Cab Thoughts 10/27/12

“People say the reason Obama wouldn’t call Clinton is because he doesn’t like him,” observes  Tanden. “The truth is, Obama doesn’t call anyone, and he’s not close to almost anyone. It's stunning that he's in politics, because he really doesn't like people. My analogy is that it’s like becoming Bill Gates without liking computers.”--former white House staffer Neera Tandem (who served as senior advisor for health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services, advising Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and working on President Barack Obama’s health reform team in the White House to pass the bill) on Obama's not asking Clinton for advice.

 

Alpha Centauri is the nearest star system to our sun; it is 4.3 light-years away. It would take the Space Shuttle about 165,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri--not including the fuel problem (the more fuel you carry, the more fuel you need to carry it.)

Dinosaur plumage????

 

The Left is in favor of government spending and the jobs it creates--execpt for the spending and jobs that result from military spending. The Right always thinks that federal spending is inferior to private spending--except for military spending.

 

It appears, contrary to my expectations, that the Libertarian Johnson is going to be a non-factor in the election.

 

America continues to be different. The world view of the election is striking. By a margin of 50-9 percent, Obama is favored in the poll of 21,797 respondents in 21 countries around the world. Obama polls highest in France; only in Pakistan(!) does Romney out-poll Obama. Most, with good taste presumably, refused to answer, it appears, but still this is further evidence of American Exceptional-ism.

 

Another Republican moron with moronic opinions about pregnancy. When are these people going to learn that only morons care about this? Or at least give the moron who thinks that the island of Guam is going to tip over because of a new marine unit's arrival equal time.

 

$76 Billion have been paid in lawyer fees for mortgage suits against the big banks since 2008.

 

There are good stats that show that GDP grows inversely to government size. That makes sense because with government growth is subsidized from taxes from the private sector. That removes money from consumption and investment.

 

Every once in a while these people step over the line. Here is one such instance: (From The Hill) United Nations-affiliated election monitors from Europe and central Asia will be at polling places around the U.S. looking for voter suppression activities by conservative groups. This sounds like something from The Onion. What is next, giving Serbian and North Korean monitors police power?

Golden Oldie: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/09/cafeteria-of-vulgarity.html

Amtrak has lost over $850 million in the last ten years on their snack bars.

 

8 in 10 Americans under the age of 30 have read a book in the past year compared to about 7 in 10  adults, in general. The average Irish adult reads 60 books a year.

 

Clint Eastwood has brought in all of his movies ahead of schedule and under budget. His working relationship with Warner Brothers is the longest director-producer relationship in the history of Hollywood.

 

I thought Eastwood's "empty chair" image at the convention was evidence he was failing. Now he looks like a genius.

 

In 2010, one out of five Americans (21.6%) age 25 to 34 reported living in a multigenerational household, the majority with their parents. That was up from 15.8% in 2000 and a low of 11% in 1980, according to the Pew Research Center. Some of this was from financial necessity but historically the family was always a geographic unit.

 

In France the government has proposed legislation that would determine home energy bills dependent on age, income, climate and conservation efforts. The law could impose a penalty of as much as 600 euros a year for energy-inefficient households. Hard to believe? The consumer hated seat belts and catalytic converters, but they got them anyway because law is more powerful than choice.

 

One of the widely circulated untruths about Marcellus (encouraged even now by the NYT) is that there is no real volume of gas in the find, that it is a "Ponzi scheme." A recent ITG Investment Research estimates that the Marcellus contains 330 trillion cubic feet of gas, or more than twice the 141 trillion cubic feet estimated by the Energy Information Administration. That's about fifty years worth. So not only is it there, it is twice as big as the government thought.

 

The coarse, uninformative and combative debates are an embarrassment to the nation. Nothing, of course, embarrasses a politician.

 

The QE has resulted in a rise in commodity and stock prices. "Wages did not immediately respond to commodity price changes; therefore, there was an approximate 3% decline in real average hourly earnings in both instances. It is true that stock prices also rose along with commodity prices (S&P plus 36% and 24%, respectively, in QE1 and QE2). However, median households hold a small portion of equities, and thus received minimal wealth benefit.” (Lacy Hunt) So the geniuses who massage and tweak our world have created exactly the opposite of their intended effect: The QE was supposed to create a wealth effect, instill confidence and encourage risk taking, it has done the opposite.

 

The evil rich continue to be a core campaign concept for Democrats. Yet they ran John Kerry the last election with no discernible shame. Of course Kerry earned his money the old fashioned way: he married it.

40% of US corn and 14% of our soybean production is now consumed to make bio-fuels. We are burning food for fuel, distorting the food market, causing run-off damage all because we refuse to use the abundant oil and gas sources we have. There is no sensible--or legal--explanation for such a distortion.

I again was treated to the routine TSA outrages this week, the single greatest public relations disaster in history. Every day thousands upon thousands of travelers stand in line and curse militant Islam. I also got to curse the upper 1%. In every line there was a second, faster line of first class, military and other special people. Obama probably doesn't know of this injustice.

 

At least $813 million went to energy companies that eventually filed for bankruptcy, including A123, Solyndra, Beacon, Abound Solar and EnerDel. This should not be seen as Obama's failure. These people always do this. These are coffee house thinkers sitting around spending other people's money. Failure never deters the arrogant or the righteous. Here is a summary of large, failed directed federal programs aimed at energy solutions (from Peterson at Seeking Alpha):

• The Nixon and Ford Administrations' support for synthetic fuels from coal and oil shale;
• The Carter Administration's support for synthetic fuels, nuclear fusion, ethanol and fuel efficiency;
• The Clinton Administration's "Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles" that failed miserably while private initiatives from Toyota and Honda were remarkably successful;
• The Bush Administration's unflagging support for fuel cells, the hydrogen economy and corn ethanol; and
• The Obama Administration's support for alternative energy and electric vehicles.

These are huge programs with huge intent and their effects have gigantic reverberations throughout the economy. Money diverted, emphasis diverted, focus diverted. We are still burning food for fuel!  And they will not stop. They will not say they are out of their depth. They simply take your money and reload.

 

6 new-gas fired power plants represent billions of dollars of new investment, thousands of construction jobs, and thousands of megawatts of new, efficient, much cleaner generation are proposed in counties like Lawrence, Bradford, and Westmoreland.  Their completion depends upon price of gas and coal, whether coal plants are forced closed, environmental struggles etc.. Coal has actually made a comeback, now generating 39% of electricity, up from 32%. Why? Gas is up 95%.

AAAAAaannnnnddddd.......a chart this time:

Vehicle	2011	Market	2012	Market
Class	Units	Share	Units	Share
Battery Electric Vehicles	7,287	0.08%	6,358	0.06%
Plug-in Hybrids	3,895	0.04%	24,082	0.22%
Hybrid Electric Vehicles	191,541	2.02%	322,516	2.97%
Internal Combustion	9,282,889	97.86%	10,510,120	96.75%