why oh why can’t this stupid blog age faster than the rest of the universe so that I can start using it for PPP? There are so many more opportunities for sites that are on their own domain and have a google rating (like this one) and I can’t use it yet!

really, I do. When I was in the army I spent about 6 months filling in as the motor pool clerk because I was the only mechanic who could type. One day I was bored so I took some official letterhead and my “official business” department of the army stamp and I wrote a letter to my, at the time, girlfriend. The letter started out “Dear Miss Brown; we regret to inform you that your boyfriend Specialist Kevin J. Greenlee has been killed during an accident while on duty at his post in Ft. Hood TX.” I then went on to explain that while “Kevin” was working on his electric typewriter (this was before word processors had made it to the army) he spilled his Mt Dew on it and was electrocuted. His last words were “Oh, Crap!” I included some other junk to make it sound like preparations were being made etc. etc. I signed it with some ridiculous made up colonels name but on the last line of the letter I put “Just kidding. I had you going for a while though didn’t I? Love Kevin.”

I thought it was going to be very funny. She didn’t. Neither did her mom. Apparently she didn’t get all the way to the end of the letter before she started crying and stopped reading. It was her mom that found out it was a joke. I guess I was lucky I wasn’t there at the time or my mother might have gotten a REAL letter. Believe it or not, she kept dating me after that.

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new
constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at
the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the
Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot
exist as a permanent form of government.”

“A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that
voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public
treasury.”

“From that moment on, the majority always vote for the
candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with
the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose
fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the
beginning of history, has been about 200 years.”

“During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through
the following sequence:

1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage”

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St.
Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000
Presidential election:

Number of States won by:
Gore: 19
Bush: 29

Square miles of land won by:
Gore: 580,000
Bush: 2,427,000

Population of counties won by:
Gore: 127 million
Bush: 143 million

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
Gore: 13.2
Bush: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: “In aggregate, the map of the territory
Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this
great country. Gore’s territory mostly encompassed those citizens living
in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government
welfare…”

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the
“complacency and apathy” phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of
democracy, with some forty percent of the nation’s population already
having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million
criminal invaders called illegals and they vote, then we can say
goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

Today is the first day of spring but it really doesn’t feel like it. It is cold and nasty. Two weeks ago we had two days in the 70’s but that was technically still winter. Oh, well, I have the first two seasons of “Enterprise” on DVD. It could snow for all I care.

(obviously I didn’t write this, but I wanted to share it)
Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage
By Chris Demorro
Staff Writer

The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society
so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to
show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their
ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in
North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than
a Hummer.

Before we delve into the seedy underworld of hybrids, you must first
understand how a hybrid works. For this, we will use the most popular
hybrid on the market, the Toyota Prius.

The Prius is powered by not one, but two engines: a standard 76
horsepower, 1.5-liter gas engine found in most cars today and a battery- powered engine that deals out 67 horsepower and a whooping 295ft/lbs of torque, below 2000 revolutions per minute. Essentially, the Toyota Synergy Drive system, as it is so called, propels the car from a dead
stop to up to 30mph. This is where the largest percent of gas is consumed. As any physics major can tell you, it takes more energy to get an object moving than to keep it moving. The battery is recharged through the braking system, as well as when the gasoline engine takes
over anywhere north of 30mph. It seems like a great energy efficient and environmentally sound car, right?

You would be right if you went by the old government EPA estimates,
which netted the Prius an incredible 60 miles per gallon in the city
and 51 miles per gallon on the highway. Unfortunately for Toyota, the
government realized how unrealistic their EPA tests were, which
consisted of highway speeds limited to 55mph and acceleration of only
3.3 mph per second. The new tests which affect all 2008 models give a
much more realistic rating with highway speeds of 80mph and
acceleration of 8mph per second. This has dropped the Prius’s EPA down by 25 percent
to an average of 45mpg. This now puts the Toyota within spitting
distance of cars like the Chevy Aveo, which costs less then half what the Prius costs.

However, if that was the only issue with the Prius, I wouldn’t be writing this article. It gets much worse.

Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer
that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already
noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel.
The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This
plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding
environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test
moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and
Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the
plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario,
becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.

“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants
and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace
energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a
British-based newspaper.

All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey
to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this
disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest
nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to
produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the

completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the
around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are
these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and
more like a farce?

Wait, I haven’t even got to the best part yet.

When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and
build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes
almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis.

Through a study by CNW Marketing called “Dust to Dust,” the total
combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation,
materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the
expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per
mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of
the Hybrid.

The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile
to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the
Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined
energy doing it.

So, if you are really an environmentalist - ditch the Prius. Instead,
buy one of the most economical cars available - a Toyota Scion xB. The
Scion only costs a paltry $0.48 per mile to put on the road. If you are
still obsessed over gas mileage - buy a Chevy Aveo and fix that lead
foot.

One last fun fact for you: it takes five years to offset the premium
price of a Prius. Meaning, you have to wait 60 months to save any money
over a non-hybrid car because of lower gas expenses.

In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
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In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
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Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to1945, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated
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China established gun control in 1935. >From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
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Guatemala established gun control in 1964. >From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
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Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
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Cambodia established gun control in 1956. >From 1975 to 1977, one million ‘educated’ people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
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Defenseless people rounded up and exterminated in the 20th Century because of gun control: 56 million.
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It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced by new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by their own government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars. The first year results are now in:
List of 7 items Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2 percent. Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6 percent. Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent).
In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent. Note that while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not, and criminals still possess their guns! While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steadydecrease is armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed.
There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the ELDERLY. Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was expended in successfully ridding Australian society of guns. The Australian experience and the other historical facts above prove it. You won’t see this data on the US evening news, or hear politicians disseminating this information. Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws adversely affect only the law-abiding citizens.