Obama a Terrible Venture Capitalist! President Backs 12 "Green Energy" Failures With $Billions of Taxpayer Dollars

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CBS News counted 12 clean energy companies that are having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for bankruptcy: The junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES' subsidiary Eastern Energy and Solyndra.

Others are also struggling with potential problems. Nevada Geothermal -- a home state project personally endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid -- warns of multiple potential defaults in new SEC filings reviewed by CBS News. It was already having trouble paying the bills when it received $98.5 million in Energy Department loan guarantees.

SunPower landed a deal linked to a $1.2 billion loan guarantee last fall, after a French oil company took it over. On its last financial statement, SunPower owed more than it was worth. On its last financial statement, SunPower owed more than it was worth. SunPower's role is to design, build and initially operate and maintain the California Valley Solar Ranch Project that's the subject of the loan guarantee.

First Solar was the biggest S&P 500 loser in 2011 and its CEO was cut loose - even as taxpayers were forced to back a whopping $3 billion in company loans.

Nobody from the Energy Department would agree to an interview. Last November at a hearing on Solyndra, Energy Secretary Steven Chu strongly defended the government's attempts to bolster America's clean energy prospects. "In the coming decades, the clean energy sector is expected to grow by hundreds of billions of dollars," Chu said. "We are in a fierce global race to capture this market."

Economist Morici says even somebody as smart as Secretary Chu -- an award-winning scientist -- shouldn't be playing "venture capitalist" with tax dollars. "Tasking a Nobel Prize mathematician to make investments for the U.S. government is like asking the manager of the New York Yankees to be general in charge of America's troops in Afghanistan," Morici said. "It's that absurd." _CBS_via_MJPerry

The Obama administration is reckless and corrupt with American taxpayer's money. At the same time that Obama is throwing taxpayer dollars at his campaign supporters in the green energy sector, he is actually killing energy ventures in time-tested areas such as coal, offshore oil, Canadian oilsands pipelines, nuclear energy, and more.

It is time for Mr. Obama and his band of energy starvationist zombies to be sent on their way.

This Is Obama's Problem - Solving "Dream Team"

Obama is salivating at the chance of being the hero of the hour.  He wants to save the day, when BP, the Coast Guard, the US Navy, the US Air Force, a small fleet of private fishermen, and everybody else in the world failed to deliver.  To that end, Obama has chosen a "Dream Team" of creative problem solvers to come up with a brilliant solution to the problem of the leaking Macondo deep sea oil well.  Here is the team:

Jonathan I. Katz, physics professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Katz, a member of the prestigious JASON think tank, did his early work in astrophysics, though he now tackles a wide variety of physics problems. He’s definitely the wild card of the group, having published provocative essays entitled “Don’t Become a Scientist,” “In Defense of Homophobia” and “Why Terrorism is Important” on his personal website.

Richard L. Garwin is also a physicist and consults the U.S. government on military technologies. He, too, is a JASON member and assisted in developing the first Hydrogen bomb in 1951. In 1991, Garwin organized a conference of various experts to discuss solutions for containing Kuwaiti oil leaks during the Gulf War. Garwin brings experience to the team.

George Cooper, former professor of civil engineering at Berkeley. Cooper, the team’s most mysterious member, helped NASA refine techniques for mining Mars’ surface, and lists his specialties as “Novel drilling methods, Drill bit design, Borehole stability.”

Alexander Slocum, a mechanical engineering professor at MIT. Slocum holds patents in robotics and computer science, and claims to be interested in “staying down longer while SCUBA diving.” Bloomberg quotes a colleague of his as saying “He has a lot of creative ideas. One in 10 are really brilliant ideas, but nine are dumb…You can’t miss that one that is brilliant.” Slocum’s the wacky one.

Tom Hunter, former director of the DOE’s Sandia Laboratory. Sandia’s x-ray technology is already being used by BP to evaluate the spill, and the lab has also done research on anti-terrorism technology in the past. Hunter recently retired from his position at Sandia, but is coming back for one last job in the Gulf.

These are the five men being charged with cleaning up the terrible mess in the Gulf, and to be sure they’ve got a massive task ahead of them. But from the sound of things, they possess an insanely wide range of expertise, and perhaps more importantly, they have all demonstrated the ability to come up with creative solutions to tough problems.

