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Breaking News, Now With More Election-Related OMGWTF?!?

I'd say the 50-state strategy is a failure.

I'd say this because as of right now, barring court action, the Libertarian candidate, Bob Barr, is absolutely guaranteed to win the state of Texas in the Presidential Election.

Why, you ask?

What would prompt me to make such a wild, outrageous prognostication?

I mean, clearly all my election predictions have been proven wrong before, amirite?

Oh, wait. They were all, so far, proven RIGHT.

Yeah.


Not wrong on this one, either.

Why?

Because, in their rush to ensure they got as many electoral votes as possible, to absolutely guarantee that they will win the most states they can, they made one crucial mistake.

They forgot to file for election in Texas.

Yeah, both of them.


Which means that as of right now, Bob Barr (L) is the only candidate on the ballot for the Presidency in the state of Texas.

But don't take my word for it.

Look at the Texas ballot for November yourself.

That's fucking ridiculous.

Look, ok, I am a libertarian, sorta; I'm not either Democrat or Republican, although if forced to choose I will choose conservative over socialist any day; but you know what?

I am fucking disgusted by this.

Texas has the second highest number of electoral votes - 34 - behind only California (55.) Even New York has fewer - 31 - so, what the fuck?

I mean, WHAT THE FUCK?!?

How do you FORGET TO FILE in the second biggest electoral district in the nation, in what will no doubt be one of the most hotly contested elections EVER?

How do you write off a state at ALL, much less one with THIRTY-FOUR ELECTORAL VOTES?!?

You want to talk about losing the franchise? There it is, right there.

The Democrats and Republicans don't give a fuck about you.

They can't even be bothered to remember how many STATES there are.

Obama thinks there are 57, and McCain dismisses his biggest single block of electoral votes?

Both these guys ought to go in the fucking dustbin, and we ought to start again with new candidates. Frankly, we could hand things over to Sarah Palin of Alaska to keep things running while we figure out who the fuck is gonna be in charge. (That way she'll have some executive experience under her figurative belt when she runs for President in 2012 or 2016.) (THAT'S ANOTHER PREDICTION, BY THE WAY.)

Senator Barack Obama Is Too Awesome For Your White House, America!

...And should he deign to grace the Oval Office with his august presence, the sheer honor of his proximity will cause the walls to warp, and paint to peel throughout the building, as the White House struggles vainly to contain an awesomeness so vast, so mighty, that it belongs on an INTERNATIONAL stage, not limited to a single third-rate former superpower!

So, yeah; Senator Obama is awesome. He'll tell you so, every chance he gets. So will the sycophantic media; which is to be expected, since his campaign has actually ostracized journalists for daring to question his greatness.

But they tend to be very unspecific about the exact details of how and why he's really so amazing. So, since I'm Here For You™, I've decided to put together a Top Ten List of reason Senator Barack Obama is awesome.

• # 10: Senator Barack Obama has AWESOME ears, see?

  

  
  
• # 9: Senator Obama is awesome in his self-sufficiency; he doesn't need his family, his pastor, his fist-bump, his mentor, his church, his former friends, campaign advisors, whole special interest groups, unborn babies, major campaign donors, Senator John Edwards, the state of Iowa, the U.S. Armed Forces, or recently, the only man able to even make a case to the public that he was a legitimate military advisor; he is so cool he can toss them all under the proverbial bus and remain unscathed. It must be crowded under there, though; I wonder how much road traction they can get?
• # 8: Senator Obama is so cool that despite having the arrogance and gall to present a forgery as an actual birth certificate, when he apparently actually HAS A REAL ONE, nobody seems to care.
• # 7: Senator Obama is so badass that 200,000 Germans just LOVE him. Or, wait, was it 20,000 instead? The first reporter said it was 20,000, and then they switched to saying 200,000 later on. Which is it? Who cares, anyway, the Germans like the hell out of him, thus proving that, like, it's perfectly ok to give huge speeches to foreign nations, as part of your cunning strategy to get elected God-Emperor of Dune. Wait, Europe. Wait, no, he's running for the U.S. Presidency, isn't he? So why's he in Germany again? Never mind, they liked him, and that's what REALLY counts.
• # 6: Senator Obama is so awesome that he gets to accept campaign donations from foreigners and known terror operatives, and at the same time clamor for campaign finance reform.
• # 5: Senator Obama is so amazingly intellectual that he can overcome cognitive dissonance entirely, and hold two separate and opposing viewpoints in his mind at the same time!

