STRAIGHT OUTTA’ DENVER

Have you ever felt the sticky sensation of dried piss on your hands?
Or the gritty pleasure of sand between your teeth?
Do you ever look up into the sky and realize what you have taken for granted?

To you, life is like a never ending carousal of misery and pain.
9 to 5, and over again… sand between your teeth (piss on your hands).
I’ve heard that dryers help the environment, but what if paper towels help the soul?

Look into the sky and see the sign (as Seven things go passing by)
Were you ever born, or have you lived to die?
Piss and sand and dust and dry…

why?

Why not live… why not cry?
Why not laugh, and why not sigh?
Why not feel love, and joy, and grace, and… life
9 to 5 (9 to 5)

2 comments.

WTF: invot’s a Vegan?

Posted on April 7th, 2009 by invot.
Categories: Environment, Ethics, Itelligent Life, Cultural.

So this will likely be the most obscure post I ever write in my life. In fact, I’m debating right now on if I’ll even post this or if I’ll just delete it once I’m done.

Basically, I’ve made the decision to become vegan. Now, this is something I’ve never wanted. I’ve always jokingly stated that I’m racist against vegetarians. The common condescending nature of their kind has always turned me away for perusing such a lifestyle. I’ve told my friends in the past that for every cow they didn’t eat, I’d eat three. And, for a long time I did.

My belief has always been that people who decide not to eat red meat become malnourished and scrawny. And to be honest, I don’t have a problem with animals being slaughtered as long as its humane. (I’ve seen people torch pigs alive and I have to say I was pretty outraged.)

Though I love the taste of dairy and all those lovely meats, I’ve come to the conclusion that my body simply can’t handle them. Case in point: last night I ate a burger and afterwords felt annihilated, but for lunch I had a *cringe* veggie sandwich and felt great!

Though you may think I’m retarded, I’d like everyone I know to support me in this decision. I am not doing this for any moral reason, but for health reasons. My goal is to feel energized and healthy for once in my life so that I persue the things I’m after more efficently. Right now I’m stagnant, and I feel it’s due to my diet.

If any of you are interested in doing this with me, please let me know, and we can help eachother out. I’m excited to start doing this, however I know I’m going to suffer meat and diary withdrawals for while so please be encouraging. I found a list of veg-friendly resturants in Denver that I’d like to try out, so if you’re ever in the mood for a salad (or something of equal gayness :p), give me a ring and we’ll make dinner plans.

6 comments.

The Sinking ship called the United States of America

Posted on November 16th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Environment, Ethics, Party System, War, Law, Philosophy, Creative Writing, Israel, Christianity, Economics.

I’m actually taking great pleasure in writing this! I can’t deny this any longer. Our country is dieing! Now if you have voted for Obama because you believe that he will have an epic presidency and he will bring us out of the dark ages that Bush has put us through, then I think that you should stop reading this post now. It’s your time now and you should live it up to the fullest! Celebrate this and remember this to your dieing day! Really! Don’t let this bigoted fool spoil all of your fun! God bless all of you and just keep on going because nothing I have to say here that is going to be helpful for you. It’s just going to make you upset and I don’t want that. However if you voted for Obama because you thought he was the best man for the job or if you voted for anyone else or didn’t vote then this post is for you. Believe it or not I am not saying this because Obama was elected. In fact, I really think that politics should just start becoming a sporting event for everyone! I’ll root for my team, the republicans! My great friend can root for the democrats (who will not be named in this post, but sorry, girl, what just happened between us is just too essential to the point of this post for me to pass up!) D. Bean can root libertarian, P Muse can root Nater while Bieren can root for the no vote. We can just have some fun at it all! But I say that when the voting is done we get back to the business of the real kingdom because this country started dieing a long time ago and we’re still in that process. Obama’s election really just acted as a conformation of the fact that this country is sinking. Or we could say that his election was a diagnosis of a disease that our country has and it’s a terminal one. Now if you have voted for Obama then you did exactly what God wanted you to but we have a caner growing in our country and eventually it will kill our country. We could try a surgery on it; a revolution per se. But that’s not going to work one bit! this caner is too big and will kill the patient if attempted. That would be a lot of bloodshed in a hopeless cause so don’t attempt it! No! There is no reasonable why to remove this caner at all! This country is doomed to death. And it’s really quite simple why it will die! Our country will die because of just two sins: greed and coveting. Now I must first warn you before you keep reading this: This post is intended to challenge you! It’s not meant to gain agreement with me in any way at all but rather it’s meant to confuse. It’s really meant to screw your thinking up! So if you keep on reading this then you’ll be entering the world of a ravening lunatic! However this lunatic is a bondsmen to Jesus and that Guy has more power than you can imagine to just mess with your mind! So read on if you dare and if you do then I pray that He will start screwing with your mind and conforming it to what He wants. If you stop here then I pray that He will bless you and give you great Joy. If you have any challenges of me if you really do dare to read this, then please bring it on. I could really use much more challenges! If you have any hate filled comments then please send them. I have a funny way of always starting to pray for people who hate me so you’re really asking to trouble yourself with God. And lastly if you have any praise for me, well I’ll accept them but they’re just going to end up in Gods hands so you might as well just throw them up to Him now. That’ll just be quicker. But then again all of it will end up with Him anyway!

A far fetched grasp to what God sees
That title to this section is just my way of saying that this is what I think God was thinking when he allowed our nation to be born. Not that I am saying that I know what God is thinking by any sense of the word. If I knew what God is thinking then I would be God. But no, I’m not. I’m just another fool trying to make sense of this world. But as we have had a look through the bible we see a nation, Israel, that is one that always had God directly involved in all of the inner working of it’s government. God brought them out of Egypt, showed them their path to follow, destroyed their enemies for them, showed them how they should march in battle, how they should conduct their daily lives and when they started to complain that they didn’t have a king like the rest of the nations, he also selected a king for them. If you trust the bible on all that, then you can’t deny that He was running the whole show there. He even told them ahead of time how they could fail and get Him to kick them out of the land He promised for them.

Deuteronomy 30:15-18
“Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. For I command you this day to love the Lord your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy.

“But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy.

So in Israel of that time, anyone could look up in their book here and see why God is punishing them and why their doing badly. You’re not doing what God wants so you’re going to get disaster! You see it all throughout the old testament where Israel goes up and down. As soon as they start to forget God then they start doing badly and when they turn back then God blesses them and then they go back to forgetting Him again. That cycle kept on going on and on until they really upset God and he had Babylon come in and take them all away for 70 years. Just read through Jeremiah and you’ll get a sense of how upset God can really get! But as God had promised, He brought them all back again and it was back to the same as usual. However now this time God decided to really shake things up. He sent Jesus to turn everything up on it’s head. Jesus paid the price for the law so that now we’re not following the letter of the law but rather the spirit of the law. Now we’re to do what the law was always meant to do but because of sin everyone was unable to do it. The price of the law was paid in full and while it still applies, it serves as only as a mirror to show us our sins so that we may run to Christ and receive His free gift to pay the price for the law. That’s a concept coming directly from Paul where he says:

Romans 7:4
So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God.

And here in verse 7:

Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not! In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “You must not covet.”

So now something takes the place of the law:

John 14:15-17
“If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you.

The Holy spirit takes the place of the law and acts as our guide. So that means that we no longer need direct laws and miracles from God in order for us to follow His will. That’s not to say that He doesn’t do miracles anymore, there have been many that people have experienced and I have seen these miracles for myself as well. However God always seems to make them much more settle lately and their not obvious for the whole world to see like He did for the Jews in early Israel. So God has never directly controlled our country. He in fact had allowed us to set up our government without any direct guidance from Him but rather our forefathers set this country up based upon the principles that we find in the bible. I think that God set up a second Israel like nation as the United States only this time He held back and instead of direct involvement in every inner working of our government, He instead granted the wisdom to us on how we should run this country according to His will and gave us the right people to run establish this nation. However just like the first test He had with Israel, we still had sin in our country from the very beginning that will, just as early Israel did, eventually lead to our death as a nation. The first one we have had entrench before we even became a nation: Greed.

The original sin of the United States
Greed is our original sin as a country! It’s the most obvious sin we have going around. We saw that all to clearly with our finical collapse we are going through. It’s all due to the fact that people we getting greedy and taking loans that was beyond their means. It’s a hard thing to control just due to the fact that we do have a finical system that is set up to encourage greed. Now a little bit if greed is actually not bad at all! It’s what keeps us driving to bigger and better things in this country. We need a little bit to keep our economy going because people want to make their money so that they can live out their life and reach for their dreams. The problem is when we get too excessive with that dream. A little greed is good but we have to realize that we use it only so that we can survive, enjoy life and to give to others! Where it gets us into trouble is where it starts to rule our lives so that the obtaining of wealth becomes most important aspect to our lives. That’s why we allowed our first horrid injustice form: slavery. We allowed the south to buy people as though they could be bought like a plow and use them to make money for our selfs. That’s a dark sin on our country that we have paid a horrible price for it through war. Our civil war left a massive scar on our nation. However, going overboard on greed is just something that cuts at out nation and if thous cuts don’t kill us on impact then we find a way to move forward in this country and repair the damage that was done. We have seen this all the time in out nation! We get a little bit overboard in our markets and then we get punished with recessions and then we go back up again. It’s quite a cyclical thing in our country and it’s happened many times before. So just like how people get an occasional bum and cut all the time and they heal back up, so too our country goes through these bums and cuts and also heals back up again. However just like how people can get an infection or a disease through a wound that is exposed, so too we have let a caner into our country through our exposed wound of greed. That’s a caner that is less obvious to see and feeds off of our nation; growing to eventually take the life of our nation. That caner is coveting.

