The Economist hates Republicans

The Economist, for those that don't know it, is a weekly news magazine published in London. They do a lot of real news, unlike Time and Newsweek, but they also have some of their own ideological hangups. According to the Economist the Republican party is handicapped by the following beliefs.
1. Pro-life. Tut-tut. Actually we Republicans make a strong effort to avoid this wedge issue and concentrate on matters of real public policy.
2. Anti-gay marriage. Another Tut-tut. Again, this is a divisive wedge issue that we don't campaign on.
3. Anti-amnesty. This is a hard one. No one wants to let illegal immigrants into the US ahead of legal immigrants who have been waiting in line. No one wants to send out SWAT teams to round up the illegals and bus them to the border. If there is a decent solution I don't know what it is.
4. Anti-Obamacare. True. Obamacare will destroy company health insurance where most of us get our health care. It does nothing to reduce health costs. It imposes rationing and death panels. And endless paper work.
5. Anti global warming. True. Global warming is a scam. The climate gate emails revealed a conspiracy between climate "scientists" to exaggerate the warming and edit the data to create Michael Mann's hockey stick temperature graph.
6. Anti-gun control. True. We Republicans strongly believe that a piece in the cash drawer or the bedside table reduces crime. Most Americans agree with us.
7. Anti tax increase. True. Raise more revenue and the government will just spend more.
8. Pro Israel. True. The Israeli's have created a decent and humane democracy in the face of intense opposition. They are to be admired.
9. Anti-EPA. True. The EPA is on a tear to shut down coal power plants, the auto industry, pour money down "green" ratholes and throw people out of work.

Other than this kind of bigotry, The Economist is an interesting read.

Those limo's are Lincolns.

The Wall St Journal had a good clear picture of the Kim funeral and you can see the Lincoln hood ornament on the limo.
I wonder how a Lincoln limo gets to Pyongyang. Sure they don't have a Lincoln Mercury dealer up there.

Popevers finally popped

Half a dozen batches of popovers made in the last few months have failed to pop. They would come out edible enough, but without the high rise crustiness that makes a popover a popover.
Today it all came together and the popovers rose, got crusty, and were delicious.
The recipe is simple, cup of milk, cup of flour, two eggs, pinch of salt (1/4 tsp actually) and a tablespoon of melted butter. NO BAKING POWDER! Preheat oven to 400F. Add the milk, eggs and salt into a mixing bowl. Beat with an egg beater til smooth and fluffy. Melt the butter (I cheat and use margarine) in a big spoon on the stove. Beat the melted butter into the eggs & milk. Sift in a cup of flour. Only this time I used bread making flour instead of all purpose flour. It has more stickiness than the all purpose flour. Grease a muffin tin liberally, the popovers can stick and their hollow nature doesn't support prying out of the muffin tin. Bake 25 minutes at 400F, back off to 350F and give 'em another 15 minutes.
Yummy.

Frosty

It's below zero this morning. Coldest it's been so far this winter. Must be global warming.

Where do they get those cars?

The North Koreans did a state funeral yesterday. Vast empty street, Snow on the ground, crowds of mourners confined to the sidewalks.
Humungous long black limousines, with a '70's look to the styling. They weren't Cadillacs. I don't thnk they were Lincolns. Were they Russian? Do they Russians make such cars? And export them? And what do they do the rest of their lives, when they aren't hauling coffins in state funerals?

Hyping your headlines

Today's airliner incident, a 737 aborted its takeoff. According to Fox TV News, the tires "exploded".
Yeah right. Any motorist knows that tires blow out, they don't explode.
But the writer's must think "explode" is catchier. Or maybe they are just ignorant. TV people are poorly educated.
But for those of us who drive or fly, "blow out" gets our immediate attention.

Words of the Weasel Part 24

Underperform. Fox News Speak (heard on air this morning) for lose. As in "Newt Gingrich may underperform in the Iowa Caucus."

Should party primaries be open?

