terryhallinan's Blog

The Thundering Herd May Soon Follow The Bear Into Extinction

2008-03-17T11:36:03Z

For any hermits living in caves, the Bear is Bear Stearns and the Thundering Herd is Merrill Lynch.

I thought the Great Dying was supposed to hold off for decades and decades.

Dean Baker over on the left proposes to alleviate the massive runs with constipation initiated by some more bloodletting. Doesn't sound very efficacious to me but what do I know about the Dismal Science?

What does occupy my interest is that some hedge funds are about to be blown away by the disaster. Geez, will a former First Daughter have to go out and make an honest living?

Personal investigations by politicians are always intriguing to me. Tom Harkin first got into the Senate when Sen. Roger Jepson got some unaccountably bad press for investigating prostitution in a high class massage parlor. The guest book had names like John Smith, Bill Jones and then Senator Roger Jepsen. Well why wouldn't a senator be proud of his name and title especially when he is serving the public? John Edwards was investigating hedge funds when he made a bundle doing so.

Caped crusader Eliot Spitzer, who made his fame fighting the titans of Wall Street, seems to have made his fortune with connections to Cramer and the hedgies. Good to use the enemy's strength against him I guess.

It's good knowledgeable folks like Dean Baker are going to save us all from both the bull and the bear by singing small investors some more but I would really appreciate some more investigating of the investigators and their hedging.

Best, Terry

Emergency Drug For A Dire Political Situation

2008-03-14T05:33:33Z

The [recommended daily allowance] for iodine was based on the amount of iodine/iodide needed to prevent goiter, extreme stupidity...

Recovery from the pandemic onset of critical iodine deficiency of even some very intelligent posters here might begin with a bowl of seaweed soup. It is not obvious there are enough oysters and kelp in the whole world to do for Hillary and Geraldine but one should never give up on even the most difficult cases.

Obama could always claim to have been a secret Muslim all along. A substantial portion of the population already believes that.

I suppose most will never be convinced now that Obama isn't a Christian after all but one can always try.

Those of us (actually just me) whose religion teaches that agnostics are too damn sure of themselves may finally get some converts for the very first time.

The audacity of hope is unquenchable.

Best, Terry

Helpful Suggestions To Elliot Spitzer To Save His Job

2008-03-12T03:02:47Z

1. Switch to the Republican Party.

2. Have A Sex Change Operation

3. Get His Mother To Confess He Is John McCain's Negro Love Child

Best, Terry

Twas A Famous Victory For Hastert's Seat

2008-03-09T10:04:14Z

But it smells a little ripe anytime the machine wins over the people.

More than a curiosity is that the Righty Chicago Tribune endorsed the Democrat while a more liberal Sun-Times endorsed the horrible Republican.

In truth money and power won in the Democratic primary for the upcoming regular election.

It usually does.

Then voters wonder why nothing changes.

Because, as Hillary says, the people don't really count for much.

A whine from the machine-defeated Democrat is @:

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/couriernews/news/832329,3_1_EL08_A1CONGRESS_S2.article

Best, Terry

Muckraking For Real

2008-03-07T13:05:06Z

Sewage-Based Fertilizer Safety Doubted

By JOHN HEILPRIN and KEVIN S. VINEYS – 14 hours ago

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — It was a farm idea with a big payoff and supposedly no downside: ridding lakes and rivers of raw sewage and industrial pollution by converting it all into a free, nutrient-rich fertilizer. Then last week, a federal judge ordered the Agriculture Department to compensate a farmer whose land was poisoned by sludge from the waste treatment plant here. His cows had died by the hundreds.

The Associated Press also has learned that some of the same contaminants showed up in milk that regulators allowed a neighboring dairy farmer to market, even after some officials said they were warned about it.

In one case, according to test results provided to the AP, the level of thallium — an element once used as rat poison — found in the milk was 120 times the concentration allowed in drinking water by the Environmental Protection Agency.

,,,data endorsed by Agriculture and EPA officials about toxic heavy metals found in the free sludge provided by Augusta's sewage treatment plant was "unreliable, incomplete, and in some cases, fudged," [said Da Judge].