The killer germ
Doesn’t that seem like the odd commandment out! Looking through all of the other commandments, their all ones that you should do something or not do something. You know, Don’t murder, or worship idols, or you should honor your parents and the sabbath. But then he throws in “You must not covet your neighbor’s house. You must not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor.” (Exodus 20:17) Isn’t that one a little strange? This is the only one that tells us not to want something, or one that tells us not to think something. So of all of the commandments this the one weird zinger at the end! Why would God do that? Well this is the interesting don’t think something commandment. What does it really mean? You’re not to want something that someone else has. It doesn’t say that you can’t want things. There are plunty of times where it’s good to want things. It’s alright to want a nice house but it’s bad to want your neighbor’s house. It’s alright for a man to want a wife but it’s bad for a man to want his neighbor’s wife. So why should you want anything that your neighbor has? Could it be because you think you’re more deserving of that than your neighbor? That’s the real problem! thinking that because your neighbor did something wrong means that you should get what your neighbor has! Does that sound familiar? That’s all that Obama talks about! Just because the poor have been crushed by the rich means that the poor should be given what the rich has. Now again I was just getting into how bad greed is. Letting that greed go wild can create this situation but it doesn’t make it right. Why can’t we just trust God to set things right? Why do we have to start getting envious of what these rich people have. They have far more problems to deal with than the rest of us who don’t have that much money.

Isaiah 3:14-15
The Lord comes forward to pronounce judgment
on the elders and rulers of his people:
“You have ruined Israel, my vineyard.
Your houses are filled with things stolen from the poor.
How dare you crush my people,
grinding the faces of the poor into the dust?”
demands the Lord, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.

Why couldn’t we just trust in God like our coins say? But instead we have chosen to make coveting a governmental issue! Did you ever wonder why we have never prevailed in the war on poverty. We’ve been doing it for around 40 years and it’s never gotten better. In fact I would say that it’s gotten much more worse! When you eliminate the principal that if a man doesn’t work that he doesn’t eat then what happens? He just doesn’t work! So when everyone wants to just let others do the working for them then how’s going to do the work? The only people who work are like me who know there is a God in heaven that I am really serving. I don’t work hard at my job just so that I can live, I could just take it easy just like the rest of the people at my work and just do enough to get by the day. But I work harder than them because I want to give that up as an offering to my God! And I really asking for forgiveness right now because lately I’ve been loosing sight of that with all the things going on in my life. However when the weight of people that just want to be lazy gets greater than the weight of thous that are pulling them, then how is the cart of our economy going to get pulled? You can’t do it! So just by the sheer laws of economics that God has put in place, our country is just going to die. So when everyone thinks they’re owed a free ride then the economy will collapse, hence the commandment do not covet just so that they can just keep on going about their business and not worry about who has more or who has less. instead Jesus told us to be concerned with the least of these. I’ll tell you what, voting for someone else to be concerned with the least of these is not being concerned with the poor! Sitting down and taking to such people is and helping them get out of their situation is helping the poor! You’re just pushing it one someone else rather than dealing with the problem that you see. But we have all been raised in a now oriented culture and we just want to see the problem to go away right now! But these things don’t go away immediately, It takes a lot of time and effort. Just giving a hand out just makes the problem worse! Not only do you need to stop the problem but you need to fix what created it in the first place. So I can give you a problem of mine to illustrate this better. I have this Truck that I absolutely love! That thing can haul things really well. At the time that I have bought I, it seemed really reasonable to me! It was only 9 Grand and It had a V8! I love big engines! So it seemed that it was really well with in my means. However The gas prices went up and then I’ve had both axles brake on me and now just the rear axle just locked up on me. So now it’s become a whole lot more expensive for me! So is the solution to just keep on borrowing money from people so that I can say afloat? (and I am very grateful that I have amazing people in my life that have helped me out here). No! The real solution is for me to get rid of that truck so that I can live a little bit better in my means. So if I just keep on asking for money from the people around me pretty soon I am going to run them dry and also make them angry with me. However our whole country is not doing that! we just continue to borrow from others for something that we really don’t need. That’s all this welfare and social security. All of these thing made to make us feel better for not really caring for the poor our selfs like we should have. All of this to conceal the greed that we all have (and this is me much more than most).

The land of the slaves and the home of the timid
We are slaves to this country! Now in relative terms we’re quite free in this nation. Now, in comparison to North Kora we’re really free! But we’re still not actually free. To Illustrate my point further I just have to go to Joesph. Just a little refresher, he was the one that sold into slavery to Egypt and interpreted Pharaoh’s dream to him. Pharaoh then put him in charge of everything in Egypt and so when the famine came everyone came to Egypt because Joesph had plunty of food stored up. First he took all their cattle for the grain he gave them but the famine was still relentless. So all of the people sold their land and themselves as slaves to Pharaoh. So what was the consequence of that action?

Then when you harvest it, one-fifth of your crop will belong to Pharaoh. You may keep the remaining four-fifths as seed for your fields and as food for you, your households, and your little ones.”

Or that’s 20% of everything that they make goes to Pharaoh. So we get about 17% in income tax but you also have to add in state and sales taxes and not to mention that any tax on companies gets installed into the price of what they sell. We’re well beyond that 20%! Not to mention that now the government is going to be buying up the bad houses and while I did support that idea at the time, that’s just going to make us even more enslaved to this government. I still thought that McCain would win when I had supported the idea so I thought that it would eventually get sold back to the market, but with Obama I just think that it’s going to get a whole lot bigger! But we do have a freedom in the sense that we still can control our own lives to a certain extent. We can still decide for our selfs what line of work we want or who we want to marry and such things like that. But when all of our money goes to this system, does that really make us free? We can’t really do everything that we really want with all of our money because we have a demand on us from this government to give a good bit of it to what government wants to do! Why should we be saves to this government! It’s all because we have decided to make our selfs slaves to this government. By voting in policies that forcefully take from the rich and give to the poor, we have decided to enslave ourself to this government. And that’s just going to become more and more true as more and more welfare policies go up. Now I have been one of the biggest patriots this country has ever known! I very much grew up that why and I guess one of my biggest sins early in life has been one were I would put my trust in this nation rather than in God. I didn’t trust myself at all and at the time I though God hated me, so the only thing I had was this country! So I got very interested in politics, listened intently to talk radio all so that I could understand it all extremely well. But right now God is dealing a really harsh reality to me that I have been afraid of all my life. The reality is that any system ever conserved by man is doomed to failure just by the very fact that it has been made by sinful men. It doesn’t matter what system it is, it’s doomed to failure just by the fact that we are sinful, we’re human! Now in the past we have seen a perfectly controlled society that could not fail in early Israel. That system was one in which God Himself pronounced the judgments and rules to His people through His judges and He went ahead and won the battles for them. But what happed to that system? The people wanted a king to be like all of the rest of the nations.

1 Samuel 8:7
“Do everything they say to you,” the Lord replied, “for it is me they are rejecting, not you. They don’t want me to be their king any longer.

Doesn’t this sound a bit familiar? What is it that Obama is all about? Being liked by other nations! We just all need to get along. Well just getting along is not why we are here but to do God’s will is why we are here! So we are rejecting the same God that has blessed us so much just the same as early Israel. We didn’t trust God we he wanted us to help each other out and be a blessing to the rest of the nations just the same as early Israel did. God used two different methods to prove His point, that without Him we are meaningless. In early Israel he used the method of direct involvement in every aspect of the country and in our country he used the method of just giveing the principals, wisdom and His Holy Spirit to guide us. The results was and will be failure just because we are sinful humans and we always fail. So there’s really no hope here! The ship is sinking here and anything we do with this government will just be putting a little sock in the massive hole. There’s no hope to stopping this patent from dieing! If you try to remove the caner by revolution then you’ll just end up killing the patent. That’s a horrible bloody thing to be thinking about and just a lot of people would die for no reason. So you can count me out on any sort of idea like that. I just won’t have any part of that. So without some sort of miracle, then this patent is going to die sometime soon. I can’t say when, I’m not a prophet by any sense of the word and God has never talked to me directly but rather by implanting ideas in my head and I just struggle my hardest to make sense of it all. So what can we really do when someone is dieing from a caner? Pray for a miracle and be there as much as we can. But what can we do when a country is dieing from a caner? Become the miracle!

Finding a miracle in a broken country
That great friend of mine reminded me of a line from Shane Claiborne a few weeks back that said- “We need to find some way to teach people to live more simply…so that others may simply live.” I have to admit that it really did seem like a really simplistic line to me at first! Almost like the liberal version of the conservitive line “eat your food because there are kids starving in China.” Oh! So does that mean that if I just eat my food then some kid in China will have his stomach filled? I had a similar reaction to this line thinking, “Oh does that mean that money will just get shipped of to Africa if I don’t make that much.” No that doesn’t translate at all! If I just don’t make the money then someone will just do it. You just can’t force wealth to be spread you have to get others to make it for it to be spread. But as I had mentioned earlier the rear axle in my truck had just locked up on me a few weeks back. After I had gotten it back to the shop and heard how much it was going to cost me I just couldn’t help but think, “man I just need to live a little simply so that I can just live!” Then it just hit me, that’s exactly what the whole country needs right now! To get rid of the excess and just live simply for others! Which is exactly what my friend was getting at in the first place! Now I just have to admit that Shane was right, God just has a funny way of just slapping what you dismiss right back in your face (and that’s why I still say that He has a really sick sense of humor or maybe He just does that to me because I like it). But we just can’t go up to congress and demand that they just stop doing things, they don’t care! They’re just going to keep voting for what gets them elected and getting their bribes. And both parties do that! We can’t get a governmental fix here because of all this greed and coveting! So what’s the miracle?

