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David Harsanyi contemplates a Trump run.
Our nation, fractured and beleaguered, can finally embrace a moment of consensus. From Tea Party to union activists to undecided moderates, we must demand Donald Trump run for president.
Trump, as you’ve no doubt heard, is actively pretending to dip his loafers into the pool of Republican presidential hopefuls. And if conservatives — nay, all Americans — are yearning for anything in politics, it’s a mogul celebrity without a coherent ideological viewpoint but with malleable political values and a reality show.
The Donald, if I may — and actually, I must, because like you, I feel I know the man — has been a ubiquitous pontificator on policy issues these days. Regis and Kelly, Rush Limbaugh, you name it. Of course, Trump has never shied away from unleashing blunt nuggets of wisdom, like the time he reportedly claimed, “Everything in life is luck.”
If you listen to Trump talk for more than a few minutes. you will be forced to concede this statement must, in fact, be true. …
Continuing with nonsense, Dilbert blogs on Charlie Sheen.
I met Charlie Sheen a few years ago, on the set of his show, Two and a Half Men. The writers made a few references to Dilbert in an episode, and that turned into an invitation for Shelly and me to come down and watch the taping.
Charlie was very friendly, and acted as though he was familiar with Dilbert. I often tell the story of Charlie doing a head-to-toe visual assessment of my wife from four feet away. He wasn’t kidding around. Just curious, I guess. Somehow he made it seem normal.
In my two minutes of interaction with Charlie, I got the strangest vibe from him. There was something extraordinarily deep, or maybe dark, or intense, about him. You often hear it said of celebrities “He’s so normal.” I didn’t get a normal vibe from Charlie. Not even close. It wasn’t a crazy vibe, or a drug vibe. It just wasn’t anything I’ve seen before. It was haunting. …
Wanna know how Washington works? Tim Carney shows how lobbyists have captured “green’ initiatives.
Environmental policy is not driven by tree-hugging activists, earnest liberal bloggers, or ecologically minded citizens. Instead, it flows from the lobbyists and executives of well-connected multinational corporations and built-for-subsidy startups that see profit in the loan guarantees, handouts, mandates, and tax credits Congress creates in the name of saving the planet.
K Street is the epicenter of this green-industrial complex, and ground zero might be the firm founded by Democratic revolving-door earmark lobbyist Steve McBee.
McBee, a former top staffer for Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and powerful House Appropriations Committee member Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., reportedly wrote key provisions in the stimulus bill to open the spigot of green corporate welfare. Also, he has hired up the Capitol Hill staff at the center of big environmental legislative pushes like cap and trade.
Exploring corporate lobbyists’ central role in Obama’s “green energy” push provides us two important lessons. First, it reveals as hypocritical the Democratic attack that opponents of cap and trade and other green policies are simply shills for big business. …
We have more to make you cringe thinking about “green” folks. The LA Times follows the career of Larry Eisenberg, the man picked to oversee a $6 Billion construction program at Los Angeles Community Colleges. His bad luck was he was selling his snake oil to college presidents well grounded in reality. He should have called on the Ivy League, or maybe signed on to the present administration.
… Eisenberg, now 59, grew up in Sun Valley, the son of a TV repairman and a secretary for the probation department. He was student body president of North Hollywood High School and became the first member of his family to attend college. He earned a bachelor’s degree in urban studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master’s in public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
After a succession of jobs managing public buildings in Wisconsin, Eisenberg was hired in 1993 as facilities chief for Washington County, Ore., which encompasses suburbs of Portland.
In 1995, he and his wife, Christine, filed for personal bankruptcy, listing assets of $236,000 and liabilities of $262,000. Most of the debt, aside from their home loan, was to credit-card companies; they also owed $21,000 in back taxes. The bankruptcy case was closed after the couple completed a payment plan in 1999.
Eisenberg ran into difficulties at his job as well.
His boss, Bob Davis, “wanted to get rid of Larry because of mismanagement,” Washington County Commissioner Andy Duyck said in an interview. Duyck said he did not know the reason for Davis’ displeasure, and Davis, the county administrator, declined to comment.
Eisenberg recalled that Davis “let me know he was unhappy” with his job performance. He depicted it as a clash of management styles: Davis’ was conservative, while his own was creative and entrepreneurial, Eisenberg said.
“I’m not risk-averse,” Eisenberg said. “In retrospect, maybe they think they should have gotten rid of me sooner.”
Eisenberg left the Oregon job in August 2003 to become head of facilities and new construction for the Los Angeles college district. He acknowledged that he had not told district officials about his bankruptcy. He said it had no bearing on his professional life.
Eisenberg was put in charge of the campus construction program, one of California’s largest public works projects.
A mandate from the district’s Board of Trustees to incorporate renewable power into new buildings offered him a chance to make his name as a leader in green construction.
He was tireless in promoting the program’s eco-friendly aspects, traveling at taxpayer expense to Zurich, Switzerland, to speak at a conference of the International Sustainable Campus Network. He made similar presentations in New Orleans, Seattle and Atlanta.
His advocacy had a messianic tinge. In one e-mail to his advisors, he described his renewable-energy agenda as “what the world needs now. No one else is doing it. We can and will.”
The trustees encouraged Eisenberg’s push for green energy, even as his plan grew steadily more ambitious. They liked the idea of freeing the colleges from dependence on fossil fuels and were content to leave the practical details to him.
But Eisenberg’s enthusiasm obscured an inconvenient reality: With the technology now available, the cost of renewable power exceeds that of energy derived from burning coal and natural gas.
Green energy advocates often argue that the added cost is justified by the reduction in pollution, particularly carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.
Eisenberg talked up the environmental benefits of his plan. But he also insisted that it would cost less than continuing to rely on conventional sources of electricity. Private investors, he explained, would put up almost all the money in order to take advantage of tax breaks, and they would pass the savings on to the district.
In the end, he said, government subsidies would reduce the district’s purchase and installation costs as much as 90%.
One thing was for sure: No matter how it was financed, the bill for all those solar panels and wind turbines would be huge. Eisenberg’s cost estimates for taking the nine campuses off the grid ranged as high as $975 million — this for a college system that in 2010 spent less than $8 million on power bills. …
A serious look at the cause of baby dolphin deaths ends up dwelling on randy dolphins. Planet Gore of NRO is responsible.
… Like most Hollywood stars, dolphins aren’t as cute in real life as they are on the silver screen. They make Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan look like model citizens, since, as Slate reports, they’re prone to murder baby dolphins and their close relative, the porpoise, as well as to rape and sexually harass.
Not just other dolphins, either. Gossip tabs report that Demi Moore had a close encounter, as did Jessica Alba while filming the remake of Flipper. Said Alba to MTV: ““I don’t know if anybody knows this but dolphins get excited, even when you are a human being — and they have long, long.#…#I didn’t know this until I was being poked by a few of them, which was very rude. I think I learned my lesson. I sort of request female dolphins after that because those are horny little b*******.” …