ET Williams

The Doctor of Common Sense

Blog

by

Obama Killing More Jobs With New EPA Rules

I Have Split Personality

 

The Obama administration on Tuesday proposed the first-ever standards to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants — a move welcomed by environmentalists but criticized by some utilities as well as Republicans, who are expected to use it as election campaign fodder.

“Right now there are no limits to the amount of carbon pollution that future power plants will be able to put into our skies — and the health and economic threats of a changing climate continue to grow,” Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement.

While the proposed rules do not dictate which fuels a plant can burn, they would require any new coal plants essentially to halve carbon dioxide emissions to match those of plants fired by natural gas.

The proposed standards have divided the power industry between companies that have moved toward natural gas, such as Exelon and NextEra, and those that generate most of their power from coal, such as Southern Co. and American Electric Power.

Record low prices for natural gas and the looming air rules already have pushed many companies to put older coal plants into retirement.

“There are areas where they could have made it a lot worse,” said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a coalition of power companies. Still, “the numerical limit allows progress for natural gas and places compliance out of reach for coal-fired plants” not planning to capture and sequester carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas.

Steve Miller, CEO and President of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a group of coal-burning electricity producers, took a more dismal view, saying it “will make it impossible to build any new coal-fueled power plants and could cause the premature closure of many more coal-fueled power plants operating today.”

Other opponents of the long-delayed EPA proposal say it will limit sources for electricity by making coal prohibitively expensive.

“This rule is part of the Obama administration’s aggressive plan to change America’s energy portfolio and eliminate coal as a source of affordable, reliable electricity generation,” said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., who as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee has led the charge against environmental regulations. “EPA continues to overstep its authority and ram through a series of overreaching regulations in it attacks on America’s power sector.”

Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail have claimed that Obama-era rules affecting power plants in recent years could cause blackouts. Numerous studies and an Associated Press survey of power plant operators have shown that is not the case.

Environmentalists were quick to welcome the proposals, which will be finalized after an undetermined period that will include public comments.

Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called it a “historic step … toward protecting the most vulnerable among us — including the elderly and our children — from smog worsened by carbon-fueled climate change.”

The American Lung Association agreed. “Scientists warn that the buildup of carbon pollution will create warmer temperatures which will increase the risk of unhealthful smog levels,” said board chairman Albert Rizzo. “More smog means more childhood asthma attacks and complications for those with lung disease.”

The proposed rules would affect only new plants, not existing plants, which was a concession to industry. In addition, they would not apply to units that will start construction within the next 12 months.

Still, the proposals could set the stage for the EPA to regulate existing plants in the coming years.

The EPA is moving forward on the climate rules, which do not need approval by Congress, after a wide-ranging climate bill died in the Senate in 2010.

The proposal, which was due to be released last July but was held up at the White House, stemmed from a settlement with environmental groups and states. The government already controls global warming pollution at the largest industrial sources, has adopted the first-ever standards for new cars and trucks and is working on regulations to reduce greenhouse gases at existing power plants and refineries.

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/27/10886373-end-of-coal-power-plants-epa-proposes-new-rules

by

Obama Tells Medvedev He Will Sell US Out After Election

 

SEOUL — In a private conversation made public by a live microphone, President Obama appeared to be putting off diplomatic talks with Russian leaders about a controversial missile defense system until after the November election, prompting quick attacks from the president’s Republican rivals.

Obama was seen on video Monday in a casual chat with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at a nuclear security summit in Seoul. On the tape, Obama leans toward Medvedev and can be heard giving him a message for the once and future Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved,” Obama said. “But it’s important for him to give me space.

“This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.”

“I understand,” Medvedev responded. “I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”

The exchange, its air of secrecy enhanced by the muffled audio, raised alarm among Obama’s critics about his long-term commitment to the missile defense system. The U.S. has promoted it as a shield to protect Europe from missile attacks by Iran. The Russians fear it’s aimed at them, and opposition to the missile shield was a major theme of Putin’s recent presidential campaign.

Putin, who previously served two four-year terms as president, won a new six-year term March 5 in an election that critics charge was flawed. He will succeed Medvedev, who replaced him in 2008 when term limits prevented Putin from seeking a third successive term.

Mitt Romney, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, accused Obama of “pulling his punches with the American people” and obscuring his plans for the missile defense system.

