> What's being debated is if its enough to cause global warming...
Exactly. Because while you can measure an effect in the lab it really doesn't matter much in the real world where CO2 is in parts per million and CH4 is in parts per billion. So many other factors operate on scales so much larger than any warming effect those trace gasses will cause as to not matter much. A few clouds more or less totally swamps greenhouse warming. A little more or less solar output totally swamps the greenhouse effect. And so on.
> There's also no harm in feeding cows healthier diets, and breeding them to digest more completely so they produce less methane.
Not at all. But any such change should be based on sound science, economics and consumer preferences not manufactured scare campaigns with hidden agendas.
> would be enough to balance methane emissions with the natural methane sinks..
Who cares? The biggest 'sink' is it's seven year half life in the atmosphere. That means that since we have been maintaining huge populations of cows for several times the half life of their belches/farts the level is pretty much as high as it will ever be unless we add some new high volume source. Meaning we ARE in balance, Methane levels aren't likely to rise from where they are now.
> You can get the same effect by paving over landfills and building methane turbines to > burn all that garbage gas and turn it into electricity, though you'd have to get at > least 50% of all landfills to balance things out. And, why not do both?
And I'd like a pony while you are at it. If electricity could be produced at a profit by burning methane from garbage someone would probably be doing it. So I am to assume you are either clueless on economics or you do understand that you are proposing a government subsidy to produce energy at a loss to let greens feel good about how much they care about the environment.... when they are spending other people's money. So which is it? Ignorant or Evil?
Because make no mistake, taking random people's money and wasting it to give a few greens an egoboo is evil. It is a waste because if left in the rightful owner's possession that money would create economic growth instead of being lost on a feel good project that produces a net negative economic effect. In case you haven't noticed we have a major recession going on right now, wasting money only prolongs the pain.
Listen up numbskulls, cows belching/farting aren't a problem.
Even if you buy the CO2 == Global Warming theory, and the debate on that that is far from decided, cows aren't a problem. The whole carbon theory rests on the release of long sequestered carbon in the form of fossil fuels increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere. And that much has both science and common sense to back it, extracting and burning billions of tons of hydrocarbons has increased the CO2 level in the atmosphere.
Cows are eating plant (and other stuff you really don't want to know about) matter which fixed carbon out of the environment recently. They belch/fart/poop most of it right back into the circle of life where it goes round and round. Not a problem except to the extent fossil fuels are powering much of the cycle in the form of fertilizer to grow feed, move the cows/meat around, etc. but those are general problems with dependency on hydrocarbons that have been buried for millions of years.
Some enviro whack jobs say the methane is a 'greenhouse gas' but that is hard to buy since it is less than two parts per million currently. Even if we take the "twenty times the greenhouse effect as CO2" at face value that works out to rounding error compared to all of the other factors that influence the global environment.
So go have some cow and don't let the greens lay yet another guilt trip on you. Beef: It's what's for dinner!
There are good arguments for legalization but idiots like you spewing stuff that doesn't pass the most basic smell test aren't helping your cause.
Ok, survey says 6% of the US population uses a product that is illegal and has enough enforcement that it accounts for a fair percentage of inmates in prison. They are willing to deal with the criminal underworld to get the stuff, pay black market prices and risk jail, loss of their job in many cases, etc. What percentage of the population is chugging Nyquil?
Yes the fact booze is legal again goes a long way to account for the fact most people have more sense than to chug 20 proof Nyquil when 80 proof whiskey is equally available and is a lot cheaper per ounce. But the point still stands that weed makes folks do irrational things that can't be explained without assuming addiction. A lot more addiction than cough syrup.
So now lets put on our thinking caps and examine a world after legalization. That 6% would double overnite just from people who would use but fear what a conviction would do to their career. Then again from people who would use if they didn't have to deal with the criminal underground. Smokers, for all their other problems (and second hand smoke kicks me square in the NUTS. I hate smokers!) can be productive members of society. Before we chased em all outdoors they didn't even take too much (if any) of a productivity hit. Not sure what would happen if a quarter if the population was baked out of their heads. And unsure on such an important question is bad.
Personally I'd favor legalization of EVERY drug on one condition. That anyone wanting such full liberty signed a statement taking full responsibility for the consequences. That means no welfare, no public funded trips to rehab, nothing. They could buy any insurance they wanted on the private market, but not a dime of the taxpayer's funds. Because total liberty is incompatible with a welfare state. That is my big objection to legalization, it would be great in a Free country but we don't live in one of those anymore.
> Where were the independent securities rating agencies during the recent banking fiasco?
They were rating the paper as AAA rated because everyone was singing from the same hymnal. Home pricing could only go up. The pessimistic scenarios were housing prices only going up 5% annually. So housing was seen as an investment where you couldn't actually lose principal. And home ownership was a good public policy so bending the rules to put as many people as possible in a house was not a problem, especially in light of the wrong assumption that prices always go up. After all housing can't go down, so it can't really hurt to make 'Community Organizers' happy and put people with no ability to pay a note in a house; since when they can't pay the house can be sold over and over again with plenty of transaction fees for everyone.
So the private rating agencies, the government regulators, the business press, the politicians, the great mass of investors, hell darned near everyone bought into the bubble. The uncomfortable reality is no regulation is going to fix the infinite capacity for delusion inherent in the human animal. That notion drives progressives crazy, to the point where they must deny it and build a new mass of government BS and assure themselves the problem is solved because the notion of unsolvable problems inherent in the human condition blows a huge hole in their worldview.
Hell no. And if you hadn't baked your brains like everyone else on/. it seems you would be able to figure that much out for yourself.
Democracy is a stupid and evil notion our Founding Fathers were rightly (see: French Revolution) terrified of. Which is why we weren't given a Democracy, we were instead entrusted with a Republic which we have failed to keep.... but could restore if so inclined.
Democracy is fifty one people voting to piss in the corn flakes of the remaining forty nine. And if everyone actually believes in pure democracy those forty nine victims only get to challenge the accuracy of the voting and have to then just suck it up and accept piss in their corn flakes. Democracy is the plebs discovering they can vote themselves bread and circuses from the public treasury.
No, what I want is the Rule of Law, not the Rule of Men. Well defined Laws specifying in advance what is permissable, even for the State; and where the law is difficult to change. Where even the majority cannot have its way in a momentary spasm of stupidity but if they are hellbent on it they can eventually have their way... evolution in action and all that. Where the State is small and individual liberty large because the State only exists to defend against threats foreign and domestic and to ensure everyone is equal before the Law.
In our original system the notion was that we were Endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. This is an important notion to understand and one that the government schools have spent decades working to cause misunderstanding of. The 1st Amendment does not promise a Free Press or Freedom of Religion; the Second does not grant a RTKBA. Our system presupposes ALL of those Rights to be the birthright of every human ever born. The Bill of Rights is a prohibition against the State infringing those inalienable rights. It means ANY government anywhere that infringes those basic human rights is wicked, unjust and it is never wrong to throw down such an regime. Not just Kings and Dictators,even when it is 'the will of the People(Communism/Socialism/Progressivism/Fascism/etc)', done in obedience to god(Iran), whatever. Even if it really WAS the will of the People, even if not a one man one vote one last time deal. Even a majority of the People lack the moral right to infringe the basic human rights of a minority who wants to remain Free even when the majority are willing to put on their chains joyously.
