The Toyota Prius was the 10th [theautochannel.com] best selling vehicle by volume in the US from Jan-April of 2008. Nice sales figures but hardly indicative of overwhelming demand for hybrids. You will note that the Prius is the only hybrid vehicle on the list.
What you failed to mention about it's 10th place finish is that it saw a 22% increase in sales from the previous year. 5 of the 9 vehicles that out sold it experiences 10% or greator sales declines. If such trends continue, the Prius would likely move up to the 7th or 8th top vehicle in the next year, and top 5 in the year after that.
I disagree that Bush acted on false intelligence. I don't think either of us can really KNOW the answer either. I worked for federal govt in Intel. for a couple of years (hated it) and I saw/read nothing that made me think otherwise. Of course I am just some anonymous jerk on the internet, and if I was reading this from somebody else, I wouldn't give it any weight either:)
There was enough intelligence to raise a flag on Iraq, there is no doubt of that. And that's why we had UN investigators on the ground pounding sand. Yeah, they were taking some heat and their should have been a stronger international force backing up their presence. But there was nothing factual that backed the need for war. Forget everything that you heard come from the mouths of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield in the build up. Listen to/watch the presentation that Colin Powel made to the UN. His staff stripped all of the intelligence that could not be coalborated out of his presentation and the biggest item he had to sell the war on was satelite imagery of shipping containers and semi-trailors that may or may not have contained biological weapons research facilities, and a few arms caches that violated the international limits placed on Saddam.
By the time the war was being sold to the UN, we already knew that the yellow cake paper work was bogus, we knew that the alluminum tubes that were originally claimed to be used in centrafuges were actually entirely the wrong spec. Those two key pieces of Intelligence were known to be false long before the US put troops on the ground in Iraq. And the perported link between Al Quida and Saddam was already tenuous and was proven to be all but non-existant shortly after the war started.
To answer some of your points, I don't think anybody blames Bush for 9/11 (do you?)?
I do not. I've heard the conspiracies, but I don't buy them. I blame Bush for not taking the security threats he inherited more seriously, but in the transition and coming off of 8 years of relative peace, I can understand his decision.
With regards to the deficit--the government has been running at a deficit for 50 years
With the exception of the 2nd Clinton term, you know when we had a surplus of over two hundred billion dollars in 2000 and with current trend was projected to hit 1 trillion dollars and pay off the national debt by 2010. Not that it actually would. If the government had a 1 Trillion dollar surplus, taxes would drop, politicians would be re-elected, and the actual debt payoff would be pushed out further, but we'd be moving in the right direction.
Take a look at the trend of the federal debt http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm Out of the last 50 year, only the last 30 have been explosive. And in that time it has been the Republican Presidents that have been the worst offenders. Sure, Clinton might have been a tax and spend liberal, but every republican elected in the last 30 years has been a borrow and spend liberal. Only difference is that with Clinton, people were more interested in being fiscally responsible since we were footing the bill. With everyone else, we've just gone hog wild with spending because we can sell all of our debt off to China and Japan.
People don't realize how much intelligence and military were able to "step down" in the 90s...obviously this is now reversed.
Why? Because we wanted to take a military action against a non-state sponsored terrorist organization by attacking one of the most inhospitable and war ravaged countries in the world with a population where almost every citizen is a veterain of military conflict? Was attacking Afghanistan really a net gain in our security? Or should we have focused more on intelligence spending and track down the money and real power brokers?
And Iraq was a complete debacle. There were reasons to go in, but those
I don't like Bush, but I respect him. He is not the blathering idiot most people portray him as. He is not mentally handicapped. He isn't necesarily vindictive, but he has had his agendas from election day, and he did his best to acomplish those goals.
He didn't "act on false intelligence", he acted on manipulated and fabricated intelligence. It was fabricated by his own administration to advance his agenda. He is not an idiot, he knew it was false. He was "hopeful" though, and almost everyone figured that Saddam did have WMDs, but had managed to keep them hidden from inspectors. The disappointment is that one of his prize agendas, one of his biggest goals as president, will forever be tarnished because they couldn't find the smoking gun to post-hoc validate their actions.
I can even understand the reasoning behind some of his goals. The real reasons for why toppling Saddam and installing a pro-West government was extremely important. His execution sucked, many of his subordinates displayed amazing incompotence, but his reasoning is understandable (even by an anti-Bushie like me). Even Rumsfield's performance confused me. I served under the man, he was a bright individual. I can only guess that an early onset of dimential was crippling his brain by the time we were marching into Iraq.
But that doesn't mean "I know where he stood" on any issue. The man is a politician, and like all politicians he lied out of both sides of his mouth. Whether it was the Christian Coalition that he was stringing allong for campaign contributions but back tracked on every line he fed them, or the complete reversal from his original campaign of reduced overseas military activity, or any of the other numerous situations he has been through in the last 8 years where he made decisions completely contradictory to what he had campaigned on and promised to his constituents.
He had excellent reasons for doing so, like most politicians, but the "know where he stood" BS is just media hype.
Long term, people will look back at his presidency and see a number of things: 1) The worst terrorist attack on US soil ever. 2) Two "wars" with no sign of end. 3) Nation wide unemployement jump from ~4% to over 7%. 4) A multi-billion dollar federal budget surplus turned into over a trillion dollar deficite. 5) One of the worst examples of explosive growth and burst of an economic bubble. 6) One of the worst natural disasters to ever hit the US, and possibly the worst ever federal response to such an event. 7) A huge step forward in the end of civil liberties (We've been marching down that road for a while now) 8) Expansive growth of power in the executive branch (ie: the reason why no one wanted to elect another Clinton!)
Maybe I'm just jaded, but I have to say, he will likely go down in the annals of history as one of the worst US presidents ever.
It ensures that if the uprising fails, those responsible will be persecuted. And should the uprising succeed, those that were the root cause of the need for uprising will be persecuted.
In either case, it contributes to the stability of the society after the conflict.
