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Just When You Think Conservative Talkers Can't Get Any Worse...

...Michael Savage lowers the bar (again).

It's a new world's record! Listen to Savage mock and insult blacks, crippled kids, and women, all in less than two minutes of completely fact-free ranting!



(Download mp3 here)

And his audience loves it! Of course, they're too dumb to know that blacks die from asthma at a rate two-and-a-half times higher than whites. Or that the risk of autism is more than 90% genetically determined (sorry, paid link). Or even that being a women doesn't mean being a weak crybaby. If you don't believe me I'll send my little sister over to kick your butt.

And she can!

New High Voltage Transmission Lines - Needed or Not?

Yesterday the Wisconsin State Journal published an editorial in support of building new electrical transmission lines. While I don't agree with their damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead approach to the issue, they raise some important points.

Despite our best efforts at conservation, electricity usage will increase significantly over the next few decades as we move away from liquid fossil fuels. In twenty years most of us will drive plug-in hybrids or electric cars, and heat our houses with electricity.

Unfortunately, while the editorial mentions this increased demand, it misses the fact that increased electrical demand alone doesn't necessarily mean we need more transmission lines. Improved peak load control and distributed generation can let the existing electrical grid handle a lot more power, greatly reducing the need for new transmission lines.

But we're going to build a bunch of new transmission lines anyway. The main reason isn't demand, but supply. What the editorial gets exactly right is that increased use of renewable energy will result in significant geographical changes in electrical power generation. You build wind turbines where the wind is good, not next to existing power plants, and you need new transmission lines to get that green power to where it's going to be used.

This doesn't mean that every new transmission line is justified. But don't make the mistake of thinking that we're going to simply conserve our way out of this issue either.

Madison Robocall Credit Card Scam

Watch out! I just got a robocall from "Visa and Mastercard" saying that my credit card rate was going up, but that I had been selected to receive a lower fixed rate. To receive this special rate all I had to do was press six to talk to a customer service representative.

Of course I pressed six. I let the guy go through his spiel , then I asked him what company was doing the calls. He said "Visa and Mastercard." So I said, "No, what company are you working for?" He immediately hung up on me. Pretty safe bet this is an identity theft scam. If you get a call like this, particularly if you have caller ID and can get the originating phone number, please call the WI Department of Agriculture, Trade & Consumer Protection, 608-224-4949, and let them know about it.

Why is Gas So Cheap?

Gasoline is amazingly cheap. I know this sounds stupid, but bear with me. If you drive a car the implications are important.

Gasoline is made from oil. At the current price of $147 a barrel, a gallon of crude costs $3.50. Historically gasoline has retailed between 1.5 to 2 times the cost of the oil it's made from. Today that ratio is 1.2. By historical norms gasoline should be well over five dollars a gallon, and probably closer to seven. This means that even if crude oil prices stabilize or drop a bit, gasoline prices could still soar.

But they probably won't.

Diesel prices will go up. So will heating oil, and jet fuel. But we got lucky on gasoline. Most of the world is switching to diesel engines, and for good reason. They're a lot more efficient than gasoline engines. But the result is that there's a relative glut of gasoline, forcing prices down compared to other oil products. Refineries can't quickly or easily change the mix of products they produce, so as worldwide demand increases for diesel fuel, they end up with lots of gasoline that they need to get rid of, so they're willing to sell it cheap.

Eventually refineries will fix this problem, and gasoline prices relative to crude oil will increase significantly. But this will take years, and until then we're getting a break compared to the rest of the world. Gasoline prices are still directly tied to the price of crude, so if crude oil prices go up so will gasoline, just less than other fuels. Of course, if we do something stupid, like attacking Iran, you can expect gas prices to go through the roof.

The big question is if we'll use our temporary cost advantage compared to the rest of the world to smooth the inevitable and expensive transition away from liquid fossil fuels, or just piss it away by continuing to drive big cars and SUV's. Given that this is America, it's pretty safe to bet on the latter.

For a good, if rather wonkish, discussion of gasoline prices relative to other fuels check out this post and discussion on The Oil Drum. It's a great site if you're into peak oil and energy policy.

