Why the US has a filibuster?

I’ll skip the colorful history of the filibuster which goes back to the Civil War.  I think we should demand more than just a razor thin majority of votes to pass a law.  Unless most of the legislators think the law is a good one, then it’s probably a bad one and should not pass.  The current Senate rules, which allow any senator to call for a vote of 60-40 to pass a law is a good idea.  If 40 senators think the law should not pass, that says to me that the law in question has some problems.  And the Republic is well served when that law is rejected.

  Democrats are calling to kill the filibuster, so that they can pass a number of very questionable laws that Republicans dislike and have filibustered.  I think that is a selfish and short sighted viewpoint on the part of Democrats. 

Humanity has very strong instincts to have children.

If we didn’t, the human race would die out.   Children provide emotional satisfaction, love, companionship and a feeling of wellbeing to parents.  Failure to have children can be a source of great unhappiness to the childless parents.

Last night Tucker Carlson was saying that the mobs of people out demonstrating against the Supreme Court’s cancellation of Roe vs. Wade; this group of people was largely unhappy with the thought that they would wind up having to raise children rather than just aborting them.  Nasty thought that.  He also said corporations like childless workers (they work hard and child care does not distract them from their company jobs). To this end the corporations are offering to pay for employee’s abortions, and creating “feminism” an ideology that is hostile to the idea of mothering children.

Let’s hope humanity’s strong built in urges to have children overwhelm this claptrap ideology.

From a letter to the editor of the Wall St Journal, today

 "Contrary to popular wisdom, Americans aren't opposed to wars for good causes, but they are tired of losing conflicts becauswe the US is unfilling to use its full strength."

Ron Kurtz

Alpharetta, GA.

There are only two exit strategies from a war, victory, or defeat. 

People who smell alike make friends more easily.

I saw this reasonable sounding idea somewhere on the Internet.  Sounded good, but their laboratory technique was flaky.  I cannot smell myself until I have gone without bathing for several days.  Back when I was gainfully employed I would take a shower every morning, just to avoid offending co workers with unmentionable body odor.  This suggests that people mostly smell of soap and water at work. 

   Then the authors used an “electric nose” to see whose scents matched up.  They never explained how this device worked, or how they calibrated it, and what they did to make sure it gave the same readings on the same people every day. 

  So it’s an interesting idea but the authors didn’t convince me that they had proved their idea worked.  

Elected legislatures are supposed to write the laws

Courts and judges are supposed to interpret existing law and show how existing law fits the case before the court.  Elected legislatures are subject to pressure from voters to vote this way or that.  Which is as it should be, legislatures are supposed to represent their districts.  We give judges tenure, often for life, to insulate them from popular pressure so that they can rule in accordance with the written law.     Unfortunately political pressure groups, back in the ‘60s and ‘70s found it easier to influence 5 out of 9 unelected lawyers than to gain the votes needed to pass a law in Congress.   Hence Roe vs. Wade in the early 1970s.  This led to responsible presidents nominating “strict constructionists” to the Supreme Court, judges who would rule in accordance with existing law and not make new law from the bench

The need for guns in America.

Guns in the hands of ordinary citizens have stopped a lot of crime over the years.  They stopped a crazy who was about to shoot up a church down south a while ago.  Every month American Rifleman carries nearly a dozen stories of ordinary homeowners taking care of home invaders, shop keepers or counter clerks fending off robbers, motorists fending off carjackers, and more.  Most of the time that armed citizen manages to hold the perps at gunpoint until the cops arrive.  Some of the time (not all that often) the armed citizen kills the perp right then and there.

   America would have fewer school shootings and other crime if we had more citizens who carried a gun.

   Men are taller, heavier, and stronger than women.  Women, especially young and pretty women, ought to consider carrying concealed firearms, just in case.

   The anti gun people make America more dangerous for ordinary citizens.   

  

Red Flag laws. Gun Confiscation?

