My turn on the soapbox

OK my friend, YOU were the one up on the soap box; now it's my turn:

I agree that Obama inherited a HUGE mess, one that dates back many decades. I'm just an engineer and not a historian or economist, but I can see its roots in the New Deal, which started the shift from "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" to entitlements that we couldn't afford. Then we had Nixon taking us off the gold standard and we started borrowing money instead of living within our means. From there we went to Jimmy Carter and his "fair housing" and "energy independence" for which we're just receiving the bill. We can fast forward through Reagan's deficit spending and Clinton's gutting of the military and semi-"privatization" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Then we had Bush Jr. running two simultaneous wars on credit cards and leaving office "giving us the bird" with a trillion dollar TARP.

So yes, Obama inherited a HUMONGOUS mess, and one that he is apparently intent on worsening. He spent more money in his first quarter in office than his predecessor managed to burn through in two terms. Now he wants to socialize our banking system, industry, and energy sectors?! Oh sure, because that's worked so well in the other communist countries who have already tried that formula. Our dollar is so battered that we bought our own bonds this week (if you or I did that we'd be arrested for check kiting) and China has just called for getting off the dollar for international trade (and can you blame them?). So now that we've had our credit cards cut up because we've been so irresponsible for the past three decades, we're printing money with no backing. That can only mean we're in for hyper-inflation and total financial collapse, probably before the end of this calendar year. And all I see Obama doing is throwing gasoline on this fire stoked by his predecessors (there being NO substantive difference between presidents and congresses of either party in my lifetime.) So, I'm in the process of divesting my stocks and bonds and hoarding food, garden seeds, fuel, firearms, and ammunition; and I recommend you do the same my friend.

OK - I'll get off my soap box now and desperately hope you can tell me why I'm wrong and why Obama is going to fix a problem that has only mushroomed after being planted and fertilized for at least 80 years. I would really prefer to going back to "life as usual" and I'd like you tell me that's going to happen and how.

Wind Turbines Cause Bats to Explode

Wind projects have been encountering a pesky problem – exploding bats. (Not kidding). The environmental sciences have come up with an ingenious solution – shut down the wind turbines! (Really, I’m not kidding). So now that we’ve solved that problem (saving bats by shutting down wind turbines) we’re all set to mandate more wind energy. (Huh?) Here’s the article:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/23/wind-turbine-advocates-test-a-solution-to-explodin/

Personally, I'd prefer the bats over the windmills - at least bats are useful in that they eat bugs. But what the story really exposes is the disconnect between legitimate environmentalists (those trying to save the bats) and the illegitimate environmentalists (those trying to peddle windmills.)

Wind power, like solar power, in the power industry, is considered a joke; it only generates energy around 15% of the time in the best of circumstances (whereas power customers expect 24-hour service) and almost never during the period of peak demand, and is many times more expensive than conventional energy sources (gas, coal, hydro, nuclear, etc.)

So, as the engineer for a non-profit cooperative, whose main concern is to provide the best service to my customers for the least cost, it galls me to be asked (or worse, forced) to buy unreliable but expensive energy and then in turn force the members of my cooperative to pay extra for it. It is simply immoral.

As for creative painting, my experience is that paint doesn't stick to steel poles very well, so it's much better to leave them either plain galvanized or self weathering. I'm attaching a photo that I took of a power line with steel poles to illustrate that very point. As you can imagine, not very many people are volunteering to get up on the steel pole between the wires, energized at 345,000 volts, to repaint the structures.

The "Controversial" Topic

If you are shopping for a gun safe, you don't have to spend thousands of dollars, although you can. I purchased a very nice, medium size gun safe at Sportsman's Warehouse for just $300. It gives me a place to park the guns that I'm not keeping out for an emergency. I have some trigger locks that came with various gun purchases, but I don't use them; either the gun is in the safe or it's out and ready to use.

