Why Do They Vote Republican Again?

The clip below is really bad quality (looks like a smart phone recording) but pay attention to the guy at the 1 minute 40 second mark...



 Seriously...WTF?

If voters were more educated, Republicans would cease to exist as a party because so few people would vote for them.

What Ever Happened to Good Old-Fashioned Police Work?

The poor FBI. Apple is going to make their job impossible by encrypting the contents of the iPhone 6.

The phone encrypts emails, photos and contacts based on a complex mathematical algorithm that uses a code created by, and unique to, the phone’s user — and that Apple says it will not possess.

The result, the company is essentially saying, is that if Apple is sent a court order demanding that the contents of an iPhone 6 be provided to intelligence agencies or law enforcement, it will turn over gibberish, along with a note saying that to decode the phone’s emails, contacts and photos, investigators will have to break the code or get the code from the phone’s owner.

Breaking the code, according to an Apple technical guide, could take “more than 5 1/2 years to try all combinations of a six-character alphanumeric passcode with lowercase letters and numbers.” (Computer security experts question that figure, because Apple does not fully realize how quickly the N.S.A. supercomputers can crack codes.) 

Since this code is "created by" the phone's user I also question that figure. If these codes are anything like the passwords most people use for their email accounts, it will take about five minutes to decrypt 80% of all the iPhones out there.

And, yet again, the FBI is trotting out the hoary old "kidnapper" fable:

He cited kidnapping cases, in which exploiting the contents of a seized phone could lead to finding a victim, and predicted there would be moments when parents would come to him “with tears in their eyes, look at me and say, ‘What do you mean you can’t’ ” decode the contents of a phone.

Huh? If you've got the kidnapper's cell phone, you've probably got the kidnapper. Which means you've pretty much got the case solved 99.9% of the time. Yeah, we've all seen this TV show: the cops have captured the kidnapper, but his victim is buried out in the woods somewhere with only 37 minutes of air, and if they don't get him to confess the victim will suffocate and there won't be any evidence with which to prosecute the bastard.

But does that ever happen in real life? I can't think of an actual case like that. In all the recent high-profile kidnappings around here, the victim disappears, the cops don't find anything for weeks, eventually they find the perp, and it's another six months before they track down the corpse buried in the woods or dumped in a lake. Or the victim has been living with the perp for the last five years as his sex slave. Or the victim is a child in a nasty custody battle.

And all those same TV shows tell us that if you don't find a kidnapping victim alive within 24-48 hours, odds are you never will. And since cops rarely investigate missing persons until they've been gone for 24 hours, what are the odds that being able to decrypt a cellphone will make it easier to find that kidnapping victim?

Does it make any sense have a legal system that makes it trivial for cops to snoop on 300 million Americans in order to make it slightly easier for them to solve a case that happens maybe once every 10 years?

What did the FBI do 20 years ago, before cell phones? Back then, kidnappers just remembered everything, or wrote it down on pieces of paper they could eat when they were gonna get caught. Law enforcement couldn't track everyone's whereabouts through cell phone towers, or read your email off the backups on your ISP's server without ever setting foot in your house. Kidnappers used paper maps instead of GPS units, which left absolutely no electronic trace whatsoever.

Back then, the FBI had to rely on old-fashioned police work and deductive reasoning. If you watch those same TV shows, you learn that other forensic techniques (pollen, trace evidence, telephone logs, cell phone tracking, lists of known associates from police files) lead them to the victims just as easily as text messages, contact lists and cell phone photos.

Is the FBI just getting lazy? Cell tower tracking data and call logs from the phone company will also lead them to co-conspirators, and kidnappers can't delete that data from their phones. And if the kidnappers are smart enough to turn their phones off so they aren't tracked and not call their partners in crime, odds are they're smart enough not to put anything useful in their phones in the first place: if you want to keep a secret, don't tell anyone and don't write it down. Anywhere. It didn't take Edward Snowden to tell us that: anyone watching any cop show for the last 20 years knows it inside and out.

The public should have the right to protect themselves against the theft of their data by criminals. If we should have the right to protect ourselves with guns that can just as easily be used to murder dozens of innocent victims at a time, shouldn't we have the right to use encryption to protect ourselves from blackmail and theft of intellectual property? If a business competitor steals your phone, you should be able to encrypt the data so they can't profit. If Kate Upton loses her cell phone, she should have the expectation that her nude selfies will not be spewed across the Internet.

