QotD, Grandiose Promises In The Age Of Scrutiny Are BAD, OK? edition.

Point (via Hot Air Headlines)

In the 70 years since Robinson broke the color line in baseball, Obama said, the country has evolved into a more accepting place.

That, he suggested, is how change happens: slowly, over generations, and only after a sustained fight.

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” Obama said. “It doesn’t happen in one fell swoop. It doesn’t happen because a president gives a speech.”

Counterpoint:

…we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.

Continue reading QotD, Grandiose Promises In The Age Of Scrutiny Are BAD, OK? edition.

Politico offers the unkindest cut of all towards POTUS.

They analyze the President’s performance to date, and conclude that his new life goal should be… mediocrity.

What all this means is, barring some unforeseeable world event, Obama’s will probably not be a historic presidency. He will have some successes and a lot of failures. His opposition won’t roll over, and his party will refuse to go along with his more costly, and thus risky, schemes. He won’t coast to reelection.

So Obama now has the chance to be the sort of president Bush would have been if the World Trade Center towers had not come down. Here’s hoping he makes the best of it.

Via Instapundit. I personally doubt that it will happen; there are far too many Democratic partisans out there who absolutely need this President to be… whatever it is that they are not, and know that they are not.  They will not be pleased to see this administration try to revise its hopes and goals so as to be more in line with its abilities, and they will do their level best to stop that change.

Just the way it is.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Missourians about to get charged for energy reduction programs.

Hey, these things cost money.

And, contrary to our current ruling party’s (Democrats) operating fiscal paradigm, there are no money trees out there.  If you want a thing, you have to find a way to pay for it.  The trouble is, of course, that if you don’t particularly want a thing you may have to pay for it anyway, particularly when the people who do want it (Democrats) happen to have one of their own as Governor of Missouri.

These three paragraphs come to the heart of the matter, I think.  Bear in mind that Governor Nixon’s (D) overall goal is that there be less power usage, which sounds marvelous until you contemplate the implications of a population that’s increasing faster than power production.  If you don’t want to increase power supply, and you can’t control the population, the only way to manage the situation is to set up conditions where individual expectations of fair-share power are lowered to a level that equals the supply.  We have an adjective to describe that condition.

It’s ‘poor.’

Usually, regulators allow utilities to recoup the cost of building power plants or buying more power to meet customer demand. Recently, the Missouri Public Service Commission began allowing some utilities to pass along to customers the cost of programs that reduce demand for electricity.

For example, the commission last week approved a program in which St. Louis-based AmerenUE can offer credits to businesses that voluntarily shut down or scale back their electricity use during peak demand. AmerenUE will be able to recoup the cost for the program that starts Thursday by increasing the rates it charges business customers.

[snip]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that energy-saving programs offered by utilities will add about 3 percent to the average electricity rates. But it says customers who participate in the programs could save 10 percent to 20 percent on their energy bills, and even those who don’t participate might save if utilities don’t have to buy more energy or build new power plants.

(Bolding mine) Continue reading Missourians about to get charged for energy reduction programs.