Too many of US no longer understand the power inherent in the idea of inalienable rights but every despot does, witness how they hate us so. Because even with most of us not understanding it the idea is still embedded in a good bit of our culture and when it gets loose in an oppressed society the results are entirely predictable. Revolution. But because we don't understand it the idea it is often imperfectly passed on or poorly explained, making too many revolutions go wrong and leave places worse off than before when smooth talking assholes twist the idea and make yet another People's Republic.
> The only people who think wind turbines are a good idea are naive Greenists and wind turbine companies.
I dunno, I'm not green and have no ties to turbine companies and I think wind should be part of the mix.
I agree no wind turbine to date has been justifiable on a pure economic basis, without government subsidies nobody would be even thinking of operating one. Economics isn't the only factor at play though. Economics doesn't really have a good model to use to calculate the value of 'cost of handing craploads of cash to people who want to kill us.' That isn't an economic problem, it is a foreign policy one problem but is no less real. So some subsidizing of alternatives can be justified on sound non-economic reasoning.
I'd still prefer building several hundred nuke plants, breeders to recycle the fuel, etc. Make electricity cheap enough it would serve as an economic trigger for R&D into portable storage (synthetic gas, hydrogen, batteries, whatever) to get us off the foreign oil dependency.
> So it's only homicide if the one who dies is a citizen?
Basically yes. With some obvious legal constructs to cover non-citizens legally visiting and such. Any Free form of government is in essence a contract between its members governing what they can do to/with each other and what the State may and may not do. The fundamental unit is the Citizen. If you are a Citizen the Law covers you, if a fetus isn't a Citizen it isn't protected.
Ultimately the abortion argument is going to come down to answering the question of "When does a new Citizen exist?" because the life/choice divide can't be solved with logic or reason; it is a philosophical/religious question. But when does a Citizen exist is something we can attempt to answer and once a Citizen exists it obviously can't be killed without due process. Currently the only guidance the Constitution provides is the "born or naturalized" clause. Once we accept that line of reasoning we can move on to ask whether birth is the right place to draw the
> The Constitution does not grant the Congress an explicitly enumerated power to regulate marriage.
No it doesn't. But it is still one of the more interesting questions the court will eventually have to settle. Both sides can make a strong originalist case. Observe:
The DOMA isn't about marriage per se, it is about clarifying the Full Faith and Credit clause in the Constitution. The word marriage has a specific meaning. Some states have suddenly decided (mostly by judicial fiat, but we now have some states which did it correctly) the word has a different meaning. If State A redefines a word that redefinition is not required to be accepted by State B. So just because two men are "Married" in Vermont does not mean West Virginia has to accept that their marriage laws have been redefined in ways that make a mockery of the purpose of those laws as understood in West Virginia.
The other side just has to mention that it wasn't too many years back that "Marriage" didn't include mixed race couples in quite a few states and the courts ruled that such a marriage was valid in every state. Right there you are most of the way to winning the argument. And Nevada was notorious for it's divorce laws. And marriages involving girls so young it would be statutory rape in most states wasn't illegal so long as you kept that marriage license handy. And finally, had not Utah not been required to renounce bigamy before admission to the Union their marriages would have almost certainly been legal nationwide.
So both sides can make a case, which way to rule? Most cases I can get on my soapbox and declare a winner. Can't on this one.
> I'm not sure what you're trying to prove, but your account of "modern historians" seems to > come out of thin air; no historian within the realm of citation has ever claimed Lincoln > was a Democrat, or that the labels got "swapped" somehow.
Except they do. Oh they don't do it those words but they clearly try to paint the modern Democratic party as the inheritor of the Lincoln legacy on the race relations issue.
> The racist block of poor southern whites simply just stopped voting Dem and stated voting > Republican after the LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act.
That is the theory we are given but I live in the South. The South became Republican as the old Yellow Dog Democrats started dying out. In the main those old guys never forgave the Republicans for Lincoln's "war Crimes", they just finally died out. A few of the less radicalized younger ones eventually flipped parties, mostly due to Reagan not Nixon.
And again, wouldn't you think bigots who are single issue voters on that issue would know the Civil Rights Act (and I think the VRA as well votewise) passed with Republican votes over the fillibuster of Kleagle Byrd and the majority of the Democrats in Congress. We are expected to believe they voted for Nixon over George Wallace? If the bigits were voting for Nixon was Wallace stuffing the ballot boxes to get his numbers?
As for your 'authorities' I wouldn't put much stock in what a NY Democrat has to say about the inner workings of the Republican party and Pat Buchanan is quite mad these days, you do know that don't you.
> People vote for socialists without believing in socialism...
This part of your post is just muddled. Some people are single issue voters. They have their pet issue and vote for whoever promises to support that issue, period. But most people aren't. But they also aren't the dolts you seem to think they are. If people really were as hopeless as you make them to be and they couldn't be educated then the whole notion of self government would be a bad idea.
The parties, in every period, tend to espouse two fairly different philosophies. even when not explicitly stated most voters have a fairly clear notion of what the two positions are. One will more closely align with their positions. That is the party they will be registered with. If neither party is very close they are an "Independent." Because our government schools (by intent) do a poor job of Civics education most people don't know enough to make the best choices and they are a lot more prone to get swayed by personalities but they do still vote their general interests as they see them most of the time.
And right now the two general positions have never been more starkly divided.
One side basically divides people into two groups. A small enlightened elite, fit to rule by right of their superior intelligence and morality and the poor benighted creatures who would collapse into cannibalism without the first group. And it is important that the second group BELIEVE themselves to be helpless and utterly dependent on the first group.
The other camp believes everyone should be free to pursue happiness and that the vast majority of people will find it if we can get the meddling fools in Washington off everyone's back.
What we get is erratic judging because bad precedent piles on previous bad precedent. But it is just post modern twaddle to assert that impartial judging is impossible. There are some pretty clear guideposts to judge the quality of a court's judging by.
what should good judging look like? Here are some rules of thumb.
1. What we want is the Rule of Law and not the Rule of Men. This means we need a dead Constitution, not a living one. The Constitution has to mean what it meant when it was written. Yes it CAN change, but only by the Amendment process, not judges deciding 'society has changed' or 'evolving standards'.
2. The best measure of whether you have the Rule of Law is whether people know what the rules are in advance. The Founders tried to make that possible by building in lots of sane defaults. Then they added the Bill of Rights to add more clarity with lots of "Congress shall pass no law..." and "shall not be infringed" short of language to clearly define limits to the powers of the Federal Government and topped off with the 9th and 10th Amendments to attempt to put the government in a small clearly defined area. Basically, unless it is clearly specified that something IS something the Federal Government controls the default answer is NO, the government can't do it.
It really shouldn't take much thought to figure out how the Supremes SHOULD rule on most questions. The problem is even the most strict originalists lack both the numbers and the courage to break with precedent and clean out most of the Federal government and thus have to weasel their way to slowly try to push the law in originalist directions without wholesale renunciation of precedent.
3. How would a court full of Vulcans or correctly operating expert systems rule? Working correctly the court would be bored to death because everyone on the lower courts would know how the Supreme Court would rule, and even most of the litigants would know, thus few cases would ever be appealed to them. But because with our current broken system neither side has a frickin clue how any given court, including the SCOTUS, will rule we get endless court action. Heck, by the time your case works its way up the makeup of the SCOTUS will probably change.
