Something else I didn't build

The Wood Faerie not only brought it one day, that night he cut it, split it, and stacked it.  For that I certainly want to thank the Wood Faerie and his advisor, His Ineptness, the president.

The president deserves yet another paean in this regard. By reminding me I don't actually own this little project he saves me from the notion that I have some right to resist any looter who swings buy with a pickup to transfer any or all of the sustainable, renewable biomass from my residence to his.

(Unfortunately, "paean" is always a noun, never a verb, which prevents a  fellow from writing that we should have a great national meeting and paean the president. Proper grammar imposes regrettable limits on expression.)

For energy geeks, you're looking at a little more tha two cords, mostly oak, containing roughly 40 million btus of energy, comparable to the heat available from more than six  barrels of crude from the Arabs who, oddly, seem to own their oil. At least His Ineptness, has never lectured them on the universal nature of collectivism.

False prophecy there, AP

Somebody on the AP General Desk may wish he had held off a few minutes. He filed a lede predicting:

With a month to go until the presidential election, the government on Friday issues its September jobs report, expected to show an uptick in the U.S. unemployment rate after employers added only a modest number of jobs.

You've seen that the opposite occurred. The official unemployment rate -- which may or may not be a number related to any earthly reality --  fell to 7.8 per cent, and we were blessed with a few more new jobs than predicted.

It isn't a horrible journalistic mistake. Technically, it is not an error at all because it was true when released and based on quotations from "experts." But it is a useful reminder to keep your salt shaker handy when reading the day's news.

The campaign to re-coronate His Ineptness has to love the new  numbers. If nothing else they kill the GOP sloganeering that the current ruler has presided over an 8 per cent or higher unemployment rate since Day One of the Unicorn Administration.

But with Kwee* Three in full assault on the accumulated wealth of American citizens, a fractional rise or fall in number of Americans hired by MacDonald's or the Staten Island Topless Car Wash is damned thin gruel for any claim that happy days are her again.

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*TMR speak for QE -- Quantitative Easing -- which is a term altogether too pretentious for creating money out of thin air.

Saturday vintage skin show

Inspired by TCM's wee-hours showing of the 1940 "Pride and Prejudice."

I suppose there are those who would question the macho quotient of a guy who thinks Jane Austen was a genius -- and a funny one at that. So be it. If it gets out of hand I'll post a self-portrait shooting an assault rifle or something.

Miss Garson played Elizabeth in the tale, which, on a sub-level, is a fine treatment of what happens in a society which deems it vulgar to earn money but quite refined to marry or inherit someone else's.

The photo is, of course, a promo for some other movie.

It come a-gusher!

In Merreye Olde, a big-time oil trader named Steve Perkins got smashed, went back to his office and bought about seven million barrels of oil -- price be damned. It happened in the wee hours and woke the snoozy overnight oil markets with a collective WTF?.  Reactive panic strained global order desks.  "Buy, dammit, buy!"

International  oil prices spiked. The market didn't calm until it became apparent that one of the Masters of the Universe screwed up while in a well-oiled state. Steve's company lost millions. He was fired, fined, and invited to seek another profession.

It happened about three years ago, and I didn't catch why it is again timely enough to rate a mention on CNBC this morning while I was trickling charging my nervous system with the first cuppa. But I'm glad it did because it reminded me to be pissed at the lunacy of rational markets when they come under control of irrational men.

It seems to me that there are about three ways to become irrational. One is to be born stupid. Another is become ignorant, generally through intellectual laziness. The third is to get drunk, either on a nice single malt or on daydreams of personal power and riches -- or both.

Now: Since TMR readers are men and women of lively minds who are quite comfortable making logical connections between seemingly disparate events,  it is to be expected that some of you will read about oil hustler Steve of perfidious Albion  and think about money hustler Ben of our own Federal Reserve System. One shrieks "Buy!" and the other howls "Print!" Each in his own way turns the economies of the world into a game of seven-card no-peek stud played by nincompoops with a deck of 51. Or 53. Everything wild except deuces, jokers, and one-eyed jacks.

I don't feel like typing a long rant on confluence of these lunatic notions, but if you care to, you have my full endorsement. Personally, I'm off to pursue more immediate challenges related to distorting world oil markets by splitting and stacking a fresh load of sustainable, renewable biomass.