That's like saying that the secret meeting that Cheney had in the vice-presidential office with energy industry insiders, had nothing to do with the administration's policy on energy.
The difference here being that the meeting with Obama's staff was not secret. While you might be hard pressed to get a transcript of it, the meeting and some of its attendees is listed in TFA. Knowing that you could ask for an interview of any of the people there and likely get a decent description of what exactly was discussed.
In 2003 he owned over 175 newspapers, and every single one of them were pushing pro-Iraq Invasion editorials.
The media is STILL pussy footing Bush. Just a few days ago he said that it was "unfortunate" that no WMDs were found in Iraq. Talk about the most self-centered and retarded things to say. We are extremely fortunate that there were no WMDs found. If they had been found that would mean that 1) There are/were people in Iraq with the knowledge to make them again, and 2) That there are likely more of them in different storage facilities or being off loaded on the black market.
To call it "unfortunate" that we destroyed a country and killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions more, is a grievous understatement.
The only reason why it is "unfortunate" is because it will forever tarnish Bush's record in the history books.
Yet the media just sweeps away the statement. The guy makes a statement showing that his primary concern is his legacy, not the security of the country, nor the millions of people affected by the war.
Not that I'm a sunshine-daisy Obama optimist. He strikes me as more of a centrist republicrat than a lefty liberal. But taking over after Bush, he'll be hard pressed to do worse.
Clearwire Executive Vice President R. Gerard Salemme, the person refered to in the horribly misleading summary, is not employed by Obama or his transition team. RTFA, the only direct relationships between Salemme and Obama is that Salemme made campaign contributions and attended a meeting with Obama's Science and Technology team.
A far cry from the scandal the summary makes it out to be.
I mean, if you're going to screw with a delivery date that has been set for over half a decade, you might want to contact the executives of the major companies that are going to be effected by such a decision. Just to be polite and all.
The guy in question has made some campaign contributions (apparently around $17,000).
He has an impressive history in the industry and as a lobbyist in DC. The guy has been around, knows his technical info, and knows who to talk to in DC.
But.... He is not on Obama's staff. It appears that he was invited to some of the campaign parties, and that he has (post election) been invited to one or more meetings as a consultant with the head of Obama's Science and Technology working group. A group headed by Tom Wheeler, who has ties to a back bone provider that may have a better chance at profiting with no delay in the DTV conversion.
In summary, some guy who doesn't work for Obama has an opinion that might or might not lead to a more profitable situation for a company, and he has shared that opinion with someone who possibly has a different opinion that might or might not lead to a more profitable situation for another company, who works for a man that has an opinion that he has hopefully come to after listening to people with different motivations and goals, and weighed each of their opinions against each other and against what he hopes to accomplish while in charge.
I'm failing to see how this is at all "scandal". We already knew that Obama was soliciting advice from people who he disagreed with. The fact that he is talking to lobbyists from opposing sides of these arguments at least indicates that he is trying to get a better picture than what any individual (even those on his staff) are able to paint for him.
Toyota makes virtually no profit on the Prius even with the help of government subsidies. They make about $100 per vehicle net. If demand for hybrid vehicles was so great, don't you think they would account for more than 3% of total vehicle sales by now?
Do you have a source on that $100 number? I know the mark up is much lower than their sport utility and truck lines, but I'd be surprised if it was that low.
You've probably seen the "Saved by Zero" sales campaign that's been going on since December. But there was one product that has not had any additional incentives marketed. The Prius. If they were sitting on stock like they were with all of the other vehicles, they would be pushing some sort of sale for them as well. But they offer nothing. No cash back. No Hawiian trips. No 0% financing. The market demand for them is strong enough that when every other segment for them is dropping, the Prius continues to sell. Seems like a pretty strong indication of consumer demand to me;)
Anyone with more than two braincells left knows that ethanol in the US (specifically the northern Midwest) has nothing to do with saving the planet. Ethanol in the US is nothing more than an agricultural subsidy and marketing campaign, fleesing would-be do gooders into making decisions that have a net negative effect on the environment. The real reason for the push to ethanol is profit and misinformed activist.
1. Forcibly reducing consumption will not necessarily reduce the actual amounts of the subsidies, because I think population growth will level out the relatively minute energy savings garnered by producing more energy-efficient TVs.
Population growth is independent of TV energy efficiency. California's population will grow at the same rate wether the TVs on the store shelves consume 40 watts or 40 killowatts. So you are correct in that improving the efficiency of TVs will not actually reduce the total power consumption. What it will do is reduce the growth of total power consumption.
2. My position on government intervention is consistent: the energy subsidies themselves are stupid and should be dismantled as well, allowing the market to build clean and efficient nuclear power plants and work towards technological solutions for a cleaner, power-efficient future without propping up worthless old technologies and inefficient and impractical ones like solar and wind with subsidies.
There is a major problem with that though. Coal is cheap. Coal is really cheap. Way cheaper than nuclear. If it weren't for government subsidies, loans, and incentives, the only nuclear reactors would be in Universities. Technology for wind and solar power sources has improved greatly in the past decade, to the point now where it is realistic to see a ROI with only minimal incentives.
I do agree with you though, subsidies are like the anti-competition. On the other hand, if we raise the taxes on known inefficient systems, we can promote free market investment in alternatives. Last year in Wisconsin the state legislature voted to end the automatic inflationary gas tax hike. A move that many used as a marketing move for campaing season. And now that prices have come back down, people are driving less, and inflation is ramping up, we really need that automatic hike back in, but no one wants to burn the political capital to actually do it. I would go even a step further though. In addition to reinstating the automatic hike, I would tack on another 15-25 cent tax. The purpose being obviously to raise more capital for road maintenace (and jobs!) when the reduction in travel is reducing the DoT budget. And a secondary cause being that the more expensive gasoline is, the more marketable it is to invest in alternative energy, which creates more jobs and drives engineering, skilled labor, and education in the US.
Ideally, we would have seen $4/gal gasoline back in 2004-2005 to get the "green economy" (I hate that phrase, but I like the job creation associated with it) started up when it was becoming obvious that the housing market was bubbling.
