The Day We Lose the Will to Fight is the Day We Will Lose Our Freedom.

Today is October 30th, which is only four days prior to the U.S. general election.

I am truly fearful for the direction our country is taking. It is a genuine concern that applies to both major political properties, to both candidates for President, to all those Senators and House Representatives that are up for re-election this year.

Should we elect a Democratic party supermajority in the U.S. Senate, here's some things that I believe will ABSOLUTELY happen in the next four years.

1. We will abandon our mission in Iraq, and leave the Iraqi government and people in a state that will find them inadequately ready to resist the violent fundamentalism and sectarian violence that will threaten to return them to a state of tyranny and subjugation. And yet, Breitbart.com posted an article indicating that "If Iraqis could vote it would be for McCain". Those people, who clearly have recently spent more than two generations under a tyrant, know the importance of vigilance and more importantly, the price that must be paid for freedom. If we back out, Iran will fill the power vacuum and the Sunni people in Iraq will be destroyed, and Iraq will become a client state of Iran and convert to fundamentalist Islamic rule.
2. The government will EXPAND it's powers over private citizens and private concerns. The government is ALREADY making moves towards ownership and nationalization of the financial sector. The Democrats want to increase taxes on one class of people in order to "share the wealth", clearly a socialist policy.
   
3. Currently, the right-wing of political thought and expression really only dominates one aspect of our media, which is "talk-radio". Nearly all other forms of broadcast or print media (Broadcast TV, Cable/Satellite TV, Major newspaper syndicates and weekly/monthly magazines and the Internet) have a clearly "liberal" or "progressive" bias. This is so well documented that I will not bother with citations here. Just Google it if you don't believe me. The interesting dichotomy is that so-called "right-wing talkers" on radio make no claims of neutrality, but most of the liberal (dare I say "controlled"?) "main-street media" profess neutrality. A claim I clearly dispute. In fact, recently, even Democratic campaign staffers recently stated that the attacks on Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP VP candidate were "over the top". Yet the only media that a Democratic Congress (Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA; Senator Harry Reid, D-NV) supports imposing a new version of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" is on talk radio. How interesting that they only want to impose this doctrine on the only media that has a conservative dominance. How "fair" is that? This means that conservatives will have no easily accessible "forum" to voice and hear issues from their point of view, while liberals will continue to enjoy the vast dominance of all other forums. In other words, the Democrats will stifle the conservative voice in our political dialouge. If you don't believe this can happen, just look at Australia. Read this article for details, but essentially they will implement "Chinese style" restrictions on Internet access. As usual, it starts with a universally distateful (and yet highly profitable) child-porn industry. But it will end, like China, with restriction on access to dissenting political speech.
4. There will be a definite assault on the American right to firearms. I do not need to elaborate on this one. Suffice it to say that a people that cannot resist tyranny are not free.
5. Provide public healthcare to those who currently don't have healthcare (including those that have OPTED OUT) at the expense of many who have paid for healthcare all of their adult lives.
   

All of these issues are associated with a panicky scared populace who are looking to the government to bail them out. The problem in this situation is that government CREATED the mess to begin with. We the PEOPLE need to ride this one through, instead of asking for more of "mommy's hand". Every great endeavor created in this country was done in spite of government, not by it.

Those who trade liberty for security will have neither.

Tire Pressure Maintenance -- It'll Help but It's Not The Fix

Everybody has heard about Senator Obama's suggestion for reducing our dependency on fossil fuels. So the question is: Just how much fuel can the average motorist save?
I wrote this piece primarily because I wanted to see if a complete energy layman of Conservative principles could determine the following. First, was Senator Obama's tire pressure suggestion factual or a lot of hooey? Second, is Senator McCain justified in lampooning his suggestion? What I found was that both Senators are correct. McCain is correct that we must advance all forms of energy production available to us. Senator Obama who also supports quite a few of the same energy policies expressed by Senator McCain (except the drilling part, of course) is absolutely correct that at the national level, proper automobile maintenance can help reduce our need for foreign oil. If you want to read my lengthy proof then proceed.

