As the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, an economist, anti-totalitarian and climate change sceptic, prepares to take up the rotating presidency of the European Union next year, climate alarmists are doing their best to traduce him.
The New York Times opened a profile of Klaus, 67, this week with a quote from a 1980s communist secret agent's report, claiming he behaves like a "rejected genius", and asserts there is "palpable fear" he will "embarrass" the EU.
Friday, November 28, 2008
The NY Times
All the excrement that's fit to shit:
Build me this house.
Ever build a home or know how the home building process works? Imagine you and your happy family wants to build a home. It’s a pretty simple process, fairly straightforward to navigate
Well I would like to pose a thought experiment to illiterate another point.
Try building a home when the government has the right the change your design standards after they have been submitted, approved and then inspected. For example a 2X4 stud wall that was approved at 16” on center gets changed to 12” on center after your conduit plumbing and drywall work are done. Even though you followed all the relevant desgn guidelines and have included significantly large safety margins, the reason for this change can be as arbitrary as the inspector saying “do it because we say so”.
Try building a home where the government’s regulation of your building material supplier has been so burdensome that you cannot go to Lowes or Home Depot for your lumber wire and roofing shingles (they have all been driven out of business); you now have to buy all of it from France and Japan.
Try getting a loan for this house when there is no guarantee that even if you jump through ever single hurdle presented above there is no guarantee that you will receive your occupancy permit.
During every step of the way your worst enemies petition the government to stop you, have courts grant injunctions against the building, and have the government change what your house looks like.
Now imagine that through all of this you having to pay for lawyers to fight your enemies and pay for all of the tradesmen when they either cant work or have to rework what they have done.
A home that would normally cost $250,000 and take 5 months to build would cost $2,000,000 and take 5 years to build.
How many houses would be built if the process was like this? Not too many.
Welcome to the state of the US nuclear industry,
The Bush administration gave nuclear a big boost early on, but lost the political capital to push ahead, although the US Indian Nuclear agreement was just the shot in the arm that the US nuclear industry needed.
When just another Illinois politician Obama was supportive of Exelon, if not necessarily of the nuclear industry as a whole. During the campaign, The Dear Leader played the good fence sitting politician by saying “we should explore nuclear power as part of the mix" but considering the opposition to nuclear power only a strong commitment on the part of the government will get things going again.
The next times some dickhead starts whining about the “republican war on science", ask him about nuclear power.
Well I would like to pose a thought experiment to illiterate another point.
Try building a home when the government has the right the change your design standards after they have been submitted, approved and then inspected. For example a 2X4 stud wall that was approved at 16” on center gets changed to 12” on center after your conduit plumbing and drywall work are done. Even though you followed all the relevant desgn guidelines and have included significantly large safety margins, the reason for this change can be as arbitrary as the inspector saying “do it because we say so”.
Try building a home where the government’s regulation of your building material supplier has been so burdensome that you cannot go to Lowes or Home Depot for your lumber wire and roofing shingles (they have all been driven out of business); you now have to buy all of it from France and Japan.
Try getting a loan for this house when there is no guarantee that even if you jump through ever single hurdle presented above there is no guarantee that you will receive your occupancy permit.
During every step of the way your worst enemies petition the government to stop you, have courts grant injunctions against the building, and have the government change what your house looks like.
Now imagine that through all of this you having to pay for lawyers to fight your enemies and pay for all of the tradesmen when they either cant work or have to rework what they have done.
A home that would normally cost $250,000 and take 5 months to build would cost $2,000,000 and take 5 years to build.
How many houses would be built if the process was like this? Not too many.
Welcome to the state of the US nuclear industry,
The Bush administration gave nuclear a big boost early on, but lost the political capital to push ahead, although the US Indian Nuclear agreement was just the shot in the arm that the US nuclear industry needed.
When just another Illinois politician Obama was supportive of Exelon, if not necessarily of the nuclear industry as a whole. During the campaign, The Dear Leader played the good fence sitting politician by saying “we should explore nuclear power as part of the mix" but considering the opposition to nuclear power only a strong commitment on the part of the government will get things going again.
The next times some dickhead starts whining about the “republican war on science", ask him about nuclear power.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Lynchings increase a bazillion percent since Obama election
I saw that dickfaced shmuck Charlie Gibson talking about this the other nite, and I just had to comment on it.
Basically this story is nothing more than a regurgitation of the the SLPC's (aging liberal hippie douches founded by race pimp extraordinaire Julian Bond) talking points.
Fact is the FBI wont compile data like this until well into next year, and all evidence to that effect is purely anecdotal. News outlets that are running with this story are not only doing a disservice with the mild regurgitation of a left wing organizations press release but is illustrative on just how lazy they have gotten. Do they still wonder why hoards of people continue to tune them out?
But its like I was saying before, instead of being seen as a nail in the coffin of institutional racism, the Obama (elect) administration will be able to use race as powerful shield against legitimate criticism. It will be small rhetorical leap to link this clip on the resurgence of the Klan and a center right critic of the new Obama administration.
But in their defense, I supposed that maybe the SPLC may only been confused (and not outright full of shit) about the spike in hate crimes since the election.
Barack Obama's election as U.S. president has provoked a rise in hate crimes against ethnic minorities, civil rights groups said on Monday.
Hundreds of incidents of abuse or intimidation apparently motivated by racial hatred have been reported since the Nov. 4 election, though most have not involved violence, said the Southern Poverty Law Center.
White supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Council of Conservative Citizens have seen a flood of interest from possible new members since the landmark election of the first black president in U.S. history.
Far right groups are also capitalizing on rising unemployment in the economic downturn and a demographic shift that could make whites a minority by mid-century, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.
Basically this story is nothing more than a regurgitation of the the SLPC's (aging liberal hippie douches founded by race pimp extraordinaire Julian Bond) talking points.
Fact is the FBI wont compile data like this until well into next year, and all evidence to that effect is purely anecdotal. News outlets that are running with this story are not only doing a disservice with the mild regurgitation of a left wing organizations press release but is illustrative on just how lazy they have gotten. Do they still wonder why hoards of people continue to tune them out?
But its like I was saying before, instead of being seen as a nail in the coffin of institutional racism, the Obama (elect) administration will be able to use race as powerful shield against legitimate criticism. It will be small rhetorical leap to link this clip on the resurgence of the Klan and a center right critic of the new Obama administration.
But in their defense, I supposed that maybe the SPLC may only been confused (and not outright full of shit) about the spike in hate crimes since the election.
Federal officials have launched a preliminary inquiry into whether recent acts of vandalism against Mormon temples and meeting houses are hate crimes, a department spokesman said Friday.Something tells me these kinds of hate crimes don’t count though.
"We are looking into whether these acts are intimidating people into not going into houses of worship," said Juan Becerra, of the Salt Lake City FBI. "The right to worship is a basic civil right."
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints actively supported the passage of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Global Warming
Back in the early part of my career and even to a limited extent today I utilized a tool known as computational fluid dynamics, or CFD. CFD and modeling software packages in general are great. You can use that fancy schmancy Sun workstation your boss plunked $50K down for (now it is an off the shelf PC, my how times change) to make a computer model of a physical system. Without ever having to step inside the shop, you can build a component or an entire engineered item and see how it performs. It’s like a having an army of mathematicians solving tens of thousands of simultaneous equations in three dimensions. Better yet, you can even overlay other interdependent models like a chemical kinetic models to map out changes in system chemistry or a finite element model to give you material stresses.