Speaking of nude selfies, I would say that Apple is not going far enough with its encryption: several celebrities' online accounts were recently hacked and embarrassing photos were released. That should be much harder to do. In any case, everything in the Cloud should be encrypted to prevent poorly paid sysadmins from rummaging through your personal files and selling them to TMZ or your competitors.

The FBI is just whining. To reiterate, if these files are encrypted with a user-supplied code, that code will be relatively easy to guess most of the time. If it's not easy to guess, then it's probably not easy to remember, and that means any would-be kidnappers will have it written down on a piece of paper. Probably in their desk at home, or in their wallet, or on a USB flash drive in their possession.

In other words, easily found by good, old-fashioned detective work.

Kidnapping is a red herring. The FBI really wants contact lists to be unencrypted so they can more easily track down organized crime, drug dealing, terrorism and insider trading. Those are all things worth fighting, but the FBI shouldn't be lying about why they want to be able to spy on us.

Things I have learned from my Facebook feed recently...

1. Barack Obama is Lord Voldermort
2. The Koch Brothers are Lord Voldermort
3. The federal government is practicing black magic.
4. Monsanto is practicing black magic.
5. Climate change, nuclear energy, GMOs and vaccines are all black magic practiced with nefarious intent by THEM.

The Military To Fox News: Fuck you!

An Open Letter To Fox News About 'Boobs On The Ground'

Dear Mr. Bolling and Mr. Gutfeld,

We are veterans of the United States armed forces, and we are writing to inform you that your remarks about United Arab Emirates Air Force Major Mariam Al Mansouri were unwarranted, offensive, and fundamentally opposed to what the military taught us to stand for.

First, foremost, and most obvious to everyone other than yourselves, your remarks were immensely inappropriate. Your co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle was so right to call attention to an inspiring story of a woman shattering glass ceilings in a society where doing so is immeasurably difficult. We never heard an answer to her question: why did you feel so compelled to “ruin her thing?”

As it turns out, women have been flying combat aircraft since before either of you were born.Over 1,000 Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) flew during World War II. Seeing as U.S. Army Air Forces Commander “Hap” Arnold said “Now in 1944, it is on the record that women can fly as well as men,” we can probably guess he thought their parking was adequate. The WASP legacy reaches into the present day; on 9/11, then Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney scrambledher F-16. Completely unarmed, she was ready to lay down her own life to prevent further devastating attacks on American soil.

Thus the skill of women as fighter pilots is well established. And before you jump to the standby excuse that you were “just making a joke” or “having a laugh,” let the men amongst our number preemptively respond: You are not funny. You are not clever. And you are not excused. Perhaps the phrase “boys will be boys”—inevitably uttered wherever misogyny is present—is relevant. Men would never insult and demean a fellow servicemember; boys think saying the word ‘boobs’ is funny.

The less obvious implication of your remarks, however, is that by offending an ally and cheapening her contribution, you are actively hurting the mission. We need to send a clear message that anyone, male or female, who will stand up to ISIS and get the job done is worthy of our respect and gratitude.

We issue an apology on your behalf to Major Al Mansouri knowing that anything your producers force you to say will be contrived and insincere. Major, we’re sincerely sorry for the rudeness; clearly, these boys don’t take your service seriously, but we and the rest of the American public do.

