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ONE MAN'S SEARCH FOR A PARTY

Posted by baseballdoc on Saturday, May 17, 2008 12:37:55 PM

 

 .....I was raised in Boston which is a bastion of
Liberalism ...growing up I never knew anyone who was
not a Democrat ...I was a registered Democrat until
Vietnam and LBJ ...

.....I became a Republican with Reagan because I saw a
sharp distinction between the Partys ...the Democrats
were going Socialist while the Republicans remained
Conservative ...

.....When GW was elected, Republicans had control of
both Houses but Bush immediately began blurring the
distinction between the Parties and many in the GOP
followed his lead ....the term RINO was coined to
describe them ...

.....Now, with the nomination of McCain, I have been
driven out of the GOP the same way LBJ drove me out of
the Democrat Party ...with both the DEMS and the GOP
becoming little more than a choice between Tweedle Dum
and Tweedle Dee ....I have become a man without a
Party ...

.....I am considering a Straight Libertarian vote this
fall as my only option ...the main fault critics find
with the Libertarian Platform is that it guarantees
too much freedom ...for instance, no laws against
victimless crimes ...I can live with that ...I would
rather have "too much" Liberty than not enough
.....COLOSSUS

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THE GREAT ETHANOL BOONDOGGLE

Posted by baseballdoc on Friday, November 02, 2007 6:04:31 PM

The Farmers grow the corn - the consumers get the shaft.


.....An acre of U.S. corn yields about 7,110 pounds of corn for processing into 328 gallons of ethanol ...but planting, growing and harvesting that much corn requires about 140 gallons of fossil fuels and costs $347 per acre. ...Thus, even before corn is converted to ethanol, the feedstock costs $1.05 per gallon of ethanol ... 

.....The energy economics get worse at the processing plants, where the grain is crushed and fermented ...As many as three distillation steps are needed to separate the 8 percent ethanol from the 92 percent water ...Additional treatment and energy are required to produce the 99.8 percent pure ethanol for mixing with gasoline ...Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion to ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make 1 gallon of ethanol ...One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000BTU ...so about 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in ethanol ...Every time 1 gallon of ethanol is made ...there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTU ...

.....Ethanol from corn cost about $1.74 per gallon to produce, compared with about 95 cents to produce a gallon of gasoline ...That helps explain why fossil fuels, (not ethanol), are used to produce ethanol ...The growers and processors can't afford to burn ethanol to produce ethanol and U.S. drivers couldn't afford it either, if it weren't for government subsidies to artificially lower the price ...

.....Most economic analyses of corn-to-ethanol production overlook the costs of environmental damages, which should add another 23 cents per gallon ...Corn production in the U.S. erodes soil about 12 times faster than the soil can be reformed, and irrigating corn mines groundwater 25 percent faster than the natural recharge rate of ground water ...The environmental system in which corn is being produced is being rapidly degraded ...Corn should not be considered a renewal resource for ethanol energy production, especially when food for humans is being converted into ethanol ...

.....The approximately $ 1 billion a year in current federal and state subsidies, (mainly to large corporations), for ethanol production are not only costs to consumers but ...Subsidized corn results in higher prices for meat, milk and eggs because about 70 percent of corn grain is fed to livestock and poultry in the United States ...Increasing ethanol production would further inflate corn prices ...In addition to paying tax dollars for ethanol subsidies ...consumers would be paying significantly higher food prices in the marketplace ...

.....If all the automobiles in the United States were fueled with 100 percent ethanol ...a total of about 97 percent of land area would be needed to grow corn feedstock ...Corn would cover nearly the total land area of the United States.

.....Not too long ago the Democrats and the RINOs in Congress voted not to recover our oil resources in Anwar ...these are the same braindead morons who keep telling us we must wean ourselves off Mideast oil and who keep pushing for ethanol as a replacement fuel ...all this while we are sitting on top of an oil shale formation in the Green River Basin ...most of which is in Colorado ...covering more than a thousand square miles ...with a potential to recover a billion barrels of oil a square mile ...the recovery costs of this oil is economically feasible at $30 dollars a barrel ...oil is presently selling for over $90 a barrel ...so why don't the energy companies recover it ...because as soon as they try the Sierra Club and the enviro-nuts along with the EPA file law suits that would delay production for years ...so the energy companies look for their oil overseas ...

