God is a Democrat?

Both Michael Moore and another prominent Democrat say that a hurricane devastating New Orleans again and disrupting the Republican's convention is proof that there is a God.

I've heard God works in mysterious ways, but blasting a Democrat city, with a Democrat mayor, seems a hard way to show favor to Democrats and disfavor to Republicans.

I guess it shows the special relationship Democrats have with God. As the news media deifies Obama, God feels compelled to chip in His two cents.

Biden just a Chicken?

Democrats called Dick Cheney a "Chicken Hawk" because of five student deferments that kept him from being drafted. I wonder what Joe Biden will be called? He also had five student deferments, then was classified 1-Y (undraftable except in a national emergency) because of childhood asthma.

In "Promises to Keep," a memoir that was published last year and became an instant best-seller after he was tapped as Obama's running mate, Biden never mentions his asthma, recounting an active childhood, work as a lifeguard and football exploits in high school.

Isn't this the same Joe Biden who is so proud of his vitality?

So vain?

The one who told a questioner that he had a higher IQ than the questioner, even though he graduated near the bottom of his college graduating class?

Yep, he's the one.

Iraq War Deaths in Perspective

Since the Iraq War began over five years ago, the United States has suffered about 3,400 combat deaths, roughly the number killed in any four-month period in Vietnam during the last year of LBJ's presidency. Or sometimes in a few days in World War II.

So far this year, Mexico has had 2,700 drug murders in only two-thirds of a year, about 700 deaths less than the total US combat deaths in over five years of war.

In 2008, Oakland, California has almost as many homicides as the United States has had combat deaths in Iraq. Add in homicides in Richmond, California, and the total probably exceeds US combat deaths in Iraq.

It's not cold or heartless of me to put these deaths in perspective. I regret each death, but I've lived long enough to have known of far worse, and I don't understand Liberals' concerns for our war deaths, but lack of concern for far worse associated with their consumption of illegal drugs that drive the drug war deaths.

Is it because the drug war deaths in Mexico can't be blamed on George Bush?

Forget Democrats - Our Economy is OK

There is gloom, there is doom, the sky is falling, and “the good times are all gone, and it’s time to move along.” However, no one told our poor, fragile, insignificant little economy, which is only larger than the combined total of the next five countries below (California’s economy by itself is bigger than the sixth country), so second quarter gross domestic product (GDP) grew at a 3.3 percent rate.

That’s not what Barack and the Democrats were hoping for – good news about America is bad news for Democrats.

First they had to run from Iraq because the surge worked. Now they’ll have to duck the economy, because it’s chugging right along. The way things are going, all the Democrats will have left is “hope” and “change.” “Hope for,” and “change what?”

Obama hasn’t told us yet. He’s hoping we don’t notice, and change our minds about voting for an inexperienced, nebulous novice.

Many Democrats are Racists

Not only are many Democrats racists, but many others are sexists.

If you vote for or against someone because of their skin color (for, because their skin color is the same as yours, against, because it isn’t) are not you engaging in racist activity, i.e., casting your vote on the basis of race?

Of course you are!

And if you vote for or against someone because of their sex (for, because their sex is the same as yours, against, because it isn’t) are not you engaging in sexist activity, i.e., casting your vote on the basis of gender?

Let me have an “Amen, Brothers and Sisters!”

And is there any proof that this sort of thing is going on?

Of course there is!

Over 90 percent of voting Blacks – some estimates are over 95 percent – have and will vote for Obama because he’s Black. Of course, Democrats are no strangers to special interest (i.e., bigoted) voting, engaging in it far more than Republicans. Democrats expect women to vote for women, Hispanics for Hispanics, and Blacks for Blacks.

Or without a candidate of the proper race and/or sex, for a candidate who will give special attention and favors on the basis of race or sex, not on the basis of what's best for the country.

