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Update On DNC Fun.

Posted by Average Voter on Thursday, August 28, 2008 12:39:29 PM
   My photos of the DNC stuff are not loading correctly. Hope to have it fixed shortly.
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Why Only Seven Years?

Posted by Average Voter on Thursday, August 28, 2008 10:21:58 AM
   An article in the Washington Post today gives us a time line, starting Inauguration Day in January 2009 untill 2015, to get our carbon under control. Unfortunantly, the article does not say why. Is it because writer Carlos Pascuol says so? Or is because both Obama and McCain support an aggressive global warming agenda?  
 
   This article is the same old left wing assault on all things non-progressive. If we don't do something now we are all going to die, and if the temperature goes up George Bush is to blame. Blah, Blah, Blah...
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Batman Would Be Dismayed

Posted by Average Voter on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 10:41:18 AM
   Can't pass up a good story on clean energy and animal deaths, even with the almighty Obama's convention going on here in Denver.
A new study show that it's not birds that are being hurt by wind turbines, it's bats.
 
A six-week study at two wind farms in the eastern United States recorded 1,764 and 2,900 bat fatalities. Another American project found that bat deaths outnumbered bird deaths in Montana by two to one. Though death rates in Europe are generally lower than this, extensive bat casualties have been reported in Britain.
 
   Animal rights groups have been on this story since 2005.
 
Apparently, wind farm planners, operators, and governmental regulatory agencies were unaware that these Central Appalachia wind farms are located on bat migration areas.
 
Oops...
 
 
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Change Of Plans

Posted by Average Voter on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 5:45:56 PM
   The wife and I decided to move our tour of the DNC to tommorow. Since Barack will be staying in the hotel attached to the wifes work, they will be closing the streets in the early afternoon. So we deceided to carpool and leave work early to go wounder around and take some pictures and experience the insanity of it all.

   Joe Biden stopped by Boney's BBQ outside my wife's building yesterday for some pulled pork. Exciting...
 
Some goof-balls got busted yesterday for threating to shoot Obama, but they look to be nothing but druggies.
 
Update: News conference at 4:00 pm.on more people arrested in same deal.
 
One of the guys arrested was named Adolf...wonder what group he belongs to? Hmmm....
 
 
Here is a slide show  featuring words that some group decided to paste on the side of Tabletop mountain.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Re-Create 68 - No Warming

Posted by Average Voter on Sunday, August 24, 2008 10:50:27 PM
   On Re-Create 68's website, they have a listing of each days focus of protest.
 

Days of Resistance — August 24-28

During the convention, there will be five major protests, one each day. Each protest will focus on a symptom of the disease of an imperialist, capitalist, racist system as seen in our communities. Some of the proposed themes are as follows:

Sunday - End All Occupations at Home and Abroad
Monday - Human Rights/Free All Political Prisoners
Tuesday - No Racism/Imperialism
Wednesday - No Warming
Thursday - No Borders

As actions develop, we will post more information.

 
If you notice on wednesday the focus is 'stop warming'. I would suppose they are talking about global warming, but can't seem to find anything on it from the site. Anyway, I will be following that one.
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The GOP Denver 'War Room'

Posted by Average Voter on Sunday, August 24, 2008 10:30:16 PM
   The republicans have set up camp not far from the Pepsi Center trying to get noticed. They even have their own website, NotReady08.
 
I will have to find that area Tuesday and go shake Mitt Romney's hand. He was my choice for President, but hey, can't win'em all.

VP? maybe?
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Speaking Of Change...

Posted by Average Voter on Sunday, August 24, 2008 10:08:32 PM
   I will be changing my focus this week from environmental stuff to the Democratic Nation Convention happening my hometown.For starters, we are having some tornados and flash flooding  here in Denver on the eve of the DNC. Do you think someone is trying to tell us something?
 
2 tornadoes touch down; no major injuries reported
 
Two tornadoes were reported south of town a ways; fortunantly no one at this point seems to have been injured.
 
The protestors did manage to lock the Pepsi Center down for 15 minutes or so today..good for them, statrting off with a bang!
 
I wonder what Lileks is up to?
 

I’m at the StarTribune’s spot in the press gallery, where we have power and internet and Epsom-salt foot baths and all manner of conveniences. The view: we will have an absolutely top-notch and upobstructed view of the left side of Obama’s head. This place is smaller than I expected, and it’s all Pepsi Blue, too. But it is cool and sedate, and after the protest - which was hot, smelly, and, shall we say, an up-tempo event, it’s a welcome relief. Grainy, blurry iPhone picture:

   Can't believe I forgot to buy a ticket! Anyway, me and the wife decided that Tuesday night after work we would take a stroll through the rucuss just to get a feel for things. The wife works downtown, in a building actually attached to the hotel where Barack will be staying. She was told to bring extra cloths and food to work in case an 'event' were to happen. She is a little scared and I can understand, although I tend to believe most of these trouble making protestors are trying to get there faces onto the evening news rather than try to protest anything meaningfull.
 
