Wow! I don't believe that. Frederick Douglas Republicans, Mr. Douglas is spinning in his grave!

If this guy thinks food and drink is all that, then I'd be happy to feed him some enchiladas in exchange for doing some yard work. I need my gutters cleaned, my lawn fertilized, I have a few trees that need to be trimmed, and I have a few garden boxes that need to be set up. I sure he won't mind if I use a whip to make him work harder. If he gets it done by time the sun sets I might add a cup of rice to his meal. Sound good, Mr. Terry?

Grrrrr....... this is a freak show.

Not only does he say blacks should vote in Africa, Terry also believes women are not equal to white men.

At one point, a woman challenged him on the Republican Party’s roots, to which Terry responded, “I didn’t know the legacy of the Republican Party included women correcting men in public.”

I repeat, when is it over?

Sandy, I agree. Women are not equal to men; women are better than men! LOL

For once, inadvertently, these jerks got something right!

I'll agree that liberal women have more chutzpah than liberal men.

Sweet!

Some day you will learn what that word means, I hope, since I am quite sure it does not mean what you think it means.

Snicker.

pld1762,

Van does not even realize that his grandfather's association with Nazis (which Van brags about) makes grandfather a Nazi as well.

How much should one expect from arrogant Nazi spawn?

Van,

Based on the historical records of military, social, and scientific achievement over the last 6000 years, if there is a 'master race' it is the Han (Chinese).

And I am pretty sure there are precious few 'Roberto's amongst them.

Wow! Alva!

We agree on something! There are already states where people with their own solar panels sell the surplus back to the grid. I posted a link to a Business Week article about it on another thread. I can't remember which thread.

Maria, I looked into having them installed on my house, but the laws as they are now, it would cost a freaking fortune. That needs to end. I'm really lucky in that I have a customer owned energy co-op, called NOVEC. The prices are good, and they're investing in alternative energy and renewables. But waste just pains me.

My wife won't let me get too crazy with it though. If I'd have my druthers we'd recycle our waste to add it to the compost heap. For now I suppose I have to stick with yard clippings.

I have solar panels on my roof. I am one of numerous small "green energy" sources for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. If you can't be in a customer-owned energy co-op, a municipal utility district is a great way to go.

Everyone would be green if it were cheap. Alva points out the reason climate changer advocates often let their wallets speak instead of heir actions. Even Al Gore has a larger carbon footprint than 90% of the population.

Alva,

Affordable solar collectors are about as efficient in converting sunlight into a portable form of energy as plants are. Solar panels yield electricity, plants yield cellulose. Cellulose can be converted into methanol (wood alcohol) fairly trivially, and with a bit of effort (and ZSM-5 catalyst) methanol can be converted into gasoline. Gasoline from methanol is renewable, carbon neutral, and does not require sending young people to Iraq. Also, modern pyrolysis reactors can generate electricity using wood slash as fuel. Wood slash can be readily harvested from pine and hardwood forests as a byproduct of forest management.

The reason why we do not use renewable and carbon-neutral energy sources such as methanol is that we collectively subsidize fossil fuels so their apparent cost is far below the true cost. If the petrochemical companies had to pay for the cost of securing the Persian Gulf, renewable gasoline from methanol would look pretty good.

But Obama backs ethanol...

John, all that is true, but the problem is that methanol does not burn very cleanly, as I understand it.

I think concentrated solar power is the way to go. Just like using a magnifying glass to set things on fire on a sunny day, you can use lenses to supercharge solar panels.

Another technology that I'm really fascinated with is biofuels grown from algae. Not only will it sequester CO2 easily, it can turn pollution from coal fire plants into non-poisonous organic compounds. We can easily produce a ton of it daily, we can continually renew it, and turn it into anything we need just like oil, except it's organic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnOSnJJSP5c

Alva,

Methanol burns cleanly in an industrial boiler, not so cleanly in a car. And the energy content of methanol per liter is low compared to gasoline, which is why it makes sense to convert it to gasoline for use in cars. You use up a bit of the methanol in the conversion, but the gains in terms of vehicle range per tank of fuel are worth it.

The big advantage to methanol is that the base feed stock is currently considered waste material from forestry and agriculture.

But no renewable source can compete against petrochemicals as long as they charge at the pump only a third of the real price of production.