Very Respectfully,

Michael Breen, U.S. Army
Shawn VanDiver, U.S. Navy
Kristen Rouse, U.S. National Guard
Andrea Marr, U.S. Navy
Kristen Kavanaugh, U.S. Navy
Richard Wheeler, U.S. Army
Leo Cruz, U.S. Navy
Aryanna Hunter, U.S. Army
Geoff Orazem U.S. Marine Corps
Scott Cheney-Peters, U.S. Navy
Jonathan Murray, U.S. Marine Corps
Timothy Kudo, U.S. Marine Corps
Welton Chang, U.S. Army
Michael Smith, U.S. Army
Gordon Griffin, U.S. Marine Corps
Kelsey Campbell, U.S. Air Force
Matt Runyon, U.S. Army
Richard Weir, U.S. Marine Corps
Scott Holcomb, U.S. Army
Jon Gensler, U.S. Army
Erik Brine, U.S. Air Froce
Rob Miller, U.S. Marine Corps
Josh Weinberg, U.S. Army
John Wagner, U.S. Air Force
Terron Sims II, U.S. Army
Sonia Fernandez, U.S. Marine Corps
Dan Hartnett, U.S. Army
Dan Futrell, U.S. Army
John Margolick, U.S. Marine Corps
Daniel Savage, U.S. Army
Matt Pelak, U.S. Army,
LaRue Robinson, U.S. Army
Anthony Woods, U.S Army
Margot Beausey, U.S. Navy
Dustin Cathcart, U.S. Army
Kayla Williams, U.S. Army
Dan Espinal, U.S. Army
Jonathan Hopkins, U.S. Army
Tony Johnson, U.S. Navy
Andy Moore, U.S. Army
Kevin Johnson, U.S. Army
Brett Hunt, U.S. Army
Russell Galeti, U.S. Army
Gail Harris, U.S. Navy
Katelyn Geary van Dam, U.S. Marine Corps
Mick Crnkovich, U.S. Army
Jonathan Freeman, U.S. Army
Chris Finan, U.S. Air Force
Robert Mishev, U.S. Air Force
Matt Zeller, U.S. Army
William Allen, U.S. Marine Corps
Sharmistha Mohpatra, U.S. Army
Adam Tiffen, U.S. Army
Alex Cornell du Houx, U.S. Navy
Jason Cain, U.S. Army
Rob Bracknell, U.S. Marine Corps
Karen Courington, U.S. Air Force
Justin Graf, U.S. Army
Lach Litwer, U.S. Army
Andrew Borene, U.S. Marine Corps

False Patriotism and Scoring Points In A Game No One Else Is Playing

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Election 2014 Update

Now that we are sufficiently past the Labor Day holiday, we can take a look at the polls for November election and see a much clearer picture. At this point in time, things don't look good at all for the Democrats.

The two main sources I use in predicting elections are RealClear Politics and Nate Silver's 538 Blog. The former currently has 45 D and 47 R with 9 tossups so let's start with that baseline and build from there. Silver has Michigan and New Hampshire going to the Dems with an 82 percent chance and North Carolina doing the same with a 76 percent chance. That puts the Senate at 47-47 with six seats up for grabs. This is exactly where control for the Senate will be fought.

Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, and Kansas.

Before we focus on these states, it's worth a moment to note Kentucky and Louisiana. It looks like Mitch McConnell is firmly in control of winning back his seat. Alison Grimes is a great candidate but she hasn't been able to make any headway. Given all the data that goes into predicting elections, the most important of which is turnout, things don't look good for her at all. Nor do they look good for Mary Landrieu with RCP having Louisiana as a lean R and part of that 47. She is also not a good candidate and will not get the 50 percent of the vote needed to prevent a runoff which will occur in December. At this point, I predict that this election will tip the outcome of the Senate. More on that in a moment.

Colorado will go for the Democrats. There is also an election for the state's governor there which means larger voter turnout. That always favors the Democrats. John Hickenlooper is in a tight race but I think he will prevail. So will Tom Udall despite the recent Quinnipiac poll which no one really takes seriously (compare them to other polls). I also think Iowa will go for the incredibly flawed candidate, Bruce Braley. There will also be a bigger turnout in this state because of the gubernatorial election (event though Terry Branstead will win) and thus, more Democratic voters. Iowa also does not elect women Senators.

So, that brings the Dems to 49 but at this point, I think that is all they are going to get. Silver has Alaska, Arkansas and Georgia all going R with over a 70 percent chance and I think he is right with one small caveat. The Alaska voters are very hard to poll and turnout is always low yet still favors incumbents so everyone could be off on this one. But let's say it goes red so now the GOP has 50 and that leaves us with Kansas. Greg Orman was recently courted by the failed Tea Party candidate, Milton Wolf and I think that he will eventually caucus with the Republicans. He could surprise everyone, however, and be the first truly independent candidate but Kansas is a red state so it's likely he will want to please his voters. That puts the GOP at 51.