Some examples might make these ideas more understandable:
Roe v Wade: The Constitution is silent on abortion thus the 10th reserves it as an issue for the States. The Feds can neither outlaw abortion nationwide or forbid the States from outlawing it. Citizenship is defined as 'born or naturalized' so the pro-life argument that a fetus is a baby may or may not have merit, but that a fetus isn't a Citizen is black letter law as the Constitution is currently written.
McCain/Feingold: What part of Congress shall make no law... is beyond the comprehension of the Honorable Senators? Note that the entirety of the Campaign Finance regulatory regime fails this test along with most of the FEC regulatory machinery.
> Alot of Progressive Democrats through WW2 and into the 50s were happy to call themselves racist, > and many Republicans still marginally considered themslves enlightened party-of-Lincoln > non-racists. There was a big realignment of constiuencies around '68, and this tends to skew > the definitional "liberal"/"conservative" meanings.
Not exactly. whne public opinon on racism turned against it the Progressives in the media, academy and the arts did a fast pivot and suddenly racism was a conservative/republican thing. The official histories were rewritten and now Republicans have ALWAYS been racists and Democrats have ALWAYS been the enlightened folk. But it ain't so.
To hear modern 'historians' tell it Lincoln was a Democrat, the labels have just swapped somehow.
Nope. Go look at old history. The Solid South was all Democrat until the late 1970's. Seriously, most Southern states didn't elect their first Republican Governor or Senator until then. All those bigots you see in the grainy newsreels turning water hoses and dogs on people, yup every last one of them was a Democrat.
Democrats hated Lincoln (the first Republican POTUS) even more than that hate Bush (the most recent Republican POTUS). So from Lincoln to Bush the Republicans have a pretty good record on the race issue. Debate all you want about other aspects of the Bush record but the diversity of his administration is not really debatable. Meanwhile Bill Clinton was hailed as the 'first black president' at the time but had a pretty darned monochome group of people around him.
And at this point the doubters will bring up Nixon and his "Southern Strategy." No. Total myth. Nixon was many bad things, stupid wasn't one of them. Go hit wikipedia and examine the election returns. Note the third candidate. Ok, remember that southern bigots HATED Republicans. Hated with a white hot hate that would never die. (the idiots dying off was the way it ended as things turned out) So you are a Southern Yellow Dog Democrat and you have McGovern, Nixon and Wallace to pick from. Oh yea, you are going to pick Nixon. Riight. We are to believe Nixon thought he could out bigot George Wallace without alienating the northern Republicans.
Note that there is ONE Kleagle of the Klan seated in the US Congress. He is not a Republican.
This should be enough to put the "Republicans are racists" myth is put in question. (It can't be 'debunked' in a slashdot post, all I can hope for is to plant some seeds of doubt. It is up to YOU to follow up and learn the Truth for yourself.) Now lets examine the other side a bit more.
As noted above, the south was almost enturely Southern Democrats. But the racism of the Democratic Party was by no means a Southern thang. It permeates the entire 'Progressive' project. Go read Jonah Goldberg's _Liberal Fascism_ to get a full exploration of the connection between today's Democratic Party, the old Progressive movement, the Communists AND the Fascists and Nazis. Yes, including the noxious ideas on race.
In this space lets let one example serve to get the curious asking questions about the accuracy of the history they have been taught. Take Hillary Clinton's 'hero' Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Go dig into this central figure of the Progressive movement a bit. Lets just say it isn't an accident most of their efforts were (and still are) concentrated in the areas with large 'ethnic' populations. Crazy bitch was quite open (as most of the early Progressives were) about her notions regarding culling out the fast breeding but inferior breeds.
> Everyone who thinks they are helping by siding with the Iranian opposition > has a very poor understanding of Iranian politics.
People are risking death over a stolen election. If they succeed I'd suspect they will a) take their new found liberty a bit more seriously than the average American who usually can't even be bothered to vote and b) after getting a taste of what Liberty is all about they just might decide the like it and want more.
Look, I'm a conservative and all, but Kennedy had some things dead on. Like this:
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. 4
This much we pledge--and more."
Now would be a good time to at least stand up and make sure the Iranians know we hope they succeed. And yes I know that too much open support of the rebel forces would backfire. But it would be nice to see our government have the courage give the opposition some sign of support.
And besides, there is always the realpolitik angle, if they collapse into civil war it might slow down their nuke program a bit, buying time to find some solution other than waiting for Israel to solve the problem with high explosives.
Jeeze you Apple zealots with the mod points are the unhoopiest froods around. All the PR says 'yall are the happy shiny folk but ya act like you have a rod up yer ass or something.
Go read the parent post I was riffing on and tell me how the post above was a troll.
> When Apple releases a new OS and says it's not compatible with the old,....
Apple products are virtually unheard of in corporate cube farms. Perhaps these legacy issues you speak of are part of the reason for that. Well that and the fact Apple doesn't even sell a product suitable for a cube farm... maybe we are seeing a pattern?
Apple is only interested in selling to trendy yuppies and flaming homosexuals. Everyone knows that, right? That is why "there's a huge line to suck Steve Jobs' dick." Has nothing to do with Apple's lack of support for legacy softwre, that's just what flaming homosexuals do.
Maybe I'm just missing the point. But I see two use cases for tethering:
1. Once in a while you need net and the only thing that can do it is your phone. But most of the time WiFi does the trick. I can see wanting to do this with a smartphone but the carriers shouldn't have a problem with light use of this sort.
2. You are away from WiFi a lot, or want it as a primary connection. If you have a netbook or laptop handy most of the time why did you get a smartphone? If I were in that situation I'd want the smallest most phonelike phone I could get that supported bluetooth and tethering.
But AT&T Sprint seems to fear large numbers of customers people want to spend serious coin for oversized premium smartphones so they can leave them in their pocket and bang away on a laptop, sucking up gigs of bandwidth they meter by the GB anyway.
> I feel like you have something against people who are as you refer to them "nutter enviros"
Because they a) aren't living in reality and b) lie in that they refuse to discuss their actual goals making rational discourse impossible. If I'm right that Greens ACTUALLY want to disassemble our energy consuming civilization but only speak of their actual goals when they think they are talking amongst themselves it makes it kinda pointless to argue whether an energy source is practical, safe, etc since they object to it on a totally different basis.
> Some of your examples like ethanol were always the wet dream of farm oligarchs.
Of course big agra liked the idea and now that they have had a taste of the money aren't likely to give it up without a fight. But they didn't start it, I was around back when that crap got started and it was starry eyed hippies questing for "Renewable energy."
> Why is being concerned about rivers and lakes "whinging about fish?"
Because ALL energy sources have consequences. Even if the Greens aren't total liars they refuse to deal with the world as it is. If I announced a new energy source tomorrow based on Unicorn farts the Greens would be partnered up with PETA by tomorrow and would be condemning it as cruel to have poor Unicorns in stalls with hoses up their bum. In the end it comes down to choices, pay trillions to the Middle Eastern terror states or build nuke plants. Pay trillions to prop up known human rights abusers or possibly abuse fish. Dunno about you but Humans > Fish in my priority list and I trust us to build and operate safe nuke plants a lot more than I trust what our oil money is funding in Iran about now.
> The 5th largest economy in the world, and the 2nd largest EU economy.
> How dare they have any say!
Nope. First it isn't just about economic power, and they certainly weren't (they were a smoking ruin along with everything else in Europe) #5 when they were given that veto wielding seat; it was a pure legacy thing. Germany was and is far more inherently powerful but for obvious reasons was not offered a permanent seat. Second they should have lost it along with GB when the EU became a political (vs the Euro economic only stuff much earlier) Union and been replaced with a single UN seat for the EU. Otherwise the US needs to get 50 General Assembly seats, along with one Security Council seat with a veto. Then the fifth permanent seat could go to a new up and coming nation, perhaps India?