Get Your "McCain is Aware of the Internet" Shirt While They Last

At a Personal Democracy Forum event a few days ago, one of John McCain's technical gurus, trying to defend MCain's complete lack of computer skills, claimed "John McCain is aware of the internet."

Wow! Who knew McCain was so so sharp?

But it gets even better. CNN, which broadcast the event, apparently thought the comment was so newsworthy that they made a T-shirt out of it! Twenty bucks, including shipping. But you better get one soon if you're interested. I'm sure the McCain folks aren't very happy with the situation, and they're probably going to bring the hammer down on CNN.

America's Funniest Political Videos: Republican Logic!

Watch Mitt Romney try so hard to stick to his talking point that McCain is bipartisan and Obama isn't that he backs himself into a logical corner and is forced to claim that nuclear nonproliferation is a "liberal" position. Hilarious!

Hard to believe this guy was a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. Of course, I feel the same way about Mr. no-idea-how-to-use-a-computer McCain.

Nice catch by TPM TV!

FISA - Good Dems and Bad Dems

FISA, almost certainly including telecom immunity, is a done deal. The cloture vote to stop debate passed 80 to 15, and below I've listed the Dems who voted for and against cloture.

Although the vote on the actual FISA bill may not occur for a while, it's the cloture vote that really counts. The lopsided vote clearly shows that the Democratic leadership supported the bill, despite Senator Reed's "reservations".

It's now unlikely that telecom immunity will be successfully stripped out unless Obama personally leads the charge against it. And although some of the Democrats who voted for cloture will likely vote against the eventual bill, don't be fooled. They knew that cloture, which requires 60 votes, was the only real chance we had to defeat the bill and thereby obtain any meaningful compromise from the White House.

Senator Feingold, as usual, fought the good fight. Senator Kohl, as is too often the case, sold us out. Obama missed the vote, as did Hillary and McCain. Shame on them. Regardless of where they stand, every elected official should be on the record when it comes to important issues like this.

FISA GOOD DEMS

CA - Boxer
CT - Dodd
DE - Biden
IA - Harkin
IL - Durbin
MA - Kerry
NJ - Lautenberg
NJ - Menendez
NY - Schumer
OH - Brown
OR - Wyden
VT - Leahy
WA - Cantwell
WI - Feingold

FISA BAD DEMS

AR - Lincoln
AR - Pryor
CA - Feinstein
CO - Salazar
DE - Carper
FL - Nelson
HI - Akaka
HI - Inouye
IN - Bayh
LA - Landrieu
MD - Cardin
MD - Mikulski
MI - Levin
MI - Stabenow
MN - Klobuchar
MO - McCaskill
MT - Baucus
MT - Tester
ND - Conrad
ND - Dorgan
NE - Nelson
NM - Bingaman
NV - Reid
PA - Casey
RI - Reed
RI - Whitehouse
SD - Johnson
VA - Webb
WA - Murray
WI - Kohl
WV - Rockefeller

If any of my Democratic friends are considering letting loose on me in the comments, be aware that I fully understand the political calculus behind the vote. I just don't agree with it.

Democrats succeed when we stand up for Democratic values, not when we cower and pretend we're corporate Republicans. That's the fundamental political lesson we should have learned over the last thirty years. Unfortunately, far too many Dem leaders aren't smart enough to realize that, or are simply too comfortable with the status quo to risk change.

Stop FISA Telecom Immunity: Call Obama

The single most important thing you can do to stop telecom immunity is to call Obama's national campaign office and tell him how you feel:

866-675-2008

Obama's position is that while he opposes telecom immunity, he'll vote for the bill anyway. This is unacceptable. Call him:

866-675-2008

I spoke to the campaign folks earlier today, and they're getting lots of calls about FISA. They need lots more:

866-675-2008

Obama is the key. He's the nominal leader of the Democratic Party, and if he comes out strongly against telecom immunity the rest of the Democrats will fall into line. Do your part. Call Obama's campaign office and give them hell! (Politely, of course)

866-675-2008

Call now, or I'll have to repeat that number again!

Father's Day and PTSD

Yesterday was Father's Day, but I don't have many happy stories to tell about my father. Forty years ago, when I was nine, I lost him to the Vietnam war.