And along with those higher TV prices will come lower (or a slowing of growth) of electricity consumption. Which means less (or less growth) power generation and transportation.
You might not be aware of it, but your tax dollars are heavily subsidizing the energy industry. And the need for additional capacity and transportation is a major push for eminent domain claims and individuals losing their property to larger high voltage line towers.
So while the price of TVs may temporarily be adjusted, the net effect will likely be a reduction (or a reduction in growth) of your taxation.
Government intervention isn't by default bad. But it should always be looked at with sceptisism. So while I applaud your immediate displeasure of the decision, I would recommend you investigate further before flushing the idea. And if someone has thought on it longer and harder than I, I would appreciate your thoughts as well!
I had a similar idea, character's aranged in rings growing from the center.
! @ # $ % ^ & *
( l f k p r z )
- b g a o v = [ c h e * u w ]
; d n i y x '
\ , . ? ! /
Where A, E, I, O, and U form the center most ring. Inside that ring is a double, shift, space, and backspace buttons. Consinants would have to be arranged meaningfully (I just tossed them up alphabetically and swapped the vowels)
I'm highly tempted to try writting such a tool in silverlight now...
Replacing Exchange+Outlook with Domino+Notes is like trading a Communist Russian controlled Ferrari in for a Nigerian wheel barrel.
Yeah, Exchange and Outlook mean you get locked into MS's grip, but it's a pretty solid system. With Lotus Notes you get that same lock in only to a different company, and instead of having a well designed, stable, and consistent user interface, you'll sit at your desk eating a turd sandwich while hoping that you can at least check your email and calendar before the day ends.
I'm all for an open source replacement to Outlook and Exchange, but honestly, Lotus Notes is not it. Lotus Notes is the crash and burn incident that people look back at and say "Lets not make that mistake again!"
I mean, it's not the greatest OS in the world, but it's not horrendous. Yeah, there was the crap with the 'Vista ready' BS when it came out, but at this point, most new PCs should have no problem running it with Aero.
There were tons of driver issues when it came out too (Just like when Win 2k was new, god that was a nightmare), but again, it's been a few years and the driver support seams pretty top notch at this point.
The UAV system is annoying, but easily disabled. Hopefully they will tweak it to run more like Ubuntu where I can log in as a power user with out admin rights, but perform admin tasks by providing admin credentials when attempting the task.
Other than that, I'm pleased with the system. It's a tad more bloated than my XP build, but the hardware is a bit more beefy, so the extra memory and clock cycles are negligible and it can perform all of the tasks I normally do faster than my older PC with XP.
If Windows 7 makes iterative improvements on Vista the way 98 did to 95, then I'm all for it. I'd shell out $90 for an upgrade version next time I build a PC.
Yeah, I admit, being a first time voter on an overseas tour in the Marine Corps at the time, I didn't do as much research as I have in the elections since.
I hope that Obama does better, but I am amazed at how well he has been painted as a liberal, socialist, and even communist. Not that he is any of those things. He is just another charismatic republicrat that I hope can lead the country in a better direction than Bush did. But I've heard a number of my more conservative friends and family members make almost Mcarthy-like remarks of the red scare and that Obama was a road to the end of democracy. How anyone with the brain power to make it through a college education can believe the drivel, left or right, that has been pumped this last election season is beyond me.
Personally, I find in amusing how the newly elected officials are loved at the start and folks can't wait for them to leave when their time is up.
An interesting take. The poster didn't say that Obama was better, just that Bush was all of those things and the Obama was replacing him. And the point that he was likely trying to make was that a representation style of governing does not protect us from the very idiocy the GP was claiming was a threat to community rule.
And it is a factual statement. We know that Bush Jr had a problem with Alcohol. We know that he has done coke and pot. We know that he has run his previous business ventures into the ground. We could guess that he has made poor life decisions as well, but he has managed to raise a family, hold his marriage together, and become President of the USA, so I think his good life decisions likely outweigh his poor life decisions as far as his own continued existence is concerned.
Also, to the note of your post, you are extremely accurate in the case of Bush. Bush ran on a platform of reducing military spending, reducing overseas deployments, less military intervention in foreign countries. It was because of his claims of wanting to reduce our military's international role that I voted for him in 2000. Unfortunately after 9/11, that stance went out the window and our military spending has ballooned out of control as we have invaded 2 countries, started pissing matches with 3 others, and aided in the provocation of that snafu in Georgia. So yeah, seeing as how his stance and platform has changed radically from what it was when he first ran, I would fully expect a lot of people who liked his stances in 2000 to hate him in 2008.
Why is this a bad example of patents? If anything, this is an excellent example of good patenting.
The patent contains the technical knowledge require to reproduce their device. Any Joe Schmoe with the technical knowledge and tools to do so can look at their patent documentation and have a good idea on how to build the device.
That same Joe could then make improvements on the device and file for a new patent.
Mean while, the original patent owner, who has likely sunk a huge amount of money into research and development, has a temporary monopoly that all-but guarantees them enough profits to pay off their debts and fund future research.
The only thing wrong in this case is that the patent lasts for almost 20 years. 20 years was great 80 years ago. 20 years is fine for drug formulas that can take a decade to get through testing and FDA approval. 20 years is way too long for technological advancements though.
Drop it down to a 5 to 10 year window, and push inventors to get their products to the market, or open them up to competition.
For the first half of your post, because when you burn coal in most cases you do not burn 100% of the available fuel, unspent hydrocarbons are released with the exhaust. By piping the exhaust through the algae not only are you sequestering CO2, but you are also reclaiming those unspent hydrocarbons. Additionally, the CO2 rich exhaust from coal plants can cause the algae to grow significantly faster and produce more oil than algae farms with out exhaust.
For the second half of your post, the US has coal. Lots of coal. Lots and lots and lots of coal. Coal is cheap. Coal is really cheap. So long as coal is plentiful and cheap, it will be a significant part of our enery infrastructure. As much as I wish otherwise, that is just a fact. Biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, hydro-electric (which has its own nasty side effects) all have significant subsidies going that attempts to make them more competetive with coal.