> Um, they could have threatened nuclear war for violating the UN charter.
Another poster has already ridiculed you over the silly notion that the UN has the capability to nuke anyone. I want to ridicule you over an even more obvious problem. We have a veto. That is the problem with the UN, it was designed to ensure nothing actually got done. The fricking French have a veto.
And besides, Saddam was in flagrant violation of an sackful of UN Resolutions and they couldn't be stirred to react. So the worst case scenario is they could have attempted to pass a sternly worded Resolution against the US... which we would have vetoed. And had Bush been in a mood to demonstrate the uselessness of the UN he could have instructed our Ambassador to let em pass their silly Resolution and then walked to the nearest lectern and said "Screw em, they refuse to enforce the decade old Resolutions against Saddam so they can sit and spin while I ignore this one as well."
In the end that is the problem with the UN, everyone designing it knew they were designing a Parliment of Tyrants so they made sure it was toothless, thus turning it into a mostly harmless masturbatorium. Yes, really. Do the math; Far more than half the nation states in the UN were and still are obviously unfree but political correctness demands one nation one vote thus Evil must carry the day. Thus it was rendered ineffectual.
I remember when hydroelectric was still hailed as almost an ultimate green tech, "Free energy from water!" Before the whinging about fish, before the land use issues, etc. These days it is considered as anything but green.
I remember when ethanol was THE replacement for gas. Actually try to make a few million gallons of the stuff and the problems become apparent enough for even a green idiot to see. Although I saw the problem a decade ago. We don't have enough farmland to feed both the world and our cars.
Solar was THE bee's knees when it was Kalifornicators using government subsidies to put collectors on their roof to get bragging rights over their neighbors over how 'enviromentally aware' they were. Try to scale it up to industrial production and there isn't ANYWHERE you can put square miles of collectors where some insignificant critter doesn't live... and might not thrive anymore if you turn it's desert habitat into cool shade under the solar collectors.
Plug in electric cars are another great impractical luxury good to get plenty of egoboo out of owning.... and being seen to own; so long as too many people don't try and actually own one. Then the question of where the hell is all of that additional electrical generating capacity going to come from needs an answer and it probably won't be too green.
Eh? Dunno about you but the Air Force One gag included made it pretty clear to me the original poster was making a joke out of it, which is the correct response.
> Honestly, will we ever get our national cojones back?
Forget the cojones, how about some sanity and common sense?
Now getting back to the topic......
Look folks, this isn't rocket science. Modern civilization isn't possible without large quantities of energy in some form. The current situation is clearly unsustainable, depending on oil from places that hate our guts and use our dollars to destroy our civilization is insane. Ok, if we can agree on that we can move to the question of what should replace foreign oil. And it is a pretty short list:
1. More domestic production. Nice short term solution, I support it even; but Drill, Baby Drill! ain't nothing but a stopgap measure at best.
2. Something Green. Ok, this kite thing is typical of the category. Pie in the sky, impractical, decades away and will cost multiples what we pay for energy now. Assuming it can even be made to work at all. Again, if one of these notions eventually pans out, great. For the record I'm all for Unicorns and kittens too. But do we really need to put all our hopes on one of these miracles arriving in time to save us?
Especially in light of the hate enviros start heaping on any alternative source that begins to become practical? Hydro? NO! Already got nutter enviros against geothermal. How in the wide wide world of sports can an enviro be against geothermal! There are other reasons it hasn't become commonplace, but environmental concerns? Got enviros lining up against large scale solar. Wind turbines, besides Sen. Kennedy not wanting to see em off HIS beachfront, are noisy, ugly and kill birds. Oh no, wind isn't green enough. And we are laughing now about kites but if actual production started lighting up the grid you can bet enviros would have objections and they wouldn't be joking. And laughing at THEM gets you branded a 'hater' who wants to destroy the precious earth.
I think we have enough evidence to draw a conclusion: By the time a green tech gets into actual production it isn't green anymore. The real world at work? Or perhaps we need to understand the underlying truth. Greens don't want us to find innovative new sources of energy to continue our lifestyle, they want to make energy scarce so as to reshape our society along lines THEY find more pleasing. We aren't to get a vote in this, we aren't even supposed to know we have other options because we can't be trusted to make the 'correct' choice.
And meanwhile, while we sit around and beat off over the latest green tech fresh from some research project we actually DO NOTHING other than continue to send cash to help destabilize the middle east a little more.
3. We build the crap out of modern safe designs for fission plants and let that hold us until fusion finally gets into production.
> California has been growing in population at an incredible rate.
Not quite. California is starting to experience net negative population growth, even allowing for illegals to make up some of the losses. California has gained house seats in every Census from 1930 forward... but probably won't in 2010 and will more than likely lose one.
And then you start making my point for me while thinking you are disagreeing.
> The blue parts of Colorado are growing the fastest and gaining the most jobs.
Yes, and a good many of that growth is coming at California's expense as people and jobs flee from the asylum. And as I said origionally they are bringing the problem with them in that they are still voting blue team. Because bluntly, THEY are the problem. Classic case of the problem with intellectuals. Yes you need them but if you get too many of them they cause Socialism and ruin for reasons which have been explored in enough depth in the literature that I won't bother with a Cliff's Notes summary here.
> So home owners fight the city when they try to pave their roads.
I'd suspect the reason homeowners hight pavement is they know why the city wants to pave the road. Up until the housing bubble burst it almost certainly meant some developer had bought some property nearby and wanted a nice paved road into his new planned community of McMansions. I.e. there goes the nice quiet neighborhood the locals probably recently moved out of California to get.
> Yeah, Democrats, I'm sure that's the reason. It had nothing at all to do with > the auto industry and loss of jobs or anything like that.
Yea, it has everything to do with loss of jobs and the auto industry. Let me keep it simple enough someone with a government schooling should be able to follow along. Democrats destroy jobs. The greater tehir majorities and the longer the time they hold it the worse the damage. Go plot the demographic trendlines yourself if you don't believe me. The Bluer the state and longer it has been blue the more seats it has lost in the last couple of Census reallocations. The Red states have been picking up seats. People are voting with their feet. I just wish the fools would realize WHY they had to move and thus not bring the problem with them by electing Democrats in their new home.
There isn't much of a problem in the 'auto industry' if by auto industry you mean production of autos. They just aren't being made in Michigan anymore, they are being built in Right to Work states with lower tax structures in factories where the root of the corporate ownership tree is in Tokyo instead of New York[1]. Of course with the recession and all, they are all feeling some pain about now.
Now riddle me this: With an existing industrial base and lots of experienced labor available, why does a Japanese automaker decide to skip Michigan when locating a plant in the US and instead go to the South where none of those advantages exist? Why do they do a greenfield project along the Interstate in the middle of nowhere when they could buy a closed plant in an area with thousands of unemployed workers with exactly the skills they need? When you can answer that question you will have taken your first step towards enlightenment.
[1] Hint, the 'Detroit automaker' bankruptcies are being filed in NY.
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> What's being debated is if its enough to cause global warming...
Exactly. Because while you can measure an effect in the lab it really doesn't matter much in the real world where CO2 is in parts per million and CH4 is in parts per billion. So many other factors operate on scales so much larger than any warming effect those trace gasses will cause as to not matter much. A few clouds more or less totally swamps greenhouse warming. A little more or less solar output totally swamps the greenhouse effect. And so on.
