More than 30 years ago using off the shelf technology (then) myself and engineers at Texas Instruments designed a system that could eliminate almost all of the onroad automobile crashes. This could be implemented for less than the cost of auto insurance, save 40,000 plus lives a year in the US alone, prevent hundred thousands of injuries and save billions of dollars. It would allow the auto makes to cut the wieght of cars substantially reduceing fuel consumption proportionately.

There is a program that would create jobs to install a system (redesign cars), save lives, reduce (not that it matters)carbon production and so on.

Of course the Auto Insurance compnies would be reduce to about 2% of their size. Most auto body repair companies would go out of business. Police staffs could be reduced. Red light camera companies would be reduntant. Traffic court judges would be unemployed. Traffic jams would disappear. Comuting times would be reduced. The savings to the economy would be in the trillions.

Where is Obama on this? No where! Oh well.

Moreover, if the problem was as bad as they say there is nothing we can do about it.

That’s a subtle and underappreciated point. The law of greenhouse absorption, known as “Arrhenius’ law”, says that heat uptake is logarithmic with concentration. One unavoidable consequence of that is that if there is a problem, making 10 or 20% cuts in emissions a la Kyoto won’t make any appreciable difference. If Hansen’s ranting claims were true, nothing short of a complete cessation of fossil fuel usage would make a measurable difference.

Reason Magazine or someone similarly interested should be invited to set up a kind of About.com site for those interested in economics, covering the basics and then going into issues that one will see in the news frequently. And then we have to go around and promote the heck out of that site, which should have a generic cast but be open about its partisanship, and hope it’ll appeal to a more general audience than merely the same sort of conservative.

Other things that conservatives could provide introductions to: American, World, or Biblical History (including an alternate history of the 1960′s); Medieval Philosophy (I’m sure quite a few at “First Things” would love to do this); guides to Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Again, these are all things that have more general appeal, make the Internet a smarter, better place to be, and give us credibility about other matters before we go opine.

Right now, our opinions are almost completely separate from our base of knowledge. Anyone could write the majority of op-eds at Pajamas only knowing the news. Conservatism has never been about the news, though.

The Conference Board, an industry group, said its sentiment index fell to 37.7 this month from an upwardly revised 38.6 in December. Wall Street analysts had forecast the index would climb to 39 from a previously reported reading of 38.

Why the lack of faith in the Obamessiahs polices?

Rush Limbaugh?

It really is Rush Limbaugh’s fault.