McCain vs Obama

So who are these guys running for President? Despite a vigorous primary season, voters apparently still don’t know.

From the Wikipedia, John McCain had a mixed college career at the Naval Academy. He apparently was well regarded, sometimes stood up for students being bullied, but also had conflicts with authority and while he worked hard at literature and history, didn’t work as hard at other subjects. He graduated with a low class ranking.

McCain then became a naval aviator. I guess he was somewhat typical as a navy pilot, doing some hard partying apparently. He apparently was not real talented at flying planes off and landing planes on carriers, although he did well enough to have flight status, and that is saying a lot. He was shot down in Vietnam while flying a jet on a ground attack mission (those are the types of missions most likely to be shot down by surface to air missiles). He was injured, taken prisoner and tortured for six months. The Vietnamese then offered to release him, because his father had been made commander of all US forces in Vietnam. It was an offer probably made for propaganda purposes, and McCain refused it, and as a result he remained a POW for a total of five and a half years. As a result of his torure, he is not able to lift his arms above shoulder level today. The quality of resisting authority that he should as a cadet was also one he showed as a POW. It is brave, but kind of questionable in terms of showing judgment.

I am going to leave McCain’s political career and personal life for a different time and glance a bit at Obama. Obama was born in Hawaii (although conservatives like to question that), and spent his first six years there. He then moved with his mom and step dad to Indonesia. He came back to Hawaii for high school, living with his grandparents. I get all this again from the Wikipedia; from there I see no sign that Obama ever lived in Kansas (FWIW). He started college at Occidental college, apparently a small but good liberal arts school. After two years he transferred to Columbia. Anybody he has ever looked at transferring schools knows that the admissions people generally hold you to a higher standard (although Luke Ravenstahl maybe the exception to the rule). So that Obama was able to get into Columbia two years in speaks well of his scholarship. He studied political science with a concentration in international relations there, which may have equipped him better equipped to handle foreign relations than the Republicans have claimed. After graduation, he spent five years out in the working world, a year at a corporation, a year at a public interest group, and then three years at Chicago non-profit. Then he applied to Harvard Law.

I remember reading that Harvard Law gets so many talented applicants that it is not enough to have perfect grades and LSAT’s, you have to be interesting. Well, here was Barack Obama, a mixed race child raised for a while by a single mom, who had lived in Indonesia for a while, and who had worked for non-profits. The thing is, Obama justified the “you have to be interesting” policy. He got elected president of the law review and graduated magna cum laude.

One conservative commenter over at the Burgh Report suggested that Obama had a privileged education. As far as I know, he was not a legacy (unlike the current President) and he paid his own way (thousands of dollars of loans, probably couldn’t even do it today). Now, some say Obama is too good at playing politics. Maybe, but isn’t a pragmatic and smart individual better than someone who fights authority when it would be better in the long run to go along. Do we want someone who might be able to persuade people like Putin that the economic consequences of alienating the west out weigh the domestic (in Russia) benefits of occupying Georgia, or do we want someone who calls him a bully?

I hope Hillary Clinton goes to Texas and Ohio and Pennsylvania, and tells the people who voted for her that Obama is for health care and social security and jobs. Obama is polling behind McCain because some people will seize on any reason not to vote for a black man. But McCain is scary, he has drifted to the right (instead of to the center) and it also appears his mental faculties may be showing signs of impairment.

And on ...

There are still new and old voices piping up about bicycling around the internet. This was a comment on Pittsblog (reprinted in its entirety):

“Here's why drivers are never going to be happy...

Drivers see no real benefit from cyclists, but clearly are inconvenienced by them.

That's about all there is to it.

Bicyclists need to somehow compensate drivers for the "externalities" related to their decision to cycle.”

Another commenter on the Burgh Report essentially blamed all car-bicycle accidents on bicycles, for engaging in the risky behavior of riding on the street.

I think the objections to bicycles have fallen into two different groups. First are the people who say that all bicyclists break the law. I guess they simply want to get rid of bicyclists, and that is their club. I will say once again that I believe nearly if not all car drivers also break the law, by speeding and/or rolling through stop signs. Obviously they stop at stop signs if there is a car (hopefully they also stop for bicycles) in the way, but at a clear stop sign …

The second set of objections, possibly combined with the first, are that bicycles are in the way. This is more honest, and perhaps sometimes more legitimate. After all, an out of shape cyclists riding a poorly maintained bicycle on a bridge like the Liberty or Smithfield Street Bridge in traffic is likely to hold up a lot of people. That’s where a bicyclist should consider using the sidewalk, even if (s)he has to walk the bike.

But regular commuting on city streets like Negley or Northumberland shouldn’t be a problem for drivers. It should be easy to pass a bicycle after a short time on these streets. Still clearly this is what drivers who complain about bicycles in the way have in mind.

Some people are suggesting bicyclists pass a test. But reasonable questions arise, how do (some low income) bicyclists get to a testing center, and is the a practical minimum age for the test? I myself think some safety requirements should be enforced. All bicyclists should be compelled to wear a helmet. All bicycles should have reflective devices and a bell. But I think the cops should carry, in their cars, reflective tape, a supply of bells and coupons for free helmets (available perhaps at police stations and mini-stations),. Other people suggest licensing, registration and perhaps taxing bicycles as well or instead (like the commenter above). Fine, let’s tax all vehicles by weight, which should determine how much they tear up the road. I’ll match my 35 pound bike with your 8,000 pound Hummer. A penny a pound or a dollar a pound (a dollar a pound might hit my Hyundai Accent pretty hard).

Some people who are riding a bicycle do so because they don’t have the money to shell out for bus fare, much less buy a car. These are people for whom a fee to ride a bike might be enough to make them give up working and go homeless. But they probably weren’t working a particularly important job, it can be filled with another poor person, and that’s one less bike on the road. Result!

I myself can easily toss my commuting bike on a bike rack and drive to a testing center, I can pay a fee to register my bike, the whole thing. But there are people for whom it would be a burden. Maybe in this new bike regime people could bring a copy of a tax return to prove income level and receive free registration a certain level. That is if they’re not working two jobs and can't get to the testing center.

And on ...

Chad Hermann kept at least as busy as me continuing to comment on bicyclists. He was doing it because the thread refused to die on the Burgh Report, he got emails and since stuff has starting appearing in the PG. The emails he reprints have (in the parts he reprints) a tone reminiscent of the arguments against driving 55 mph. People drving that slow represent a hazard, because we have to slow down.

Now, I know I’m lucky because almost all of my commute takes over roads with parked cars or wide enough that I pose no problem for drivers. Cyclists who have to cross bridges probably ought to ride on the sidewalk, if there is one. But you know, if your best suggestion (as one of the emails starts) is “Bicyclists should just stay the fuck off the road ” and then make some half-assed tax argument, then you are not adding to the conversation.