Of course, on election night, it will be 50 GOP, 49 Dems with Louisiana into a runoff. Suddenly all eyes will be on Mary Landrieu and I don't think she will be up to the task. Millions will be poured into the runoff but it won't work for the Democrats. At this point, I predict that the Senate will be 51 R, 49 Dem. 

Could there be twists, turns and surprises which will alter my prediction?

Naturally. I could be off on Orman (a former Democrat) and the anti-GOP sentiment in Kansas, due to the absolute failure of the conservative economic policies of Sam Brownback, could tip him into caucusing with the Democrats. Or Begich, Pryor could pull it out. It's very hard to unseat an incumbent. Perhaps Iowa could surprise and elect a woman.

No doubt, things are going to be very exciting in the next few weeks!

How Much Longer Is This Gonna Go On?

Ever since Ferguson many whites seem to think that blacks are being hypersensitive about getting stopped by cops. Here's a reality check: this dashboard video shows what happens when a black man, Levar Jones, is stopped by a white Trooper, Sean Groubert, for a seatbelt violation in South Carolina.

This time around, however, the cop has been charged with assault. Here's a summary of what went down:

Jones was stopped Sept. 4 as he pulled into a convenience store on a busy Columbia road. With the camera recording, Groubert pulls up without his siren on as Jones is getting out of his vehicle to go into the store.

"Can I see your license please?" Groubert asks.

As Jones turns and reaches back into his car, Groubert shouts, "Get outa the car, get outa the car." He begins firing before he has finished the second sentence. There is a third shot as Jones staggers away, backing up with his hands raised, and then a fourth.

From the first shot to the fourth, the video clicks off three seconds.

Jones' wallet can be seen flying out of his hands as he raises them.

Groubert's lawyer, Barney Giese, said the shooting was justified because the trooper feared for his life and the safety of others. Police officers are rarely charged in South Carolina. In August, a prosecutor refused to file criminal charges against a York County deputy who shot a 70-year-old man after mistaking his cane for a shotgun during an after-dark traffic stop.

The defense lawyer's argument is preposterous: he essentially is saying this his client should go free because he shot an innocent man for complying with the orders of a police officer. This is like one of those dirty cop movies: if you want to kill a suspect, tell him to do something, and when he does it, pretend that you were afraid he was going to do something else. If he doesn't comply, you can shoot him for disobeying orders. It's win-win!

Black men have to deal with this crap all the time, and without the dashboard cam we would have no idea what really happened, and the cop would have walked away with a commendation for being so "vigilant."

But video cameras have their limitations: much of the action is out of the frame; Groubert can't be seen, and Jones is no longer visible after a few seconds. It's just dumb luck that things were lined up properly: if Groubert had been just a little smarter, and pointed his car in a slightly different direction, he would be getting a commendation for saving the lives of all the people at the convenience store. You gotta wonder: is the dashboard cam intentionally oriented to capture as little of the action as possible? Why doesn't it fully capture all the action in front of the vehicle, as one would naturally expect?

Right-wing closet racists will blame this all on Jones. As everyone knows, Jones should have had the "talk," which explains how black men must deal with the police: they should move extremely slowly. They should tell the officer what they're going to do, then ask permission to do it in simple terms that a four-year-old can understand, with as "white" an accent as they can muster. Then they should move only after verbal confirmation from the officer, and then only as slowly as an arthritic 90-year-old man

To be fair, cops do get shot in cases like this. A month before this shooting, Michael Pimentel, the chief of police in Elemendorf, Texas, stopped Joshua Manuel Lopez at 11:30 AM and was killed at a in a subsequent "altercation." It appears that Pimentel was after Lopez for spray painting city vehicles.

The suspect had an outstanding warrant for graffiti. None of the stories I can find explains exactly what happened. My question is, was Pimentel killed by his own service weapon, or did Lopez have a gun? If Pimentel was in fact shot with his own weapon, it's clear he was a victim of his own shoddy police work.

A lot of the stops cops make on blacks and Hispanics are for trivial stuff like this, frequently for an unfastened seatbelt, or minor traffic violations, or suspected marijuana possession, things they never bother with in ritzy white neighborhoods. They call it "broken windows" policing, and they claim it gets results and they insist the numbers bear them out.

