August 2008 Archives

There's some whining over here by someone who doesn't really know what the military does.

It's not all about bullets. Last time, FEMA sucked, and the military did great. So if Bush is sending the military to deal with Gustav, that could be a good thing.

Anyways, here's what I wrote in a comment there:

Sergeants worry about tactics. Colonels worry about strategy. Generals worry about logistics. I find most of you article woefully ignorant about what the military actually does.

In the wake of a natural disaster, you want a hot meal, a cot, a blanket, and a tent. There is no one on earth better equipped to deliver those things then the US military, because winning wars is about exactly those same things.

Meanwhile, FEMA is mostly about the financial aspects of a disaster.

In other words, get off your civilian high horse. Getting the military involved early to deal with what could be a cat 5 hurricane could be exactly the right thing to do. The military has more knowledge about transportation, health care, food, and transportation than any civilian agency.

In short the guys at FEMA are bankers, the guys in the military are truck drivers. In a natural disaster, you need truck drivers, not bankers.

Another way to put it. The Army has to deliver a hot meal, a cot, etc. while people are shooting at them. So what's a little wind and rain. :-)

As I watch the Democrats tie themselves in knots over the selection of Sarah Palin, I’ve come to realize that it was a masterstroke.

Palin has been in politics longer than Obama, since 1992 compared to 1997 for the One.

Critcizing Sarah critcizes Obama and she’s at the bottom of the ticket. Like I’ve said before, the VP is the third nipple of American politics.

Plus you’re talking about a woman governor with 80-90% approval rating in a state with more men then women.

Perhaps the pick is just a unique example of affirmative action: she has twice the experience of a man, because it’s twice ad hard to be a woman politician.

Anyways in a way, this pick makes me think even more of McCain because if he can outmanuever the Democrats like this, imagine what he can do with Putin.

According to this analysis Obama/Clinton are mainstream Democrats, Mc Cain is closer to the center than either of them, and Bush is way out there.

Here's the chart:

This chart is interesting in a number of ways. First, the Democrats are more alike ideologically, because their curve is higher and narrower, compared to the Republicans (if you go to the site, you'll see that's especially true of House Democrats). Second, there is a huge difference between members of the two parties. You might think that there would be more people in the center, but that doesn't seem to be the way politics works. The same site has some charts on that very topic here.

Perhaps there is some truth to the idea of a house-divided. If we have a Democratic Congress and a Republican President (or vice versa, not being partisan here), perhaps they can average out to the center?

If you’re walking down the street with a megaphone yelling “This is what a police state looks like.”

You don’t actually live in a police state. They don’t allow that in police states.

I'm sure McCain wouldn't have approved of this message:

When the Washington Post writes a Where's the Beef? editorial.

My mom, who was the shop steward for her union always said there were two things wrong with education in America;

1. The District Office (in other words, the bureaucracy.
2. The Teachers Union

The problem is, you can't get rid of just one. Looks like the Democrats are are getting closer to reality, given the fact that the running joke at Democratic conventions is "Where do you teach?"

The Republicans always talk about getting rid of bad teachers, like tenure is the problem. The reality is that bad teachers don't rock the boat, good teachers do. So its the good teachers who get written up.

I'm guessing that Obama chose correctly in choosing Biden. The Vice President is the third-nipple of American politics.

Something best hidden away.

If Biden just results in everyone focusing back on Obama again, that's probably fine.

Highlight: Unlike some other pussified states, in Arizona the bars are open on election day.

Seems that in some states they used to offer free drinks on election day to encourage you to vote for one candidate or another.

When they tried that in Arizona, the cowboys would just go from bar to bar until they were so drunk they forgot to vote.

So I was telling my wife about the Ayers-Obama thing. She asked me “You’re always telling me stories about Obama getting caught in this lie or that lie. What’s up with that?”

I dunno. Seems like Obama is always getting caught telling some lie where it only matters because he told a lie. If he’d said something like “If you want to get anywhere in Politics on Chicago, you have to kiss Will Ayers ass.” No one would have said any thing more about it. But by lying, it becomes news.

A friend of mine asked me today about McCain since he knew I lived in Arizona.

My friend commented, "I used to think he was OK, but now he seems kind of crazy.".

I talked about the fact that I had run into him before in our local nursery while his wife was buying some plants, and that he had been very approachable, and very knowledgeable about the issues, and that he always knew both sides of the issue, and could show why he was on such and such a side of the issue, based on certain basic principles of his. That you get the feeling that McCain has certain core values, and that he makes decisions based on that. But also that he can change is mind as facts change.