The biggest advantage of using CFD is that I don’t have to make a prototype in order to test a design and I can refine my design to a level that I just couldn’t with a pen and paper or statistical/empirical based calculations. I can make all the little tweaks and refinements I like, and then go make a prototype. Its not a magic bullet, to be sure, but it cuts the amount of time it takes to analyze and develop something.
After a model was constructed and everyone got the opportunity to shit all over it through a review process. As part of this review process, all of the assumptions I made were scrutinized. The software lets me “ignore” for lack of a better term phenomenon that doesn’t apply to my model, or should I say phenomenon that I think have a negligible impact on the results. The software also allows me to set the resolution of the model. I could, for example, include every physical, chemical, and thermal phenomenon into my model, but in my opinion the ones I chose to ignore are of tertiary importance and including them will waste manhours and make the model to complicate to run on my puny machine.
Couple this with the fact that I have years of experimental and empirical data to validate my initial methodology. For example, Dr Smith from the University of Complicadia figured out in 1967 that the exothermic reaction of a minor chemical intermediary in my process only contributes .001% to the overall energy balance and therefore I can safely say BFD.
In addition to all this, the one thing I don’t have to worry about is the soundness of the tool I am using. The makers of it have put it through a rigorous verification and validation procedure (like ISO/IEC 90003:2004 or something), and this procedure conforms to some recognized international standard.
At the end of my review process changes were made until everyone was happy and a prototype was built. That prototype was then tested and discrepancies between the real world results and the model were explained as either within the margin of error, poor assumption in the model or whatever. These real world results were then taken into consideration the next time a model was constructed, and were also good to give to management to waylay their fears as they are naturally skeptical of all that oogah-boogah black box magic, and don’t want to spend $40 million just to find out that the computer was wrong.
This CFD tool that I used on boilers, pumps, solid fuel injection and all that good stuff is being used to model the global climate. There are statistical based models as well, but I know very little about them and my comments will only touch on general circulation models which use a methodology similar to the CFD models I worked with.
A lot of big claims are being made about where the global climate is going. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that they are 90% certain that global temperatures could rise from 1.8°C to 4.0°C. My goodness, 90% certainly sounds pretty freaking sure, and after all, they have all those global warming models to back these claims up, but now the question becomes how reliable are the models.
Now these climate modelers are smart guys to be sure, they know their shit and I would never accuse them of intentionally passing off what they knew to be bad date. This said, they seem to be a rather insular group of people who are a little to thin skinned, clannish and not open to criticisms of their work. Many of them have never had to work in the private sector where good verifiable results are a must and poor performance is severely punished. If they want to satisfy people like me, they should allow their work to be checked by people with no connection or conflict of interests.
They claim that they have validated their models using historic data, but there are some gaping holes in that explanation.
The explanation goes like this: we have validated the models by setting them up to reflect the conditions of the year 1900 and when advanced to 2008, they show a good match between what happened with the climate, or at least they did after we tweaked them.
And by tweaking they mean that they modified the code and all those constants whose values they came through via assumptions, to get the models results to match the historical data. And that’s OK, isn’t it? Isn’t that what I do when performing my modeling work?
Not exactly. As I mentioned before, I actually get to build what I modeled and see if it works as I predicted it would, they don’t have that luxury so they should be extra specially careful, that and there are significant problems with the methodology they use for their fancy curve fit.
First, how reliable are temperature readings that are 150 or even 100 years old? Was the instrumentation properly calibrated? How accurate were these instruments? It might sound like a trivial point, but instrumentation reliability has killed more than one experiment. Remember we are talking about differences of a just a couple of degrees C, was instrumentation resolution and accuracy in 1905 at a high enough level to make the data gathered useful?
Secondly, what happens when the models appear to work fine at describing some phenomenon like the global average mean temperature from 1850 to 2000, but work very poorly at describing related phenomenon:
The standard response to this is that the modelers will incorporate this data into their next revision, and that will make the models even more accurate, except the climate models continually predict the same warming trend regardless of how many revision have been made to them:
I have had conversation with people about this issue in the past and they have responded to me with two answers: you can’t predict the future and there is no cost in being wrong about this, it’s a win win.
Its not about predicting the future here, its about verifying that the methodology you used to construct your climate model is sound and has been rigorously examined by people who have no personal or professional interest in its failure or success.
There is a cost for being wrong. If legislation to halt global warming is enacted it could very well result in the greatest transfer of wealth from the first to the third world and could also result in the greatest voluntary surrender of individual freedom.
Don’t believe me? The developing world will be written out of any treaty on CO2 emissions. Industry will move there and make them wealthy. Legislation here will determine in no small part what we eat, where we live, how large our homes are, how we go places, how many children we can have, where we work, what temperature the thermostat is set for, where we vacation etcetera.
I don’t know they are wrong, but they have yet to demonstrate that they are right. I know, sounds like a cop out, but its not. They have not demonstrated to any accepted global standard that they tools they use are reliable and they have not demonstrated to any accepted global standard that their methodology is reliable.
Make your case before you legislate way my freedom in the name of saving the Earth. If the science is truly settled, conform to the same burden of proof I would have to.
Show me the money.
The biggest advantage of using CFD is that I don’t have to make a prototype in order to test a design and I can refine my design to a level that I just couldn’t with a pen and paper or statistical/empirical based calculations. I can make all the little tweaks and refinements I like, and then go make a prototype. Its not a magic bullet, to be sure, but it cuts the amount of time it takes to analyze and develop something.
After a model was constructed and everyone got the opportunity to shit all over it through a review process. As part of this review process, all of the assumptions I made were scrutinized. The software lets me “ignore” for lack of a better term phenomenon that doesn’t apply to my model, or should I say phenomenon that I think have a negligible impact on the results. The software also allows me to set the resolution of the model. I could, for example, include every physical, chemical, and thermal phenomenon into my model, but in my opinion the ones I chose to ignore are of tertiary importance and including them will waste manhours and make the model to complicate to run on my puny machine.
Couple this with the fact that I have years of experimental and empirical data to validate my initial methodology. For example, Dr Smith from the University of Complicadia figured out in 1967 that the exothermic reaction of a minor chemical intermediary in my process only contributes .001% to the overall energy balance and therefore I can safely say BFD.
In addition to all this, the one thing I don’t have to worry about is the soundness of the tool I am using. The makers of it have put it through a rigorous verification and validation procedure (like ISO/IEC 90003:2004 or something), and this procedure conforms to some recognized international standard.
At the end of my review process changes were made until everyone was happy and a prototype was built. That prototype was then tested and discrepancies between the real world results and the model were explained as either within the margin of error, poor assumption in the model or whatever. These real world results were then taken into consideration the next time a model was constructed, and were also good to give to management to waylay their fears as they are naturally skeptical of all that oogah-boogah black box magic, and don’t want to spend $40 million just to find out that the computer was wrong.
This CFD tool that I used on boilers, pumps, solid fuel injection and all that good stuff is being used to model the global climate. There are statistical based models as well, but I know very little about them and my comments will only touch on general circulation models which use a methodology similar to the CFD models I worked with.
A lot of big claims are being made about where the global climate is going. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that they are 90% certain that global temperatures could rise from 1.8°C to 4.0°C. My goodness, 90% certainly sounds pretty freaking sure, and after all, they have all those global warming models to back these claims up, but now the question becomes how reliable are the models.
