So how do those containership ports work?

 Surely those big steel containers don't have paperwork showing where they need to go on the outside of the container somewhere.  Would not a few rough seas wash such paperwork overboard, or at least get it so wet as to be unreadable?  How do the crane operators, truckers, and railroad crews know where to send each container?  Clever computer programs that display the bill of lading for just entering the container serial number?  Do containers have serial numbers painted on the outside?  You would think they do, but I have never gotten close enough to see them. 

Ideally the crane operator would pull a container off the ship and drop it on a truck or a train and get it out of the port right then and there.  If they pile the containers on the ground in the port that slows things down.  The containers piled on the ground have to be picked up and loaded on trucks or trains sooner or later.  Which takes as much crane time as unloading them from the ship in the first place.  Faster is to unload the containers off the ship right onto trucks or trains and get the containers clean out of the port right then and there.   

I am thinking that a long train of double stack flat cars, pulling slowly along side the ship as the crane unloads is the way to go.  Only drawback is the train only goes to one place, so all the containers wind up somewhere like Salt Lake City from which they get sorted out and shipped to their owners.

And despite what union leaders say, the port can move more containers if it runs three shifts and operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

After Biden How can any American vote for the democrats?

 It has been only 10 months since Biden took office.  In that time he turned Afghanistan over to Islamic crazies, failed to get our non combatants and our Afghan friends to safety before pulling our troops out, hiked the price of gasoline from $2.10 to $3.40, clogged up the ports of LA and Long Beach, crushed GNP growth down to 2%, thrown a lot of people out of work with his vaccine mandates, and more bad stuff that I could think of if I took some more time.  This is just the stuff on the top of my head.

Not only is Biden a disaster, from whom we may never recover, the democratic party nominated him when there were a bunch of much better democrats (just about any democrat is better than Biden).  I say decent Americans ought to vote Republican to save our country, like the Republicans did back in 1860.

Wall St Journal is catching up

The mail person delivered the Journals for Tuesday, Wednesday and today.  No Thursday.  I started reading them.  The Tuesday edition has a long piece abput how ready the Taiwan armed forces are to repel an invasion from the communist mainland.  The piece concluded  that Taiwan's military was not very ready.  Not a word about navies.  Can the US Navy sink the communist invasion force while it is crossing the Taiwan Strait?  Does Biden have the stones to order our navy into action?  Is the US Navy, widely known for collisions  with merchant vessels (good seamanship there), competent enough to defeat the Chinese navy which will surely have orders to protect Chinese troop ships at all costs. 

That giant freebie bill

The Democrats seem to be having trouble rounding up the votes to pass their $3.5 Trillion (or $6 Trillion or $1.75 Trillion versions).  Strange that the Democrats don’t have a name for this bill, other than its cost.  Seem to me that the Democrats packed every social welfare freebie scheme there ever was into the original version.  Trouble is, although there are Democrats who like this freebie or that freebie, there are no Democrats that like all the freebies.  And each such Democrat thinks they can get the price of the bill down by dropping the freebies that they don’t like.  I believe this is how they got the bill down to $1.75 Trillion from $3.5 Trillion.  How low can you go?

   Answer, you can go to zero.  The country has gotten along without any of the freebies in this bill since 1789.  We can get along just fine without this bill just about for ever. 

   It would have been more straight forward to propose a separate bill for each freebie and try and pass it.  Instead they jammed all the freebies into one gigantic bill on the theory that the more popular freebies would pull the less popular freebies thru.  With luck, we can defeat the whole d**n thing and save ourselves from a humongous tax hike.

My Wall St Journal didn't make it.

 Second day in a row.  Many of my posts are inspired by pieces in the Journal.  Best thing to arrive in the mail was Rail Model Craftsman.  The model railroad hobby is shrinking.  The hobby no longer attracts young boys.  Partly because the real railroads don't run in a lot of places, plenty of boys can grow up and never see a real train. Partly because the models have gotten very expensive.  There was a time you could buy a kid a complete HO train set for $39.95.  Now it is $139.95.  A single freight car model kit used to be $3.  Now they go for $30 and more.  

  It is too bad.  Model railroading taught electricity, carpentry, metal work, use of air brush, photography, track work, and model building. 