Then I asked him, "Ok, so why does he seem crazy?"

"Well," he said, "it seems like he used to always complain about negative campaigning, and now it seems like he's been doing more of it lately. It's like there are two McCains."

"Ah," I said, "Well, that's absolutely true. But I blame not McCain, but both the media and Obama for that. McCain early on offered to do town meeting after town meeting with Obama. Obama turned him down. So now McCain has to campaign, and frankly, the media wants to cover the horse race. From the media's point of view, the ideal presidential campaign looks more like the World Wrestling Federation then anything else. So if McCain wants to get any media attention, he has to say negative things about Obama. It's how the system works. He hates it, he tried to change the rules, but he failed, in part because the other candidate wouldn't go along. Meanwhile, he does mostly town meetings with his campaigns. Sometimes, at those meetings, people stump him because they can talk about anything. Like I saw him get stumped when someone asked him while Medicaid pays Viagra, but not birth control pills. But now he's the one that brings that up."

"I can totally see how he's forced into that by the media," he said.

You know, as citizens, we get the campaigns we deserve. The way the Presidential campaigns should really work is that rather then have the candidates blow millions on these stupid 30-second ads that don't tell you anything, every other Saturday, a candidate should get 1 hour of free TV time to make their pitch. That Sunday, the other candidate should get a half hour to rebut the candidate. Then they should swap. Once/month, there should be a town hall meeting for at least 2 hours.

That's what we should be doing. Instead, we get this.

Michael Totten is in Georgia

Nothing like non-mainstream-media eyewitness reporting.

Every so often, Ann Coulter makes me laugh:

This week, Barack Obama's challenge is to select a running mate who's young, hip, and whose accomplishments in life don't overshadow Obama's. Allow me to suggest Kevin Federline.

Yow, that's bitchy.

Listen to Micheal Moore

So let's see. By the time he was nominated, Clarence Thomas had worked in the Missouri Attorney General's office, served as an Assistant Secretary of Education, run the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and sat for a year on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation's second most prominent court. Since his "elevation" to the High Court in 1991, he has also shown himself to be a principled and scholarly jurist.

Meanwhile, as he bids to be America's Commander in Chief, Mr. Obama isn't yet four years out of the Illinois state Senate, has never held a hearing of note of his U.S. Senate subcommittee, and had an unremarkable record as both a "community organizer" and law school lecturer. Justice Thomas's judicial credentials compare favorably to Mr. Obama's Presidential résumé by any measure. And when it comes to rising from difficult circumstances, Justice Thomas's rural Georgian upbringing makes Mr. Obama's story look like easy street.

From the WSJ.

Hat Tip: Strange Maps

WSJ Article about people building fusion reactors in their basements.

So the Obamanauts are trying to spread the idea that McCain somehow listened to the questions ahead of time at the forum over this weekend.

Guys, both candidates knew the topics ahead of time.

From the McCain campaign's letter to NBC:

2.) In his official correspondence to both campaigns, Pastor Rick Warren provided both candidates with information regarding the topic areas to be covered, which Barack Obama acknowledged during the forum when asked about Pastor Warren's idea of an emergency plan for orphans and Obama said, "I cheated a little bit. I actually looked at this idea ahead of time, and I think it is a great idea;" 3.) John McCain actually requested that he and Barack Obama do the forum together on stage at the same time, making these kinds of after-the-fact complaints moot.

I notice that on DailyKos, even the Kosmonauts are unconvinced McCain cheated.

I'm going to throw in a personal anecdote here. I have run into McCain in our local nursery when he and his wife came up to buy some plants for their home in Sedona (I live in Flagstaff). He was gracious, polite, and knew his stuff when I talked to him. Talking to him about some things changed my mind about some issues, because he knew both sides of the issue.

Obama didn't do as well because he hasn't spent the last 20 years doing this kind of thing. End of story.

Great Article on Powerline about the New York Times screwing up the math about Corporate Taxes

You know, I see that kind of thing all the time. Obama generalizes a 3% reduction in gas usage by inflating your tires to everyone in the US, not realizing that only helps if you're driving on flat tires. (One of my 2-year-old cars auto-senses, so I never drive it on flat tires.)

Ernie pointed out that oil is partially a function of the dollar which is a reasonable insight, but the dollar hasn't fallen to 10% of the Euro, demand vs. supply is still a big issue.