But when you stop blacks at 10 times the rate that you stop whites, of course you're going to get 10 times as many people holding drugs, and 10 times as many people who resent being harassed by the cops and resist arrest. And 10 times as many "unfortunate incidents."

Even More Diversity!

Finally, A Decline...

For the first time since 1980, the number of federal inmates has fallen. The drop in nearly 5,000 inmates comes as a direct result of the polices of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Holder wants to reduce the number a further 10,000 by 2016, which would be enough to leave six maximum security prisons empty. His package of policing and justice reforms is designed to divert nonviolent criminals away from prison and is seen as a rebuke of the so-called 1994 “crime bill,” which expanded the list of felony crimes, pumped $10 billion into new prisons, and gave incentives to states to mass incarcerate even low level offenders.

Considering we have only 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's inmates, I'd say this is a very large step in the right direction. My hope is that our government goes even further and begins the process of decriminalizing drugs.

Prohibition never works.

Another Responsible Gun Owner

Idaho professor shoots himself in foot two months after state legalizes guns on campuses

How many US citizens accidentally shoot themselves every year?

Good Words

Talk About Lazy...

Paul Krugman has a piece about conservatives in general, and John Boehner in particular, blaming lazy unemployed people for all our problems. The story on Huffington Post Krugman references mentions Paul Ryan:

During a talk-radio interview, the Wisconsin Republican spoke of a "tailspin of culture in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value of work."

Ryan later said his remarks were "inarticulate."

At the time, Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, said Ryan's remarks were a "thinly veiled racial attack" in which "inner-city" was a code word for "black."

That got me thinking about the entire concept of laziness.

When I was kid my dad would at times call me lazy because I spent all my time reading, mostly about science and science fiction. When I was in junior high computers just started becoming available in schools, and I spent hours and hours playing around writing silly little BASIC programs (I even got into a little trouble doing this). I did the classic kid jobs, delivering newspapers and cleaning little old ladies' apartments. But my "lazy" leisure activities did much more to prepare me for work than the meager paychecks I received for my menial labors -- my first real job was at a library and after college I went into software engineering.

I was not unlike all those "lazy" inner city black kids who spend all their time on leisure activities such as playing basketball (like Michael Jordan and LeBron James). Then there all those "lazy" suburban burnouts who spend countless hours in the garage pounding on drums or hammering out guitar chords, while their parents and neighbors complain about the noise (like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan). Then there are the "lazy" daydreamers who spend all their time in a fantasy world, reading about hobbits and spaceships (like Steven King and George R. R. Martin). And then there all those "lazy" kids who spend their every waking moment playing video games (like Michael Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, producer of World of Warcraft).

Are you really lazy if you devote a huge amount of time and effort to get really good at something?

I was lucky that my youthful "laziness" primed me for a career in software, which happens to pay well. When I going to college my younger brother told me I was wasting my time going to school. Two years later I was "lending" him money to take a course in heavy machinery operation. I retired in my forties and he's still scrambling to find a job after getting laid off recently. It is really hard for a 54-year-old man to find work, and after 35 years of physical labor you start getting pretty beat up, which further limits your options. Are you really lazy if no one will hire you to do the job that you're good at?

I don't fault my brother for not going to college. Not everyone is cut out to be a programmer; we need heavy equipment operators. But because of the physical demands, it's a job that you won't necessarily be able to do for 40 years.

"Lazy" is what politicians call people who are doing something they don't approve of. Those "lazy" black kids playing basketball are working a hell of lot harder than they would be if they were mopping floors, but there's only so much demand for professional basketball players.

Millions of people want to be professional athletes, singers, guitarists, painters, actors, authors, songwriters and screenwriters, and have worked their butts off to make it. But success in those fields is hard to achieve, and the number of successful practitioners is relatively small. Not only do you have to be good at it, more importantly, you have to have the connections: if you don't know the right people, you will not succeed no matter how good you are.

That means all those people are doing jobs they really don't want to be doing. They settle for working as cooks and waitresses and janitors and used car salesmen because they can't do what they love. And just because they've had to settle for such jobs doesn't mean they should be paid slave wages: everyone should earn a living wage.

But millions of those who are on long-term unemployment aren't that kind of "lazy." They're middle-aged white guys who have lost their jobs because of the recession.