Now these climate modelers are smart guys to be sure, they know their shit and I would never accuse them of intentionally passing off what they knew to be bad date. This said, they seem to be a rather insular group of people who are a little to thin skinned, clannish and not open to criticisms of their work. Many of them have never had to work in the private sector where good verifiable results are a must and poor performance is severely punished. If they want to satisfy people like me, they should allow their work to be checked by people with no connection or conflict of interests.
They claim that they have validated their models using historic data, but there are some gaping holes in that explanation.
The explanation goes like this: we have validated the models by setting them up to reflect the conditions of the year 1900 and when advanced to 2008, they show a good match between what happened with the climate, or at least they did after we tweaked them.
And by tweaking they mean that they modified the code and all those constants whose values they came through via assumptions, to get the models results to match the historical data. And that’s OK, isn’t it? Isn’t that what I do when performing my modeling work?
Not exactly. As I mentioned before, I actually get to build what I modeled and see if it works as I predicted it would, they don’t have that luxury so they should be extra specially careful, that and there are significant problems with the methodology they use for their fancy curve fit.
First, how reliable are temperature readings that are 150 or even 100 years old? Was the instrumentation properly calibrated? How accurate were these instruments? It might sound like a trivial point, but instrumentation reliability has killed more than one experiment. Remember we are talking about differences of a just a couple of degrees C, was instrumentation resolution and accuracy in 1905 at a high enough level to make the data gathered useful?
Secondly, what happens when the models appear to work fine at describing some phenomenon like the global average mean temperature from 1850 to 2000, but work very poorly at describing related phenomenon:
global weather models predict that as carbon dioxide increases, it should affect the temperatures of higher elevations more than it does at ground level. Douglass’s analysis suggests that while the models do roughly match ground temperatures as carbon dioxide increased over the last 20 years, the mid- to high-tropospheric levels of the atmosphere actually cooled.
“The models are relatively accurate at predicting the temperatures at the Earth’s surface, “says Douglass, “but when you go a few miles up, they diverge dramatically. The models are really challenged to explain these results.”
The standard response to this is that the modelers will incorporate this data into their next revision, and that will make the models even more accurate, except the climate models continually predict the same warming trend regardless of how many revision have been made to them:
A detailed analysis of black carbon -- the residue of burned organic matter -- in computer climate models suggests that those models may be overestimating global warming predictions.
I have had conversation with people about this issue in the past and they have responded to me with two answers: you can’t predict the future and there is no cost in being wrong about this, it’s a win win.
Its not about predicting the future here, its about verifying that the methodology you used to construct your climate model is sound and has been rigorously examined by people who have no personal or professional interest in its failure or success.
There is a cost for being wrong. If legislation to halt global warming is enacted it could very well result in the greatest transfer of wealth from the first to the third world and could also result in the greatest voluntary surrender of individual freedom.
Don’t believe me? The developing world will be written out of any treaty on CO2 emissions. Industry will move there and make them wealthy. Legislation here will determine in no small part what we eat, where we live, how large our homes are, how we go places, how many children we can have, where we work, what temperature the thermostat is set for, where we vacation etcetera.
I don’t know they are wrong, but they have yet to demonstrate that they are right. I know, sounds like a cop out, but its not. They have not demonstrated to any accepted global standard that they tools they use are reliable and they have not demonstrated to any accepted global standard that their methodology is reliable.
Make your case before you legislate way my freedom in the name of saving the Earth. If the science is truly settled, conform to the same burden of proof I would have to.
Show me the money.
Wow! What a fucking whore
Some things, and some people do things that are just so disgusting that words, no matter how crass and vulgar, wont do it justice.
Read all about these two shits a The Dirty
Interesting that she describes her poltics on her (now hidden) facebook account as very liberal.
I hope that Nicole Cassese and Yael Nadel-Cadaxa are put in the hospital for this.
On the plus side for her, being a journalism major and all her sense of humor and politics will go over well if wants to get a job at the AP.
STILL MORE
Looks like our budding little journalist got to write a guest column for the Arizona Daily Star
My favorite line from her op-ed:
Read all about these two shits a The Dirty
Interesting that she describes her poltics on her (now hidden) facebook account as very liberal.
I hope that Nicole Cassese and Yael Nadel-Cadaxa are put in the hospital for this.
On the plus side for her, being a journalism major and all her sense of humor and politics will go over well if wants to get a job at the AP.
STILL MORE
Looks like our budding little journalist got to write a guest column for the Arizona Daily Star
My favorite line from her op-ed:
If I stick with my major (fingers crossed) and ever become a reporter, I can assure you this, I will stay true to what journalism really is.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Revolutionary Suicide
You might think that’s an Obama supporter justifying their vote. After all, the election of The Dear Leader has been referred to as a Revolution by lots of big named people."We didn't commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world."
But you’d be wrong. This was actually Jim Jones another left wing messiah, and yesterday was the 30 year anniversary of the revolutionary suicide that took place in Jonestown Guiana.
Jones managed to indoctrinated tens of thousands of young idealistic white progressives and poor minorities in California by selling his own brand of spiritual socialism.
A lot of people don’t really connect what happened 30 years ago to the left, and with good reason. When lefties commit acts of mass stupidity (and mass suicide) they usually have an army of journalists, TV producers, movie directors and musicians who will go to great lengths to write any mention of their involvement out. Were you a Stalin sycophant? Did you carry around Mao’s lil’ red book? Was Pol Pot a progressive visionary? Did you successfully lobby for the parole of a murderer just to see him kill again a few months later? Did you spy for the Soviet fucking Union? Don’t worry, the normal channels of mass marketing vilification will always be kind to you and you will still have a place for interviews in respectable places like the NY Times, NPR and anywhere in America’s university system.
The People’s Temple had an impressive list of big named celebrity supporters who never seemed to face any repercussions for what they stood for back then. Willie Brown, Harvey Milk, Angela Davis, Jane Fonda, Daniel Ellsberg, Caesar Chavez, Dick Gregory, Tom Hayden, and Jerry Brown all spoke at and/or supported Jones’s little experiment.
What’s the point of this pointless rant? Just reminding people that being a good progressive means never having to say you are sorry.
P.S. Lt Nixon has the best picture I have seen on this subject to date.
The Pickens’ Plan
I am sure that most of you have read or at least heard about the Pickens’ plan. Oil tycoon T Boone Pickens has a plan in which the United States uses wind energy to generate electricity which will replace natural gas derived electricity which will allow all that natural gas to be used to fuel vehicles, thereby displacing oil.
Sounds good, but will it work? The short answer is no, there are a lot of holes in the fundamentals (not just the details) of the plan that have not been addressed.
The long(ish) answer is that there are many reasons why both the Pickens’ plan is impractical.
There are two types of electrical generating sources in the US: baseload and peak.
Baseload plants, just like the name would imply, provide for the base electrical demand on the grid. These are big units like nuclear and coal plants. They are baseloading units because they have the lowest $/kW operating costs (fuel prices) and the highest reliabilities and capacity factors.
Peaker capacity is almost entirely comprised of stationary natural gas powered turbines and supplemental natural gas firing into boilers. This is because natural gas is expensive but cheap to build.
As a commodity, electricity is special in that it cannot be easily stored in large quantities and it has to be generated as needed: to much of it and you crash your grid, too little of it and you crash your grid. Determining how much electricity needs to be put up on the grid at any given moment is a very complex process. Any shortcomings in your baseload capability has to be made up for with your peaker capacity. Natural gas turbines make for good peaker sources because if you need X number of MW of additional electricity, you know with a high level of certainty that you can generate what you need, and gas fired sources can come on line within minutes, which is nice if you lose a baseload generating source for some reason (happens all the time).
