Dichotomous Mediocrity

So yellow cake is very popular among American internet users lately, i should have bought stock in Pillsbury before posting this popular subject. Iraq Yellow Cake. One week of hits on Yellow Cake in Iraq has generated more hits then on my previous most popular article that is several months old. I think from now on I will just tag everything Yellow Cake in Iraq. Odd to say the least….

This was last night’s episode of The Charlie Rose Program, where he interviewed Amory Lovins, from the Rocky Mountain Institute. I would have posted it sooner, but it was only made available now. This is must watch information about the Energy Crisis and it has nothing to do with Environmental Whackos, but rather fiscal economics & sound energy policy.

Here it is, you will be surprise and should pass it on to everyone, so that it may enter the Lexicon of the Nation instead of the disingenuous “Drill Now, Drill Here, Pay Now!” campaign.

Amory Lovins on Charlie Rose

in response to the good Elephants, suffering a “Senior Moment” over at American Elephant Blog who need Ginkobalboa included in their prescription plan with the Viagra.

I have my skepticism of his plan [T Boone Pickens] to be honest around where all the natural gas freed up will go to. I have a sneaking suspicion it will be used for oil recover in tar sands, but that is another story all together.

I note some discrepancy in your argument AE, as you state electric will not run cars (true enough at this current time, although European nations are shooting towards implementing electric &/or hybrids with batteries to be connected to the grid that can be used to store the electricity then drawn off of when they are not in use on a massive scale, minimizing the problem you mention which coincidentally is the same with Nuclear always on, where does the unused electricity “go” at night when demand drops?) put then you point towards Nuclear as a solution. A solution (part of one anyways) to the oil problem, how so given as you said, cars do not run on electricity?

Also, i beg to differ with the categorical statement that Nukes are owned by government. To the contrary they are if not partially, then mostly owned by private companies, however they are backed by government insurance as no private insurer will cover them. Traditional Privatized Profit, Socialized Risk, as we are seeing with all these bailouts currently happening. Again, another topic, but a contradictory premise of Republican ideology.

I did not know it was Pickens that put out the “reward” although I do know a group of people put together 60+ pages of documentation to disprove it, sent it to him, and well, Keep reading →

in response to the tired old derogatory “elitism” argument. I thought American mantra was “We’re number one!”? Apparently, it is better to be stupid & arrogant than elite in one’s field according to “a majority of Americans”.

wow! I did not realize it was “elite” to speak more than one language! so therefore roughly 2/3rds of the world is “elite” huh?
www.scarsdaleschool.com says

How many people in the world are bilingual?
It is impossible to determine just how many people are bilingual world wide largely because the linguistic competency of individuals varies and there are no clear guidelines about which competencies should be used to determine who is bilingual. Research indicates that the majority of the people on the planet are bilingual. If people speaking Pidgins and Creoles are included or excluded from the count the percentage of bilingual speakers will change. However, published estimates indicate that the bilingual population ranges from between 60% and 75% of the world’s people.

so this is very interesting, I once thought America was number 1 at everything (Most cars, biggest military, largest per capital income, etc., etc.) when to be an American was to “be elite”, to be the best, to be the greatest. Isn’t that what you believe, isn’t that to be elite?

If I am not mistake, I think you are getting arrogance confused with elite. Let us check your example & definition of elite,

Elitism is an attitude. One could be dirt poor and harbor an elitist attitude toward those that share their rung of the economic ladder.

to that of a dictionary.

TheFreeDictionary.com says

e·lite or é·lite (-lt, -lt)
n. pl. elite or e·lites
1.
a. A group or class of persons or a member of such a group or class, enjoying superior intellectual, social, or economic status:
b. The best or most skilled members of a group: the football team’s elite.

and now arrogant[nce]

TheFreeDictionary.com says

ar·ro·gant (r-gnt)
adj.
1. Having or displaying a sense of overbearing self-worth or self-importance.
2. Marked by or arising from a feeling or assumption of one’s superiority toward others: an arrogant contempt for the weak.