Again to be fair, that particular email mentioned dedicated bike lanes. Now, we might get some more bike lanes around here, but drivers are not going to be happy about having some of their commuting space cut. The letters and emails and blog discussion we are getting now will be as nothing compared to the push back from drivers if they are forced to share the road.

Dr. Hermann also referenced a Rich Lord bicycle piece in this morning’s PG. Dr. Hermann notes one quote “It takes a lot of energy to get a bicycle from zero to cruising speed, he noted, so if the coast is clear, some cyclists roll on” from Scott Bricker of Bike Pittsburgh. I suspect this is exactly the argument most cyclists would make, but as more cyclists do come onto the roads, I suspect the red light and even stop sign jumping will have to stop. It may be something experienced riders can get away with (although it is illegal), but with more cyclists on the road, all will need to behave the same, to keep unthinking drivers and/or unthinking cyclists from coming together in an unfortunate way.

Mr Bricker also apparently said that onus to avoid collisions rests most heavily on motorists (possibly not a direct quote). Well … yeah, but bikes can move to the side even faster than cars, and cars can’t stop as fast as bikes. So if a bike is changing lanes or even swinging out to avoid a parked car or a road hazard that only (s)he can see, the cyclist needs to make sure it is safe. We don’t have blinkers and the times we might need to make hand signals might also be the times we need to keep both hands on the handlebars to be able to brake. Use a mirror, make sure it is safe to swerve (otherwise stop and wait).

Lastly, I will note that Dr. Hermann, in his own defense, notes he has always skewered bad drivers over the last four years. I dunno, I read his blog periodically and I only remember maybe some drivers with cell phones complaints. It certainly seems in keeping with his personality that he might complain about bad driving he had witnessed or read about. I just wish he had made *mention* of the equally illegal behavior of cars (speeding, not stopping atstop signs) at the time he was applying “scorn, these last few days, to equally discourteous cyclists and the often silly justifications for them”. On the other hand, as I have said, we take much of the illegal behavior of car drivers for granted, in fact, we seem to count on it as we drive.

Undying issue ...

This bicycling issue has surprised me with its longevity. I sort of understand the supporters of cycling, but the hostility shown by opponents of cycling is a bit baffling. There was a letter in the Issue One section of Sunday’s paper from a Kristin Debbis that is a good example of that hostility. She evidently travels in the hilly area of the city around Station Square, where they used to run that race. Now, possibly some cyclists are zipping down the hills in the area, whipping around blind corners. She would have a point in complaining about them. But the style of her complaints reveals a startling lack of understanding of how bicycles operate, how they have to operate. She complains about cycles running red lights (illegal), turning left or right across oncoming cars (isn’t that what you have to do in traffic), going 15 or 20 MPH under the speed limit (hello, they are bikes) and (my favorite) riding next to but not on the sidewalks (that’s what the law says bikes should do). Basically this woman wants bikes out of her way.

Biking on roads where there are two traffic lanes is tough, and if I am in that situation I will often ride on the sidewalk, although that is not my preference. But Ms Debbis wants the City to make sure she is not inconvenienced by bicycles at all. Unless she is driving a Prius or Civic Hybrid, she is not doing all she can to make sure her driving does not inconvenience the rest of us. If you ask (or demand) something of the rest of us, we have a right to ask what you are doing for us.

In the interest of fairness ...

In the interest of fairness I should note that Chad Hermann posted a follow up to yesterday’s commentary about bicyclists. In this post he mentioned his personal experiences with bicyclists (as Bram did, but not in such detail). Chad Hermann thinks only 75% of bicyclists break the law. And he did mention someone passed him twice, in a car, so he also noticed the behavior of one motorized lawbreaker. I still say we close our eyes to the illegal behavior of cars/SUVs/pickups and mostly to motorcycles, because we all go at least a bit over 25 and 55, and we slow down but don’t actually stop at stop signs.

Dr. Hermann also, after taking an “aw shucks you don’t want me to do this” attitude, made a couple of suggestions. First he mentioned there should be a complete re-examination of the traffic laws for bicycles, which is actually a very enlightened suggestion. I suspect he would not want the rules loosened any, but that is entirely speculation on my part. He then suggested bicyclists be licensed. This is a more complicated suggestion. It’s a lot like the Republican suggestion that voters have photo ID’s. I myself, and most everyone I know who rides bicycles, would have no problem with this suggestion. As I stated before, though, some poor people rely on bicycles as cheap transportation. If you can only afford a bike, then trekking to a bicycle testing center (the old driver testing center – now a Pittsburgh police station – on Washington road?) could be fairly arduous. The license requirement might be yet another excuse for racial profiling and harassment (not necessarily here. Again, if you can only afford a bicycle to get around with, you probably can’t afford a $25, $50 or $100 ticket.

But I have to give Dr. Hermann credit for making the suggestion, and if it were ever made by a policy maker, I’m sure the issues I just cited would be raised. And I would like to see something done so that bicyclists and car drivers know what bicyclists should and shouldn’t do in traffic.

Death to Bicyclists

Are bicycles the same as cars? What do you think? I think they’re not. Not as fast and entirely human powered. Bicycles are in fact regulated more than cars; the rules say, essentially, get out of the way of cars. Stay to the right. I’m not sure what we are supposed to do when we want to go left. It appears that some people would prefer that we just stay off the road, or maybe disappear altogether.

In the wake of the announcement of the bike czar, two blogs made statements about bicyclists. John McIntire called bicyclists annoying, and reckless bastards (in his post “Annoying Bikers Edition”). And Bram Reichbaum (on the Burgh report) said that “As of today, 100% of cyclists have egregiously broken at least one traffic law -- disregarding stop signs, blowing through red lights, blowing through red lights to make left turns, weaving in and out of traffic.” (emphasis his). I sent McIntire an email, which he ignored, but I used the comments area at the Burgh Report to complain to/about Bram’s post. I mean, do people even notice when cars glide through stop signs? But that’s ok, they’re cars, and they belong on roads. Bikes don’t.

Into this fray comes the great commenter Chad Hermann, with another long, wordy post (I know, pot calling kettle). Dr. Hermann is another blogger who doesn’t actually believe in democracy in that his blog is not set up to receive comments. Anyone who has read his blog knows how he handles comments, I will leave it at that (res ipsa and all that). I believe Dr. Hermann wants to be seen as the voice of common sense, just someone intelligently commenting on life in a sea of idiots. But Dr. Hermann is, in real life, a speech writer for a Republican Congressman running for re-election. His agenda is advancing the agenda of the Republican party, the people who brought you the “conservation is a personal virtue, but has no place in policy” energy policy.

