The Blog Police

Does Al Gore Use Twenty Times More Energy Than The Average U.S. Household?

Does Al Gore use twenty times more energy than the average U.S. household? According to The Tennessee Center for Policy Research—an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization—the answer is yes. They issued a press release late Monday (See below).

I don't know if Tennessee Policy is legit or not, if it's really just some redneck front organization, or whether these facts and figures are true or not. I will state that I am pulling for Al Gore as the dark horse in the presidential race. I do believe he was screwed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000. I was an Al Gore delegate to the Washington state convention in the 1980s. I don't have an axe to grind with him. Quite the contrary. However, if what the Tennessee Center for Policy Research says is true, it gives one pause. There is no queston that Al Gore's mansion is big.

Is Vice-President Gore asking us to cinch our belts without pulling his own in a notch or two? I don't know. I've never been comfortable with the "don't do as I do, do as I say" school of politics. I do know that this estimate does not even include the many miles Prince Albert spends jetting around the globe on jets, or speeding around town in limos. Can some of you Gore supporters tell me how this really works?
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According to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, the former Vice-President may not be shooting from ther hip:

"Gore’s mansion, [20-room, eight-bathroom] located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).

"In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.

"The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.

"Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.

"Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

"Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.

“ 'As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk to walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,' said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson. "

In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006. [1]

[1] For Further Information, Contact: Nicole Williams, (615) 383-6431, itor@tennesseepolicy.org .
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Are you a capitalist?

I am apparently 16% Capitalist, 84% Socialist

You see a lot of injustice in the world, and you'd like to see it fixed. As far as you're concerned, all the wrong people have the power. You're strongly in favor of the redistribution of wealth - and more protection for the average person.

Are You a Socialist or Capitalist?

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How's your vocabulary?

Your Vocabulary Score: A

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

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Poem: Dual Mortality

Petting my cat Booya
I count the cats I've had
And wonder how many more

I get to have?
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More Memories Of Kent, Washington: The Internment Of The Japanese Families

The first wave of immigrants to the Kent, Washington area happened shortly before 1900. The immigrants were mostly European. There were, even as I was growing up, several Italian families still farming the valley. The 1900 census count shows 13 Japanese families in and around Kent.

The number of Japanese immigrants rose steeply over the next few years until 1907, when the US Government put the brakes on the number of Japanese allowed to immigrate. Eventually, in the 1920's, they were banned altogether. The Anti-Alien Land Law in 1923 barred these immigrants from owning land, and even from becoming citizens. Those with a child born in America could put land in the child's name. Some of the Japanese worked for established farmers and some cleared land and began their own farms in Kent, Auburn, and the nearby villages O'Brien, Orillia, and Thomas.

Many Japanese farmers had dairy farms until the price of milk plummeted after the Great War. Those farmers jumped into vegetable and berry farming, and their truck farms were profitable. They sold produce in Seattle, at farm stands, and shipped lettuce and cabbage to the east coast.

In 1930 there were about 200 Japanese families farming in the White/Green River valley. In 1942 during WW II all Japanese people in the White/Green River Valley were ordered evacuated from this area and were detained at the War Relocation Camp at Tule Lake, California. They lost their businesses, farms and personal belongings. They lost everything in the war hysteria.

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President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered them jailed with Executive Order 9066, a law designating certain "military areas" as zones from which "any or all persons may be excluded." Thus, in one of our more shameful national acts of jingoistic racism, all people of Japanese ancestry were removed from the entire Pacific coast--all of California, Oregon and Washington (except for those already in internment camps). In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of this law, saying it is permissible to curtail the civil rights of a racial group when there is a "pressing public necessity." I don't know if that decision still stands or not. Perhaps this is the precedent we use for locking up various Muslims and people of middle-eastern extraction.

The forced removal encompassed about 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans--3/5 of them U.S. citizens. They were sent to quickly and shoddily constructed camps called "War Relocation Centers" in remote portions of the nation's interior. . .far away from where they might have, say, used a flashlight to guide a fleet of Japanese bombers toward the Boeing warplane plant.

My mother, Betty Brummet, remembers Japanese American kids being marched from Ballard High School one day. Some of the students lined up and booed.

The phrase "shikata ga nai" (loosely translated as "it cannot be helped") summarized the interned families' resignation to their helplessness. This was even noticed by the children, as mentioned in Farewell to Manzanar. The Japanese people tended not to make waves, and complied with the government to prove themselves "loyal citizens."

