MacGyver

BP's market cap at the close of the market today was $99.71 billion at $32.11/share. They've got some blood to shed in the market before this is done, but they're certainly worth more than $20 billion. Read what they tell you, listen to what they say, and then use the common sense the good Lord gave you to ask yourself if they're being straight with us. My conclusion right now is that they are all either liars or fools. I need to get one of those Fox Mulder "Trust No One" posters. I've got nothing more to add today. I was having a good time earlier going back and forth with mike and 6.8, but I'm spent for the day.

He's smart, I just don't think he's smart enough. I hope that this is what will save us from this mess. Not that he doesn't have an agenda. Not that he wouldn't love to capitalize on it. It's just that this wasn't in his gameplan, and politicians suck at improvising when things don't go according to plan. I think that he's going to have so little political capital coming out of this, that it really won't matter what he thinks. Everyone that matters is going to see him as a one term president, and who wants to side with that? Long term, our country is still on a collision course with calamity unless major changes are made. But, short term I think the best I can hope for is that he comes out of this with so little brand integrity that the DNC does what they're best at, which is screw around and accomplish nothing. If that gets us to November, then hopefully we can have a Republican majority in the house, a smaller democratic majority in the Senate, a lame duck president and complete and utter gridlock. That sounds terrible, but I increasingly beleive that the less they do, for whatever reason, the better for us. Like I said earlier, our two party system is a true zero sum game. What's good for one party is necessarily bad for the other. The problem is that both parties have gotten so focused on looking out for and protecting the party that they've lost sight of the people. That's the biggest problem in my book. We don't have a government "of, by and for the people", we've got two relatively small groups playing a high stakes game with our lives.

Far be it from me to support the guy; I think his handling of this has been miserable so far. But then again, I don't believe that our government is capable of creating value. So, big suprise. I don't think it would have matter who was in office. They would have done an abysmal job as well. The lesson that things like Katrina and this should teach us is that we depend far too much on our federal government. There are some jobs that they're just not cut out to do. I don't think he's smart enough to capitalize on this. Not really, anyway. I think that's why we've seen him so disconnected. He's trying to find a way to capitalize on it, and there's not one. It's all downside. The only scenario where he wins is by plugging the hole, and he can't do it. All the might of our federal government isn't big enough to plug an 18" hole in the ground. I think he certainly has an agenda, but the problem with this disaster, from his perspective is that this is really screwing it up. Spending political capital on this costs him in areas where he really wants to bring that "hope and change".

The two year's I spent in Houston investigating this little oil and gas company that declared bankruptcy may have jaded me a bit. The one thing I learned from that experience is that there are only two groups that come out ahead in a calamity like this - the lawyers and the restructuring specialists. I can't even count the number of meetings I walked into that had $60,000/hour worth of professional fees sitting around a conference table. It's ironic, but it's kind of like going to the gas station. From the time you get there, until the time you leave, you can just watch the price go up. And the sad thing is that they don't leave until the tanks are dry. Maybe we should send restructuring specialists to siphon the oil from the wellhead. They can certainly suck faster than any pumps that BP has out there.

Somebody's already looking for the hammer to crack that piggy bank. This ought to make people really angry.

Not saying it's easy, but that there is recourse under the law as it exists today. BP couldn't afford to get this wrong. Not that their handling thus far deserves any slack. This is a huge disaster, and the clean up may indeed last generations in some ares. Managed independently? From CBS's report of the meeting this morning: Call it what you want. This play was stupid on the part of the administration. Again, I hope you are right.

I'm afraid I'm still out in the cold.

This little piece of extralegal looting may in fact be where this disaster becomes Obama's Katrina (if you think that analogy has any merit). It's a really dangerous play, and I think shows more about how disconnected he truly is, and what a political operator he truly is. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (passed in 1989 by a Democratic Congress with huge bipartisan support) requires that BP pay for every cent of containment and cleanup. Every cent. Even if it weren't the right thing to do, and the smart thing to do from a PR perspective, it's required by law. Today. Now here comes Obama demanding the money go into escrow that the administration or one of its "non-partisan appointees" heads up. If I was BP, I would absolutely have jumped on that. It is truly Obama's mess, now. Had any applicant to BP been denied reimbursement, they would have full recourse to sue under the law. Now, the government has a $20B piggy bank. That's a lot of cash to dole out to your friends to help "clean up". I'd love to see an audited statement at the end of this. Suddenly this is going to become one of those charities who spends $5 in administrative costs for every $1 they give away. It's going to be a disaster. It really suprises me that Obama did it. Is he really that naive? Does he really think the government can do better? Faster? I don't believe it. You don't get to where he is being that stupid. He's grasping at air. This is going to be suicidal for him politically. Anybody want a FEMA trailer?

