Leap Day: life out of balance

This is what we can expect this summer

The fact that we have a Leap Day every four years is proof that time is an illusion.


Same for the reason in the recent run-up in gas prices. 


The average price in Oregon for regular gas, according to AAA, is $3.92 per gallon. Last year at this time it was $3.47. 


By the way, in self-serve California, the current average price is $4.32 per gallon. 


At this rate, we'll be over $5 a gallon by Memorial Day, which would smash Oregon's all-time highs of $4.89 per gallon during the summer of 2008 when GW Bush was still roaming around the White House.


We hear the usual blather about conflict in the Middle East, problems at refineries shifting over to summer fuel, rejection of the Keystone pipeline and, according to GOP candidates, it's all President Obama's fault.


Of course, we now know that excuses for high gas prices, by and large, are hogwash. 


As Bernie Sanders, the Independent senator from Vermont, notes in this op-ed piece, Wall Street speculators are taking money out of the pockets of almost every American. 


He points out that "the demand for oil in the U.S. is at its lowest level since April of 1997."


Also, we're now a net exporter of refined oil products for the first time since 1949. 


So what gives? Why are gas prices so damn high? Is Big Oil to blame?


Sanders writes: "Sure. Partly. Big oil companies have been gouging consumers for years. They have made almost $1 trillion in profits over the past decade, in part thanks to ridiculous federal subsidies and tax loopholes. 


"But there's another reason for the wild rise in gas prices. The culprit is Wall Street. Speculators are raking in profits by gambling in the loosely regulated commodity markets for gas and oil. A decade ago, speculators controlled only about 30 percent of the oil futures market. Today, Wall Street speculators control nearly 80 percent of this market. Many of those people buying and selling oil in the commodity markets will never use a drop of this oil. They are not airlines or trucking companies who will use the fuel in the future. The only function of the speculators in this process is to make as much money as they can, as quickly as they can."


The other function of speculators is to act as "the invisible hand" to crush the marketplace. 


The amazing thing about capitalism is that it needn't fear any other ism from dethroning it as the de facto  economic model of the world. 


As we saw with the Wall Street meltdown in 2008 and that we're now seeing with the manipulation of the oil futures market, capitalism is perfectly capable of destroying itself.

GOP looking ahead ... to 2016

Potential GOP candidates in 2016

As soon as the polls closed in Arizona, the networks projected Mitt Romney the winner before a single vote was counted.

But, despite holding a 4-point lead throughout the night in Michigan, the networks were afraid to project him the winner, based presumably on exit polls.

Romney was winning big where most people live, around Detroit, while Rick Santorum was prevailing in rural areas, indeed much of the state, where few voters live. Eventually, Mitt was declared the winner around 7:15 p.m. West Coast time.

Neither Republican will carry Michigan in November and some Democrats consider Arizona in play for the general election.

The GOP establishment is breathing a sigh of relief tonight, but Mitt is still not the nominee, yet.

Republicans must be looking to 2016 where they hope they have a sure-thing nominee before the primary season even starts.

If he's alive, Ron Paul will be there. There will also be the token minority and perhaps, a token female.

But the nominee will be another white male, who will take positions on social issues that are out of step with most Americans.

What's happening nationally to the Republican Party mirrors what happened to Oregon over the past 30 years.

For most of our history, Oregon was largely a progressive Republican state, with long-serving GOP governors and senators. Under Republican leadership, Oregon created its well-known land-use laws and also the first bottle bill in the nation.

But, in the early-1980s, Oregon elected its last Republican governor. By 2008, we no longer had a Republican politician in any statewide office. We have just one GOP representative out of five.

A reason for the change? Well, the GOP became fixated on social issues to the exclusion of most everything else and Oregonians said "no thanks."

The GOP became known as the party of extremists and most voters are not.

It's taken awhile, but it seems that the rest of the country is following Oregon's lead. The nation is exhausted by the stalemate on social issues. It's time to move on.

But, the extreme base of the GOP still wants to wage a battle -- on abortion, contraception, gay rights -- that is less than secondary to most American lives.

GW Bush was adept at catering to the base while also appearing palatable to independents. Granted, he wasn't really elected president in 2000, but selected by the Supreme Court.

Still, Bush prevailed in 2004 by 2.9 percent of the vote, the smallest margin for a re-elected president since 1828. (President Obama won by 7.3 percent in 2008).

Compared to 2000, Republicans considered the 2004 vote a landslide and a mandate to do whatever they wanted. The obituary of the Democratic Party was written by pundits coast-to-coast.

Well, here we are in 2012 with the GOP struggling to find a candidate to face President Obama.

Since it is still February, no one knows how the election will go, but this much is certain: Obama will win most of the states where most of the people live, while Romney/Santorum will carry a majority of the states, but where fewer people live.

