Fredux

There is a thorough analysis of Fred Thompson's "political positions and votes as they pertain to all three parties" (Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians) over at ControlCongress.com by Jace Walden.

From the post, here are the things which I personally like about Fred (in no particular order):

–Would like to impose a two-year limit on welfare benifits for recipients who are able to work
–Would like to slightly increase spending on national defense
–Supports decreasing the Captial Gains Tax, Cigarette Taxes, Income Taxes, taxes on domestic and international businesses, and would also support eliminating taxes on savings and investment
–Believes that a woman should be able to seek an abortion under any circumstances as long as it is in the first trimester
–Is not “Christian enough” for James Dobson and the religious right
–Supports eliminating government regulation to encourage [investment] and economic expansion in the private sector
–Wants to allow the natural cycle of the market to create jobs without government intervention
–Supports school choice programs so that parents receive vouchers that can be used to send their children to participating schools.
–Wants to decrease spending in federal health care programs and research
–Would like to limit the growth of government to 2%

Here are the things I don't like about Fred (again, in no particular order):

–Would increase penalties on the selling and trafficking of illegal drugs
–Voted for McCain-Feingold

I did leave out a few things from the Walden post about which I don't really care.

But taken on the whole, and assuming this post portrayed him accurately, Fred looks like someone I could vote for. Mind you, I am not endorsing Fred...yet.

Here comes Fred!

You would have to be hiding under a rock today to not realize that former Senator Fred Thompson is running for president.

What can we expect from Fred? A conservative in the Reagan mold, without the Newt Gingrich baggage.

Here are some snippets from a speech Fred gave on May 4th:

Some want us, to the extent possible, to withdraw from the world that presents us with so many problems, in the hope they will go away. Some would push us towards protectionist trade policies. Others see a solution in raising taxes and redistributing the income among our citizens.

Wrong on all counts. These are defensive, defeatist policies that have consistently been proven wrong. They are not what America is all about.

Let's talk about the issues here at home, first. A lot of folks in Washington suffer from a big misconception about our economy. They confuse the well-being of our government with the wealth of our nation. Adam Smith pointed out the same problem in his day, when many governments mixed up how much money the king had with how well-off the country was.

Taxes are necessary. But they don't make the country any better off. At best they simply move money from the private sector to the government. But taxes are also a burden on production, because they discourage people from working, saving, investing, and taking risks.

That is the key thing liberals always miss when discussing taxes (which is why I put it in bold). People take financial risks for one reason: they have nothing to lose, whether they have been backed into a financial corner, or they have more money than they will ever need. Either way, taxes take away the ability of either of these people to take risks. If not for the risk takers, you wouldn't be reading this right now. Government funding didn't put personal computers in everyone's home. While government funding may have started the Internet, it was private funding that made it take off.

That's why the economy booms when taxes are cut. When the Kennedy tax cuts were passed in the 1960s, the economy boomed. When Reagan cut taxes in 1981, we went from economic malaise to a new morning in America. And when George Bush cut taxes in 2001, he took a declining economy he inherited to an economic expansion -- despite 9-11, the NASDAQ bubble and corporate scandals.

The Democrats, of course, want to raise taxes. They only want to target the rich, they say. A word of advice to anyone in the middle class -- don't stand anywhere near that target.

I see Fred knows his history. That was how the 16th Amendment got passed.

But for those of you who see taxation as a necessary evil which is needed for the government to solve whatever ails society, Fred has this to say:

The growth of government is not solving these problems; it's causing a lot of them. Every level of new bureaucracy that is created develops a level of bureaucracy beneath it, which creates another one. Pretty soon there is no accountability in the system. A new head of a department or agency comes in from out of town and, after a protracted confirmation fight, wants to spend his or her few years in Washington making great policy and solving national problems, not fighting with their own bureaucrats. So they just let well enough alone. Then you start seeing the results. Departments that can't pass an audit, computer systems that don't work, intelligence breakdowns, people in over their heads.

Yet people in both parties continue to try to federalize and regulate at the national level more and more aspects of American society -- things that have traditionally been handled at the state and local level. We must remember that we have states to serve as policy laboratories for innovation and competition. That's how we got welfare reform. Our system also allows for the diversity of our large country. Our attitude should be, let the federal government do what it is supposed to be doing -- competently. Then maybe we will give it something else to do.