So please do tell, which great American attribute is it that Obama embodies that you despise so much? Is he Elite, like a pro-football team, a winning NASCAR driver, a corporate CEO earning billions, the President of the United States, the Navy Seals or Green Berets, POWs that survived & were released, etc.?

Or is he Arrogant, like those who find it completely stupid to challenge one’s brain to know a second language, just as 2/3rds of the World’s population does, even though the US is an elite nation when it comes to many factors in comparison to other nations, most especially wealth and opportunity for education?

Please do tell, as I’m dying to understand the air of arrogance over being an elite and this new found insistence that it is better to be NOT number 1, instead of being the best you can be!

Is this why the US Army changed its motto from “The best you can be” to “An Army of One”? When will we see the US Marines change their motto to “The Many, The Arrogant, The Marines.”?

[note: this is not showing disdain for the brave members of the US Military, past or present, but to the contrary, attempting to highlight how misguided and ill served this resentment for the term "elite" is a direct attack on the American psyche and its rightful standing in the world as a leader, as an elite, in many achievements & categories.]

Are those on the conservative side of the aisle aware of this conundrum in their derogatory use of the term “elite” is, in fact and without question, an attack on many of the institutions for which they claim to champion support for? To consider Obama an “elitist” or “elite,” are they saying he commands the same respect as our brave members of the US Military, who without debate are elite; our corporate CEOs, who again without question are elite in their abilities; and by definition Presidential, given their have only been 43 presidents of the United States of America, hence only a very few men are part of this group?

This is the Conservative Conundrum they appear to be willingly painting themselves into without realizing it. If Obama is, according to conservatives, “Elite” and our military is Elite, what is John McCain if he is partially a product of our Elite military, yet they do not want to consider him Elite?

Well they could, but given the truth would be more damaging to McCain than the worst case scenario lies, why would they want to report the truth about McCain’s past.

I’m an not an artist, but maybe someone who is can come up with a little political satire on an equivalent nature for John McCain. I shall provide some fodder, however when it is “true” can it still be considered satire?

Could McCain have dropped the Napalm bomb that was famously captured in this photo?

John McCain fighter pilot

Ross Perot, Carol & John McCain

Ross Perot paid for Carol McCain's medical expenses while John cheated on her with Cindy

Walkers, what John will be using to get around with prior to completing 1 term. Is he medically competent to be President of the USA?

The Beach Boys "Bombing Iran?"

Bush & McCain hugging

Fought against, Missed vote to fundraise in California, Then credited by Bush for doing so much for latest GI Bill

John's past, present & future "Stepford Wives"

If he "doesn't know much about the subject", how did John McCain make it through so many years of "Playboying" without The Pill yet not have any illegitimate children?

Does he support or not support torture & waterboarding?

In Cindy's favorite color

Crooked Talk Express

"A nation of whiners", or enron loopholes, which 25 year friend do you want advising our President?

I could go on, but there is plenty to work with.

US Wind Power Resources available to us in the USA.

courtesy of Montana Green Power.com

Montana Green Power

The wind in the United States could produce more than 4.4 trillion kWh of electricity each year–more than one and one-half times the 2.7 trillion kWh of electricity consumed in the United States in 1990.

Whether you are religious and believe God created everything around you, or are science based in thinking, there is no debate as to the cost of WIND POWER: IT IS FREE FOR THE TAKING.

US Electrical Grid courtesy of Geni.org

The US Electrical Grid is already in existence for bulk transportation of electricity from one part of the country to another and if people live there, there is a distribution (collection) network already in place servicing the vast majority of the nation. Therefore, minimal investment would be needed to connect Wind Turbines to the Electrical Grid and from the Grid to your Home.

So which do we prefer? This….

Wind Turbines courtesy of Alibaba.com

or this….

"Smoke" Stacks image courtesy of TheDailyGreen.com

or the potential for a nuclear meltdown like at 3 Mile Island in the US…

3 Mile Island Nuclear Plant courtesy wikimedia.org

Why can’t we be reasonable, when reasonable is the intelligent, safe & fiscally responsible manner in which to proceed?

A heavy push for the Nuclear option fails simple logic on several fronts if we are being told it will help with fuel costs.

