So, what do we do with this mutt? How do white Americans respond to someone who defies political correctness (behaviour I would usually support, as I hate political correctness) by bringing race into the national discussion so easily and offhandedly? This situation reminds me of how black people can use the word “nigger” or “nigga” with impunity, while it is a mortal sin for white people to do so.
Obama’s insensitive self-description of himself as a “mutt” just invites racial invective against any white person that picks up the term and uses it, even jokingly. This is the equivalent of a racial inside joke – one that blacks can laugh at, but white people will be scorned for participating in.
Thanks for widening the racial gap in your very first post-election press conference, Mr. President-elect Barack Hussein Obama. If that’s a preview of the next four years, I have a feeling we’re going to see more anti-white, racist policies and social taboos introduced into our society.
you obviously missed something important here. “mutt” has nothing to do with color, but is has everything to do with ethnicity.
since when do you call a siberian husky, because it is tri-colored a “mutt”? or a saint bernard a “mutt” for the same reasons? the term “mutt” comes from an offspring of dogs of different breeds, not dogs of different colors.
a person whose mother’s mother was irish, whose mother’s father was enlish, whose father’s mother was german and whose father’s father was russian, is what is considered a “mutt” even though that person is all white.
get over color as it has nothing to do with color, and Obama has even said before that at Thanksgiving at his house almost all ethnicities are represented. he did not say “almost all colors are present,” so your argument is pretty weak and showing of a bigoted predisposition.
so Thank You for widening the racial gap in this country, while others try to bridge it.
As some of my readers may have noticed, I have not been around much lately. The reasons being multifaceted, but center around a couple key factors; I’ve returned to Colorado, a place I love; I’ve gotten out of my funk of the past couple years; and lastly I starting working for a company that proves renewable energy is not just a figment of future promise, but is competitive currently and actually works, and the last two months I’ve been working my ass off towards bringing renewable energy into actual people’s lives.
Wind Turbines on the north side of the Columbia River in Washington State.
En route out of Oregon and my year long hiatus from my tree pruning business, I was in search of employment working on the giant Wind Turbines, but much to my dismay along my entire course through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming & into Colorado, the only ones I saw were in Arlington, WY. Ironically, while moving my wife, to Colorado we saw many, many more. In Arlington, Oregon another large wind turbine project was being constructed. What is the roots of the name Arlington, windy as fuck?!
Giant Wind Turbines in Arlington, OR
Shortly after arriving in Colorado, I was hired on by Next Generation Energy in Lafayette, Colorado. A short list of renewable energy projects we work on, with some details to follow, is solar thermal heating of domestic hot water (for bathing, laundry, cooking, etc.), homes tied into either forced air or radiant heat, grid tied solar electric systems and stand alone photovoltaic systems to power remote communication towers or “street” lights and small wind turbines in the range of two feet diameter blades up to 12 feet.
Now I think there is a huge misconception out in the world that solar energy conversion to human use is an instant gratification device that us Americans are so used to receiving, yet this is not the case when we look at the installation costs of converting the sun’s energy into something useful. The simple notion that you can’t get something from nothing is applicable in the renewable energy industry as well, but we need to think of it as an economic investment over time. If we can get over our instant gratification insistence & expectations which we are too accustomed to, then we can come to realize how every day the sun is giving us huge quantities of energy that is being wasted and converted into destructive end results.
Just think of the amount of solar radiation that is being “wasted” in our urban environments converted to heat as parking lots & asphalt roofs absorb heat in the day, that we fight with air conditioners and more power consumption, then releases it in the night making it impossible to sleep without have the AC cranking. By intercepting the sun’s rays that would be converted to heat in a form we either do not want or cannot use productively, we could cover our roofs with both photovoltaic cells tied to the grid to reduce our need for fossil fuel production during the days, then at night when electricity demands from industry lower, the power plants would supply the electricity, hence diminishing the needs for battery storage. Also on the roofs we could have thermal collectors, that efficiently capture the suns energy before it is wasted as heat we do not want or cannot use, store it tanks similar to a modern hot water heater and supply 80-90% of our domestic hot water needs when averaged over the year.
