Cancelling Abraham Lincoln

San Francisco school board voted to rename a bunch of schools to remove the names of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and more.  Abraham Lincoln??  The man who signed the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves.  And followed up by winning the Civil War to make the Emancipation Proclamation stick?  George Washington who beat the Redcoats in the Revolutionary War, chaired the Constitutional Convention, and served as our first president.  Without Washington we would still be a bunch of British colonies.  Jefferson, the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence, " all men are created equal".  They want to cancel all these heroes of American history??  What kind of education do these crazies offer to the children of San Francisco??

Ten worst Crime Neighborhoods in US

 Seven of them are in Los Angeles and San Francisco. So much for California.  Two are in Kansas City and one in Portland Oregon.  From Forbes Magazine.

Undercounting NewYork Covid 19 deaths???

 The TV is carrying the story today.  I wonder just what they are talking about.  Surly they could not conceal the fact of a death occurring.  I mean you have a body to bury or otherwise dispose of, you need a death certificate.  I cannot imagine concealing the occurrence of the deaths.  So are we talking about deaths from Corona virus being recorded as from other causes?   More easily done, as most of the deaths were of elderly people who suffer from a number of problems as well as from Corona virus.  In a case like this, where there are a lot of things present, what to blame the death upon is up the the judgement of the doctor.  The odd part about the situation is doctors have been widely accused of attributing every death to Corona virus.  Apparently hospitals get more reimbursement for Corona virus cases than other things and place great pressure upon the doctors to call all the questionable cases to be corona virus cases.  

   The TV is not talking about that angle.  

  Later TV input, About 8000 New Yorkers died in nursing homes from Corona virus.  Another 4000 came down with Corona virus and were transferred to hospitals and then they died.  Those 4000 deaths were not counted against nursing homes. 

The Rise of Skywalker: Star Wars Episode 9 2019

 I  got to watch this, on a Netflix disc, the other day.  We have from the old days, Carrie Fisher as Leia Organa, looking kinda over the hill, especially since she died before filming started and her presence is from film shot on the last Star Wars movie.  Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Daisy Ridley as Rey, Darth Vader Jr, Harrison Ford as Han Solo, R2D2, C3PIO, and a bunch of new faces that didn’t make much of an impression on me.  It’s long,  better than two hours.  Not much of a plot.  Lots of light saber duels, star ship shoot outs, crashes and smashes.  Darth Vader Jr has some kind of teleportation link with Rey, and keeps popping up, no matter where Rey is, and doing a light saber duel with her. 

   Rey’s outfit, white, is cute.  But the arrangement of a gauzy skirt, split in the front, and clam digger shorts could be improved. Either cut her shorts shorter and make the skirt more opaque, or cut the clam diggers as long slacks going down to the ankle. And skip the gauzy skirt.  

Overall:  meh. 

American funding created Corona virus in China

Steve Hilton, host of Fox News show The Next Revolution said this evening that the corona virus came from the Chinese Institute of Virology in Wuhan China.  It was the result of genetic manipulation of viruses harvested from wild animals, like bats.  The genetic manipulation was “gain of function” work intended to give the virus functions it lacked, such as the ability to go aerosol, and infect after a short or long period of floating around in the air. 

    This sort of research was deemed extremely dangerous.  The Obama administration forbade gain of function research in 2014.  The Trump administration added to the ban.

    Hilton revealed that the work at Wuhan was funded by an AMERICAN grant of $3.5 million.  The funding was set up by Dr Fauci, scientific advisor on Corona virus to both the Tramp administration and the new Biden administration.   The funding was granted AFTER the ban on gain of function research was announced.  In short Dr. Fauci created the Corona virus using US taxpayer money. 

   Steve Hilton did not know how the mutated virus got out of the Wuhan lab.  Might have been an accident, might have been deliberate.  The Wuhan lab has a poor safety record.

   This is the first time I have seen this story.  I thought I would pass it on.  My only source is Steve Hilton of Fox News.

Donald Trump's acheivements

Way back in the winter of 2007 and 2008, bone headed Wall Street banks managed to crash the global economy with too many "credit default swaps".  The resulting recession knocked our GNP growth down from 3.5% a year to zilch.  And Obama took office.  For the next 8 years Obama manage to hold GNP growth down below 2%.  He even got financial commentators to write that 2% was the right growth rate.  Then Trump took office.  He got our GNP growth back up to 3.5% where it belongs.  He brought the stock market up to new highs.  He brought unemployment down to 3%.  And when the Corona virus struck in 2020 he spearheaded operation Warp Speed that brought a vaccine into production in only a few months.  