Republicans expect Republicans to vote for varying degrees of conservative political belief, because they believe that smaller government and stronger individuals are best for the country. If Mr. Powell or Ms. Rice could overcome their aversion to political campaigning, the world would hear thunderous support for a Black and/or woman from Republicans, particularly if they are followers of the philosophies and teachings of Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams.

It just doesn’t seem fair, does it? Conservatives –shunned by Blacks - have great Black leaders, Drs. Sowell, Williams, and Rice, and General Powell, for example, and Liberals have charlatans like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

You do get what you deserve.

Democrat special interest (i.e., racist and sexist) politics was obvious in the Democrat primaries: Obama won Southern states where most Democrats are Black (and which will go Republican in the general election, anyway), and Hillary won the big Northern and Western states, with majority White (and pro-Hillary female) populations.

Now White and/or female Democrats are trying to figure out what to do with an unproven, inexperienced candidate. While world events throw cold water on the idea of electing a president with little or no real world experience, many Democrats realize they want effective leadership more than an historic first Black or woman president.

Obama is not the answer, and neither is Hillary.

Someday soon we will have one or the other, but not yet.

However, if we can get Ms. Rice energized, we can have both.

Obama and Democrats Jump the Shark

Usually it takes a long time for something to reach its peak and turn mediocre, i.e., to “jump the shark.” In the case of Obama’s presidential campaign, it only took Russia invading Georgia to start the downhill slide. His subsequent selection of Joe Biden for running mate shows Obama understands that he needed a sudden injection of “gravitas.”

It’s not like Obama-Biden is a match made in political Heaven. Not so long ago, Biden noted that Obama didn’t have what it takes to be president, remarking that: “The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.”

Selecting Biden shows how desperate Obama is to patch over his yawning foreign policy knowledge and experience hole. Although Joe Biden is deeply flawed goods (plagiarist, liar about his class standing, degrees, and scholarship), he still is the best of the sorry bunch Democrats have to offer. Besides denigrating Obama’s experience, Biden also pronounced the surge a failure just as it was snatching defeat from the jaws of surrender-monkey Democrats.

Of course, Biden could and did go the way of many Democrat hopefuls, like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, and announce that he was always against the war even when he voted for it. Also like most Democrats, after announcing he had always really opposed it, he has had to hope for bad war news.

Democrats make odd patriots, since good news for America is always bad news for them.

Obama Scared Spitless

Picking Joe Biden for his running mate shows that recent events in Russia have thrown Obama into a panic. Just as he didn’t have a high enough pay grade to determine when “personhood” is created (strangely, in 2001 he seemed to think he did. Ed Morrissey wonders when Obama was demoted?), now he as well admits he’s over his head in foreign policy, too.

It is disbelievable that Barack Obama, chanting his mantra of nebulous change, has now dug deep into the Democrat bag of old bones and come up with a defining dinosaur. There is not one tired, old Democrat program that Joe Biden has not been a party to.

Photo credit: I think this came from the New Republic, but it's been around

Reforming Social Security? Good ‘ole Joe will be against reforming it, until the day (not long until 2016) it dies. St. FDR in Heaven won’t let that happen!

Reforming Medicare? It’s already dead, but Joe still doesn’t want to change it. I’m sure Joe thinks that St. LBJ will raise it like the Phoenix from its funeral pyre.

Joe Biden, like another Democrat fossil John Kerry, was for war in Iraq before he was against it. Democrats now applaud him for having the fortitude to bail out on his first choice as soon as the going got tough. In fact, Joe Biden was a leader of the valiant charge of the “surrender monkeys.”

With the political and military acumen that typifies Democrats, Joe Biden pronounced the “surge” a failure just as it was proving just the opposite. Joe Biden on the surge:

The surge isn't going to work either tactically or strategically,” Biden told the Boston Globe last summer. “Tactically it isn't going to work because ... our guys go in and secure a neighborhood, but because we don't have enough troops, we have to turn it over to the Iraqis, and they can't hold it or won't hold it.

More Democrat wishful thinking? They wanted the surge to fail in the worst way.

