Is this blog endangered?

Not from low readership or from infrequent postings, but from mighty Google itself?

The political views of the contributors tend to be more right then left leaning and Google appears to be shutting down sites that have posted anti-Obama posts. The thing is most of those sites were pro-Hillary not pro-McCain.

Is Google trying to shut down the free exchange of ideas? Will they try to help Obama with their search results? I don't know, most likely not as that would not be in the best interest of the shareholders and they not the management are the ultimate owners of the company.

Ok, our readership is so vast (all two or three of you per week), Google is likely to ignore us but then again they could shut us down for not following the corporate line.

The American Citizen Won

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the District of Columbia cannot ban a citizen from keeping a handgun at home, throwing out one of the nation's strictest gun control laws.

Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that the Constitution protects an individual's right to keep and carry a gun.

The only bad news was the decision was 5-4, it should have been 9-0. Its a reminder that elections count and if you don't want the USSC to reverse it when the next president appoints two more liberal justices, vote in November. Sitting on the sideline is not an option, it is the same as voting for the other person.

Thursday Update

US military shoots down separating missile in test

And they said it couldn't be done. Good job America. Yes we need it unless you want to trust our survival on the kindness and rational behavior of North Korea or Iran.

Another increase in Federal spending. Only $845 billion over 13 years or $65 billion per year or $197,000 per person in the US per year for additional foreign aid to be spent by the United Nations. I don't know about you, but don't we have things we could do with this money at home or better yet, not spend and let our kids have a lighter debt load?

The USSC is going to learn a lesson one day

Court rejects death penalty for raping children

Justice Kennedy says the punishment does not fit the crime. Will the "all wise" justice please explain what punishment will fit the crime? How does one become un-raped? Now if they were to hold the scum who did this until the child was an adult and then let the now adult have 15 minutes to explain why what the scum did was wrong while the scum was tied down and crowbars were available to the now adult person, then maybe I might agree.

But Kennedy and the other four justices seem to forget that the courts are only effective when the people think the courts are working. When people think the courts are not working, the courts will lose their power because the people or the government will simply ignore them and then it becomes mob rule or he with the biggest gun rule. And judging from the comments, the people are believing the courts are not working.

New Update

Three stories to share with today.

1. Florida needs energy (as does everyone else), but doesn't want to have oil rigs off its coast. Its ok for other States or countries to have them but Florida should be spared the sight of them.

Actually, replace Florida with California and the story could just as true here. But with $5 a gallon gasoline, maybe that view will change.

2. Oregon has depended upon the Federal Government for timber payments for much of its budget. Now those payments are ending and the local governments are crying. Here is a solution, allow more economic activities on your land and the budget problem can be solved.

3. A female Christian reporter wrote an article critical of some of the cultural practices of her community. The Christian community has denounced her saying she as a Christian woman has a duty to defend the faith and not say or write anything that may bring the Christian community into a bad light.

Of course if the above was true, the ACLU or the Canadian equivalent would be up in arms along with many secularists to protect this woman and the paper that dared to print the story.

However, replace Christian with Muslim and the above paragraph is true. However, I don't hear anyone coming to the defense of the reporter or the paper. Do you?

Nutcase

Chavez continues his war against capital as he sets a 60 day ultimatum for cement companies to strike a deal over the nationalization of their assets in Valenzuela. Mexico based Cemex, Switzerland's Holcim Ltd, and France's Lafarge SA would become minority owners in the units they built in Valenzuela. Generously,

the companies could negotiate over continuing as minority partners in their units and over compensation for the loss of their assets

How nice.

According to Hugo, I can barge into your house, demand you sell it to me, and then allow you to negotiate to keep part of what you already own. If Chavez is so hot to own these companies, why doesn't he go out and tender an offer to buy shares? This is not an issue of eminent domain and the public good--unless you deem that it is in the public good for the government to monopolize industry--it's an issue of deprivation of property. It's easy to deprive faceless corporations, despite the reality these corporations are really a collective of thousands of employees, myriad suppliers, and customers that are as personal as you or me. In the end, all corporate entities boil down to people. Where will it stop?

Maybe today it's a company, tomorrow it may be the individual.

Bugs and Oil Barrels

A silicon valley firm claims to have genetically engineered a strain of bacteria to produce a petroleum by-product near to distilled gasoline--somehow the company, LS9, has convinced a few E. coli to poop gas, which is the highly technical term. The article goes on to present their claims as well as explain to us their discovery is "carbon-negative".

Can this be true?

Frankly, I'm skeptical. Remember a few years ago in 2003 when turkey offal would be converted into light crude via thermal depolymerization? "It's the silver bullet!" we (or at least I) thought. Five years later, they're still relying on subsidies for a profit and fighting the local government to even stay open (apparently nobody likes the smell of turkey offal).

This current fad for green technology and the resulting gold rush for alternative fuels feels like a haven for snake oil salesmen and hucksters looking for easy money from soft-headed capitalists. This firm's claims sound too much like a penny stock spam email than real scientific results:

Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, "it’s a brave new world".

or (emphasis mine)

Bob Walsh, 50, who now serves as the firm’s president after a 26-year career at Shell, most recently running European supply operations in London. "How many times in your life do you get the opportunity to grow a multi-billion-dollar company?" he asks. It is a bold statement from a man who works in a glorified cubicle in a San Francisco industrial estate for a company that describes itself as being "prerevenue".

As much as I want to believe we can simply grow gas and lesson our dependence on imported oil (and I do hope we get there one day), the truth of the matter is our foreseeable future lies in oil pipelines and not in pipe dreams.