Thanks

This is the end of "Hot Topics" under my stewardship.

It's been a pleasure and an honor to have had these conversations with you.

Special thanks to oldnumber7, michelle, tanstaafl, daryl and all you anonymouses.

As Tigger would say, TTFN (Ta-ta for now).

G - Ocho Cinco - P

Syndicated columnist Susan Estrich had this question high up in her latest opinion piece:

Has anyone heard of new faces, new ideas, "change" -- all the things Americans voted for overwhelmingly?

What "overwhelmingly"? Obama beat McCain 53 percent to 46 percent in the popular vote. That's not exactly overwhelming. And, as they say in the financial planning business, past results are not a guarantee of future performance. Twenty years ago, Bush 41 beat Dukakis by about the same margin, and we know how well 41 did in his re-election bid.

As for Congress, I don't know about "overwhelming" either. Voters tossed out one set of scoundrels, but all they got was another bunch of scoundrels that refuses to police its own ranks. Will people go back to the original set of scoundrels in 2010 or 2012? I have no idea.

It would help if the GOP offered a coherent vision of governance that swing voters could buy into, but so far it has not. From the outside looking in, it doesn't appear that the Republican Party needs a good political strategist to get its act in order. It needs a chaotician.

I well remember the Cincinnati Bengals' second Super Bowl against the (insert profanity here) San Francisco 49ers. Late in the game, Joe Montana threw an end zone pass right into the arms of Bengals cornerback Lewis Billups, and Billups dropped it. If Billups had made the catch, the Bengals would have won.

Maybe that's it. The GOP has been getting its strategy advice from Bengals management.

Right now, the Democratic Party is the Steelers, and the Republicans are the Bengals.

Light posting

Sorry for not putting much up today. Nothing, actually. Because of the holiday weekend, we have to put out an extra opinion page before I leave the office Friday afternoon.

Today I worked on Saturday's page, which will be different from the usual. It's an experiment that will need some tweaking as we go along. Let me know how you like it.

Odds and ends, 5/20/09

It's bad enough that the presidential election runs on a four-yaer cycle nowadays. Now at least two people have declared themselves as candidates in next year's legislative race here in Cabell County, and the primary is a few days short of a whole year away.

Give us time to breath, people, please.

But if you're a candidate who doesn't have instant name recognition, you need the time to get your name out there for people to remember. Just ask that ketchup guy.

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I took this picture about a month ago. I was sitting at a red light with my window down. I looked up and saw this steeple and said to myself, this would make a nice photo. Then I realized I could not tell you the name of this church. I've driven past it since the East End bridge opened in summer 1985, and I read the name of this church most of those times, but I still draw a blank when I try to remember it.

It sort of makes me think what else I look at daily but never see.

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Like nobody saw this one coming.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Facing mounting budget deficits and seeing few areas left to cut spending, states increasingly are turning to the only option they have left: raising taxes.

Though public officials are loath to do this, particularly during a recession, many governors are increasing personal income taxes, raising corporate income taxes, hiking cigarette and gas taxes, or broadening sales taxes.

Already, 16 states have taken this unpopular step this fiscal year, and another 17 have proposed tax hikes for the coming year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a policy group. In many cases, they are making small increases in specific taxes, rather than imposing a broad rate hike.

Buzzard enjoying meal of wild possum

Any day you're driving in to work and a buzzard lets you get multiple shots of him, you know you're starting off good. My only regret is that I can't afford a $1,000 lens to get really good shots of these shy birds.

These things can't avoid me forever. Someday I will get that good closeup of a turkey vulture in the wild.

Black vultures are more aggressive than turkey vultures, so maybe they won't be so shy if they move into this region. I just hope they don't drive the turkey vultures out when they get here.

Demon corn

Is this a great country or what?

We used to worry about that demon, corn liquor.

Now we worry about that demon, high-fructose corn syrup.

America, what a country.

