Happy 7th on the 8th!

New wedding set at flickr!

Born to Ride

Happy 4th on the 8th

Callie Walks!

Firefox Blog Feature

This might be a big help for blogging, we'll test it out and see

this is a quote

I'm striking thru

this one's in color

this one has a hyperlink

Kinsley gets gas

"Ordinarily, we shouldn't want the government to decide when profits become "excess." But the case of huge profits from the run-up in oil prices is different for two reasons. First, it is unusually clear that these profits have nothing to do with productivity. Diverting them to the U.S. Treasury would have no effect on the incentive to extract more oil from American ground. Second, some or all of these profits are directly related to a situation that is imposing huge sacrifices—financial and otherwise—from others; that is, the Iraq war.

Because of the war, the government is adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the burden of debt that all taxpayers, including other businesses, will have to pay off. Because of the war, American soldiers by the hundreds, and Iraqis by the thousands, are paying the ultimate tax of death by government policy. And because of the war, American oil companies are raking in extra billions of dollars of profits.

The oil companies, like other big corporations, are mostly owned by ordinary citizens, either directly or through mutual and retirement funds. Presumably some of them support the war and others don't. Do any of these shareholders, pro-war or anti-war, want to pocket $45 billion (or whatever number you choose) from a war that is costing others so much?"

Is it right to make huge profits on the backs of our soldiers and tax dollars? I'm all for free markets, but oil is different, and this article points out a few reasons why oil is a commodity unlike any other.

Explainer does gas boycotts...

...and why they won't work:

Do gas boycotts really work? By Daniel Engber: "Can a consumer boycott really affect gas prices?

Not in America. The e-mail that appears to have inspired the Bee County board claims that a widespread consumer boycott would push Exxon to lower its gas prices. This would in turn break the price-fixing monopoly and yield price decreases across the board. Economists point out that this isn't likely to happen for several reasons."

Click thru for the full read....I love "explainer" so much, thank you Slate!

Jesse pays tribute to Bono

TIME.com: Bono -- May. 08, 2006 -- Page 1: "After so many years in Washington, I had met enough people to quickly figure out who is genuine and who is there for show. I knew as soon as I met Bono that he was genuine. He had his facts in hand and didn't have any agenda other than doing all he could to help people in desperate need.

Along with Franklin Graham, Bono, 45, helped me understand the scope of the tragedy in Africa, especially the pain it is bringing to infants and children and their families. Once I understood, I made both men a promise that I would do all I could to help."

For more on this odd couple, see my webite about Bono and Jesse Helms

Also, if you can tolerate RealPlayer, here's a link to a great NPR story a few years back, where you can hear Helms talk in his admirable southern drawl.

Another new feature!

Down the left hand side of the page, below the flickr boxes, you'll notice a new feature, Yahoo! Babel Fish, the online translator. Now if you want to read the watts4u2 blog in Dutch, it's possible. The world is a freer place now, thanks Babel Fish!

Domingo, De Abril El 30 De 2006

¡Otra nueva característica!

¡Abajo del lado de la mano izquierda de la página, debajo de las cajas del flickr, usted notará una nueva característica, Yahoo! Pescados de Babel, el traductor en línea. Ahora si usted desea leer el blog watts4u2 en noruego, es posible. ¡El mundo ahora es un lugar más libre, agradece los pescados de Babel!

watts4u2Pod

Wow...a cool new feature that keeps track of my playlists. This should be interesting over time. You can join in the fun, includes a free streaming radio at 128 kbps. Click on the iPod to the left for more info, the one to the right is just for show. Thanks to u2log for pointing this out, they turned me on to blogging and flickr, so I expect this to be a hit

One Certainty About Iraq

The One Certainty About Iraq: Spiraling Costs for Americans: "There are many uncertainties about the progress made by coalition forces and the future prospects for stability and democracy in Iraq, but there is at least one indisputable fact: The Bush administration vastly underestimated the costs of the Iraq war.

Not only in human lives, but in monetary terms as well, the costs of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq far exceed the administration's initial projection of a $50 billion tab. While the number of American casualties in Iraq has declined this year, the amount of money spent to fight the war and rebuild the country has spiralled upward."

Initial projection: $50 Billion
Latest projection: $1 Trillion
That's 20X more than projected.
And look what we have to show for it!

Oily Market

Creeping toward oil as a social good | csmonitor.com: "The list of answers to higher priced energy, viable or not, is endless. What the US really needs first, though, is a consensus on just how much more government intervention is needed in the private business of oil. Yes, Congress passed another energy bill last year. But tell that to someone who just paid more than $3 a gallon.

A creeping federal role in oil has been taking place for decades, primarily for two reasons: One, foreign governments control more than three-quarters of oil reserves through national oil companies. And two, oil prices rise steeply when a crisis hits one of these often-unstable governments, or one of them uses energy as a weapon.

Look at recent months: Oil prices rose when terrorists tried to bomb Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure. Militants in Nigeria shut down a fifth of that nation's pipelines. Iran threatens an oil export cutoff. Iraq's oil industry struggles with attacks. Venezuela plays politics with oil exports. Russia restricts exports of natural gas. China's government-controlled oil importers, meanwhile, are roaming the earth to lock up new oil supplies, as Japan did before it.

These nonfree market forces can easily kick up prices in a laissez-faire oil economy. Last year, Americans paid 17 percent more for energy than in 2004, making energy the largest driver of inflation. Another oil shock like that in 1973 could cost $8 trillion, or almost two-thirds of GDP. Such a potentiality pushes even free-market conservatives to ask for a larger federal role in oil, simply for national survival."

Someone e-mailed me recently regarding the Exxon boycott, and he described oil as a fungible commodity. That's true, but it's also a finite commodity, it will become evermore valuable as there is less and less available and becomes harder and harder to extract and refine. It's not a good example for free market capitalism, especially given the examples in this interesting article.

A real comment!

"Ed" posted a comment to one of my "war pricetag" posts from back in January and he had some interesting points about how much entitlement programs cost. Click on the link to see my original post, now with 2 (make that 8, and I have a reply brewing) comments, yay!

Lost Marley Photos

scanmarlwatts1web, originally uploaded by watts4u2.

Mom has been kind enough to dig up some old Marley photos and I've been scanning them into the flickr account. This one has to be a favorite, what a cute pup. I was wearing that shirt when I shook Bono's hand at Clemson in 1997. Time flies...