Alternate History. What if Japan had NOT attacked Pearl Harbor in WWII?

Japan had a number of aggressive plans for their neck of the woods.  The US did not approve, and eventually embargoed shipment of oil and scrap metal to Japan.  But with Hitler showing us how dangerous Germany was, and isolationism running wild in America, we were not about to do anything to Japan short of diplomatic nasty grams and  embargoes. Had Japan understood this, they could have proceeded to take over places they wanted, like Dutch East Indies oil fields, and more of China.  We would not have gone to war with Japan over this kind of aggression.
   If Pearl Harbor did not happen, we would not have joined the British in the war against Hitler, even if Hitler had the British on the ropes.  Isolationism would have prevented it.  Churchill's entire plan for beating Germany consisted of getting the Americans to help him out.  Without Pearl Harbor, Churchill would have been severely disappointed.
  What's more, if the Nazi's had done some serious diplomatic work on Japan, they might have been able to talk the Japanese into attacking the Russians in the far east.  If this had gone down in the winter of 1941, when Hitler's army was at the outskirts of Moscow, the Russians might have cracked.  As it was, the Russians brought ten divisions back from Siberia and threw them into the battle to save Moscow.  They would not have been able to do that if the Japanese had attacked in the far east.  And the Japanese had memories of the successful (from Japan's viewpoint) Russo Japanese war of 1905.  And the Japanese were still smarting from a sharp defeat the Russians gave them in 1939.  Japan had tried to seize parts of Siberia.  The Russians sent a large army, with plenty of tanks, aircraft and artillery, under Georgi Zhukov, best Russian general of WWII,  and whipped the Japanese thoroughly at a place called Kalkin Gol.
  Any way you see it, Pearl Harbor in our real history, was a key decisive event.

Plastic straws?

Used to be, straws were paper.  They worked.  They issued straws at the soda fountain with milkshakes, frappes, and root beer floats.  Special treats, not every day drinking.  And they issued straws at lunch in school to sip the milk out of those tiny little paper milk cartons, if you had paid in your milk money that week.   Each classroom had a big box of straws sitting on a shelf.  Don't remember exactly just when plastic replaced paper for straws, must have been sometime in the 1960's
   I don't remember drinking soda (tonic in New England) with straws.  You popped the top off the bottle (canned soda was much later) stuck the bottle in your mouth and drank.  You had to learn the trick of putting your upper lip half way down the mouth of the bottle to let the air in as the soda was sucked out.  Most kids mastered the art by the age of three.  My parents didn't approve of soda, they thought it was bad for kids teeth, so I didn't get to enjoy it all that often. 
   The TV newsies have been doing a lotta talking about plastic straws filling the Pacific ocean with floating plastic.  Despite all the talk, I have trouble believing that plastic straws are a serious issue or yet another environmental hazard.  I'm kinda hazarded out these days. 

Facebook stock tanks today

Has the last few months of bad news, leaks of personal data, censoring of conservative posters, Russian trolls, fake news, and 'bots posting trash, finally caught up with good old Facebook?  Or was it a downer report issued by Facebook itself predicting loss of  customers?  Could it be that Facebook has reached a limit to growth, like every one with Internet access is already on Facebook?
  Anyhow their stock took a header today.  Down 23% by some reckoning.

Seattle is paying $5.2 million a piece for trolley cars.

Damn.  That's a ridiculous amount of money for a trolley car.  You used to be able to buy a brand new diesel bus for $50K. You would think you could buy a trolley car for about that.   What's worse, they are saying that these ultra pricey new trolleys won't fit into the car barns, or even on the tracks.

