NYC Flyover by DOD – R U Nuts?

New York to White House: Are You %$#&*^& Nuts?
By Paul Bertorelli

No, make that the entire country to the White House.

Monday’s flyover of New York for a photo op of the 747 that serves as Air Force One was the most stunningly stupid decision by a group of adults authorized to use government airplanes that it’s possible to imagine. On a scale of 10 for utter idiocy, it’s a 13. It makes those clueless guys who busted the Washington ADIZ in a Cessna 150 a couple of years ago look like Lindbergh finding Paris with a compass and a watch.

The most disgusting part of it—it’s damn near evil—is that the FAA and the White House notified the NYPD of the flyover ahead of time but classified it, preventing its release to the public. There is no other way to described it than this: These agencies engaged in negligent terrorizing of a public still traumatized by the September 11, 2001 attacks. While we’re talking about resetting relations with Cuba and Venezuela, what we really need to be doing is resetting our own government, or at least the part of it that deals with the highly charged relationship between airplanes and the national security apparatus. And surprise!…it applies to Air Force One, too.

Somewhere, I’m sure a few people are saying, “Oh, New York, get over it.” I wasn’t in New York on September 11th, but I know many people who were. I can’t look deep enough to get over it. When I saw the pictures of Monday’s fiasco, I had the same gut wrenching dread that we all had on that awful day almost eight years ago. It still seems like yesterday to me. I don’t think the country is anywhere near being able to tough it out when an airplane as big as a 747 flies that low over New York or any other major city. Nor should anybody be testing the premise.

And this was done by the same people who have the unmitigated gall to frisk the citizenry before boarding airliners, to bar general aviation aircraft from ever more airspace and to generally make life miserable for the rest of us while they do they very thing that scares the hell out of all of us.

It’s hard to know how even to respond to this sort of lunacy. I for one expect President Obama on the tube today explaining himself and illuminating us on who he has fired. I don’t care if he knew about it or not. It’s his watch. We just loaned him the airplane.

Meanwhile, to whomever originated this stunt, how about this: A 12-year-old with a copy of Photoshop could have gotten your photo op with a lot less grief than this mess will create.

The First 100 Days

Last night the President of The Unites States Gallup Poll rating was 63%. The NPR Live ratings were Democratic House/Senate rating=B-, the Republican House/Senate rating=C- and the President rating B. Here is what the President had to say about his First 100 days;

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txBh-vYgb-E&feature=player_embedded

Obama Health Care discussion

This is a straight forward discussion of how President Pbama feels about health care. I agree with most of it because I have long said that no one in the United States should die because of a lack of money to pay for health care. Here is a way for me to put into action my convictions.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om5gGBVy_4k&feature=player_embedded

Growing Plants on the Moon

Editorial: The Pickens Plan

The Pickens Plan is the only proposal on the table which will lower our dependence
on foreign oil by up to 50 percent over the next ten years. We must reduce our dependence on foreign oil as fast as we are able to act. Reducing foreign oil dependency will result in more stable oil prices, reduce deficit spending and increased national security. Ask yourself – what would $6 per gallon gasoline do to our consumer pocket books and the United States? You know the answer to that and those prices are definitely possible in the next few years.

A broad coalition has formed under the banner of the Pickens Plan. This volunteer army of people exceeds 1.5 Million people and is growing each day. The intent of this army is to be the watchdog and champion of Renewable Energy and Natural Gas legislation on national, state and local levels.

These are some sobering facts relating to our energy current consumption within the United States:
· We consume 25% of the worlds daily oil production.
· In March we spent $19 Billion on oil alone.
· 65% of this comes from foreign sources ($12.5 billion in March)
· 70% of our imported oil is used as a transportation fuel.
· 30% of all that is used as diesel fuel for heavy trucks
· Heavy trucks used $2.6 billion of imported oil in March
· Imported into the USA will increase
· The price per barrel will increase as competition for the limited supplies intensifies, e.g. China and India
· The projected USA oil usage is expected to be $700 billion per year in the next few years

What can we do about this appalling threat to our national security and way of life? Here is how we can achieve the 50% reduction goal within the next 10 years. First we must present a few statistics:
· 22% of or electrical energy production comes from natural gas (NG)
· 50% from coal
· 20% nuclear and the remaining 8% from other sources like geothermal

The short term goals of the Pickens Plan propose to divert the NG from electrical production to transportation. For example, city transit, taxi cabs and local trucks can use compressed natural gas (CNG) and longer distance heavy vehicles can use liquid natural gas (LNG). The 22% of the NG that we will divert from electrical production will come from renewable sources like wind, solar and newly developing technologies like closed loop geothermal wells that produce steam power. The Department of Energy concluded a study showing that 20% of our electrical power needs could be generated from wind energy alone in the “wind corridor” stretching from northern Texas to the Canadian border. The remaining 2%+ must come from solar, coal and geothermal.