• # 4: Senator Obama is so outstanding that he can campaign for the position of ultimate and final decision-making in the United States, a job above which there is no greater authority, and still claim that there are decisions that are "above his pay grade."
• # 3: Senator Obama is so intelligent that in only 143 actual work days in the United States Senate, he has managed to amass greater wisdom, knowledge of government, and diplomatic experience than people who have been Senators for 26 years.
• # 2: Senator Obama is so black - disregard his white mother, she doesn't count - that every single black person in America will vote for him, regardless of their personal political convictions, and those same people and Senator Obama can then accuse anyone of racism who doesn't do likewise.

And the Number One reason Senator Barack Obama is awesome:

Because he's so cool that his obvious communism - endorsed by the Communist Party of America, no less - his support of failed policies of socialist medicine, his support of increased corporate taxes despite the U.S. being second-highest in the world already, his ties to a racist preacher, his ties to known former terrorists, his endorsements from terror groups - yes, groupS, plural - his ties to Louis Farrakhan, his total lack of experience in government, his openly racist disdain for his grandmother based on her skin color, his own racist statements, his wife's hatred for America, his inability to secure the Democratic nomination without resorting to superdelegates, his loony tax and energy policies, his failure to adhere to his own campaign platform even before the election, his endless flipflopping and self-contradiction, his refusal to admit the iraq troop surge worked, his willingness to go negative first in campaign ads, his willingness to negotiate with people known to be untrustworthy, his total unwillingness to even discuss actual debates with his opponent, and his rampaging sense of entitlement are all nothing more than the obvious machinations of the corrupt, racist right wing, and its massive anti-freedom conspiracy, and so none of them count despite all of them being true.

But there's one more crucial reason that Senator Barack Obama is the most awesomely awesomest political candidate we've ever had in this country ever ever ever:

Senator Obama says so.

The Left Shows Its True Colors yet Again: NIMBY Rears Its Ugly Head.

You've heard me talk about energy in several articles; mostly I've been concerned with the issues surrounding petroleum, but now it's time to talk about one potential source of renewable energy.

Wind power.

Wind power requires an acre of land per turbine; each turbine results in around a 30% of rated capacity in actual energy production, based on the intermittency of wind; it's between 20-40%, but I'll shoot at the median. That's about 2,628 Megawatt hours of energy generation per turbine per year.

Now, the wind companies tend to recompense people handsomely for the inconvenience of having the turbines built on their land, or near their towns, or just to get them to shut the hell up. More on this in a minute.

Did you know there are now ANTI-wind activists?

I didn't know that.

It honestly never entered my mind that people would be that overt about their agenda. But apparently, stupidity not being in short supply, there are anti-wind activists now.

In New York state, an area known as Tug Hill has become the site of a modest wind farm - 195 turbines, called the Maple Ridge wind farm. Maple Ridge uses 1.65 megawatt wind turbines; at 30%, that's 845, 559 megawatt-hours of generating capacity per year; nearly a terawatt of power, plus the carbon offset equivalent of nearly 200 square miles of new forestation.

To give you a fair idea, that is - without pollution, without waste, without risk of meltdown or any of the other things anti-nuclear activists are up in arms about - double the generating capacity of all six nuclear reactors in New York State COMBINED.

Maple Ridge looks like this:

Yeah. Hideous, and stuff.

Each of these turbines, for this particular project - I told you I'd come back to this - gives the owners of the land it sits on $79, 200 per year in permanent leasing payments; the land the turbines stand on is leased in perpetuity, in exchange for $6, 600 per month in leasing fees.

That means someone fortunate enough to have seven acres of land up there - just seven - can expect leasing payments of HALF A MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR - $554, 400 - for the use of their land for windmills.

Since the windmills have been up, the budgets of the nearby towns have better than doubled; PPM Energy, owner of the Maple Ridge turbines, is very generous with the payments every month not only to the land owners, but to neighbors - they call it a nuisance fee - neighboring towns, school districts, everybody. They can afford to be; Maple Ridge produces enough energy to power about 100,000 homes, in a rural area with an incorporated population of a little under 27, 000 people; that means that nearly 3/4 of the power produced can be sold elsewhere, especially to power-starved New York City.

So, this energy development has brought prosperity, employment, residual leasing fees, steady municipal revenues, and clean power to this area; it has allowed many of the area's older land owners to secure - for their offspring - permanent sources of income; retirement funds that they didn't have to work for; a secure future.

So what do these offspring have to say about this undeserved bounty their parents have settled into their laps, guaranteeing their PERMANENT financial security, removing utterly their need to fear future events, removing utterly their need to worry about providing for their own offspring?

Well, they say this:

I was sold out by my own father.