Dust storm at an internment camp a/k/a relocation center

In our war hysteria, we didn't want any Japanese Americans near the west coast. They would form cells and assist soldiers and pilots from the motherland in attacking The Pacific Coast. The number of Germans and Italians placed in the camps is only a fraction of their total population compared with the Japanese, virtually all of whom were locked up.

After the war only about thirty families returned to the valley area. I remember the Miyoshis, Yamadas, Nakaharas, Koyamatsus, Hiranakas, and Okimotos. Some of them got back into farming (not on their old farms, which had been confiscated and sold). I worked on the Yamada's farm a couple of springs, cutting and boxing rhubarb, and I worked for a couple of weeks on Kart Funai's farm one summer, bunching radishes and scallions.

In 1988, the U.S. Congress passed legislation awarding formal payments of $20,000 each to the surviving internees—60,000 in all. This same year, formal apologies were also issued by the government of Canada to Japanese Canadian survivors, who were each repaid the sum of $21,000 Canadian dollars. President Ronald Reagan even apologized on behalf of the United States. $21,000 would buy a fraction of the hundreds of acres of stolen land. Sure, it's better than the reparations paid to the families of slaves (zero, to date), but a pittance compared to losing everything you owned, and the farms you nurtured. If they held on until now, they'd all be rich.

Through the 1950's the Green River continued to flood the valley floor in late spring. This is what made the valley floor some of the richest soil in the world. . .but, alas, flooding prevented big business from locating there. In 1963 the Army Corps of Engineers built the Howard Hansen Dam (an earthen dam, still protecting the valley from floods) to regulate the river waters. The danger of uncontrolled flooding ended. The flat, treeless land on the valley floor now was an attractive area for business. And build they did.

Boeing built an aerospace lab, and the floodgates were opened. Farming was over, and dwindled rapidly, although there are a few pockets left. One of my old high school mates, Danny Carpinito has in fact become a wealthy vegetable farmer. Of the Japanese kids I knew in school, virtually none remained in Kent after high school. Of course, neither did I nor most of my friends, although some of our familes still live there.

Sources:

The Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment

The History of Kent, Washington: http://www.kent.k12.wa.us/curriculum/vtours/kent/

Japanese Relocation Centers: http://www.infoplease.com/spot/internment1.html

The Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American

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Collage: The State Of The Union

click the collage to enlarge

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Ex-Canadian Minister of Defense Hellyer Says We Should Not Let The U.S. Start A War With The Greys

From exopolitics.org, I learned that Paul Hellyer in a speech at the Exopolitics Toronto Symposium in which he spoke out about "extraterrestrial visitors & government secrecy."

In the hundred articles that have appeared here on Alien Lore, government secrecy has been a central issue. And now the Honorable Hellyer adds his voice to the chorus. It's good to have one of our brothers from the Great White North air his thoughts on this topic:

Hellyer claimed that evidence concerning UFOs is the "greatest and most successful cover up in the history of the world."

"The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning ... The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."

Go here to read the entire article on http://exopolitics.org.

A recent posting on All This Is That concerning exopolitics: http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2007/01/alien-lore-no-94-exopolitics.html

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Collage: Condoleezza Rice and George Bush's Appetite For Manflesh Grows Stronger Every Day

Click Secretary Rice and President Bush To Enlarge
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A sick site: Coloringbookland.com

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Barack Omama Gives Veep Cheney A Verbal Bitch-slap

Barack Hussein Obama, speaking at a huge rally in Austin, talked about England's decision to withdraw thousands of troops from Iraq. "Now if Tony Blair can understand that, then why can't George Bush and Dick Cheney understand that?" Obama asked the crowd of rain-soaked supporters. "In fact, Dick Cheney said this is all part of the plan (and) it was a good thing that Tony Blair was withdrawing, even as the administration is preparing to put 20,000 more of our young men and women in."

"Now, keep in mind, this is the same guy that said we'd be greeted as liberators, the same guy that said that we're in the last throes. I'm sure he forecast sun today," Obama said to supporters holding signs over their heads to keep dry. "When Dick Cheney says it's a good thing, you know that you've probably got some big problems.

Poem: Changes 37/ The Family

The influence that goes out
From the family
Is like the wind

Created by fire
Heat creates energy
The wind is stirred by fire

And issues from the flames
Travelling out
Into the world

Made affective and effective
As others adapt and conform to it
Gathering winds

Blow through the world
Roiling the sand and trees and water
Across the land and hills and seas.
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