Fausta's Blog

No more Tired Old Ass Soak for you, if Charles gets his way!

One must take shorter showers, says Charles: Prince urges British families to ’snub the bathtub’

Prince Charles has told British families to take shorter showers to help protect the environment.

The instruction came at the end of a list of 20 lifestyle changes recommended by the Prince of Wales for his new green campaign, Start.

In separate advice endorsed by the Prince, he was more detailed – urging people to give up baths in favour of ’short, refreshing’ five minute showers.

His campaign website reads: ‘Snub the tub. If everybody in a four-person family replaced one bath a week with a five-minute shower, you could save between £5 and £15 per year off your energy bill.’

In true Green spirit, Charles preaches what he doesn’t practice,

As for the Prince of Wales himself, Clarence House last night remained tight-lipped on whether he takes short showers.

Years ago people were speculating on the higiene habits of Il Tampone, but I digress.

A spokesman simply said: ‘The Prince of Wales does the vast majority of the things on the list.

Such as?

‘loving your leftovers’, holidaying closer to home and reusing ‘what can’t be recycled, such as paint tins’.

Charles, who flies private jets to ceremonial shindigs at exotic locales probably “loves his leftovers” enough to feed them to his dogs (do his employees get meals free of charge? just asking!), and I don’t think Charles has seen a ‘paint tin’ since he was in kindergarten and the teacher handed him some tempera for fingerpainting.

The Prince isn’t exactly slumming it in a Prius; but just so you can relate to the guy, the article goes on,

The Prince’s Jaguar, Audi and Range Rover cars run on biodiesel made from used cooking oil, while his 40- year-old Aston Martin uses bioethanol made entirely from wine.

I wonder what Camilla runs on – cooking oil or wine?

H/t American Thinker.

On the Surface, Gulf Oil Spill Is Vanishing Fast; Concerns Stay

The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected, a piece of good news that raises tricky new questions about how fast the government should scale back its response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The immense patches of surface oil that covered thousands of square miles of the gulf after the April 20 oil rig explosion are largely gone, though sightings of tar balls and emulsified oil continue here and there.

Reporters flying over the area Sunday spotted only a few patches of sheen and an occasional streak of thicker oil, and radar images taken since then suggest that these few remaining patches are quickly breaking down in the warm surface waters of the gulf.

Now the question is, will Obama undo that drilling moratorium?

Don’t count on it.

————————————-
Due to a number of tasks that need to be completed this morning, there will be no podcast today.

Since the average sized bathtub is too short, I love a really great shower, and would absolutely love to have one of these installed in the house. Imagine 12 lovely gallons of water a minute. Alas, the government says “no”:

Compared to the Shower Rose, the shower complying with the Federal maximum is a Water Pik.

A Water Fight Over Luxury Showers

Regulators are going after some of the luxury shower fixtures that took off in the housing boom. Many have multiple nozzles, cost thousands of dollars and emit as many as 12 gallons of water a minute. In May, the DOE stunned the plumbing-products industry when it said it would adopt a strict definition of the term “showerhead” in enforcing standards that have been on the books—but largely unenforced—for nearly 20 years.

Why?

The showdown is a challenge to President Barack Obama and his energy secretary, Steven Chu, as they try to cajole—or compel—Americans to use water and energy more efficiently.

Yes siree, Barack Obama, the guy who flew his dog on a separate plane to a weekend vacation in Maine, doesn’t want you to luxuriate in a shower – he wants to force you to use energy more efficiently.

Don’t blame Obama only; the law was passed in 1992, when George H. W. Bush was in office.

Because the government can, and will, regulate you out of the comforts of your own bathroom. As I said last October,

Living in green misery and living in a totalitarian society might go hand-in-hand. Take advantage and enjoy the benefits of a free capitalist society while you can, and shower on.

I predict the start of a black market on non-compliant showerheads.

Oil leak is stopped for first time since April 20 blowout

As part of what BP calls an “integrity test,” a robotic submersible slowly closed a valve on the well’s new sealing cap. That choked the flow until the plume, a fixture of cable TV and many a nightmare, disappeared. The technological breakthrough came 87 days into the crisis, which began with the April 20 blowout that killed 11 workers and sent the burning rig Deepwater Horizon to the bottom of the gulf.

Chris Cillizza would have you believe that the Gulf Oil spill fades as issue; I expect that the Obamamedia will work that meme hard from now until the Congressional elections, and beyond into 2012. For instance, we will be reading fewer and fewer reports on the dismal condition in the Gulf states, and on the disastrous decision to have a moratorium on offshore drilling. Andrew Malcolm, however, has a different roundup:

Here’s the kind of daily news the crowd currently controlling the Capitol confronts:

Americans disapprove of U.S. President Barack Obama’s handling of almost every major issue and are deeply pessimistic about the nation’s direction, offering a bullish environment for Republicans in the November congressional elections, a Bloomberg National Poll shows.

A majority or plurality disapproves of Obama’s management of the economy, healthcare, the budget deficit, the overhaul of financial market regulations and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a Bloomberg National Poll.

And the same poll found almost six in 10 Americans regard Obama’s signature Afghan war effort as a lost cause.

Three out of four Americans oppose Obama’s moratorium on deepwater drilling, while a separate poll found that 57% support Arizona’s illegal immigrant law — and 17% think the state measure doesn’t go far enough on enforcement.

In Nevada, Reid appears to have closed the gap in his Senate reelection race against Republican Sharron Angle.