NPR played the Cohen tape over the air this morning

I could not understand most of what was said on the tape.  Nor could I recognize Trump's fairly distinctive voice.  I'm not saying it is fake news, yet,  but I have my doubts based on what I heard on my FM radio this morning. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cute but dumb

She IS cute.  Too bad she isn't blonde.  If she were, we could call her a dumb blonde.  Which has more bite to it than dumb brunette.
  She was saying that the reason Trump has brought unemployment down so far is that people are holding down two jobs, to make ends meet.   This does not compute.  If we have people filling two jobs, we will have fewer people employed than if we just allowed people to fill one job at a time.  Even a economics and international relations major ought to be able to figure that one out.
   Stay tuned, Alexandria ought to come up with some more amusing whoppers before election season is over.

Bears over the years

We have bears up here in the North Country.  Here are a few bears photographed from my deck.  I am OK with bears, I keep my distance, the bears keep their distance, and we are all very happy.  And I never put  trash out on the deck.  And I don't feed bears.  Next town over, they had some hippy dippies living right down town and feeding bears from their garden apartment building.  That town had to pass a town ordinance against feeding bears in town.  My town has smarter residents, even the Massachusetts retirees know enough not to feed bears in town, or anywhere else for that matter.  Bears are cool to have around.  But you gotta remember that they are very strong, very fast, and always hungry, and totally wild.  If they think you threaten them, or their cubs, they can become VERY nasty.  And being wild animals, they are impulsive, and easily scared.  You don't want to mess with a scared bear. 

Middle Kingdom in the Middle East

Nice color picture in The Economist showing President Xi and an aide, reviewing  a Saudi honor guard with MBS.  MBS is wearing white flowing Laurence-of-Arabia style robes and sandals.  Xi is wearing a standard western style dark business suit and a poker face, his aide is wearing a western style Chinese Army green Class A uniform. The Saudi honor guard are all wearing thick black full beards over jazzy western style military uniforms.  Since the Chinese don't grow beards, much, I had to wonder what Xi was thinking about looking at all those thick black beards on the Saudi troops.  

Lynne Blankenbecker at the PBVRC Spaghetti Dinner

The Pemi Baker Valley Republican committee is a very active group, based in Plymouth.  They put on a monthly spaghetti dinner, which is always well attended and fun to go to.  Now that I am running for NH senate district 1, I went to the affair on Friday night, thinking to meet some voters, even though Plymouth is a little south of my district.   For everyone's edification, NH senate district 1 starts at the Canadian border and runs south to a line of Bath, Benton, Woodstock, and Thornton.   Any how I got to show my face and give my campaign speech.
  Best speaker of the evening was Lynne Blankenbeker. She is running for US rep from Congressional District 2, the western half of NH, currently held by Anne Kuster, a fairly worthless democrat.  Lynne has an impressive resume, service in both USAF and USN, attained the rank of captain in the Navy (Navy captains are much higher rank than Army or Air Force captains).  Ran for and won a NH house seat way back in 2009.  She spoke force fully and well Friday night.  I was impressed. 
   Everyone ought to make an effort to hear Lynne speak.  Her campaign website is https://www.blankenbeker.com.  They will have a list of Lynne's speaking engagements.  It's well worth your time to go hear her. 

Career Choice for college students.

Op Ed piece in last Saturday's journal entitled "Why do Women Shun STEM? It's Complicated".  The writer is a female professor of engineering.  She mentions a number of things, but she dwells on the effect of liberal arts faculty bad mouthing engineering and other STEM subjects to the students.  Women students get told that STEM subjects just lead to jobs in cubicles crunching numbers.  Which isn't true at all.  Engineering is very creative, engineers get to create new things with their own hands, work the bugs out, and bring them to market.  Beats selling life insurance or real estate all hollow.  I am retired after fifty years doing electrical engineering, it was fun, and it paid well. 
   As a college student, you need to decide on your career after graduation.  You need to do this early freshman year, by Christmas time at the latest.  Once you have picked a career, then you must pick a college major that makes you employable in your chosen field.   Career choice is tough.  As a freshman you don't really know what the ropes are, most of what you do know is vague hearsay.  What do  you really want to do to make a living?  So you talk to parents, friends, relatives, anyone about it.  One caveat.  Don't take advice from the faculty or your college advisor (who is also a faculty member).  Reason is simple.  Anyone who has pushed and struggled hard enough to become a professor of anything, is going to tell you that what ever it is that he/she is teaching is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  That's just the way people work. College faculty think their job is to train up students to become professors just like they are. 
   Couple of things to know.  First, teaching college isn't what it used to be.  Most college courses are taught by part timers (adjunct professors they are called) who receive miserable pay and no benefits.  And no chance of tenure.  Second, there are a lot of things taught in college that are of little to no worth out in the real world.  Majoring in "studies" (gender studies, ethnic studies, environmental studies, any kinda study) is a total loser.  Anthropology, sociology, astronomy, art history, music appreciation, are not much better. 
   One good trick, read a biography of someone who followed the career path you might be thinking of taking.  
  