And this:

I just want to be able to get a good night's sleep and to live in my home without these monstrosities hovering over me.

And this:

I told him if he allowed turbines in that field he would lose a son.

And this:

Dad taught us such respect for the land. For my father to be part of this...

And this:

We want clean energy as much as anyone, but we also want quality of life.

And it makes you wonder why more of them haven't been disinherited.

That last quote is the best for me; the resident who gave that quote, and her husband, both work for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. Because respecting and preserving the environment by not pouring gas fumes and oil smoke and coal dust and nuclear waste is wonderful, and morally right, and everything we should all want - but not if it lands in MY backyard. Oh, HELL no.

That family was offered $1, 500 a month in permanent income by PPM Energy, because the turbines "disrupted their view;" the family rejected it and told the wind company that the turbine was watching them like a giant preying mantis. That's $18, 000 a year for the INCONVENIENCE, but no, they're protesting.

The older residents, of course, are having none of this. They are saying things like:

It's better than a nuclear plant, and it brings in good money.

And like this:

The sound don't bother me, and it sure beats milking cows.

And this:

It's the best cash cow we ever had, this cow doesn't need to be fed, doesn't need a vet, doesn't need a place to lie down.

And the town whose incorporated area hosts the most turbines - Martinsburg, population 1, 200 - has had its budget jump from $400,000 a year, to $1.2 MILLION a year - better than double - from the wind company's payments. They're not complaining.

The Lowville school district has received $6.3 million so far, and has been able to refit their schools with computer labs, all new lab equipment and sports gear, and anything else they could get their hands on to benefit the kids.

But to the left, you see, the issue is NOT "environmentally friendly energy." The issue is NOT "ending pollution." The issue is NOT "stopping global warming," or "save the forests," or "keep the groundwater clean," or any of those other things that you'd think it might be.

They don't actually care HOW you generate power.

As long as you don't do it where it could get in the way of their view. Or, in the case of one Tug Hill resident, in the way of his hang gliding.

Not In My Back Yard.

Oh, yeah, lest I forget, not where there's boating, either.

Hey Libs: Pay Attention. School Is In Session.

Something I notice all too often in discussions with lefties about environmental issues, economic issues, whatever, is that they are abysmally ignorant of their own standpoints' valid arguments.

In other words, even when they're right, they don't know why.

Admittedly, that's not often; they're wrong about practically everything.

But that's ok; we have the right to disagree.

I have this notion, however, that if you're GOING to disagree, you ought to know how to do it.

So: I'm going to teach you how to argue for oil conservation PROPERLY, since you don't know how to do it yourselves. With oil prices still over $125 a barrel, despite OPEC saying it should be $78, well:

So pay attention, dammit, I'm only gonna hold your friggin' hand once.

Class is in session. Prepare to get schooled.

The primary reason - at least at this point in history - that most wacko moonbats cite as a justification for conserving oil is the theory of anthropogenic - human-caused - global warming.

So let's get that out of the way first.

Forget about the axial precession cycle of the Earth, or our current position in it.
Forget about the actual climate scientists, saying that the evidence does not support it.
Forget about the mountains of evidence against it.
Forget the fact that the global temperature dropped so much in the last 12 months that it erased the entire preceding century of rising temperatures.

Forget that even if global warming continues unchecked, blah, blah - its effects will likely be beneficial to humans.

Ignore it; disregard it; whatever it is you guys do when there's no actual way to support a theory of yours.

Let's instead look at Greenland.

"The Ice Sheet is melting!"

That's right, it's receding. As it has done in the past, naturally, with no human help.

How do I know this?

Because as the ice recedes, it's revealing human habitations to archaeologists.

Oh, wait, not just houses; FARMS.

Not just FARMS, but VINEYARDS.

Because - before the invention of the internal combustion engine, before the Industrial Revolution, before the planet's population hit ONE billion, much less six - it was hot enough, through natural processes, to grow grapes in Greenland.

There's no evidence to support human-caused global warming. But even if there were, it doesn't change the fact that a global increase in temperature in line with what the IPCC hysterics are raving about would be GOOD for humanity.

Sorry to disappoint you.

Now, that out of the way, let's turn to the subject at hand, shall we?

Are you ready to learn how to justify oil conservation? Good.

First, let's define it. "Conservation" of oil, in my terms, means never, ever, ever, ever, evereverevereverever using it for propulsion or power generation or any application at all that involves burning it up.

I've been accused of using "reductio ad absurdum" - the logical argument of reducing a statement to an absurdity, then claiming that the absurdity disproves the original point. In this case, that doesn't apply; you'll see why.

