My internet blackout, Part 2

So, after the very nice Time Warner service man called, Trusty Desktop ran fine til bedtime. This morning, I powered him up, and lo and behold, it was just as broke, and broke the same way, as before the service guy arrived. Same deal, the laptop (Angry Pierre) worked and Trusty Desktop didn't. After a couple of hours of messing around, I finally disabled the Zone Alarm firewall. Presto, internet came back.
So, I used Add/Remove Programs to zap Zone Alarm for good. Turned on the less effective built in Windows firewall. In actual fact the Netgear router is a very good firewall, and hackers/crackers/spyware and such get stopped by the router. I checked the Zone Alarm logfile and it hadn't seen an attack since it had been installed. So, for now, bye bye Zone Alarm. Been running Zone Alarm for years and years, without trouble, but looks like it's broke now.

Fannie & Freddie

Ray Suarez was interviewing US Rep. Barney Frank on the news hour last night. Barney was defending the Fannie & Freddie bailout. They got into the history, and Barney was very firm that the entire disaster was caused by a lack of regulation, and of course he, the democratic party and the US house had pushed for appointment of a regulator. The evil Republicans in the Senate had failed to approve Barney's pet regulation bill, and so the Fannie & Freddie disaster was all the fault of Republicans.
A regulator was going to save Fannie & Freddie? A clueless back seat driver overseeing company management is going to raise their stock value, sell their bonds and prevent a wave of foreclosures? Maybe in Barney's universe. Barney is very smart, very liberal, Jewish, and from Brookline Masschusetts, a town that makes the People's Republic of Cambridge look conservative.
As it is, looks like Fannie and Freddie's $5 TRILLION dollars of debt is going to be added to the existing $9 TRILLION dollars of the existing federal debt. Scary. That's an unbalanced budget that will never quit.
The other option would be to tell the Fannie and Freddie bond holders that they won't get paid, they are out $5 TRILLION bucks. That will make a load of unhappy investors, pension funds, banks, builders, real estate brokers and every one in the housing business. Law suits will go on for 50 years. Without Fannie and Freddie, banks will have to relearn how to do mortgages and attract depositors, and mortgage money will be very hard to get. It will damage the credit of the United States, making it harder to sell US treasury bonds to the Chinese. All in all, the "let 'em crash" option is even scarier than absorbing $5 trillion of debt.

My broadband connection just came back

It was Thursday last week, I powered up my trusty desktop, and oops, no internet. So I did the usual thing, pull the plug to the cable modem and the Netgear router, and then plug 'em in again. No dice. Hmm, maybe the network is down? Sometime after lunch I decide to wade thru the voice mail hell that is calling for technical assistance. My first calls get to pleasant sounding but clueless young ladies at an overseas call center. Some persistence gets me through to the service center in Maine. The lady at the service center says the network is OK, and then she interrogates my modem remotely and it says it's OK, but "the receive signal is a little weak". We schedule a service call for Monday.
I decide to keep blogging on Word. Bloggable ideas are getting scarce, and if I don't write 'em down when they occur to me, I forget them.
Monday morning arrives. I decide to double check. I pull my daughter's discarded laptop out from under the bed and plug it directly into the router. Bingo, beatup laptop logs on immediately and I can catch up on Instapundit. Wow. maybe it isn't the cable modem stuff.
Trusty Desktop is connected via a wireless card. I had a cable built into the house, but I never used it, 'cause the electrician didn't crimp a connector on the end and I found I could buy the wireless card for less than the proper crimping tool for the RJ-45 connector used on LAN cables. I snip the connector off a spare LAN cable and splice it onto the cable to the desktop. Strip, twist together, solder, and insulate with heatshrink tubing. There is an industry standard for the color codes of the 8 wires inside LAN cables, you just have to match up the colors.
Plug the newly spliced cable in, go upstairs, and try the desktop again. The task bar icon shows "connected" on the wired LAN, and I can ping the router box. But, still can't get on the net. So I have one computer that gets on the net and a second one that won't. Arrgh.
About this time the Time Warner service guy pulls up in a van. He pulls a brand new cable modem out of his truck and installs it. The new modem is about half the size of the old one, and presumably has spiffier semiconductors inside it. It powers up and bingo, BOTH computers now can get on the net. Dunno how that happened, but it did.
Logic says that if one computer can get on the net, the cable modem is OK. So, either that ain't so, or the desktop just decided to stop being cranky, or something. Let's see how long things last.
So I posted the last few days of blog ideas a few minutes ago, and how it's time to catch up on the email.

Political talk that ain’t worth your time.

I watched a long TV discussion between Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the house, and E.J. Dionne, Washington Post columnist. Dionne would review various political ideas and classify them as “liberal” or “neo conservative”. He didn’t discuss the goodness or badness of the ideas, he just attempted to label the ideas he liked “liberal” and the ideas he didn’t like as “neo-conservative”. Newt did somewhat better, he did try to bring the debate around to real things, such as the decision to disband the Iraqi army, but Dionne wasn’t having any. He didn’t want to talk about the merits of ideas; he just wanted the viewers to agree with his ideas about good and bad. In short, Dionne was not willing to reach out to voters and citizens and appeal to their heads. He appeals to their partisanship.