  Not too shabby.

What do Democrats have against Winston Churchill?

 Barack Obama removed the bust of Churchill from the oval office upon his election victory.  This gained him a good deal of hostile commentary.  Donald Trump restored the Churchill bust in 2016.  Now we have Joe Biden removing the Churchill bust again. 

Churchill was the man who did more than anyone else to win World War II.  First he kept Britain in the fight.  Had Churchill not been Prime Minister it is very likely that Britain would have made a deal with Hitler.  Hitler offered such a deal, and it wasn’t totally unattractive.  Churchill refused to have anything to do with Hitler’s deal and instead inspired British resistance to Hitler. 

   Churchill convinced Franklin Roosevelt to do Operation Torch, the North African landings.  Torch resulted in an allied victory over the Germans nearly as big and the Russian victory at Stalingrad a few months before.  Churchill traveled to Moscow and negotiated with Joseph Stalin.  Churchill was instrumental in setting up the United Nations and NATO.  President John F. Kennedy bestowed honorary US citizenship upon Churchill.  The US Navy named a vessel after Churchill.  Churchill wrote a six volume history of World War II which was widely read in both Britain and America.

    It has been 75 years since World War II and memories have faded.  But I still admire Churchill.  Without Churchill Hitler might have won World War II.  We might still be coping with a Nazi government ruling all of Europe.

Putting the troops in a parking garage is awful.

 Governor Sununu has ordered the our troops home to New Hampshire.  We ought to meet them at the Manchester airport.  Assuming they will be flying home.  Let's hope they are, making the 11 hour drive from DC in Army trucks sounds unpleasant.  

  At least the concrete floor was fairly clean in the video I have seen.  Usually parking garages have big black oil and grease spots in each parking space.  The videos showed fairly clean floor.  But still, a garage is a garage and we ought to be treating our troops better than a garage floor, especially in our national capital.  I had more comfortable quarters during a combat tour in Southeast Asia during the Viet Nam war.  We had hootches, with insect screens and a decent latrine.

So we inaugurated Sleepy Joe Biden today

 On TV it looked reasonable.  The camera's didn't show the lack of spectators.  Biden spoke of improving unity, pulling the two sides together.  Sounds good, but will Biden actual do anything to unify the Country.  They say he has 17 executive orders ready to file today.  I bet they all repeal or cancel things that Trump did.   Unifying that is   

   Better would be to explain in detail just what each of the 17  executive orders will do.  And where it clearly reverses a Trump policy, give a rational, a reason, for doing so. 

   Another unifying thing Biden could do is call for an end to the Trump impeachment.  Most of us think losing the  election is punishment enough.  Ending the impeachment would sooth a lot of people.  Not a word of this came from Biden's mouth today

I suspect that Biden is just giving lip service to the unification idea.  I think he really wants to cancel out every thing that Trump did.  Just because Trump did it. 

Howcum no talk about Sherman Anti-trust??

 Been a lotta talk about Facebook and Twitter shutting off Donal Trump and what to do about it.  I have not heard any talk about using Sherman Anti-Trust to break them up.  Both of them are clearly monopolies and Sherman Anti Trust was intended to break up monopolies just for being big, they did not have to misbehave to fall under the hammer.  

   Of course, Biden's democrats like what Big Tech is doing, silencing the political opposition, so I don't expect them to make a move to break up Big Tech.

That $15 an hour minimum wage

 Getting $15 an hour is groovy, IF you stay employed.  Retailers are tooling up to replace workers with automation.  The Tilton Mcdonalds is all automatied right now.  You walk in the door and see a dozen giant touch screens.  You touch what ever it is you want to eat, slide your credit card into the slot, and bingo, your order pops up back in the kitchen.  Cashiers and counter people are gone.  Next they will automate the kitchen jobs.

   The big box stores (Wallymart, Home Despot, Lowes, Shaws and the like) are training us customers to work the bar code scanners and pay with credit cards.  Bye Bye cashiers jobs.  

   For that matter, Bye Bye to the little local shops and eateries that cannot afford to buy all that automation.  Get ready to eat only in the big chains, McDonalds, Applebees, 99, and such.  Tasty they are. 

Entry level jobs that currently pay less than $15 will just go away 'cause the employer will be losing money on them when he has to pay $15 an hour.  It's gonna be tougher for kids entering the workforce to find a job at all. 