Most people do not think about how much energy they waste and subsequently pay for, as the power companies do not give rebates for hot water you heat but do not use, do they? Upwards of 30-40% of an average home owners energy bills are for the heating of domestic hot water and keeping it at the high temperature for use at any time. Convert that fact to reality, and much of those costs are paid for something you do not use and it is wasted. Most people have their water temperatures too high, just think of the last time you turned on only the hot water to take a shower. There is enough energy in most areas of the country from solar irradiance, where you could achieve 80% of your home heating & domestic hot water needs from the sun alone.
Street lights we manufactured & installed in Colorado with small wind turbines, a PV panel & batteries completely off the grid.
So let’s be realistic and return to the errant preconception of the prohibitive costs to solar power. If you could reduce your home heating & energy consumption through investing in a system that can convert the sun’s rays to something useful and save 80% of your energy costs through the year, why would you not do it? Oh right, it is too costly!
Oh contrare my good reader. You are thinking of it from the old preconceptions. It is an investment, and what is the biggest investment most average people know of? Their homes, yet they have this wrong idea that they could “invest” in remodeling their kitchen or adding a bedroom that would increase the homes value for resale. Well if the last couple months have shown anything, homes do historically go up in value, but what is the rate of return on a home when you factor in mortgages & interest rates, or a slumping economy? Now if we cannot be certain a home’s value will increase at a rate higher than that of interest charges on a mortgage, while at the same time we know for certain energy prices from fossil fuels will increase and we know what the cost of heating & powering your home from the sun can be calculated relatively simply, we can begin to see if we look at a solar system as an investment, just like we have been mislead to believe our homes are supposed to be, that the rate of return on a solar system is much greater than that of a home investment.
I’ll return in a future post with more details as to how exactly we can accomplish converting the sun’s energy (a free, unlimited resource) into something that is not only useful to us, but also cost effective and over the long term profitable.
Your premise for this post is flawed, “During a Time of War.”
We are not “in a time of war.” We are “in a time of flawed and failed policy.”
So what is the problem?
If we used diplomacy instead of being trigger happy, there would be no need for our bloated military budget.
If we used actual military personnel instead of paid mercenaries, no bid government contracts with cost plus accounting where we are paying 3-10x the actual costs of having our military actually do the work, then again we could lower our overall military expenditures and receive the same “work accomplished.”
If we turned to renewable energy, that I would venture to guess you have limited belief in its ability to work, then we would not need a bloated military to subsidize our imperialistic demands of protecting our fossil fuel importations globally.
Again, work on the premise of your post, and then there can be justifiable credence given to your claims of foul for cutting the military expenditures for this nation.
there comes around a Republican that I can respect. It should come as no surprise, as I considered this Republican for a Vice Presidential nod from Barack Obama, that this person of honor and deserving of respect is Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel.
WASHINGTON – Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel said his party’s vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, lacks foreign policy experience and called it a “stretch” to say she’s qualified to be president.
“She doesn’t have any foreign policy credentials,” Hagel said in an interview published Thursday by the Omaha World-Herald. “You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don’t know what you can say. You can’t say anything.”
Could Palin lead the country if GOP presidential nominee John McCain could not?
“I think it’s a stretch to, in any way, to say that she’s got the experience to be president of the United States,” Hagel said.
McCain and other Republicans have defended Palin’s qualifications, citing Alaska’s proximity to Russia. Palin told ABC News, “They’re our next-door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.”
Hagel took issue with that argument. “I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, ‘I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia,’” he said. “That kind of thing is insulting to the American people.”
Hagel, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In July, Hagel traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Though he didn’t expect to be asked, Hagel had said he would have considered serving as Obama’s running mate.
Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population 6,500, before becoming Alaska’s governor in December 2006.
Palin visited soldiers in Kuwait and Germany last year and said in an interview with ABC News that her only other foreign travel had been to Mexico and Canada. She also said she had never met a foreign head of state.
Hagel told the newspaper that other governors have been elected to serve in the White House without experience in Washington. He said judgment and character were also important for the job.
“But I do think in a world that is so complicated, so interconnected and so combustible, you really got to have some people in charge that have some sense of the bigger scope of the world,” Hagel said. “I think that’s just a requirement.”
Yep, that is how much you, me and every other American are paying to bailout AIG! I love just throwing out money for nothing. Thank you George W. Bush, Phil Gram & John McCain!
There is nothing more lovable about Republican Policy than Privatized Profits with Socialized Risk backing! You have to be kidding me, Fiscal Conservatives?!
