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Name: ElSnapitan
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A Day to Remember

Posted by ElSnapitan on Friday, December 07, 2007 5:34:14 PM
Well here I am at home sitting on the couch taking care of my wife who is upstairs recovering from a gall bladder operation that she had yesterday. And I turn on the History Channel (in HD) and they are playing back to back programs on Pearl Harbor. I had completely forgotten it was the 7th.
Granted I had other things on my mind but I sat back and watched a few hours of black and white films.
I thought of my Grandfather who turned 95 this year and wondered what he was thinking when all of this happened?
Was he as mad as me when 911 happened? What was going through his mind when he went to enlist being turned away because he had polio when he was young? You would never know he had polio by looking at him. He was and still walks around quite fine despite his age.
And then what was the public thinking about how the was was going on? Would it ever end? How much more would they have to sacrifice as a nation? As a community? What about personally? How much longer would they have to continue the victory garden? How many more Americans would have to die before this was over? How many times would he look to see the names of the fallen or missing in the newspaper?

Flash forward to today.....

We have people who are upset for the losses that we have suffered as a nation since the war in Iraq.  Understandable to some extent. We don't want any American to die. I get it.
In contrast, what have we had to sacrifice as a Nation besides the lives that were lost on 911 and during the Iraq war so far? Have we had to ration our food,clothes,gas,rubber or build a victory garden? NO.

I think we as Americans need a little dose of reality sometimes and remember what our past generations have gone through and hold what we are going through in check.

If you see a veteran go up and shake their hands no matter how old and thanks them for their sacrifice. They are the ones that are doing the sacrificing not us.


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Carbon Offset?

Posted by ElSnapitan on Friday, December 07, 2007 3:07:07 AM
What is the carbon offset for a wind generating plant? Is it worth it? Before you think that I am an idiot, please refrain from that decision at least until you have heard me out first........then you can slam me hehe.

Now I am NOT an expert but I am a thinker and I was thinking about what goes into making on of these things. If I have missed anything please let me know....

In order to make one wind turbine you would need:

Raw Materials:    
Steel for the poles    
Lightweight metal or plastic or carbon fibre for the blades
Copper cables to transfer electricity from the turbine to the batteries
 The manpower to assemble the turbine
 Transportation to deliver and install the turbine

What resources are used to build the steel poles for the base of the turbine?
A steel manufacturing plant has to melt the raw materials and then form the steel to the correct specs.

I guess the same could be said for any of the lightweight metals used to build this also.
Plastics are made out of oil so that adds to the carbon footprint of these turbines.
The resources for the copper and plastic coatings for the cables.
The gas it takes to deliver these turbines and poles to their destinations.

How much carbon will be reduced by this turbine once it is built and operational?
How long will it take for this turbine to be carbon neutral?
How long can the turbine operate before needing new parts or be completely replaced?

Although I like the idea of clean energy, how can these be an effective tool to reduce any carbon footprint?
I say they can't.
How many of these would need to be built to make a city like Chicago carbon neutral?
What kind of land mass would that take up?
How long would it take for the wildlife kooks to start screaming about these turbines killing migrating birds and bring the matter up in court to stop building them?

I think the resources used just to ship the turbine across the country would be enough to make it an in-efficient way to reduce our need for oil.

What do you think?
And please don't say things like anything is better than nothing or something along those lines.
Give me something to think about.
Prove to me that there is something out there that I didn't see or take into consideration.




                              
   
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Posted by ElSnapitan on Thursday, December 06, 2007 1:39:26 AM
When will the liberal windbags realize that socializing anything will not work.
If you need proof, look no further than our educational system. Our students are falling behind the curve internationally.
The idea of socialized medicine is one that Hillary and her "ilk" cannot get past. I have talked to several people who have visited our country from countries that have socialized medicine and when I talked to them about their experiences they have absolutely  nothing good to say about it. When I ask them why they say that if you are talking about normal checkup's then it is ok at best. But if you have anything wrong with you and it is not life threatening then you are forced to live with your ailment until they can fit you in. Depending on the severity of your ailment and those that have more serious ailments you could be out of luck for awhile.
Over in England, they have private hospitals that you can go to if you have private healthcare. If you don not then you will not be seen by them and they will refer you to the public hospitals which are state run and are not as good as the private ones. Why is that? Why should a private one be better than a state run hospital?  One answer is incentive.  The private hospital gets paid by the insurance company not the state. They have to compete with other private hospitals unlike the state hospitals. They have doctors that do not get paid by the state and their salaries are determined by the operations that they do and the quality of work that they do. (If you are a bad doctor no one will go to you on private insurance, which will weed you out and have you work at a state run hospital)
It is a free market system that will fix the problems that ail most of our woes,not the Govt.
I am not against the Govt. I believe that the Govt is vital for certain things that we as Americans need. Among them are Protection from our enemies whoever they may be at the time.
But to say that we need the Govt (as great as it is) to run our healthcare system is wrong.

Where is the incentive for young people to go into medicine?
How do you fork over 12 years of college to get your degree and spend all that money for school to go and get a job with the govt to practice medicine only to be regulated on what you make?
One of the benefits of being a doctor is that you can have a nice lifestyle and be able to afford that lifestyle on what you earn. The initial buy in is high for the schooling, but the rewards are worth it because of the free market.

So if the healthcare system is not a free market, where do the students come from? The Govt will need to entice people to become doctors by paying for their education. Sounds good......? Before you answer that think about who is going to pay for that education that those students are getting.........? Can you say the tax payers?!?
So not only do we have the Govt subsidizing healthcare at some un-godly amount now we have the Govt paying students education because no one in their right mind is going to spend six figures on an education to earn what the govt pays our teachers. It is not going to happen.

AM I WRONG?


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