Syria (Sigh)

Posted on Monday, September 9, 2013 by Dick

The President of the United States drew a red line in the sand. Then he lied about it.

I worry…
1. I worry that our Administration just keeps on lying to us. Again. (From the vast domestic surveillance program to ordering Boeing to shut down its new factory in South Carolina — because the factory and its 1,000 new employees were non-union — that should be no surprise.)
2. I worry that isolationism is taking hold. Again.
3. I worry that we either don’t have a plan or that our plan is radically different than anything the Administration is telling us. Again. (See #1.)
4. I worry that every airhead in a “leadership” position says Mr. Assad is violating “norms” because they want us to think they have neither law nor treaty authority. Again. (Except the Chemical Weapons Convention explicitly outlaws producing, stockpiling, and using chemical weapons.)
5. I worry that so many ostriches are asking, “Should there be consequences?” Again.

Should there be consequences? Committing genocide, whether writ large or small, violates my very core and, I suspect, yours. We do have two options:
1. Snatch Mr. Assad and deliver him to a world court.
2. Destroy the chemical arsenal of any nation or terrorist group that uses them anywhere in the world. Then do number one.

According to a poll making the rounds on the Interwebs, the Majority Of Americans Approve Of Sending Congress To #Syria.

Tuesday Trippin’

Posted on Tuesday, May 28, 2013 by Dick

I tweeted Leaving the land of $3.94 gas! Woot & Heeeeeeyyyyyyyyyooooooooo! on Thursday as I drove over the bridge into Vermont from New York State.

Bob and his friend Brad created the tradition of shouting Heeeeeeyyyyyyyyyooooooooo at the top of their lungs on road trips. They started it the first time they drove to the Winter Star Party in the Keys as “a cry of exaltation as each state line was passed.” Usually they are in closed cars, so it hurts only them. I have to admit that I expanded into yelling into everyone’s ears via social media.

I drovedrovedrove last week. Then I drovedrovedrove some more. Crossed a number of state lions so I did a lot of Heeeeeeyyyyyyyyyooooooooos.

Road trips are cool. Where else would I get my car detialed (that’s fonetic pronounsation) or discover that Woodstock has a brand new water tower. I shouted it for Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and West BG Virginia.

And then, Heeyyyooooo? How did I get back in Virginia??? And then Heeyyyooooo? Maryland? MARYLAND??

Huhroh?

My GPS is schizophrenic. It told me I was in Pennsyltucky.

This was a visit-old-friends-and-shoot-photos trip. The Laurel Grove Cemetary and the Forsythe fountain. Robertville and Estill which may be pronounced E-stull. Harper’s Ferry. I stopped at a couple of beaches at the Delaware Water Gap and even waded in the river to take some bridge photos. I didn’t take (many) pictures of the friends.

The run along the Delaware Water Gap was nice although the overcast means the photos I shot there were fairly dull. I’ll still get a couple out of that series.

The rest of the trip was boring except for the rain. There were some serious deluges through which I flat out could not see. I need new wiper inserts — they are pretty worn and I had to push the stiffener down into the arm again when I stopped at lunch time. Can’t find refills anywhere so I guess I’ll end up buying complete new wiper blades. That irritates me.

The (topless)(white) car averaged a skoch over 30 mpg on the trip but I still paid between $3.229 and $3.459/gallon for the privilege. I could have paid $3.169 in one of the Carolinas but I had already filled up at $3.22. I saw $3.949 in Champlain but Stewart’s in Rouses Point was $3.629/gallon. Right across the bridge in Vermont, both the Mobil and Irving were $3.639. It’s $3.679 in Swanton. That came to more than $200 in gasoline alone.

That’s price gouging. Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT) got his sound bite about gouging last year, though, so we don’t have to worry about that any more. See, after he “launched an investigation into unusually high gasoline prices in northwestern Vermont last summer, gas prices in Chittenden, Franklin and Grand Isle Counties became much more competitive.”

Of course that lasted about a nanosecond after the TV cameras (and Sen. Sanders) went elsewhere.

Our neighbor, Captain Gib, sells gas at his country store. He was moaning the other day that he “only makes about four cents a gallon.” For the record, each gallon of gas sold in northwestern Vermont last year made the seller 31.6 cents in average profit; this region turned in the 10th highest profit margin in the U.S. which means I really, really don’t want to drive in the number one market.

Meanwhile, I have to mount the mower deck on the tractor and do the first cutting (the grass is more than a foot tall). There are some other chores waiting on me. Two toilets need repair parts and the hot water pipe to the upstairs bath burst over the winter. That made a mess. I have to bleed the air out and refill the furnace with water and anti-freeze. Memorial Day Weekend. It snowed a little just a few miles from here.

