This morning I picked up my little granddaughter to watch her while the kids were at work. I bundled her into her state-approved car seat, and we hit the road to my place.

About halfway there, in her sweet little voice, she said, “I wish I could sit next to you, Papa.” 

And Its Potential Salvation

© Brian Baker 2012

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And that’s why the political alternative of repeal isn’t acceptable. If the mandate is somehow held to be constitutional, a repeal is meaningless, because the power to reinstate it remains for the next change of watch; and future laws imposing draconian mandates are just around the corner. The whole idea has to have a judicial stake driven through its heart.

Algae.

Yep. That’s right. The Brilliant One has pinpointed pond scum as the way to “energy independence”.

“We’re making new investments in the development of gasoline and diesel and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance — algae… Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17 percent of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in the United States.” Dear Leader in a speech at Miami University.

Well, maybe there’s something to that. After all, where does oil come from? The transformation of organic matter into oil. We know we can create biofuels from used cooking oil. So maybe there’s something to this, right? I decided to look into it.

I went to the website of the Institute for Energy Research (IER) and lo and behold, they had an article on just that topic (Here). It seems that from 1978 to 1996 the Department of Energy funded research into the development of algae – pond scum – as an alternative fuel source. But they ran into several problems.

To meet 100% of our fuel needs would take algae farms that would cover an area the size of the state of North Dakota. Even if we set a target of meeting only 17% of our fuel needs – per Dear Leader’s speech – that still requires farms that would equal an area the size of South Carolina. Now, I doubt that the residents of either state would be too keen on evacuating just to make room for scum farms, so someplace would have to be found to grow the stuff.

Remember, we’re talking pond scum, so it would have to be in the South, because the stuff won’t grow in the cold. It would have to be warm all year round. Which means we’d probably have to fill up our southern deserts with scum farms. Wouldn’t that disrupt the habitats of some turtles or something? Oh, well, a problem for another day.

Of course, scum needs water in which to grow. A lot of water. About 350 gallons of water for each gallon of scum oil. Where’s that going to come from? Especially in the desert? Well… maybe we can locate these scum farms near the rivers instead of in the deserts. But now we’re back to inhabited areas again. Are those people going to be any more willing than the Dakotans and Carolinians to just up and move away to make room for the scum?

Then we’re going to need a whole new technological infrastructure – refineries – to process that green stuff into stuff you can put in your car. You can’t refine scum in an oil refinery. Oh, no! Even more disruption of the environment!

That’s the problem with these hare-brained ideas that come from the leftists: they’re … well… hare-brained.

When I was a kid, you could buy a whole used
car for that amount

I’m revisiting a topic I’ve written about before, but it seems especially timely given that the price of gas at the pump has risen to over four bucks a gallon – a new record for this time of year – and there’s no end in sight.

Our economy is driven by its fuel. The price of fuel affects literally everything, not just your personal cost to operate your vehicle. It affects our costs to manufacture and transport goods, too, including our agricultural products. It keeps this country mobile, which has been one of the – if not the – key elements in making us the economic powerhouse we are.

What have we heard from Obama and his minions, and the “environmental” lobby, about how to address the problem? Endless blather about “alternative fuels and energy”. Put another way, speculative science fiction.

What I’m doing here is reprinting an email dialogue on this topic that took place yesterday thanks to my web-buddy Buck, who initiated the emails on the topic. It started with a fellow talking about the fallacy of the economies of the Chevy Volt. I’ll start with my response.

ME: Here are some facts: The energy-to-weight nature of petroleum-based fuels far surpasses that of any battery ever made. What that means is that petroleum isn't going to be replaced as the power source for most
transportation. At best, you'll see "hybrid" technology utilized.

Battery powered cars are great, until you reach their maximum range of 200 or 300 miles. Then you have hours of recharging time in front of you, and there's no way to shorten that to the time frame involved in filling up your gas tank.

Aircraft aren't going to be powered by solar panels or batteries. Ships, unless they're nuclear powered, will not bepowered by anything other than petroleum-based fuels. You're not going to see battery-powered big rigs.

We have the largest known deposits of crude in the world in shale, enough to make us energy-independent well into at least the next century, and a net-exporter if we so choose. The Athabasca oil sands development has proven the extraction to be cost-effective, and Shell's new in situ extraction process has proven to be very "environmentally friendly".

Unless the Starship Enterprise shows up to share their di-lithium crystal technology with us, our need for petroleum isn't going away in the foreseeable future. That's just a fact.

Let's look at some further facts.