*at present cars are not powered by electricity
*the Hydrogen Car is years if not decades away from everyday American’s use
*the entire fuel delivery infrastructure (the gas stations) would need to be reworked and billions would need to be invested to retrofit them with hydrogen fueling tanks & pumps
*The US has no comprehensive plan for dealing with Nuclear waste
*How can the same people that believe Nuclear Power is the “Solution”, yet still be against Nuclear Waste being shipped across the country in railroad cars through their neighborhoods?

I am not stringently opposed to Nuclear Power in the mix, but it does not solve our energy problems when it comes to high gas prices.

Although I am slightly skeptical of what ulterior motives there may be for “freeing up” natural gas, potentially for use in tar sands oil recovery, there is no doubt moving to 20% electricity production from Wind Power is a positive & good thing to do. We have everything to gain and very little to lose by moving in this direction.

Let’s stop the insanity, move forward in a positive direction and quit fighting each other!

Which do you prefer, a relatively silent, clean wind turbine in your backyard or any of these options; a Nuclear Power Plant, a train carrying nuclear waste through your town & by your children’s school, contaminated water from “cleaning” the coal in “Clean Coal” technology, oiled beaches when a tanker runs aground or your children dying in a war to protect “our oil interests” abroad?

This truly is a no brainer, think about it!

First it was WMDs, mushroom clouds and Saddam posing a risk to US security. Then when we found no WMD, no nuclear program and ironically failed to take, hold & protect Iraq’s conventional weapons stockpiles, so that they could be used to killed our troops, we moved onto the next reason.

Iraq was harboring Radical Islamic militants, AQI, al Queda in Iraq, which of course did not exist before Bush attacked without planning and left the boarders wide open for Whabist radicals to come in from our “ally” Saudi Arabia and kill even more of our troops.

Moving on, as that was easily disproved, we were bringing democracy to the Middle East. The hitch being of course, democracy never existed in the Middle East, we destroyed a Secular, albeit Authoritarian regime, to allow for a religious civil war to break out, where democracy was supposed to sprout and take hold with “purple fingers”. Keep reading →

John “War Hero” McCain lies once again!

Pittsburg or Green Bay Who are you pandering to today, the North Vietnamese or Vietnam Veterans?

I thought with age, comes experience? Experience to learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others. Apparently, McCain didn’t learn from Hillary about not writing one thing in your book, then telling reporters another thing.

Senile or just stupid? Neither are fit to be President!

Someone tried to tell me Yellow Cake was found in Iraq. Was I a sleep over the past 5+ years when this was announced or was Pillsbury awarded a no-bid contract to supply “yellow cake” to Iraqis as they never had any before?

Hell, if this were the case, that it actually was found, wouldn’t we have had ticker-tape parades in honor of the Commander in Chief? How did I missed it?

Way to go John you American War hero you! You sold out your fellow military veterans by fighting against the GI Bill, then failed to show up in DC to vote for it, your job for which we as American tax payers pay you for, to go to a fund raiser in California and by golly-gee-oh-my you win big this month netting 22 million dollars for your campaign.

Congratulations John, way to show your solidarity with the troops which you want to commit to an endless war in Iraq and potentially Iran. Maybe, just like you, the troops should only show up 39% of the time to their job and for which they are paid. How does that sound to you War Hero?

Apparently, McCain gives 1% of his time for every 100 brave US troops that have died in Iraq since “Mission Accomplished” was declared.

Honor, a word John McCain does not deserve to wear! He’s no more of a Patriot than those faux “Yellow Ribbon” & “Flag Pin” wearing Republicans that support him.

I can’t wait for a President that considers the Almighty Greenbacks more important than the lives and best interests of those that fight for this country without questioning whether it is right or wrong. What a despicable human being John “War Hero” McCain is.

As John W. Dean eloquently and scientifically lays out in his book, “Conservatives Without Conscience”, Liberals & Democrats are more critical in their thinking, while those on the Right fall into several categories including Authoritarianism & Submissive and are either leaders or subservient followers.