How much generating capability a utility builds and keeps on line is determined by how much electricity they need divided by the capacity factor of the source they are installing. A coal fired plant has an average maximum capacity factor of about 85%, so in order to meet 100MW of electricity demand with coal you would have to build a plant that had a nameplate capacity of 117MW (100/.85).
So what does this have to do with the Pickens’ plan and why it won’t work?
The crux of Picken’s plan is that we replace natural gas derived electricity and replace it with wind powered electricity. Wind power is variable, just like the wind, so you cannot rely on it to provide exactly as much power at the precise time you need it to. To compensate for this you either have to use a backup power supply to compensate for all those times that the wind isn’t blowing right, like natural gas. Since wind only has a capacity factor of around 33% you have to install 3 times as much. In reality a combination of both would be needed, but the Pickens’ plan does not take any of this into account. He prices the replacement of natural gas with wind on a watt per watt replacement cost.
In addition to the cost of the implementing the plan to provide a reasonable degree of reliability to avoid rolling blackouts, controlling a system that would be prone to such wild and dramatic swings in load would be a significant engineering challenge (lots more money).
There is also the question of whether or not this even provides us all that much energy security.
The US uses about 39.8QBTU’s of oil, imports 58% of that and uses 70% for transportation meaning we import 16.2QBTU’s of oil for transportation alone. Out of that 16.2QBTU, we use about 55% for cars or 8.91QBTU, the res is for commercial trucks, planes, trains and boats. The US uses about 23.5QBTU’s of natural gas, imports 20% of that and uses 30%, or 7.1QBTU’s for power production. This means that we will still have to nearly 2.0 QBTU’s of natural gas to make up for this differential. Doesn’t sound like a lot, true, but our production of natural gas in the US has been nearly flat for the past decade. So instead of importing oil from volatile areas of the world whose inhabitants and governments despise us, we now have to import natural gas from volatile areas of the word whose inhabitants and governments despise us.
In short, the Pickens’ plan will cost more that is estimated, by an order of magnitude once everything is factored in and will not significantly reduce our reliance on foreign energy.
Unfortunately when the press and pundits weigh in on this, they do a terrible job of addressing any of these issues. An example of the 4th estate’s failure to clarify these issues is Obamabot Anthony Cefali’s ill-informed and gushing piece about Obama’s willingness to implement the Pickens’ plan:
The author’s lack of even the most fundamental understanding of how the nations electrical grid works (he is a biology and English lit major at UW Madison) is only compounded by the certainty he has that this plan, under the ever watchful eyes of the Dear Leader naturally, will work. Industry uses natural gas primarily for process heating applications, and electricity makes a poor and very expensive substitute for this (trust me, I recently priced out a 10MMBTU electrical heater and it was about $850,000 dollars, the 10MMBTU natural gas heater was $50,000.)
Pickens plan might work if we were willing to spend the money for it and the money for the additional transmission and distribution infrastructure needed, and the additional money to make 20% of our grid reliant on a variable output source, and additional money to develop offshore gas production and transportation infrastructure for Alaskan natural gas (good luck with the last 2).
I am all for reducing our dependency on foreign oil, that why we need to reduce what we use, drill here at home, develop the trillion plus barrels we have in shale deposits and build lots more nuclear plants not blindly buy into a woefully underpriced plan.
Sounds good, but will it work? The short answer is no, there are a lot of holes in the fundamentals (not just the details) of the plan that have not been addressed.
The long(ish) answer is that there are many reasons why both the Pickens’ plan is impractical.
There are two types of electrical generating sources in the US: baseload and peak.
Baseload plants, just like the name would imply, provide for the base electrical demand on the grid. These are big units like nuclear and coal plants. They are baseloading units because they have the lowest $/kW operating costs (fuel prices) and the highest reliabilities and capacity factors.
Peaker capacity is almost entirely comprised of stationary natural gas powered turbines and supplemental natural gas firing into boilers. This is because natural gas is expensive but cheap to build.
As a commodity, electricity is special in that it cannot be easily stored in large quantities and it has to be generated as needed: to much of it and you crash your grid, too little of it and you crash your grid. Determining how much electricity needs to be put up on the grid at any given moment is a very complex process. Any shortcomings in your baseload capability has to be made up for with your peaker capacity. Natural gas turbines make for good peaker sources because if you need X number of MW of additional electricity, you know with a high level of certainty that you can generate what you need, and gas fired sources can come on line within minutes, which is nice if you lose a baseload generating source for some reason (happens all the time).
How much generating capability a utility builds and keeps on line is determined by how much electricity they need divided by the capacity factor of the source they are installing. A coal fired plant has an average maximum capacity factor of about 85%, so in order to meet 100MW of electricity demand with coal you would have to build a plant that had a nameplate capacity of 117MW (100/.85).
So what does this have to do with the Pickens’ plan and why it won’t work?
The crux of Picken’s plan is that we replace natural gas derived electricity and replace it with wind powered electricity. Wind power is variable, just like the wind, so you cannot rely on it to provide exactly as much power at the precise time you need it to. To compensate for this you either have to use a backup power supply to compensate for all those times that the wind isn’t blowing right, like natural gas. Since wind only has a capacity factor of around 33% you have to install 3 times as much. In reality a combination of both would be needed, but the Pickens’ plan does not take any of this into account. He prices the replacement of natural gas with wind on a watt per watt replacement cost.
In addition to the cost of the implementing the plan to provide a reasonable degree of reliability to avoid rolling blackouts, controlling a system that would be prone to such wild and dramatic swings in load would be a significant engineering challenge (lots more money).
There is also the question of whether or not this even provides us all that much energy security.
The US uses about 39.8QBTU’s of oil, imports 58% of that and uses 70% for transportation meaning we import 16.2QBTU’s of oil for transportation alone. Out of that 16.2QBTU, we use about 55% for cars or 8.91QBTU, the res is for commercial trucks, planes, trains and boats. The US uses about 23.5QBTU’s of natural gas, imports 20% of that and uses 30%, or 7.1QBTU’s for power production. This means that we will still have to nearly 2.0 QBTU’s of natural gas to make up for this differential. Doesn’t sound like a lot, true, but our production of natural gas in the US has been nearly flat for the past decade. So instead of importing oil from volatile areas of the world whose inhabitants and governments despise us, we now have to import natural gas from volatile areas of the word whose inhabitants and governments despise us.
In short, the Pickens’ plan will cost more that is estimated, by an order of magnitude once everything is factored in and will not significantly reduce our reliance on foreign energy.
Unfortunately when the press and pundits weigh in on this, they do a terrible job of addressing any of these issues. An example of the 4th estate’s failure to clarify these issues is Obamabot Anthony Cefali’s ill-informed and gushing piece about Obama’s willingness to implement the Pickens’ plan:
Why is Pickens’ Plan important? Simply because it’s main goal is to divert all of our oil and natural gas to the transportation sector. Factories will no longer use natural gas because they will be powered either on site or through an electric grid powered by wind and solar. The plan stresses efficiency and centrality. It could also potentially save the US $300 billion in oil expenditures. Citing Obama’s plan to end dependency on foreign oil in the next ten years, Pickens expects that the first step will be implementing major parts of his plan.
The major parts of the plan involve the US specially equipping larger vehicles (buses, trucks, etc.) to run on natural gas. This would take a huge load off of our dependence on oil, in turn causing prices to drop because factories and businesses will have no need for it. Demand for oil would come solely from consumers, as would carbon dioxide emissions (the nitrogen oxide emissions will come from the natural gas burning buses).