Senator Obama asserts: Improper tire pressure can cause a vehicle to lose as much as 3% of its fuel usage efficiency. If the American electorate maintains proper tire inflation we could save more fuel than can be produced though offshore drilling. Is this true or false? My research concludes that this is somewhat true, but that his position is based on some overly broad assumptions.
www.carcare.org suggests that improperly inflated tires can reduce gas mileage by as much as 3%. They do not cite the source of any studies or provide any hard evidence. But hey, it's www.carcare.org, right? Let's roll with it. I currently drive a 2001 Dodge 3500 1 Ton dual-wheel pickup. When it's running well, which is all the time, and I don't drive like Dale Earnhardt, Jr., it gets 18 MPG on the highway and about 14.5 MPG in the city, for a mixed bag of about 15.6 MPG. These are actual statistics I have compiled over the years of driving this vehicle. I drive about 20,000 miles per year. So, at optimum tire pressure (amongst a whole lot of other things) I should use about 1,282 gallons of diesel in one year.

Now, let's say that I let the tire pressure go but maintain everything else. Assume that I suffer the maximum suggested performance hit of 3%, or in other words I only get 97% of my optimum efficiency. That would be 15.1 MPG (actually 15.132 but I'm rounding everything down to the nearest 1/10th). So, dividing 15.1 into 20,000 means I would use 1,324 gallons. This is 42 gallons per year. At the time I wrote this, diesel in my neighborhood was selling for $4.70 a gallon. This means I would spend $197.40 more for diesel annually. But keep in mind that I would have paid $6,025.40 for the other 1,282 gallons so in the great scheme of things this isn't a whole lot of money, nor is it a whole lot of gas. In fact, it's only 3 PERCENT. More importantly, if diesel went up by only 25 cents during the calendar year, that would wipe out any financial gain that I would get from running optimum tire pressure all the time.

Everything to this point has been a discussion about how it affects ME, the individual. Let's apply the same thing to the nation. First of all, we need to know what the average MPG is for the entire United States. According to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics (www.bts.gov), the average MPG for all passenger vehicles currently registered in the U.S. for 2006 was 22.4 MPG. Total miles driven in the same year for passenger vehicles only was 2,670,145,000,000 miles. That's right! 2.67 TRILLION miles! Now keep in mind that this is a very SIMPLE example. At 22.4 MPG, that means that American passenger vehicles consumed about 119,202,901,785 (119.2 billion) gallons of gasoline and diesel. Now, drop the MPG to only 97%, which is 21.7 MPG. This would result in 123,048,156,682 (123 billion) gallons needed, or four billion gallons more than we used with 22.4 MPG.

Now, who the devil is going to argue that it wouldn't be prudent for Americans to maintain proper tire pressure in order to save FOUR BILLION gallons of fuel? Nobody. However, what is the total impact to the United States? Here's where it gets really interesting.
In order to understand what four billion gallons of gasoline means to the CRUDE OIL market, we first have to know how much gasoline is IN a barrel of crude oil. And there's simply NO standard answer to this question. Crude oil comes in many varieties. Some Texas and Arabian crude oil deposits are very "light/sweet" and can produce up to 30% "straight run" gasoline (very little refining effort here). Others, like Venezuelan crude may produce only 5% "straight run" gas. However, in both cases, the remaining crude can be refined be various processes, which I won't go into here, to further refine the heavier crude into gasoline as well. So, if you ask 15 petrochemical engineers, you'll get 15 different answers. Based on my not very exhaustive research, anywhere from 19 to 28 gallons of oil can be obtained from one 42 gallon barrel of crude. And remember, the remainder can be used for many other uses, such as heating oil, fuel oil for large ships, etc. So I have a range of 19 to 28 gallons from a single barrel. Let's just split the difference. Subtract 19 from 28 leave 9 divide by 2 = 4.5 add to 19 gives us 23.5 gallons of gasoline per barrel. EXCELLENT! If we divide the 3.846 billion gallons by 23.5, we get 163,627,867 barrels of crude wasted by our 3% penalty because of our lousy tire pressure maintenance. That's 163.6 million barrels.

To summarize everything we've done to this point; We've determined the average MPG of the US passenger car fleet (22.4) in 2006, the total number of miles driven (2.67 trillion) in the same year by the same class of vehicle, and the total extra barrels of crude we would have been consumed caused by a three percent drop in average MPG because of poor tire pressure maintenance (163.6 million barrels). This does assume that EVERY single passenger car in the US fleet is not properly maintained, which is most certainly NOT the case. This is a worst-case scenario.

