Mergers... In... Space....

You may have heard that Sirius and XM, the only satellite radio companies in existence, want to merge together to form one (supposedly) stronger company. I support it, and I'll use this post to explain why, but if it doesn't happen, I won't lose any sleep over it.

For the record, I own 20 shares of Sirius stock. But if you think that's the reason why, you're seriously overestimating the value of 20 shares. It's not like it's Berkshire Hathaway. I bought it for my speculative portfolio in January 2005 when the stock was at $7.54/share. With all of the buzz going on at the time, I thought that it was the next Taser (TASR). For those of you unfamiliar with that stock, it went from nothing to Wall Street juggernaut overnight. The values on the curve don't look all that impressive now, but you have to realize that it went through a 3 for 1 and two 2 for 1 splits all in 2004! Carry those multiples across and you'll see what I mean. That's what I thought was going to happen with Sirius. But it never did.

Why did I think Sirius was going to pull a Taser? Well, besides the hype, I believed in the product. All those commercial free music channels that catered to everyone's tastes was something that was clearly needed in the marketplace. Let's face it. Unless your music tastes match whatever local radio format is in your area, you're screwed. I can't listen to classic rock 24/7. Not only because there's other stuff I like but because it's always the same 80 songs over and over again, with little variation. College radio offered some refuge, but for every song I liked there were probably 10 songs I didn't like. So here's a product that'll meet my needs, without commercials. It's like a hundred stations in one. The drawback? A monthly subscription whereas commercial laden terrestial radio is free.

What went wrong? XM and Sirius got locked into an arms race. Each scrambled to do outdo the other, signing "talent" and locking in content to insanely lucrative deals. The expectation was that listeners would sign up in droves, unable to resist what these guys offered. While many people have signed up, not nearly enough took the plunge. Wall Street couldn't help but notice. Every other week there was a press release proclaiming the latest signing and the huge outflow of cash awarded to the recipient. Wall Street walked away and the stock prices for these two plummeted. XM is at $13/share after hitting $40 while Sirius never got off the ground. They're at three and a quarter.

So now the companies want to merge and everyone is crying monopoly. Former AG John Ashcroft has been hired by the National Association of Broadcasters to lobby against the merger. He fired off a scathing letter to his successor, screaming about how unholy this alliance would be. He neglected to mention that he solicited XM to represent them prior to his NAB hiring. What a piece of shit.

Other, presumably less hypocritical, people are complaining that consumers will suffer without a choice in the satellite radio market. But I think that they're not seeing the big picture. While XM and Sirius are competing against each other, their biggest competition isn't themselves, it's terrestrial radio. Neither company can withstand the onslaught of Infinity Broadcasting, Viacom, or ClearChannel. If people don't like what a Sirius-XM merger becomes, they can always go back to regular FREE radio. The real market isn't satellite radio, it's ALL radio.

For comparision, let's look at the cable TV market. I can't get any other cable TV supplier besides Comcast. Cablevision is available in other towns, but not mine. Why? I don't know, but I suspect collusion. So does Comcast have a monopoly? If we apply the anti-satellite merger argument, it certainly does. But I'm not forced to accept Comcast. I can opt for satellite TV (assuming that I can get a signal) or rely on an antenna. Hell, I could just rent DVD's for entertainment and rely on newspapers and the internet for news. So Comcast, while having a cable TV monopoly, doesn't have a TV monopoly.

Its my opinion that this logic be applied to the satellite radio market. Note that I'm saying that they should be allowed to merge. I don't know that it'll do any good. A merger means that employees performing duplicate work will get canned. Somehow, I don't think that'll cover Howard Stern's paycheck.

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The Man That Could Save The Republican Party

I'm under no illusions that this will happen. There's no way the entrenched power elite of the Republican Party will wake up and realize that in order to save the party it needs to remember Constitutional Conservatism, better known as libertarianism. It means abandoning the work done by this administration to create an Orwellian state that claims it is protecting us by invading our privacy, ignoring habeus corpus, starting wars to protect corporate hegemony overseas, imposing a witch hunt upon those who don't share their so called "moral values", ignoring the fact that there are three equal branches of government, and bankrupting the country.

The only man capable of that task is Ron Paul, ex-Libertarian Party presidential candidate and current Republican congressman from Texas. On March 18th, he announced his candidacy for president. Check him out. You may not like some of the things he has to say or his stance of some issues, but I don't believe that you'll find a candidate from either party more willing to roll back the damage the Constitution has suffered at the hands of this administration and has the voting record to back it up.

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Beer In Review: Wrestling Match

"Ladies and gentlemen! Tonight, Weyerbacher Brewery Wrestling Federation is proud to announce a heavyweight match between Blithering Idiot and Old Heathen."

Or something like that. Both of these high octane brews are crafted by Weyerbacher Brewery. Located in Easton, Pennsylvania, these people have been at it since 1995. A tour through their website reveals a colorful collection of labels, some of which I've seen, though I've never purchased. Weyerbacher beers are carried by stores throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, New York, DC, Virginia, Ohio, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, Connecticut, North Carolina, and as of last week, Maine.

This round of tasting is courtesy of Jim, who might not like what I have to say.

First up is Blithering Idiot, a barleywine style ale. For those unfamiliar with barleywine, think of it as a wine made from barley instead of grapes, but still a beer. The alcohol content is similar to that of wine, and Blithering Idiot clocks in at a hefty 11.1% ABV. And at that level, you'll certainly wind up a blithering idiot if you drink too many of these.