So can someone clear this up for me, if AIG is partially owned by China and the US Federal Reserve & US Treasury are bailing this company out by borrowing money from China which our tax dollars are responsible for paying back plus interest, is this nothing more than a transfer of money from the taxpayers to China twice?
Again, I can’t express my excitement for what 7 years of Republican controlled Whitehouse in conjunction with 12 years of Republican controlled Legislature has done “positive” for all Americans!
Sunday evening the news was buzzing about Lehman Brothers going under and less than two days later AIG is the next financial institution going under. You may not like my choice of language here, but is half the fucking country in complete denial of the reality around them and oblivious to the causes and implications for our economy now and in the distant future?!
Here is a brief compilation of what 8 years of Republican Executive Branch in conjunction with 12 years of Republican Legislative control have reeked upon each and every one of us living today and yet to be born tomorrow.
Bear Stearns
* $29 BILLION
* March 14th, 2008 announced on a Friday evening, settled by government in under 60 hours over the weekend!
* 20 “News” articles did not post this number! Do you think they don’t want us to know or is it just my imagination?!
Freddie Mae & Fannie Mack
* $100s of BILLIONS (potential initial payments)
*
Countrywide
Lehman Bros.
AIG
I am about to have a meltdown of my own over this “Mortgage Meltdown” and I have no direct moneys invested. What I do have, just like you is over $30,000 we each owe to the National Debt, and guess what, these motherfuckers in the Whitehouse, this motherfucking liar McCain and his economic advisor Phil Gram, just want to keep increasing this amount!
Wake the Fuck Up People! Look around you and see what is actually happening! Stop believing everything these liars and their propaganda machines are cramming down your throat until you have no choice but to believe it as fact! November 4th is do or die people, stop this bullshit about “who would you must want to have a beer with” and just look at the people with whom the candidates surround themselves with! It is time for a smell test, and the shit being piled on your and my doorstep by Bush and the Republicans is deep and fetid. Fucking think for yourself for once people, the stakes are too high right now to do anything less!
Again the lies continue here in Colorado. Listening to the radio today, the McCain ad, one in which he “endorses this message” first starts off with the whole BS lines about how Nuclear with solve our Gas crisis. This is of course surprising as Republicans are as best I can determine against electric or hybrid cars, “the batteries are too dangerous” and there are no Nuclear powered cars, so how is it exactly Nuclear is supposed to solve our Gas Crisis?
Then it goes into China drilling just 60 miles off our Florida coast and guess what, they are slant drilling at that. Even Florida Republican Congressman Mel Martinez has stated that there is no validity to this statement, so WTF, is McCain just a straight up liar given not one bit of this advertisement he is running holds an iota of truth?
Honor, last I checked, does not include blatant lying, so what should we conclude about McCain’s
“strongest” selling point of being an honorable man?
I’m not gonna source this as it is just a observation and well reality, but who is the genius that came up with these TWO stupid schemes? Oh right, it was Big Oil and their lapdog Our Government.
Federal Fuel Tax (think it is called Federal Excise Tax, but whatever) is a set rate per gallon. HELLO! is anyone paying attention, what other tax is there that we have that is set based on a unit price? Do you buy milk and are taxed by the gallon, or is it based on a set percentage of the price per gallon? Do you buy a car, doesn’t matter which car or its price and it is a set amount per unit car? No!
Same deal with oil YOU & I own found under OUR public lands, or OUR coastal waters. That’s right, no matter what the going rate is for oil, you know that $100 plus per barrel we hear of every day, OUR government gives it away to Big Oil for a set price of roughly $18 dollar per barrel!
Think of it this way, you own a store and have 1000 cases of Spam, made back in the 30’s when all of it was made, and that is all you sell. Now you have been selling them for decades and started selling it at 50 cents per can back in 1930. Fast forward 78 years and you are forced to sell it for 50 cents a can regardless of what the neighboring shops are selling it for at 3-5 times the price and regardless of what the cost of operating a store is (rent, utilities, inflation, wages, etc). Now do you think you are gonna be able to stay in business?
What a joke! And no wonder we are owing $10 trillion dollars, or over $30,000 for each and every one of us.
Only in America! …….
Our National Resources are given away at 1900 prices, if not paid to be taken away, through subsidies or infrastructure development.
No Bid Contracts dominate most government contracts.
