What would happen if you cross-bred Tom Friedman with an actual, sentient human being who had to work for a living?

I realize this is pure speculative fantasy.

Please don’t talk about breeding Tom Friedman.

It’s funny because I thought that the whole reason for banning gay marriage in many states was that you can’t breed two men together.

What would happen if you cross-bred Henry Ford and Yitzhak Rabin?

A self hating Jew? Is this supposed to be a bad joke or Zen koan or something?

BTW, I believe that is the first time that I have ever seen the term “Jewish Henry Ford”. I would be ill, but I have already been inoculated by “Black Hitler”

How many miles per FU does that work out to?

Also a stunner in that column: arguing that T. Boone Pickens is here to save the world and bring us better energy policy, and completely missing the point that T. Boone Pickens’s Swift-boat funding brought us four years of oilmen in the White House and their shitty energy policy.

How is it possible that a complete moron like Friedman, who not only is wrong on everything, but also can’t write for shit, makes millions as a columnist for a major newspaper? I guess he might have been a reasonable journalist once (I hear his reporting on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was okay), but how does this give him the right to phone it in now? It must be that meritocracy thingwe are always hearing about.

Shouldn’t that be Tom “Suck on this” Friedman?

LMBO at Grace

My problem is that Our America aint black or white – it’s green besides I don’t listen to talking heads, folk here don’t get down like that I say work hard and don’t complain nice spot, chk me out one day and if u like what u read, maybe u will come back, even Blog Roll Me

Or is everyone driving a Hummer in Europe these days?

Well, everyone Tom Friedman knows about in Europe certainly is! Just yesterday, he talked to a DC cabbie who has several relatives “over there”, all of whom cruise around in Hummers to all the best Obama rallies!

I’ll bet RB’s sentence generator could do a much better job at imaginary geneology as metaphor than Friedman does.

Or is everyone driving a Hummer in Europe these days?

No, everyone’s getting a Hummer in Europe these days. All the best hookers working for Euros, natch.

How is it possible that a complete moron like Friedman, who not only is wrong on everything, but also can’t write for shit, makes millions as a columnist for a major newspaper?

Don’t be silly. He makes thousands as a columnist. He makes millions the honest, old-fashioned way — by marrying into major money.

The fact is, this post isn’t nearly as funny as DUmmie FUnnies.

Heartland.

I’ll bet RB’s sentence generator could do a much better job at imaginary geneology as metaphor than Friedman does.

Ooo, there’s a time-waster.

He should thank his stars he’s so pretty.

How is it possible that a complete moron like Friedman, who not only is wrong on everything, but also can’t write for shit, makes millions as a columnist for a major newspaper?

It’s simple, really. His message of “Golly Gee! Everything our corporate masters do is awesome and soooooooo good for all of us!” tends to make him quite popular with said corporate masters.

What would happen if you cross-bred Angelina Jolie and Maggie Gyllenhaal? You really can’t but it sure would be fun to watch them try.

Apparently Mr. Flat World is unaware that for the past 10 years, “environmentalist” T. Boone Pickens (who of course made his fortune in the very industries that have most polluted the planet and contributed to global warming) has spent his time working towards cornering the market on water.

You know, that stuff that no living thing can survive without. And here’s the kicker – he plans on selling the water from the high plains aquifer that everyone from west Texas to the Dakotas rely upon for drinking and irrigation.

Fuck those people – he’s T. Boone Pickens, billionaire environmentalist and role model for Mr. FU! If he says the water’s his to sell, then it is, by gum!!

What would you get if you cross-bred J-Lo and K-Lo?

Jennifer is right. Seems the Texas Legislature, that bastion of capitalist can-do spirit, gave Pickens the right to build a water pipeline underneath his wind-generated power lines that will go from his water to his market through the socialist power of eminent domain. I’m sure there’s a lesson in the free market’s wonderfulness to be learned there, but I’ll be damned if I can find it.

And his notion that natural gas can power our cars? Fucking absurd. I welcome his wind-generators, and Dallas needs the water, but I don’t see this guy as a hero so much as a man desperate to hide his true nature as a crony capitalist behind a screen of eco-bullshit.

