Can McCain still Win?

I try to stay away from commenting on this highly charged presidential campaign, but we have now entered the final countdown and a couple of observations are worth making, particularly since the press is currently riding Obama triumphalism.

The numbers that are on the board now are perhaps 49% for Obama and 43% for McCain. Obama has realistically peaked, particularly since Colin Powell has endorsed him, while McCain will surely grow. I would expect that if nothing changes much these numbers would tend to converge to a more natural 1% percent separation, as has occurred in most of the past two man races. It seems that only very rarely can a given candidate convince more that fifty percent of the population to support him. The best he can hope for is to convince some of the fifty percent supporting his rival to stay home. I may sound cynical, but do the numbers.

All things been equal, Obama’s support will actually be tending to fade, although his massive media advertising may well hold it steady, and McCain’s support should be rising while the economic fears begin to fade and market volatility dies down. The question right now is whether Colin Powell is worth a last bounce for Obama

The other thing now going for McCain is that as the economic fears quiet, the voters may be prepared to support a maverick slate. They very naturally migrated to the umbrella of Obama for the simple reason he truly represents business as usual in Washington. To think otherwise is ludicrous, regardless of the claims to the contrary. The voters instinctually understand that with Obama, the only thing that will really change is the name on the door.

No man with a good idea will fail to share it over a year long primary race. That is why we know that this man does not represent change. There were no ideas that were not parroted straight from the Democrat playbook. And he is very much an actor saying his lines while dodging every test with sophistry and legalese. That is what he was trained in.

The problem McCain faces, is that he is a true maverick and his choice of running mate gives him an Energy Czar who has already tamed the dragon in the one area that he needs a strong maverick lieutenant. When Americans are afraid, they will not support a real change agent. Yet on the files that he is visibly strongest which is security and foreign affairs, he is head and shoulders above Obama, and that is mostly because of both experience and direct training in the military. The military trained him, as they trained his father and grandfather for high command.

Therefore a break on those files even at this late hour could accelerate his climb back into contention. Remember that the Pallin bounce showed that he could hit fifty percent and that the attack ads against her have now run their course allowing a return of her natural base to the voting booth.

It is curious. For the first time since Kennedy, America has a choice between a battle tested leader who did not dodge the draft and yet one more machine politician. Unlike Kennedy, they are not the same person. And we are really at war. Both in the Middle East and against time to get our energy house in order. Fine words will not produce a tank of affordable gasoline for the man in the street. energy will be front and center for the next four years because we have to replace millions of barrels of oil for the US economy to keep it running smoothly.

Regardless, a shift of three points by both parties in their natural direction can completely reverse this electoral outcome. Both are quite capable of occuring, however unlikely it may seem. A few second thoughts about Obama will quickly lose him three to four points, while a slight surge for McCain will give him three to four points. It is almost out of reach but just almost.

That is why the Obama attack ads will be unrelenting over the next two weeks.

Orson Scott Card on Congressional Subprime History

It saddens me that it takes a card carrying democrat who is also obviously a patriot to bell the cat on the congressional history behind the financial meltdown. I have always enjoyed his writing in science fiction and have had little exposure to his columns.

So long as we accept as journalists those who are strangers to modern economic thinking and the formalism of scientific thought, we will endure the fashionistas. And today they are blindly running Obama into the Whitehouse. Of course, they also gave us George Bush. Hell, he was prettier too. McCain was always a vastly better choice, but I guess we will never know for sure. Al that scaring sort of made him an ugly prick. At least Lincoln never had to deal with satisfying a television camera.

I thank Orson for piecing together the history of this debacle. Had I been still directly active in the security business, I would have been yelling loudly as many were. Now we all pay the price, not least the poor folks who were given a couple of years pretending that they could afford to live where they were.

I found this originally on Jerry Pournelle’s website.

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

By Orson Scott Card

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?"

( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.
You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina

Global Warming Dogma

I find it interesting that in the face of a couple of solid years of the media promoting global warming dogma, that poll respondents are so terribly unmotivated. It is not outright rejection but surely represents a healthier level of skepticism than I would have comfortably anticipated.

We have already seen a political leader in Canada impale himself on the issue. This suggests that political leadership will need to be very circumspect regarding the support of any initiative tied directly to global warming no matter how shrill the true believers are.

Support exists for programs that help wean us away from Arab and Hugo oil, simply because it is good common sense. We are spending massively on offshore oil with little going the other way. Whereas money spent in North America stays in North America. We see the reality of that with the tar sands which is a boon to capital spending in the US rust belt.

The tragedy of buying oil from the Middle East was that the only thing they really seemed to want to buy from us was our guns. It took China to buy up all our old worn out factories.

It is clear to everyone that if we produce all our own energy, that a lot of our geopolitical problems will wane. We will still have rogue regimes to deal with but they will be financially weakened so long as they avoid modernization. North Korea is an excellent example. Their options are utterly circumscribed by their poverty and their nuclear program is a Potemkin village as a result.

I have learned a long time ago to not underestimate the common sense of the electorate. They are saying that we need to take better care of our environment, but it must be done at a profit. That is what they will support. There is no panic to do it at an economic or social loss.

After saying that, I have little faith in either Obama or McCain getting this right. Neither have the hands on economic experience that I would like to see. I do have faith that American business will get it right in spite of who is in office. In fact they are doing it right now while everyone is distracted by the financial crisis.

Believe it or not, by January, the global financial system will be stabilized and chastened and in the throes of establishing a global regulatory framework based on full disclosure in lending. Lack of any disclosure got us here.

The best advice that we can give the new president then is to do nothing while it all begins to work again. I do not trust either of them with a new economic idea at this time.

The good news is that there is clearly no electoral support for a radical reshaping of the tax regime to impact on global warming and certainly no mandate is been given for such.



Poll: Global Warming On Back Burner

By DAVID FUNKHOUSER The Hartford Courant

October 21, 2008

Just a sliver of voters say global warming is the most important issue they are weighing in deciding whom to support for president. Nonetheless, the issue appears to be playing a role in how voters make up their minds and could be key for undecided voters, according to a new poll out Monday.

The survey, conducted by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities, also found Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain among registered voters by a margin of 9 percentage points, a result consistent with other recent polls.

With the economy in turmoil, that global warming even registered as an important issue with undecided voters came as a surprise, said Anthony Leiserowitz, one of the researchers and a professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

The poll, taken Oct. 7-14, surveyed 2,189 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Asked how important a candidate's views on global warming are in making up their minds, nearly two out of three undecided voters — 62 percent — said it is "one of several important issues."

Just 1 percent said it was the "single most important issue," and 37 percent said it is "not an important issue."

Another surprise, Leiserowitz said, was how skeptical many of McCain's own supporters are of their candidate on the issue.

Just under half of those who said they will vote for McCain also said they did not trust him "as a source of information on global warming." Of those leaning toward voting for him, 64 percent distrusted him on the issue.

Both of the candidates have proposed programs to address global warming, and McCain has been out front on the issue among Republicans.

"Many of those who don't trust [McCain] on this issue are less likely to say it's happening or it's real," Leiserowitz surmised. "This suggests to me that on this issue, they're holding their nose" to vote for McCain.

On the same issue

, 15 percent of Obama's supporters distrusted him, and 36 percent of those leaning toward voting for him distrusted him on global warming.

Overall, forty-eight percent of voters said they will vote or are leaning toward voting for Obama, while 39 percent say they will vote for or are leaning toward McCain, the poll said. Nine percent were undecided.

Historic Sarah Palin Rise and Energy Independence

I normally do not comment at all on current news since rarely is it truly important in the framing of the issues of the day except perhaps through the mists of time. Then there are weeks like the past that reach a threshold to really stand out and beg for comment. Here last week we had a possible market bottom and the abrupt emergence of Sarah Palin as political kingmaker.

