buzzsawBeaver

I'm very passionate about it, but just telling it like it is none the less.

"Back to the main point: we are sitting on a freaking gold mine of renewable wind energy in SWVA. It would be THE ticket to getting SWVA back on the right track to growth and prosperity" Explain how. Realistically, they blast the mountain tops, build windmills, the work is done, they leave. 12 or less people have minimum wage jobs with the windfarm, property below east river mountain or anywhere else windmills are is devalued, (that's not prosperity, it decreases property tax values at that), where's the growth or prosperity? The small amount of energy it produces goes to a storage bank that bigger cities draw from. Since when did bigger population centers ever pass up a goldmine in the energy business? They could put a million windmills up and down the east coast and draw from a much more powerful and consistent wind source off the atlantic coast. You might want to ask yourself why these people don't want them in their backyards, especially if they're so profitable. The fact is profitable or not, the companies are going to get 10s of millions in credits just for a certain small amount of green energy exploration. It doesn't matter if a windmill blade ever turns or not they've made 10s of millions. They could care less about this county or area. If these things were such a goldmine the politicians of this state would be pushing them for their biggest voting bases and doing this big favor for millions in eastern va with their much better wind source, not tazewell county.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. This wasn't an opportunity for anyone but the people in the power business, at the people of tazewell counties expense. This wind farm would have created what, 12 permanent minimum wage jobs for 12 local people. At the expense of east river mountain and it's wildlife, devalued property for a lot of people, our wildlife, birds and mammals. A lot of people live here because of the beauty of the mountains, and if you really don't consider geography that much, it's just not beautiful because it's home, but tazewell county is 1 of the most geographically unique set of mountain formations in the east. Sell out to the power company for that? G man was 100% correct, the power they generate (windmills are 30% productive at best) doesn't go to this area anyhow, it goes to a storage bank to supplement that, ( a drop in the bucket of power in that bank at that) that bigger cities along the east coast draw from. It's not any different than that aep powerline they built through this region that supplies power to nc. Lastly consider this, most people here realize the global warming or global climate change fad is propaganda, what do you think all this green energy agenda is associated with? If they doubled all the solar, wind intake they could in the u.s. at best it could supply 12% of what this country has to have. At best 12%. "It simply isn't a realistic alternative." wind farming has been abandoned all over europe because it wasn't effective. Oh the windmills are still there, they're just abandoned and unused for years. The people who back wind and solar power are the people who push to have coal mines shut down. For goodness sake, that should be all that has to be said there. I even had a woman I was talking to about them in bland county, (she was for them) say "shouldn't we do our share here". I realized I was wasting my time talking to her if she really thought that. For goodness sake wv itself, without the numbers of va or ky, has had over 100,000 coal mining related deaths producing energy for this country throughout the decades. Hasn't this region done more than enough without selling out our mountain tops at their expense to some greedy power companies?

personally I don't consider graham's football program out yet, they might be down, but in the bigger scheme, from an older person's perspective, they're not out. Their program has been strong for decades, so I'm not going to consider them out quite yet.

case in point

If only you ever argued anything you believe in with anything but snide comments ending with lol.

That's not stupidity in the least, there's many failed policies starting with the stimulus that are completely the actions of this administration that have skyrocketed the debt and unemployment. This president is not a leader in the least. The guy's not going to "fix anything in a year?", what has this administration fixed, most everything is considerably worse.

People of america actually representing themselves for themselves, I'd be all for it.

It's a result of the country's direction under this administration. Nj and mass., it's hard to deny.

fair enough opinion.