I really need to know what you get when you cross-breed Steve Jobs with Emperor Haile Selassie. Or Martha Stewart with Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin.

If we’re going to give the husband of a billionaire heiress a regular column in the country’s most power-elite connected newspaper, we must not only allow him to replace argument with silly, top-of-the head analogy, we must push such analogies to their ultimate limits.

Almost as if you cross-bred Formula 1’s Lewis Hamilton with Chief Justice Earl Warren.

On a serious note, this is the stage when you will be seeing the Super-Rich changing the Global Warming “debate” from “no no no it isn’t happening” to (1) how to make us working schmucks pay for all the changes needed; and (2) how to make sure that investments for any changeover for a lower carbon energy system goes directly to their pockets and as little as possible is spread around for our benefit.

I cross bread a loaf of Wonder with some unleavened flatbread.

It was immediately ruled illegal miscegenation….

mikey

And what would happen if you put together T. Boone Pickens[J.R. Ewing of “Dallas” x Carl Pope], and Shai Agassi[Henry Ford x Yitzhak Rabin]?

I say we do a Punnett square, but we’ll need to know who’s recessive.

And I’d say Friedman is what you get when you cross a solar calculator with a dim bulb, but it just doesn’t add up.

How is it possible that a complete moron like Friedman, who not only is wrong on everything, but also can’t write for shit, makes millions as a columnist for a major newspaper?
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
It’s simple, really. His message of “Golly Gee! Everything our corporate masters do is awesome and soooooooo good for all of us!” tends to make him quite popular with said corporate masters.

But you’d think that they could afford to buy a better shill

Take a Hostess Twinkie and cross your eyes and it’s TWO HOSTESS TWINKIES!!!

No Friedman fan me, but could he mean the cost of gasoline as it is factored into all of the stuff you buy (shipping, etc.)?

I’m stealing this post title for my autobiography.

And what would happen if you put together T. Boone Pickens, the green billionaire Texas oilman now obsessed with wind power, and Shai Agassi, the Jewish Henry Ford now obsessed with making Israel the world’s leader in electric cars?

Fuck that. I want to know what would happen if you put together T. Boone Pickens and five pissed-off woolly mammoths.

The fact is, the DayByDay cartoon is very insightful and enlightening.

But you’d think that they could afford to buy a better shill

You know, that they can’t makes me feel a bit better about humanity.

Then again, it may just be constrained by nepotism.

Damnitall wordpress. There was a rumor that you could learn things.

jon said,

July 29, 2008 at 0:18

And his notion that natural gas can power our cars? Fucking absurd. I welcome his wind-generators, and Dallas needs the water, but I don’t see this guy as a hero so much as a man desperate to hide his true nature as a crony capitalist behind a screen of eco-bullshit.

Yeah, the natural gas car is silly in that CNG cars have an efficiency of 20%, maybe 25% if you’re lucky, whereas natural gas burned in power plants has a much higher efficiency rating, somewhere around 70%. You’d be better off burning it at a power plant, lose some electricity from resistance over the powerlines, and then plug it into an electric car.

As for natural gas (ie: methane) itself, it’s probably the most viable fuel for thermal energy needs, but it has to come from bio sources. After all, if we were to just let the methane from sewers, dumps, compost heaps, cow/pig shit, etc. go into the atmosphere it is actually 25-70 times worse than CO2 in terms of greenhouse effect. So you might as well burn it.

Damn. It’s so hot here I can’t even stand to have the desk lamp on.

Europeans don’t drive Hummers. They ride horses in the polo.

(Completely OT, but that article was everything I find funny about England all wrapped up in one 400 word piece.)

Andre, that was hilarious.

An official said that [the streakers] had violated the strict dress code, which for men is trousers and a collared shirt.

“They wouldn’t have been ejected from the park, but they would have been told to put their clothes back on, as they would have broken our dress code in the members’ enclosure at Guards Polo Club,” she said.

It’s like a whole different country.

“Agassi is a passionate salesman for his vision. He could sell camels to Saudi Arabia.”

