Yeah, I hear you. People on either extreme tend to be equally condescending and smug in their own ways – it’s the sort of that happens when one is so sure that they’re right and everybody else is wrong. Not that I’m trying to tell you that I’ve found a perfect middle ground — I’m just as full of shit as anyone else is. (No, you can’t quote me on that later). The wingnuts are just really easy to make fun of. I couldn’t help it.

you forgot

Win! Win Win!

That’s enough for my vote!

Nancy P was on George Stephanopoulos’ show this weekend, George asked her about not allowing an up or down vote on drilling offshore I believe 9 times (to his credit), she refused to answer. At one point she went into the Obama wants to do this or that, one of the items she mentioned was natural gas, I guess the ninny doesn’t realize you have to poke holes in the ground (drill) for natural gas, just like oil, in fact the best way to tell it is a gas well is there is a big ugly fiberglass tank nearby that the oil wells don’t need.

Ethan,

Well, I suppose if I have to go to my grave never being as smart as a liberal, that’s just a cross I will have to bear. It’s always been a joke in Colorado that the most intellectually liberal place in the state is Boulder, and unless you play football at CU, you are white if you live in Boulder. I will say this, it makes the game easier if you can take any statement made by a conservative, say, “I like strawberry ice cream” and say it is a racial comment. Then impugn the conservative who dares to question the logic that it isn’t a racial comment as stupid.

I was a business partner with a Boulderite for a while and as such was a tolerated outsider to his group of friends, they kept me around for amusement I suppose. It was interesting at first but I tired of the “liberal sip”. You would be at a cocktail party and would state a conservative position, a liberal who was up to the challenge would then say “well there are those that would say…” not having the guts to say he disagreed with you, someone else, usually a woman would make a snide remark that she thought was over your head, the bar’s not that high in their minds, and then came the sip. Almost in unison all the liberals would raise their glasses and take a sip, with just a hint of knowing smile in the corners of their lips.

At one such party my wife hustled me out of there, in the car I admitted I was about to smash one particular woman’s wine glass in her face the next time she did it, my wife’s response was that if I didn’t smash her face she was going to, so she decided it was best we leave before we got blood on our cloths. We got a good chuckle out of it and never went to one of their events again. Life is just too short.

War! War! War!

Surge! Surge! Surge!

Drill! Drill! Drill!

I didn’t read the entire thread…but I want to throw my $0.02 in here after reading the first seven or eight posts. Yes, you don’t have as finely tuned mind as the more liberal folks. Don’t feel bad – there are lots of people who don’t ‘get it’. I had to go to Hampshire College, one of the most liberal institutions on the earth, for about (ahem) 6 years to ‘get it’. Here’s a short translation matrix to grant you some of their insight:

Quote: “Obama’s against offshore drilling”
Translation: “I don’t like black people…and I’m gonna push congress for offshore drilling; but it’s not like it’s up to me – it’s Congress’ deal.”

Quote: “Is he ready to lead?”
Translation: “He’s black. I’m white. Any questions?”

Quote: “Obama’s inexperienced”
Translation: “I’m fucking old (and hence, experienced). Furthermore, I don’t like black people”

Quote: “Obama’s gonna raise your taxes”
Translation: “Well, I’m gonna raise ‘em too, someone’s gotta pay for the war and cover for the loss of tax revenues in this shitty economy. Did I mention that I don’t like black people”

Quote: “Obama’s a celebrity”
Translation: “Of course he’s a celebrity; just like Brittney and Paris, except he’s black. And I don’t like black people”

Quote: “My name is John McCain, and I approve this message”
Translation: “My name is John McCain, and I do not like black people”

This can get you started on the translation part. To really expand your mind, start reading more bumper stickers and buying into them. Then, repeat the bumper-sticker sayings in the midst of a political conversation and pretend that you’ve said something really insightful and profound (my recent favorite is ‘tax cuts for the rich’). The more vehemently and emotionally you repeat these sayings, the more your opponents will take you seriously. If you haven’t made up your mind on other sensitive issues (e.g. abortion), you can also use this paragraph to get you into on side or the other. With practice, you’ll start to get it.

OK — I’m just joshin’ yall. Seriously; you can put your pitchforks and torches down and go home. No, really. Guys?

You’re probably right about the political maturity of large swaths of the country. When I see these bratty ads, it just makes it that much more likely that I’ll vote for the target of the juvenile insults.

