Daily Topics - Friday February 12th 2010
By Louise
Quote: "Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties." -- Abraham Lincoln (born February 12, 1809)
"Welcome today to: Time Warner Cable in 150,000+ homes in Southwest, OH; also to Rochester Community TV in Marion, MA; the Lansing Radio Network in Lansing, MI, NEK-TV in Newport, VT; and HCTV 99/HERKIMER College TV in Herkimer County, NY
"Anything Goes - Townhall Friday"
Hour One - "Brunch With Bernie" Senator Bernie Sanders www.sanders.senate.gov
Hour Two - Don't you think Muslim countries are more offended by their country being occupied than by having gays serving in the military? Sen. Gary Nodler Missouri State Senator, R-32 www.nodlerforcongress.com
Comments
#2
Thom,
Apparently for the Iraqi election there is a question as to whether 'former Bathists' should be allowed to run.
Not the same thing of course but when I hear your republicans so full of themselves and how they are going to kill any form of health care reform, I can't help thinking that they are much the same.
Not 'should they be allowed to run' but should they be listened to?
They seem to believe that they should still be in power and that pesky election didn't mean anything. They and the public as a whole need to be reminded often that their party is down to 20 %.
When you hear that 50% of republicans are for or against something, remember that means only ten percent of Americans.
They have fun using the term 'Democrat party', maybe they should be either the Republic party' or just the American Bathist Party. They are like a lizard's tail left twitching on the ground; you shouldn't pay any attention to it if you are after that big meal.
I love that Eisenhower quote; ( http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/ike.asp ) "Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
Happily covered with single payer health care in Canada, except like you, we are currently governed by a Conservative Minority Government.
Rick in Canadia
Palin-Prejean 2012!! Single 'prayer' health care.
#3
@Charles- cool. Maybe you get them to advertize on your local progressive station. Is your station still on the air there?
I tell you, thank goodness for Dish and Siirius Satellite. I am in a large condominium complex and almost every unit has a dish. So glad Thom is safely plugged into these networks. He is safe from the Republicans now. The world is watching.
#4
Thinking about 9/11 stock puts and so forth, perhaps the simplest explanation would be that bin Ladn told some of his financial supporters that something would happen around 9/11 that would mess with airline stocks, or whatever financial instruments were actually affected.
For the financial contributors, the information might be very low-risk to employ. If nothing happened, they would be as likely to make as to lose money due to normal market "noise". But if something did happen, they'd make out very well.
If they were clever, they would of course work through intermediares, perhaps not even profting personally but merely passing on investment advice to others, and reaping benefits only by later reminding the beneficiaries of their prior good advice. Further investigation would seem to be only common sense, even if nothing is ultimately found.
#5
@ Harry - Outsourcing prisons to Mexico was not from some whack-job corporatist lobby group. It came from the Governator.
#6
@ Rick in Canadia
re: "all upside down"
The Church Lady is curious. Which one are you?
(in your avatar) My fingers are crossed.
#7
Just a lonely moose in the great white north.
Watch out for those cold metal statues in the deep of winter! ;-)
Cheers,
Rick
#8
@KMH - the closest thing to progressive radio in Dayton is NPR, enough said. The local news does a good job of talking up the 2nd St Mkt. If not for the internet, there would be no Thom in Dayton.
This area has John Boehner to the north and Jean Schmidt to the south. And "Touchdown Jesus" in between.
#9
@KMH, well I am in LA (suburbs) and yes there are farmers markets and health food stores, that are open while I work, not so much when I'm not working.
However, my point was more subtle. I know somewhat how to find healthy foods, I was more or less pointing out that the common citizen doesn't really bother. My gripe is that our government really limits its regulations, so that many foods can have big flashy labels that are misleading, and unless you take a close look you miss what's really going on. I know better, but the average shmoe, doesn't, and to me that's at least negligent of our government, at the worst allowing insidious tactics by turning a blind eye.
Not saying that you haven't taught me more though. I know a bit more than the average bear, but there is certainly much more for me to study. Thank you.