Millions of people, like my brother, can't find a job where they live. To find work they have to abandon their family and friends, take a risk and move to another state to look for a job that they're good at. But they need money to pick and move, money they don't have. Which may mean they have to embarrass themselves by moving back in with mom and dad while their employed friends are bouncing their grandkids on their knee.

Who is going to hire a 54-year-old diabetic heavy equipment operator with knee and back problems caused by an accident on the job? Retraining for a completely new career at that age is really tough, even more so because it costs money they don't have. And if they spend two years at a vo-tech learning a new job in something like computer controlled manufacturing, there's no guarantee whatsoever that any company will hire them, especially when they can hire their grandkids instead.

Unless they know someone who can get them a job, the only option for guys like this is to start back at the bottom in a job at Walmart. And they can't live on a Walmart wage. (Fortunately, because of the Affordable Care Act, most people stuck in this situation now have access to health care so their diabetes won't kill them. Except those people who live in a state run by Republican nitwits who have spent the last five years trying to sabotage the president in every way possible.)

Yes, it's true, if they're not too beat up physically, people like my brother can go to the oil patch in Nowheresville, North Dakota, and apply for a dirty and dangerous job on an oil well, where they live in a crowded and filthy town with no decent apartments, and prostitution and drug use are endemic. Sounds great.

My brother is not unskilled or lazy, but there are a million guys just like him in the same jam. He's a hunter and a fisherman. He'd make a great park ranger, a job he'd love. But so would a million other guys in the same situation.

If you really want to talk about lazy, consider John Boehner and Paul Ryan. All they do is whine about the president, call up rich people and badger them for money, and fly around the country to schmooze with wealthy campaign contributors and the Koch brothers' operatives. And every few weeks they hold another vote to repeal Obamacare.

Does they ever actually do anything?

The Genuine Progress Indicator

A recent discussion on Facebook regarding GDP as a measure of growth and stability led me to learn about GPI: Genuine Progress Indicator. GPI looks at 26 different indicators to measure citizens' well being. These indicators fall under three categories: economic, environmental, and social. After spending some time reading through the various benchmarks, it's become quite clear to me that this is a far more intelligent and detailed way to judge exactly how we are doing as a nation. Some states in our country have adopted GPI as a way to measure their successes or failures. Vermont became the first in 2012 and there is now a report on Maryland.

Consider what Robert Kennedy said when he was running for president in 1968.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

Yep.

Bernie Sanders on the Minimum Wage

Good Words (Renewable Energy Version)

Vivek Wadhwa's recent piece on solar energy really puts things in perspective. He notes one of my favorite thinkers and his astute prediction.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil notes that solar power has been doubling every two years for the past 30 years — as costs have been dropping. He says solar energy is only six doublings — or less than 14 years — away from meeting 100 percent of today’s energy needs. Energy usage will keep increasing, so this is a moving target. But, by Kurzweil’s estimates, inexpensive renewable sources will provide more energy than the world needs in less than 20 years. Even then, we will be using only one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the Earth.

In places such as Germany, Spain, Portugal, Australia and the Southwest United States, residential-scale solar production has already reached “grid parity” with average residential electricity prices. In other words, it costs no more in the long term to install solar panels than to buy electricity from utility companies. The prices of solar panels have fallen 75 percent in the past five years alone and will fall much further as the technologies to create them improve and scale of production increases. By 2020, solar energy will be price-competitive with energy generated from fossil fuels on an unsubsidized basis in most parts of the world. Within the next decade, it will cost a fraction of what fossil fuel-based alternatives do.

Yes, it will. And then all this silliness over the validity of climate change being a "hoax" won't matter. The free market will have simply taken care of all of it.

The rest of the piece contains some very interesting chestnuts. These two are my favorites.

There will be disruption of the entire fossil-fuel industry, starting with utility companies, which will face declining demand and then bankruptcy.

We will go from debating incentives for installing clean energies to debating subsidies for utility companies to keep their operations going.

Indeed. It will be a pleasure to see climate change skeptics, who rabidly defend fossil fuel producers, turn on them for taking government handouts. Or will they?

They are insanely stubborn people, after all:)

His Year In The NRA

There are a great many wonderful things about Rob Cox's latest piece on the Gun Cult that are all sure to blow bowels across the nation. It's a long read but most worth it. Here are my highlights.

