China Gas Lines

The picture I put up yesterday showing gasoline lines in China got me to wondering what the problem was and it turns out the problem is fairly simple. China went the Jimmy Carter route. In the 70's Carter put on price controls in an effort to fight inflation. Not only that, he also added a "windfall profits tax" on oil and gas producers. China is doing the same. O.K. now here is the question. If the price of a barrel of oil in China is held $10 below the actual world price, where will the Chinese oil firms sell their oil? Bingo!!!

When Reagan became President the first thing he did was immediately repeal all Carter-era oil and gas controls and the excess profits tax. Oil prices went to their natural market value and through the magic of market forces, production rose, consumption fell and prices began to decline.

Gas lines in China-August 18,2005

I am not sure how much it costs when these drivers get to buy gas, but I am glad to be paying $2.50 per gallon in comparison.

Who would have thought?

Only about half of this year's high school graduates have the reading skills they need to succeed in college, and even fewer are prepared for college-level science and math courses, according to a yearly report from ACT, which produces one of the nation's leading college admissions tests.
Read the whole story here

Cleaning up the mess

I should have known better than to call RU-486 a morning-after pill since it is actually a true abortiofacient drug which terminates confirmed pregnancies rather than block implantation of newly fertilized eggs. My main point remains intact, however.

Why I own stock in Syneron

Syneron makes a product called VelaSmooth. It sells for $65,000 and physicians, primarily gynecologists, buy it. They use it on women at a cost of $150 per visit and most women need 16 treatment sessions and then maintenance treatments every 3 to 4 months. Most doctors can generate $22,000 to $25,000 per MONTH with VelaSmooth so it gets paid for in 3 months and then the rest is gravy. Furthermore, the treatments are not reliant on insurance company payments. The women pay after each visit. Why do they do this? VelaSmooth combines radio and laser to reduce the appearance of cellulite. The symbol of this company is ELOS.

Something to keep in mind

During World War II the Japanese military sent 4,000 young, inexperienced pilots up in obsolete aircraft with a 250 pound bomb to perform as martyrs and, similar to today's terrorists, give themselves up for the "cause". By war's end, the U.S. had credited Kamikaze pilots with sinking 34 Navy ships and damaging 368 others. Some 4,900 sailors were killed and about the same number were wounded. The present war started with the greatest Kamikaze attack of all time on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon which killed almost 3,000 people. Now we must see if our nation can perserveer as we did in the previous war.

Law suits and adverse drug outcomes

Here is something to watch for in coming weeks. What happens when a drug, approved by the FDA, suddenly has some unexpected deaths associated with its use? Think of Vioxx. This is an antiinflammatory drug taken by persons with painful arthritis and in a few cases patients had heart attacks and died. What happened next is being acted out in a court room where Merck is being sued by trial lawyers for humongous damages on behalf of "victims" and others who took the drug but did not die and are also going to be included in law suits to come.
Now we have a situation where 4 women who took RU-486 out of 400,000 who have taken the drug since 2000 have died of infections which are very closely attributable to having taken the drug. RU-486 has a controversial history since it is well-known as the "morning-after" pill which blocks pregnancy if taken soon after intercourse. The anti-abortion position was that the drug would be misused and was dangerous to women who took it. In fairness, however, they also opposed it on moral grounds as being an abortion pill. Since this was the anti-abortion position, the liberals defended it and got it approved by the FDA. The pro-abortion crowd is now fighting to get it approved as an over the counter drug.
Here is what we need to watch for. Will the trial lawyers yield to their liberal instincts and leave the drug alone or will they yield to their greedy instincts and sue to have the drug be withdrawn and the manufacturer pay through the news?

Report from Iraq

It's been nearly a year since a gang has been able to attack and capture a police station. The cops know how to call in reinforcements, including American ground troops and air support. In response, the gangs increasingly turn to murdering and kidnapping individual police. But this sometimes backfires when the cops go after relatives of the criminals. This is an old Middle Eastern practice. Kill a cop, and the police will lock up your mother until you turn yourself in. The outlaws are at a big disadvantage once the police come to town, build police stations that cannot be captured, and establish the capability to arrest people. Law and order changes the way the war is being fought. The gangsters are increasingly making desperate and spectacular attacks with bombs and ambushes, failing to shake the cops, and then fleeing to the shrinking number of towns without police stations. The Iraqi police are taking more casualties than the Americans, but the cops are winning the war, one neighborhood at a time.
Read the whole thing here.

Mortgage Problems Ahead??

I knew that many folks were taking out adjustable rate mortgages (ARM) which will result in higher monthly payments if interest rates go up--which they are doing at the lower end and long rates should follow. That would scare me, but I recently read of a home mortgage product called an option ARM that would terrify me. With an option ARM, the borrower has the option to make minimal monthly payments which are below what interest only loans would be. This means that the balance of what is owed keeps going up even if rates stay the same. This is called negative amortization. It also means that if interest rates go up beyond what is manageable for the borrower and there is a coincident decrease in home values (don't believe it can't happen), the so-called owner will be forced to sell at a loss or simply walk away and let the lender have the house. If this happens on a large scale, the victims will not only be the borrowers and the lending institutions, but all of us will suffer since Congress will step in and bail everyone out with our money.

