Posted by: The Elephant Owner in video on July 31st, 2009
Share on FacebookOne of the problems with electric cars is that recharging their batteries can take a long time. Think of this. If your electric car had a range of 250 miles with a 12 hour recharge, then it would take at least 36 hours of charging to drive from New York to Florida. Can you see how that would be a problem?
There is a fix on the way (sort of). At MIT they are working on a fast charging battery pack.
In order to power the car’s 250 horsepower, 187 kilowatt electric motor and give it similar performance to a gasoline engine, the team needs to wire a battery pack that includes 7,905 of the A123 cells. In order to rapidly recharge those batteries, they’ll need 350 kilowatts. “That’s enough power to blow the fuses on 20 residential homes at once … so we’ll be hooking up directly to MIT’s power plant to get that kind of power,” (LINK)
When you are driving down I-95 for the long awaited spring vacation, instead of looking for the next gas station, keep your eyes peeled for the next power plant.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Alternative Energy on July 31st, 2009
Think about this. Pre-existing conditions are a problem for many people. Who benefits from the health insurance system as it is now structured?
It’s not the insurance companies. They raise the price of insurance for costs that they now they are going to incur. I don’t really see that as an advantage. At best, it’s a wash.
Pre-existing conditions benefit your employer. Your health insurance in provided by your company because of the tax advantage setup by our tax code. This means that you must change insurance companies when you change jobs. If you or anyone in your family has a pre-existing condition, then you will find it more difficult to find an employer who can competitively cover you and your family.
This difficulty in changing jobs is an advantage to employers, not to employees. This added pressure to remain in your current job may keep you in a position that you find unsatisfying or keep you from moving ahead in your career. More importantly, it creates a downward pressure on ALL salaries.
We (the people) should be fighting for the right to control our own health care, and the way to reach that goal is by changing the tax code which created the employer’s advantage.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Health Care on July 31st, 2009
The treasury is finding it harder to find buyers for all our debt.
The U.S. Treasury sold $39 billion in five-year debt Wednesday in an auction that drew poor demand, raising worries over the cost of financing the government’s burgeoning budget deficit.
If this continues, the interest rate will have to be raised. This will cause the economy to slow.
The stimulus was meant to increase economic activity. In the long run, all it will accomplish is extending the recession and moving our economy from the private sector to the public sector.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Economics on July 30th, 2009
Liberals have learned to disguise their beliefs behind populace rhetoric, but every once in a while they get careless. It’s not that politically astute people don’t already understand the liberal agenda, but these careless moments give us proof of their radical agenda and elitist attitudes.
I wouldn’t know Anna Wintour if she wasn’t the latest careless liberal. Her chosen industry (fashion) is being hurt by the current recession. The NY Post is reporting that the powerful fashion designer is lamenting steep mark downs.
“Could someone lead a committee that would make ground rules for retailers when the discounting starts, and then all the retailers can agree to it?” Wintour asked.
When CFDA President Diane von Furstenberg pointed out, “That’s illegal,” Wintour said: “Is that something we can change? We have friends in the White House now.”
Price fixing is illegal unless the government does it…and then it is just counter productive. Anna Wintour is looking to the White House to help her. Why shouldn’t she? Barack Obama handed ownership of 2 U.S. automakers to his political allies. He bypassed every bankruptcy law to fulfill the dreams of the union bosses. That’s what friends in Washington can do for you these days.
As in “Animal Farm“: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Free Markets on July 30th, 2009
The Clinton’s took Washington by storm in 1993. They had big plans for health care reform, but it fell flat because they over reached. Democrats paid the price. In 1994, the Republicans took both the House and the Senate. Soon, President Clinton was whining that he was still relevant.
Could this happen again? I sure hope so.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Health Care on July 30th, 2009
If your neighbor went out of town and asked you to cut his lawn while he was gone, you might call that a “job”…but would it make sense for your neighbor to brag that he created a job? It’s more like he paid you to do a chore.
How much are politicians straining to convince people that the government is stimulating the economy? In Oregon, where lawmakers are spending $176 million to supplement the federal stimulus, Democrats are taking credit for a remarkable feat: creating 3,236 new jobs in the program’s first three months.But those jobs lasted on average only 35 hours, or about one work week. After that, those workers were effectively back unemployed, according to an Associated Press analysis of state spending and hiring data. By the state’s accounting, a job is a job, whether it lasts three hours, three days, three months, or a lifetime.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Common Sense,Economics on July 29th, 2009
From Thomas Sowell
Many people hoped that the election of a black President of the United States would mark our entering a “post-racial” era, when we could finally put some ugly aspects of our history behind us.