The author’s lack of even the most fundamental understanding of how the nations electrical grid works (he is a biology and English lit major at UW Madison) is only compounded by the certainty he has that this plan, under the ever watchful eyes of the Dear Leader naturally, will work. Industry uses natural gas primarily for process heating applications, and electricity makes a poor and very expensive substitute for this (trust me, I recently priced out a 10MMBTU electrical heater and it was about $850,000 dollars, the 10MMBTU natural gas heater was $50,000.)
Pickens plan might work if we were willing to spend the money for it and the money for the additional transmission and distribution infrastructure needed, and the additional money to make 20% of our grid reliant on a variable output source, and additional money to develop offshore gas production and transportation infrastructure for Alaskan natural gas (good luck with the last 2).
I am all for reducing our dependency on foreign oil, that why we need to reduce what we use, drill here at home, develop the trillion plus barrels we have in shale deposits and build lots more nuclear plants not blindly buy into a woefully underpriced plan.
Monday, November 17, 2008
New Name for the Democrat Party
The Know Nothing Party.
The problem with worshiping a mortal is that once people realize that "The Dear Leader" is not omnipotent they might come unhinged.
The problem with worshiping a mortal is that once people realize that "The Dear Leader" is not omnipotent they might come unhinged.
Redistributive Wealth In Action
Be careful what you wish for:
(H/T: A Chicago Blog )
On my way to lunch recently, I passed a homeless guy with a sign that read "Vote Obama; I need the money." I laughed. In a restaurant my server had on an "Obama 08" tie. Again I laughed. Just imagine the coincidence. When the bill came, I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Barack-Obama-redistribution-of-wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need—the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight. I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I've decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful. At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment, I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more. I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.
(H/T: A Chicago Blog )
A Big Pill
Although I never cared much for Ron Paul on a lot of issues, his former economic advisor Peter Schiff was spot freaking on in 2006:
To which our newly ordained Dear Leader says:
I don’t know if this is the most prudent course of action, later on in the video Schiff makes the case that we need to get the deficits under control, otherwise inflation will explode and do more damage than to the economy than any correction. Unfortunately as spot on as Schiff was, I think that people will continue to ignore him at our peril.
No one wants to acknowledge the hard truth that we have collectively been living beyond our means for the past 20 years, it will only get harder to correct this imbalance the longer we allow it to continue.
Whether it starts in 07 or 08 I think is immaterial. I also think its going to also not just for quarters but for years. The basic problem with the US economy is we have too much consumption and borrowing and not enough production and savings and what’s going to happen is the American consumer is basically going to stop consuming and start rebuilding his savings especially when he sees his home equity evaporate.
And when you have the Economy 70% consumption you can’t address those imbalances without a recession. Rather than the recession being resisted, it should really be embraced because the disease is all this debt financed consumption. The cure is that we stop consuming and start saving and producing again, and that’s a recession. Sometimes medicine tastes bad but you gotta swallow it.
To which our newly ordained Dear Leader says:
The government will do ``whatever it takes'' to revive the economy, Obama said. That means ``we shouldn't worry about the deficit next year or even the year after,'' he said, adding that in the short term, ``the most important thing is that we avoid a deepening recession.''
I don’t know if this is the most prudent course of action, later on in the video Schiff makes the case that we need to get the deficits under control, otherwise inflation will explode and do more damage than to the economy than any correction. Unfortunately as spot on as Schiff was, I think that people will continue to ignore him at our peril.
No one wants to acknowledge the hard truth that we have collectively been living beyond our means for the past 20 years, it will only get harder to correct this imbalance the longer we allow it to continue.
Friday, November 14, 2008
The T-Shirt of Conformity
The good Obamatron bad Obamtron experiment:
Here’s what’s so interesting about this story, Oak Park is generally considered to be one of the most “progressive” suburbs of Chicago. Its like the Santa Monica of Illinois.
But like all progressives enclaves, they don’t necessarily practice what they preach. Aside from young Catherine Vogt another interesting anecdote is what happened in the 1970’s.
Chicago’s west side was rapidly experiencing “white flight” and the boundaries of the ghettos were quickly coming up on Oak Park’s border. When that boundary, Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, started to go ghetto and overflow into Oak Park what did the good progressives in Oak Park do to accommodate their new neighbors?
Did they embrace them and sing the praises of their diversifying community?
Silly rabbit! They did what any good progressive would do, the used city ordnances to drive them back into the ghettos of Chicago! By passing very strict zoning ordnances they were able to enforce occupancy limits on residential structures and through the schools they were able to investigate and expel out of district students, thereby saving their progressive enclave.
The Catherine Vogt Experiment on Diversity of Thought took place before the presidential election. She shared her idea secretly with her history teacher, Norma Cassin-Pountney.
Her findings?
When she wore the McCain shirt, she was stupid and was told to go die. One kid said she should be "crucifixed," which should prompt outrage from that student's grammar/lit teacher. Crucifixed?
One student whispered—perhaps like Winston Smith in "1984"—"I really like your shirt." But she said it quietly so no one else would hear and denounce her.
And when Catherine wore the Obama shirt? Her brains grew back and she was smart again and welcomed into polite society.
Since many liberal journalists live in Oak Park, I expect to receive many snarky reviews. My crime? I dared to illustrate, through the actions of a brave 8th-grade girl, that even high-minded liberal communities can be intolerant, no matter how many times parents gush on about "diversity" at their cocktail parties.
So much for the audacity of hope.
Here’s what’s so interesting about this story, Oak Park is generally considered to be one of the most “progressive” suburbs of Chicago. Its like the Santa Monica of Illinois.
But like all progressives enclaves, they don’t necessarily practice what they preach. Aside from young Catherine Vogt another interesting anecdote is what happened in the 1970’s.
Chicago’s west side was rapidly experiencing “white flight” and the boundaries of the ghettos were quickly coming up on Oak Park’s border. When that boundary, Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, started to go ghetto and overflow into Oak Park what did the good progressives in Oak Park do to accommodate their new neighbors?
Did they embrace them and sing the praises of their diversifying community?
Silly rabbit! They did what any good progressive would do, the used city ordnances to drive them back into the ghettos of Chicago! By passing very strict zoning ordnances they were able to enforce occupancy limits on residential structures and through the schools they were able to investigate and expel out of district students, thereby saving their progressive enclave.
Kafka in Ohio
The 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama, exercising the state's power upon those who speak the truth:
To be fair (as is my way), it wasn’t the campaign that did this, it was its followers. Operating just like a well oiled political machine should; be proactive in defending The Leader that he doesn’t soil his hands doing the dirty work himself (as far as we know).
And this begs the question: who were the bigger pieces of shit here, the diggers of dirt or the lapdogs in the press regurgitating it?
Ohio Inspector General Tom Charles said his office is now looking at a half-dozen agencies that accessed state records on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher.
The Beacon Journal has learned that, in addition to the Department of Job and Family Services, two other state offices — the Ohio Department of Taxation and Ohio Attorney General Nancy Rogers — conducted database searches of Joe the Plumber.
To be fair (as is my way), it wasn’t the campaign that did this, it was its followers. Operating just like a well oiled political machine should; be proactive in defending The Leader that he doesn’t soil his hands doing the dirty work himself (as far as we know).
And this begs the question: who were the bigger pieces of shit here, the diggers of dirt or the lapdogs in the press regurgitating it?
Wake up ... Wake Up ... Wake Up
AIG, Amex, The Big 3, the cities of Detroit, Phoenix, Philadelphia all want in on some of tat delicious tasty rich and sweet goverment cheeze.
