As IF Times

link Reception for Obama Is More Sober Than in 2008 – NYTimes.com.

Well it has been 5 years and the comedown was bound to happen.  The swooning crowds, the breathless adulation, the rock-star persona, the trance-like state of delusion by the masses.  They are all subsiding.  We’re not talking Justin Bieber here, that’s still going on.  We are talking about an obscure senator from Illinois five years after bursting on the scene seemingly out of nowhere to reach the world’s highest office.  That the fascination has lasted this long is amazing by itself.   Justin Bieber, to his credit, at least has a basic talent.

On any given day as you stand in line at the checkout stands at the supermarket, you will be exposed to the numerous blaring headlines of Hollywood gossip magazines offering profoundly important news about the most picayune activities of the glitterati. We find that Kim Kardashian is pregnant!  It’s a miracle! We know that Justin likes Selena, but she likes someone else’s boyfriend and Taylor Swift is miffed and Jennifer’s wedding is postponed and Brad suffers heartbreak and Jessica is fat.

Gripping stuff, but mostly it’s all noise to normal and intelligent people.  Only 12 year old girls have an obsessive appetite for these morsels of drivel dressed up as fresh news on their idols.

Apparently there remains that hard core journalistic equivalent of 12 year old girls that are still intoxicated by the cloud of greatness that emanates from the incumbent healer of the earth and saviour of mankind.   According to stories such as the one in the linked article, by the New York Times no less,  journalists that are not Chris Matthews and increasingly much of the general public are sobering up.  It’s the equivalent of the realization that the Korean rapper Psy is a one act phenomenon…which he is.  Like William Hung of American Idol fame, his 15 minutes are over.   Over the past half year, there is increasing evidence that the adoring Obama fan base is falling away as it becomes obvious that beyond the ability to read off a screen, the man has no talent.  It would be as if people listened to Vanna White’s opinions on world affairs solely by virtue of her skill at turning letters on a board.

When you hear the same old banalities and cheap bromides offered again and again as sage wisdoms delivered in that same condescending pedantic tone, especially if read off a screen, the credibility is lost.  When you lose credibility, you lose audience.  When you lose audience, you lose effectiveness and influence.

When people are at raucous party and especially if they are in an altered state, every conversation is witty, every person is fascinating and the loud amorphous music all sounds intoxicatingly brilliant.  In the sober moments of daytime however, those same conversations are banal, the people are bores and the music becomes just so much cacophonous noise.  Methinks we are at that sobering moment.

Update: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/obama-second-term-doldrums-93295.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1627b9a4-e234-11e2-87ec-00144feabdc0.html#slide0

link States look to tax hybrid and electric car owners to recoup road funding | Fox News.

It’s hard to make stuff like this up.  The image of the snake eating its own tail now has some real life examples.  As many may know, the automobile and petroleum industry are responsible for incalculable benefits to the modern world, not only from their respective utilities but as importantly from the taxes associated with their use.  Roads, highways and bridges couldn’t be afforded if taxation from fuel and vehicle sales didn’t exist.  Up here on the west coast, fully half of the amount charged on a liter of gasoline are taxes of some sort or another.

If electric vehicles ever achieve ubiquity of common use for the average person, the taxes associated with petro fuel sales would plummet. According to the U.S. Bureau of Statistics, in 2009, there were over 254 million passenger vehicles registered in the U.S.  As of 2011, there were an estimated 2 million hybrid electric vehicles.

Observing these statistics, this is unlikely to happen in the next decade or so unless there’s a quantum leap in battery technology.  As of now, the workable range of most electric vehicles will barely allow for a trip to drop the kids off at school plus a run to Costco.  What is seldom mentioned is the fact that all eco-vehicles are subsidized by governments at purchase, anywhere from $2500 to $7500 per vehicle.  So what we have are more expensive, less efficient vehicles that will be taxed more than already efficient gasoline vehicles in order to maintain the same notional level of road tax budgets.  This turns the classic Mies Van Der Rohe dictum of less is more on its head.

It’s not too much a leap of logic to draw the parallel with the hypothetical situation of hiring as many law enforcement officers as possible as a means to deter crime.   At some point, at least in theory, there will be no criminals and you’ll have to tax the police just to keep paying them.  Oddly, this has not happened in real life as the same scenario applied using lawyers has had just the opposite effect.  Presently the United States and Canada have the most amount of practising lawyers ever in history.  Strangely, life is neither necessarily easier nor safer.  All that’s happened is that we’ve created a more byzantine legal system with potentially more lawbreakers.  Naturally, to protect themselves, the people need to hire more lawyers.

Getting back to our unfolding drama regarding electric/green vehicles, taxing them may not be a bad thing since most who own them probably deserve to be taxed anyway.  A large contingent are likely eco-weenie snobs and can afford to pay the exaggerated price in order to maintain their personal levels of smugness.  However, the limited range of the cars will quickly annoy them when they get caught in one of the traffic jams of most major cities such as L.A. Chicago and New York.  When the Chevy Volt dies only 3 miles from home, it’ll be back to the Tahoe.