How to Guarantee a Democratic Victory in 2008

I'm not interested in seeing Rudi Giuliani get the Republican nomination. I will work for Fred Thompson instead. But I see statements like this, and I get very, very worried:

I do not believe a pro-choice Republican candidate can win the presidency (Giuliani can win the GOP nomination, but not the general election). This is because, if the Republicans run a pro-choicer, far too many pro-lifers (myself among them) will refuse to vote for him, and either stay home or vote for a third party candidate, thus making it impossible for Giuliani to win the presidency.

Personally, there are no circumstances under which I could vote for a candidate who believes it's okay to slice up unborn babies, or puncture the back of their heads with a fork when they are halfway out of the womb.

A few years back, gun owners self-righteously withheld their votes from George Bush, Senior. I understood their disgust, and I could not develop any enthusiasm for him, either. But the net effect of gun owners refusing to vote for Bush, who was a weak supporter of gun control, was to put in office Bill Clinton--an enthusiastic supporter of gun control.

If Republican voters pick someone like Giuliani, there are going to be two choices in November:

1. A pro-choice Republican.

2. A Democrat. (There's no need to identify that the Democratic candidate will be pro-choice; there's a litmus test for this.)

There is a possibility that Republicans could pressure a pro-choice Republican President to nominate a mixture of pro-life and pro-choice judges to the federal bench. This is not an ideal situation for a pro-life Republican, obviously. But if a Democrat ends up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, any pro-life judge that gets appointed will be an accident.

It is entirely sensible for pro-life Republicans to work very hard to see that a pro-life candidate gets the Republican nomination. I can see why pro-life Republicans might well decide to grudgingly and with great reluctance vote for a pro-choice Republican in the general election. I would not expect them to put money into that candidate's campaign, or make any effort (even at the bumper sticker level) on behalf of that candidate. But if pro-life Republicans in large numbers refuse to pick the lesser of two evils in a general election, they are guaranteeing that the greater of two evils will be President of the United States.

UPDATE: One of my readers points out that if pro-life voters sit out the 2008 election, and a Democrat gets elected, Republicans will have no choice to but to bend to pro-life demands the next time around:

A more dynamic analysis would note that how you vote in one election influences the choices you get in the next election. If, for instance, pro-gunners demonstrate to Republicans our willingness to vote for an anti-gun Republican candidate, the rational response by Republican candidates is to become more anti-gun, because this gains them some marginal votes from anti-gunners, but does not lose them our votes. The Democrats then respond by also becoming more anti-gun. And suddenly we're not debating the Lawful Commerce in Firearms act, but instead renewal of the "Assault weapon" ban.

Of course, how this works out in practice is dependent both on the actual relative numbers in each camp, (If you're a marginal interest group, the rational politician just writes you off instead of trying to win you back.) and whether a temporary setback is likely to lead to a permanent loss. In which case you're trying to lose as slowly as possible, rather than trying to win.

I understand the logic of this. But is letting President Clinton pick the next two or three Supreme Court justices a case of "temporary setback is likely to lead to a permanent loss"? Imagine a Supreme Court that decides that same-sex marriage is Constitutionally mandated, and limiting "hate speech" allows revoking the non-profit status of churches that speak out against homosexuality or abortion. Imagine a Court that rules that freedom of religion does not include the right to refuse to perform same-sex marriages.

There's also the experimental example. After the 1992 elections, when gun owners to a large extent sat out the elections because Bush Senior was mildly anti-gun, what was the name of that strongly pro-gun candidate that Republicans picked in 1996? I'll bet he just cleaned Clinton's clock! (Oh, that didn't happen?)

Ditto for what happened when gun owners sat out the Dan Lundgren for Governor campaign in California? He was strongly anti-gun. And which strongly pro-gun Republicans have followed him at the top of the ticket?

Sometimes, if you sit out an election, those parts of the Party that don't particularly agree with you anyway have a reason to say, "Why are we worrying what they think? When we needed them, they weren't there for us."

UPDATE 2: Adam Graham thinks I'm missing the reason for this, pointing out that gun control is largely a dead issue now. But unfortunately, not because Republicans learned their lesson--but because Democrats lost the 1994 Congressional elections, by their own admission, largely because they got what they wanted on gun control. What concerns me is Adam's view that:

The best possible outcome for our country of a Giuliani nomination is for a conservative third party to emerge that either leads to the GOP going the way of the Whigs or moving the GOP to the right and then disbanding.