Then it’s somewhat beneath him to sell a load of bull to Friedman, innit? Every cab driver in New York has sold him at least one.

I have close relatives who work for a municipal government, and they have had to deal with Pickens and his people for a long time.

He is as green as a stop sign.

He could sell camels to Arabs? That’s impressive.

Could he sell, oh, I don’t know, toques to Canucks?

Oh and thanks, guys. I was eating a falafel and hit the title of this blog post. After a bout of uncontrolled mirth, suddenly, I feel awful…

Well, maybe we can get PIckens to build those windmills and then take them from him when Obama starts the communist revolution?

You guys just don’t think outside the box enough.

pedestrian said,

July 29, 2008 at 1:32

It’s like a whole different country.

Seriously. If that happened in the US, they would’ve been tasered and/or shot.

Ok, I just can’t leave the Novakula thing alone:

“You say Novak’s brain is malignant? Who could have guessed?”

I’m sure I’ll think of others.

pc disclaimer: my father died of a “benign” brain tumor in 1994, so I know from personal experience that brain tumors really aren’t funny. Then again, my dad wasn’t a giant douche like Bob Novak is.

Agassi could sell camels to the Saudis? Gee, what a brilliant salesman! I bet some redneck Australians couldn’t do that…

I wonder if the Japanese might one day sell televisions to Americans?

Um. I dunno. It’s kinda like some of you guys want everything, and therefore can’t bring yourselves to allow anything.

I dunno this Pickens beyond his tv commercials, so maybe he’s a crappy example. But maybe not.

We know a couple things. We know the planet is dying.

We know the overall cost of energy is rising at exponential rates.

We know that in all cases, individual, municipal, corporate, federal, we purchase energy. The people who sell that energy make a profit.

We know that we’ve been saying for decades that with the price of oil so low, alternatives and renewables cannot compete economically.

We know that with the price of oil over $120.00 a barrel, there is a very large economic opportunity to produce energy using alternative and renewable sources.

We know that SOME organizations, whether it’s Exxon or some as-yet unknown alternative energy company funded by venture money and angels like, oh, I dunno, Pickens maybe, are going to make billions selling us our energy, even though they will produce it in a more sustainable and clean manner.

We actually recognize that this is a GOOD thing, because the overwhelming argument against green energy and carbon neutral solutions is it will wreck the economy, and if there is economic growth seen in these very healthy generation methods we have a much better chance of surviving as a society and a species until 2100.

We hope that many rich people invest in alternative, renewable and carbon neutral energy generation businesses, and we accept that they will be doing so in order to make a profit. Certainly there might be some downsides, but compared with the destruction of life on earth as we know it, they seem, er, manageable…

mikey

mikey – I got no problem with his windfarms.

It’s his idea to suck all the communually owned water resources out and sell them to the highest bidder – as if it belongs to him – that makes him a douchebag.

Here’s something you might want to read, mikey.

The man is a rightwing scumbag. The best thing I can say about T. Boone Pickens is that he hasn’t done as much damage to our country, and the world, as either Richard Mellon Scaife or Rupert Murdoch.

But that’s slim pickin’s.

Pretty sure he’s a douchebag.

Pretty sure he’s in it for the money.

Pretty sure he might very well be part of the solution…

I know Larry Ellison personally. He’s a douchebag.

I know people who know Steve Jobs. They say he’s a douchebag.

You ever met anybody who knew Bill Gates or Warren Buffet who said they were cuddly?

I’ve worked on over a hundred venture presentations, in front of people who represented Billions of dollars of investment capital. The were, pretty much one and all, assholes.

But just exactly what does that have to do with the necessity for investment in the alternative fuels and renewable energy industries? And why should we, as citizens of a dying planet, do anything but welcome them?

mikey

And here’s the kicker – he plans on selling the water from the high plains aquifer that everyone from west Texas to the Dakotas rely upon for drinking and irrigation.

So, Jennifer, T-Boone wants us to give him tax breaks to build wind farms, and then pay him for the energy that those wind farms produce, while he uses that energy to steal our drinking water and sell it (possibly to the Chinese government, which has crapped up its own acquifers producing crap for Wal-Mart)?

