The Destroyer of Finance

 Biden.  So… to really attract the middle of the road and the apathetic, the machine at the DNC thinks: Hey!  Let’s pick an old white liberal senator from the northeast!  Well, we can’t pick a democratic governor from a republican state, because then we might lose that office in the replacement race.  Also, we should pick someone who is a real Washington insider (their words not mine) and strong on foreign policy… since (apparently) Obama’s weakness in economic policy doesn’t matter since we’re going to assume we’ve got a slam dunk on the economy.

 What a bad pick.  What a typical party pick.  Either Obama’s not a smart as I thought, or he had to bow to the party line.  A senator with a long voting record to target?  Someone who embodies party politics?  How does that fit in with the campaign?

 Also, I noted NPR running a promo for a segment on how the DNC convention was seeking to define Obama better.  Why?  Can’t they see that Obama’s campaign to date, the one that has energized people and attracted the middle of the road and the uncommitted right is built on being undefined?

 Hope!  Change!  This concepts are best lest formless so that they can take the shape most appealing to whoever receives the message!  You can’t even attack the issue, because then you’re just being a mean politician attacking hope and change.

 Once you define hope and change it becomes just a list of social programs, taxes, and/or spending cuts that turn off republicans and moderates and project a “politics as usual” air that deflates the enthusiasm of the apathetic voters.  Lists of programs etc is an easy target to attack as well.

 Bloomberg would have been awesome for Obama.  Epic.  Biden is epic.  Epic fail.

 So Bloomberg is a possibility for McCain, but I think Romney works better for him.  Bloomberg has had too much of a public love affair with Obama, and Romney would still give McCain the economic expert that Obama lacks (while McCain has his own foreign relations cred).

 Speaking of foreign relations cred, Biden has such a strong base:

 - Declared that the US had “no choice” but to remove Hussein in Iraq, and voted for the war.

 - Was described by the UN Weapon’s Inspector Ritter as having ignored Ritter’s arguments against WMDs in Iraq while seeking to support his own conclusion that Hussein not only had Bio and Chem weapons, but was attempting to gain nuclear weapons.

 - He supports a “third way” in Iraq, which sounds good on paper (and makes all Bill Clinton fans horny), but is doomed to total failure simply because not only are the majority of Iraqis not on board, the surrounding Arab states wouldn’t support it either (notably Turkey).

- It’s worth noting that he also co-sponsored a non binding resolution against the troop surge in Iraq and joined in referring to the move as the “McCain Doctrine” (actually John Edwards’ words).  Don’t hear much of that talk these days.

- Was/Is? a BIG supporter of the PATRIOT ACT, even going so far as to claim he had introduced an almost identical bill years earlier.

- He does cover Obama’s Jewish sore spot by being a staunch backer of Israel, so clearly that endears him to those other countries we might need to deal with… like Iran.

 I’ll grant that I agree with his more lenient stance on immigration and like that he’s against ethanol, not that he’s view on ethanol will do much good with corn fueled Obama around.  Throw in his views on guns, and he’s pretty much a disaster.

 Will he help the Dems win Pennsylvania?  No.  So he’s big in Philly?  Ahh… Philly has been a democratic stronghold for long time, no?  He’ll certainly NOT help in any of ther southern states.

 It’s amazing how often the DNC can’t get out of it’s own way.

Why living near Dallas is good comedy; why NOT actually living IN Dallas is a bonus; why Dallas might be the same sort of hellhole that Detroit is:  all these things are found here:

A special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets turned tense and bizarre this afternoon.

County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.

Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections “has become a black hole” because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.

Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud “Excuse me!” He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a “white hole.”

That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.

Mayfield shot back that it was a figure of speech and a science term. A black hole, according to Webster’s, is perhaps “the invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an intense gravitational field from which neither light nor matter can escape.”

Other county officials quickly interceded to break it up and get the meeting back on track. TV news cameras were rolling, after all.

 And that’s just a meeting about traffic tickets!  You should see the angst in meetings about road repairs (“What do you mean ‘black top’?  I say we line the roads with ‘white top’!) and school board meetings (“I will WHIP YO ASS!) [quotes for illustrative purposes only, not real quotes.  Yet.]

 Back in high school I wrote a paper in which I made a claim that the US ought to put more effort into builing our bond with Saudi Arabia and less effort into bonding with Israel.  One of the primary reasons I offered was that playing big brother to Israel was a major ass whipping and they are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, so why do we need to catch the flack everytime they take a zippo and an aerosol can to an ant hill?

