{"id":371,"date":"2008-06-18T20:13:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-19T03:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/MamaOKnits\/2008\/06\/18\/annoyances\/"},"modified":"2008-06-18T20:13:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-19T03:13:00","slug":"annoyances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/annoyances\/","title":{"rendered":"Annoyances"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There have been annoyances lately&#8230;like today, the President said (roughly) that anyone who&#8217;s being responsible would vote to drill in Anwar.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Okay&#8230;parsing the whole thing would take too much of my time and effort (and it&#8217;s hot&#8212;dry, sure, 107 \u00b0, that too) but let&#8217;s just focus on one little part.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>That whole responsible thing.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I think we&#8217;ve gotten needlessly Libertarian here&#8230;and I&#8217;m not against Libertarianism&#8230;not if you live in a completely homogenous society of say&#8230;fifty people. Then I think it&#8217;s bloody brilliant and I&#8217;m all for it.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>No, I mean this whole &#8220;I get to define responsibility the way I want to&#8221; thing&#8230;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>REAL responsibility?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Well, that means you accept your part of the problem (you&#8217;re in cahoots with Big Oil)<\/div>\n<div>and you are willing and able to propose a solution (getting out from under the thumb of Big Oil and get realistic about the whole &#8220;renewable resources&#8221; vs &#8220;nonrenewable resources&#8221; thing).<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>If we start there, then the next reasonable argument goes something like this: \u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">Because we&#8217;ve been beholden to the interests of a bunch of gynormous corporate entities for too long and in the process we&#8217;ve made certain that the little guy&#8211;the small businessman or businesswoman&#8230;the \u00a0entrepreneurial \u00a0sprirt upon which this country was founded, if you will&#8211;we&#8217;ve made certain that the good people of America simply cannot get a break (because all the breaks are going to the big companies in the form of giant tax breaks, etc etc) because of all of this, I have decided to change business as usual. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">We will now put out a request for bids on the following:<\/span><\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">government contracts for the best retro-fit of a gasoline-powered automotive engine to a viable alternative fuel source;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">government contracts for the best retro-fit \u00a0of a home from oil to solar or wind;<br \/><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">government contracts for the best retro-fit \u00a0of a home from gas to solar or wind;<br \/><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">government contracts for the best retro-fit of an in-home water system from complete potable water to grey water for toilets and home-created grey-water for irrigation; \u00a0<br \/><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">governme<\/span><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">nt contracts for the best retro-fit \u00a0of a fast food chain to provide recycled bio-fuel (no using NEW corn for fuel&#8230;that&#8217;s just silly&#8211;and maybe the fast food chains will use cleaner oil for cooking in if they can make a little money off of the waste product);<br \/><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">government contracts for the best retro-fit \u00a0of a manufacturing plant from a non-renewable \u00a0energy source to a renewable one;<br \/><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">and, finally, 70% one-time tax breaks to any corporation who can (a) demonstrate,  \u00a0and (b) distribute the means by which any and all unwanted waste\/byproducts can be reused by another company\/manufacturer for a profitable purpose.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>From what I understand, (necessity being the mother of invention and all) we&#8217;d see a return on those bullet points faster than we&#8217;d see a return on Anwar&#8230;not to mention the fact that Responsible Folks say the oil companies have PLENTY of offshore drilling rights they haven&#8217;t exploited b\/c it&#8217;s STILL too expensive to do so&#8230;at $4.50 a gallon, it&#8217;s STILL too expensive.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Please.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>When Holly and Dawn (see upcoming Chum) can reuse Pendleton fabric to make AWESOME \u00a0couture, you&#8217;re trying to tell me there&#8217;s NO WAY we can reuse our company byproducts SOMEhow? If Soysilk (love it!) can be made from leftovers after Tofu has been created&#8230;there HAS to be some use for EVERYthing, right?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>And I know what the naysayers are saying&#8211;if everything goes Solar or Wind or whatever, then the large power \u00a0utilities \u00a0go under and that&#8217;s an even worse economic nail in our collective coffin. \u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I agree. I think they should be the ones bidding. And I think part of their contracts should include upkeep, repair, and replacement. I think there&#8217;s a TON of money to be had on nothing more than yearly inspections&#8230;and power plants should ALWAYS be a backup system&#8230;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I&#8217;m just sayin&#8217;&#8230;Anwar is not the only solution. There are other&#8211;more \u00a0responsible ways&#8230;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I&#8217;m putting the soapbox away now. Thanks for indulging me.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There have been annoyances lately&#8230;like today, the President said (roughly) that anyone who&#8217;s being responsible would vote to drill in Anwar. Okay&#8230;parsing the whole thing would take too much of my time and effort (and it&#8217;s hot&#8212;dry, sure, 107 \u00b0, that too) but let&#8217;s just focus on one little part. That whole responsible thing. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-fun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}