A man of vision on a par with the C-Plus Augustus!

Remember the old line about history repeating itself, first as tragedy and then as farce? They called the first iteration of this very American brand of kleptocracy the Gilded Age. What can they dub *this* version — the Well-Polished Coprolite Age?

“You say Novak’s brain is malignant? Who could have guessed?”

If it turns out the tumor is benign, we can re-use the Waugh line about the surgeons removing the only part of Novakula that wasn’t malignant…

But just exactly what does that have to do with the necessity for investment in the alternative fuels and renewable energy industries? And why should we, as citizens of a dying planet, do anything but welcome them?

Okay. How about this:

Bill Kristol says he’s going to send a thousand dollars for relief of Palestinian refugees in the Gaza strip.

But meanwhile, he’s going to keep writing in the NY Times and appearing on TV to attack anyone who doesn’t answer the question “what’s better than dropping bombs on the Ay-rabs” with “dropping even more bombs on the Ay-rabs!!!one1!”

Should we thank him for his new found humanity?

I don’t have any problem with entrepreneurs making money off of green energy. In fact, it’s pretty clear that unless somebody is making money off of it then it won’t happen. That’s life in these United States.

That doesn’t mean that we should give a person who’s willing to take a chance on green energy a pass if that person is doing something flat out evil like sucking all the water out of the nation’s largest aquifer so he can sell back to us at an obscene profit. All the wind farms in the world can’t make that right.

What’s the concern, anyway? Do you think that if we call Pickens on his bullshit he’ll just say “Screw you!” and shut down his wind farms? Pickens is in the business because it’s profitable, and if it’s profitable for him it’ll be profitable for the next guy to come along.

It’s not all or nothing. It’s entirely possible to praise Pickens for his work creating wind farms while blasting him as a fucking parasite for trying to get richer selling our water back to us. The man is judged by all of his actions.

In the same way, I think it’s wrong to lecture anyone who criticizes Obama about how horrible McCain is, especially on a site like this where everyone who’s not trolling is going to vote for him regardless. I can also disagree with you on this and still maintain my high opinion of you and your writing.

But Pickens is a scumbag. Fuck him with his pipeline.

Blue Buddha said, July 29, 2008 at 0:09

What would you get if you cross-bred J-Lo and K-Lo?

Nauseated.

Hey, if T. Boone Pickens is promising that as long as we promise him tons of money and free land and tax breaks and water rights if he says he’ll deliver eco-sensitive power, I say we just go right ahead and believe him and give him everything he wants ’cause it’s not like somebody like that would sucker us once we gave him everything he was lookin’ for!

You don’t get to be an oil billionaire by bein’ some sort of double dealer or deal breaker, they are famous for always holdin’ up their end of the deal.

Mikey,

It’s also worth noting that Pickens is pushing CNG for cars because he’s heavy, heavy into natural gas. There’s no concern for the planet on his part; he’s playing on our concerns to both pimp his CNG business and privatize water rights, which could cause more problems than all the energy shortages.

What’s the concern, anyway? Do you think that if we call Pickens on his bullshit he’ll just say “Screw you!” and shut down his wind farms? Pickens is in the business because it’s profitable, and if it’s profitable for him it’ll be profitable for the next guy to come along.

Nope. Don’t have a dog in this fight. Don’t care who wins. Just really would like to see, for one fucking time, the poorest and most powerless lose a little less. And if that means making a deal with the devil? Where do I sign.

‘Cause you can sit there on your high horse and feel good about your No no no policy. Fuck these clowns and thugs. And they are still going to win. And I’m not sure if you GET what that win looks like. It’s poor people starving, in hovels, without power, and without medicine and without water that doesn’t make them sick.

I’m just saying that we NEED investment to make the world a better place. And most of these motherfuckers aren’t gonna invest if there isn’t a return on the investment. So you can feel all pure in your judgement. And you can deny that there’s any blood on your hands.