We consider a “Gas tax Holiday” actually amounting to something in our pockets and not just a pander for votes.
Seriously, our citizenry is some of the dumbest mother fuckers to have ever existed!
Hey Chunk! you don’t mind if I call you that do you?
How about fat ass?
From the pictures over at myspace (isn’t that for people in their 20s and less) it looks like you have one hell of a shed covering your tool. Too bad you probably can’t find it!
huh, again the irony goes with much notice. you have “REM’s “Everyone Hurts” on your page playing, alluding to your having some issues, yet all you do is attack a candidate for president with pure bullshit smears. isn’t that a bit hypocritical?
“I’m for Barack Obama all the way. The Clinton campaign has took a desperate turn and has, I think, shown its true colors. How dare they use fear against Americans after these past seven years? I’m really tired of politicians telling me what to be afraid of. On the other hand, Obama is hopeful, grounded and clearly intelligent. He is, relatively, an outsider to the beholden D.C. club, and I think that is what America is calling out for; not a career politician but a true outsider candidate. He represents I think the true spirit of the beginning of the 21st century.”
Just think, if McCain gets into office, he’ll probably end all government oversight into everything other than war, so when you go to get your gastric bypass surgery, I’d be very careful given the doctor’s will have no one regulating them. You’ll probably come out with your ass sewed to you lips, but then again you got that already right?
this is kind of fun playing games like you. I’ll keep it up as much as I can given I actually live an active life.
So here I am once again in the Front Range of Colorado, and once again my life is threatened by terrorist in my midst. The first terrorist threat upon my life was in 2001 as I was to fly from Denver to San Francisco in the early morning of 9/11 for work. The second threat upon my life, is most likely in motion currently with only a few hours until my life may be no more.
I am currently in Golden, Colorado, the home of Coors Beer for anyone not in the know. It is a mere 6 blocks from where I am currently staying, and no I do not fear brewery explosion, and I do not fear for the fishes in Clear Creek that were intoxicated to death when I was last here and a mix-up at the brewery dumped 15,000 gallons of raw beer into the river.
What I am told to fear is that Al Jazeera television is setting up their base of operations for the Democratic National Convention here in Golden at a hotel only 3 blocks away from where I sleep. Irony, of all irony is that they plan to broadcast from The Buffalo Rose, a well known biker bar here on the main street of historic downtown Golden. Tell me this is not a recipe for disaster, however the owner of this rough and rowdy “watering hole” welcomes their business openly.
For whatever reason, it has become a huge ordeal here in the quiet town of Golden, a town that has invested significant sums of money in developing its riverfront & main street with activities for the full spectrum of its citizens and visitors alike; from kayaking & tubing, to baseball & tennis courts, to movies in the park, the Pioneer History Park and the National Renewable Energy Laboratories, there is something for everyone here. If you are not into the taste of mountain water in your beer, you can get a Rocky Mountain “high” launching yourself off Lookout Peak in a paraglider, or pursue a degree in natural resource exploitation at the Colorado School of Mines.
When the City Manager of Golden “mistakenly” offered to host the Al Jazeera media crew to a “American style” BBQ at his private residence and as a private citizen here in Golden to exhibit goodwill and extend to the 100 million plus viewership of the Middle Eastern television network an inside look of how most Americans live, outside of the glorification of the American Dream portrayed in Hollywood movies viewed by billions of people worldwide, all hell broke loose and the crap hit the fan.
Having caught some of the gossip through the local grapevine, I was flipping through the TV stations this morning watching the Olympics and caught the rebroadcast of the Golden City Council meeting. Citizen after citizen bashed the City Council over this extension of goodwill, and outside the BBQ, something they had no say over whether the Al Jazeera media crew stayed in Golden, Boulder or Denver. Veterans, spouses of those currently serving and general Golden citizens of all types, shamed the City Council and more specifically the City Manager into canceling the BBQ, with threats of ending all business within the city. There were a few citizens and members of the council who has hosted students at CSM from foreign countries who defended the positive effects of showing goodwill to the network and in reality citizens of the world, yet it was to no avail.
The City Manager gave a moving speech as to his original intentions and expressed much regret for the “havoc” this caused in the town, and finally resigned himself to the the reality that he could not separate himself as a private citizen from being a public official vis-a-vis a representative of the government.