The Tesla Roadster is the first -- and so far only -- electric-only car in production. (True at the time I wrote the original essay on my blog) It has a range of 244 miles on a single charge. It recharges at a rate of 56 miles/hour, so a full recharge takes 4 hours.

By the way, electricity isn't free; it's actually pretty expensive, and getting more so.

ANYway... the battery has an estimated life of about 100,000 miles, at which point it has to be replaced at a cost of about $36,000... the price of a new gas-powered SUV.

According to Tesla's own white paper: ( here ) "the Li-ion batteries in the Tesla Roadster only store the energy equivalent of about 8 liters of gasoline; a very small amount of energy for a typical vehicle." The battery weighs about 750 pounds. That's the equivalent weight of about 130 gallons of gasoline. Assuming your car gets 20MPG, you'd drive 2600 miles on that 130 gallons of gas. If your car has a 20 gallon tank, you'd have refueled 7 times. At an average refuel time of 10 minutes, that would have taken about an hour altogether.

Your Tesla would have been "refueled" 10 times. With an average refuel time of 3.5 hours, you'd have spent 35 hours charging your car. There's no way to speed up the recharge process; you can't "slam" a charge into a battery. It's an electro-chemical process. If you try to do it too fast, the battery simply explodes, just like a nuclear reaction goes critical if it's allowed to proceed too quickly, resulting in a meltdown or nuclear explosion.

Gas-powered car at 100,000 miles: $19,000.

Tesla at 100,000 miles: $40,000.

This is what I mean about the practicality of the technology, or lack thereof for this application.

RJ: Well Joe and Brian, It looks like gasoline is here to stay. Why about hydrogen. Anyone ever put any serious efforts into this. It is the fuel used by our space craft so why not auto engines. I realize it is highly explosive and something would have to be done about that but it should be easily solved by our chemist and engineers. Also, with the price of gas from the Muslims soaring every day, why do we not use our own gasoline supplies supplies. It is my understanding that we have enough of our own to last for over 400 years if it were not for the green people. We need to be spending the gasoline cost in our own country and not giving the Muslims whatever they demand for it and all they want is to see us all destroyed.

ME: Richard and Peter, yeah, that’s the problem with hydrogen, as we saw with the Challenger. Its explosive nature. There are extremely few substances with a higher stored potential energy than petroleum distillates (gasoline, kerosene, etc.), and those are basically explosives.

As to our own domestic capabilities: we’re among the most oil-rich nations on earth. We’re also the only country with oil resources that doesn’t maximize its development of those resources. In oil shale alone in the Green River formation we have enough unrecovered product, conservatively estimated at over 800 BILLION barrels, to meet all of our countries oil needs for over 100 years at current consumption rates (http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/oilshale/index.cfm). Then throw in all the other deposits, both known and so-far unknown, free oil and shale, oil sands, fracking recovery techniques, new recovery technologies that make formerly abandoned deposits now economically feasible again, and we could easily be a net-exporter country instead of an importer; we could actually be THE determinative factor in oil prices, rather than the Middle
East. This would not only go a very long way toward reversing our economic problems, but would at the same time free us from our “dependence on foreign oil” and the restrictions it places on our foreign policy.

But no. NOOOOOoooooooooooooo... Can’t have that! MUCH better to depend on “alternative energy” sources that no one can name, that don’t exist anywhere near the horizon yet, but that are for sure going to magically appear just in the nick of time, like the cavalry in an old Western movie.

Maybe the Vulcans will show up and share their dilithium crystal technology with us. That makes more sense than what I hear from the Left on the issue, anyway.

Beam me up, Scotty.

RJ: Well Brian, I agree with you 100% if we would ever get a government with enough guts to do all the things about gasoline. But don't you not think that the explosive nature of almost free Hydrogen could be solved by our chemist and engineers? After all since the Challenger I don't believe we have had any other problems with our space craft. Just an idea I have had for many years and wanted to see what others thought about it. I like the idea of being the worlds biggest exporter of crude oil if we could ever make this come about. We need something to try to balance our horrible trade deficit.

ME: Richard, I think it’s probably scientifically achievable. But I don’t think it’s a near-term solution. Here’s
why.

Frankly, I don’t think such a thing as a “near-term” alternative solution is at all possible regardless of the political aspects. And I’ll quickly interject that I agree that politics are the ONLY reason we’re not energy-independent using our own oil. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, a breakthrough occurs and a viable and economic alternative magically appears on the scene. That doesn’t in any way address the fact that there are many hundreds of millions of gasoline-powered vehicles on the road, the seas, and in the air both here and
all around the world. And those vehicles are going to be around for decades, at least.