As usual, Obama and Biden are applauded by the Main Stream Media for having the courage of their lack of convictions.

Both have neither the judgment nor the ability to make tough choices, but Democrats call cowardice and indecision virtues.

When asked by George Stephanopoulos if he had said “The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training,” concerning whether Obama was ready to be President, Joe Biden said one of the few things he has gotten right: "I think I stand by that statement."

I’ll bet he won’t stand by it today.

That was one of the few signs Joe Biden has shown of having any sense. While he was dumb enough to get caught for plagiarism, he was doubly dumb by plagiarizing an ineffective British Labour leader, Neil Kinnock. For those who protest that Biden’s plagiarism was accidental, we have voluminous evidence that Biden is a stranger to truth from his undergraduate days:

Within days, it was also discovered that as a first-year law student at Syracuse Law School, Biden had plagiarized a law review article in a class paper he wrote. Though the dean of the law school in 1988 as well as Biden's former professor played down the incident of plagiarism, they did find that Biden drew "chunks of heavy legal prose directly from" the article in question. Biden said the act was inadvertent due to his not knowing the proper rules of citation, and Biden was permitted to retake the course after receiving a grade of F, which was subsequently dropped from his record. Biden also released his undergraduate grades, which started off poorly and remained unexceptional. Further, when questioned by a New Hampshire resident about his grades in law school Biden had claimed falsely to have graduated in the "top half" of his class, (when he actually graduated 76th in a class of 85) that he had attended on a full scholarship, and had received three degrees. In fact he had received two majors, History and Political Science, and a single B.A., as well as a half scholarship based on financial need.

Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

What’s changed?

Mayor Bloomberg Full of Wind

It’s no surprise a politician would be for wind power. Of course, you could get all the benefits of wind, without the negatives of high cost, scenic pollution (just ask the Kennedys about windmills off Hyannis Port), unreliability and need for constantly spinning back-up power generators, and bird deaths, if you just installed nuclear power stations.

(It didn't take long for even dense Mayor Bloomberg to find out how dumb his idea was, as this article shows. These photos are courtesy The New York Daily News. Click here for more.)

Da Brooklyn Bridge


The cost would be much lower, and instead of providing only ten percent of New York’s power needs in ten years, you could supply 100%.

"When it takes to producing clean power, we're determined to make New York the No. 1 city in the nation," said Bloomberg.

Why not make it the No. I city in the world and go all nuclear? Right now Paris, France would probably be No. 1, because France generates 80% of their power needs from nuclear, which is much more environmentally friendly than wind and solar.

Skeptical? How about this example.

To generate the equivalent peak power of a small nuclear plant, solar panels require 12.5 square miles of pristine desert land. Even then, because the sun shines at varying degrees of intensity during the day, and not at all during the night, total output is only one-third of that small nuclear plant.

Or how about this example? On a 100+ F day when electricity demand was at its afternoon peak, Texas' 6000 MW of installed wind generation was supplying only 600 megawatts (MW) of power to the grid, whereas a generic nuclear power plant would produce almost double the MW using less than one percent of the land required for wind power, and would produce it much more cheaply and closer to its users, instead of a thousand miles distant.

The higher the percentage of power provided by solar and wind, the more critical the need for back-up power generation to make the grid 100% reliable. Both Mayor Bloomberg and T. Boone Pickens ignore or gloss over this inconvenient truth.

If you’re concerned about greenhouse gasses (I’m not), nuclear produces far less than wind or solar, because far less earth is disturbed during its construction, and less energy is used in its fabrication compared to wind and solar equipment.

In fact, although Mayor Bloomberg’s advocacy of these impractical schemes can be credited to typical political pandering (and monumental ignorance), the position of environmentalists is a model of unprincipled hypocrisy. At the same time they are frantic to prevent drilling in 2000 acres of mosquito-infested tundra in ANWR, they are rapturous over the prospects of solar projects covering hundreds of square miles of scenic desert, requiring enormously expensive and visually polluting transmission lines.

