Radioactive Communist Zombies

Say "Non" to French Toast

Busy night tonight, so I'll leave you with this:

Electric Cars Make no Sense (or Cents)

GM ("Government Motors"?) is still still committed to bringing the Chevrolet Volt into production and on the market.  But according to Charles Lane writing in the Washington Post, it's not a very good idea (links original):

Likely to cost consumers more than $30,000 even after a big government tax rebate, the little four-seat Volt "is currently projected to be much more expensive than its gasoline-fueled peers and will likely need substantial reductions in manufacturing cost in order to become commercially viable," President Obama's automobile task force reported on March 30.

The problem is the technology just isn't there, yet (and perhaps never).  So the total cost of ownership of one of these expensive cars doesn't justify owning them unless oil gets a lot more expensive:

Boston Consulting Group found that the total cost of ownership of existing hybrids and advanced internal combustion engine cars is more attractive than that of electric cars as long as oil prices are below $280 a barrel

And oil prices peaked at about $147 a barrel last July.  So at $280 a barrel, gas prices are going to be, what, $8 a gallon?  And even at $4 a gallon gasoline, the Volt makes no sense:

Geoffrey Styles, founder of the energy consultant GSW Strategy Group, recently reported that it would take a minimum of six years for drivers to recoup the differential between the Volt's projected price and that of a Toyota Prius -- even assuming $4 per-gallon gasoline.

So unless there is a technology break-through that dramatically lowers the cost of electric cars (and increases their range and power so they are practical), or gasoline hits $8 a gallon through market forces and/or taxes, the Chevy Volt makes no cents.

Welcome to Your High Density Living.

(Hat tip Washington Policy Center Blog)

The Obama Administration has a plan for you and where you work and where you live.  It's called "Smart Growth."  And it's basically a plan to move you out of your house and into high-density housing (read: apartments).  Ronald D. Utt of the Heritage Foundation explains (links original):

A March press release issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a new interagency partnership to create "affordable, sustainable communities."[2]Included among its many goals are projects to:

• Develop a new cost index that combines housing and transportation costs into a single measure to better illuminate the true costs by "redefining affordability and making it transparent,"
• Encourage "transportation choice," and
• Require even more planning by the many federally funded regional planning entities that are already attempting to guide Americans toward a supposedly better life.

Sound innocuous enough.  But it's not.  Take for example "transportation choice."  That means, basically, public transportation:

To save Americans from these alleged higher living costs, the Smart Growth and New Urbanist movements want Americans to move into higher-density developments--such as townhouses and high-rise apartment buildings--which, the anti-suburbanists contend, can be better served by public transportation (hence the commitment to "transportation choice," a process whereby commuters are bribed or coerced into an inconvenient mode of transportation that most would not choose on their own)--thereby freeing the hapless American people from relying on their automobiles.

Of course, public transportation has its own problems (beyond having to sit next to a proselytizing lunatic who hasn't bathed since the Carter Administration).

As for the alleged savings in transportation costs that are predicted to occur by shifting from cars to mass transit, data from a 2004 DOT study reveal that public transit survives on massive taxpayer subsidies that are generally hidden and excluded from any discussions of the relative costs and bene�fits of different modes of travel.[5] When all costs are considered, public transit is far more expensive than automobiles.

So it's not about savings, what is it about?  Control.

Finally, the proposal exhibits a child-like faith in government planning, a concept that half the world quickly abandoned in the late 1980s when all of the formerly socialist countries (except, of course, for Cuba and North Korea) rejected state planning in favor of private-sector initiative, economic freedom, and market solutions. Nonetheless, and ever the optimist, the President proposes that the existing regional planning authorities be given yet more responsibility--and power.

All in the name of getting you out of your house with a yard and into an apartment in the city where you can ride the bus everywhere.

Sounds lovely, doesn't it?

Monday Night Ramble

Well, GM is now going to stand for "Government Motors" as the U.S. government will have a majority controlling interest in the company.  As the Wall Street Journal reports (sub probably required):  

Under the plan, GM is asking the Treasury Department for an additional $11.6 billion in loans, on top of the $15.4 billion it has already received. It envisions giving the government at least half ownership of the company as payment for half of the loans.

At the same time, GM said it would use stock instead of cash to pay off half the $20.4 billion it owes a United Auto Workers fund to cover retiree health care. That stock would leave the union owning about 39% of GM.

The upshot would be the transformation of a troubled American icon, leaving it in the hands of the government and its main union.

Can't wait to see the crapmobiles that will come out of a government/union committee in vehicle design.  You know, the safe, green, (slow, light, small) cars of the future.

The DoD pulled a boner today, flying Air Force One around New York City low and slow with a fighter jet accompanying it for a "photo op."  Fox News reports:

White House Military Office Director Louis Caldera apologized for any panic caused by a flight mission and photo op that looked like Air Force One and fighter jets heading toward the New York City skyline Monday morning. 

Caldera said he approved the mission last week and that federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey. 