Well, they are in New Hampshire. We allow voters to change their party affiliation at the polls on election day. And to change it back again on the way out the door. Party members often complain about this, saying it is wrong to allow non party members a voice in party candidate selection.
I disagree. To win office, candidates must attract votes from the undecided middle. The independents or the opposition. The way things are right now, about 30 percent of voters are die hard Republicans, who will vote Republican no matter what. Another 30 plus percent are yellow dog Democrats. And the remaining 40% of the electorate can vote for either side.
Allowing that 40% middle to have a vote in the primary helps nominate candidates acceptable to the middle, and thus have a chance of winning the general election.

Did Congress slip on over on us?

The news is full of talk about the "payroll tax reduction" bill that might have passed the House yesterday. Actually it's the FICA tax they are talking about. Used to be, FICA was levied only on the first $110k of income, income over that limit was not subject to FICA.
According to Tax Prof here, the new law levies a 2% FICA tax on all income over the $110k cutoff point. That's a pretty stiff tax bite. And right out of the blue, too. This is the first I'd heard of this new "revenue enhancment".

Do your Christmas shopping in Littleton

Went out Christmas shopping yesterday. You gotta do it, websurfing and Amazoning just lacks the flavor of going into stores and looking at stuff and exchanging Merry Christmas greetings with strangers met in stores. Main drag of Littleton can be walked, lots of neato stores carrying stuff you can't find at Walmarts.
Much better than mall crawling.
Then we had family over to decorate the Christmas tree and consume a bit of Christmas cheer.
Merry Christmas.

Tis the season to go virus stomping

Got another one. This guy called him self "XP Antispyware 2012". He tries to look like he is official Microsoft issue, although he isn't. He throws up a window that looks like an anti virus scan and shouts about infections. And he gets into the registry and fixes it so that anytime you run an .exe file, he get run instead.
I'm so glad Microsoft gave us the Registry with the power to reprogram every part of Windows.
Fortunately good old Bleeping Computer had a fix for him.

Model Number, lack of

Trusty Hoover upright vac is running on it's last bag. So I note "Vacuum bags" on the shopping list on the refrigerator door. Then I look at the vac for a model number to put on the list. Damn, no model number or name (e.g. Supersucker 1234) on the vac. I turn it over, no luck. Hoover didn't bother.
So tomorrow I'll be in the supermarket looking at a dozen different dirt bags wondering which one will fit.

60 day extension of Pay Roll tax, meaningless

Obama is on TV right now whining about the failure of the 60 day extension of the pay roll tax cuts. Is there much of a difference between a tax hike in January as opposed to the same tx hike in March? Is a mere 60 days worth all the speechifying and bloviating?
Far as I can see, makes no real matter.

Double Tap. A space age derringer.

Full page ad in my January American Rifleman. It's a double barreled belly gun chambered for .45 ACP. It gives you two shots and then you break it open to reload. It holds two more rounds in a compartment in the grip. Only 14 ounces, available with either a titanium or aluminum frame.
No price listed in the ad.
Hmm. two rounds of .45 ACP ought stop most anything, if you can hit it. It's small. I don't want to think about recoil or muzzle blast. The .45 round kicks hard and is loud fired from the big government model 1911. It will be worse fired from a smaller lighter gun.
All in all, I think I would rather have five rounds of .38 Special than just two rounds of .45ACP.

Whither North Korea?

Medium duty dictator, Kim Jong Il, croaked last night. We have no idea what comes next. The South Koreans might have a clue, but we don't. Perhaps heir Kim Jong Un (28) has the stones to take over from his father and actually run the country. Perhaps the North Korean establishment will run things with Kim as a figurehead. Perhaps the North Korean regime will collapse under the pressure of starvation and famine.
The last possibility is the most worrisome. If the North collapses, the South Koreans will be under enormous pressure to do something. A lot of South Koreans still have kin in the North. They will demand relief efforts to keep their relatives from starving to death.
The Chinese have been very happy with North Korea. It gives them a friendly border state, who can tie the Americans in knots at the drop of a nuke. The idea of having a pushy capitalist South Korea, hand in glove with the Americans, on their border is anathema. So the Chinese are under pressure to intervene to save the communist regime in the north.
So now we have South Korean army units, trucks loaded with relief supplies and peace flags fluttering from bumper mounts, tooling around in the north, with Peoples Liberation Army units doing the same thing. The nasty possibilities should be obvious.
If things blow up, we will be under enormous pressure to back up the South Koreans. They are good people, lots of us have been to their country and come back impressed with their country, their industry, their people, and their army. We will see the issue as support of a loyal long time friend of America, against Communist aggression.
We don't really want to get into a scrap with the Chinese, with whom we do a lot of very profitable business, but we don't want to leave a long time friend in the lurch either.
With luck, this issue won't come to a head until we have replaced Obama with a real president.

