Obama has been visiting Florida this week, where he attended a Party fundraiser in Miami and did one of those "support the troops" gigs in Jacksonville to assure all concerned that he still cares about the military and is thinking really, really hard about what to do in Afghanistan.

Today he visited a little rural town named Arcadia (pop. approx. 3,000), where he marveled at their many solar panels:

Obama Promotes Energy Plan in Visit to Arcadia

For some reason, I found this paragraph the most amusing:

"It's an honor to be here on a very big day," the president told a waiting crowd of about 50 invited guests and several dozen reporters and photographers.

The war has already been politicized. Then he politicizes education and entertainment. Then he politicizes cable news. Now he just adds finishing touches by politicizing shovels and solar panels.

But I found this sentence even more amusing, Pinkie.

It [HIGHLIGHT=#ffc000]supplies[/HIGHLIGHT] [HIGHLIGHT=#ffff00]enough [/HIGHLIGHT]electricity to [HIGHLIGHT=#ffc000]supply[/HIGHLIGHT] about 3,000 homes - [HIGHLIGHT=#ffff00]enough[/HIGHLIGHT] for the city of Arcadia - and saves [HIGHLIGHT=#ffff00]enough[/HIGHLIGHT] emissions to account for about 4,500 cars on the road.

Either being near Obama is likely to make journalists dumb, or dumb journalists are more likely to be attracted by Obama, but one of these factors is influencing the quality of Obama stories these days.

The solar panels only cost 152 million dollars for 3000 homes. And with maintenance and down time that's even more. Talk about jobs. I don't think the private sector would've ever been able to create so many jobs. This is just what a poor small town need.

Omerica! Omerica!

I just figured out that the cost of the solar panels at 152 million dollars for 3000 homes will take about 100 years to pay off. Provided there is still a town. No one but Obama could think that long range!

Omerica! Omerica!

I wonder what would happen if the town needed to grow? Would there then be a "problem of the commons?"

There's only so much electricity to go around.

Omerica doesn't mean the place would be stuck in Omerica, does it?

Margaret wrote:I just figured out that the cost of the solar panels at 152 million dollars for 3000 homes will take about 100 years to pay off. Provided there is still a town. No one but Obama could think that long range!

Omerica! Omerica!

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Such cynicism. Comrade Margaret, it will interest you to know that this project will generate oodles of cheap energy (1 oodle = several gazillion milliwatts) once the airborne giant flying magnifying glass (to focus the sun's rays on the solar panels, silly) is launched. In the future, please try to have a little more faith in our great leaders.

Red Square wrote: Either being near Obama is likely to make journalists dumb, or dumb journalists are more likely to be attracted by Obama, but one of these factors is influencing the quality of Obama stories these days.

Once upon a time, journalists learned their profession in the real world. Then, the colleges began "teaching" the subject. So it went from being reality based to fantasy based. Fifty years ago, journalists (they were called "reporters" then) would have laughed candidate Obama with his postage-stamp resume and bag of Marxist pals off the stage; now, he's the perfect complement to their delusions.

"It's an honor to be here on [HIGHLIGHT=#ffff00]a very big day[/HIGHLIGHT]," the president told a waiting crowd of about 50 invited guests and several dozen reporters and photographers.

It [HIGHLIGHT=#ffc000]supplies[/HIGHLIGHT] [HIGHLIGHT=#ffff00]enough [/HIGHLIGHT]electricity to [HIGHLIGHT=#ffc000]supply[/HIGHLIGHT] about 3,000 homes - [HIGHLIGHT=#ffff00]enough[/HIGHLIGHT] for the city of Arcadia - and saves [HIGHLIGHT=#ffff00]enough[/HIGHLIGHT] emissions to account for about 4,500 cars on the road.

Comrades,

I beg to differ. This is called marketing comrades. Repetition of words, auspicious descriptive phrases. And IMHO it looks like the target market is between 12 - 24 years of age. Arcadia fell right out of a storybook or video game. Do the Sim City Sims live there too?

Hail Obama and the Axelrod Express!

Like KC and the Sunshine Band.

He studied music at Miami-Dade Community College and worked part-time in a record store. He noticed often that customers would come in not remembering the titles of the records they wanted, and the store would lose the sale--this is the reason so many of his songs repeat their titles over and over.

Imagine voters walking into the polls last November, unable to remember the name of the person they wanted to vote for--or rather, why they wanted to vote for him.


And while I found it interesting that there were almost as many reporters/photographers there as invited guests, the fact that this reporter kept stumbling over his words to the point of repeating himself and not making much sense, means he's tongue-tied.

Being tongue-tied (even in writing, in which case he must have been "finger-tied") commonly occurs when you're in the presence of someone really cute on whom you have, like, a really big crush. And you want so much to be able to walk up to him and talk to him, ask him questions, flirt with him until he smiles at you in that way of his that always makes you all swoony and leg-tingly, and then maybe he'll notice how awesome your butt looks in your tight jeans, but you can never think of anything intelligent or coherent to say when you're around him.

But if you REALLY have it bad for this person, you won't be able to say or write anything intelligent or coherent even when you're away from him.

Can all of you tell how much I really love Obama so much?

Commissarka Pinkie wrote:And you want so much to be able to walk up to him and talk to him, ask him questions, flirt with him until he smiles at you in that way of his that always makes you all swoony and leg-tingly, and then maybe he'll notice how awesome your butt looks in your tight jeans, but you can never think of anything intelligent or coherent to say when you're around him.

The quickest way to a man's heart is through the back of his skull. A solid whack with a shovel is a great way to break the ice and start a conversation.

And might I add that laying on the sidewalk, dazed, looking up at the woman who just smacked you from behind really accentuates the curves of her figure.

And you would know, Whoopie, having dealt with the business end of my shovel almost as often as Maksim gets Beet of the Week. Don't we always have the most delightful conversations afterward about your bone fragments? (Yelling Yelena always told me a man likes nothing more than to talk about himself.)

Margaret; it may take 100 "old" years to pay off those solar panels, but when People's Time(tm) is applied, they were actually paid off 25 years ago. Add Pupovich's People's Cash(TM) to the mix, and well.... you have the perfect progressive combination.

Comrade Whoopie, have you tried wearing a kevlar helmet around Pinkie? I find it lessens the pain considerably (although the neck suffers a bit because of the impact to the head) and there are no bone fragments. I also find that carrying a small folding shovel, and throwing it to one side when Pinkie in all her glory advances is often enough of a distraction to enable an escape. Pinkie; the concerned darling that she is gets concerned when she sees a small, baby shovel that has been abandoned.

Comrades, has anyone noticed that solar panels do not work at night? That means that grandma's respirator or sister's dialysis machine, or the marijuana grow lights or the Mototool making the next Weather Underground bomb just won't work if the sun isn't shining.

Which means of course that we have to put an arc light right above each solar panel, to be turned on at night and on cloudy or rainy days.

This would be I think a environmentally friendly usage for nuclear power: to power the arc lights used to power the solar panels.