A cruise through the inbox this morning because there is just some damn interesting stuff going on.
For example, John down at www.sunelec.com sent out one of his email flyers announcing they have a deal on solar panels (pallet sized order) and it’s down to 42-cents a watt. You can’t buy them – in the USA – but read on…
To give you an idea of how cheap this is, 20-years ago when I was living on my offshore sailboat and put two 200-watt panels on the top of the dodger (the canvass thing over the hatch) I didn’t get but a couple of bucks back from a $600-bill. At the time, circa mid 1990s, it was a hell of a deal to get solar for a buck and a half a watt.
The payback time on solar keeps coming down. 42-cents a watt I’m not into doing free commercials (which this is, I ‘spose) but I am about sharing great deals that people can use:
Suntech 250 watt only $105 !
Suntech 300 watt only $126 !
Grade A, UL,
Located in USA
25 Yr. Factory Warranty
25 Yr. Sun Warranty.
Sorry, Chinese Cells so they must be shipped outside the U.S.
Min. Order 1 – 20 ft. Container, for now. However, we will bring some down to Miami so people can purchase by the pallet out of our Duty Free Zone Warehouse next week.
World’s Lowest PV Prices. (Our Business Plan)
The interesting part to me was the part I highlighted. Despite Solyndra going BK, I find it super-interesting that we have laws on the books, apparently, that prevent the US consumer from being able to buy things like solar panels at prices that could really spur economic investment in solar.
I guess the power company infrastructure in ‘Merica has to be “protected” from people like me who put in grid-tied systems and keep their operating costs low.
Yes sir…got to protect ‘Mercian backwardized business which should be leading the curve on innovation, instead of needing to be protected from being run over.
Yes on Chest Cams
Next idea is some fine comment on the police/chest cam question for our public official which I mentioned in the Monday column. Here are two really good notes:
“Chestcams” ??? Absolutely! 100% Absolutely. Too many good cops get accused of crap that a very tiny minority are actually guilty of.
Actually, since you’re all about the business side of things here: Think of the man-hours saved in investigations. The damage done by protesting thugs who may have fewer reasons to do their thuggary when the truth swats them in their thuggish faces. Unintended consequences of the rule can be adjudicated and mitigated if or/as they come up. Frankly, I see more positive than negative here and it fits right in with my personal credo, “Freedom for the Most at the Expense of the Fewest.” But that’s just me.
Don of Odessa’s comments are well-taken. But as another reader opined, maybe we ought to get the cameras off the chest…
“yes to police cameras, on shoulders, not on chests, too easy to have them blocked by a dispute….or struggle. Yes, to keeping ALL their video on file INDEFINITELY…sorry George and your high powered honest friend…the police have a REPUTATION across all states, cities, and towns of police collusion, corruption, brutality and sticking together EVEN WHEN IN THE WRONG…IF THERE IS A PATTERN, HOW CAN A LAWYER FIND IT WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO SEE THE PAST ACTIVITIES OF THE PARTICULAR POLICE OFFICERS?
Police’s Number ONE job is to protect the citizens….so they should not be afraid of ANY video if they are doing their job and so it should be stored FOREVER…
Let’s hold them to the SAME high standards they expect of the citizenry: integrity, truthfulness, and honesty. And yes, those 3 things are the most important qualities.”
The deterrent effect of the camera is extremely high. But, I still worry about giving lawyer access to anything other than the case at hand.
Maybe the answer would be for an attorney, suspecting a pattern of misbehavior by an officer, could demand an internal investigations review of officer conduct in other cases. But here, we get back to the matter of police saying “trust us…” and that’s a toughie.
As reader Jim notes:
Yes George, you are on the mark as usual.
Body cams are nothing more than another nail in our coffin of ever increasing surveillance. It doesn’t matter who reviews this crap, who downloads it, who discovers it, it just doesn’t make a flipping difference. The stupid red light cams are a good example. Here in the state of Misery they are in flux due to law suits. It was a requirement that the footage had to be reviewed by a sworn officer to make charges stick. Can you guess for one minute which officers got stuck er I mean assigned that duty.
I think there is a group who are rapidly approaching the “aw hell freaking no more” point not in only on this but all of this in general.
Better shut up before I end up on the watchlist…..again I hope. Will I be spending retirement in a FEMA Camp?”
No worries, brother Jim. it’s not going to be called a FEMA Camp. It’s going to be called a Social Security Planned Community and they will be supplied minimal food and water once the Social Security “Trust Us” fund is shown to be bank-o’ed.
Elaine and I keep having that conversation: Should we high-tail it back to the big city lifestyle with 2-minute medical response OR would that be like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire?
Watching the news over the past year has definitely made it easier to decide where NOT to live. So far on our list we have Ferguson, Baltimore, Waco, and we (sadly) keep adding cities all the time.
We might move eventually to one of the “last places standing.” Panama and his g/f are still considering El Paso, but when you’ve been a lone wolf/special forces guy in Central and South America for as long as he was, the language and culture become second-nature.
As I have written many times, we are quickly “catching down” to Mexico… (as opposed to catching up). And that sort of moves us into the conspiracy realm…
Good Old Conspiracies
Another email:
“Conspiracy theorists are going to love this one:”
That is just another comment I find intriguing ..the way I see it there aren’t any conspiracies at all in our country.. everything in our government does is done in triplicate and usually has a few committees etc to check over.. then the departments under the organizations and committees that are involved in one way or another keeps records in triplicate also by the time it hits the gossip in the chow line at the diner everyone knows including the delivery boy from the doughnut shop down the street..