   When we are down there Tuesday, we will be sure to bring a camera so I can post some photos.
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Denver Is This Weeks Beijing

Posted by Average Voter on Sunday, August 24, 2008 5:10:15 PM
   Some of the greatest political contestants in the U.S. will be in Denver this week looking to win gold for their party. Now that the Olympics are over, the country, and especially Denver will once again be inundated with political brouhaha.
 
   And the fun has already started.
 
KUSA - Denver Police evacuated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from the Grand Hyatt hotel in Denver Saturday after a man carrying two long rifles and two handguns walked into the lobby of the hotel.
 
Carrying rifles through a hotel lobby you are not registered in during the DNC will get you arrested.
 
   The protestors are already at it.
 
Protestors, which included members of the "Re-create 68" group, blocked the entrance to the Pepsi Center for 15 minutes on Sunday, before dispersing.
 
   A Fox News reporter got into a tangle with Colorado's best known wierdo Ward Churchill and his minions.
 

In video footage of the incident, demonstrators surrounded Jenkins after the alleged confrontation between the reporter and Churchill.

"We're not going to stand for your lies," a demonstrator yells.

Spagnuolo said the reporter put his hands on Churchill.
 
 
Of course, we all know who Spagnuolo is. His protest group 'Re-Create 68' is the one everybody is worried about.
 
We also have special guest Cindy Sheehan, the Bush hating anti-war mother of a fallen soldier.
Cindy Sheehan speaks this morning at the State Capitol.
 
   Fortunantly, all is well because we now have James Lileks in town. I feel so much better now!
 

Lileks

Standing in a mile-long line in a mile-high city. It's the line to get into Pepsi. Hellishly hot & shade-free. But what fun so far!
 
Glad he is. I made dinner reservations for tonight to celebrate my wife's birthday. Hopefully I won't have to much trouble getting downtown.
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Obama's Enviromental Gang

Posted by Average Voter on Friday, August 22, 2008 7:18:33 PM
   Got this list of people whom Barack Obama relies on for his energy policy. The comment section at the bottom pointed out that everybody on it save one person is a lawyer.
 
Really, who would know more about global warming than an bunch of environment and energy lawyers from the Clinton administration?
 
And they say McCain is a third term for Bush.
 
 
 
 
 
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Back To Our Busy Hurricane Season

Posted by Average Voter on Friday, August 22, 2008 7:00:21 PM
   Just found out today that Colorado State University on August 5th upped, yet again, their hurricane forecast for 2008. here are the new numbers:
 
17 Named Storms
9 Hurricanes
5 Instense Hurricanes
 
 
TC Activity
 
We have had five named storms so far, three tropical storms and two hurricanes, one being classified as intense (Bertha).Unless we have a totally abnormal rest of the season,  I don't see it happening. But, we may be surprised?!
 
 
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Air Quality Not Issue At Beijing Olympics

Posted by Average Voter on Thursday, August 21, 2008 7:19:39 PM
   I kept expecting to hear about the smog issue in Beijing while watching the Olympics but it has yet to surface. Of course it was one of the big topics a few weeks before the games started. This article in the TimesOnline gives a little insight into the workings of keeping the smog down, although the writer is not impressed. Communist China is one thing, the over-indulgent human race is another.
 
But how much of this Green Olympics malarkey is diesel smoke and mirrors? One of the official sponsors is McDonald's, serving burgers by the diesel-powered truckload and it is an established fact that beef production is one of the heaviest consumers of water, for example.
 
Evil big corporations!
 
And how much aircraft fuel was used to ferry - I don't know the precise number but let's guess at a minimum of 30,000 - athletes, officials and media people to Beijing, and that is not counting hangers-on and tourists, from all points of the globe?
 
Evil aircraft industry! How dare they burn so much fuel getting people to China to compete!
 
Then there are the tonnes of rubbish we generate, the millions of meals we consume greedily, the gallons of water in plastic bottles we glug before we all turn around and fly home in our Jumbo jets with their airborn trail of emissions.
 
Humans, always eating and drinking and drinking and eating and flying and eating and drinking...Jeez....
 
 
 
 
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Climate Change Is Making It Hot In Spain

Posted by Average Voter on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 7:52:07 PM
   In this article from the ever-popular website, StopGlobalWarming.com we have an article on the drought in Spain. Here is the first sentence in the article:
 
Spain is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. Climate experts warn that the country is suffering badly from the impact of climate change and that the Sahara is slowly creeping north - into the Spanish mainland.
 
I only have one question here...was it climate change 40 years ago when they had a drought?
 
Here are the last few sentences in the article:
 
"You must not leave the tap on for too long because water will be wasted and we won't have enough water in Barcelona", five-year-old Teresa solemnly told me on the way to the playground area in one of the city's parks.

Her friend, seven-year-old Carmen, then added: "If you want to shower in hot water, then you must collect the cold water that comes out first in a bucket and use it later to water the plants".

And from eight-year-old Juan: "If you don't have water, there are lots of things you can't do. You can't live without it. Without water we can't survive."