So this brings me to the recent flack over Obama’s FISA vote. True he gave in to compromising, read: Giving Bush everything he wanted, but let’s be realistic here. He is one of 535 members of Congress, what power if any did he have in stopping it? Not much, so because we are critical, open thinkers, we now feel it our obligation to fire up the grill and cook him on it? The implications of this vote on the overall diminution of the 4th Amendment have potential to be a problem, however it does not warrant the response from the Left it is getting and the apparent disgust many in the Democratic Party now have with Obama. What would his filibustering of this Bill actually have achieved? Not very much.

If we are so outraged by his “inaction” on this one incidence, and correct me if I am wrong, I have never heard Obama say he was a Liberal, while I have heard him say he wants to bring all people & interests together, where is the outrage worthy of tearing apart the Party to give McCain the Presidency over the failure to impeach Bush & Cheney? It is not there, so we think it is justified to destroy ourselves over the FISA Bill because our “Great White Hope” did not have the actual power to do anything currently, however if we all stand together and get him elected in November he will have significant power and “The One True Vote” to rectify that which was wrong? Some in the Democratic Party, are holding Obama’s feet to the fire when it was not even his doing in making this the problem that it is. Let’s be real here, it was Bush & Cheney that subverted the law, not Obama, so whey is Obama more responsible for this misdeed than those that actually did it?

We like to eat out young. And after we do it, we never learn what a bad taste it leaves in our mouths for a very long time. We were not content with how “Liberal” Al Gore was in 2000, so we felt it our obligation to find someone more to our tastes by supporting Nader and now we have suffered almost 8 years of a sour, putrid taste in our mouths because of it and given the situation in Iraq, we will continue to grimace at this taste from many more years to come.

The irony being, we continue to chew of the same rotted corpse because we are “critical thinkers” yet we are blinded by the taste in our mouths to stop us from continuing on the same unpleasant action. Today, Al Gore is the patron saint of the Party and Nader nothing more than a bitter old man, yet we can’t see how we did it to ourselves and want to continue on the same path.

Do you see Republicans eating their own? McCain may be the slight exception, where the Right has begun to splinter and yet somehow we see this as a challenge to us of being able to eat our own better and more thoroughly!

Look at the Republicans when it comes to David Vitter and Larry Craig, who if the Party followed their own stringent standards should have been shamed out long ago, but no the followers do not do it. Why? Because the overall needs of the Republican Party to maintain power, to get their agenda accomplished trump the individual desires & wishes of the Party followers. Who are truly the thinkers and smart people when we look at it critically, which is what we always do? But again we often times, much to our detriment, are blinded by our Ideology much more so than those diametrically opposed to us, whom we reverently claim are nothing more than ideological sheep.

We better wake up, open our eyes and get over the sour taste in our mouths, or this fetid taste we have become accustomed to is bound to last a very long time. There is a time for Ideology and there is a time for Reality, now is a time for Reality to set in and actions to be made accordingly.

I think that about sums up the overall result of my living of life when I average it all out.

To say I am bi-polar is not correct, but my actions are. I can never find a middle ground in my decisions, fight mediocrity tooth and nail, but am completely content to be doing nothing, i.e., being mediocre when I cannot be doing what I truly want to be doing.

When I began to find myself in college, I exhibited this “bi-polar” perfectly by achieving 2 As, a D+ and 2 Fs in one semester alone. I fought against the notion I needed to memorize upteen million Calculus formulas & an equal amount of formulas in physics, to which I received my 2 Fs. At the same time I excelled in my 400 level engineering classes on hydrology and of all things dam building & feasibility studies. I had a battle within myself between principles & concepts and practicality & a hands-on-approach.

I find this to be common in my life. If something interests me, then I am all over it. I paid off my college loans of $30k in a little over 3 years then shortly after 9-11 paid off a vehicle loan in under a year based on the my principle of not being locked in to any responsibilities. Both of which are unheard of in today’s society. Yet now, I find myself completely content and at ease with zero remorse for defaulting on a loan for a vehicle I purchased for my business, intending to pay down the principle of $35k in max 2 years, but finding out I was locked into a 5 year payment plan. I’ll lose about $10k on the deal now that they repossessed it and it goes to auction for far less than it is worth and it destroys my credit, but hell I don’t give a crap. It means nothing to me.