The right to keep and bear arms.

 You would think that elected representatives, both federal and state, would be solid responsible citizens.  Just the kind of people you would trust to carry a gun.  And yet we have Nancy Pelosi down in DC and the Democratic leadership in the NH house (last session) putting in metal detectors and forbidding concealed carry in the NH house.  

   Every so often terrorists work their way into the visitor's gallery or the legislative chambers.  It would be nice if those terrorists were met with gunfire from their targets.  In Concord NH the reps have to walk considerable distances to their parked cars, often after dark.  I know a fair number of female reps would feel better about taking a walk on dark city streets if they were carrying a gun.  Just in case.  

   We should not be denying the right to keep and bear arms to our most responsible citizens. 

Cobra Kai, TV series from Karate Kid

 So I watched the first disc of the series.  It picks up the story from Karate Kid I movie 20 years later.  Daniel LaRusso is married and a successful owner of a string of auto dealerships.  Johnny Lawrence (Daniel-san's opponent in the big karate tournament) , is not doing so well, in fact is unemployed.  He some how gets the money to start up the old Cobra Kai dojo.  Some amusing scenes of Johnny doing the hard ass act on his Karate students.  The plot is shaky bordering on non existent.  The chicks are not all that pretty.  Mr. Miyagi is dead and buried and the series needs him, or a replacement, badly.  Not as good as the first two Karate Kid movies from years ago. 

15000 National Guard troops for inauguration security??

 I will grant that after last Wednesday we probably need to beef up security.  But with the inauguration parade canceled for corona virus do we need a full division of troops?  That's more troops than we have in Afghanistan.  Hopefully they won't issue live ammunition like they did at Kent State years ago.

America needs a press that we can believe in

 The average citizen has a life to lead, children to raise, a job to go to.  These ( and other things) fill most of his time.  He lacks the time and the skills to dig down and find out what is really happening.  Most of us average citizens get our news from NPR (NHPR) while driving to work, and off the TV in the evening.  For a democracy to work, the voters need to know what is going on.  And American news media have little to nothing about what is really happening.  They have a lot of commentary, and what little news we get is heavily slanted.  Stories that support "the narrative" get lots of coverage.  Stories that contradict the narrative get buried.  And the citizens know this, and hence don't know what's going on, and so vote their built in prejudices, which ain't always good for the country.

  We really need a trustworthy press, and we don't have it.  And we know that.  Fox News and the Wall St Journal are perhaps the best of 'em.  PBS ain't what it used to be back when it was the Mac Neill-Lehrer news hour.   But we need more reliable news sources.  And we don't have them. 

America needs to get off the dime.

 

America is split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats.  The Georgia elections were very close, nearly 50-50.  The US Senate has 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats.  The US House has the narrowest margin in years, only about 5 more Democrats than Republicans.  For a body of 425 members, 5 is very close.  As a result or this even Steven split, it is impossible to get anything done.  Congress has done very little in recent years.  They need to do something about the DACA children.  They need to do immigration reform.  And a lot of other things.  But, being split so evenly, they don’t have the votes to pass anything.  

   The Republicans need to attract more voters.  Trump did some good work in this area.  He attracted a lot of union voters, a lot of black and minority voters.  It wasn’t quite enough to get him re elected, but it was close. 

   American political parties run on ideology, a platform, and personalities.  Republican ideology comes from the Declaration of Independence, “All men are created equal”.  Republicans were started as the party to free the slaves.  Republicans fought the Civil War.  In the 1960’s Republicans passed the Civil rights acts.  Republicans believe in free enterprise and capitalism as the system that creates vast amounts of wealth.  Under free enterprise factories and farms and everything else is owned by individuals or groups of individuals (corporations) and the owners are strongly motivated to run them efficiently. Republicans believe in American exceptionalism, the notion that America has a glorious history of which we should be proud. 

    Party platforms were more specific lists of laws the party would support, and other laws the party would oppose.  In recent years both parties have pretty much stopped doing platforms.  Partly because it is hard to come up with a platform that everybody in the party approves.  Partly because advocating specific acts gains the party more enemies than it gains them friends.  And probably other reasons as well.  Net result, no platforms for this last election. 

  And finally, personalities.  Right now the biggest personality in the Republican Party is Donald Trump.  He will be around for quite a while.  Nobody else in the party, Cruz, Rubio, Graham, McConnell, Romney, and you-name-him is as big as Trump.  Unfortunately Trump has as many bitter enemies as he has die hard supporters. 