So the answer has to be a combination of reducing the cost of alternative energy sources, combined with improved emission regulation and export limitations. But honestly, nothing significant is going to change in the coal industry in the US in the next 20 years, and likely not in the next 50 years. Where as we can get algae farms up and running in under 4 years that can dramatically effect the growth rate of CO2 emissions in the US.
Not a permanent solution, but in the short term, it is a great bandaide.
Correct, which is why ALL Bio-fuels are 'carbon neutral'.
If you did not have the algae farm, nor the car that was being powered by the bio diesel the farm produced, there would still be the exact same amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
But we are talking about replacing a non-carbon neutral fuel (petro-diesel) with the carbon neutral bio-diesel. So the net effect is that there will be less carbon being released into the atmosphere. But if all vehicles were runing on bio-Diesel, there would be no reduction in CO2 exhaust.
In the short term, bio-diesel presents a chance to reduce our carbon foot print. Long term it allows us to get the maximum amount of work out of the given polution. And infinite term, it will at least in part need to be replaced by some net carbon negative fuel source.
While I'm not a fan of corn based ethanol, I am a fan of having a heavily subsidized and regulated agricultural industry in the US combined with import tarrifs and controls in imported food stuffs.
The combination of those factors ensures that farming in the US remains profitable to most farmers and guarantees that even in a global economic melt down, getting food to the plates of Americans will not be an impossible problem.
It does screw with the global economy something fierce though and pisses on all of the non-developed countries that would typically be able to compete on the global market through agricultural exports. But personally, I'm a bit more worried about health and stability in my own country.
A coal fired plant burns coal, generates electricity, and exhausts all sorts of crap.
If you push that exhaust through an Algae farm you can reduce the CO2 emissions by 40%.
If you use that Algae to produce bio-Diesel, the vehicle will burn the fuel and exhaust that same CO2 that was previously removed from the coal plant exhaust.
If the Algae farm and the car did not exist, the exact same amount of CO2 would be released into the environment. So adding the Algae farm and Diesel car into the mix is called 'carbon neutral' because it is not adding NEW carbon to the atmosphere.
The same for Ethanol and Switch Grass, sure you have to burn more of it, but the carbon that is released when you burn it is the same carbon that the plant absorbed while it was growing. So the net effect is no change.
Most modern Diesels don't have heater blocks. Even with the cold weather package it wasn't an option on the last diesel I bought.
Diesel engines have Glowplugs that help them start in the cold. Since there is no spark to ignite the fuel at the end of the compression stroke, Diesel engines rely on the heat generated by compressing the charge to ignite the fuel. If the head and block is too cold, the charge will not ignite and after sitting on the street over night in -20 degree weather, a little block heater (used to heat oil and coolant) isn't going to have any effect on that.
Glow plugs are the trick to starting Diesel engines in the cold. They are small electric heaters that are in the combustion chamber of each cylinder. When the temperature drops below 10 degrees Celsius the glow plugs light up. They create a hot spot in the cylinder that when combined with the heat from the compression stroke, will ignite the fuel. Once the engine starts firing as usual, the glow plugs turn off and the heat from compression will keep the engine running on its own.
The only other thing that really cold weather does to diesels is to gel the fuel. Even winterized diesel will gel if you get it cold enough. Most diesels are designed to circulate extra fuel from up around the engine block back to the tank, so that once the engine is running the recycled fuel will warm the fuel in the tank to prevent gelling. But for really cold starts after the vehicle has been out in the cold over night, you may need a fuel line heater.
I should say though that I have yet to have winterized fuel gel on me through the last few Wisconsin winters. Even in -10 degree weather my TDI starts up with only a few second of glow plug delay and a second on the ignition. Modern consumer class Diesel engine vehicles have no significant starting issues in cold weather.
The amount of energy put into biofuel in the form of fuel to run tractors, transport it to market, etc. exceeds the amount of energy you get out of it. Therefore, by definition, short of a significant change in the fundamental technology of farming or in the types of crops grown, biofuel will never---can never---be commercially viable
As it applies to Corn based ethanol, true. But there are a lot of different options for biofuels. Ethanol is an unrealistic option for many reason, the limitations of corn is only one of the thorns in its side.
Soy-Diesel is a net gain, but at ~50 gallons per acre there is no way to get the volume needed to make a dent. There are other slightly more exotic that can push bio-diesel up to 200 gallons per acre, but they require a growing climate that is only available in a small section of the US.
Algae farms on the other hand, can pump out thousands of gallons of bio-Diesel per acre, can be designed to run in low pop/non-farmland south west US, and can be used to clean exhaust from existing coal fired power plants. Of all the bio fuel options, these are really looking like the hot ticket right now.
Unions make sense in places where a single employee doesn't have the ability to justify his paycheck over any other person. Jim the assmbly line worker can't negotiate by saying 'my ability to assemble this widget has saved the company money' because it doesn't matter how fast he can do it so long as he can keep pace with the assembly line. The employeer could fire him and hire a high school drop out to do the same job, and likely for less.
So it is critical in situations where prior performance can't be used as a negotiating tool that there be a union to protect workers. But for IT? We can have such a dramatic effect on the business as a whole, that we don't need a union. I would venture a guess that unionizing IT would actually REDUCE our performance. With a union in place we wouldn't be able to use our individual performance as a negotiating tool for pay reviews and job security. So if doing extra isn't going to gain us anything in the company, why do it? Just put in the minimal effort and you'll get the exact same pay raise as everyone else.
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The Toyota Prius was the 10th [theautochannel.com] best selling vehicle by volume in the US from Jan-April of 2008. Nice sales figures but hardly indicative of overwhelming demand for hybrids. You will note that the Prius is the only hybrid vehicle on the list.