We can’t wave a magic wand and make them go away, or be magically converted to the new energy source. Also, the energy dispersal infrastructure – the means of refueling the vehicles – consists of tens of thousands (at least) of gas stations. So, no matter what, there’s going to be a transition period that’s going to take a loooooong time to complete. All those vehicles are going to have to be replaced, and the gas stations are ALSO going to have to be replaced, with the new technology. We’re talking about God knows how much time, and many many trillions of dollars at all levels. Our technological world developed around combustion as the primary energy source, and primarily combustion of hydrocarbons. Even a hydrogen-based technology is going to take a very long and expensive conversion period.

(My thanks to all who participated in that email conversation. I hope you don’t mind my quoting you guys. It was great!)

© Brian Baker 2012

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If you follow the political punditry you know that all the talking heads are constantly pontificating about how the various candidates and their policy proposals are going to be received by the bloc of the electorate variously described as “independents”, “moderates”, and variations on that theme.

Democrat and Republican operatives alike seem to think that these “independents” are a left-leaning group who want “progressive” social policy coupled with a modicum of fiscal restraint. For the Democrats, this means constant surprise when their policy proposals are rejected by the majority of the electorate. For the GOP this means that the Establishment hacks, in their constant search for winning nominees, repeatedly back the least conservative candidates – commonly labeled RINOs (Republican In Name Only) – in the apparent hope that they’ll be able to lasso in some votes from liberals.

I have no idea where either party gets their ideas of what comprise the “independents”. And I think they’re both dead wrong, other than in the idea that winning over “independents” can be key to winning elections.

The most obvious and recent indication is the rise in popularity and influence of the Tea Party, an amorphous group that rallies around traditional conservative principles of fiscal restraint, small government, individual responsibility, and an Originalist interpretation of the Constitution. These are hardly “progressive” positions. We also saw the rise and fall of the “Occupy movement”, and how they failed to resonate significantly with the populace, and in fact wore out their welcome without really having any effect whatsoever.

Polling data consistently show that the people in this country consider themselves to be “right of center” politically. Further, the data show that over the years, while the percentage of the electorate that’s registered as Democrat has stayed pretty stable in the mid-30s percentile, the GOP has lost about 18% of its registered voters to the “independents”. In other words, where in the past the electorate was split pretty evenly among the three options, the Democrats are unchanged while the GOP’s share has shrunk to the upper-20s percentile with the loss going to the uncommitted.

That’s important to note. The Republicans’ loss did NOT translate into the Democrats’ gain. It translated into an increase in the size of the uncommitted.

The question then becomes: why?

I think it’s instructive to look at the clear lessons of history to find our answers. Traditional American conservatism almost always does extremely well in the voting booth. Look at Reagan’s two landslide victories, followed by Bush the Elder’s landslide as Reagan III and his defeat as his more real and more liberal self. As a matter of fact, whenever the GOP runs their Establishment RINO-type candidates, they don’t do well at all: Dole, McCain; even Bush the Younger didn’t do very well against two rabidly leftist opponents, both of whom ran incredibly inept campaigns.

Contrast that with Bobby Jindal’s sweeping success in Louisiana, running on true conservative principles in a Democrat stronghold; or Sarah Palin’s success (whatever you may think of her now) doing the same thing in Alaska. Even Scott Brown’s success in winning “Teddy Kennedy’s Senate seat” in that most liberal of states, Massachusetts, was based on his opposition to Obama’s landmark socialist healthcare legislation. In Massachusetts, that’s what passes for conservative.

More history: as Daddy Bush became more and more “compassionate”, his support left him in droves and coalesced around Ross Perot, giving Clinton the win. But a mere two years of Clinton’s unchecked leftism swung control of Congress to the GOP and its 1994 Contract With America, a clear statement of conservative ideals, forcing Clinton to “triangulate” into a less-leftist “moderate”.

We saw the pattern repeated with the last Bush. His support kept dwindling as his policies swung more and more leftward, costing his party the control of Congress in 2006 and the loss of the presidency to Obama in 2008 when the GOP ran a candidate – McCain – who was almost indistinguishable from Obama on policy positions. But again, a mere two years of Democrat control of the entire apparatus was enough for the electorate to rebel in 2010, giving the House to the GOP and winnowing the Democrat majority in the Senate to a razor-thin margin. Yet another repudiation of leftism.