After reading about all these handouts, I dont know why Bone Thugs-N-Harmony popped into my mind.
After reading about all these handouts, I dont know why Bone Thugs-N-Harmony popped into my mind.
Wake up, wake up, wake up
it's the 1st of the month
To get up, get up, get up
so cash your checks and get up
Interesting Coincidence?
Interesting tidbit, and all of it quite true.
On September 11th, 2002 the wining lottery number for the daily 3 pick in New York State was 9-1-1
On November 5th, 2008 the wining lottery number for the daily 3 pick in Illinois State was 6-6-6
Now, before anyone accuses me of being some rapture singing fundie, I don’t think that this is some kind of sign that Obama is the Antichrist or anything like that. However I do think that when enough people begin to put their conscious or subconscious minds on something, interesting things can happen.
On September 11th, 2002 the wining lottery number for the daily 3 pick in New York State was 9-1-1
On November 5th, 2008 the wining lottery number for the daily 3 pick in Illinois State was 6-6-6
Now, before anyone accuses me of being some rapture singing fundie, I don’t think that this is some kind of sign that Obama is the Antichrist or anything like that. However I do think that when enough people begin to put their conscious or subconscious minds on something, interesting things can happen.
Does this Bother Anyone?
When a "president-elect" and "respectable" journalists :cavort with terrorists
Not to say that Marshall is anything other than a slimy shit eating prick, but doesn’t it bother anyone that members of the media are now sitting on, what essentially are the equivalent of teabagging sessions, with these people?
Early on in the panel discussion, the moderator, Joshua Micah Marshall, editor and publisher of the political blog Talking Points Memo, asked Ms. Dohrn what it was like for her and her husband to play cameo roles in the campaign.
She said they felt “tremendously lucky to have been together for almost 40 years now.” She added that they were still “proud radicals,” and were “definitively not now, or then, terrorists.”
Not to say that Marshall is anything other than a slimy shit eating prick, but doesn’t it bother anyone that members of the media are now sitting on, what essentially are the equivalent of teabagging sessions, with these people?
Barbara Boxer (D-Pedophilia)
Does Boxer have some kind of soft spot in her heart for kiddie fuckers?
If you think I am blowing one single incident out of proportion, remember a few months ago when "The Lion of the Left" Bernie Ward got pinched for kiddy porn as well? He was a former Boxer aide as well.
An aide to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has been charged in federal court in Virginia with receiving and distributing child pornography.
Jeff Rosato, 32, of Arlington, Va., was arrested Friday on a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Virginia. Boxer's office fired him the same day.
If you think I am blowing one single incident out of proportion, remember a few months ago when "The Lion of the Left" Bernie Ward got pinched for kiddy porn as well? He was a former Boxer aide as well.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Government Cheese Spreads
Another bailout for another industry, this time the Big Three.
I hear a lot of people saying that this has to be done or GM, Ford and Chrysler will go bankrupt but I don’t hear any of these people also explain why this is the worst of all possible outcomes.
The Big 3 will remain at a significant competitive disadvantage if they cannot get out of their long term pension liabilities with the UAW. The worst of all possible outcomes is having to do this again in 15 years.
Bailing them out just allows them to continue implementing a failed business model that will have to be abandoned eventually anyways. As much as it will suck for all those retired and soon to be retired UAW members who have been relying on their pensions to see them through retirement, it has to be done sooner or later.
If the Big Three were smart, they would take part of the money and give it to the UAW and say here, you manage the pension fund for now on.
I hear a lot of people saying that this has to be done or GM, Ford and Chrysler will go bankrupt but I don’t hear any of these people also explain why this is the worst of all possible outcomes.
The Big 3 will remain at a significant competitive disadvantage if they cannot get out of their long term pension liabilities with the UAW. The worst of all possible outcomes is having to do this again in 15 years.
Bailing them out just allows them to continue implementing a failed business model that will have to be abandoned eventually anyways. As much as it will suck for all those retired and soon to be retired UAW members who have been relying on their pensions to see them through retirement, it has to be done sooner or later.
If the Big Three were smart, they would take part of the money and give it to the UAW and say here, you manage the pension fund for now on.
Who lives and who dies
Though this article on a pandemic was interesting especially when it came to who is really essential and who isnt.
Interesting to think that all those smug pricks who think of themselves a so indispensible in modern America (i.e celebrities, talking heads, comparative literature majors who now blog for The Atlantic, Mother Jones, or Vanity Fair) will find themselves waiting in line behind truck drivers, sanitation workers and refinery operators for a vaccine.
Bought this over at Amazon a while back, good book with lots of basic information.
The top of the list is an easy one. Doctors and nurses will be vital, so they end up in the win column. Others essential to public health and safety will be next, but after that, the going gets tough. A provocative new study argues that the list needs to be broadened. Some truck drivers, for instance, may be just as important as doctors.
What it boils down to is this: Medical professionals won't be very successful if the truck driver doesn't show up with the necessary medications because he couldn't get fuel for his vehicle.
So, people who might have been thought of as nonessential are indeed essential if the wheels of society are to keep rolling along. Someone to deliver fuel to the service station. Someone to keep the truck operational. Someone to drive it.
Interesting to think that all those smug pricks who think of themselves a so indispensible in modern America (i.e celebrities, talking heads, comparative literature majors who now blog for The Atlantic, Mother Jones, or Vanity Fair) will find themselves waiting in line behind truck drivers, sanitation workers and refinery operators for a vaccine.
Bought this over at Amazon a while back, good book with lots of basic information.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Juan Cole say What?!?!
While pissing and moaning about the injustice of letting "criminals" like Karl Rove, Tom Delay and Oliver North on TV, “noted Middle eastern Scholar”© Juan Cole had this to say about the MSM’s abuses on liberal commentators:
Say what !?! Scott Ritter was sidelined by Aaron Brown over a date gone wrong? I don’t know about Cole, but I have never been on a date that consisted of chatting with a 14 year old girl on the internet, agreeing to meet said 14 year old girl at a Burger King so they could watch me jerk off, only to find out that the 14 year old girl was actually a member of a sexual predator task force.
Like Ritter did, not once but twice!
If that’s Cole’s idea of a date, good bad or ugly, then I sure a shit hope his daughter (or son for that matter) doesn’t plans on having any sleepovers any time soon. Or ever for that matter.
And to think that this asshole had the nerve to complain about Yale rejecting his 2006 Cole nomination to teach there?
Note that corporate media is much more careful about sexual scandal than it is about other kinds of crime. A politician or public figure so much as accused of sexual impropriety is often considered off limits (CNN's Aaron Brown once sidelined Scott Ritter that way, over a date gone bad). Presumably this caution derives in part from fear of the emails they would get, and threats of advertiser boycotts, from the relgious[sic] Right
Say what !?! Scott Ritter was sidelined by Aaron Brown over a date gone wrong? I don’t know about Cole, but I have never been on a date that consisted of chatting with a 14 year old girl on the internet, agreeing to meet said 14 year old girl at a Burger King so they could watch me jerk off, only to find out that the 14 year old girl was actually a member of a sexual predator task force.
Like Ritter did, not once but twice!
If that’s Cole’s idea of a date, good bad or ugly, then I sure a shit hope his daughter (or son for that matter) doesn’t plans on having any sleepovers any time soon. Or ever for that matter.
And to think that this asshole had the nerve to complain about Yale rejecting his 2006 Cole nomination to teach there?