There's several problems with this idea:

1. There would need to be enough conservatives to form a third party. There aren't even enough to control the Republican Party with any certainty--or Giuliani wouldn't be a serious Republican candidate for president.

For those of you who think that because evangelical Christians are a majority of the U.S. population that therefore there is a conservative majority--sorry, it doesn't work that way. Much of the evangelical Christian population of the United States isn't terribly conservative. Much of it believes in gay marriage, that homosexuality is an alternative lifestyle, abortion is getting rid of "fetal tissue," and that maybe Islam isn't so different from Christianity. Why? Because they watch television, and this is their major source of information and ideas. (Pastors by and large don't make any effort to correct these points of view.)

2. If the GOP goes the way of the Whigs, the net effect will be to hand over control of the nation to Democrats for perhaps two presidencies, at the end of which there will be either a solid leftist majority on the Supreme Court, or we'll be fighting against Islamists in the streets of America. (The Whigs did elect two presidents, but the Democratic Party was largely in control for most of the period that the Whigs were the "other party.")

3. I like the idea of moving the Republican Party right--but what if the net effect of doing so is to cede the libertarian and liberal wings of the Republican Party to the Democrats?

Callable Bonds: More Interesting Things Learned

As I have previously mentioned, a callable bond is one that the issuer can redeem (force you to sell) at a particular price, on or after a particular date. For example, a bond might have a maturity of November, 2037, but when issued, the bond specifies that it can be called at 100 (par value) on November 1, 2009. Sometimes the call price is above par; often it is at par. And as I discussed before, there is the even more mysterious "Make Whole Call" provision on some bonds.

Well, I am starting to look at long-term bonds, partly because I've got a bit of money sitting in a money market fund that wants a better return, and partly because I think we may be near or at the top of interest rates for a while. I noticed that some of the callable bonds have very high yields. There's a reason for this, and it is important to understand this if you are buying bonds. For example, there is a Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) bond that matures 6/22/2037, with a 6.75% coupon (CUSIP 31398ADR0). The current price is 100.10--just above par. The yield to maturity is 6.742%; the yield to worst (meaning if they call the bond at the worst possible price and date) is 6.689%. The bond can be called as early as 6/22/2009 at a price of 100.0.

So why does a government agency bond (which is almost as safe as a Treasury bond) pay such a high yield? Because Fannie Mae bonds are financing homes. If someone pays off their Fannie Mae mortgage (by refinancing or by sale) early, as often happens, Fannie Mae may end up calling the associated bond. If so, you get the par value of the bond back, and you have enjoyed this very high interest rate for several years.

It is possible that this Fannie Mae bond will not be called before it matures in 2037, but I would not bet on it. Remember that if interest rates come plummeting down, people with mortgages that are financed by this bond will have a strong incentive to refinance their homes, or in the inevitable housing frenzy, they will sell their current home, and pay off the loan. If interest rates go up, it creates an incentive for home owners to keep their current mortgage.

Think of these high yield, low risk, but callable bonds as paying a pretty hefty premium for the high probability that they will be called when interest rates have fallen substantially--and you then have to find a better place to park your money while waiting for interest rates to rise again.

"Beer, Brotherhood, and Guns"

That's the title of an article in the July 23, 2007 Inside Higher Education about gun violence (much of it while drunk) in college fraternities. I wish that I could say that it is all made up, but the fact is that a lot of college students have alcohol problems, and I don't find it hard to believe that the problem is worse in fraternities:

A few weeks ago, Yale University undergraduate David Light showed his collection of 11 guns to Christopher Keefer, who was visiting with his brother at the off-campus Beta Theta Pi fraternity house.

Then, at about 3 a.m. on Friday, July 13, gun shots rang out in the house. Keefer, who is in the Air Force, rushed to the living room, where he’d heard the shots. There, according to police reports, he found a visibly intoxicated Light with a gun in his hand and shell casings on a nearby table. Light responded to Keefer’s requests to put the gun down by firing two rounds of blanks at the ceiling and when Keefer tried to convince Light that blanks could also be dangerous, Light allegedly responded, “Why don’t I point it at your head to find out?”

When Light was arrested, a student who had stayed in the house for a few days and who had seen Light with suspicious-looking guns told the Yale Daily News, “it fell into place … I felt foolish that I didn’t tell someone.”