It's worth mentioning, the eu is the global status many would have America join (and reduced to). Remove the strength from this country and what makes this country great, and the world is truly going to have a bad experience, unlike ever before. Embrace socialism, communism and bring down the wealth and strength of America at your own risk.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7005887/Haiti-response-shows-the-difference-between-the-EU-and-a-superpower.html "Compare and contrast the initial responses of two "major world powers" to the Haitian earthquake disaster. Within hours of Port-au-Prince crumbling into ruins, the US had sent in an aircraft carrier with 19 helicopters, hospital and assault ships, the 82nd Airborne Division with 3,500 troops and hundreds of medical personnel. They put the country's small airport back on an operational footing, and President Obama pledged an initial $100 million dollars in emergency aid. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the European Union geared itself up with a Brussels press conference led by Commission Vice-President Baroness Ashton, now the EU's High Representative – our new foreign minister. A scattering of bored-looking journalists in the Commission's lavishly appointed press room heard the former head of Hertfordshire Health Authority stumbling through a prepared statement, in which she said that she had conveyed her "condolences" to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, and pledged three million euros in aid. A gaggle of other Commision spokesmen followed, to report offers of help from individual member states, such as a few search and rescue teams, tents and water purification units. We were also told that an official EU representative would be trying to reach Haiti from the Dominican Republic, to stay for a few hours before returning to report what he had found. Memories might have gone back to December 2004, which saw similarly contrasting responses to the Indian Ocean tsunami catastrophe which cost nearly 300,000 lives. Again, within hours the US took the lead in forming an alliance with Australia, India and Japan, and had sent in two battle groups fully equipped to deal with such an emergency, including 20 ships led by two carriers with 90 helicopters. President Bush immediately pledged $35 million, later rising to $350 million. Because they were self-sufficient, the US forces pulled off a stupendously successful life-saving operation, almost entirely ignored by the British media, notably the BBC (whose journalists on the spot were nevertheless quite happy to hitch lifts from US helicopters). The EU, by contrast, pledged three million euros for the tsunami victims, called for a three-minute silence (three times longer than is customary to remember the millions who died in two world wars) and proposed a "donors' conference" in Jakarta nearly two weeks later to discuss what might be done. The only real difference between these two episodes is that, in the five years which have elapsed since 2004, the EU has even more noisily laid claim to its status as what Tony Blair liked to call "a world superpower", capable of standing on the world stage as an equal of the US. Anyone who witnessed the dismal showing at Thursday's press conference of the High Representative, which would scarcely have passed muster at a board meeting of the Hertfordshire Health Authority, might well cringe at the thought."

I hadn't noticed that myself. I don't or won't use facebook myself, but it does seem to be a heck of a social network, and growing.

I honestly don't know pat robertson's ways. But my comments were directed at the message he was saying, not who he is. Based on what I read here it seemed people suggested he was foolish for suggesting an act of god happened on earth. eta not that I believe in god, I'd say it had something to do with geography and fault lines myself.

I don't know pat robertson's opinions on that myself, I really don't know much about him at all.

So your opinion is that pat robertson hates the people of that country or something?

A lot of people lacking faith. It seems that for a "christian" nation, when put to the test, the idea that there is really a god at work in this world is considered extreme and nonsense by most of the people of this country. Christianity's great when people are in church an hour on sundays, but, the thought of that very god of the bible, acting out in this world, showing vengeance on earth,..... what an extremist point of view, why is this guy even permitted on cable? Haven't some of you requested prayers or told others you'd pray for someone on here before, even this past year? So exactly who are you praying to if not the god of the bible who's hand is supposedly at work bringing about his master plan that is beyond our comprehension and to big for us to grasp? So why is pat robertson some retarded extremist?

I don't really mind it at all, it's what winter is supposed to be, although the freezing cold can be rough. It's been so long since we had a rough winter of snow anyhow. If it weren't snow all this would be cold rain and mud.

when were you there and what unit where you with, where were you at there? What was your mos?

It's known as an sacrificial investment in the safety of this country, by others, and to highlight your ignorance I've already been there with the infantry. Photo taken outside of ramadi, .....by me A big thank you to you and every other liberal who undermines the success and accomplishments of everyone who serves.

