Dyre Portents

Obama's Energy Rebate Gets an F

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:18:32 -0500

Over at the WSJ Martin Feldstein takes a look at the effects of Obama's proposed energy rebate. He used the economic effects of the last tax rebates to come up with a likely scenario. The results ?

Cost? 65 billion dollars

Amount of Increased Spending? 10 billion dollars

Why? Because people either bank rebates or use them to pay off debt.

Finally the effect that I'm most concerned about..

His plan, to finance those rebates with an extra tax on oil companies, would reduce investment in refining and exploration, keeping oil prices higher than they would otherwise be.

I'd be lying if I said I couldn't use the money. But if the rebate drives up the price of gas in the long term we'll all be paying it back at the pumps.

John McCain's Energy Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:31:02 -0500

In the interest of fairness. Plus I wanted to take Scribd for a test drive.

McCain's Energy Plan - Upload a Document to Scribd

I note a severe lack of tire gauges in his plan. However it is worth noting that he's against continuing to subsidize agribuisness and ethanol production.

Had Enough of Obamania?

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:52:41 -0500

Looks like you may not be alone. A recent Pew poll shows that forty eight percent of Americans think that Obama is overexposed.

"As he has since January, this week, Barack Obama enjoyed much more visibility as far as the public was concerned than did John McCain. By a margin of 76% to 11% respondents in Pew's weekly News Interest Index survey named Obama over McCain as the candidate they have heard the most about in recent days. But the same poll also shows that the Democratic candidate's media dominance may not be working in his favor. Close to half (48%) of Pew's interviewees went on to say that they have been hearing too much about Obama lately. And by a slight, but statistically significant margin - 22% to 16% - people say that recently they have a less rather than more favorable view of the putative Democratic nominee."

Looks like he's ranking right up there with the GEICO lizard and that "Can you hear me now?" guy. Personally I'm not suffering from Obama fatigue yet. But I read news more than I watch it.
Odds are McCain will start getting more coverage after the conventions and particularly after the first debate. He is after all a more practiced debater than Obama. In the mean time it could be worse for Obama after all, according to Oscar Wilde, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Obama's Energy Policy Available Here

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:29:25 -0500

Thanks to Scribd. Scribd does for documents what YouTube does for video. Apparently Obama's campaign has been using it to keep everyone in the know. So here is his complete energy plan. Believe it or not there's more than tire gauges involved....

Barack Obama's New Energy Plan For America - Upload a Document to Scribd

More policy and positions available here.

H/T to Donklephant

Obama Losing Ground in Polls

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:20:21 -0500

Odds are we'll see a different set of numbers after the conventions once the general public starts paying close attention.

From Zogby (via McClatchy)

Barack Obama has lost ground among some of his strongest bases of support, including young people, women, Democrats and independents, according to a new ATV/Zogby poll.

The Illinois Democrat has also lost some support among African-Americans and Hispanics, where his lead over Republican John McCain has shrunk, and among Catholics, where he's lost his lead.
The net result, pollster John Zogby found, is a race that's neck and neck, with McCain supported by 42 percent; Obama by 41 percent; Libertarian Bob Barr by 2 percent; and independent Ralph Nader by 2 percent. Another 13 percent supported other candidates or were undedcided.

Zogby called the results a "notable turnaround" from a July survey he did that showed Obama leading by 46-36.

Perhaps this drop is caused by the current blurring of the differences between McCain's policies and Obama's. If the public perceives that Obama is co-opting McCain's positions it makes McCain look like the stronger candidate. Obama would do well to show some ingenuity about now.

Texas GOP Pressing Libertarian Candidates to Bow Out

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:55:30 -0500

Looks like a former GOP State Rep called a few Libertarian candidates running in close races and asked them to drop out.

From the Austin American Statesman:

A former Republican state representative called three Libertarian Party candidates for the state House on Friday to request that they drop out of their races rather than take votes from their Republican opponents.

Suzanna Hupp, who represented District 54 in Central Texas for 10 years, said she made the calls Friday because of concerns that the Libertarian candidates would take Republican votes and ultimately give Democrats control over state and national seats.

"The fact is, we've got redistricting coming up in a few years," said Hupp, from Lampasas, who served in the House from 1997 to 2007, "and if the Republicans lose the (Texas) House of Representatives because there are a handful of people mad at them and vote for the Libertarians instead, then we could be in big trouble at the federal level."
...
Hupp said she called three Libertarian candidates in races where she knew the margin between the Republican and Democrat candidate figures to be close in November. However, one day after she made the calls, Hupp said she could remember only two of the three districts where she had intervened.
The two districts, candidates and calls that Hupp remembered were the same two that Texas Libertarian Party Executive Director Wes Benedict already knew about and had told reporters occurred.
...
Benedict said he told Libertarian candidates to "sit tight and stay in the race" after the calls were made. "I told them that Republicans need to earn those votes," he said.