Why we love Microsoft

Trusty antique laptop had been running Office for years. For some damn Microsoft reason Office suddenly decided to stop working and whine. It wants "activation" and threatened to die for good if not "activated" within the next few usages. So, I clicked on "activate by Internet. The program hummed and whirred and then choked up. "Cannot contact Microsoft Activation Server, check your internet connection." Lovely.
So I tried "activate by telephone". At least the phone answered, a robo answering machine. The robo responder wanted me to key in a 54 digit magic number displayed by the program. After a lengthy button pushing orgy, the robo server decided the number was no good and hung up on me.
So I did some internet searching. Apparently I'm not the only one whose Office got surly for Christmas. But no real fixes were posted anywhere. I was hoping for a registry patch. No such luck.
Finally I tried the "activate by telephone" trick again. This time it worked. I keyed in all 54 digits and the roboserver responded with a second 48 digit magic number, which I copied down and then input to Office. Must be that I messed up keying in the magic number to the telephone last time.
I love Microsoft.

Teebow?

All I know is
1. He plays professional football. (Nothing wrong with that)
2. He is apparently pretty good at it. (Commendable)
3. He has been observed praying on the field. (Commendable)

And for this he is getting more air time than a Presidential candidate.

Coffee makes the age of reason possible.

This one is cool.

Aviation Week doesn't know why the drone crashed

They said it wasn't shot down, 'cause the picture shows it all in one piece, no blast damage, no scorch marks or bullet holes. Makes sense.
The undercarriage is hidden in the photo the Iranians released which suggests "The lack of crash damage would indicate the standard UAV flight-termination procedure after an airborne mishap of going into a flat spin."
That's cool. A flat spin slows the drone down enough to recover it in one piece. Just what you need on a peacetime test range. It's nice to have a chance to fix what broke and fly it again. Not sure if that's what you want in wartime. I think it ought to do a power dive into the ground leaving a big hole. And a lot of scrap metal.
Aviation Week said the nobody was very concerned about compromising secrets. They claim the payload was a "full motion video sensor" aka ordinary TV camera. As far as the air frame and engine go, the experts claim there is nothing new there. Right.

California Cognac

Cognac, the brandy of Napoleon. Comes from just one district in France, and is so smooth you can sip it neat, from a special glass (a brandy snifter). Under French law, only brandy produced in the Cognac district can bear the Cognac label. Everyone else must label the product "brandy". And just plain "brandy" is so rough that us ordinary mortals must add ice and soda to make it drinkable.
Out in California the E&J (Easy Jesus my son calls 'em) has long distilled an ordinary brandy and sold it in cathedral shaped bottles. E&J was OK as a brandy, but you don't want to sip it neat. Now E&J has gotten better at it, and offered a brandy marked "V.S.O.P." the traditional mark of high class Cognac. The NH liquor store carries it, at 1/3rd the price of Hennessy.
It's not bad. It's smooth enough to sip it neat. If they can keep it up, E&J might have a real product here.