Our Congress is talking about passing a gun control bill, still nameless in today’s Wall St Journal.  This bill would “encourage” states to pass “red flag laws”.  The journal did not say what “encouragement” means, a juicy federal payment for just passing a “red flag” law?  Or a bounty of cash for each person who has his firearms seized? Or???.   Far as discussion in the Journal or on Fox goes, all it takes is a judge’s say-so to confiscate a victim’s firearms.  Judges are nice people and all, but they know little or nothing about mental health, psychosis, or depression. No requirement for a board of experienced people, clergy, psychiatrists, law enforcement and others to evaluate the victim.  Victim does not get a chance to defend himself. 

   If the victim is so bent out of shape that we need to confiscate his firearms, is he not so bent out of shape as to require a stay in a mental hospital?  Find out what his problem[s] is/are and treat them.  Today we have a lot of very powerful drugs for mental problems. 

   Seizing the victim’s firearms is cheap, one visit by law enforcement and it is done.  Providing a bed in a mental hospital takes real money.  Confiscating the victim’s firearms makes the anti-gun people happy and does not cost much, which probably accounts for the popularity of the idea. 

 

Presidents and bikes

 I don't remember any US President on a bike, up until just now.  I can remember back thru Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Bush Sr, Bush Jr, Obama, and who else.  I don't remember every seeing photos of them on bikes, or reading about them going biking.  Until we get to Biden who falls off his bike in front of a lot of cameras. 

Run for the Hills.

 Fox News had a guy on Sunday (yesterday).  He claimed the stock market was going to tank, everybody should get out of stocks, keep the money in cash.  I hope he is wrong.  At least after selling all your stocks you could buy US bonds.  They pay 2-3% interest which is far more than banks are paying on deposits. Me, I am staying in the stock market. 

Fate of Taiwan?

We are hearing more tough talk from the Chinese about how Taiwan is (or ought to be) part of China, and how the Chinese might take military action to make it so.  Taiwan is 120 miles off shore and the Strait of Taiwan that separates the island of Taiwan from the Chinese mainland is blue water, deep enough to float aircraft carriers.  The Chinese army is very big, bigger than ours, probably bigger than the Russians.  Should the Chinese get that army ashore on Taiwan (and keep it supplied) it’s all over for Taiwan.  No way can Taiwan produce an army big enough to compete with the Peoples Liberation Army. 

    So the secret of keeping Taiwan independent is keeping the Chinese from crossing the Strait.  This has two angles, navy and air force.  If Taiwan can put up enough aircraft to sink the Chinese ships carrying the Peoples Liberation Army to their shores, they win.  This can be hard to do.  The newest Chinese war planes are nearly as good as ours, or maybe just as good as ours.  The Chinese just have to put up fighters to take out Taiwan’s bombers.  Taiwan has to put up bombers to sink Chinese ships, and fighters to fend off the Chinese fighters.  The bombers might be US made A-10’s; they don’t have to be 8 engine strategic bombers.

   Or the Navy angle.  Best is a bunch of submarines, they can stay submerged and just torpedo any Chinese vessel that needs it.  As long as they stay underwater they are pretty much immune to enemy aircraft. The US Navy and the Chinese Navy have about the same number of ships.  The effectiveness of ships is largely the effectiveness of the ship’s missiles.  When surface ships meet in combat they fire missiles at each other.  The ships with the best missiles win.  Best missiles have best range, best anti jamming features, best and strongest warheads, best guidance systems.  We don’t really know how good Chinese missiles are.  Afghanistan and Ukraine have showed American Stinger anti aircraft missiles to be excellent.  Ukraine has shown the American Javelin antitank missile as highly effective.  We can believe American naval missiles are just as good.    When it comes to aircraft carriers, the combat effectiveness lies with the carrier’s air group.  All the carrier vessel needs to do is launch ‘em and land ‘em.  It’s up to the aircraft to survive enemy fighters and get hits on targets.

   Used to be America gave Taiwan private assurances that the US navy would keep the Chinese from invading them.  Now, with WRBA and Biden, nobody knows what to think.  The Chinese may think we will let them invade Taiwan.  Who knows?

Christmas in July (well June is close to July)

 The UPS truck dropped off a carton for me this afternoon.  It had a nice brand new Dell laptop inside.  No bill, no indication of anyone except Dell, maker of the laptop.  I didn't order another laptop, I bought a new Acer in person from a computer store down around White River, two years ago.  Could it be one of those robocallers who say "some an so is charging something expensive to your Amazon Plus card" ?  I canceled Amazon Plus a year ago.  I'm still getting the calls.