At the same time they vehemently oppose off-shore drilling for oil, they want far larger and more numerous wind turbines all over New York City bridges and skyscrapers, in the Hudson and East Rivers, and off the coast of Queens, Brooklyn, and Long Island.

There is no rational explanation for such schizophrenia. The environmentalists’ overriding principle is to save the environment, but they can’t bring themselves to even mention the most obvious means available, nuclear power. In their mad rush to protect so-called pristine wilderness, i.e. ANWR, they have no compunctions about polluting far more scenic and fragile habitat with huge arrays of solar panels and turbines, and enormously expensive and intrusive transmission lines.

In order to pursue their anti-corporate, anti-Republican, and of course anti-Bush agendas, they are willing to sacrifice those things that just a few years ago they considered sacred: the untrod desert, vistas without visible power lines, and bridges and buildings celebrated for their pure architectural beauty.

San Franciscans recently voiced their opposition to building a higher suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge because it would detract from its esthetics. I wonder how they would vote on a suggestion to put turbines atop its towers and to cover its surfaces with solar panels?

I wish Mayor Gavin Newsom would follow Mayor Bloomberg’s lead and suggest it.

Mayor Newsom can commit adultery, blame his failings on alcoholism, use sanctuary-city polices to hide illegal alien felons from federal law, and still be considered a viable Democrat candidate for governor. However, if he messes with the Golden Gate Bridge, he’s toast.

Democrats Thanked for Cheating Social Security

While perusing a Google inquiry that led some now-enlightened soul to my post on privatizing Social Security, I came across this website discussing whether the Social Security Trust Fund was worth anything.

I read the post by Angry Bear (slightly left of center economic commentary on news, politics, and the economy) and his readers’ comments, and soon felt I was witnessing the rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic. Their debate spent inordinate time and energy discussing the Special Treasury Bonds held in the Social Security Trust Fund that are issued when its surplus is transferred to the General Fund. Angry Bear and cubs felt these bonds were real, and could be negotiated on the bond market the same as any other Treasury Bond. Others disagreed, characterizing them as “play money.”

The cause of the historical diversion of the Social Security surplus occasioned a prolonged round of partisan finger pointing, although it is clearly the love child of LBJ and the Democrats as they sought a means to finance the Great Society, create Medicare, expand the Vietnam War, and do it all without raising taxes.

However, astute bond traders/investors/students of finance noted that the Special Social Security Trust Fund bonds are government bonds that can only be redeemed by our government issuing regular Treasury Bonds redeemable from the General Fund, which would require the General Fund to reduce expenditures and/or raise taxes to fund their redemption.

Hallelujah, they got it right! Of course Angry Bear and his cubs fought on, laying down smoke screens including a gratuitous offer to buy the doubters’ shares of Trust Fund bonds at 10 cents on the dollar.

Their silliness reminded me of my silliness twenty years ago, when I offered to relinquish any and all claims I had for all time against Social Security if they would only refund my and my employers’ total contributions to Social Security. I pledged if Social Security would do this, I would be responsible for me for the rest of my life.

Further, in terms of healthcare, all I asked was that I could stop paying into Medicare and only receive the lifetime medical coverage through the United States military medical system that I was promised upon retirement from the Air Force.

Social Security and Medicare never accepted my generous offer. Had they, I would have taken the $47,935, invested it in an S&P 500 index fund, and each month thereafter increased my investment in the fund by 12.4% (the FICA rate) of my income. At the end of this year I would have an account valued at over $500,000, based on the actual performance of the S&P 500 during the past twenty years.

I get under $2,000 per month from Social Security, so if I stopped investing the $500,000 and took out $2,000 a month, it would last over twenty years (my current life expectancy is fourteen more years, or to age 80). Of course I would keep it invested, and since the rate of return of the S&P 500 since January 1980 for all full-year increment holding periods is 13.9%, I could withdraw an average of $5,790 each month and never touch the principal. That’s almost triple what I’m getting from Social Security, and I would still have half a million dollars for special needs or to ease us through hard times.