On illegal immigration:

The government could start by securing our nation's borders. A sovereign nation that can't do that is not a sovereign nation. This is secondarily an immigration issue. It's primarily a national security issue. We were told twenty years ago if we produced a comprehensive solution, we'd solve the illegal immigration problem. Twelve million illegals later, we're being told that same thing again. I don't believe most Americans are as concerned about the 12 million that are here as they are about the next 12 million and the next 12 million after that. I think they're thinking: "Prove you can secure the border and then people of good will can sit down and work out the rest of it, while protecting those folks who play by the rules."

On term limits and Social Security/Medicare:

Sometimes I think that I'm the last guy around who still thinks term limits is a good idea. The professionalization of politics saps people's courage. Their desire to keep their job and not upset anybody overrides all else -- even if it hurts the country.

So the [Social Security/Medicare funding] problem gets kicked a little further down the road. This action is based on the premise that our generation is too greedy to help the next generation. I believe just the opposite is true. If grandmom and granddad think that a little sacrifice will help their grandchildren when they get married, try to buy a home or have children, they will respond to a credible call to make that sacrifice -- if they don't think that the sacrifice is going down some government black hole.

I am going to quote my friend, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. I don't think he'll mind, even though it was a private conversation. He said, "People talk a lot about moral issues, but the greatest moral issue facing our generation is the fact that we are bankrupting the next generation. People talk about wanting to make a difference. Here we could make a difference for generations to come."

Of course, anyone who quotes Tom Coburn is ok by me.

It's a Gas Gas Gas!

So how much of our current gas prices go to taxes, versus oil company profits?

A simple answer can be found in a typical oil company financial statement. For the sake of discussion, I will use Exxon Mobil.

According to Exxon's last SEC quarterly filing from March 2007, Exxon paid over $23.6 billion in taxes, whereas their after-tax net income was $9.2 billion (although that figure includes over $3 billion in non-oil related income).

Of course, government taxation doesn't end with the oil company. Since most gas stations are franchised or independently owned, they pay taxes too. According to the Department of Energy's website, 14% of April's retail gas prices were for severence taxes, import tariffs excise taxes, and royalties paid to the government. Since I am using the March data for Exxon, I will also use the March figure from the DOE, which was 15.5%.

Here is where it becomes tricky to determine an actual figure for the cost of government taxation, because the DOE figures do not include income tax cost. For the sake of argument, I will drop the consideration of income taxes paid by gas retailers, since most of their income is derived from other operations. Even the DOE figures for March 2007 put the distribution and marketing costs (where the gas retailer's profits would be, as well as their related income tax cost) at 8.5%. (Ironically, since 2000, it seems the distribution and marketing costs seem to go up when the retail price of gas drops. Although the statistical correlation is not precise.)

Based on the DOE definitions, the income tax passed through to the consumer by the refiners would seem to be included in the "refining costs and profits" category, which is defined as "the difference between the monthly average of the spot price of gasoline...(used as a proxy for the value of gasoline or diesel fuel as it exits the refinery) and the average price of crude oil purchased by refiners (the crude oil component)." The cost for this during March was 23.6%.

If we assume Exxon is the typical oil refiner (admittedly a huge assumption), and apply Exxon's income tax costs as a percentage onto the DOE figures from March, then 25%* of the DOE's "refining costs and profits" was paid to income taxes.

25% of the 23.6% of the retail price of gas means an additional 6% of the retail price went to the government, on top of the other 15.5% that went to taxes. This makes 21.5% of the retail price of gasoline going to the government. Considering this is a potentially conservative estimate because it gives no consideration is given to gas retailers' income taxes, plus I overestimated Exxon's passed along costs (thereby minimizing the income tax impact on the pass along costs), this is a pretty hefty amount. Of the average retail price in March of $2.563/gallon, 55.1 cents went to the government.

How much did Exxon walk away with? 35% of the DOE's "refining costs and profits", which is 8.2% of the retail price of gas. Of the average retail price in March of $2.563/gallon, 21 cents went to oil company profits.