   Could it be Youngest Son and his very nice girlfriend sending me a Birthday or Father's day gift?  There is a tiny icon on the shipping label of a gift box tied with a ribbon.  A name that could be very nice girlfriend's first name, with a last name appears on the shipping label.  I have not learned very nice girlfriends last name so could mean anything.  

   So far, Laptop has powered up, connected to my home network, updated Windows and is currently trying to get me to open  an account with Microsoft.  I have avoided that on my current laptop (Redkey) and my Dell desktop (small box).  Microsoft has tightened things up and it doesn't like my email address.  I will see what comes.  I am expecting Youngest Son and very nice girlfriend up here this evening so we ought to be able to straighten things out. 

The Martian Chronicles versus Fahrenheit 451

The Martian Chronicles is a collection of short stories.  It’s old. Copy write 1950.  Back then little was known of Mars short of what could be seen in a telescope.  The Martian satellites and rovers are half a century in the future.  The short stories are various, some tell of live Martians on Mars, dealing with Terran explorers.  Some tell of Terran explorer's trials and tribulations getting to Mars, settling on Mars, whatever.  I encountered the Martian Chronicles in grade school and I loved it.  I read it repeatedly on my own time.  Still have a paperback.  It broadened my mind a lot. 

  The other book Bradbury is known for, at least in science fiction circles, is Fahrenheit 451.  This is a simple tale of future Nazi like bad guys who burn books they don’t like.  I didn’t read it until much later and it never lived up to the promise of the Martian Chronicles. 

   For some reason school teachers liked Fahrenheit 451 far better than they liked Martian Chronicles.  Probably because the book burning had been going on the Germany less than 20 years before and teachers understood it and detested it.  Martian Chronicles had a lot of stories that required serious thinking to get your head around them.  It’s a pity; I think Martian Chronicles would have developed a love of reading in a lot of children.  Reading Fahrenheit 451 was just work, not much fun.

Robocallers who mumble

The robocallers have sharpened up their game this month.  Used to be, I would pick up the phone, and then wait five seconds.  (one thousand, two thousand ...) If the robocaller failed to answer within 5 seconds (fairly common) I would hang up.  Now, the robocaller picks up the phone after 2 or 3 seconds and starts its spiel.  If the robocaller mumbles, so that I cannot understand what company it is calling from, I hang up.  If the robocallers suggests I press 1 (or any number) I hang up.  

We need a law criminalizing robocallers.

Bye Bye Internet Exploder.

Apparently Microsoft is going to drop Internet Explorer.  The Wall St Journal; ran a long front page article lamenting this, flavored with a lot of IE users tears.  What they did not mention was the history.  Netscape Navigator was the first real web browser and Netscape was selling it for $30, It worked, and lots of people were sending in $30 to Netscape.  Micro$oft woke up to the power of browsers and wrote Internet Explorer to compete with Netscape Navigator.  Only Micro$oft included Internet Explorer as part of Windows, which made it free.  This torpedoed Netscape’s business plan of selling Navigator for $30.  They sued claiming unfair competition.  The Federal Trade Commission dismissed Netscape’s suit. 

   Which was the end of Netscape as a company.  Netscape Navigator was very good, and a bunch of computer savvy hackers maintained Navigator for many years.  Navigator is still out there, it calls itself Firefox now.  I still use it.  According to figures I see on my blog, Firefox is still number three in popularity amount browsers.  Micro$soft and Internal Explorer, and the follow on Edge are so far down they don’t even show.   

Crypto currency takes a dive. "Investors" take a bath.

 The old line financial instruments I understand are stocks, bonds, and bank deposits.  These either grant ownership in a valuable company (stocks) or are backed by promises to pay (bonds) from strong companies (Ford, Facebook, Apple, and many more) or strong governments (USA, Britain, Germany, Japan and others).Bonds issued by dead beats like Greece or Puerto Rico are often bought, but should not be since Greece has no way of paying them off.  Most banks understand this but there were a number of brain-dead European banks that bought Greek bonds because the Greeks offered juicy interest rates. 