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gbpCMPX9_kRtYkL1Yv9-OzuVxFfQD8V86OUG0

EPA strikes again.

Best, Terry

William F. Buckley Interviews Al Gore

2008-02-28T06:10:13Z

Perhaps some here don't recall William F. Buckley's interview of Al Gore:

In Memorium

Best, Terry

Winger Answer to Health Care - Bleed 'Em

2008-02-27T04:30:50Z

I know a bit about bleeding. As antique dealers, we have sold dozens of bleeders, circa 1850 and earlier.

Bleeders aren't real pretty looking tools and aren't all that useful but for some reason a lot of people still think that involuntary bleeding of individuals for healthcare is a grand idea.

The subject comes under the general theme of use taxes. Mostly use taxes are a terrible idea. They are expensive to collect, regressive and discriminatory. About the only thing worse is sin taxes.

Naturally, as with Hillary's mandates, both are very popular.

Imagine if the Iraq War was funded with mandated payments to Halliburton. Think there might have been problem. That is pretty much akin to what Hillary plans with forced payments to private insurance companies. Or worse.

Of course, Bush wisely chose to put the was on the cuff instead.

One of these days we may be able to play the game of politics far away from the shadows of the DLC's goal posts.

Obama may yet make that possible.

Hope so.

Best, Terry

The Farce of Clean Coal

2008-02-23T12:39:35Z

Anyone who has ever gotten their hands dirty with coal should be able to realize that clean coal is an oxymoron. Coal is the sine qua non for global warming. Sequestration of CO2 emissions would take building an infrastructure greater than the entire mass of pipelines, vessels, other transportation, mines, drilling rigs and production platforms and then leave a problem more difficult than the storage of nuclear waste.

Scientists attempting to separate and convert the noxious emissions of coal-burning plants to additional fuel as well as recovering valuable products are not terribly likely to see substantial commercial results that would solve most problems in the near future. In no way would I want to discourage such research BTW.

Though only fools think they know the future certain, it is my belief now that Obama will be the next president. Much of what he proposes and a lifetime record promises a most welcome change but his routine acceptance of conventional wisdom in regard to energy policy is abysmal. As are those of nearly all politicians. One might even make the case that John McCain is the superior candidate on the issue considering McCain has accepted that there is a problem of global warming, something scientifically-challenged Republicans tend to deny.

Advances in solar power and storage technology may some day make it an acceptable alternative to fossil fuel-burning power plants but for now, despite some admirable uses, it is little more than a cipher in the total energy picture. Wind makes far more of a contribution but is still a very minor factor and will remain so in the foreseeable future because it is intermittent. No one wants power only when the wind blows and the sun shines.

Even if the U.S. stopped building coal-burning power plants today and started shutting down those in existence, one might consider that China is adding a new coal-burning power plant every week.

There are answers but the answers are not ones that politicians readily accept.

For instance, the U.S. is shipping waste wood to China and other countries to supply power even now while utilizing only little of its own. The problem for politicians is that utilizing wood from sources like landfills does nothing for farmers, let alone coal miners.

Obama has added biodiesel to the Al Gore catechism of wind and solar. It is enchanting to think of trucks being fueled by used french fry oil from McDonald's - there really is some use of such oil - but biodiesel production may be more destructive of the environment today than even coal mining. The point is that both current agricultural land as well as virgin land is diverted to production of fuel with all the damage that agriculture can do to the environment.

Sometimes it seems self-proclaimed greens are the worst enemies of the environment.

Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

Anaerobic digesters have been utilized for centuries to convert manure to a more effective fertilizer. At first the methane that was separated was little more than an entertaining novelty. My doctor told me that the small village where he grew up in India derived all its ele electricity from digesters. The Sierra Club fights tooth and nail against efficient modernized use of anaerobic digesters with Norman Rockwell-like pictures of happy cows and pigs playing in green pastures.

Rockwell and his mistress must be roaring with laughter up in heaven. Rockwell actually used his mistress as a model on occasion in his Saturday Evening Post covers. Can you imagine the brouhaha that would have caused in the puritanical 50's if they knew? Puritans must be the most sex-crazed people on earth with the persistence of so many through the centuries. :-)

When can we have a serious discussion in the country about energy?