John 17:13-19
“Now I am coming to you. I told them many things while I was with them in this world so they would be filled with my joy. I have given them your word. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. They do not belong to this world any more than I do. Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth. Just as you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world. And I give myself as a holy sacrifice for them so they can be made holy by your truth.

Retuning to what Jesus told us! We were not called to be engulfed by this world but to be in the middle of it and not represent any part of it. The sneaky betrayal of this country is that it started off representing that but as the devil has gotten a hold of over this country then he twisted it to something completely different. From being in this world but not of it to taking thous who trust in it to slavery to the devil. This is something that I am just now realizing because I was so caught up in it! But now I must call that we turn this country off even though it has done so many great things in the world. However this county is not the same as the heavenly kingdom that we are apart of! This one will burn! But yet by the fires that will burn this country, there will be a purification of thous that are not part of this world. Like a crucible the burns off the trash and reveals the pure gold so to will this world be burned by fire. The hope is not that we leave this world but that God will come and burn off all of the evil that has infected this world and bring us to His special home. So it becomes, especial now, massively important that we become part of the gold that will remain when the fires start! For if the death of a smaller nation like early Israel lead to God giving us the gift of Jesus and His Holy Spirit then what would the death of this nation mean? It would mean the beginning of the fires that burns off the trash and the return of Jesus. And that’s all that our hope is warped up in! But how do we make our selfs pure when we have a nation that makes us slaves to the devil by giving us what we desire most. We start a revolution! One not of bloodshed or even one that has any violence at all to it. One that’s just really Irresistible!

The Irresistible Revelation
Now that’s not an original line! That’s a title to a book that I have reviewed here on this blog. That was written by Shane Claiborne and he has a funny little disclaimer at the beginning of it. Something similar to the disclaimer that I made a the beginning of this post. That’s a disclaimer that you should pay attention to because it does mess with your mind! You just can’t get it out of your head until God just makes you pay attention! Because it is just so irresistible to just absolutely not care for the things of this world and just care about the smaller things of life. And that’s what we need to do! Start giveing into God and start releasing our selfs from the slavery of this country and enslaving our selfs to Jesus and we can do that right now in a piratical way! All we have to do is just stop depending on government as much as possible and start depending on each other as much as possible! Not that we don’t pay our taxes or anything like that but just that we should just make it harder for them to tax us. May I be so bold as to say that we should just give unto Obama what’s Obama’s and give unto God what’s God’s. And when you count for the fact that God wants every part of us then you just have to say that Obama really doesn’t get all that much (that’s just to give a little twist on what Shane had said). However as Paul had told us:

Romans 13:1-3
Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God. So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished. For the authorities do not strike fear in people who are doing right, but in those who are doing wrong. Would you like to live without fear of the authorities? Do what is right, and they will honor you.

This is not a rebellion in any sense of the word but yet it’s one rebellion that will absolutely drive everyone mad (just like how I am just going crazy!) The one thing that going to get everyone ticked of the most is just the fact that we just will not conform to their thinking like they want us to. The battle is in being surrounded by this world but not being in it so then we must not live anything like everyone else. We should go into every place with a smile so big that no one can figure out why the heck we can even smile. I can tell you what: I have that key! It’s really very simple yet really hard to do! But it only has two steps to it. The first step is pretty hard, you have to realize that all of your suffering is your own fault! (I really messed up on that line, I explain here.) After that the next one is really easy. All you have to do is just love everyone around you intensely just as if they we’re your own child. Once you do that then you’ll find out that you haven’t suffered at all! I’m telling you that it’s really a great feeling that you just can’t help but smile! I’m telling you that once you start doing that then you’ll find that you just never fit! Could we say that it’s just like repenting and serving? Now why does that sound familiar? Could that just be exactly what Jesus called us to do? Isn’t that “three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13) We are called to do everything that we do in this life for God with great love for others! That’s what just makes this so Irresistible! It’s because God himself just keeps throwing zingers at us all the time! However the zingers are just too small for our humanly eyes to see! We just have to trust him to let us see them and you’ll just be amazed at how much the smallest things can make the biggest impacts of all. So to borrow another line from Shane that we are “committed to doing small things with great love.” And when we do that for each other and everyone else then the world view then start to crumble around us. But yet we have to keep on making that commitment over and over again because the eyes God gives us are small and need constant maintenance to keep us focused on the little things that God has. When you let an engine run without oil for a long time the thing just breaks down! Then you have to rebuild it that engine to get it working again. So to when we let our selfs loose the sight of the little things that God does for us then God needs to take apart our brains and just rebuild it so that it can function properly again. Hence: my prayer that this is screwing up your thinking. Well Shane just did it to me, can’t I just start throwing it on you now!

I have come here a sinner but I will leave you a saint
I am really ashamed to admit it, but just this week the thought of some sort of suicide for me was quite temping the other day. That was the first time I even had ever though that I could do such a thing. Just in the past few months everything I have though and believed in was coming crashing down before my very eye’s and there was nothing I could do about it. That’s the hardest thing for me to deal with because understanding is one of my most valued assets. But yet being a bondsmen to Christ means that he owns everything even my flawed way of thinking. So when God had planted the idea in my head that there’s this girl who’s going to love you sitting right there (and now I am really putting you on the spot here girl! Sorry if you still reading this). God told me that he had something for me to do first before I could get it. So being a raving fool that I am, I just start looking for every little thing about her to find out what it is I have to do! That’s been causing a wreaking ball in my head trying to figure it out! God’s just used this whole situation to completely blow up my mind! Till finally I just had the wild idea that I should just tell her the whole thing! A very frighting prospect to me because I just felt so ragingly mad over everything. And in the end I didn’t get that girl of my dreams here but yet she still really did love me. Not in the way that I wanted her to but, yet, in the why that I needed her to. That’s doing a simple thing with great love! For though it all I was able to find myself once more. For God’s grace is sufficient. He always does what he promises to do but its our own flawed thinking that makes us wrong with Him and we need Him to rebuild our minds every now and then. Through it all I just had to keep my hope in God and while He didn’t do anything that I wanted, He did what I needed. That’s the most valuable thing we can take from this right now! Through every shattered thought and dream the words God had told me have never left: “Don’t worry my son, I AM still in control.” God wants us to have great joy in our lives but He will do what we need first. So even if all of the doom and gloom happens then God is still in control! If all of the doom and gloom doesn’t happen then God is in control! If everything that I strive to try to achieve doesn’t fall through THEN GOD IS IN CONTROL! I would have been dead so long ago if it wasn’t for God being in control and well for that matter there’s nothing. For what does one gain when he sells his soul to get what he wants? I’ll tell you! A world full of greed and coveting! Let’s let God have our greed and coveting (and we all do it!) and give all of our work up to Him in everything that we do. That’s being a bondsman to Christ.

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The 2008 Colorado Election

Posted on October 9th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Energy, Environment, Ethics, Law, education, Economics, Local.

Man! We have a lot of things to vote on this year with 14 amendments and 4 referendums to vote on this year! Of course we have Obama vs. McCain on the ballot as well as Bob Schaffer Vs. Mark Udall for Senator. So since there are a good number of amendments I thought it would be a good idea to put up each of them up here so that we can debate them here. So here is the page with all of the amendments and referendums. These are all the exact wording that you will see on your ballot, it just came straight off of my mail in ballot. Once we put up a post on any particular amendment or referendum I’ll link it up under that particular amendment. You can keep track of what we post up by just going straight to the page on the side tab unless you are using Internet Explorer. IE is a bad bowser and it doesn’t work well with our site so do yourself a favor and get Mozilla. Then you’ll be able to see all of the pretty things we have posted up at the side. You can download Mozilla free here. After the election I’ll put up what passed and failed and we can continue on from there.

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Sarah Palin Gets the Veep spot!

Posted on August 30th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Energy, Environment, Party System, Philosophy, Media, Republicans, Democrats, Economics.

An absolutely brilliant political maneuver by John McCain and it’s sure to stir things up! Thursday while Obama was preparing for his speech there were plenty of rumors going around about who McCain’s running mate will be. He had the media all rilled up with Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Tim Planity all rumored to be headed to Ohio to accept his nomination and then this morning he pulls out Sarah Palin of Alaska to be his running mate! Now I now that I have had plunty of prevous posts saying that she needs more experience and should stay in Alaska another four years to get it, but now that he has picked her I really am happy and I must say that I am starting to get impressed by John McCain. I starting to really look forward to seeing her take on Joe Biden! I mean come on now! This lady will tear Biden a new one! This is really starting to expose a big flaw in the Obama camp in the fact that he went with the normal Democrat running mate when he should have gone with Hillery (of course then again he would have to have plunty of secret service around him at all times a even need to hire a taste tester too if he did that.) Slow Joe Biden is not going to get Obama anywhere and now it just looks like all of the thunder that he amassed yesterday was just stolen by Sarah Pailn. Hugh Hewitt has six reasons why this pick was a good one up at Townhall.com.