What you failed to mention about it's 10th place finish is that it saw a 22% increase in sales from the previous year. 5 of the 9 vehicles that out sold it experiences 10% or greator sales declines. If such trends continue, the Prius would likely move up to the 7th or 8th top vehicle in the next year, and top 5 in the year after that.
-Rick
I disagree that Bush acted on false intelligence. I don't think either of us can really KNOW the answer either. I worked for federal govt in Intel. for a couple of years (hated it) and I saw/read nothing that made me think otherwise. Of course I am just some anonymous jerk on the internet, and if I was reading this from somebody else, I wouldn't give it any weight either :)
There was enough intelligence to raise a flag on Iraq, there is no doubt of that. And that's why we had UN investigators on the ground pounding sand. Yeah, they were taking some heat and their should have been a stronger international force backing up their presence. But there was nothing factual that backed the need for war. Forget everything that you heard come from the mouths of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield in the build up. Listen to/watch the presentation that Colin Powel made to the UN. His staff stripped all of the intelligence that could not be coalborated out of his presentation and the biggest item he had to sell the war on was satelite imagery of shipping containers and semi-trailors that may or may not have contained biological weapons research facilities, and a few arms caches that violated the international limits placed on Saddam.
By the time the war was being sold to the UN, we already knew that the yellow cake paper work was bogus, we knew that the alluminum tubes that were originally claimed to be used in centrafuges were actually entirely the wrong spec. Those two key pieces of Intelligence were known to be false long before the US put troops on the ground in Iraq. And the perported link between Al Quida and Saddam was already tenuous and was proven to be all but non-existant shortly after the war started.
To answer some of your points, I don't think anybody blames Bush for 9/11 (do you?)?
I do not. I've heard the conspiracies, but I don't buy them. I blame Bush for not taking the security threats he inherited more seriously, but in the transition and coming off of 8 years of relative peace, I can understand his decision.
With regards to the deficit--the government has been running at a deficit for 50 years
With the exception of the 2nd Clinton term, you know when we had a surplus of over two hundred billion dollars in 2000 and with current trend was projected to hit 1 trillion dollars and pay off the national debt by 2010. Not that it actually would. If the government had a 1 Trillion dollar surplus, taxes would drop, politicians would be re-elected, and the actual debt payoff would be pushed out further, but we'd be moving in the right direction.
Take a look at the trend of the federal debt http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm Out of the last 50 year, only the last 30 have been explosive. And in that time it has been the Republican Presidents that have been the worst offenders. Sure, Clinton might have been a tax and spend liberal, but every republican elected in the last 30 years has been a borrow and spend liberal. Only difference is that with Clinton, people were more interested in being fiscally responsible since we were footing the bill. With everyone else, we've just gone hog wild with spending because we can sell all of our debt off to China and Japan.
People don't realize how much intelligence and military were able to "step down" in the 90s...obviously this is now reversed.
Why? Because we wanted to take a military action against a non-state sponsored terrorist organization by attacking one of the most inhospitable and war ravaged countries in the world with a population where almost every citizen is a veterain of military conflict? Was attacking Afghanistan really a net gain in our security? Or should we have focused more on intelligence spending and track down the money and real power brokers?
And Iraq was a complete debacle. There were reasons to go in, but those
I don't like Bush, but I respect him. He is not the blathering idiot most people portray him as. He is not mentally handicapped. He isn't necesarily vindictive, but he has had his agendas from election day, and he did his best to acomplish those goals.
He didn't "act on false intelligence", he acted on manipulated and fabricated intelligence. It was fabricated by his own administration to advance his agenda. He is not an idiot, he knew it was false. He was "hopeful" though, and almost everyone figured that Saddam did have WMDs, but had managed to keep them hidden from inspectors. The disappointment is that one of his prize agendas, one of his biggest goals as president, will forever be tarnished because they couldn't find the smoking gun to post-hoc validate their actions.
I can even understand the reasoning behind some of his goals. The real reasons for why toppling Saddam and installing a pro-West government was extremely important. His execution sucked, many of his subordinates displayed amazing incompotence, but his reasoning is understandable (even by an anti-Bushie like me). Even Rumsfield's performance confused me. I served under the man, he was a bright individual. I can only guess that an early onset of dimential was crippling his brain by the time we were marching into Iraq.
But that doesn't mean "I know where he stood" on any issue. The man is a politician, and like all politicians he lied out of both sides of his mouth. Whether it was the Christian Coalition that he was stringing allong for campaign contributions but back tracked on every line he fed them, or the complete reversal from his original campaign of reduced overseas military activity, or any of the other numerous situations he has been through in the last 8 years where he made decisions completely contradictory to what he had campaigned on and promised to his constituents.
He had excellent reasons for doing so, like most politicians, but the "know where he stood" BS is just media hype.
Long term, people will look back at his presidency and see a number of things:
1) The worst terrorist attack on US soil ever.
2) Two "wars" with no sign of end.
3) Nation wide unemployement jump from ~4% to over 7%.
4) A multi-billion dollar federal budget surplus turned into over a trillion dollar deficite.
5) One of the worst examples of explosive growth and burst of an economic bubble.
6) One of the worst natural disasters to ever hit the US, and possibly the worst ever federal response to such an event.
7) A huge step forward in the end of civil liberties (We've been marching down that road for a while now)
8) Expansive growth of power in the executive branch (ie: the reason why no one wanted to elect another Clinton!)
Maybe I'm just jaded, but I have to say, he will likely go down in the annals of history as one of the worst US presidents ever.
-Rick
That law is enforced by the winner of the war.
It ensures that if the uprising fails, those responsible will be persecuted. And should the uprising succeed, those that were the root cause of the need for uprising will be persecuted.
In either case, it contributes to the stability of the society after the conflict.
-Rick
Ahh thanks. I should have double checked the quote.
You are correct, he said "Not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment."
Which has a similar, albeit slightly more disturbing meaning to it.
-Rick
That's like saying that the secret meeting that Cheney had in the vice-presidential office with energy industry insiders, had nothing to do with the administration's policy on energy.
