2009-7-2 05:46:00
[Compiler's Note: The "Local Posts" series of articles found here in "The Archives" are a collection of exchanges between JJ Dewey and others participating on a local online newspaper blog, and were subsequently re-posted by JJ Dewey on The Keys Of Knowledge discussion group prior to being archived here.]
JJ:
The only thing that caught my attention in these letters is Al's appreciation for bringing back the Sunday Dilbert. Dilbert has to be the greatest comic strip of all time and why the Statesman ever dropped it from the Sunday section is a mystery.
I wish they would also bring back Spiderman and Alley Oop. Most of the newer comics are boring beyond belief.
JJ:
These environmental writers are so concerned about small things like switching to electric lawn mowers to reduce carbon dioxide yet I wouldn't be surprised if they supported breaching dams and were against nuclear.
Hydropower and nuclear, despite the opposition from environmentalists has done many times more to reduce the earth's carbon footprint than anything else dreamed of by "greenies."
And Norma has it right. carbon dioxide is not a pollutant any more than water vapor is but is essential to plant life and a green earth.
Some scientists think that the increase of carbon dioxide has helped increase food production on the earth and has been a factor in making the doomsday starvation prophesies pronounced at the first Earth Day not come true.
"Run" says:
"By the way, you're overgeneralizing; many of us "greenies" support the responsible development of nuclear power. A physics teacher friend of mine once told me that there's enough fuel left over from the cold war weapons programs alone to power the entire country for 200-300 years. That's an opportunity that has to be explored."
JJ:
If we recycled the waste from current nuclear plants we could power the country carbon free for a 1000 years, but Clinton stopped the research on breeder reactors that could accomplish this.
You are right a number of "greenies" are waking up to the benefits of nuclear. I recently bought a book by an environmentalist promoting nuclear titled, "Power to Save the World." Ten years ago you couldn't find a greenie that supported nuclear but now this awakening is creating a division separating the purists from the real progressives.
France, of all countries, has paved the way by going almost 80% nuclear. Germany, on the other hand, has dropped nuclear progress to go purist green, and they have had to come to France begging for them to share their energy generated through nuclear power.
Dumb.
Ms Simon writes:
"Obama's public health insurance option would save us up to 30 percent on our insurance premiums by being more efficient and driving down prices across the board, according to the Commonwealth Fund report.
"The insurance lobbyists are fighting against Obama's public health insurance option. Insurance companies know that lower costs for us mean lower profits for them."
JJ:
Such a plan wouldn't produce lower profits but no profits and drive private insurance companies out of business thereby leaving the Federal Government in total charge of healthcare.
Insurance premiums are not where they are because of greed but to enable the company to make enough money to stay in business and hopefully expand. A private company does not have infinite power to use tax money as does the government.
JJ:
The Left operates in the fantasy world of idealistic theory and like little children think that fantasy should translate to reality.
For instance, they look at how a business operates and say: "if we took away the large salaries, the advertising and the profits (which may amount to around 20%) and mandate the government run it then we could reduce costs 20% and pass the savings along to the people.
For some strange reason such people do not understand the waste, inefficiency, dogmatic mistakes, bad estimating of costs and extra fraud that takes place in government monopolies.
Take Medicare, for example; the cost of fraud alone there was $60 billion a year in 2007 and probably more now. That alone wipes out all the profit savings several times over from private enterprise.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22184921/
"PDC" wrote:
"I'm in complete agreement with you, having experienced UK NHS myself. Trouble is the loudest arguments in favor of single-payer health care here have never stepped outside Idaho."
JJ:
I've also experienced the UK [United Kingdom] healthcare system and these supporters, who have never tried it, do not know what they are in for.
Imagine ten years from now if Obama gets his way with healthcare. The posts will not be in support of it, but complaining about it.
Of course, Lefties will say it is not working because of something the Right has done, even if Obamaites get their way 100%.
Mr. Young writes:
"It never ceases to astound me that hard-core "conservatives" in Idaho (and elsewhere) claim supremacy in "common sense" over all other Americans, yet find it perfectly reasonable and "common sensical" to believe that a billion internal-combustion engines (and other products of the industrial revolution) have absolutely no negative effect on the environment or atmosphere of our fragile planet."
JJ:
I do not know who Mr. Young has been talking to but the skeptics I know all acknowledge there has been warming over the last century and carbon dioxide does produce an effect. What Young does not seem to realize is that every influence has positive and negative effect. If one studies global warming rather than just swallowing the propaganda he will see that the warming of the last hundred years has been a much more positive thing than negative.
He will also conclude that the U.N. scientists are just guessing. For instance the 2001 IPCC report predicted a sea level rise of somewhere between 4 and 35.4 inches by the end of the century. Then in 2007 the fourth report predicted 7-23 inches. Then to top it off the non-scientist Al Gore predicted up to 20 feet.