I say possible market bottom because it is the first week of September, the down move is now testing a prior low from two months ago when the worst financial news was first breaking. Also this low is 22% of the all time market peak. To go the next 10% all that strongly touted bad news would have to be true. If that bad news is not true and I am seeing solutions going into place to prevent the worst, then stocks are cheap again and the worst is over.

Remember that the real stupidity has been cleaned out over the past two years. All the holders of bad paper have been working overtime to repair the damage. Stabilizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should mostly end the surprises and also stabilize housing prices. We are almost ready to return to prudent business as usual.

There will now be plenty of cash around to buy equities and this is one of the better times of the year for such buying of bargains. This last brief shakeout sets the stage for a decent bullish quarter offsetting the past nine months of ugly financial news and markets.

The price of oil continues to slip as everyone wakes up to the idea that $145 oil suppresses demand and that Americans want out of the oil business now. The oil price decline has also taken the speculative money out the commodities markets in general and they are all in major decline. This was long overdue. Next year everyone will be complaining about surplus everything.

This readjustment in global pricing will have the immediate benefit of improving cash flows as this source of costs is finally abated. This means that business can improve across the board over the next two years.

Then into this mix we have the introduction of Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate for the Republican Party. What a week!

I dislike commenting on the US political scene since I am an outsider looking in and can surely only offend everyone. However, I have watched the media give Obama a free pass for the past year and have been disquieted. I am not the only one. He has not been brought to heel on his visible attachment to long discredited policies of the liberal left. And let us be totally fair. The wacko right has policies that are just as far from the pale of acceptability. I simply believe that a country’s leader must be pragmatic and an independent thinker above the simplistic ideas of the ideologues. Obama may well be such a thinker, but he hides it well.

This set him up with a giant bull’s eye on his back for the moment that someone changed the story line. You must also admit that the press was getting tired of the great storyline presented by the Obama candidature. The nomination was wonderfully choreographed as the coronation of the prince culminating in the most heralded oration since the Gettysburg Address. I think he got twelve hours of coverage before the rug got pulled by McCain. Since then for the past several days he has barely gained a mention as the press leapt happily onto the story line of Sarah Palin.

The Campaign or battle is now truly joined and he is up against two wonderful scrappers who are surely not going to let go control of the script for the next sixty days.

More importantly, their success means a probable one term McCain presidency followed by a probable two term Palin presidency. Goodbye Hilary.

Vastly more important to the Republican brand itself is that their supporters identify with this renegade style of candidate. Remember that the original success of the party with Newt and the boys was as renegade outsiders. That they became insiders much too fast was their undoing.

I have no doubt that the first task undertaken by a McCain presidency will now be the reforging of the entire US energy business. My readers know what the solutions must be and see in my postings many of the most viable options. These have been mere words to date. In the hands of visionary leadership they can become total reality in the next four years. Sarah was totally right to drive the building of a working gas pipeline from the Alaska North Slope through the Mackenzie Valley (which may turn out to be the greatest store of hydrocarbons on earth) to the pipelines in place in northern Alberta to the lower forty eight. A huge long lived store of natural gas is a giant boon for the American economy and this pipeline and others have been dickered over for thirty years. It took political will to finish the job.

Readers already know that North America can be energy independent. It takes immediate conversion of the long haul transportation industry over to LNG, preferably from Alaska and rapidly expanding THAI oil production in both the Alberta tar sands and possibly in formerly depleted US oil fields. Cattail ethanol can also be expanded everywhere wetlands exist at a production rate a least an order of magnitude greater than corn. Full out this can all be done in the next four years.

I have seen no evidence that Obama can even imagine change on such a scale. I suspect that McCain/Palin are both able to and believe enough in themselves to go forward.

I think that this week will be remembered as truly historic.

Oil Price Choke Point

I think this article by columnist Dick Morris, more than all the other hand wringing going on, has got it. The great transition out of the fossil fuel paradigm is underway. The political support is now in place to have the US economy and thereafter the global economy completely retooled away from any reliance on oil in particular and eventually natural gas and coal.