Taiwan

 Taiwan is a sizable country, with a lot of high tech industry, that is friendly to the United States.  It is an island, off the coast of China, and China thinks it ought to be part of China, under the control of the Chinese Communist party (CCP). Taiwan used to be part of China until 1947 when the communists took over China.  The Chinese nationalists, Chiang Kai-shek's party, retreated to Taiwan (Formosa it was called in those days).  China has wanted to regain control of Taiwan ever since 1947.  Only in the last few years has China become strong enough to make that a possibility.  

When Nixon and Kissinger did the opening to China back in the 1960's, one part of the deal that the Chinese insisted upon was for the United States to stop promising to defend Taiwan from Chinese attack. We have kept our promise to the Chinese on that subject.  Our state department called this policy "strategic ambiguity", we would not say we would  defend Taiwan but we would not say we would not defend Taiwan.  

The strait of Taiwan is 120 miles wide and deep enough to float aircraft carriers.  To defend Taiwan our navy has to move into the strait and sink all the landing craft loaded with Peoples Liberation Army soldiers.  The Chinese will use their navy to defend their troop ships and landing craft.  As of right now the Chinese have as many ships in their navy as we have in ours.  We need to build some more navy ships in order to have a bigger navy than China does.  

Biden just came right out and said we would defend Taiwan, which is the right thing to say, we need Taiwan.  To back up those words we need a navy strong enough to prevent the Chinese from landing troops on Taiwan. 

Dreadful books are one reason kids aren't learning to read.

 

This evening Trey Gowdy said on his program that children’s school grades and scores have been falling since 2011.  He mentioned difficulties reading in particular.  I can agree with that, kids that can read, quickly and well, can learn everything else they need to know by reading about it.  A good deal of the loss I will lay at the feet of school teachers, who assign just dreadful books for the kids to read.  My youngest son had a good deal of trouble learning to read, so I did what I could to help him, including reading his assigned books so we could talk them over.  Most, perhaps all, of the assigned books were terrible.  “The Giver” about a distopia so harsh as to make 1984 look like summer camp. “Riding the bus with my sister” where the sister was autistic or something and the protagonist finally falls in love with the bus driver and marries him (Boring, extra boring).  “Of Mice and Men” assigned in 7^th grade which is entirely too young for a story about sexual dysfunction.  “Fahrenheit 451” instead of Bradbury’s much better “Martian Chronicles”.  A looser story about the mujahadeen in Afghanistan in which the young girl protagonist’s favorite camel gets turned into K-rations for the mujh to eat.  I don’t remember reading a single book that was of interest to Youngest Son, or to me, and I do a lot of reading.    

   About the only good books from my childhood still in the bookstores are Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.  We have picked up the Phillip Pullman books, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, and the Rick Riordan books, but that is about all.  We have lost Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan and the John Carter Martian stories). Andre Norton, (lots of good science fiction),  Robert Heinlein, the greatest science fiction writer, L Frank Baum and Ruth Plumley Thompson, the Oz books, Fletcher Pratt, The Battles that Changed History, Bruce Catton, civil war. 

   In short assign the kids too many really dreadful books to read, and we have taken a lot of the good readable books off the market. 

Wuhan Lab. Why is the US funding any kind of research in China???

 The TV is now discussing the US grant to the Wuhan Lab and what it was for.  Many people and National Institute of Health (NIH) say the grant was to do dangerous "gain of function" research.  Dr. Fauci denies this. My question is why were US taxpayer funds sent to a Chinese lab rather than an American lab?  American labs offer access to the raw experimental data, chance to interview the researchers, in general a necessary openness.  Chinese labs do what the Chinese government tells them to do.  In the case of Corona virus, which we think was created in the Wuhan lab, certainly a vast embarrassment to China, the CCP closes the doors, keeps foreign investigators out, conceals or destroys the lab results, and won't allow interviews with the researchers.  So why did US funding go to China?  Was it that the Chinese would perform "gain of function" research that US labs won't?  The Obama administration forbid "gain of function" research because it is very dangerous, and we don't want the know the results.  Gain of function research fiddles with the genes of the virus, bacterium, whatever to see what happens.  It often happens that the modified pathogen becomes much more deadly.  

  

I was taught to always treat every fire arm as loaded

 This teaching started in summer camp (riflery was taught in those days) when I was 11 years old.  This teaching continued up thru my Air Force years.  When picking up a gun the first thing you do is make sure it is unloaded.  This includes opening the chamber to make sure there is no round lurking there in.  Another basic gun safety rule is "Never point a gun at anything you don't intend to kill".    The recent tragic accident of Alex Baldwin and a "prop" gun indicates Alex Baldwin has not been properly trained in gun safety.  Had either rule been followed this killing would not have happened.  Surely Alex did not intend to kill his cameraman (woman). I feel sorry for his victims and for Alex. 