> There's also no harm in feeding cows healthier diets, and breeding them to digest more completely so they produce less methane.
Not at all. But any such change should be based on sound science, economics and consumer preferences not manufactured scare campaigns with hidden agendas.
> would be enough to balance methane emissions with the natural methane sinks..
Who cares? The biggest 'sink' is it's seven year half life in the atmosphere. That means that since we have been maintaining huge populations of cows for several times the half life of their belches/farts the level is pretty much as high as it will ever be unless we add some new high volume source. Meaning we ARE in balance, Methane levels aren't likely to rise from where they are now.
> You can get the same effect by paving over landfills and building methane turbines to
> burn all that garbage gas and turn it into electricity, though you'd have to get at
> least 50% of all landfills to balance things out. And, why not do both?
And I'd like a pony while you are at it. If electricity could be produced at a profit by burning methane from garbage someone would probably be doing it. So I am to assume you are either clueless on economics or you do understand that you are proposing a government subsidy to produce energy at a loss to let greens feel good about how much they care about the environment.... when they are spending other people's money. So which is it? Ignorant or Evil?
Because make no mistake, taking random people's money and wasting it to give a few greens an egoboo is evil. It is a waste because if left in the rightful owner's possession that money would create economic growth instead of being lost on a feel good project that produces a net negative economic effect. In case you haven't noticed we have a major recession going on right now, wasting money only prolongs the pain.
Listen up numbskulls, cows belching/farting aren't a problem.
Even if you buy the CO2 == Global Warming theory, and the debate on that that is far from decided, cows aren't a problem. The whole carbon theory rests on the release of long sequestered carbon in the form of fossil fuels increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere. And that much has both science and common sense to back it, extracting and burning billions of tons of hydrocarbons has increased the CO2 level in the atmosphere.
Cows are eating plant (and other stuff you really don't want to know about) matter which fixed carbon out of the environment recently. They belch/fart/poop most of it right back into the circle of life where it goes round and round. Not a problem except to the extent fossil fuels are powering much of the cycle in the form of fertilizer to grow feed, move the cows/meat around, etc. but those are general problems with dependency on hydrocarbons that have been buried for millions of years.
Some enviro whack jobs say the methane is a 'greenhouse gas' but that is hard to buy since it is less than two parts per million currently. Even if we take the "twenty times the greenhouse effect as CO2" at face value that works out to rounding error compared to all of the other factors that influence the global environment.
So go have some cow and don't let the greens lay yet another guilt trip on you. Beef: It's what's for dinner!
> it is less addictive than most cough syrups.
There are good arguments for legalization but idiots like you spewing stuff that doesn't pass the most basic smell test aren't helping your cause.
Ok, survey says 6% of the US population uses a product that is illegal and has enough enforcement that it accounts for a fair percentage of inmates in prison. They are willing to deal with the criminal underworld to get the stuff, pay black market prices and risk jail, loss of their job in many cases, etc. What percentage of the population is chugging Nyquil?
Yes the fact booze is legal again goes a long way to account for the fact most people have more sense than to chug 20 proof Nyquil when 80 proof whiskey is equally available and is a lot cheaper per ounce. But the point still stands that weed makes folks do irrational things that can't be explained without assuming addiction. A lot more addiction than cough syrup.
So now lets put on our thinking caps and examine a world after legalization. That 6% would double overnite just from people who would use but fear what a conviction would do to their career. Then again from people who would use if they didn't have to deal with the criminal underground. Smokers, for all their other problems (and second hand smoke kicks me square in the NUTS. I hate smokers!) can be productive members of society. Before we chased em all outdoors they didn't even take too much (if any) of a productivity hit. Not sure what would happen if a quarter if the population was baked out of their heads. And unsure on such an important question is bad.
Personally I'd favor legalization of EVERY drug on one condition. That anyone wanting such full liberty signed a statement taking full responsibility for the consequences. That means no welfare, no public funded trips to rehab, nothing. They could buy any insurance they wanted on the private market, but not a dime of the taxpayer's funds. Because total liberty is incompatible with a welfare state. That is my big objection to legalization, it would be great in a Free country but we don't live in one of those anymore.
> Where were the independent securities rating agencies during the recent banking fiasco?
They were rating the paper as AAA rated because everyone was singing from the same hymnal. Home pricing could only go up. The pessimistic scenarios were housing prices only going up 5% annually. So housing was seen as an investment where you couldn't actually lose principal. And home ownership was a good public policy so bending the rules to put as many people as possible in a house was not a problem, especially in light of the wrong assumption that prices always go up. After all housing can't go down, so it can't really hurt to make 'Community Organizers' happy and put people with no ability to pay a note in a house; since when they can't pay the house can be sold over and over again with plenty of transaction fees for everyone.
So the private rating agencies, the government regulators, the business press, the politicians, the great mass of investors, hell darned near everyone bought into the bubble. The uncomfortable reality is no regulation is going to fix the infinite capacity for delusion inherent in the human animal. That notion drives progressives crazy, to the point where they must deny it and build a new mass of government BS and assure themselves the problem is solved because the notion of unsolvable problems inherent in the human condition blows a huge hole in their worldview.
> If you want real democracy,
Hell no. And if you hadn't baked your brains like everyone else on /. it seems you would be able to figure that much out for yourself.
Democracy is a stupid and evil notion our Founding Fathers were rightly (see: French Revolution) terrified of. Which is why we weren't given a Democracy, we were instead entrusted with a Republic which we have failed to keep.... but could restore if so inclined.
Democracy is fifty one people voting to piss in the corn flakes of the remaining forty nine. And if everyone actually believes in pure democracy those forty nine victims only get to challenge the accuracy of the voting and have to then just suck it up and accept piss in their corn flakes. Democracy is the plebs discovering they can vote themselves bread and circuses from the public treasury.
No, what I want is the Rule of Law, not the Rule of Men. Well defined Laws specifying in advance what is permissable, even for the State; and where the law is difficult to change. Where even the majority cannot have its way in a momentary spasm of stupidity but if they are hellbent on it they can eventually have their way... evolution in action and all that. Where the State is small and individual liberty large because the State only exists to defend against threats foreign and domestic and to ensure everyone is equal before the Law.
In our original system the notion was that we were Endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. This is an important notion to understand and one that the government schools have spent decades working to cause misunderstanding of. The 1st Amendment does not promise a Free Press or Freedom of Religion; the Second does not grant a RTKBA. Our system presupposes ALL of those Rights to be the birthright of every human ever born. The Bill of Rights is a prohibition against the State infringing those inalienable rights. It means ANY government anywhere that infringes those basic human rights is wicked, unjust and it is never wrong to throw down such an regime. Not just Kings and Dictators,even when it is 'the will of the People(Communism/Socialism/Progressivism/Fascism/etc)', done in obedience to god(Iran), whatever. Even if it really WAS the will of the People, even if not a one man one vote one last time deal. Even a majority of the People lack the moral right to infringe the basic human rights of a minority who wants to remain Free even when the majority are willing to put on their chains joyously.
Too many of US no longer understand the power inherent in the idea of inalienable rights but every despot does, witness how they hate us so. Because even with most of us not understanding it the idea is still embedded in a good bit of our culture and when it gets loose in an oppressed society the results are entirely predictable. Revolution. But because we don't understand it the idea it is often imperfectly passed on or poorly explained, making too many revolutions go wrong and leave places worse off than before when smooth talking assholes twist the idea and make yet another People's Republic.