And that’s when it really hit me. What the people of Newtown wanted — and indeed all Americans at that moment wanted and still want — was an honest discussion about how something as awful as Sandy Hook could happen, and how to prevent it from happening again. LaPierre made it clear the NRA was going to do everything in its power to thwart genuine debate. 

It goes way past LaPierre. The entirety of the Gun Cult wants to thwart genuine debate. One need only look at my comments section for evidence of that.

The most distinctive element was a general sense of impending doom, a pervading belief that America is swiftly going down the tubes. This sentiment was particularly evident at the 5th Annual Freedom First Financial Seminar, one of the many sessions taking place off the main exhibition carnival.

This was Cox's impression of NRA attendees...what an awful way to live your life...

The NRA’s political agenda is pretty simple: It works to perpetuate gun culture in America, and ensure that access to guns is unfettered. And unlike, say, tobacco or automobiles, the constitution gives the NRA an authoritative, to some religious, scripture to which it can continually refer when opposing regulation of the products its corporate supporters sell to its $25-a-head members.

Yep.

Since joining, I have received countless calls to political action. On the day before a background-check bill failed to pass the Senate in April 2013, LaPierre emailed me that “anti-gun ringleaders in Congress and the national media are waging all-out war on our gun rights” and are “fighting to BAN tens of millions of commonly owned firearms… fighting to register and license gun owners…fighting to create a federal registry of ammo buyers…and fighting to destroy your right to defend yourself, your home and your loved ones.”

They's a comin!!!!

The best part?

A salesman with a country twang wanted me to renew my NRA membership on special terms. But before making the offer, he wanted me to answer a simple multiple-choice question: “What do you think is the single greatest threat to your Second Amendment freedoms?” Was it, he asked, Barack Obama? Was it the United Nations and its Arms Trade Treaty? Or was it the “gun grabbers” Michael Bloomberg, Chuck Schumer, and Dianne Feinstein? 

I told him I didn’t think the black guy in the White House, foreigners, or the Jews in Congress were the problem. Rather, I told him, I worry about my fellow Americans who routinely abrogate their rights by not recognizing the responsibilities that come with owning firearms. Every time I see the headlines about a toddler who kills his little sister with Dad’s loaded, unsecured pistol, I worry for my rights. I told him that when I see the horrors inflicted by yet another psychopathic young man who should never have legal access to the kinds of guns our veterans have become accustomed to on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, I worry about my freedoms. 

I think this will be my response the next time I get into it with a gun cult member.

Throwback Thursday

Energy, the Dominion of Mankind and the Free Market

As an adjunct to Mark's post, The New York Times has a detailed look at renewable energy in general and Germany in particular. But if you look more closely at the numbers, it becomes clear that "green" energy still comes with an environmental cost. Of course, it can't be any other way: there are billions of humans using trillions of kilowatt-hours of electricity: that's gonna leave a mark. On the other hand, hydroelectric, solar and wind power already cost less than coal and gas.

The following table gives more detail for power generation:

The thing to note is that Brazil and Canada lead the world in renewable power generation, and they do it with hydroelectric.

On the ideological front, conservatives love to hate renewables because they think it means caving in to namby-pamby Bambi lovers. They seem to think that using renewable energy somehow surrenders our God-given dominion over the earth.

But environmentalists hate hydroelectric power. It covers up huge areas of land, interferes with spawning fish and causes any number of other environmental problems. Huge dams can burst and kill thousands of people.

Ditto with wind power. Some environmentalists don't like wind turbines because some birds are killed flying into the blades. This is something that the fossil fuel industry loves to play up, even though the number of birds killed by wind turbines is infinitesimal compared to the billions of birds killed each year by pet cats, flying into glass buildings and oil spills.

Ditto with solar power. Some environmentalists don't like solar power because it uses so much land, and endangers some tortoise in the middle of the Mojave desert. They also don't like solar thermal power plants because the reflected sunlight scorches birds in midair.

So, conservatives need not worry that mankind will cease to assert our dominion over the earth just because we stop burning coal, oil and gas: with hydro, wind and solar we use will still make our mark on the world and run roughshod over other species. We just won't be pumping as much CO2 into the atmosphere and warming up the planet to the detriment of humanity.

