Posts Made By: James Brown

Hi all:

Jim Babcock had a heart attack and stroke last night. He is out of surgery now, but he faces a tough recovery and will be unable to use his keyboard for quite a while.

Jim's wife Jeannie has been in touch through Jim's Astromart account. She said this in a recent note:

"The thought of being able to debate politics with so many smart people brightens up Jim's day. To him even those that seem to hate him he considers friends, it is something like a club to him. Have fun arguing politics and astronomy, and good wishes to your family."

I don't think anyone could ever put the value of this forum into better words.

I think I speak for the forum when I say; Get well soon Jim! Our prayers are with you and your family. We will all be looking forward to your speedy return.

Jim

Hi all:

There is some interesting conversation going on about what I'm calling "ancillary considerations." This relates to the fundamental individual person "who am I going to vote for this year" process. I would define "primary considerations" as the party platforms, the candidate's character and experience, his stated policies, party loyalty and other stuff that usually drives a normal voter to pick one candidate over another.

"Ancillary considerations" are different and unique with each election. These are not necessarily policy or party platform related.

One huge ancillary consideration (in my opinion) is the desire to punish the GOP for Bush. I think this is very real and reasonable, and also likely to carry the election for Obama. I'm not sure it is rational because McCain is his own man and has caused the far-right Bush wing of the GOP a ton of heartburn in the past. Still, I think that the desire to punish the GOP is real, in large part justified and maybe important to steer the party back toward the center.

Another huge ancillary consideration is the desire for change, any change. The GOP has had the White House for a while, many folks think for too long. This favors any Democrat.

Obama's race is an ancillary consideration. As I mentioned below, I hope and do not think it will be a deciding factor in the swing states, but who really knows.

Are ancillary considerations less real or important than the analysis of policy and platform? I don't think so. In my opinion the ancillary considerations are going to drive this election to Obama. Particularly the desire to punish Bush which includes a huge loss of confidence in the GOP. McCain did damage control last night, but it is probably too little too late.

Jim

Chris Myers said:

...because all his team are realizing that real independents are largely favoring Obama. I suggest that this is why he picked Palin, to try to motivate the far right to get on board. He realizes he's lost most independents to Obama and that the conservative far right are his only real hope. Oh, and by "independents" I am not referring to those Reps and Libertarians who think they are independent. I argue that "independent" generally means free of *any* party affiliation. In other words, truly free to vote one's conscience and use one's intellect, logic and common sense. I realize this a forum filled with some pretty strong and willful subjective points of view, but I hope even those will get my point.

Hi Chris:

I'm not sure about "real independents" as you define them, but with respect to independents as Gallup defines them it looks like McCain is doing quite OK. Obviously independents by any definition are fickle and a lot will bounce around between now and the election. The debates will be huge.

Look deep into the article and you will see that (according to Gallup) "pure independents" favor McCain by over 20%. Just what is the basis for your premise that McCain is losing the fight for the independents??

http://www.gallup.com/poll/110137/McCain-Now-Winning-Majority-Independents.aspx

Hi all:

I just enjoyed a nice dusk watching a mid-sized bull elk and his small harem. The bull is still bugling out back as I post this.

This first shot is an extreme crop of an image taken with a Canon 300D at the prime focus of my TEC APO 140. The elk is about 100 yards away. I was very tickled to catch details like his eyelashes.

Unfortunately the light was pretty low, so the raw images that I shot at 1/125 or 1/80 second exposure had to be brightened quite a bit before much was visible. This introduced some color noise that is visible on the extreme close up crop.

I hope you like these,

Jim

For those sick of grim analysis, here is an editorial where the author opines that Paulsen's 700B gamble might net the US treasury 2.2 trillion dollars over time:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122230704116773989.html

I am not knowledgeable enough about these things to even guess whether the author is smoking crack or whether he has a point. Although I'm opposed to government bailouts in general, it sure would be nice to hope that this one, which seems inevitable in some form, might become profitable. I'd sure like to hear an opinion about this chap's reasoning from some of our financial market experts (Chris N., Paul K. etc. are you out there?)


Jim

Hi all:

I believe that expanding nuclear energy production is important to this nation’s energy future. I also believe that expanding nuclear although risky beats accelerating global warming by continuing to rely on carbon combustion for our power. Accordingly, I have been watching the candidates on this issue. Based upon the debates and upon the candidate’s official policy statements I think the following is accurate:

McCain is promising to encourage the construction of nuclear plants. The issue of whether he can or will be able to encourage the construction of nuclear plants is of course debatable. His rhetoric is in the right place though.

Obama publicly pays lip service to nuclear energy as demonstrated below. However it is clear to me that his opposition to the development of nuclear waste transportation or storage facilities such as Yucca Mountain is an effective and complete block to any new nuclear energy development in the United States. In my opinion, Obama is in effect saying “Sure we will need nuclear (wink wink) but there is no way I am going to allow us to move forward until the storage and transportation issues are fully resolved.” This is a lot like a republican who states; “sure global warming is real, but I’m not going to do a damn thing until I am sure that the cause is human activity” The partisan Republican will never be convinced of human cause and Obama will never be convinced that any storage site is safe enough.

Regarding storage, Obama states in his policy paper that Yucca Mountain is not a suitable storage site. If Yucca Mountain is not suitable, what site will ever be suitable? Thus, Obama is basically having his cake and eating it too. He says he is not “opposed” to nuclear; however he won’t let storage site development proceed. This effectively kills the prospect of any nuclear energy expansion in the US in the next couple of decades. You guys probably know that Yucca Mountain is a decade away from going on line in any case. In the meantime spent waste must be stored on site. This is obviously a huge impediment to new nuclear plant development. It is the ultimate deal breaker.