House Speaker John A. Boehner(R-Ohio) said “we look forward” to hearing what the president meant by “more flexibility” when he returns from South Korea.

John Bolton, ambassador to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration, called Obama’s comments a “fire bell in the night,” which signaled not only that Obama would scale back the missile defense program, but also that he might be planning to give ground on a range of national security priorities.

“There’s huge cause for concern here,” Bolton said.

Obama is too much of “a politician to entirely show his hand in the first term, but it would be open season” if he is reelected, Bolton said.

By afternoon, the Republican National Committee had created a video ad with the subtitle, “What Obama tells world leaders when he thinks you aren’t listening.”

White House aides said the president was still “deeply invested” in the missile defense system.

Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said after the recording became public that the two leaders had been talking about Russia’s objections to the missile defense system and agreed to talk later because of political concerns on both sides. The two sides have been trying in vain for years to reach a breakthrough on missile defense, and no one was expecting a dramatic change at this week’s nuclear summit.

What Obama meant by “flexibility” was unclear. Some analysts speculate the U.S. might try to win over the Russians by showing them classified data to prove that the system could take down Iranian launches but not Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles. Few experts think that would convince the Russians.

Public broadcast of the private exchange provided a rare glimpse at the candor world leaders sometimes exhibit at such high-level meetings. Last year, journalists overheard Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy talking about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Sarkozy said he “can’t stand” Netanyahu.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-obama-open-microphone-20120327,0,1479756.story

by

French Teacher Wants Killer Honored (Liberalism Is A Mental Disorder)

[flagallery gid=all name=”Gallery”]

 

 

Whatever Happen To COMMON SENSE?

 

A French teacher was suspended Friday for allegedly urging her class to observe a minute’s silence for serial killer Mohamed Merah, the day after he was shot dead by police.

Education Minister Luc Chatel had called for the teacher to be suspended after her class reported she called Merah a “victim” and said his links to Al-Qaeda were invented by the media and “Sarko”, referring to President Nicolas Sarkozy.

“An immediate suspension has been decided along with a ban on entering the school,” the local education authority’s Florence Robine told journalists, adding that the suspension did not imply any guilt.

Student representatives in the final year class in the northern city of Rouen wrote to the principal to voice “shock” at being urged in an English lesson to pay respect to a self-declared Al-Qaeda militant who killed seven people.

Most of the class walked out, though some remained “to try to understand what she was talking about,” their letter said.

She “clearly said that Mohamed Merah was a victim, that the link with Al-Qaeda had been invented by the media and ‘Sarko’,” said the letter, a copy of which was published by the Paris Normandie newspaper.

“This is not the political act of an extremist but the act of a colleague who has health concerns, who is fragile and who is receiving psychological treatment,” the local head of the SGEN-CFDT union, Pascal Bossuyt, told AFP.

“She said something unfortunate in a particular context and she immediately regretted what she said,” he added.

Police shot Merah dead on Thursday at his flat in southwest France where he was holed up after going on a jihadist-inspired killing spree. His victims included three young Jewish children and three paratroopers.

Following the attack on the Jewish children, schools around France held a minute’s silence in their memory.

The teacher was not immediately available to comment.

http://news.yahoo.com/french-teacher-urges-minutes-silence-killer-153306566.html

by

White Man Shoots Black Teen Like A Dog, and He Has Not Been Charged

This Is Real Racism

The family of Trayvon Martin is asking the FBI to get involved in the investigation of the killing of the unarmed 17-year-old Florida high school student, who was shot last month by a self-appointed neighborhood watchman outside his stepmother’s home.

Martin, a black high-school junior, was making his way home with a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea on Feb. 26 when George Zimmerman spotted him, called a non-emergency dispatch number to report Martin looked intoxicated, followed him, and then minutes later after an altercation, shot him.

Zimmerman, 28, who is white, claimed self defense. He was never arrested and has been charged with no crime, sparking national outrage.

ABC News has learned police seemed to accept Zimmerman’s account at face value that night and that he was not tested for drugs or alcohol on the night of the shooting, even though it is standard procedure in most homicide investigations.

Now Martin family attorney Ben Crump has written a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, and it’s being circulated by several members of congress who are putting pressure on him to get the FBI involved.

An FBI spokesman told ABC News: “We are aware of the incident, we have been in contact with local authorities and are monitoring the matter.”

