One thing you learn when mentoring young engineers is to be careful and not be anxious to tell them they can’t do something. After all there were so many impossible things that we couldn’t do, like go to the moon or split the atom. Still, there are some things that are not practical or require a foundation first to be built. Maybe it’s like that with first term senators.
Listening to Barack Obama’s speech in Ohio tonight reminded me of the landlord I had decades ago. He was absolutely convinced that he could create hydrogen and oxygen from electrolysis then burn them in an engine and generate electricity. His plan was to do this and sell the surplus back to the power company. He wasn’t a bad man, he just forgot to take into consideration that it would consume more energy to create the hydrogen fuel than he could produce with his engine. There was absolutely nothing I could do to convince him otherwise. He believed in the idea but had no practical knowledge of thermodynamics. His lesson came at a high price.
Barack says he’ll stop the subsidies to companies that are shipping jobs overseas so that they will be punished if they do. Punished, with higher taxes, if they ship jobs overseas. Does he know so little of history or economics? Rather than shipping a few jobs overseas the companies will simply move out of the USA. No revenue at all, except perhaps some repatriated wealth for a few people that bring enough back to pay for their life style. A policy that will not mean fewer jobs from these companies, it will mean no jobs, no domestic product. Nothing.
He says he will bring high speed broad band to rural areas so that companies will have an incentive to relocate in these areas. Why move a company to an area that has a sparse workforce? What will they find there, perhaps an advantageous tax base? It will require infrastructure, housing, schools, the things that already exist in population centers that are presently over taxed and over managed. It’s no secret why Michigan and California have high unemployment rates.
Obama says he’ll create five million new jobs with wind, solar, and clean coal technologies. Has anyone bothered to check the manufacturing capacity of existing factories to see that Wind and Solar growth are not going to grow that fast? The numbers just don’t add up. And as for the next generation of bio fuel, there doesn’t seem to be a mutually supportive land use program in his plan to make that work. Who has been pushing land use reform so that it might have a chance? The Republicans.
Perhaps the most incredible suggestion is Obama’s new power grid. Yes, we may be headed there but it will take more than lofty rhetoric. Imagine trying to put all the balls on a pool table in a straight line if the pool table is on a ship being tossed at sea. That gives you an idea of the challenge being faced by the inter-grid concept. There are only a few people on earth that understand fully the concept and fewer still who understand the technological challenge. Unless you have a PhD in math or physics, or electrical engineering don’t expect to get a job in that industry any time soon.
How will he bring the country together? I haven’t heard anything in any of his speeches that addresses how he will appeal to people that don’t share his liberal views. In an election that would call a 51% majority a landslide and a 300 electoral vote a mandate there seems to be something missing. If you check the polling data for several reds states, Texas for one, you’ll see McCain has a +20% lead. How can these people be mocked and ridiculed today as people who just don’t get it and be all one unified nation next Friday?
No, I don’t think Barack Obama is a bad man. I think he really believes he can build a perpetual motion machine. I hear in his voice the faith that he can overcome the laws of economics, and physics, and human nature. This naiveté is great for philosophers but dangerous in politicians. It’s dangerous because we expect our leaders to protect us from rain makers, snake oil salesmen, and faith healers. We don’t expect them to be of that ilk.
UPDATE: Michelle Obama introduced her husband in Columbus, telling the rapt crowd of some 60,000 that despite his self-confidence, he needs their help. “He thinks he can really do anything — he does. With his own power and will, he can fix it,” she said.
Seems like Michelle agrees.
That’s the second time this week Michelle has accurately described her husband. First that he’s “not ready, he hasn’t done anything” in response to a question in 2004 whether he should run for POTUS.
This is the second one. He thinks he’s invinceable. We all know the depth of his narcisssicm, but is he also saying they will try and steal the election too?
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Sorry, should be “narcissism”.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Respectfully, I couldn’t disagree more strongly. He is a “bad” man; evil, even.
It’s not stupidity that makes him champion infanticide, even the more grotesque practice of allowing babies already born to die, IF their mother had come in for an abortion.
I read somewhere that his language was such that he could not even call them babies. He may have used the word fetus, which clearly an alive baby outside its mother’s womb is not.
Also, I consider him bad/evil, in that he proclaims to be a devout follower of Jesus, yet supports the death of society’s most innocent.
He’s also a bad/evil man in that he’s a true racial and cultural arsonist. Plus liar.
He’s shown that he exploits race and social/cultural status to divide, then motivate voter blocs.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
There may be as many perspectives on Obama as there are people. Mine is that he is so arrogant and self-convinced that he does believe, as Michelle said, he can do anything, and nothing is beyond his reach.
He thinks he can tell the folks in W.Va. one thing, and the people in Nevada something else, and neither audience will discover his duplicity.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
I guess the people that stared back at me from across the Wall in Berlin were not bad people, just pawns in an international chess game as was I. That does not describe their leaders beginning with the atrocities of Stalin.
I differ with you, in that, I believe obama firmly believes in his communist parental upbringing. His agenda is cloaked in the Alinsky method of degrading a system then providing a solution. It takes a dark heart to manipulate people with a hidden agenda as the real goal. obama speaks proudly of his days as such a person. In my opinion that makes him dangerous.
Just for grins, let’s throw in his association with known terrorists and the picture becomes much clearer as to his agenda. He must know that he cannot create energy from nothing, but it sure sounds good to those less informed and wiling to follow him. He cares little for his followers, they are merely a tool for his own self-aggrandizement and agenda.
Great post, with many points I totally support.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
you want to talk about stupid? Check this out- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDJXmTEqc3Q
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
With the advance of clean coal burning technologies and with the abundance of coal supplies we have in the United States of America, 250 years worth, it makes sense to look into using coal to generate our electricity far off into the future.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
I think you could be on to something with that thought.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0