Chisel of Precedent, Hammer of Fear

Post-game analysis of the Times Square Bomber's failed plot continues, and our leaders are falling over each other to remove what's left of our civil liberties.

On the chopping block today is the 5th Amendment, or specifically, Miranda rights, i.e. the right of US citizen terror suspects to be informed of their rights to remain silent and to an attorney.

Officials claim that this right interferes with public safety, and that terror suspects should be interrogated prior to being informed that they do not have to say anything that would incriminate themselves.

I know those who support suspending Miranda rights mean well. They simply want to learn more intelligence about the terror organizations that suspected terrorists belong to, in order to stop them and protect the American people. I get that.

But this cannot be done. Suspending an un-convicted suspect's rights is unconstitutional and wrong, no matter what you think he has done. This is what America is about, this is why it was founded, so that no man can be denied his rights, including the right to due process and 5th amendment protection.

Some defense hawks believe that people like me are blowing this out of proportion, that a change in Miranda rights requirements hardly makes us a police state.

To this I reply that a police state does not occur overnight. Our police state is occurring by the slow-but-steady chipping away of our liberties, one tiny bit at a time, because we are afraid. This fear is the impetus for giving away our liberties.

This hammer of fear strikes our liberty, but it does not destroy it immediately. It is with the fine chisel of legal precedent that the hammer strikes at our liberty. A new definition of liberty is defined, the chisel of precedent is set, and the hammer of fear strikes, etching out a new shape from our block of liberty.

The piece that is chipped off may be small, and it may be so small that some never notice that it is gone. But the hammer and chisel are not finished. As soon as a terrorist scares more people, the chisel is reset and the fresh fear energizes the hammer yet again. Another chip falls to the floor.

This is the point of terrorism. It is not just to kill innocents, but rather to make the survivors live in fear. Fear that permeates our laws and our agencies, fear that suppresses our freedoms. Fear that changes the way we live. That is the point of terrorism.

In his first inaugural address, FDR said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." These are the words we must heed, or, as he knew then, our fear will destroy us.

If we allow fear to be our guide, we will be left with a nation that is not worthy of defending.

Hey BP: Get Your Shit Together

Your big hole is leaking 5,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico. Your big dome that was supposed to cover the leak and suck out the oil got clogged with crystal formation. Now you're trying a smaller dome? Just get it done.

TONY HAYWARD, BP CEO: Well, we are working this, as you know very aggressively in three ways, in the subsea to eliminate the leak, on the surface to contain the spill to the greatest extent possible in the area of the leak, and thirdly to defend the shoreline and prevent any oil from getting to the shore.

In terms of the subsea interventions, we are pursuing multiple occupy shuns in parallel. So we tried the large dome over the weekend. It wasn't successful. Too much hydrate formation, a consequence of there being much greater gas in the flow of hydrocarbons than we had anticipated.

So we are now moving to deploy over the next 72 hours, a smaller containment device, a so-called top hat, which is described like that because it looks like a top hat, put in the water, on the end of a piece of drill pipe to fit over the leak. We'll be doing that over the next 72 hours.

In parallel there are a series of other operations being planned on the blow-out preventer, most importantly the so-called top kill or junk shot whereby we would pump into the blowout preventer material to clog it up and stop the flow.

VAN SUSTEREN: Where the hydration is, isn't that ineffective because it blocks it? Is that why that's been ineffective? And why hasn't that effective in containing the leak?

HAYWARD: The issue is the quantity of gas and seawater in the large dome. That is a difficult combination. So, by moving to a smaller dome we'll have less seawater and, hopefully, a better chance of minimizing the hydrate formation and being able to get in sort of system to work.

...

VAN SUSTEREN: Let's say Plan A failed, the bigger dome, Plan B is the smaller dome, hoping less of a hydrate problem. In the horrible, awful event that Plan B doesn't work, what is Plan C?

HAYWARD: So Plan C is the so-called junk shot, top kill, where we connect two flexible hoses to the top of the blowout preventer and pump material to block up the blowout preventer.

Plan D is to remove what is called the riser with which is sitting above the blowout preventer and put in place another blowout preventer. There's a Plan E and a Plan F. So we are working through a whole series of options that are being developed and engineered in parallel and deploying them in time sequence.

I don't care if it takes till Plan Z, get it done, and get it done NOW.

In the mean time, I urge all Americans to boycott BP until this crisis is over.

Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Have a Perfect Quarter

Goldman Sachs made money on trades every single day this past quarter.

Goldman posted no less than $25 million in net trading revenue every day during the quarter, according to its 10-Q regulatory filing. For the first time in its history, it reported no net loss on any day.

“This is the first time we have reported zero trading loss days in a quarter,” Samuel Robinson, a Goldman Sachs spokesman, told Bloomberg via e-mail. “We believe it shows the strength of our customer franchise and risk management.”

