Comments on: Confederate Yankee: Another Plate Of Mac And Cheese [UPDATED]

By: Batocchio

Batocchio — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:23:37 +0000

I actually just posted on this… somehow, I trust Gore more than a GOP astroturf group funding by oil companies:

Former Vice President Al Gore’s Belle Meade house is bristling with brand-new solar panels, energy-efficient windows and uncountable multitudes of energy efficient light bulbs. Retrofitting the 80-year-old house earned the Gores a gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

How could their utility bills possibly be going up?

They’re not, says Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider.

In fact, over the past year the Gores’ utility bills have dropped 40 percent, thanks largely to the house’s spanking new geothermal heating and cooling system, which has reduced the Gores’ natural gas bill by 90 percent in the past year.

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research issued a gotcha press release today, revealing to the world that the global warming crusader’s house used 10 percent more electricity in the past year than it did the year before — despite extensive renovations to make the home more energy efficient.

So what’s the deal with the electric bill? Did the Gores screw in all those energy-sipping LED light bulbs in vain?

Kreider pointed out that the renovations weren’t complete until November, so it’s a bit early to be attempting before-and-after comparisons. In addition, the Gores participate in the Nashville Electric Service’s Green Power Switch Program, which allows them to buy their electricity from renewable sources like wind power, solar power or methane gas from landfills (the house’s 33 solar panels only supply 4 percent of its power needs, per Kreider.) So any energy they burn won’t be burning them a bigger carbon footprint.

As for the record, Gore is not thrilled by the prospect of a 70-foot-tall hot air balloon buzzing his home on Friday. Kreider said his staff is “making inquiries” to see if the global warming skeptics from Americans for Prosperity might be violating any local ordinances.

By: The Reality-Based Dave

The Reality-Based Dave — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:39:49 +0000

My favorite rebuttal for tearing down the “average” arguments:

Bill Gates is worth 50 billion dollars. Put him in a room with 49 bums, & on average, everyone in the room is a billionaire!

By: Cornfederate Yanker

Cornfederate Yanker — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:46:49 +0000

My heart hurts!

By: Cornfederate Yanker

Cornfederate Yanker — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:34:14 +0000

Update: apparently we have been lied to by foreign scientists, and the ice cream actually has 250 “kilo”calories. A reader notes (correctly) that each of those is equivalent to over ten “regular” calories, so you may need to eat more ice cream before seeing substantial weight loss but indeed this only serves to underscore the importance of blogofacts.

By: Cornfederate Yanker

Cornfederate Yanker — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:31:06 +0000

Hey y’all to show there’s no hard feelings I’m going to share my weight-loss tip with you: ice cream.

See, a half-cup (four ounce) serving of ice cream has about 250 calories. BUT, when you eat it it’s like twenty degrees, and your body has to give up energy* to get it up to 98.6 degrees, so that’s nearly 80 degrees times four ounces which comes out to over FIVE THOUSAND CALORIES that you expend! So every serving of ice cream really has NEGATIVE 4750 CALORIES which is like doing TEN HOURS on a STAIRMASTER.

No need to thank me.

* one calorie raises one “gram” of water one degree “celsius”; I have assumed that ice cream has the same specific heat and also converted the atheist units into Godly measurements.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:47:46 +0000

My house uses enough energy in one year to supply energy for 52 of my neighbors for a week! I tried to use this logic to get my wife to turn off the AC but she wouldn’t buy it.

By: Puzzled

Puzzled — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:03:48 +0000

Please let us not be measuring things behind closed doors at Casa Johnson *shudder*.
How much power does the Johnson bot use as it lurches around making things up. Obviously the head unit is long ago burnt out but there must be some requirements for the feet and hands and the “Danger, Danger, Will Robinson” type messages.

By: Rufus

Rufus — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:38:28 +0000

“A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

Dare we measure Drew Johnson’s commitment to his beliefs? Does anyone have the stomach to peek behind the closed doors of Johnson’s own home?

I could speculate that his beliefs involve the daily deliberate destruction of millions of reproductive cells, but I suppose that would be irresponsible.