HR whines again

This was on Vermont Public Radio this morning. An aircraft maintenance company out in the mid west is complaining about the lack of qualified aircraft mechanics to hire. An lady HR rep from the company said on air "You cannot just hire high school graduates to do this work."
The hell you can't. That's all we did in USAF. We enlisted high school graduates, put 'em thru a few months of tech school, and then put 'em to work on the flight line as apprentices (3 levels in USAF jargon). They worked under the supervision of journeymen and masters. After taking some courses, getting lots of hands on experience, and passing some tests, they got promoted to journeymen (5-levels). Took about three years for the average guy. And with more experience, and training, and testing, the journeymen became masters.
That maintenance company could do the same.
Then they revealed that they only paid people $12 an hour to start. No wonder they have trouble filling vacancies.

Bad day at the Green Hill Mall

It's Christmas shopping season, the sun is out, the snow is melting, great day to be out and about. I needed some electronic parts. The local Radio Shacks are all out of business, so I drove over to a surviving one in St Johnsbury. It was in a nice new mall, with a micro Sears, a J.C. Penny, a dollar store, a bank, couple of shoe stores, you know, the usual. Christmas carols are playing on the PA system.
One thing wrong. The place is deserted. The halls are empty, the stores have more clerks on the floor than customers. The mall has four giant gaping vacancies, the parking lot is nearly empty. Great Depression 2.0 is hard at work around here.

Need to Know, We have a democracy

Was watching a new PBS Sunday pundit show yesterday. "Need to Know" they call it and it has Ray Saurez of the Newshour as one of its hosts. They had a panel of elderly Congressmen and newsies, bewailing the current problems of Congress. They had a clip of Elmo from Sesame St saying that a nice playdate would solve all the problems. The panel talked as if Congressmen were both the cause and the solution to the current deadlock. They talked about the good old days when Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan, or Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton could get together and cut deals that would stick. If only Congressmen would socialize with each other more, all the bad partisan feelings could be soothed and we could pass some of each side's favorite bills. The entire focus of the discussion was upon Congress and Congressmen, as if the real world didn't exist.
In the real world, Congressmen have to vote their district. A lot of democratic Congressmen became former Congressmen last November because they forgot that rule. On issues that the district cares about, Congressmen have to toe the line.
In the real world the country is evenly and deeply split over many issues, taxes, spending, abortion, immigration, oil drilling, coal burning, Iraq, global warming, Afghanistan, bailing out Detroit and Wall St, to name just a few. Many districts have strong views on these issues and insist that their Congressmen support their views. When the country is split, Congress will be split too, at least a democratically elected Congress. Which is the way it ought to be.
Not only that, Congress is set up to to prevent the "tyranny of the majority". We cannot allow a slim majority to impose its will on a large minority that is dead set against the change. The country won't hold still for it. The way things are now, the country closely split, it's better to keep things the way they are, than pass laws that 49% of the country will detest.
And that is what is happening. On the deeply divisive issues, the Congress is leaving things the way they are, because it cannot muster the votes to push thru changes that are stoutly opposed by one side. And that is the way it ought to be.
Too bad no one on this panel of supposedly wise men understood that.

David Gregory, master of stupid questions

He is interviewing Ron Paul this morning on Meet the Press. "Who is the real conservative, Romney or Gingrich?" he asks Ron Paul. Who cares? What we want to know is where the candidates stand on healthcare, taxes, global warming, budget cutting, Israel, nuclear power, Syria, Iran, and numerous other important questions. In particular, when you are interviewing a presidential candidate we want to know where he stands, not what he thinks about his competitors.

Whap!

That's the noise a bird makes flying into my Thermopane windows. They been doing it more and more. Just this morning I watched a blue jay perched on my porch railing. The jay spread his wings and took off, gathered speed and whap! Right into the window. He must have survived, I didn't find him lying dead in the driveway.
And it ain't like that window wash commercial "Our Stuff makes glass so clean it seems to disappear." My windows have a goodly selection of bug smears, condensed wood smoke and they all need cleaning.

Mitt or Newt?

Newt is an interesting guy. I'd love to have him over for dinner. Newt is an idea man, he has ideas running out of his head and all over the floor. Most of them are good ideas, some of them are bad ideas. We could be in a lot of trouble should a President Gingrich push thru one of his bad ideas. Mitt is a nice guy, nice wife, nice kids. He has real executive experience and can get uncooperative legislators, investors, and promoters to cooperate. Mitt is a middle of the road guy. He isn't going to go to the mat against abortion, gay marriage, legalized grass, amnesty or any other wedge issue. He will do his best for the economy, employment, and the deficit. The independents are more likely to vote for Mitt, which makes Mitt a better bet to beat Obama.

