Another problem with Waxman-Markey is that while wind power, solar, and some biomass are included hydropower and nuclear power are excluded. Hydropower is a renewable and fairly effective source of electricity— its exclusion makes no sense. The exclusion of nuclear power, while not surprising, shows how disingenuous this push for “renewable” electricity really is.

– Daren Bakst.

There are some interesting comparisons between Iran’s latest revolutionary movement and Poland’s Solidarity movement in the 1980s. Western assistance came both vocally and covert — via American companies providing Western intelligence agencies with printing presses and other equipment and utilities to assist the organization of the Polish protesters. The movement was already there and in full swing, the West just provided a little extra support where it counted.

Read the comparison in the WSJ today. Here’s the conclusion — it’s not too late for Obama and the West.

All of which means that there are opportunities for the Obama Administration to exploit, provided it envisions a democratic and peaceful Iran as a strategic American aim. That doesn’t mean military confrontation with the mullahs. But it does require taking every opportunity to apply consistent pressure on Iran while exploiting its internal tensions and contradictions.

“I often wondered why Ronald Reagan did this, taking the risks he did, in supporting us at Solidarity,” Mr. Walesa wrote in these pages after Reagan died in 2004. “Let’s remember that it was a time of recession in the U.S. and a time when the American public was more interested in their own domestic affairs. It took a leader with a vision to convince them that there are greater things worth fighting for.”

The circumstances aren’t so different. With similar vision and leadership, the endgame could be the same.

The following is from a Washington Post article titled, “Arab Activists Watch Iran And Wonder: ‘Why Not Us?’”

Across the Arab world, Iran’s massive opposition protests have triggered a wave of soul-searching and conflicting emotions. Many question why their own reform movements are unable to rally people to rise up against unpopular authoritarian regimes. In Egypt, the cradle of what was once the Arab world’s most ambitious push for democracy, Iran’s protests have served as a reminder of how much the notion has unraveled under President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled the country for 30 years.

“I am extremely jealous,” said Nayra El Sheikh, 28, a blogger and Sharkawy’s wife. “I can’t help but think: Why not us? What do they have that we don’t have? Do they have more guts?”

The frustration comes against a backdrop of deep-rooted skepticism among pro-democracy activists that U.S. policies under President Obama will help transform the region, despite his vow to engage the Muslim world in a highly publicized speech here last month. Some view Obama’s response to Iran’s protests, muted until Tuesday, as a harbinger of U.S. attitudes toward their own efforts to reform their political systems. The Egyptian government, they note, is a key American ally, and U.S. pressure on Egypt for reforms began subsiding in the last years of the Bush administration.

“When Obama does not take a stance, the very next day these oppressive regimes will regard this as a signal. This is a test for his government,” said Ayman Nour, a noted Egyptian opposition politician who was recently released from jail. “If they can turn a blind eye to their enemy, they can turn a blind eye to any action here in Egypt.”

The Obama administration has been worried all this time about interjecting too much into the Iranian election, but as Michael Goldfarb has noted, with an Iranian population mostly under the age of 30, tired of their oppressive theocracy, and looking next door to several successful and fair elections in post-Hussein Iraq, it’s far more credible that we the West should be worried about not interjecting ourselves in Iran’s affairs enough.

Here’s reason #1 of the Club for Growth’s top 15 reasons to oppose the Waxing Malarkey (Waxman-Markey) “cap and tax” bill:

National Energy Tax: This is a tax that will affect constituents in every aspect of their lives. From transportation, to food, to electricity, to income – this is the ultimate regressive consumption tax to the tune of nearly $3,000 per year according to the Heritage Foundation. The costs per family for the whole energy tax aggregated from 2012 to 2035 are estimated to be $71,493.

Read the rest.

Seriously, a grander diversion from the Iranian quasi-revolution than Michael Jackson’s death couldn’t have been masterminded by a decade worth of planning by Hezbollah.

The liberal media pile-on over the Sanford and Ensign extra-marital affairs aren’t just a collaboration of double standards, they’re off base too.

Consider the New York Times’ Gail Collins:

I’m thinking it’s time for the Republicans to apologize for putting us through the Clinton impeachment. We seem to have pretty well established that sexual stone-throwing is a dangerous sport.

Gov. Sanford and Sen. John Ensign (R, NV) may be cheating idiots who didn’t have the decency to divorce their spouses first, but they weren’t found guilty by a federal judge for perjury and then use their office to obstruct justice — as did Clinton.

That’s the point: despite the historic revisionism by the liberal base the rationale behind the Clinton impeachment wasn’t that he was an immoral anathema to family values, but that he lied during a sworn deposition in which his prosecutors were establishing a pattern of abuse during a sexual harassment case. Once more the “feminists” at the NYTs and their ilk show they are only feminists when it’s politically convenient for them.