Does this sound like guesswork or what? In 2001 the prediction of sea level rise was between 4 and 35.4 inches, a variance of almost a thousand percent!
That would be like me saying, "The wind speed tomorrow will be between 5 and 50 miles per hour." If I predicted such a thing a person of common sense would look at me cross-eyed and figure I didn't have a clue as to what the wind would be tomorrow.
Young accuses skeptics of being ignorant but I'll bet he has never read the IPCC reports or cannot answer why we had global cooling between 1940-1976 after we really started putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
JJ:
No one knows how much the CIA [Central Intelligence Administration], Congress, the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] or Obama lies but one thing should be clear. If you are the Speaker of the House and you openly accuse the CIA of lying you should back it up. Nancy Pelosi offers no proof but only accusations to save her own skin and that is pathetic. I don't know how she could have arranged to look more guilty.
As far as torture goes, real torture is that which you do not get volunteers to participate in like searing your skin with a hot iron. Several people on Fox News have been waterboarded just to see what it was like and many Navy Seals have volunteered to try it. FDR's [US President Franklin D. Roosevelt] classmates waterboarded nerds for fun, but this didn't seem to bother him.
In China they used to waterboard with a Kerosene and feces mixture. Now that's real torture and no reporter would volunteer to try it out.
One of the fiercest complaints of torture from Guantanamo was that female cadets looked too sexy and distracted their minds from Allah. Now that's torture I can live with.
JJ:
It is strange that when any conservative innocently mentions God or country in a positive light that he is strongly attacked by the Left.
Gardoski stated [in a letter to The Idaho Statesman] that he was not an extremist because he believes, along with George Washington, that "God and his name are a part of America and our legacy."
I'd say that over half the country also accepts this making Gardoski correct that this is not an extremist position.
Mr. Deangelo, who obviously cannot accept the diversity of belief, attacks Gardoski's belief as "unfounded" and "arrogant" and then rants on with guilt by association linking him to every wrong that America has committed including slavery and Indian massacres.
Believers see the hand of God in many things carried out by an imperfect humanity. Since there is no way to prove them right or wrong we can at least respect their point of view and cease calling them extremists. A belief embraced by the majority is not extreme by any measure.
"Blarney" wrote:
"However, do not try to turn this country into a theocracy. That's what like Mr. DeAngelo and myself are concerned about."
JJ:
Who in the world is even talking about turning the country into a theocracy? I'm against that as much as you are. You need to argue about what I say not against something that I do not even believe in.
"Loki":
"God told me to oppose theocracy in America to the last bullet and last drop of blood."
JJ:
Sounds like we might need gun control after all for Lefties as yourself.
"ConservoDem" wrote:
"The right wing ideologues would love to see the US look just like Iran, except with preachers in place of Imams."
JJ:
I do not know anyone on the right who thinks that way. Certainly not me. I do not even go to church.
"Gimmeshelter" wrote:
"So, I cannot forgive you for your inability to at least listen to reasonable ideas not parallel to your own."
JJ:
Tell me even one reasonable idea I will not consider or reject without good reason. I tire of attacks with absolutely nothing to back them up.
JJ:
I watched Steve Harrigan of Fox News get waterboarded. Fox showed it from beginning to end. When he was asked how he felt afterwards he said: "Fine, excited, glad it was over, sinuses all cleared up. Got water in one ear now."
Funny... He actually had an improvement in his sinuses from the experience.
Do you think anyone tortured by Kim Jong-il would say they felt fine afterwards?
I don't think so.
And the Japanese waterboarding was much worse than the CIA uses and could kill.
If you define torture as anything that makes you feel uncomfortable then truth would be torture for the Left.
Real torture is that, when the experienced is over, one doesn't say he feels fine.
Based on standards of the past, one doesn't say he feels fine after experiencing real torture. The left is redefining this and everything else they can think of so they can attack conservatives.
By the way Obama has reserved the right to waterboard if he personally approves.
Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,227357,00.html
This whole issue of torture really has nothing to do with torture and everything to do with political power.
For several decades now the Left has been redefining words and terms in an attempt to control all arguments so they appear to have the higher ground. There is no end to new politically correct terms that are used to typecast those who do not like them as Neanderthals.
Now they are doing the same with torture as they did with PC [Politically Correct] jargon and are downgrading what is torture.
What is and is not torture is merely based on how you define the term. My generation grew up thinking is was something no one would ever volunteer to do and that it usually left a long lasting scar or painful effect. Waterboarding does not fit into this category.
Now torture has been redefined by the Left as something which is either very uncomfortable or scary -- like being tickled by caterpillars and thinking they are snakes. Sounds like pranks we played on each other as kids.
"Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them."
-- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
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