The GrassCity Gazette

[Dickie4:20]

Faith : Will the Antichrist be a homosexual? - Frontiersman

hot news straight outta Wasilla, Alaska.

[aaronman]

General Orders Troops to "Stop Suicides Now"

The 101st Airborne's senior commander in effect ordered his soldiers Wednesday not to commit suicide, a plea that came after 11 suicides since January 1, two of them in the past week.

An Army honor guard stands ready to fire a salute at Fort Campbell.





"If you don't remember anything else I say in the next five or 10 minutes, remember this -- suicidal behavior in the 101st on Fort Campbell is bad," Brig. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend told his forces. "It's bad for soldiers, it's bad for families, bad for your units, bad for this division and our army and our country and it's got to stop now. Suicides on Fort Campbell have to stop now."

Fort Campbell's suicide rate, the highest in the Army, "is not a good statistic," he said in remarks to one of four divisions he addressed during the day.

After nearly one soldier per week committed suicide at the post between January and mid-March, the Army instituted a suicide prevention program that "seemed to be having good effects" until last week, when two more suicides occurred, he said.

"Suicide is a permanent solution to what is only a temporary problem," Townsend said. "Screaming Eagles don't quit. No matter how bad your problem seems today, trust me, it's not the end of the world. It will be better tomorrow. Don't take away your tomorrow."
He urged anyone feeling hopeless or suicidal to "tell somebody."

"You wouldn't hesitate to seek medical attention for a physical injury or wound; don't hesitate to seek medical attention for a psychological injury."

Townsend exhorted any soldier who suspects that a fellow soldier may be feeling suicidal to act -- first by asking how the soldier feels, then by escorting him or her to help.
"Do not wait," he said.

Soldiers can turn to their leaders, chaplains, medics, social workers, teammates, family and friends, he said.

"Don't let yourself, your buddies or your families down," he said, ending his comments by repeating, "This has got to stop, soldiers. It's got to stop now. Have a great week."
But Townsend's message -- called a Second Suicide Stand-Down event -- is likely to be ineffective, said Dr. Mark Kaplan, a professor of community health at Portland State University in Oregon, who has researched veterans' suicide and served last year on a Veterans Administration blue-ribbon panel on suicide risk.

"It sounds like an order," he told CNN in a telephone interview. "I'm not sure that a command like this is going to alter the course of somebody who is on a trajectory of self-harm."

He suggested the Army might want to adopt the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs model.

"They're dealing with a comparable problem with a similar population," Kaplan said. "They have infused more sensitivity to their approach to suicide prevention as opposed to this. This is like any other order."

The military culture attaches a stigma to mental illness that needs to be reduced, he said. Soldiers who acknowledge they are considering suicide can suffer severe repercussions, such as losing opportunities for promotion and access to firearms, he said.

If the Army is serious about addressing the problem, it needs to address the stressors common to soldiers, including financial problems, marital problems, frequency of deployments, length of deployments, deployments to hostile environments, exposure to extreme stress and service-related injuries, he said.

The role of alcohol too must be addressed if the rate of suicide is to be lowered, he said. "More often than not, these are individuals who'll get liquored up, so to speak, and have access to a gun and die from a self-inflicted gunshot wound," Kaplan said.

Bill Lichtenstein, who serves on the board of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism, the advisory council of the Center for the Advancement of Children's Mental Health at Columbia University, and on the advisory board of Families for Depression Awareness, was equally unimpressed with Townsend's tack.

"It's the equivalent of 'Just Say No' to prevent drug abuse,' " he told CNN in a telephone interview.

Screening techniques that involve a series of questions are available to identify people at risk for suicide, he said.

"Prominent among them, if not the most important question is: Have you made a plan for suicide? Using a simple battery of questions, you can suss out people who might be at risk, which is far more important than telling somebody, 'Don't take your life,' " Lichtenstein said.

