“I tend to think that the charge of hypocrisy in political discourse carries more weight than it rightfully should (a man’s convictions should be assessed independently of whether he has the courage of them). But in instances … where a man who has a robust predilection for raising our taxes is caught apparently engaging in behavior to avoid paying his own, a little bit of righteous indignation is in order.”

-Daniel Foster

We always slow down at crosswalks, and exercise extra vigilance for pedestrians there. We love crosswalks, not only because we depend on them ourselves on occasion, but also because we hate jaywalkers, and believe that the existence of crosswalks reduces their number.

If crosswalks did not exist, it would be impossible to cross the street without jaywalking. This would impede the flow of traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, as well as result in injuries and deaths. We have been to many cities where such a situation is prevalent, and we do not find it acceptable.

Jaywalkers are the enemies of pedestrians. They exacerbate the conflict between vehicular and pedestrian traffic. If jaywalkers did not exist, there would be no conflict, and fewer injuries.

Jaywalkers and pedestrians who use crosswalks lawfully are not the same class of people. Although they both have the same objective (getting to the other side of the street), their methods of achieving that objective separate them in a fundamental way.

Similarly, a person who cuts into a queue at a ticket window is a different class of person from one who arrived earlier and waited patiently. To classify both both types under their common trait (patrons) unfairly and misleadingly ignores the more important distinction between them.

If all of this seems logical, why is such logic ignored when applied to the matter of immigration?

Both of our major political parties can count statesmen among their membership. But there are also plenty of corrupt, self-interested, short-sighted, unprincipled, uneducated, and ideologically fraudulent individuals in each of them.

Thanks to the genius of our founders, the severe potential damage these unsavory individuals have on legislation is minimized by a vital counterbalance — the party in the minority.

Legislation requires lots of wheeling and dealing, and the party in the majority usually gets most of what it wants while the minority gets at least some of what it wants. Though this compromise doesn’t guarantee that the resulting legislation will be “good” (especially in the views of the inflexible ideologues on either side), at least the “worst” aspects of the bill are usually stripped out.

But what happens when one party gets a super majority? Without the need to compromise with the minority, the majority have no one to deal with, except each other. Without the necessary counterbalance from the minority party, the Congress becomes another Duma or Reichstag, where the less savory members gain much more leverage over their more principled peers.

The only legislation that could come from a Congress dominated by a super majority is bad.

What do the following countries have in common?

United Kingdom, France, Poland, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Israel, Colombia, Panama, South Korea, Mexico, Honduras, Brazil.

One of the oft-cited disadvantages of wind power is the lack of constancy of the energy source: power is available only when there is wind. Supply rarely matches demand.

This disadvantage would not exist if there were a “perfect battery”, i.e., a method for the energy to be stored so it can be made available to meet demand, and not just when the wind is blowing.

Such a battery exists for hydro-electric power: the dam. Since wind power does not have a counterpart, current wind farms are really no more sophisticated than placing small water turbines along a flowing river. If that approach doesn’t seem efficient, it’s because it isn’t, even if the flow of water is reliably constant.

One way to save up the energy of a wind turbine would be to use its energy (either mechanically or electrically) to raise a heavy load from one elevation to a higher one. I call this the grandfather clock approach. Like lifting the weight on a grandfather clock, a wind turbine can convert its kinetic energy to stored potential energy in a similar fashion. When the supply of wind exceeds energy demand, the weight is lifted; when it falls below demand, the weight descends. A reduction gear assembly regulates.

We have solved the constancy problem, but added to the complexity. We need a system of weights and regulators. In a large wind farm, it wouldn’t be practical for every wind turbine to have its own weight battery. Why not have the turbine array power a single, large battery?

One such battery could be a large water reservoir at a high elevation. The array of wind turbines could provide the pumping power to pump water from a low source (or sources) to the higher reservoir. The potential energy of the water stored in the reservoir could then be used to provide hydroelectric power as it flows back down to replenish its original sources.

Such a system solves 90% of the perfect battery problem. We now have delinked the unreliable wind supply from the potential energy demand. But we have introduced another potential inconstancy: a reliable source of water. During long droughts with little wind, the reservoir supply could fall below an exploitable threshold.

But there is a simple solution to the water supply challenge: wastewater, which is always in ample supply. Rather than dumping directly into a river after treatment, the water could be used to supply the reservoir.

