Taking over the world by doing nothing, brought to you live from the Command Bunker at the Lightning Man World Propaganda Network....Of all the blogs you've ever read, this one is the most recent.
As you'll recall, back in May I let everyone know it was okay to kill endangered eagles as long as you were a Green Energy Wind Turbine consortium treasured by the Left. Well, those hungry turbines have made the news again, this time overseas on a rocky & mountainous area of the Outer Hebrides called The Isle of Harris.
Outer Hebrides? Where's that, Steve?
The Outer Hebrides are a little cluster of islands at the northwestern end of Scotland. One might consider it the Boondocks or BFE., colloquially speaking. The Isle of Harris and it's sister the Isle of Lewis are in the ancient lands of the powerful Clan MacLeod. Tinted shots of the island were used as the surface of Jupiter in the film 2001:A Space Odyssey.
Enter the White-Throated Needletail.
Also known as needle-tailed swift or spine-tailed swift, it is the fastest-flying bird in flapping flight, with a confirmed maximum speed of nearly 70 miles per hour but is rumored to hit up to an astonishing 106 miles per hour. These birds have very short legs which they use only for clinging to vertical surfaces. They build their nests in rock crevices in cliffs or hollow trees. They never settle voluntarily on the ground and spend most of their lives in the air, living on the insects they catch in their beaks. They even drink on the fly.
These swifts breed in rocky hills in central Asia and southern Siberia. This species is migratory, wintering south in the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and Australia. It is a rare vagrant in western Europe, but has been recorded as far west as Norway, Sweden and Great Britain. And here's where the tragedy begins.
The Needletail is not endangered, but in the United Kingdom it is a very rare sight. In fact, they hadn't seen one there in 22 years. There has not been a sighting of the species in Britain since 1991 when a single bird was seen four times - in Kent, Staffordshire, Derbyshire and finally Shetland. So when one was spotted, bird watchers (known as twitchers) literally dropped everything and took ferries out to Harris to see the bird.
Seriously.
A spokesman for Bird Guides said it was only the ninth time it was spotted in the UK since 1846. It was first seen by two bird spotters from Northumberland on Monday. After that, word went out through the twitcher grapevine and soon more than 80 bird watchers from all over with more en route were watching the speedy black & white avian when.....it slammed into a wind turbine and was instantly killed.
Another victim of Green Energy.
Rest in Peace, little bird. You died so some asshole vegan in a hemp pullover could eat his tofu with a clear conscience under a dim corkscrew lightbulb lit by a windmill.
It is illegal by Federal Law to kill bald eagles and golden eagles, under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940. Unless you're Green Energy...
Really, gang, this should come as absolutely NO surprise. If you're surprised, then you haven't been paying attention to ANYTHING I've been saying these past few years on this site, nor have you paid attention to anything said by any sane, rational human being when it comes to the wanton, reckless, and verily CRIMINAL hypocrisy of The Left in general and the Obama administration in particular.
We're all supposed to pay our taxes, lest the IRS come down on us with almighty wrath. However, Obeezy's cabinet and key staff has been populated, nay riddled, with tax cheats. Hell, Wesley Snipes is fresh outta jail and needs a job; why not make him a cabinet secretary?
The Left hates guns, and wants to control guns, but crime is at its worst in Democrat-controlled zones where they don't allow responsible citizens to exercise their right to self-defense. It's also okay for prominent Liberals to own guns. Do as I say, not as I do. Gun control ain't about the guns. It's about the control.
The Left, especially in Hollywood, hates Conservatives as being violent babykillers, and then deify those in Hollywood who make exceedingly violent films.
The Left hates the rich, unless you're a rich Liberal. Then, it's okay. Those people are worshiped.
Most Liberals scream for people to pay more taxes yet pay no taxes themselves because they're sucking the government teat.
The Left claims to be tolerant & understanding, until you disagree with them. Then you're racist.
And, seriously, who's a bigger hypocrite than Al Gore, who has made tens of millions in filthy lucre on his Global Warming scams, lives in a mansion that uses more electricity than some small towns, and sold his failed TV network to an Islamist front organization backed by oil money. Asshole.
It's been a deliciously Schadenfreudian Slip recently watching Obeezy's administration unravel as his scandals catch up to him. No one buys that he and his scumbag lackey Eric Holder knew nothing about Fast & Furious and selling guns to Mexican drug cartels, one of which was used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
No one believes the administration's lies and cover up over the murder of four Americans by terrorists in Benghazi. That whole situation is FINALLY unraveling on him.
No one believes Obeezy knew nothing about the IRS targeting conservative Tea Party groups.
And now the Mainstream Media, even libs like Jon Stewart, are turning against the White House after it was made public the government was rummaging through the phone records of the Associated Press. The Lapdog know bites the hands of its former master.
