News & Discussion Items 10/8/08

Paul Rosenberg nails the past 8 years in a very short post.

The second Presidential debate was last night.  Sen. Obama said the words “middle class” four times.  Sen. McCain didn’t say them at all.  That’s why McCain is losing.  He doesn’t care that the middle class is struggling.

Britain has put together a rescue package for its banks.  Which is quite different than the Bailout Bush prushed.  See, Britain is buying shares in the banks until such time that their financial affairs are back in order.  British banks are not just getting money handed out to them, as they are in America.  Spain is following in America’s footsteps.  The framing of each case is critical moving forward.

A number of swing states have seen voter rolls purged – likely illegally.  A New York Times look into the matter hasn’t picked up any patterns of responsibility by either major party.  Regardless, a lot of people could be turned away come Election Day or told to vote on provisional ballots, which are rarely counted.  My own state of Colorado is on the list.  Despite an increase in population all decade and very successful voter registration drives, there are currently 100,000 fewer voters left on the rolls than in 2004.  That’s going to be a big problem come November 5th.  This situation provides strong evidence of the need for same-day registration.  Americans should be able to wait longer than 4-5 hours for an official count for something as important as President.

NASA’s Phoenix lander is currently expected to keep operating until about the middle of November 2008.  At its high latitude, the amount of sunlight it can receive is currently decreasing as Mars moves into its fall and winter.  Soil sampling will continue until no power is left on the craft.

Some 76 million Americans own their homes.  Housing values have fallen about 30% since their peak two years ago.  Which means approximately 12 million Americans owe more on their homes than they’re worth – about 16%!  That percentage is up from only 4% in 2006 and 6% in 2007.  9% of homeowners are between one month overdue or in foreclosure.  Here is why that’s really bad news.  More upside-down houses results in more foreclosures which drags other home values down, which puts more owners upside-down and so forth.  That’s what initiated the mortgage crisis and then the financial crisis.  With the credit markets frozen, fewer mortgages will be approved, keeping housing values and sales down for some time to come.

News Pieces 9/27/08

In a move toward improving the transparency of bills in Congress, PublicMarkup.org has put the original Bush Bailout plan and Senator Chris Dodd’s plan dealing with the same issue up for public view.  The public can also comment on the legislation.

Oh, in case you’re wondering – despite having billions of dollars worth of bad assets and paying executives millions of dollars every year, the financial institutions looking for a $700 billion handout is still paying for lobbyists.  In the millions this year alone.  While families are losing their houses.  That’s immoral.

The Republican County Clerk in El Paso is illegally trying to prevent students at Colorado College from voting this November.  Why would that be?  Could it be that young voters are breaking 65-32 for Obama over McCain?  Every vote Bob Balink prevents for Obama and other Democrats is one step closer toward his party’s success.  There are 10 days left to register to vote for this year’s election.  How many voters will be unable to vote because of this Republican’s immoral efforts?

While the summer season has drawn to a close for the Arctic, thankfully ending the horrible rate of melt this year, the Antarctic’s winter is also ending.  This winter wasn’t as good to the sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere as last winter was.  The maximum extent was 15 million sq. km, over 1 million sq. km. less than the area last year.  It appears Aug. 2008 wasn’t a good year for ice worldwide as the Southern Hemisphere actually lost over 500,000 sq. km. of ice in a two-week time period.  August also saw the fastest rate of melt of ice in the Northern Hemisphere.  After attaining a +2 million sq. km. anomaly last year, the Southern Hemisphere is lucky to be right at the 1970-2000 mean, and appears to be heading negative as the melt accelerates.

The shuttle mission to Hubble has been delayed by 4 days, from Oct. 10th to the 14th.  Most of the delay was caused by Hurricane Ike’s landfall and damage to the Houston, TX area.  Atlantis is scheduled to make the trip to Hubble.  Endeavour is waiting on a nearby launch pad in the event that Atlantis experiences damage significant enough to prevent a return to Earth.  Endeavour is scheduled to make another construction flight to the International Space Station later this year if the rescue mission is unneeded.

A potential lunar colony site has been mapped in 3-D using camera data that wasn’t meant for 3-D.  I think Mars exploration and colonies should come first, but recognize the long-term importance of the Moon as well.

Gas shortages are occurring across the southern U.S. A couple of factors are causing this situation.  Hurricanes Gustav and Ike shut down drilling and refining infrastructure as well as power delivery systems across the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana and Texas.  More disturbing is the following:

In its most recent Weekly Oil Data Review, Barclays Capital pointed out that the U.S. gasoline inventory has reached its lowest level since August 1967, when demand was a little more than half its current level of 9.3 million barrels a day. At 178.7 million barrels, inventories are 21.6 million barrels below their five-year average.

Replacing those inventories isn’t easy either.  “Once the refineries get back up and running, they’ll drain the already low crude oil inventories.”  Not discussed in the article is the impact of fuel corporations sitting on millions of acres of leased land without drilling.  Not discussed in the article is the impact of not building additional refining capacity in the last 30 years, making the drilling issue completely irrelevant.  It’s that lack of refining capacity (which are only operating at 67% of capacity right now) that has put a large region of the country in danger of running out of gasoline.  If that situation gets worse, food won’t be able to be supplied.  Then the anger over Bush’s Wall St. Bailout will seem minor in comparison.