Why ya got ta rip it like this, son?
I don't know about anyone else out there, but after this past week, I am getting the feeling that no celebrity is safe.
First it was Ed McMahon, then Farah, then MJ, and now the beard only second to Chuck Norris, Billy Mays.... I've spent the past several hours trying to find common threads between the four now-deceased celebs. Someone's targeting them. It's a massive conspiracy. The Illuminati did it.
...too soon?
In other news, I've never needed to go on vacation more in my life. Working for my new boss over the past two months is bringing me closer and closer to coronary embolism. More than that, the quarter ends in two days and I have two big contracts I called to close...that haven't. MORE THAN THAT... my email's down this moring.
Fantastic. It's the end of the quarter, I have contracts to bring in, and apparently I have to do it without the device that allows me to actually receive contracts.
No matter how poorly this week goes (and, by the looks of things, it may go down as one of the all-time crappiest weeks in Chris's employment history), I go on vacation all next week. Hooray. So, I just have to survive, and then its drunk on the beach time for 7 days.
In more other news, I'm very unsettled by this 1200+ page cap-and-trade bill that passed the house on Friday (with no one in the house actually reading the entire thing, mind you). I'm more unsettled by the fact that most credible news organizations refuse to actually point out anything on the other half of the argument. For example (I borrowed this from Atlanta's favorite Libertarian radio personality, who in turn borrowed it from Investor's Business Daily):
An analysis of Waxman-Markey by the Heritage Foundation projects that by 2035 it would reduce aggregate gross domestic product by $7.4 trillion. In an average year, 844,000 jobs would be destroyed, with peak years seeing unemployment rise by almost 2 million (see charts below).
Consumers would pay through the nose as electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket, as President Obama once put it, by 90% adjusted for inflation. Inflation-adjusted gasoline prices would rise 74%, residential natural gas prices by 55% and the average family's annual energy bill by $1,500.
Hit hardest by all this would be the "95% of working families" Obama keeps mentioning as being protected from increased taxation. They are protected, that is, unless they use energy. Then they'll be hit by this draconian energy tax.
And what would we get for all this pain? According to an analysis by Chip Knappenberger, administrator of the World Climate Report, the reduction of U.S. CO2 emissions to 83% below 2005 levels by 2050 -- the goal of the Waxman-Markey bill -- would reduce global temperature in 2050 by a mere 0.05 degree Celsius.
Doesn't that seem like relevant information?
Look, if your goal is to do a little bit to help the environment while doing as much as you can to cripple the United States' energy industries, that's fine. Here's my beef: If you're going to take these down through massive tax programs, you need to have something in place ALREADY to pick up the slack. The American people (especially those who you promised on your campaign stump would NOT see tax increases) need to have an alternative. That way, there's some sort of solar/nuclear/wind powered company to pick up the slack so that our economy does not suffer and our people do not bear the brunt of the cost - as they should be able to begin using your alternative source.
Right now, we don't have that. All we have are the fossil fuel companies who are being targetted, so we're all going to suffer greatly while you throw away seven and a half TRILLION dollars of GDP to "fix" climate change by 0.05 degrees centigrade (in case you're curious, a change of .05 degrees C equates to .9 degrees F). So... 7,500,000,000,000 dollars to take the summer heat here in Atlanta from 98 degrees to 97 degrees.
Thank you, Democrats... as always, your economic rationale is impeccable.
By the way, temperatures have been trending downward the past seven years. DOWNWARD. FOR SEVEN YEARS. No one cares though, because anyone who opposes the notion of radical man-made climate change is labelled an idiot an no one listens to them. You're not cool/hip/with it/enlightened/credible unless you believe that we are the sole reason the climate changes. It's not a natural, cyclical process, oh no, and the HUGE abundance of carbon emissions from naturally occurring soils has NOTHING to do with it. It's the conservatives and their SUVs. They're to blame.
That turned into way more of a rant than I had planned. Oops. I've also revealed to all of you my right wing view of things, which could be bad. Standard protocol now, from a left-wing perspective, would be for you to immediately assume that I cannot read or write, do not have any intelligent thoughts on my own, worship Bill O'Reilly, secretly hope that we re-institute slavery, and believe whole-heartedly that everyone but us white conservative males are going to hell. Oh yeah, and an optional addition to the standard assumption would be that I have incestuous tendencies - that one's not required though.