#10
This was sent to me by friend on Facebook:
Kitty Lambert and her longtime partner Cheryl attempted to apply for a marriage license yesterday in Buffalo, New York. When she was denied, she turned to the crowd: "With news cameras rolling, Kitty then turned to the crowd and asked for any male who would be willing to get married to her. A gay man named Ed stepped f...orward and volunteered. They briefly exchanged information and presented the appropriate documents along with $40. City staff verified the information, and proceeded to give them a marriage license. Kitty’s point in approaching the City Clerk for a marriage license is that there is no religious basis for marriage, and it serves only as a legally binding contract in our society. Instead of being offered the ability to receive a license with her long-term partner, she was able to secure a license with a virtual stranger, strictly based on their gender."
http://www.towleroad.com/2010/02/watch-ny-lesbian-weds-male-stranger-in-...
#11
NEWSFLASH: There are already gay people in the military! For people who think the effect of repealing DADT will be gay people lining up to serve and be killed have a distorted view of our military. Besides, the best thing that could come out from allowing gay people to openly serve would be more form-flattering uniforms and bedazzled weapons!
#12
'Self-sufficent' is the message and antidote to the pajoritive 'protectionism'.
#13
@Bryan: as I recall, many gays booted out of the military were translators trying to protect us from terrorist attack. If we hadn't lost those translators, maybe 911 wouldn't have happened in the first place.
#14
@ Bryan - ha ha
Repealing DADT will remove the fear of being outed and forced out. A gay soldier can serve honorably (if you discard concealing sexuality for a job as dishonorable) for years and have it all thrown away.
#15
A quote for these times from 1977 by Edward Abbey: "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." (The Journey Home)
#16
Since it's "Anything Goes Friday"
--- everyone can grow a little bit of their own food, even if it is so little as growing herbs in a pot on their desk.
Especially if you're unemployed and looking for something to so - replace that lawn with crops appropriate to your locality and easy to maintain. A $2 packer of seeds can yeild $50 or more of food with minimal work AND you'll know whether it's organize or not.
You can plant the humble potato in a pot on your apartment balcony; it'll make nice foilage and after a while you'll have a meal.
Try to get "heirloom" seeds so you can have food that is grown for taste and nutrition, not shippability and resistance to poisons a.k.a. chemical sprays.
Share your seeds with neighbors - usually there's more in a packet than you need.
Local groups like Seattle Tilth and countless "sustainability" groups will help you figure out what to plant and how.
It's good for your kids too!
#17
ooops I wrote "organize" instead of "organic".
As they say: "Don't mourn --- organic-ize!"
#18
rewinn are you trying to get Monsanto to show up on your doorstep? "You're meddling with the primal forces of nature......"
#19
america was once the clothing capital of the world . the corporations did not want to share the profits with a decient wage for the workers. the corporation wanted to maximize profits for the few the shareholders . this is what is wrong with the wall street mentality. to do anything to maximize profits at the expense of others. to me corporations need to become more humanistic and not be ruled by greed anger and folly.
#20
Thom, it may have been better in the long run to let the banksters just blow themselves up.
I think they watched Blazing Saddles too many times.
#21
brian I doubt that corporations will find a conscience, so how 'bout limiting their size and at the very least life span.
#22
Something that needs to be pointed out to people like Carrie Lukas is that if you only allow corporations to be punished through lawsuits, not only can a lot of people die before anything is done about it, but the corporate execs that made those deadly decisions get off scot-free due to the limited-liability system. So there really is no punishment. The execs can reincorporate and do it all again without fear.
#23
@Charles and harry:
Yes, I am aware of how many people got booted from the military strictly for being who they are. It's so sad that discrimination is so rampant in this country with sexual orientation, race, gender, age, etc that we as a country overtly allow it instead of discourage and outlaw it.
#24
@Nels testing now my 3rd post- just wanted to validate and support you
#25
Yesterday, some bloggers on here were talking about Natural Laws... in nature the only thing that comes close to a monetary system is food. I feel that our monetary system is probably one of the major reasons for such inequality in our society. I don't have a solution to it, I'm just saying something here is quite wrong.
#26
Thank you KMH, much appreciated.
#27
BTW KMH, luv your avatar... I confess I am a cat person.
#28
:) Sure wish my post would not have been deleted. I put a lot of work into it because I want to let you know that I was totally with you.
#29
What channel on Time Warner in SW Ohio???
#30
@Nels, I assume you refer to the thermal storage technologies I mentioned(?)
A new company here in Vermont, called Thermal Storage Solutions, or TSS for short, has done lots of research with TESS -- Thermal Energy System Specialists, of Madison, WI. TESS is one of the premiere thermal engineering groups in N. America.