Van, yes, this is how Germany does it. It's called "feed-in tariffs". Basically, the way it works is the the gov't gives home owners interest-free loans to install solar panels on their homes. Home owners are then able to sell that energy back into the grid, which pays for the solar panels. It also encourages home owners to be energy efficient. The more energy you save the higher your profits. Germany has managed to do this despite that it's a very cloudy country and it only get as much sun as the state of Maine.

Imagine what we could do in Arizona!

John,

I'm all for a more efficient use of waste. We can make other forms of energy more efficient than fossil fuels, it's just an engineering challenge. In the grand scheme of things, all forms of energy originated as solar power. Fossil fuels is just "ancient sunlight", as Thom Hartmann dubbed it. The potential of bio-fuels and solar is enormous if done correctly. I picture reworking buildings so that glass is replaced with solar panels that you can see through.

One thing that I find amazing is that some people are looking into massive increases in efficiency just by going green. Here is a TED talk that I watched a while back, that if we take the implications from it and put enough resources into it, we could not only solve our energy problems, but we could change the world.

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pawlyn_using_nature_s_genius_in_architecture.html

The Democrats should bring hte minimum wage up to a vote, and do it over and over and over and over again. How many times did the GOP try to eliminate the Affordable Care Act? 42 times? Let's have the Democrats put the minimum wage on the table 84 times. And let the GOP vote it down each and every time so come 2014 they can explain that to the voters.

Van, you couldn't be more wrong about that. Anyone who thinks the voters don't care about the minimum wage is completely out of touch.

If minimum wage increases don't result in job loss, then they should be raised to $40 or $50 an hour...

Rusty,

History of the minimum wage in this country tells us that the modest increases that have happened are not correlated with unemployment. And the proposed increase does qualify as modest.

Of course, if we radically raised the minimum wage there would be economic consequences. Whether the main consequence would be a rise in unemployment or a dramatic increase in inflation is hard to say, for the dismal science of economics is based on data and we have no data for such an event in this country.

Would a small reduction in minimum wage result in employment increases? If yes, why wouldn't we do that. If no, then... Well, why did Obama lie to us when he reduced employers payroll tax?

Rusty,

The payroll tax holiday was to spur consumption and increase demand. At least pretend to pay attention.

Rusty, I've taken a close look at this, and the reality is that one of the main drivers of the incredibly low unemployment rate of the late 60's/early 70's is that Congress was raising the minimum wage every single year for nearly 10 years.

When you adjust it for inflation, when the value of the minimum wage was the highest, unemployment dropped to a 3.4%, which was the 2nd lowest unemployment rate for all the 20th century.

If you mark all the dates, down to the month, when a minimum wage increase happened, take note of the unemployment rate that month, and look at what the unemployment rate was 12 months later after that increase has had time to filter through the economy, what you'll find is that two third of the time unemployment went down. The times it went up, other economic factors were more driving factors in the economy, such as the oil embargo of the late 70's.

Yes, you can raise the minimum wage too high. But for it to be too high and cause an increase in unemployment, you'd have to raise it beyond what the value of the productivity of minimum wage workers. And since minimum wage workers on average have a wage to productivity ratio of 1:4, we could safely raise the minimum wage to anything below $29 an hour.

Enlighten one- you are Sooo well informed. Obama cut payroll taxes paid by employers for hiring new employees back in 2009 and 2010. do some research or thinking. He claimed that by lowering the cost of employing people, more employment would be generated. Now, I agree with him on that. Back then, on these same blogs, I commented that the libs may want to remember this argument when next they proposed minimum wage increases, stating it wouldn't hurt employment. Was obama wrong back then, or are you folks wrong now?

Alva- raise it to $29 an hour and see if your theory is correct. How many value meals would mcdonalds sell if the employees there were bringing down $29 an hour? You'd also see lots of people emptying their own trash bags,metc, at offices around the country. Just can't see many janitorial services employees at that rate.

It is what Bill Maher once said, something like: "Not all Republicans are racists, but racists are more than likely to be Republicans".

I loved it several weeks back when Maher called Obama the "panderer in chief"

What difference does 6 weeks make to a person who believes it is a baby, not a fetus? To place a time limit on abortions is completely hypocritical. Does a pro-lifer think it is ok to kill a baby that is 5 weeks in the womb but not 6 weeks?

Lorr-2611132

It is what Bill Maher once said, something like: "Not all Republicans are racists, but racists are more than likely to be Republicans".

Lorr, historical footnote: John Stewart Mill once said something similar, but said it a bit differently:

"A conservative may not necessarily be stupid, but most stupid people are conservative."