Solve the Truck Driver Shortage

 The TV is saying that the backup in West coast ports comes from a lack of truck drivers to get the containers out of the port and on their way to make room for another shipload of containers. I think the truck driver shortage could be easily fixed, just reduce the amount of paperwork done for each driver and allow 18 year old high school graduates to earn a truck driver's license. 

   Driving a truck is not that much different from driving a car, and most high school graduates have already obtained their driver's licenses.  Granted, a truck is bigger than a car and requires more attention to clearances and care to avoid sideswiping stuff, and backing a semi trailer rig is tricky.  I am thinking that about a week's behind the wheel practice will be enough.  If we decide that class room instruction in rules of the road and other stuff is necessary, have the classes taught by real truck drivers, not bureaucrats or ed majors.  

  Some will object that 18 years is not enough to be a responsible driver.  I say that is up to the hiring manager.  If he thinks the applicant for a job is trustworthy enough to handle his company's trucks, let him hire the kid.  I graduated high school quite some years ago.  All my classmates were responsible people, in whom you could entrust an expensive truck, and its valuable cargo.  I'd like to think that today's high school graduates are as good as all my classmates were years ago. 

Chinese Hypersonic missile Fractional Orbit Bombardment System

 Been a lot of talk about this.  It certainly indicates that Chinese missile engineering is good.  On the other hand I am not convinced that this weapon offers a worse threat than what we face already.  Standard ICBMs are extremely difficult to stop.  The warhead comes in at nearly orbital velocity, Mach 20 or 18,000 mph.  The warhead has a tough heat shield to prevent it melting from atmospheric friction. To shoot one down probably needs nuclear warheads on the anti missile.  

  At Raytheon many years ago I worked on the anti ballistic missile system radar.  It was a massive radar, definitely a fixed installation, no way it was ever going to be mobile.  It  was a phased array radar so it could generate multiple beams to track multiple targets.  The anti missiles had to accelerate at 100 gravities to get high enough to prevent their nuclear warheads from blowing the city they were defending away. 

In short, the new Chinese missile is impressive, but I don't see it as being all that more dangerous than standard ICBMs, of which we have a lot.  

Boeing is hurting.

 So said the Wall St Journal yesterday.  They cited a truckload of lawsuits resulting from the two crashes of brand new 737 MAX's.   They didn't talk about how the 737 MAX is selling now after the treacherous MCAS autopilot has been fixed.  How much revenue is Boeing bringing in from sales?  If it is enough to pay off the lawsuits, Boeing will survive.  If it isn't, bad things will happen.  

   They did mention that ONE Boeing employee, the senior test pilot, is in trouble with the law.  This guy convinced federal regulators that the very existence of the MCAS system did not need to be documented in any of the 737 manuals.   This seems like picking on a fairly low level employee who surely was just following direction from higher ups.  No mention of who the higher ups were. 

   The treacherous MCAS system was a band aid to make the 737 MAX fly just like the plain old 737 to avoid the cost of pilot training to fly the 737 MAX.  The 737 MAX was a plain 737 after an engine swap.  The new engines gave better fuel consumption, maybe 5% better.  With jet fuel going for $3 a gallon, and a full fuel load being a couple of 18 wheeler tank trucks, say 20,000 gallons, 5% fuel savings might be 1000 gallons, or $3000.  Nice chunk of change.  The new engines are bigger in diameter than the old ones, which meant they had to be slung somewhat lower under the wing.  Which meant that increasing the engine thrust, say for takeoff, had an increased tendency to push the aircraft's nose up.  Too much of this and the aircraft will stall, and fall like a stone.  So MCAS was supposed to give a bit of down horizontal stabilizer to counter the nose up tendency.  The two crashes of brand new 737 MAXs were blamed on the MCAS system going crazy and diving the plane into the ground.  

  The Journal piece did not mention who at Boeing, engineers or suits, OKed the MCAS design and what testing was supposed to be performed on each aircraft. 

Exit Strategy from a War??

 Only one exit strategy is acceptable, victory.  Destroy the enemy armed forces, occupy the enemy lands and capital, kill or capture enemy leaders.   Captured enemy leaders to be tried for war crimes.  If we are not prepared to pay the price to bring victory, stay out of the war. 