As I have said before, there are a lot of assumptions built into these numbers, and feel free to point out flaws in my math. But the truth is that government costs more than oil companies, even if my figures are off.

On a related note, one thing I noticed in the DOE figures is that crude oil as a percentage of the retail cost of gas has gone up in the past seven years, from 41.4% in April 2000, to 50.3% in April 2007. While it has fluctuated over this period, from a low of 35% in May 2001 to a high of 60.1% in January 2006, the overall trend has been towards the price of crude oil driving the retail price of gasoline. Supply and demand anyone?


*The actual numbers used to determine the 25% were:
Exxon's total income taxes - $6.784 billion

divided by the sum of the below plus the figure above to get the percentage of the income tax passed along

Exxon's production and manufacturing expenses - $7.283 billion
Exxon's selling, general and administrative expenses - $3.392 billion (this may include expenses not related to oil refining, however the bulk of it would apply)
Exxon's total net income (including non-oil related income) - $9.280 billion

UPDATED: I stand corrected.

I was listening to the radio yesterday, and a representative of an oil refiners trade organization (I forgot his name, sorry) pointed out that up to 15% of our refined oil is IMPORTED. That little factoid is not presented in the DOE or Exxon figures, but is quite important to consider.

Another thing he pointed out is that it takes up to 20 years to build and run a new refinery before an oil company can see a profit from it. If you were an oil company in the current energy environment, how comfortable would you feel doing that?

NFL Draft Challenge

Instead of the usual Friday Trivia, today we will test your NFL draft prognostication abilities.

The rules for the NFL Draft Challenge are simple: list the first 10 players taken in the NFL draft tomorrow, in the order they are taken. Just post your picks before the start of the draft tomorrow (Saturday) at noon. You only have to show the draft order, the player's name, and their position (although I am showing a little more information below).

Now for my picks:

1. Oakland (2-14)- JaMarcus Russell, QB, LSU
All the experts and talking heads say the Raiders will take JaMarcus Russell, and I cannot call that a bad pick. However, how many quarterbacks have the Raiders drafted that have gone on to have a great career with the Raiders? Just Kenny Stabler (and he was a 2nd round pick). As a Raider fan, I would rather see them take Calvin Johnson, who is a sure thing.

2. Detroit (3-13)- Calvin Johnson, WR, Georgia Tech
Expect the Lions to trade this pick away, probably to Atlanta. If Matt Millen drafted another wide receiver, the Detroit fans would shoot him (in Detroit, literally).

With all of the issues "dogging" Michael Vick lately, the Falcons drafting the best wide receiver in Atlanta's history (not to mention Johnson has a tremendous work ethic on top of his freakish abilities) would be a major "catch" for them.

3. Cleveland (4-12)- Brady Quinn, QB, Notre Dame
How many quarterbacks state before the draft that they WANT to play in Cleveland? Bernie Kosar is the last one I remember, and he turned out ok. The Brownies desperately need a quarterback (Charlie Frye is NOT the answer), and Quinn could be the guy.

4. Tampa Bay (4-12)- Joe Thomas, OT, Wisconsin
The Bucs need offensive line help, and Thomas is the best in this draft.

5. Arizona (5-11)- Gaines Adams, DE, Clemson
It is safe to say the Cards will pick a defensive player, but which one? Adams is arguably the most highly rated defensive prospect.

6. Washington (5-11)- Laron Landry, DB, LSU
Washington has already said they are taking either Landry or DT Amobi Okoye. Since Landry is probably the better of the two, and since Adam Archuleta has been released by the Skins, expect Landry to be the pick.

7. Minnesota (6-10)- Adrian Peterson, RB, Oklahoma
Expect the Vikings to draft some secondary help later in the draft. For now, this team needs some offense. Chester Taylor was solid last year, but not exceptional. Also, don't be surprised if another team trades up to this spot to get Peterson.

8. Atlanta (7-9)- Jamaal Anderson, DE, Arkansas
With the Lions trading down to this spot, expect to see a defensive player picked here. Anderson could give the Lions a much needed pass rusher.

