Guns, Energy, and a Squirrel
June 26th, 2008The Supreme Court today did the right thing and reaffirmed that the Right to Bear Arms is a personal Right, not some collectivist group think crap that certain folks on the Left think it is. Finally. Now, let’s roll back some of these anti-gun laws.
Like always, uber-hypocrite Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said that because of the Supreme Court’s ruling, the country will be less safe. Keep in mind Feinstein has a California Concealed Weapons Permit, yes, a gun, that she keeps on her at all times because she said that if someone wanted to take her out, she’d take “that bastard” out with her.
Now, doesn’t that sound like something that I would say? Sure does. Amazing how someone could be that hypocritical. Well, what do you expect from the anti-gun crowd? They have no respect for our Constitution.
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We have a serious energy crisis, my friends. Now is not the time to point fingers but the time to take action. It’s time we started taking Solar Energy seriously. Get the ball rolling. Start putting out massive Solar Power projects.
It’s not just about the environment any more. It’s about slavery. Do we want to be slaves to foreign oil? No. $400 billion over 40 years is chump change. It’s less than we spend on farm subsidies and much less than we’d spend on foreign wars because of oil. If I had my fingers on the budget, I guarantee you I could cut $10 billion a year in pork, easily.
If you want to hear more about what I’m talking about, read the January 2008 issue of Scientific American. It has all the details, and shows that your energy bill will actually go down, not up. Plus, we won’t have to worry about foreign oil at all.
Imagine, telling the Middle East where they can stick their oil. Following the plan detailed in Scientific American, we can ditch foreign oil altogether.
Did you see the market today? The Dow dropped around 350 points. Why? Because of the price of oil. We need to kick this crack habit.
As for extra drilling here, no. Why not? Because there really isn’t that much. Certain lobbies would like you to believe it’s the greenie meanies who are holding us back but in reality, it’s the scientists. They know it’s not enough to be even worthwhile.
Solar on the other hand is limitless. Twenty years ago, I would have dismissed this concept as a bad joke but technology changes. Solar has grown leaps and bounds in the past decade and has become not only a lot more efficient, but much cheaper, and will continue to be more efficient and cheaper. Unlike oil, there’s an unlimited supply. Well, I take that back. We only have five billion years left of it.
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I’m proud of this last shot. No, I do not have a telephoto lens. I was really this close to the squirrel. By request, I’m going to start posting more pictures that I took.
Nice picture.
Beside solar, there’s wind and hydro power. Out here we use hydro cause we are blessed with rivers everywhere.
I am not a big fan of guns and would never think of having one. If someone attacks me or something, i would rather use the flying pan or a cricket bat, but never a gun.
That is cool. You must have been in a place where squirrels don’t worry about getting eaten.
Tchoden - California has a lot of wind power. ‘Tis a good idea. Hydro, I have mixed feelings on.
If you ever come to America, come to California. Not Los Angeles, but San Francisco. Go over the Golden Gate and go to Muir Woods and you’ll see the tallest trees in the whole world. Beautiful forest. Plus, I’ll take you shooting. You’ll have a different view of guns once you shot some real nice ones.
Kate - ‘Twas. It was in a botanical gardens.
Hee. I love squirrels. They’re just cute. Good picture.
As for the guns thing. I know you know I disagree. I honestly don’t think repealing Chicago’s handgun ban will make me any more safe. In fact, I like being confident that 99% of the people I see walking down the street aren’t packing. I don’t want to live in a place where I just don’t know who might have a gun. I’d be living in a state of paranoia.
when i heard the SC ruling my comment was, “thank you for codified statement of the obvious folks.”
thanks for the article link. i have it bookmarked to read when my brain clears up. we definitely need to look into clean, renewable sources.
I’m with you - but solar power is a good idea for the average homeowner to put up on their roof (since the footprint is already on the land. To generate enough from solar panels, you need an enormous footprint.
So?
“Wind Power”. Let’s use some ‘hot air’ that is freely available in a much of our lovely country - most of that land it is not even visible by the passersby on our wonderful interstate highway system. For example, West Texas - the start of the wind belt. Land owners just hankering to get a piece of the action. Boone Pickins is ready to lease their land - land they can still use to run cattle on. He’ll put wind turbines on that will generate power and a lot of it. A great deal for the land owner, and an incredible deal for us. It is probably the most efficient power available. A few birds will buy it I know, but they will also buy it flying through a blow-off stack at a refinery. (There are no remains of birds that get too close…)
Everything has a cost, but upfront costs we can assess. The back end costs seem to always be forgotten.
