Cats of War

This one is funny.

That $4 billion oil industry tax break

Obama has been running around and running his mouth about a $4 billion tax break for the oil industry. Unfortunately Obama never actually says just what this tax break might be. Some net surfing suggests that he might be talking about Section 119, the Domestic Manufacturing deduction. This is a deal that allows all companies (and individuals too) to deduct 9% of their earning from domestic (US based) manufacturing, construction, movie production, and a few other opaque things, one of which apparently is drilling for oil.
This is a fairly general US income tax loop hole drilled back in 2004. Reading the opaque language of the statute hints that the intent of the statute was to give a tax break to domestic manufacturing to encourage investment at home, rather than in China. Just about every kinda company is eligible, it's by no means an oil industry tax break. It must have been buried pretty deep in the 2004 tax cut law, I never heard of it before.
Obama gives no indication of what he wants to do, close the loophole (raise taxes) for every one, or just oil companies.
At a time when cutting spending is the serious problem, why is Obama touting a chicken feed tax hike on the oil industry? Does he think the voters can be distracted from their quest for spending cuts by promising tax hikes on unpopular industries?

Egypt to go Islamist

Apparently Egypt is going the way everyone, yours truly included, predicted. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist extremist group older than, more extreme than, and just as violent as, Al Quada, is going to control the Egyptian parliament. This comes from an Egyptian who is likely to become president, which means he has a fairly good idea of what's going down. The Muslim Brotherhood has been around since the 1920's when it worked to drive the British out of Egypt. It has survived severe prosecution by Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarik. They are the group responsible for the assassination of Anwar Sadat. They are survivors, and they are the only organized political party in Egypt. There is nobody to resist them.
Once in power, the Muslim Brotherhood will make trouble for Israel, impose Sharia law on the population, prosecute the Christians (10% of the population) and team up with Iran to cause trouble for the United States.
Egypt is important. It is the center of the Arab world. Cairo has the same prestige in the Arab world as New York City has in the real world. Egypt sets the tone, writes the books, makes the movies, prints the newspapers that go all over the Arab world.
Aren't you so glad that Obama called for Mubarik's ouster?

Soldering Iron

I needed a real soldering iron (150 Watts) to do some brass bar stock. These are pretty much obsolete, no store up here carries them anymore. You can get soldering guns in that wattage, but the biggest irons are little 30 watters intended for semiconductor work.
So, what do you do when it is not sold in stores? Simple, E-bay. Some one on the Bay had a carton of cheap ass 150 Watt irons from China. Couple a bucks for the iron, $9 shipping and handling. So I ordered one. It came in after a week.
It's Chinese, and it's cheap ass. The packaging has some amusing Chinglish on it.
"It's normal for heating elements to have a slight fever with smoke after the first electricity, they'll disappear after 10 minutes." "Thermo elements and iron head are strictly prohibited to be demolished or replaced when iron is in electricity." "Mada in China."

Unregulated Tattoo Ink

Monday must be NPR's day of woe. After the autism piece, they ran a second piece about the dangers of unregulated ink used to tattoo humans. They dropped the amazing statistic that 30% of Americans have tattoos (really?) and then bemoaned the lack of government regulation of tattoo ink, and by implication regulation of the entire tattoo business, probably with an eye to shutting it down.
Now I don't hold with tattoos myself, I think they are dumb looking, and likely to cause infection, but if others want to tattoo them selves, it's none of my business, and none of the government's business.

The rise of Autism

Long piece on NPR this morning claiming that autism is much more widespread than thought. They did a study in a Korean city and declared that better than 2% of the children in the city were autistic. They went on to explain that a large number of cases were discovered even though the unlucky children had been doing well in school and not in difficulty.
The piece did not explain how these "hidden" cases of autism were detected, nor how bad the situation was.
I reflect upon a couple of young boys I know, who seem like perfectly ordinary boys to me, but whose mothers both informed me that the they were autistic.
Is autism becoming the new Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), a diagnosis beloved of teachers, because it releases them from responsibility for the child's academic difficulties?

Leaf Day

In the high mountain passes of New Hampshire, the trees are putting out leaves, finally. Hurray.
Let's hope it doesn't snow on them.