Odds & Sods #59: Blowin’ in the Wind Edition
- Pres. McCain@3AM: Toles nails it again.
- Thanks for the memories: Tiger Stadium in Detroit may not survive the month.
- God’s way of telling you that you have too much time on your hands: You are this guy putting lyrics to well-known movie themes. Or maybe you’re just the guy watching the videos.
- One guy’s an optimist and the other guy is an expert on the economy: In this Daily Show video, Bush and Bernanke appear — simultaneously but in different parts of DC — to say completely opposite things about the economy.
- Douchebag for Liberty: Bob Novak says McCain cannot win running a positive campaign. And this just in — Columbus has discovered America!
- We don’t even show the coffins arriving at the airbase: The entire nation of Israel shuts down as she mourns her war dead.
- McCain better rev up the nastygrams: Obama down by only three in North Carolina.
- Gore issues a challenge: Produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun, etc by 2018. And T. Boone Pickens’ TV ads are running on TV, too, in Baton Rouge. Pretty soon, it’ll be a movement! UPDATE: Texas OKs a massive wind power project.
- Obama pwnage: Dem nominee sucker-punches the Wall Street Journal and others who reported a puny $30 million take in June — real number: $52 million. Ouch.
I’m not thinking of this as a felony, but more of a misdemeanor. I get the impression you are thinking of it as a felony (or at least that I am thinking of it as one).
I am in now way thinking of business as out of control. rather I’m thinking of for profit corporations as amoral entities whose only responsibility is to make as much money for shareholders as possible within the rules set by governments. I might grant that it is preferable to avoid clearly immoral behavior as it tends to negatively impact profits over the long run. I do not think selling automobiles and oils is immoral behavior.
If/when someone else can come along with a better way and knock them off the top of the hill, good for them. However, it is not the job of a for profit entity to create the threat that would require it to refocus its business if that threat came along from the outside. On the contrary that business could very well be legitimately in trouble with shareholders if it did so.
I’ve never said, nor did I intend to suggest, that Gore is “solely” responsible for anything. However, when you make yourself into a one issue pony like Gore has done it really would behoove him to have crafted an argument that casts as wide a net. In that sense he really is standing in his own way and tying his own shoelaces together. That is how I mean that he is the biggest obstacle. He is the most recognized name out there and is undercutting himself with a needlessly large portion of the US population.
I’ve never said, nor did I intend to suggest, that Gore is “solely” responsible for anything.
Let’s go to the tape:
He remains the single biggest obstacle to the energy sources of the future.
So what you’re trying to say is that he’s his own worst enemy?
…he really is standing in his own way and tying his own shoelaces together.
Not the same as “single biggest obstacle.” If it were, we’d say McCain was the single biggest obstacle to winning in Iraq.
You’re overlooking his enablers. Those Al Gore fans who give him the positive reinforcement that serves as his own personal heroine and makes him ignore the broader argument.
“His enablers?” You mean these guys?
Look, if you don’t like Al Gore, that’s fine. I’m sure there’s plenty there to dislike. But just what is the broader argument than saving-life-as-we-know-it-on-planet-earth?
I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in his awards, Nobel included. We aren’t going to get any closer on this.
You’re a Gore-hater, Eric. Face it. Your prejudices and beliefs bear no resemblance to the man or what he has done.
“Independents” had to construct a villain in Gore because he represented the thing they hate most – the need for everyone to take other people and our interconnectedness into account with our actions. Add government involvement and you have the antithesis of what they believe in their heart of hearts – unbridled selfishness without outside interference.
I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in his awards, Nobel included.
Do you have something against the awarding bodies? Or something against the idea of awards granting prestige? Or do you simply dislike Al Gore so much that you believe that anyone who gives him an award must automatically be suspect?
I don’t care much for his rhetoric and awarding him (or anyone else) for employing so broadly ’sky is falling’ language. I suspect there are issues where Gore and I would find agreement like technology overall and its use in education. We would agree on green even if we disagree on why. I prefer his position on stem cell research to Bush’s.
I would say disappointment is more accurate than hate. My view is that he is slowing progress in getting to a greener energy complex. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you have to employ tactics that I find offensive. But, I’ve been in favor of things like alternative vehicle fuels since a junior year high school chemistry project. It has never seemed so complex to me (and I’m not overly inclined to enjoy the arithmetic side of the scientific arguments). It’s all technology and advancement.
I prefer the old moderate Gore to the new proselytizing Gore.
“I don’t care much for his rhetoric and awarding him (or anyone else) for employing so broadly ’sky is falling’ language.”
Apparently Gore thinks the sky is falling (so do I). Perhaps he understands things that you can’t or won’t grasp. If he’s right, or even if he only thinks that he is, shouldn’t he say so?
“I prefer the old moderate Gore to the new proselytizing Gore.”
Gore wrote Earth in the Balance in 1992. Again you’re the victim of a lot of anti-Gore propaganda and possibly your own psychology. And it was the Reagan Administration who changed the policy of the country from weaning itself off of ME oil to a carbon orgy, with ubiquitous and ridiculous Suburbans and McMansions, in 1980! Where did all that “moderation” get us? You need to ask yourself why you insist on keeping on blaming the messenger.
I don’t care much for his rhetoric and awarding him (or anyone else) for employing so broadly ’sky is falling’ language.
This is why he called it “an inconvenient truth,” I suppose.
My view is that he is slowing progress in getting to a greener energy complex. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you have to employ tactics that I find offensive.
Let me get this straight: your resistance to doing something about it is because Gore is so annoying? Have I got that right? If so, this says more about you than it does about him.
But, I’ve been in favor of things like alternative vehicle fuels since a junior year high school chemistry project.
Well, then, what have you done about it? Given a speech? Written a book? Made a film? Lobbied Congress? Bought a fluorescent light bulb? Turned down your thermostat?
Do you feel like you’re being nagged?
It’s all technology and advancement.
What exactly does that mean, Eric?
No, I feel like you are being obtuse while trying not to act like it, Ara.
OK, then correct if I’m wrong: you’re saying that the only kind of change that is acceptable is that which serves the best interests of corporate shareholders.
Do I have that right?
I’d like to proceed from there, but first I’d like you to tell me I understand you correctly on that point.
I’ll hang up and listen to your answer.