You can also put wind turbines out to sea… There are new types and better, that will withstand hurricanes (yes) and will produce power for years without much maintenance. Are they dangerous to navigation? No more so than the myriad oil rigs that are unlit unmarked and unused that litter the Gulf of Mexico. (I sail the Gulf frequently enough to be annoyed by them, and to NOT cross the Gulf at night. I tie up to one of those rigs and wait for the sun…)
Mr. Edward Kennedy (you remember, the drunken, lying, murderer from Massachusetts? Oh wait. I am supposed to feel bad for him. Sorry, momentary lapse.) Canned the project where turbines were going to be placed off of Martha’s Vineyard. Great place. Prevailing winds… But they would be visible from the Kennedy Compound. Oh my, can’t have THAT! Not in HIS back yard. A senator that has proclaimed again and again how ‘alternative’ energy is needed! How ‘big oil’ is evil!
I say, put them out in MY back yard, then. I’d have no problem waking up in the morning and seeing a bunch of turbines generating power, a portion of which I get in cash! I don’t care how rich Mr. Pickins gets off this project, he’s sharing the wealth. A truly win-win situation.
Tide Power:
Capture incoming tides in natural lagoons - with gates that close behind them, and let them out slowly over a turbine. Nova Scotia could win big there… You don’t even need to ‘captured’ the tides there, the tide race is so massive in some areas that a turbine might just burn itself up. Of course this has limited applicability, but we don’t have to have a one size fits all solution.
Solar, wind, tide… geothermal… there are a lot of options. Let’s start demanding them…
We’re going ‘off the grid’ as soon as we can. If enough people would do that (they won’t of course), the energy companies would star scrambling!
Cap’n Jan
No use repeating here. Wallflower said exactly what I was about to say, except for the Kennedy part. Now I have another reason to despise that murdering rat bast^rd!
I don’t like guns, but I love the first, second and other amendments, codifying rights that proceed from the Creator and not a ruling monarchy, oligarchy or other-archy. I probably won’t ever own a gun, but I do enjoy shooting at clay pigeons and other objects down at the town gravel pit. I would possibly take up arms to defend your right to keep your guns, ZS. If I could shoot the raccoon or cat that killed the bluejay babies in our holly bush, I might possibly pull the trigger.
Oil?
First, do a 360º and look at everything in your home or place of work. Everything you see has been transported, powered or created with/by petroleum at some point. It’s not going away in our lifetime… it can’t.
So, how about exploiting and refining more of it, so the captial and energy it generates serves the development of other sources of energy (renewable would be nice). Utilize every type of energy possible to arrive at the cleanest, most efficient energy for the coming generations. Rather than curse the darkness, explore, extract and burn more oil… use oil to get off oil dependence.
Finally, follow the example of tens of millions of Chinese peasants, who can’t own cars or even use public transportation. Commit to riding a bicycle everywhere… it can be done, you know.
Bo said: First, do a 360º and look at everything in your home or place of work. Everything you see has been transported, powered or created with/by petroleum at some point. It’s not going away in our lifetime… it can’t.
Good point. There’s a documentary I’ve been meaning to see called Crude Impact, which explains just this issue. They break down the real cost of everyday items in terms of the oil used in their production and transport. There are some things that will always need to be transported. There are things that we can do though, like, buy local produce if you can. Rather than buying Peaches out of season from Flordia or Grapefruits from Brazil, go to your local farmer’s market or crop sharing association and get what you can there. We have to get out of the mindset that we deserve to have anything we want right when we want it — thus going without fresh strawberries in Chicago in January….
For the repubs to offer offshore drilling in this country as any sort of solution to high gas prices really took a lot of balls. I couldn’t agree more Slayer, I’ve read the same stuff over the years whenever this is brought up that we just don’t have enough oil off shore to mandate drilling. But off shore drilling would help the oil companies bottom line. To be honest since Exxon has been able to mostly slime its way out of the consequences for their oil spill in Alaska I frankly just don’t trust the bozos when they say they can drill safely.
My dad is borderline survivalist, but it doesn’t take much of an imagination to know what it would be like if we were invaded. We have to protect ourselves, hell, from our own government even should it decide to declare martial law. The pride of being American involves sometimes not taking shit when it comes to our personal liberties.