Unlike under Social Security, if I died young – like right now at age 66, which is the life expectancy for Black American males – I would still have $500,000 to pass on to Alice and my sons, grandchildren, and great-grandchild.

Mentioning Alice reminds me that if she could have opted out of Social Security only twenty years ago, she would now have an S&P 500 index fund valued at over $600,000, and our combined annual income from our privatized equivalent of Social Security would be over $150,000 without pulling a penny from our total principal of over $1.1 million.

There is an obvious bottom line here, and I’ll spell it out. Like John McCain said, Social Security is an absolute disgrace.

I’ll spell out another obvious conclusion. If Democrats had not demagogued reforming Social Security, our senior citizens would not have shot down their own chances for luxurious retirements by fanatically defending the present abomination.

Not only is it an absolute disgrace, but it is a political football and cash cow for Democrat politicians. They shamelessly pander saving Social Security to gain senior votes, while even more shamelessly diverting the surplus to pander to special interest groups and buy their votes.

In the end it’s poetic justice: Democrats cheat the old of incomes and estates they could have had, and are thanked for doing it, then spend the Social Security surplus to buy the votes of younger Americans so they can be cheated of their futures too, while profusely thanking their cheaters.

I just wish I didn't have to be an unwilling participant in their stupidity.

Salman Rushdie Protests Random House Censorship - San Francisco Chronicle Buries the Story

I clicked on “Google News” to scan the headlines, and this caught my eye: GOP plans shot down over oil, The San Francisco Chronicle, August 16, 2008. Wow! I thought. It sure didn’t take long for Nancy Pelosi to renege on her statement that she would allow debate on offshore drilling.

However, on further inspection I found what Google News featured as a news article was actually only a very opinionated, fact-free Letter to the Editor. In a way I can understand the Google News confusion. The San Francisco Chronicle news articles and editorials usually are very opinionated and fact-free.


Aisha, Mohammad says he has a big surprise for you tonight!

When real news is afoot, The Chronicle has no appreciation for its relative worth, and we find abominations like their placement on page E-3 (the Entertainment section) of Salman Rushdie’s complaint about Random House pulling an historical novel about the prophet Muhammad and his child bride Aisha because of speculation that it would anger Muslims.

Damn it! Everything angers Muslims! Since when have American publishers, writers, and journalists based their actions on avoiding offending Christians, Jews, Hindus, Whites, Blacks, misogynists, racists, and etc.? Actually, if the misogynist and racists are Muslims, which many are, are publishers, writers, and journalists do go out of their way to avoid making them angry.

Why have violent, ignorant savages been given power over the thoughtful and educated of the world? Once the irrational fear of Hitler and his Brown Shirts that brought the Nazis to power in a cultured and refined nation, one with a proud tradition of great literature and music.

What Random House has done is a book burning without the messy need of inciting a howling mod and lighting a fire. They have allowed a book to be banned by illiterates.

In America we proudly (but erroneously) quote Voltaire: "I disagree with what you have to say but will fight to the death to protect your right to say it."

But then we amend our courageous stance: “However, even if I agree with you, if it might annoy an illiterate Muslim ten thousand miles away, I’m out of here!”

Democrats – They Even Screw Themselves

No matter how bad you think a Democrat’s conduct is, it can always get worse. John Edwards is only the latest in a long, typical line. I can hear Democrats now saying, “So he had an affair, but he did his job. What’s the big deal?”

I’m sure they feel righteously indignant that the Great Right Wing Conspiracy is sticking its prurient nose in another Democrat’s personal life again. After all, John told Elizabeth about the affair two years ago, while she was still in remission for breast cancer, then promised to be good, and in return she promised to give witness to his being an honorable, moral presidential candidate.

However, when her cancer recurred and Elizabeth was told it was incurable, John clumsily continued the affair and made a mockery of the lies that he and Elizabeth told to further his ambitions.

Who would be that callous and cruel?

Or stupid?