Goldman Sachs 10-Q filing
The breakdown, on page 121 of the 10-Q, is as follows:

7 days at $25 million to $50 million
50 days at $50 million to $75 million
16 days at $75 million to $100 million
35 days at more than $100 million

Goldman's successes were matched by JPMorgan, who averaged $118 million PER DAY in the previous quarter.

At least we know our government's economic policies are working out for someone. But this kind of success doesn't come free. Since 1990, Goldman Sachs has given over $31 million to political candidates, with Democrats receiving the lion's share of the booty (64%). Obama leads the pack as the largest receiver of Goldman donations, with a little over $1 million.

Talk about a great investment by Goldman: $31 million donated over 20 years, and now they're making well over $31 million per day.

Now you know how to do it. You too can be successful in America, all it takes is $31 million to buy senators, congressmen, and a president or two.

It's really a bargain, when you think about it.

The Evolution of Thought

The following are four quotes from founding father Thomas Jefferson on the nation's credit and the wisdom of borrowing money.

"Though much an enemy to the system of borrowing, yet I feel strongly the necessity of preserving the power to borrow. Without this, we might be overwhelmed by another nation, merely by the force of its credit." --Thomas Jefferson to the Commissioners of the Treasury, 1788. ME 6:423

"I am anxious about everything which may affect our credit. My wish would be, to possess it in the highest degree, but to use it little. Were we without credit, we might be crushed by a nation of much inferior resources, but possessing higher credit." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1788. ME 6:453

"Though I am an enemy to the using our credit but under absolute necessity, yet the possessing a good credit I consider as indispensable in the present system of carrying on war. The existence of a nation having no credit is always precarious." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 6:455

"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing. I now deny their power of making paper money or anything else a legal tender. I know that to pay all proper expenses within the year would, in case of war, be hard on us. But not so hard as ten wars instead of one. For wars could be reduced in that proportion; besides that the State governments would be free to lend their credit in borrowing quotas." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1798. ME 10:64

In 1788, Jefferson saw credit as a tool to be used sparingly in times of crisis, especially when other nations use their large credit lines against us to build armies and make war. He felt borrowing money was a necessary evil, and thought that a nation should work hard to preserve a good credit rating.

By 1798, his thoughts had evolved to the point where he no longer thought government could be trusted with the power to borrow. He realized that credit allowed government to run wild, and place its population in untenable situations, most importantly war. He felt so strongly that he wished for a constitutional amendment to strip the power to borrow from our federal government.

Jefferson foresaw what could happen to a nation who's government had access to credit. Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been conducted totally on the national credit card. Thousands of American soldiers have lost their lives in these wars, and many more permanently injured. The cost of these wars has significantly expanded our national debt, placing our nation at the mercy of the financial system, which as we have all learned is a complete disaster.

If can learn anything from the current Greek debt crisis, as well as America's own experience, its that governments can and will borrow a nation past the breaking point. Whether it is done for social programs or to conduct senseless wars, government's national tendency is towards debt, which is passed on generation to generation, weakening our nation and our economy, and enslaving us all through our system of credit.

Wall Street: ‘Machines just took over’ [Robot Apocalypse]

The war has expanded to the financial front, and the machines have come for our money.

No one was sure what happened, other than automated orders were activated by erroneous trades. One possibilility being investigated was that a trader accidentally placed an order to sell $16 billion, instead of $16 million, worth of futures, and that was enough to trigger widespread sell orders across the market.

"I think the machines just took over. There’s not a lot of human interaction,” said Charlie Smith, chief investment officer at Fort Pitt Capital Group. "We’ve known that automated trading can run away from you, and I think that’s what we saw happen today.”

We gave the machines control of all our money, and now we're paying for it.

[via Cam]

Audit the Fed? Bernanke Says No

Ben Bernanke came out against pending legislation that would allow Congress greater oversight of the Federal Reserve.

"Such amendments, if enacted, would seriously threaten monetary policy independence, increase inflation fears and market interest rates, and damage economic stability and job creation," Mr. Bernanke wrote to Mr. Dodd.

By some reasoning that I do not understand, Mr. Bernanke believes the American people have no business knowing what goes on inside the institution that controls all of their money.

If I were Ben Bernanke, I wouldn't want people knowing what I was doing with their wealth either. Because once people found out that the Federal Reserve has been helping banks steal their wealth for the last century, they might get a little upset. Like, Greece upset.

Adam Carolla on Electric Cars

Adam Carolla turns his well-honed ire on electric cars and the stupider parts of the green energy movement.

[Gizmodo via Brian]

The New Space Race Begins

A new company has thrown their hat into the space tourism ring: Dassault.

Following the trail of SpaceShipTwo, Dassault has been working on a new suborbital civilian spacecraft. Not to be confused with the Future High-Altitude High-Speed Transport 20XX, the new aircraft could be a 11-ton vehicle derived from their VEHRA satellite launcher.