Dr. Hermann suggests that cyclists see criticizing them as the same as criticizing the pope or Barack Obama (making sure to link Obama to a religious figure, to get that little shot in). He says he is entertained and infuriated by “the clockwork accumulation of silliness, of moral relativism and ethical obfuscation, from the (for lack of a better term) pro-biking commenters”. Mind you, McIntire called bicyclists annoying and Bram said all bicyclists break laws every time we ride, both prior to any bicyclist comment. But we are the self-righteous moral relativists.

I’m sure that there have been cases where a bicyclist caused someone else’s death in a traffic accident. But I think we are talking fingers on a hand numbers, not the tens of thousands in auto accidents. I really think this is a case of people complaining about the mote in my eye, not considering the beam in theirs (oh great, a biblical reference, who does he thing he is, Obama?). I should point out that many of the bicyclists in the thread on the Burgh Report essentially confessed their sins, admitting about blowing through traffic lights and stop signs. Not one driver admitted rolling through stop signs or driving 70 mph on the Parkway or Route 28. The drivers did say that bicyclists would get respect when they started obeying the laws. I suspect African Americans would find that statement familiar. Of course, as long as one bicyclist breaks one law, we will all be tarred with the same brush, branded as annoying law breakers, while drivers continue rolling through stop signs, blasting along at 70 mph in a 55 mph zone and killing bicyclists.

Bicycles are both transportation for the poor and toys for the rich. You can buy a bike at a yard sale for $25 or at a bike shop for a thousand. But bikes as commuting vehicles do not use (scarce) gas, do not pollute and don’t take up much space on the road. As I say, bikes don’t cause traffic deaths (except perhaps from heads exploding because of bicyclists sheer moral relativism and ethical obfuscation). But my wife heard a discussion on a bus as it passed me cycling to work one day. The bus driver was being encouraged to run me over. You just don’t hear about how car drivers should be killed just for being on the road.

Again, the basic theme on Dr. Hermann’s post was that bicyclists were admitting breaking the laws and he took them to task for it. But if a bicyclist suggested drivers also break traffic laws, he dismissed them as being juvenile. When a car and a bike tangle as a result of either law breaking or accident, the bicyclist will end up in much worse shape almost all the time. Which is I guess what Dr. Hermann wants: the death penalty for riding bikes.

Today's stuff n@

In a few places I have seen people applaud the recent run up in gas prices, because it forced people to take measures to conserve. Specifically people drove less, possibly some drove slower and demand for SUV’s and pickups fell through the floor. From a policy standpoint, I think that on balance the run up in prices was not a good thing. It was not good but government had no hand in controlling it, and no way to ameliorate the negative effects on the poor. What we should have been doing, starting twenty five years ago, was taxing gasoline at one hundred percent. The revenue from that tax could have been split between poorer people and trucking companies, to keep the price of transporting things from going too high (just like Congress never raided the Social Security trust fund …). 1983 is about when OPEC lost its discipline and the price of oil dropped after its first big run up in the mid seventies. Right then the government should have taxed the fifty cent gas (whatever the price was at that point) at fifty cents, and kept the tax at one hundred percent. Of course it should have never allowed the states to wriggle out of the 55 mile per hour speed limit. Doing those things would have saved huge amounts of gas, and would have limited our dependence on foreign oil. Alternatives to petroleum based gas would have been much more cost effective, and thus brought to the market much sooner

By the way, the people who say that traffic deaths actually dropped the year after the Congress finally jettisoned the 55 mph national speed limit, never seem to note that by then air bags, which had been made mandatory a few years back, were finally becoming a factor in traffic accidents. An air bag in a 70 mph crash is better than no air bag in a 55 mph crash. But what’s best of all is an air bag in a 55 mph crash (actually what’s best is driving at 55 mph and avoiding the crash you wouldn’t have been able to at 70 mph).

On a different note, apparently yesterday there was an incident in City Council yesterday. Doug Shields had an exchange with Barbara Trant, City Personnel Director, which led to her walking out. As she was doing this, apparently other Council people (notably Jim Motznik) were having something of an exchange with Mr. Shields. Shields actually sent the police officer assigned to Council after Ms.Trant, to no avail. Mr. Shields then walked out of Council, and Mr. Motznik called for his resignation.

Pat Dowd had had words with Mr. Shields earlier in the Council session, and later was quoted in the PG (I paraphrase) saying that it was not the first time that had happened and it was unfortunate. Pat Dowd is very intelligent, as far as I can see. But maybe he has spent too much time first with high school students (who can be intelligent but are never experienced) and then with Council people (who, in this town, have no training in their jobs). I shouldn’t wonder if Dr. Dowd expects to be in line for Mr. Shields’ position. But there is a problem with that. In this town people can succeed if they offer extremely brilliant ideas, but all the press Dr. Dowd has received shows him to be little more than contrary. Alternatively people can succeed in politics if they are good party men or women, but we know that Dr. Dowd is not doing that. It ends up that I have to wonder how Dr. Dowd will fare in the next district election, much less in any advancement of his position.

Your own hype ...

Last week I noticed a post over at TWM. Mr/Dr Hermann noted how a Florida man had threatened to kill Barack Obama, and was taken into custody. He also noted that the man had also threatened to kill the President, but the newspaper story had put that fact down in the fourth sentence. Mr/Dr Hermann speculated that a threat against the President wasn’t important enough to lead the story, or possibly, not important enough a reason to arrest the man.

Except that Barack Obama was traveling in Florida at the time.

It’s a terrible thing when you believe your own hype.

Fuel economy

Again I have been ignoring my blog in favor of kibitzing on others people’s blogs. Also, I have not had an idea that seemed real … well, “post-worthy” (with apologies to Seinfeld). But there have been a few things rattling around the back of my brain.

First, the question of how fast people should be allowed to drive keeps nagging at me. I have settled for myself that about 45 miles per hour is an optimum speed for my car. I had purchased a little plug in on-board computer that calculates fuel economy. I believe if does that by measuring the speed of the car against the rpms, although I have read it is something to do with the speed of aid moving through the engine. So all that is a little suspect, but I will say my MPG as measured by how many miles I go versus how much gas I put in my car when I fill up has shown improvement (up to an average 36 MPG overall in my last thankful). But if I try to use my car as an example, people may say that their eight cylinder is different than my four. Plus the EPA seems to support the idea that 55 MPH is the optimum of efficiency with graphs like this.


But I have been thinking about why that graph might differ so much from my own experience. Then it occurred to me that the Feds do their mileage testing in a lab. They put the car on a dynamometer, a device that has rollers and measures how fast the wheels are turning. I believe it might also provide resistance, but clearly it wouldn’t take into account wind resistance. The Feds may try to take this into account, but given the chart above, it doesn’t look like they succeed totally.