By: Doctorb

Doctorb — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:54:34 +0000

We shouldn’t be comparing Gore’s house and McCain’s houses, though. It might be more instructive to add up for Gore:

energy usage (mansion)
miles of air travel
cost of John Edwards’s haircuts

and for W and Cheney:

energy usage (White House, Crawford Ranch, Undisclosed Location)
miles of air travel
total energy used invading Iraq to look for non-existent WMDs and to occupy it for five years and counting

By: Doctorb

Doctorb — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:50:27 +0000

The thing is, when you compare things appropriately (a per-area basis, looking in the same geographical area, comparing houses to houses, etc) Gore’s house is slightly more efficient than average. In comparison, George W Bush’s pig farm in Crawford is astoundingly green — it produces only twenty percent as much pig shit as the average pig farm, his swimming pool counts as wetlands, and the big piles of brush he’s always chopping up are like a carbon sink or something.

By: Peanutcat

Peanutcat — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:32:06 +0000

Anyone ever figure out how much electricity the McCain’s seven mansions use up?

By: Onan the Contrarian

Onan the Contrarian — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:22:50 +0000

Al Gore flies in a airplane! Al Gore flushes the toilet when he pees! Al Gore sometimes drives with the AC on and the window open! Al Gore’s car gets five hogsheads to the furlong! Or the other way around! Whichever is worse! Also Al Gore took over twenty parsecs to do the Kessel run! And one guy who monitored a Navy weather station for three years says the scientists are wrong and you hardly ever hear about that except in like every motherfucking Op-Ed page like every damn day because they’re being silenced because Al Gore makes money off your carbon credits!

By: Puzzled

Puzzled — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:10:01 +0000

I haven’t seen any retraction or apology about this lie. So it will become another AL Gore myth.
I realize that the Internet tradition forbids anyone in the right wing death squads from admitting that they screwed the pooch again, but really these people are the suckiest sucks evah, aren’t they?

By: kenga

kenga — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:14:55 +0000

What a hypocrite. I’m so buying an SUV now.

SUV is the new single-wide!

By: Grand Moff Texan

Grand Moff Texan — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:45:04 +0000

so how about our old pal Glenn Reynolds?

Still a dumb inbred. Why do you ask?
.

By: WereBear

WereBear — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:16:09 +0000

Is Confederate Yankee embarrassed yet?

More to the point, has he demonstrated convincing proof of sentience?

By: Dragon-King Wangchuck

Dragon-King Wangchuck — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:17:51 +0000

Lots of talk, but more bloated than ever. It’s almost like a metaphor.

I never metaphor I didn’t skin.

By: MzNicky

MzNicky — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:59:55 +0000

Lawnguylander:

TGW isn’t my blog, although a couple of years ago I was an occasional poster there. I quit even visiting because of all the, uh, turmoil and unpleasantness of the last few months. Some of us who’d been around a while kind of resented being called trolls and subjected to other impolite abuse from the apparently deranged and the obvious ratfuckers who had taken over. We’re hoping things will continue to improve. Why, just this week I’ve seen the reappearance of some of the old generic misogynist/rightwing gasbag trolls that we used to torment constantly! How frightening that by comparison they now seem fairly benign.

As for the blog’s motto, I couldn’t agree with you more.

By: Rightwingsnarkle

Rightwingsnarkle — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:57:36 +0000

Have dogs stopped licking their balls? The bigger question is why do dogs lick their balls. The simple answer is that they do it because they can.

By: Lawnguylander

Lawnguylander — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:44:14 +0000

PLEASE NOTE: I am not responsible for, nor do I in any way endorse, many to most of the wacko nutjob comments that appear at this site.

I’ve seen you and your friends trying to salvage the comments section of that blog, MzNicky and I wish you good luck. But I’m not sure what can be done under the current management since egalia seems comfortable with some of the viler commenters and the obvious ratfuckers. Maybe you could take it over? If you do, first order of business would be to restore the old blog subtitle to include racism and the right wing as targets worthy of beatdowns.