But how many reservoirs exist at altitude? And how many could be constructed without significant environmental impact? These are engineering questions left to the engineers and environmental experts. Obviously, mountainous areas would have geographic and physical advantages over the prairie for this type of system. Our most populous state is blessed with the Sierra Nevada, ideal for many perfect batteries.

The Sierra Nevada is not only located adjacent to huge wind farms, it’s a short pipeline distance from the largest body of water on Earth: the Pacific Ocean.

However, seawater is salt water, and we don’t want to create a salt water reservoir high in the Sierra Nevada. But we won’t have to: we already have Mono Lake, a saline lake which needs salt water because of diversions from its watershed.

Mono Lake is our perfect battery. The energy from the wind farms supplies sea water to Mono Lake when the wind is blowing, and hydroelectric turbines meets electric demand as the water flows out of the lake back to the sea — in pipelines.

But do we really want to pipe the salt water all the way back to the sea? Why not use a fraction of the hydroelectric power generated to desalinate the water? This desalination plant would provide a bonus supply of fresh water to a water-starved state.

Will it halt or even slow down the rapid growth of the deficit? No. Does it address any of the systemic problems with the current budget process? No. Does it impact any major spending program in any meaningful way? No. Does it account for any more than a tiny fraction of the current deficit? No. Is the proposal any more than a nakedly political, symbolic gesture timed for the State of the Union Address? No.

Should the Republicans therefore condemn the proposal? NO!

Even this symbolic gesture should be encouraged. It’s a step in the right direction, and even tiny steps are positive steps if they’re in the right direction. If enacted, it will demonstrate that the direction is a positive one, and will infuriate the left nonetheless. It’s one campaign promise (Obama opposed freezes during the debates) that we’d love to see the president break.

Some predictions on the content of the upcoming State of the Union address:

1. He will continue to focus on himself, totally unaware (along with his speech writers) that he’s supposed to be reporting on the State of the Union (SOTU), not the State of Obama (SOO). The first person pronoun will be prevalent, and many listeners will be counting. And when he uses “we,” he will be referring to his administration (or his party), not his fellow citizens.

2. He will continue to blame the past administration for his current and accumulating failures. However, he’ll have to stop referring to the “past eight years” since the most recent of those years is his own. Instead, he’ll us phrases like “when I took my oath…” or “a year ago…” or “I inherited…” such and such. In fact, his entire focus will be on the state of the union he inherited, not to where he has taken it so far.

3. He will use the phrase “whole host of…” at least three times, but probably more.

4. Recognizing the fact that he (and the Democrat Congress) has increased discretionary spending more than the entire past administration (even before counting the health care CBO estimates), he will stress fiscal responsibility. With a straight, solemn face.

5. He will not use the words “terrorist,” or “war on terror,” or “Islamic extremism” even once.

6. He will stress the final “s” on every word (e.g., “challengeSSS”), partly from his Chicago dialect, but mostly because he likes the way it soundSSS.

Nearly two weeks after the CRU e-mail scandal broke, the MSM have finally taken notice — to dismiss it as “not altering the basic underlying evidence that climate change is real and man-made.”

Thank you ABC, NBC, CNN, NYT, etc., for uniting firmly in the camp of the anti-science alarmists. And you wonder why you’re losing viewers and readers?

Every justification coming from the administration at its supporters for the decision to move some high profile terrorism cases (but only some) from military tribunals to a federal criminal court in New York can be summed up as:
1. We want to show the world that our justice system is the best in the world and is capable of trying cases of this type.
2. We are confident that KSM and the other 4 accused will be found guilty and will receive capital punishment.

Ironically, these arguments are self-undermining, for the following reasons:
1. A justice system, to be the best in the world, has no need for “show trials,” which are common in Iran and other despotic nations, not in the U.S.
2. If the verdict is foregone, what is the purpose of a trial, except as a show trial (see 1)?

This administration is clueless.

Democracy cannot be imposed on any nation from the outside…. Each country will pursue a path rooted in the culture of its people and in its past traditions.

Was President Obama addressing Honduras when he said this at the U.N.? How would he characterize U.S. meddling in Honduras in light of these words?

Honduras has pursued a “path rooted in the culture of its people” — namely, to institute constitutional provisions to discourage the revival of presidents-for-life. And along comes a president (Zelaya) who tries to do just that.

What Zelaya attempted was not only illegal in Honduras, but would not have been legal in any democratic republic in the world.

But that didn’t matter to Obama/Clinton. Yankee paternalism lives on.