So do all the TV talking heads who use the phrase “flip flop”. They are not attacking the ideas on the merits; they are accusing the speaker of going back on his sworn word. So does Obama when he rails against “Bush’s third term”. If he doesn’t like ideas, why not explain why he doesn’t like them?

Words of the Weasel, Pt 8

“Passed” or “passed away”. It’s all over the tube this weekend in connection with Tony Snow. Why can’t the TV people just say “died”?

They don’t do car ads they was they used to

I’m watching a short clip on “Speed” the car lover’s cable channel. The camera pans back and forth over a Ferrari 3300. The hood is raised, we see the fine Italian power plant, the manual transmission, the suspension parts, in short the nuts and bolts of this hot car. Then we get some shots on the road. For a point of difference, this particular Ferrari is painted grey, rather than the proper red, but the nondescript color lets the good lines of the styling show to advantage. Bottom line, after watching a 5 minute TV show/infomercial I am ready to own and drive a Ferrari.

The show cuts to commercial. A camera looks down on a blue car pulled into the gas pumps. We watch the fuel hose slip out of the fill pipe and slink down to let the air out of the rear tire. “Gas pumps hate us” “Chevrolet Cobalt” and “36 MPG” float across the screen. Cute, but it doesn’t sell the car to me, not the way the Ferrari piece sold that Ferrari. The top camera angle shows little of the vehicle. I’m left wondering “is that car

Wall Streeter opines upon the sub prime mortgage disaster

Ethan Penner, “a pioneer in real estate finance” shared his thinking with us on yesterday’s Wall St Journal op-ed page. He laments the fall of “securitization” and the business model for large sections of Wall St. He feels that credit rating agencies are completely capable of assessing the worth and risk of mortgage backed securities. Right there, we can see the difference between the Wall St world and the real world. A home mortgage is a sound investment only if the borrower[s] are both willing and capable to make their payments until the either they sell and move, or they pay the mortgage off. No way can a paper pusher in an office at Moody’s Investor Services have the faintest idea about the stability of a borrower. An experienced loan officer conducting a face to face interview with the borrowers can make a pretty good call (most of the time) but without that personal contact with the borrowers, you don’t have a clue. To say nothing of inspecting the property to see if its sale value is somewhere close to the amount of the loan. If the borrowers cannot/will not make their mortgage payments, the lender is going to take a huge loss. After foreclosure, the lender has to sell the property to get any money back. If the house was salable, the owners would have sold it to pay off the mortgage. Only the unsalable properties get as far as foreclosure.

Then Mr. Penner explains the difficulties doing thirty year mortgages with depositor’s funds with can be withdrawn at will. He blames the 1980’s savings and loan (S&L) disaster on depositors withdrawing their money from the S&L’s. In actual fact, the S&L’s went broke after Congress repealed the laws that restricted S&L’s to doing home mortgages. They used this new freedom to play the stock and commodities markets. Being unsophisticated newbies, the S&L’s got taken to the cleaners by sharp/dishonest salesmen. In the real world, a bank, even a junior bank like an S&L, can increase deposits by paying depositors higher interest.

Mr. Penner’s suggests a new system where the bank keeps owner ship of the mortgage, and issues some sort of trick bond to raise cash to do more mortgages. He doesn’t understand that, with or without trickery, such a bond works just like the ordinary bonds issued by ordinary companies every day. Investors buy ordinary corporate bonds based on the reputation of the issuer and the interest rate promised. The “securitized mortgage bonds” that fueled the sub prime lending spree, and of which Mr. Penner is so fond, were “backed” by the mortgages. Starting last summer, investors learned that the “backing” was worth no more than the underlying mortgages were worth, and surprise surprise, those mortgages turned out to be worthless.

A basic fact of mortgage lending, the lender has to borrow the funds for LESS interest than that charged for the mortgage. Today my local band is offering 30 year fixed rate mortgages for 6 and a fraction %. That means no way can an investor in mortgages make more than 6 and a fraction %. Mr. Penner states that investors could earn mid to high teens and that wasn’t very appetizing. This is the sort of thing a mortgage backed security salesman might say.

One Man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter

Taxpayer funded National Public Radio (NPR) is calling the FARC “rebels” rather than terrorists. Doesn’t matter that FARC has been kidnapping for ransom, holding hostages chained to jungle trees for years, drug dealing, and murdering anyone who gets in their way. Doesn’t matter that the government of Columbia, against whom they “fighting”, is democratically elected and enjoys solid popular support. No matter, NPR likes the FARC and supports them, calling them by the romantic label “rebels” rather than calling them terrorists, which they are.

Let’s hope the Columbian armed forces are able to defeat the FARC in short order.

The Price of Gasoline is going down

Heard that on the BBC just this evening. Wonder what world they are reporting from?

Let’s Move to France

The clock radio came on as usual this morning, tuned to NPR. I let it play for a while before facing up to the awfulness of getting out of bed. The commentator was waxing lyrical about the French health care system. He talked and talked, and he made France sound like the most civilized and humane place in the world.

Except he failed to mention a single number. Such as the life expectancy and infant mortality rates in France, as compared with other places. Such as the cost of health care. The US is spending 16% of gross national product on health care. This is a shameful amount of money going to drug companies, insurance companies, hospitals and doctors. Hell we only spend 4% of GNP on defense. The medical community is sucking up four times as much money as the old military industrial complex.