How did that US drone come down in one piece?

Iran is displaying a futuristic looking drone it claims is of US origin (despite the lack of USAF markings) . How did it fall into Iranian hands in one piece? Did the Iranians get onto the drone's command frequencies and order it to land? Did the drone encounter some kind of in flight failure and the on-board artificial intelligence made a safe landing in a field? Were the Iranians merely lucky? Like the US was in WWII when we found a crashed Japanese Zero in Alaska in good enough shape to salvage and even fly.
If Iran did force the drone down via the radio command link, how come said radio command link was not encrypted? There are plenty of uncrackable encryption schemes that can be realized on a 3 by 5 inch printed circuit board. Why did not this top secret drone have encryption?
And, why is the US admitting that the Iranians have a top secret US drone in their possession? We don't have to lie about, we just say nothing. In response to reporter's questions refuse to answer. That way anyone who wants to believe the Iranians are not being truthful, can go right on believing. But once some big fat mouth in DC says "Yeah, that's ours" the jig is up. Once the Americans themselves confirm Iranian claims everyone will believe those claims. If we could just say nothing (difficult for politicians and bureaucrats) we would leave the matter in some amount of doubt.
Finally, does this drone have anything to do with the series of massive explosions plaguing the Iranian nuclear program?

Plumbing

My least favorite household activity. The bathroom sink faucet has been leaking for months. Not on the floor, just a little dribble on the sink. I finally got irritated enough to fix it. Drive in to Littleton, all the while thinking to myself "Lowes or Home Depot?". We have both, next door to each other. Eventually I found myself in the Lowes parking lot.
They had a lot of faucets. Shiny Chrome, gun metal, porcelain knobs, all pricey. I settled on an el cheapo Pfizer model for $18, thinking that the fancy jewelry grade faucets would look out of place in my humble bathroom. Only when I got it home and unpacked it did I see the "Made in China" sticker on this old line American plumbing fixture company's product.
Now the fun begins, getting the old faucet out of the bathroom sink. That fellow has been peacefully rusting in place since the house was built in 1962. The brand new $15 basin wrench was able to loosen one of the four nuts holding it in place. A heavy shot of PC blaster loosened a second nut enough for the basin wrench to turn it, but the last two were stuck fast. A half an hour of groveling around on the floor and using bad language convinced me that those two nuts were really stuck. So I disconnected the pipes lower down and took the entire sink off the wall and down to the shop. There a one and one eighth inch Craftsman deep well socket made the last two rusty nuts say uncle.
More fun was in store. Replacing the sink on the wall revealed that the new faucet was a quarter of an inch shorter than the old one, and the hot and cold water supply tubing didn't quite reach far enough. Damn.
Make a quite speed run to the hardware store, arriving just before closing time. Bought two new supply tubes. Returned to the job, and found the new supply tubes were the wrong size.
And now it was after five o'clock and the hardware store was well and truly closed. Another struggle and I was able to stretch the old supply tubes just enough to fit. And wrenched them good and tight, and Halleluiah, they don't leak.
I hate plumbing.

Bankers must do their own risk assessment

Rather than depending upon ratings agencies. Well how about that? Bankers will have to work at their trade, inside of accepting outside opinions. About time. The secret of banking is making loans that will be repaid. Any turkey make made a loan, the trick is to make loans that get repaid. On time, with interest.
The Wall St rating agencies, Standard and Poor's, Moody's Investor Services, and some others, have been "rating" investments, banks, and even countries as AAA, A,B,C just like grades on report cards. Trouble is, the ratings agencies made some astoundingly poor ratings over the years, such as rating mortgage backed securities AAA. Banks have been dumb enough to accept agency ratings and been burned badly.
Apparently the word is getting around. Congress required the the FDIC to remove any language referring to agency rating from the banking regulations. This is finally filtering down to even the dumbest banks.