But nobody told the media nor the millions still living in NYC that remember 9/11.  Rather insensitive of someone in the Obama Administration.

And of course, swine flu is going to kill us all.  Well, there's some confirmed cases in the U.S., no deaths yet.  Quite possibly this will fizzle out and be much ado about nothing.  Or it could kill millions.  But I'm betting on the fizzle.     

    

Britain: Be PC or Go to Jail

(Hat tip Liberal Fascism)

In Britain they are going to make politically incorrect jokes a punishable offense, according to Hal G. P. Colebatch writing in The Austrailian:

The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out.

It's already a crime to express "racist" thoughts in the U.K.:

Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government's anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: "If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you." Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter saying no charges would be pressed, but that: "If further evidence comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will seek to initiate proceedings." It took him five years to clear his name.

Page was at least an adult. In September 2006, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only Urdu. The teacher's first response, according to Stott, was to scream at her: "It's racist, you're going to get done by the police!" Upset and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down. The teacher called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed. According to her mother, she was placed in a bare cell for 3 1/2 hours. She was questioned on suspicion of committing a racial public order offence and then released without charge. The school was said to be investigating what further action to take, not against the teacher, but against Stott. Headmaster Anthony Edkins reportedly said: "An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark. We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form."

A 10-year-old child was arrested and brought before a judge, for having allegedly called an 11-year-old boy a "Paki" and "bin Laden" during a playground argument at a primary school (the other boy had called him a skunk and a Teletubby). When it reached the court the case had cost taxpayers pound stg. 25,000. The accused was so distressed that he had stopped attending school. The judge, Jonathan Finestein, said: "Have we really got to the stage where we are prosecuting 10-year-old boys because of political correctness? There are major crimes out there and the police don't bother to prosecute. This is nonsense."

(We talked about Codie Stott here.)

And the British face losing their jobs for expressing religious convictions:

There have been innumerable cases in recent months of people in schools, hospitals and other institutions losing their jobs because of various religious scruples, often, as in the East Germany of yore, not shouted fanatically from the rooftops but betrayed in private conversations and reported to authorities. The crime of one nurse was to offer to pray for a patient, who did not complain but merely mentioned the matter to another nurse. A primary school receptionist, Jennie Cain, whose five-year-old daughter was told off for talking about Jesus in class, faces the sack for seeking support from her church. A private email from her to other members of the church asking for prayers fell into the hands of school authorities.

Don't think it can't happen here.  It's already started on college campuses for the past twenty years or so.

At least in the U.S. we have a Free Speech clause of our Constitution.  But someday it could be a under attack as the Second Amendment.

Cap and Trade . . . Or Else

Don't like Waxman-Markey (see here, here, and here)?  Seems a lot of folks in Congress don't either, including a fair number of Democrats.  Which puts in doubt its chances of passing.

But there's a gun to the head of the economy.  The Obama Administration is in essence saying "Pass cap and trade or the economy gets it."  That gun, is the Clean Air Act and the "finding" that greenhouse gasses pose an "endangerment" to people.  The Wall Street Journal in an unsigned editorial explains:

This so-called "endangerment finding" sets the clock ticking on a vast array of taxes and regulation that EPA will have the power to impose across the economy, and all with little or no political debate.

How bad could it be? 

The centerpiece of the Clean Air Act is something called the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, or NAAQS, under which the EPA decides the appropriate atmospheric concentration of a given air pollutant. Under this law the states must adopt measures to meet a NAAQS goal, and the costs cannot be considered. For global warming, this is going to be a hugely expensive futility parade.

Because greenhouse gasses mix in the atmosphere, the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere over Kansas could be from CO₂ from China.  Yet Kansas is somehow supposed to regulate them.  And the regulations are extensive:

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA also must regulate all "major" sources of emissions that emit more than 250 tons of an air pollutant in a year. That includes "any building, structure, facility or installation." This might be a reasonable threshold for conventional pollutants such as SOX or NOX, but it's extremely low for carbon. Hundreds of thousands of currently unregulated sources will suddenly be subject to the EPA's preconstruction permitting and review, including schools, hospitals, malls, restaurants, farms and colleges. According to EPA, the average permit today takes 866 hours for a source to prepare, and 301 hours for EPA to process. So this regulatory burden will increase by several orders of magnitude.

Some perspective: In order to get a CAA permit (assuming that 866 hours estimate is accurate and not low) a business (school, hospital, farm, college, etc.) will have to have one full time person working nearly five months.  Hey, there goes our unemployment problem (if you don't understand why that's a joke, you need to study basic economics).

Right now the EPA is only talking cars.  But that's bad enough, forcing automakers to make tiny crapboxes no one will want to buy (way to save the auto industry).  But there will be lawsuits to force it to extend CAA to stationary sources.

Which brings us back to the Obama Administration's political roulette. Democrats know that their cap-and-tax agenda is losing ground, notably among Midwestern Senators. The EPA "endangerment" is intended to threaten businesses and state and local governments until they surrender and support the Obama agenda. The car industry is merely the first target, meant to be the object lesson.