The Europeans only spend 8% of GNP on health care, half what we spend. But NPR didn’t mention this fact, and said nothing about any possible restrictions upon expensive treatments this might cause. This reporter was convinced the French have it right and the Americans have it wrong without bothering to explain to us listeners why he felt this way.

Aviation Week calls for Air Force Cleanup

This is Aviation Week, the old time, highly respected, very well informed trade journal of aerospace, airlines, and the Air Force. We have a serious industrial player bashing the military part of the famous military industrial complex.
They mention the recent Boeing-EADS tanker procurement fiasco, the not-so-recent Boeing tanker lease problem, the two protests over the award of the combat search and rescue copter, the loose nuclear weapons blunder, serious cost overruns on satellite programs. Then there is crony linked contract to promote the Thunderbirds, and charges of religious proselytizing at the Air Force Academy. And footdragging in supplying unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) support to the ground forces in Iraq. The iceing on the cake was lobbying Congress to fund more F22 fighters after the Administration had decided to put the money into things of real use in the real war we are fighting.
That last got the Defense Secretary to fire both the Chief of Staff, and the Secretary of the Air Force. Aviation Week is calling for more blood, namely firing the officers responsible for the other screwups.

How to save GM?

GM is close to doomed. The stock is down around $10, which makes the entire company, once the biggest corporation in the world, worth only $5 billion. Sales are down, they don't have cars that people want to buy, the price of gas has destroyed demand for SUV's and pickup trucks. They will burn through the rest of their cash in a year or so.
The Wall St Journal opined that only the development of desirable bread and butter sedans would save them. There's something to that, if you are going to be a car company, you have to have cars that people like. But better is to invent a new car type. Lee Iacocca did this repeatedly in his career. He fathered the Mustang, the K cars, the the minivan. GM needs someone like Iacocca who has a feel for the market and creates things that sell. Rick Waggoner ain't that guy, he barely knows where the ignition key goes, let alone what makes a hot selling car.
GM ought to try making a two seat micro Corvette. Do a very small, low cost, two seat sports car. Figure out some way to get surfboards, snowboards or skis into it, or onto it. A roof rack, a fold down rear window , a pass through from the trunk to the cockpit, something. Make it light, offer a 5 speed manual, a 4 cylinder engine, get the gas milege up over 30, get the front rear weight distribution 50-50, give it the pizazz of the 'Vette at a third the price point.
Second new car, the micro hauler. A car in the Cobalt class that somehow allows the owner to get 4*8 sheet goods back from the lumber yard or furniture back from the auction. Doesn't have to seat more than two, but must handle the cargo, and be cheaper and less thirsty than a minivan.

Real Solar Energy (as opposed to imaginary solar)

The don't drill, no nukes, conservationists get all excited about "Solar" with out ever explaining what "Solar" is. For most of us, in the lower 48, real solar energy comes from home heating or cooling. Shining in through windows the sun pours a lot of heat into a house. In the winter, this is all to the good. In the summer, it makes the air conditioner draw more expensive electricity. Every window needs a sun shade, positioned to let the low winter sun shine in, and shade the window from the high summer sun. The sunshade needs no moving parts, and in fact properly designed eaves do the job very well.
Here in New Hampshire, I have enough solar gain through the windows that my furnace stays off during the winter day. With the solar gain, my furnace gets through the winter on about the same amount of fuel as my car uses all year. Without the solar gain, my furnace oil costs might double.
Home buyers ought to check the sunshade/eaves/awnings situation on the windows before falling in love with the house. In heating country, a good house faces south to get more sun. In air conditioning country, the house ought to face north for more shade. If buyers cared about these things then builders would furnish them.
The technology of building to take advantage of the sun has been well understood since the days of the Roman Empire. Where as solar electric technology still lacks decent batteries to give you electric lights after the sun goes down.

So where do the pundits stand on Iraq?

Listened to the Sunday pundits, Stephanopolis on ABC. The talking heads spent a lot of time explaining how Barack Obama was changing, or must change, his position on Iraq. Last firm word from Obama himself, broadcast on TV a couple a days ago, was, (paraphrased) "I will withdraw the Army from Iraq as soon as possible (ASAP)".
It's pretty clear the talking heads. even democratic talking heads, are calling for Obama to change his policy, and keep enough troops in Iraq to win the war. So far, I haven't heard Obama himself say this, but it's clear the pundits want him to.

Words of the Weasel, Part 7

"Flip Flop" a derogatory term applied to any any policy statement made by any politician. Rather than summarize the policy statement, and perhaps muster reasons for and against it, the reporters simply brand the statement a "flip flop", implying the speaker is a slippery customer who has gone back on his sworn word.
This shows ignorance, and partisan bias on the reporters part. Few reporters actually understand policy issues. Or any other issues for that matter. Most reporters are political partisans who view their job as supporting their politicians and badmouthing the other side's politicians. So, when at a loss for anything real to say (the usual case) reporters simply brand the policy statement a "flip flop".
Question: would you like a political leader so narrow minded that he never changed his mind on anything?