You guys somehow think I’m against these new technologies, that I want to hold onto my gas can like an old farmer who plowed with a horse way past the acceptance of the tractor. I’m not, I’ve been an innovator and have not only embraced but helped develop uses of new technologies all my life. We just need to understand there are limitations to technologies. Many times what are now limitations turn to attributes as new things are discovered. Even after the two technologies are combined to form a new breakthrough there are usually limitations to that new technology. Currently solar and wind can only produce about 10% of a grid’s power as I’ve stated many times. With full conventional generation backup required. Well, that’s still 10%, no small amount, but we shouldn’t think we can magically turn that into 80%. If this new breakthrough adds another 5% or 10%, that’s huge! But let’s not get so excited that we think this is going to eliminate our power grid. It may, who knows.

When I was in high school I worked in a Radio Shack store when the first electronic calculator came out, I think it was $100 in 1972 dollars. It had the four basic functions and a percent key (the next year’s model had square root). We were so skeptical of this new technology we would use the calculator in front of the customer when we were figuring their bill to try and sell them one but we would go behind the counter and double check our calculations with an old mechanical adding machine. There is no way I would have predicted 35 years later I would be carrying on a daily conversation with someone in Canada on my own device, they call it a personalcomputer. It is so small you can put it under your desk. Who would have thought that statement, as quaint as it was, that we would all have our own computer, would even in itself be so wrong. Thirty five years later we do our banking, and conversing not on this amazingly small computer but on our phones that we all carry anywhere in the world. Who would have thought we would have phones that we carry all over the world?

There is a good chance that the next energy won’t be one single thing, but a patchwork of different technologies. Solar where there is sun, hydro where there is water (including waves), seaweed biofuel, a different kind of nuclear to fill in the gaps, who knows. But storage is major component.

If you want to feel good about what some salt of the earth types are doing, go to

http://www.greensburgks.org

This is the small Kansas town that was destroyed by a tornado last year, 95% of the buildings were destroyed or heavily damaged (I grew up a hundred miles or so northwest of there). They are rebuilding the town from the ground up to be the “greenest” town in America. Last week I started an inquiry in my company to see if we can offer some of our products to the town, mainly some of the solar control products we make in Europe. So far my request has made it to the VP of marketing (not sure if he is just North America or worldwide) and have gotten some positive responses. Now we may be getting in too late, it’s still very early in the process, but I’m giving it the old college try. Download the master plan and at least skim through it, it’s 175 pages long so reading it in it’s entirety is best left to masochists like me.

So you see I’m not the anti-environmental ogre you make me out to be. I just don’t believe in all the hype of greenhouse gasses and don’t want to spend resources on fixing something that isn’t broken.

Your comment could be read in one of two ways. Are you gloating that you knew that was a key requirement, or are you disputing that MIT has found a good way to store the energy?

Here’s the first few paragraphs:

“In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today’s announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. “This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for years,” said MIT’s Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. “Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon.”

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.”

“This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind,” said Barber, the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London.

…

Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.

http://www.web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html

shcb – please note that this breakthrough development was not as a result of the free market, but rather a generous government and private funding program.

Steve first, the reason the ads seem like they are written by a jr high student isn’t because they were written by one, but because they were written for 9th graders. Now many voters are intelligent and accomplished in other areas but are not very politically sophisticated. People who keep up on politics have made up their minds long before the ads start, or they use voting records or that sort of thing to make their decisions.

I don’t hate Obama, I disagree with his views and don’t think he has the experience. I’m also not impressed with his off the cuff remarks, lending credence to his inexperience.(he said recently that if we keep our tires properly inflated we won’t need to drill for more oil). I have given many examples of how I disagree with his proposed policy changes, increasing taxes, arbitrary deadlines for troop withdrawal, mandatory volunteerism, etc. All these items are real issues, what do you mean we don’t have any real argument?

NL, yes this current economic downturn is the markets correcting themselves. Partly because that is what markets do, and partly correcting for excesses of government intrusion. Isn’t Enron gone? That is how market economies correct themselves. Joseph Schumpeter called it the creative destruction of capitalism. The mortgage problems we are having now are because of the government forcing lending institutions to give home loans to under qualified individuals. Some regulation is needed, but less is better than more

Just because you say he is less patriotic does not make it so.

It is a subjective scale to be sure but Iwill stand by my statements

Some would argue sending your young men and women into battle over lies is pretty unpatriotic. Screwing them over when they get home is pretty unpatriotic. Pissing on the constitution is pretty unpatriotic. Representing big oil and not the American people is pretty unpatriotic.

I don’t agree because none of those statements are true. But even if they were it wouldn’t necessarily mean the people in charge were patriotic or not patriotic. Those items could be because of incompetence, crookedness, covering one’s ass, many things. Patriotism is something in your heart, as well as in your mind. It is not only loving ones country, but loving it above all others.

Now I don’t think Obama hates this country like Ayres or Wright, it’s just mater of scale.