Off-Topic: Pickens

I’m going to take just a moment here to say something semi-political, though that’s generally not my style. Those of you who know me, know I’m a native NY’er with a deep love of country and Capitalism, which makes me something of a political hybrid. My friends in Boston call me Conservative while folks down South think I have some liberal social views. But when it comes to money, I’m a Capitalist. Don’t forget, I worked on Wall Street for a while right before 9/11. I’m a strong believer in leaving the money with the people who earn it — not redistributing it according to some politician’s ideas of what’s right. I earned it. I know what to do with it. Sheesh! But don’t get me started…

Here’s something I think is worth listening to:

Now, I haven’t figured out what his angle is yet. I’m suspicous by nature, so when somebody spends millions on advertising, etc, I always wonder if it’s going to be another John-Corzine-like takeover of a state government or something. (For those who don’t know about NJ’s governor - he’s a very rich man who used his own money to run tons of ads supposedly to educate taxpayers before he ever ran for office - it seems now that was just a way to make himself famous so people would vote for him.)

But I watched the video on pickensplan.com and was impressed by the numbers. Our Canadian friends use a lot of natural gas to power their vehicles and I think it’s a good way to go. On Long Island, where I live, most of the bus fleet has been converted to natural gas and they’re still somewhat noisy, but not as disgustingly dirty and smelly as those old diesel busses. It might be something to consider. So if you’ve seen the commercials and thought about going to the site, I encourage you to do so. His ideas have some merit and those idiots in Congress won’t do anything useful unless the people threaten to vote them out. We need to do SOMETHING to get them motivated to do the right thing. Otherwise they’ll just sit on their asses launching investigations into useless crap for the rest of our lives instead of fixing the problems we have NOW.

Oops - got a little vehement there. Sorry. Now, about those pretty windmills… I’ve actually seen thim in operation in both California and Pennsylvania. I think they’re beautiful. But then, I’m part Dutch, so I guess windmills are in my blood. LOL. Still, I don’t know why anyone would object to them. They’re pretty to watch - almost like looking at fish swim around an aquarium, they’re very peaceful to see moving slowly through the wind - and they use a resource we have in abundance to generate the power we so desperately need to keep our country running. I think they’re a win-win situation. I also like solar energy, but there are only a few parts of the country really suitable for producing it on a steady basis. So let’s turn the desert into a big mirror, eh? LOL!

I hope you don’t mind my injecting a little bit of reality into our discussions here, but I think this is worth talking about. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…