An 80 mph speed limit? Please, no.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Despite warnings from safety advocates, a group of lawmakers wants Ohio to join 32 other states that have raised speed limits to 70 mph or higher on certain roads.

State Rep. Dan Dodd, a Democrat from Hebron, says Ohio should allow drivers to catch up with the rest of the country. He’s a main sponsor of a bill getting its first hearing before a House transportation committee on Wednesday.

The plan already faces opposition from the State Highway Patrol.

Lt. Shawn Davis says the main contributing factor in fatal crashes continues to be people driving too fast.

Ever since Congress repealed a national speed limit law in 1995, the trend has been for states to keep pushing speed limits higher. Texas and Utah have an 80 mph limit on some roads.

A speed limit of 70 is about as high as I can see anyone needing to go. A few years ago, local LEOs (law enforcement officers; I've been watching too much NCIS, I guess) told us one of the main safety problems on Interstate 64 is speed differential, that is, people traveling different speeds.

And there is a thought in West Virginia that the actual speed limit is 9 mph above the posted limit, so if West Virginia went with a plan like this, people would go 89 right and left.

Can you imagine a guy like me doing 70 and being passed constantly by people doing 90 or higher, and then we all come up on a couple of people doing 65 in the left lane?

Not that this would happen in Ohio. Unlike West Virginia, in Ohio the posted speed limit is assumed to be the maximum allowable speed, and it's enforced. but 80 is still too high.

Let me add another reason: How many cars out there do you think have the tires, brakes and shocks to handle 80 mph for long distances?

How many people would get off an interstate highway where they had gone 80 mph and then get on two-lane Route 7 and do something close to 80 without thinking, because 80 would be the new default speed people would drive? Not likely? Then go up West Virginia Route 2 between Huntington and Point Pleasant sometime. Drive 55 and see how many times you are passed or tailgated.

And yeah, we need a bunch of 17- and 18-year-old kids driving 80 mph in their daddies' cars.

This is why I avoid I-64 whenever possible.

Deep six 80. Please.

Giving up on science

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Middle and high school students across the country are generally falling behind in life sciences, and the nation is at risk of producing a dearth of qualified workers for the fast-growing bioscience industry, according to a report released Monday.

Students are showing less interest in taking life sciences and science courses, and high schools are doing a poor job of preparing students for college-level science, says the report, funded and researched by Columbus, Ohio-based Battelle, the Biotechnology Industry Organization and the Biotechnology Institute.

The deficiencies will hurt the country’s competitiveness with the rest of the world in the knowledge-based economy, the report concludes.

From the kids I've seen, something destroys kids' interest in science somewhere between 4th and 9th grades. Kids who want to know about the moon and dinosaurs become fascinated with fame and music instead. Science becomes boring, tedious and dull.

I blame middle schools and hormones. The combination is deadly when it comes to science and math. We can't do anything about hormones, but we can do something about middle school.

Huntington, meet Paducah

One of former Huntington Mayor David Felinton's failings was his inability to get people to buy into his vision of what Huntington could be. He used the buzz phrase "creative community," but that didn't go anywhere. I don't have any proof, but I get the feeling too many people here equate "creative community" with "let's recruit some gay artists to live here."

According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, Paducah, Ky., which is a little over half the size of Huntington, began a campaign some 15 years ago to become the kind of city that Felinton envisioned for Huntington.

Read the entire thing and see how much of it resembles what Huntington is today.

I spent a few hours in Paducah in 1986 on my way to somewhere else. I need to get back down there. In the past 23 years, I've learned there's a lot in Paducah that I need to see. Not just quilts and Lowertown, but other things that interest me in particular.

And I want to see for myself if Paducah really became what Huntington could be, but never did.

WESTEST week

West Virginia public school students in grades 3 through 11 are taking WESTEST 2 this week. That's the new, supposedly tougher standardized test to see if they are learning what they are taught.

Later this year, the state Department of Education will release results. We will learn the average score in each school or grade, and there will be some other statistical data released, all of which seem to tell us something but really not.