First, over the past month we have gone from hoping Senator McCain would win to thinking he might actually be able to win. With the selection of Governor Palin most of us are convinced he will win. Which means the country will be well led on the war for at least another four crucial years. The reason behind this new confidence leads us to the second factor.

Although I am going to be more humble and not say that McCain/Palin is a sure win but new confidence is exactly right!

Sarah Palin is a real deal conservative, down the line, on all of the issues. This has the immediate effect of energizing the base to battle to keep the White House and to close the gap in or take back the House of Representatives. It is especially important that she is ardently pro-life, and the story of her family is certain to resonate with those values voters who prize faith and family as the center of life.

Amen!

Third, the Palin pick guarantees that the party will remain a conservative party long-term. If Senator McCain had picked a pro-choice Republican or had asked his friend and great American Joe Lieberman to run with him, the party would truly have been split. That didn’t happen, and Matt Cunningham summarizes the response among conservatives party activists:

McCain took a major step forward in exciting the GOP’s conservative base at Rick Warren’s forum. For example, I spoke with a prominent local conservative activist who was so enthused by McCain’s performance who bought a plane ticket for Minneapolis the next.

The Palin choice boosts and accelerates that process. Like me, Palin is 44 years old. She came of age politically during the Age of Ronald Reagan. To a conservative movement that has grown tired and enervated, she has demonstrated you can run, win and successfully govern on conservative principles in the face of the government-accommodating Republicanism that has infected so much of the party.

Most defiantly was necessary for McCain to ensure to his base and the fact that he will have a conservitive voice in his administration will ease the concerns of, well really all the conservatives in the party.

Fourth, the GOP already owned the energy issue and and the energy issue dominates and will continue to dominate the next 60 days. Even if Sarah Palin doesn’t persuade John McCain to come out for exploring ANWR now, a vigorous exploration/conservation strategy has an ideal spokesperson in Palin.

It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

Fifth, she is not a Beltway Republican. The modern GOP is the party of Reagan and Bush –both westerners, and very outside-the-Beltway. Neither ever succumbed to the Beltway’s many poisons.

John McCain is clearly outside of his party’s recent tradition, much more of the Eisenhower, above-partisanship nationalist than the movement conservative, comfortable as a Beltway big, on easy terms with the permanent political elite of the country from both parties and the Beltway-Manhattan media elite.

McCain, of course, understands the war and is the steel for the next crucial few years of resolve that victory in the war requires. A Vice President Palin will be a voice for the conservative movement in the Administration and for the party outside of the Beltway. The long run of Congressional power drained a lot of the energy from the GOP when it came to the battle of ideas, and Palin is a representative of the non-Beltway GOP that wants very much to get back into that fray. Winning the war remains the first priority, and Supreme Court justices after that, but on a host of key issues Governor Palin represents the reagan wing of the party, and that’s a great thing.

That’s looking to cleaning up Washington!

Sixth and finally, she is young enough to be a bridge to the next generation, and with five kids, she has been living in the world of young moms and technology-dependent teens. This advantage will be hard to quantify, but when she is out on the trail talking about her kids and her family’s path, it will be a huge counterpoint to the Obama’s narrative, one that underscores that millions of American families are conservative, traditional, proud of their country and full of optimism about the future if the government’s burdens do not grow to large and the country’s enemies are kept in retreat.

There is a lot of enthusiasm out there, and given these reasons, it will endure until November.

Absolutely right! That certainly helps out a lot. Even James Dodson is getting on this band wagon:

Prager: Plenty, plenty of people care and that’s why I am having you on. I care, many people care and you have a lot of followers. You have earned the right to that respect. So are you prepared to say, “Folks, look, given this pick and all I have learned about what would happen with a Democratic victory we have no choice, but to enthusiastically work for the McCain-Palin ticket?”

Dobson: You know, I have only endorsed one presidential candidate in my life and that was George Bush in the second term after I had watched him for four years. I did not do that in his first term. So I’m very reluctant to do that. You marry a politician you can be a widow pretty quickly.

Prager: That’s right.

Dobson: But I can tell you that if I had to go into the studio, I mean the voting booth today, I would pull that lever.

Prager: Well this is a very big deal.

Dobson: And that’s a long way’s from where I told you a year ago.

Prager: No kidding. No kidding. I am honored that you used this show to make that statement.

Dobson: You know, Dennis, the things that concern me about John McCain are still there. I made those comments not just based on emotions, but based on his record and some of the things that took place—embryonic stem cell research, and other things, the campaign finance, and other things. Those are still there. So, there’s still concerns. But I tell you, when I look at the choices that are ahead and what the implications are for this country, and now especially with this selection, with just an outstanding V.P. candidate as a running mate, I tell you what I am relieved and very excited.

Prager: Well, if you’re very excited given your previous reservations then I have to believe, and certainly based on the handful of calls I’ve been able to take the first hour before my “Happiness Hour,” I took the calls and people were so excited, palpably excited. Jim Dobson, and I got to tell you… if your base is energized then that is the biggest nightmare that the left has.

Dobson: I was just with about 300, maybe 400 people in a large auditorium, and they put Sarah Palin’s speech on the screen and we sat there and watched. I’m telling you it was electric. These were conservatives, you know. They were mostly Christian, but not all of them were. I mean to tell you, it set that crowd on fire. If that’s any indication, I think we are going to see some things.

Prager: We sure are. Well, you made my day. I just want you to know that.

Yep that was sure! Here is the key to her speech:

I was just your average hockey mom in Alaska. We’re busy raising our kids and serving as the team mom and coaching some basketball on the side. I got involved in the PTA and then was elected to the city council. And then elected mayor of my hometown, where my agenda was to stop wasteful spending and cut property taxes and put the people first. I was then appointed ethics commissioner and chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. And when I found corruption there, I fought it hard and I held the offenders to account. Along with fellow reformers in the great state of Alaska, as governor I stood up to the old politics as usual, to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the big oil companies, and the good old boy network. When oil and gas prices went up so dramatically, and the state revenues followed with that increase, I sent a large share of that revenue directly back to the people of Alaska. And we are now embarking on a $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.

I signed major ethics reforms and I appointed both Democrats and Independents to serve in my administration. And I’ve championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said, we’d build it ourselves.

Well, it’s always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk. To just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn’t get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not why the ship is built. Politics isn’t just a game of competing interests and clashing parties. The people of America expect us to seek public office and to serve for the right reasons. And the right reason is to challenge the status quo and to serve the common good.

Now, no one expects us to agree on everything. Whether in Juno or in Washington. But we are expected to governor with integrity, and good will, and clear convictions, and service (ph) heart. Now, no leader in America has shown these qualities so clearly or present so clear a threat to business as usual in Washington as Senator John F. McCain.

This is a moment when principles and political independents matter a lot more than just the party lines. And this is a man who has always been there to serve his country, not just his party. And this is a moment that requires resolve, and toughness, and strength of hearts in the American president. And my running mate is a man who has shown those qualities in the darkest of places. And in the service of his country.

That’s exactly what we need! Someone to make sure that the conservitive principals have their voice in the white house and now conservative will be very comfortable voting for them. So what did Obama have to say?

What — what is that American promise? It’s a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have obligations to treat each other with dignity and respect.

It’s a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, to look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

Ours — ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work.

That’s the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation, the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.

That’s the promise we need to keep. That’s the change we need right now.

(APPLAUSE)

So — so let me — let me spell out exactly what that change would mean if I am president.

(APPLAUSE)

Change means a tax code that doesn’t reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.

(APPLAUSE)

I’ll eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

(APPLAUSE)

I will — listen now — I will cut taxes — cut taxes — for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.

(APPLAUSE)

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

(APPLAUSE)

We will do this. Washington — Washington has been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years. And, by the way, John McCain has been there for 26 of them.

(LAUGHTER)

And in that time, he has said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil than we had on the day that Senator McCain took office.

Now is the time to end this addiction and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution, not even close.

(APPLAUSE)

As president, as president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I’ll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America.

(APPLAUSE)

I’ll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars.

A lot more of big government taking care of you little people. Is that what we really want? Do you really want a government that will take care of you and make sure that you have everything that you need? Or would it be better that we just take care of our selfs and thous around us and we (not the government) will move this country forward. If you want to get taken care of then Obama/Biden is defiantly your vote and if you want to achieve something for yourself then McCain/Palin is your vote.

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Another Obama Post!

Posted on July 8th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Immigration, Energy, Environment, Abortion, Party System, War, Law, Constitutional Law, Terrorism, Republicans, Democrats, Iraq, Israel, Economics.

Yes yes, that’s right! I’m posting on Obama again because this is just too important to pass up. Townhall.com has had two of my favorite talk show hosts: Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Prager. I’ll start with Prager’s article first:

My bottom line is this: The gulf between John McCain and conservatives is miniscule compared to the gulf between John McCain and Barack Obama. This is true regarding virtually every issue of significance to America. The America that a President Barack Obama would shape, with the help of a Democratic Congress and a liberal Supreme Court, would be very dissimilar from the America shaped by a President John McCain.

