Stick with it - it gets easier and more intuitive with practice. There is an unbelievable amount of information out there. One interesting site is muckety.com. If you type Muckety into google or yahoo it will come up in the results. Go to the web site and type in someone's name, like Van Jones, or Rahm Emmanuel, or whoever. The site generates relationship diagrams that you can expand and manipulate to see who is connected to who, etc. It's fun - but kind of scary. I'm going to start a page here and join a group. This seems like a good place to try for a while. Thanks.

Thanks. I’m in the process of getting signed up. Here is a short intro though: Anne Bartley is married to Larry B. McNeil. He organized Saul Alinsky's "Industrial Areas Foundation” and he is in the power structure of the SEIU. She is involved with the Rockefeller family foundations, and an organization called “Grassroots Policy Project” (“GPP”). The GPP develops and publishes “how-to” articles and seminars for progressive activists. They are heavily into the development of power structures and reframing American cultural “worldview” to facilitate mainstreaming progressive ideals and goals. Both of these people are interconnected with a bunch of other individuals and organizations that Mr. beck has been working on from the other end of the power maps I’m using.

Maybe I can try the blog posting function on this site. I'm new here, so I have not looked into it yet. I tried Townhall, but it's difficult to use and overcrowded with "professionals."

I’ve embarked on a personal "connect the dots" project involving several “power maps” and the progressive networks that they describe. I have begun by exploring Anne Bartley, the Grassroots Policy Project, and the first power map in a series I am developing called "The Third Face of Power – A Progressive Worldview ." Mr. Beck calls this process an “awakening.” I am becoming more awakened by the day to an ugly reality that lies well below the surface of our culture, an age-old Matrix of power – and unfortunately I think I’ve swallowed the red pill. I’d like to share some of what I see with any who may be interested, but I have not found a useful blogging outlet. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Has anyone suggested "instant tea parties" at local 4th of July festivities yet? Lots of cities and towns have local fireworks displays and other activities that are open to the public. It would be pretty simple to make some signs, etc., and put them up by your lawn chair or car. It's a public forum, with a lot of local exposure ready-made.

Has anyone suggested "instant tea parties" at local 4th of July festivities yet? Lots of cities and towns have local fireworks displays and other activities that are open to the public. It would be pretty simple to make some signs, etc., and put them up by your lawn chair or car. It's a public forum, with a lot of local exposure ready-made.

Has anyone suggested "instant tea parties" at local 4th of July festivities yet? Lots of cities and towns have local fireworks displays and other activities that are open to the public. It would be pretty simple to make some signs, etc., and put them up by your lawn chair or car. It's a public forum, with a lot of local exposure ready-made.

Philly: You might want to have a look at www.judicialwatch.com for starters. There are actually some organizations like you describe already out there. There are also a lot of individual attorneys who work the "conservative" side of Constitutional issues. Hugh Hewitt is one notable example from the talk radio world. You can find his blog at www.townhall.com along with many other good sources.

By the way, did you know that B.O. was an adjunct professor of Constitutional law for a few years?

Part 2: Without carbon sequestration, natural gas is the likely fuel to rplace coal-fired electric utilities. Wind is inconsistent, and therefore unsuitable for "base load" on the power grid. Solar can be more reliable, but still poses challenges for storage and load balancing. Add the fact that there isn't a transmission system in place to get solar or wind power from where you can make it to where you want to use it, and you might wonder how folks really think the power grid could convert to renewable energy sources in the near-term.So why set up a cap & trade system? Follow the money. If you establish marketable carbon credits that can be traded like commodities futures, where does the underlying commodity come from? Simple answer in this case - it's the atmosphere. So, the government sells shares of the atmosphere to carbon speculators and uses the money as an additional source of federal revenue. The cost is passed down to the end user (you) through the industries that ultimately acquire and "spend" the credit. Europe has a system like this already, and it has not been a great success.

Part 1: One of the reasons that the current administration is interested in a cap & trade system is the concept that it would raise the cost of traditional energy sources enough to make alternative energy sources competitive. However, that may not be an accurate assumption. In fact, a cap & trade system may simply raise the cost of electricity, gasoline, and home heating without really providing much incentive for wind or solar power generation. For example, with a $25/ton tax on carbon, the price of electricity generated by coal-fired power plants might increase by more than 180%. See: Gilbert Metcalf, "The Cost of Cutting Carbon," MIT Technology Review, February, 2009, p. 15. Even with that scale of cost increase, coal may remain cheaper to use than wind or solar if carbon sequestration is used (capturing the CO2 and pumping it into the ground). Id. (Part 2 to follow)