9. Miami (6-10)- Amobi Okoye, DT, Louisville
The Dolphins could also go with DT Alan Branch, but Okoye has more upside.

10. Houston (6-10)- Levi Brown, OT, Penn State
With Houston's awful pass blocking, and less than stellar run blocking, offensive line help is desperately needed here.

Friday Trivia! "April showers" edition

First, the answers from last week's trivia (no one got all of them):

1. On a Friday the 13th in 1307, what group had all their members in France arrested under orders from King Philip IV of France? The Knights Templar
2. After today, when is the next occurrence of a Friday falling on the 13th day of the month? July
3. Who is the only actor from the original Friday the 13th movie who has his name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? Kevin Bacon
4. In the year 13 A.D., who was the emperor of Rome? Augustus
5. Which rock band released the album 13 in November of 1970? The Doors

This week's trivia:

1. What was the first song released from Peter Gabriel's 1986 album So AFTER the single Big Time?

2. Which battle was Field Marshall Arthur Wellesley best known for?

3. Who was the first running back in NFL history to gain over 1,000 yards rushing for three different teams?

4. What song, first featured in the movie The Hollywood Revue of 1929, later became the title and theme song of a 1952 musical?

5. The Rolling Stones got their name from what musician's 1950 song, Rollin' Stone?

Friday Trivia! "Friday the 13th" edition

1. On a Friday the 13th in 1307, what group had all their members in France arrested under orders from King Philip IV of France?

2. After today, when is the next occurrence of a Friday falling on the 13th day of the month?

3. Who is the only actor from the original Friday the 13th movie who has his name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?

4. In the year 13 A.D., who was the emperor of Rome?

5. Which rock band released the album 13 in November of 1970?

Gone fishing

I am going to take some time off from blogging. It is a pretty slow news cycle right now until we get closer to the NFL Draft.

However, I will continue to post the Friday Trivia segments.

Friday Trivia! Easter edition

1. Who had his first number one hit with the song Sailing back in 1980?

2. What is the name of Bugs Bunny's girlfriend in the movie Space Jam?

3. Which former Negro League and Major League Baseball player hit a 477 foot home run in Cleveland's Municipal Stadium, a feat matched only by Mickey Mantle?

4. What dish is usually made with two halves of an English muffin, and topped with smoked bacon or ham, poached eggs, and hollandaise sauce?

5. Which 1968 song by the band Cream was later covered by both Lynyrd Skynyrd and Rush?

Quotes of the Day: Global Warming

"Some wealthy elitists in our country who cannot tell fact from fiction, can afford an Olympian detachment from the impacts of draconian climate change policy. For them, the jobs and dreams destroyed as a result will be nothing more than statistics and the cares of other people. These consequences are abstractions to them, but they are not to me, as I can name many of the thousands of the American citizens whose lives will be destroyed by these elitists' ill-conceived ‘global goofiness' campaigns." - Bob Murray

Read the whole article over at the New York Sun website.

Also, there was a good editorial by William F. Buckley yesterday, which compares Global Warming fervor to the Spanish Inquisition. From the editorial:

"Critics are correct in insisting that human enterprises have an effect on climate. What they cannot at this point do is specify exactly how great the damage is, nor how much relief would be effected by specific acts of natural propitiation.

The whole business is eerily religious in feel. Back in the 15th century, the question was: Do you believe in Christ? It was required in Spain by the Inquisition that the answer should be affirmative, leaving to one side subsidiary specifications."

The "Idol" on "American Idol"

It is rare that you will hear me recommend a tv show, and even rarer to hear me recommend something as popular as "American Idol". Why would I bother to recommend a show which continually tops the ratings?

Two words: Melinda Doolittle.

I can appreciate there are people out there who do not watch the show because the talent is generally unworthy of anyone's attention. Occasionally, a mediocre talent will put on a great performance, otherwise known as a "blind pig finding an acorn". Only twice can I recall examples of an American Idol contestant/winner worthy of a cd purchase or MP3 download (Kelly Clarkson and Bo Bice).

But this year, they have hit a gold mine. Melinda Doolittle is head and shoulders above, not only this year's contestants, but ALL the contestants the show has EVER had.

Earlier this season, after one of her performances, I turned to my wife and said, "She reminded me of Gladys Knight." Then Simon Cowell proceeded to compare her to a "young Gladys Knight". My wife gave me a look which said, "How did you do that?"