Now all we have to determine is if increasing US offshore drilling would produce more barrels of crude than is lost from poor tire pressure maintenance.
To quote from the June 18th, 2008 LA TIMES, which ran an article about this very subject entitled "Bush Calls for Offshore Drilling, Citing Gasoline Prices":
'The Energy Information Administration said that opening access to undersea oil fields "in the Pacific, Atlantic and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030." Drilling in domestic waters off all the coasts except Alaska's would increase annual production from 2.2 million barrels a day to 2.4 million barrels a day, the agency estimates.'

Excellent! So we estimate that while it would take nearly twenty years to get these fields 100% online, at that point in time we would increase domestic crude oil production by two-hundred thousand barrels A DAY. Multiply that times 365 days per year (except leap years of course) and we get 73 million barrels of new crude production annually. Keep in mind that only a portion of this gasoline will actually go to passenger car usage. Much of it will go to commercial and public transportation (rail, city public transit, government usage, etc). I did not find that statistic.
OVERLY SIMPLISTIC CONCLUSION: In twenty years we could be producing an additional 73 million barrels of oil annually. Assuming that every single barrel was destined for passenger car usage and that every single car on the road was wasting at least 3% fuel economy due to incorrectly inflated tires not only would the 73 million barrels be completely consumed, but we would still have 90 million barrels that we would need to get from somewhere in order to handle the shortfall. So, Senator Obama's suggestion has some merit. There are modest savings to be had at the household or passenger car owner level. At the national level, Senator Obama's suggestion could reduce American fuel usage by over one hundred million barrels of crude per year. But there's a tremendous caveat here: A large fraction of the American people properly maintain their vehicles, including monitoring tire pressure. So the consumption of 163 million barrels of crude caused by poor tire inflation is VERY speculative. I simply could not find any metrical data to establish even a rough guess number, so the scenario I have presented to you is a worst-case scenario.

Based on my research, I think that we can conclude the following.
1. The US needs to expand all sources of energy production. This includes fossil fuels, nuclear, natural gas, shale-oil, tar sands, clean coal, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, hydro-electric, fuel-cell and others that I'm probably not listing here. Incidentally, John McCain supports this idea.
2. The US needs to expand the grid to efficiently transport energy from the point of collection/production to the point of consumption. T. Boone Pickens wants the taxpayer to pick up the tab for this one. I for one say that we should get government out of the way and let the entrepreneurs, who have never failed us yet in a crisis, to solve this. But make sure that they do so in a manner that does not unduly harm our interests. Make them responsible to cleanup when they are done.
3. American auto manufacturers must step up to the plate with vehicles that can use fuels other than gasoline/diesel. They've made progress but we aren't there yet.
4. Those American who are not properly maintaining their vehicles should be considered for punishment, as they are directly adversely affecting our nation's strategic security and increasing our dependency on foreign fossil fuel sources. I really like this idea, but I doubt the Progressives do.
5. The American people need to accept that we can no longer count on being the only consumer of energy in the world. Growing industrial economies in South America, Asia and India will have tremendous impact on the worlds resources. We must accept that this is not an American problem, but a Global problem of which America is only a part. Republicans have to accept the fact that we do live in a global community. Democrats have to accept the fact that government kowtowing to the extreme environmentalist lobby is probably the single largest reason why we don't produce domestically more of the energy that we use.

A couple of final things I just have to get off my chest. The chorus of cries that the oil companies need to invest in alternative fuel and energy sources. Is it my imagination or are they called "oil companies" for some reason other than they are specialists in the finding, pumping and refining of naturally occurring crude oil? And the other hue and cry is that drilling NOW will not lower cost of fuel in the short term. Yup, they're sure right on that one. We wouldn't start seeing benefits for at least seven to ten years, with fruition taking nearly two decades. AND YET every day that we delay exploration, drilling for oil or exploiting shale-oil or other fossil fuel deposits is one more day that we will not be able to lower the cost of fuel. To stand by and do nothing is worse than insane. It is national suicide. And there's NOT ONE STUDY that indicates that any other energy technology can produce the same quantity of usable energy at the same cheap cost as fossil fuels or is mature enough to provide energy to the United States, much less the world, in quantities to satisfy our need (not desire) for energy.

And This Too Shall Pass

Well... the "rescue" ain't working!

