Who McCain Should Pick for VP

VP speculation for both candidates is in high swing. Here’s a nice rundown for both McCain and Obama (at the bottom of the page). So far, McCain has been trailing Obama, and there are 3 things that may affect it:

1. VP Choice


2. Presidential Debates


3. News events over the next 3 years

McCain needs to nail the VP choice. If he goes soft with a Charlie Crist, I think he loses. My choice for McCain, not mentioned, would be Tom Coburn, the Republican Senator from Oklahoma. He’s a doctor turned politican after years of getting frustrated.

Pros

• He’s a strong conservative and will bring out conservatives


• As he is very strong against pork barrel spending, he makes up for some of the Republican overspending the last 8 years..


• He was first elected as Congressmen and kept a pledge to only run for three terms. He left in 2000 and returned to private practice. He ruffled establishment Republican feathers with his 2003 book, Breach of Trust.


• Adds credentials to anything related to healthcare.

Cons

• He’s not well known outside conservative circles. Nothing like being VP to make someone well known..


• He’s from a state that is already very Republican. However, the chance that someone would be a strong conservative Republican from a swing state is rare. I think McCain’s need for conservative credentials outweighs his need for a bump in any one state.

Cars Cause Droughts?

From Barack's Berlin lovefest speech:

"Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen -- a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world."

Definiton of citizen: a native or naturalized person who owes allegiance to a government and is entitled to protection from it"

"As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya."

Has the world gone mad? When a major Presidential candidate says something so ridiculous without notice or concern?

"This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. Let us resolve that all nations -- including my own -- will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere. This is the moment to give our children back their future."

We Are Now All Dumber

Obama's ability to answer a question is in a sad way, funny, but sad that he is close to becoming president.


Obama-Couric Interview

Couric: But what area do you feel least comfortable with?

Obama: Well, you know … I think that … there are so many issues in which I am not an expert but require you to be an expert. That the most important job that I will have as president is choosing excellent people to help to shape policy and provide me with a clear set of decisions. So …I'll give you … a very clear example.

I know quite a bit about healthcare, from a 4,000 to 40,000-foot level. But I'm not a doctor. I'm not a biochemist. You know, if you ask me about the human genome, I can vaguely describe it to you, but I don't know all the possibilities and potentials. So when I think about what I have to do as a president, my job is to be smart enough to choose really smart people, in fact, not to be intimidated by having people who are smarter than me, around me to give me, sound advice, and then be able to make those decisions.

But when it comes to foreign … you know, I feel confident in my ability to apply good judgment to a broad set of problems that are out there. It doesn't mean that I'm gonna be an expert on everything. It means that … I'm still gonna be consulting with people who have specialized in a particular area or particular region. But I think that I have a good feel for the nature of the problems that we have, the fact that the globe has gotten smaller, that we are all interconnected but that we still have a whole host of ethnic divisions and rivalries … that are people are still steeped in history.

We started talking about the issues here in the Middle East. Obviously … those long-standing grievances are not gonna go away immediately. And that the United States, one of the things that we can provide is leadership based on sets of values and ideals that recognize the equality of people; recognize human rights; recognize the importance of opportunity for all.

I believe those are values that are applicable to a wide range of problems. And that's why I think it's so important for the U.S. to return to the kind of leadership by example … that has made us … not only powerful, but also influential around the world.


"What you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in the room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul." -- Billy Madison

Elizabeth Edwards:, Smug , Self-Righteous, and Wrong

Elizabeth Edwards was on the Colbert show touting universal healthcare and claiming its not socialized medicine. She blames the "free market system" for the state of healthcare. On to gas, she smugly says:

"Thanks to a free market system, we have $4 gas." Then she says that it will soon be $5 and $6.

While the problems in healthcare are too complex to expand on here, Edwards blames the free market for high gas, yet it is her own party which is artificially restricting supply. In the real free market, as the price of gas rose to $4/gallon, investors would want to drill to increase supply in order to make a profit. As a result the price would come down. However, the Democrats prevent additional supply via laws against drilling.