  

12 Strong 2018

Netflix brought this to me yesterday.   It's a war movie, about a 12 man Special Forces team send to Afghanstan in the very early days after 9-11.  They served as forward observers and brought in smart bomb air strikes that enabled the Northern Alliance to overcome the Taliban in a matter of weeks, after years of loosing to the Taliban.  It's not bad, but not compelling.  I didn't watch it to the end. 
   A lot of internet critics slammed it for political incorrectness, they wanted a movie to trash the US intervention in Afghanistan.  This one portrays the American effort as good, and the special forces guys as heroes.  Which is fine by me.  Lots of action, explosions, fighting, not much dying.  They hired the blackout camera man from Game of Thrones.  He turned the lights out on the sets while filming, yielding the annoying but trendy black on black scenes where you cannot see anything. 
   Acting was only fair.  Despite some name brand actors (Chris Hemsworth and Michael Shannon) the actors failed to really engage us audience folk.  No really snappy lines of dialog, little background of friends, family, lovers, children.  No good jokes.  I couldn't related to any of the characters very well. 
   Overall a C movie. 

Has anyone seen any Russian hacks on Facebook or Twitter?

For all the talk about Russians and Trump in 2016, I have not seen any examples of things the Russians did, posted, tweeted, or commented upon.  So what did those alleged Russians do?  Can I see it anywhere?  For all the sound and fury, you would think there would be something that shows on the internet somewhere. 

Drug pushing robo callers

Lately I have been getting them.  There is the caller who tells me my shipment of pain killing drugs is ready for pickup.  And the caller who asks if I am over 65 and suffering from arthritis pain. And the caller who offers me any kind of prescription pain killer under the sun, just come down to our friendly pain management clinic.
   I wonder how much of the opioid crisis in New Hampshire is caused by telephone pushers of drugs.
   I don't have caller ID on my land line phone, and the robo callers don't answer my questions about who they are and what their phone number is, so I don't really have anything worth reporting to law enforcement.  

The Great Rift, by Michael E Hobart, Science vs Religion

Book review in Thursday's Wall St Journal.  Interesting writeup.  On the other hand, is the science vs religion topic truly relevant today?   Far back, in ancient times, before the invention of science, religion explained all things as God's will, the weather, disasters like volcano's, earthquakes, and  hurricanes, creation of the world and all that is in it.  Science, newly invented in the Middle Ages,  offered the Copernicus  heliocentric theory sometime in the 16th century.  That was the first  serious head-to-head set to, the Church espoused the older earth centered Ptolemaic system, for reasons that I no longer remember. They made life hot for Copernicus and then they laid onto Galileo even harder.   Darwin in the 19th century caused an even bigger fuss, a lot of people liked the creation story given in Genesis a lot better than they liked evolution and the idea that man was descended from apes. 
   But today, surely this is no longer a real issue.  I know the creation story in Genesis, I even read it aloud to my children.  I also know the creation story from astronomy, cosmology, geology, and evolution.  When I think about it, I realize that the two stories are incompatible with each other.  But,  that's OK by me,  I know and understand both stories (all except Guth's idea of inflation) , my head is big enough to hold them both and  let them be. I have no plans to resolve the issues, I know plenty of better men than I have tried and short of becoming an atheist, unattractive at my age,  there is no resolution.  The incompatibilities just don't bother me that much, I know they are there, I know they will be there for a long long time, and I know there is little I can do about it.  So I don't worry about it.
   