Sylvester Graham

This week's U.S. News and World Report has an interesting series of stories about food in the U.S. It makes the point that Americans are fascinated by food and I am a good example of that, I guess. One of the stories described the contribution of Sylvester Graham who invented the Graham cracker. He was a food fanatic of his day and believed that if we ate what Adam and Eve ate, we would be in physiological balance as nature intended. This ruled out meat, shellfish, salt, spices, sugar, coffee, tea, and alcohol. He was especially keen on controlling sexual urges through diet---especially masturbation. He felt that you need to avoid foods that stay in the body for a long time since they become fermented, turned to alcohol and this leads to nervous irritability and eroticism. This lead him to develop his own high fiber wheat flour from which he made his famous Graham cracker and, of course, we have now adopted his belief in high fiber diets even though I doubt many of us are selecting foods to suppress urges.

Australian in Al Qaeda

There was a documentary released last week by the terrorists with links to or in Al Qaeda which differed from others in that at least one segment was in English by a person with an Australian accent. It has now been established that his name is Mathew Stewart and this is his background:

Private Mathew Stewart was patrolling the streets of Dili, East Timor, in 2002 when he was confronted with the full horror of live combat.

The quiet soldier and keen surfer from Queensland's Sunshine Coast stumbled upon the almost unrecognisable body of a Dutch journalist killed by militia.

Financial Times reporter Sander Thoenes, 30, had been shot in the chest and badly beaten. According to his comrades, Stewart was deeply traumatised by the discovery, his first encounter with death on the front line.

He was discharged from the army's 2nd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment for psychological reasons a short time later, sending him into a spiral of depression and self-doubt.

While other East Timor veterans looked for a change of lifestyle back home, Stewart began fixing his sights on the war unravelling in Afghanistan in the wake of the attacks on New York the previous year.

Furious at his perceived mistreatment in the Australian army, Stewart began making plans to fight for the other side.

This makes one wonder about the intelligence communities claim that it would have been impossible to infiltrate Al Qaeda. If an Australian soldier can walk in and join, surely we could find someone to get in there. Or maybe we have.

What happens when you elect a German Pope

WWF International Issues Climate Conclusions

European Union to set tougher targets for emissions of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide.
…
...13 of the 16 cities surveyed were at least one degree Celsius higher than during the first five years of the 1970s, the environmental organisation said.
…
There is a trend of increasing summer temperatures and that is due to global warming.

Certainly urban areas are experiencing climate change. But it’s a micro-climate change due to a well documented phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect.

Air in urban areas is often 6-8 degrees hotter than in surrounding rural areas. The abundance of dark surfaces in urban areas absorb heat and the minimal vegetation limits the shade required to mitigate such effects. The urban heat island effect is blamed for increased energy use, and therefore, increased emissions.

The answer is not to tighten emissions standards and control “global warming,” but to apply common sense urban design. Urban development should utilize to the greatest extent feasible heat reflective materials on surfaces and roofs. The EPA recommends the use of building materials that turn traditional heat absorbing surfaces “cool” or “green.” Not only would urban areas be cooler, but they would be improved aesthetically.

Unions vs. Wal-Mart

Teachers union members are trying to persuade consumers to boycott Wal-Mart. The campaign claims Wal-Mart pays low wages, fails to provide affordable health care, discriminates against women, violates child labor laws and shifts "more than $2.5 billion a year in health care and welfare costs for its underpaid and underinsured workers to U.S. taxpayers," reports the San Jose Mercury News.

Retail employees don't make much money, but presumably they prefer a low-wage job to the alternative. Most Wal-Mart employees work full-time and average $9.68 an hour, the company says. Health benefits start at $35 a month. Wal-Mart gave $45 million last year to teachers and students, in addition to selling low-cost school supplies.

So why is Wal-Mart any worse than any other retailer? Don Dawson, a math teacher at Silver Creek High School in San Jose, said the Walton Family Foundation -- run by the heirs of Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart -- has spent about $250 million in the past six years promoting the school-voucher movement and lobbying for tax credits for parents who send their kids to private schools.

I guess that explains it.

Britain getting smart according to Michael Barone

British opinion since the July 7 bombings will have noticed that "multiculturalism" is under sharp attack. Tony Blair has spoken favorably about multiculturalism. But on July 7, he struck a different note. "It is important, however, that the terrorists realize our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause the death and destruction of innocent people and impose their extremism on the world."
Writers in other tolerant countries have been noticing the blowback from multiculturalism. The Dutch novelist Leon de Winter wrote that as traditional Calvinist discipline frayed and Muslim immigrants rejected Dutch tolerance, "the delicate mechanism of Holland's traditional tolerant society gradually lost its balance."