The night of Feb. 26, Zimmerman made a non-emergency call to police before fatally shooting Martin, in which he told a dispatcher, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good, on drugs or something.”

But law enforcement expert Rod Wheeler who listened to the tapes tells ABC News that Zimmerman, not Martin, sounded intoxicated in the police recordings of the 911 calls.

“When I listened to the 911 tape the first thing that came to my mind is this guy sounds intoxicated. Notice how he’s slurring his words. We as trained law enforcement officers, we know how to listen for that right away and I think that’s going to be an important element of this entire investigation,” Wheeler said.

But Zimmerman was not tested.

Martin’s family is now calling on the FBI to take over what they say is a botched investigation.

“We’ve got a fair investigation, it was the best we can do, it’s in states attorney hands now,” Sanford Police Department spokesman Dave Morgenstern said.

Series of Calls to Police Record Events Leading Up to Shooting

The series of calls to police, which depict the apparent progression of events that led to Zimmerman allegedly shooting Martin, sent the boy’s mother screaming from the room and prompted his father to declare, “He killed my son,” according to a family representative.

The contents of the calls and the family’s reaction to them were recounted to ABC News by a representative of the boy’s family, Ryan Julison, and ABC News affiliate WFTV published excerpts from the 911 calls.

On one call to a non-emergency dispatch number, according to Julison, Zimmerman says, “He’s checking me out,” and then, “This guy looks like he’s on drugs, he’s definitely messed up.”

“These a**holes always get away,” he adds.

The dispatcher is heard trying to discourage Zimmerman, asking, “Are you following him?.. Okay, we don’t need you to do that.”

Within minutes, however, 911 calls are being made to police reporting the two are fighting.

“They’re wrestling right in the back of my porch,” one frantic caller says. “The guy’s yelling help and I’m not going out.”

On a second call someone’s screams for help can be heard and what sounds like two gunshots.

The caller’s boyfriend shouts, “Get down,” and after the second apparent gunshot, the shouts for help cease, Julison told ABC News.

“There’s gun shots. Uh, I’m pretty sure the guy is dead out here, holy sh**,” a caller says into the phone.

One witness describes Zimmerman after the shooting.

“He’s out there with a flashlight. The guy is raising his hands up saying he shot the person,” the caller said.

Martin’s family listened to eight tapes, Julison said. At one point, Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s mother, ran out of the room screaming and crying, barely lasting through half the tapes.

The boy’s father, Tracey Martin, stoic and measured until then, erupted, Julison said.

“He killed my son,” Martin said, according to Julison. “He killed my son. He couldn’t control himself.”

The Sanford, Fla., Police Department, relenting to massive public pressure, plans to release parts of the 911 tapes pertaining to the shooting, multiple sources told ABC News, but wanted the boy’s family to hear the tapes before they were released to the public, according to a family source.

A week after ABC News uncovered questionable police conduct in the investigation of the fatal shooting, including the alleged “correction” of at least one eyewitness’ account, outrage that the shooter remains free is intensifying.

“It’s surprising. It’s shocking,” said Tracy Martin, Trayvon’s father. “It lets me know that justice is just not being served here. All we want is justice for our son. We’re not asking for anything out of the ordinary.”

In an interview with ABC News, Martin’s mother, Fulton, tearfully said she only seeks an arrest.

“Let a judge and jury decide the rest,” she added.

In the meantime, outrage is spreading across the Internet.

The Seminole County State Attorney’s Office was so bombarded by emails demanding that it prosecute Zimmerman that its website had to be taken down for 45 minutes, according to a spokeswoman for the office.

One of several petitions for Zimmerman’s arrest has garnered more than 250,000 signatures on a change.org site, and at one point signatures were pouring in at the rate of 10,000 an hour, according to the website.

The outrage has been partly buoyed by calls for non-violent action by hip-hop luminaries, including Russell Simmons, who has been tweeting about the tragedy and warning against its possible vigilante violence.

“Trayvon Martin didn’t die so we can create a race war he died so we can promote better understanding. We must start honest dialogue,” Simmons wrote.

It may have been an allusion to a statement by a group called the New Black Liberation Militia, which planned to travel to Sanford, Fla., next week to enact a citizen’s arrest against Zimmerman and bring him to federal authorities.

Sanford, Fla., Police Chief Billy Lee said Zimmerman asserts he shot Martin out of self-defense.

