Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Feds guarantee Detroit Iron

...and in doing so, open up the biggest can of worms imaginable.

It's all about equal protection under the law, which, even the ObamaMessiah can't ignore.

Let's say that Chrysler has one line of cars that has a bumper-to-bumper 100,000 mile warranty.

Let's say that the best warranty you can get on a GM car is 60,000 miles.

Under equal protection, General Motors now has to guarantee all their products for 100,000 miles.

Yes, equal protection ALSO means that the government could chop off the Chrysler guarantee at 60,000 miles, but that's unlikely, and if it happened, it would be enjoined in a District Court in Detroit so fast the ink would not have had time to dry on the Fed's order.

So, now there has to be a uniform guarantee out of Detroit, and what do you bet that the import autos will also be forced to toe that line?

If one of the automakers wanted to get a serious shot in at the Feds now, before the takeover becomes effective, all they have to do is offer a lifetime guarantee on one line of cars.

Heheheheheheheheh.

Last day of salmon season

...but the fish just aren't in the river in any numbers. It's been a fine week on the water, though.

So, I'll be packing up all my kit and shifting my flag back to Schloss Rivrdog in a few hours.

I'd rant something political, but after a relaxing week on the water, I don't have any rant in me, know what I mean, Verne?

Wishin' for a fish

...but if wishes were horses, we'd ALL be ridin'

No fish yet. Only know of one caught, and that just a few yards out on the river from me. I could cast that far, but then my line would be across a very popular troll, and lures and weights are expensive.

I'm fishing a backwater behind my boat shed. It's along a rock wall (the levee is rip-rapped, and has the desired depth, so I SHOULD be getting bites, at least.

Had mud-skippers nibbling on the bait portion of my lure (salmon eggs on the hook of a Spin-n-Glo), but that's all.

Been busy while fishing, and the boat sparkles. Cold here, now 48 and rainy, good thing I've a toasty-warm boat to fish from.

Big family dinner tomorrow night, at which a fresh salmon would be a big hit, so I'd better intensify my fish-on attitude here, and that means folding up this computer and WORKING that pole...

Mechanic's question

Here's an insider-type question for all you mechanically-inclined folk out there.

Situation: I replaced the OEM-fitted 50-amp alternators on the 350-CID Crusaders in my boat. The new alternators (by specialty builder PMX of Portland, OR) are hand-built into the old size of shell, but are 90 amps output, each.

They are fitted with single pulleys and one v-belt.

One alternator charges a ("house") battery bank consisting of 4 six-volt golf-cart batteries, arranged into one bank, for a total capacity of 450 amp-hours at 12 volts. The other alternator charges one 12-volt Group 27 (engine-starting) battery only. The reason that alternator is so large is to give me an "on-engine" spare for the house-bank alternator (the alternators are identical, and interchangeable.

The problem: On the house-bank side, the charging load on the huge battery bank causes the v-belt to slip for several minutes until the maximum charge rate starts to damp down a bit. I have no exact amperage available for when slip starts and ends, but I think it's down to about 60-70 amps before the belt gains perfect traction.

The standard solution for this is to fit double pulley sheaves to the crankshaft, engine water pump and alternator, and use twin belts. This is expensive, since the rotor shaft of the new alternators is not long enough to fit them. I am using the expensive NAPA notched belts, the heaviest-duty belt made in that particular angle-of-vee configuration. The belt is tightened to the correct flex distance between sheaves.

Questions: Would belt-dressing compound help alleviate this situation? If not, is there a list somewhere showing the anti-slip qualities of various manufacturers' belts? I've always assumed that NAPA's best is very high quality, but this issue has to have come up before.

Any and all advice from all you meck-a-necks out there is appreciated in advance. Any engineers chiming in, I'll try to understand your calculations. I heard years ago that the max amperage for a single belt was 70, but I've never seen that as a hard and fast rule.

Down a lazy river

...which has been, alternately a millpond and a rolling ocean. First night out, stayed at the bucolic JJ Collins Marine Park only 3 miles below my Yacht Club. Yesterday, Commodore Charley and I motored our crafts down to Rainier City Dock, about 30 more miles downriver.

Rainier is a handy place, with a nice, new "wave-breaker" dock (which breaks few waves because the open end faces the prevailing wind and it's accompanying roller waves). One can walk 5 minutes to a theater, couple of taverns, True Value Hardware and a sort-of grocery store. There's decent pizza in town, too.

There's a lot of poverty here, but not much crime. That's a truism in forever-poor country places: the poor DON'T rob one another, because they've learned to live with being poor. Hmmm. How could that be applied to our big cities? Naaah. Never work in the ghettos, need the Tobacco Road solution there.

...and so the rains continued, for forty days and forty nights.

Thanks to the Honda EU-2000i and my Mr. Heater "buddy", we're warm and dry in the cabin.

0830, so it's time to confer with the Commode-er and decide where we're going today.

Ahead, slow bell.

Told ya so

Just a short note of "told ya so".

History background: The Europeans have all tried Socialism, in fact most European countries, such as the Czech Republic, are still socialist democracies, with many, including the Czech Republic, having only just emerged from communism 20 years ago.

These folks know which forms of socialism work and which don't. They all know about heavy-handed central banking and fiat currencies, and they all have changed to some form of "capitalistic socialism", heavier on the capitalism than the socialism, as regards their economies.

When Czech President (lame duck though he may be) Mirek Topolanek tells President Obama that his reckless spending (not his words, they're the words of the leader of the largest socialist nation on the planet) is a "road to hell", well, I believe him. The Czechs have been down many roads to Hell in the past century, so they know.