> The only people who think wind turbines are a good idea are naive Greenists and wind turbine companies.
I dunno, I'm not green and have no ties to turbine companies and I think wind should be part of the mix.
I agree no wind turbine to date has been justifiable on a pure economic basis, without government subsidies nobody would be even thinking of operating one. Economics isn't the only factor at play though. Economics doesn't really have a good model to use to calculate the value of 'cost of handing craploads of cash to people who want to kill us.' That isn't an economic problem, it is a foreign policy one problem but is no less real. So some subsidizing of alternatives can be justified on sound non-economic reasoning.
I'd still prefer building several hundred nuke plants, breeders to recycle the fuel, etc. Make electricity cheap enough it would serve as an economic trigger for R&D into portable storage (synthetic gas, hydrogen, batteries, whatever) to get us off the foreign oil dependency.
> So it's only homicide if the one who dies is a citizen?
Basically yes. With some obvious legal constructs to cover non-citizens legally visiting and such. Any Free form of government is in essence a contract between its members governing what they can do to/with each other and what the State may and may not do. The fundamental unit is the Citizen. If you are a Citizen the Law covers you, if a fetus isn't a Citizen it isn't protected.
Ultimately the abortion argument is going to come down to answering the question of "When does a new Citizen exist?" because the life/choice divide can't be solved with logic or reason; it is a philosophical/religious question. But when does a Citizen exist is something we can attempt to answer and once a Citizen exists it obviously can't be killed without due process. Currently the only guidance the Constitution provides is the "born or naturalized" clause. Once we accept that line of reasoning we can move on to ask whether birth is the right place to draw the
> The Constitution does not grant the Congress an explicitly enumerated power to regulate marriage.
No it doesn't. But it is still one of the more interesting questions the court will eventually have to settle. Both sides can make a strong originalist case. Observe:
The DOMA isn't about marriage per se, it is about clarifying the Full Faith and Credit clause in the Constitution. The word marriage has a specific meaning. Some states have suddenly decided (mostly by judicial fiat, but we now have some states which did it correctly) the word has a different meaning. If State A redefines a word that redefinition is not required to be accepted by State B. So just because two men are "Married" in Vermont does not mean West Virginia has to accept that their marriage laws have been redefined in ways that make a mockery of the purpose of those laws as understood in West Virginia.
The other side just has to mention that it wasn't too many years back that "Marriage" didn't include mixed race couples in quite a few states and the courts ruled that such a marriage was valid in every state. Right there you are most of the way to winning the argument. And Nevada was notorious for it's divorce laws. And marriages involving girls so young it would be statutory rape in most states wasn't illegal so long as you kept that marriage license handy. And finally, had not Utah not been required to renounce bigamy before admission to the Union their marriages would have almost certainly been legal nationwide.
So both sides can make a case, which way to rule? Most cases I can get on my soapbox and declare a winner. Can't on this one.
> I'm not sure what you're trying to prove, but your account of "modern historians" seems to
> come out of thin air; no historian within the realm of citation has ever claimed Lincoln
> was a Democrat, or that the labels got "swapped" somehow.
Except they do. Oh they don't do it those words but they clearly try to paint the modern Democratic party as the inheritor of the Lincoln legacy on the race relations issue.
> The racist block of poor southern whites simply just stopped voting Dem and stated voting
> Republican after the LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act.
That is the theory we are given but I live in the South. The South became Republican as the old Yellow Dog Democrats started dying out. In the main those old guys never forgave the Republicans for Lincoln's "war Crimes", they just finally died out. A few of the less radicalized younger ones eventually flipped parties, mostly due to Reagan not Nixon.
And again, wouldn't you think bigots who are single issue voters on that issue would know the Civil Rights Act (and I think the VRA as well votewise) passed with Republican votes over the fillibuster of Kleagle Byrd and the majority of the Democrats in Congress. We are expected to believe they voted for Nixon over George Wallace? If the bigits were voting for Nixon was Wallace stuffing the ballot boxes to get his numbers?
As for your 'authorities' I wouldn't put much stock in what a NY Democrat has to say about the inner workings of the Republican party and Pat Buchanan is quite mad these days, you do know that don't you.
> People vote for socialists without believing in socialism...
This part of your post is just muddled. Some people are single issue voters. They have their pet issue and vote for whoever promises to support that issue, period. But most people aren't. But they also aren't the dolts you seem to think they are. If people really were as hopeless as you make them to be and they couldn't be educated then the whole notion of self government would be a bad idea.
The parties, in every period, tend to espouse two fairly different philosophies. even when not explicitly stated most voters have a fairly clear notion of what the two positions are. One will more closely align with their positions. That is the party they will be registered with. If neither party is very close they are an "Independent." Because our government schools (by intent) do a poor job of Civics education most people don't know enough to make the best choices and they are a lot more prone to get swayed by personalities but they do still vote their general interests as they see them most of the time.
And right now the two general positions have never been more starkly divided.
One side basically divides people into two groups. A small enlightened elite, fit to rule by right of their superior intelligence and morality and the poor benighted creatures who would collapse into cannibalism without the first group. And it is important that the second group BELIEVE themselves to be helpless and utterly dependent on the first group.
The other camp believes everyone should be free to pursue happiness and that the vast majority of people will find it if we can get the meddling fools in Washington off everyone's back.
What we get is erratic judging because bad precedent piles on previous bad precedent. But it is just post modern twaddle to assert that impartial judging is impossible. There are some pretty clear guideposts to judge the quality of a court's judging by.
what should good judging look like? Here are some rules of thumb.
1. What we want is the Rule of Law and not the Rule of Men. This means we need a dead Constitution, not a living one. The Constitution has to mean what it meant when it was written. Yes it CAN change, but only by the Amendment process, not judges deciding 'society has changed' or 'evolving standards'.
2. The best measure of whether you have the Rule of Law is whether people know what the rules are in advance. The Founders tried to make that possible by building in lots of sane defaults. Then they added the Bill of Rights to add more clarity with lots of "Congress shall pass no law..." and "shall not be infringed" short of language to clearly define limits to the powers of the Federal Government and topped off with the 9th and 10th Amendments to attempt to put the government in a small clearly defined area. Basically, unless it is clearly specified that something IS something the Federal Government controls the default answer is NO, the government can't do it.
It really shouldn't take much thought to figure out how the Supremes SHOULD rule on most questions. The problem is even the most strict originalists lack both the numbers and the courage to break with precedent and clean out most of the Federal government and thus have to weasel their way to slowly try to push the law in originalist directions without wholesale renunciation of precedent.
3. How would a court full of Vulcans or correctly operating expert systems rule? Working correctly the court would be bored to death because everyone on the lower courts would know how the Supreme Court would rule, and even most of the litigants would know, thus few cases would ever be appealed to them. But because with our current broken system neither side has a frickin clue how any given court, including the SCOTUS, will rule we get endless court action. Heck, by the time your case works its way up the makeup of the SCOTUS will probably change.
Some examples might make these ideas more understandable:
Roe v Wade: The Constitution is silent on abortion thus the 10th reserves it as an issue for the States. The Feds can neither outlaw abortion nationwide or forbid the States from outlawing it. Citizenship is defined as 'born or naturalized' so the pro-life argument that a fetus is a baby may or may not have merit, but that a fetus isn't a Citizen is black letter law as the Constitution is currently written.
