The Fast & Furious Presidency Here During Carter's Second Term

Banner graphics of the Fast & Furious display as they appear at Universal Studios, Hollywood. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2011)

The Fast & Furious Presidency Here During Carter's Second Term

Fast & Furious is kind of a "Branding" of the Barack Obama regime.

Fast & Furious doesn't exclusively relate to a crazy, progressive-political scheme carried out by a misguided but, ideologically pure 44th Presidency to erode the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The idea, by the Obama Administration to use with Congress and the American people, was to prove that easy access to weapons by Mexican citizens across the Northern border in the United States was the reason for so many deaths of Mexican citizens by Mexican drug cartels. Problem was that Eric Holder's Department of Justice (DOJ) was having trouble finding easy statistics to buttress their contention, so the DOJ (through its enforcement arm - Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives - ATF) decided to supply/feed about 2,000 plus assault rifles and high-powered weapons directly to known contacts associated with the Mexican drug cartels so they had serial numbers by which they could trace weapons that "walked" across the border and prove their assertion.

The operation code named Fast & Furious was to develop information on loose weapons sales so that the Obama Administration could make the case to restrict the sale of weapons and reduce the strength of the guarantees put forth by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution ... the Right for citizens to bear (own) arms. Sadly, a Federal agent was gunned down and killed with a known Fast & Furious assault weapon. Ten Arizona Sheriffs (elected as Democrats and Republicans) held a news conference this week stating that they feel Attorney General Eric Holder should step down or be fired because they, the Sheriffs, no longer have confidence in the DOJ with Holder as its leader.

Given the recent release of White House communication email memos out of Washington DC, combine with the history of the way this Executive Branch likes to operate ... Fast & Furious could actually be a name given to the way a failed Presidency operates.

Take the recent disclosures about the way Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturing plant and a visible cog in the Obama Administration's "Green Economy" agenda, received over a half a billion dollars of Federal Government venture capital style taxpayer money in the face of many red flags that would point against such a large, irresponsible, and risky move - Fast & Furious!

Fast & Furious banner graphics as they appear at Universal Studios, Hollywood. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2011)

This excerpted and edited from Politico -

2010 email on Solyndra: 'Bad days are coming'
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN | 10/4/11 7:08 PM EDT

Top White House advisers and OMB career staffers worried about the political risks from President Barack Obama's Solyndra 2010 visit and also discussed deeper management programs inside the Energy Department's loan guarantee program, according to more than a dozen internal email threads released Tuesday by House Democrats.

"There is an inherent risk in highlighting a single company before they have a track record," Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama, wrote to Ronald Klain, Vice President Joe Biden's chief of staff, on May 24, 2010.

"Or even after they have one :-)" Klain replied in a colorful exchange that came just two days before the president's oft-quoted speech at the solar company's Bay Area headquarters.

In another newly released email, an unnamed Office of Management and Budget official responds to a colleague's concern that Obama's visit to Solyndra "could prove embarrassing to the administration in the not too distant future" because of the California company’s problematic finances.

"A cautionary note," the OMB staffer replied on May 25, 2010. "This is a classic problem with startups, but we have to be careful what POTUS says."

The Klain-Jarrett email exchange and the comments from the OMB official underscore how top Obama aides were well aware of the risks they were taking in sending the president to California to speak at Solyndra.

Obama's remarks have been haunting the White House for months, growing only larger after the company went bankrupt last month and FBI agents opened an investigation into Solyndra alongside the Energy Department's inspector general.
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The emails released Tuesday also include a series of exchanges among career OMB officials raising red flags over how DOE was handling Solyndra’s application, as well as the overall loan guarantee program.

"What's terrifying is that after looking at some of the ones that came next, this one started to look better," an unnamed OMB staffer wrote to a colleague on April 2, 2010. "Bad days are coming."

"That's one heckuva day," the OMB colleague replies.

The OMB officials also homed in on PriceWaterhouseCoopers’s independent audit of Solyndra, which contradicted assurances they’d been hearing about the company from DOE officials.

"DOE ... has one loan to monitor and they seem completely oblivious to this issue — and to make it worse it was the key thing I said they needed to watch," one OMB staffer wrote.

"Possible to close and default on one before closing on a second??? Could be a new record," added another OMB staffer.

