Pale Green or just cheap?

I think I am more cheap than Green. I tend to reuse and or repair items rather than throw away. I drive my cars until they are worn out. Most of my cars have been used cars. These things that I do are Green, but I do them because it saves me money. Lately I’ve been looking to be Green. However, it cost to do so. Yes I have bought a few compact fluorescent light bulbs and I figure that it will take three to five years to recover the extra expense for the CFL bulbs in the energy savings. I guess I will live long enough to make it worth while. But many of the things to be Green take too long to pay back the initial cost. I would consider things that pay back within two to three years. Conservation is the only thing that makes sense for someone of my age. So going Green to heat water, to heat the house, or to make electricity just isn’t going to happen around my house.

Kneepads!

Ever since I had a total knee replacement on my left knee last fall, its been painful to kneel due to pressure on the scar. I had a kneeling pad and some cheep foam kneepads from before the operation which only did a little (very little) to reduce the pain. Today I bought a pair of kneepads that had a hard plastic cap. With these I can kneel without pain. Being only able to kneel on one knee has made many of the things I do around the house very hard to do. I worried what I would do after I got my right knee replaced this fall and I could not kneel without pain at all. Problem solved!

Are we (USA) becoming a third world country?

I found the following rant in a story I am reading. It struck a resonate cord in me. There seems to be a lot of truth in this rant. It may not be quite as bad as the rant indicates, but we seem to be headed in that direction. I’ve modified the wording to remove story elements and to make it a little more readable. Note, there are no solutions offered, it’s just a rant.


The problem is that reasoned argument -- and even principled agreement -- no longer works in this country. No, we have allowed our politics to degenerate to a level of corruption we usually associate with third world nations.

Our courts, our politicians, our police, and above all our legislatures are bought and paid for by money from every sort of interest and pressure group. Decisions in this country are no longer made in the best interests of the country or the people, but in the interests of whichever group or organization has bought and paid for enough influence to get their way.

I submit to you, this isn’t a very good way to run our country.

And, make no mistake about it -- this is our fault. Yes, there are those who are taking advantage of the system, and it’s a system that has been redesigned and reconstructed by those who are intent on reducing us to third world bondage -- and we have let them do it. We say that we’re voting for the lesser of two evils when there are people running for office who are unpalatable. We vote the party line or we vote on a single issue without regard to the other issues and worst of all we don’t vote. Until recently, this was a country where we had a free press with competition that kept track of what was going on -- if had we the least interest in seeing how the sausage was made. The USA press (newspapers, radio, TV and the like) is owned and controlled by a few -- with little or no competition. Therefore, we usually get only one point of view from the press.

Yes, watching sausage being made isn’t pleasant, and of course neither is watching politics. The problem is, the sausage factory isn’t producing sausage for the people these days -- it’s making all beef patties on sesame seed buns for just a few.