Don't blame Wilileaks

Blame some government weenie who gave Army privates access to State Dept classified. Today's WSJ has an op-ed piece by Floyd Abrams decrying the really bad effects of Wikileaks posting classified State Dept cables. Numerous US diplomats expelled after their classified cables containing perfectly true but uncomplimentary information became public.
Abrams blames all this on Julian Assange, Wikileak's founder.
Wrong. The blame belongs to the un named bureaucrat who gave Army private Bradford Manning access to State Department classified. Manning turned into a traitor of the Benedict Arnold class and stole thousands of classified documents and gave them to Wikileaks. Manning is in custody, but the unnamed bureaucrat who gave Manning access is getting away scot free.

Gotta prove intent in order to prosecute

That's the whine I read in the Wall St Journal. Some investigator working to nail somebody, anybody, for causing Great Depression 2.0, or at least profiting by it.
What is this? Intent is thought. Are we trying to prosecute thought crimes? Real crime, which juries will convict for, involved actions, not thoughts. Taking cash out of the vault, out of safety deposit boxes, out of customer accounts (Corzine!), forging signatures, that's crime. The law has been real clear on this sort of thing since Moses's time.
Buying a stocks and bonds that go down in value ain't criminal, dumb maybe, apt to get you fired, but it ain't a crime.
What this guy is complaining about is really one of two things.
A. Nobody committed any crimes.
B. He is too stupid to prove the crimes. (You gotta be smart to be Sherlock Holmes. Few guvmint employees are very smart)

Crime should not rest upon mental attitude. Proof of a crime should be proof of some action, not wheither the perp was thinking impure thoughts as he did the actions. Juries largely agree with this, and have been returning verdicts of "not guilty" when the government brings a thought crime case.
And no, we do not need more vague laws making impure thoughts into felonies.

Banking with Basel

Or, how banking regulations drove the world economy over the cliff. The Basel agreements on international requirements for banking capitol drove banks into unsound lending.
To understand the issue, we have to understand "capital" as related to a bank. Let's try a simple case, a medieval bank that gets its funds from depositors, in gold, and makes loans. Obviously such a bank cannot loan out ALL the money in the vault, they have to hold onto some money to cover withdrawals and losses (some borrower fails to repay his loan). Obviously the amount of capital to keep is a delicate balance. Money sitting in the bank's vault pays no interest, so the banker is motivated to loan it all out. On the other hand, the banker knows that he can't go THAT far, if he does he will be unable to pay off a depositor, and then a lot of bad things happen, like a run on his bank, tar and feathers ...
Now a days things are more complex, but the issue of capital reserves is the same. Banks ought to keep adequate capitol reserves to cover bad loans. But, now "capital" is more than gold coin. We count paper money, US treasury bonds, and less safe things like mortgages, Greek bonds, common stocks, anything that could be quickly sold for cash to meet obligations. Things like real estate don't count as capital because they cannot be sold quickly. Suppose you needed to sell the Empire State building to raise cash; how long would it take to find a buyer? Who knows.
To create a level international banking field, the big boys got together at Basel Switzerland and set up rules for how much capital banks must hold, and what things count as capital. They even talked the American SEC into imposing these rules on US banks. Trouble is, the Basel rules are bad rules. And every bank got pushed into doing things the Basel way. Under Basel , banks had to hold 8% capital against corporate loans, 4% against mortgages, and 1.6% against mortgage backed securities.
Right there you can see we are in trouble. Everybody knows that mortgages are pretty sound investments ("Safe as houses" they used to say), but mortgage backed securities are extremely risky. But the Basel rules encourage investment in flaky mortgage backed securities instead of genuine mortgages.
It gets worse. Basel defines sovereign debt (Greek bonds) as risk free, so a bank can buy any amount of sovereign debt (loan to flaky Euro governments) and not have to hold any capital at all. This was pure crazy. What is sounder, bonds issued by the likes of IBM, Southwest Airlines, Caterpillar Tractor, or bonds issued by Greece, Iceland, Ireland, or Albania? What kind of loan does more to develop an economy? Loans to flaky governments to pay for welfare benefits, or loans to productive corporations that create jobs?
Basel "regulation" is responsible for the Euro debt crisis. It encouraged banks to load up on high paying but flaky bonds, and now the flaky is coming home to roost (default) Plus, no longer do bad things happen to bankers who make dangerous loans. TARP or the ECB or somebody bails out the loser banks and nobody looses their job or gets prosecuted.
Regulation can be a disaster.