Conservatives who will not vote for McCain are well-intentioned utopians. They are comparing McCain to a consistently conservative candidate. The reality, however, is that McCain is not running against a consistently conservative candidate. He is running against a consistently left-wing candidate. And America cannot afford to have its first leftist president ever. It can afford liberal presidents — such as Bill Clinton, or Jimmy Carter (who governed as a liberal but became a leftist after leaving the White House), or John F. Kennedy, or Lyndon Johnson, or Harry Truman — i.e., all the Democrats who have been president since World War II. But the Democratic Party has moved well to the left of liberalism. And Barack Obama is at the left of that left-wing party.

Furthermore, given the strong possibility of a Democratic House, a Democratic Senate, and a liberal Supreme Court for decades to come, given the number of Supreme Court appointments a Democratic president will be able to make, an Obama victory will move America more radically leftward than ever in its history.

The Supreme court is good reason in it’s self! It’s taken a long to just to get it to a swing court. An Obama presidency will ensure that it stays a swing court and possibly reverse what we have wanted all along. The next president has the possibility of picking the next six supreme court justices.

That is why the argument that an Obama administration will be so destructive that Americans will reject the left and then elect a real conservative to undo the damage done in an Obama presidency is deeply flawed.

First of all, other than impeachment, there is no way to undo Supreme Court appointments, two or three of which a President Obama would likely make. And given how active most liberal judges are, it won’t matter much if the country has some conservative epiphany and then elects a Republican president and Congress. Because even if the Congress and the president will not pass liberal legislation, a liberal Supreme Court will. On almost any social issue that matters — the right to bear arms, late-term abortion, the definition of marriage, capital punishment, and many others — a liberal Supreme Court will rule on these issues, and there will be nothing that a post-Obama Republican president, even with a Republican congress, will be able to do about them.

Moreover, the argument that Americans will have a conservative epiphany after four years of an Obama presidency is predicated on America being greatly damaged by his policies. What kind of mindset welcomes such damage to the country it loves for the sake of potentially gaining politically after the damage is done? Is it, for example, really worth a considerably weakened economy (which Barack Obama’s tax and other economic policies would likely lead to), with its widespread suffering and unforeseeable social and political consequences, just to — hopefully — get a conservative into the White House four or eight years later?

And the damage won’t necessarily be undone. Even Ronald Reagan, the most popular conservative to ever serve as president, could not roll back most liberal creations. He never could get rid of the useless Department of Education, for example. Nor could a then-popular President George W. Bush do a thing about Social Security even when he had a Republican House and Senate. And how will Barack Obama’s successor undo the damage done to Iraq, the Middle East, the War on Islamic Terror, and the credibility of America’s assurances to allies once Iraq slides into chaos as a result of America’s precipitous withdrawal from Iraq?

Therefore, as well meaning and sincere as many conservatives are, this mode of thinking — let the country suffer under a left-wing president, Congress, and Supreme Court and then it will come to its conservative senses — will likely lead to a downward spiral from which it is hard to see the country escaping for a generation, if it is lucky.

There is one person who can prevent this unhappy future — John McCain.

He will not raise taxes, the last thing we should be doing in a weakened economy.

He will reduce government spending, and thereby prevent the state from controlling even more of American life.

He will ensure that America wins in Iraq. That will make one of the biggest and richest Arab states the freest of the Arab states. And it will hand Islamic terrorists the biggest defeat they have ever suffered. It will teach potential enemies not to attack America (whether Iraq did so directly is irrelevant to the point). And it will reassure America’s allies around the world, many of whom, as in Iraq, risk their lives for America and liberty, that America will never abandon them.

He will appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court and to federal benches, thereby depriving the left of its most powerful weapon in reshaping America in its image.

He may attract enough Hispanic votes (while securing the borders) to prevent that critical constituency from identifying with the Democratic Party, something that would ensure left-wing victories for decades to come.

He will develop nuclear power, environmentalist (read leftist) opposition to which has been morally indefensible. We would all love to have a solar powered or wind powered country. However, on planet earth at this time, nuclear power may be the cleanest source of energy we have. That is why France, not heretofore known as politically conservative, relies on nuclear power for nearly 80 percent of its electricity.

Now to Hugh Hewitt’s bit:

The key: McCain will pursue victory in the war, deter our enemies because of his reputation for strength and defend the country via aggressive pursuit of terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever they are, and get most of the judicial nominees right. He’ll keep taxes where they are if he can.

Obama, on the other hand, is just now coming into focus for other than the already committed Obamians. He had a stumbling, bumbling close to his primary campaign, and the opening weeks of his general campaign have been marked by flip flops and lurches left.

Here’s the core of Obama:

He’s hard left.

He wants the marginal rate on total federal taxes, including his social security tax hike, to immediately rise at least 57% on the highest earners. Obama wants to raise taxes even in a weak economy, though this is a recipe not just for recession but worse. Obama also wants to raise taxes on dividend income and to return the death tax to its highs of eight years ago.

Obama has proposed more than a trillion dollars in new spending.

Obama is going to absolutely destroy this economy even worse than it is.

Obama wants to cut and run from Iraq, with withdrawals of crucial forces beginning immediately upon his entry into office. Obama has never met one on one with General Petraeus and has not been to Iraq in more than 900 days. He is indifferent to the incredible progress made by our troops and the Iraqi Defense Forces and the Iraqi government in the last 18 months.

He supports the decision extending habeas rights to Gitmo detainees and he thinks the most liberal member of the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is a great model for future Supreme Court appointments.

Obama supports gay marriage, and opposes the California constitutional amendment to restore marriage to the definition overturned by a 4-3 vote of the California Supreme Court in May. He supports abortion on demand, including partial birth abortion.

If any of you care about abortion and gay marriage, Obama’s going to shove it down your through.

Obama has the slightest grasp on history, and routinely makes the sort of errors about basic facts that shock knowledgeable observers, like arguing the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit in Vienna was an example of the benefits of one-on-one diplomacy.

Obama is not a strong friend of Israel. He spent 20 years in a church that was openly hostile to Israel, and he reversed himself on Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel after one day of criticism by Palestinians.

Obama is running a dirty campaign, and the serial assaults on John McCain’s service, most visibly by Wesley Clark but by many others closely associated with Obama, is repulsive. These are not hits by independent 527s but by close associates and advisors of Obama.

Michelle Obama’s campaign rhetoric has been very divisive, is full of anger and resentment about “moving the bar,” and not being proud of the country, and has led to her high negatives with the public.

Obama’s close friends, mentors and associates are deeply troubling: the radical pastor Jeremiah Wright, the unrepentant terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, the convicted swindler Tony Rezko, and now a long line of “public housing developers” who took the money and failed to deliver on promises of safe and secure housing for Obama’s poorest constituents.

Obama’s judgment on key appointees is suspect, and he has had to fire the head of his vice presidential search team because of ties to the subprime mess and dump numerous “foreign policy advisors” for their hostility to Israel.

Obama’s deal with the Teamsters to end federal oversight of the union smells very bad indeed and telegraphs the sort of cronyism we could expect from an Obama Adminsitration. Obama’s mentor and real estate partner is Rezko, who helped the Obama’s buy their home, a home on which the Obamas received a mortgage that looks to many like a sweetheart deal.

Obama, like the other leaders of the Triple D Democrats –the Don’t Drill Democrats– doesn’t care about the price of gas, and refuses every initiative to increase supply and thus bring that price down.

Obama has broken his word on his commitment to public financing of the campaign and to meet John McCain in frequent debates. Obama can’t be trusted to keep even high-profile promises he made even only weeks ago.

Away from a teleprompter Obama stumbles and stutters and lapses into a closed circle of cliches that betrays almost no reading or curiosity about the world around him,and a massive ignorance of the war in which we find ourselves. Even when he works from a prompter he says nothing at great length with wonder phrasing but zero substance.

His crowds are enormous and his coffers overflowing, the products of a highly energized and vitriolic left that expects –believes it will be owed, in fact– the spoils of the election. If Obama wins, the sharpest lurch left in American history is ahead of us.

Barack Obama is not only the most radical nominee of a major American political party in history, he is also the least prepared and the least informed. He has spent less than four years inside of the United States Senate, and much of those years have been spent away from his job and away from the capital he wants to lead. But he is protected and his campaign nurtured by a MSM that swooned for him long ago. The prolonged and serious scrutiny of his background and his proposals will not be forthcoming in any consistent way between now and November.

And that’s the argument against Obama. So what’s the argument for him? Oh, yea that’s right: he’s for change! Well if you are looking for big changes to where the government is in control of every aspect of your life then Obama is your man. I’ll pass on that! I’m voteing for McCain.

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The Spectacle of the DNC

Posted on June 27th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Energy, Environment, Ethics, Beer, Media, Creative Writing, Democrats, Economics.

If you didn’t know already the Democratic National Convention is coming here to Denver in late August and man is it causing trouble here. Here’s what the Wall Street Journal as to say about it:

As the Mile High City gears up to host a Democratic bash for 50,000, organizers are discovering the perils of trying to stage a political spectacle that’s also politically correct.

Consider the fanny packs.

The host committee for the Democratic National Convention wanted 15,000 fanny packs for volunteers. But they had to be made of organic cotton. By unionized labor. In the USA.

Official merchandiser Bob DeMasse scoured the country. His weary conclusion: “That just doesn’t exist.”

That’s always great! We need to come up with something completely new to keep this green.

Ditto for the baseball caps. “We have a union cap or an organic cap,” Mr. DeMasse says. “But we don’t have a union-organic offering.”