It's now early on Friday, October 10th 2008 and yesterday the Dow Jones Industrial Index dropped another 600+ points, leaving the Dow at just over 8500 points. We are now down over 40% from the high water mark of exactly one year ago of over 14,600.

What's the problem?

When the US Congress first failed to get the rescue package passed after Speaker Pelosi's poisionous rant on the House floor, the Dow dropped over 800 points. That was a little over a week ago. Once Congress passed the amended rescue plan, with $150 billion in "sweeteners" (also known as PORK BARRELL SPENDING!) the Dow hasn't had a single "up" day since.

So what's the problem?

Well, I think that we can find a few things. First: Consumer confidence is in the sewer. The average US consumer is worried about his job. He's worried that his retirement fund has lost 40% of it's value in one year ( on average ). He's worried that Joe six pack is no longer buying washing machines, automobiles or large screen TVs. He's more worried that Bernard the Billionaire isn't spending money to buy his new Bentley, his new 4,000 sq ft addition to his house that will be tiled entirely in Italian Marble, or that new $300,000 boat. He's really worried that he won't have a job in six months. So he's saving money and for the first time in two decades, he's paying off debt faster than he can incur it.

Second, I think that the We the People smell a rat. It wasn't market economics that got us into this mess, especially with the financial industry. Social engineering and tinkering of home finances brought into this mess by encouraging financial institutions (especially Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) to lend money to people that ought not to have been approved. So when the same people that either a) created this mess or b) ignored this mess; now claim that the "rescue" will fix this mess, we are reacting with what can only be called skepticism.

There is actually some good coming out of this. Oil is back down to $88.00 a barrel. The American consumer purchased 8 million barrels less gasoline in August of 2008 than they did in August of 2007. The American consumer is starting to hold on to their hard-earned wages, and they are beginning to pay off their debt. We have been drunk on debt spending and revolving credit for over two decades now. It's going to take some time to get off the habit. But when we do, America will be leaner and meaner than we have since the early 80's. That's a darn good thing.

I'm a diehard fiscal conservative and moderate social conservative. But I do not trust the current Congress nor either candidate a plug nickel when it comes to fixing this mess. Personally, I believe that Government cannot solve this problem. If you are going to live in a free-market society, you must allow the free-market to work without tinkering with it. Congress got us into this mess. They ignored the warning signs back in 2004, 2005 and 2006 (even though to their credit several notable Republicans did try to sound the alarm about Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae).
Banks are going to fail. People will lose their jobs. The economy is going to go backwards for a while.

Fortunately, the United States has one of the most robust economies on the planet. This will knock us down temporarily, but not forever. Most definitely not for the long term. On the flip side, I'm buying stocks right now at a ridiculously low price. Imagine how they'll increase in value as the economy rights itself.

When did Healthcare become a right?

In a recently posted CNN article concerning Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's fiscal policies the following quotation was reported:

"For a drop in the bucket, every single kid in the state could have health insurance," said state Rep. Les Gara, a Democrat from Anchorage. "For a drop in the bucket, we don't have to be one of the worst states in terms of high school graduation rates."

This was in response to Gov. Palin sending a $1,200 check to every man, woman and child in the State of Alaska, which were the result of a windfall profits tax on high oil profits in 2007.

Since when is it the government's job to require that every kid (or anybody else, for that matter) have insurance? Who will administer the insurance program? The government? The same United States Federal Government whose oversight gives us $600 hammers and $1200 toilet seats for the U.S. Air Force? Give me a freaking break!

Democrats routinely take the position that everybody that does not have insurance wants it if it was affordable. Well, I sold insurance for a year (most miserable time of my life) and 95% of the time I was rejected by the prospect. Most of the rejections were based on the fact that they felt that buying insurance was a "gamble". And darn near every prospect that opted not to buy ... lived in a single-family home, owned at least one car of which one car was 3 years or less old, owned at least one late-model color television set, owned at least one high fidelity stereo or sound entertainment system.

Yes, there are *some* Americans who do not have insurance because they truly cannot afford it. But the many Americans who do not have insurance have elected to buy consumer goods or go to ball games instead.

I will never support nationalized healthcare insurance because at the same time that it theoretically "uplifts" those who "can't" afford it, it penalizes us who have made the sacrifice and pay for healthcare of our own choosing.

Who in the heck needs the US Gov, Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae? We need FAMILIES!