On the pour, the imbiber is given a cloudy amber drink with plenty of head. The aroma is fruity but once it hits your mouth the esters and alcohol combine to punch your tongue with a sickening sweetness and then ends on a sour note. I have to say I despised this beverage. Normally, I like sweet. I've drank many a bottle of schnapps over the years and I prefer malty beers, which are generally sweeter, and the mixers I use to support the vodka I drink are all sweet, but this is just plain wrong.

It could be that it's because I hate wine. No seriously. I despise it. All I smell with red wines are a nasty combo of vinegar and sulfites, even the ones that get good ratings from Wine Spectator. I haven't tried to drink one in over a decade as my tongue would tear itself from my mouth and punch me in the eye. I don't hate white wines, but I certainly don't like them either.

Based on this, I'm certain that I'm a lousy judge of barleywines. But if you don't care for wine, then you probably want to steer clear of barleywines and the Blithering Idiot.

Up next is Old Heathen, an Imperial Stout. It's no slouch for alcohol either, measuring 8% ABV.

The beer oozes out of the bottle with the color of used motor oil. No joke. It's black. Even the head has a distinct black tint to it. It hits the tongue with a chocolate malt taste, with the alcohol making a pronounced appearence on the swallow. And that's it. I couldn't identify even a hint of hops. Overall, it's ok. Still not anything that I'd buy on a regular basis, but certainly drinkable, particularly in the winter.

And the winner of this very ugly match is.... Old Heathen, by decision. Certainly not a knockout.

You may be wondering, is this a case where marketing overwhelms craftmanship? I don't think so. Unlike Ridgeway Brewing, where the marketing controversy outweighed the quality of their beer portfolio, the names that Weyerbacher used aren't over the top. They seem to specialize in crafting high alcohol and complex beer, and their Winter Ale won a silver medal back in '98. It may be a while, but I'll give them another chance down the road.

Sorry, Jim.

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Surf Titan

The Cassini probe has uncovered evidence that Saturn's largest moon, Titan, has hydrocarbon seas (probably simple stuff like methane and ethane). Since November 1980, when Voyager 1 revealed to us that Titan had an opaque, orange atmosphere, it's been speculated that Titan had hydrocarbon seas which helped to sustain said atmosphere. How was Cassini able to discover these seas when Voyager couldn't? Radar!

No word yet if Haliburton is planning to relocate their headquarters there.

Buy the t-shirt!

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Why Don't We Just Impeach Everyone and Start Over

I've been too busy to blog these days, but fortunately there's people like Mike that can keep rolling day in day out. In this post he vents off some vitriol which I've been feeling as well.

What no one mentioned there was that those attorneys were all Republicans. I first heard of that on Countdown but I figured that I'd offer the Andrew Sullivan link instead. Can't say why. One would expect the current administration to wipe out the previous admin's appointees, but not their own. One of the AG's was the chief investigator in the Duke Cunningham case. Coincidence? No, not possible.

Will someone please tell me how this country continues to function with the shit that DC is pumping out 24/7? Is it because the corrupt shit is lubricating the gears of profiteers and power brokers? Are we comfortably numb? Anesthetized to the lies? Has cynicism and apathy won?

I can't see how anyone on either end of the political spectrum can be happy about this. I know people want to bash conservatives since most of the Republican party claim to be conservatives, but I think definitions are being muddied. The Republican party's claim to cultural conservatives is dead on, but that's it. I've ranted in the past about how fiscal conservatism has been lost on the formerly Republican controlled Congress (Bridge to Nowhere. Now that should be a song). As for Constitutional conservatism, the Republican party's a fucking joke. It's so bad that even John McCain, a man I used to admire, has been corrupted by this perverted need to re-work the Constitution to push the neocon agenda.

Anyone notice how the Republican controlled Senate wanted to kill the need for supermajorities to end filibusters but now that they're in the minority they've used to kill non-binding resolutions to voice disapproval over W's Iraq nonsense?

And no, the Democrats aren't free from this malaise. They've failed to show any Constitutional backbone either. And now, the party elite are moving most of the primaries up to early February of '08 to make sure that the candidate of power gets the nod locked up several months before the convention. Forget any long shot candidates. If you don't have the war chest NOW, you're done. Who do you think that favors? It's one conspiracy theory that I'm certainly willing to back.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: No more Bushes and no more Clintons in the White House. It's time to move on.

On Pink Floyd's album, The Final Cut, there's a song entitled "The Fletcher Memorial Home". It's a suggestion that we take all of our leaders, irregardless of nationality, and send them to a sort of "old folks home". Although written in 1983, it has even more pertinence now.

Although I've been drinking heavily this evening, it hasn't been enough to overcome my fear that the government is watching for certain keywords or phrases on the internet. With the domestic spying/surveillance program, I think I'm justified in that fear. When I get this angry, and drunk, my proposed solution to the mess in DC becomes a bit more violent. It's probably why I support the 2nd amendment so much. It's the last refuge for an oppressed populace. Call it the last "check and balance" on our government. The Founding Fathers put it in there for a reason. They knew all too well the evils of tyranny and its corruptive influences. It's something that we've forgotten how to recognize in ourselves, even as we're shuffling off to foreign lands to rid others of their tyrants.

So, you can call me a coward for censoring myself or stupid for blogging while intoxicated or what have you. But the truth of the matter is that I fear for my country and the sinister places where idiots/malfeasants have led us, blindfolded, all the while insisting that we trust them. I can't help but wonder if it's already too late.

I know I'm going to regret this tomorrow.

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