Down with voting machines. Up with paper ballots

 Voting machines are just desktop computers running an "I-am-a-ballot" program.  They can be hacked over the internet, while stored at city hall, while being set up for election day, and probably twenty other times and places as well.  Paper ballots, marked by the voter get checked by the voter and counted and saved in case of a recount.  Attached is a long screed against voting machines.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/11/02/computer-experts-sound-warnings-safety-americas-voting-machines/6087174002/

Colin Powell dead at 84.

 We have lost a great American.  He served his country for many many years, as a soldier, and later as advisor to presidents and secretary of state.  If he had run for president I would have voted for him. We all miss him. 

How the Fed Finances U.S. Debt.

 Wall St Journal op-ed last Thursday.  Written by Judy Shelton.

Strange article.  Never mentioned US bonds (T-bills).  First it talks about a silly plan to mint a $1 Trillion dollar platinum coin, deposit it in the Federal Reserve, and claim we are solvent.  Even if such a toy were 6 feet across, it would not be worth a TRILLION dollars.  Plus, the Fed can print all the plain old dollar bills that might be needed to redeem T-bills as they come due. 

   Then we have a strange quote from Janet Yellen.  “[It] (the platinum coin thing) is equivalent to asking the Federal Reserve to print money to cover deficits that Congress is unwilling to cover by issuing debt. It compromises the independence of the Fed, conflating monetary and fiscal policy.” 

   Wow!  I, and everyone else in America, expects the Fed to prevent a default on our T-bills by any means possible, selling more T-bills if Congress raises the debt limit, or just printing more Benjamins.  The inflationary effect of selling T-bills is about the same as for printing Benjamins.  T-bills are “near money” according to my old college economics text (Samuelson).  They are nearly as good as cash; investors who pay cash for them know that they can turn their T-bills back into cash any business day.  We run a bond market open 5 days a week, and you can sell your T-bills anytime you please and receive a cash payment within a couple of business days.

  Interesting factoid, The Fed gives the interest it earns on various things it bought to the Treasury.  This was $87 billion last year.  A nice chunk of change. 

  There are more words in the piece, but they are things everyone knows. 

Eaves vs gutter screens

 The TV has been heavily advertising gutter screens, pieces of perforated metal that fit on the top of the gutters, and let the rain water in and block out the leaves.  Cool.  Of course my house does not have gutters at all, so I don't need gutter screens.  I have nice big deep eaves, so the rain water that runs off my roof falls at a decent distance from the house and does not cause my any trouble.  

   The other benefit of good deep eaves is heating and cooling of the house.  My eaves allow the sun to shine in my south facing windows in the winter, and they block the sun in the summer to keep the house cool.  I think every house ought to have good deep eaves. 

A Couple of more good bright trees up in Franconia Notch.

 

 

 

Welfare for lawyers.

 Eight years ago the Tsaernov brothers bombed the Boston Marathon.  They killed three people, injured better than 100 people, including 16 people who lost limbs from the bombing.  The older brother was killed by police during his arrest, the younger brother ,Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was arrested, alive, and given a trial.  The jury found him guilty and condemned him to death.  That was 8 years ago.  For the next 8 years lawyers have been collecting fees to rehash the case.  Today they got their arguments to the US Supreme Court.  How much longer lawyers will be able to collect fees from this case is unknown.  The crime was murder, which is an offense tried and punished by the states.  It is not a federal crime.  Why the Supremes are messing with a state crime and a state court sentence of death, is unclear.  Justice delayed is justice denied. 

Covid Vaccine Mandates Unnecessary

 I got vaccinated back in February and March of this year.  Since then something like 250 million shots have been administered in this country.  Less than 10,000 adverse reactions have occurred.  That is a success rate of 99.996 %.  Success doesn't get much better than that.  Very few cases of covid have occured in vaccinated people.  So I believe the covid vaccination is safe and effective.  I got vaccinated, and I will ask my doctor about getting a booster shot when I see him later this week.  I'll do what ever he recommends.  

  There are a number of people who don't want to get vaccinated.  I think they are wrong headed, but hey it's a free country (at least it used to be). If people don't want to get vaccinated I don't think we ought to be forcing them by firing them from their jobs and not allowing them into stores and restaurants and what ever.  They can walk around, spreading covid, I'm vaccinated so they won't give it to me.  If you are worried about them giving covid to you, go get vaccinated, that works, it's free. 