For an emergency around the house, nothing works better than a 12 gauge pump action shotgun. The sound of the action being pumped is distinctive enough to dissuade most invaders. I had worried that my wife would need to go down to a 20 gauge, but we have found that she is very good with a 12 gauge - she can hit more clay pigeons that I can and I've been shooting all my life. (But I'm still the best shot with a rifle.)

As for other calibers, there is something to be said for "caliber consolidation" - which is to choose guns with a common caliber so it is easier to find or trade ammunition. Following that line of reasoning, you should know that the military and police use .40 caliber pistols (usually Glocks), .308 rifles for sniping (or hunting, if you're a civilian), and .223 for assault rifles (for crowd control.) For my assault rifle I chose a 5.56 NATO caliber which will also shoot a .223 - that gives me two rounds to choose from, just in case.

Ammunition and guns have become very scarce and expensive since the election back in November 2008, BUT I keep asking myself: when the dollar becomes worthless and all of my "electronic funds" (like savings accounts, CD's, money markets, stocks, bonds, retirement fund, IRA, 401k) evaporate, what will I wish I had spent my money on back when I had the chance? Certainly food is at the top of the list. So are real property, vehicles, and guns and ammunition.

The attached photo is of three generations target shooting together. "The family that shoots together..."

Spring Break at Disneyland

We drove to Anaheim after church on Sunday the 15th of March. The traffic between Las Vegas and Barstow, California was absolutely brutal; stop and go the whole way. So our six hour drive turned into eight. But early Monday morning we got up and hit the park right at opening. First thing in the morning the park is pretty empty and we RAN from ride to ride, doing all of our favorites before the park got busy and the lines got long. So we hit “Pirates of the Caribbean” “Haunted Mansion” and “Indiana Jones” a couple of times first off, and then over to “Buzz Lightyear” (my personal favorite.) We also collected Fast Passes all morning so that by the afternoon we had a collection of passes that got us on to all of our rides without a wait. We had the three-day park hopper passes, but we spent the whole of Monday in the Disneyland park. At the end of the day we hit some of the big motion rides, like “Space Mountain” and “Star Tours”, and I ended up pretty green around the gills.

On Tuesday we got up early again and did our one early entrance day to Disneyland and executed our speed round of our favorite rides before heading over to the California adventure land when they opened a couple of hours later. There they had a new ride, “Toy Story 3-D”, which is my new favorite in California land. Mom and the girls did the roller coaster, but my stomach was still out of sorts from the day before, so I sat and held their purses for them. We lazed around the California land, hitting the “Tower of Terror”, “Monsters Inc.”, and “Bugs’ Life” until it closed that evening and then we went back to Disneyland for seconds on our favorite rides. Wednesday we did a combination of the two parks, hopping back and forth and hitting our favorites all around. All three nights we stayed until after the evening fireworks, almost until closing. I’m attaching a photo of us in front of Tomorrowland just before the fireworks. And then on Thursday morning, but not too early so as to avoid the rush hour, we headed back home to St. George where we found everything just as we’d left it. So, this was another successful family trip.

Misery Index

Back in the 70’s and 80’s, when we compared the economy to past years, to decide if it was getting better or worse, we talked about the “Misery Index.” It’s simply the sum of the unemployment, inflation, and interest rates. No one is talking about this index these days because they prefer to talk about the “worst economy since the Great Depression.” Just as an intellectual exercise I decided to recreate the Misery Index back to 1960 to see where we really stand. You can see on the chart that we’re not even half as miserable as we were back under Jimmy Carter. We’re not even as bad as we were under Nixon. Yet.

Where do we go from here? I’m guessing that the economy is going to get superheated by all of the deficit spending and we’ll see the inflation rate go from its current rate of zero to something HUGE. Then the government will drive up interest rates, to try to get inflation under control, and then we’ll WISH we had a misery index of only 40%. That’s my bet. So, I’m doing what the (LDS) Prophet says and I’m getting my year’s supply and planting a garden.