Actually, when talking about Democrats, the list of the callous, cruel, and stupid ones is quite long when it comes to sexual misconduct. And their loving wives seem to all be Hillary clones, because they all “stand by their men.”

However, Hillary paid the ultimate price for her loyalty, because she will never be the First Woman President of the United States. Hillary was understandably filled with glee when Bill’s scandal weakened Al Gore enough to cost him the presidency, because that fit well with her own presidential ambitions after she first paid her political dues in the Senate. After all, if Al had won in 2000, he probably would have won again in 2004, and Joe Lieberman, as his vice-president, would have been the favorite in 2008.

However, with Al out of the way, and your place-holder Kerry conveniently losing in 2004, the way was clear for your anointing.

Except John Edwards took a very large portion of votes that would have gone to Hillary in Iowa, giving Obama an easy first place victory over Edwards, and Hillary a close third. It was all over for Hillary before she even got started. Her aura of invincibility and inevitability was shattered – even though she got the non-Black female vote, Obama got all the Black vote, which was enough for him to win in the South (where Democrats don’t win presidential elections), even as Hillary won all the big states that give Democrats a shot at winning the presidency.

If Edwards had been found out sooner – the Inquirer reported his scandal in November, but the Main Stream Media ignored it – Edwards would have been a non-starter, and Hillary would be the Democrat nominee.

Hillary would then have the female vote, the Black vote, the union vote, the teachers vote (I guess I already covered that in the union vote), enviromentalist, socialized medicine - in a word, all the Democrat special interest groups that vote for their selfish agendas instead of for the good of the nation.

How about that, Hillary? You set the Gold Standard for Democrat women by standing by Bill through all his cheating, and now Elizabeth stood by her man long enough to let him shatter your dreams. Bill and John certainly screwed around, but you ended up screwing yourself. You’re finished, and you know it.

The parade has passed you by.

If Obama wins, it’s all over for Hillary, because he runs again in 2012, and in 2016 Hillary is a 68-year old Senate drudge.

If McCain wins, Hillary has a chance because she’ll only be 64, but McCain will be doing a good job, and Republicans will be on a roll. Democrat Senators like Hillary will be back on the legislative dung hill where they belong – prospering mightily financially, accomplishing nothing legislatively.

Still screwing each other, but not screwing us.

"Well, Democrats are furious, they're going on record now saying John Edwards will not be allowed to speak at the convention because of this affair. Yeah, instead speaking in his place: Bill Clinton. You have to put your foot down." --Jay Leno

Give Us Back Our Chains!

The International Herald Tribune, now an acolyte of The New York Times, laments the deaths of “–isms” in India caused by recent rampant individualism (In India, idealism falters in the face of power, by Anand Giridharadas, published: August 14, 2008). According to the author, when India was powerless, they were a land of idealists bent on reforming the world. Now that Indians are doing well, they just want to do better instead of spending a lot of time in government showing others The Way.

One can understand this turning inward. India has long been a land of external restraints. Families told you whom to marry, what to study, where to work. Bureaucrats told you whether you could get a phone line or start a business. A caste determined the amount of respect you could command.

Today millions of Indians, from maidservants to doctors, are revolting against those destinies. They share a new belief in the power of self-contained individuals: a belief that individuals must not slight elders but must no longer depend on them; must not forget their roots but must now stray from them; must not crave a government job like their fathers but must now survive as though the state did not exist.

And, in relying ever more on themselves, this group of Indians relies ever less on India.

It might seem uncharitable of me to mention that when Indians were full of ideas and dedicated to government service, i.e., were red hot socialists, almost all Indians led miserable lives mired in crushing poverty. Intellectuals spent copious quantities of time discussing almost everything and accomplishing absolutely nothing. As such they were prototypical intellectuals, knowing that they have the answers to all the ills of mankind, if mankind would just put them in charge.

Much to their chagrin, when socialism waned and individuals gained power formerly exercised by the state, individuals found that freedom empowered them in a way that following political ideologues never did. They discovered that people serve states, not vice versa, and that by relying on themselves they do better for India than they did when they placed their reliance on India.