That quote always makes me grin when I think of it.

Hey these radicals are racists and proud of it. And stupid, I give you GWB You can fool me once shame on you! Ah duh You can't be fooled again!

Gotta-love it when liberals self assign themselves as smart. Read through these same blogs- you will see libs proclaiming the strength of the economy, as they have been since unemployment dropped below 8%. Newsflash- there is a smaller percent of working age people employed today (58.6%) than in June 2009 (58.6%). I've read libs proclaiming an expansion of consumer spending- up in February. Yep, it was- but furniture, electronics, retail sales, dining- all decreased- about the only category that increased was gasoline spend. That was because prices increased, not because the economy picked up. More people are working part time than ever- and it will continue that way. Obamacare will cause that phenomena. I think it is June of this year- a snaphot establishing number of full time employees to help determine what they will hac=ve to pay for starting Jan 2014- resulting in more part timers. If you haven't seen that in the economy- you haven't been looking.

I also recall about a year ago, when there were concerns about Iran having nuke capabilities- these same liberalbloggers were on her stating that they were literally years, if not decades away. This past week, Obama admitted they were within a year.

Libs- in the form of the Nobel committee- found Obama to be so insightful, they gave him the peace award before he ever did anything. Do you think they feel duped at this time- with his exponential expansion of the drone program?

Libs will believe anything this White House tells them, then they will enable Team Obama to change the story as necessary without ever questioning him. That's not intelliigence- just being a sheep.

Fully expect this comment to be collapsed in typical liberal censoring fashion. Alva may be the first to click it. It's a lot easier than discussing issues.

Since His Holiness is 74 years old, he would have been born in 1938. He was 6 years old by the end of the war.

I don't think it's a valid question to ask. Most of the Nazis were rounded up in the years following Nuremburg, and I seriously doubt he had any interaction with what was left of them.

Pope Emeritus, on the other hand, probably has more to answer for with regard to the Nazis in his early life than Pope Francis I.

Actually there were quite a few Nazis in Argentina up to 1955 when Peron was kicked out of office. Martin Bormann is though to have died there, as did Mengele. Adolf Eichman was kidnapped from Buenos Aires in 1960. Peron recruited many from the German aviation industry after the war, like Kurt Tank and Adolf Galland, to come to Argentina and develop an aviation industry there.

2). I think that was the basic question Rand Paul was asking Hagel...

/snark detector is on!

I'm sure our newfound Confederate "patriot" Van Roberto would agree with this:

ThinkProgress spoke with Terry, who sported a Rick Santorum sticker and attended CPAC with a friend who wore a Confederate Flag-emblazoned t-shirt, about his views after the panel. Terry maintained that white people have been “systematically disenfranchised” by federal legislation.

When asked by ThinkProgress if he’d accept a society where African-Americans were permanently subservient to whites, he said “I’d be fine with that.” He also claimed that African-Americans “should be allowed to vote in Africa,” and that “all the Tea Parties” were concerned with the same racial problems that he was.

At one point, a woman challenged him on the Republican Party’s roots, to which Terry responded, “I didn’t know the legacy of the Republican Party included women correcting men in public.”

That's what Congress said 30 seconds into Rant Pauls filibuster,

And 51% voted for him,, gee imagine that,, he won.

Can't put one over on you though,,, LMAO!!!

Don't forget when Reagan won 51% of the vote they ran around claiming it was a land slide victory.

Van,

Considering 51% is better than your boy W. got in either of his elections, I would say it will do.

Ah those ones written in crayon! And Raygun was a fruit that turned into a vegetable! Bwahahahaha!

Tea party troll alert

Pee- if you come on here criticizing Obama, be prepared to be labeled a racists, a bigot, a facist, and a tea part troll.

Well the way I look at it Obama wasn't suppose to win as the banks in 2007 put money to get him to beat Hillary and then who was gonna vote for a unknown black senator. I wish Hillary would have won the primary and in 2016 Obama could have run again. I think things would be very different in this country now, especially womens rights. And I think she would have saved the USPS as one of the first things. Why Obama or the Dems drop the ball on that one? Well at least we are out of Iraq and Osama is dead. But we have lost many more rights because Dems won't fight back for our rights! Time for a new bunch with some balls and brains that aren't in the pockets. Also its not right that the Citizens United ruling got past. Its something that the people should have voted on. And I think its time to get it reversed and put on the ballot in 2014.