Why does it need to be organic anyway? Has anyone asked this in the first place? No! We need to keep this green.

Much of the hand-wringing can be blamed on Denver’s Democratic mayor, John Hickenlooper, who challenged his party and his city to “make this the greenest convention in the history of the planet.”

Thanks Hick! More taxes for me.

Convention organizers hired the first-ever Director of Greening, longtime environmental activist Andrea Robinson. Her response to the mayor’s challenge: “That terrifies me!”

She should be!

After all, the last time Democrats met in Denver — to nominate William Jennings Bryan in 1908 — they dispatched horse-drawn wagons to bring snow from the Rocky Mountains to cool the meeting hall. Ms. Robinson suspected modern-day delegates would prefer air conditioning. So she quickly modified the mayor’s goal: She’d supervise “the most sustainable political convention in modern American history.”

Man they really did some weird stuff back in the day.

Now, she must pull it off.

To test whether celebratory balloons advertised as biodegradable actually will decompose, Ms. Robinson buried samples in a steaming compost heap. She hired an Official Carbon Adviser, who will measure the greenhouse-gas emissions of every placard, every plane trip, every appetizer prepared and every coffee cup tossed. The Democrats hope to pay penance for those emissions by investing in renewable energy projects.

Perhaps Ms. Robinson’s most audacious goal is to reuse, recycle or compost at least 85% of all waste generated during the convention.

And how are they going to do it!

The Trash Brigade

To police the four-day event Aug. 25-28, she’s assembling (via paperless online signup) a trash brigade. Decked out in green shirts, 900 volunteers will hover at waste-disposal stations to make sure delegates put each scrap of trash in the proper bin. Lest a fork slip into the wrong container unnoticed, volunteers will paw through every bag before it is hauled away.

Have 900 people stand around and yell at you “Hay don’t put that there! Put it in that one!” Man that’s has to be really efficient and of course us Coloradans will pay for it. Still wouldn’t it be better just to round up a bunch of bums and have them scour out all the trash and stuff left on the sidewalks so they can go sell it to the recycling plaints? That might save you some money but then again it’s not too pretty. You can’t have that at the DNC.

“That’s the only way to make sure it’s pure,” Ms. Robinson says.

Naturally

Republicans are pushing conservation, too, as they gear up for their convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Like the Democrats, they’re cutting down on printing by doing as much work as possible by email; using recycled office furniture; and urging employees to walk or take public transportation to work. The Republicans also encourage vendors to be as environmentally friendly as possible.

everyones gotta’ be green! Well, except me of course.

But Matt Burns, a spokesman for the Republican convention, looks on with undisguised glee at some of the Democrats’ efforts — such as the “lean ‘n’ green” catering guidelines.

This might be just too funny to miss.

Among them: No fried food. And, on the theory that nutritious food is more vibrant, each meal should include “at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white.” (Garnishes don’t count.) At least 70% of ingredients should be organic or grown locally, to minimize emissions from fuel burned during transportation. “One would think,” says Mr. Burns, “that the Democrats in Denver have bigger fish to bake — they have ruled out frying already — than mandating color-coordinated pretzel platters.”

Why exactly do thous certain colors mean healthy! Can someone explain that to me? Really! Why these colors? Just leave me a comment here.

Democrats say the point is to build habits that will endure long after the convention. To that end, the city has staged “greening workshops” attended by hundreds of caterers, restaurant owners and hotel managers. “It’s the new patriotism,” Mayor Hickenlooper says.

Thanks again Hick!

Laura Hylton, general manager of Biscuits & Berries catering, agrees in principle. But she has been testing her recipes using local ingredients for weeks and still can’t get the green peppercorn sauce right when she uses white Colorado wine. The state’s high-altitude wine industry took off in the early 1990s and produces some award-winning labels, but Ms. Hylton says diplomatically, “It’s a little…lacking. Our wineries out here aren’t what you’d see in California or France.”

OOOh! So our Coloradan wines are not good enough for you! We aren’t California or France! Well Ms. Hylton you should know since your from here that as alcohol goes we’re sort of like Germany. You come to this state for Beer not wine. You should try something special from Great Divide. That will turn out good and that will bing in the great culture of Colorado into this.

Joanne Katz, who runs the Denver caterer Three Tomatoes, will take one for the green team by removing her fried goat-cheese won tons with chipotle pepper caramel sauce from the menu. But she questions whether some of the guidelines will have the desired earth-saving effects.

That’s right! Take one for the team here! Hey wait! I may want some fried goat-cheese won tons. That kind of sounds good right now.

Compostable utensils, she says, are often shipped from Asia on fuel-guzzling cargo ships. As for the plates: “Is it better to drive across town to have china delivered to an event and then use hot water to wash it, or is it better to use petroleum-based disposables?” she asks.

These are really hard decisions. I wouldn’t want her job.

The convention’s greening gurus say they’re doing the best they can with the most current information available.

but of course, and now to the Coors Conflict!

Coors Conflict

But it’s almost inevitable that principles, politics and profit will conflict. To wit: Coors Brewing Co., in Golden, Colo., will donate biofuel made from beer waste to power the convention’s fleet of flex-fuel vehicles. A green star for the convention — but it has rankled die-hard liberals, who boycotted Coors in the 1960s and ’70s to protest hiring practices that they said discriminated against blacks, Latinos, women and gays. Heirs to the Coors fortune have long been active in conservative causes and Republican politics.

See! thous of us in the conservitive movement want you to have a good DNC in our city. We’re compassionate! But will you take it?

Convention officials say Coors is a good corporate citizen. And a Coors spokeswoman says the donation was a gesture of civic pride, not politics.

No matter, grumbles Anna Flynn, a longtime union member from Denver who objected to the donation. “Any way you put it, it’s still Coors,” she says.

Hell NO!

Chris Lopez, a spokesman for the host committee, says that securing a diverse group of sponsors is as much about showcasing the regional economy as promoting sustainability. He added that Democrats are nudging sponsors to “think green” by participating in an eco-festival and cutting back on paper fliers stuffed into delegate goody bags.

Please don’t start bringing up body bags!

Watching the greening frenzy from afar, Fred L. Smith Jr., president of the libertarian Washington think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, suggested the Democrats could really shrink their footprint by staging a virtual-reality convention: “Just have everyone stay at home with their laptops, sitting in their pajamas, interacting through their avatars.”

Yea, don’t start causing trouble downtown, do it online! Sounds good to me.

Ms. Robinson, the greening director, says big showy conventions are part of the American political tradition, and thus worth a few emissions here and there. Also, she hates to be a killjoy.

Wait a minute. She’s a liberal! Isn’t that her job?

True,

See!

she did try (unsuccessfully) to get bottled water banned from the convention hall. But remember those balloons? She checked the compost heap last week — and found them still intact. She has added more liquid to try to get them to degrade.

Well that’s great. The balloons don’t work right.

And if they don’t? “The balloons will be there,” she promises.

So we’ll spend a lot more on that balloons that are supposed to degrade anyway! Even though they really don’t work. I can hear my wallet shrinking now.

So will the fanny packs — made in the USA of undyed, organic fabric. Mr. DeMasse vows to get a union shop to print the logo, but he says the ink will be petroleum based. Unless, that is, he decides to get the logo embroidered — with biodegradable thread.

That’s great. I was thinking of just sitting this one out due to the recreate 68′ group from the good ol’ People’s Republic of Boulder, promising to start riots in downtown during the convention. But after reading the sort of spectacle the Dems have waiting for us downtown, I’m now start to think that this will just be too good to miss or rather to funny to miss. Besides with Hillary being snuffed out of the race and Obama “assured” to win this it probably won’t be bad at all. Besides they’re just leftys from Boulder! They wouldn’t know how to riot if they had to. And if things get a little out of hand I just start hanging out with the conservatives over by Dennis Prager and Hugh Hewitt. They’ll have some guns there and I’m sure they’ll defend one of their own. Although I might still want to bring my knife with me, just in case. But just keep that between you and me here I don’t want to get in trouble with any of the cops. Wink,Wink.

0 comments.

I told you so!

Posted on May 27th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Energy, Environment, Law, Economics.

This polar bear listing is starting to heat up! Just last week Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska started her charge against the listing. This from breitbart.com:

The state of Alaska will sue to challenge the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species, Gov. Sarah Palin announced Wednesday.

She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state’s northern and northwestern coasts.

Palin argued that there is not enough evidence to support a listing. Polar bears are well-managed and their population has dramatically increased over 30 years as a result of conservation, she said.

I think I’m falling in love here! Oh, wait. She’s already married. Well, I’ll get over it.

Palin and other state officials called arbitrary a decision to list a healthy species judging by what they deem uncertain modeling of future climate change and unproven long-term impact of any future climate change on the species.

State Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Irwin said it could have wide economic effects.

“Inappropriate implementation of this listing decision could result in widespread social and economic impacts, including increased power costs and further increases in fuel prices, without providing any more protection for the species,” he said.

And he’s exactly right and now I have proof for you. This is just in from azstarnet.com:

This month’s listing of the polar bear as a threatened species was the biggest victory in the 19-year history of Tucson’s Center for Biological Diversity.
It was also the single biggest step to advance the cause of global warming on the worldwide stage of public opinion, according to the environmental group’s friends and foes alike.

They aren’t kidding on that point.