However, Ernie is wrong, as is Obama, about drilling not helping.

From FactCheck.org today:

We are issuing a split decision in the Obama vs. McCain dispute over whether proper tire inflation could save as much oil as expanded offshore drilling is likely to produce.

We find that proper tire inflation could save more than a billion gallons of fuel per year and do it several years sooner than expanded drilling could produce a single drop. McCain has exaggerated by representing Obama's suggestion as a silly notion or implying that it constitutes his entire energy policy.

But we also figure that expanded offshore drilling is projected to produce far more oil eventually than can be saved by proper tire inflation – nearly three times as much even by the conservative estimate of government experts, and more than 10 times as much if an industry-endorsed estimate is correct. And even taking into account additional fuel savings from tune-ups, which Obama also mentioned, he greatly exaggerated.

However, part of the reasons the Democrats are saying it would take 10 years for oil to show up, is that it would probably be true under a Democratic administration, because bringing new oil online means a lot of environmental impact statements, government review, etc. A Republican administration could make that happen in 2 years if they wanted.

So McCain/Obama are both shading the truth a bit on this issue, but the reality is that the Democrats don't want to drill because they want to break the national addiction to gasoline. McCain wants to break our addiction to foreign gasoline, but ease into it, because oil, unfortunately, underlies lots of our economy. The Gas tax hits the poor more then anyone else..

And the laws of physics aren't in our favor at the moment.

We can only hope that this Blacklight Power stuff is for real.

This is based on the difference between the Obama search percentages in a state and the McCain search percentages in a state over the last 30 days. It's not super accurate, because Obama leads in searches by 74/44 on whatever weird scale Google uses. So I'm subtracting two percentages that are in two different scales

But its fun to look at!

Obama's Mindshare since 2004, according to Google:

The world:

Kenya wins with 100% of the searches.

The US:

Obama US, last 30 days:

Here's McCain:

Iraq is coming in at 66% of America's 100%.

The US for McCain:

Last 30 days:

It would be interesting if someone could compare these maps to the battleground states...

over at the WSJ

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.

So I did that hand gesture to my wife and I asked her, "What do you think it means?"

She said, "Asshole".

After 5 minutes of rolling around on the floor laughing, with her saying, "what? What?" I told her:

That's the new "I am an Obamanaut" sigh.

She said: "See, I was right."

Over here at OpinionatedBastard, we heartily endorse the Obamanaut sign.

You can compare McCain's playlist to Obama's here.

Weirdest pick?
GT: I couldn’t tell if it was cool or creepy for Obama to have “Yes We Can.” Maybe he’s in love with himself and wants to hear his speeches over and over as collaged by will.i.am.

From the WSJ:

Just weeks ago the fragile commodities markets could be sparked ahead by a mere hint of bad news. That market psychology has reversed, with Monday's action showing that even war can't halt oil's current retreat.

Inside the commodity-trading pits and brokerage houses, the conversation isn't whether prices are pulling back in the near term, but how far and for how long.

That was made clear as markets digested increasingly violent images of conflict between Russia and the oil crossroads of Georgia. Oil prices fell to as low as $112.72 a barrel before settling at $114.45 a barrel, down 75 cents,

I kept wondering, "am I going to see a Blue Screen of Death"?

It was there.

Perhaps I should have asked myself, when, not if.

Georgia has a blog.

Here's Obama's New Ad claiming that McCain is a bigger celebrity then Obama. (I'm like so totally fooled, Obama).

First off, the ad is lame. McCain's ads were funnier. Obama's is just whiny.

Second, do they realize that unlike McCain's ad, which just asked a question Is he ready to lead? Obama's ad is a negative attack ad.

Here's McCain's Ad.

My nightmare scenario:

Someone bombs the pipeline in Georgia, causing oil prices to skyrocket even more. (It will be interesting to see what oil is selling at on Monday).

Russia is the #2 producer of oil in the world, after Saudi Arabia.

So oil shoots through the roof.

In 2 years, the fucking Middle East has enough money to buy controlling interest in every corporation in America. They do so. We'll have sold ourselves into slavery.

Welcome to the Caliphate.

We need to drill, build nuclear power plants, invest in Bussard's Fusion reactor, whatever.

Because the only difference between my nightmare scenario and the Georgian pipeline NOT getting bombed, is 6 years. The Middle East is already raking in 1.8 Trillion/year, they can buy America in 6 years.