The problem is not limited to Fort Campbell. The Army has reported 64 potential active-duty suicides this year; 35 have been confirmed as suicides, and 29 are pending determination of manner of death.

Suicide is bad, mmkay?

[Dickie4:20]

Friday, May 29, 2009

How does Mr. Geithner like his tea?


Obama’s Secretary of Treasury is off to China this weekend. Most of the early meetings will revolve around formalities and ceremony with photo ops posed with cups of tea. At some point the Mandarin speaking Geithner will be expected to convey the new official policy of the United States. This new policy reverses sixteen years of official policy and in reality 40 years of government policy. The new policy is to revive the American manufacturing base. Mr. Geithner is tasked with convincing China to reverse its Dollar policy that enables Chinese goods to overwhelm the US market.

It is doubtful that China will agree to this or that this would even fix the problem given the dismal condition of the economy. But the real purpose of the visit will be to convince China that Obama has a plan and what he expects China’s role to be.

Given the looming crisis in the US, China has little choice but to make some sort of agreement. The number of Americans on unemployment sets a new record every week. Most of the holders of commercial real estate are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. The number of homeowners behind on their mortgages has gone past twelve percent and is climbing. Eight million foreclosures are expected this year. The next big downturn is expected this fall and could make 2008 seem like the good old days.

So far, all President Obama has done is to attempt to re-inflate the banking bubble, but with no real economy to support it this won’t last. Layoffs, business bankruptcies and wild swings in prices could ignite deflation which would drive a collapse that the government is not prepared to deal with.

As worker’s extended unemployment benefits begin to run out, the real pain that has be postponed will begin to set in. People will start to demand that action be taken. Unfortunately few Americans have any idea what that action should be. Most Americans alive today have been raised on a steady diet of antiunion, pro-corporation and "government is the problem" pabulum.

You can count on the Pigman to be there to tell them his nonsense. The question then is will Obama be there with a plan the American people can get behind before the panic starts.

[Dickie4:20]

Raw Story » US violated Geneva Conventions, Bush Iraq commander says

[AK Infinity]

msnbc.com Video Player

Not everyone wants to be a paranoid reactionary uneducated goon.

[Deutschbag]

RealClearPolitics - 'Shock And Awe' Statism

Return to the Article

May 31, 2009'Shock And Awe' Statism

By George Will
Epiphanies are a dime a dozen among congressional Democrats as they discover urgent new reasons to experience the almost erotic pleasure of commandeering other people's money. For example, freshman Rep. Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat whose district includes Disney World, was recently there and was inspired.
The world, he realized, would be a sweeter place if Congress mandated that all companies with 100 or more employees provide a week of paid vacation to those who work at least 25 hours a week. After three years, they would be entitled to two weeks, and companies with more than 50 employees would have to start providing a paid vacation week. Grayson would not mandate that paid vacations be spent at Disney World.