Or you can recognize that we’re a LONG way from Kansas, Dorothy, and you don’t get utopia, but maybe, just maybe, we can save some of what happened here by a great, beautiful cosmic accident, and maybe you can’t have everything you want, but just fucking MAYBE, asshole, a few very hungry, sick and marginalized people don’t have to die for your purity…

mikey

Who gives a fuck about Pickens? Is there ANY investment you’d be willing to accept? Who passes your purity test?

The clock, I’d remind you, is ticking…

mikey

Every dollar flowing into alternative energy generation is gonna be “tainted”. So what are you going to do? What exactly are you advocating here?

I’m listening….

mikey

mikey – then listen to this: T. Boone Pickens can make money, and lots of it, with his windfarms. That doesn’t make it desirable, ok, or reasonable for him to be sucking out the nation’s largest reservoir of groundwater, relied upon by millions of people in 5 states for drinking and farming and selling it for profit. Every single person living over the aquifer has as much right to it as he does. He’s drinking their fucking milkshake.

I’m not necessarily ruling out any sort of deal with Pickens, or investors like Pickens. What I’ve seen so far is that Pickens has blown into town on a flashy campaign and has media nimrods fawning over him, and so far very little of anything real is known other that “Hey it’s T. Boone Pickens!”

Maybe it’s not necessarily the uptight purity patrol as it is the “WTF? Where is this bandwagon we’re supposed to be jumping on? Can I take a look?”

Pickens will be fine with people starving in hovels without water. In fact, if you can’t pay him market prices, he’ll make sure you don’t get water. He’s a walking, talking embodiment of the Shock Doctrine.

Smart people are gonna take your wallet. Or “drink your milkshake”.

What did you expect them to do?

The important thing is that development of energy generation solutions that don’t kill your children or grandchildren is GOOD. You can sort out the social justice issues at some point, or more likely you can’t because this community doesn’t believe in social justice, but let’s be honest.

What does the future look like if we just keep burning coal and driving cars?

mikey

You guys all built this “money rules” society.

And now, when your children can’t live, you want a do-over?

Where were you in ’59?

mikey

We have to do something. We have to do something now. On the other hand, this being the real world, the amount of money and infrastructure isn’t infinite, so we have to have some vague notion that if we’re going to commit to a big project that it’s likely to do what we want, rather than being some blow-hard’s future regretted pet failed project and/or boondoggle. Or maybe we just need to get that monorail right now.

You loved your big houses and your big TVs and your big SUVs.

Now it’s hard?

I do NOT have sympathy…

mikey

I don’t even understand your argument, mikey. I’m talking about this specific man, Pickens, not green energy in general. I’m saying that his scheme to claim ownership of water that rests underneath our feet is wrong. I’m saying that his little plan will cause untold suffering and hardship when the aquifer starts to run out because he sold that water. I’m saying that Pickens, not green energy investors in general, is doing something very fucking bad and he should be stopped.

What the hell good is it going to do us if we finally eliminate our dependency on oil, but we’re paying $5 a gallon for water?

Furthermore, like I said, Pickens is getting into alternative energy because there’s a lot of money to be made there. If there’s money to be made, won’t many people be rushing to make that money? In fact, won’t Pickens continue making that money with his wind farms whether we put a stop to his scheme to privatize what has been a public resource since the founding of this nation?

If you don’t have dog in this argument over Pickens, then why are you arguing? Nobody is screaming because he’s not pure enough and we will only accept the purest of capitalists in our alternate energy. The problem lies in his plan to steal our fucking water, which we need to live. Do you think everyone who puts up some windmills should get a pass on any other fucked up things they do?

Maybe you’re a long ways from Kansas, but plenty of people aren’t, and I’m assuming they don’t want to start paying a hundred times as much for their water because some asshole decided he owns it now. And by the way, thanks for the condescension. Obviously the fact that I’m not chillaxing about the midwest’s water supply being privatized means I’m cool with people suffering and dying for my purity while I sip chardonnay on top of my high horse. Cuz it’s not like having your water supply cut off could lead to any suffering, right?

mikey said,

I was inside of mommy, until November.