I expected it to take much higher prices to reach this trigger point, but it appears that we are here. The massive financial resources of the modern global economy will now be harnessed to shift us out of the fossil fuel energy trap.

Of course, if the Brussard fusion energy system works out, the transition will even be abrupt. The transition will appear to be abrupt anyway. The automakers are today cranking out electrics and hybrids. The next generation is next year. It is amazing to me that even manufacturers appear to have gotten on to internet time.

On top of all that, those who have actually read through this blog over the past year will have seen us discover several nifty strategies that are even happening now and many others if successful, that will be a major part of the energy equation within twenty years at most.

To begin with, conversion of the diesel truck fleet over to LNG is a must because this releases a major portion of our oil demand. LNG is not going into anything other than capacity shortage for a very long time. It is still a fossil fuel, but it is a good quick fix for the developing squeeze on global oil supplies. The last oil crisis pushed oil out of the home heating business. This one needs to shift the haulage industry out.

The conversion of the automotive fleet into less oil dependency is underway. My guess is that it will be able to cut demand there by about half over the next five years.

Several millions of barrels per day of demand can be fairly cut without any special action taken and in a simple response to the current price regime. And that is what we need to give us the five years we need to mobilize the alternatives.

What I have found always delightful, is the way that a generally free liberal economy is able to do when facing a clear cut challenge. It is amazing how swiftly decisions can be made and implemented in the face of sudden death. Now try to imagine any bureaucracy performing like that.

I had a revealing conversation yesterday. A Canadian businessman who has made his life for the past decade in Hong Kong told me that about two years ago the Chinese government veered away from attempting to involve the state and is now supporting the same style throughout China. It was very much a case of recognizing that China needed more of what Hong Kong has. This also suggests that within a generation we will see Taiwan climb back aboard as it will not matter anymore. I also now expect electoral systems to start working their way vigorously through the body politic. There is just too much heat to contain and that will blow it off. I also suspect that the political leaders of China are ready to transition to a fully democratic system as the middle class is now emergent and very conservative.

In any case, as I have said before, the oil price regime has shifted from the twenty year $30 mark to the plus $100 mark. This is a four fold increase in the cost structure and is now sitting at the upper range. We cannot afford this. The rest of the globe cannot afford this. What is more, we now know that we cannot depend solely on the oil industry. During the seventies oil shock brought on by the initial declines in US production, there was always the Middle East. All those reserves are no longer enough to satisfy projected global energy demand.

A lot of alternative energy strategies become feasible when cheap oil is $100 per barrel. We will soon see that price again because right now, consumers of oil are rapidly adjusting and demand is dropping. So unless we get a serious supply shock of a couple of millions of barrels per day, we will retreat from the $140 range. The long side speculators will get creamed and we will have a serious oversold market very quickly. The range may even open up to $60 to $140 before stabilizing at the $100 mark.

For those who like history, the seventies oil crisis peaked at $40 and crashed to $12. That was still four times the sixties bench mark of less than $3 and the real market shook out around $20 for the next twenty years. As I said, an accident could take us to $200, but it is now more likely we will see $60 first.

McCain Scores Big With Offshore Oil Drilling Proposal

Thursday, June 19, 2008 2:06 PMBy: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

John McCain has drawn first blood in the political debate following Barack Obama's victory in the primaries. His call yesterday for offshore oil drilling — and Bush's decision to press the issue in Congress — puts the Democrats in the position of advocating the wear-your-sweater policies that made Jimmy Carter unpopular.

With gas prices nearing $5, all of the previous shibboleths need to be discarded. Where once voters in swing states like Florida opposed offshore drilling, the high gas prices are prompting them to reconsider. McCain's argument that even hurricane Katrina did not cause any oil spills from the offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico certainly will go far to allay the fears of the average voter.