 In retrospect, I can see the utility of staying close to Israel, even if only to be better able to pull back on their reigns when they start getting too far off track.  Still, it sucks when Iran announces that, because they view Israel as eesentially a US colony, they will treat an attack by Israel as an attack by the US.

 The secret threat in the message is that Iran would try to close the Strait of Hormuz in the event that Israel did something… rash.  The Strait, which connects the Persian Gulf with the Indian Ocean, is a whopping 21 miles wide at its narrowest and, oh yeah, something around 20% of the world’s oil supply passes through it.  Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE (even Bahrain and Qatar) all shiping most or all of their oil out through the Strait.

Above the water is Iran, below the UAE to the left and Oman to the right.

 From the picture, you can probably figure out the problem.  In an age where almost every geographic choke point has been rendered meaningless by technology, we have the Strait of Hormuz.

 Objectively, Iran’s military is really no more than mediocre.  Excluding the land forces, it’s really quite poor.  The air force is not terribly well equipped and lacking in talented pilots and the navy is a collection of jumped up speed boats with only a few frigate sized war vessels of debatable quality themselves.  Oh, and three Kilo submarines.  Ah.

 The rub: to close the Strait, Iran doesn’t have to physically prevent tankers from going through it.  Much like the genius of mining a harbor (which, by the way, Iran could do to the Strait), you don’t actually have to DO it to be effective as the threat alone will bring ship traffic to a halt.

 You’re the owner of an oil tanker.  It’s worth probably no less than $50 million and significantly more than that if it’s one of the really big suckers.  You know all it takes is one missle from an armed speed boat that sneaks by your naval escort, from a jet that manages to come in under the radar, from land even… or a torpedo from one of those damned submarines.  Sure, the subs are one shot weapons sure to be blasted out of the water after the attack, but you probably aren’t anxious to make your boat be the bait.  In addition, your crew is more than likely not going to be willing to man the ship on such a voyage.

 So, I saw a prediction for $300 oil if the Strait were closed, and $8 gallon gas (I guess that would mean, what, $15 gallon gas in Europe?  Just add about $4 to what it is now).  I think they overstate the gas price a little… maybe only $7.50.

 How do you feel about bombing Iran now?

 I really think that if Israel and Iran would go sit in their corners and think about what they’ve done that the price of oil would be ready to come down some.  There are clear signs of demand destruction (both short term and long term), which should help the supply/demand fundamentals, but this other sideline crap is stirring things up too much.  That’s fine with Iran, of course, as they think higher prices are better anyway.

 In closing, please don’t bomb Iran, but if you do, please legalize whale hunting so we can harvest their blubber for oil again.

 I’m going to open up a new Starbucks… oops,

 Rene Lacoste

 How is it that we get by with so much stuff that is charitably described as “jury rigged”?  It’s amazing.  Of course, my grandfather had a slightly different yet explosively uncomfortable phase he used.

 Old people are funny, no?

 Don’t hold your breath for blog tomorrow.  I’m certain there will be a way to survive, I’m just not sure what it is.  Given that I’ll be stuck in a small metal box sitting behind a continuous chain of small explosions, it will be difficult to bring fire to the people.

 Hillary Clinton won the culturally diverse, academia oriented state of West Virgina by a not inconsiderable margin.  What does this mean: A) nothing, B) it gives her more excuse to hang on for Puerto Rico (which she’ll win) and some other states that she has a good shot at winning.  She’s actually got a decent chance of running the table in terms of remaining primaries.  I seriously doubt she’ll still manage to end up with the party nod after convention, but she’ll make things interesting.

 The other effect is that it just goes to show that Obama might not be able to win West Virigina, so maybe I have to change my electoral map projections to account for that.

 I’m still hanging with my Bloomberg deal.  Obama + Bloomberg = November party for the DNC.  Obama + Clinton = November party for a different national organization (and not the GOP).  Obama + other = push.

 Today is my last day in this cube.  I’ll be in a new (Actually brand new) cube on monday in our new HQ building.  I’ll also be back on the train which means:

• I save a shi-ton on gas money
• I might run into my giant douche bag ex-manager.  One can hope.

 So sad.

 Sup?

 I regret to announce that blog service may be interrupted this Thursday and Friday, as I voyage to New Mexico.  I thought about staying home and using a lighter to burn a dollar bill about every 8 minutes (but saving the gas and pain of sitting in a car for 8 hours), but decided that wasn’t a workable option.

