Don't Blame GM for Electric Car's Demise - Los Angeles Times

Don't Blame GM for Electric Car's Demise
Regarding "Movie Casts the Electric Car as Hero, GM as Bad Guy," July 15:
Andrius V. Varnas
Redondo Beach
Letter to the Los Angeles Times

Quotes:
>>It is a myth that electric cars do not pollute; the pollution is simply transferred from the tailpipe to the generating plant.

It is a myth that electric cars reduce our dependence on fossil fuels; except for nuclear and hydroelectric power, generating plants burn fossil fuels or coal.
[snip]
The fact is that each EV1 cost GM about $150,000 to make. That is the reason the automaker did not sell the cars but leased them for about $500 a month, which included all maintenance. (Parts were not available at Pep Boys.)

You could never lease a $150,000 car for $500 a month on the open market. GM was subsidizing EV1 drivers — no wonder they liked it.<<

Good points.

Busch Gardens Tampa

Man Dies After Riding Busch Gardens Ride

When is Bush going to pull us out of that quagmire in Tampa? How many more people have to die?

Newspaper Columnist Jealous of Success

L.A. County Supervisors Guzzling Gas Big-Time on Taxpayers' Dime - Los Angeles Times
STEVE LOPEZ/POINTS WEST

Quotes:
>>I just happened to be in the Glendale neighborhood where Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich lives and noticed a big black Cadillac with tinted windows out front of his house, parked near a flagpole flying the red, white and blue.
[snip]
I hung around for a couple of hours to catch any comings and goings, and to marvel at the size of the Cadillac.<<

We have a word for this sort of activity in California. Stalker.

>>The supervisors each have $3.4 million a year to hire staff and run their offices. The figure includes discretionary funds they can dole out at will to community groups, which makes for a convenient investment in their own reelection. Or they can buy cars and hire chauffeurs.<<

This guy is clearly jealous because he's writing for a declining newspaper and obviously not getting paid what he thinks he's worth. Now whose fault is that? As he himself notes, the Supervisors oversee $20 billion and 10 million people (2 million people each). That's more than any Representative in Congress, more than some Senators (I'm sure). Relax. They clearly do a much better job than the City of Los Angeles leadership, which consists of a 15-member City Council and a Mayor. If you don't like it, move to a County where each Supervisor has the time (and need) to hold two other full-time jobs. I'm not one for government waste, but this is really misplaced concern. These Supervisors are extremely busy and put in very long hours and are essentially working all of the time.

There Are Better Ways to Die

Dairy Farmer Found Dead in Manure Pit - Los Angeles Times

Quote:
>>A dairy owner died when his tractor sank into a manure pit, Fresno County authorities said Thursday.

Jose Iraizoz, 64, was riding his tractor between two open pits Tuesday when the wheels apparently slipped into about 5 feet of sludge.<<

Charlotte Allen Shows the Folly of Liberal 'Christianity'

Liberal Christianity is Paying For Its Sins
Out-of-the-mainstream beliefs about [counterfeit] marriage and supposedly sexist doctrines are gutting old-line faiths.
By Charlotte Allen - Los Angeles Times
CHARLOTTE ALLEN is Catholicism editor for Beliefnet and the author of "The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus."

Quotes:
>>The accelerating fragmentation of the strife-torn Episcopal Church USA, in which several parishes and even a few dioceses are opting out of the church, isn't simply about gay bishops, the blessing of same-sex unions or the election of a woman as presiding bishop. It also is about the meltdown of liberal Christianity.

Embraced by the leadership of all the mainline Protestant denominations, as well as large segments of American Catholicism, liberal Christianity has been hailed by its boosters for 40 years as the future of the Christian church.

Instead, as all but a few die-hards now admit, all the mainline churches and movements within churches that have blurred doctrine and softened moral precepts are demographically declining and, in the case of the Episcopal Church, disintegrating.<<

Yup. If you dismiss Biblical authority, your congregants no longer have a command to attend church... and many don't. There are other places they can go to socialize or get "feel good" motivation stuff. And so these liberal churches are dying.

>>As if to one-up the Presbyterians in jettisoning age-old elements of Christian belief, the Episcopalians at Columbus overwhelmingly refused even to consider a resolution affirming that Jesus Christ is Lord. When a Christian church cannot bring itself to endorse a bedrock Christian theological statement repeatedly found in the New Testament, it is not a serious Christian church.<<

AMEN!