One legal observer, University of Denver law professor Fred Cheever, likened it to the effect of the endangered-species listings of the bald eagle and peregrine falcon, which led the U.S. to ban the pesticide DDT a quarter-century ago.

“If you had to rank them, what single thing has brought the most attention in the U.S. to the climate-change issue?” asked Oliver Houck, a Tulane University law professor who specializes in environmental law.
“Would it be Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize, the movie ‘Inconvenient Truth,’ or a picture of a polar bear on shrinking ice? I say maybe the picture would win.

“That image is so much in the public mind that the Bush administration didn’t want to list it but had to. Not listing it would be like killing Flipper or Smokey Bear,” Houck said.

But like scores of other species-protection cases won by the Center for Biological Diversity in the past, this is but the first step in a long, arduous process to translate the listing into action.

The center petitioned for the polar bear’s listing back in 2005. It later sued along with Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list it.

The center’s blueprint for saving the polar bear is ambitious and complex. It includes:

And here is the key to everything!

● Challenging offshore oil and gas leasing in Alaska within six months.

● Launching a large-scale challenge to the licensing of coal-fired power plants around the country sometime after that.

● Finally, challenging large-scale, local government development plans in major cities.

See! I told you so! I knew they wouldn’t just sit back and do nothing. No they’re going to go after oil and drive gas prices up. Not to mention they’re going to cut power to your house! but it gets better:

Summer sea ice shrank last year to a record low, about 1.65 million square miles, nearly 40 percent less than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000.

If temperatures continue warming at their current pace, in five or six years there might be so little sea ice frozen during the winter that there would be none left in the Arctic at the end of summer, scientists say.

If global warming continues as expected, two-thirds of the polar bear population would be gone by 2050, the U.S. Geological Survey has said.

Many legal experts said the listing could be a political boost for those fighting global warming, by prodding Congress to pass a law limiting carbon dioxide emissions.

And they call us the fear mongers.

Based on what longtime federal climate scientist James Hansen has said about global warming, there is a compelling case to be made for not allowing any more coal-fired plants, said Suckling, the biological diversity group’s executive director.

Hansen, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, recently wrote that the world must cut atmospheric CO2 concentrations by nearly 10 percent, “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted.”

Hansen has also argued against construction of new coal-fired plants that don’t capture and store CO2 instead of releasing it into the atmosphere.

Do these guys really hear them selfs talk when they say things like this?

But if the Fish and Wildlife Service decides that a project won’t jeopardize the bear’s existence, overturning that ruling may be difficult. “Who wants to be the judge who says all new federal highway funding is prohibited by the ESA?” Doremus asked.

The Center for Biological Diversity has won some legal cases involving warming. In northern New Mexico, it successfully pushed the Fish and Wildlife Service to consider effects on greenhouse gases from a proposed power plant.

In San Bernardino, Calif., its lawsuit prompted local officials to add requirements for alternative energy and public transit to approved development plans.

“We’re going out on a cutting edge, making this law happen,” Suckling said. “We’re way out in front of the law clinics and law schools on this. When it comes to climate, the real action is in the courts, not the classroom.”

They’re not going to take my advice, they’re going to push this to the limit.

But critics warn that the polar bear protection will bring unprecedented bureaucratic interference into humans’ daily lives.

Political columnist George Will wrote that this listing gives the Endangered Species Act unlimited application.

“Want to build a power plant in Arizona? A building in Florida? Do you want to drive an SUV? Or leave your cellphone charger plugged in overnight? Some judge might construe federal policy as proscribing these activities,” Will wrote in The Washington Post.

Law professor, radio broadcaster and blogger Hugh Hewitt of Southern California wrote that any activity in the Lower 48 states that requires a federal permit could be delayed or have costs added.

That’s because the Endangered Species Act requires that a federal permit be judged to see if it could affect the bear.

Coastal building programs requiring federal flood insurance, federally financed highways, flood-control permits for new developments and joint NASA-private industry initiatives could be affected, wrote Hewitt, of Chapman University Law School.

That’s because it’s true!

That’s fear-mongering, counters Suckling, who said he has seen critics’ similar claims fail to materialize after other species-protection debates.

This time, the biological diversity center will go mainly after large-scale greenhouse gas emitters, to get the biggest bang for the buck, he said.

“The Endangered Species Act has never on its own completely solved any environmental problem,” Suckling said.

“What they’re imagining is that every aspect of global warming will be regulated by ESA and people will be ordered out of their homes. That is wrong, duplicitous and stupid.”

What foolishness! We never said that you would take our homes but that you will make it so expensive that we will have to leave our homes! These guys are off on a charge that they have no idea what the repercussions of it will be. This whole idea that we could destroy this planet just by emitting CO2. I don’t know if they have heard but plants need that to live. Not to mention that just this year the earth has cooled down just as much as it has heated the past 10 years. The sea temperatures are cooling not warming and they don’t have a clue why! They say that it’s an open and shut case but still Wikipedia has a list of scientists that are opposed to this whole scare. Frankly, I think these people are arrogant! How do they even know that the current temperature of the Earth is the perfect one? I think that it might be better if the Earth is actually warmer. more people die from harsh cold than harsh heat and I and tired of these massive cold spells that we have been getting this year. We just had two tornadoes tear through our start a few days back. One of them was just several miles from my house. They have absolutely no way they can prevent them. And now they have the hubris to tell me that getting in my truck everyday and going to work is causing it. I’ll consider it when they get rid of their jets and stop their hypocrisy.

With how the economic situation is right now, you have China eating up a lot of gasoline but a big reason for this is China is subsiding gasoline and as prices go up then China will not be able to keep on doing that. Thus they’ll have to cut back and will release supply to us and prices will go down. Also all of the other oil producing countries are upping their production that will also help. However with how these environmentalist are starting to go after offshore drilling in Alaska, that’s going to cut supply severely and will keep the prices high. If they succeed at sewing the oil company and getting them to shut down the offshore rigs then prices will at the very least say where they are at all summer long. And you will know the reason why! The oil companies want to dill it but congress won’t let them. It’s really out of phase with reality when you see millionaire senators asking the oil companies how much money they make. And what’s even worse is the oil companies are the one’s making their money legitimately while the senators do shady deals to make their money. Now don’t get me wrong here, I do think that big business is A-moral and would sell their mothers if they could. However, with money as their god you can always force their hands to do what is right but these senators on the other hand think that they are going to save the world by making life hard on you! All the while they sill take your money from you and live in their mansions with total disregard to the environment. And to think that all this happened because of a picture of a polar bear that’s stranded on ice. But the really odd part to that story is the polar bear really wasn’t stranded he was just playing on it and he was fully capable of swimming to his home and living another day. The reality is these polar bears don’t need us to protect them and even if they did there is nothing that we could do to protect them. Global Warming is an effect of the sun and nothing we can do can change that! The effect of CO2 on the warming is minuscule to the effect that the sun has and we will all see one day that this was all just one big scare that has no basis is reality and we will destroy our economy over it.

2 comments.

Polar Bears got listed on the Endangered Species Act!

Posted on May 17th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Energy, Environment, Economics.

Well, most of the time something like this wouldn’t really matter all that much. Most of the animals on this act are one that are really in danger so that just means that you can’t shoot them and if they happen to wander in on your property then you’re screwed. For the case of the polar bear (in normal circumstances) that would mean that you can’t go up to the north pole and start hunting them (and that’s something that really wouldn’t appeal to me). However, this is a special case that will have massive impact on our economy because of the reason that the polar bear got listed. This from USA Today:

“This listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting,” Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said while announcing the decision. The Endangered Species Act should not be “abused to make global warming policies,” he said.

Kassie Siegel, a lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the group does not accept Kempthorne’s view.

The act requires federal agencies to take steps to reduce or eliminate those impacts on threatened species, she said. “There is no exemption for greenhouse gas emissions.” If the government fails to address global warming, “we can and will go to court to enforce the law,” she said.

The decision comes three years after environmental groups petitioned to have the polar bear listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The listing of “threatened” means a species is at risk of becoming endangered within the foreseeable future. A species is listed as “endangered” when it is at risk of becoming extinct, according to the act.

And here’s the kicker!

“Although the population of polar bears has grown from 10,000 in the 1960s to 25,000 today, our scientists tell me that polar bears could become an endangered species in the next 30 years,” Kempthorne said.

Polar bears are still reproducing at at good rate! Hugh Hewitt has been all over this on his radio show and his blog and this is what he has to say about this on townhall.com:

After 18 years of a law practice devoted to counseling landowners, home builders and commercial interests affected by the long arm and severe penalties of the Endangered Species Act, I am used to incredulous looks and outraged oaths from clients coming to grips with the Act’s incredible burdens on impacted private citizens.

“Are you telling me I can’t build my Burger King because a Delhi Sands flower-loving fly that has never been seen and is above ground only a few days a year might be near-by?”
“I can’t build a connector road because the noise from construction might damage the hearing of the Stephens’ kangaroo rat thus impairing its reproduction?”

“All construction in San Diego involving impacts to road ruts which might contain Vernal Pool Fairy Shrimp is enjoined? All construction?”

Yes, yes, and yes. The list of situations in which the ESA has stopped otherwise legal and fully permitted projects from proceeding is extraordinarily long and getting longer. With Wednesday’s decision to list the polar bear as “threatened” the burden on the American economy brought about by the ESA grew exponentially.

That alone will earn him a special place in hell for environmentalist and since I support him you guys can throw me in there with him. But here is the key to what this means!