That's completely unfair.

Review of the Pickens Plan

If you watch cable news then undoubtedly you’ve seen T. Boone Pickens' advertisements for his energy plan.

Overview

T. Boone Pickens, famed oilman, has launched a media blitz touting his Pickens Plan (http://www.pickensplan.com/theplan/) as the way for the future in energy and a way to break our dependence on foreign oil. So I decided to give it a look. Considering almost no oil is used for electricity production, how will adding wind turbines effect dependence on oil? Pickens envisions that up to 20% of electricity can come from wind. This would offset an equal amount of gas fired generation. Then the natural gas that would have gone into electricity generation could be used to power cars, which offsets demand in oil.

Before we go into the analysis let’s discuss how electric generation operates. People’s usage of electricity changes dramatically over the course of a day and from season to season. From 2am to 2pm, the usage of electricity will increase by about 60-80%. As the day comes and people go to their jobs, the demand for electricity increases. So in order to meet that rise in demand, some power plants that are operating at a lower capacity will be “turned up” and others must be turned on. Of the power plants that must be turned on, only some certain types can start rather quickly….and these are mostly natural gas. The power plants that don’t shut off during the night are your coal and nuclear plants.


The Problems

Pickens wants to take $1.2 trillion and replace natural gas power plants with wind. The wind is fickle and often blows the most at night. Adding wind generation may not displace much gas generation, but the nuclear and coal plants that are operating at night.

The plan would still need to have combustion turbines to back up the wind generation when the wind isn't blowing or Americans must change their views about reliability of electricity in their homes. Texas only considers 8.7% of wind capacity, dependable. That means that if an area has 1000 megawatts (MW) of demand, you would need at least 11,500 MW of wind turbine capacity in order for you be confident your lights turn on when you flick the switch.

Another consideration is, why not nuclear? If you are trying to displace the gas generation that is operating around the clock, why try to displace that with wind, but rather than nuclear? Nuclear is much more dependable, fuel costs are minimal, and the emission are zero.

There are a couple of other temporary problems such as the fact that turbine manufacturers are at capacity and that there is a poor distribution for natural gas for cars. Now if a government is committed to spending over 1 trillion, then manufacturers could add capacity at a price, and you would see natural gas stations spring up. One might also be able to tap into the supply at home if you have natural gas heating.


What I liked

He “got the white off the paper.” He also presented his plan with detail and a degree of logic.

T Boone was rather realistic about costs. A 3 MW turbine will cost about $6-7 million. The $1.2 trillion included $200 billion in costs for transmission. When electricity is generated in the middle of nowhere, it must be transmitted to the cities. This can be very expensive as Texas is finding out! He did, however, ignore the cost of backup capacity or the cost escalation that would be seen if demand for turbines or transmission equipment skyrocketed.

The idea of displacing gas generation, even if it is not quite as ambitious, isn’t awful. If 10% of gas generation per year could be displaced somehow (combination of wind & nuclear) that could be used to fuel about 10 million cars.


The Gore Plan - (link)

Not to be outdone, Al Gore released a statement saying the US electric generation should be completely Earth-friendly by 2018. He estimated the cost between $1.5 trillion and $3 trillion. That’s about all the information that he gives. So Pickens estimates it costs $1.2 trillion for 20% generation to be by wind, and Gore will do 100% for $3 trillion. Essentially Al Gore is just blowing hot air to get attention. The plan is so poorly thought and so ridiculous that it is a sad day that it is not met with instant ridicule.

Tony Snow, Requiescant in Pace

Tony Snow, newscaster and Press Secretary passed away today from cancer. I always like his radio show a lot. He was a strong conservative, his own thinker, and critical of the Republican party when they needed criticism. As Press Secretary he brought a cheer, debating skill, and speaking ability to the post... all qualities which is predicessor lacked.