As in 2004, the election will likely be over once the votes are counted in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio.  If Obama takes all three, and he has the edge now in February, the election is over.

That's good for us on the Left Coast because it means we won't be hammered with as many negative ads as in the battleground states and it may keep some GOP voters at home.

Should Obama win, as I think he will, the pundits will write the obituary for the GOP.

In fact, they have already.

While demographics favor Democrats now and the foreseeable future, nothing is set in stone.

Whatever party that is in power always has the ability to squander that power.

Besides, 2016 isn't that far off when you consider the GOP presidential campaigns start a year from now.

God help us.

February one of the mildest in Bend

Yummy!

These last few days notwithstanding, February will go down as one the driest, mildest Februarys in Bend's history.

We had 60-degree weather last Friday and it was still in the mid-40s during the evening.

Sure enough, though, we woke up to snow on Saturday morning and it's been white and cold ever since.

We're supposed to get a few more inches of snow overnight and, thanks to Leap Day, our February weather will appear colder and snowier than it actually felt like.

Check out this link from The Weather Channel on Bend's mild month.

There were few days with precipitation. Temps in the upper 40s to low 50s were almost routine.

Yes, we had some cold nights, but February is known for even colder nights.

Don't know what gets the credit for our relatively mild February, but if it's climate change, La Nina or El Nino, I don't think most people would complain. Even snow-riders had their share of snowpack at Mt. Bachelor.

Of course, it also means we could have another cold, lengthy spring like we had last year. I won't complain, though, because those chilly springs are great for keeping my juniper allergies at bay.

Who will be Romney's running mate?

Will it be M&M (Mitt and Marco)
on the GOP ticket?

Although Mitt Romney has yet to seal the deal with Republicans, it seems he'll get the nomination, barely.

In the process, he'll have alienated a few groups he might need in November.

These include independents, women and Hispanics, to name a few.

He'll get enough women, but not a majority, to vote for him.

What he can't do is lose the Hispanic vote by less than 40 percent, according to Beltway politicos.

But, the intolerant position that Romney and GOP have taken on immigration is pushing Hispanics away from Republican Party.

So, how to win them back? Pick a Hispanic as a running mate.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., seems like the perfect fit as he could deliver Florida, a crucial swing state, and a sizable portion of the Hispanic vote even with his anti-immigrant stances. He's also Catholic.

Or, sort of. Apparently, he's left the Church a few times, but always gone back. At one point, he attended a Baptist church.

And, the clincher, he was also a Mormon when he was a child.

Having a president as a Mormon does not seem far-fetched. But, having his vice-president as a onetime Mormon would really alienate the evangelical/fundamentalist base of the GOP and suppress the Republican turnout even further than Mitt could do by himself.

That is why the story emerged this week, to plant that seed of doubt in the electorate.

Romney may opt for another Hispanic, perhaps New Mexico Gov. Susanna Martinez. She could deliver the Hispanic and female vote, or so the thinking goes. But, New Mexico isn't a vital battleground state.

Ultimately, I don't see Mitt taking such a bold, unprecedented move. He saw what happened to the McCain/Palin ticket and it wasn't pretty. Yes, they did get tens of millions of votes, but still lost by 7.3 percent, which is considered a blowout in this millennium.

Mitt, will likely pick someone white, male and not Mormon.

Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana, seems like a Mitt pick with his strong business background. But, while an undergrad at Princeton in 1970, Daniels got arrested for possession of marijuana, LSD and other drugs. No, he wasn't a pharmacology student. But, that arrest didn't prevent him from getting elected governor.

Picking a Veep is a tough call. President Obama went with a safe, bland pick in Joe Biden.

Mitt will likely make another safe, cautious pick.

He'll want to look steady, not desperate and calculating.

Either way, it won't matter in the end.

At this point, I see Mitt losing by 8.3 percentage points to President Obama.  The electoral count could be even worse.

HP stands for Ho-hum Products

Poor Hewlett-Packard. It's earnings were down 44 percent over the holiday season thanks largely to weak demand for its PCs.

Such news is hardly surprising since the previous CEO wanted to jettison the high volume/low margin PC business from HP.

Out he went and in came Meg Whitman, the woman who made a killing running eBay and then blew a good chunk of it on her failed, egotistical bid for governor of California.

HP, on the consumer end, is known for cheap computers and printers. There are so many models of each that it can barely keep track of them.

Whitman acknowledged as much when she said that HP needed to reduce its SKU, or stock-keeping unit.

Whitman also blamed the economy, flooding in Thailand and changing buying habits for the big decline at HP. Consumers are buying iPads, not HP's failed TouchPad, which lasted about two months.

How about blaming its mediocre to poor core products.