A co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore is now an advocate for nuclear energy development. (This of course has really fried his former pals.) Moore changed his mind because the risks associated with nuclear are less that the risks associated with dumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. I think Obama would do well to listen to him. If global warming is a big issue for you, consider that both parties are going to fund solar and wind research. Both are going to provide incentives for efficient and electric cars. Only one party is willing to move forward on a big part of the ultimate solution though.

Jim

[SIZE="Small"]Everything in this post is my own opinion. The supporting research is my own. No cut-and-paste was used to construct the opinions above. Any errors are mine. Please feel free to rebut my opinions in an original post of your own. Anyone who resorts to fisking my post will be ignored and/or publicly mocked as an intellectual and political featherweight. JB
[/SIZE]

[COLOR="Blue"]Supporting materials:[/COLOR]

Obama’s official plan: http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/factsheet_energy_speech_080308.pdf

McCain’s official plan:

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/17671aa4-2fe8-4008-859f-0ef1468e96f4.htm

Presidential Debate #1

McCain: Look, we are sending $700 billion a year overseas to countries that don't like us very much. Some of that money ends up in the hands of terrorist organizations. We have to have wind, tide, solar, natural gas, flex fuel cars and all that but we also have to have offshore drilling and we also have to have nuclear power.

Senator Obama opposes both storing and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. You can't get there from here and the fact is that we can create 700,000 jobs by building constructing 45 new nuclear power plants by the year 2030. Nuclear power is not only important as far as eliminating our dependence on foreign oil but it's also responsibility as far as climate change is concerned and the issue I have been involved in for many, many years and I'm proud of the work of the work that I've done there along with President Clinton.

Obama, Later in the Debate:

What we're going to have to do is to approach it through alternative energy, like solar, and wind, and biodiesel, and, yes, nuclear energy, clean-coal technology. And, you know, I've got a plan for us to make a significant investment over the next 10 years to do that.

McCain in McCain/Obama exchange, later still: No one from Arizona is against solar. And Senator Obama says he's for nuclear, but he's against reprocessing and he's against storing. So...

Obama: That's just not true, John. John, I'm sorry, but that's not true. [COLOR="Blue"](In my opinion, based upon his white paper, Obama is fibbing here) JB[/COLOR]

McCain: ... I supported Nunn-Lugar back in the early 1990s when a lot of my colleagues didn't. That was the key legislation at the time and put us on the road to eliminating this issue of nuclear waste and the nuclear fuel that has to be taken care of.

Obama: I -- I just have to correct the record here. I have never said that I object to nuclear waste. What I've said is that we have to store it safely.

VP Debate:

Biden:“The way in which we can stop the greenhouse gases from emitting. We believe -- Barack Obama believes by investing in clean coal and safe nuclear, we can not only create jobs in wind and solar here in the United States, we can export it.”

Minnesota leaning toward McCain? I suppose anything is possible. If true, maybe it's because you folks have the same accent as Palin? Is it a hockey thing? Any opinions Paul K. or Eric G.?

http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=0782fede-2757-4c86-9479-f84f02afc9fb

http://electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/Graphs/minnesota.html

If this is true I'll have to invite you guys to my swing-state-swing-county-swing-vote barbecue along with McCain and Obama.

Jim

Hi:

This panorama is pretty much the entire Gore Range in the Colorado Rockies. The Gore Range runs N-S for over 60 miles. The Blue River Valley is between us and the mountains. If you have ever skied at Vail, the other (far) side of this range faces the ski mountain.

I took this from the top of Ptarmigan Peak which is the Southernmost peak in the Williams Fork Mountains to the East of the Gore. It is a merge of 5 vertically oriented images shot with a Canon 300d and Tamron 28-300mm zoom lens. I merged the images with the utility program that comes with a Canon camera.

I hope you enjoy this picture as much as my family of four (plus dog) enjoyed the 13 mile hike (round trip) to the top of Ptarmigan Peak!

Jim

Those of you who follow polls know that the news has not been so good for McCain recently. Still, this article is interesting (tip of the hat to the "Hedgehog Report" for calling this out):

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gmJpgsrR27lwSUQ24_WSSrU0W-JwD93L8H1O0

Only 3000 voters in the entire state of Ohio took advantage of the new and disputed one-stop registration and vote program. Only 1100 people in Columbus took advantage. Columbus is the home of massive Ohio State of course and about 70,000 of those youth voters Obama is counting on.

Maybe Obama's ground game is not up to the task? I would see this as reasonably good news for McCain.

Jim

Chris Myers said:

Sure wish my pockets were this deep. First 700 billion, now possibly as much as 1.3 trillion more (see figures about halfway down the linked article). Give 'em an inch...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081007/ap_on_bi_ge/financial_meltdown

Hi Chris,

I would be interested in an analysis of the projected net cost of this plan. For example, if the Fed buys 1.3T in short term commercial paper and is paid back at a reasonable interest rate with minimal defaults, the net cost will be reasonably low. If this move thaws the credit markets a bit, the net cost is worth it.

I don't want to sound like an irrational optimist, but the 1.3T figure (like the 700B figure) is being discussed in the popular press as a simple expense. It is not. Under certain scenarios (that are probably extremely far fetched,) the Fed makes a lot of money on these deals. Under no scenario are these simple expenditures of cash out with no possible recovery. for the press, the net projections lack the shock and awe value of the gross figures though....

Jim