Long term goals to be met within the next 50 years focus on renewable energy (10-50 years), nuclear (20-50 years) and the inexhaustible geothermal sources (20-50 years) to produce the ever increasing energy demands of our society. The culmination of the plan would see nearly 100% of our electrical supply being generated by renewable or inexhaustible energy supplies by year 2060.
The remaining oil supplies would gradually shift from transportation uses to chemical applications like plastics other hydrocarbon based applications.

You can be part of this army and only spend minutes per week protecting your financial and security interests. Call your representatives and ask them to support the Natural Gas Act of 2009 (HR1835) and Renewable Energy Standard (RES). Support the Pickens Plan and join our army at http://www.pickensplan.com

Written by:

Charles W. Moore
csjmoore@hotmail.com

Fire Extingushers: A Tutorial

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdLhu1JQMmQ&feature=player_embedded

TEA Party Comment Clark Howard

Apr 16, 2009 — Tea party protests belie real issues about gov’t spending
The tea party protests around the country yesterday were quite a phenomenon. But they were not really about taxes in Clark’s opinion.

Sure, our tax code is incredibly labyrinthine. After all, the consumer champ’s taxes were 169 pages long this year!

However, our tax rate is actually more favorable now than it’s been in recent decades — as strange as that may sound. The average family pays 9 cents on the dollar in taxes, according to an article in The Washington Post. Meanwhile, a new Gallup poll shows that roughly half of Americans are happy with the level of tax they pay.

In Clark’s case, his financial success means that his tax rate was effectively 34.3% this past year. That’s not particularly low, although it could have been much higher; at other points in our nation’s history, it has actually been as much as 90% for the wealthy!

So if taxes aren’t the real issue with the protests, then what is? The penny-pincher believes it is concern over government spending…and this is not a partisan issue. Former President George W. Bush was a huge spender and the Obama administration looks like it is heading down that same path.

Adding to the general unease people are feeling is the fact that we’ve perverted capitalism with the way both administrations handled bank failures and the collapse of the auto industry.

The banks should have been allowed to go insolvent. That’s why we have the FDIC. But they weren’t and now we’re in a neverland: Are institutions like Bank of America and Citibank private or are they public? Are they serving stockholders or the taxpayers?

Ditto with the auto industry. How absurd is it that President Obama basically fired the CEO of GM after the company got a bailout?! Again, it leaves us in a gray area similar to the bank conundrum.

When you’re sitting at the crux between capitalism and government control, you’re lost in the ozone. Clark compares it to the phrase “you can’t be a little bit pregnant.”

We need a hard restart back to the basic tenets of capitalism. If businesses can’t make a go of it, they should fail and the stockholders should be wiped out. Period.

2 boat n back

Fred & I went up to the boat to do some pre-launch work. Fred specialized in the water line stripe and I continued work on the rub rail varnishing. We left Thursday morning early and arrived around 1100 hrs. By the time we quit for the evening at around 1830 hrs we had finished the first coat of the water line and done the rub rails. We then proceeded to The Butler to demolish a Sizzler Steak meals and after the meal went to Oval Beach to watch the sun go down over the water. It was an absolute beautiful day and great sundown.

Today we were at the boat early again and finished about 1400 hrs. Fred did the stripe alone and I concentrated on the rub rail gloss coat of Cetol. Another beautiful day better that yesterday if that is possible.

Great work guys – even if I do say so myself. On the return we shied away from Interstates and traveled back roads through Three Rivers, Centerville, Sturgis and back home.

The Pickens Plan

I worked today on the PP and making some contacts within the Steuben County Democratic Party. I left a blogline on the IN-03 PP site and did some housekeeping. I also packed the truck and got ready for the trip up to the boat with Fred. Our goal is to paint the waterline stripe that has eroded over the past three years. It should be nicely green when we are finished. More on this tomorrow.

Small world in Hamburg, Germany

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN_oDdGmKyA&feature