I saw this next chart elsewhere on the web. It looks like a Volkswagen made an effort to measure the fuel efficiency of the cars (Volkswagen TDI’s) of several of their members. It must have been a long process, measure fuel efficiency at several MPH points, say 25, 35, 45, 55, 65 and 75 (or something like that). I myself am struck by how, even though the cars (all the same model) get different levels of mileage, how the curves are shaped exactly alike. The mileage is clearly highest at a point between 35 and 40 MPH, and drops from there.


I think that this graph would justify calling for a return to the national 55 MPH speed limit, although it would make an even stronger case for a 50 MPH speed limit. After all, my car seems to max its fuel economy around 40 MPH, except up hills, where anything below abouit 48 MPH makes the car lug or at least strain some in fifth gear. So 50 would be a good catch all for all makes of vehicles.

By the way, the top image above came from fueleconomy.gov, and the bottom from drive55.org, although they clearly got it from someone else.

On another related front, conservative commenters over at the Burgh Report, as well as everywhere else, have called for drilling in the OCS and the ANWR. One rather obnoxiously phrases it as drill through a polar bears head to get to oil (and then they wonder why liberal bloggers call them names). National polls show the same sentiment among regular voters, 67% want drilling now in at least the OCS. Conservatives claim their motives are patriotic, while I think voters just want to go back to the way it was three months ago, when all you has to worry about was foreclosure, getting laid off or healthcare. Even Obama has picked up on this, now supporting limited drilling.

So we want to drill now, to get this oil out so that we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil. For how long, a couple of years? Maybe ten years, if we are lucky. If it takes ten years to get to the oil, the longest we could be looking at the oil lasting is maybe twenty years from now. Does anyone thing we will be off oil by then? Plug in hybrids are coming, but Toyota can’t keep up with demand for it’s hybrids now. Unless no new cars are sold that aren’t plug in hybrids, then we will have heavier users of oil with us for some time to come.
What I am leading up to is that there may come a time when we really need that OCS oil, not like now where we want the oil to return to an easier life style. Possibly even in a couple of years, four dollar a gallon gas may seem like the good times.

Now, going partially electric in cars is going to put a strain on the electric grid, with all those cars recharging over night. Any additional contribution made from wind farms will need to go to augmenting the electric grid before it goes to replacing coal burning power plants. And plug in hybrids will still need some gas sometimes, for trips between cities. By which I mean that we are not going to get off oil dependence in four years, or even eight. We may be looking at slowly reducing our use of oil over the next fifty years. So we may need that OCS oil in forty years, when everyone else runs out, and we can turn a good buck selling (and using) it. So we should resist using it now. Our children will thank us.

Ruth Ann weighs in ...

I hadn't noticed Ruth Ann Dailey's column yesterday, but the Two Political Junkies did, and compared it to Bob Herbert’s column in the NYTimes the other day. There are interesting differences between the two, and interesting connections to other people. For example, Herbert mentioned the attempt of the Republicans to define Obama as “the other”, someone not of this country, “not sufficiently patriotic” or “one of us”. Well, David Brooks spent an entire column today about how Obama consciously stands apart from his enterprises, teaching law, organizing in the community, going to a church, being a state legislator or US Senator. Americans, Brooks says, like to be able to define their candidates and they can’t do that with Obama. That’s why Obama is not ahead in the polls. Brooks says nothing about Americans defining their candidates by race, because he doesn’t have to.

Ruth Ann Dailey pushes back in a different way. She trots out her familiar point, that the Democrats were the party of racism before the 1960’s. And she’s right, the Democrats were the party of racism, probably most explicitly in the south, but I suspect also in the north when needed. In fact, the Republicans provided the votes to get the civil rights legislation passed in the 1960’s. But since the “Southern strategy” of the 1970’s (darn that Richard Nixon, he was also responsible for the 55 mph speed limit), the positions have flipped.

But Ruth Ann does an interesting thing in her column. She accuses the Democrats of accusing the Republicans of racism ever so subtlety, but she never describes the McCain ad that set off the whole issue, at least not its racial angle. Which was my earlier point, that the attack was subtle enough that, for example, Bram Reichbaum didn’t think it had a racist component. It was just enough to set off certain voters with a predisposition to look for such things. Since the ad went out with John McCain’s approval, it needed that cover. So Ruth Ann Dailey self righteously attacks the Democrats as hypocrites, while McCain pulls even in the polls. David Brooks self righteously describes Obama’s failure to pull ahead as Obama’s own fault for being so aloof and distant, providing those independents and Democrats of a racist inclination with cover for their rejection of Obama. Meanwhile McCain jettisons everything he believed in for one last chance at the presidency, becoming the new pro-business candidate, the one who will block new regulations and allow Americans a few more years living a fantasy lifestyle. “Apres moi le deluge”

McCains ad

In my previous post, I suggested the McCain ad with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton was subtle, and probably I really should not have. When you think about how the ad was made, the people making the ad asking themselves, "if we want to describe Barack Obama as a celebrity, whose image should we use?". Are there bigger celebrities than Spears and Hilton? Yes, Pitt and Jolie, Tom Cruise, Oprah, Tom Hanks all leap instantly to mind. What Hilton and Spears share, besides some celebrity, is a reputation for loose morals.

Now for decades African American men (and now teenage girls) have also had a reputation for loose morals. This is true particularly in southern states, but thanks to the magic of television, African-Americans have played the villain in numberless cop shows. We would naturally assume that a Britney or Paris would want to experiment with a black man, an Obama's natural impulse would be to indulge himself. That is a lot to read into one ad, but I think it is justified. Obama himself is the product of a failed interracial marriage, raising that specter with his mere presence.

Obama should push back soon against these ads, although I'm not sure how. He needs to include us (all Americans, but particularly white America) and tell us we are better than these ads. Racial overtones, even if meant humorously, are never acceptable.

Of resumes and senior moments...

David Brooks, conservative NYTimes columnist, has stopped praising Barack Obama’s intellect, speaking abilities and policy proposals, and has started showing his true colors. In complaining about Obama’s lack of experience, he suggested you would have to go back maybe two hundred years before finding a presidential candidate with less experience. Like most people, I don’t know much about the experience of Presidents or candidates before 1950, with one significant exception. In fact, Obama might have himself mentioned that exception in the past, although in any event I know about it from having read a book about the exception. As I considered that exception, I also remembered reading some of the late night talk show host monologues, and the following hypothetical sequence came out of those musings:

Obama, answering charges related to his lack of experience, pointed out that Lincoln was only a one term Representative from Illinois. McCain responded that it is the height of arrogance for Obama to compare himself to Lincoln, and anyway McCain had been in the Navy during Lincoln’s term, serving our country. Aides later commented that it was a natural mistake for Senator McCain to make. After all, Lincoln and Ford are the same car company.

Heh.