Tucker Carlson was saying that the humongous flight cancellations on Southwest Airlines  over this Columbus day weekend is caused by workers and flight crew who don't want to get vaccinated taking sick days and staying home.  These highly trained people are impossible to replace.  We would do better if we dropped this vaccine mandate stuff. 

Infrastructure should be a state and local business.

 Infrastructure is roads and bridges and dams and airports and flood control.  This stuff only helps the residents of the states in which it gets built.  I think such projects should be locally funded.  He who spends the money should raise the money.  This tends to keep the spending down.  If the feds just hand cash to the states, the states will make sure that they spend it all whether they need it or not.  Use it or loose it. 

   Congress is debating a one and a skosh TRILLION dollar infrastructure bill right now.  A good chunk of this is the federal highway trust fund, financed by the federal gasoline tax.  It was created back in the Eisenhower administration to build the interstate highway system.  They finished that job 40 years ago.  But they have kept right on spending year after year.  We could shut down the federal highway trust fund, and shut down the federal gasoline tax.  And tell the states that they can do any road building they deem necessary and they can raise the state gasoline tax to pay for it.  Want to bet that spending would go down now that the states would have to raise the money to pay for frills like the Boston big dig?

   I think the country would be well served to get the feds out of the infrastructure business.  The states will do a better job.

 

 

Compression Ratio. What is it? How high is enough?

   Gasoline engines (car engines) work by igniting a flammable fuel air (gasoline air) mixture when the piston is at top dead center. The heat of the burning fuel creates a high pressure in the cylinder and that pressure forces the piston down.  Heat energy (from the fuel burn) is converted into mechanical energy to turn the wheels of the car.  As long as the piston can travel down, heat energy gets converted into mechanical energy.  Unfortunately, in real practical engines, the piston reaches bottom dead center, after a travel in the order of four inches.  At bottom dead center the exhaust valve opens and the burning mixture, still very hot, is wasted to the atmosphere.  If we could build engines where the piston could keep going down, for maybe 10 feet, we could get a lot more work out of the fuel we burn.  Unfortunately such an engine would never fit under the hood, or even inside the length of a car. 

   It was found that the measure of engine efficiency is the ratio of the volume of the combustion chamber and top dead center, to the volume of the entire cylinder at bottom dead center.  You can raise the compression ratio by making the combustion chamber really really small, and living with the four something inch stroke of the typical engine. 

   In gasoline engines something else limits the possible compression ratios.  The piston compresses a flammable mixture of fuel and air. Compressing a gas (a fuel air mixture) heats it.  Sooner or later the mixture will spontaneously burst into flame.  The mixture burning on the compression stroke is called knocking in automotive circles.  Most of us have heard the noise, a kind of banging, when lugging up a hill, rpms too low, load too high.  Knocking is more easily heard on standard shift cars.  Slush box cars are programmed to down shift, get the rpms up, and avoid knocking.  The onset of knocking depends upon the grade of the gasoline.  80 octane regular gasoline is about as low as we go in the United States and will not allow a compression ratio higher than 8:1.  100 octane high test is quite knock resistant and can support a compression ratio as high as 13:1, beloved of car racers. 

 In recent years the advent of microprocessors in cars has allowed compression ratios as high as 10:1 to run on 80 octane regular gas.   The microprocessor detects the onset of knock and adjusts the ignition timing to control the knocking. 

   The greenies have been working hard to reduce car fuel efficiency.  They believe that car exhaust emissions of various nitrogen oxides are the cause of LA smog, and they have written regulations to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions.  Nitrogen oxides are formed whenever air is heated to extreme temperatures.  High compression ratios yield extreme temperatures as well as high fuel efficiencies.  To pass the greenies nitrogen oxide limits most car makers are reducing compression ratios and taking the hit to fuel economy. 

   In actual fact, nitrogen oxides all wash down in the rain, all nitrates are soluble.  And nitrogen oxides are good for plants; the botanists call the stuff fixed nitrogen.   When you buy fertilizer for your lawn you are buying nitrogen oxides. 

   LA smog happens when nitrogen oxides react with oily vapors from spilled fuel, loose gas caps, and worn engines that burn oil.  We could reduce smog by clamping down on oily vapor emissions and permit car engines to run high compression ratios to get good gas mileage. 

Leaf Season. Not quite peak yet, but getting there

 

Raising the Federal Debt Limit.

The Feds have two ways to pay for their many many expenditures.  One is taxes, the other is borrowing.  Right now taxes are high enough to pay for about 60 odd percent of the federal budget, and the other 40 percent comes from borrowing. 