Barack Obama called for "service" from high school and college students. Quoted in the Rocky Mountain News.

"Just as we teach math and writing, arts and athletics, we need to teach young Americans to take citizenship seriously. Study after study shows that students who serve do better in school, are more likely to go to college, and more likely to maintain that service as adults. So when I'm President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you'll have done 17 weeks of service."

Service? Such as providing food, fuel, transportation, communication, manufactured goods, raw materials and entertainment to society? People who perform these real services hold "jobs" and they even get paid to do so. Is Mr. Obama suggesting students hold part time jobs? Or join the Armed Services part time?

In my youth I participated in American Friends Service Committee work projects in Philadelphia. At the time it seemed like a worthy cause, but looking back on it, I doubt that anything we did on work weekends was as helpful as real paying jobs for those people would have been.

Real service is a paying job.

Federal Flood Insurance

Floods are different from house fires. The chance of a house fire is about the same for every house in the country. Thus the premiums of the many go to make the few fire victims whole again. Everyone buys fire insurance and thus there is enough money to pay out the claims. Floods are different. Property too close to the water and too low is the only property liable to flooding. Therefore, only the few on the flood plains buy flood insurance, and sooner or later, they all have losses. Commercial insurance companies figured this out many years ago and now refuse to offer flood coverage.
A great cry went up from all the waterfront property owners. Congress critters heard the cry and Uncle Sam began offering flood insurance to all comers. Despite hefty premiums, federal flood insurance racks up heavy losses to the taxpayer. The program is really a taxpayer subsidy to waterfront home owners. Availability of flood insurance has subsidized a lot of construction in flood prone areas that should not have been built in, and paid for the inevitable rebuilding after the predictable flood.
As a taxpayer I see no reason for my tax dollars to pay people who build houses in flood prone locations. Every one would be better off building on higher ground, of which there is an enormous amount. No body needs to build on the river bank. If people want to build there, fine, but I don't want to be taxed for it.
A new flood insurance bill is floating thru the Congress at this very minute. If it is impossible to vote it down, how about limiting the payout to ONE flood. The flood victim gets paid off, but his flood insurance is canceled, and the site goes on a list of "too flood prone to insure" properties. If the owner rebuilds on the same site, it is at his risk, not mine. It's a free country, and people are free to build where ever they want. But I shouldn't have to pay for other peoples risky decisions.

Iraq casualties less than Afghanistan casualties

Looks like peace is breaking out in Iraq. US casualties have dropped below those in Afghanistan. Ever trustworthy MSM imply that Afghanistan is getting worse, although they don't bother to supply any numbers to support their viewpoint. Is the glass half full or half empty?

Words of the Weasel, Part 6

"Progressive". We used to call them liberals, in fact Republicans and Rush still do. Liberal policies have been less than successful over the years, so the liberals now call themselves progressives, while advocating the same old stuff. They hope the name change will disguise them well enough to get them elected.

Are the tomatoes innocent of all salmonella?

A couple of weeks ago I posted doubts about the guilt of tomatoes in the salmonella scare. Seems now the FDA is having second thoughts. They have admitted to Fox News that they don't have a clue, and the slamonella cases are still coming in. Great work. I'm sure the tomato farmers appreciate it.

Climate Confusion by Roy Spencer C2008

Very thought provoking book. Spencer does believe that global warming is happening. Has graphs that show same. He just doesn't believe that the small amount of CO2 increase is significant, compared to the enormously greater amount of water vapor (as strong a green house gas as CO2 and 100 times more plentiful) in the atmosphere. He also points out that atmospheric circulation carries heat from the surface to high altitudes where it radiates the heat into space. The magnitude of this heat transfer dwarfs the tiny amount of extra heat trapped by rising CO2 levels. He casts doubt on the reliability of computer models (very reasonable doubts that, after 40 years of computer work, I share). The effects of cloud cover are poorly understood, and the relationshp between a warmer earth, more water evaporation, forming more clouds is even less well understood. The model's handling of clouds, increasing humidity and numerous other factors is problematic.
Well worth reading.

Solar Energy put on hold due to "environmental concerns"

Alternate energy any one? US bureau of land management wants a two year study period to "study" the environmental impact upon the desert. Full story here. The US is getting so wrapped around the environmental axle that we cannot do anything. Can't drill for oil, can't expand refineries, can't do solar, can't do oil shale. Can't do nothing, 'cause everything has an environmental impact. Pretty soon we start to freeze to death in the dark.

Heavy Sour Crude oil, cheap and plentiful

All you have to do is refine it. According to Classical Values, the Indians are planning to do just that. The EPA has stalled a Cococo project to expand an Illinois refinery to handle 500,000 barrels a day of heavy sour Canadian crude. I blogged about that here.