Well, so I shouldn’t quit my day job, but there are some points worth considering, sort of in there. For example, on the surge Obama is starting to look like the Fonz, who never seemed to be able to even utter the “wrong”, let alone admit a mistake. It would be a relief for Obama to say he was wrong … except for the follow up question. About the only thing Obama could do would be to blame faulty intelligence. Otherwise, he would have to blame his inexperience or that he was standing with the crowd of Democrats in mechanically denouncing everything about the war/occupation. The second choice would not be good for the “change” candidate. Obama had better get used to the question, because he is going to hear it in every interview until his head explodes.

On the McCain side, it is clear that someone McCain trusts read “The Political Brain” by Drew Westen (yes, I am bringing that up again). In McCain’s Paris Hilton/Britney Spears ad, a narrator calls Obama the biggest celebrity in the world as Hilton and Spears images appear before Mr. Obama, and then the voice asks if he is ready to lead. The ad didn’t need the images of Spears or Hilton, it could have shown Oprah Winfrey and Tom Cruise, or Tom Hanks and Celine Dion, or other celebrities. Obama’s response was equally subtle, and frankly restrained, talking about his “funny” name and how he doesn’t look like the Presidents on the dollar or five dollar bill. And that’s when the McCain camp made its next move, saying Obama was tarring McCain as a racist.

There is an elaborate dance being choreographed here. Each side wants to portray the other side as either racist or playing the race card, without appearing to. So the McCain ad, by using the word “celebrity”, justifies its use of the image of young white women with known bad reputations and loose morals. Obama’s response was the sort of subtly he has used before, that his story is unusual and that he knows he is not what people are used to in a Presidential candidate. Of course, part of that is that he is black, but he didn’t say that. And the McCain campaign’s response was to say that the didn’t appreciate the insinuation of racism.

These are subtle attacks, pretty much like the Willie Horton ad was a (sort of) subtle attack on Dukakis. Each side is raising the specter of race, but waits to accuse racism until there is sufficient provocation. David Brooks (again), on “Face the Nation”, said that this is not the campaign McCain wanted to run, the McCain campaign must be delighted with the results. They have successfully introduced the idea of racism in the campaign by claiming they were accused of it, that they are the victims. Obama will have trouble diffusing this. He will have to give another epic speech where he convinces people not to give into their fear. That will be a really tough needle to thread, because a mis-step anywhere and Obama will offend white voters who do not thing that they themselves are racists, they just cross the street when an African American youth approaches.

It will be an interesting fall. I just wish Obama wouldn’t vacation in Hawaii, even if he did spend part of his childhood there. Branson, Mississippi would be a much better choice (even if Michele would never forgive him). Just don’t wear a cowboy hat, Barack.

Screeds (I like that word) ...

Iraqis face an uncertain future. They can either have a continued occupation by American troops, where Iraqi non-combatants get caught in the cross fire between Americans and insurgents of whatever stripe. Or the Americans will leave, and the Iraqis, who have seen their professional class decimated in a wave of kidnappings and killings in 2004, will have to try to run their country without engineers and doctors and lawyers, although they do have a surplus of thugs. The best part is they have no control over what happens, they are subject to the whims of the American people and Congress. We wanted to export our brand of democracy, and that’s exactly what we did.

I bring the Iraqi situation up because I hear people, as the economy worsens, voicing opinions (loudly and rudely) that would not pass the grandchild test. The grandchild test, probably reminiscent of (one of) Kant’s Categorical Imperatives, is whether you could imagine telling your grandchildren they should do this thing. Take drilling off the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) and/or in the ANWR. Let’s say the liberals are wrong about it taking ten years to get the oil; that oil could come out of these places within six months. But how long is the oil projected to last? Ten years? Twenty? So our grandkids will face a future without oil. Of course, we will have been preparing for that future all along, with new solar power and wind initiatives, right? Well the best predictor of our future behavior is our past behavior, and the last seven years of the Bush administration (or the previous eight, or the twelve before that) we did nothing. So the drill now people are like the invade Iraq now people were in 2003. No long term plan for the future.

I have gotten myself involved with the national 55 mph speed limit movement in a tiny way, signing up to be a local resource for Drive55.org. The people who argue against the 55 mph speed limit are interesting. They almost all call the idea stupid (using that word in particular). Some also cite statistics or studies, most of which probably come from right wing think tanks, or from the objectors own personal experience. So they say traffic accidents went down after the 55 mph speed limit was ended, or their last car got better mileage at 65 (or 75) than it does at 55 mph. Sometimes they make the personal argument. One fellow at a hypermiling website (hypermiling is the practice of driving in such a way as to maximize fuel economy) first said that instead of a 55 mph speed limit we should remove/retrain the incompetents who don’t maximize their own mileage (so taking away driver’s licenses is preferable to driving 55) and then said that there is a stretch of a California highway where he can nurse his Prius downhill at 70mph and navigate the small uphills only on battery power, where his gas powered motor would turn on if he went 55 mph. Therefore, because he gets better mileage at 70 mph in this one spot in one type of car using obscure driving techniques, no 55 mph speed limit for anyone.

I think the 55 mph speed limit passes the grandchild test. If you are going to drive a gas powered car, don't waste this finite and scarce resource. I think not drilling now in the OCS passes the grandchild test. Let's wait, see how bad it gets, and drill when we really need to live, not just to maintain a wasteful lifestyle. I think solar and wind and bicycling all pass the grandchild test. Do things that don't use resources your grandkids might really need.

Iraq, drilling now, driving 65, 75, 85... You kids stop that, now.

Thank god for Democrats, say the Republicans

When this Bush came into office, the standard complaint made by the Republican administration and the Republican Congress was that the country was in a shambles because of the years of the Clinton administration. Never mind the fact that Clinton had six years of a Republican Congress. The Clinton’s had ruined America and now George W Bush was here to undo the damage. As no progress toward doing that was made during the first few months of the Bush administration, what a relief it must have been to have the terrorist attacks. Now there was someone new to blame for the economy and the lack of progress the Republicans had made. So Bush turned his attention toward Afghanistan and toward hunting Osama bin Laden, with the help of NATO and the good wishes of much of the rest of the world. Bush’s attention soon wandered toward Iraq, and we invaded them. And the years rolled on, as Osama and Afghanistan were forgotten and we started an occupation of Iraq with US government officials tossing packs of money they called “footballs” around and then losing the "footballs". The new problem was Al Qaeda in Iraq, aided by communist sympathizers at home (also known as Democrats and Hollywood). Although the economy grew some from 2000-2006, and average wages grew a bit, that was mostly because the wages at the top end grew dramatically while the middle class and the poor just stagnated. Katrina brought into sharp focus just how inept our government had become. Although the Republicans tried to blame the Democratic state and local government, clearly the federal government was not and still is unable to address the problem. So what a relief is must have been when the Democrats won the Congress back in 2006, for the first time since 1994. Now all the problems that have been festering since 1994 can be laid, once again, at the feet of the Democrats.