When will Obama  we learn?

Taking the rest of the month off

...from blogging. It seems that the give-a-shit factor is so low that no one comments anymore (last comment was 10 days ago and I made it), and since this is a TEACHING blog, meant to inform and make it easier to learn about world events, no feedback means no one cares to learn.

I could write a few pages on why it bodes VERY bad for the conservative culture to clam up, but since evidence shows that no one would read it anyway, I am not going to waste my time.

Here's an assignment, readers (yes, I'm in full didactic mode here):

Take a post I have written in the last couple of weeks, and tell me, in comments, either on that post or to this article, why you like or dislike it.

If I see enough critical thinkers out there, I will continue this blog. Otherwise, I'll probably just stop publishing it, because it costs me some money each month, and Twitter is free. I don't tweet much now, but that could change quickly.

BTW, if you want to follow my presently-feeble Twitter output, I'm "04283" (without the quote marks). You have to subscribe to my account, but if you're interested enough to push the "ask to subscribe" button, that's good enough for me.

Rigged oil market

Do you need more proof than this?

Two US Navy ships collide at night in the Straits of Hormuz. Navy ships are NOT required to report their position to each other.

Neither ship was involved in the oil trade, except as a minor consumer of refined product.

Oil prices rose.

WTF, over?

The sky is blue, oil prices rise. The sky is grey, oil prices rise. Pinning an oil price rise on this Navy accident is like saying that your mother is responsible for your shoes coming untied, 25 years after she died and you are 72.

The liars who write this propaganda should be shot, hung, then drawn and quartered, in that order.

It's curious that Obama gave a speech about Iran and it's dangerous nuclear intentions, but that speech is not supposed to have had any effect on the oil markets and an inconsequential collision of two Navy ships DID have an effect?

Here's "the sense of the blog" on this issue: I think that oil prices should have dropped after Obama made his concession-filled speech to Iran, but the world doesn't think much of Obama, so the prices didn't fall. Rather than pin this on Obama, the world MSM pinned it on the Navy.

The blame for rising oil prices DOES fall on Obama, because of his monetary policy which has reduced the value of the dollar. Oil prices didn't really rise 10% or so yesterday, the value of the dollar which they are quoted in fell. Proof of THAT was the 9% rise in the price of gold yesterday.

Let's put the blame for oil prices where it REALLY lies, MSM.

Why do I even waste time and bandwidth talking about variations in the most crooked market in the world, though?

Pete DeFazio, you ROCK!

US Rep. Pete DeFazio, (D) Lane County, OR, signed the soon-to-be-called "Blue Dog Letter" opposing in no uncertain terms any renewal of the Assault Weapons Ban. He joined 64 other Democrats in the House of Representatives, 111th Congress, who also signed. For the math challenged, that means even if 28 Republicans voted for any AWB2, it still wouldn't pass.

The letter wasn't written to Madame Speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

It was written to Attorney General Eric Holder.

Take THAT, you GFW rat, and THAT, and THAT!

I'm going to go celebrate now. A morning cocktail is not out of the question here.

Yahooo!

H/T to David at Random Nuclear Strikes blog for passing on the info in such a timely question. YOU Rock too, David!

BTW, Peter DeFazio was one of the few (20) Democrats who refused to sign the original Bailout Bill last year (and embarrassed the HELL out of Madam Speaker).

The AIG fiasco, or how Obama missed the boat

(Not so) hidden between the lines of the AIG bonus fiasco is the fact that almost all the bonuses were paid to AIG derivatives people, not the top company brass as the foaming-at-the-mouth MSM has it.

The bonuses were similar to a sports team's Free Agent retention bonuses.

Except that they didn't work. Two-thirds of the derivatives writers and traders who were paid the bonuses left the employ of AIG anyway.

What dummy writes a retention-bonus contract which allows the employee to collect the bonus if they quit? No sports team would do that.

The bottom line here is that these bonus people were largely responsible for the fall of AIG in the first place, since it was their Credit-Default Swaps which failed, and plunged the derivatives market back into the Stone Age (where it should stay, BTW, we don't need that phony money in our economy).

So, the bonus controversy serves a very important purpose: it will eventually provide a list of who these idiots were who bundled the CDS' that toppled AIG and the equities market last year.

If there ever was a justification for maintaining a "black list", this is it: not one of those bonus recipients/derivatives jerks should ever be able to get a job even so low as sweeping the floor of a stock exchange again. Let them sell used cars for a ghetto sleazebag used car dealer, they seem well qualified for that.

The government may be biting off more than it could chew trying to recover the bonus money, and I suggest that they don't even try. Not because it wouldn't be just to recover every dime, but because there's a better way: just dock that money from the next bailout request for AIG, and that would be the request AFTER it's properly pared down of such bloat as these bonuses.

Oh, and since the US Taxpayer now owns an 80% stake in AIG, let's make sure that there is 80% representation of taxpayers on the AIG Board of Directors.

I propose that the local jury pool be tapped for providing the Directors, since the Board has shown that all their business acumen has done the company no good anyway and lay people ought to be able to do just as well.

The first job for that new Board would be to review every single employment contract that AIG has in force, and reopen every one to new terms that reflect the reality of doing AIG's business in a de-leveraged marketplace.

Hell, give every AIG employee a Civil Service or Wage Scale rating, and the pay that goes with it. Since these employees can't even claim the efficiency of shovel-leaning Government workers, they shouldn't be paid more than them, either.