The difference here being that the meeting with Obama's staff was not secret. While you might be hard pressed to get a transcript of it, the meeting and some of its attendees is listed in TFA. Knowing that you could ask for an interview of any of the people there and likely get a decent description of what exactly was discussed.
-Rick
Does the name "Rupert Murdoch" ring a bell?
In 2003 he owned over 175 newspapers, and every single one of them were pushing pro-Iraq Invasion editorials.
The media is STILL pussy footing Bush. Just a few days ago he said that it was "unfortunate" that no WMDs were found in Iraq. Talk about the most self-centered and retarded things to say. We are extremely fortunate that there were no WMDs found. If they had been found that would mean that 1) There are/were people in Iraq with the knowledge to make them again, and 2) That there are likely more of them in different storage facilities or being off loaded on the black market.
To call it "unfortunate" that we destroyed a country and killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions more, is a grievous understatement.
The only reason why it is "unfortunate" is because it will forever tarnish Bush's record in the history books.
Yet the media just sweeps away the statement. The guy makes a statement showing that his primary concern is his legacy, not the security of the country, nor the millions of people affected by the war.
Not that I'm a sunshine-daisy Obama optimist. He strikes me as more of a centrist republicrat than a lefty liberal. But taking over after Bush, he'll be hard pressed to do worse.
-Rick
Clearwire Executive Vice President R. Gerard Salemme, the person refered to in the horribly misleading summary, is not employed by Obama or his transition team. RTFA, the only direct relationships between Salemme and Obama is that Salemme made campaign contributions and attended a meeting with Obama's Science and Technology team.
A far cry from the scandal the summary makes it out to be.
I mean, if you're going to screw with a delivery date that has been set for over half a decade, you might want to contact the executives of the major companies that are going to be effected by such a decision. Just to be polite and all.
-Rick
The guy in question has made some campaign contributions (apparently around $17,000).
He has an impressive history in the industry and as a lobbyist in DC. The guy has been around, knows his technical info, and knows who to talk to in DC.
But.... He is not on Obama's staff. It appears that he was invited to some of the campaign parties, and that he has (post election) been invited to one or more meetings as a consultant with the head of Obama's Science and Technology working group. A group headed by Tom Wheeler, who has ties to a back bone provider that may have a better chance at profiting with no delay in the DTV conversion.
In summary, some guy who doesn't work for Obama has an opinion that might or might not lead to a more profitable situation for a company, and he has shared that opinion with someone who possibly has a different opinion that might or might not lead to a more profitable situation for another company, who works for a man that has an opinion that he has hopefully come to after listening to people with different motivations and goals, and weighed each of their opinions against each other and against what he hopes to accomplish while in charge.
I'm failing to see how this is at all "scandal". We already knew that Obama was soliciting advice from people who he disagreed with. The fact that he is talking to lobbyists from opposing sides of these arguments at least indicates that he is trying to get a better picture than what any individual (even those on his staff) are able to paint for him.
-Rick
Toyota makes virtually no profit on the Prius even with the help of government subsidies. They make about $100 per vehicle net. If demand for hybrid vehicles was so great, don't you think they would account for more than 3% of total vehicle sales by now?
Do you have a source on that $100 number? I know the mark up is much lower than their sport utility and truck lines, but I'd be surprised if it was that low.
You've probably seen the "Saved by Zero" sales campaign that's been going on since December. But there was one product that has not had any additional incentives marketed. The Prius. If they were sitting on stock like they were with all of the other vehicles, they would be pushing some sort of sale for them as well. But they offer nothing. No cash back. No Hawiian trips. No 0% financing. The market demand for them is strong enough that when every other segment for them is dropping, the Prius continues to sell. Seems like a pretty strong indication of consumer demand to me ;)
-Rick
Just look at the farce that is ethanol...
Anyone with more than two braincells left knows that ethanol in the US (specifically the northern Midwest) has nothing to do with saving the planet. Ethanol in the US is nothing more than an agricultural subsidy and marketing campaign, fleesing would-be do gooders into making decisions that have a net negative effect on the environment. The real reason for the push to ethanol is profit and misinformed activist.
1. Forcibly reducing consumption will not necessarily reduce the actual amounts of the subsidies, because I think population growth will level out the relatively minute energy savings garnered by producing more energy-efficient TVs.
Population growth is independent of TV energy efficiency. California's population will grow at the same rate wether the TVs on the store shelves consume 40 watts or 40 killowatts. So you are correct in that improving the efficiency of TVs will not actually reduce the total power consumption. What it will do is reduce the growth of total power consumption.
2. My position on government intervention is consistent: the energy subsidies themselves are stupid and should be dismantled as well, allowing the market to build clean and efficient nuclear power plants and work towards technological solutions for a cleaner, power-efficient future without propping up worthless old technologies and inefficient and impractical ones like solar and wind with subsidies.
There is a major problem with that though. Coal is cheap. Coal is really cheap. Way cheaper than nuclear. If it weren't for government subsidies, loans, and incentives, the only nuclear reactors would be in Universities. Technology for wind and solar power sources has improved greatly in the past decade, to the point now where it is realistic to see a ROI with only minimal incentives.
I do agree with you though, subsidies are like the anti-competition. On the other hand, if we raise the taxes on known inefficient systems, we can promote free market investment in alternatives. Last year in Wisconsin the state legislature voted to end the automatic inflationary gas tax hike. A move that many used as a marketing move for campaing season. And now that prices have come back down, people are driving less, and inflation is ramping up, we really need that automatic hike back in, but no one wants to burn the political capital to actually do it. I would go even a step further though. In addition to reinstating the automatic hike, I would tack on another 15-25 cent tax. The purpose being obviously to raise more capital for road maintenace (and jobs!) when the reduction in travel is reducing the DoT budget. And a secondary cause being that the more expensive gasoline is, the more marketable it is to invest in alternative energy, which creates more jobs and drives engineering, skilled labor, and education in the US.
