Thursday Mashup Part Two (6/3/10)

(Part One is here.)

I give you J.D. Mullane in the Bucks County Courier Times today (here)…

With oil gushing into the sea, there are calls to stop drilling, for the good of the planet. Renewable "clean" energy, such as windmills, is the future, if only the politicians had the guts to pass the laws that would break our "oil addiction" and put us on a path to sustainable energy.

It sounds nice, but it's nonsense. That's according to journalist Robert Bryce. In his eye-opening new book, "Power Hungry," Bryce marshals devastating facts and disposes of the notion that windmills and the electric car will save the world.

Mullane is actually correct when he tells us that Bryce opposes wind energy and favors natural gas (shocking, I know), but Mother Jones tells us the following here concerning Mullane’s claim (or implication at least) that Bryce opposes clean energy...

MJ: If you were king of the world and you had a million dollars, what kind of energy technology would you invest it in?

RB: Batteries. This is the same problem that frustrated Thomas Edison. We could have a huge breakthrough in batteries for the stationary market and the mobile market: That is the game changer. I have a chapter in my new book, Gusher of Lies, about this issue. I talk about what I call the super battery prize. Let's offer a billion dollars to anyone who can create a cheap, compact, efficient battery that can store multiple kilowatt-hours of electricity, and let's offer 10 billion to anyone who can create a multiple megawatt-hour battery with those some attributes. That would be the game changer both in terms of traditional generation sources and for the renewable sources like solar and wind. And would result in huge decreases in CO2 emissions, and it would be an enormous, enormous breakthrough. But people have been working on it since Edison's day, and nobody has come up with it. The money to be made by a company coming out with a superior battery is enormous.

MJ: What will it take for renewable energy to go mainstream?

RB: It is always about economics. I am not a fan at all of ethanol. It's a scam. But when it comes to solar in particular, and I'm far more bullish on solar than I am on wind, it is always about economics. Unless and until they can get to the point where they can compete truly head-to-head, unsubsidized, with national-gas-fired, nuclear-fired, coal-fired power plants, they are just not going to be viable.

I think this paints a bit more complete of a picture on Bryce than what Mullane would have us believe (with Bucks County’s big mouth still inflicting lines in this tome like “Separating energy from freedom is like separating water from wet”).

I guess someone will have to pry the gas pump from your cold, dead hands, huh J.D.?

Also, I give you the following comedy from Fix Noise (here)…

There is also widespread chatter inside MSNBC that their days of being a propaganda machine for Obama are over. Comcast is not likely to keep the formula of all liberal hosts (I know, I know, Joe Scarborough - we’ll get to him) all liberal guests, and agitators thinly disguised as reporters and news anchors. And prime-time might be the first to go.

The thinking is that Phil Griffin won’t have time meet the new bosses before finding himself out on the street. And without Griffin to protect The Stalker from the new corporate bosses, he can cross another network off his list of places he can never work again.

We’re even thinking of running a contest here on what day will be Keith’s last. Winner gets dinner with Ed Schultz!!

Is the GOP’s media house organ claiming here that Keith Olbermann is a “stalker”? That is utterly hilarious coming from the network guilty of aiding and abetting a certain falafel-abusing loudmouth who is too cowardly to do his own dirty work and sends his lickspittle producers out to do it instead (here).

Besides, as noted here, MSNBC and its dastardly liberal hosts are pretty thoroughly trouncing CNN in daytime and prime time; they’re not going to overtake Fix Noise anytime soon I know, but Comcast cares more about money than ideology, and they’re not going to kiss off the audience of K.O., Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz for the sake of some ideological purity test.

Finally, the New York Times ran a full-page ad today from the American Medical Association decrying a 21 percent cut of doctor’s reimbursements for Medicare and TRICARE patients due to inaction by the U.S. Senate.

What they should have done is decry the actions of one senator instead, and that would be – wait for it! – none other than Jim “High And Tight” Bunning, who also has screwed over his fellow countrymen depending on unemployment and COBRA benefits, as noted here.

Which is all the more reason to support this guy (and anyone who thinks Rand Paul would be any different from ol’ Jimbo must also be a fan of Bud Selig because of his “winning personality” – as Bugs would say, “What a maroon”…here).