I will, however, leave you with a reminder, courtesy of Mr. Grey:  "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

International macroeconomic query

I'm not getting enough free stuff and wondering if it is okay to go out to the road and protest just as I am. Or do I have to learn to speak Greek or Spanish first?

How much does a Kwee cost?

"Quantitative Easing" -- or "QE" -- my butt.  The Fed loves the locution because it rings of careful policy crafted by the wisest of the wise.

Wrong, Bunkie. It is a pure and simple dilution of every dollar you have accumulated. It is money-printing.

So "QE" deserves a twee name. I nominate Kwee. As in, "Last week the Fed imposed Kwee 3 on the liquid wealth and productive forces of America."

Kwees are cute, also expensive as Hell. Permit me to take you back about four years, to a TMR report Dec. 4, 2008, when the the federal government was only thinking about bailing out every thuggish and incompetent business in sight.

---


As of the time the Mr. Coffee wheezed itself full today, wholesale gasoline needed to decline just 29/100ths of one cent (about the value of a Pelosi promise) to be below $1 per gallon. And a pound of lead now trades at 45.5 cents. 

---

The corresponding  prices today are about $3 for wholesale gasoline and around $1 for lead.  The difference is what it cost you to permit the politically connected money barons to enjoy all the rewards of capitalism but none of the penalties. 'course if your personal income has doubled or tripled in the past three years and 10  months, you probably aren't all that upset. Show of hands, please?

Pronunciation aid: "kwee" rhymes with "Weimar."

For some reason I'm not too cheerful this morning. Don't know why. The weather is suburb. I have hunted and gathered about all the renewable, sustainable  biomass I'll need for the cold months ahead. A naggy problem with Rusty Red, the  F150 wood hauler has been found and fixed at no cost, right here in the Camp J motor pool.

Maybe it's just a piece of undigested roast beef degrading my emotional innards, part of a rump which, by the way, costs upwards of five bucks a pound in these days of drought, the warp-speed money press, and the ethanol mandate.

Aha. That's it, and if I gotta be a little grumpy I have a right to suck away at your happiness, too.

Bernanke is probably about to screw with our money again, and even some of the world's big bankers are going public with warnings. Printing money willy-nilly is a heck of a lot of fun, they admit,  but it's a little like Wild Turkey. Too much and you find your soiled self collapsed in the weeds, wondering what the Hell happened.

" we think we will get on-going synchronized QE [quantitative easing]. Central banks will have to print more money and this will continue to drive up inflation expectations." 

Yeah, the Fed bosses are meeting this week to decide how much more of your savings account they should steal by tapping the keyboard a few times to create  more magic money. 

They'll tell us Thursday.  All the experts say they will QE3 us. The guru in the above cite says they should do something far more intelligent: nothing. Fat chance.

The bankers and politicians of Europe are as desperate as our own Ben Bernanke  and his assistant, Barrack Obama. The Germans, for instance,  just finished trying to sell  5 billion Euros in IOUs. Investors  left more than 1 billion worth  of them on the table.

(You'd think the Germans would be better at printing and peddling funny money, what with all their practice back in the good old Weimar frolic. But I digress.)

German money bosses say they'll try to sell the leftovers later, but it looks to me like the orphan Eurotoons could be destined for the "free"box at the garage sale.

Why not? They're like Bernanke bucks. Renewable biomass.

Girl porn. Money porn.

(1) One hundred years ago "September Morn" was finished and won an award from the critical Frogs of the Paris art industry. It was, however, considered no big deal, just another workmanlike oil by a guy who liked representational naked girl images against a sorta-impressionistic background. It might have sold for a few hundred francs, then spent time a bourgeoisie parlor until, eventually, an American tourist found it in a Left-Bank stall. He hung it in the rec room to surprise his wife, Prudence, who surprised him with "It goes or I go."  That's why you, you aging roue, might have scored it for fifty bucks at a garage sale down the street.

It didn't happen that way because of Duh Mare. "September Morn" was sent to a Chicago art dealer who put it in his window. Mayor Carter Harrison Jr. hit the ceiling* and filed indecency charges against the dealer. The dealer won the case and "September Morn" won instant fame.