First it was Ed McMahon, then Farah, then MJ, and now the beard only second to Chuck Norris, Billy Mays.... I've spent the past several hours trying to find common threads between the four now-deceased celebs. Someone's targeting them. It's a massive conspiracy. The Illuminati did it.
...too soon?
In other news, I've never needed to go on vacation more in my life. Working for my new boss over the past two months is bringing me closer and closer to coronary embolism. More than that, the quarter ends in two days and I have two big contracts I called to close...that haven't. MORE THAN THAT... my email's down this moring.
Fantastic. It's the end of the quarter, I have contracts to bring in, and apparently I have to do it without the device that allows me to actually receive contracts.
No matter how poorly this week goes (and, by the looks of things, it may go down as one of the all-time crappiest weeks in Chris's employment history), I go on vacation all next week. Hooray. So, I just have to survive, and then its drunk on the beach time for 7 days.
In more other news, I'm very unsettled by this 1200+ page cap-and-trade bill that passed the house on Friday (with no one in the house actually reading the entire thing, mind you). I'm more unsettled by the fact that most credible news organizations refuse to actually point out anything on the other half of the argument. For example (I borrowed this from Atlanta's favorite Libertarian radio personality, who in turn borrowed it from Investor's Business Daily):
An analysis of Waxman-Markey by the Heritage Foundation projects that by 2035 it would reduce aggregate gross domestic product by $7.4 trillion. In an average year, 844,000 jobs would be destroyed, with peak years seeing unemployment rise by almost 2 million (see charts below).
Consumers would pay through the nose as electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket, as President Obama once put it, by 90% adjusted for inflation. Inflation-adjusted gasoline prices would rise 74%, residential natural gas prices by 55% and the average family's annual energy bill by $1,500.
Hit hardest by all this would be the "95% of working families" Obama keeps mentioning as being protected from increased taxation. They are protected, that is, unless they use energy. Then they'll be hit by this draconian energy tax.
And what would we get for all this pain? According to an analysis by Chip Knappenberger, administrator of the World Climate Report, the reduction of U.S. CO2 emissions to 83% below 2005 levels by 2050 -- the goal of the Waxman-Markey bill -- would reduce global temperature in 2050 by a mere 0.05 degree Celsius.
Doesn't that seem like relevant information?
Look, if your goal is to do a little bit to help the environment while doing as much as you can to cripple the United States' energy industries, that's fine. Here's my beef: If you're going to take these down through massive tax programs, you need to have something in place ALREADY to pick up the slack. The American people (especially those who you promised on your campaign stump would NOT see tax increases) need to have an alternative. That way, there's some sort of solar/nuclear/wind powered company to pick up the slack so that our economy does not suffer and our people do not bear the brunt of the cost - as they should be able to begin using your alternative source.
Right now, we don't have that. All we have are the fossil fuel companies who are being targetted, so we're all going to suffer greatly while you throw away seven and a half TRILLION dollars of GDP to "fix" climate change by 0.05 degrees centigrade (in case you're curious, a change of .05 degrees C equates to .9 degrees F). So... 7,500,000,000,000 dollars to take the summer heat here in Atlanta from 98 degrees to 97 degrees.
Thank you, Democrats... as always, your economic rationale is impeccable.
By the way, temperatures have been trending downward the past seven years. DOWNWARD. FOR SEVEN YEARS. No one cares though, because anyone who opposes the notion of radical man-made climate change is labelled an idiot an no one listens to them. You're not cool/hip/with it/enlightened/credible unless you believe that we are the sole reason the climate changes. It's not a natural, cyclical process, oh no, and the HUGE abundance of carbon emissions from naturally occurring soils has NOTHING to do with it. It's the conservatives and their SUVs. They're to blame.
That turned into way more of a rant than I had planned. Oops. I've also revealed to all of you my right wing view of things, which could be bad. Standard protocol now, from a left-wing perspective, would be for you to immediately assume that I cannot read or write, do not have any intelligent thoughts on my own, worship Bill O'Reilly, secretly hope that we re-institute slavery, and believe whole-heartedly that everyone but us white conservative males are going to hell. Oh yeah, and an optional addition to the standard assumption would be that I have incestuous tendencies - that one's not required though.