James Lileks, in a beautifully trenchant bit of reasoning, has a terrific first step for stopping fossil fuel use:
There’s only one sensible response: we have to shut down Las Vegas. Yes, I know, they get their power from hydro, but juice is fungible; the power that goes to light up Vegas could be used to take oil-fired plants off the grid. Closing down Vegas would reduce Nevada’s carbon footprint in other ways: a quarter of all tourists come from California, and I’d wager they drive. (Or drive to wager.) Thirty-six million visit Vegas each year – at least three million people a month arrive and depart from the airport on pollution-spewing fossil-fuel consuming planes.
There is no practical reason for Vegas to exist. Surely this is a luxury we can do without; surely Nevada can find other sources of revenue to fund the government. If Las Vegas does not voluntarily cease operations, I call upon the Senate to either ban flights entirely, or impose a luxury surcharge equal to 110% of the ticket price, because Las Vegas and the waste it represents is ruining the world.
Surely, Senator Reid can get behind that proposal, if fossil fuels are the evil he seems to think they are.
]]>FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) - When Capt. Ivan Castro joined the Army, he set goals: to jump out of planes, kick in doors and lead soldiers into combat. He achieved them all. Then the mortar round landed five feet away, blasting away his sight.
"Once you're blind, you have to set new goals," Castro said.
He set them higher.
Not content with just staying in the Army, he is the only blind officer serving in the Special Forces - the small, elite units famed for dropping behind enemy lines on combat missions.
Read the whole thing. And then resolve to “perform two ranks higher.”
]]>Given those facts, it would be the height of folly and arrogance to pass the Dodd-Shelby bill until there has been an independent investigation to determine beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt that there has not been a quid-pro-quo with the "Friends of Angelo" loans and the Dodd-Shelby bill.
(I know: Folly and arrogance by members of the U.S. Senate? What am I thinking?)
Right now, this looks, walks, and sounds like a duck. Offended denials will not do it; Senators Conrad and Dodd must prove their case.
]]>Could they become "booty-load" and "booty-naked?"
(Cross-posted at Writing, Clear and Simple.)
]]>If you haven’t already done so, please participate in this vital scientific study: Do you call it soda, pop, coke, or something else?
]]>Iraq is another Vietnam. Not for the U.S. For al-Qaeda.
]]>When the United States lost Vietnam, it lost credibility and saw an emboldened Marxist-Leninist offensive around the third world. Al-Qaeda is a global insurgency and not a nation-state — and thus its circumstances are radically different from ours 40 years ago — but it has suffered a similar reputational loss.
The Iraq war had been a powerful recruiting tool for al-Qaeda when it was winning. No more. Osama bin Laden rendered what is called the “bandwagon effect” in international relations — the tendency of states to go along with the dominant power — in his homespun Arabic analogy of people liking the strong horse over the weak horse. In Iraq, al-Qaeda’s proverbial horse is a broken-down nag.
A wide body of research shows that modern liberals are much more likely to complain about things in their lives. Conservatives are more content with their lives. When asked “How satisfied are you with life these days? Sixty-six percent of conservatives said “very satisfied” compared with only 46 percent of liberals. Conservatives are more likely to say they love their jobs (53 percent vs. 41 percent) and even enjoy their hobbies more (63 percent vs. 51 percent). When asked by the Social Capital Survey whether they were satisfied with their income, liberals were more than three times as likely to say “not at all satisfied” — even when they earned the same as conservatives.
Quit your moaning.
]]>I don't claim to be a Mensa candidate or anything, but I must know more about basic economics than a large block of the members of the U.S. Senate. You see, I know about the law of supply and demand.
Yesterday, the Democrat majority tried (and failed) to pass a cloture motion on a bill to impose a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies.
Here's the problem I have with that bill: A windfall profits tax would do absolutely nothing to help consumers--on the contrary, it would most likely end up hurting consumers in a whole bunch of ways.
As much as they bloviate about how high fuel prices are hurting consumers, the Senate and House of Representatives haven't done diddly to impact the basic issue: increasing the supply of oil, or decreasing the demand is the only way to reduce the price. It's Econ 101.
The U.S. could be doing a whole lot to deal with this--drilling for our own proven reserves, increasing refinery capacity, and expanding our generation of alternative energy sources, such as nuclear power plants (which are far safer and better for the environment than coal- or oil-fired plants).
On the oil production front, here's link to the Drill Here, Drill Now petition. I signed. Will you?
]]>Not the Supertramp song. We’ve been getting a bunch of rain lately. Nothing like some parts of the country; no houses being ripped off their foundations and washing downriver.
But it has kept us from getting the main part of our garden planted, which is a bit strange. We usually have that done, and then the tomatoes and peppers are the last things we get done. This year, we got the tomatoes and peppers planted, but I haven't so much as turned over a spade-full of soil in the garden proper.
]]>I'm amazed at this whole episode. Have the (putative) best and brightest of American politics really sunk so low as to engaging in this kind of tu quoque? These are the front-runners?
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