“Until we can establish probable cause to dispute that, we don’t have the grounds to arrest him,” Lee said last Tuesday.

Martin had been staying at his father’s girlfriend’s house and stepped out. On his way back into the gated suburban Orlando community, Martin was spotted by Zimmerman.

Zimmerman described Martin as suspicious because he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and walking slowly in the rain, police later told residents at a town hall.

A dispatcher told him to wait for a police cruiser, and not leave his vehicle.

But about a minute later, Zimmerman left his car wearing a red sweatshirt and pursued Martin on foot between two rows of townhouses, about 70 yards from where the teen was going.

Zimmerman’s pursuit of Martin did not of itself constitute a crime, Lee said.

Witnesses told ABC News a fistfight broke out and, at one point, Zimmerman, who outweighed Martin by more than 100 pounds, was on the ground and that Martin was on top.

 

Austin Brown, 13, was walking his dog during the time of the altercation and saw both men on the ground but separated.

Brown, along with several other residents, heard someone cry for help, just before hearing a gunshot. Police arrived 60 seconds later and the teen was quickly pronounced dead.

According to the police report, Zimmerman, who was armed with a handgun, was found bleeding from the nose and the back of the head, standing over Martin, who was unresponsive after being shot.

An officer at the scene overheard Zimmerman saying, “I was yelling for someone to help me but no one would help me,” the report said.

Witnesses told ABC News they heard Zimmerman pronounce, “It was self-defense,” and place the gun on the ground.

But after the shooting, a source inside the police department told ABC News that a narcotics detective and not a homicide detective first approached Zimmerman. The detective peppered Zimmerman with questions, the source said, rather than allow Zimmerman to tell his story. Questions can lead a witness, the source said.

Another officer corrected a witness after she told him that she heard the teen cry for help. The officer told the witness, a long-time teacher, that it was Zimmerman who cried for help, the witness told ABC News.

Lee publically admitted that officers accepted Zimmerman’s word at the scene that he had no police record.

Two days after the incident, during a meeting with the victim’s father, Tracy Martin, an officer told the father that Zimmerman’s record was “squeaky clean.”

Yet public records showed that Zimmerman was charged with battery against on officer and resisting arrest in 2005, a charge that was later expunged.

In a letter to the Orlando Sentinel, Zimmerman’s father contended his son is not a racist.

“At no time did George follow or confront Mr. Martin. When the true details of the event became public, and I hope that will be soon,” the letter said, “everyone should be outraged by the treatment of George Zimmerman in the media.”

“I asked [the police], ‘Well, did you check out my son’s record?'” Tracy Martin told ABC News in an interview Sunday. “What about his? … Trayvon was innocent.”

Trayvon Martin’s Family Seeks Justice

Trayvon Martin had no arrest record or disciplinary action for violence as a student in North Miami’s Krop High School.

On Monday, Lee, seeking to head off racial unrest, tried to reassure the public that his department was doing all it could to reach a fair conclusion, as some in the crowd heckled him by saying, “a little black boy is dead.”

Lee’s department said it plans on passing its investigation over to the state’s attorney office to determine whether to press charges against Zimmerman.

Trayvon Martin’s parents described him as the kind of son who, even at 17, allowed his parents to kiss him publicly.

“That was my baby, my youngest son,” his mother, Sybrina Fulton, told ABC News in an interview in Miami. “He meant a lot to me, I don’t think the police department really understands that. … I need justice for my family, I just want justice for my son.”

 

Fulton is incensed that Zimmerman left his car despite being urged by dispatchers to stay put.

“My son didn’t do anything,” she said. “He was walking home from the store. Why would the neighborhood watch guy would have a weapon? … It’s just crazy. You are supposed to watch the neighborhood, not take the law into your own hands.”

 

http://abcnews.go.com/US/neighborhood-watchman-allegedly-shot-trayvon-martin-wanted-cop/story?id=15949879&singlePage=true#.T2vUaBFrPMQ

by

37 Shootings and 9 Murders over the weekend in Chicago

If We Ignore The Violence It Will Go Away

 

“Mayor Rahm Emanuel Is Not Doing Such A Great Job In Chicago, Just Like Is Former Boss Obama Is Doing A Terrible Job Running The Country” (ET Williams)

 

Responding to a bloodbath of violence over the weekend, Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said Monday that he’s seeing an “uptick” in gang conflicts — and will soon provide beat cops with better information about gangs to stop retaliatory shootings.