Tales from the Land of Cognitive Dissonance
If you ever wondered why newspapers and the journalism profession in general is in such dire straits, letting guys like Bryan Miller of Ceasefire New Jersey write columns for you should be a good indication.
Here’s a tip for you Bryan, get your fat lazy ass to a gun store and see the crowds for yourself.
The press has been full of reports in recent days of gun shop owners across the country claiming sales have climbed dramatically since last Tuesday's election. Said owners attribute this supposed spike to Barack Obama's election as, per the quoted remarks of a Seattle gun shop owner: "He wants to take our guns from us and create a socialist society policed by his own police force."
Overlooking the craziness of this gun retailer's sentiment, I am highly skeptical of the sales claims. Note that gun dealers are the ones making them. I've seen this happen numerous times over the years.
Here’s a tip for you Bryan, get your fat lazy ass to a gun store and see the crowds for yourself.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Obama's Economic Stimulus is Working!
Looks like Obama’s anti-gun stances are reaping large sales and profits for the gun industry.
I know from my own experience that gun sales have taken off since last Tuesday. Just today I went into buy the following Rock River AR-Clone, knowing that I might not get the chance to ever do this again in a couple of months.
I asked the salesman how many of these he was going through and he told me that in an average month he would sell between 50 and 60 of the Rock Rivers (this is a huge gun store) but since the election he has been selling 40 of them a day and cant get ebough from the distributor. Similar sales, although not in the same magnitude, were being seen for M1’s, AK’s and tactical shotguns.
I certainly hope that The Dear Leader can spur a similar uptick in the auto industry.
Indianapolis - Gun control was an issue that was largely out of the spotlight in the presidential campaign. Fears the new administration will impose stricter regulations have caused a spike in the number of firearms sold nationwide.
At Popguns on the east side, business is literally booming. Racks with long guns are half empty. Hand gun cases are thinning out too. Last weekend, firearms sales here increased 250 percent.
I know from my own experience that gun sales have taken off since last Tuesday. Just today I went into buy the following Rock River AR-Clone, knowing that I might not get the chance to ever do this again in a couple of months.
I asked the salesman how many of these he was going through and he told me that in an average month he would sell between 50 and 60 of the Rock Rivers (this is a huge gun store) but since the election he has been selling 40 of them a day and cant get ebough from the distributor. Similar sales, although not in the same magnitude, were being seen for M1’s, AK’s and tactical shotguns.
I certainly hope that The Dear Leader can spur a similar uptick in the auto industry.
More on 52 to 48
Its hard not to want to treat Obama and his sycophants ... er ... I mean supporters ... the same way that the left has treated Bush over the past eight years.
I can understand how many of the "48" want to have posters of Obama with a gun to his head, or "hail to the chimp" coffee mugs or all the stupid bullshit agitprop that the left was so in love with for the past eight years, but Dirty Harry captures my thoughts on this pretty well:
Well said.
I can understand how many of the "48" want to have posters of Obama with a gun to his head, or "hail to the chimp" coffee mugs or all the stupid bullshit agitprop that the left was so in love with for the past eight years, but Dirty Harry captures my thoughts on this pretty well:
Because of my love of country, respect for the office, and determination not to become what thoroughly disgusts me, I will never dehumanize President-elect Obama the way in which Bush was. However…
I will never forget the immoral monsters on the left willing to abandon a country and its 25 million innocents to the same evil responsible for 9/11 — all in the name of winning a few political points.
Well said.
From the Go Fuck Yourselves file
52 to 48 says no hard feeling about the election, lets all be friends and bask in the soft warmth of the Dear Leaders glow. After all, now its cool to love America and be one nation, under the The One, with servitude and government cheese for all.
Sure, we spent the better part of the last several months demonizing a decorated veteran and public servant, labeling him everything from a garden variety racist, a murderer, war criminal, all the way to a fascist but now its time to get past all that and roll over because our guy won.
Now we are all one, now we can be united! The mighty mocha demigod who will now be designated simply as “The One” cannot change the greatest nation on the Earth without compliance and submission from the 48, therefore you MUST submit so that "The One" can fulfill his destiny.
Fuck that.
Sure, we spent the better part of the last several months demonizing a decorated veteran and public servant, labeling him everything from a garden variety racist, a murderer, war criminal, all the way to a fascist but now its time to get past all that and roll over because our guy won.
Now we are all one, now we can be united! The mighty mocha demigod who will now be designated simply as “The One” cannot change the greatest nation on the Earth without compliance and submission from the 48, therefore you MUST submit so that "The One" can fulfill his destiny.
Fuck that.
Post Racial
“You all can kiss it god damn it, that’s what y’all white mother fuckers can do.”
“It aint the White house no more .. its the Black House”
Welcome to post racial politics.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Predictions: The Traitor
Everyone loves predictions … right? I know I do.
Every so often, I think I am going to throw one of these out there, that way when one of them comes true, I can look prescient and wise (just so long as you ignore all the wrong ones).
Rahm Emanuel will not last more than 3 years in the new administration and will become Obama’s Scott McClellan or Paul O’Neil.
A fight will begin in the new administration over how to deal with Israel, Iran and the Palestinians. On one side will be the advisors who want nothing more than to see Palestinians dance victoriously in the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, think of people like Ed Lasky and Zbigniew Brzezinski and then there will be guys like Emanuel.
Emanuel does not seem to be an overly ideological guy, he’s a run of the mill machine power monger, very good at what he does. The one issue that trumps his MO is Israel. Emanuel, for example, left the US during the Gulf War to volunteer with the IDF. Zionism is a cause that he and his family have always strongly supported.
If the anti-Israeli side of the new Obama demonstration wins out, and the US abandons our ally, I don’t think the Emanuel will play the yes man and will turn on the administration.
But the best part is going to see Emanuel go from being the good Jew to the bad demonized Jew in a heartbeat. The DNC has always had a soft spot for anti-Semitesand this would certainly put a big spotlight on this. .
Every so often, I think I am going to throw one of these out there, that way when one of them comes true, I can look prescient and wise (just so long as you ignore all the wrong ones).
Rahm Emanuel will not last more than 3 years in the new administration and will become Obama’s Scott McClellan or Paul O’Neil.
A fight will begin in the new administration over how to deal with Israel, Iran and the Palestinians. On one side will be the advisors who want nothing more than to see Palestinians dance victoriously in the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, think of people like Ed Lasky and Zbigniew Brzezinski and then there will be guys like Emanuel.
Emanuel does not seem to be an overly ideological guy, he’s a run of the mill machine power monger, very good at what he does. The one issue that trumps his MO is Israel. Emanuel, for example, left the US during the Gulf War to volunteer with the IDF. Zionism is a cause that he and his family have always strongly supported.
If the anti-Israeli side of the new Obama demonstration wins out, and the US abandons our ally, I don’t think the Emanuel will play the yes man and will turn on the administration.
But the best part is going to see Emanuel go from being the good Jew to the bad demonized Jew in a heartbeat. The DNC has always had a soft spot for anti-Semitesand this would certainly put a big spotlight on this. .
More Change at Change.gov
This time it with respect to the renewal of the Assault Weapons Ban.
Ace over at Ace of Spades managed to catch this now-you-see-it now-you-don’t over at Change.gov
But I do recall that Obama promised that he wouldn’t take anyone’s guns ... after all he didn’t have the votes:
Now it looks like he does have the votes.
On the plus side, democrats from deeply red states who assured us that "Obama doesn’t want to take anyone’s guns" could be in real trouble in a few years.