The law is what the people believe it is

The Supreme Court, by the narrowest of margins, showed some common sense in yesterday's ruling that US citizens have a right to keep and bear arms, just like the Second Amendment says they should. Most Americans believe, and always have believed in their right to have a firearm in a useful place, the cash drawer, the glove compartment, the bedside table. Just in case.
Americans are very law abiding. The laws of the United States are complied with because the people believe in the laws. They pay their taxes, register their cars, send their kids to school, and don't do crimes, because they believe it is the right thing to do, not because of law enforcement. This is a wonderful thing, something that many countries would love to have. It works only because the people believe in the laws they obey.
Widespread beliefs cannot be changed by a 5 to 4 Supreme Court decision. Had the Court ruled against the right to bear arms, it would simply make a large number of citizens into law breakers. Fortunately five justices were astute enough to realize this. You have to wonder about the intelligence of the other four justices, and wonder how in the name of all that's holy they ever got onto the Supreme Court.
Lesson for the day. Vote a straight republican ticket to put more intelligent justices on the Court.

I am NOT addicted to oil.

I just need enough furnace oil to keep the house up to 60 thru a New Hampshire winter. That was about 700 gallons last winter. And enough gasoline to get to the store and to church on Sunday. My six passenger Detroit sedan gets 27 mpg, and a 20 gallon tank lasts a couple of weeks. Figure 500 gallons a year. Between the furnace and the car, 1200 gallons or 22 barrels a year round numbers. Figure maybe 100 million households at the same rate of consumption and you get to about 6 million barrels per day of oil consumption. Actual US consumption is 3 times that, so something like 12 million barrels per day are going to industry. Airlines, trucks, trains, electric power generation, agriculture, chemical feedstocks, bunker oil for ships, asphalt for the roads, and who knows what else.
Industry can do some cut backs, but I need my modest 22 barrels a year and there is little I can do to cut it downany more. I'm insulated, I have good Andersen thermopane windows, fluorescent lights, a new furnace, and I keep the heat turned down. I don't drive much.
Every time you hear a democrat say the US is addicted to oil, you have just heard a good reason to vote republican.

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.

Bye Bye Hummer

Nightly business report is doing interviews with Hummer dealers. Seems that sales are indeed off, even the dealers are admitting it. One dealer was explaining that the Hummer gas milage was really better than people think, as good a 12-14 mpg, on regular gas. Hell, my '99 Cadillac DeVille gets twice that and runs knock free on regular. Hummer is the vehicle that makes Caddy look economical? That's gonna sell Hummers?

Cluelessness on the News Hour

Last night Ray Suarez was chatting breezily with a youngish Wall St broker type. They traded market jargon back and forth and sounded very hep. Then the broker guy said something like "Of course the market for mortgage backed securities froze up last fall and still hasn't unfrozen" Wow. Understatement of the year. A better description of the situation is that investors wised up last fall and won't touch mortgage backed securities with a ten foot pole. And there is no reason to believe investors will ever buy them again.
Buried in the fine print of mortgaged backed securities is language that means "If the mortgages "backing" this security default it will cost you, the security owner. The security will loose value and/or reduce dividend payments. And by the way, said mortgages are all sub prime. "
Now that investors understand the fine print (burned investor hand teaches best) they have resolved never to get mixed up in them again.
I expect Hell to freeze over before that market "unfreezes".
Ray Suarez never called him on it. Was Ray merely being polite (he is a nice guy) or was he clueless too?

So how do they know the tomatoes are contaminated?

It's tough trying to make a living growing tomatoes. FDA is blaming the salmonella outbreak on tomatoes, from somewhere. Sales have dropped to zip. Fresh ripe tomatoes are piling up unsold, un eaten and going bad. Growers are losing money thru no fault of their own. How do they know the salmonella came from a tomato? Were they able to culture salmonella from an uneaten tomato? If so, could they read the packer's name and lot number off the cardboard carton?
Or, did they merely ask the victims to list everything they ate, and discover that all ( or a lot) of the victims listed tomatoes? Since tomato is about the most popular veggie in America you'd expect nearly everyone to list them. Guilt by association.
FDA isn't talking. Wonder what they are really doing

There aughta be a law, Pt 2

Against TV broadcasters putting a station logo over the program material. Bad enough to endure the modern 10 minute commercial break. But to mess up a movie with a station logo is plain offensive. Even worse are those animated coming attraction thingies that pop up to ruin the movie for you.

There Oughta be a Law Pt 1.

Against those telemarketers who ring your phone but when you pick it up, you just get dead air. When they ring my phone, causing me to drop what I am doing to answer, they should at least have the courtesy to speak with me.

NH congressman Paul Hodes Solves the gasoline price crisis

Mr. Hodes shared his wisdom with us taxpayers in a handsome 4 color printed brochure mailed to voters. “This mailing was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense” was printed right on the front. Mr. Hodes has a four part plan to bring back the good old days of lower gas prices.

Part 1. Stop filling the strategic petroleum reserve. Big one here. 70,000 barrels per day were going into the reserve. US consumption is 20 million barrels a day. Stopping filling reduces US demand by 0.35%. Does anyone think this is enough to make any kind of difference?

Part 2. Sue OPEC. The long arm of US law will reach across the world and hail Dubai, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, the Iranians, and others in to US district court. Rather than being held in contempt of court, these easily cowed Arab countries will immediately cut prices and pump more oil. Last time I looked, foreign governments were not subject to US law. Sounds like more welfare for lawyers. Surely no one believes we can increase supplies by suing the suppliers.

Part 3. Alternate Energy. Repeal some tax breaks enjoyed by the oil companies and put the extra tax money into “alternate energy”. Ethanol anyone? At least I can run my car on ethanol. Wind and solar? Can’t put them in my gas tank, or my oil tank. Add a “biomass” tax credit. Wow, I get a tax credit for the cord of split birch I bought this spring?