Ok. All that’s fair. So here’s my question.

What do you think we should do. Legislate that rich people cannot purchase green investments? Kill them if they dare invest? Find a way to make their investments invalid.

Again. I do NOT have a dog in this fight. This Pickens dood might very well be a fuckwad. But what’s wrong with recognizing that the path to survival is going to make some folks wealthy?

mikey

Where were you in ‘59?

Not even yet a gleam in my father’s eye.

I’m with Jrod. Privatizing a commodity like water has nothing to do with green energy. It has to do with greed. One man should not be allowed to monopolize it at the expense of millions whom, as I’ve already noted, have every bit as legitimate a claim to it as he does.

Again. I do NOT have a dog in this fight. This Pickens dood might very well be a fuckwad. But what’s wrong with recognizing that the path to survival is going to make some folks wealthy?

I’d just like us to remember that a small group of tycoons keep raping us over and over again.

And maybe we should remember who they are.

Pickens’ green investments are great. Let him catch tax breaks for putting up windmills all day long, I’m cool with that.

However, his little water plot is about as green as a stretch of asphalt. I’m not obligated to support that just because he traded in his oil-rigs for windmills.

Privatizing a commodity like water has nothing to do with green energy. It has to do with greed.

Yep. makes sense. So what do you do with the part of the investment you agree with? Try to stop it?

Well, dammit, you pretty much can’t. Tell me how you prioritize?

mikey

Provide tax breaks and incentives to people who invest in alternative energy.

Pass a law declaring all aquifers in the nation a public resource and make it illegal it sell it.

These are separate issues, and equally important in my view. If you allow a single man to declare himself owner of our water supply, then what next? Somebody declares himself owner of the atmosphere and starts charging $10 a day to breathe?

BTW, my dad was five years old in ’59, and he was the son of a farmer. If some rich asshole claimed ownership of the water my grandpa and dad were using to irrigate their crops, they may have both starved long before I came into the picture. That’s where I was in ’59, if that’s somehow important.

Look, you said:

But what’s wrong with recognizing that the path to survival is going to make some folks wealthy?

I never claimed to have a problem with that. I’m just pointing out that handing our water supply over to corporate interests is pretty much the opposite of a “path to survival,” no matter how many natural gas powered cars those corporate interest might make.

That makes sense. But it’s clearly two different issues.

As to water, that’s an interesting question. Would you like to be in possession of the water when the people are thirsty? I suspect your life expectency would be very, very short.

But that’s not the point I’m making. The point is simple. At some point, corporate interests are going to want to profit from climate change and renewable resources. The question is, will we allow it, and how will we try to manage it?

And I’m just saying that corporate investment is going to be part of the solution. And those of you green purists who cannot accept that need to explain where all the development funds are going to come from…

mikehy

For Pickens, see here, or here, or here. As far as his wind energy venture is concerned, it appears that he’s pursuing it in large part because running electrical lines makes it easier for him to gain the right of way to ship water, which is his primary concern (see here).

Pickens is indeed a fuckwad, but I don’t particularly care about that. I’m not worried about what he is, I’m worried about what he’s up to. And it certainly looks like the damage from his water schemes will way, way outweigh any potential benefits from his wind venture.

And I’m just saying that corporate investment is going to be part of the solution.

I have no problem with that statement.

Ideally such investments would be managed through, well, regulation. Of course, we all know how popular regulation is with our ruling elites. I’m really not anti-capitalist, but I do think that we the people, through our representative government, have the right to make the rules under which said capitalism operates.

Yeah yeah, pie-in-the-sky bullshit. Unfortunately though, outside of the torches and pitchforks route, governmental power is our best bet for keeping our rich elites in line. I don’t think it’s asking a hell of a lot for them to keep their grubby mitts off of our water supply.

What doesn’t worry me is actually finding capitalists who are willing to sink money into alternative energy. The one who finds the holy energy grail to replace oil will become very, very rich indeed. Those who don’t are still making money, as long as they’re producing some energy. There’s no need to fellate a scumbag like Pickens just because he’s putting up windmills, because there are plenty of people with money to take his place.