The average score tells us little. I would like to know the arithmetic mean, median and mode for each school and grade. And the standard deviation, which tells you whether most scores are clustered around the average.

I would like to know if there is a correlation -- linear or nonlinear -- between WESTEST 2 scores and grades. I say that because of the experience of a kid I know. He lives on the same road I do. When he was in middle school, his parents pulled him out of school and taught him at home because he was close to failing his subjects. When he took the WESTEST, he scored well above average. When he returned to public school that fall, administrators wanted to fail him. When his parents said his WESTEST scores showed that he was above average, the administration passed him to the next grade.

And I would like to know how the kids who take the test year after year advance. Do they do better or worse?

How do the scores of kids who drop out of school compare with those who stay in? Did kids who dropped out and got their GEDs within a few years do okay on WESTEST and WESTEST 2?

In other words, I would like to see a really good analysis of exactly what WESTEST 2 can tell us about our schools and our education system.

Not that any of us will ever see it.

CAFE mandates and used cars

A story at the Wall Street Journal online site says President Obama will announce an accelerated schedule for automakers' fleets to meet the goal of averaging 35 miles per gallon. Tomorrow, Obama is supposed to announce date for that goal has been moved up from 2020 to 2016.

So after seeing that, I got my Consumer Reports annual auto issue and start looking for cars that meet that standard now in real-world driving. Few even came close. The smallish Honda Fit came close at 30 mpg. The Toyota Prius attained 42 mpg in CR tests, while Honda claims its Insight will get 41 mpg. The Prius and the Insight are both gas-electric hybrids, by the way.

The Volkswagen Jetta TDI diesel averaged 33 mpg in CR tests.

So where does this leave us, the average consumer? I know of a few ways to get mileage up:

1. Build smaller cars with smaller engines, and make them as lightweight as possible.

2. Use hybrid technology, all-electric technology or high-mileage diesel engines such as the TDI.

3. Go back to the 1970s and build little cars with very little sheet metal to protect you, and strip off as much weight and as many safety features as possible.

Right. I'm not a big fan of using a 1970s-era economy car as the primary transportation for my family. Short of a big jump in gasoline prices, it would seem to me that the used car market will be very strong for years to come if Obama's plan goes into effect. I'm not saying West Virginia will become Cuba North, but it is a tantalizing possibility for a mechanic who knows how to extend the life of our favorite SUVs.

Another unintended result could be that carmakers will sell fewer cars, making their situation worse.

One other thing: Would pushing CAFE standards up, which could lead to more plug-in electric vehicles, really cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, considering that most electricity in the USA comes from burning fossil fuels?

Odds and ends, 5/18/09

Got my first sunburn of the year yesterday, and I got it the same way I have the past two, three or four years. I've lost count. I gave my mother-in-law's yard its first good mowing of spring. In some places, I had to cut the high grass with a string trimmer before I attacked it with a push mower. So now my neck and my nose are a bit too red. C'est la vie.

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I see the mayor plans to resume paving soon. Doesn't he know this isn't an election year?

6th Avenue needs some street lines. The old ones have faded so much they're almost invisible.

Some folks want the asphalt taken up and Huntington returned to a city with all brick streets. They probably haven't seen some brick streets that have gotten too much traffic and too little maintenance.

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My daughter attended her first prom over the weekend. All that work and expense, and she and her friends got caught in a thunderstorm walking from the car to the front door. Next year maybe they'll get there early enough to find a parking spot closer in.

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My older son loves Chuck Norris jokes. This weekend I came across this one:

Chuck Norris was bitten by a cobra. After five hours of excruciating pain, the cobra died.

My son didn't like it when I told him I had done something I had never heard of Chuck Norris doing. A month or so ago in a cooking mishap, I managed to stain stainless steel.

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After watching a few minutes of a CNN news show this morning around 5:30 a.m., I'm still glad I'm not Nancy Pelosi. I'm also glad I'm not a member of the Republican leadership. If politics were baseball, those guys would play catcher and they would lead the league in passed balls.