With the welfare state approaching insolvency and businesses sagging, this is an odd time to augment Americans' entitlement mentality. But the travel and tourism industries think that Grayson's idea is neat.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus want the Treasury Department to subsidize minority owners of broadcasting properties. The broadcasters are not "too big to fail" and so do not pose a "systemic risk," but, the representatives say, failures of minority broadcasters would diminish diversity.
Such government micromanagement of the economy is everywhere. The Post recently reported that Richard Wagoner, the former CEO of General Motors who was removed by the government, remains on GM's payroll "because senior Treasury officials have yet to decide whether he should get the $20 million severance package that the company had promised him." His 2009 compensation -- $1 -- is payable Dec. 31. The $20 million promised to him includes contractual awards, deferred compensation and pension benefits accrued over 32 years with the company. Promise-keeping, including honoring contracts, is the default position of a lawful society. But suddenly, many citizens' legal claims are merely starting points for negotiations with an overbearing government.
State governments, too, are expected to accept Washington's whims, but plucky Indiana is being obdurate. Gov. Mitch Daniels, alarmed by what he calls the Obama administration's "shock-and-awe statism," is supporting state Treasurer Richard Mourdock's objection to the administration's treatment of Chrysler's creditors, which include the pension funds for Indiana's retired teachers and state police officers and a state construction fund. Together they own $42.5 million of Chrysler's $6.9 billion (supposedly) secured debt.
Compliant, because dependent, banks bowed to the administration's demand that they accept less than settled bankruptcy law would have given them as secured creditors. Next, the president denounced as "speculators" remaining secured creditors, who then folded and accepted less on the dollar than an unsecured creditor -- the United Auto Workers union -- is getting. This raw taking of property from secured investors penalized those "speculators" -- retired Indiana teachers and state police officers who, Mourdock says, are being "ripped off by the federal government."
He is asking a court to declare that the Obama administration's actions have violated "more than 100 years of established law by redefining 'secured creditors' to mean something less" and that the actions violate the Fifth Amendment protection against the seizure of private property. Furthermore, he says, the government is guilty of "misuse" of the Troubled Assets Relief Program, which gives the Treasury authority only to aid financial institutions, not industrial companies.
One New Deal improvisation not yet emulated by the Obama administration is the September 1933 slaughter -- while the unemployment rate was 25 percent and millions were hungry -- of 6 million young pigs. The purpose was to raise the price of pork by reducing the supply of it. But the "cash for clunkers" idea is a cousin of that.
The Wall Street Journal's Joseph B. White reports that proposals percolating in Congress would further subsidize Detroit -- and chill the planet, of course -- by bribing people to turn in old cars and trucks (dealers have 400,000 unsold large pickups) and buy vehicles that get better gas mileage. In one plan, if the new truck gets one mile per gallon more than the old truck, the buyer would get $3,500; a two-mpg improvement would be worth $4,500.
Such a policy would counteract the president's environmentally harmful policy of forcing Detroit to quickly produce cars that are much more fuel-efficient -- meaning light, cramped and dangerous. Such products will be powerful incentives for Americans to continue driving their old, more polluting and less fuel-efficient cars. This will deprive Detroit of some customers, but surely the government has thought this through.

checkTextResizerCookie('article_body'); georgewill@washpost.com
Copyright 2009, Washington Post Writers Group

Page Printed from: RealClearPolitics - 'Shock And Awe' Statism at May 31, 2009 - 09:40:06 AM PDT

[Dickie4:20]

Suspect arrested in connection with slaying of abortion provider George Tiller - Kansas City Star


Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry who is part of Operation Save America, issued this response to Mr. Tillman's death-

"George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name, murder."

[Dickie4:20]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/op...gman.html?_r=1

[aaronman]

Krugman belongs in the Humor section of this forum.

[Deutschbag]

'Reagan did it,' but not alone - Real Clear Politics – TIME.com

'Reagan did it,' but not alone
Posted by Froma Harrop | Email This | Permalink | Email Author I hold a lifetime membership in the Paul Krugman fan club, but sometimes even The Great One gets an incomplete.
Today's column is objectionable not for what it says, but for what it doesn't. Writing of the S&L collapse of the 1980s, Krugman accurately notes:

The immediate effect of Garn-St. Germain, as I said, was to turn the thrifts from a problem into a catastrophe. The S.& L. crisis has been written out of the Reagan hagiography, but the fact is that deregulation in effect gave the industry — whose deposits were federally insured — a license to gamble with taxpayers' money, at best, or simply to loot it, at worst.

Krugman should have elaborated: At Democrats' insistence, the legislation raised coverage by federal deposit insurance to $100,000 per account from $40,000. Had that not happened, taxpayers would have been far less on the hook, and depositors would have cared where their money was being “invested.” In other words, the law of moral hazard would have greatly slowed business at the casino.
Of course, Reagan signed it.
Postscript: The recent financial crisis prompted another increase in the FDIC insurance limit, from $100,000 to $250,000.