I'm not going to be dipolmatic and just going to say you need to get your ignorant head out of your a!! when you label the wars useless. We've killed tens of thousands of people who are at war against america, it doesn't matter how passive America acts towards them they'll be at war with the u.s., call a truce, they'll still be at war with the u.s., pull all the troops out of the middle east, they'll still be at war with the u.s., run and cower, and they'll only try to kill us harder. There isn't a standing army to fight so we fight the terrorists wherever they're hiding or wherever forces them to come out and fight. They were forced to come out and defend holy land in iraq, it was the biggest killing ground so far of these people. The wars generate billions of dollars in the weapons industries and ammunition, bomb manufacturing plants, 1 of the few things this country doesn't outsource to other countries, the country gets tens of millions in taxes as well and people get to be safe overall. What irks me about liberals is their completely spineless, ignorant thoughts on how to protect a country from people who would use nuclear weapons to reduce this country to ashes in a second if they could and hate this country regardless of what it does. Useless my a!!.

lance you might read through this topic, only for thought "Looks like .gov seizure of 401Ks is gathering steam...." http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=981166

I've never denied so much as any claim that people don't influence the environment and wildlife with some pollution, or destruction of habitat, that and altering the planet's climate and weather patterns are completely different things. You claim that a few cold winters don't prove global warming doesn't exist, yet you would have us believe that the mere geological tick of the clock that the people on your side are using to suggest global warming exists is accurate. But the fact of the matter is a much larger step back shows that in geological time, extreme climate changes have always happened many times throughout the earth's history, emphasis on the word "happened", as in not the first time. You still have commented about how greenland is known as greenland because it used to be green, not a present day ice cap as big as the u.s..

hard to defeat terrorism when the president is sympathetic to their cause. I'm sort of speechless when considering an acting u.s. president released enemy combatants to rejoin the fight against this country. And they're contemplating releasing a lot more to yemen as of last week. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6975971.ece At least a dozen former Guantánamo Bay inmates have rejoined al-Qaeda to fight in Yemen, The Times has learnt, amid growing concern over the ability of the country’s Government to accept almost 100 more former inmates from the detention centre. The Obama Administration promised to close the Guantánamo facility by January 22, a deadline that it will be unable to meet. The 91 Yemeni prisoners in Guantánamo make up the largest national contingent among the 198 being held. Six prisoners were returned to Yemen last month. After the Christmas Day bomb plot in Detroit, US officials are increasingly concerned that the country is becoming a hot-bed of terrorism. Eleven of the former inmates known to have rejoined al-Qaeda in Yemen were born in Saudi Arabia. The organisation merged its Saudi and Yemeni offshoots last year. The country’s mountainous terrain, poverty and lawless tribal society make it, in the opinion of many analysts, a close match for Afghanistan as a new terrorist haven. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, voiced concern about the growing strength of al-Qaeda in Yemen. “Obviously, we see global implications from the war in Yemen and the ongoing efforts by al-Qaeda in Yemen to use it as a base for terrorist attacks far beyond the region,†she said. A Yemeni, Hani Abdo Shaalan, who was released from Guantánamo in 2007, was killed in an airstrike on December 17, the Yemeni Government reported last week. The deputy head of al-Qaeda in the country is Said Ali al-Shihri, 36, who was released in 2007. Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaish, who was released in 2006, is a prominent ideologue featured on Yemeni al-Qaeda websites. Geoff Morrell, the spokesman for the Pentagon, said: “This is a large question that goes beyond the issue of transferring detainees. The bulk of the remaining detainees are from Yemen and that has been the case for a long time. We are trying to work with the Yemeni Government on this.†The US Government issued figures in May showing that 74 of the 530 detainees in Guantánamo were suspected or known to have returned to terrorist activity since their release. They included the commander of the Taleban in Helmand province, Mullah Zakir, whom the British Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, called “a key and seemingly effective tactical leaderâ€. Among others who returned to terrorism was Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti who killed six Iraqis in Mosul in 2008. The number believed to have “returned to the fight†in the May 2009 estimate was double that of a US estimate from June 2008. US officials acknowledged that more detainees were known to have reoffended since, but the number has been classified. “There is a historic trend and it continues. I will only say that we have said there is a trend, we are aware of it, there is no denying the trend and we are doing our best to deal with this reality,†Mr Morrell said. Officials said that a higher proportion of those still being held were likely to return to terrorism because they were considered more of a security threat than those selected in the early stages of the release programme. Chris Boucek, an expert on the region for the Carnegie Endowment think-tank, said that up-to-date figures for Saudi Arabia showed that 26 of the 120 Saudis released from Guantánamo were either in jail, wanted by the authorities or dead. Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert at Princeton University, said evidence showed that al-Qaeda was seeking to use Yemen to mount a renewed campaign into Saudi Arabia. He cited a recent incident in which two Saudi militants, one the brother-in-law of alShihri, were killed while trying to cross the border in women’s clothing. Martyrdom videos were subsequently posted on militant websites. The Saudi Government had boasted previously of a zero reoffence rate for Guantánamo detainees who were put through its widely praised rehabilitation programme for al-Qaeda members. Robert Lacey, who writes about Saudi Arabia, made numerous visits to the Prince Mohammad bin Naif rehabilitation facility north of Riyadh. “I know a number of young men from Guantánamo who were successfully reintegrated,†he told The Times. “The programme involves the whole family with a mixture of religious re-education, patriotism, guilt and co-opting in terms of being given a car, job and a nice wife.†However, other analysts suggested that the claims for the Saudi programme were exaggerated. Mr Johnsen pointed out that an attack that nearly killed Prince Mohammad bin Naif, the Saudi head of counterterrorism, in August was mounted by a Yemen-based al-Qaeda terrorist who had offered to join the reintegration programme to get near his target. “The Saudi programme is nothing but bureaucratised bribery. The ideologically committed terrorists simply won’t listen,†Mr Johnsen said. The Yemen reintegration programme for terrorists was abandoned on December 10, 2005.