Heeding calls from Congress, Energy Secretary Steven Chu took aim at government red tape on loan guarantees when he arrived in early 2009, clashing often with DOE’s general counsel, OMB and the Treasury Department.
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"They got them before we did," Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) told POLITICO on Tuesday. "Obviously I think the administration wanted to spin what they felt was an embarrassing situation. Unfortunately for them, it highlighted the problem more than they thought they could spin it."
[Reference Here].

Fast & Furious!

One only has to look at the way this 44th Presidency has chosen to make executive decisions and spread the executive power around, not only to the official group of traditional advisers, the Presidents Cabinet, but throughout its bureaucracy of about 33 Czar appointments and bureaucratic figureheads.

The legislative agenda over these last two years and eight months have given the U.S. citizens a bunch of new debt and regulations that would make even the most detailed policy wonk's head spin.

In the first couple of months alone the Obama Administration was able to pass the 865 billion dollar Stimulus spending bill and quickly thereafter the 410 billion dollar Omnibus Federal Government 2009 funding bill without floor debate or much committee oversight - Fast & Furious!

A year later, President Barack Obama signed into law the CBO rated 1.2 trillion dollar ObamaCare bill, again, without floor debate or much committee oversight. Nancy Pelosi stated that Congress would have to pass the bill and have it signed into law so that everyone could find out what is in it. In May 2010, soon after the bill was signed into law had the CBO revise its projection - The Congressional Budget Office released an analysis of discretionary spending in the law, and found that those costs will “probably exceed” $115 billion over 10 years. At a stroke, this finding erased almost all of ObamaCare’s $143 billion in budget savings based off rushed, incomplete CBO projections given just before the decisive House vote in March 2010 (additional problems with ObamaCare). - Fast & Furious!

Just this past month, the CATO Institute discovered another unaccounted for cost of ObamaCare that could account for another 500 billion dollars of cost over the next ten years. The official budget forecasts ignored the cost of insuring many employees’ spouses and children, according to a new analysis. The result could cost the U.S. Treasury 50 billion dollars a year during the first ten years of the new health care law’s implementation - Fast & Furious!

Obama's rash of new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations could knock down the energy supply by 10%. Currently, the EPA is leading the Obama administration’s Cap and Trade assault on coal with a number of new regulations. Two of the most important are the “transport rule” and the “toxics rule” (Utility MACT). Combined, these regulations will systematically reduce access to affordable and reliable energy - Fast & Furious!

General Motors drives to meet the Federal Government's 2016 35.5 mpg average CAFE standards with the new Chevy Sonic. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2011)

The Obama Administration takes over two of three major automobile manufacturing operations based in the United States. General Motors and Chrysler are taken over by the Federal Government and pushes share holders aside (and devalues their investment) to assign a part of the ownership of these corporations to Labor Unions. Further, the Obama Administration issues new, aggressive CAFE standards (the largest mandatory fuel economy increase in history) and has GM push up the VOLT electric-powered car release date with a sales projection of 10,000 units in the first year (2011) ... actual sales (with a $3,700 discount and no corporate federal taxes because they are still owned by the U.S. Govt.) for the transpired 9 months of 12? ... only 3,895 units as of the end of September 2011. In the month of September alone, the company sold just 723 Volts and a major percentage of the 2011 total sales are being used by dealerships to market the lower cost, 42 mpg Chevy Cruze as per Mark Reuss, GM President North America - Fast & Furious!

We could go on and on with the many failures in Obamanomics, employment, and the values wrapped up in receiving the Nobel Peace Prize early in his Presidency and never end the examples upon which Fast & Furious becomes the best branding of the operating style and effectiveness of this 44th Presidency of the United States.

We are not experiencing Carter's Second Term as many dubbed the Obama Presidency going into the first year back in 2009, we are experiencing the "Fast & Furious Presidency" ... the one-term Executive Branch of Barack Hussein Obama!



[Article first published as The Fast & Furious Presidency Here During Carter's Second Term on Technorati]

Obama Administration - Green Agenda Push Raises Aviation Safety And Security Vulnerability

Wind turbine farms give fits to air traffic control radar. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2010)

Obama Administration - Green Agenda Push Raises Aviation Safety And Security Vulnerability

Funny thing about priorities ... they always have a way of pointing out why the simple approach became the simple approach in the first place.

The Obama Administration, picking up and carrying majority of the water for the (largely socialist) Green Movement through its energy policy, highlights just WHY petroleum based products have become so widely used and continue to be the popular choice for power in the face of other proven alternatives.