I dunno what the guys over at 538 are thinking. Whenever Democratic candidates start saying that they're going to get a lot of youth votes, and that youth votes are undercounted, that means they've lost.

Yeah, ok, if you were 14-17 in the last election, maybe you had an excuse for not voting. But if you didn't vote in Bush/Kerry, you're not going to vote in McCain/Obama.

You get hugs from smokin' hot girls

The McCain campaign pointed out today in response to an Obama ad that they weren't the first to run a negative ad, and their strategy was suddenly clear.

So first, McCain releases the Obama Love video, calling the media on their infatuation with Obama.

Then they run the "Celebrity" and "One" ads, which actually, aren't negative. Instead, they're actually sort of "The Emperor Has No Clothes" style of ads. As others have noticed, they show a lot of pictures of Obama, and they're good pictures. He's smiling, he's in front of adoring crowds, etc. It's actually surprising. But then they ask one question.

Is he ready to lead?

Suddenly, the media fawning over Obama goes from a plus, to a negative. Being in the tank for Obama will actually make Obama seem weaker, not stronger.

So McCain has managed to neutralize Obama's major advantage. The Media.

This is the man I want planning our strategy in the Middle East.

So the Washington Times ran a survey article about Obama jokes.

Far be it for me to say that Obama and the Democratic Party are snobbish, elitist, humorless dweebs....when I can just cut/paste quotes from the article that demonstrate the point perfectly.

"The most effective weapon against a political opponent is humor, especially mocking," said Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh. "When it gets picked up by late-night comedians, it becomes part of the mainstream and reaches even more voters more effectively."

One Democrat said the McCain tack is working. "To a certain extent the ads are having some effect," said Tom Daschle, a former Senate majority leader and an Obama adviser.

Though if you want to read real vitrol, just go over to the Huffington Post and read a few comments.

Hey, DNC: Running for President is a Trial by Ordeal. If your guy can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen!

Presidential candidates only get 1/10th the mockery a sitting president gets. Rent Obama a sense of humor.

I sent about 3 different letters to the McCain campaign suggesting this.

The Virtual Town Hall Meeting

No need to thank me, John. Just as long as you turn the One, into the "Second Place".

So Obama has responded to $4/gallon gasoline and the economic slowdown with possibly the stupidest idea imaginable. A $500/person tax refund, funded by a windfall profit tax on those evil oil companies. (It's $1,000 if you're married.)

I can't believe anyone would be so stupid as to repeat an idea that didn't work during the Carter administration.

First off, oil companies may be raking in record profits, but that doesn't mean that they are super-profitable. I've already covered how Exxon is only making about 10% profit. It's 10% profit on a bigger number, so the total number is bigger, but their profit margins are still low. That's because Exxon still has to buy some of their oil from the Middle East. It's not Exxon raking in $119/barrel, its Saudi Arabia. Exxon might be making more money on domestic oil, but only if they own the oil fields.

Second, it would be a disaster. Per the Congressional Research Service:

Reinstating the windfall profit tax would reduce recent oil industry windfalls due to high crude and petroleum prices but could have several adverse economic effects.

Obama can read the same report, so the campaign quotes:

Therefore, a well designed mechanism can impose a fee on a small share of these windfall profits without affecting incentives for oil companies and without affecting the price of oil. Indeed, as the Congressional Research Service recently concluded: “[T]o the extent that a surtax on the corporate income of crude oil producers on their upstream operations could approximate such a [pure corporate profits] tax, this would not raise crude oil prices and would not increase petroleum imports in the short run. While the current corporate income tax is not a pure corporate profits tax, a surtax for oil companies would arguably be an administratively simple and economically effective way to capture estimated oil windfalls in the short run.

What that paragraph is trying to say is that the only way a Windfall profits tax could possibly work is if it was just an extra corporate income tax applied to the oil/gas industry. Which makes my scenario of Exxon buying Microsoft seem more likely. Of course, they omit the next sentence:

In the long run, such a tax is a tax on capital; it reduces the rate of return, thus reducing the supply of capital to the oil industry.

and they also ignore the conclusion:

In the long run however, all taxes distort resource allocation and even a corporate profit tax (either of the pure type or the surtax on the existing rates) would reduce the rate of return and reduce the flow of capital into the industry, adversely affecting domestic production and increasing imports.

