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You have your radicals, and conservatives…
Radicals who want to cut taxes,and take drastic measures, bold untried steps, to strip government of its power, it’s authority,….
And then you have conservatives, who just want things to go back to the way they were before the Bush Tax cuts, … when everything worked. when everyone did better than the year before, when we all actually believed that if we just worked hard, applied ourself, we could retire with something saved up and enjoy our golden years…
In this regard, Republicans like McConnell, Boehmer, Cantor, and Ryan are radicals…. Democrats including Obama, Biden, Coons, are conservative….. We just want to go back where we were ten years ago… Is that so bad?
Waxing nostalgic I searched my files and came up with this:… a nugget of how things once were….
We’ve changed; I’ve changed…
i remember the controversy over Donvitti’s Veteran’s Day picture… Many were moved at it’s evocative message to complain vociferously … Now jaded as we are, we’d just say”that’s Donvitti” and shrug it off… Yes, things have changed…
I think young people thrive on change: old people hold onto pieces of the past… and as much as I hate to admit it, I am less young than I once was.
Memorial Day used to sweep me with emotion as I remembered those who had gone before… Back then, I hadn’t had to bury any of them… I think funerals change a person. I think they provide a reality check against some of the dreams to which we aspire… So now, I accept out of duty, and go through the motions, of celebrating Memorial Day… But is more empty than it was before…
I wonder sometimes, if blogging burns out neurons. It seems to… Sort of the same way that drinking strong coffee, towards the end, doesn’t jolt to the same effect as did that first cup…. or that flush from a light Chardonnay, gets lost at the bottom of the third bottle, … or how attending aother funeral, becomes “just another one..’
So how does one celebrate Memorial Day? What is the most fitting way of doing something grand? Something that can be done year after year, without losing its impact, its effect, its meaning?
Attending services at first seems like a viable option… Showing your respect by driving around the state, stopping from memorial service to service to shake a few hands, thank veterans for their service…. but after a while, when you look at the impact of what you’re accomplishing, versus the time, versus the effort you paid out, and you start feeling it’s a lost cause, an issue of spending years collecting pennies in mason jars, only to find at life’s end, no one wants them?
But,
Huddled on a moonscape tonight, is someone’s little boy… someone’s baby girl,… Perhaps their eyes are blue, or maybe they’re brown… Perhaps their hair is fine, flopping the breeze, or maybe it’s wiry, cropped close to the scalp? Bottom line, and cold reality is: tonight, any one of them, could breathe their last …
And for what?
For a gabble of egoistic, cranky old coots jamming the halls of Congress? For a man, (or women) having the luck to convince more levers, more buttons, more check-marks, to be cast for his name as opposed to his rival’s? For their spouses sleeping around the base back home? For their kids missing a parent, and taking that frustration out on those in school? For less taxes, more taxes, too many taxes, not enough taxes? For giant building projects? For protecting the simple wetlands needed to keep a little quiet in the urban world?
Why?
These ideas go through every service person’s mind, just before the order to move out, comes down… “Why am I here. they wonder?”
The answer lies in a small word, with a big meaning…. America… People have tried to put their finger on it, just what that means… and no one can: It is just too big…
How can you describe standing on the rocky beach in Portland, Maine, looking out toward Europe on a clear blue day, and compare it to the hotness lining the burr-yos outside Los Angeles, where the most amazing senioritas strut their stuff? How can you link hiking under the spires of the pristine rain forests on the Olympic Peninsula, with laying in the sun, sweating on top of an Alabama haystack sharing that moment with your high school sweatheart and two cans of PBR?…. Impossible? Yet but all that and more, fall under the umbrella of that single word “America….”
All are indeed worth dying for…
So, I think when it comes down to it, my best way to honor those who went off and didn’t come back, is to ask, …. “what would they want to do right now, if they were here? What is the one thing they miss the most?”
That would be: spending quality time with friends and family… That would be my answer… Personally, if they were here again, I doubt that they would spend all day going from service to service… Instead, they would be hugging their children, never letting go of their spouse, laughing with their grandparents, chilling with their friends, … they would be living life…. a life they did not have.
THAT is what they’d want to do, … if they were still here…
So, that’s how I’m spending my holidays… with family. with friends. Doing some catching up, some future planning, some sharing….
And the thought occurs to me at some point during that time… THIS is what they gave up… THIS is the true nature of the sacrifice they made…..
And that stupid little tear that always forms in the corner of the eye, almost always at the most inopportune moment, is now…. there again..
Courtesy of CBS News.
Does this make any sense?