[aaronman]

The War Party Returns

Whatever happened to the neocons, those creatures of legend whose fulminations led to the worst strategic disaster in American history? Oh, don’t worry, they’re still around and up to no good – out of power, but not out of mischief-making schemes to drag us into yet another war, this time on a scale much bigger than their previous "accomplishment."

The Weekly Standard, Rupert Murdoch’s gift to the War Party, is no longer delivered in multiple copies to the White House, but that doesn’t mean editor Bill Kristol is totally bereft of influence in Washington. Kristol & Co., having disbanded their Project for a New American Century [.pdf] – which played a key role in dragging us into Iraq – have come up with a new vehicle, the Foreign Policy Initiative, which recently co-sponsored a conference with the head of the Center for a New American Security (the Obamaites’ favorite foreign policy think-tank) and the Center for American Progress, the Soros-funded headquarters for progressives such as Matt Yglesias. The subject was the "Af-Pak" front, and the attendees, whatever their other political differences, were in agreement that our new president is on the right track as he escalates this latest surge in the "war on terror."

The reason for this ideological harmonic convergence is simple enough to see: in spite of Obama’s alleged commitment to "change," so far our foreign policy is Bushism without Bush – a policy of perpetual war, albeit without the Bushian bells and whistles.
Not that the administration will ever admit to this essential continuity. In a move that underscores the stylistic differences between the new crowd and the old, the Pentagon recently issued a diktat to its minions, notifying them that "this administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ [GWOT]. Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’”

Appearances are everything to this administration, whose top guns are understandably sensitive to the charge, coming from the more principled element of the Democratic Party base, that the revolution has been betrayed. The president’s defenders note that none of this should come as any surprise to those who listened to what Obama actually said on the campaign trail, and they’re right about that: he constantly charged that the Bushies had "neglected" the Afghan front and that we were fighting "the wrong war." Once in office, he would fix that, he vowed – and that is precisely what he is doing.
Yet one has to note that the Bushian terminology at least had the virtue of honesty. This new crowd, which supposedly disdains all ideology and is devoted to a streamlined, hard-as-nails "pragmatism," is slipperier than a greased-up eel in a frying pan. "Overseas Contingency Operation" indeed!

The euphemism is comical, yet not totally meaningless. Within it lies a hint of what the Obamaites intend, or, at least, what they say they intend. Being sensitive barometers of the political zeitgeist, the Obamaites are perfectly aware of the war-weariness of the American people. Even if you call it an "overseas contingency operation," a war in these hard times is likely to grate much harder on people’s nerves as they listen to the latest news from the Af-Pak front. Yet to call the current war a contingency is to imply that there’s going to be an end to it, and, not only that, but that the end is in sight, if still a decade or so off.

This, one assumes, is progress of a sort, but one has to wonder: what is the administration’s current overseas operation contingent on? Or, in plain English, what event, or series of events, would cause us to declare victory and come home?
The answer to this question is lost in a maze that would baffle the Minotaur, tangled up in so many contingencies, what-ifs, and weasel words that it would take an analyst of Alexandrian abilities to cut the Gordian Knot of this conundrum.

In taking a stab at it, however, one is forced to conclude that the term "Long War" is forbidden precisely on account of its accuracy. Whatever contingencies will bring America’s post-9/11 madness to an end lie in the far future. We ought to take seriously that U.S. general who recently said we’re preparing to stay in Iraq for the next decade or so, regardless of the 2011 cutoff point stipulated in the recently signed U.S.-Iraq status of forces agreement [.pdf].

I empathize with those who had hope for a significant change in American foreign policy, yet the evidence that we are making an even bigger
military footprint in the Middle East and Central Asia seems irrefutable. The one hope left is that the Obamaites will really crack down on the Israelis, who are intent on building new settlements with your tax dollars, and who are moving steadily toward a particularly nasty form of ultra-nationalism, one that represents a direct threat to U.S. interests in the region.