   Looking at this I can suggest Republicans need to talk about the party ideology more often.  They need to get a platform out.  They need to recruit more personalities, especially electable personalities.  Republicans used to get personalities from the military, Eisenhower, Powell, and McCain for example.  We don’t seem to have that many military men with strong reputations to recruit as we used to.

Beat The Press. An hour about the Capitol riots

 Chuck Todd was in full voice this morning.  Spent the entire one hour show talking about Wednesday's Capitol Riot.  Blamed it all on Trump.  Called for impeachment, a bill of attainder, everything.  

  Did not mention the three resignations of capitol security chiefs.  No mention of the video showing Capitol police standing back and letting the rioters stream into the building.    No mention of the Rasmussen poll showing Trump's approval rating rising since Wednesday.

Fox News needs to move the studio to a quieter part of town

 I watch Fox (in case  you had not guessed).  They have fire sirens, police sirens, ringing telephones, and a bunch of other noise in the background of the news stories.  Pain in the A**.  I hear this stuff coming off the TV set  and I start looking out my windows for the fire trucks.  They ought to move the studio to a quieter part of town. 

So what is Parler's Beef?

 Apple has threatened to toss Parler off their Apps Store unless Parler applies the same heavy handed censorship of conservatives that Facebook and Twitter are starting to do.  

Why does Parler need anything from anyone's app store?  I think they can make Parler work by just putting up a website and having the users go to the website and read and comment.  That works for most web places right now.  If for some obscure reason Parler needs to load code onto user's desktops or smartphones, then they just put up a website and let the users download the code over the web.  What's so hard about that?  

So what's the beef??

The democrats, the MSM, all Trump's enemies, blame him for the DC riot

And all of them are so overjoyed to have Trump supporters doing the rioting.  And so they all say the riots are Trump's fault.  It makes them all sooo happy.  It fits the narrative.

   But, the DC police chief, the House Sergeant-at-Arms and the Senate Sergeant-at-arms have resigned their offices, which says to me that security precautions were not taken, or not taken enough to prevent the break ins at the Capitol.  If they thought they had done a good job, they would not be resigning.  I think they all believed that Republicans and Trump supporters are peaceful and law abiding and don't break into buildings.  A small group of fanatical troublemakers worked their way up to the front of the mob and started breaking doors and windows.  Once the way was opened, a whole bunch of normally decent law abiding people in the crowd followed the troublemakers into the building. 

Facebook and Twitter hurt themselves

 By banning Trump.  The social media giants don't like The Donald, but 74 million Americans voted for him and will log into Twitter and/or Facebook just to see what Trump has to say.  Trump is still the president of the US and a whole bunch of people want to keep up with him.  Locking Trump off of Twitter and Facebook just kills their ratings, which is what advertisers pay for.  I believe the phrase is "shooting yourself in the foot."   The TV networks,NBC CBS and ABC, don't like Trump any more than Facebook or Twitter do but they never failed to put Trump coverage on because Trump is good for ratings. 

Rioters storm Capitol Building

 I don't approve.  Rioters breaking into our legislative chambers is the sort of thing they do in South America, not in the United States of America.  On the other hand it does show we have a lot of really pissed off people.  Messing with the election will do this to people. 

   They should have had enough cops, secret service, capital police, US Army, National Guard, FBI, you name them, to keep the rioters out.  Somebody did not prepare properly for this one.  I don't know who "somebody" is.  Will our noble MSM mention the name? 

The DC mayor declared a curfew for 6 PM.  Too late, it is full dark at 5 PM in DC.  You want to get people off the streets before it gets dark.  

Let's hope things simmer down.  If this kinda stuff keeps happening, it will give Joe Biden a lot of grief.

If not Pelosi, who??

 TV newsies are doing a lotta talk about re electing Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.  They point out that the Democrats only have a 5 vote majority in the House and that 10 Democratic reps voted against Nancy last time.  But they don't talk about who might replace Nancy.  "You cannot beat somebody with nobody." to quote some old time politico.  Unless and until I hear a name, I don't believe all the "Nancy won't be re-elected talk".

Microsoft is out of the browser business

 At least looking at the page hits I get on this blog.  The two big browsers are Safari and Chrome.  Poor old Firefox is nearly gone, although it is still #3, behind Safari and Chrome.  Microsoft's Internet Exploder doesn't show, and that new Microsoft browser, Edge, doesn't show either.  Color them gone.

For that matter, Apple OS is giving me more hits than Windows.