Yale police arrested Light last Monday, charging him with unlawful discharge of a firearm, two counts of illegal possession of assault rifles, reckless endangerment in the first degree, threatening in the second degree and breach of peace in the second degree.

Since the April murders at Virginia Tech, politicians have been talking about the danger of mentally ill students on college campuses. Receiving less attention has been the issue of guns in fraternities, and in some cases, the results have been tragic.

...

Over the last few years, fraternity members at Dartmouth College, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor have gotten in trouble for shooting BB guns at members of their fraternities or unsuspecting people on campus.
Fraternity members are not the only undergraduates who own guns, but Greeks are more likely to own them.
While 5.2 percent of fraternity and sorority members surveyed in the 2001 Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Survey owned guns, 4.1 percent of non-Greek undergraduates were gun owners.
Matthew Miller, an assistant professor of health policy and management at Harvard University and the primary author of the study , said that “the kinds of behavior that students who have guns exhibit are also the kinds of behavior that students in fraternities often demonstrate,” listing binge drinking, driving while intoxicated and “general aggression” as behaviors associated with fraternity members.
“There’s a decent chance that at any school where students have guns, members would be more likely to have guns than other students,” Miller said. “And they’d probably be engaging in riskier behavior, maybe with their guns.”

My response is very simple: What do the following situations have in common?

Guns plus alcohol sometimes yields accidental shooting. Fists plus alcohol sometimes yields drunken brawl. Cars plus alcohol sometimes yields drunk driving accidents. Penis plus alcohol sometimes yields rape.
If there is something that colleges might want to seriously considering fixing, maybe it is the alcohol? Alcohol (and many of the illegal drugs) reduce inhibitions and impair judgment—both of which are in short supply among many young people. Focus on the real problem: alcohol.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq Operatives Changing Sides

From the July 23, 2007 Times of London, this encouraging news that you probably won't see on American TV:

Fed up with being part of a group that cuts off a person’s face with piano wire to teach others a lesson, dozens of low-level members of al-Qaeda in Iraq are daring to become informants for the US military in a hostile Baghdad neighbourhood.

The ground-breaking move in Doura is part of a wider trend that has started in other al-Qaeda hotspots across the country and in which Sunni insurgent groups and tribal sheikhs have stood together with the coalition against the extremist movement.

“They are turning. We are talking to people who we believe have worked for al-Qaeda in Iraq and want to reconcile and have peace,” said Colonel Ricky Gibbs, commander of the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, which oversees the area.

The sewage-filled streets of Doura, a Sunni Arab enclave in south Baghdad, provide an ugly setting for what US commanders say is al-Qaeda’s last stronghold in the city. The secretive group, however, appears to be losing its grip as a “surge” of US troops in the neighbourhood – part of the latest effort by President Bush to end the chaos in Iraq – has resulted in scores of fighters being killed, captured or forced to flee.

You can see why the Democrats are trying so hard to withdraw--they are probably in terror that we might win this.

Harry Potter Night

Friday night was the release of the last Harry Potter novel, and the Borders bookstore in Boise asked the pipe and drum band that my wife is in (the Sleekit Beasties) to come and play. It keeps the enormous line of people in good spirits--although it seems that the relevance of bagpipes to Harry Potter is a little remote.

The pictures came from my HP Photosmart, so the darkness was definitely stretching its limits. Due to some miscommunication, some showed up in the band uniform, some in a weird mixture of stuff, and my wife dug out something that might look appropriate at Hogwarths.


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There was a big crowd of Harry Potter fans there, dressed up as characters from the books.


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At this point, I'm sure a few of my readers are scratching their heads about this. Some Christians have decided that the Harry Potter novels are anti-Christian, Satanic, etc. Sorry, but at least from having read the first two with my son, I just don't see it. J.K. Rowling wrote a fantasy--and one that didn't take itself seriously. Owls for mail delivery? Platform 9 3/4? Quidditch?

There have been a lot of books and television shows over the years that have used the idea of the supernatural for laughs. The Bewitched series, for example, was cute and funny in the first couple of seasons. What would it be like to marry someone with supernatural powers? How complicated would it make your life, especially if your mother-in-law wasn't just a typical mother-in-law, but was a witch? Then it started to elaborate on the "hidden world" of witchcraft, took itself too seriously, and just became stupid.