I can already see claims I am a terrorist sympathizer, but the reality of reality is, keeping the world’s residents in the dark about what common Americans truly are like outside of the Washington, D.C. or make believe Hollywood that is the only thing they see of us is a travesty, and it is what continues the promotion of the hatred that people from other countries have for us as well as the “fear” we have for them.
In the end the only thing gained through these protests is the promotion and continuation of the same hatred and fear that causes most of the conflict we see in the world. Ignorance again prevails, and once more pure stupidity cultivates more ignorance.
Before the “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” campaign hit the scene and now as the Presidential Election nears, we are continually bombarded with this completely ridiculous logic from the Republican Spin Machine. The “logic” that defies all known logical thinking is that Nuclear power will lower gas prices!
How is this so? I cannot comprehend how this is humanly possible given two tenants of Republican mantra; 1) Larger, gas guzzling SUVs are safer and therefore more economical vehicles, let alone hybrids or electric cars are not a “solution” to the energy crisis, and 2) the US auto fleet and fuel distribution system is too difficult and costly to replace or at minimum slowly implement fleet conversion to electric or CNG vehicles, and add new “fueling” terminals for CNG or electric plug-ins.
Call me a freaking moron, but what does Nuclear have to do with gas prices, let alone how does it have the ability to lower gas prices? I do not see the logic to this solution that they are insisting is one of three ONLY answers; more drilling, more refineries and more Nuclear.
How does Nuclear fall into a solution for lowering gas prices? The only thing that comes to my mind is a new fleet, see number 2 above, of “Back to the Future” style cars with self contained Nuclear reactors in each car. Will we A) have to drive around indestructible “tanks” to ensure these mini Nukes do not meltdown in the event of an accident, and B) how if as they say, a replacement of the US fleet is impossible, do we convert the current US fleet to use this miracle technology?
McStupid never talks about energy policy without including Nuclear, yet the discussion of “for what purpose and for what end point” is breached.
Here is the Republican Spin Machine in action here in Colorado. Note that Nuclear is prominently included in “The Solutions” to high gas prices, so what gives, how does Nuclear have anything to do with gas prices? Are Republicans sitting on some magic technology, or has God given his “chosen” believers a means to convert electricity into gasoline, thus swamping the market with cheap gas?
So please, I am begging some knowledgeable Republican to decipher for me in simple language, as obviously I cannot comprehend the connection attested to between Nuclear power & gas prices, of how Nuclear is one of the three solutions to high gas prices.
So I am in transition right now. I still maintain Oregon residence, however I have relocated to Colorado. Now of course a single vote does not really ever make that much of a difference, however in the current times, it could be argued either way which state is more important to vote from.
Here is how I see it, Oregon is going to go for Obama with little doubt. Colorado is a very purple state at the moment, hence an extra vote in Colorado could be all that is needed to win it for Obama as we recently saw how close the Governor’s race in Washington state where only a few votes made a difference.
The catch being, my vote in Oregon could be more powerful to get Senator Gordon Smith out of office. This rich boy pussy, who was all for the war and completely in lock step with Bush is now claiming he is more in line with Obama & Kerry than he is with McCain. Now I remember years past when I wrote this scumbag letters, as well as most other western Senators, to stop further subsidies to welfare ranchers on federal lands and protect wilderness areas, not put more roads through them, yet he voted in favor of all this trash.
I’m thinking it would be best to vote from Oregon, hoping enough intelligent Ohioans, who have given up on their moronic statesmen, will have relocated to Colorado and will cover that one less vote needed in Colorado for Obama for me.
Dichotomy -- Information floods us from every direction, do we lap it up and allow this knowledge to cripple us or bury our heads in the sand & live our lives in a self-imposed, irresponsible ignorance?
Up with "Jobs & Food"!
Down with "God & Guns"!
Think about it,
Ideology does not feed you,
Reality does.
DisclaimerThe views expressed in here are mine & mine alone. Whenever possible, I will cite source info w/ a link & attempt to be as factual as possible. I separate from the factual whenever I need to dumb myself down far enough to deal with Rightwing idiots who base their arguments on emotion & talking points.Democratic Nominee I am a realist, I did not need someone to tell me who I should support. I chose the candidate I believe the most and is the most representative of my views & experience. I am not a blind followers & gave a lot of thought to my decision to support Barack Obama. I hope you do the same.
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