Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

The Supreme Court issued a judgment on the Exxon Valdez case. For those of you born after the Exxon Valdez accident a quick refresher. A humongous oil tanker, owned by guess who, was skippered by a relapsed alcoholic, Joe Hazelwood. With a full load, the tanker pushed off at night, with the skipper sleeping it off in his cabin, and the third officer conning the ship out a narrow channel. He got confused in the dark and hit a rock, ripping a big leak in the hull. Most of the cargo leaked out and made one god awful mess. It killed the fish, fouled the beaches, killed the birds and did a lot of other damage. This happened 19 years ago.
This evening the Supreme Court issued a judgment on this case. In the 19 years of legal delay one fifth of the original plaintiffs have died of old age. You don't ever get justice from the US courts, you die of old age first. Lawyers got 19 years of employment.

Usenet killed by Time Warner

Shed a tear for Usenet. It is one of the oldest parts of the internet, as old as email. The world wide chat room. In the old days computer geeks swapped programming tips and software work arounds on Usenet. Communities of real experts formed groups to discuss every subject under the sun, technology, politics, history, literature, religion, cooking, carpentry, writing, and many more. In the 80's and 90's much good information and humor was available there on. Being an original part of the internet, created in a more reasonable age, Usenet had no security. Anyone could sign on and say what ever he liked. The spammers got their start on Usenet but a hard hitting combination of system administrators pretty much drove the spammers off. CancelMoose was a famous anti spammer capable of making any post disappear with a few keystrokes.
Then the trolls moved in. They posted provocative messages which were outrageously successful at lighting off flame wars. The signal to noise ratio dropped to the point that serious individuals got tired of sorting thru the flames looking for serious content.
Usenet was never pre installed on computers, the user had to be technically savvy enough to configure his web brower to receive Usenet messages. Between the difficulty of getting onto Usenet and the infestation of trolls the serious users disappeared. Yesterday the lid of the coffin slammed shut. TimeWarner stopped carrying Usenet. Rest in Peace.

Obama finds his Karl Rove

Low key, young looking David Plouffe has been Barack Obama’s campaign manager since the beginning of 2007. He refuses interviews and attempts to keep his name and his family’s names out of the press. Barack Obama has heaped praise upon him. Plouffe is credited with the strategy of contesting all the minor state caucuses, which gave him the slight, but unbeatable edge in delegate count that Hillary never overcame. The caucus states are decided by a very small number of active party members. It wasn’t too difficult to recruit enough new voters to swamp the caucuses with Obama supporters. In most cases Obama was able to win all or nearly all the delegates, unlike the hotly contested primary states where Democratic Party rules split the delegates between the two contenders.

Battleground States

I'm looking at a very interesting electoral map of the US. It shows the solid republican states, the solid democratic states and the tossup (battleground) states. The Republicans own a solid strip of middle west states, going from Texas up to North Dakota, plus the old confederacy. The Democrats can count on California, Illinois, New York, New England and Maryland. The electoral votes are evenly split, 150 democrat, 153 GOP, 235 swing votes.
Should be a hotly contested election. New Hampshire, unlike the rest of New England, is a battleground state.

Kay Bailey Hutchinson vs Ed Markey on ABC

George Stephanopolis had republican Hutchinson debating democrat Markey on his Sunday morning pundit show. The guy doing the labels managed to promote Markey to senator (he is truly just a US rep from Massachusetts). Hutchinson came out for doing something real about the fuel price spike, namely drilling for oil and building more nuclear power plants. Markey tried to explain the great fuel price spike was Bush's fault. Didn't bother to explain just what Bush had done to cause the great price spike, but he was very positive that it was all Bush's fault. Then Markey went on to explain the need for government subsidies for "alternate" energy. According to Markey nothing gets down unless subsidized by the taxpayers. Like ethanol, which gets subsidies, tariff protection, and a federal law requiring addition of 10% ethanol to all motor gasoline. The corn farmers love it. Price of corn passed $7 a bushel the other day. It was $3.50 two years ago.
America has been the land of problem fixing since George Washington's day. Got a problem, we will invent a solution. Are we short of fuel? Fine, lets produce more. And lets work on fuel, the kind you can put in your furnace or your car. "Alternate" energy doesn't work in either place. The republicans have it right, more fuel production is the answer to the great fuel price spike.

Tanker Tangle

Boo Boo. Major Boo Boo. The General Accountability Office, GAO, just declared the USAF jet tanker competition was unfair, and ought to be redone. That's gonna set the program back another year, and soak up more millions of dollars redoing all the paperwork. Plus generate more hard feelings no matter whether Airbus or Boeing gets the contract in the end. No wonder SecDef Gates fired the Air Force civilian head and chief of staff last month. This is a disgrace to the Air Force. Once upon a time I was an Air Force officer. I used to look back with some pride on my service. That's harder to do now.
The tanker selection is not rocket science. It's just buying off-the-shelf jet transport planes, and replacing the seats with fuel tanks. Deciding between Airbus and Boeing is something the commercial airlines have figured out how to do. If Delta and Southwest can pick between them why can't USAF? Why cannot USAF have some Air Force Manual on airplane buying, and comply with it?
Were the Air Force officers on the selection board so unprofessional as to take out personal grudges on the bidders? And the senior Air Force leadership let them do it? Reading between the lines in Aviation Week one gets the impression that Boeing had pissed off a number of Air Force people.
Why did the Air Force ask Boeing to bid a small aircraft and Airbus to bid a big one? And then cite the advantages of large size after selecting Airbus? There are obvious advantages to big planes and to small planes, and after operating jet tankers for half a century, the Air Force ought to be able to decide which size tanker best suits their needs. The request for proposal should have specified the aircraft size.
In fact, Airbus and Boeing jet transports are so similar that passengers are hard pressed to tell which one they are flying in. The only real selection issue is price. The hungriest company will offer the best price. The competing price quotes did not appear in Aviation Week, let alone the clueless MSM. Did the Air Force keep the price secret? Does the Air Force even care what the price is?
The Air Force officers responsible for this bungle should be disciplined, and they oughta outsource the next selection to the commercial airlines.

How much oil is offshore?

Today McCain and President Bush came out in favor of exploring for oil off the US coasts. They cited oil reserves of 10 billion barrels and up. Bringing that amount of oil onto the market would make a serious reduction in the price of gasoline.
Barack Obama opposes off shore drilling. He doesn't think there is enough oil out there to make a difference.
Barack Obama is a nice guy and all, but he isn't the right guy to ask about the size of oilfields. I want to hear what ExxonMobil, Atlantic Richfield, Gulf, BP, Chevron and the rest of them think. If the majors want to spend the humungous sums of money needed to bring in an offshore field, that means they think there is oil in it. If the majors want to drill it, they think there is oil down there. When big oil, who has been risking money on drilling for 100 years now, wants to bet on a gusher, I'll put my money down alongside of theirs. Barack Obama is just a politician, and he doesn't know oil like the real oil guys do.
I can't put alternate energy into my car or my furnace. I need the real thing.