A little later it found its way to a New York art shop and shocked another public titter. You've heard of him, Anthony Comstock, over-seer of public morals as a special agent of the Post Office. He threatened legal action, but by this time he was in his 70s and forgot to follow through. His bluster added to the fame, and the Paul Chagas painting now lives in the Metropolitan Museum of  Art.

I guess that means it isn't obscene.

(2) As this year's first September morn dawns, public titter and one one-per center  Ben Bernanke is just back from beautiful Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I read that it was a very nice gnome convention, and all the world's central bankers joined in a happy group giggle as Ben told them he still had his tools but intended to keep them zipped in for a little while longer. But just a little. He winked and nudged that   he was just letting the wine breathe for a bit, maybe until the next  FOMC meeting. Then he would flop them out and boy won't we have a ball. All the other bankers there dialed up their brokers and doubled their stakes in green-ink manufacturers.

That's obscene.

---

There's a logical reason to consider the big banker meeting in the same small essay as "September Morn." Jackson Hole is in the Tetons.

*Speaking of roofs, supposing a modern Mayor Carter Jr. happens to be in the Sistine Chapel. Supposing he happens to glance upwards. What the Hell does he do. Arrest the Pope? Sue Michaleangelo's estate?

Pornographic gun prices

The only explanation I have is that Ben and the Feds announced QE 3 and QE 4 and QE5 yesterday and everybody heard about it except me. Am I supposed to go trade my green money for orange today?

The chief pleasure down in Spencer last evening was making a guy I dislike pay close to $300 for a fair-to-good 10 gauge Remington 1889, Grade 1.  It was tight and original, but the left hammer wouldn't cock, and I hate getting into the innards of old doubles. Otherwise I'd have laid it in against my next trip west, into serious Cowboy Action Shooting country where it would be desirable trading stock if working.

Otherwise: The rattiest old Stevens single shot .22 bolt gun you ever saw for $100.  A Ruger 10-22 of no distinction for $290. One of those rattletrap Rohm .22 single-sixes  for about $230. A post-64 Model 94 Winchester for $490. ('course that included the rubber slip-on recoil pad. Who's that frail?) And so forth.

The standout, though, was a Findy Sickle Iver Johnson .32 rimfire breaktop,  nice, bright silver thanks to a soaking in naval jelly and enthusiastic wire brushing. Bubba didn't bother to dissemble it first. Not a part would move. One hundred bucks.

---

I settled for some shooty or otherwise lethal  bric-a-brac -- a little ammunition and a nicely preserved Western 4 1/2-inch hunter from the '40s.

Tiffany Tanks

I see by the news Tiffany profits sank last quarter and the lamp-shade company isn't too optimistic about this one.

I can explain part of it. Ann hasn't been shopping too much lately, busy as she is on the campaign trail trying to make Mitt look common enough to get a few WalMart voters. Same with Michelle 'cept her job is to help make His Ineptness look competent.

I would like to stay and analyze this for you some more, but my breakfast date just walked in.

You mean "pull the pin?"

I'm not going to post the site, just the headline covering a Wall Street Journal video.

"Fed Could Pull the Trigger to Save Economy Wednesday."

There isn't enough Prozac to make me feel better about that. It means the Fed will admit  to upping it order for green ink and paper.

I'll post this one, though. Stock traders made long bets this afternoon when Ben told some congresscritters he "has the tools" to masturbate stimulate the banks, meaning he's probably getting ready to use them.

It gets a little worse when Bernanke and the  Gnomes of Everywhere get together again  in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The Eurognome is Mario Draghi  who bosses the European Central Bank. Mario wants to chat with Ben about:

...yield-band targets under a new bond-buying program to let it shield its strategy and avoid speculators trying to cash in, central bank sources told Reuters on Friday. 

And that means keeping interest rate plans secret from everyone except guys like Bank America, Chase, Wells Fargo, etc. They'll probably also let your legislators in on the gag, too. Just not guys like you and me -- y'know, speculators trying earn an obscene two or three per cent on their savings.

Obama? Romney? No, go ahead and pop the cap

I'm not too familiar with Marc Faber's work. He bills himself as an expert on the markets and the economy, or both. Today he addresses the question of whether Tweedle-Dum (D) or Tweedle-Dee (R) would best aid the American economy.


...says Faber, the Thailand-based author of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, if you put a gun to his head and told him to pick a candidate to vote for, he'd say, "shoot." 