Neverland

Watched it last night in the SyFy channel. It's a made for TV miniseries about the Neverland before Wendy, Jon and Michael Darling fly in. It's an origin story of Peter Pan. Naturally I watched it. I've read the book, I've seen the movie,and I'm ready for more.
The sets and costumes are good, the actor playing Peter is the right age and the right size, and cute enough. The girl who plays Tiger Lily is not cute at all, neither is Tinker Bell.
The two hour premiere is kind of unsatisfying. Peter never gets a clue as to what he should be accomplishing. We hear some talk about getting home to London, but we all know that ain't gonna happen. We know Peter Pan will establish himself and the Lost Boys in Neverland and have adventures going up against pirates and Indians. So when he talks about going back to his previous Oliver Twist like existence in turn of the 19th century, Dickensian London, we know he doesn't have his head screwed on nose to the front yet.
Matter of fact, the opening of the story looks more like Oliver Twist than Peter Pan, right up to including a Fagin, who Peter wants to work for as soon as he is old enough. Fagin gets transported to the Neverland along with Peter and morphs into Captain Hook somehow. Peter has a confusing emotional relationship with Fagin/Hook. At one point they confront each other with large bore flintlock pirate pistols at four paces, only Peter looses his nerve and gives up his gun. Bad Form! The real Peter Pan would have pulled the trigger, blown Hook into next week, and escaped by some magic/acrobatic trick.
The second episode is on tonight. Despite the numerous flaws in the script I'll watch it just to see if something good doesn't happen in the last reel.

Euro land woes

We have all heard about Greece, Italy and the Euro bond/bank disaster. Essentially, private investors will no longer buy Euro land government bonds, not even German bonds. Investors as a group now doubt that any Euro land government is good for the money. The 50% haircut on Greek bonds is an object lesson.
The dead beat Euro governments are crying for the European Common Bank to print barrels of Euros, and buy their worthless bonds with the freshly printed Euros. The bank is resisting this pressure, so far.
Friday, Angela Merkel was quoted in the WSJ as saying that euro members would have to accept a certain loss of national sovereignty. In plain English, she means that deadbeat members would have to accept outside (IMF, ECB, or German) control of their taxes and spending. Wow! Somehow I don't think that is going to work. Any national government with a speck of pride would rather do without borrowing at all than allow outsiders to set their taxes and spending.
Perhaps the Europeans could take a lesson from the Yankees. American state governments somehow manage to maintain their bond ratings without Federal supervision. The penalty for states that overspend is simple, they have to pay more on their bonds, or in extreme cases, they cannot borrow at all. And, like Euro land governments, no American state can print it's own money.