The industries most likely to be pummeled by the polar bear are energy production, aggregates extraction, transportation, and commercial building because each can be shown quite easily to result in increased emissions of greenhouse gases and each routinely requires federal permits to go about some aspect of their business. (The coal industry may be target number one, followed by oil drilling in the lower 48.)

The Act operates simply. Once an animal is listed, it becomes a felony to harm or harass it without the permission of the feds.

Harm or harassment has been defined to include destruction or impairment of the habitat the species actually occupies. (Some more radical views argue that harm to habitat that could be occupied in the future should also be a felony under the Act, but that view has not yet been upheld by a court of appeals.)

Because the polar bear has been listed as threatened due to alleged deterioration of its ice habitat, and because the alleged loss of the ice habitat has occurred because of global warming caused at least in part by the emission of greenhouse gases, environmental activists will argue that all emissions of greenhouse gases that flow as a consequence of the grant of a federal permit of any sort are now subject to review under the ESA and, crucially, that those permits cannot be issued unless and until the United States Fish & Wildlife Service reviews and approves of the requested permit under Section 7 of the ESA, a process which takes at a minimum months and which can cost millions of dollars even if it is successful.

Because of the generous “citizen standing” provisions of the ESA, expect dozens of “60-day” letters to begin to arrive in the offices of Secretary Kempthorne very soon, announcing that unless the Department and the Service act to invoke Section 7 vis-a-vis this or that federal permit, a lawsuit will be filed to force compliance. Expect most of those suits to be filed in the Ninth Circuit, where the appeals court has been very expansive in applying the ESA.

So now on anything that can produce carbon dioxide can be brought up to the courts to review if it can be allowed! This is insanity! So what does Hugh suggest we do about it?

Some will no doubt urge that the listing itself be challenged, but not only will proceeding that takes years, it is likely to be unsuccessful because the courts rightly defer to the exercise of scientific discretion by the agencies charged with protecting the species protected by the Act. It is not a hopeless effort, but it is also not likely to succeed.

The key will be to cabin the reach of the polar bear listing’s impact by pushing for court decisions on the limits of where Section 7 reaches, and to do so in federal circuits much more cautious about the ESA’s intent when passed by Congress and signed by Richard Nixon. In addition to the obvious constitutional arguments about whether the Interstate Commerce power was ever intended to support such far reaching claims of federal regulatory power, and statutory construction arguments on whether the ESA was ever intended to reach future habitat destruction based on predictive models (as well as the obligatory non-delegation arguments which are highly unlikely to be persuasive) the key will be to force the courts to early on confront the limits of causation when it comes to harm to the ice that the act can support. Courts must establish that it is absurd for the federal government to ever argue that project-by-project review of greenhouse gas emissions is required by the ESA or could in any way prevent ice formation or destruction.

Test cases should be brought by industry that argue that various federal permits –import/export permits, private jet landing permits, conservation banking permits– all have greenhouse gas impacts, no matter how small, and thus that they must be subject to Section 7 review. Courts ought to be forced to the far reaches of Section 7 immediately rather than over years so that the agencies do not develop a practice of automatically referring for review just the projects they want to stop. It is vital that affected industries not trust the executive branch to practice restraint or to push back against the most ambitious of the claims of environmental activist plaintiffs.

Push the limits to make this look as absurd as possible! And it is absurd but here are some beautiful examples for what to do.

One caller to my radio show yesterday suggested targeting imports from China entering via federally-regulated ports as an opportunity to argue that the PRC is the real culprit behind skyrocketing global emissions.

Ouch! That’s going to hurt. No more stuff from China! How will Obama be able to make life affordable for the underclass?

Another urged a focus on the private jets that Al Gore and other activists are so fond of using to carry their climate change gospel around the globe.

Lovely! I like that one, start going straight to the heart of the hypocrisy in this.

An e-mailer asked whether the new Yankee Stadium is depending upon federal money or federal permits in any way as surely the traffic to and from the ball games will punch up the plight of the polar bear.

No nice stadium for New York! Well we all hate the Yankees anyway!

While there will be a long list of targets for test cases, the key is that industry not react to suits brought by the very accomplished lawyers of the left but that they force the tempo and choses at least some of the battlegrounds.

Swarming the courts has long been a tactic of the left, but private sector firms and sectors threatened by the threatened polar bears need to do more than sit back and wait for bills to come do and projects to be canceled. Congress under Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid will not be offering legislative relief no matter how absurd the consequences of the listing. The best hope to cut-off the imposition of Kyoto through the rulings of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is through the federal courts, and the time to act is now.

Watch out environmentalist because this is going to cause a massive backlash against you! This is going to be the straw that brakes the camel’s back and you’re going to see the American people begin to hate you! Watch your words carefully and bring your suits carefully becuse if you push too hard too fast then the American people will see just how absurd this really is! As people start seeing that we have plenty of oil here and you are the ones stopping it through the courts they are going to get mad at you! And If you use this to start shutting down refineries and oil rigs, we will start seeing gasoline go up to 7,8 or even 10 bucks a gallon and people will know that you are the reason for it. This will make the price of everything go through the roof and then the American people will say enough and elect republicans to destroy everything that you have built up for the last 40 years. Americans, you better start saving your money because if this gets bad enough we will see another depression that will be far worse than the previous one. So much so that not even Gold can save it! Our county as gotten sew happy here and it has had a devastating effect on our economy but ironically the only way to stop this will be through the courts by making suits as absurd as possible so that it will show the American people to throw this out as quickly as possible. However that could be a massive gamble if you have some judges that will be crazy enough to actually rule in favor of some of the absurd suits. Most likely that will not happen but if the Chinese do see this sort of thing happen they may start looking for some other markets to sell stuff to. Now I may be over exaggerating things here but I see a real danger here to my county and this could possibly start some chain reactions that will be bad for the world. America needs to start getting energy independent now by any means possible. Right now I am afraid for my country because we are turning our backs on the principals that made this country great. Just be careful because wars are coming but I pray that I am wrong here.

0 comments.

Global Warming: Could it be a propaganda term?

Posted on March 18th, 2008 by Distinguished Bean.
Categories: Political, Environment.

Before you label me a stuck up, greedy, party liner Republican, hear me out. For one, I consider myself a Libertarian and am quite fed up with the Republican party myself (as well as the Democrat party). Second, I care about the environment just as much as the every-day, Al Gore lovin, Liberal who spits out his Global Warming rhetoric as he pumps the peddle of his gas guzzling, CO2 emitting, SUV. I simply feel that all of this ‘buzz’ around Global Warming is a bit ridiculous. Obviously the climate is changing, i’m not denying that, but why is it changing? and our we changing it? That is what I will discuss in this short essay…

(The evidence used for this essay was taken from various books on climate change, other essays i have recently read, and a few economic books on how the media can sway people’s opinions. I only have limited time, so i will not be citing my sources. I know this is horrible, but the evidence is out there. If your not lazy and actually care about the environment, go research it yourself. I felt that in the end, this is such accessible knowledge that i shouldn’t need to cite sources.)

Many times when I hear people making all these Global Warming arguments, I wonder if they have even spent any time at all examining factual evidence to support their argument (and just watching Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ does not prove sufficient). What many people don’t know is the history behind climate change. Climate change has only been heavily monitored in the last hundred years, and only heavily covered by the media in the last 10 to 15. I wonder how many people know that in 1940 the government released a statement saying that there was a peak in high temperatures and that the climate was about to go into a warming phase (now called Global Warming)? Every scientist on the globe believed it. They thought the ice caps would melt and the earth would be in great danger.
However, around 1970, congress released a report that Global Cooling had begun. Having a chilly decade, marked with blizzards and expanding Ice Caps, the greatest scientists in the world felt the whole ocean would begin to freeze and New York would be covered in layers of ice.

So how in just 30 years could the greatest scientists in the world change their mind on something they were absolutely certain about???

And how, just 30 years from then are we experiencing another Global Warming???
Does it seem a bit like a cycle?
Why has the media jumped all over the recent Global Warming, when almost no one in pop culture has heard about the Global Cooling 30 years earlier???
Does the Media perhaps want to sway the public for votes and money???
Perhaps i am just a conspirator, but how come Al Gore is able to say he’s against carbon emissions into the atmosphere, and then make money on selling carbon credits to businesses???

Here are a few facts many may not know:
1. The Earth’s temperature has only budged 1 Degree Fahrenheit in the last century, and it is said that it would have to change by 10 degrees for their to be any sort of remarkable climate change.
2. Due to the Sun brightening up in the last century, It is extremely plausible that it was the cause for the 1 degree change.
3. The amount of glaciers shrinking is less than 5% different than the amount of glaciers around the world that have been growing rapidly.
4. Al Gore is the leading figure in the selling of carbon credits which accounts for the majority of the pollutants sent into the atmosphere.

In the end, I guess I am just asking whether maybe all this hype around the term Global Warming has become an accepted term that can scare people into giving money to Al Gore and Voting for certain parties and candidates. Could it be Propaganda??? If so, it has done one of the greatest jobs of brainwashing this country has every seen (this proved through how ridiculous you think i am for even considering the possibility). Could the climate change be cyclical??? The evidence surely shows it is a great possibility.

1 comment.

Environment

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The Sinking ship called the United States of America

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I told you so!

Polar Bears got listed on the Endangered Species Act!

Global Warming: Could it be a propaganda term?