Here’s another point: the brazen double-standard liberals follow in cases of politicians sexual misconduct. This shouldn’t be “The Long Winter” for Republicans, as today’s Washington Post puts the outing of Sanford and Ensign. Family values and such topics are no more dead today than the day before. It’s not Republicans who are smeared, but Sanford and Ensign, as they should be. The difference is that these men are officially outcasts in the eyes of fellow Republicans, whereas Democrats who do the same are excused by their apologists in the liberal base — who instead just hope and pray for the next Republican to foul up in order to even the score.

Whether the party plank is family values, free-market economics, limited government (this being Gail Collin’s biggest beef with Mark Sanford), or other, when our Republican leaders let us down the answer isn’t to disqualify the issue, it’s to purge the offending politician from the ranks.

Here’s Michael Goldfarb:

The left wanted Obama to keep his mouth shut for fear of undermining the protesters by allowing the regime to portray them as U.S. pawns. Well, at what point does Obama risk alienating a future generation of Iranians by sitting on the sidelines as they get butchered in the streets?

But then, do liberals stand for liberty? For me, but not for thee?

Americans, European Union, international community, this government is not definitely — is definitely not elected by the majority of Iranians. So it’s illegal. Do not recognize it. Stop trading with them. Impose much more sanctions against them. My message…to the international community, especially I’m addressing President Obama directly – how can a government that doesn’t recognize its people’s rights and represses them brutally and mercilessly have nuclear activities? This government is a huge threat to global peace. Will a wise man give a sharp dagger to an insane person? We need your help international community. Don’t leave us alone.

– Iranian protester to CNN’s John Roberts and Kiran Chetry.

President Obama watches CNN, doesn’t he?

Let’s say that you and I owned competing “widget” businesses. Would you find it “fair” or an otherwise healthy competitive environment if I were also the one in charge of dictating the rules and regulations of our industry? Might you find my dual role a conflict of interest? Well, that’s exactly what Barack Obama’s proposal for health care is going to create.

George Will explains:

Competition from the public option must be unfair because government does not need to make a profit and has enormous pricing and negotiating powers. Besides, unless the point of a government plan is to be cheaper, it is pointless: If the public option conforms to the imperatives that regulations and competition impose on private insurers, there is no reason for it.

…

There are 1,300 competing providers of health insurance. And Roll Call’s Morton Kondracke notes that the 2003 Medicare prescription drug entitlement, relying on competition among private insurers, enjoys 87 percent approval partly because competition has made premiums less expensive than had been projected. The program’s estimated cost from 2007 to 2016 has been reduced 43 percent.

Some advocates of a public option say health coverage is so complex that consumers will be befuddled by choices. But consumers of many complicated products, from auto insurance to computers, have navigated the competition among providers, who have increased quality while lowering prices.

Although 70 percent of insured Americans rate their health-care arrangements good or excellent, radical reform of health care is supposedly necessary because there are 45.7 million uninsured. That number is, however, a “snapshot” of a nation in which more than 20 million working Americans change jobs every year. Many of them are briefly uninsured between jobs. If all the uninsured were assembled for a group photograph, and six months later the then-uninsured were assembled for another photograph, about half the people in the photos would be different.

Almost 39 percent of the uninsured are in five states — Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, all of which are entry points for immigrants. About 21 percent — 9.7 million — of the uninsured are not citizens. As many as 14 million are eligible for existing government programs — Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, veterans’ benefits, etc. — but have not enrolled. And 9.1 million have household incomes of at least $75,000 and could purchase insurance. Those last two cohorts are more than half of the 45.7 million.

Insuring the perhaps 20 million persons who are protractedly uninsured because they cannot afford insurance is conceptually simple: Give them money — (refundable) tax credits or debit cards (which have replaced food stamps) loaded with a particular value. This would produce people who are more empowered than dependent. Unfortunately, advocates of a government option consider that a defect. Which is why the simple idea of the dependency agenda cuts like a razor through the complexities of this debate.

Here’s an interesting letter to the Washington Post editor which underscores that the law of unintended consequences is generally far more relevant and far-sighted then your average unelected egghead bureaucrat who designs our CAFE laws, etc.:

The Prius’s reputation as a “green” car is completely undeserved. The culprit is its nickel metal hydride battery.

The nickel is mined in Sudbury, Ontario, and smelted nearby, doing damage to the local environment. The smelted nickel is shipped to Wales, where it is refined. Then it is sent to China to be made into nickel foam. Then it goes to Japan, where it is made into a battery. Then it goes into cars, some of which are shipped to the United States and some of which go to Europe. All of that seaborne transport consumes a lot of fossil fuel.

CNW Marketing rates cars on the combined energy needed “to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a vehicle from initial concept to scrappage.” A Prius costs $2.87 per lifetime mile. By comparison, an H3 Hummer costs $2.07 per lifetime mile. Then there will be the problem of disposing of the used batteries.

This is not a “green” car; it is a “brown” one.

JAMES CLIVIE GOODWIN