So it's pass something awful (cap and trade/Waxman-Markey) or get something worse out of the EPA.  This isn't democracy but extortion.  It's carbonism, green fascism, and mob tactics in the name of "stopping" climate change which is probably natural, anyway.  

Apollo Astronaut: There are Aliens

Edgar D. Mitchell, who walked on the Moon, is saying that yes there are alien visitors to Earth and the government knows about it.  Fox News reports:

"It is now time to put away this embargo of truth about the alien presence," Edgar D. Mitchell, who made the longest moonwalk in history, told those attending a conference in Gaithersburg, Md., set up by the Paradigm Research Group.

"I call upon our government to open up ... and become a part of this planetary community that is now trying to take our proper role as a spacefaring civilization," the 79-year-old added. "We are being visited."

Well, there's no doubt in my mind that somewhere in the vast universe there is life off planet Earth (there might be life on Mars).  And I would be sorely disappointed and surprised if there were no other intelligent life in the Universe other than humans.

However, I doubt any intelligent species is going to expend the resources and energy necessary for interstellar travel just to buzz a few farms and redneck and do some anal probing.  Are they that hard up for dates?

It just makes no sense that aliens have visited Earth.  It's not logical. 

Climate Change: It's Constant

Speaking of global warming . . .

Back in the 1970's scientists were concerned about climate change, too.  Except, as the Washington Policy Center Blog reminds us, it was warming they were worried about:

[N]ot so long ago the news media issued dire warnings about global cooling and a coming Ice Age.  Consider these headlines:

• “The Earth’s Cooling Climate,” Science News, November 15, 1969.

• “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age,” Washington Post, January 11, 1970.

• “Science:  Another Ice Age?”  Time Magazine, June 24, 1974.

• “The Ice Age Cometh!”  Science News, March 1, 1975.

• “The Cooling World,” Newsweek, April 28, 1975.

• “Scientists Ask Why World Climate is Changing; Major Cooling May Be Ahead,” New York Times, May 21, 1975.

• “In the Grip of a New Ice Age?” International Wildlife July-August, 1975.

• “A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable,” New York Times, September 14, 1975.

• “Variations in the Earth’s Orbit, Pacemaker of the Ice Ages,” Science magazine, December 10, 1976.

Reporters told the public about global cooling in the same confident tone used in today’s coverage about global warming, creating the strong impression that no reasonable person could disagree.  Here are some examples:

“The evidence in support of these predictions [global cooling] has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.” The Cooling World

“A study release last month by two NOAA scientists that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.” The Cooling World

“Telltale signs are everywhere...the thickness of the pack ice...the southward migration of warmth-loving creatures like the armadillo...”  Another Ice Age?

“Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7 degrees.” Another Ice Age?

“The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind,” The Ice Age Cometh!

Sounds an awful lot like a scientific consensus.  Sort of what the media says we have today on climate change.  The WPC blog puts it correctly when they say:

Similarly, today some scientists want to debate global warming and its possible causes, but the media presents global warming as a settled issue, not to be questioned.  Since the reporting today about world climate is the opposite of what it was 30 years ago, it’s ok to be skeptical about the worst predictions surrounding global warming.

Which is why some of us are skeptical.

Ashley Judd: Scientist?

Yesterday was Earth Day, I guess.  I missed it, having to work.  No big loss.

Ashley Judd (she's an actress) and Jeff Corwin (he's a T.V. show host) testified before Congress about global warming (or is it climate change?).  The AP reports:

Actress Ashley Judd and TV personality Jeff Corwin are urging Congress to spend $7 billion a year to help safeguard America’s wildlife from the impact of global warming.

Judd is a longtime environmental activist. The actress told a House subcommittee on Thursday that climate legislation should not just address the causes of global warming, but also the effects already being seen on the ground.

Judd says evidence of global warming is already being felt on her farm in Tennessee.

Well I'm convinced.

At least Corwin is a biologists which I'm sure makes him an expert in climate change and other atmospheric phenomena.

So why is an actress and a T.V. host testifying before Congress?  Oh that's easy: to generate headlines for their cause.  Does Ashley Judd know more about climate change than I do?  I doubt it.  But she's famous.

The Life of a Pirate

A Somali "teen" is going to be tried as an adult for piracy.  According to Reuters:

Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, the sole surviving accused pirate from the foiled bid to hijack huge U.S. container ship the Maersk Alabama earlier this month, was put in custody until his next court appearance on May 21.

Muse, who prosecutors said "conducted himself as the leader of the pirates," is charged with piracy, conspiracy to seize a ship by force, conspiracy to commit hostage taking and related firearms offenses. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.

Life in a U.S. prison compared to life in lawless Somalia?  Three squares a day, a roof over your head, regular showers (with soap and water), no dangerous sea voyages.  Sounds like a pretty good life, comparatively.

UPDATE: Muse told one of his captors on the Maersk Alabama that he always dreamed of coming the America.