,,,,,Instead of subsidizing farmers to grow corn that will never be eaten ...we should be subsidizing the technology we need to recover the oil we already possess in one of the largest fossil fuel deposits in the world ...ethanol is a boondoggle that creates more problems than it solves ...it is impossible to believe that the President and our leaders in Congress do not know these facts ...but they have sold us out to the Special Interests ...the farmers, big Chemical, Agri business, The sierra Club and the enviro-wackos ...and they have given us an energy policy that is a combination of sheer stupidity and suicidal insanity .....COLOSSUS
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UNIONS - PART SEVEN

Posted by baseballdoc on Saturday, September 29, 2007 4:31:39 PM


KILLING THE GOLDEN GOOSE ...unions are government protected labor monopolies that use Capitalism to advance Socialism ...


.....What the United Automobile Workers has done ...on the foundation of coercive interventionist labor legislation ...is bring a once great company to its knees.  It has done this by a process of forcing one obligation after another upon the company ...while at the same time ...through its work rules ...featherbedding practices ...hostility to labor saving devices ...and outlandish pay scales ...doing everything in its power to make it impossible for the company to meet those obligations ...

.....Without the UAW tens of thousands of workers ...its own members ...would not now be faced with the loss of pension and healthcare benefits that it is impossible for GM or any other auto companies to provide ...and never was possible for them to provide.  The UAW ...the whole labor union movement ...and the Left-Liberal intellectual establishment ...which is their father and mother ...are responsible for foisting on the public and on the average working man and woman a fantasy land of imaginary Demons (big business & the rich) ...and of saintly Good Faries (politicians/government officials/union leaders).  In this fantasy land the Good Faries supposedly have the power to wring unlimited free benefits from the Demons ...

.....Without the UAW and its fantasy land mentality ...autoworkers would have been motivated to save out of wages actually paid to them ...and to provide for their future by means of reasonable investments of those savings ...investments with some measure of diversification.  Instead ...like small children ...lured by the prospect of candy from a stranger ...they have been led to a very bad end.  They thought they would receive endless free golden eggs from a goose they were doing everything possible to maim and fatally kill ...and now they're about to learn that the eggs just aren't there ...

.....It is very sad to watch an innocent human being suffer ...It's dreadful to contemplate anyone's life being ruined ... It's dreadful to contemplate even an imbecile's falling off a cliff or down a well ...But the Union members ...their Union leaders ...the Politicians who catered to them ...the Journalists ...the Writers ...and the Professors who provided the intellectual and cultural environment in which this calamity could take place ...none of them were imbeciles ...but they all could have and should have known better ...

.....What is happening is cruel justice ...imposed by a reality that willfully ignorant people thought they could choose to ignore as long as it suited them ...the reality that prosperity comes from the making of goods ...not the making of work ...that it comes from the doing of work ...and not from the shirking of it ...that it comes from the machines and methods of production that save labor ...not the combatting of those machines and methods ...that it comes from the earning and reinvestment of profits ...and not from the seizure of those profits for the benefit of the idlers who do all they can ...to prevent those profits from being earned in the first place ...

.....excerpted from an article by George Reisman .....COLOSSUS
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Where is GOD?

Posted by baseballdoc on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 4:13:43 PM



.....It was Socrates who said, ..."an unexamined life is not worth living" ...The philosophy of Socrates pre-dated Christianity and Christian morality but much of Socrates' wisdom is still relevant today ...

.....The examination of my own life began in my late teens ...I was raised as a Roman Catholic but the logic of my analytical mind began to uncover doubts ...my faith was being challenged by my reason ...

.....Was the Bible literally the word of God and therefore beyond dispute? ...Did Moses really part the Red Sea? ...and if so why? ...to believe this I had to assume that the Creator favored the children of Israel above all others ...was the fact that I was not a Jew mean that God rejected me? ...serious questions such as these raised doubts about my faith and began a long journey to find the truth ...

.....my journey brought me through a period of Atheism ...then to becoming an Agnostic ...and finally a long torturous route back to faith as I witnessed miracles and experienced the power of prayer in the middle of a war ...

.....Logic tells me that there is a Creator (God) because the Universe and life are far too complex to exist without an "Intelligent Designer" ...when I pray ...I pray to this Creator ...

.....By definition this makes me a Deist ...my faith is deism ..."The belief, based on reason, in a God who created the Universe and has since assumed no control over life, exerted no influence on nature, and given no supernatural revelation." ...I see the Bible as a collection of stories and parables ...part history part literature ...inspiring but not to be interpreted literally ...

....I see Religion as mans quest for God ...his need to know ...what is the meaning of life? ...is there an afterlife ...only religion offers to satisfy this thirst for most people ...

.....I do not need a religion to find God ...logic tells me the He exists ...that is enough for me .....COLOSSUS
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