I can understand why the hard-core leftists who inhabit and control the Democrat party want to ignore all this. To acknowledge it would mean they’d have to abandon their goal to fundamentally transform this country into yet another “social democracy” such as those in Europe.

But why the GOP keeps clinging to this idea, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, defies all reason and logic. Are they really stuck on stupid?

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Last night on his TV show, Sean Hannity asked Gingrich why he sat on that couch with Nancy Pelosi in a TV ad, bleating about “climate change” (though Hannity didn’t ask it quite that way). Gingrich’s response? “It was a mistake”.

When asked why he called Paul Ryan’s budget proposal “right-wing social engineering”, his response? “It was a mistake”.

When asked why, back in 1995, he supported the idea of a government mandate that people buy health insurance, the equivalent of Obamacare, his response? “We were mistaken”.

His latest gaffe? In the GOP debate two days before Thanksgiving – a time when most people aren’t paying any attention to politics – he came out for, essentially, amnesty for illegal aliens. Yes, he tried to gussy it up, but there’s not enough lipstick in the world for that pig, as John McAmnesty learned three years ago.

What’s going to happen when people start paying attention to politics after the holidays, and he finds out how unpopular that position is? Is he going to admit another “mistake”?

How many “mistakes” does this guy get? How often does he get to be on the wrong side of the issues?

This is one of the big problems with Gingrich: he always thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room, and he’s arrogant enough to think that because he is, all he has to do is make a pronouncement and everyone else is going to fall in line and follow him blindly. He’s the personification of hubris. He believes his own press releases.

I’m not even going to raise the issue of his personal baggage, other than to say that if he went on a cruise, the ship would have to tow a barge behind to load it all in.

The fact that he’s polling so well illustrates one of the big weaknesses of the GOP: they always seem to fall in love – or at least lust – with whoever is the latest Stage Door Johnny with a line of patter and some snappy responses to the press … or in this case the debate moderators. Last time it was McCain the “maverick”; this time it’s Gingrich the “tough talker”.

I take comfort in the fact that it’s still early in the race. At this time four years ago, it looked like Giuliani had it sewed up; McCain was on the verge of dropping out; Huckabee was running strong. Look how it turned out.

The GOP still has a chance to redeem itself.

In 1965, when that song came out, California epitomized the American Dream. Surf, sand, sun, and mountains, it was where everyone wanted to be. Hollywood, Carmel, San Fran, and magnificent LA. Breadbasket to the world. Home to movies and the aerospace industry. Banker to the West and the emerging Pacific Rim. Get rich in beautiful surroundings; and even if you fail, you won’t freeze to death. Opportunities abound. If you can’t make it in California, you can’t make it anywhere.

What the hell happened?

California now has about 14% of the nation’s populace and about 35% of its welfare recipients. Somewhere between 30% and 50% of the country’s illegal aliens live here, depending on which survey you read. We’re awash in a sea of red ink and have been for years. First under Schwarzenegger and now under Brown, the governors and their cohorts in Sacramento have been pushing for tax increases to address a multi-billion-dollar annual deficit. According to the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office report (here), “The budget problem consists of a $6 billion projected deficit for 2010–11 and a $19 billion gap between projected revenues and spending in 2011–12.”

For quite a while now, we’ve been bombarded with threats of curtailed services if tax increases aren’t enacted: reductions in police and fire protection; closing of parks and libraries; shortened service hours at the DMV. Felons are already being released early from prisons because we don’t have the money to build more. Brown has repeatedly called for a ballot proposition to increase taxes, which if passed would then presumably indemnify him and his allies from the political consequences of a tax increase because the electorate would have voted it onto themselves.

Yet somehow, in the midst of this fiscal hurricane, Brown and his leftist buddies in Sacramento found the money to provide taxpayer dollars to illegal aliens so they can go to college.

On the 8^th of October – a Saturday, a day on which most people don’t pay attention to the news – Brown signed into law the California DREAM Act Part 2, which provides government subsidies – “financial aid” – to illegal aliens to attend college. He evidently hoped this would slide by unnoticed.

We allegedly don’t have money for cops or firefighters or to keep felons in prison, but we sure have enough to pay illegals to attend college. According to Brown, "The Dream Act benefits us all by giving top students a chance to improve their lives and the lives of all of us."

How so? Assuming they graduate from college, all you’ll have is a batch of well-educated people who will still be illegal aliens. It will still be illegal for them to work in this country.

Really? Is that all he has? He’s just a one-trick pony?

ANYway….