Map Courtesy of US Dept. of Energy (right click for full image)
As one can see there is a lot of competition for offshore wind… At one point in time, Delaware was poised to become the center of offshore wind manufacturing. Unless we move quickly, that place in history will be lost….
And just like our once ground-breaking New Castle- Frenchtown Railroad, although considerable investment was put in place to get it running, the rest of the world quickly passed us by…. because Delawaeans did what Delawearns do… sit on their hands…
We need to court GE with all the good reasons why they should build their new 5.0 offshore turbines here in Delaware. We need to spawn the development of an offshore tower construction company set up in Lewes. We need the MAPP lines connecting DC to our coast to continue forward quickly without interruption. Furthermore, we need to get NRG moving on building Bluewater Wind as fast as possible. Finally we need Delaware’s political contingent, including the Vice President, to create the tension always necessary to make bureaucratic things “happen”..
Time is wasting; we are sleeping.. The alarms gone off; it’s time to WAKE UP!.
1. Internet search giant Google announced Wednesday it is partnering with banking conglomerate Citibank to invest in what is set to become the largest wind power project in the world, in southern California. Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said its wind farm, which will be part of the Alta Wind Energy Center in the Tehachapi Pass in Kern County, would generate up to 1.5 gigawatts of electricity. It said that would be enough to power 450,000 homes through Southern California Edison.
2. Windpower 2011 finished up today in Anaheim.. Out of that, the big news was that the regular boasting of 41,000 MW of domestic capacity and celebration of providing electricity equivalent to ten nuclear power plants were contextless figures that ignored wind’s chronic problems of intermittency, geographic/transmission difficulties, and its inability to provide baseload power. Breakthroughs will be needed to address these challenges, and experts agree that the R&D funding gap necessary to achieve those breakthroughs will come from governments, not private industry.
3. Delmarva Power, a Delaware-based business unit of Pepco Holdings Inc. said it has filed a request for the approval of its revised agreement with Synergics Eastern Wind Energy LLC, which has moved its wind farm located in western Maryland to central Pennsylvania. The filing was made with the Delaware Public Service Commission.Delmarva Power said it also has other agreements in place to supply clean, renewable energy to its customers. Some of these include a 15-year contract with AES Wind Generation, a unit of AES Corporation (AES – Analyst Report), for 50 megawatts of wind power; a 20-year contract with Synergics for up to 40 megawatts of wind power from its Roth Rock project in Maryland, expected to go fully operational next month; a 25-year contract with NRG-Bluewater, a unit of NRG Energy Inc. (NRG -Analyst Report), for up to 200 megawatts of offshore wind power from its planned project off the Delaware coast; and a 20-year contract with White Oak Solar Energy for up to 16,500 megawatt-hours in solar renewable energy credits, to go operational this summer. A quick check here, shows it has either yet to be filed, or has not yet been uploaded to Delaware PSC site.
4. Wind power’s vast supply chain, which produces the 8,000 components making up a typical wind turbine, continues to grow deeper roots here in the U.S. Today the industry employs 75,000 people, and over 400 wind-related manufacturing plants dot the map in 43 states, from California where the industry began 30 years ago, through the Midwest which now leads wind development, to the Southeast even though its first wind farm is still on the drawing board.
5. This past February, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu unveiled a coordinated strategic plan, A National Offshore Wind Strategy: Creating an Offshore Wind Industry in the United States, which pursues the deployment of 10 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2020 and 54 gigawatts by 2030. They announced $50.5 million in funding opportunities for projects that support offshore wind energy deployment.
6. The Connecticut House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation Tuesday requiring first-ever regulations governing state review of wind power projects. Lawmakers voted 132-6 to back the bill calling on the Connecticut Siting Council to adopt regulations on setbacks, a wind power project’s impact on natural resources and other factors.
7. Currently, the market is being shepherded by developers who are scrambling to put turbines in the ground ahead of a 2013 expiration of lucrative federal tax credits for wind. Beyond that date, the industry’s fortunes are hazy. “You are going to see a real slowdown in ’13,” Vic Abate, General Electric Co’s vice president of renewables, said in an interview this past Monday at the above mentioned U.S. wind industry’s annual trade show in Anaheim, California. “Over the next 12 months you are going to see all great news. You are going to see project starts are up, units are being shipped, orders for turbines are going up. It’s going to give you a signal of security, but the reality is they are all targeted to end on December 31, 2012,” he said. A government support plan that must be renewed every couple of years only makes matters worse. “The hardship on the industry is this sort of stop-start policy,” said Lisa Frantzis, managing director for renewable and distributed energy at consultant Navigant. “If you look back it’s always been extended, but the timing can really impact things.”