I've had numerous HP products over the years, including printers, desktops and laptops.

The only product that I've ever liked was the 5P laser printer. I traded in my 3P in 1995 for the 5P and it's still working.

But, the desktops and laptops had numerous issues including ridiculous "bloatware," pre-loaded garbage software that nearly incapacitates the computer.

Another big issue is the poor compatibility between HP computers and HP printers. Go figure.

Some of the problems are related to Microsoft's Windows operating system. But, it got ridiculous when I called HP's customer support and they would immediately say they weren't at fault. Call Microsoft. And, of course, Microsoft blamed HP.

I had enough of HP by 2009 after my daughter's first laptop became virtually useless after one year in college. We got her an MSI netbook which was a champ on her travels.

I'm typing this blog entry on a Samsung laptop that came with little bloatware. It's fast and reliable.

My next printer will be a Canon because they're always rated better than HP printers.

The big winners of the PC era, HP and Microsoft, are now the big losers during the iEpoch.

The reason is that they both had microscopic innovation this past decade. They were fat and happy.

Apple wasn't.

Thanks to Steve Jobs' leadership, Apple produced hit after hit: the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Now that Jobs has died, Apple will likely begin to fade again.

And then there is Google, the search engine that could.

Its Android operating system is now on more phones than Apple's operating system.

It may not be long before Android hogs market share in computers whether they be tablets, laptops or desktops.

Google and Apple are innovators.

The only knock against Google is that it innovates so much and so frequently that it can barely inform the end-user.

I'm mostly in Google's camp because Apple's products are overpriced, but I have yet to buy any hardware that runs Android.

The updated Asus Transformer running Android, though, is looking good.

I'm done with HP and someday soon I may be done with Windows.

Apple exploits in America, too

Data center: Warehouse full of computer servers
with few workers

Apple got cored recently in the New York Times over its exploitation of workers in China.

Now, Oregon is saying, "hey, Apple, exploit us, too."

Last week, when the Oregon Legislature passed the "Facebook" bill to not tax data centers in enterprise zones for 15 years, Apple quickly bought 160 acres near Prineville for $5.6 million, according to news reports.

Apple, apparently, is going to build another data center near Facebook's two centers there.

If there is one thing that two of the richest companies in America cannot afford is taxes.

Taxes are for the fools who haven't figured out how to exploit local and state governments in granting them tax exemptions.

In fact, it's a strategy of many corporations to extract as many concessions as possible from desperate government entities.

I mean, they're bringing "jobs," which is more important than anything else.

Of course, the employment numbers at the data centers are just a few dozen people, most of whom are hired from outside the area. Yes, these workers, presumably, will pay state income taxes, which is how Oregon primarily funds itself.

And, as I've noted before, schools in Crook County continue to struggle financially. Having poorly funded schools is not attractive to most families raising kids.

But, Facebook and Apple don't care about their workers that much. These wealthy corporations are  coming to Central Oregon for the usual business reasons: they need to be in this geographic area with its relatively cheap land, lower energy costs and pliant governments.

Those dots on their strategic plans don't include "quality of life" or public education or public safety or decent roads.

Now, if we could all just incorporate our families and bargain for lower property taxes on our homes.

Hey, it works for people who have money to burn but choose to burn yours and mine instead.

Does anyone care about Iran?

Personally, I do not.

I know there are many who do, namely Israelis, understandably.

But, we're in America and somehow we're supposed to be wrought up in the daily war of words between the two Middle East countries.

No, it is not good that Iran develops a nuclear weapon or two. But, that's the way of the world and weapons.

It'll take awhile, but eventually most countries will have some form of nuclear weaponry. Israel does.

Plus, Iran saw what happened to Iraq, which had no weapons of mass destruction and was invaded because it didn't.

Another unintended consequence of the Iraq war is that it accelerated the pace at which countries, rogue or not, are developing weapons of mass destruction.

Once Iran gets WMDs, Israel and the U.S. won't attack or invade that Islamic country.

The most dangerous country in the world, North Korea, is left largely alone because it has WMDs.

If Israel does attack Iran before it develops a nuke, we'll get blamed and dragged into another war over oil.

But, enough is enough.

If Israel wants to strike Iran, or vice-versa, then so be it.

There isn't much we can do about it.

Israel ceded the moral high ground when it chose to expand settlements in the occupied territories.

Iran has long ceded any ground whatsoever when it forced an Islamic republic upon a citizenry that didn't really want it. Plus, the leadership there says some alarming things about destroying Israel.

Such talk could lead to MAD: mutually assured destruction, which is a doctrine that has deterred World War III for more than 60 years now.

Neither side wants our counsel.

And, they'll pay for it.

Or, more likely, we're paying for it in the form of higher gas prices, greater instability in the Middle East and another potential petroleum war.