"International Test"

My guess is that the first international test a President Obama would face would involve Israel and Iran. There will be a conflict between those two countries, probably shortly after the election, and the US will, either overtly or covertly, support Israel.

In response to our support, Iran would retaliate against us, probably domestically by hitting the electrical grid or something similar. Ahmedinejad would explain this retaliation to the American people as being in response to our support of Israel. He would assure us that if we were to simply mind our own business, Iran would leave us alone. This is consistent with the Qur’an*:

9:29 Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.

Note that Ahmedinejad has previously offered us the Scripture, in his invitation to George Bush.

Iran could keep up low-level attacks indefinitely by the use of stateside Muslim groups. My impression is that a President Obama would sacrifice Israel.

*until, of course, we face our own decision of conversion, subjugation, or death a few decades down the line.

I Am Joe

Brick Oven endorses Iowahawk’s piece on Joe the Plumber. I’ve had the establishment accuse me of operating without a license, almost lost a $117,000 house because I fell behind on payments, and ‘fantasize’ about hitting it really big one of these days. I play with my kids in the front yard of a modest house. I used to smoke cigarettes. There are lots and lots of Joes. They are the people that make this country function.

It disturbs me that the national media is trying to destroy Joe’s image after attempts to use his image did not work out as planned.

Joe the Plumber, Meet Hank the Surgeon

America houses the world’s centers of medical excellence. This will end in the years to come as talented doctors move their practices to the Caribbean, where governments will welcome them open arms.

Here are some average salaries. You can figure that the good doctors, with their own practices, earn double or triple the typical $300,000 salary. These doctors would pay 39%, as well as another 12.5% as the social security cap is eliminated. Throw in 3% for Medicare, 8% for state, plus whatever else. That is approaching two-thirds of their earnings going to the government.

Universal healthcare will generate business for them as well. It will result in the importation of crappy doctors from the degree machines, and will ban expensive treatments and treatments for people established as ‘low-worth’.

Belize has some very nice beaches and friendly people. Their income tax rate can be zero, with the proper permits.

Book Eight

And these are not the only evils , I said --there are several lesser ones: In such a state of society the master fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters and tutors; young and old are all alike; and the young man is on a level with the old, and is ready to compete with him in word or deed; and old men condescend to the young and are full of pleasantry and gaiety; they are loth to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they adopt the manners of the young.

Quite true, he said.
The last extreme of popular liberty is when the slave bought with money, whether male or female, is just as free as his or her purchaser; nor must I forget to tell of the liberty and equality of the two sexes in relation to each other.

Harry Schmidt

My wife likes the TV show JAG, which was on as I woke this morning. I recognized the case they were acting out. It was about a guy with whom I served with, Harry Schmidt. Schmidt was a TOPGUN Instructor, and a man of high integrity in my experience.

Schmidt made a decision in the middle of the night in a distant land that turned out to be bad. His government then charged him on thirteen criminal counts. Here is one account of his experience. Make your own judgments; I defer to the man on the front lines.

What this account leaves out is that Schmidt was offered a formal reprimand, politically motivated in my opinion, that would have allowed him to continue with his life, and Schmidt said no. He demanded a court-martial to clear his name. This was and is inspirational for me. He was cleared on twelve of the thirteen criminal counts, and was then presented with this in June, 2004:

"You acted shamefully on 17 April 2002," wrote Lt. Gen. Bruce Carlson, the judge in the case. "Your willful misconduct directly caused the most egregious consequences imaginable. . . . By your gross poor judgment, you ignored your training . . . and the result was tragic. . . . You had the right to remain silent, but not the right to lie. In short, the final casualty of the engagement over Kandahar . . . was your integrity."


The statement from the General was out of line. Schmidt made a decision, which turned out to have been wrong. Most people decide not to make decisions. Schmidt will punish his own conscience for the rest of his life.

Subsequent to his statement, Lt. General Carlson was selected for a fourth star, which was awarded in November, 2005.

Bernoulli, Airplanes, and the 'Economic Bailout'

The Bernoulli equation can be seen as emblematic of a functioning society. It describes that there is only so much energy in a system and, although you can distribute the system’s energy in a number of ways (potential energy, pressure energy, and kinetic energy), is does not change the overall energy of the system, which remains constant.

You can add external energy to the system but, when you are on your own, you are on your own.

Comair Flight 191 took off from the wrong runway, and created a tragedy. The principle of flight involves adding solar energy in the form of liquid fuel to the system consisting of the airplane. This solar energy is transformed to kinetic energy as the plane rolls down the runway, part of which is then converted to pressure energy.

The wing’s airfoil creates a higher-kinetic energy situation above the wing, a resulting zone of relative low pressure, and the upward force that lifts the plane into the sky, adding potential energy to the equation. But if your runway is not long enough to generate the required amount of kinetic energy, it does not matter how hard you apply the flaps. The plane will fall out of the sky.

Printing money, buying banks, and socializing losses will not add energy to our economy. These actions, in fact, do nothing other than add friction to the system, lowering overall energy levels. Examples of actions that would add energy to our financial system include imposing tariffs to generate cash while promoting domestic industry, and lifting environmental restrictions on industry, starting with the ban on oil shale exploration.

But national leadership is not talking about these things. They only speak of creating more friction, and accelerating the inevitable.

The Economy

Brick Oven takes no pleasure in being proven right on investment advice, which is holding for now. But one thing that has not made sense to me has been the relatively low price of gold. Gold spot had hit ~$1050 several months back and is now at $850, despite the fact that there are shortages in coins.

My theory is that the price of gold is being held in check by margin calls at hedge funds. See the dive taken on Friday afternoon above. There was no open reason for it, and the fall in price was probably the result of some leveraged entity raising cash to cover an obligation by selling the only thing that people are buying-gold. Probably in the form of bars, which would explain the drop in the price of the metal, at the same time us proles are paying $150 over spot at eBay.

Brick Oven again endorses investing in metals. Buffalos are better than American Eagles because they are not alloyed with stiffeners, meaning that they could be more easily cut into pieces for commerce in the SHTF scenario.

Or better yet, place a stake with some crackpot pursuing a new energy technology. He might not ready to call any cars, but that stock is up.