That is quite understandable. But it takes two to tango. Those of us who want to see racism on its way out need to realize that others benefit greatly from crying racism. They benefit politically, financially, and socially.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Obama Administration on July 29th, 2009
Some people are advocating the capture and sequestering carbon dioxide (CO2). This is a foolish idea for many reason, but here is something to ponder. We are taking carbon out of the ground in the form of coal, oil or gas. When we burn it as fuel, the carbon combines with oxygen. CO2 sequestration does not propose we split the two components. The idea is to bury the carbon and oxygen together.
Presumably, millions of tons of CO2 must be buried in order of sequestration have a global effect. Has anyone thought about what will happen if we deplete the atmosphere of that much oxygen?
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Global Climate Change on July 29th, 2009
The last economic expansion ended in 2007. At the time, murder rate in Philadelphia exceeded one per day. As anyone can tell you, things have turned economically sour since then. I find it interesting that the murder rate has declined 30% since that time (LINK).
I’m not jumping to the conclusion that there is or is not a connection here, but this statistic highlights the fallacy of the left that claims poverty causes crime. It doesn’t. If it did, the Philadelphia murder rate would be going up instead of down.
History backs me up. There was economic prosperity and rising crime rates in the 20s, 50s and 60s. The Great Depression saw a significant drop in crime (LINK). The people who claim that poverty is the root cause of crime need to do some homework. Poverty does not cause crime.
Maybe crime is caused by envy instead of need. If society as a whole is struggling, then an individual can take comfort in the fact that we are all struggling together. However, envy, jealousy and anger can occur when some are getting ahead while others are left behind. These emotions can be stoked by politicians who use class envy for political purposes.
Do I have any proof for this theory? Not at all. It’s just something to ponder.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Common Sense on July 28th, 2009
Back in September, I posted comments from James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal who mocked community organizers (LINK). He wrote:
…when your toilet breaks, do you wait around for some Ivy League hotshot to show up and organize a meeting so that you can use your collective strength to wring concessions from the powers that be?
It’s not so funny now. According to the NY Post (LINK)
The feds are spending tens of millions of stimulus dollars to repair and build toilets across the nation, in an outflow of taxpayer funds that critics have branded “potty pork.”
Jokes are suppose to be funny…not sad.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Obama Administration on July 28th, 2009
The left looked foolish when the induged the great conspiracy theories about George Bush. Their hatred for GWB and conservatives was so great that logic and reality took a holiday. Let’s not go down that road.
From the editors of the National Review (LINK)
The serial number on his birth certificate is 010641. Baby Barack’s birth was not heralded, as some of his partisans have suggested, by a star in the east, but it was heralded by the Honolulu Star, as well as the Honolulu Advertiser, each of which published birth announcements for young Mr. Obama.
Much foolishness has become attached to the question of President Obama’s place of birth, and a few misguided souls among the Right have indulged it. The myth that Barack Obama is ineligible to be president represents the hunt for a magic bullet that will make all the unpleasant complications of his election and presidency disappear. We are used to seeing conspiracy theories from the Left, for instance among the one in three Democrats who believe that 9/11 was an inside job conducted with the foreknowledge of the Bush administration. We’ve seen everything under the sun blamed on Dick Cheney and Halliburton, and Rosie O’Donnell has given us much mirth with her metallurgical expertise, while Andrew Sullivan has beclowned himself and tarnished the good name of The Atlantic with his investigation into the “real” parentage of Trig Palin. Most notable, the Iraq War summoned the craziness in a big way, and there are those who still shudder over their espressos at the mention of the Carlyle Group.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Obama Administration on July 28th, 2009
From Low Tech Magazine
A small windmill on your roof or in the garden is an attractive idea. Unfortunately, micro wind turbines deliver hardly enough energy to power a light bulb. Their financial payback time is much longer than their life expectancy and in urban areas they will not even deliver as much energy as was needed to produce them. Sad, but true.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Alternative Energy on July 28th, 2009
Here’s a test. Listen to this audio and see if you can pick out the hypocricy in the senator’s statement.
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Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Congress on July 28th, 2009
I ordered my Shattered Obama sticker today. $4.95 for a sheet of 6 (plus a couple bucks for shipping). Obama became president with image (or mirage), and he can be taken down the same way. Order your stickers today.
Created by Tennyson Hayes and Michelle Malkin
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Obama Administration on July 27th, 2009