That’s just what Jack Kelly did in today’ column, in between taking shots at Al Gore. “The power grid already is strained by the unwillingness of Democrats to construct electric power plants of any kind.” is a sentence buried in the middle of Kelly’s anti-Gore screed. So suddenly the Democrats have stopped any new power plant being built in the last year and a half, because in the six or twelve years prior, no one was interested in building a power plant (twelve including the Clinton years). What were the Republicans doing between 2000 and 2006? What were they doing after Middle Eastern terrorists attacked our country? Not reducing our dependence on foreign oil by opening up the OCS to drilling (like they now “suddenly” want to). Not authorizing new power plants to be built (ditto). No, the Republicans were cutting the rich tax breaks, ignoring the housing bubble and bringing home the earmarks for their districts like there was no tomorrow.

Yeah, the Democrats, including Al Gore, are not perfect. The Democrats are now getting earmarks for themselves, and somewhere I heard they are the largest in history. Of course, I assume the budget is also the largest in history, the sort of thing that happens in a growing economy. Doesn’t excuse the Democrats, just means they aren’t any worse of villains than the Republicans. And I don’t know why Al Gore has four houses, including the monster mansion in Tennessee. It may be that after he left the Vice Presidency, he thought he might still have a public role, and wanted to be able to receive people in his house in a style they would respect. If he had a modest house outfitted with solar panels, I am sure people would dismiss him as an Ed Begley Jr wannabe, some environmentalist who wants us to wear Jimmy Carter sweaters and ride bikes everywhere.

Instead Gore has an enormous house, on which he has installed solar panels so that his carbon footprint is apparently zero (at least in terms of home energy usage, although possibly he sells enough surplus energy back to make up for the private jet, etc). People who try to lead are human and fallible. Some Democrats are still upset with Gore for not fighting for the election harder, some even for Gore “sighing” in the debate. At least, though, Gore is not calling conservation a “Personal” virtue; something Cheney has not, to my knowledge, apologized for or at least corrected.

I glanced around the web just enough to see that the APS was doing no more than presenting the debate not changing its position. There clearly are scientists who don't believe in global warming, but its not clear to me how *many* there are. When conservative columnists say that the global warming issue is in serious doubt, a web search usually reveals that these claims are made by only a few, and dismissed by many others. It may be that the earth is not quite warming as fast as predicted, just like it may be that the surge in Iraq has in fact been "militarily" successful. But the slowing in the rate of global warming may just show that efforts to reduce carbon output here and there were successful (and not taken into account in the original predictions), just like the military success of the surge may enable the actual troop with drawl from Iraq.

District 7 Town Hall

So I did go to the Town Hall meeting for District 7 last night and I feel I should say something. First of all, seven of the nine Council person were in attendance (it’s easiest just to say that Dan Deasy and Reverend Burgess were not there). There were some preliminaries in terms of presentations by a planning person and a budget person, slides that I wish were on the City website (or if they are, I wish they were easier to find). Patrick Dowd took a few minutes, and said something that he apparently feels is the most important issue facing the City. He pointed out that the City has had a downward trend in population since 1950. Dr. Dowd later suggested to me that now is a time also of extraordinary opportunity, although I have some trouble seeing the opportunity if your funds are as limited as ours are.

Now, I don’t know why people were leaving Pittsburgh up to about 1980, maybe it was that whole sun belt versus rust belt thing. But by 1980, heavy manufacturing industry and the formerly large number of corporate headquarters were gone or about to go, and the people who remained in Pittsburgh were retirees in larger numbers than in other cities. So I pointed out (when I took a turn to speak) that the recent decline could be because of people dying off, not necessarily leaving.

I would agree, though, Pittsburgh needs to attract people to the City. That aside, the other big question about the evening is how the Council members got along, considering the recent news stories and the City Paper article. There was no obvious sign of friction among the Council members. I don’t remember Jim Motznik speaking, although he may have at the end (“This is my favorite part of the job”, they all said). There were a few looks of boredom and possibly frustration on some Council faces during the event, especially when other Council persons were talking, but that could have been because it was a hot room at the end of what was probably a long day and near the end of the week.

Of cours, this is my blog and I want to talk about me. So among my suggestions (when I took my turn to talk) were to install a large solar array somewhere (I didn’t say it, but my favorite target location is Flagstaff Hill), a big, flashy project that might get some attention for the city (could be used to power City equipment like traffic lights). I also suggested the City rehab abandoned houses for people returning to the City (say, from exurbs where it is now too expensive to live), putting police on bicycles, and putting something on the City website to help newcomers to the City, like a forum where they could ask questions and see answers to previous questions. The police thing was a repeated theme for the evening, some people complaining there isn’t enough of a police presence, especially after the police station moved, and one memorable speaker describing a series of events in which she felt she and or her children were targeted by the police, possibly called by malicious neighbors. People were asking for foot patrols, I made the bicycle suggestion as a way of giving beat cops more range and a bit more speed potential, while also saving gas. I don't know for sure, but apparently I was mumbling early, and I think my face got quite red. At least I didn't fumble for words like I have in the past when I spoke in front of a crowd.

Many of the evening’s comments had to do with parking, tree removal, police presence and speeders and other traffic issues. Few were related to the larger issues facing the City, but that’s the nature of the relationship between government and its citizens. Most of us ask for help from the City, County, State or Federal government, especially if we approach an elected official.

The City Paper - "Motion Sickness" (heh)

There was an article in this week’s City Paper on the City Council (Charlie Deitch). Not surprisingly a lot of it had to do with Pat Dowd. He has become well known to Council watchers as some one who is argues the technical merits of issues, any nad perhaps all issues, without really being concerned about who he is arguing with. Away from the Council table he seems to think this is OK:

“There was a time that you knew these five were with the mayor and these four weren't," Dowd says. "You don't have that now, and I think that's pretty important. I don't see the middle as a bad place. I see it as a way of being reasonable and considered, deliberate and open-minded, and not ideological and locked into a way of thinking.

"When is the last time that you were able to sit in a city-council meeting and honestly not know which way the votes were going to go? I think it's great for the process."

But Pat Dowd has accused fellow Council persons of “dirty politics” and “dishonesty”. He is raising his voice (so I am told), showing his passion for his position. But that could be viewed as contempt for someone else’s position, maybe everyone else's position. He appears to be burning bridges, getting a reputation not as an independent thinker but as a contrarian.

Look, I am the last person to disagree with the idea that each issue should be viewed on its merits. I think that each issue should have at least some discussion, possibly an argument, as long as all sides agree to be civil and logical. If your position is based on fact, if you can advocate the logic of your position thoughtfully and persuasively, then you should win supporters. After all, City Council is a place where you have the time and resources to lay out your case (the "Twelve Angry Men" fantasy).