The chances that an Israeli provocation will lead to a full-scale Iranian assault on U.S. troops stationed in Iraq are quite high at the moment, and that is one big reason for increased strains on the "special relationship." The Obama administration seems headed for a showdown with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a hard-liner who, in the context of his ferociously rightist cabinet, is a relative moderate. With Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli version of George Lincoln Rockwell, in charge of the Foreign Ministry, it looks like we’re going to be in for a long, bumpy ride.

Yet the Obama administration, in making a big issue out of the settlements, is paving the way for Israeli "concessions" that still leave Tel Aviv with de facto control over large swathes of Palestinian land. Even minus the settlements, the peace plan one envisions coming from the Obamaites leaves Israel lording it over a demilitarized Palestinian castrato-state, one that acts as a kind of human shield for Israel’s expansionist designs. The Israelis need only agree to stop torturing their Palestinian helots quite so harshly – perhaps by letting food and medicine into Gaza – in order to successfuly goad the U.S. into provoking a war with the Iranians. The U.S. stance on Iran is reportedly Obama’s chief bargaining chip in his testy negotiations with Tel Aviv – a price that, if it is ever exacted, will be paid in blood, American and Iranian (but never Israeli).

The fundamentals of U.S. foreign policy – a policy based on the grandiose delusion that the U.S. can and must retain hegemonic power in the world in order to ensure its own security – haven’t changed a single iota. According to our commander in chief, that fanatics are plotting against America in a cave somewhere in Waziristan is reason enough to launch a decades-long occupation and nation-building project in the wilds of Central Asia. As long as these baddies find a "safe haven" for their plotting, there is no country in the world that’s safe from a future as a battle zone. This is the Bush doctrine of preemptive warfare carried to its logical, Bizarro World conclusion: in keeping the peace we must invade and conquer the world.

What has changed, however, is the willingness of the American people to put up with an "overseas contingency operation" without end. Therefore the Obamaites have to tread very carefully, even as they carry out the same old policies under a freshly minted rubric, mindful that the natives are already getting restless, albeit not quite yet as restless as Ted Rall.

I remember way back when Rall’s rhetoric was considered radical; the Iraq war, he averred, was "a war waged under false pretexts by a fictional coalition led by an ersatz president." In 2003 and thereabouts, when news announcers had yet to take off their flag lapel buttons and Phil Donahue was getting unceremoniously ousted from the airwaves, Rall was accurately calling the Iraq war as lost and demanding Bush’s prosecution as a war criminal. In those dark days, Rall’s views – quite aside from his style – were considered beyond-the-pale radicalism. Today, we have members of Congress, including the speaker, calling for what amounts to a war crimes tribunal to sit in judgment on Bush administration officials. Yesterday’s radicalism, in this instance, is today’s growing consensus.

Similarly, I believe, Rall’s recent piece calling for the president to resign on account of his serial betrayals, especially on the foreign policy front, will prove to be a prophetic reading of the zeitgeist to come. I agree with Katrina van den Heuvel, editor of The Nation, who, in an interview with Antiwar.com’s Scott Horton, compared Obama to another Democratic president with a liberal domestic agenda who got bogged down in a no-win, no-sense war: Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The War Party, driven from power by the Bush defeat, has regrouped and had a makeover: in their new guise as nation-building humanitarians, they’re not making war – they’re conducting an Overseas Contingency Operation. Instead of the damn-the-torpedoes approach taken by his predecessor, this president is not averse to euphemism and what passes for subtlety in pursuing the very same ends. Yet the real contingency here is the patience of the American people, which is fast coming to an end. How long the Obamaites can delay the inevitable revolt is a matter of pure speculation. However, I’m willing to bet it’ll be sooner than they fear.

[Deutschbag]

Campaign For Liberty — The "Traction" Fallacy   | by William Anderson

The "Traction" Fallacy
By William Anderson
Published 06/01/09

Printer-friendly version

In his recent book, The Return of Depression Economics, Paul Krugman makes a rather amazing claim when he says that almost any problem in the U.S. economy can be "solved" simply by printing money. Elsewhere in his semi-weekly column in the New York Times and in his blog, Krugman has called for "a credible commitment to fairly high inflation" as a means of economic recovery.