Yesterday, before Judge Pauley of the United District Court of the Southern District of New York, a motion was filed by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, against a consortium of hedge funds that ran up the price of oil during the winter of 2008.
The defendants manipulated the market by buying up roughly two thirds of the supply passing through the Cushing terminal, holding on to it to create the impression supplies were short, then dumping it onto the market, after betting it would sell short.
They performed the caper in January 08 and March 08. They were unable to find funding to finance it during February 08. Once they were notified in April that they had been placed under investigation, this consortium stopped.
This is just one group. imagine 30 to 40 groups all doing the same thing…
That this is done is now common knowledge, Out there are those who still erroneously believe supply and demand affect oil prices.. They refuse to acknowledge that oil was $145 a barrel, then $45 dollars once the funds got sold off to keep from going bankrupt..
There are those out there who still think we need to drill, drill, drill, like drilling will lower the price at the pump… It won’t, It can’t, . But instead of opening ocean floor to drilling, there still is something the Federal Government can do to make our lives easier when it comes to putting gas into our cars…
They can bet the entire Federal Debt on the fact that gas will rapidly drop in price, then dump a considerable amount of the Strategic Petroleum Reserves onto the Market… As the price of gas plummets from $3.87 to $1.47 a gallon, and bankrupts each and every hedge fund, both domestic and international, so much so, that across both sides of Wall Street, the sound of light caliber pistol fire echoes from building to building, cubicle to cubicle, … it forces the price of oil to again become determined by supply and demand. As all the moneys of the hedge funders start back-flowing into the US Treasury, and as each of us breathe easier every time we pull up to the pump, we, by pursuing this action, take care of the problem of high prices at the pump once and for all.
I mean if private companies can do it to take money out of our pocket each time we pump gas, the Federal Government can do the opposite to put money back into our pockets…
This is the second time… The first was 2008, but now, because of Republican gains in Congress, it is happening again… It would be wise to remember: just as we had to fight Germany twice in half a century because we didn’t finish the war the first time… this time, in our second war with the hedge funds, it would be wise to accept nothing less than unconditional surrender on their part.
A lesson needs to be taught! That lesson is: you don’t screw over everyday Americans.
Yesterday’s small step in US District Court, begins the process of educating America as to just exactly why, and by who, they are paying over $2.40 a gallon higher than they should……
And let us all stop this nonsense that gasoline prices are not manipulated…. They are. I’ve shown you the proof.
Next time someone tells you they aren’t, do them a huge favor. punch them hard and hurt them a little….
Katie Hanson; Miss Delaware USA (photo’s courtesy of Miss USA Pagent
I really don’t know why it gets to me,… but it does… My state, the first state to enter the Union, the second smallest but still, the one state with the fewest counties, my state, the one our nation’s Vice President calls home…… My state, the one poised to be the first state in the union to have an offshore wind farm…. has, never… not recently, not even in ancient history, … ever won a title in a national beauty pageant….
Just as we are the only state without a National Park; we are also the only state that has never won a national title… Wikipedia almost gloatingly points out, “The least successful states are Delaware, the only state that has never placed;”
How come? Did any of you know this?
It’s obviously not because of our women! We have some amazing women here… Why is Delaware the ONLY STATE TO HAVE NEVER PLACED IN A NATIONAL COMPETITION?
To be honest, it’s because we don’t care. until of course, we happen to catch a glimpse on TV of our stunning candidate, and say wow, they really do look better than the competition…. By then, it’s too late.
No matter how you feel about beauty competitions… they do represent your state.
and Delawareans should begin getting mad that we are always left out…
When the Miss USA of Texas gets crowned, she is given a line of prizes a mile long.
Usually the family of the Delawarean contestant must pay out of pocket for the privilege to fly out and compete…. One would think, someone here in Delaware, would want provide some help to sponsor her? In return for advertising, if nothing else?
Is there anything we can do?
Yes, there is… For the first time in history, citizens of Delaware can go online here and vote 10 times a day for the candidate of their choice… Of course with our few citizens, compared to the numbers of New York and California, only a ambush will give us any chance… But ambushes are the American way.. Look at the Battle of Trenton, and Princeton!… We have a shot…to change history, at least get Delaware into the semi finalists, if everyone reading this votes, and votes often….
Why?
Primarily because we are a small state, one with few sport’s hall of famers… Often the butt of national jokes, we usually simply have no choice but to dismiss them… Now, before us is an opportunity to brag a little if we can pull this off.. Do we have a great candidate? Yes!.. Look at the competition on the site above..
We have a contender….