Just as it means nothing to me that I built up a very successful business, operating completely “cash on hand” (minus that truck) then ran it into the ground and another $8k in debt on a credit card, when I stopped giving a shit about it and was pissed at the lousy deal I was dealt on the loan and some meaningless regulatory agency exerting their useless mandates on me.

The weird irony in this all, outside the obvious of credit rating either being 1000 or 400 if it were calculated daily, is that my principled mind would never allow me a day of collecting unemployment to which I have paid into. I cannot allow myself to get something for not doing anything, yet I know people, lots of people who are completely content to get laid off seasonally so that they can collect unemployment. I could never do it and live with myself, yet at the same time, I have zero remorse for defaulting on a loan or credit card.

Is this my battle against injustice in this country were big corporations receive billions in subsidies, read: welfare, while their stupid minions fight social welfare & entitlements to the death? It must be and it must be where my remorseless actions of screwing over a credit card company comes in while at the same time being unwilling to accept money that I have paid into through governmental taxes. Fuck the Big Money companies and banks! They want to screw over me and my economic class with pathetic interest rates on money I have in their possession, while they rape us with 20% interest rates that we borrow from them, then they can take their losses, which of course they will easily write-off and more likely then not get payment from the government in more corporate welfare from my tax dollars.

Why should I be held to a higher standard of fiscal responsibility than a bank or corporation? Bear Stearns comes to mind here. Government for the Corporation, by the Corporation, paid for by the People.

Anywho that’s my rant of the day….

Iran Test New Missiles

A television report showed footage of at least six missiles firing simultaneously and said the barrage included a new version of the Shahab-3 missile, which officials have said has a range of 1,250 miles and is armed with a 1-ton conventional warhead. The television report did not specify where the launch took place.

That would put Israel, Turkey, the Arabian peninsula, Afghanistan and Pakistan within striking distance.

This is a Win-Win-Win solution! That is if the US smartened up and actually used it to their advantage! Sadly this would never happen.

If the US used Iran as a Proxy to fight a mutual enemy, The Taliban, just like we are using the -stan countries as military bases & sites to torture people, then imagine what could be accomplished.

According to Time Magazine, September 18th, 2001

The Taliban, who overran most of Afghanistan in 1996, are a militia driven by an extremely harsh Medieval interpretation of Sunni Islam. Backed by Pakistan and funded by Saudi Arabia, they promised to put an end to the factional warfare that had claimed thousands of lives in the years following the defeat of the country’s Soviet puppet government in 1991.

Iran is implacably hostile to the Taliban over that movement’s extremist theology and over its killing of Afghan Shiite Muslims. In 1999, Iran almost went to war against the Taliban after its militia killed eight Iranian diplomats and a journalist after capturing a predominantly Shiite town, and has worked together with Russia to support anti-Taliban opposition forces. Despite the overtures between the reformist president Mohammed Khatami and the West on ways of cooperating against terrorism, hard-line spiritual leader Ayatollah Khameini insisted that while Iran condemned the terror strikes in the U.S., Tehran could not support U.S. military action against Afghanistan. Still, whether working directly with the U.S. or not, Iran remains a key regional player in the anti-Taliban alliance.

Win #1 Iranian missiles could strike Wahabi schools in Saudi Arabia that are training future militant Islamics and kill them before they grow up to kill Americans.

Win #2 Iranian missiles could strike the ungoverened areas of Pakistan where the Taliban has regained pre-9/11 strengths and again is making Afghanistan deadly to American & NATO troops.

Win #3 Iranian missiles used against our mutual enemies would be destroyed upon impact and never be able to be used against the US’s regional partner Israel.

How could this not be a more perfect situation?!

So when an Oil Man says, offshore drilling & ANWR are not the answers to the oil problem and Peak Oil exists, you are smarter than him and know more about the Energy Crisis we are in now how exactly? That’s right this multi-million/billionaire doesn’t know as much as you do about economics and is a Socialist trying to destroy Capitalism.

What a waste of 20 years fighting the inevitable reality!