Now, in the country where I live, one generally does not need the government to "commit" itself to inflation. Indeed, governments will do that all on their own and don't even need approval from economists and especially Krugman.

But while it might seem that calling for inflation is absurd on its face, I believe that I should try to explain the economic strategy that is behind the call for more inflation. The term Krugman and others have used is "traction," but instead of being an appropriate analogy, I would say that this is a "strategy" to run the economy off the road altogether and impoverish much of the United States.

If I am going to use such harsh language, however, I need to be sure that I can explain why Krugman and others have used that analogy, and why they believe it will work. It won't, of course, but nonetheless I should be able to explain why on both counts.

I live in a place that receives a lot of snow each winter, and our house is halfway up a steep hill. We used to have a rear-wheel-drive van and in order to be able to make it to our driveway when the snow was falling, I had to gain speed just before we hit the hill, or the van would slide back.

Because not everyone here expertly drives in snow, once in a while someone goes off the road or is stuck in a snow bank. One way to help that person to drive out is to throw dirt or ashes under the tires in order to give the vehicle traction. After throwing down the material, people then push the car from behind. Once the car has some forward momentum, it usually can get out of the snow on its own.

Likewise, Krugman and others like him (too many like him, as far as I am concerned) believe that the problem with the economy today is that people just are not spending enough money, and in their reluctance to spend, they have created a "liquidity trap." Since the Keynesian construct of the "liquidity trap" has it being a self-perpetuating problem, the only way to steer the economy out of its present "snow bank" is to have an outside force -- the government -- give it a push or throw money under the wheels (instead of ashes) and then watch the economy take off again.

In the case of the present downturn, creating new bank reserves will not provide much of a push since new money cannot be created if banks are not making loans, and a period of economic uncertainty is not going to result in a surge of new lending. Thus, if the economy is to be given "traction," the only way is for government to spend in a way that floods the economy with new money, forcing up prices through inflation. People will face the hard choice of holding onto their money and watching its value deteriorate, or spending in and enabling the economy to "take off."

As people continue to spend, the spending sends signals to producers to make more goods, and then the economy is off to the races. And all it takes is a friendly shove from the government along with a blizzard of new dollars.

If the economy really were a circular flow and if there were such a thing as a "liquidity trap," and the economy worked just as Keynesians claim, then perhaps such a strategy would make sense. (I am not endorsing inflation, but rather am giving Krugman and others their argument in an imaginary economy.)

However, as I have pointed out before, the economy is not a circular flow mechanism. It is not some sort of perpetual motion mechanism. It is an entity with real fundamentals, a real structure of production, and these are things that matter. If an economy were simply a blot into which people throw whatever they wish and out pops what we see today, that would be one thing; but it is quite another when capital matters, when the relationship of factors of production to each other and to consumer good matters.

In the Krugman/Keynesian view, production is an automatic thing. In fact, it does not even matter who or what entity is producing something. In Krugman's world, a government-owned and operated economy will operate just as well as one based on private property and maybe even better, since governments are legally permitted to print money.

However, if ours is a world scarcity, a world in which prices tell us something about the demand for and the relative scarcity of all goods, be they producers' goods, consumer goods, or our labor, then throwing a big pile of money into the mix will not give an economy "traction" any more than pushing the car further into a snowy ditch will enable it to pull out. In fact, a burst of inflation (or, better, a government "commitment" to debasing our money) only will further the malinvestments that now plague our political economy.

My sense is that the powers that be will listen to the Krugmans of the academic and political world instead of listening to people like Ron Paul. After all, they are the ones with the honors, they are the ones who populate the "elite" economics departments, and they are the ones who are laying out real-live "plans of action" by which the political classes can make it look as though they are doing something. Those of us who advocate the government stepping back and not "helping people" are seen as reactionaries and worse.