        

Strzok Hearing. Shouting match.

Peter Strzok  is the very senior FBI agent who ran the Russian Collusion hearings and the FISA court warrants to investigate members of the Donald Trump campaign and was on the Muller investigation team.  He was having an affair with Lisa Paige, an FBI legal type, and they exchanged some text messages indicating a super high degree of hatred for Trump, and a desire to tip the election to Hillary.
  Congress has been grilling Agent Strzok on live TV all day.  I would have liked to hear about  what evidence Strzok showed the FISA court to get warrants to surveil Trump campaign workers, what evidence they turned up about Russian collusion, both of which Strzok knows a lot about.  They never did get down to that.  Strzok kept refusing to answer questions claiming the the FBI didn't want him to testify.  Congress should have said, "Answer or you are in contempt of Congress, which is 6 months in slam for each question you refuse to answer."  CongressCritters don''t have that kind of stones any more.  The Democrats spent all their floor time trashing the Trump administration rather than boring in on the Muller investigation and Strzok's part in it.  Lot of shouting, lot of points of order, little real info.  They are still at it as I write this. 

How combat ready is NATO?

I read a couple of web postings saying that the German Air Force only has ten jet fighters operationally ready.  The rest, hundreds of expensive warplanes, are down for maintenance.  With only ten flyable fighters,  German pilots won't be getting enough flight time to stay proficient.  
   That is a ridiculous figure.  When I was squadron level maintenance officer in USAF, we were required to show 70% of out fighters in commission and ready to fly every day.  Our squadrons were 18 aircraft in those days, and 70% came out to 11 aircraft.  And we made that 70% OR rate every day.  In short, a USAF squadron had more OR fighters than the entire Luftwaffe.
  The Germans claim to be spending something like $60 billion on defense, 1.2% of GNP.  Which ain't enough if it leaves nearly all of their fighter planes grounded for maintenance.  
   I think Trump is right to yell at them for not paying enough for defense.  The Russians still have a large army, they have grabbed off big slices of Georgia and Ukraine, and Putin is talking about grabbing more.  Not the right time to have most of your air force grounded for maintenance. 

Captain America, Civil War, 2016, I caught it on the tube last night

It was long.  Ran three hours what with the usual heavy load of commercials.  The camera man turned on the lights of the set BEFORE filming.  Give him points for that.  None of those black on black scenes that Game of Thrones likes so much, and I find totally annoying.  Give them credit for doing a good job rather than being arty.  The sound man was barely adequate, I had to turn up the volume, and boost the treble before I could catch all the dialog.  I had no trouble hearing all the dialog in the commercials, which means the sound man could do a lot better.  
   The movie has Captain Steve (America) Rodgers, Iron Man/ Tony Stark, a new young actor playing Peter Parker/Spiderman.  The Spiderman costume totally covers the face, and so even as Spiderman gets a good share of screentime, it's hard to relate to a superhero with out a face.  And a lot of Marvel Comics characters that are new to me.  I stopped reading comic books a long long time ago so I am not up to date on Marvel Comics Universe. Since nobody ever addresses anybody by name on screen, it is tough to figure out who is who. 
   There was a lot of hand to hand combat, jumping out of tenth story windows and bouncing when hitting the ground, and fantastic but fun to watch moves with that shield.  There wasn't much of a plot, or at least I never did catch on to what Captain America was trying to do to save the world this time.  They split the Avengers into two warring factions which resulted in a lot of hand to hand fist fighting between Steve Rogers and Ironman.  Somehow, no matter how hard Steve Rogers hit, Ironman's iron suit soaked up the blows.  Funny about that
  It was fun to watch, I stayed awake to the bitter end at 11PM.  Far past my usual bedtime. 