Delaware has never placed… Let’s do something about it?
What if we all petitioned David Letterman, to negotiate with Donald Trump, ( the owner of the Miss USA pagent) live on air, to give Miss Delaware a fair shot at righting this dubious distinction? Of course, Delaware will have to take some pings in the process ( that’s what comedy is all about) but to see one of our own as a finalist, would still send chills up our spines, irregardless of what we normally profess to think of beauty pageants.
It’s Delaware we’re talking about…
A brief note should turn the tide; something like this:
Dear Dave: Often you make Delaware the butt of your jokes. That is probably because we deserve it. But did you know, Delaware is the only state that has never placed in a national beauty pageant? Now, we know you are good friends with Donald Trump and he runs the Miss USA pageant. Could you do our humble state a favor and introduce Miss Delaware USA to Donald Trump on your show? We are not expecting miracles… but she IS beautiful…. and we could use some extra publicity so the world knows it… After all we are the only state that has never, ever placed… even Wikipedia makes fun of us…
If you can help us, thanks…
Here is the site for the David Letterman show... please include any jokes their writers might enjoy…. The email address is: lswdl@aol.com
5 or 10 won’t do it; I figure the minimum to be noticed is around 30,000… It will take some enthusiasm, some selling, and some enthusiastic supporters to make a dent in a contest that is obviously stacked against us, like a Republican Congress is stacked against John Carney!…
If you can spread the word, please do… and vote… and yes, vote often…. It’s our state pride that’s on the line here…..
Toon courtsey of Inkcint Cartoons
Delaware has a surplus…
As usual, everyone put out their hand and says: “I want mine”…. Thank heavens this is a democracy and votes were placed in 2008, 2010, and will be again in 2012, all which decide exactly who will get “da” money.
From an economic perspective, the entire amount should be injected into the economy. Democrats immediately took the lead and unifyingly said: give the 2% back to those who gave it up… and increase their pensions 1% while we are at it… After all, we are making them pay more for it…. Best estimates show that this will cost $19 million… Most of that $19 million will be spent in Delaware….
It was with grateful heart that Delaware thanked their lucky stars that they chose to provided Democratic leadership in both houses as opposed to that of Republicans… Look at the turmoil in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, as the Republican governors try to decimate the working middle class, and use their savings to give tax breaks to the wealthy….
While those states are imploding, Delaware will have money ($40 million) to attract new businesses by improving access roads and sewers for incoming businesses. While those states are imploding, Delaware will have money ($40 million) added to the Transportation Trust Fund, to stave off future deficiencies. While those states are , imploding, Delaware will have money ($35 million) for the preservation of historical buildings, our greatest heritage. While those states are imploding, Delaware will have money ($10 million ) for affordable housing programs. While those Republican states are imploding, Delaware will have money to put up ($10 million) to protect open space… While across the board, those states who had the unpleasant misfortune to have gotten stuck with a Republican chief executive are stripping money from education, Delaware, will invest money ($22 million) into early education….
Overall about $265 million of the surplus has been targeted to develop jobs. Something that directly impacts the betterment of every Delawarean. If all that money gets funneled back into our state economy, as it should, thanks to the JEC and Markell’s careful targeting of where it should be spent,…. expect an average of ($265M /897,000) $295 extra dollars to flow through every man, women, and child’s hands over the course of next year…
That IS good economic policy.:. putting money in the hands of those who spend it…. Truly, we are lucky to be a Democratic state…
Makes one wonder if those other states will eventually also come to their senses and “wise up”?
Video courtesy of the Telegraphtv
Even Rick Jensen (WDEL) would be proud of his president on this day…. Here’s hoping we never again have a president who prefers Bud Lite…..
Guinness = Wisdom
Photo courtesy of Softpedia.com {right click for full view}
While all eyes were focused on the fake news event of galactic proportions… ie, Camping’s prediction, real shattering events in the world of science were actually taking place… which stretched out to the extreme may one day, like Star Trek and Star Wars, send men at warp speed to distant galaxies…
Antimatter… the opposite of matter, was found and held for 16.6 minutes…. That is plenty of time to bring another hydrogen atom damn smack into it… Creating, something magnificent…creating results bordering on what we don’t know yet ….
Trust numbers, not people… Math predicted their existence, and even though no one quite new how to find them, most accepted them on mathematical evidence… In my lifetime, and yours, this great event took place…. and went unnoticed for several weeks, because the world was ending….. not…
Praise be to mankind, who has grasped the inner workings of matter itself… Praise be to Europeans, … who did not kill their super collider as did America’s numbskull republicans…..