   Lately we have crypto currencies like Bitcoin coming on the market.  These sold because they have been going up dramatically in value.  There is nothing behind crypto currencies except the desire to buy them from other investors.  When the other investors stop buying, the crypto currencies sink, badly.  Right now the Wall St Journal has been running stories every day or so about how badly the crypto currencies have tanked and how badly investors have been burned. 

   One of my rules is don’t invest in things that have no value of themselves.  Stocks and bonds can be sold in markets that are open 24/7 and cash can be in your checking account within a day or two.  You cannot do that with crypto currencies.

 

 

What ever happened to that Supreme Court Leaker?

 You would think that the chief justice of the Supreme Court is enough of a lawyer to interrogate the small number of people who had access to the leaked material and figure out who done it by now.  And fire him or her.  And publicise the name, making any future employment in the legal system very difficult. 

Supreme Court Security Force.

We ought to have one. It needs to report to the Supreme Justice only.  It shall protect the lives of the Justices and their families, and any other important Supreme Court personnel that the Chief Justice shall designate.  It shall preserve order around the Court and on any such real estate that the court may possess.  This force shall not involve itself in anyway with plaintiffs before the court.  Its job is strictly to protect Court personnel and property. It shall not arrest people for failing to show up for a court hearing or trial, that is the duty of the various executive law enforcement agencies such as the FBI.

   Size of force, office space, funding, and equipment shall be at the discretion of the Chief Justice.

Uvalde Cops.

I am seeing and hearing some bad things about the Uvalde cops performance at the Robb school massacre.  Apparently the cops stood around in the hall out side the classroom for an hour before the team from the Border  Patrol showed up and took care of business. 

  The commander of the Uvalde cops should had been in the school, on that floor and turned to his men and said "We are going in to stop that bastard right now.  Follow me."  His men would have followed immediately.  Looks like there was no leadership and so nothing happened.

Those Jan 6 hearings.

 I watched Fox News last night. They did not carry the Jan 6 hearings. Instead they spent the time trashing the hearings and the speakers there at. Some instant replay on ABC did not show much goodness coming out of the hearings.

Solar Panels just raise my electric bill.

 Home owners with solar panel roofs can sell the electricity back to the electric company, when the sun is shining of course.  Homeowners get paid the retail rate, 25 cents a kilowatt hour, for their meager contribution.  By rights they should only get paid the wholesale rate, 10 cents an kilowatt hour.  As it is, the power companies are required by law to pay a ridiculous rate for electricity that they don’t need.  The power companies are all paying staggeringly high mortgage bills on their real power plants.  They have to pay the mortgage whether the plants are running or not.  So the homeowner’s solar power does nothing for the power company, it just costs them money.  Which they have to recover from rate payers like me.

  Now the TV is telling me that Biden is lowering the tariff on solar panels to allow Chinese panels to be sold in the US.  We will be sending good US dollars to an unfriendly China to pay for solar panels that just raise my electric bill.  Lets go Brandon.

Gun Safety Rules

If you are new to guns and shooting you want to learn the four standard safety rules.  If you are an old pro you want to teach these rules to the newbies.

 

    1. Always treat every gun as loaded. 

    When you pick up a gun, even your own, check to make sure it is unloaded.  Open the bolt, or eject the magazine, or swing open the cylinder, and finally check the chamber for the presence of a live round.  Do this religiously and eliminate the old excuse “I didn’t know the gun was loaded”, used after a gun accident.  If you are going to clean the gun, work on the gun, dry fire the gun, do anything short of firing the gun, you want it unloaded, you don’t want an accidental discharge.  You heard of that fatal gun accident involving Alex Baldwin on the set of the movie “Rust”?  If Baldwin had followed this rule that accident would not have happened and his camera woman would be alive today.

2. Never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to kill. 

    Just in case you have failed on rule 1, this rule will keep you from killing someone or something by accident. 

3.  Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.  

       If you don’t press the trigger the gun will not fire.

4. Don’t fire until the gun is pointed at the target and behind the target is clear.

      Stuff (houses, people, pets, cars whatever) must not be behind the target.  The humble .22 Long Rifle rim fire slug will travel a mile.  More powerful rounds go even farther.      