McCain/Feingold: What part of Congress shall make no law... is beyond the comprehension of the Honorable Senators? Note that the entirety of the Campaign Finance regulatory regime fails this test along with most of the FEC regulatory machinery.
> Alot of Progressive Democrats through WW2 and into the 50s were happy to call themselves racist,
> and many Republicans still marginally considered themslves enlightened party-of-Lincoln
> non-racists. There was a big realignment of constiuencies around '68, and this tends to skew
> the definitional "liberal"/"conservative" meanings.
Not exactly. whne public opinon on racism turned against it the Progressives in the media, academy and the arts did a fast pivot and suddenly racism was a conservative/republican thing. The official histories were rewritten and now Republicans have ALWAYS been racists and Democrats have ALWAYS been the enlightened folk. But it ain't so.
To hear modern 'historians' tell it Lincoln was a Democrat, the labels have just swapped somehow.
Nope. Go look at old history. The Solid South was all Democrat until the late 1970's. Seriously, most Southern states didn't elect their first Republican Governor or Senator until then. All those bigots you see in the grainy newsreels turning water hoses and dogs on people, yup every last one of them was a Democrat.
Democrats hated Lincoln (the first Republican POTUS) even more than that hate Bush (the most recent Republican POTUS). So from Lincoln to Bush the Republicans have a pretty good record on the race issue. Debate all you want about other aspects of the Bush record but the diversity of his administration is not really debatable. Meanwhile Bill Clinton was hailed as the 'first black president' at the time but had a pretty darned monochome group of people around him.
And at this point the doubters will bring up Nixon and his "Southern Strategy." No. Total myth. Nixon was many bad things, stupid wasn't one of them. Go hit wikipedia and examine the election returns. Note the third candidate. Ok, remember that southern bigots HATED Republicans. Hated with a white hot hate that would never die. (the idiots dying off was the way it ended as things turned out) So you are a Southern Yellow Dog Democrat and you have McGovern, Nixon and Wallace to pick from. Oh yea, you are going to pick Nixon. Riight. We are to believe Nixon thought he could out bigot George Wallace without alienating the northern Republicans.
Note that there is ONE Kleagle of the Klan seated in the US Congress. He is not a Republican.
This should be enough to put the "Republicans are racists" myth is put in question. (It can't be 'debunked' in a slashdot post, all I can hope for is to plant some seeds of doubt. It is up to YOU to follow up and learn the Truth for yourself.) Now lets examine the other side a bit more.
As noted above, the south was almost enturely Southern Democrats. But the racism of the Democratic Party was by no means a Southern thang. It permeates the entire 'Progressive' project. Go read Jonah Goldberg's _Liberal Fascism_ to get a full exploration of the connection between today's Democratic Party, the old Progressive movement, the Communists AND the Fascists and Nazis. Yes, including the noxious ideas on race.
In this space lets let one example serve to get the curious asking questions about the accuracy of the history they have been taught. Take Hillary Clinton's 'hero' Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Go dig into this central figure of the Progressive movement a bit. Lets just say it isn't an accident most of their efforts were (and still are) concentrated in the areas with large 'ethnic' populations. Crazy bitch was quite open (as most of the early Progressives were) about her notions regarding culling out the fast breeding but inferior breeds.
> Everyone who thinks they are helping by siding with the Iranian opposition
> has a very poor understanding of Iranian politics.
People are risking death over a stolen election. If they succeed I'd suspect they will a) take their new found liberty a bit more seriously than the average American who usually can't even be bothered to vote and b) after getting a taste of what Liberty is all about they just might decide the like it and want more.
Look, I'm a conservative and all, but Kennedy had some things dead on. Like this:
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. 4
This much we pledge--and more."
Now would be a good time to at least stand up and make sure the Iranians know we hope they succeed. And yes I know that too much open support of the rebel forces would backfire. But it would be nice to see our government have the courage give the opposition some sign of support.
And besides, there is always the realpolitik angle, if they collapse into civil war it might slow down their nuke program a bit, buying time to find some solution other than waiting for Israel to solve the problem with high explosives.
Jeeze you Apple zealots with the mod points are the unhoopiest froods around. All the PR says 'yall are the happy shiny folk but ya act like you have a rod up yer ass or something.
Go read the parent post I was riffing on and tell me how the post above was a troll.
> Obviously you are a member of Dogbert's New Ruling Class.
And obviously I'm a retard.... Of course that should be "Obviously you aren't a member...."
> Let's keep it SFW, guys. None of this backwoods paraphilia.
Obviously you are a member of Dogbert's New Ruling Class.
> When Apple releases a new OS and says it's not compatible with the old,....
Apple products are virtually unheard of in corporate cube farms. Perhaps these legacy issues you speak of are part of the reason for that. Well that and the fact Apple doesn't even sell a product suitable for a cube farm... maybe we are seeing a pattern?
Apple is only interested in selling to trendy yuppies and flaming homosexuals. Everyone knows that, right? That is why "there's a huge line to suck Steve Jobs' dick." Has nothing to do with Apple's lack of support for legacy softwre, that's just what flaming homosexuals do.
Maybe I'm just missing the point. But I see two use cases for tethering:
1. Once in a while you need net and the only thing that can do it is your phone. But most of the time WiFi does the trick. I can see wanting to do this with a smartphone but the carriers shouldn't have a problem with light use of this sort.
2. You are away from WiFi a lot, or want it as a primary connection. If you have a netbook or laptop handy most of the time why did you get a smartphone? If I were in that situation I'd want the smallest most phonelike phone I could get that supported bluetooth and tethering.
But AT&T Sprint seems to fear large numbers of customers people want to spend serious coin for oversized premium smartphones so they can leave them in their pocket and bang away on a laptop, sucking up gigs of bandwidth they meter by the GB anyway.
> I feel like you have something against people who are as you refer to them "nutter enviros"
Because they a) aren't living in reality and b) lie in that they refuse to discuss their actual goals making rational discourse impossible. If I'm right that Greens ACTUALLY want to disassemble our energy consuming civilization but only speak of their actual goals when they think they are talking amongst themselves it makes it kinda pointless to argue whether an energy source is practical, safe, etc since they object to it on a totally different basis.
> Some of your examples like ethanol were always the wet dream of farm oligarchs.
Of course big agra liked the idea and now that they have had a taste of the money aren't likely to give it up without a fight. But they didn't start it, I was around back when that crap got started and it was starry eyed hippies questing for "Renewable energy."
> Why is being concerned about rivers and lakes "whinging about fish?"
Because ALL energy sources have consequences. Even if the Greens aren't total liars they refuse to deal with the world as it is. If I announced a new energy source tomorrow based on Unicorn farts the Greens would be partnered up with PETA by tomorrow and would be condemning it as cruel to have poor Unicorns in stalls with hoses up their bum. In the end it comes down to choices, pay trillions to the Middle Eastern terror states or build nuke plants. Pay trillions to prop up known human rights abusers or possibly abuse fish. Dunno about you but Humans > Fish in my priority list and I trust us to build and operate safe nuke plants a lot more than I trust what our oil money is funding in Iran about now.
> The 5th largest economy in the world, and the 2nd largest EU economy.
> How dare they have any say!