At least Spain has produced one good thing in this, the year of drought - some of the most environmentally aware children in Europe.
What? Most environmentally aware children? Oh please...
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Kansas's Govenor and Green Energy

Posted by Average Voter on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 7:39:09 PM
   As the Planet Gore article states, Kansas Govenor Kathleen Sebelius is on Obama's short list for V.P., and she is serious when it comes to the environment.
 
“Instead of building two new coal plants, which would produce 11 million new tons of carbon dioxide each year,” Sebelius said earlier this year in defending the state’s decision to nix new coal facilites in west Kansas. “We now know that carbon has a huge impact on the atmosphere, and global warming is very real. In a state like Kansas, where over 20 percent of our jobs and economy involves agriculture and the land, changes in the climate and atmosphere can be devastating. Kansas has great opportunities in clean energy and alternative fuels.”
 
Guess what, wind power doesn't work when the wind isn't blowing. And now Kansas is going to pay.
 
“I’d say this decision pretty much halts wind development in western Kansas,” said David Snyder, economic development director in Ness County. “We need transmission lines, and we need the coal plants to get them.”

Snyder is simply reciting Renewable Power 101: It’s not economically practical for transmission lines to be erected for wind alone due to the line expense and the erratic nature of wind power. Wind, in other words, can only supplement larger (and less intermittent) energy sources.
 
“Not only do we lose the $3.6 billion expansion investment (and) those hundreds of jobs won’t happen,” says Kansas House Speaker Melvin Neufeld, “(but) other companies considering expansion in Kansas may see us as an unfriendly place to do business and tens of thousands of Kansans now face the very real possibility of higher electric bills.”
Green enough for you?

 
 
 
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Movie Of McCarthy's Book 'The Road'

Posted by Average Voter on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 7:25:11 PM
   I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's book The Road in short order, finding it hard to set it down. In the LA Times On The Set section writer John Horn talks with the people who are making the movie version. It is always funny how the book is never good enough for a movie. They have to not only change things but add them too, and this one is no different.
 
WITH THE incessant threats -- cannibals, thieves, starvation, dehydration, hypothermia -- the Man and the Boy face, it would seem unnecessary to make their survival even more difficult, but that's precisely what Penhall ("Enduring Love") and Hillcoat chose to do.

The film's most obvious departure from the book -- outside of the elimination of the novel's vaguely nuclear "long shear of light" that stopped clocks at 1:17 -- is its redoubling of the book's fleeting flashbacks of the Man and his final days with his desperate and suicidal wife (Charlize Theron). Throughout the movie, the filmmakers also have amplified McCarthy's already vast peril.
   
The book told a story that delved into the relationships of a father and son and the difficulties and depression of life after all ways of sustaining it is left to scavaging. But what it dealt with is living. Staying alive for your son, and keeping life sacred. As this article says, it tells a different stories to different people. But one thing this story doesn't tell is this;
 
So even as the filmmakers were ratcheting up the story's danger and despair, they also were pushing to make the movie as uplifting as possible, emphasizing its intrinsic father-son love story and promoting the notion that the Boy embodies some sort of messiah. Along the way, movie version also became much less a story about a post-nuclear catastrophe and more a tale of climate change and a dying planet.
 
Climate change never once entered my mind while reading this book. Yet, this books story line makes it easy to turn a nuclear holocaust into climate change. You can't get a movie funded in Hollywood without mentioning climate change, global warming, or taking a stab at President Bush.

 
 
 
 
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The T. Boone Pickens Plan

Posted by Average Voter on Sunday, August 17, 2008 1:26:03 PM
   I have only one question concerning "The Plan". On whose land do we put these wind turbines? Okay, two questions... is that included in the price? Becuase that will be 'the question' when it comes to getting this thing to work. Purchasing land, condeming land, court cases, land leases, enviromentalists, and a host of other problems there are with getting the land you need to build these things on.
 
A wind farm.
 
But a short search netted a interesting find. A Popular Mechanics article goes into another part of his 'plan', a water pipeline.
 
   Pickens is in the planning stages of a $1.5 billion initiative to pump billions of gallons of water from an ancient aquifer beneath the Texas Panhandle and build pipelines to ship them to thirsty cities such as Dallas. So far, no city has taken up his water company, Mesa Water, on the offer. But company officials and experts agree that a continuation of the drought impacting large portions of the United States could turn Pickens into something of a water baron. His yet-to-be-built pipeline would follow the same 250-mile corridor as electric lines carrying power from his wind farms. Pickens prompted the creation of a public water supply district, run by his employees, that can claim private land for the pipeline route through eminent domain. (Follow the pipeline's path here.)
 
   Eminent domain. That is how he is going to make it work. Take citizens land for the good of the country. We all know how that works with the Supreme Court case Kelo v. City of New London. The government can take your land for just about anything now, as long as it is deamed good of the public.
 
   So of course you can follow Mr. Pickens logic. Beacuse of the current hype about global warming, he will build a water pipeline that he will control, he will get his wind turbines up without having to pay for the land, and he already is well invested in natural gas.
 
He will make a ton of money. He has got to sell it, but the odds are pretty good considering the current climate and the likelyhood of an Obama win.
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