In other words, we'll raise money in the short term, but in the long term, we're going to be even more dependent on Saudi Arabia. No doubt this would have an adverse affect on our economy, reducing the money available to the government in other ways. So it could easily be a net loss. (Shades of the Carter administration again)

The campaign also chose to omit the paragraph which preceeded it:

The $80 billion in gross revenues generated by the WPT between 1980 and 1988 was significantly less than the $393 billion projected. Due to the deductibility of the WPT against the income tax, cumulative net WPT revenues were about $38 billion, significantly less than the $175 billion projected. This report presents estimates of the amount of foregone oil production from 1980-1986 due to the WPT under three alternative supply price responses, reflecting three different assumptions about the price elasticity of the domestic oil supply function, a critical factor (statistic) in estimating lost oil output and increased import dependence. From 1980 to 1988, the WPT may have reduced domestic oil production anywhere from 1.2% to 8.0% (320 to 1,269 million barrels). Dependence on imported oil grew from between 3% and 13%. The tax was repealed in 1988 because (1) it was an administrative burden to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), (2) it was a compliance burden to the oil industry, (3) due to low oil prices, the tax was generating little or no revenues in 1987 and 1988, and (4) it made the United States more dependent on foreign oil. The depressed state of the U.S. oil industry after 1986 also contributed to the repeal decision.

In other words, it was an unmitigated disaster last time. It didn't raise the money it was supposed to, it increased our dependence on foreign oil, and it crippled our domestic oil companies. It was a stupid idea then, and a stupider idea now.

In the new flavor, its especially bizarre. Even if you think that gas/oil companies are evil, you have to realize that the cost of gas and oil are, to a large extent, a big factor of everything you buy. A Windfall Profits tax is going to make food and commuting more expensive. In essence, the Windfall Profits tax is going to fall most heavily on the poor. Having an extra $1,000 won't help, because everyone will be spending $3,000 more on gas...

I can only see only the following possible reasons why Obama would propose this:

• He's stupid. It's possible that Obama has bought into the whole Profit is Evil thing. Democrats have a tendency to view the economy as one large pie, with their stated goal to be to give everyone a fair share of that one pie. I'm all for economic justice, but the problem with that view is that the economy is really a collection of difference size pies. Rather then trying to get a bigger share of the one pie, what the Democrats really need to create more pies. So Obama could possibly think that by crushing the "evil" oil companies that everyone else will get a bigger share of the economy. What will actually happen is that the pie will shrink, and everyone will get a smaller share of the smaller pie.
• He's smart, but has another agenda. That is, he knows exactly what will happen, that it will drive up gas prices, and cripple domestic oil production if not our entire economy, but he's ok with that for some sort of misguided ecological reason. In other words, he buys into that whole whining thing about the US being only 5% of the population but 25% of the consumption, yadda, yadda, yadda. So he's going to make the US poorer instead of making other countries richer.
• He's cynical. He doesn't think it will actually pass, but he's trying to pander for votes on the left by saying "we'll tax those evil oil companies to help working families".

What do you think? Stupid, Cynical or Smart? Leave me a comment.

From the Huffington Post of all places.

John McCain is a complete and well-formed man. Barack Obama is completing himself. As he moves to fit what he perceives to be a right-of-center country, he distances himself from the simple and authentic passion of a young candidate who once pledged "Change We Can Believe In."

Read it here.

John McCain went to Sturgis for the Motorcycle rally.

Obama, not to be outdone, will be giving a speech at Folsom Street Fair.

Both crowds are known for wearing leather, but for vastly different reasons.

The whole "Windfall" thing makes no sense. The Oil companies aren't making enough money.

Read what they say here.

The McCain campaign is giving away "Obama Energy Plan" tire pressure gauges.

Pretty funny idea.

Get yours here!

Out of Exxon, Microsoft, Apple, and Intel, who has the greatest profit margins? Microsoft, at 29%. Exxon is the least profitable of those three companies.

Don't take my word for it:

Yahoo Finance Key Statistics: Intel

Yahoo Finance Key Statistics: Microsoft

Yahoo Finance Key Statistics: Apple

Yahoo Finance Key Statistics: Exxon/Mobil

Look for "Profit Margin".

Obama is going to give everyone $1000 and pay for it by taxing those evil oil companies! Not!

You know, originally, I was just kidding about Exxon buying Microsoft so that they would no longer be an oil company. I didn't really think Obama would really be as stupid as say, Jimmy Carter.

I was wrong.

Obama needs more time in the oven. Like 4-8 years...

Those hippie fascists in California are striking again.

Now they've banned fast foot restaurants in poor neighborhoods.

Hat Tip to Marginal Revolution