Ideally, we would have seen $4/gal gasoline back in 2004-2005 to get the "green economy" (I hate that phrase, but I like the job creation associated with it) started up when it was becoming obvious that the housing market was bubbling.
-Rick
And along with those higher TV prices will come lower (or a slowing of growth) of electricity consumption. Which means less (or less growth) power generation and transportation.
You might not be aware of it, but your tax dollars are heavily subsidizing the energy industry. And the need for additional capacity and transportation is a major push for eminent domain claims and individuals losing their property to larger high voltage line towers.
So while the price of TVs may temporarily be adjusted, the net effect will likely be a reduction (or a reduction in growth) of your taxation.
Government intervention isn't by default bad. But it should always be looked at with sceptisism. So while I applaud your immediate displeasure of the decision, I would recommend you investigate further before flushing the idea. And if someone has thought on it longer and harder than I, I would appreciate your thoughts as well!
-Rick
I had a similar idea, character's aranged in rings growing from the center.
! @ # $ % ^ & *
( l f k p r z )
- b g a o v =
[ c h e * u w ]
; d n i y x '
\ , . ? ! /
Where A, E, I, O, and U form the center most ring. Inside that ring is a double, shift, space, and backspace buttons. Consinants would have to be arranged meaningfully (I just tossed them up alphabetically and swapped the vowels)
I'm highly tempted to try writting such a tool in silverlight now...
-Rick
Replacing Exchange+Outlook with Domino+Notes is like trading a Communist Russian controlled Ferrari in for a Nigerian wheel barrel.
Yeah, Exchange and Outlook mean you get locked into MS's grip, but it's a pretty solid system. With Lotus Notes you get that same lock in only to a different company, and instead of having a well designed, stable, and consistent user interface, you'll sit at your desk eating a turd sandwich while hoping that you can at least check your email and calendar before the day ends.
I'm all for an open source replacement to Outlook and Exchange, but honestly, Lotus Notes is not it. Lotus Notes is the crash and burn incident that people look back at and say "Lets not make that mistake again!"
-Rick
What are the unsorted problems with Vista?
I mean, it's not the greatest OS in the world, but it's not horrendous. Yeah, there was the crap with the 'Vista ready' BS when it came out, but at this point, most new PCs should have no problem running it with Aero.
There were tons of driver issues when it came out too (Just like when Win 2k was new, god that was a nightmare), but again, it's been a few years and the driver support seams pretty top notch at this point.
The UAV system is annoying, but easily disabled. Hopefully they will tweak it to run more like Ubuntu where I can log in as a power user with out admin rights, but perform admin tasks by providing admin credentials when attempting the task.
Other than that, I'm pleased with the system. It's a tad more bloated than my XP build, but the hardware is a bit more beefy, so the extra memory and clock cycles are negligible and it can perform all of the tasks I normally do faster than my older PC with XP.
If Windows 7 makes iterative improvements on Vista the way 98 did to 95, then I'm all for it. I'd shell out $90 for an upgrade version next time I build a PC.
-Rick
Yeah, I admit, being a first time voter on an overseas tour in the Marine Corps at the time, I didn't do as much research as I have in the elections since.
I hope that Obama does better, but I am amazed at how well he has been painted as a liberal, socialist, and even communist. Not that he is any of those things. He is just another charismatic republicrat that I hope can lead the country in a better direction than Bush did. But I've heard a number of my more conservative friends and family members make almost Mcarthy-like remarks of the red scare and that Obama was a road to the end of democracy. How anyone with the brain power to make it through a college education can believe the drivel, left or right, that has been pumped this last election season is beyond me.
-Rick
Personally, I find in amusing how the newly elected officials are loved at the start and folks can't wait for them to leave when their time is up.
An interesting take. The poster didn't say that Obama was better, just that Bush was all of those things and the Obama was replacing him. And the point that he was likely trying to make was that a representation style of governing does not protect us from the very idiocy the GP was claiming was a threat to community rule.
And it is a factual statement. We know that Bush Jr had a problem with Alcohol. We know that he has done coke and pot. We know that he has run his previous business ventures into the ground. We could guess that he has made poor life decisions as well, but he has managed to raise a family, hold his marriage together, and become President of the USA, so I think his good life decisions likely outweigh his poor life decisions as far as his own continued existence is concerned.
Also, to the note of your post, you are extremely accurate in the case of Bush. Bush ran on a platform of reducing military spending, reducing overseas deployments, less military intervention in foreign countries. It was because of his claims of wanting to reduce our military's international role that I voted for him in 2000. Unfortunately after 9/11, that stance went out the window and our military spending has ballooned out of control as we have invaded 2 countries, started pissing matches with 3 others, and aided in the provocation of that snafu in Georgia. So yeah, seeing as how his stance and platform has changed radically from what it was when he first ran, I would fully expect a lot of people who liked his stances in 2000 to hate him in 2008.
-Rick
Why is this a bad example of patents? If anything, this is an excellent example of good patenting.
The patent contains the technical knowledge require to reproduce their device. Any Joe Schmoe with the technical knowledge and tools to do so can look at their patent documentation and have a good idea on how to build the device.
That same Joe could then make improvements on the device and file for a new patent.
Mean while, the original patent owner, who has likely sunk a huge amount of money into research and development, has a temporary monopoly that all-but guarantees them enough profits to pay off their debts and fund future research.
The only thing wrong in this case is that the patent lasts for almost 20 years. 20 years was great 80 years ago. 20 years is fine for drug formulas that can take a decade to get through testing and FDA approval. 20 years is way too long for technological advancements though.
Drop it down to a 5 to 10 year window, and push inventors to get their products to the market, or open them up to competition.
-Rick
For the first half of your post, because when you burn coal in most cases you do not burn 100% of the available fuel, unspent hydrocarbons are released with the exhaust. By piping the exhaust through the algae not only are you sequestering CO2, but you are also reclaiming those unspent hydrocarbons. Additionally, the CO2 rich exhaust from coal plants can cause the algae to grow significantly faster and produce more oil than algae farms with out exhaust.