>>When a church doesn't take itself seriously, neither do its members. It is hard to believe that as recently as 1960, members of mainline churches — Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and the like — accounted for 40% of all American Protestants. Today, it's more like 12% (17 million out of 135 million).
[snip]
According to the Hartford Institute for Religious Research, in 1965, there were 3.4 million Episcopalians; now, there are 2.3 million. The number of Presbyterians fell from 4.3 million in 1965 to 2.5 million today. Compare that with 16 million members reported by the Southern Baptists.
[snip]
A causal connection between a critical mass of female clergy and a mass exodus from the churches, especially among men, would be difficult to establish, but is it entirely a coincidence?<<

There are now church services specifically geared towards men, and they are doing well. Men have had to tone down their masculinity in the workplace. Schools have been oriented toward the girls. Boys are being raised in homes without fathers. Television is, more and more, geared towards women. The feminizing of churches has created one less place where men are called to be men. The male-targeted churches are also attracting single women who are interesting in finding a Christian man who isn't a wimp.

>>Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, which preach biblical morality, have no trouble saying that Jesus is Lord, and they generally eschew women's ordination. The churches are growing robustly, both in the United States and around the world.
[snip]
As for the rest of the Episcopalians, the phrase "deck chairs on the Titanic" comes to mind. A number of liberal Episcopal websites are devoted these days to dissing Peter Akinola, outspoken primate of the Anglican diocese of Nigeria, who, like the vast majority of the world's 77 million Anglicans reported by the Anglican Communion, believes that "homosexual practice" is "incompatible with Scripture" (those words are from the communion's 1998 resolution at the Lambeth conference of bishops). Akinola might have the numbers on his side, but he is now the Voldemort — no, make that the Karl Rove — of the U.S. Episcopal world.<<

Bravo to the Los Angeles Times for printing this piece. I'm there there will be shrill, bitter letters to the editor denouncing the piece, but it is hard to argue with the facts.

Bible-teaching churches and temples that disciple people to apply Biblical principles to every area of their lives - even sexuality - are growing all over the place. The Calvary Chapel movement alone has grown since the 1970s from a church in Orange Count, California to having congregations all over the place.

Aztlan Crap Makes the L.A. Times

Vision That Inspires Some and Scares Others: Aztlan
The lore of an Aztec homeland in the U.S. is a volatile piece of the immigration debate.
By David Kelly - Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Quotes:
>>In the churning debate over immigration, there are perhaps no words as loaded or controversial as Aztlan, the name of the mythical Aztec homeland.

For many it carries potent political overtones, for others it is a romantic ideal, and to those most opposed to illegal immigration it represents a strategic effort to reclaim land that was once part of Mexico.<<

It was a part of Mexico for only a few years! Before that, it was controlled by Spain! And for a much longer time before that, it was where various tribes lived.

>>"Aztlan is a state of mind for some people. It's a point in history. For some it's a political place. For some it's a separate nation," said Armando Navarro, chairman of UC Riverside's Ethnic Studies Department, whose views have generated controversy. "It represents land lost. You are sitting in a city, Riverside, that used to be in Mexico. That gives us a sense of entitlement. This was our land."<<

So I guess this guy is not an American if he says this used to be our land? Remember this if you are thinking of sending your kid to UC Riverside.

>>During the Chicano rights movement of the 1960s, Aztlan became a powerful rallying cry for militants who spoke of a reconquista, or reconquest, of the U.S. Southwest, turning it into an independent homeland for Latinos.<<

Yeah, that's not racist.

>>That feeling may stem from Mexico's huge territorial losses after its defeat in the Mexican-American War. In 1848, it signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ceding California, Utah and Nevada, and parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming to the United States.<<

Mexico lost a war. It signed a treaty. DONE. END OF STORY. THIS IS AMERICAN LAND.

>>Demographer Wayne Cornelius said he had seen little evidence that immigrants are looking to take back anything.<<

Right, and Neo-Nazis don't want to take over anything, either.

>>Over the decades its name has been tacked onto Latino organizations such as MEChA — Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan — which has more than 300 chapters at U.S. colleges. The group has been attacked by those who claim its 1969 "El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan" is a separatist call for reconquest.

"Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans," the plan said. "We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent."

MEChA leaders say it is a historical document from a more radical time distorted by critics who focus on a few lines while missing the broader picture.<<

Okay, so you'd be willing to replace it with a new document, then?

>>"It is a real place. It is also a cry from young Chicanos in America who go to school and never hear about their ancestry," said Cecilio Orozco, a retired professor of education at Cal State Fresno, who spent 27 years exploring the rivers and canyons of the American Southwest in search of Aztlan.<<

If you are Spanish and want to know about "your" ancestry, go to Spain. If you are Mexican and want to know about "your" ancestry, go to Mexico. In America, we focus on American history, which one of tribes and European colonization, followed by independence and development with a flood of LEGAL immigrants. People of European descent founded the U.S.A. That's a fact. If you don't like that, tough. You can leave, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.