 Why 8 minutes?  Assuming $3.75/gal, 33MPG (presviously observed), and avg speed of 65MPH, you get an average fuel burn of 12.3 cents per minute.  Factoring in parts wear, a dollar every eight minutes is probably overly generous.  And while gas can still be had for $3.60 here in Big D, out in the Styx (and in New Mexico), you’d have to provide sexual favors to get gas for less than $3.80 or $3.90.

 And yes, fun with numbers is fun.  And excessive.

 Also, based on a really expensive consultant’s advice, there may be format changes forthcoming.

 In China, the Earth decided to make some format changes via a nice 7.9 magnitude earthquake.  Here we learn that shoddy construction methods + crowded urban environment + big bad rumble shake shake = indiscriminate population control.

 Continuing the lessons of population control in Asia, we seeing further what having a terrible government in charge of a poor populace leads to in Myanmar.  The military rulers in Myanmar ought to cast an eye over to pre-WWII China and remember that if you take away enough from the people you rule, eventually the threat of death isn’t a deterrent.  Maybe we need to throw some history books in with the aid shipment.

 Along the same lines, things still not looking great in Lebanon.  To recap, Lebanon, Zimbabwe, Myanmar: all off the vacation list.

 Coming back to the domestic side of things, we see that tomorrow Mrs. Clinton expects a big win in West Virginia.  Why the big win?  Well, since it’s obviously not due to a lack of ethic demographics at the voting booths, it must be because of the sophisticated electorate.

Like most people in Mingo County, West Virginia, Leonard Simpson is a lifelong Democrat. But given a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain in November, the 67-year-old retired coalminer would vote Republican.

“I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist,” said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides.

Mr Simpson’s remarks help explain why Mr Obama is trailing Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, by 40 percentage points ahead of Tuesday’s primary election in the heavily white and rural state, according to recent opinion polls.

 It seems I should insert some sort of biting, curt commentary here about reaping what you sew, but surely I am mistaken.

 What does this do for Clinton’s presidential bid?  Nothing, of course.  It’s still about as alive as that woman in Florida a couple years ago.  All that’s left is a lawsuit, some bitter tears for the media, and then turning out the lights.

 Clinton for VP?  If you want Obama to win, you better start throwing Holy Water on Clinton to make her go away, but rumor has it the Mrs. Obama isn’t to keen on the idea to begin with.  Clinton brings Obama nothing, and brings me only typos that I have to constantly correct.

 I’ve been waiting to see who my leader will be, and a new front runner has emerged: Mr. Barr.  He still has to beat the former anonymous Democrat Mike Gravel, but I’m not sure that will be such a hard thing to do.

 I can’t wait to throw my vote straight into the toilet in November.  It’ll be grand.

 By the way, did any democratic supporters of Gravel realize he supported the general equivalent of privatising Social Security?

 So, yeah.  Go world, and everyone have a happy stuff.

 Look, there’s not much real super news.  Oil is still expensive, and people are still proclaiming that the beast (credit crisis) is dead.  I get a sensation that the potential for a Dewey/Truman moment is high, but maybe that’s my chaos lust speaking.

 Japan had an earthquake, but again, what’s new.  You live on a giant volcano, you’re going to have earthquakes.  6.8?  Whoooooo.  One of those cheap vibrating hotel beds shakes more than that.

 Ok, so I’m over doing the reduction.

 We also learn that maybe cyclones in Tsunami aren’t so much a global warming problem (let’s tap the breaks on that one) as a problem with a bad government.

 And, we also finally have a conclusion to the Democratic primary… only problem is one candidate doesn’t know it.

 That’s about all… other than being just a wretched day on the stock market.  Quite the backdrop for declaring victory over a down economy.

 Time for a nap?

 Traci Lords

(By the way, I copied this post to my clipboard right before I got logged out.  So suck it, wordpress.)

 Crap, I just remembered I was going to do Union Pacific today.  I shouldn’t have scheduled such a thing for the fourth business day of the month.  Still possible though.

 Indiana and North Carolina make their attempt at failing to bring us any resolution to the Democratic primary today.  Allegedly, Clinton will win in Indiana and Obama will win in North Carolina, which pretty much means we could have had these two primaries a couple weeks ago and just saved the time and money.  Although Zogby says Obama is up 2 points in Indiana, so if he’s right we’ll hear all about how brilliant he is, and if he’s wrong then, well, dont’ worry about that.  No polling group has beeter spin masters than Zogby International.

