Mon - June 29, 2009UnsustainableEmphasis
added.
Now comes the CBO with yet more news of the sort that neither Capitol Hill nor the White House is likely to welcome: its freshly released report on the federal government's long-term financial situation. To put it bluntly, the fiscal policy of the United States is unsustainable. Debt is growing faster than gross domestic product. Under the CBO's most realistic scenario, the publicly held debt of the U.S. government will reach 82 percent of GDP by 2019 -- roughly double what it was in 2008. By 2026, spiraling interest payments would push the debt above its all-time peak (set just after World War II) of 113 percent of GDP. It would reach 200 percent of GDP in 2038. This huge mass of debt, which would stifle economic growth and reduce the American standard of living, can be avoided only through spending cuts, tax increases or some combination of the two. And the longer government waits to get its financial house in order, the more it will cost to do so, the CBO says. The Debt Tsuami, washingtonpost.com Good work if you can pull it off. Spend more money than can possibly be paid off. Hand out expensive goodies to almost every group in sight. Then blame everyone else when the economy collapses. And demand more in taxes to put things right. Don't fall for it. 
Posted Mon - June 29, 2009 at 12:58 PM in
Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊ Why is it necessary to pass a climate bill that no one has read?Sometimes I do have hope
yet.
Katabasis: The Minority Report: Why I am a Climate Sceptic Somebody else arrived at the same position I did and for pretty much the same reasons. Here's one of my first pieces on the subject, complete with my infamous four questions. Here's my Global Warming FAQ. Here's my environmental entry index, just chock full of links to the debate that you have been told doesn't exist. Do you really trust the government to save you?
Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊ HonestI've never really been a celebrity watcher, and I
find the whole ritual of devouring a celebrity's life after their death to be
ghoulish. It seems like you couldn't turn on the television or the computer
the last few days without seeing Michael Jackson or Farrah Fawcett "remembered,"
their entire life laid out before the hungry public like some sort of macabre
buffet.
Especially Jackson. Now I don't have enough information on Jackson's sexual life or his health or much else. But it occurs to me that there is exactly one person who is uniquely qualified to comment. Lisa Marie Presley. And she did. It's the only one I have see that is worth reading. The rest is just carrion-feed.
Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊ Tue - June 23, 2009My simple plan to cut down on carbon, provide power, save the economy, lower taxes, and earn high profitsSo I got an email complaining that I never give
any practical ideas for saving the
planet.
Here's one for your consideration. If I had the money, I'd start a car company. But I wouldn't begin with cars. No, I'd target long haul truckers. We know that there is no way under any foreseeable technology for the next 25 years that there would be a battery system that could support an 18-wheeler doing a cross country trip if the truck used electric motors. A while back I was reading that it was possible to build a nuclear reactor about the size of a refrigerator that you could bury in your back yard. So let's junk the batteries and start with that. Make it overpowered. Pair it with a flywheel system that could bleed off the extra power. Make it safe enough to withstand impacts and accidents. Replace as much of the transmission, gears, and braking with heavy duty electrical motors that you could so that the truck and it's APC ran from the sealed reactor and the flywheel. Now here's where the fun part comes in. The truck generates electricity whether it's moving or not. So when it's parked at a truck stop or at a warehouse or where ever, it's plugged into the power grid. The local utility pays the parking spot owner. The parking spot owner pays the truck owner. Bam! Reliable power. Money changes hands. Profit. No carbon. More important to me, no smelly diesel fumes. Think about those implications for just a moment. Whenever someone needs emergency power, they pay a truck driver to park for a while. With a little bit of work, city electrical grids could be designed to be isolated and run off of trucks instead of the central utilities. Once these electrical trucks have proven the concept, we add city buses and other large scale vehicles. Then we work on scaling the whole thing down to passenger vehicles. Same deal though. When the car is parked, it pumps power back into the grid. The overall effect to do away with most gasoline and diesel engines and let people earn cash with their cars. This would decentralize the power grid. Nearly everyone wins.