TSS has been using high-mass, underground thermal storage to use solar collectors to heat high-performance homes in a new way. They are also working on solar absorption cooling. The technology is there for larger, commercial-scale buildings, but there are no units on the market here that are small enough for the cooling loads of super-insulated homes. I've been involved as a solar consultant, and have helped install 3 of their heating systems. Only 1 of them has been in the field through an entire year-long cycle, while the others are more recent, and have not been commissioned yet. I'm planning to use this system on the home I'm building now.
For large areas of the US with greater heating loads than cooling, we're still working on a company in Spain to make smaller absorption chillers. Its not easy to get companies to invest in new products in this economy.
Clear skies,
Brad
#31
@Brad, OK, there's some good leads for me to search for, I don't have any particular reason to research it other than for my own knowledge. I know too little about Solar power.
@KMH, don't get upset about it, your shortened comment is sufficient for me to understand that you think I'm headed in the right direction.
#32
Look at this video about Bank takeover / FDIC corruption by a couple of realtors-
It is way more profitable to foreclose than rework the loans- Unbelievable!
http://www.thinkbigworksmall.com/mypage/player/2168/23165/274019
.
#33
KMH -- sorry to respond so late and after the show has gone off the air...
I am at work and got real busy for a while -- I own a solar business in Vermont, and a USDA Engineer stopped in for help with a solar water pumping station for a horse farm!
Sorry to come off as a smarty-pants -- I'm new here, (but a long-time listener), so I have to figure out how things work. I used to get Thom on the radio -- remember those thingies? But now I have to listen to streaming audio.
Solar thermal stuff used to mean "solar hot water", which is about 67% efficient overall (some evacuated tube collectors are as much as 92% efficient at converting sunlight to heat, but the whole system would have losses in other areas...), while photovoltaic collectors are mostly between 12% - 20% efficient. I have not seen good numbers for solar thermal electricity generation, but it has to be lower than using the heat directly, based on the way these systems operate.
So, here's one of my pet peeves: "Renewable energy" is starting to mean that which produces electricity. As a culture (OK -- a blend of cultures in many areas) we in the US tend to use a LOT of electricity -- probably much more than we need to, though "need" could be a bit subjective here. There seems to be some collective foregone conclusion that we "need" to make more and more and ever more electricity because we're all addicted to the newest electronic gadgerty, etc... I'm not convinced we need more -- I think we need to learn to be happy with less.
OK -- back to solar thermal stuff: taking the heat we capture from the sun, and using it to boil water (or another fluid) to make steam to drive a turbine to make electricity has many compounding energy losses, and then transmitting that juice over long distances from the Nevada desert, say, to LA, means even higher losses. If the electricity is going to LA to power air conditioners, why not make heat on the roof right in LA, and use that to drive the AC unit? It would be FAR more efficient. Even better would be a building with 5 times as much insulation that doesn't need much AC (or heat, if Chicago) in the first place.
Funny thing about electricity and efficiency... Plumbers may tell you that an electric water heating coil is 100% efficient, but that only means the efficiency of converting the power on this side of the wall to heat energy. The fact that getting that electricity to my home is only about 17% efficient really needs to come into a broader view.
I'm not opposing solar thermal electricity generation, but I want to look at the whole system and make sure we're not just falling in love with the next new gadget. If we back up and look at the wider view, there might be an even better way.
#34
I need to comment on Gary Nodler's comments on how Iraqis will view the US military if they repeal Don't ask don't tell. Do the Iraqis really wonder if the person patrolling the streets with an automatic weapon is openly gay? Does it really matter to them? Following that logic, would Americans think less of a person killed by a stray bullet in a gang shooting if they knew the gang allowed members to be openly gay?
#35
Well Brad, it seems you might become a go to guy on a lot of questions regarding Solar energy on this blog.
I see that you're making some recommendations, but I'm getting a bit confused on which system you consider best for its functions.
Also you say you run a Solar business, what does that mean? Are you installing Solar Systems, Producing them, both?
Just curious.
#36
I think Nodler is just a homophobe that is looking for any excuse to deny gays their civil rights. He's clinging to the Muslim reaction because he thinks its a smart way to get people to go along with his oppressive tactics. I'm don't doubt that if there was a bill presented to throw all Muslims out of America, he'd be the first to vote for it. He's a hypocrite.
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@Charles: huh! and Haiti is out-sourcing its law enforcement to the U.S.!
This free trade is getting out of hand. What's next, out-sourcing the Government to Fox?