What good is a ten year budget forcast?

I notice the Obamanauts have suddenly started talking about the ten year budget, and crowing about the wonderful deficit reductions to come ten years from now. Does any one really believe that predictions for ten years from now mean anything? Or is the ten year talk merely a way to obscure how bad the numbers for this year are? Like predicting the budget deficit in ten years will be less than next year and claiming that is a "reduction".
Honesty requires us to talk about this year's budget, not the imaginary future budget.

Tim Geithner, Master of evasion

Geithner was on the Stephanopolis talk show this morning. He talked and talked but didn't say much. He only mentioned a number once (he thinks he has $130 billion of TARP money left to spend). The rest was the vague motherhood and apple pie stuff that doesn't tell us taxpayers what Treasury is going to do to fix Great Depression II. He didn't offer any real reasons for pouring money down the AIG rathole. He appears to think bank failures are bad, and even the most brain dead zombie bank should be given more taxpayer bailout to continue operations. He still believes in the extremely rosy Obama predictions of 4% economic growth in a year. He made no mention of anti trust action to break up or prevent the formation of banks too large to fail. He hopes the toxic asset program will work, even after the mau-mauing of AIG. Lots of hope and change, not much concrete planning.

Words of the Weasel Part 10

"Invest". Used by democrats when they mean "spend".

Laser hits 100Kw mark.

Northrup Grumman's Joint High Power Solid State Laser demo hit 105.5 Kw using seven slab laser amplifier chains to produce a single beam. In tests the laser operated at full power for 5 minutes. It's electrically powered and has a 20% conversion efficiency. That means it needs 500Kw of electricity input to make 100Kw of laser beam. Although 500Kw sounds like a lot, especially for a truck borne system, such a generator could be driven by a 700 hp diesel engine.
By the way, has anyone else noticed that every DoD project is named "Joint" this or that. Joint Strike Fighter, Joint Combat Pistol, Joint Belt Buckle, etc. Can interservice rivalry still live?

A picture is worth 1000 words. Graphic Deficits

Good post here with scary graphs of the Obama deficit.

I heard Obama saying things that ain't so

This evening Obama said the deficit he inherited from Bust was 3 trillion dollars. No so, Bush was running about a half a trillion. Then he said his budget cut the deficit in half. Not so, his budget deficit is going to be 2-3 trillion a year, which is 4 to 6 times the Bush deficits.
Then he said the solution to Great Depression II was education, health care and green energy. Not so. The US has college graduates driving taxi cabs, and the best (and most expensive) health care in the world. US energy needs call for more nuclear power plants, off shore drilling, shale oil development, not windmills and solar cells.

The electric grid, need for smartness thereof

Wired Magazine is pushing for spending money on the national electric grid. They claim the existing grid (transmission line network) is worn out, old fashioned, and hindering the progress toward a green future. Clearly more porkulus money is required to bring the system up to modern greenie standards.
They go on to rave about clever electronic boxes that monitor this and that and allow consumers to see how much juice they are using.
Actually, the transmission grid is there to keep customers lights on if/when a generator fails. The generators are connected together by transmission lines, and if one fails, power from neighboring generators flows into the affected area to keep the lights on. With a few exceptions, like the great blackout of 1965, the grid works well. The grid only needs capacity to flow enough power to support one or two downed generator plants, say 1 or 2 gigawatts.
The grid does not have capacity to route 100 gigawatts from the midwest to the east coast. Line losses grow the farther the electricity travels, and 400 miles is about as far as is practical. Losses are set by basic physics and no amount of R&D is going to lower the resistivity of aluminum or raise the voltage at which air breaks down and permits a lightening bolt to leap from wire to ground. 400 miles is enough to bring power from Niagara to New York City or from Quebec Hydro to New England. It ain't enough to ship Iowa windmill power to Boston. No amount of porkulus money will make transmission lines work over that distance.