You know how I feel about energy. On Laura’s comment I would say that anything we do to curb our addiction to oil will at least decrease our demand on foreign oil. I too doubt that we will ever be totally off of it (until it runs out). But if solar can completely power our homes that would be HUGE. I’m not sure just how huge, but combined with wind power and other sources, and the fact that cars can be powered by electricity, you have to be hopeful.
As long as its about shooting some empty cans, i won’t mind.
Hyrdopower is a clean source of energy, the only damage it does is, you got to built lots of towers and grids, and for that u got to cut down quite a number of trees:(
Oh man. There’s such an infrastructure built on oil. It’s stupid, destructive, and the politicians (I suspect) everywhere are in it up to their gritty little necks. The technology and power sources exist now to get off of this stuff to a much greater degree than we have. Kyoto’s figures are a drop in the bucket compared to what’s really needed. The only (hollow) satisfaction about the greedheads is that when the rest of us go from the effects of the planet’s writing, they will go along with us.
Hey Zombie glad to see you posted… LOL..Beautiful photo. I have to talk to you but you already know about the e-mail you must have recieved from me. I didnt do it.. I cant get myself to stoop that low. But if you could e-mail me to my new account until I either get my hotmail cleaned up or just get it where people arent being harrassed through my e-mail. My new one is nbrtweet at gmail dot com. Its also on my profile and a post from yesterday.
I don’t understand why we became so dependent on foreign oil to begin with. I mean don’t we certainly have enough oil reserves to last us for quite a while? It just seems like the funds are going to line someone’s pockets. I’m thought we came up with a car that runs on corn oil during the 60’s. What the hell?! Looks like someone would have run with that idea.
And yes I would like to tell O.P.E.C. to shove it.
Nice post Zombie
Have a good day.
I love solar power and it’s so long over due. I hate squirrels.
Are you buying more DIA now that it has dropped again?
Kate - Looking to buy if it goes down to 11k.
JACC - Really? I’m kind of squirrel indifferent. Agreed about solar power.
Moni - Actually, the very first diesel cars invented in if I’m not mistaken the early 1900s ran on some kind of oil, I think it was peanut oil. I had a biodiesel car for awhile. I liked the concept, it was just that car was falling apart and I didn’t want to spend too much time on keeping it together.
Tweety - Got your msg.
Bridget - Ironically, your country has a tremendous amount of oil. The problem is getting to it. If they find a way to get to it, you may be the supplier for North America instead of overseas oil.
Tchoden - It will be shooting paper targets most likely.
We have water energy here, but it’s at the expense of destroying some nice valleys. Now, some of the dams are coming down.
Scott - I wish more people take survivalism more seriously. There’s something to be said for someone who can take care of themselves, no matter what the situation is.
That Scientific American article claims we can be completely off of foreign oil. We do produce oil in this country, just not enough, that’s why we have to import. If we can supply X% of more energy here (I don’t know the exact amount but the article has estimates), we could get off our dependence completely.
Beach - There have been some ugly spills on the California coast. Ugly is an understatement. It really destroys the beaches.
Laura - Actually, when I talked about Slow Foods probably a few years ago, I discussed that. Slow Foods include locally grown produce, and cut down on transportation costs and of course fuel consumption.
Bo - The thing is, America does produce a lot of oil. As I replied to Scott, we only need to cut down consumption by X% (as in the article) and we’ll be supplying our own oil, as we should be. The article showed how Solar Power can be that X%.
Tshsmom - I hate that guy, and will not mourn his death. he’s done so much damage to this country, not just killing that woman years ago.
Wallflower - Wind? Heck yeah. There’s a lot of it in California. I want to be completely off the grid someday and will use both wind and solar.
When you get off the grid, let me know. I’d love to know how it works. We’re currently renting, but when we move back to our house we’re renting out, we’ll cover the roof with solar panels and it should get enough sun in the summer months to actually get some money back from PG&E (our local energy company).
Lime - Agreed.
Laura - Thanks. It was not easy getting that close.
As for guns, we probably debated this point ad nauseum.
Oh, that squirrel is so cute!! I need to get my pics downloaded so I can show everybody the super cute ground hog that lives next door.
For the record, I’m part of the Left in regards to guns and I do not own, nor would I, so I am, at least, not hypocritical. I’ve been exceptionally disappointed in Ms. Feinstein and Ms. Pelosi of late.
Kathleen - Disappointed in them of late? I’ve never liked either. Both are career politicians with shaky ideals.
Glad you like the squirrel. I was really that close to it.