Of course, that is anathema to liberal politicians, who understand that if the people realize they can take care of themselves, they won’t be beholden to politicians for special treatment and favors.

To a liberal politician, losing faith in the power of government to take care of you is a loss of idealism. It is also the first, best step to take to prosperity for both the individual and the state, and to gain true power for both.

T. Boone Pickens Can't Say the "N" Word

The San Francisco Chronicle devoted their entire August 11, 2008 Op-Ed page to “T. Boone Pickens’ plan to break the stranglehold of foreign oil” (Jay Mandle, economics professor, Colgate Univ.) through replacing natural gas used to generate 22% of our electricity with wind power, and then diverting this natural gas to transportation needs to reduce our need for oil. I wasn’t surprised that Mr. Pickens avoided the “n” word – nuclear energy, which already generates 20% of our electrical requirements, is available 24/365, produces no Greenhouse gases, and has been and continues to be improved in terms of safety, cost, and reliability.

Mr. Pickens noted that Robert Kennedy Jr. is an enthusiastic supporter of wind power, although he didn’t mention that Uncle Ted and the Kennedys virulently opposed placing windmills off Hyannis Port. As Mr. Mandle mentioned, Mr. Pickens also avoided mentioning “the enormously expensive construction of new wind turbines and the vast extension of the national electrical grid that will be required.”

If we doubled the percent of electricity generated by nuclear to 40%, we would still be behind France at 78%, and Japan will be at 40% by 2013. In the European Union, nuclear power generates 30% of electricity.

Apparently Mr. Pickens, recently investing heavily in Texas wind power, sees no need to mention that nuclear can achieve his goal of reduced dependence on foreign oil much more effectively and less expensively.

Chicago Passes on Global Warming

When you are having global warming, isn't it supposed to get warmer? Anomalies abound, such as revisions to NASA's temperature records which now show that six of the warmest years of the past century occurred over fifty years ago, and that 1934 was the warmest of all.

Apparently the United States, land of the most complete and sophisticated weather measurement and recording systems, has decided to pass on global warming, and Chicago is only one of many measurement points that are not cooperating with the United Nations global warming alarmists.

I'm sure that Al Gore and the Alarmists are going to find that Chicago's cooler summers are another sign that man-caused global warming has taken firm hold. True believers interpret everything to support their beliefs.

Decade has had fewest 90-degree days since 1930, By Tom Skilling, Chicago Tribune, August 13, 2008

August is the wettest and often the muggiest month of the year. Yet, summer heat continues in short supply, continuing a trend that has dominated much of the 21st Century's opening decade. There have been only 162 days 90 degrees or warmer at Midway Airport over the period from 2000 to 2008. That's by far the fewest 90-degree temperatures in the opening nine years of any decade on record here since 1930.This summer's highest reading to date has been just 91 degrees. That's unusual. Since 1928, only one year—2000—has failed to record a higher warm-season temperature by Aug. 13.

Of course everyone remembers Al Gore and his Acolytes getting all over the Category 3 hurricane that hit New Orleans, citing it as proof positive that the Warming was upon us.

That is why this linked article should be of interest. It shows steadily decreasing hurricane strength since 2004, and that:

During 2007, the Northern Hemisphere as a whole experienced the lowest ACE hurricane energy & number of hurricane days since 1977. 2007 was the 4th slowest year in the past half-century (since 1958)...

Socialist Masquerade - "Progressive" Economics

(This is a response to a letter in our local weekly paper, The Independent Coast Observer, by a local Liberal touting the virtues of Progressive economic theory. From my studies of Progressive theory, it seems just another word to disguise warmed over Socialism.)

Mr. Skibbins is apparently proud of Progressive economists, since his letter was only a bibliography of their names and titles, devoid of any other information besides their admission of belief in greater government control. I could cite many experts more prominent and relevant to current economic theory that the Progressives, but two will suffice: Mr. Skibbins’ late Sea Ranch neighbor, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek, prescient author of The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944.