Source: ImpactLab

Can Obama's dream team succeed?  Or is this just a publicity stunt by Obama, desperate for anything that might save him from his own self-created economic disaster?

Back by Popular Demand: Obama, Saviour of the Universe Film Festival and Bacchanalia

Okay, well perhaps the last video is just a bit over the top. It reminds me of something the Obama juggernaut (ACORN, moveon.org, Rev. Wright, etc) might have cooked up, if the Obama steamroller had been running against Obama. Sauce for the goose and the gander, you might say. It certainly had me laughing uncontrollably most of the way through.

President Obama's Brave New Brain Implant

Image SourceBarak Obama's addiction to the teleprompter is becoming a sore point with White House insiders. Not the addiction itself, but rather the fact that people are beginning to notice. In fact, Mr. Obama cannot give a simple four minute announcement without spoon-feeding from a teleprompter.

This unseemly dependency has prompted White House aides to pursue a less conspicuous way of feeding the president his lines. That is how the idea of a brain implant for Mr. Obama came up in conference recently. Caught between a rock (Mr. Obama's inability to speak publicly without prompting) and a hard place (the fact that Mr. Obama's handicap is being noticed beyond deniability), the White House Office of Perpetual Campaigning is considering the technology option. The only question now seems to be, "how to do it?"

A bionic eye implant may seem at first glance a plausible plan. But a few moment's thought should make it obvious that the "camera glasses" Mr. Obama would have to wear to make the bionic eyes work would be an unsightly obstacle to the president's facial expression magic.

When faced with the shortcomings of plan A, one White House counsel suggested a brain implant without the glasses. But there was the problem of how the implant would receive the signal transmitting the president's speech to his brain. Would he wear an antenna on his head? "No," scoffed another aide, "The president's hair is too short to conceal an antenna and power supply for the implant."

"Then what about using an implant that uses photoelectrodes instead of electrical signals? You could covertly beam the speech to an array of fiberoptics cunningly concealed in the president's hair!" yet another aide enthused.

"I've got a better idea," interjected Rahm Emanuel over the intercom. "How about using a focused ultrasonic brain stimulator? You wouldn't need any kind of receiver or antenna then!"

Everyone turned to look at the only scientist in the group, a neuropsychologist on loan from MIT. What did he suggest? "Well, there have been some embarrassing side effects from brain implants in the past. If the president started to ... you know ... in the middle of a State of the Union Address, or in high level talks with the Chinese Premier ... "

For a moment, there was only silence in the room as White House aides contemplated the enormous risks of their mission. Then, over the intercom came the voice of WHCOS Emanuel: "we could always include a 'kill switch' in the device signal." The suggestion was greeted with gasps and moans. "No, no, not that kind of a kill switch. Just a type of 'reset switch' that causes him to lose consciousness temporarily so that a medical team can rush him out, in case he starts to do something too embarassing."

With that explanation, the tension blew out of the room as from a runaway balloon. They were all in agreement, it would be done. Just how it would be done, and who could be trusted to do it secretly was another matter, for another conference. But that is how government works. That is just how government works.

First published at Al Fin

Obama on Verge of Nervous Breakdown!!!

Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.

"Obama is overwhelmed. There is a .... tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.

"That was the gamble these guys made at the front end of this presidency and I think they're finding it a hard thing to do everything." Telegraph

The simple fact is that Barak Obama was not prepared to be US President. He was not prepared to be US Senator, for that matter, but in the Senate a member can spend most of his time running for president -- occasionally sparing the time to vote "present" on important issues -- and still be considered a US Senator in good standing. A president is expected to stay on top of things, and to actually ... you know ... make decisions.

Up to this point, Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel have been making almost all of the decisions for Mr. Obama. Obama makes decisions about vacations, parties, eating out, and setting the thermostat near 80 degrees F. Or perhaps Michelle makes those decision -- who knows?

White House insiders say Obama may not be getting enough sleep. What -- twelve hours a night is not enough? Perhaps a bit of modafinil might help, but I suspect that a nice long vacation is what the president really needs. Say, a forty year vacation in Hawaii? Perhaps he could run for president of the Honolulu Marxist Association? That might suit him to a tee.

Image h/t Rob's No Bull Zone

First published at Al Fin