this is what this country is in for "Minnesota levies world's first carbon tariff...against North Dakota If you regulate CO2 produced from manufacturing, it's probably more expensive for you to produce goods compared to somebody who just blithely opens the smokestacks like they're living in 19th-century England. Carbon tariffs are a way for countries that do control CO2 to level the economic playing field against ones that don't—you simply tariff imported goods that are cheap because of polluting so that the price better reflects the damage done, and so that the cleaner country can compete. Or, rather, it was assumed the parties would be countries—and it was generally assumed that China would be the first polluter to have a tariff levied against it. But, you know assumptions ... The first carbon tax to reduce the greenhouse gases from imports comes not between two nations, but between two states. Minnesota has passed a measure to stop carbon at its border with North Dakota. To encourage the switch to clean renewable energy Minnesota plans to add a carbon fee of between $4 and $34 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions to the cost of coal-fired electricity, to begin in 2012, to discourage the use of coal power; the greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Coal has immediate health effects in addition to the well documented long term effects on climate. Coal has been implicated in asthma, diabetes, heart disease and even neurological damage, reducing intelligence levels. North Dakota ranks 8th in toxic metals contaminating its coal waste, with 3,419 tons of toxic metals. If this seems a little weird, you should probably understand that Minnesota has been generally pushing for cleaner power within its borders (it's no California, but it's doing better on this than most states), but the utility companies that operate here have, over the past decades, sited a lot of coal power plants on the relatively cheap and open land of North Dakota. My guess would be that this is a way of extending policy to cover more of the energy used within the state, even though it happens to be produced elsewhere, while simultaneously spurring investment (theoretically in both Minnesota and North Dakota, as only coal-power electricity is affected) in renewable energy development. North Dakota, meanwhile, is pissed, and has sued the state of Minnesota. Minnesota had anticipated this, and has a half million dollars set aside to fight."