How bad do things need to get?

Best, Terry

No More Winter, Barack?

2008-02-22T14:47:50Z

Barack Obama has extended the Al Gore catechism of intermittent renewable solar and wind energy to include biodiesel.

Biodiesel mostly helps hasten the warming of the planet through diversion of agriculture to fuel crops, unless there is sufficient compensating starvation.

(I have not bothered with the prescriptions for warming the planet by Hillary Clinton as it is immaterial now in my view.)

What is wrong with replacing coal-fired power plants with surplus wood and other plant material? Surely even a city boy has heard of burning wood though Al Gore hasn't. Even now wood is scavenged from landfills in the U.S. and sent to Europe and China for burning in power plants. In the U,.S. we prefer to burn coal.

It is estimated by some that just the Salton Sea KGRA (known geothermal resource area) in California could supply the entire electrical needs of that state and leave room for export while the reborn environmentalist governor talks about (heh heh) clean coal.

Bush's DOE has approved grants for one outfit to build a cellulosic ethanol plant on a landfill in California that would utilize methane gases from the landfill to fuel the ethanol boilers rather than warm the planet. A pilot plant in operation iin Japan for a year or two has sold ethanol into the market.

Maybe Governor Schwartzenegger thinks it wasteful to utilize methane for biogas for heat when that same gas could more efficiently warm the planet.

There is a lot of hope for an Obama presidency from this quarter but precious little indication Obama has thought much about our looming energy problems and the threat of global warming.

Best, Terry

Obama Just Won the 11th Primary in a Row

2008-02-21T14:37:17Z

Obama Wins Democrats Abroad Primary
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hUPSXLSf9BMjfyPSCc2sdK8RtV8QD8UUOF5G0

Best, Terry

Politics of Personal Destruction

2008-02-21T06:30:46Z

Things weren't going so well for our high school football team. Matter of fact things very seldom did go well for our team.

"All right," said the coach disgustedly, "we will pick on the cripple." One of the opposing tackles was one-armed.

We quickly found out why it was a terrible idea to pick on the cripple. There was a reason the one-armed player had made it on the other football team. He quickly showed himself to be the best of the bunch. We went back to picking on the non-cripples with somewhat more success.

I can hardly deny considerable bias in judging the Clinton campaign has done itself in with negative campaigning but much smarter people see it the same way. I firmly believe that the current attacks on Michelle Obama are going to redound to the further benefit of the Obama campaign. It appears even Barack is loathe to tangle with one formidable lady. And who would know better.

There is a kind of Maxwell Smart aura about strictures against negative campaigning, a kind of air that it is nice be nice but if need be throw mudballs.

For some, like the Bushes, the last resort is the first resort. Hard to argue with their electoral success. Then again, besides being tall, the sine qua non for elective office seems to be a decided lack of morals and intelligence.

Obama is undoubtedly tall but seems badly handicapped by the two disqualifiers of high intelligence and good moral character.

Like Russ Feingold, it appears to me now that Obama may be turning conventional wisdom on its head by omitting most negative campaigning while his opponents self-destruct with the old reliable.

Will wonders never cease.

Best, Terry

The Ghost of Thomas Dewey Lives

2008-02-06T14:05:46Z

AP Headline:

Clinton Wins Democratic Primary In Missouri

See here.

Best, Terry

A Modest Proposal to Solve the Clinton-Obama Paradox

2008-02-04T17:10:18Z

Consider the problem:

Democrats are to choose between:

- Bush in drag

And

- A weak-willed, half-breed Muslim Manchurian candidate who just wants to get along.

What kind of choice is that?

Men are limited to thinking with awful gray matter. No man could ever solve such a problem so I got the spouse with the white matter to solve the problem.

It is so simple.

The wife had just finished listening to Michele Obama. Michele ain't no shrinking violet and she sure don't take no guff from Barack.

What else could any Democrat ask for? A candidate tailored to specifications. Michelle could make Lyndon LaRouche or Mike Huckabee her VP and still McCain might yearn for the days when he had only North Vietnamese prison guards beating him.

Takes the right kind of brains.

Best, Terry