That's fair. I would like to agree, but the DNC is stupidly displaying one or both of the two most dangerous things in politics - a party that thinks they can't lose, or one that thinks they have nothing to lose. I'm not one to bash democrats for the sake of bashing democrats, but they're playing hot potato with a grenade. The end of the game is going to be ugly. And it's not like the republicans are any better. They were fully responsible for what they got in 2008. Our two party system is a zero sum game where 'we the people' are left on the sidelines as an afterthought.

I hope you are right, but I think we have several to go: Corporate Real Estate More Consumer Mortgages - next year is the year when all of the 3/1 ARMS written in 2008 convert. The industry wrote more before the fallout in September than they had at anytime previously Consumer Credit Card Debt - that $50 cheeseburger would cause a lot less heartburn if it would just go away. At least one more round of massive banking failures - how are we any different today than we were two years ago? Answer: We're not. People just quit looking More auto bailouts - as the economy tightens again, the government is going to want people to keep buying cars - here comes Cash For Clunkers 2 A new homebuyer credit - the only uptick we've seen in home sales has been the result of the homebuyer credit. As that expired last month, we're going to see sales falling off a cliff. Better prop that back up. Lord forbid the effect of the widescale default by Europe on their debts. A military coup in Spain, Portugal or Greece isn't out of the question. It's certainly happened before. I could go on, but I've now thoroughly depressed myself. From my perspective, we've only just begun. I would argue that the next shoe dropping will be way worse than the first, because the government is out of ammo, and everybody depends on them to be their sugar daddy. I think the next few years are going to be brutal. Hope I'm wrong.

Nice work. That looks great.

That's crazy.

Good luck with that. Our expertise and a $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee. I wouldn't worry about your 2 yr. old out on the trail too much. As long as you are a responsible parent and keeping him close, I'd let him have fun. I do the same with my 2.

Wow! You should definitely be proud of that mount. It looks great.

Just out of curiosity, knowing nothing at all about taxidermy, how long did it take to do that mount?

Nice progress. You're 2/3 of the way there. How's the heat?

Nice mount. That looks really good! Btw. I really enjoy looking at your site from time to time. Great site, and looks like you guys have a great time.

The stock on the LTR is great. Much better than the overmolded Hogue's. I like other hogue products, just not that stock. My LTR is a 20" barrel that I had Joe's rifle smith thread and make a thread protector for. A lot of people like the 20" barrel on the LTR as opposed to the 26" barrel on the regular 700P because it's a bit stiffer.

Police LTR in .308.

Saudi royal family is Sunni. Iranian clerics are Shia. No love lost between them. We're fools to think they only hate us. Luckily they don't really like each other either.

I always think about the Israelis when it is a new moon out. I think, "well, I wonder if today's the day." I don't blame them. There's certainly no downside for them. They seem to be the only ones out there who truly understand or comprehend the risks involved here.

TDS-US gets them in frequently, but they go fast. You have to check pretty often. I got some about 6 weeks ago.

Agreed. I'd call it more of an academic exercise to see if it could be done. I think you would have a tough time getting the whole working surface of a drill bit to the correct hardness with a torch. With a name like MacGyver, though....well, you know.

Absolutely. The starting point of the metal defines the starting point of the process, I guess. In Lester's drill bit case, it seems that your bit has been annealed by heating it up in whatever media you are drilling and then letting it air cool. You would need to get the hardness back up by heating it and then plunging it, and then heating it back up until it's where you want to work with it. I'll give it a try over the weekend. I just inherited a bunch of old tools, included in which were hundreds of drill bits that had been run too fast and trashed. I don't have a sharpener, so I'll have to try my hand at it on the bench grinder when I'm done to re-dress the cutting edge.

So... tempering metal is a process that is actually the reverse of what most people think. When you heat a piece of metal up to a certain temperature and then let it cool slowly, you are annealing the metal, or making it pretty soft. When you temper a piece of metal, you actually want to get it to it's hardest point, and then bring it back down to the degree of softness you require. So, to your example, if you were to heat your bit up with a torch and then plunge cool it, it would be hard and brittle. As an interesting experiment (wearing eye protection) heat an old bit up with a torch to a mild cherry red, and then plunge it in a bucket of water. Take it out and drop it on the floor, and it will shatter like a piece of glass. The way I was taught to temper metal when learning old school blacksmithing was to polish it at this point and then appropriately start to heat it back up. You would see a color spectrum start to appear (like appears on your drill bit when you really heat it up) and stop when you get the working part of the tool to where you want it. That is a very rustic explanation, and modern heat treating makes old school tempering pretty much unnecessary. It's a neat skill to know at least a little bit about, though.