I think Even the government releases news leaks that are usually put on the last page of the newspapers section c just so that if anyone comes up and says… ” why didn’t you inform anyone.. well they did..” what I look for in the news are the odd news stories where millions have been spent to discredit a story that most people wouldn’t give to shakes of a pepper shaker over.. so to hear that some organization got wind of what was written a day earlier just doesn’t make me suspicious at all.. we have lobbyists and special interest groups that have had our congresses ears for years influencing and in some cases even assisting in the writing of laws that most of the members voting on don’t even care enough about to crack open the cover of..
So to think that someone else could be influenced to give up a set of notes that are going public or semi public anyway for a few bucks or a dinner out .. absolutely and I don’t know what I would do if I was the head of a large investment firm where acquiring that information could get me a few million in bonuses….”
Uh, yeah….which then gets us to the latest whirlwind in the conspiracy pits…
Kerry and Reid?
I was reading your blog this morning – Monday’s column as I’m a day behind. When I clicked on the link for the article about Kerry rumors (the one associated with the bike accident), my browser was taken over and I had a warning message that it had downloaded a virus.
That’s a weird one…I open every link I put up with my system and NEVER put up anything that comes up with an alert using Win 7/8/1 and Avira Pro. Still, maybe it was on that page…no telling.
One thing is for sure, there is so much code out there (like .js /javascript) that it’s hard telling what’s clean and what isn’t. Another possibility is it was from a previous page. Some of the newer “pop after” code is pretty interesting. You go to a page and then three pages later –BLAM.
OK, so no one had claimed the nickel prize purse for seeing new John Kerry video since his bike accident. But check out this note from a total aware reader:
I know the last time Kerry got hurt it was playing hockey. It looked to me like someone beat him up.
And another oddity…
No pictures of him after the fall? Everyone has cell phones. No pictures of him with the medical staff after setting the bone – the usual PR photo op thumbs up and everything. He needs a flying hospital for him alone to return? Air Force 2 wasn’t good enough? Not a word from the Whitehouse since…….I don’t know but it sure is strange……..
http://www.eutimes.net/2015/06/obama-made-secret-boston-visit-as-kerry-reported-at-deaths-door/
And here’s the absolute frigging capper…
Same with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Broken facial bones and ribs from exercise equipment????
Aha! Yes, treadmill kicked his ass good, or so the tale went.
This gets us to some very interesting speculation – and as long-term readers know, we use a fictitious federal dark agency which we call Directorate 153 which is charged with really running America…something no one else seems to be doing effectively.
So what if….and this is only conjecture, anyone even begins to think about going “off the reservation” with some unacceptable conduct (e.g. telling the people about the real shit going on with the corporate takedown of the former civil government), they get administered a solid beat-down.
And let’s not forget what’s-her-name the former SecState who fell down so bad she got amnesia about Benghazi, am I right? So maybe beat-downs and accidents (remember Ron Brown?) is how the game is played.
Or, in the case of figures from Elliot Spitzer to Dominique Strauss Kahn, they get set up with hookers or whatever and then “sexicided” – thus ending their careers… Control files is what Catherine Austin-Fitts calls data that controls…
Thanks to NSA, and social mapping help from the FB and other social media, everyone is getting a control file built…so why not just preemptively punish people who might let some ugliness out of the bad?
Either that, or it is just a matter of statistics catching up with people.
For example, the Centers for Disease Control has been counting old people falling down and this is what they find:
- One out of three older adults (those aged 65 or older) falls each year1 but less than half talk to their healthcare providers about it.2
- Among older adults, falls are the leading cause of both fatal and nonfatal injuries.3
- In 2013, 2.5 million nonfatal falls among older adults were treated in emergency departments and more than 734,000 of these patients were hospitalized.3
- In 2013, the direct medical costs of falls, adjusted for inflation, were $34 billion
All of which leaves us with what we had before. We have the conspiracy deniers, who point to the statistics and say “You see there?” Then we have the conspiracy believers who point to the dangers of public life where it seems beat-downs and accidents happen. Along with a boat load of hookers and drugs…
And last, there are people like us: We can see both sides of the debate clear as day. But NEITHER side has a case you could take to court and win with. Just making a headline on a conspiracy-leaning site is sort of like a grand jury indictment, sure. But what’s the old saying? “You can indict a ham sandwich in the NY courts…”
On the other hand, conviction is a different matter. It takes lots of data. Convincing, overwhelming data, or you could be adjudged “crazy” and off as a ward of the state you go. No need for FEMA camps if you have state facilities and crooked psychiatrists loading the deck.
Then, once inside and tucked away long enough to fade from memory, you’ll conveniently fall, or be eliminated…
So lack of conviction, without overwhelming data – the kind that 12 reasonable people would convict on – is the only sensible course.
He who fighting and runs away, lives to write another day. How many reporters have “gotten the word” too?
With midweek approaching, we are again sitting with the scale of Truth. Reading the conjecture on one side and the data on the other. I’ll cut, you pick.
In the spirit of Talking Heads, we are seeing lifetimes piling up and don’t whisper of The Beast before going mountain biking.
Write when you break-even and come back Thursday (or sooner) and bring reinforcements.
George george@ure.net