Seriously, Melinda's vocals are comparable to Gladys Knight or Aretha Franklin. She is pitch perfect. On top of that, she "feels" the songs. By that I mean she performs the songs with the feelings inherent within the lyrics. Last night, she did the old standard I Got Rhythm, which I always thought was kind of a silly song. She corrected me of that misinterpretation, by showing that it is a song of happiness about life. THAT is the art of singing.

If you are looking for a sexy singer, look somewhere else. Melinda is NOT sexy, but she is a rare talent.

Frankly, it has been too long since there has been ANY singer come onto the musical scene with the whole package like Ms. Doolittle. There have been singers with great voices, and singers who could perform great, but none that I recall who could match Ms. Doolittle.

I suggest you watch the show just once to hear Melinda Doolittle. It may be a few decades before another talent like her comes along.

A Diamond among Trash

For the past two days, my wife and I were cleaning out our basement.

My wife pulls a little book out of a box and asks me if I want to keep it. The front of the book says "Autographs". I say, "YES!"

I immediately paged through the book. The names leapt out at me: Ron Jaworski...Hal Carmichael...Randy Logan...John Bunting...Wally Henry...Vince Papale...

Back in the late 70's, my mother took me and a friend up to the Philadelphia Eagles training camp in West Chester, PA. I bought that little autograph book to take with me.

The one autograph I remember the most was Harold Carmichael (he signed his name "Hal Carmichael"). When you are a kid standing right next to him, he was HUGE! It felt like the back of my head had to touch my spine to see his face. But he was a complete gentleman, just like the rest of the Eagles.

The whole experience was one that has stuck with me even to this day. Those Eagles were larger than life figures to me, even now. Those men immortalized themselves in my memory, by doing nothing more than taking a few seconds of their time to sign their name in a book for a kid. God bless them.

When I think of all the great teams of the 70's and 80's, the Eagles stand out for me. Not because they were great on the field, but because they were great OFF the field too. If they had any sins as individuals, those were erased in my mind when they took the time to sign my little book.

When I hear about athletes who won't sign autographs for kids, I think of what a disservice they do to their own legacy. What you do as an athlete on the field may put you in the record books, the Hall of Fame, on television, in commercials, and secure your financial future. But the few seconds it takes to sign a piece of paper for a child is a bond that goes beyond all the fame and accolades. It places you on a pantheon above all other athletes in the mind of that child, for the entire lifetime of that child.

And you want an extra $20 for that?

The Attorney General Dead-end, Part 2

As I pointed out in yesterday's post, the whole attorney general firing scandal is a dead-end. Simply put, feel free to complain about it, but don't you dare suggest a solution.

Probably the best example of a similar scandal was Bill Clinton's last minute pardons before he left office. The fact is that he took money for his presidential library in order to issue some of those pardons. We can all agree what he did was highly unethical.

But if we look at it as a problem, what would the solution be? We could amend the Constitution to limit or eliminate the presidential pardon power.

If we limit pardons by giving Congress oversight, what do we gain? Congress is not known for its high ethical standards.

If we eliminate the presidential pardon power, what happens when the court system makes a glaring mistake? Sorry, we will just have to live with it.

Again, we come back to a problem without a solution, or where the solutions are worse than the problem itself.

But if you absolutely positively MUST have a solution to the problem, it is really quite simple: Vote for ethical politicians! Our government does not, and should not, run on auto-pilot. Take responsibility for YOUR VOTE! If you vote for unethical politicians, don't blame the government, because YOU made it!

The Attorney General Dead-end

Over at Ragged Thots, Robert George has once again posted on the so-called attorney general scandal.

In his post, Robert links to a post by Josh Marshall, which makes the case for why this scandal is important:

"Whoever's in power and however intense things get, most of us assume that the party in power won't interfere with the vote count. We also assume that the administration won't use the IRS to harrass or imprison political opponents. And we assume that criminal prosecutions will be undertaken or not undertaken on the facts.