Posted Tue - June 23, 2009 at 01:41 PM in
Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊ Mon - June 22, 2009Enough alreadyMy very first entry on
Pagan
Vigil was my infamous True Believer Rant. I'd been putting it up for
months on various lists (good luck finding it anywhere else), and the result was
almost always the same.
How could I dare say that liberals and progressives were more intolerant than conservatives? Well, here we are in 2009, with the first black President, and it's still happening. Almost any criticism of the Imperious Leader is passed off as racism. I really get tired of defending my credentials. So let's put this all in perspective. My mother's family hails from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. And not the good parts. Yes, there is a bit of "mixed" ancestry there. Heck, my grandparents didn't even have indoor plumbing until after they moved to Arizona in 1950. Don't get me started on shoes. I was born on the Navajo reservation. I lived in Phoenix for a time, and from the time I was in fifth grade through my graduating high school, I lived right next to the reservation. In my Corporate Clone days, I had a discrimination lawsuit filed against me. It lasted only until I took the attorney into my department and showed him that about forty percent of my staff was Diné (Navajo to English speakers). I've slept with women who happened to be black, Japanese, Diné, white, Apache, Latina, Polynesian, and a few others. No, not all at the same time. I was more interested in the fact that each was a lady willing to use her mind then I was her skin color. That's what gets my engine running. Sure, looks can rev things up more, but if you can't think, I usually don't pay much attention. In short, I am one of the most unracist people you are likely to meet. I'm the guy who keeps saying that the only race that matters is human. So when I criticize Obama, it's because I think his ideas are bad and destructive. It has nothing to do with anything else.
Posted Mon - June 22, 2009 at 01:49 PM in
Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊ A really really big IF…For years I've been telling you that there is
something brewing beneath the "official" news about Iran, and it looks like
things may be coming to a boil.
Like almost all my news sources from Iran, this is very indirect. You have to read between the lines. Given what is happening, I can't really say if this is any more than rumor and hope at this point. There is someone else who's tumbled to what could be happening. Folks, this is huge. Huge. A report from Saudi Arabia's al-Arabiya, Iranian clerics seek supreme leader alternative, indicates that Rafsanjani is seeking to eliminate the Supreme Leader. Not just the man, but the position and role presiding over Iranian politics and the Iranian society. If it's true, and PLEASE notice that I am really stressing that if, this could be the biggest thing in the Middle East since Iraq was kicked out of Kuwait. Reform has to come from the Iranians, and there is absolutely no reason for the U.S. to interfere. In fact, interfering with internal Iranian politics right now could undo all the good we've done in Iraq and start a shooting war between Israel, Jordon, and Iran. While I do think that the events in Iraq helped bring things to this point, Iraq was a special and unique case. I'm still watching close. And this is still rumor.
Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊ Wed - June 17, 2009You're looking at the wrong Iranian election fixI have a thunderstorm on the horizon, which means
I'm probably not going to get more than one post in today. So it had better be
an important one.
So I say again, you're looking at the wrong Iranian election fix. That was the whole point. No matter which candidate won, the fix was always going to be in. See, the Iranian president is a figurehead, about two steps down the ladder from the real executive power. First you have the Supreme Leader. Besides having the final say on everything the government does, he's also the one who picks the candidates for office. Then there is the Council of Guardians. They make sure that the government acts within Islamic law, and they approve the elections. The Iranians never had a choice of candidates. And yet they are calling for a new election with the Supreme Leader choosing who will run. My take is that the Iranian people aren't quite ready to deal with democracy yet. If they were, they'd be demanding a secular government. These protests are important, but it's a long way from freedom. Oh, one other thing that is seldom noticed. When the Iranian president meets with the head of state for another nation, it's a calculated and deliberate insult. From an Iranian viewpoint, any foreign leader who meets the President of Iran is not worthy of respect and is certainly not worth the attention of the Supreme Leader. Just asking automatically makes any other nation subservient to Iran and to Islam. I'm pretty sure that the news never told you that. It's true though. The Iranian system has been crafted to shame most Western governments, but you have to have studied Islam to understand that. And if you and your various government officials don't understand, then that pretty much proves their point, doesn't it? The scary thing is that if someone like me with just a few books and internet access can figure that out, there ought to be somebody in the State Department that can do the same. Unless the system is geared to eliminate anyone who protests the "conventional wisdom" and accepted ways to deal with the Middle East.