The new Chevrolet (not Chevy, ever) Volt ... at only 40 miles per several hour recharge (receptacle shown above) and a list price of around $40,000 dollars ... is poised to place additional strains on an already taxed power grid with little positive benefit. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2010)

Take the creation of electricity for the general grid used for powering our homes, streetlights, and if you listen to what one United States Government owned automobile company has to say - automobiles like the Volt, for example. Many years have been invested into wind turbine technology to the point that it has become an economically viable contributor to the electric power that fuels the grid but as more turbine farms pop-up, incited by incentives provided by the Federal Government, an unintended problem is making itself clear.

Wind turbine farms, when located near military facilities, impair security and safety. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2010)

Wind turbine farms make the radar systems that keep our aviation traffic informed and secure in the skies above completely compromised. That's right, radar systems become confused when wind turbine blades begin to turn enmasse because the radar signal that returns reads or present themselves in many disturbing ways - heavy storm activity and blackout zones where air traffic and its control disappear completely from the radar screen.

This excerpted and edited from The New York Times -

Wind Turbine Projects Run Into Resistance
By LEORA BROYDO VESTEL - NYT - Published: August 26, 2010

The United States military has found a new menace hiding here in the vast emptiness of the Mojave Desert in California: wind turbines.

The wind turbines pose an unacceptable risk to training, testing and national security in certain regions, Dr. Dorothy Robyn, deputy under secretary of defense, recently told a House Armed Services subcommittee.

Because of its concerns, the Defense Department has emerged as a formidable opponent of wind projects in direct conflict with another branch of the federal government, the Energy Department, which is spending billions of dollars on wind projects as part of President Obama’s broader effort to promote renewable energy.

“I call it the train wreck of the 2000s,” said Gary Seifert, who has been studying the radar-wind energy clash at the Idaho National Laboratory, an Energy Department research facility. “The train wreck is the competing resources for two national needs: energy security and national security.”
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Collisions between the industry and the military have occurred in the Columbia River Gorge on the Oregon-Washington border and in the Great Lakes region. But the conflicts now appear to be most frequent in the Mojave, where the Air Force, Navy and Army control 20,000 square miles of airspace and associated land in California and Nevada that they use for bomb tests; low-altitude, high-speed air maneuvers; and radar testing and development.
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The military says that the thousands of existing turbines in the gusty Tehachapi Mountains, to the west of the R-2508 military complex in the Mojave Desert, have already limited its abilities to test airborne radar used for target detection in F/A-18s and other aircraft.

“We cannot test in certain directions because of the presence of wind turbines in the Tehachapi area,” said Tony Parisi, the complex’s sustainability officer. “Our concern is construction in other areas will further limit where we can do this kind of testing.”
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As a result of the military’s opposition, Horizon Wind Energy recently withdrew three project applications in the area. AES Wind Generation said it found out in May, after nine years of planning, that the military had objections to its proposal to build a 82.5-megawatt, 33-turbine wind farm.
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The impact of wind turbines on radar had been a back-burner concern for years, but it heated up in March, when the Defense Department put a last-minute halt to the $2 billion, 338-turbine Shepherds Flat wind project in Oregon out of concern the turbines would impair the effectiveness of long-range surveillance radar.
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Eliminating turbine clutter on radar is complicated. Part of the challenge is that many radar systems in use in the United States date back to the 1950s and have outdated processing capabilities — in some cases, less than those of a modern laptop computer. While there are technology fixes to ease interference on these aging systems, it can be tricky to filter out just the turbines.

On radar, “a wind turbine can look like a 747 on final approach,” said Peter Drake, technical director at Raytheon, a major provider of radar systems. “We don’t want to have the software eliminate a real 747.”
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Mr. Debenham just wants his three individual turbines to win approval. The concerns of the local military have been directed to Washington for review. In the meantime, millions of dollars in financing and renewable energy incentives are, well, twisting in the wind.

“I’m in limbo. My customers are in limbo,” he said. “Can you tell anyone in Obama’s office?”
Reference Here>>

The fact is, and there's plenty of evidence over these last 19 months in office to suggest, no one can tell anyone in Obama's office - or even Back Obama himself - ANYTHING! This crowd is hell bent on placing this country into a full-steam ahead position on every idealistic political agenda they hold no matter how simple the solution or how damaging the alternatives may be.

The Obama Administration is the "Ruling Class" and that is just tough for those who, or what, may be injured from their view and lack of representation of the citizens who supposedly own (Country Class) this country ... remember "by the people, and for the people?"