Price of Gasoline

You must have noticed that the price of gas is pushing toward $4 a gallon, maybe $5 this summer. The MSM always follows this downer news item with the observation that Obama cannot do anything about the price of gas.
That's not true. Obama could resume issuing drilling permits in the Gulf. He could have OK'ed the Keystone XL pipeline. He could authorize oil exploration in the "Arctic National Wildlife Refuge" (a barren piece of tundra on the shore of the Arctic ocean). He could stop shutting down gasoline refineries in the Caribbean. He could issue leases to develop oil shale in Colorado. He could junk the boutique gasoline blending rules that prevent selling gasoline across state lines. Obama thinks we will all be happy on solar and wind power after he drives the price of oil thru the roof. He wants to price oil out of the reach of citizens so they will have no choice but to go to "alternate energy". He's making progress toward that goal.

Flicks

Over on PJ Media we have Whittle and Klavan discussing the sad state of the Oscars. Both of these guys are movie buffs, and both admitted that they had NOT seen most/all of the Oscar nominated movies. In short, this years crop of flicks was too boring for them to watch.
Whittle brought up the pacing of today's CGI based flick. Too intense. The classic flicks would start off slow, follow the hero around, meet his associates, ride around the ranch, get acquainted stuff. The movie would work up a a climax (a stampede, a car chase, a battle, and then end. Whittle says the modern flicks just go from one climax scene to another, non stop action, and the audience doesn't have time, or breath, to take much of it in.
Whittle is onto something here. And it was Raiders of the Lost Ark that started this trend. Just action scene piled upon action scene.

Mitt.

Mitt has some problems. First and foremost, he hasn't told us what he would do if elected. No campaign promises. Mitt apparently believes that the less he says the better. Talking substance only makes you enemies, never friends, so he has decided to say as little as possible, while standing four square for motherhood and apple pie.
Second, it should be apparent to anyone that Mitt is not going to go to bat for all those favorite wedge issues like gay marriage, abortion, birth control, gun control, and you can fill in the rest. Mitt is a business man and he will do whatt he can about jobs and the economy, but he won't mix it up in the social issues area.
But Mitt is acceptable to the middle of the road independents, who actually control the election. Rick Santorum still looks like a right wing crazy to the independents.
Me, I want to win the election, four more years of Obama will bring the US down to where Greece is.

Words of the Weasel, part 27

"closing tax loopholes" actually means "tax hike".
"Balanced deficit reduction" actually means "tax hike".

Do I believe this?

Prominent bloggers are suggesting that Obama kicked off the Catholic contraception furor just to distract voters and Lame Stream Media from the really awful lack of jobs in he country , and the just as awful Federal debt.

Nortel Hacked

Nortel Networks, a famous but defunct Canadian maker of telecom equipment (central office switches to be precise) was hacked ten years ago, really thoroughly hacked. Their customer lists, payroll, product plans, email, everything, had been a wide open book to the hackers for at least ten years. The hackers buried rootkits on Nortel computers, which are probably still active, and moving on to infect the companies that bought up parts of now dead Nortel. This was a cover story on the Wall St Journal the other day. And the story has turned up on the Web.
Not discussed. Did the hacking have anything to do with Nortel going bankrupt? Did Nortel's competitors learn what Nortel was bidding on a job and then under bid them? Did Nortel's competitors read Nortel's plans and duplicate Nortel's equipment?
Few suits understand or care about computer security. Suits need to understand that if the competition knows everything you know, you are gonna loose the business.

Alternative Energy

NHPR was pushing this one. Wood pellets. They are locally grown, so if you heat with wood pellets, the money stays in NH, rather than going to the Middle East. Groovy. Then they gave some numbers. Unusual that, especially as the numbers are unfavorable.
NHPR gave the price of a wood pellet furnace at $16,000 (WOW). The pellets only cost $243 a ton, and a ton of wood pellets gives the same heat as 125 gallons of oil.
A standard oil burner only costs $2000, new, installed. So how long will it take to get your money back on a $16,000 wood pellet furnace?
I use about 800 gallons of furnace oil a winter at $4 a gallon, total $3200 . In wood pellets that would be 6.4 tons at $243 a ton, total $1552.2. Let N be the number of years to pay off the VERY pricy wood pellet burner.
Cost of oilburner + $3200 * N = cost of woodburner + 1552.2 * N.
Solve for N (high school algebra)
N = 8.449 years.

That's right, it takes 8 and a half years to pay off the wood pellet furnace. That's a long time. I wonder if the price of wood pellets will stay at $243 a ton for the next 8.5 years.