Nope. First it isn't just about economic power, and they certainly weren't (they were a smoking ruin along with everything else in Europe) #5 when they were given that veto wielding seat; it was a pure legacy thing. Germany was and is far more inherently powerful but for obvious reasons was not offered a permanent seat. Second they should have lost it along with GB when the EU became a political (vs the Euro economic only stuff much earlier) Union and been replaced with a single UN seat for the EU. Otherwise the US needs to get 50 General Assembly seats, along with one Security Council seat with a veto. Then the fifth permanent seat could go to a new up and coming nation, perhaps India?
> Um, they could have threatened nuclear war for violating the UN charter.
Another poster has already ridiculed you over the silly notion that the UN has the capability to nuke anyone. I want to ridicule you over an even more obvious problem. We have a veto. That is the problem with the UN, it was designed to ensure nothing actually got done. The fricking French have a veto.
And besides, Saddam was in flagrant violation of an sackful of UN Resolutions and they couldn't be stirred to react. So the worst case scenario is they could have attempted to pass a sternly worded Resolution against the US... which we would have vetoed. And had Bush been in a mood to demonstrate the uselessness of the UN he could have instructed our Ambassador to let em pass their silly Resolution and then walked to the nearest lectern and said "Screw em, they refuse to enforce the decade old Resolutions against Saddam so they can sit and spin while I ignore this one as well."
In the end that is the problem with the UN, everyone designing it knew they were designing a Parliment of Tyrants so they made sure it was toothless, thus turning it into a mostly harmless masturbatorium. Yes, really. Do the math; Far more than half the nation states in the UN were and still are obviously unfree but political correctness demands one nation one vote thus Evil must carry the day. Thus it was rendered ineffectual.
> Really? Name one.
Didn't I name enough in the original post?
I remember when hydroelectric was still hailed as almost an ultimate green tech, "Free energy from water!" Before the whinging about fish, before the land use issues, etc. These days it is considered as anything but green.
I remember when ethanol was THE replacement for gas. Actually try to make a few million gallons of the stuff and the problems become apparent enough for even a green idiot to see. Although I saw the problem a decade ago. We don't have enough farmland to feed both the world and our cars.
Solar was THE bee's knees when it was Kalifornicators using government subsidies to put collectors on their roof to get bragging rights over their neighbors over how 'enviromentally aware' they were. Try to scale it up to industrial production and there isn't ANYWHERE you can put square miles of collectors where some insignificant critter doesn't live... and might not thrive anymore if you turn it's desert habitat into cool shade under the solar collectors.
Plug in electric cars are another great impractical luxury good to get plenty of egoboo out of owning.... and being seen to own; so long as too many people don't try and actually own one. Then the question of where the hell is all of that additional electrical generating capacity going to come from needs an answer and it probably won't be too green.
> America circa 2009: "OMG terrorists!"
Eh? Dunno about you but the Air Force One gag included made it pretty clear to me the original poster was making a joke out of it, which is the correct response.
> Honestly, will we ever get our national cojones back?
Forget the cojones, how about some sanity and common sense?
Now getting back to the topic......
Look folks, this isn't rocket science. Modern civilization isn't possible without large quantities of energy in some form. The current situation is clearly unsustainable, depending on oil from places that hate our guts and use our dollars to destroy our civilization is insane. Ok, if we can agree on that we can move to the question of what should replace foreign oil. And it is a pretty short list:
1. More domestic production. Nice short term solution, I support it even; but Drill, Baby Drill! ain't nothing but a stopgap measure at best.
2. Something Green. Ok, this kite thing is typical of the category. Pie in the sky, impractical, decades away and will cost multiples what we pay for energy now. Assuming it can even be made to work at all. Again, if one of these notions eventually pans out, great. For the record I'm all for Unicorns and kittens too. But do we really need to put all our hopes on one of these miracles arriving in time to save us?
Especially in light of the hate enviros start heaping on any alternative source that begins to become practical? Hydro? NO! Already got nutter enviros against geothermal. How in the wide wide world of sports can an enviro be against geothermal! There are other reasons it hasn't become commonplace, but environmental concerns? Got enviros lining up against large scale solar. Wind turbines, besides Sen. Kennedy not wanting to see em off HIS beachfront, are noisy, ugly and kill birds. Oh no, wind isn't green enough. And we are laughing now about kites but if actual production started lighting up the grid you can bet enviros would have objections and they wouldn't be joking. And laughing at THEM gets you branded a 'hater' who wants to destroy the precious earth.
I think we have enough evidence to draw a conclusion: By the time a green tech gets into actual production it isn't green anymore. The real world at work? Or perhaps we need to understand the underlying truth. Greens don't want us to find innovative new sources of energy to continue our lifestyle, they want to make energy scarce so as to reshape our society along lines THEY find more pleasing. We aren't to get a vote in this, we aren't even supposed to know we have other options because we can't be trusted to make the 'correct' choice.
And meanwhile, while we sit around and beat off over the latest green tech fresh from some research project we actually DO NOTHING other than continue to send cash to help destabilize the middle east a little more.
3. We build the crap out of modern safe designs for fission plants and let that hold us until fusion finally gets into production.
> California has been growing in population at an incredible rate.
Not quite. California is starting to experience net negative population growth, even allowing for illegals to make up some of the losses. California has gained house seats in every Census from 1930 forward... but probably won't in 2010 and will more than likely lose one.
And then you start making my point for me while thinking you are disagreeing.
> The blue parts of Colorado are growing the fastest and gaining the most jobs.
Yes, and a good many of that growth is coming at California's expense as people and jobs flee from the asylum. And as I said origionally they are bringing the problem with them in that they are still voting blue team. Because bluntly, THEY are the problem. Classic case of the problem with intellectuals. Yes you need them but if you get too many of them they cause Socialism and ruin for reasons which have been explored in enough depth in the literature that I won't bother with a Cliff's Notes summary here.
> So home owners fight the city when they try to pave their roads.
I'd suspect the reason homeowners hight pavement is they know why the city wants to pave the road. Up until the housing bubble burst it almost certainly meant some developer had bought some property nearby and wanted a nice paved road into his new planned community of McMansions. I.e. there goes the nice quiet neighborhood the locals probably recently moved out of California to get.
> Yeah, Democrats, I'm sure that's the reason. It had nothing at all to do with
> the auto industry and loss of jobs or anything like that.
Yea, it has everything to do with loss of jobs and the auto industry. Let me keep it simple enough someone with a government schooling should be able to follow along. Democrats destroy jobs. The greater tehir majorities and the longer the time they hold it the worse the damage. Go plot the demographic trendlines yourself if you don't believe me. The Bluer the state and longer it has been blue the more seats it has lost in the last couple of Census reallocations. The Red states have been picking up seats. People are voting with their feet. I just wish the fools would realize WHY they had to move and thus not bring the problem with them by electing Democrats in their new home.
There isn't much of a problem in the 'auto industry' if by auto industry you mean production of autos. They just aren't being made in Michigan anymore, they are being built in Right to Work states with lower tax structures in factories where the root of the corporate ownership tree is in Tokyo instead of New York[1]. Of course with the recession and all, they are all feeling some pain about now.
Now riddle me this: With an existing industrial base and lots of experienced labor available, why does a Japanese automaker decide to skip Michigan when locating a plant in the US and instead go to the South where none of those advantages exist? Why do they do a greenfield project along the Interstate in the middle of nowhere when they could buy a closed plant in an area with thousands of unemployed workers with exactly the skills they need? When you can answer that question you will have taken your first step towards enlightenment.
[1] Hint, the 'Detroit automaker' bankruptcies are being filed in NY.