Bad Taste

So this is what now passes for journalistic excellence. This “cartoon ,” drawn by Lee Judge of the Kansas City Star, a formally well-respected newspaper, is in such poor taste that it is amazing it made it to print. While the media frets about what Don Imus meant about two-bit loser Pac Man Jones, this special editorial comment slips by all of them.

There can be no mistake in the cartoonist’s message: if God was being fair, Rush Limbaugh would have died of a sudden heart attack instead of Tim Russert.

Why is it such fashion to attack right-wing pundits with such elementary school taunts? It seems if someone wants to say something about a conservative, they can get away with whatever they want. Say something like this about a liberal and wait for the riots to start.

When Al Franken wrote a book bemoaning Limbaugh, he entitled it “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot.” Limbaugh has 20 million listeners and Franken couldn’t keep his show on the air and ended up owing a huge amount in back payroll taxes to his employees. Really now, who’s the idiot?

Politics and punditry are messy affairs, but it sure would be nice if the discourse could at least reach junior high school level. Just disgraceful.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

The democrats, especially those damned democrats, think the American public is stupid. And they’re betting on the fact they’re correct in their assessment.

Please follow their logic on energy policy. Their approach to solving our current, but neither first nor last, energy crisis is to do the following:

1. Place a “windfall” profits tax on oil companies that are mostly foreign now.
2. Go after “speculators” who invest their money in oil futures.
3. Encourage greater use of windmills and solar energy.
4. Block all drilling for oil in the U.S. and keep our nuke plants shut down.

The windfall profits tax they are peddling to America is the same that was peddled by Jimmy Carter in 1976 when gas prices were *gasp* surging past $1.00 per gallon. We were assured then, and we are now, that these taxes would not be passed along to the consumer. Now, what corporation does not pass all their costs, including taxes, on to the consumers? If you believe this, I have a Social Security “Lock Box” I’d like to sell you.

The only windfall that will occur in the passage of this shameless tax is to the government which is raking in a windfall off the doubling of the price at the pump. I can’t see how taxing, or even “punishing,” the oil companies does anything to alleviate the cost of filling up our cars even if the oil company executives take a vacation from their corporate responsibilities and eat the tax. But this move by democrats is intended for the public to feel better about getting even with those billion dollar evil corporations that are producing something we are ridiculously addicted too, and not to actually do anything to fix the problem. Now, do you feel better or just stupid?

After they have taxed us, err…. I mean the oil companies, they want to go after the heartless “speculators,” as they are called. An oil speculator is just like any other investor who risks their money betting which way the market will fluctuate. This is done for all sorts of commodities including just about everything we eat. Some days these investors win and some days they loose.

Those who are betting on oil prices to rise have been winning lately because they can read the newspapers and they realize that Washington is paralyzed. If nothing changes and demand continues for oil as does the unrest in the Middle East, they believe the price of oil will go up. If they thought politicians in Washington were acting as grown-ups, they may begin to speculate that the price will go down. But they have nothing to base that assumption on, so they will continue to bet on higher oil costs.

The democrats demeaning the speculators and offering really no solution to the crisis is feeding the speculation that prices will rise. I wonder if democrats actually are aware of their role in this and have investments in oil futures or if they area really that stupid. The jury is out.

Speculators exist across the board. They are betting gold will rise, they bet corn and sugar beets would rise when Congress placed mandates on ethanol mixes and even one of the democrats’ big heroes, George Soros, made nearly $1 billion speculating that the price of the Pound would drop and then did all he could to talk down the currency.

I’m not sure what they have planned for the speculators, but I’m speculating it will do nothing to address our long or short term energy problem. However, they area certainly expecting you to believe meting out punishment to investors will make you feel better.

Which brings us to their brilliant idea of getting more of our energy from windmills and solar. Only people who gave us ethanol and the ensuing food shortages and food riots could expect us to believe this is a logical way to replace fossil fuels. Based on the Department of Energy’s own statistics, we get less than 2 percent of our electricity from solar and wind and, mind you, none of this moves our cars around.

It would be wonderful to be able to get our energy from such things, but the technology is not where it needs to be to make this realistic. It would be great to have more funding for alternative fuels and energy and I fault Bush and his predecessors for doing absolutely nothing to encourage development of other reliable sources. We’re the most technologically advanced society but we seem to be sitting on our thumbs when it comes to real and practical innovation. For now, solar and wind only produce a needed counterbalance to the hot air coming our way from Washington and you’d have to be tilting at your own windmills to believe it will save us.

