Pointman’s Page

As the saying goes, all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others. So despite the hue and cry that alternative energies aren’t getting the financial attention they deserve, based on the kwh they’re getting a lot more than the tax payers are getting back from the investment. Granted some still need time to mature, but others have already proven too problematic in one way or another - such as Wind farms killing birds by the tens or hundreds of thousands.

I certainly hope the Republican fall turn out is better than yesterday’s primary. With 1.2mil Democrat voters and only 410k Republican voters the concern is certainly there over November’s turn out. Granted, the Republican candidate is already decided and that alone was enough to dissuade a lot of Republican’s from taking the time. Add to that McCain isn’t exactly the dream candidate for conservative Republicans and we get a low Republican turn out. But if we repeat this turn out in November Republicans are in trouble.

If you still believe the anti-oil hubbub is about anything other than power then don’t miss the missing big story that no one is covering.

The Bio-fuel scientists are right now trying to make bacteria more efficient in making ethanol and that has been covered on the regular evening news programs at length. But make bacteria that make hydrocarbons and what happens? Nothing… Silence… hear crickets chirping?

Every now and then it really helps to get the big picture.

The wife and I don’t go to many movies in a given year largely because most releases deserve little attention or are no better than a made for television special you might find on the networks or cable. But this year one of the first movies to really catch at least my attention was IRON MAN so when it was released yesterday we made a point to go see it.

Now I’ve seen enough promo’s and movies to know that often all the cool scenes in the promo video clip are all the cool scenes in the entire movie. So I pretty much expected that to be the case with Iron Man.

I have seldom been so happy to be wrong.

(Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 94 )

It looks like Microsoft may actually be serious in their endeavors to become more than a niche player in the event management field with the Operations Manager product line. Event management that only works with one platform is immediately handicapped and restricted to small to mid sized companies. But when you add cross platform extensions and connectors so that the software can monitor and manage every server in your environment (like MS’s competitors do) then you have something. Whether their implementation will be worth actually using remains to be seen. It is not unknown for Microsoft to throw us a bone so that they can SAY they do something, but it doesn’t work anywhere but a lab.

I can only laugh at the latest explanation of the missing Whitehouse Emails, they migrated from Lotus to Exchange and Exchange does not have a defacto archiving system. First thing I want to point out is that such a lapse is due to very poor product capabilities evaluation or poor communication of requirements. I wonder how much $$ the consultants earned for this.

After some decades I finally found something on which I can agree with the New York Times (second question)….

Microsoft has released a USB thumb drive device that allows police to completely unlock a “suspects” Windows based computer system. And it will only be used for legitimate purposes… I suppose we should be grateful there isn’t a little pi symbol in the corner of our screens eh? But then why be so obvious when you can simply distribute a USB thumb drive to all your cronies…

I have a mystery on my hands. When I got home last night there was a box on my desk from a company I’d never heard of and didn’t order anything from. Initially I thought it might be some promotional item (Dell is always sending me stuff like mobile mice and blue tooth headsets). But when I tore into it the contents was a very nice SureFire flashlight! I’ve wanted one for years but I’m really cheap so haven’t broke down and actually bought one, which makes it a perfect gift for me.

So now I’m wondering… how did anyone know I even wanted one? Went to my wishlist page and started going through them and there is the light in my Cabella’s wishlist! Or, it WAS! (Past time to update all my lists)

I am in the dark as to who my mysterious benefactor may be - but I suspect my poor, starving MBA student Brother…

Whom ever you are, THANK YOU!

UPDATE: My Brother has confirmed that he is the mystery sender!

Though Stahl gets her opinion in her interview of Justice Scalia reminds me how much respect I have for him.

“When I first came on the court I thought I would for sure get off as soon as I could which would have been when I turned 65. Because you know, justices retire at full salary. So there’s no reason not to leave and go off and do something else. So you know, essentially I’ve been working for free, which probably means I’m too stupid to be on the Supreme Court,” Scalia says, laughing. “You should get somebody with more sense. But I cannot - what happened is, simply I cannot think of what I would do for an encore. I can’t think of any other job that I would find as interesting and as satisfying.”

I was readingRush’s comments on “farming out” and it occurred to me that while the Democrats bash the Republicans for outsourcing government jobs through “privatizing” the Democrats are guilty of outsourcing government authority and accountability to the globalists and United Nations.

Now some of you may not see that as a bad thing, but a strong America means a wealthy America and prosperous citizens who can afford bg screen televisions and single serving microwave brownies that taste like homemade (must have our priorities straight, mustn’t we).

People forget that the government is here are serve us, not just the peons but corporations as well. While there must be some balance a peon never created a job or wealth. To balance, corporations have been guilty of over reaching in big ways and things like NAFTA and a less than particular market place hasn’t helped. But then “the people” are certainly culpable here, too. Without the consumer where are these over reaching corporations getting their cash?

Even oil, if you have a retirement fund, a ROTH or a 401K - YOU own, albeit small, part of an oil company.