Line Item Veto vs Balanced Budget Amendment

A line item veto for the president would allow him to delete costly pork barrel projects from budget bills without vetoing the entire bill, and giving the budget writing treadmill another turn of the wheel. In real life it's hard for any president to veto a highway bill or a defense appropriations bill just because Senator Fogbound has slipped in a little $1million bit of pork for his district. If the president could kill off the pork without throwing the entire department into budgetary chaos quite a bit of money could be saved.
Congress critters are dead set against a line item veto just because it would let the president deprive them of the fruits of much hard lobbying and bargaining with mere a tick of his pen.
I am dubious about the value of a balanced budget amendment. Too many ways to weasel around it. First and easiest way, over estimate tax revenues. The budget next year is "balanced" if taxes are as large as spending. Those taxes have not been collected yet, so no one REALLY knows how much tax money will come in. So they make an estimate. And since estimates are subjective, it doesn't take a very smart politician to raise the estimate enough to declare the budget "balanced". Then they can go home and not have to face worrisome questions about budget cuts.
The second way is the "off budget" scam. Declare certain activities, a state toll road authority, the state retirement system, the state university, the social security system, the federal home mortgage bank, stuff like that, to have their own budgets, independent of the state or federal budget. New Hampshire practices this to perfection. More than one half of New Hampshire spending does not come out of the general fund, it comes from a myriad of special purpose funds. It is not hard to show the general fund running a surplus by pushing expenses off on the special purpose funds, who can borrow to pay bills. The general fund can look really good when overall the state is spending more than it takes in by way of taxes.
This simple scheme works; New Hampshire newsies are so clueless as to fall for it and only report on the general fund, ignoring the overall picture. National newsies are as clueless as the New Hampshire sort.

The Cat Listener

Cats are not pets. In actuality cats run the house. Humans are placed under some kind of spell that causes them to feed the cat, pet the cat, let the cat in, let the cat out, etc etc.
Cats say many things. The attentive human will understand most of them. Cat sayings:

Meow (plain meow): I want attention.
Meow (with some snarl to it): Don't do that.
Purr: I am happy and contented.
Tail lash: I am loosing my temper, beware
Tail Twitch: Something ain't right.
Siren Howl: Get off the property, Right Now
Mewrrp (soft): Pet me.
Hiss: Watch out you. I am planning violence

"Republicans" who voted AGAINST Right to Work

Right here on Granite Grok

http://granitegrok.com/blog/2011/11/republican_defectors.html#more

I'm sorry to see John Tholl's name on this dishonorable list. We supported him. I went up and poll watched for him one frozen February day.

Cutting the Defense Budget

Now that the super committee has failed to do squat, the Defense Dept is facing up to some deep budget cuts. Aviation Week published a list of big defense projects that might be canceled to save money

1. Joint Strike Fighter, F35. They are outrageously expensive and killing the program would save really big bucks, more than any other program. Cancellation would piss off a lot of allies who have ordered the fighter and who would now have to scramble to find something to replace it with. A compromise would be to kill the VTOL version which is having technical troubles, and proceed with the standard version.

2. V-22 Osprey. This is in production and has entered squadron service with the Marines. It' been in "development" for nearly 20 years. Trouble is, ordinary helicopters, Chinook, Blackhawk and such, can perform the V-22 mission. And they cost less.

3. Next Generation bomber. The Air Force wants a B-52 replacement, without one, the nuclear deterrent mission goes to the ICBM's sitting in silos. Last time the Air Force went for a next gen bomber it got the B-2 stealth flying wing; a cool plane but so expensive that they could only afford 20 of them.

4. Ground based Midcourse Defense. A legacy ICBM based missile defense system that I never heard of before.

5. Ground vehicles (Tanks, Hummers, MRAPS, Bradley's) What exactly do the Army and Marines need after Afghanistan and Iraq?

6. Ford class aircraft carriers. These are super carriers and super expensive.

7. C-27 Light transport. This is a cargo plane that looks like a miniature C-130 with only two engines. Trouble is, the good old C-130 can do every thing the baby C-27 can do; plus carry more stuff farther.

8. Helicopter modernization. A never ending black hole for money. You can spend the price of a new helicopter on add-on gadgets, bigger engines, and "stuff". In actual fact the existing helicopters are flying missions without expensive modernization.

9. DDG-51/DDG1000 new Navy destroyers. As usual, new Navy warships cost more than existing ones.

10. Littoral Combat Ship. I think "littoral combat" means shore bombardment. Do we want to buy warships so specialized that they can only handle a single mission? Warships are so expensive that I expect them to be able to handle more than one mission. Like deep sea escort, raids on enemy oil platforms, and anti submarine work. Put a couple of decent sized guns on existing warships and they could do shore bombardment. A lot of modern destroyers only have a single three inch popgun.

The real defense funding issue. Should we not have more infantry, so the poor infantry men don't have to serve back-to-back tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and other nasty places?