Progressives strangely think that if an uneducated, unskilled, malnourished worker overseas can do a job as well and cheaper than an American, that the American should want his government to fight outsourcing instead of encouraging him to get a better job. Or that it is in mankind’s best interest to deny the world’s impoverished the means to survive and perhaps even prosper.

While progressives believe in government solutions, John Maynard Keynes was shown the light. He said that Hayek’s claim that temporary governmental fixes usually become permanent and growing government programs, stifling the private sector and civil society, was "deeply moving." Hayek included this quote on the cover of The Road to Serfdom.

Mr. Skibbins concludes that corporations should not be “making profits for their owners at the expense of the rest of us.” Of course, corporations get their operating capital from investors. When they are unprofitable, owners lose their investments, the corporations soon cease operations, and then their former workers join the ranks of the unemployed. And unlike the “exploited” workers dear to Progressive lore, today’s workers are usually also owners of corporations through 401K and IRA investments.

Government already mismanages many things at the expense of the rest of us, particularly Social Security and Medicare, so I’m sure they could completely foul up corporations if we were fools enough to let them try.

Dumb Democrats Blame Speculators

In response to my letter that speculators were not to blame for the high price of oil, a letter writer to our local weekly paper, the Independent Coast Observer, who I shall call Mr. McManus, observed that there are multiple factors driving the cost of oil, then blamed the Republican Congress of 1999 for enabling Enron to play games with energy costs (and I might add, go bankrupt). Apparently confusing spot prices with the futures market, Mr. McManus then noted that barrels of oil – I assume he is referring to futures contracts for oil – may be traded more than 20 times before the oil is delivered.

Indeed, futures contracts are traded numerous times before the commodity – not just oil - is finally delivered. In fact, that’s the way commodity market trading is designed to function.

As Robert J. Samuelson explains in Newsweek, July 7, 2008, commodity investing is different than stock trading or real estate. Unlike Mr. McManus’s Enron-like example of traders trading oil back and forth on paper, oil futures trading creates a gain and a loss on each trade.

The International Energy Agency predicts that demand for crude oil will rise strongly over the next five years (2007 through 2012), driven by global economic growth of 4.5 to 5.0 per cent a year.

Concominantly, world crude oil production declined about half a million barrels per day in the past three years (2005 through 2007), and the combination of rapidly increasing demand with supply stagnation has drawn down worldwide oil inventories.

The surplus oil buffer – the excess of production capacity over demand – is shrinking from 3 million barrels per day to 1.5 million.

In summary, demand for oil is strong and growing steadily, and supply is actually shrinking along with productive capacity.

For the United States, oil production has declined steadily since 1970: 9,640,000 barrels per day then, only 5,100,000 now, or a decline of 47%.

US oil consumption is 20,770,000 barrels per day, compared to approximately 14,500,000 in 1970, or an increase in consumption of 43% while our production was falling 47%.

In the past two decades US crude oil reserves have fallen 23% to 280 million barrels, or enough to last less than two weeks at our current consumption rate of almost 21 million barrels a day (an additional 706 million barrels, or 34 days’ worth, is held in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve).

While Democrats demagogue speculators, all signs are that the market is adhering to the laws of supply and demand. Light, sweet crude for September delivery has now fallen in six of the last nine sessions and has shaved 18 percent off its trading record of $147.27 reached July 11, curbing speculation by costing many speculators their shirts..

"People are looking for any excuse to sell oil right now," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Ill., and are doing so, even when faced with possible strife with Iran and a hurricane in the Gulf.

Following Obama's remarks that he would support offshore drilling in the US, "the market is increasing the odds now that the drilling deal will get done and we will see more production coming out of the Gulf of Mexico," said Phil Flynn, analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago. "There's nothing that cures high prices like high prices."

As Anthony deJasay cogently explains: Like oil, speculators too can burn.