Mr. Hodes doesn’t speak to the PSNH wood fired electric plant for Grafton country recently shot down in Concord, or the endless red tape holding back nuclear power.

Part 4. Offer special low rate loans for construction of energy efficient buildings. Right on. With mortgage money tight as it is, every new building will be certified “energy efficient” if it cuts a quarter point off the mortgage rate. This will become simply cheap mortgage money, a desirable thing, but hardly a thing to reduce gasoline prices.

Part 5. Tax credits for carpooling. “Oh yes your honor, I carpooled every day, and that is why I took a tax credit of $5700 last year, $20 a day for the 270 working days”. Right now, everyone who can put a carpool together is carpooling. Find two or three guys working at the same company and living sorta close together and they will carpool. No tax credits required.

Mr. Hodes doesn’t speak of the need to increase domestic oil production, build more refineries, exploit US reserves of oil shale, refine common cheap heavy sour crude oil into heating oil and gasoline, support research into nuclear fusion, and end the ridiculous system of boutique gasoline requirements.

If Mr. Hodes would talk about actually doing real things to relieve the fuel shortage he could send out as many self promoting brochures at taxpayer expense as he pleased. As it is, he comes out four square for doing nothing, at taxpayere expense.

Congress men are terrible speakers

Watched the House "debate" on the Amtrak bill this morning. Rep after Rep would take his allotted time to praise his committee, his constituents, damn the price of gasoline, and recommend a vote for the Amtrak bill. None of them spoke about the bill itself. Issues such as levels of service, speed, adding new routes, improving existing routes, buying new rolling stock, electrifying more track, scheduling more or fewer trains, raising pay and benefits for Amtrak workers, dead silence. In short, the C-Span televised floor debate didn't enlighten this taxpayer one iota. A voice over commentator mentioned some dispute between the White House and Congress and a veto threat, but none of the floor speakers gave a hint of this, or emphasised some good feature of the bill that might qualify a veto over ride.
In short, our Reps are using their floor time to promote themselves and their party. They don't attempt to persuade voters or the other party of the merits of the bills before them.

Republican energy plan will yield $2.06 gasoline

PowerLine has a comparison of Republican vs Democratic energy plans.

Water Vapor a Greenhouse Gas. Global Warming Part 3

At this time we all have heard of the evils of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. According to many sources, the CO2 blocks infrared radiation from leaving the earth for outer space, making the earth warm up.
Atmosphere levels of CO2 are around 300 parts per million. Less publicity is given to the 22000 parts per million of water vapor in the atmosphere. Water vapor is also a green house gas, as strong an infrared absorber as CO2. And there is better than 70 times as much water vapor in the air as there is CO2.
With 70% of the earth's surface covered by water, we are going to have a lot of water vapor in the air. Dry air will absorb as much water vapor as it likes, as it blows across the oceans. With the concentration of water vapor 70 times or more that of CO2, why do we worry about CO2? Even if man made CO2 was reduced to zero, the water vapor is still there, trapping heat, and warming the world.
Of the 300 PPM of CO2, much of it comes from natural causes like volcanoes and cannot be abated, no matter how drastic the restrictions on fuel burning become. A reduction of 100 PPM of CO2 (from 300 to 200 PPM) is the optimistic best that can be expected. It won't do anything for water vapor. So, today we have 22300 PPM of CO2 and water vapor. After drastic reductions in fuel use we get down to 22200 PPM. Is that going to save the world?
Few global warming enthusiasts talk much about water vapor.

Conoco Refinery Expansion is set back

The EPA appeals board in Washington DC revoked air permits granted by the Illinois EPA. Conoco wanted to enlarge their Roxana Illinois refinery to handle 500,000 barrels a day of heavy Canadian crude. Half a million barrels a day is 2.5% of national consumption. A 2.5% increase in supply is significant and might well reduce the price of gasoline and home heating oil. The state EPA approved the project. The refinery expansion was going to spend $4 billion dollars for construction in the state of Illinois.
However environmental "groups" (American Bottom Conservancy, National Resource Defense Council) went to the EPA appeals board in DC to stop the project. The inside the Beltway EPA bureaucrats are a softer touch than the regional people out in the mid west. The beltway folk put project on hold pending more EPA paperwork.
Our tax dollars at work, defending the price of fuel.

Driving the golden spike, er golden rail joiner.

The main line of the Franconia branch of the Boston & Maine Railroad (HO gauge) is finished today. A car coasts clean around the train room, no bumps, jumps, lurches or derailments, even when hand pushed at a scale 200 miles per hour. Gotta do some wiring before I can run locomotives under power. One thing at a time.
Lessons learned. After cutting the flex track to size with rail nippers, clean up the rail ends with a flat single cut file. File the end square, and then file a slight bevel on the tops, bottoms, and sides of the rail. This gives a smooth-to-the-touch rail joint, rather than leaving a burr that might help a wheel flange climb over the rail head. Use fresh new rail joiners. Lay a 4 foot straight edge along the straight tracks to make sure they stay straight and kink free before nailing the track down.
PL300 foam board adhesive has the pleasant property of coming off with just a sharp putty knife pushed under the roadbed. Comes clean from the foam without destroying it. How do I know this? Just one or two places I had to move the roadbed over a bit to make things fit better.
Nailing down the flex track to wood roadbed also lets me relocate track to eliminate kinks and other bad spots. Just pull out the track nails with long nose pliers and move the track. Easier to correct problems than had I glued the track down.
The wire guides (1/2 inch holes and dadoes in the under neath of the table work) are already doing good. I started the Cab A bus (#14 solid copper house wire) in the wire guides and lo and behold, it stays in place, runs straight, and it will be obvious just what wire it is even after the usual under layout rats nest of wire gets started.