New Supreme Court Justice

Lot's and lots of yak on the TV about this.  Much of it phoney.  They talk about a tremendous floor flight.  Not very likely.  Either the Republicans have all their ducks in a row, and their mavericks and RINO's under control, or they don't.  Even with McCain out with brain cancer, they still have a one vote majority in the Senate, and a Republican vice president as a tie breaker.  If they don't have all their members on board, they won't bring the matter up until they do. 
   I don't know the names on Trump's picklist, but I assume they are all guys like Gorsuch, who has worked out well and is generally respected.  This kind of guy will believe in "stare decisus", Latin for "Let it Stand".  The doctrine that when in doubt, it is justice to rule the same way previous judges have ruled on the issue.  Which makes all the talk about over turning Roe vs Wade just scare talk.  Roe vs Wade has been the law of the land for nearly 50 years, a half century.  Stare decisus means stick with Roe, because it is the way things have been done for 50 years.  I don't think Roe vs Wade is in any danger from anyone Trump might nominate. 

Franconia NH, Old Home Day Parade

Franconia does Old Home Day on Saturday, as close to the 4th as they can get.  So I went.  Spent 6 hours smoothing with voters, asking them to vote for me.  A lot of people were out of state tourists, worthy folk who help keep NH green but cannot vote for me.  And a lot were voters in my district.  All were perfectly happy to say hello and shake hands.  Weather was ideal, cool, sunny, clear skies.  A good time was had by all.

Pocahontas Is Racially Charged???

The Hill was trashing back at President Trump yesterday.   The President is famous for calling Senator Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas" in response to Warren's claims of Indian ancestry.  The Hill called the nickname "racially charged".
   Really?  Back when my kids were doing elementary school, Pocahontas lunch boxes were all the rage.  Pocahontas beat out My Little Pony for most popular kids lunchbox.  Back when I was doing elementary school myself (long before the Disney movie) we knew of Pocahontas as a beautiful, romantic Indian princess, who had a thing going with John Smith, later married John Rolf, went to England were she was treated as if she was British nobility.  Pocahontas was cool, everybody knew that. 
   Dunno where The Hill comes up with "racially charged". 

Background on the 2nd Amendment

Let your mind run back in time, to 1789, the year the constitution was adopted.  The United States possessed an enormous territory, stretching 2000 miles from Maine to Georgia and inland for a thousand miles.  It was thinly settled in those days.  France and England were the super powers of the late eighteen century and everyone understood that one or both of  them would want to expand their power by taking over parts of the brand new United States. Nearly every settled place had seen Indian raids, banditry, pirates, French, Spanish, and lastly Redcoats.  No way the infant federal government could protect  this huge vulnerable territory with regular army soldiers.  They lacked the money, the supplies, the roads, and the shipping, to get regular army troops into position to protect the civilians from all the potential attackers.
   The Americans had just finished the Revolutionary War, where American militia had driven Redcoat regulars into flight from Concord, slaughtered them en masse at Bunker Hill, forced "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne to surrender an entire British army, and served with distinction on hundreds of battlefields.  In those days everyone knew the militia was needed for, and adequate for, protection of American civilians, anywhere up and down the length and breadth of the land.  We would raise a small regular army, but for defense of the homeland, we would rely upon the militia.
   This was the thinking behind the clause "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State...".   Militia was a bring your own gun (BYOG) thing.  In those days no state or federal government had the money to provide arms to the militia.  And it was also known in those days that plenty of land owners, patroons, and other colonial big shots were in favor of taking guns away from "the rabble" who might use them to cause trouble.  Hence "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." 
   And this worked for many years.  As late as 1940 Japanese admiral Yamamoto said "To invade the United States is impossible.  There would be a rifleman behind every blade of grass. "   America is no longer a shaky new found country clinging to the coast of a continental wilderness.  We are now the strongest country on earth with regular armed forces surely strong enough to defend the homeland. 
   But for all our modern improvements we still have reasons for citizens to want firearms.  For instance, I have black bears strolling up and down my driveway, especially during beechnut season.  Plenty of Americans live in far more dangerous places than I, and I don't see any reason to deny them firearms.   Plenty of robberies have been thwarted with the help of a gun in the cash drawer.  So have plenty of home invasions, muggings, and car jackings.
   The recent appalling  murders of school children and innocent spectators happens because we allow homicidal maniacs to run around loose until they commit an awful crime.  We used to have mental hospitals in which we confined those of unsound mind.  Unfortunately the civil rights movement of the 1960's forced their closure, and turned the inmates out into the street, where many of them still live. 

