The Colonel's Forum

Mitch McConnell released a statement this week warning my fellow Kentuckians about how the proposed energy bill will ruin our livelihoods. One of Mitch's largest campaign contributors is Peabody coal. Any chance these two facts are related? "We'll pay more at the pump for gas and more for keeping the lights on if it passes," he says. That is true, because any sensibly energy bill will account for the economic cost of carbon emissions (there is one) promote energy efficiency (because the current growth in US energy consumption is unsustainable) make us less dependent on oil. we use 19M barrels a day, and we import 12M (63%) of those. Anyone who thinks we can simply stop importing and triple domestic production, is stupid (and wrong). “It’s American troops whose lives are endangered because we’re dependent on oil companies in countries that hate us. It’s American consumers who are tired not just of prices at the pump that soar each summer, but sick and tired o...

Interesting article about how Verizon is joining AT&T in disabling certain features on phones running the Android operating system. If you've never heard of Android, it's a phone operating system from Google that is free, uses open standards, and is available on many different handsets from many different manufactures and many different wireless providers. The new version of Android OS (2.2 Froyo) supports tethering (tying your phone to your PC for use as an Internet connection) and also the ability to use your phone as a WiFi hotspot that serves several devices in the immediate area (I think up to 5). These are useful features, but they increase the amount of data usage on the wireless networks. If you buy your phone from your wireless provider, you're generally buying a handset that has a modified (provider-specific) version of the phone operating system. In short, the wireless companies add programs (often useless, but designed to sell you crap) and disa...