For decades, Americans have dragged their feet when it comes to switching their cars, leaving their SUVs at home, and backing alternative energy development and new oil drilling. But the recent shock of a massive surge in oil and gasoline prices has awakened the nation from its complaisance. The soaring prices are the equivalent of Pearl Harbor in jolting us out of our trance when it comes to energy.

Suddenly, everything is on the table. Offshore drilling, Alaska drilling, nuclear power, wind, solar, flex-fuel cars, plug-in cars are all increasingly attractive options and John McCain seems alive to the need to go there while Obama is strangely passive. During the Democratic primary, he opposed a gas tax holiday and continues to be against offshore and Alaska drilling and squishy on nuclear power.

That leaves turning down your thermostat and walking to work as the Democratic policies.

McCain has also been ratcheting up his attacks on oil speculators. With the total value of trades in oil futures soaring from $13 billion in 2003 to $260 billion today, it is increasingly clear that it is not the supply and demand for oil which is, alone, driving up the price, but it is the supply and demand for oil futures which is stoking the upward movement.

The Saudis have made a fatal mistake in not forcing down the price of oil.

We could have gone for decades as their hostage, letting their control over our oil supplies choke us while enriching them. But they got greedy and let the price skyrocket. The sudden shock which has sent America reeling is just the stimulus we need for a massive movement away from imported oil and toward new types of cars.

The political will for major change in our energy policy is now here and those, like Obama, who don't get it need to rethink their positions. To quote FDR, “this great nation calls for action and action now” on the energy issue.

What has been a back-burner problem now has moved onto center stage and McCain has put himself in the forefront.

The Democratic ambivalence stems from liberal concerns about climate change. The party basically doesn't believe in carbon-based energy and, therefore, opposes oil exploration.

That's why Obama pushes the windfall profits tax on oil companies — a step that tells them “you drill, you find oil, and we'll take away your profits.” But Americans have their priorities in order: more oil, more drilling and alternative energy sources, flex-fuel cars, plug-in vehicles and nuclear power.

With his willingness to respond to the gas price crisis with bold measures, McCain shows himself to be a pragmatist while Obama comes off as an ideologue to puts climate change ahead of making it possible for the average American to get to work.

Of course, the high price of gas makes it inevitable that the U.S. will lead the world in fighting climate change.

With $5 gas, Americans will switch en masse to cars that burn less gasoline. Already we have cut our oil consumption by 500,000 barrels a day in the past year (about a 3 percent cut).
The move away from oil will be exponential from here on out, dooming radical Islam and reversing climate change at the same time. But while we are getting new cars, we need more oil and McCain has flanked Obama on this issue. Big time.

EPA Demonstrates Common Sense

It is good to see the EPA demonstrating common sense, hard as that is to believe. Particularly after watching Al Gore push tortured analogies decrying the opponents of the global warming ideology. I am getting disturbed that some of this bone headed thinking will work itself into the global economic system.

The worst idea that I heard recently was that the developed world, after shipping our polluting industries offshore, should turn around and slap on a carbon tax on all imports. We really need to turn the current financial panic into a true depression.

I have rarely seen such a lack of economic leadership in the political world. Both Democratic candidates sound hopeless on the issue, although perhaps you can trust Hillary to actually do nothing as her husband had the good sense to do in a different time and place. Of course, if you live in Pennsylvania, you may think she means it about NAFTA, and if you live anywhere else, you sure as hell hope she doesn’t. Obama however, seems to be a follower of ideas that may betray him and he has not come out with a strong convincing economic position. Unfortunately, we can say the same thing about John McCain. He however, appears most likely to recognize and follow good advice. I am personally impressed by his support of the Iraqi surge and he is certainly the best option for wriggling out of there.

We have been blessed for the past forty years, to have had strong voices who have positively influenced economic policy and have benefited with a full twenty five years of solid economic expansion that reinvigorated both Europe and Japan and ignited the emergence of both China and India as viable economic powers.

Yet we always hear the voices of the economically ignorant who desperately want to promote state power in the naïve belief that this can work. How many Katrinas do we need? Human greed will trump good intentions every time.