Yes, there's prosecutorial discretion. And the grandstanding, press-hungry DA is almost a cliche. But when a politician gets indicted for corruption we basically all assume it's because they're corrupt -- or, given the assumption of innocence, that the prosecution is undertaken because the prosecutor believes their case is strong and that the defendent committed the crime."

An indictment is NOT a conviction. Incorrect assumptions by the public is NOT a reason to change anything, except possibly public misconceptions. Did we learn NOTHING from the Duke lacrosse case?

"What we seem to see are repeated cases in which US Attorneys were fired for not pursuing bogus prosecutions of persons of the opposite party. Or vice versa. There's little doubt that that is why McKay and Iglesias were fired and there's mounting evidence that this was the case in other firings as well. The idea that a senator calls a US Attorney at home just weeks before a federal elections and tries to jawbone him into indicting someone to help a friend get reelected is shocking. Think about it for a second. It's genuinely shocking. At a minimum one would imagine such bad acts take place with more indirection and deniability. And yet the Domenici-Iglesias call has now been relegated to the status of a footnote in the expanding scandal, notwithstanding the fact that there's now documentary evidence showing that Domenici's substantial calls to the White House and Justice Department played a direct role in getting Iglesias fired.

So what you have here is this basic line being breached. But not only that. What is equally threatening is the systematic nature of the offense. This isn't one US Attorney out to get Democrats or one rogue senator trying to monkey around with the justice system. The same thing happened in Washington state and New Mexico -- with the same sort of complaints being received and acted upon at the White House and the Department of Justice. Indeed, there appears to have been a whole process in place to root out prosecutors who wouldn't prostitute their offices for partisan goals.

We all understand that politics and the law aren't two hermetically sealed domains. And we understand that partisanship may come into play at the margins. But we expect it to be the exception to the rule and a rare one. But here it appears to have become the rule rather than the exception, a systematic effort at the highest levels to hijack the Justice Department and use it to advance the interest of one party over the other by use of selective prosecution."

Well said. Now that we have identified the problem, what shall we do to fix it?

It seems clear: We need more Congressional oversight into the Executive Branch. We will need to give Congress authority (i.e. advise and consent) over all presidential attorney appointments. That will make the president think twice before appointing anyone for strictly political reasons! It will also make him think twice before firing anyone too, because then he will have to appoint someone acceptable to Congress!

Of course, Congress will be able to do with the attorneys what they did with Bush's judicial appointments: filibuster until they are withdrawn. Which means he possibly won't be able to appoint ANY attorneys! Just think how much that would mean to an opposition party which likes to keep their hands in the cookie jar?

Do we REALLY want to give Congress more power? I will grant what Bush did was unethical, but there is a VERY good reason for the president to have this authority. If he misuses it, what happens? He will get plenty of indictments, but no convictions. He will tie up the judicial system with a bunch of frivolous prosecutions.

On the other hand, if the president does NOT have the legal power to pursue corruption in opposition parties, what is to stop Congress from giving itself more immunity than it already has?

Frankly, this is a case where the cure is far worse than the disease. Let the Media have their field day over this "scandal", but don't dare to ask what should be done to fix it.

Friday Trivia! Irish edition

1. Who originally did the song Take Me to the River which was later covered by the Talking Heads?

2. Which food company was originally formed as the Minnesota Valley Canning Company, and later purchased by General Mills?

3. What was the nickname of the Vermont Republic's militia led by Ethan Allen?

4. What Oscar-nominated 1991 film was based on a novel by Fannie Flagg?

5. Who wrote the 1940 novel The Power and the Glory?

ANSWERS:
1. Al Green
2. Green Giant
3. Green Mountain Boys
4. Fried Green Tomatoes
5. Graham Greene

Time to "cut and run" from Detroit?

Gotta love Congressman Tim Walberg. From Freep.com:

A Republican congressman representing rural southern Michigan is taking heat for saying that most of Iraq is at least as under control as Detroit is.

Freshman Rep. Tim Walberg's comments, made Monday on WILS-AM in Lansing, didn't sit well with Democrats -- who issued a news release Wednesday -- or the office of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

"Any reference to Detroit as a war zone is absurd," said Matt Allen, the mayor's spokesman.

Walberg of Tipton didn't quite say Detroit was a war zone. He said most of Iraq "is reasonably under control, at least as well as Detroit."