But Council persons are political animals. Their voters may believe that their street should be paved or their local police station should be re-opened or what have you. If you always vote against the Council representative from the West End (for example) when he proposes these things, after a while (s)he is going to take it personally, and start voting against you reflexively, no matter how logical your position. So you need to cultivate allies, especially on a closely divided Council. Ideological purity is nice and all, but tough to explain to voters. Even tougher when City Council seems bogged down in minutia, when the City plunges further into debt and the pension funds fall further behind.

There is no shame in saying “I disagree with Mr. Shields, Mr. Burgess, Mr. Kraus and Mr. Peduto on this specific point, but I understand and agree with their larger intention, so I will vote with them.”. People may say you sold out, but they will understand why. And most will probably agree with you.

There is a District 7 town hall meeting tonight. I plan to attend to see what Dr Dowd has to say. This means I will miss the CityLive event, “Transportation Solutions for Our Region” tonight on the North Side (Hazlett Theatre). I hope someone asks about the price of diesel fuel and what PAT is doing about getting funding to cover it. And I hope someone suggests lowering fares and increasing routes. People need reasons to get out of their cars and get on the bus. The price of gas has gotten many people there (although it is now showing signs of falling due to demand, the right result but the wrong incentive). But others are only three quarters or halfway there. For the sake of our country and the future of the world, we each need to do what we can (says the guy who drove into work today: hey, at least my last tank-full was at 34 mpg, and I plan to ride in tomorrow. Gotta get home tonight for the Town Hall).

Truths we can't handle ...

Chad Hermann is a well known and apparently greatly admired local blogger, as I’m sure you all know. In yesterday’s post, at his blog Teacher, Wordsmith, Madman. he printed an email to him (the second of an apparent series) about the presidential race, and he also pointed out (perhaps humbly) how he has no dog in that hunt:

“Unlike many other bloggers, I'm not playing partisan hack or shill or biased, blindered cheerleader. I'm sticking to a core set of beliefs and principles that have not changed in the almost four years I've been writing this blog. All I'm doing is calling the truth as I see it.”

And then: “It's just that this time, as Colonel Nathan Jessup once famously noted, some people can't handle it.”

Let’s keep in mind that Mr. Hermann (Dr. Hermann? I don’t know) printed a six part analysis of Barack Obama’s speech on race from Philadelphia, analyzing/criticizing it literally word by word. He has accused Mr. Obama of overly florid prose, of incoherence and of course of lying. He was incensed when Obama would not renounce Jeremiah Wright when those videos hit the media rotation, and then also incensed Obama did renounce the Reverend when Wright came forward on his own power to call Obama a slick politician. Keep in mind when the Wright controversy erupted the first time, the media was using video out in the public, out of Wright’s control. The second time, what Wright said was in his control. The first time, Obama used the issue as a teaching moment, to remind white America that most of black America has not made that much progress. The second time, Obama indicated he does care about loyalty.

This is Mr. Hermann’s non partisan, truth telling nature, to spend the vast majority of his posts on presidential politics bashing Obama, yet not indicate why Obama treated Wright in the way he did (both times). To claim not to be a “partisan hack or shill or biased, blindered cheerleader” (on his blog), while his day job is as a speechwriter for Republican candidates (one of whom, Mark DeSantis, I also supported on my blog).

Colonel Nathan Jessup is an interesting choice to reference for Mr. Hermann. What is the truth that Colonel Jessup thought the naval Judge Advocate General Corps attorneys could not handle? That Colonel Jessup ordered the torture and accidental death of a marine, who may have been sick and in any event was not keeping up. That Colonel Jessup then lied about the “training” procedure, denying having ordered it, content to leave two enlisted men holding the bag (so to speak), so Jessup could advance to an important political position.

Actually, for Jessup the truth, as he saw it, was that real men have to do things, difficult things, so that pussies can sleep easy at night. I think that’s what the European and European-descended settlers told themselves as they rolled over the Native Americans. That’s what colonists and later citizens told themselves as they chained blacks. That’s what the military told itself as it rounded up Japanese Americans in World War II. And that’s what the neocons told themselves as they ordered detention without end and torture at Guantanamo Bay.

We can’t handle those truthes. You are damn right.

The Definition of Irony

Someone at the PG must have a sense of humor, or irony, or something. Basically right next to Jack Kelly’s Sunday column, on how the democrats are to blame for high oil prices, there sits Sally Kalson’s column on how she is growing a “Victory Garden”. So the essay from guy who wants us to be able to drive SUV’s for some time to come is right next to an essay on not having to drive for food because you have the ultimate in local eating.

Poor Jack, he might score some points with liberals if he tightened up his message a bit. He starts his essay by noting the danger in drawing conclusions just because one event comes after another, such as blaming the Democrats for high oil prices. Then he proceeds to go ahead and blame the Democrats for high gas prices, although without citing one specific action that would have triggered the run up in high prices. Instead he notes that when President Bush issued an Executive Order ending his side of the ban on drilling off the west and east coasts, oil prices came down. Actually oil prices were flirting with coming down the week before, but had bounced back after Iran had test fired missiles. But at least Kelly had a quote from conservative economist Lawrence Kudlow. Kelly mentions nothing about falling US demand for oil as people use other methods to commute and cancel trips, but he does say that a Bureau of Land Management decision to open 4.9 million acres of land in Alaska to oil exploration, over the objection of environmentalists, contributed to a further drop in the price of oil.

Kelly does say that the price of oil is high specifically because Democrats won’t allow drilling off the coasts, in the ANWR and because Democrats won’t allow the coal to oil gasification thing. He says nothing about the previous six years when no one said anything about drilling. He then claims that it won’t take ten years for new drilling to bring oil (possibly true in some cases, but what about refining capacity), and finishes by stating global warming isn’t coming, and even if it is, it won’t hurt for fifty years; wheras while the democrats carbon control plan, cap and trade, will immediately cripple the economy (to the tune of $144 billion). He mentions a Heritage Foundation Study for the assertion about cap and trade, but no source for his assertions about global warming, Maybe he feels it is settled science that global warming is false from his previous columns on the subject.

The thing is, when Bush calls for a end to drilling bans, it probably does exert a downward pressure on oil prices (which we have yet to see at the pump). Unfortunately, it seems like 1985 all over again. If the price falls, there will be no incentive to keep riding your bike or taking the bus to work. Whether it’s this time, the next or a time after that, there will be point where the price of oil will go up and not come back down. Where Chinese and Indian demand will be big enough to keep the price of oil up. At that point, we may have drilled all the reserves we had off the coasts and in Alaska, and we or our kids will demand the government do something, and the government will say they already did that something in 2008. It’s probably time to deal head on with the twin issues of global warming and high oil prices once and for all. Jack Kelly’s position is exactly the short-sighted wrong position.