 Ron Paul might be down, but he’s not out.  Why is it so funny to see such a small player find ways to exploit the system to frustrate the people that made the system?

And his supporters are still active at the grass-roots level: GOP officials abruptly canceled the Nevada state convention when it became clear that Paul’s backers outnumbered those for McCain and stood ready to take control of the delegate process.

 Genius.

 In the land of Tsunami, I’m sure the US is responsible somehow.  I think the take away from this is that millions of people + terrible living conditions + giant natural phenomenon = bad times.  What to do about it?  Beats me.

 Proof that national news editors are not always good at nature and NBC is funny.

 Just some random stuff, no panic.

 We’re close to many things!

 We’re getting close to 100 firearms per 100 people in the US!  You know, if we could reduce the number of guns, maybe we could cut the crime rate to around the same level as South Africa, Colombia, or Pakistan.  Peace and harmony.

 We’re close to agreeing on doing something stupid!  It’s a stupid article, also, but…

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) unveiled his nonsensical solution to $4-a-gallon gasoline two weeks ago when he proposed suspending the federal excise tax on gas during the peak-travel summer months.

 Stupid.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) seconded McCain’s motion and spiced it up with a proposal to tax windfall profits of oil companies to make up for the lost gas-tax revenues.

 So, stupid and stupider?  Windfall profits?  Damn, that’s irritating.  Stupid.

McCain’s gas-tax gimmick is about what one would expect from a Republican candidate, given that his party’s shortsighted energy policies are partly to blame for the fix we’re in today. Rather than supporting conservation measures, such as tougher vehicle fuel standards, the Republicans wasted years fighting a pointless battle to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. President Bush continued to hammer on this tired theme Tuesday, as if unaware that it would take about a decade to extract a drop of oil from the refuge and that doing so would have a negligible effect on prices.

 What happened to the bi-partisan spirit?  During the years of cheap oil, let’s be honest, the Democrats weren’t really all that excited about pushing through higher MPG standards.  However, the point about ANWR is true.  Stupid and stupid.

Any economist could have predicted this: If you lower the price of gas without increasing the supply, it will only raise demand and thus boost prices.

 Ah!  Smart!

 In other political news, Obama’s former pastor loves him some spite/scorched earth and, no, we’re not done with election season yet.  Sorry

 Not a dentist reference, I promise.

 Hillary whipped ass in Pennsylvania!

 What does this mean?

1. More money for Clinton.
2. More time for Clinton.
3. More pain for us.

 Next up is Guam on May 3rd, but the next date of any importance (look, if you want to live in political relevance, don’t live on Guam) is May 6th when North Carolina (big for Obama) and Indiana (Toss up) vote.

 If you live in Indiana, accept my condolences.  I suspect Clinton will be spending lots of time there, since she’ll know the best she can do in NC is keep it close.

 After that we only have to wait a week for the white people of West Virginia to vote, and then just another week for Oregano and the metropolitan state of Kentucky.  If the issue is still in suspense, which all partizan Republicans will hope for and all normal citizenry will be lighting votive candles to avoid, we can wait with baited breath for the demographically diverse strongholds of Puerto Rico (6/1), Montana (6/3), and South Dakota (6/3).

 Good times!

 If I was a terrorist and didn’t want to be, I don’t think i’d carry a gun.

 Ben Hur died this weekend.  Rumor has it that after expiring, the doctor was finally able to get that rifle out of his hands.

 The hottest new sport sweeping the globe is Torch Snuffing.  Loads of funny.

 Absolut thinks foot flavored vodka is a good product, panders to the Mexican a little too hard while forgetting about this thing called “the internet.”  Maybe Absolut would like to run a new marketing campaign where in an “Absolut world” there’s a 50 mile wide body of sea between the US and Mexico.  I’m pretty sure that’d be in the same range of taste and sensibility.

Absolut said the ad was designed for a Mexican audience and intended to recall “a time which the population of Mexico might feel was more ideal.”

 So, when everyone lived in abject poverty, were lorded over by a handful of very wealthy aristocrats and dictators who constantly mismanaged their resources, and were a nation that was of almost no importance on the international stage?

 Why would they need to recall that?  Can’t they just look around instead?

 Clinton is in big, deep S as polls show her nearly tied in former stronghold Pennsylvania and waaaay behind in North Carolina.  In theory we could be done with her as early as May 7th.

 Opposition leader writes column for The Guardian as Mugabe goes through the motions to rig election and continue crapping in his personal sandbox (Zimbabwe).

 Man, that is some stuff!