But back to the main topic, the “outsourcing” of America. Outsourcing through privatization is far preferable to outsourcing to globalists who hold themselves above the rest. They’re less likely to harm the American consumer who is their cash cow. That doesn’t mean a large number of American and multi-national corporations are not part of the globalist push, they are. But you, the American consumer, can fix that - government cannot.

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

—John Adams

Hm, now this is interesting, a FOXNews.com - scientist says Forget Global Warming, Prepare for New Ice Age

“This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930,” Chapman wrote in The Australian Wednesday. “If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.”

I saw a writeup on this last week, the potential billions of gallons of oil in the Bakkan region of North America but waited to see if the mainstream picked it up.. which they did not. So while we drive the cost of food up and starve out 3rd world populations and drive inflation in the US with these “bio-fuels” there is enough oil under our feet to run America for 130 years or more. Doesn’t anyone think that’s enough time to come up with alternatives that don’t starve out people? Obviously the Green’s and Global Warming priesthood don’t. But then they also think the number of people on the earth now is unsustainable and we need to “decrease” our population to a paltry 500 million or so to save gaia

If you wonder why kids today are stupid, why they cannot comprehend the American Dream, it is because their history professors don’t know history themselves. Or, knowing it don’t like it and want it rewritten in their own ideal. The saying goes that the victor writes the history which is as it should be. But they don’t like the victor, what the victor stands for so are trying to rewrite it now, before the political climate changes and, for all his failings, Bush is recognized as having been a net success for the United States.

I guess it is natural that with the fall of real estate prices in the United States, and the advent of Real Estate Tourism (Europeans taking bus tours looking for real estate bargains in the US) that other markets should follow to keep pace with competitive pressures from the United States. Interesting to note that most of these markets are for vacation and second home real estate which just goes to show there isn’t exactly a lack of disposable or investment income unless you’re sitting on your behind just waiting for that factory to re-open and recall you.

It appears President Bush is ready to back McCain-Liberman “Kyoto lite”… now that the Earth is heading into a cooling trend we “must act now”. And you idiots think Bush is a “radical right-wing conservative”? You’re all nuts…

This is the kind of liberal insantity coming from McCain, Bush and the national Republican party which make the differences between the left and the right darned near invisible and will very likely result in the conservative base of the party simply staying home in November. There is little to no differentiation between these candidates so why bother? (a factious question, I’ll vote anyway but I don’t have to be happy about it)

“An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.”

—John Marshall

“The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is… legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay… If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.”

—Frederic Bastiat

Yet another article in the main stream continuing to throw doubt on global warming. So now you know why the global warming crowd kept saying “we must act now!”… before they were found out for the frauds they are.

I love the media fear mongering going on in Flori-duh. They found an Anti-Tank Grenade Launcher which was seized while busting up a crime ring (kudos on the bust btw) and they’re trotting it out for all to see as some horrific weapon of mass destruction. What you have to read closely to find is that it is a vintage WWII launcher. What they don’t say at all is that according to the law it isn’t even classified as a firearm… the rockets that go in it, well they’re a different story all together but then they didn’t find any of those. My point? None really, other than the media continues to capitizlize on the ignorance of their readers to push their own agenda rather than reporting the facts…. so no, no point really….

Three divergent articles on global warming, or the lack thereof, today. The first one is on the lack of temperature rise since 1998 which is a pretty startling piece of information to read from the BBC. Second up is how the lack of major disasters in the last couple of years (where did those forecast horrific hurricanes go anyway?) has customers wondering why their rates are still high when the claims have fallen so low.

And the last which is my favorite of the day as it points out the true nature of the global warming zealots… the World Bank is being accused if using Global Warming as an excuse to “seize control of the billions of dollars of aid that will be used to tackle climate change in the next four decades”.

An article from earlier in the week also raises the possibility that we’ll soon see the courts rule on global warming and carbon dioxide. With the states suing the EPA for not regulating CO2 it is my hope they will force the Fed to once and for all drag out the research from the last few years that successfully refutes the entire global warming thesis including the role of carbon dioxide. (There is talk we may actually need more rather than less CO2). Other data I’d like to see dragged out for public scrutiny are that some ice fields are growing rather than shrinking; that the Siberian weather station data coincidentally went off line about the same time we noticed the global warming trend start in earnest (in the numbers, anyway); that weather monitoring stations in the United States are ground level today compared with the use of weather balloons previously; that those US monitoring stations have been shown to be placed in such poor positions as beside parking lots and air conditioning units - so much so that the locations of the weather stations were taken down to stop public inspection…

So I finally get around to calling about ordering the Tsukayu Jumbo Strong hard bags for the VTX only to find out they are shipped from Japan and it takes 6 weeks go get them… I guess it’s not a terrible hardship having to wait until mid May to get them but I had hoped to be on a couple road trips by then rather than just getting the X ready for them. But then, these should be well worth the wait and I’ve already been waiting since July 2007 so… what’s a few more weeks?

This will end well…. Can we put the Argentine president in a room with Maggie Thatcher for 10 minutes and get this settled? Again? Seems more humane than killing all those sheep residing in the Falklands… and would make a wonderful YouTube video.

Otherwise, GW may have to let Britain have a hand full of their troops back for a few days to deal with this.