Walberg's spokesman, Matt Lahr, said the congressman "frequently shares sentiments expressed to him by the soldiers and veterans he meets." He wouldn't say whether a soldier or soldiers made the Detroit remark.

There have been 3,223 U.S. military deaths in Iraq since the war began in 2003, and more than 10,000 Iraqi civilian and security forces killed since January 2006, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. About 1,576 people died as a result of homicide or nonnegligent manslaughter in Detroit since the beginning of 2003.

While the numbers don't equate, they are at least comparable.

When can we expect a timetable for pulling out of Detroit?

I can see the protests now: "Kwame lied! People died!"

Personally, I think this whole thing is a smoke screen. The real problem is Ohio's nuclear ambitions. It wouldn't be so bad if not for their constant threats to "wipe Indiana off the map".

R.I.P. Larry "Bud" Melman

According to CNN.com:

"The balding, bespectacled nebbish who gained cult status as the oddball Larry "Bud" Melman on David Letterman's late-night television shows has died after a long illness.

Brooklyn-born Calvert DeForest, who was 85, died Monday at a hospital on Long Island, the Letterman show announced Wednesday."

I always thought Melman was one of the funniest parts of the Letterman show. Melman's brutal sincerity made a nice complement to Letterman's tongue-in-cheek style. Melman brought a comic sledgehammer to Letterman's straight man setups.

The saddest part of the story:

"There will be no funeral service for DeForest, who left no survivors."

God bless you DeForest. You made a lot of people laugh, and that is a pretty good legacy to leave behind.

Popular Culture?

Define "popular culture"?

In this day and age, that seems a lot harder to do.

Considering that for most of the 20th century, there was a dominance of popular culture by certain mediums:

In the early 20th century, radio, newspapers, and movies tended to dominate. In the mid to late 20th century, television dominated it.

Sometime in the 1990's, the popular culture started to fragment, starting with the rise of the Internet and satellite tv (100's of channels, all at the click of a button).

Nowadays, what people think can be influenced in hundreds of different ways. Unlike 50 years ago, it is no longer controlled by three television networks and the local newspaper.

I'm not saying there isn't a popular culture. What I am saying is that it is significantly harder to use case studies to draw conclusions over the entire culture. We have more "pocket" cultures today than we have had in the past.

Another Global Warming Hole

Yet another hole has been shot into the swiss cheese theory known as Global Warming.

It seems the main basis for Global Warming is flawed: an average global temperature.

Discussions on global warming often refer to 'global temperature.' Yet the concept is thermodynamically as well as mathematically an impossibility, says Bjarne Andresen, a professor at The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, who has analyzed this topic in collaboration with professors Christopher Essex from University of Western Ontario and Ross McKitrick from University of Guelph, Canada.

..."It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth", Bjarne Andresen says, an an expert of thermodynamics. "A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate".

Does this mean my house in the north Georgia hills won't be beachfront property? Now I'm REALLY disappointed...

(Hat tip to www.sciencedaily.com)

In other news...

From CNN.com:

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- About one-third of the people living in the nation's capital are functionally illiterate, compared with about one-fifth nationally, according to a report on the District of Columbia."

...and that's just at Capitol Hill.

The Illogical Extreme of Global Warming

I hope the enviro-nuts are happy now.

Because of the so-called danger of Global Warming, we now have scientists coming up with hare-brained schemes to cool the planet. From CNN.com:

"Scientists are exploring global warming solutions that sound wholly far-fetched, including giant artificial "trees" to filter carbon dioxide out of the air, a bizarre "solar shade" created by a trillion flying saucers that lower Earth's temperature, and a scheme that mimics a volcano by spewing light-reflecting sulfates high in the sky.

These are costly projects of last resort -- in case Earth's citizens don't cut back fast enough on greenhouse gas emissions and the worst of the climate predictions appear not too far away. Unfortunately, the solutions could cause problems of their own -- beyond their exorbitant costs -- including making the arid Middle East even drier and polluting the air enough to increase respiratory illnesses."

This scares me more than any amount of Global Warming.

For example, what happens if we set off a volcano, and then another one erupts naturally? How does global cooling sound to you?