Multiculturalism is based on the lie that all cultures are morally equal. In practice, that soon degenerates to: All cultures are morally equal, except ours, which is worse. But all cultures are not equal in respecting representative government, guaranteed liberties and the rule of law. And those things arose not simultaneously and in all cultures, but in certain specific times and places -- mostly in Britain and America, but also in various parts of Europe.

In America, as in Britain, multiculturalism has become the fashion in large swathes of our society. So the Founding Fathers are presented only as slaveholders, World War II is limited to the internment of Japanese-Americans and the bombing of Hiroshima. Slavery is identified with America, though it has existed in every society and the antislavery movement arose first among English-speaking evangelical Christians.

Random Thoughts

My bride and I were in St. Maartens last year and we heard that the airport was on the coast and landings brought the planes in right over the beach. Here is confirmation of that.

1. I am not sure what the mission is for our shuttle program on paper, but it seems like the primary objective now seems to be a launch followed by a long repair process with the hope that the crew can get back alive.
2. I read a good description of the current real estate market in some areas--especially the one I have been playing with the last few months. It is like a flock of chickens. If you put out a pan of big food scraps, the chickens come running and the first ones pick up a big piece and depart quickly...the others see the pieces in the beak, and instead of realizing there's plenty more in the pan, they chase the hens who got the first pieces. That is the resale psychology.
   
3. The female teacher in New York who is accused of raping her male students will be prosecuted in the same way as a male teacher would be who raped female students....according to the D.A. Nonsense. In the first place none of the so-called victims in this case filed charges and I doubt any of them would call the experience "victimization".
   
4. My understanding is we need to watch to see if Iraq comes up with a constitution which gives the 3 sectarian sections of the country strong powers with a weak central government or if the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shia sections are weak relative to the central government. I am not sure they will be able to avoid a civil war in any event.
5. I admit I am no Brad Pitt, but I am not sure I would give up Jennifer Anniston for one of Billy Bob Thornton's rejects.

Americans With Disabilities

I have always had problems with the Americans with Disabilities Act. That is not a very popular position, but I guess I am enough Libertarian to believe that the market would have done the same thing if left alone. Merchants would have provided access to their stores and parking places without the government getting involved and as a result concocting all kinds of ridiculous rules to hamper small businesses in particular. Well, now we are getting ready to have some new laws as a result of a review of existing practices by the Department of Justice. There is a guy named Banerjee who is a paraplegic due to an automobile accident and he is now asking that ALL public golf courses be required to provide special golf carts with swing-out seats which would allow him to swing at a ball while seated. Obviously, this will impose a hugh financial burden to many courses and guess who will be required to pay for the carts which will be seldom if ever used?
There are other changes being contemplated. The blind are asking for ATM machines which have audio capabilities so they can operate them independently. With such a machine a user plugs headphones into a jack and a computerized voice guides the customer through the transaction by pointing out where the buttons are.
Finally, the National Association of Manufacturers is concerned about proposals which would require wheelchair accessible routes even in areas where the public is not permitted--such as the plants work floor.
All this is fairly typical of government gone wild, I think.

Show Us the Scientific Data

The Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is Joe Barton of Texas. He recently requested that three noted climate scientists provide data related to their claim that climate changes and global warming require tens of billions of new taxpayer money. This research, by the way was heavily funded by federal taxes and by other sources which could have had a political stake in the outcome of the researchers claims....namely the U.N. and the Pew Center on Climate Change.
Barton asked Universtiy of Virginia's Michael Mann to share the data and the methodologies they used to come to the conclusion that the 20th Century was the warmest of the past two millenniums and also the source o the funding of their research. This has been called a witch hunt despite the fact that the issue of whether human carbon dioxide emissions cause any significant amount of greenhouse gasses is still the object of intense debate among scientists. Mann's research popularized his theory that shows nearly 1000 years of relatively stable temperatures followed by an abrupt upturn in temperatures in the latter part of the 20th century. This is the well-known "hockey stick" graph. Six teams of scientists published critiques of this work and showed that Mann omitted key data and misinterpreted other data. Mann's team later issued a partial "correction" conceding it had underestimated temperature variations by more than 33% since 1400, but stated the major error did not affect his conclusions. At the same time, Mann's team adamantly refused other, more skeptical scientists the right to review the raw data or the methods they used to arrive at their conclusions. Without that information, it is impossible to determine if Mann's research is valid and Congressman Barton is doing exactly what he should to insist on full disclosure before spending more of our money on such a boondoggle.

Leno on O.J.

In Florida, a judge has found O.J. Simpson guilty of stealing satellite TV and ordered him to pay DirecTV $25,000 in back charges. We are finally getting tough on celebrities in this country.

Were you shocked? I knew he was a murderer, I didn’t know he was a thief. I was stunned.

I just hope this one incident doesn’t ruin O.J.’s reputation.

Howard Dean

This man is really an idiot. Most recently he loudly blamed the widely unpopular Kelo decision which allowed the taking of property by some town in Conneticutt for private developers on Bush. He said it was "Bush's right wing Supreme Court". Not only has Bush not named any of the current court, but the only dissention to the decision were by Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist, and O'Connor. You won't read about this in any of the MSM, by the way.