VEHRA and VSH—the name of the new civilian vehicle—are both air launched, and "based on the X-38 experimental lifting body from NASA, for which Dassault Aviation had defined the shape." While VEHRA will have heavy versions capable of putting a 7-ton payload in low orbit, VSH is only designed to bring tourists into the edge of space, flying at Mach 3.5.

The VSH is still very early in development, but by the time it flies, SpaceShipTwo should have already made its maiden voyage.

This could be the start of something big.

After Oil: The Methanol Economy

It's spilling into the Gulf of Mexico at an alarming rate. Our armed forces are in the Middle East fighting for it. We would all be toast without it.

But what will we do when we run out of oil?

Nobel prize winner in Chemistry George Olah has the solution: methanol.

Technology Review: Why methanol?

George Olah: Methanol in its own right is an excellent fuel. You can mix it into gasoline -- it's a much better fuel than ethanol. And we have developed a methanol fuel cell.

Methanol is a very simple chemical that can be made in a very efficient way. It is just one oxygen atom inserted into methane, the basal component of natural gas; but methanol is a liquid material which is easily stored, transported, and used.

TR: What's wrong with hydrogen fuel cells?

GO: Even today you could put a pump dispensing methanol at every gasoline station. You can dispense it very well without any [new] infrastructure. For hydrogen, there is no infrastructure. To establish a hydrogen infrastructure is an enormously costly and questionable thing. Hydrogen is a very volatile gas, and there is no way to store or handle it in any significant amount without going to high pressure.

TR: But methanol is a way of storing energy, not a source of energy like gasoline. Where will the energy come from?

GO: The beauty is we can take any source of energy. Whether it's from burning fossil fuels, from atomic plants, from wind, solar, or whatever. What we are saying is it makes a lot better sense, instead of trying to store and transport energy as very volatile hydrogen gas, to convert it into a convenient liquid. And there's a fringe benefit: you really mitigate carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

TR: How do you make methanol?

GO: One approach is to produce methanol by converting still-existing huge reserves of natural gas, but in entirely different, new ways. Today, methanol is made exclusively from natural gas. Natural gas is incompletely burned, or converted, to synthesis gas, which can then be put together into methanol. Now we have developed ways to completely eliminate the use of synthesis gas.

The second approach involves carbon dioxide. We were co-inventors of the direct methanol fuel cell. This fuel cell uses methanol and produces CO2 and water. It occurred to us that maybe you could reverse the process. And, indeed, you can take carbon dioxide and water, and if you have electric power, you can chemically reduce it into methanol.

So the second leg of our methanol economy approach is to regenerate or recycle carbon dioxide initially from sources where it is present in high concentrations, like flue gases from a power plant burning natural gas. But eventually, and this won't come overnight, we could just take out carbon dioxide from air.

Dr. Olah makes a persuasive case. We can take energy from anywhere; hydroelectric, nuclear, wind, solar, even coal and gas, and turn it into an easily transportable fuel.

Anyone who has accidently lit a gas can on fire can tell you that gasoline has TONS of energy stored inside. It's what makes it so useful as a fuel. But matching that level of energy without using petroleum is a very difficult problem.

Currently, electric and hybrid vehicles draw energy from heavy and expensive lithium-ion batteries. Despite their large mass, these batteries are still very limited in their storage capacity.

Methanol has the advantage of having enough energy that it can replace gasoline, and we can get it without digging into the ocean floor or dealing with unstable Middle Eastern nations.

It's certainly worth thinking about, as it's the best gas alternative I've come across.

Sucks to be an Illegal Immigrant in Mexico

Mexico has its own problems with illegal immigration, though when dealing with it they employ methods quite different from the United States

The level of brutality Central American migrants face in Mexico was apparent Monday, when police conducting a raid for undocumented migrants near a rail yard outside Mexico City shot to death a local man, apparently because his dark skin and work clothes made officers think he was a migrant.

Virginia Sanchez, who lives near railroad tracks that carry Central Americans north to the U.S. border, said such shootings in Tultitlan are common.

"At night, you hear the gunshots, and it's the judiciales chasing the migrants," she said, referring to the state police. "It's not fair to kill these people. It's not fair in the United States and it's not fair here."

Undocumented Central American migrants complain much more about how they are treated by Mexican officials than about authorities on the U.S. side of the border, where migrants may resent being caught but often praise the professionalism of the agents scouring the desert for their trail.

"If you're carrying any money, they take it from you -- federal, state, local police, all of them," said Carlos Lopez, a 28-year-old farmhand from Guatemala who was crouching in a field near the tracks in Tultitlan, waiting to climb onto a northbound freight train.

Lopez said he had been shaken down repeatedly in 15 days of traveling through Mexico.

And you thought illegals in America had it rough.