My father was a Major in the U.S. Army Special Forces, a Green Beret, who did repeated tours in Southeast Asia starting in the late 50's. His luck held for a while, but eventually he was severely injured in combat. Sadly, he probably could have been saved if he had received medical care in time, but the seriousness of his wounds weren't recognized until it was too late.

The reason that my father didn't get the treatment he needed was that his wounds were mental, not physical. He suffered from what we would now call severe post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, and in the end he became so violent and dangerous that he had to be institutionalized.

Four decades later PTSD is still an enormous and unsolved problem. Many more soldiers who serve in Iraq and Afghanistan will end up committing suicide due to PTSD than will be killed in action^*, yet we spend hundreds of times more on equipment and training to protect our troops in combat than we do on their mental health.

We ignore the problem because it mainly strikes after a soldier leaves the military. To put it bluntly, while every combat death is national news, a veteran who commits suicide is just a few lines in the obituary column of the local paper.

Please take the time to learn more about PTSD. A good place to start is a Washington Post article called The War Inside. It uses the stories of individual vets suffering from PTSD to explore the bigger issue, and it paints a picture of a military health care system that's crumbling under the strain of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan:

"The military is also battling a crisis in mental-health care. Licensed psychologists are leaving at a far faster rate than they are being replaced. Their ranks have dwindled from 450 to 350 in recent years. Many said they left because they could not handle the stress of facing such pained soldiers."

Father's Day will always be bittersweet for me. Although I have two wonderful sons, I never really got to know my own father. He served our country with honor, yet we failed him when he most needed our help. The children of today's soldiers deserve better. Learn about PTSD, and demand that we provide the best possible care, physical and mental, for our wounded soldiers and veterans. We owe them nothing less.

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* A recent study of over 300,000 US veterans showed that they have a suicide rate twice that of the general population. This means that almost 3% of all veterans commit suicide, with about half of those deaths being due to service-related mental illness, as compared to the current combat mortality rate in Iraq and Afghanistan of a little less than 1%. Analysis based on the current US suicide rate (2004) of 1.4%, expressed as the ratio of suicide deaths to total deaths from all causes.

Ron Paul Booted From RNC Convention, Will Have His Own!

I love this. The RNC decided not to let Ron Paul speak at the Republican Convention in Minneapolis this summer, so he's going to hold his own convention. In Minneapolis. At the same time as the Republicans.

And we thought it was messy on our side of the fence...

US Special Forces Using Banned Ammo?

Wars are about killing people, and the more quickly and efficiently you kill the other guy the more likely you are to win. But there are international restrictions, generally referred to as the rules of war, on the types of weapons you can use, and how and under what conditions you can use them. One of those restrictions, which we claim to observe but are not a signatory to, is the 1899 Hague Declaration, which forbids the use of bullets which expand on impact to create larger wounds. I'm not going to get into the philosophy or wisdom of the Hague Declaration except to note that we've always given it lip service, if little more, in the past. Even that may no longer be the case.

US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) recently purchased a new type of ammunition, referred to as "5.56 Optimized" or "brown tip" (because the tip is painted brown to distinguish it from other rounds), which appears to use a bullet based on the civilian Barnes Triple-Shock X hunting bullet shown in the picture below. As you can see, this bullet would be banned under the Hague Convention.


Bullets are designed for making holes in things, and from the military's standpoint the bigger the hole the better. The M16 and its variants fire very high velocity but small diameter bullets. Little holes aren't very good for killing people, but our standard M855 round, at typical combat ranges, fragments after impact to create a massive wound channel. It's perhaps the most effective and deadly small-arms round in the world. But the same round fired from guns with shorter barrels, such as the M4 carbine and some versions of the SCAR, doesn't have enough muzzle velocity to consistently fragment, making it much less lethal.

Enter the 5.56 Optimized. Expanding bullets are designed to work properly over a broad range of velocities, so they're deadly even when fired from more compact weapons better suited for urban warfare. The 5.56 Optimized is also "green" because it's made from copper rather than lead, which, believe it or not, is a major concern of our military right now.

And the Hague Declaration? Well, if necessary we'll just have to find a way around it. Considering that the M855 meets the letter of the Hague Declaration while violating everything it stands for, I can't imagine we'll let international concerns get in our way. Damn all those European humanitarians anyway. They have no idea what it's like to fight a real war!