Ask any kid of a normal working-class family "What's the hardest part about buying a new house?" Most will say "Coming up with the down payment." And they'd be right.

So here's what we're doing. Laura and I made this offer to Mat and Heather (son-in-law and daughter) when they announced their engagement: You can live with us for three years. You will pay us $700.00 per month. We will put that money in a separate bank account. On month 37, we are going to kick you out, but we will also give you your rent money back, which should be worth about $25,000 at that point. That's 10% of a quarter million dollar house. To date they've already saved nearly $8,000.

That's how my kids are going to get into a house without using Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae or one of these dumba** risky loan types.

More Americans need to think like families again, and solve problems for each other by helping each other, instead of expecting government to bail them out.

I thought I'd share this with you just to let you know that I'm not just ranting because I'm some right-wing neocon unsympathetic psychopathic nut job.

It's not a bailout, it's a rescue. Hello CNN! Hello NBC!

A lot of airwaves and newsprint are being used to talk about the pros and cons of the so-called "bail-out" that is backed by Prez Dubbya and SecTreas Paulson.

There are a bunch of reasons to hate this idea. There maybe one GOOD reason to do it.

A little history. Back in the 1990s, Freddie Mac (FM1) and Fannie Mae (FM2) were essentially constituted to provide an available outlet to 100% home loans to those who were living "on the margin". This is a nice way of saying that these two institutions were supposed to finance the entire cost of a new/used home purchase for those who would otherwise not qualify. I should point out that this is one of the dumbest of downright dumba** ideas, which is to lend LARGE sums of money to people who cannot be reliably expected to pay that LARGE sum of money (PLUS INTEREST) back. Social engineering does not play nice with the cold hard reality of the mathematically-based world of finance.

Back in 2004, a bunch of Republicans wanted to create new oversight on FM1 and FM2 because of concerns about increasing number of home loans going into default. Dem representative Maxine Waters and Dem representative Barney Frank had nothing but high praise for then Freddie Mac chairman: Waters said "We do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and particularly Fannie Mae under the outstanding leadership of Frank Raines."

Well, Mrs. Waters, it looks like you may have been wrong.

This is not a simple problem, but essentially it's like this. There are a large number of loans that have been either defaulted on or are likely to go into default in the near future. Most of these loans were either interest-only or "sub-prime" adjustable rate mortgages. To put it another way, these were very risky loans that would have only been successful assuming that property values continue to rise over time. However, with so many loans now in default, banks are not only seriously containing new loans, but they are even reluctant to lend money to corporations or for other reasons. Further, with the glut of housing now on the market housing prices are in free fall. Banks not wanting to lend money is bad for companies like General Motors or U.S. Steel, who often borrow money on a short-term basis to make payroll, etc.

Back to my main point. Everybody is calling this a "bailout". A bailout in classic terms, is when a large amount of money is essentially gifted to some organization in order to sustain their "liquidity of assets", which is a fancy way of saying that they continue to have enough money for day-to-day operations (like paying rent, payroll and the light bill).

The proposals in both houses of Congress is not a bailout. It's a rescue. What Congress will do is use $700 billion of U.S. Taxpayer money (incidentally, money that we don't have and will probably have to borrow from either China or the Middle-east) to purchase the risky loans from a large number of banks. This means that these risky loans will be owned by the People of the United States. The U.S. will be responsible for controlling these assets (homes and properties) and selling them off over time. The banks and mortgage brokerages will then have new money assets that they can use to begin lending money again.

Over time, as the properties held by the U.S. government raise in value again as the economy corrects they will be sold to new buyers under safer more conventional loans. In theory we could even make some profit on the sale of these properties over time.

However, this is socialism, pure and simple. Capital assets will be held by the U.S. government. I hate it. I hate the liberal progressive social tinkering in the real-estate lending process that has brought us to this crossroads. Clinton should have done something about in prior to 2000. Bush should have done something about in 2001-2002. But we don't have a choice. If we don't approve this, banks will stop lending money to anybody and you won't be able to buy a car or appliance unless you can pay cash. And when people are no longer willing or able to buy consumer goods, that's when our economy completely collapses.

Oh, by the way, you and I are to blame for this. We elected the moronic chuckleheaded U.S. Representatives and Senators that allowed this to happen. When O' when are we going to learn?