Global Warming Part 2. What's wrong with more summer?

Coming out of a harsher than average New Hampshire winter, I see little wrong with shorter winter and earlier summer. We had a three inch snowstorm on the last day of April, and had to wait until today for the first truly warm day of the year. A couple of degrees of global warming would only drive the last snow back into March and move the onset of warm weather back into mid May. That ain't a catastrophe. We get a longer growing season, we still have winter skiing.
What's so bad about that?
Historical records show the Medieval Warm Period as a climatic optimum for Europe. Good harvests, good population growth, a good time. The Little Ice Age that set in for the 15th century was a disaster. With help from the Black Death, it cut the population of Europe in half.
If the Arctic ice went out it would improve the climate in all the Arctic lands, changing them from frozen wastelands into habitable farmlands. Since ice floats mostly underwater, like 90 % of an iceberg is submerged, melting the arctic ocean ice won't do much to raise sea level.
To get real sea level rises we have to melt the Antarctic ice cap. Greenland is only 15% the size of Antarctica and much of the Greenland ice cap is already below sea level. For a back of the envelope calculation we can ignore Greenland, it's Antarctica that counts. A crude calculation based on the relative area of the world oceans and the Antarctic is scary, melting the Antarctic ice cap might raise world sea level by 200 feet. Antarctica on the other hand is on land, so the ocean currents cannot melt it the way they can the Arctic. Antarctica is really, really cold. The average temperature is -30 C. The Antarctic ice cap won't melt until global temperatures climb 30 degrees C (54 degrees F). The most extreme global warming predictions are calling for temperature rises in the single digits, that isn't enough to melt out the South Pole. Without melting Antarctica, sea level rises will be in the one or two foot range at worst.
Around here we get a nine foot tide. Seawalls, locks, beaches, beach front property is already coping with an ocean that goes up and down 9 feet. An extra foot or so at high tide isn't going to flood downtown Boston.
So, far as I can see, a few degrees of global warming will give us a nicer planet to live on.

Global Warming, Part 1

The media, the greens, the Democrats, the presidential candidates, and everyone else is taking it seriously. The Senate is debating a "close down every smokestack" bill right now.
There are a number of questions voters ought to ask them selves. For instance, is the world really warming up?
To answer this question, you want to look at real measurable data, like historical temperature records or ice cores. Computer models don't mean much. All the computers do is solve mathematical equations and the answers are no better than the equations and data fed into them. The computer adds nothing to the process, scientists could solve the equations by hand with a slide rule. Using a computer makes the results seem more true, but with or without computer all we have is a theory. Science demands that theories be backed up with real observations or experiments. Theory unsupported by observations is mere speculation. It might be true, it might not be true, but until supported by real data, it's just a theory.
The most obvious data is records of temperature, made with thermometers, going back as far as the records go. That's less than three hundred years. Fahrenheit didn't invent his thermometer until 1724. A Scientific American article some years ago dug up every temperature reading in existence and tried to find a warming trend in that mountain of data. The article proceeded to explain the corrections they had to apply to the data. For instance, as vast cities grew up around historical weather stations, the temperature readings will rise, because cities covered with black asphalt roads, black asphalt roofs, lacking green trees, are significantly hotter than the surrounding country side. In sailing ship days, sea temperature was measured by heaving a canvas bucket overside, hauling the bucket of seawater up on deck, and dropping a thermometer into it. Steamers take in seawater to cool the engines, and the thermometer is permanently mounted in the cold water intake. The canvas bucket sitting on deck would warm up slightly before the thermometer reading could be taken. The sailing ship temperature readings were corrected downward a fraction of a degree to compensate. After much more correcting and data crunching the article concluded that yes, the earth had warmed up slightly. The amount of warming was smaller than the various corrections applied to the raw data.
Translation. The amount of global warming over the past three hundred years is too small to reliably observe with a thermometer.
Going back further, we have historical records of things like the start of the grape harvest, extent of Alpine glaciers, date of freezing of seaports, first day of spring planting, first snow of winter, and so on. Looking at this historical data suggests the existence of a medieval warm period centered in the 11th and 12th centuries and a little ice age from mid 15th century until the late 18th century. The medieval warm period coincides with the high middle ages, harvests were good, life was pleasant. In the depths of the little ice age it was so cold that the River Thames froze hard enough to conduct ice fairs and markets on the river ice. That doesn't happen today. The Viking colonies in Greenland failed at the onset of the little ice age.
Translation: Historical data suggests that the world has been both warmer and cooler than today, within historical times. The little ice age only ended two hundred years ago, so some warming is expected as we come out of it.
Then we have longer term evidence from ice cores. Quite a few have been taken and analyzed. The results are equivocal, some experts see global warming in the ice cores, others don't. Not being an experienced reader of ice cores myself, all I can go on is what the experts say, and right now the experts are arguing with each other.
Finally I have seen some very dramatic satellite photos of polar ice caps. One pair of photos shows a dramatic shrinkage of the Arctic ice cap over the last dozen years. I'd like to see a few more photos just to make sure we aren't seeing summer vs winter or just a short warm spell, but the two selected photos are impressive.