Finally, the issue of drilling and nukes. Yeah, I know, the caribou will be pissed. I was a lot more worried about how the caribou felt when gas was at $2 per gallon, but I am sufficiently bothered now that I don’t care what the caribou think. Round them all up and put them in a caribou show at Sea World, I don’t care, but let them know we’re moving into the neighborhood and we’re bringing unsightly drills.

We hear all the debate that places like ANWR won’t produce a drop of oil for 10 years or it won’t produce enough to make a difference. Well, that’s a great way to look at thing, isn’t it? In 10 years when gas and home heating are 10 times what they are now, will we still be saying we can’t drill for oil in ANWR or in the Gulf because it’s 10 years away? Maybe if we had begun drilling 10 years ago, we wouldn’t be having this crisis and I wouldn’t be up so late writing this shrill post.

If you are an environmentalist, please explain this to me: Why is it OK for every other country to be drilling for oil all over the world and it’s not OK for America to be doing the same? I really don’t see the outrage when they decide to drill in Brazil (in the Rain Forest, no less), off the coast of Viet Nam, all over the artic in Russia and Scandinavia, and even off the coast of Cuba. All this means is that we have to get all our oil from places that don’t much care for us and it has to be delivered to us on ships that have a lot more problems with spills than do the pipelines – pipeline technology, by the way, that American companies have perfected for foreign oil companies so that the current spill rate is non-existent.

As long as I have you environmentalists handy, what’s the deal with the nukes? It’s clean energy, especially when compared to coal, and it’s cheap. France does it, producing 85 percent of its electricity from nuclear plants, and you enviros love the French. Frankly the only problem I see with investing in nuclear fuel is that we haven’t graduated a nuclear engineer capable of running a plant in 10 years because there was no job market. We’ll have to import our engineers from France and our immigration problem is bad enough.

While I am aware that hundreds of republicans have done nothing to solve our energy crisis, including the current occupant of the White House, I still have to hand it to the democrats to come up with the least effective ways to deal with the problem. The trouble is, they, along with their supporters in the environmental movement, have been shoveling this crap at us since, well since gas prices were at 50 cent per gallon, and we’re living in a country they think is gullible enough to still believe them. And maybe they’re right, judging from polls. However, I think their rhetoric becomes more difficult to accept when oil costs are driving our airlines out of business, killing us at the super market and hurting those who can least afford to pay double for getting to work each day. I think it’s time to find a new movement for you environmentalists to get behind and let’s get our hands dirty digging for buried dinosaur juice.

June 13

Well The Boy wrote about (click here to visit his blog and see what he wrote) what I didn't seem able to write about this day. Three years ago today my brother died and a part of me died with him. (I get annoyed when people say they "lost" someone. What, did they misplace him?). Yeah, I am surviving and moving on and enjoying my life and my family, but it would sure be better with him in our lives and still around us.

Thanks to The Boy for writing how we all feel and for his touching reminder of who his uncle was and what he meant and continues to mean to all of us. He was, in fact, a warrior prince and one of these days we need to build a statue.

Will Prozac Help This Depression?

As we get near an election, all news about the incumbent party is spun as bad news by the party out of power. Wars get deadlier, global warming gets hotter, government spending is higher and the economy becomes the worst of a generation. I can generally ignore the pre-election blather and write it off to campaign worms living on four hours of sleep, cigarettes and vitamin C. But I am not so sure about the last one; are we in fact on the verge of an economic collapse or just in another normal up/down business cycle? Since I could only read a few pages of Samuelson before wanting to poke my eyes out, I flunked Econ 1 so it’s difficult for those of us who don’t know the difference between classical, neo-classical, Austrian School or Keynesian theories of economics to know if we’re, basically, screwed.

To confess, I have been thinking more about The Great Depression lately because I have been re-reading The Razor’s Edge. (An interesting sidebar to the novel: I saw the Bill Murray Razor’s Edge before Tyrone Power’s Razor’s Edge before reading the W. Somerset Maugham novel that each movie was based on. While I am certain I would draw the wrath of literary and film critics alike, I preferred the Bill Murray version. Or at least it stuck with me because I saw it first.) At any rate, the novel uses The Great Depression as a backdrop to the excess of America during the Roaring Twenties and how it was generally believed at the time that the great American engine could never be broken.

There are some frightening similarities to The Great Depression and today, most notably the rise in personal debt due to low interest rates and the loss of manufacturing jobs. I know today’s economy is global and far more complex than it was 80 years ago, but it seems to me the current credit crunch that is taking down banks and lending institutions coupled with odd monetary policy could sink a financial ship that is already listing.