That is the elephant at the party in China today. And it is starting to rumble. The only escape hatch for the Chinese political leadership with their loot is in fact to start a program of free elections, starting at the local level and quickly moving to the higher stages in two year steps. It could have been done slower, but I do not think that they have that much time left. Heaven no longer needs them.

The truth is that global warming was likely never tied to CO2 production as we have investigated this past year. But CO2 production without paying attention to CO2 offsets is just bad husbandry unless you think throwing night soil out the window is a sustainable practice. CO2 management is not about not burning fossil fuels – they will all one day be burned – it is about using good husbandry to maximize CO2 sequestration in the soils every way we can.

It struck me today that terra preta soil culture will permit the maximization of soil nutrient content. This means that no food crop should be ever nutrient deficient which is the holy grail of organic farmers. At this point, this is only my hypothesis, supported by a scattering of evidence. I suspect that it is both possible and sustainable.

Recall that in 10,000 years, that agricultural man has never had a way to create fertile soil easily if in fact at all in many circumstances. Corn culture terra preta does just that in just a few years. The resultant soil is a nutrient sponge.

EPA Signals Caution on Global Warming

By H. JOSEF HEBERT – 3 days ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government made clear on Thursday it will not be rushed into deciding whether to regulate emissions linked to global warming, as the Supreme Court directed nearly a year ago.

Such action "could affect many (emission) sources beyond just cars and trucks" and needs to be examined broadly as to other impacts, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency wrote lawmakers.

Stephen Johnson said he has decided to begin the process by seeking public comment on the implications of regulating carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, on other agency rules that cover everything from power plants and factories to schools and small businesses.

That process could take months and led some of his critics to suggest he was shunting the sensitive issue to the next administration.

"This is the latest quack from a lame-duck EPA intent on running out the clock ... without doing a thing to combat global warming," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. He is chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

The Supreme Court said in April 2007 that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is a pollutant subject to the Clean Air Act. The court directed the EPA to determine if CO2 emissions, linked to global warming, endanger public health and welfare.

If that is the case, the court said, the EPA must regulate the emissions.

The ruling, in a lawsuit by Massachusetts against the EPA, dealt only with pollution from cars and trucks.

Johnson said Thursday that if CO2 is found to endangered public health and welfare, the agency probably would have to curtail such emissions from other sources as well. That could affect a range of air pollution, from cement factories, refineries and power plants to cars, aircraft, schools and off-road vehicles.

"Rather than rushing to judgment on a single issue, this approach allows us to examine all the potential effects of a decision with the benefit of the public insight," Johnson wrote the leaders of the House and Senate environment committees.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, noted that Johnson has had nearly a year to respond to the court but "now, instead of action, we get more foot-dragging."

"Time is not on our side when it comes to avoiding dangerous climate change. This letter makes it clear that Mr. Johnson and the Bush administration are not on our side, either," Boxer, D-Calif., said in a statement.

Senior EPA employees have told congressional investigators in the House about a tentative finding from early December that CO2 posed a danger because of its climate impact. They said a draft regulation was distributed to the Transportation Department and the White House.

The EPA officials, in interviews with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said those findings were put on hold abruptly. Johnson has said that enacting tougher automobile mileage requirements in December meant that the issue had to be re-examined.

Johnson said a requirement for greater use of renewable fuels such as ethanol changed the landscape when it comes to CO2 regulation.

"It does not change EPA's obligation to provide a response to the Supreme Court decision," Johnson wrote Congress.

Environmentalists said Johnson's approach seemed to signal no meaningful action on climate change.

"EPA has offered a laundry list of reasons not to regulate," said Vickie Patton, a lawyer for Environmental Defense.

Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, an advocacy group, added, "This means any real action is going to come in the next administration."

But lawyer Chet Thompson, a former EPA deputy general counsel, said Johnson's approach was "very responsible given the numerous issues raised" and ramifications of regulating carbon dioxide.