A thorny problem. Locusts have thorns, see.
Tuesday Thorn
Monthly Archives: July 2012
Two Nickles to Rub Together
I picked up an empty Blueberry-Pomegranate Blast by Colt 45 can on walkies this morning.
I walk a couple of miles each morning at a reasonably brisk rate. I’m still not getting my heart rate up high enough but I do get my resps up. Sometimes I talk on the phone while walking which surprises the bridge fishermen I pass. Sometimes Jody Beauregard walks with me. Jody is a couple inches taller than I am, but he doesn’t like to walk as fast. “You ought to slow down and smell the roses,” he keeps telling me.
But this is about beer cans, not Rosaceae. Nor the original lime juice.
Vermont passed its Beverage Container Law to “reduce litter, increase recycling, reduce waste disposal costs, create local jobs and save energy.” Save energy? The legislature enacted the law in 1972 but delayed implementation until 1973.
I’m thinking that was to give our shopping cart people time to get bigger bags and carts.
The Act covers beer, malt, carbonated soft drinks, mixed wine drinks, and liquor in any glass, metal, paper, plastic or combination bottle, can, jar or carton. We pay 15¢ for liquor bottles and a nickle for everything else. The redemption rate overall is 85%. The Baptists should have such good statistics.
Michigan’s 10¢ bottle bill has a 96.9% recycle rate. Florida is studying the idea.
The Blueberry-Pomegranate <shudder> Blast comes 23.5 ounces to the can. 12% alcohol. Still only a nickle deposit back, though.
That doesn’t make up for inflation. Gas prices went up a nickle on Friday alone here in the protected pocket with the highest gas prices in New England. That price hike comes in the face of dropping prices everywhere else in the nation, and in spite of calls for a Congressional investigation.
I found a single 24-ish ounce empty can each morning last week and I figure this is a bad sign.
“We need to start a petition drive,” Jody said. “If people would just drink two 12-ounce cans in their cars instead of these 24-ounce monsters, their beer wouldn’t go flat as fast and we’d make more money.”
I picked up just a nickle each day. I could have been making a dime.
Wordless Wednesday
Tuesday Torn
Enola “Fanny” Guay and the rest of the lefty loon brigade went batpoop crazy over BP’s past Deepwater Horizon oil disaster and Shell’s current Arctic drilling rig stumbling around the Aleutians. Shell and BP’s rigs met all U.S. safety and environmental regulations.
Cuba (Cuba!) is drilling holes just minutes from the ecologically sensitive Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and is there a peep out of the Far Green?
Nope.
Shell and BP’s rigs met U.S. safety and environmental regulations. Does Cuba even care about U.S. safety and environmental regulations?
Nope.
How Low Can You Go?
I am just sooooo tired of you airheads. Politics ain’t a limbo contest.
An open letter to Jim Messina and Stephanie Cutter on the Left, Matt Rhoades and Kevin Madden on the Right:
The Thief-in-Chief calls the Candidate-in-Chief a “liar or a felon” over the date he signed some papers.
Let us not forget that the Loyal Opposition has long claimed the Thief-in-Chief has no papers.
The Candidate-in-Chief retorted “liar liar pants on fire” about the Thief-in-Chief.
Let us not forget that the Loyalists have long claimed the Candidate-in-Chief is an evil, religious, rich guy.
I don’t give a hoot.
I don’t have a job.
Barack Obama made more money in Illinois selling political favors than you made in all of 2001. I don’t care.
Mitt Romney made more money last night than you made last year. I don’t care.
See, I read the news. I already know what Barack Obama has done to this country for the past three years. No amount of sleight-of-hand or political spin will change that although I have noticed he is running on “change” again. I also know what Mitt Romney has done for the past twenty years.
“I fixed the auto industry!” Mr. Obama crows in his ads. Sure. Stealing General Motors from its stockholders and introducing the worst selling car since the Aztek (which itself sold 112 more cars than the Edsel) is a great fix.
Mr. Obama? Quit it. Just stand up there in front of your record unemployment, your record public debt, your Chicago politics and tell us step-by-step how you are going to fix what you’ve done.
“I know what its like to worry whether youre gonna get fired,” Mr. Romney said in New Hampshire.
Mr. Romney? Quit it. Just stand up there in front of your record at Bain, good and bad, your Olympics record, your Massachusetts record, and tell us step-by-excruciating-step what you will do to fix this mess.
My friend Dean “Dino” Russell is a roofer in the middle Keys. Dancing about on roofs all his life has made him the most physically fit man in the Home Depot and gives him a unique overview of life. Dino noted that, “What this country needs is a veterinary service that will spay and neuter otters at a reasonable rate, not another third-rate carnival barker who can do the limbo.”
And, for the record? Until the IRS tells me otherwise, I figure Barack Obama and Mitt Romney followed the tax code to the letter and paid exactly the taxes they each owed. As did Mortimer Zuckerman and Warren Buffett and David Koch and Sheldon Adelson. And me.
And I don’t even have a job.
Lordy Lordy.
UPDATE – UPDATE – UPDATE – UPDATE – UPDATEJuly 21, 2012 — “We will pull all the ‘comparison’ ads.”
July 22, 2012 — CBS Sunday Morning today aired the singing Romney ad. “Approved by Barack Obama. Paid for by Obama for America.” CBS’ Face the Nation today aired the “You can change” ad. Paid for by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads PAC.
Good to see nothing ever changes.