Political Humor

Try not to hold back the tears for what I am about to tell you. It will sadden even the alligator heart inside you…

Solar power is having some problems in Arizona.

These are sunny days for Arizona’s solar-energy industry, with photovoltaic panels sprouting up on rooftops and major utility-scale installations planned across the state.

But some see clouds forming.

Land and water issues, including restrictive public-land-use policies and opposition from some environmentalists and neighbors, have stalled some major projects, a report by a University of Arizona law professor concludes.

Lefties opposing other lefties? How dare they go off the reservation. Are they not aware of the consequences for such insubordination?

And just what is at the core of the opposition’s argument?

Some of the most promising large-scale solar technologies – thermal systems that concentrate sunlight to make steam that runs generating turbines – may require too much land and water to be cost-effective and environmentally sound, says UA law professor Robert Glennon.

“It takes a heck of a lot of water, a heck of a lot of land, and we don’t have lot of either; that’s uncontested,” said Glennon, co-author of “Solar Energy’s Cloudy Future,” published in November in the Arizona Journal of Environmental Law & Policy. UA law student Andrew Reeves was co-author.

Oh yeah that. There’s not much water in the desert. They just noticed.

Now if they could get around to noticing these solar panel projects often get funded at 110% of the cost and the contractor bails cause he made his money. Your tax dollars or higher electric rates stimulating the economy.

And notice the co-author. How would you like to be one of these greens all gung ho for these projects only to get blindsided in a study by a college student?

Now, if I can just find the world’s smallest violin. I’m in the mood to play a few renditions of “My Heart Bleeds”.

Maybe Harold Camping was right. From where I stand the craziness signals the end of the world.

(And I thought it was bad the first and second time I asked the question.)

There is, for starters the most-interesting timing award, which goes to Barack Obama for claiming the pre-1967 borders were the starting point for Isreal-Palestinian peace talks.

Always good to whip out that kind of talk during the same week the media is all over an end-of-the-world prediction. Then we hear about Iran and their testing of nuke trigger devices.

This is the same country that thinks black magic and genies are influencing their politics.

We have male reporters attempting to lactate to spice up a story on the topic. And by spice I mean confessions:

It was strange to apply a breast pump for the first time. My nipples aren’t accustomed to regular stimulation, and though I felt like I was defying the natural order, pumping was surprisingly pleasant. Nipples are filled with nerve endings, after all, and the gentle upward tug of the pump was both comforting and erotic.

The end of the world sometimes means throwing up in one’s own mouth, by the way.

People are hiding the gender of their children for fear of some kind of stigma. Or something.

“We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now–a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime (a more progressive place? …),” it said.

That’s right. They’re not saying whether Storm is a boy or a girl…

…”In fact, in not telling the gender of my precious baby, I am saying to the world, ‘Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what s (he) wants to be?!.” she wrote in an email.

Coming soon to the 2020 US Census: a box to check off non-gender. End of the world? Maybe. Another label for people who hate labels? Yes.

NPR is actually concerned about perceived bias after taking George Soros’ money last year.

So is the world ending? I don’t know. But these are interesting times. And by interesting I mean effed up.

They might as well have called it New Apollo.

NASA announced Tuesday that it found the ideal spaceship to take astronauts far from earth — the same one they’ve been working on for several years and have spent $5 billion on.

All the Orion capsule needed was a new name — the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.

NASA said it decided the spacecraft would be what takes astronauts to a still-to-be-determined destination. The disposable capsule would take four astronauts on 21-day trips.

See, it’s a much better version because it is black.

There really isn’t a lot of “multi-purpose”, especially considering it is disposable. Once it drops in the ocean it is no bueno. And we have to launch the thing from the ground. With rockets.

The future of space travel, brought to you by the past.

I’m not sure anyone in NASA noticed but we have a launching pad in orbit: the Space Station. We could go from there and we wouldn’t need all those huge rockets.

We could have ships like these traveling to Mars:

Just sayin’.