Gangs were responsible for almost all of the 37 shootings and nine murders from Friday through Sunday, McCarthy said. When he took over as superintendent almost a year ago, gangs represented about half the firearm violence, but now they’re to blame for more than 80 percent of it, McCarthy said.

“They are splintering off into smaller gang factions and it’s getting more difficult for us to track and predict what’s going to happen next,” he said.

McCarthy said he’s launching “gang audits” in each of the city’s police districts. One audit is going on in the Chicago Lawn district on the Southwest Side where Latino gangs have been warring.

Beat cops and gang officers have been meeting over maps to chart the turf and membership of gangs in the district, McCarthy said. That information will be merged with gang intelligence from the police department’s existing databases, he said.

The detailed information about gang membership will be available to officers in their beat cars, McCarthy said.

“What we haven’t done well enough is get in front of the retaliatory shootings,” he said.

McCarthy spoke to reporters about an hour after Mayor Rahm Emanuel released a terse statement about his concern over the recent spate of shootings.

“The violence this past weekend is unacceptable to me and every law-abiding Chicago resident,” Emanuel said. “ Our streets belong to the families and children of our city, not to the gangs and gangbangers.

“The violence this weekend underscores that Chicago has a unique gang problem, and I have discussed with Superintendent McCarthy a citywide anti-gang strategy similar to the successful strategy CPD recently used with the Maniac Latin Disciples.”

Chicago Police officers arrested more than 1,800 members of the Maniac Latin Disciples gang between June and the end of February after McCarthy declared war on them for shooting and wounding two young girls by mistake at a Northwest Side park.

The Fraternal Order of Police also reacted to the weekend violence, pointing to a “manpower crisis” and a change in policing strategy ordered by McCarthy.

“Sooner or later, McCarthy has to admit that the Chicago Police Department is in a manpower crisis,” union president Mike Shields said. “We cannot adequately police this city with this shortage of officers on the street.

“This is the first warm weather weekend, and already we’ve seen the results of the department’s inability to proactively fight crime,” Shields said.

 

McCarthy has shifted about 1,000 additional officers to working in patrol cars since he took office.

 

“The shortage of officers and the shift from aggressive policing to racing from one 911 call to the next in a beat car has had a dramatic effect on the increase in violence in the city,” Shields said.

But McCarthy said there isn’t a pressing need for more cops.

“Crime reduction is not a matter of how many officers we have but how they are deployed, what they do and how hard they are working,” he said. According to the department, there have been 94 murders so far this year — compared to 66 for the same period of 2011. There were 408 non-fatal shootings, compared to 296 last year.

Overall crime, however, has fallen about 11 percent over that same period, McCarthy said. If the overall crime number went up along with murders and shootings, McCarthy said he would be “overwhelmingly concerned.”

“We are going to turn it around,” he said of the firearm violence.

http://www.suntimes.com/11400560-417/mayor-city-to-do-more-to-fight-violence-after-bloody-weekend.html

by

France clears Neo-Nazi’s – Muslims may be Behind Killings

Islam Is The Religion Of Peace Is A Oxymoron

 

“I’m Shocked That A Muslim Could Have Done This” (Sarcasm)

Police have cleared three neo-Nazi suspects in the killing of three schoolchildren and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France. The suspects were former soldiers who were discharged from duty for neo-Nazi activity in 2008.
All three were interrogated by the police.
French authorities now believe the killer was motivated by Islamic extremism or racism, Israel Radio reported.
It is the third shooting attack in the Toulouse region in just over a week, and the suspect may be linked to all of them. The previous shootings targeted and killed soldiers of North African origin.
The soldiers, part of an elite paratrooper regiment, were let go from the military after a photo of them surfaced of them saluting a Nazi flag with a swastika.
Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 29, his 4-year-old and 5-year-old sons Gabriel and Arieh, and 7-year-old Miriam Monsonego were killed Monday outside the Ozar Hatorah school in the southern French city.
In the attack, a gunman drove a scooter and used a handgun to shoot and kill the victims. Police believe the killer may have taped the killing, and think he may plan to post the video on the Internet.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/france-clears-three-neo-nazi-suspects-in-jewish-school-shooting/