Ahhh, it never ends. The same tired excuses and blaming of high gas prices on Democrats and foreign oil. Never any realistic numbers given or factual basis for this weak “pass the blame” game. Rarely, if ever does one of these “ANWR is the solution” people understand the world only contains a finite quantity of oil in it and nothing we do will change the fact that Demand is Increasing, while Supply is Constant or Decreasing Slightly. It reminds me of a 90’s slogan I saw about the radical group EarthFirst!, that went like this… “Earth first, we’ll [mine, log, drill, exploit] the others later”. Well you regular rocket scientists, don’t mean to burst your bubble, but we only have what we have here now and we will not be getting any oil from another planet, so knock the stupidity off.

This was in response to the latest moron with the great “blame the Democrats” excuse. I’ll clean it up and source it later when I feel the urge to factualize the reality.

[re:some stupid justification of why gas prices are high by Jim Kramer]

Jim Kramer prior to collapse of BStearns

Jim Kramer was the same person urging his viewers to keep Bear Stearns stocks the week before it crashed, his credibility is what again? Next!

ANWR even if at full production could supply 2-5% of our total needs. So we could potentially reduce “evil” oil from the middle east by roughly double those numbers if foreign imports account for roughly 50% of our daily usage. If we are replacing “bad” oil with good oil, while the world supply remains the same and the global demand increases, what is this going to do to price again? Draw your little supply and demand charts, and yes prices will still rise. Next!

Oh Wait! What the fuck are we doing in Iraq then? Wow, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. Which Republican Principle is the reason we are in Iraq again? The Nation Building, Spreading Democracy, We Love the Desert Sun & are Planning to Build Iraqi-Disney, Ridding the World of Terrorists? Or is it the fucking oil? If Republicans are so tired of expensive & dangerous Middle East Oil, what the fuck are we doing in Iraq?! I wonder how much the price of gas would drop if $12 billion per month was used to subsidize the consumers, not pay for the Oil grab in Iraq. Hell that should at least be able to negate the price the same as opening ANWR would.

Coal to oil, wow that is just fucking brilliant. We take something we need to invest lots of energy into to get it out of the ground, then we “clean” it, dumping that waste back into the water table so our aquifers are polluted, then we spend more energy to turn it into liquid fuel. Any ideas on the net energy lost by all these recovery and conversion applications? I doubt you do, so work it out then get back to me. I’ll bet you 10 gallons of ethanol the energy loss is greater than that to produce those “evil” domestic biofuels, which are even worse than the terrorists. You don’t even have to bother on the environmental damages, as the first parts will barely break even.

Oil Shale, another brilliant idea! You want to take rocks, yes rocks and mine them, break them down to pull out minor quantities of oil. Diamond it might be profitable, but oil from rocks? I got some beachfront property I want to see you in Colorado too. Next

Oil Refinery Capacity. Hmmm, I only need to watch about 10 minutes of any of the cable news networks to see the Marathon commercial where they say they are spending 3.2 billion dollars to almost double their refinery capacity to produce 7-8 million more gallons of gas per day. what other refinery expansions are not not being advertised? Next!

Gulf of Mexico Drilling and Exploration. In that same ten minutes of watching the cable news networks, what is the other commercial we will certainly see? Kerr-McGee! Yep no oil exploration in the Gulf, only that vile man in Venezuela, that commie fucking bastard is drilling in the Gulf. Oil exploration and drilling in Gulf Hmm don’t see it being stopped there do you? Next!

Yes, Dems are entrenched with the environmental wackos, so at least they don’t take it up the ass from Big Oil like the Republicans! Why do they fight against any green power plans or development? Those are not jobs enough for Americans? Oh that’s right, to work on an oil rig you need to be a complete fucking idiot, no intelligence required, whereas with green technology you need some brain power. Yep that is why most of the Wind turbines, blades & towers are build overseas and only assembled here. All the jobs are shipped overseas because people here are too fucking stupid to realize their heads from their asses. And our current president is quite content with our manufacturing base to be made up of fast food workers, that can barely afford to shop at Wal*mart let alone raise a family, while true industrial manufacturing jobs are shipped overseas.

Wow you got us with everyone of your points! Would you like to start over again, or just continue to be a stupid fuck?