Posted Wed - June 17, 2009 at 01:59 PM in
Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊ Mon - June 15, 2009Taxes increasing by $600 billion, cuts of $400 billion. It's not really about your healthHealth-care
overhaul legislation being drafted by House Democrats will include $600 billion
in tax increases and $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, Ways and
Means Committee Chairman
Charles
Rangel
said.
Laura Litvan, House Health-Car Proposal Adds $600 Billion in Taxes It was never ever about managing the "health care crisis." It was about getting re-elected. The rest is all hype.
Posted Mon - June 15, 2009 at 12:23 PM in
Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊ ResourcesI've got a couple of good general information
resources for you.
How to Talk to a Liberal If You Really Want to Change His Mind. Myths about libertarianism. Get to know Obama's Czars. Bullion and Bandits: The Improbable Rise and Fall of E-Gold. Just handy stuff to have around.
Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊ Fudging the numbersThis is an older one, but I bet most of you
didn't see it.
Accountants, Washington Helping Banks Fluff Profits. For all of Obama's pledges of transparency, he certainly doesn't want you to have good information. Oh, and you aren't supposed to protest too loudly either. Just remember that the only thing that keeps politicos honest is the one thing that they desperately fear. An angry, informed, and determined citizenry. Not voters, but citizens. You see, voters work within the system. Citizens have been known to take freedom matters into their own hands, no matter what the law says.
Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊ It's called Freedom of ReligionSo Newt Gingrich says that the United States is a
Christian nation and Barak Obama says the U.S. is one of the largest Muslim
countries in the world.
Both are absolutely wrong. And for the exact same reason. Nations should not be religious. The United States in particular is a secular nation with a diverse population. It's not founded on ANY religious law. People are religious. In a free country, the faith of a nation's officials should have very little to do with the the faith of individuals. Just because Obama claims to be Christian doesn't make me one. Hint: look at the title of the blog. As hard as it may be for some to accept, American freedoms aren't derived from religion. That's why the U.S. law can't require you to belong to a specific church, or any church. That's why Christians can live with Muslims and Jews and atheists and those pesky Pagans and all the others. It's called Freedom of Religion. And any politico who has to score cheap points by claiming that one faith is the true basis of the United States, just remember that it is a cheap shot.
Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊ Tue - June 2, 2009Fight the "pointy-heads"I
don’t believe the pointy-heads give a damn about climate change or gas
mileage, much less about whether I survive a head-on with one of their
tax-sucking mass-transit projects. All they want to is to make me hate my car.
How proud and handsome would Bucephalas look, or Traveler or Rachel Alexandra,
with seat and shoulder belts, air bags, 5-mph bumpers and a maze of
pollution-control equipment under the
tail?
P. J. O'Rouke, The End of Our Love Affair with Cars Still one of my favorite living authors. Great article too.
Posted Tue - June 2, 2009 at 01:00 PM in
Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊ Mon - June 1, 2009Australia censoring more than child pornOh my, big
surprise.
Less Than A Third Of Australia's Censor List Actually About Underage Images Nope, didn't see that one coming. Not at all. I'd say it's more proof that government can't be trusted with morality.
Posted Mon - June 1, 2009 at 12:44 PM in
Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊
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 Pagan Vigil
Pagan philosopher, libertarian, and part-time trouble maker, NeoWayland watches for threats to individual freedom or personal responsiblity. There's more to life than just black and white, using only extremes just increases the problems.  My Thinking Blogger Nominees
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