It was wrong of Hupp to ask them to step down. However whats more disturbing is the level of hubris it took to make those calls in the first place. Given how long the GOP has been in power in Texas though its not surprising. Interestingly enough the Libertarian candidates may be inadvetrtantly doing more to fix that problem than the state Dems. If that proves to be the case at least here in Texas we might see a few more candidates running that haven't forgotten conservatism's Burkean roots.

Obama's Energy Problem

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:03:04 -0500

His recent move to the center on offshore drilling is going to be painted as a flip flop. Additionally the fact that he continues to push for a windfall profits tax on oil companies is pure populism. As for tapping into the strategic reserve it is a bad idea in my opinion. While I, myself, was against offshore drilling a few years ago I believe at this point that moving closer to energy independence is extremely important. As long as the states can decide where drilling can occur off their shores I'll back that.

The windfall profits tax, however, is unfair and not at all business friendly. A more sensible approach would be to cut all subsidies to the oil companies and lease oil and gas rights on public lands (as well as mineral rights) and offshore at fair market value. That at least would be fair. I see no reason to give hand outs to companies that are breaking quarterly profit records repeatedly. As for the strategic reserve rename it the Emergency Military Petroleum Reserve and then leave it alone.

If Obama seriously wants to win he is going to have to differentiate his policies from McCain's and it is far better to have McCain co-opting Obama's policies on energy than it is to have Obama playing catch up to McCain. After all, this is ultimately a race about change vs experience. If Obama can prove that he has quality ideas that seem pragmatic he'll carry the day. Conversely if he appears to be mainly reciting Dem talking points then the election is his to lose.

Sitemeter Issues

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 07:06:55 -0500

Sitemeter.com's traffic counter has been causing blogs not to load for Internet Explorer users. I have removed the counter to fix this issue but you may need to clear your browser's cache to ensure that every blog using sitemeter will be viewable.

Things I Have Learned

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 19:39:52 -0500

Just because my car has keyless entry doesn't mean my house does.

Upgrading

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:19:57 -0500

I've bought the domain name Dyreportents.com through Google. I did so because Google offers seamless redirection to the new address which means nobody has to change their links or bookmarks. If you're a feed subscriber you probably won't notice that the URL of this blogs feed will change (Yay Feedburner.com!) Hopefully in the long run this will help me pick up more traffic. Additionally I also plan on buying Direportents.com so that you can just say the name and in theory people can find their way here with relative ease.

TGIF

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 23:53:55 -0500

Changing genres yet again.

Danzig's Mother

McCain Going Negative?

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:53:41 -0500

This is either a sign of things to come from the McCain campaign or a major screw up. His campaign released a new ad five days ago that proves to be less than truthful.

From Fact Check:

A new McCain ad says Obama "made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras."

McCain's facts are literally true, but his insinuation – that the visit was canceled because of the press ban or the desire for gym time – is false. In fact, Obama visited wounded troops earlier – without cameras or press – both in the U.S. and Iraq. And his gym workouts are a daily routine.

What really happened?

Obama planned to visit wounded troops at a medical center in Germany until the Pentagon said it would not allow him to bring a retired Air Force major general who is one of the campaign's foreign policy advisers. The Democrat may have been poised to blur the line between political events and official troop visits by members of Congress. But there is no evidence that he was snubbing soldiers because he could not appear with them on television.

Obama explained the cancellation...

I was going to be accompanied by one of my advisors, a former military officer."
Continued Obama, "And we got notice that he would be treated as a campaign person, and it would therefore be perceived as political because he had endorsed my candidacy but he wasn’t on the Senate staff. That triggered then a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political. And the last thing that I want to do is have injured soldiers and the staff at these wonderful institutions having to sort through whether this is political or not or get caught in the crossfire between campaigns."

Supposedly the McCain campaign created two versions of the ad. One for if Obama visited the troops and one if he didn't. Word has it the wrong ad was released. If thats truw then somebody needs to be fired otherwise it will appear that McCain is signed off on the smear attempt. If the latter is case and this trend continues he's likely to lose a ton of independent and moderate voters and consign his presidential run to the same grave as Clinton's campaign.

I'm Impressed

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:00:13 -0500

MIT has made a major breakthrough in Solar technology. More details here.

Clinton to Contest at the Convention?

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:43:28 -0500

Over at The Moderate Voice Tony Campbell thinks its highly likely that the Democratic National Convention could prove to be a Clinton vs Obama showdown.

I talked to a Clinton delegate here in Maryland and he told me that they have been instructed to vote for Hillary on the first ballot. To make things more interesting, there is a movement to swing 160 delegates from Obama to Clinton. If that occurs, Clinton could re-establish her campaign and face John McCain in the fall.
The group, P.U.M.A (Party Unity My A**) claims that 15 delegates have switched from Obama to Clinton in July. There is still the possibility of a floor convention vote to fully seat the delegates of Michigan and Florida which would benefit Senator Clinton. Finally, the Obama flip-flop on the FISA bill has not been well received by the more liberal segments of the Democratic faithful.
...
Where are the Clintons? They are patiently waiting for Denver. The only question is: will it be an easy nomination for Obama or one of the grandest political ambushes ever pulled off…on the voting floor of the Convention.