The Feds borrow money by selling Treasury bonds (T-bills).  The bonds are a promise to repay the money borrowed within a fixed period, so many years.  The United States has an excellent credit rating.  We have never defaulted on our bonds, and the US dollars are good money all over the world, mostly because the Americans will sell nearly everything that exists for US dollars.  We have product on the shelf, ready to ship, or we will make it to order.  This is far better than the Russians ever did, all the Russians have to sell is crude oil, and most of their manufactured goods are so shoddy that nobody will touch them for any money.  We have stuff like jet airliners that you cannot get just anywhere.  We have top notch pop performers; we have best selling movies, best selling books, unbeatable tourist attractions, and stylish clothes, everything you can imagine. 

   My old economics text called T-bills “near money”.  They are almost as good as money, there is a 5 day a week, 8 hours a day market in which you can sell your T-bills for real cash.  An investor can buy T-bills and not feel he is any poorer, he thinks of T-bills as nearly as good as cash, and convertible to cash in a couple of business days.

   And so, to keep some limits on things, there is a federal law, the debt limit, that puts a hard limit on the amount of T-bills the federal government can sell.  Every so often as the feds borrow more and more, we raise the debt limit.  Such a time is upon us, the US treasury is saying they will hit the debt limit this month.  The Democrats don’t have the votes to pass a debt limit hike; they need some Republican votes to go along.  The Republicans, looking at the Democrats plans to pass $3.5 TRILLION (or maybe more, depends on how you count it) worth of pork and welfare, are saying “We won’t vote to hike the debt limit”. 

   The Democrats are crying that without a debt limit hike the US will default on its bonds.  This is malarkey.  Federal debt service (mostly paying off T-bills as they come due) is like 10 percent of the federal budget.  Taxes are enough the pay 60 percent of the federal budget, so paying the debt service is no real problem.  What will be a problem is deciding what to cut once the Treasury can no longer raise money by selling T-bills.  We are talking about 40 percent of the federal budget, a handsome chunk of change.  We can furlough most of the federal bureaucrats, stopping their pay.  We can stop paying for a lot of welfare and school lunches and other freebies.  We could stop federal highway subsidies, farm program price supports.  We will have to keep paying social security benefits because of the political outcry that would occur if social security went away.  We probably need to keep paying the armed forces, we may need them badly. 

Uninstalled AVG antivirus. Computer runs faster.

I was trouble shooting another problem.  An Internet posting suggested turning off antivirus might fix the problem.  Not knowing how to turn off AVG, I uninstalled it.  That did not fix my problem (cannot send email) but it did speed up my computer a lot.  Particularly noticeable was faster internet speeds with DISH.

The TV ads mostly sell health

 Just keeping score this evening I counted 13 ads for health stuff, pills, copperfit, lawyers to call to sue companies for health damaging stuff.  Health was the biggie.  They are selling health.  This probably has something to do with the US spending 19% of GNP on healthcare, twice what any other country in the world spends on healthcare.

There were 15 other ads for realtors, pans, mypillow, air freshener, Angi, vacation spots, watches, computer stuff, food, and foreign cars.  All of these other ads were onesies and twosies, nothing like the 13 ads for various health products. 

Justice Kavanaugh tests positive for Covid according to Legal Insurection

 And just how reliable is that test?  The justice has been vaccinated and is asymptomatic.  Sounds like a false positive due to poor quality control on the test.  In my book, you don't have covid until you show some symptoms. 

Nancy and the Democrats throw in the towel

 This morning the TV news announced that ONE of the TWO big spending bills will not be brought to a vote.  Presumably this means that Nancy counted votes and found that the bill would loose.  So, better not to have a losing vote, just don't have a vote at all.  I think the bill that got withdrawn today was the smaller $1.5 TRILLION bill that had a fair amount of real infrastructure spending in it,  Infrastructure is stuff like roads, airports, stuff you can see and touch.  There is a second $3.5 TRILLION spending bill kicking around which is just hand outs, freebies and pure pork.  With luck, that one will die quietly in a corner somewhere, and soon.

Fox News shows off their totally remodeled DC studio

 It looks cool.  Lots and lots of TV sets everywhere.  Painted a light shade of Landlord White.  The Fox people talked about all the fancy electronic stuff built in to their nice new studio.  I wondered if they had done anything about all the emergency vehicle sirens, gunshots, and other loud noises that kept interrupting the programming on their old studio.  Nobody said anything about that.