But even if Paul Krugman is popular and has his face on the cover of Newsweek, that does not mean he is correct. His argument that inflation will give the economy "traction" is clever and might even resonate with the political classes and the media, but even though his is a cunning argument, nonetheless it still makes no sense. An economy is not a blob, it is not a "circle of life," and it is not even something that needs "traction." Our economy is something that has been badly damaged precisely because of all of these clever policies of inflation and malinvestment that have benefited the political classes, and the only way that it can get any real traction is for the political classes to go back to ribbon cuttings and hanging out at the bars in the Beltway and stop trying to fix things.


Copyright © 2009 Campaign for Liberty

[MountyBounty]

Amazing Mustang gets 110 mpg!!!! goodbye weak ass hybrids

Now on to this specific case. Here we have a mechanic named Doug Pelmear with an ‘87 Ford Mustang that he claims gets 110 mpg, 400 horsepower, 500 ft-lbs of torque, and can do 0-60 in 3 seconds. According to Doug, the builder:

“My grandfather had the idea back in the 40’s that he can make a difference then,” Pelmear says, “There was quite a need at that time also with the war going on and everything, there was quite the need then.” And quite a need now.

This should throw up our first red flag. His grandfather had an idea back in the 40s that this guy has remade into some sort of miracle device 60 years later? Nevermind the fact that automakers spend billions of dollars working on having the best of the best in terms of both power and efficiency, and that to date the Honda Insight holds the mileage crown at with a combined EPA rating of 53 MPG. Doug Pelmear claims to more than double that using something his grandfather thought up 60 years ago? Engine technology from that period is nothing like the fuel injected, computer controlled tech of today, but this device still works wonders?
Those this technology could be working to increase the thermodynamic efficiency of the engine, as one ecomodder pointed out, thermodynamic efficiency can only be increased so much before it is at 100%, which would be impossible. Given that car engines are typically 25-30% efficient, there is only so much gain to be had before you’re claiming to have broken the laws of physics.
As for the car itself, 1987 Mustangs come with EPA ratings from 17-24 MPG, with 17 being the number assigned to the V8 variety. Completely disregarding the performance claims Doug is making, if we are to assume he’s using the 5.0L V8 as a base, he’s claiming a 640% increase in fuel economy. While ecomodders regularly report increases of 50% to 100% on the extreme side, does such a huge improvement seem feasible? And if so, how could it be done while dramatically increasing power output?
The next red flag comes up when we learn that Doug won’t tell anyone what he’s done to the car or what technology he’s using:

While Pelmear won’t let us look under the hood, he says the technology can easily be applied to smaller engines for even better gas mileage. He’s entering the car in the prestigious Progressive Automotive X competition; a race where inventors from around the world compete for the best mileage with a car that is the most marketable. Pelmear says, his technology is very marketable because it will allow people to drive large cars and SUV’s without sacrificing gas mileage.

As the original report notes, the X-Prize is a prestigious competition, but to me it seems like he is only using the name in order to make his claims appear more legitimate. While his plan to sell his design to automakers in order to make it big certainly could explain why he wouldn’t want to make a DIY and post it online, but he can’t expect anyone to believe his claims if he’s not even willing to drive the car around and fill it up at the pump to throw a little weight behind his claims.
And even that brings up another question. Evidently Doug’s job was recently cut in Ford’s latest round of lay-offs. If he intends to use this invention to bring back the US automotive industry, why didn’t it see the light of day during the years he worked for billion-dollar manufacturer? This kind of technology would have definitely gotten him a nice promotion, a fat paycheck, and position as the savior of his company. Instead, he doesn’t mention until he’s out of a job.

The rest is here.

[wackdeafboy]

Jesus......

I can't wait to hear more about under the hood.

[MountyBounty]

YouTube - 110 MPG Mustang HP2g

And someone please give me a reason why this wouldn't be on the MSM?? If Chrysler or GM bought his idea with some of the damn bailout money they would be out of the grave