He likes gold, by the way, but the report doesn't specify whether as a personal investment or a monetary standard. Could be both. Or he could be just another copper boor. (kof kof).

The Other Welfare Queens

From the cute financial writers at "Motley Fool"  (We Make Losing Amusing):

"After stimulus-hungry investors were disappointed by this week's Federal Reserve and ECB announcements, they'll turn to today's nonfarm payroll report in hopes it will fuel action from the U.S. central bank. In particular, they'll be hoping payroll additions fall well below the 100,000 person consensus estimate."

(Related quotations, courtesy of Mr. Orwell: "War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. " And the ever-popular "2 + 2 = 5.")

Simply stated, and not too drastically oversimplified,  the sleek-groomed MBA set  is praying for higher unemployment to force Ben to run the national money mimeograph a little faster.

I think we need to lay off the literal welfare mothers for a while. They're pikers compared to the spawn of graduate schools of business.

Joshua for president

Now here's a feel-good story for you. Joshua Smith is nine. He heard his hometown, Detroit, was broke. So he set up a lemonade and popcorn stand in front of his modest home. He dedicates the proceeds to the city, to pay down its debt.

I will not be cynical about Joshua. Good kid. Willing to work. Heart in the right place. Plus, undoubtedly, other virtues once associated with the idea of being American.

However, I'm a little concerned about the city he is trying to help. Detroit is, of course, ruled by grasping politicians who control a regulatory Stasi even Honecker would have been proud of. Unt dey haf ways. That's why Detroit is broke.

Who can doubt that  someone with a badge is checking on this lad? Street vending license? Health department license? Zoning approval? Local EPA-like organization hazmat clearances? City, county, state, and federal tax ID number? Sales tax permit?  Compliance with EOE dictates?  Timely filed reports to OSHA?

Young men like Josh both irritate and frighten the Hacks of City Hall (and Congress etc.).

For one thing, they  cringe at yet another shot of publicity calling attention to the results of their stupid and venal ways.  Worse yet, they detest a demonstration that a nine-year-old boy knows more about the problems and their solutions than they do.

Of course there's one large structural problem with Joshua's plan. When he turns his profits over to the city he is, by definition, handing money to the politicians. They will piss it away. Or steal it.

Libertarian Oak

Life in Bucolia has its rewards.

At 7 a.m. I am watching New Dog Libby romp. Guy in a pickup, a professional tree man,  pulls up and wonders if I'd care to own a big load of bucked burr oak. I said "sure" and asked where it was. "Down on Lake Shore Drive, but I'll bring it to you. Where ya want it dumped?"

"Aww, c'mon. I'll go get it."

"Naah. I'll bring it."

I smiled, said thanks, and pulled out a medium-sized Federal Reserve Cartoon. "Why don't you treat your crew to a few beers on me after work?"

"Nope. Glad to get rid of it."  (Repeat dialog on the same theme for a couple-three more lines.)

The friendly tone, along with money offered and refused, is one example of genuine good will with  which Ayn Rand seasons her lessons on free markets and rational self-interest. Others might just call it  the KY Jelly of commerce.

The pictured result greeted me when I returned from cage-fighting Mediacom. There's more fuel than the picture represents, a full cord at least, value in FRCs  $150 or more.

---

Why libertarian? Because two men cooperated to their mutual advantage. I got firewood free, save for the labor of cutting and splitting. My pal saved the trouble and expense of hauling it a long way. Not even Elizabeth Warren could improve on that, though she would damned well try. Or at least report me to the IRS if I forget to declare it as in-kind income.

Attention, whores:

The Lookout (Yahoo! "News") pleads:

Please send a photograph of yourself in front of your home holding a sign with: how much your home was worth when you bought it its current value. Let us know where you live, when you purchased your home, the number of members in your household and how your mortgage has affected your life. What decisions have you made as a result of your purchasing and paying for your home?


I'll pass, Yahoo, but I doubt it will make a noticeable dent in your response rate.  There's no shortage of people who think the whine is an excellent  coping mechanism.  


 Besides, if you want another tear-jerker series, you can come around and take your own gawddam pictures. 

Why we're broke, except for Utah

If Utaht you saw the national MasterCard go a little more over limit recently, you were right.