The first primary reason for never using oil for propulsion or power generation at all, in any quantity whatsoever, is:

Plastic.

You see, modern plastics can only be made from petroleum.

If you're reading this, you're using a computer; computers could not exist, at this point in our technology, without plastics. Neither could ball-point pens. Or your car. Or your clothes. Or your food containers; your cosmetics containers; your bottled water. Most industrial machinery would go out the window.

Compact discs? Gone. DVD or Blu-Ray? Gone. Movie theaters would go back to the 1930s, and use flammable celluloid for film. Conveniences of all stripes would vanish. Necessities of all stripes would vanish; we would magically be transported back to the first Roosevelt Administration.

Because modern plastics can't be made out of anything else.

Fuel? Fuel can be made from tons of things; basically any plant - if you really want to be honest about it - can be broken down for either ethanol or biodiesel; most organic material in general, regardless of source, can be made into biodiesel, right in your back yard.

Hell, you can even recycle dead hippies into fuel cells.

But modern plastics come from petroleum, period. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it; no oil = no plastic, and the global economy, and all the technology we've developed in the last 80 years goes *poof* like it never existed.

The second primary reason to "conserve" oil, as in never, ever burning it for propulsion or power generation, is:

Lubricants.

There are only three ways available to our current technologies to lubricate all the billions of tiny moving parts that power the millions of machines driving industry; manufacturing, automotive, hell, even MAIL-SORTING machines: petroleum, silicone, and plant oils. So-called "diesters" and other "synthetic" lubricating agents are manufactured from a single raw material; if you guessed "petroleum," pat yourself on the back. You cannot make something from nothing; the companies hawking "synthetic" oils - particularly for cars - are trying to sell you their product based on your misunderstanding of the word synthetic.

"Synthetic" is a descriptive form of the infinitive verb "to synthesize," meaning "making something from one or more other things."

A synthetic oil is still made of something; that something is petroleum.

Plant oils go rancid; petroleum products do not. Rancid plant oils must be laboriously cleaned away and replaced, where petroleum derivatives not only don't require this, but can be impregnated with detergent agents to continuously clean away residues.

Plant oils fail much more quickly under heat and friction than do petroleum products.

Silicone-based lubricants hold for a much greater temperature range than even petroleum derivatives, but they're not nearly as good as lubricants.

Petroleum derivatives are, far and away, superior to all the so-called "alternative technologies" for lubrication of moving parts. So much so that no real alternative in fact exists; again, without oil, you are facing a world in which, based on the knowledge we currently have available, our entire way of life is unsupportable.

But this one is actually worse.

See, plastics became widely available during World War Two; losing them would bring us roughly back to pre-WWII technology, but that's still an acceptable living standard for most people.

But petroleum has been the world's lubricating agent for a long, long time.

Like, since the Industrial Revolution began in the first place.

As in, if we lost petroleum as a lubricator, we'd be back to the 1830's or so, technology-wise.

So, what are our alternatives for power generation and propulsion?

Biodiesel is a mature technology; it's simply not widespread, because diesel vehicles aren't in wide circulation in the U.S. But if biodiesel starts to gain traction, that's going to make a quick turnaround.

There's an Indian company that is producing an $8,000 car that runs on compressed air; no emissions whatsoever, and a range of about 150 miles on one "tank."

New-generation modular thorium fission reactors literally are incapable of melting down; they produce - thanks to the modular design ensuring that all the fuel in use is burned - far less (70% less) dangerous waste than old designs; and there's enough thorium available to allow every person currently alive to spend energy at current U.S. per-capita rates for the next 165 years - just from what we've already mined and have sitting available. Based on estimated world deposits, there's enough to supply the world at U.S. rates for the next 618 years. That assumes, of course, that in 600 years we will still be stuck with that single energy source.

India has been using thorium as a fuel source for nuclear reactors since 1995.

Thorium reactors can actually burn up old nuclear waste from plutonium and uranium reactors, rendering it harmless.

It is worth considering for a moment that the thorium required to fuel the entire world's electrical needs would fit in a reasonably sized room, and the thorium required would only be about 2% of the mass of uranium mined today.

So.

Am I using a reduction to absurdity?

Absolutely not. I think the global economy needs to run, not walk, away from oil as a means of generating power or fueling propulsion. Our oil consumption for fuel and power needs to be ZERO, not 22 million barrels a day for the U.S. alone.

Imagine what a world without plastics and industrial lubricants would be like.

Think hard.

NOW you know how to argue for conservation.

THOSE are actual arguments to support your position.

Class dismissed.