Rather than be a downer, I am hoping there are those out there who know how this financial stuff works and can put my mind at ease. But, give me something that makes sound logic and is easy for the untrained mind to understand, because I have to admit, I am a bit nervous that all that is out there are reasonable differences based on economic theory.

Admittedly there is a part of me that wants to sell our house, collect all our money and invest in gold, rent a house in a safe and inexpensive small town and ride it out. Most Realtors, stock brokers and other heretics will tell you that home and stock values have their ups and downs and the best investor is the patient investor. Thank goodness my shirt was lost during the stock market bubble, but what if my home value drops in half and it takes the rest of my working life before it works its way back to the current market value? Wouldn’t we be wiser with cash than equity in this situation?

Do we really have to wait for John McCain to get elected and take us to a war with Iran before we would see an economic upswing, or will our future leaders find a prescription to what ails us economically? Put in that context, does anyone out there have confidence that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Obama/McCain will keep us from falling over the cliff? Hell, none of them has ever held a real job, little alone run an economy. Or do we trust today’s captains of industry – business leaders who gave us Enron, World Com and oil at $138 per barrel – to keep the current sputtering economic engine running? Seems to me we’re faced with a Morton’s Fork (look that one up).

Well, don’t just sit there anxiously agreeing with me with your diapers in need of a change, give me some good advice on what to do; what we all should do. I know that the run on the banks during The Great Depression had to do with confidence in the economy and people behaving as sheep, but, as they say down on the farm, the sheep are nervous.

About Love and Other Good Things

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. -- Marcel Proust

There is something I haven’t written about yet, but it is constantly on my mind. The reason I haven’t written about this subject – one that is very meaningful to me – has nothing to do with writer’s cramp or lack of interest. Rather, it is an issue with such a profound effect on my family and me that I want to make sure I put the right mix of words together because anything less just wouldn’t suit the circumstance.

As most of you know, my son is marrying the lovely Amber on June 30 in a quiet ceremony at sunset on a beautiful stretch of beach in Carlsbad. Driving around today in a misty rain and looking up at clouds that look more full and menacing than they really were, I was struck with the thought that we are in the midst of June Gloom in San Diego. Naturally this led me to the glass-half-empty thought that the weather will not cooperate to make their day more beautiful.

Just as I was having these thoughts, and having them on a spot of the freeway that just happened to be near the exact area where they plan to exchange vows, two weak clouds separated at just the right moment and a beam of stunning white sunshine burst through. And so now I know, San Diego will do its duty and provide a perfect backdrop for a perfect day in the life of my family and in Amber’s family. Aside from our house looking like a dress shop and having several thousand dollars worth of silk and taffeta charged to various credit cards and ready for return, it has been a huge honor to be part of the engagement and the wedding plans. The Boy came to me first to discuss the best way to go about finding and affording the perfect engagement ring. I took it as a hint that something was brewing.

Because I can’t keep any news, good or bad, to myself, I told Mrs. Laz who told The Girl who instantly went looking online for rings. She took it a step further the next day and went ring shopping on her own all over town. Within hours, she had found what she thought was a ring that suited Amber and had negotiated the price down to an acceptable range. She took a photograph of it and e-mailed it to The Boy who had to admit it was exactly what he was looking for and was sure it would be what Amber would want.

Only The Boy knows what was going on in his head, but what began as a finance and search query became a purchase so quickly that none of us know if he was just beginning to do one of his typical thoughtful research projects but got caught up by his family members so excited that they all wanted him to pop the question that afternoon. One thing I can report is when he and The Girl met me for breakfast and he opened a magnificent wood box to show me the ring, I have never seen such a proud and happy look on his face. I think he wanted to pop the question that afternoon, too.

He waited until he was able to do it his way and, needless to say, she said “yes.”

Our whole family could not be more happy that we will be welcoming Amber into our lives and even get the bonus of Dan and Jo-Jo, our soon-to-be in-laws. Amber lights up any room the moment she enters, is full of energy – the good kind of kinetic and infectious energy – and is full of love that she is so generous with to every member of our extended family and our friends. If I was ever going to do an evil genius imitation and draw up plans for a perfect partner for The Boy, she would look just like Amber.

I couldn’t be happier for both of them and count my blessings that the Cosmos sent such a perfect person into our lives. Live long, always stay in love and be well you two!