John Tester, for example:
I'd like to see these words come back to haunt Tester when he is up for re-election.
Ace over at Ace of Spades managed to catch this now-you-see-it now-you-don’t over at Change.gov
But I do recall that Obama promised that he wouldn’t take anyone’s guns ... after all he didn’t have the votes:
“Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’ [Obama] said. “This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’
Now it looks like he does have the votes.
On the plus side, democrats from deeply red states who assured us that "Obama doesn’t want to take anyone’s guns" could be in real trouble in a few years.
John Tester, for example:
“I talked to Obama straight up on it,” Tester said. “He told me flat out, ‘I'm not taking your guns away and don't let anybody tell you that I will.' ”
Tester, a Big Sandy farmer, told reporters that he's a guy “who likes my guns, to be honest with you,” and said Obama looked him “straight in the eye” and said the Second Amendment will be safe under an Obama presidency.
I'd like to see these words come back to haunt Tester when he is up for re-election.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Change.Gov
Where would Obama get the idea to use governmental resources to wage nonstop campaining through Change.gov?
From his one of his mentors, and soon to be indicted, Governor Rod Blagojevich back in Illinois of course.
From his one of his mentors, and soon to be indicted, Governor Rod Blagojevich back in Illinois of course.
From the department of airbrushing
A lot of people have taken note of Obama’s mandatory national service.
And then, all of a sudden when the scrutiny was beginning to build .... poof .... it disappears from the change.gov website. (thanks to Say Anything where I first saw this)
Historically, this has been referred to as airbrushing.
The Obama campaign was caught doing this several times during the campaign, and that’s shady behavior from a campaign. But it was more than his campaign, it was also the press and his church who joined in on the act.
What really bothers me about this is now it is being done at an official governmental level through an official governmental outlet. Now, it has been mentioned that change.gov is little more that a campaign tool, but don’t forget that we the people own it and we shouldn’t have to put up with it.
Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.
And then, all of a sudden when the scrutiny was beginning to build .... poof .... it disappears from the change.gov website. (thanks to Say Anything where I first saw this)
Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.
Historically, this has been referred to as airbrushing.
The Obama campaign was caught doing this several times during the campaign, and that’s shady behavior from a campaign. But it was more than his campaign, it was also the press and his church who joined in on the act.
What really bothers me about this is now it is being done at an official governmental level through an official governmental outlet. Now, it has been mentioned that change.gov is little more that a campaign tool, but don’t forget that we the people own it and we shouldn’t have to put up with it.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald seems to enjoy basking I the glory that is “The One’s” victory … I don’t know … perhaps somewhere in the back of his mind he really thinks that an Obama administration will make it possible for him to lounge about on a nude beach in Miami with his 16 year old Brazilian lover instead of having to go to Rio for his naughty afternoon delights. Time will tell I suppose.
But enough with the cheap shot. Greenwald has seemed quite content the past few days in running anyone who made a poor prediction through the ringer, but as is the case with all narcissistic pieces of shit like good ol’ Socksy McGreewald he never once considers turning his observations against himself. A few weeks ago, Greenwald was taking Jonah Goldberg, of whom I am quite the fan, to task for linking Obama’s rise in the polls to the tanking Dow.
Unfortunately for ol’ Socksy this “theory” has now manifested itself into reality
This should serve as a lesson for guys like Greenwald that if you don’t know what you are talking bout STFU please. Opinions are like assholes Socksy, and they all smell the same.
But enough with the cheap shot. Greenwald has seemed quite content the past few days in running anyone who made a poor prediction through the ringer, but as is the case with all narcissistic pieces of shit like good ol’ Socksy McGreewald he never once considers turning his observations against himself. A few weeks ago, Greenwald was taking Jonah Goldberg, of whom I am quite the fan, to task for linking Obama’s rise in the polls to the tanking Dow.
Last Thursday, when the Dow was dropping to roughly 8,600, various right-wing polemicists claimed that the stock market was plummeting because investors were realizing that Obama would likely win and his policies would be bad for the economy.
None of the people propounding the self-evidently moronic theory that the dropping Dow was due to Obama's rising poll numbers has mentioned any of this today. They're as intellectually dishonest as they are dumb.
Unfortunately for ol’ Socksy this “theory” has now manifested itself into reality
This should serve as a lesson for guys like Greenwald that if you don’t know what you are talking bout STFU please. Opinions are like assholes Socksy, and they all smell the same.
Diantha Harris
Diantha Harris .. who is she and how do we get her fired?
Update: According to this she is a substitute teacher in Ashville NC.
Update: According to this she is a substitute teacher in Ashville NC.
At least he preactices what he preaches
In an effort to get his new wealth distribution tax initiative in Barack Obama decided to take his children out on Halloween.
After returning home with their bags full of candy and other treats, then candidate Obama spread the haul on the living room floor and proceeded to divide it into two piles. One pile contained 33% of all the candy and the other pile contained 67% of all the candy.
The Obama children were given the 33% pile to split. When they asked what would be done with all that extra candy they were told by their father that he was going to give it to other children who were too lazy to dress up and go out trick-or-treating for their own candy.
After returning home with their bags full of candy and other treats, then candidate Obama spread the haul on the living room floor and proceeded to divide it into two piles. One pile contained 33% of all the candy and the other pile contained 67% of all the candy.
The Obama children were given the 33% pile to split. When they asked what would be done with all that extra candy they were told by their father that he was going to give it to other children who were too lazy to dress up and go out trick-or-treating for their own candy.
Summer Patriots and the Elections
The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.
Four years ago when Bush won re-election over Kerry, the wailing and self-flagellation from the left was bad but it was to be expected. For some people patriotism and love of one’s country (much like dissent and questioning authority) only applies when your part doesn’t run the show ... like this asshole.
This election however, the left can once again “be proud to be Americans, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that this sentiment was heralded in the NY Times.
Jessica watched the results from a bar in Cape Town and wrote: “For the first time in recent memory, I can shout in the streets that I am American and be proud of the progress, hope and color that now define us.”
Naturally though a grade-A douche like Bill Krstol would agree with all the trite little whores like Jessica out there.
And naturally what would any post-election analysis be without the deep thoughts of the ultimate Summer Patriots: celebrities. Leonardo Decaprio “couldn't be more proud of my country right now and proud of being an American". Decaprio fair weathered love of country has given me new appreciation for Titanic .... or at leas the end scene where he drowns.
While I certainly take no pleasure in calling Obama “President Obama”, he is the president and no matter who runs this country it does not change the way I feel about it. Why I love this country is not as shallow as who resides in 1600 Pennsylvania.
So do me a favor readers; the next time you hear some asshole say something to the effect that he/she is once gain “proud to be an American” kick them square in the groin as hard as you can. And if you see the jag in the picture above, kick that fucker twice.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
You though it would end with 11/04?
Anyone who visits the Drudge Report regularly comes to rely on it for those off the radar stories that everyone either will be talking about or should be talking about.
Now, I know a lot of people were really looking forward to the whole “historic” aspect of the election, and that finally, maybe, just perhaps legitimate criticisms and politically minded observation could be made about Obama, or any minority politician for that matter, without the “that’s racist” card being played. Good luck with that one. It always be an easy and convenient cover.
But at least this latest from Steinberg goes to demonstrate that Obama has won over the coveted. 40-something, pudgy, likes to beat his wife when he’s drinking, journalist demographic.
Firsty!
I used to do this all the time .. but then I got a job and a family and all that good stuff. Like all good things that come to an end, they also start up again. So here goes.
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