I just don't see it happening. Not because I don't believe that Clinton doesn't want it that badly. But because I believe that she knows that its not only a huge gamble but if she somehow won the nomination Obama's supporters would fail to show up at the polls come election day. She's too smart to risk her career and any future chance of being president by backstabbing Obama at the last moment. What she is however doing is letting PUMA keep her name in the news. Which I must add they've done a mighty good job of. Then once the election is wrapped she pulls a McCain and begins appearing on every TV and radio program she possibly can to ensure that she stays on the public's radar thus increasing her support for a run in 2012.

After all you never gamble what you can't afford to lose.

Sen. Ted Stevens Indicted

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:14:35 -0500

Bad news for him considering the fierce competition for his seat....

From McClatchy news:

WASHINGTON — Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, at 84 the longest-serving Republican in the Senate and one of its most powerful members, was indicted Tuesday on seven felony counts alleging that he lied to conceal his acceptance of $250,000 in gifts and services from a now-defunct Alaska oil services and construction company.
...
The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Washington, charges that Stevens made false statements on his annual Senate financial-disclosure statements for the years 2001 through 2006 to conceal gifts from VECO Corp. and its chief executive officer, Bill Allen. If he's convicted, Stevens could face an unspecified fine and as much as five years in prison.

If hope that if he is found guilty that he punished to the fullest extent of the law. Additionally I hope that he is the last of the corrupt Republicans still in office. I have little doubt that had the GOP not been in the majority he either would have kept his nose clean or been indicted sooner. That brings me to one of my chief concerns about an Obama presidency. I fear that should the Dems control the house, the senate, and the Oval Office that we'll see the same level of corruption and excess. To me this is one of the most important functions that divided government serves. By that I mean as long as one party feels that the other is is breathing down their neck waiting for them to screw up they tend to stick to the straight and narrow.

Not that that alone is enough to push me into the McCain camp mind you. He's not the McCain of 2000. However as both he and Obama are moving to the middle the differences in the views on major issues are starting to dissapear. If that continues and both of them prove to politicians rather than leaders in my case the divided government arguement may prove to be the tipping point in McCain's favor.

That is of course provided that I don't become totally disgusted with both candidates and throw my vote Bob Barr's way. After all in Texas that vote would be just as a significant as a vote for Obama.

H/T Memeorandum

Thanks to DWSUWF for linking to this post

Something is Missing

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:43:26 -0500

I normally don't post about tragedies like the shooting that took place at a Unitarian church today. That's largely because I don't feel that I will anything particularly insightful to add to the dialogue by the time I get around to posting. Additionally something seems wrong about using a tragedy to draw visitors to my site. However today, because I read the story on the BBC rather than the American news wires, I noticed something was missing from blogland's coverage of the story:

Police have named one of the two people killed as Greg McKendry, a 60-year-old usher at the church. The other, Linda Kreager, died of her injuries at a nearby hospital a few hours later.
Church member Barbara Kemper said that Mr McKendry had "stood in front of the gunman and took the blast to protect the rest of us".

Simply put when his fellow man needed him most he showed his quality and answered the call with both courage and selflessness. In doing so he not only saved the lives of those around him he also changed the narrative of this story. Because, if one leaves out Mr. McKendry's part this is just another senseless act of violence however, once one includes the details of his final selfless act, the story shows that there are heroes and villains on both sides of the aisle.

My sincerest condolences go out to Mr. McKendry's family. His final act speaks volumes about exactly how much you have lost.

Things I Have Learned

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 14:21:36 -0500

Liquid baby formula is not a good substitute for milk in your coffee.

TGIF

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:10:27 -0500

Changing genres again.

Old Crow Medicine Show covering Bob Dylan's Rock Me Mama aka Wagon Wheel

The Other Obamania

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:09:57 -0500

You know, the one that makes people believe and then try to prove irrational claims about him.
This time it was,"Obama is not an American citizen" which was dreamed up by a disgruntled Clinton supporter. Fortunately this one actually revealed credible evidence to the contrary.

An announcement in the Honolulu Adviser circa 1961:

While this finding may have dashed the hopes of Clinton's less logical supporters its not going to do a thing to stop the "truthers" from running with it. After all to real conspiracy theorist evidence to the contrary of one's supposition doesn't mean your wrong. It's proof of a cover up. Why? Because if they actually used Occam's Razor and faced the facts then they wouldn't be superior to the rest of the general populace. Think of it as a fundamentalist religion in which the darkest motives of man/alienkind and one's ego are the only deities and you'll have a pretty good grasp of the mindset of truthers.

The New Flu

noreply@blogger.com (Dyre42) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:31:25 -0500

Is an interesting experiment. Essentially its trying to see how information is spread on the web. Just click the spread it button and post it on your site. The widget then ads a link to your blog on the map which is posted on hundreds of blogs already. More details here

H/T to OTB