For the second half of your post, the US has coal. Lots of coal. Lots and lots and lots of coal. Coal is cheap. Coal is really cheap. So long as coal is plentiful and cheap, it will be a significant part of our enery infrastructure. As much as I wish otherwise, that is just a fact. Biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, hydro-electric (which has its own nasty side effects) all have significant subsidies going that attempts to make them more competetive with coal.
So the answer has to be a combination of reducing the cost of alternative energy sources, combined with improved emission regulation and export limitations. But honestly, nothing significant is going to change in the coal industry in the US in the next 20 years, and likely not in the next 50 years. Where as we can get algae farms up and running in under 4 years that can dramatically effect the growth rate of CO2 emissions in the US.
Not a permanent solution, but in the short term, it is a great bandaide.
-Rick
Correct, which is why ALL Bio-fuels are 'carbon neutral'.
If you did not have the algae farm, nor the car that was being powered by the bio diesel the farm produced, there would still be the exact same amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
But we are talking about replacing a non-carbon neutral fuel (petro-diesel) with the carbon neutral bio-diesel. So the net effect is that there will be less carbon being released into the atmosphere. But if all vehicles were runing on bio-Diesel, there would be no reduction in CO2 exhaust.
In the short term, bio-diesel presents a chance to reduce our carbon foot print. Long term it allows us to get the maximum amount of work out of the given polution. And infinite term, it will at least in part need to be replaced by some net carbon negative fuel source.
-Rick
While I'm not a fan of corn based ethanol, I am a fan of having a heavily subsidized and regulated agricultural industry in the US combined with import tarrifs and controls in imported food stuffs.
The combination of those factors ensures that farming in the US remains profitable to most farmers and guarantees that even in a global economic melt down, getting food to the plates of Americans will not be an impossible problem.
It does screw with the global economy something fierce though and pisses on all of the non-developed countries that would typically be able to compete on the global market through agricultural exports. But personally, I'm a bit more worried about health and stability in my own country.
-Rick
The emissions how ever are carbon neutral.
Similar to bio-Diesel Algae.
A coal fired plant burns coal, generates electricity, and exhausts all sorts of crap.
If you push that exhaust through an Algae farm you can reduce the CO2 emissions by 40%.
If you use that Algae to produce bio-Diesel, the vehicle will burn the fuel and exhaust that same CO2 that was previously removed from the coal plant exhaust.
If the Algae farm and the car did not exist, the exact same amount of CO2 would be released into the environment. So adding the Algae farm and Diesel car into the mix is called 'carbon neutral' because it is not adding NEW carbon to the atmosphere.
The same for Ethanol and Switch Grass, sure you have to burn more of it, but the carbon that is released when you burn it is the same carbon that the plant absorbed while it was growing. So the net effect is no change.
-Rick
Most modern Diesels don't have heater blocks. Even with the cold weather package it wasn't an option on the last diesel I bought.
Diesel engines have Glowplugs that help them start in the cold. Since there is no spark to ignite the fuel at the end of the compression stroke, Diesel engines rely on the heat generated by compressing the charge to ignite the fuel. If the head and block is too cold, the charge will not ignite and after sitting on the street over night in -20 degree weather, a little block heater (used to heat oil and coolant) isn't going to have any effect on that.
Glow plugs are the trick to starting Diesel engines in the cold. They are small electric heaters that are in the combustion chamber of each cylinder. When the temperature drops below 10 degrees Celsius the glow plugs light up. They create a hot spot in the cylinder that when combined with the heat from the compression stroke, will ignite the fuel. Once the engine starts firing as usual, the glow plugs turn off and the heat from compression will keep the engine running on its own.
The only other thing that really cold weather does to diesels is to gel the fuel. Even winterized diesel will gel if you get it cold enough. Most diesels are designed to circulate extra fuel from up around the engine block back to the tank, so that once the engine is running the recycled fuel will warm the fuel in the tank to prevent gelling. But for really cold starts after the vehicle has been out in the cold over night, you may need a fuel line heater.
I should say though that I have yet to have winterized fuel gel on me through the last few Wisconsin winters. Even in -10 degree weather my TDI starts up with only a few second of glow plug delay and a second on the ignition. Modern consumer class Diesel engine vehicles have no significant starting issues in cold weather.
-Rick
The amount of energy put into biofuel in the form of fuel to run tractors, transport it to market, etc. exceeds the amount of energy you get out of it. Therefore, by definition, short of a significant change in the fundamental technology of farming or in the types of crops grown, biofuel will never---can never---be commercially viable
As it applies to Corn based ethanol, true. But there are a lot of different options for biofuels. Ethanol is an unrealistic option for many reason, the limitations of corn is only one of the thorns in its side.
Soy-Diesel is a net gain, but at ~50 gallons per acre there is no way to get the volume needed to make a dent. There are other slightly more exotic that can push bio-diesel up to 200 gallons per acre, but they require a growing climate that is only available in a small section of the US.
Algae farms on the other hand, can pump out thousands of gallons of bio-Diesel per acre, can be designed to run in low pop/non-farmland south west US, and can be used to clean exhaust from existing coal fired power plants. Of all the bio fuel options, these are really looking like the hot ticket right now.
-Rick
Unions make sense in places where a single employee doesn't have the ability to justify his paycheck over any other person. Jim the assmbly line worker can't negotiate by saying 'my ability to assemble this widget has saved the company money' because it doesn't matter how fast he can do it so long as he can keep pace with the assembly line. The employeer could fire him and hire a high school drop out to do the same job, and likely for less.
So it is critical in situations where prior performance can't be used as a negotiating tool that there be a union to protect workers. But for IT? We can have such a dramatic effect on the business as a whole, that we don't need a union. I would venture a guess that unionizing IT would actually REDUCE our performance. With a union in place we wouldn't be able to use our individual performance as a negotiating tool for pay reviews and job security. So if doing extra isn't going to gain us anything in the company, why do it? Just put in the minimal effort and you'll get the exact same pay raise as everyone else.
-Rick