On the "tax the rich" nonsense:

Here's where the whole idea falls completely apart. Our debt is now over $14 TRILLION. Our entire annual GDP is $14 trillion. In order for taxation to solve the problem, the government would have to tax every single person and every single business at 100% of their gross income for a year to eliminate the debt.

In other words, everyone would have to work for a year at zero income to balance the books. It's really that simple.

The total federal annual revenue (income) is $2.2 trillion (tables). Of that, "the rich" already pay more than half, say about $1.1 trillion. They're taxed at an average rate of 35%. So... even if you tax them at a 100% rate – confiscate everything they earn – all you'd get is an additional $2 trillion.

Annual spending for this fiscal year is budgeted at $3.7 trillion (tables). So no matter how much you raise the taxes on "the rich", you're still not going to solve the real problem, because the government's still spending $1.5 trillion more than it takes in, to which Obama wants to add almost $450 billion in new spending.

Well... I guess maybe at 100% tax rates for "the rich" – defined as those earning in excess of a paltry $200K (how does $200K become "millionaires and billionaires", by the way?), the math does work. But that means the government will be setting a cap on earning, at $200k. Is THAT what America's come to?

Even at that, all we do is balance current government income and spending. It doesn’t do a thing about eliminating our current debt.

No, the problem isn’t taxation; it’s spending.

Obama and his minions are at it again. Now they have a website called AttackWatch.com where you can “Get the facts. Fight the smears”. It’s “Paid for by Obama for America”. Here’s the link. They also have a link that allows you to “Report an attack”, and the “attacks” can be categorized as “TV interview, public statement, forwarded email, rumor, TV ad, video ad, radio ad, robocall, website/blog”. I kid you not, folks; those quotes are right from their website.

Now, when you do a web search for “Obama for America”, you end up at this website: here. According to Yahoo.com, “Barackobama.com is the official re-election campaign website of President Barack Obama”.

Last I heard, the “official” re-election campaign organization is run with the explicit knowledge and approval of the candidates involved. Meaning that the President of the United States is running an operation that encourages citizens to snitch out fellow citizens who have expressed views or opinions that are critical of our Incompetent-in-Chief. I seem to recall these tactics being used a few times before. The Gestapo and KGB come immediately to mind.

Well, good citizen that I am, I had to report a repeat offender: myself. Here’s what I wrote:

“This blog, written by myself, consistently attacks Obama – even calling him ‘Bat Ears’ – for his blatant Marxism, lack of intelligence, inexperience, dogmatism, lies, unconstitutional actions, abject ignorance of free market principles, his illegal obstruction of that same free market, his Big Government nanny-statism, and a host and variety of other un-American activities and policies.

“The author of this blog – me – happens to be a ‘potential terrorist’, according to that bright light Janet Napolitano, because he’s a conservative Christian gun-owning veteran. You need to keep a close eye on this guy.

“Here’s the URL of his blog: http://viewfromtheisland.blogtownhall.com/”

I contacted you after your two votes to support the original Bush "bailout" and told you that it was insane fiscal policy – which history has proven to be true – and that in light of that vote I wouldn't support you in 2010. And I didn't.

This issue of the debt ceiling increase was your opportunity to redeem yourself and prove that you actually will act to further the principles you profess to support. Yet once AGAIN, you failed, and voted in favor of this abortion of a bill.

Needless to say, I won't be voting for you next year, either, and will urge all of my friends and acquaintances to not vote for you, too.

You’ve become a huge disappointment as a self-professed “conservative”, and an embarrassment to this valley. You’ve become just another Establishment Republican, the kind of professional political hack who’s even more problematic than the Democrats. At least they’re honest about their goal, the transformation of this country into a social-welfare state. You and your fellow Establishment Republicans, in contrast, claim to support traditional conservative principles, but when push comes to shove you’re too weak or too afraid to actually stand firm on just about anything. No wonder this country is swirling the drain.

It’s because of Republicans like you and McCain that I cancelled my GOP membership of almost 40 years and re-registered as “Decline to state”; an Independent.

Fortunately for you, this district is pretty conservative, so your Democrat Party opponents don’t really have much of a chance at defeating you. That makes your seat pretty safe. But if I were younger, and didn’t hate the idea of living in the DC area so much (I’m originally from there) I’d campaign against you next year as an Independent. And you know what? I think I’d have a pretty good chance of actually winning. Or at least getting enough of the vote to assure that you’d lose.

And just FYI, I’m posting this email on my political blog as an open letter:

http://viewfromtheisland.blogtownhall.com/