Re: Just showing I stayed awake in class. (a) Paul Ryan. Without having availed myself of the complete budget posted on your CNN page, my immediate reaction to PR’s proposal is, with fealty to the Norquist Pledge, any tax-based solution necessitates large cuts to entitlements OR the military. Good luck soft-selling either of those. Without fealty to the Pledge it‘s DOA. (b) The real reason Plato banned poets from his “Republic”. The most often reason cited is Plato believed all poet to be liars, either by inclusion or omission, but a more subtle suggestion is that poets operated by inspiration, inherently without a reliable process. Plato rejected them because they were inefficient producers and the product they produced was rejected because it was not systematic. Fortunately, he has been ignored for centuries and still Congresspeople wax poetic…© Your staff. In tonight’s show, you said you have the best staff in TV, and given the consistent quality of your show, I think you just might be on to something there. I remember you had a great staff at CNBC as well. It seems bright people are to be drawn to you, almost a pattern emerging. (d) Amelia Earhart. I love your editorials, in general, but especially when you are talking about people you admire. There is a palpable sense of your excitement: it’s almost as if you’re expressing “I’m so lucky to be standing here saying what I want to say.” You just don’t see that much, anymore, and that’s a shame, really. (e) Nothing is worth changing-in the short-term. You know, I almost feel sorry for Pres. Obama, out there, trying to get people excited about alternative energy when even he knows, no matter how much you flog that nag, it’s never going to run. Photo-voltaic solar stinks-as currently considered. I recently ran into a man who was having Solar City put leased panels on his roof. Living in Arizona, I often wondered why there aren’t more solar units on houses and what I learned from him explained a lot of it. He and his wife had recently purchased his “Mc-mansion” (a separate issue for another day) and I said that solar would certainly help with his peak electrical consumption. He said,” You know, that’s what I thought, too, at first, but I found out that because of the heat in the summer, panels are more efficient in any other season.” When I asked him why he bothered at all, he replied, sheepishly, “We’re getting a tax break…” and I felt like I had come full circle on this issue. It’s not worth it now but, theoretically, advances will come in this tech if it is supported. Looking at it historically, I’m sure there was a time when coalminers went to people and said, “Look what we found! We can burn this-all we have to do is dig it up!” and the people replied, “Yeah, we could do that-or I could just burn that log laying on the ground over there, moron.” I don’t really know how to get people excited about flawed alternative energies other than to make this point: given that, at some point in the future, we will be able to capture energy directly from the field that supports it, in real time, without intermediary steps or storage, may make these fledgling steps into this arena, quaint. The idea is to stick with it and not let the existing structures perpetuate until there is a crisis. As we are in an expansionary cycle of the Universe, there is far more energy available than can be mitigated by entropy. All we have to do I figure out the nexus of all forms of energy, which I suggest is wave energy, and we’re golden. The whole idea of the Unified Field Theory is all energy is perpetual-it just changes form. Energy surrounds us, flows through us, is created not only by the sun but by the planet itself and once we learn how to access it as it exists, the job is done once and for all. In the mean time, we have these imperfect, inefficient systems that are just the means to that ultimate end. I think we’ll make it: we just have to stay with the wave and we’ll reach the shore… (f) Etch-a Sketch. I just hope I can shake this campaign from my memory… All the Best, TVA Ps. Sorry about the flogging the nag metaphor I just couldn’t come up with a more accurate depiction. Not a pretty image but that happens sometimes. I’ll try to watch that in the future. I know I go too far, too often-but I’m otherwise perfect in every other regard so perhaps this minor flaw can be overlooked? Right? What do you say?