Whither Hillary?

This email came in this morning:



Dear David,

Over the course of this campaign, I have seen the promise of America in your courage and character, your energy and ingenuity, and your compassion and faith.

Your spirit has inspired me every day in this race. While I traveled this country talking about how I wanted to help you -- time and again, you reached out to help me. To grab my hand or grip my arm, to look me in my eyes and tell me, don’t quit, keep fighting, stay in this race for us. There were days when I had strength enough for the both of us -- and on the days I didn't, I leaned on you.

This has always been your campaign, and tonight, there's no one I want to hear from more than you. I hope you're as proud as I am of what we've done and that you'll take a moment to share your thoughts with me now at my website.

I want to congratulate Senator Obama and his supporters on the extraordinary race that they have run. Senator Obama has inspired so many Americans to care about politics and empowered so many more to get involved, and our party and our democracy are stronger and more vibrant as a result.

Whatever path I travel next, I promise I will keep faith with you and everyone I have met across this good and great country. There is no possible way to thank you enough for everything you have done throughout this primary season, and you will always be in my heart.

Sincerely,

Hillary Rodham Clinton



It isn't quite a concession speech, but it is close to one.

Heavy Sour is cheaper than Light Sweet

The outrageous crude oil prices quoted on the TV news are not the whole story. The TV price is the price for the best grades of crude oil, thin (light) and low sulphur (sweet). The lower grade thick and sticky (heavy) and high sulphur (sour) sells for a third less than the premium grade. Heavy and sour crude can be refined to gasoline and diesel, but only state of the art modern refineries can do it. Plenty of older off shore refineries cannot handle heavy sour crude at all. Difficult as heavy sour crude is to refine, it's still enormously easier than refining oil shale or tar sands. Or making liquid fuels from coal.
If we had two or three more big refineries turning cheap plentiful low grade crude into gasoline and heating oil it would actually bring the outrageous prices down.
The US hasn't built a new refinery in decades 'cause of the NIMBY problem. NIMBY's buy gasoline and heating oil just like ordinary people. They just want the refinery located in some one else's back yard. Public spirited they are. Needless to say, the US no longer has enough refinery capacity to make all the gasoline and heating oil we need and is relying on off shore refineries to make up the short fall.
The US ought to build enough domestic refineries to satisfy domestic needs, and even do some export business. While we are at it, make the new refineries capable of handling the lowest grade crude on the planet. Refinery construction money spent in the US does more for the US economy than the same money spent in Aruba.
The Supreme Court recently ruled taking property by eminent domain for mere economic development purposes IS constitutional (the Kelo decision) . Take advantage of that. Pass a law declaring refineries to be a national security matter, and grant a major oil company eminent domain powers to take land for a new refinery. Declare that the small amount of land needed for a few refineries won't endanger any species. Stop the talking and the hand wringing and get on with it. Refineries take years to build, we need to start now.
Or do you like the idea of $5 a gallon?

Just call it cap and tax

Richard Samualson at Real Clear Politics says it better than I could.

Pre exiting conditions? Hi risk pool for you.

Once you get sick, the health insurers want to dump you. Insurers make money by depositing premiums paid by well people (or well people's employers). They loose money paying doctor and hospital bills. Dropping sick people, or refusing to insure sick people, does good things for insurance company profits.
More fair would be a law requiring insurance companies to sell their policies to all comers at the same price. The sick people are not responsible for their illness, they are unlucky. They encountered a virus, a microbe, a bullet, or some dangerous machinery. Or they inherited a genetic weakness, also a matter of luck. We, as a society, ought to give the unlucky sick people the same shot at health care as the lucky, and well, majority. Insurance is supposed to share the risk, the majority who do not have losses pay for the minority who do.
The insurance companies will oppose this law. Harry and Louse will make a TV come back. Insurers are cherry picking, offering low rates to low risk people to build market share, charging high rates, or refusing to insure, high risk people to keep the low rates low. Most health insurance is company paid insurance, which means the insured is well enough to hold a job, and hence is low risk.
The law ought to require insurers to sell policies to the public at the same price they sell them to big corporations. Employees get a better health deal than the self employed, the small business owners, the professionals, the contractors and consultants. The corporation gets a better price on the insurance, and pays for it with pretax dollars. It's free to the employee. The self employed have to pay more, get no tax break, and pay for it out of pocket.

Obame vs McCain, Style versus Substance

Watched Obama and McCain on Fox News this morning. McCain is advocating real policies, like cutting off gasoline imports to Iran. Obama is denouncing McCain as "the Bush third term". McCain is telling us what he would do if elected. What is Obama telling us, other than he doesn't like President Bush?