Woodsville NH 4th of July Parade.

Unloading antique farm tractor

Becca Bailey getting the truck ready.

Groovy old Woodsville building that I need to model for my HO railroad.

Last float turns around and heads for home.

I marched ( drove actually, I am getting old)  in the great Woodsville 4th of July parade.  Above are my photos.  I finally manage to get Blogger's photo uploader to work.  It was warm, 86 F according to the big thermometer on the bank.  A good time was had by all.  We had a lot more Republican candidates than we did Democrat. 

US Health care is too darned expensive

American spends 19% of GNP on healthcare.  That is twice as much as any other country in the world.  That means that American products are 19% more expensive than they might be, just to pay the workers health care. No wonder we face such a massive trade deficit with China, and nearly ever other place in the world.  Our products are too darned expensive.  And American health care costs drive up the price of our products.
Here is my list of things we ought to do about the health care cost crisis.
1.  Drug companies are ripping us off with ridiculous drug prices.  We could fix this overnight.  Simply allow duty free import of drugs from any reasonable first world country, like Canada, the EU, Japan.  Many US rip off priced drugs can be bought overseas from half the US prices.  This is a federal issue.  Nothing a NH state senator can do about it. 
2.  Clamp down on the malpractice racket.  The lawyers turn every adverse outcome into a river of cash for themselves.  NH has done some good work here with the malpractice court.  We could do more.  We could pass a law stating that prescription, manufacture, and administration of any FDA approved drug or device is never malpractice, even if the FDA later withdraws their approval.  We could crack down on lawyer approved malarkey testimony in malpractice cases.  We could require that "expert" witnesses must be practicing MD's who have treated more than ten similar cases within the past year.   A lot of "expert" witness no longer practice medicine, they just travel from trial to trial testifying to whatever the lawyer wants in malpractice cases.  This is a state issue.
3.  Clamp down in ridiculous regulations.  For instance, Dartmouth Hitchcock, down in Lebanon, has the roof lined up from side to side with humongous air conditioner units.  That's because some regulator demands that the air conditioners hold hospital temperature to plus or minus 1 degree F.  That's ridiculous.  I used to run an Air Force Precision Measurement Equipment Lab  (PMEL we called it).  We got all over Base Civil Engineers because the PMEL air conditioner could not keep PMEL temperature below 95F on a hot summer day.  In actual fact, this hospital regulation is totally unnecessary.  As long as air conditioning holds the temperature down enough to prevent patient suffering, they will get well. Some of the mickey mouse regs are federal, some are state.
4.  Stop prescribing so many opioids.  The Wall St Journal says that 80% of Medicaid patients in West Virginia and Kentucky are getting prescriptions for pricey opioids.  Which gets the patients onto heroin when the opioid prescription runs out. This is a mixed issue, part federal, part state, part medical profession.
5.  Stop doing so much heroic treatment on elderly patients who are at end of life.  No matter what the diagnosis, there is always some expensive procedure (a CAT scan for instance) or operation that might extend the patient's life by a few weeks.  In many cases, the elderly patient would be happier to just go home and die quietly in bed. This is a tough issue, but we could help by enlisting the elderly patient's family in decisions to do expensive things on very elderly patients.  My mother felt strongly about this, and was glad to have her two grown sons take her to the hospital and then back home.  She managed to die quietly at home at age 91.