Saturday, January 29, 2011

The State of the Union



The President gave his almost hour long state of the Union address last week. Of course I watched and listened to it as I am interested in the state of my country. Lot’s of applause was given to the President for all sorts of Mom and Apple Pie themes in the address. The obligatory green part of the speech was also applauded. I have excerpted that part of the President’s speech and list it below. Even old W got applause for his renditions of the dis-laws of thermo when he opined a few years back on how Hydrogen and Ethanol will lead us to greener pastures. Obama has pretended to exit the Hydrogen Highway and the Ethanol Freeway and his address remained agnostic about particular green messianic technology but promised us that in 25 years 80% of our electric power will come from “clean” energy sources. Of course the President had to throw in the Sputnik Moment, the Apollo Program, and call clean energy the man to the moon challenge of our time. Well Mr. President we got to the moon by burning a heck of lot of fuel in a Saturn Five Rocket. In fact the comparison of getting to the moon and weaning us off of fossil fuels is plain thermodynamically dumb.

The challenge is not about technology it is about lifestyle. The President should have challenged us to change our gluttonous way of living. He should look to streets of Cairo and Tunis where high food prices have caused the public to revolt. He should have said no more corn ethanol subsidies and let food be food and let fuel be fuel. He should have used his bully pulpit to ask his fellow Americans to stop using so much food and fuel. The part of address of turning sunlight and water into fuel (hydrogen) for our cars was like a W moment of pure stupidity. I like the way Obama said “we’re not just handing out money”. Yeah we are doing electronic transfers of funds rather than handing out paper bills. Handing out a hundred billion electronically is faster than printing it and sending it in the US Mail. I will however give the President a B for the address. B stands for Boring. He was lecturing to a fifth grader on how to want a better future while doing absolutely nothing in the present.

My State of the Union address is as follows;

“For scores of years we have been eating, driving, cooling, heating and buying too much. My fellow citizens I am trading in my 747 Air Force One for a small Lear Jet and will cut down my jet fuel use by 75%. As half of the Whitehouse is already in the dark, I will keep it unlighted and unheated. I will cut my gas and electric consumption by 50%. Instead of flying around the country to campaign in 2012 I will simply Skype my campaign promises from the oval office. I will demonstrate to you business will go on and that nothing will change politically when I halve my carbon footprint, I expect you all to do likewise. If all of you ride a bike to the store, carpool to work with friends, limit your diets to 2,000 kilocalories, and heat and cool your home less we can finally stop having to kiss up to OPEC, Exxon and ADM.

I have asked President Muburak to listen to the will of his people and ride into the sunset toward Benghazi. I too will listen to the will of the people and cut all funds for all projects that pretend to be green that in fact are gangrene. I control the on off switch of pork barrel funding and it is simply time to turn many of our switches to off and not believe in fairy tale science that we can live like gluttons. You may have heard me talk about hope and “yes we can”, but I have now seen the light and have to tell you hope will not save a fluid ounce of oil. I still think we can save our country but first we have to save it from ourselves and our wasteful way of life. May Mother Naure Bless America even if we have not respected Her.”

Readers, compare what Abe Lincoln said with Obama’s address and tell me we have not become lost, self congratulating, and long winded. One question readers, did the members of Congress in 1863 interrupt old Abe with applause or did they just listen in amazement to the words of our last great president? President Obama forget Sputnik and go back further to in our history and lead by example rather than by long winded speeches as the “world did little note nor long remember what you said here”.

Lincoln

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Obama

“That's what Americans have done for over 200 years: reinvented ourselves. And to spur on more success stories like the Allen Brothers, we've begun to reinvent our energy policy. We're not just handing out money. We're issuing a challenge. We're telling America's scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we'll fund the Apollo projects of our time.
At the California Institute of Technology, they're developing a way to turn sunlight and water into fuel for our cars. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, they're using supercomputers to get a lot more power out of our nuclear facilities. With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. (Applause.)
We need to get behind this innovation. And to help pay for it, I'm asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. (Applause.) I don't know if -- I don't know if you've noticed, but they're doing just fine on their own. (Laughter.) So instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's.
Now, clean energy breakthroughs will only translate into clean energy jobs if businesses know there will be a market for what they're selling. So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: By 2035, 80 percent of America's electricity will come from clean energy sources. (Applause.)
Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all -- and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen. (Applause.)”

4 comments:

  1. I didn't buy any of it, either. Why do we have to wait over 30 years to invoke RE technologies on a MASSIVE scale?! These RE technologies are ready to be deployed on a massive scale NOW! Coal and and nooklar are HARDLY clean technologies.

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  2. الذباب في المطبخ
    قد يلاحظ أصحاب المنازل أيضًا ذباب المنازل و ذباب الفاكهة في المطبخ. بينما تتغذى ذبابة المنزل على مجموعة واسعة من الأطعمة البشرية ، فإن ذباب الفاكهة ، باسمه ، لديه شهية خاصة للفواكه والخضروات. ترك الفواكه والخضروات الناضجة يجلس على طاولة المطبخ هو وسيلة مؤكدة لدعوة عائلة من الذباب إلى الطاولة.شركة مكافحة حشرات
    شركة مكافحة النمل الابيض بالرياض
    شركة مكافحة الصراصير بالرياض

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