It somehow came to the attention of the National Science Foundation that things can get a little dry in Deseret. Nice catch, and a perfectly good reason to shovel an extra $20 million  in "research" money to the considerable spawn of Joseph Smith. Utah tax-troughers are giddy with the intellectual challenge. For instance:



"Most of Utah's precipitation falls as snow. As a result, the project will focus on how changing mountain snowpack affects water supplies for the state's growing communities, officials said."


We anxiously await the results of this research, and I submit that we'll all need Valium to cope with the shock of learning that when it snows more in the mountains, Utah gets more water. Another $20 million might extend our knowledge to undertanding that less snow produces less water.

Please notice the words "focus" in the quotation above and "specifically" in this one:

"It will look specifically at watersheds, infrastructure and technology."


if we parse it out we face a single-minded concentration -- which is the meaning of "focus" in this context -- on mountain snow and equally laser-like aiming at "watersheds, infrastructure, and technology."

A definition or three adds clarity:

--Watersheds: Every gawddam valley and divide in the state, from the beautiful Bear River to the tiniest dry wash down south in the multiwife kingdoms.

--Infrastructure:  Farms, roads, power plants, bus stations. buildings, airports, ski lifts, temples, brine shrimp warehouses, railroads, visitors centers.

--Technology: Everything with a 110--volt AC connection and/or a battery. Such an an iPod to message  Orrin Hatch that $20 million may not be enough to "focus"  on and "look specifically" at all that stuff, so send more money and if you do we might vote for you again.

---

it's a jobs program for a few academics, government "public information" specialists,  assorted bureaucrats, and journalists who turn a pretty good buck uncritically  passing along thin rewrites of federal, state, and local government gobbledygook headed, "For Immediate Release!"


But, on second thought, perhaps I err. After all, we have the governor's explanation that it is, ta-da, a public/private partnership.


Gov. Gary Herbert said. "This public-private collaboration among so many educational, industry and government partners in tackling a key factor in long-term economic growth and quality of life is another example of our state's can-do approach."


If you want to interpret that as a promise the swag will be divvied up among all  varieties of looters, why, I guess I sure won't editorialize against you.

The Honey Trap or, "Why We're Broke"

Iowa again; no apologies.

Even in Hicksville a fellow can find excellent evidence to counter the widely accepted fallacy that government officials are occasionally smart enough to pour piss out of a boot.

I suppose this one caught my attention because a certain number gives me something in common with a big Iowa DNR enterprise. Calculating my income and outgo for last year, I wound up with an operating profit of $4,230.*  Coincidentally, so did the DNR owned and operated Honey Creek Resort.

There's one slight difference. I am not in hock for $30 million, meaning I don't have to stick a gun in my neighbors' ribs and lift the interest payment on $30 million from their wallets.

A few years ago DNR commissars got together with dullards in the legislature  and Governor Tom Vilsack.  There's no hard evidence they were smoking, drinking, or injecting mind-altering substances at the party, but you can be forgiven for harboring suspicion because, collectively,  they decided they were experts in the resort business. A flurry of architecting and market studying and public relationing followed. And borrowing.

In 2006 Honey Creek Resort opened its mortgaged doors down on Lake Rathbun, itself a government invention. (The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ignored the banjos and throttled the unobjectionable little Chariton River. I don't really know why. The best guess seems to be a Corps of Engineers desired to economically stimulate itself by giving the Corps of Engineers something new to  manage, but that's a subject for another essay.)

And the Honey joint has been sucking on taxpayers ever since. Even the DNR admits it and in a left-handed way concedes there is no exit strategy.  New DNR Boss Chuck Gipp:

Some legislators have argued Honey Creek should be sold. Gipp says the state should keep it. “At this point in time, unless there’s somebody that comes along and is willing to pay what the worth of what that facility is, we’re not going to sell it at 10-cents-on-the-dollar. That would be foolish,” 


Mr. Gipp, incidentally, is a conservative small-government Republican. He was in the legislature when the Honey Creek Dacha was approved. He voted to sign my name to the IOU. If he's embarrassed that the asset is now worth 10 per cent of the debt, it doesn't show.

As I say, it's only a little Iowa issue, but, 'course, if you root around in your own state's forays into enterprises requiring several sentient neurons, who knows what you might find. Thirty million here, thirty million there -- pretty soon you're talking about enough money to send a First Lady on a couple-three vacations.