How many crises?

There is a great line from Woody Allen’s essay “My Speech to the Graduates”.

“More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

Let’s see if we can accurately count the different crises facing the US.

There is a housing/banking crisis, caused because during the housing bubble, banks made loans to people with out checking to see whether the income they said they had was in fact the income they had. Then those loans were sold upstream to funds for investors, and again the fund managers took the word of he banks that they had done due diligence.

There is a new energy crisis; the price of gas spiked for literally no apparent reason. OK, some people blame Asia for increasing demand, some people blame speculation, some people say it is our own fault (mostly cranky environmentalists).

There is a related crisis, the risk of recession. That is related to the banking crisis in that too many banks or investment firms going under doesn’t help the economy. But maybe more important, the price of gas affects all transported goods, which these days is everything. So there is a risk of the same kind of inflation we saw in the ‘70’s and early ‘80’s. That inflation (named stagflation at the time because it was linked to higher unemployment) was bad enough to induce Congress to agree to higher fuel economy numbers for cars, and to the infamous 55 mile an hour speed limit. The inflation was probably broken when the OPEC cartel was unable to keep its members from breaking their agreements to sell at a certain price. Their price agreement feel apart and the price of oil/gas dropped like a stone. Ironically it probably had something to do with the 55 speed limit and people’s personal efforts at conservation that helped break the cartel.

Finally, there is the global warming crisis. This has to do, apparently, with the fossil fuels we burn to light and heat our homes, to drive to and from work and in general to make our lifestyle what it is. This is the crisis Al Gore was looking at when he called for us to switch our electricity production to 100% renewable in ten years.

Now some of these crises are linked, feed on each other. Some of the ways we address the different crises are in fact the same, others solutions for one crisis make another worse.

We have the sorts of problems where the solutions could propel us into science fiction land; a place where we drive electric cars, our energy comes from wind and solar power, where our farming is a low tech sustainable organic sort, where we travel by rail, not plane (except perhaps zeplins), but mostly we use the internet to interact, so that we keep the critical mass of intellectual thought going to contnuously look for new solutions.

Or we live in a giant mix of downtown Pittsburgh and downtown Detroit.

The banking crisis will have a considerable negative effect on solutions for global warming and some of the solutions for high gas prices. The capital for new solar, nuclear and wind installations just may not be there. We may want the new solar/wind/nuclear not even to replace coal fired plants, but to power a new group of vehicle that use electric power and batteries. Of course, hybrids are not going away, and gas stations are already here, but unless people are buying golf carts for city driving, they may have full size electric cars that they may want to drive more than two hundred miles. If they have to wait three hours just to go another two hundred miles ....

But the idea of replacing our power plants with wind, solar and nuclear is attractive. Whether as a supplement to power new vehicles or to reduce green house gas producing coal and natural gas plants, it is a step in the right direction and may produce a desirable sort of momentum. Another positive step is that people are looking at their transportation options. They are taking the bus, commutuing with a bicycle, combining their shopping trips and have managed to reduce US demand for oil for the first time in a long time. I assume these things are being done in other countries too. This, in turn, appears to be exerting a downward pressure on the price of oil. Of course, the last time the price of gas feel, we soon went back to our old ways of wasting gas. Now we are really good at it. to help us waste more gas, there are the proposals that we drill off the coastal US, and in the ANWR. That would likely also exert a downward pressure on gas, and so we might be able to drive like we always have, for about five, maybe ten years. Burning even more gas, emitting more green house gases.

I don’t know what is going to happen. I’m about halfway through the Omnivore’s Dilema, but I can already see that a lot of what we are doing in terms of obtaining food at the lowest price possible depends on using oil, which will run out eventually, and on allowing considerable pollution and soil erosion (kept in check with ever more chemicals). In other words, unsustainable methods. We could follow Al Gore’s call to action, do things like encouraging local farms that use sustainable methods and switch to bikes and electric cars.

Then I remember the film Idiocracy, by Mike Judge. It chronicles the triumph of the lowest common denominator. Owen Wilson ends up as the smartest man on earth (!). You should check it aht.

Oil prices - We won't get fooled again?

It was probably too soon to declare that oil would keep going up and up, and never come down again back at the end of June. It’s probably too soon to declare that oil is coming down again. Still there are hints that that is exactly what is happening. The NYTImes suggests that oil traders think a recession will cause US demand to fall. Of course, possibly conservation (that dirty word that Cheney spits out) might be having an effect. That may be too radical a notion for oil traders (or newspapers reporting on them) to contemplate, but truth to tell, our record from the mid eighties doesn’t give anyone much reason to think we could maintain a serious effort at conservation. Either way, it looks like the price per barrel is dropping a bit. Of course, so far the price at the pump isn’t budging downward, in fact, in some places it is still edging upward.

What will be interesting to see is if demand for gas plateaus or even starts rising again. I suspect demand for gas in China and India have at least slowed. I know China subsidizes gas, but its payments to it domestic energy companies weren’t keeping pace with the rapidly rising price of oil, so they were threatening to go out of business. China adjusted the price of gas upward by some 20% (as I remember), still below the international price but a respectable jump. Since the Chinese are newish to the driving game, they may park their new cars, or delay buying one, and get back on their scooters, electric bicycles or plain old pedal bikes. Ditto for the Indians.

But while global demand for oil may slow, I don’t see it stopping, at least not in the near term. We could be leaders in this regard, but for every Barack Obama, there is a Newt Gingrich that thinks Americans don’t want to and shouldn’t have to give up their comforts and conveniences (after all, its just the planet at stake). Unless population growth stops rising and becomes only replacements for existing people, the demand for energy is going to continue to rise. But we have gotten the really cheap oil out of the ground. Now it is going to get more and more expensive to even get the same amount of oil out of the ground, and of course eventually there will be less and less of it. At this point, investments in the solar and wind industries look like a good bet.

However, I believe Congress is still paying money to oil companies for … nothing, just giving them taxpayer money. They were doing the same for solar and wind, but the Republicans decided that was a good place to tighten the belt (read: solar and wind aren’t contributing to campaigns yet).

If we do start to use an alternative fuel, how is that going to work? Are there enough french fries to fuel a whole America of veggie mobiles? Would you be able to stop in at your local gas station and plug in your electric car or even plug in hybrid and, in the same time it takes us now to fill our tanks (about three minutes), could you fill your battery? How will your corner gas station feel about competing with an extension cord and your own outlet? And is our electric grid ready to replace all those fuel tankers? Where would all that electricity come from?

These are non-trivial questions, and since electricity is a regulated industry, and there are safety standards for cars, government will have to be involved in the answers. I don’t know what they will be. I would hope that a big push for solar and wind generated electricity would be part of them, but who knows.