Other dramatic efforts have used the supernatural as a metaphor. The series Forever Knight made in Canada 1989-1996 was one of the more interesting ones because of the obvious parallels it drew between the world of vampires and pre-Stonewall homosexuality. (You don't have to agree with all of my assumptions below about homosexuality to see how strong the parallels were in Forever Knight.)

1. There were vampire bars--although the living might enter and just think it was a very decadent place.

2. No one chose to be a vampire--indeed, they were victims of vampires, but once in that state, there seemed to be no way out.

3. The vampires were estranged from everything Christian, reveling in their decadence, with a much stronger erotic undertone than in living society.

4. There were no long-term, stable family relationships because vampires can't have children--they can only "recruit" new vampires into the community by biting and infecting them.

5. It was a culture obsessed with staying forever young.

6. At least some of the vampires, like the hero, Nick Knight, have regular jobs, but they have to keep their private life in the closet.

7. Nick is working with a doctor to become human again, drinking animal blood, and trying to resist his vampiric urges--reparative therapy, so to speak, for the undead!

Now, there are definitely books that promote the idea of witchcraft as something serious. Where we lived in California, you could find stacks of books in bookstores that were entirely serious about this--and since this was a county filled with rich people desperate for spirituality (as long as they didn't have to change their immoral behavior), New Age, Wicca, witchcraft, "Old Religion," Satanism, and often bizarrely electic mixtures of these with Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism were very common--more common, as near as I could tell, than all branches of Judaism and Christianity combined.

This is the hazard that Christians should worry about--not some charmingly sweet books that clearly put witchcraft and wizardry in the realm of make believe. And besides, the Harry Potter books get kids to read. That's a good thing.

Wind Power

The difference in wind speed between the house, and the top of our hill is pretty impressive. I have seen wind speeds by the back door that ranged from 0 to about 5 mph. With no measurable wind at the house, at the top of the hill I was getting a pretty consistent 8 mph, holding the anemometer as high above my head as I could. As you probably know, wind speed increases as you get higher above the ground. The next step is to build a weathervane driven rotating gadget to hold the anemometer fifteen feet in the air, so that I can get a more reliable reading.

Skystream Energy offers a wind generator intended for low wind speeds--and which as an inverter built in, so it produces a 240 VAC output instead of DC. According to the chart here, it starts producing power at 8 mph, although the amount is pretty small. (Of course, around here, we get at least an 8 mph wind 24 hours a day. Somewhere around 25 mph, it is producing 2.4 kilowatts. If we ended up averaging 15 mph (which I suspect isn't too far off for the top of our hill), that would be a bit better than half of monthly energy use.

Most wind generators (all wind generators?) have a maximum speed, with various mechanisms for shutting off the blade when the wind speed gets too high. A generator like the Skystream 3.7 gets no benefit from wind speeds above about 25 mph--while generators intended to take advantage of high speed (and therefore, high power) winds usually don't start turning until the wind is already moving pretty briskly. It makes me wonder if, in a place like this, where we have continual winds of 10-15 mph--and at least monthly, hour after hour of 40-60 mph winds--whether it might make sense to have both a generator intended for the light breezes, and one of the larger generators that can take advantage of the high wind conditions as well. The light wind generator would be turning 90% of the time, producing a low but steady current--and the other 10% of the time, the wind would be moving 50 mph, and producing prodiguous output.

At least so far, when I look at products like the Air-X and Whisper wind turbines at this website, they all seem intended for relatively low wind speeds.

Zero Motion Bearings

I've had another customer decide that there was too much play in the ScopeRoller caster assembly for his astrophotography needs, and I'm not one to let an issue like this stop me. He confirms that my solution to the problem of motion in the locking mechanism works--the play is now in the bearings of the caster itself. This is a few thousandths of an inch to perhaps a few hundredths of an inch. This may not sound like much, but .05" of motion here can turn into several trillion miles at the far end of the beam of light, so I am interested in finding a solution.

Obviously, a caster with zero motion when locked doesn't exist--unless it's made by the Frictionless Surface and Dimensionless Point Corporation. (You remember Frictionless Surfaces and Dimensionless Points from physics class, right?) But does anyone know of a maker of locking caster assemblies that might be so well made that applying a force of several pounds to a locked caster will result in a thousandth of an inch or less of motion? This is a tall order, and I would probably have to pay a lot more for such casters--and charge customers that need such perfection a tall price.