Alternative money is the wave of the future. It will likely make the tech boom of the nineties look silly and small, particularly since the markets it will create will be far more permanent. It’s going to happen no matter how much trouble us little people might cause for the monied, so I see little point in tiptoeing around any issues we might have with those monied folk.

Alternative energy is the wave of the future. *cough*

Then again, if alternative money refers to trading in your dollars for euros or yuan…

A year ago when I was driving to work from London into Surrey, a 50 minute commute, I was spending around £120 a month on fuel (152 Euros). Now that I have move closer to my work, my outgoings in these straightened times is a more comfortable £35 per month (45 Euros).

In ’59, I was 8 years old and worried that the humans were killing all the animals and that by 2000, the world would be crowded, there wouldn’t be enough food and water and things would look bleak indeed. OK, so I was off by a bit.

I did a drawing for a school project of a zoo – for trees, with people lined up for miles to see them. I figured the geodesic dome would really catch on. OK, so I was wrong about that.

Pickens can screw off and so can the corrupt politicians who would sign on to such an idea. The danger of ruining the water supply far outweighs the benefit of wind farms – which aren’t very efficient, by the way.

Nitrogen and nuclear are the cleanest, most efficient ways to generate energy, have the least impact on the environment and the inhabitants thereof – which includes us.

I’d like to see every new subdivision and office building equipped with active solar panels – as a legislated requirement. I’d like to see grants for retrofitting older buildings. Every building in NA could become a little power generator, feeding the grid during the day, powering up at night.

Some places, such as where I live, aren’t fab for solar because it works best when it’s hot and sunny. However, every little bit helps and it’s pretty hot here from May to October.

So T Boone should be investing in fuel cell technology and R&D around nuclear waste disposal. He should be lobbying for active solar installations. How much bloody money do you need?

I have no problem with people making money, trust me. It’s just that there are good ways and bad ways. Groundwater is in a state of emergency, not only because millions of misinformed people buy it by the bottle when the stuff that comes out of the tap is perfectly good, but also because of diversions and good old fashioned greed, which is of course, the major flaw in the human animal.

jmo

Oops, obviously I meant hydrogen, not nitrogen. Happens when I wake up on the couch at 3:30 am….I need plant food, so nitrogen is on my back burner.

In ’59, my parents were still a twinkle in my grandparents’ eyes. Y’alls is old.

What would happen if you crossed Olindo Mare with Delroy Lindo? Why, you’d get Olindo Lindo! Top that, T Boone Dickens!

Tom “FU” Friedman’s last column

Oh man, don’t tease me like that.

bargal20 said,

July 29, 2008 at 2:36

Agassi could sell camels to the Saudis? Gee, what a brilliant salesman! I bet some redneck Australians couldn’t do that…

I wonder if the Japanese might one day sell televisions to Americans?
I dunno… maybe someone needs to tell Friedman about the miracles of globalization. Maybe we can use a glib catch phrase, such as “the world is flat” or something.

BTW, did you know that Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest importers of sand? The reason why is because the sand there is too fine for concrete, so they need a coarser grain.

“Today in Europe, you pay $600 a month for gasoline,” he explained to me.

Maybe they’re talking about truckers ? Did your Germany average include those ? It might skew the numbers somewhat.

Not that it would change a thing of course, it would just mean he’s lying sneakily instead of just making stuff up.

T. Boone Pickens has never done anything that didn’t primarily benefit T. Boone Pickens. OK, I can live with that.

The idea that, while his windpower transmission lines are carrying power above ground, his pipes below are draining it. If he’s getting subsidies, we’re payin him to do it! That ought to be worth a chuckle at the Petroleum Club. The shade of Plainview (ok, Doheny) would stand in awe.

It’s called a deal with the devil because anything the devil offers, no matter how attractive or valuable, can’t possibly be worth your soul. But, according to the late William Burroughs, you can take the offer as a sort of compliment.

It’s a shitty deal. Even without conducting purity tests, we can do much better.

Oh, I wouldn’t want to be Mr. T right now…