I didn’t drive over to see, though. Gas is even more expensive today. And the diesel juice for my tractor is even worse.

Did I mention that this column is about price gouging?

Pants on Fire, Part Umpty-Seven point Three

Posted on Monday, February 25, 2013 by Dick

The Post Office is going to sue Lance Armstrong for running “the most sophisticated, professionalized, and successful doping program” that the world has ever seen which apparently hurts postal customers’ essential concept of the Post Office.

Yeah, I’d hate ever to think the Post Office might have the most sophisticated, professionalized, and successful program for anything. That would definitely give us the wrong idea about the Post Office.

The Postal’s Services own studies show that the service benefitted tremendously from its sponsorship — benefits totaling more than $100 million in sales.

Speaking of sophisticated, professionalized, and successful doping programs: Sequestration? Budget cuts?

I’ve been looking for a straight answer on how much will be cut from actual Federal spending this week. Best I can tell, the boogeyman will slice about $85 billion from the federal budget. And also, best as I can tell, total Federal spending for fiscal year 2012 reached $3.6 trillion and is due to rise for fiscal 2013. What do you bet the increase will be more than $85 billion? For the record, fiscal year 2012 marked the fourth consecutive year of trillion dollar deficits.

Here’s the problem in a nutshell: everyone is afraid that their personal ox will get gored.

Wow. That never happens in business.

Texas Instruments laid off 1,700 people. NBC dumped 500. Solel fired 140 of their remaining 430 workers. Xerox restructured 2,500 current employees into former employees. Stryker closed their facility in New York and plans to counter the medical device tax in Obamacare by slashing 1,170 jobs, some 5% of their global workforce. And those were just some of the announcements last November alone.

Nobody said boo when Citigroup slashed 11,000 jobs, when Dow “retired” Rufus, or when Motorola did the same for Liz Arden, but the Feds can’t handle a 2% cut in money they haven’t even spent yet?

Yesterday, Governor Martin O’Malley (D-MD) said, “We can’t cut our way to prosperity.” Perhaps not, but the stock market is up on news of the layoffs and faith in government is down on news of higher spending.

As Gail Collins wrote in the NYTimes, “Did you know one of the most popular TV shows in Norway was about firewood? Maybe you should have this discussion with a Norwegian.” Better yet, maybe we should have this discussion in Norwegian.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the certification of the 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

From ourdocuments.gov: “In 1909 progressives in Congress again attached a provision for an income tax to a tariff bill. Conservatives, hoping to kill the idea for good, proposed a constitutional amendment enacting such a tax; they believed an amendment would never received ratification by three-fourths of the states. Much to their surprise, the amendment was ratified by one state legislature after another, and on February 25, 1913, with the certification by Secretary of State Philander C. Knox, the 16th amendment took effect. Yet in 1913, due to generous exemptions and deductions, less than 1 percent of the population paid income taxes at the rate of only 1 percent of net income.”

My, how things have changed.

We Go Fast, Part II

Posted on Thursday, January 17, 2013 by Dick

Up in North Puffin, the Conservation Law Foundation is concerned. See, the State of Vermont issued St. Albans City a Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4) permit last month.

“We’re convinced that significant water quality improvements in Vermont will take too long to achieve,” a spokesman who was not Dennis Farina said.

They are so worried about the timing for water quality improvements in Vermont that they have challenged the permit.

If I’ve got this straight, they want things to go faster so they figure the best way to do that is to tie the engineers, the municipal officials — the very people who would otherwise do all the work — plus a bunch of attorneys up in court? For the next year or ten?

We Go Fast, Part I

Posted on Thursday, January 17, 2013 by Dick

In a recent Comcast commercial from the Martin Agency, Dennis Farina looks straight at the camera and says “Xfinity has the fastest Internet and CenturyLink doesn’t.”

I had a little trouble with some downloads around the time the commercial aired. Many small podcasts took many big minutes. Skype kept telling us the connection was too slow for video (Skype asked if I had checked my dial-up service).

The following chart shows how long a file the size of that short podcast should take at advertised speeds. My !@#$%^ Comcast connection averaged 8 minutes.

I ran an independent speed test.

Comcast provides a speed test that shows download speed, upload speed, and ping time. The Interweb fora are filled with reports that the Comcast results are, ah, less reliable than other testers.

(Just so’s you know, I showed the SPEEDTEST.NET results to a Comcast rep who said they were wrong, that I needed to use Comcast’s own servers to get a “valid” result.)

Alrighty then. Here are some more of !@#$%^ Comcast’s own servers, starting with the same date and time of the test above.