But his son, Rory NoLastName, trails badly in the governor’s race to Republican former federal judge Brian Sandoval. That’s another emerging crevice in Obama’s political strategy to wean Western states from their traditional GOP leanings.

After more than a year of healthcare and financial reform debates as the controlling Democratic agenda, the economy in general and jobs in particular remain by far the voters’ top concerns in a new Gallup Poll.

The economy was cited by 31% of respondents, and jobs by 22%. The next closest category was 11%. But that, ominously for incumbents facing elections, was “dissatisfaction with govt/Congress/politicians/poor leadership/corruption/abuse of power.”

According to a CBS News poll, 52% say Obama has not invested sufficient time in the economy. Only 13% believe his economic programs have helped them, and 23% say they’ve actually hurt, the poll found.

Seven in 10 lack confidence in their current member of Congress of either party, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, and nearly six in 10 now lack faith that Obama will make the right decisions for the country.

Other than that, Captain Smith, it looks like smooth sailing ahead through this ice field.

Meanwhile,
Live from the Gulf: The Monumental Task of Overseeing BP’s $20 Billion Fund

Here’s the livecam BP Oil Spill Cam Stream:
(more…)

As the record temps linger,

Prince Charles, who the Italians nicknamed Il Tampone back when he told Camilla he wanted to reincarnate as her tampon, is urging environmentalists to ‘Follow the Islamic way to save the world,’

Prince Charles yesterday urged the world to follow Islamic ’spiritual principles’ in order to protect the environment.

In an hour-long speech, the heir to the throne argued that man’s destruction of the world was contrary to the scriptures of all religions – but particularly those of Islam.

He said the current ‘division’ between man and nature had been caused not just by industrialisation, but also by our attitude to the environment – which goes against the grain of ’sacred traditions’.

Charles, who is a practising Christian and will become the head of the Church of England when he succeeds to the throne, spoke in depth about his own study of the Koran which, he said, tells its followers that there is ‘no separation between man and nature’ and says we must always live within our environment’s limits.

As the future head of the Church of England and someone facing a crisis of faith in the cult of anthropogenic global warming, Charles went one step further in his speech and alluded to Saint Al of Goredom,

He added: ‘The inconvenient truth is that we share this planet with the rest of creation for a very good reason – and that is, we cannot exist on our own without the intricately balanced web of life around us.

‘Islam has always taught this and to ignore that lesson is to default on our contract with creation.’

I’m sure creation’s about to sue, particularly if Richard Dawkins has anything to do with it.

The speech was received with the enthusiasm it deserved:

While I poke fun at Il Tampone, Richard Fernandez brings insight into two nations:

President Obama comes from a mighty nation. From the viewpoint of that people, it is Rabinowitz who is alien. She is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. If she tried seeing herself through their eyes she would see herself as the problem. There is a country in which people like Helen Thomas happily thrive and  it is widespread, influential, powerful.  It may outnumber or eventually come to outnumber the nation which Dorothy Rabinowitz thinks is ‘out there’.

And it lives in the most exalted places. For example, across the Atlantic, Prince Charles exhorted his listeners to follow the precepts of two great religions: Islam and Environmentalism. His Royal Highness “urged the world to follow Islamic ’spiritual principles’ in order to save the environment”.
…

If you want to be admitted into the inner sanctum of the cultural elite, if you wish to be considered ‘cool’; if you aspire to be like a very powerful segment of the movers and shakers, then you had better stop clinging to your Bibles and guns and get with the program.  Far from being “alien”, President actually represents a point of view shared by many millions of Western Europeans and Americans. He is not the cause, but rather the effect of the existence of that nation: if he were not President, that nation would endeavor to elect someone else just like him to the Presidency.  But the two nations are not mirror images of each other. One is self-aware and the other minds its business thinking that everyone else does. They are asymmetrical with respect to their desire for power. And because of this the President’s nation can see the other clearly every day of the week, as a traveler sees an obstacle before it, while people like Rabinowitz never think of themselves as the obsctacle. That’s the problem. As the fight scene from “They Live” shows, the real challenge is to get both sides to perceive each other symmetrically

We live in an age of irony, where the cultural and aristo elites believe in pseudo-science and speak down to us as if the Enlightenment had never taken place.

But then, for them maybe it never did.

Gore tears himself away from his fixer-upper and adds his own little ray of dyspeptic sunshine during a graduation speech:
(WARNING: gentle readers now on anti-depressants may want to up the dose before watching this video)

Cheer Up For the Worst is Yet To Come!

Gore tears himself away from his fixer-upper and adds his own little ray of dyspeptic sunshine during a graduation speech:
(WARNING: gentle readers now on anti-depressants may want to up the dose before watching this video)

Cheer Up For the Worst is Yet To Come!

In today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern,
Special guest Rick Moran talks about Obama’s latest scheme, and other items in the news.

Prior post:
Drill for cap and trade?

Via Ed Driscoll, Is Environmentalism a Religion?

Novelist Michael Crichton said that environmentalism had all the trappings of a religion: “Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday.” Atwood is filling it out with saints and hymns.

Actually, Al Gore had already beat her to it:

Environmentalism is a religion, and Al Gore is its Prophet:

Al’s Gore’s much-anticipated sequel to An Inconvenent Truth is published today, with an admission that facts alone will not persuade Americans to act on global warming and that appealing to their spiritual side is the way forward.