On the economic front, Germany is finding is that solar power and wind power are already cheaper than coal and gas, due to improvements in technology, economies of scale and a Chinese push for cleaner energy (because of the intolerable air pollution in China).

Electric utility executives all over the world are watching nervously as technologies they once dismissed as irrelevant begin to threaten their long-established business plans. Fights are erupting across the United States over the future rules for renewable power. Many poor countries, once intent on building coal-fired power plants to bring electricity to their people, are discussing whether they might leapfrog the fossil age and build clean grids from the outset.

A reckoning is at hand, and nowhere is that clearer than in Germany. Even as the country sets records nearly every month for renewable power production, the changes have devastated its utility companies, whose profits from power generation have collapsed.

The problem is that power companies make most of their profit during times of peak demand, when they can charge much more for power. Peak demand is usually during the day, when it's hottest. That coincides with peak energy generation from solar power. 

In Germany, cheap solar power is already undercutting fossil fuel power generation during the most profitable time of day.

The free market is making coal and gas plants obsolete. Up till now most power utilities have been monopolies that have in turn been captives of the fossil fuel energy monopoly. But now, as the price of renewables has tumbled and governments have opened up power generation so that anyone can feed power into the grid, the utility and fossil fuel monopolies are endangered. Consumers benefit by not getting screwed for running the dishwasher at the wrong time.

In the long run, how can energy from coal, oil and gas compete? You have to pay fossil fuel energy monopolies a lot of money to dig through billions of tons of rock to extract billions of tons of oil, coal and gas, often in countries that are openly hostile to the Free World, and then ship that fuel thousands of miles at great expense and risk. Hydro, wind and solar plants get their fuel for free, right where they are. And when battery technology is improved to allow greater storage and fast charging, oil will no longer be an economical fuel for transportation.

Free markets and the dominion of mankind over the earth: for conservatives, what's not to love about renewable energy?

Cleaning Up Our Act

Turning towards good news once again, this recent piece from the Christian Science Monitor shows how the world is quickly embracing renewable energy.

Last year, new global capacity of hydroelectricity, wind, solar, and other renewable power grew by more than in any year before, according to a new report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency, continuing a run of record-breaking additions that stretches back to the beginning of this century. Renewable electricity now accounts for about 22 percent of power generation worldwide, up from 18.4 percent in 2005. The rise is largely due to the emergence of the onshore wind industry and the spread of solar photovoltaic technology. By decade’s end, the IEA projects that more than a quarter of the world’s electricity will come from sources that are carbon-free and naturally replenishable.

Here is where we are at right now with energy usage in the world

Looks like we have some catching up to do!

“We’re going to be bankrupt in two or three years if we keep going his way.”

The state of Kansas has become an excellent example of exactly what happens when you run a government with they type of policies championed by right wing bloggers.

In his 40 years living in Kansas, Konrad Hastings cannot remember voting for a Democrat. He is the type who agonizes over big purchases, trying to save as much money as possible. He is against stricter gun laws, opposes abortion in most cases and prefers less government involvement in his life.

But when he casts his ballot for governor in November, he plans to shun the leader of this state’s conservative movement, the Republican incumbent, Sam Brownback, and vote for the Democratic challenger. “He’s leading Kansas down,” said Mr. Hastings, 68, who said he voted for Mr. Brownback four years ago, when he easily won his first term. “We’re going to be bankrupt in two or three years if we keep going his way.”

Apparently, other Republicans feel the same way because Brownback is down in the polls in a deep red state like Kansas. Just to put this in perspective...Barack Obama lost Kansas by more than 20 points in the 2012 election. And look who else is in trouble because of his policies. The one thing that both Kansas and Wisconsin have in common?

A right wing blogger view of government and economies.

Ironic that their predictions of doom and gloom are actually self-created:)

Speaking of the fall elections, where is that Republican wave I kept hearing about? Kay Hagan is pulling away from Thom Tillis in North Carolina. Bruce Braley (not a good candidate) has continued to stay ahead of Jodi Ernst. The GOP challengers in Alaska and Arkansas are barely staying ahead of their opponents. This does not look at all like what we saw in September of 2010.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the GOP approval rating is half of the president's approval rating.