Two thoughts related to politics on a Friday afternoon

1. I'm glad I'm not Nancy Pelosi right now. I'm glad I'm not Nancy Pelosi any day, but I wouldn't want to be in the corner she's painted herself into.

2. Having to read the forum comments at www.herald-dispatch.com can be a wearying experience at times. A lot of people want to get into these pointless arguments about whether their dandruff is the fault of Barack Obama or George W. Bush. Sometimes I want to jump in and say they're all wrong. It's Clinton's fault. Or Reagan's. Take your pick.

Speaking of which, have you ever noticed nothing is George H.W. Bush's fault. It's as though in the search for zingers, Bush 41 is as forgotten as Gerald Ford.

Whose fault is that?

After the water goes down at HRP

If you like driftwood, mud and plastic litter, Harris Riverfront Park is the place to be.

But it's always that way after the Ohio River goes down. Sometime before Memorial Day, someone will be out there with a firehose cleaning the place off before the unofficial beginning of summer.

Here are a couple of photos of what I saw there around 2 p.m. today.

See that stump at the bottom of the steps? I stood beside it for comparison. I'm 5-11 to 6-0, depending on who's measuring me that day, and the top of those roots were maybe two feet over my head.

It wasn't all bad. There was this boat going under the 6th Street bridge.

It's the Speedway, owned and operated by Marathon Petroleum.

And there was this little critter, working as busy as a ... you know.

I don't recall seeing many little bees last year, but I've seen them a few times already this year. And that's a good thing.

Three morning pix

A couple of shots of the East End bridge this morning as the fog was lifting.

And the marquee outside a convenience store in Huntington.

Yum, yum.

An outsider's look at the Cabell school system

A TV station in Michigan came to Cabell County to see how a county-wide school system operates compared to a place with a lot of local districts.

The link to the story (text, not video) is here.

Tough job

Ironton collects an income tax from its residents and its businesses.

Wednesday, we learned AK Steel will idle the Ashland works through the end of this year. I would say a lot of people in Ironton work at AK Steel.

Today, we learn Chrysler has told Harmon Motor Sales that it's pulling its franchise to sell Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge and Dodge trucks. I might be wrong, but I think Harmon is Ironton’s last new-car dealer.

Ironton had enough holes in its budget without these problems.

I don't think I'd want the Ironton mayor's job right now.

Chrysler pulls plugs on some dealers

The list of dealerships whose franchises Chrysler is yanking came out today.

I looked at the local list and found a few I expected and some I didn't expect.

To keep things simple, these are the dealerships in this area that are losing their franchises:

Bill Spurlock Dodge, Huntington (Dodge, Truck)

Harmon Motor Sales, Ironton (Dodge, Chrysler, Truck, Jeep)

Consolidated Motor Holdings, Logan (Dodge, Chrysler, Truck, Jeep)
Crown Dodge, Nitro (Dodge, Truck)
Joe Holland Chrysler, South Charleston (Chrysler)
Paintsville (Dodge, Chrysler, Truck, Jeep).

Which means that people in Huntington's second-largest city will have to go to Putnam County or to Ashland to buy a new Chrysler product. In other words, out of county or out of state.

I don't know about you folks, but I don't like going that far. I'm shopping for a used vehicle. I'll be in the market for a new one in two or three years. It will take a good deal to make me go to Hurricane or Ashland. From where I live, those places are several miles away, and if I have a problem with the vehicle, I want it serviced locally.

It's possible the places losing their franchises will become used-car stores, get another franchise or become something else.

Spurlock and Harmon are in their cities' downtowns. Judging from experience, auto makers don't want their franchises to be so far in town and so far off the freeway. Turnpike Ford is another exception to that, but so far Ford isn't in nearly as much trouble as GM or Chrysler.

We'll have to see how it plays out. GM is supposed to announce its list tomorrow, according to the Wall Street Journal.