I won't even get into the despicable, demeaning act of having a United States Marine be reduced to an umbrella stand. Commander in Chief, my ass.
Careful, Obeezy; shit melts in the rain.
Okay, we've established these scumbags in the White House are hypocrites. But now the hypocrisy stretches even farther to include a tacit okay when it comes to killing eagles. You know, majestic raptors like Golden Eagles, or the symbol of our country, the Bald Eagle....
You see, the Obeezy Regime is turning a blind eye to eagle deaths caused by wind farms. Companies operating industrial-sized turbines that are killing eagles and other protected birds have yet to be fined or prosecuted by the Administration, even though every death is a criminal violation.
The Obeezy Regime has charged oil companies for drowning birds in their waste pits, and power companies for electrocuting birds on power lines. However, it has never fined or prosecuted a wind-energy company, even those that flout the law repeatedly.
The result is a green industry that's allowed to do dark things.
More than 573,000 birds are killed by the country's wind farms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin.
Getting precise figures is impossible because many companies aren't required to disclose how many birds they kill. And when they do, experts say, the data can be unreliable.
When companies voluntarily report deaths, the Obama administration in many cases refuses to make the information public, saying it belongs to the energy companies or that revealing it would expose trade secrets or implicate ongoing enforcement investigations. Wait, the Obeezy Regime covers things up? Say it ain't so!
Nearly all the birds being killed are protected under federal environmental laws, which prosecutors have used to generate tens of millions of dollars in fines and settlements from businesses, including oil and gas companies, over the past five years. It's okay to bankrupt oil, gas, and coal, while these guys in the Green Sector can do what they want. That's how the Left rolls.
By not enforcing the law, the administration provides little incentive for companies to build wind farms where there are fewer birds. And while companies already operating turbines are supposed to avoid killing birds, in reality there's little they can do once the windmills are spinning.
Wind farms are clusters of turbines as tall as 30-story buildings, with spinning blades as wide as a passenger jet's wingspan. Though the blades appear to move slowly, they can reach speeds up to 170 mph at the tips, creating tornado-like vortexes. They look like giant pedestal fans. However, where your pedestal fan at home has a screen assembly to keep your fingers from getting sliced off, industrial wind turbines lack any protection whatsoever.
The Obeezy Regime has proposed a rule that would give wind-energy companies potentially decades of shelter from prosecution for killing eagles. The regulation is currently under review at the White House. (That implies people actually read stuff at the White House before it gets approved and implemented, unlike, say, Obamacare that had to be passed before they'd tell us what was in it.
The proposal, made at the urging of the wind-energy industry (gasp! Lobbysists!!!), would allow companies to apply for 30-year permits to kill a set number of bald or golden eagles. Previously, companies were only eligible for five-year permits.
In exchange for the longer timetable, companies agree that if they kill more eagles than allowed, the government could require them to make changes. (Could. But likely will just ignore it to protect windmills) But the administration recently said it would cap how much a company could be forced to spend on finding ways to reduce the number of eagles its facility is killing. If it was an oil or gas or coal company though, they'd gleefully bankrupt them in the process and then deny them out of spite.
The Obeezy Regime said the longer permit was needed to "facilitate responsible development of renewable energy" while "continuing to protect eagles." Or, if you read between the lines, it allows us to keep scamming people with windmill technology from the 1300s while calling it futuristic. A similar explanation was given when the Fish and Wildlife Service recently authorized the killing of a single California condor, an endangered species, by a proposed wind farm in California.
That's because without a long-term authorization to kill eagles, investors are less likely to finance an industry that's violating the law.
Typically, the government would be forced to study the environmental effects of such a regulation before implementing it. In this case, though, the Obama administration avoided a full review, saying the policy was nothing more than an "administrative change."
Hypocrisy. You see, capitalism and making investment money is bad, unless it suits our agenda...
But under the Obama administration's new guidelines, wind-energy companies — and only wind-energy companies — are held to a different standard. Their facilities don't face additional scrutiny until they have a "significant adverse impact" on wildlife or habitat. I do beg to point out that a pile of dead birds that are already endangered is pretty significant and pretty adverse.
In the meantime, birds continue to die. The golden eagle population in the West, prior to the wind energy boom, was declining so much that the government's conservation goal in 2009 was not to allow the eagle population to decrease by a single bird.
The reason boils down to biology. Eagles take five years to reach the age when they can reproduce, and often they only produce one chick a year.
But what else would you expect from a government that gave billions to Solyndra to allegedly make solar panels only to watch it go bankrupt and spent billions to prop up the Chevy Volt that no one wanted? Is it such a shock that they'd sacrifice our eagles to prop up a wind industry that costs more per kilowatt hour to produce than the industries they'd rather kill?
