to 270: Demographics versus Economics in the 2012 Presidential Election ,” that in order to be re-elected, President Obama must keep his losses among white college graduates to the 4-point margin of 2008 (47-51). Why? Otherwise he will not be able to survive a repetition of 2010, when white working-class voters supported Republican House candidates by a record-setting margin of 63-33. Obama’s alternative path to victory, according to Teixeira and Halpin, would be to keep his losses among all white voters at the same level John Kerry did in 2004, when he lost them by 17 points, 58-41. This would be a step backwards for Obama, who lost among all whites in 2008 by only 12 points (55-43). Obama can afford to drop to Kerry’s white margins because, between 2008 and 2012, the pro-Democratic minority share of the electorate is expected to grow by two percentage points and the white share to decline by the same amount, reflecting the changing composition of the national electorate. What yesterday’s elections may have told Team Obama is that the bitter clingers out there are bitter enough to give 41% of the Democrat vote in West Virginia to a convicted felon and to ease a ban on same-sex marriage into the North Carolina constitution. They may have concluded that their energies are better spent targeting more socially liberal white college graduates in the suburbs of northern Virginia, Philadeplphia, Denver, etc. than wasting time on trying to persuade Rust Belt Jacksonians to pull the lever for Barack Obama again while (as Allahpundit suggests) considering discontent among socially conservative African-Americans an acceptable risk now. The establishment’s mockery of Obama’s unevolved position may have suggested to Team Obama that painting Mitt Romney as a right-wing extremist is made more difficult when the president shares Romney’s position on SSM. Obama’s hastily-arranged interview with Roberts suggests his campaign was prepared to let SSM drift off the news radar, until facts on the ground drove a public (but controlled) flip on the issue. –Karl
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Obama’s flip-flop on same sex marriage still driven by the campaign
Download audio here Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets , Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Michael Duncan to discuss Indiana’s battle between Dick Lugar and Richard Mourdock, how the Tea Party has organized in 2012, and what impact a larger coalition for liberty in the U.S. Senate may have. We’re brought to you as always by Stephen Clouse and Associates . If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show. Related Links: Dick Lugar: A Washington insider on his way out? Operation Counterweight Comes To Indiana Lugar’s Love Affair with Government Health Care U.S. Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock on Coffee and Markets FreedomWorks for America Michael Duncan at FreedomWorks Follow Brad on Twitter Follow Ben on Twitter Follow Michael on Twitter Subscribe to The Transom The hosts and guests of Coffee and Markets speak only for ourselves, not any clients or employers.
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Richard Mourdock Could Score Huge Win for Tea Party in Indiana