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*An estimate. If an audit proves it unreliable, I claim the same poetic license His Ineptness gets when he reports, oh, say, the unemployment or inflation statistics.

Winchester 1897

We begin with the gun, a Findy Sickle piece, celebrating its 111th birthday this year, born only three years after William Randolph Hearst started the Spanish-American war in order to allow Teddy Roosevelt to become president.

Winchester Model 1897, serial number C158xxx, one of about one million examples of this design from the brain of John M. Browning, PBUH. It is long-tomish with a 32-inch barrel, full choked in 12 gauge. (Boys, ya wanna see my bran' new goose gun?)


I've owned a few of them over the years, generally picked up as lagniappe  in multi-gun swaps or from folks who just didn't care to have rusty old guns cluttering the place. I bought them cheap, enjoyed them for a little while, and swapped them off. The only real attraction for me is the connection with my earliest days in the field, the times before I was allowed to carry a gun, that awkward stage when a little  boy was trusted to walk along in the line of  party-hunting adults as a sort of bi-pedal pheasant flusher, actually cheaper than a good dog because the folks were stuck with feeding me anyway. A fair number of the adults carried Model 97s. The majority, armed only with single-shot H&Rs  and the like, were jealous of the six-shot firepower. We bare-handed kids were even more so.

One other thing. I loved the exposed hammer, and I still do -- on any firearm -- despite their snagginess and mostly mythical safety flaws.The ability to see at the briefest glance that the gun is ready or not ready to go bang is part of my personal   security blanket.

---

(Isn't that a whole lot of wind about a common old gun, Jim? Especially one pretty well clapped out from a century of rattling around in duck boats and Model-A trunks?)

Yeah, I guess so, but it gives me a chance to bloviate on the transaction which brought her to the Camp J Armory.

We were at Cabela's in the northern Minneapolis slurbs. It's sort of a tradition when the family gathers in St. Cloud. We never buy much, but I do like wandering aisles and marveling at how many thousands of dollars folks are urged to spend in pursuit of the simple outdoor life. (Remind me to report on the absolutely indispensable $75 walking stick one of these days.)

This time, Number Two Grandson and I went directly to the gun section. The first thing catching my eye was the '97, and I idly checked the price tag. Ahem. $99?? I can make a buck on that. Or maybe, at that price,  it would be nice to grace the wall under the Maynard Reese (Nine Travelers --Canada Geese  708/950.)

I took it to a clerk who popped the trigger lock so I could see how bad the action was. The forearm was chipped, and its screws to action bar were missing. That's it. It would go bang. I frowned disgustedly anyway. The clerk said, "Maybe we can do something about the price."


Eh? Dicker in a Big Box?? I will be damned.

So I pretended to examine it in greater detail, sighing knowledgeably while finger-tapping the deeper dings.

"Well, if $70 will buy it, I'll take it."  Clerk and gun disappear for a couple of minutes.

"Seventy is fine."

He directed me to the computer  where I entered the 4473 information, permitting the Cabela's Bureaucratic Compliance Officer to check me out with Eric Holder and, not so incidentally, with all of the credit bureaus. Cabala's is smart. The same information that squares me with the BATFEIEIO justifies me with the usury industry, but I didn't think of that at the time.

The paperwork was cleared and I reached for "money" in the form of Federal Reserve Cartoons. Mr. Clerk stopped me. "Sir, you have been pre-approved for a Cabela's Visa card. "

"No thanks."


"But it comes with a $20 gift certificate."


"Uhhh,  does that mean I can deduct the $20 from the price of this gun."


"Yes sir. It does."


"Okay."

And that's how I walked out of a giant super store with a $50* Model 1897 Winchester and a brand new credit card with a limit astronomically high  considering my unimpressive personal circumstances.  In this narrow matter, I am even smarter than Cabela's because the plastic is and will remain TDY in a forgotten drawer corner.

Minor gunsmithing to ensue, followed by a nostalgic bout of scattering small pieces of toxic lead around the countryside. It's okay. No condors in these here parts.

---



*(Plus, of course, $3.50 for the state which, I am convinced, will use the money to further its efforts to persuade every Minnesota driver he or she is operating the only vehicle on the road.)