Saturday, August 16, 2008

Hey John, Call Ted


Fueling Up
Originally uploaded by mdt1960
First it was Abba, then John Mellencamp... now it's Jackson Browne.

Apparently no one in the music biz wants anything to do with John McCain... Poor, old fart.

Most recently, Jackson Browne is suing McCain for $75,000 related to copyright infringement and damages to the singer's reputation. The crime? Someone in McCain's Ohio campaign family decided to use the song Running on Empty to mock Barack Obama's comments about American drivers tuning up their rigs and maintaining proper air pressure in their tires to offset our thirst for petrol at the pump.

Hullabaloo like this can only help Jackson Browne, so why is the singer bringing a lawsuit into the picture? I'm unsure, but if I were him, I'd use my courtroom winnings to fund Barack Obama's campaign even more—talk about adding insult to injury.

So, what's with these high-profile causes like a presidential campaign (Republican or Democrat) helping themselves to someone's artistic work? Sure, I can understand if it's Mrs. Anderson's fifth-grade class making their end-of-year multi-media slide show, but for Pete's sake, it's a presidential candidate representing the entire Republican Party! What are they thinking?

Has anyone in McCain's camp considered Ted Nugent? Isn't he a big-time Republican and a highly decorated NRA advocate? Surely McCain's marketing spin doctors can do something with Cat Scratch Fever, Love Grenade or Nugent's "Can't Grill 'Em Till Ya Kill Em" mantra.

Well, I'm off to the iTunes music store now... gonna replace that vinyl copy of Running On Empty.

Sunday, August 03, 2008

The Only Wind Energy Fact You Need To Know


Martin & Turbines
Originally uploaded by mdt1960
This is directly from a web site of the United States Department of Energy and its Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy page.

"The wind energy resource in the United States is plentiful. Good wind areas, which cover 6% of the contiguous U.S. land area, could supply more than 1.5 times the 1993 electricity consumption of the entire country."

Read it again.

We don't need to dig up and burn more coal. Yes, transitions are painful, but not as painful if we address them early rather than later.

Too bad a nobody like me is touting this little fact rather than the coal-courting senators of Wyoming (where wind is the only thing more plentiful than coal)—John Barrasso and Mike Enzi.