Just pass something. Doesn't matter what.

 That's what I am hearing on the TV news.  They want something about guns passed, no matter what, just so long as the Congresscritters can say they passed something to prevent another Texas school shooting, even if it doesn't do anything worthwhile. 

Unexplained things from Jan 6

 There was that video showing people streaming into the capital building while a cop held the door open for them.  They showed that several times back just after Jan 6 but I have not seen it all lately.  I don’t understand that one at all. 

On the day after (7 Jan) both the Master of Arms and the Senate security chief resigned.  I have never seen or heard an explanation of that one.   Were these two men so ashamed of their performance that they wanted out, now?  Did someone in power like Nasty Pelosi or Chuckles the Schumer want them gone?  Something else?

The Democrats are planning hearings about Jam 6.  I wonder if either of those two questions will come up, and if they do (not very likely), what answers do we learn?

D-Day 6th of June.

On this day 76 years ago, the Anglo American armies landed on the French coast of Normandy and stood off a fierce German counter attack.  Then the allies drove forward and crushed the German armies in France, liberated Paris, and pushed into Germany.  This was a turning point in WWII, which had been raging for 5 years and had another year to go.  The Germans kicked off WWII by attacking and defeating Poland.  Then they proceeded to conquer Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. They drove the British into the sea at Dunkirk.  Fortunately the Germans never had the sea power needed to move their army across the English Channel. 

   At Churchill’s insistence, the British and the Americans were fighting the Germans in North Africa.  Churchill plainly saw that the British and American civilian populations would not put up with years of wartime privation without fighting the Germans.  Churchill sold his view to Roosevelt and Roosevelt ordered the American Joint Chiefs of Staff to prepare and execute Operation Torch, an amphibious landing in North Africa going up against the Germans, under Rommel.  This meant a lot of heavy fighting until Eisenhower and Montgomery surrounded the Germans at the site of ancient Carthage and took them all prisoner.  The Anglo Americans took nearly as many German prisoners as the Russians had taken at Stalingrad, a few weeks before.

  But, the North African victory was something of a sideshow compared with Russians and the Germans who were going head to head with armies of several million men each.  Not until the successful Normandy landing did the Anglo Americans confront the Germans with as big an army as the Russians were doing.

   Fortunately D-Day was a success.  It could have been a terrible failure.  Things were so touchy that Eisenhower, the supreme commander, man with the best view of the operation, prepared a short speech to give in the event that he had to withdraw the troops and accept defeat.  On the day before D-Day the weather was so bad that the Allied nearly canceled the operation.  One brave and sincere weatherman convinced Eisenhower that the weather would lift that night making the landings possible.  As it worked out, the Normandy landings, except Omaha beach, were successful, the troops got ashore, got their armor and artillery ashore and emplaced before the German counter attack got rolling.  Even blood soaked Omaha beach was secured in the end.     

My furnace is still firing, in June.

 June is supposed to be summer.  Must be more of that Global Warming. 

Biden caused the gas price hike, now he says it will go on.

Biden is doing the bidding of the extreme greenies, the ones who want us to live without gasoline, furnace oil, electric power, and natural gas.  I would like to see just one of those greenies spend a winter up here north of Franconia Notch. 

 Biden moved against the oil companies his first day in office.  He canceled the Keystone XL pipeline.  He stopped issuing leases to explore for oil and gas on federal land.  He stopped oil exploration in ANWR, (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a stretch of tundra above the arctic circle) and he jawboned the banks and financial operations to stop financing oil and gas drilling.  These adverse actions cut US oil and gas production by a million barrels a day.  And that is why gasoline prices have been skyrocketing ever since Biden was inaugurated.

 Biden was on TV just this morning saying that high gasoline prices will continue.  He won’t do anything about it.  You Americans just suck it up.   The extreme greenies rule.

 Every American should vote a straight Republican ticket in November.

 

Joe Biden’s anti gun speech this evening.

    1. He wants an assault weapons ban.

There is no difference between an “assault weapon” and any other sort of rifle.  So an “assault weapons ban” will outlaw all rifles.  The anti gun folks are happy with this, the more guns they can ban the better.  Biden claimed that the “assault weapons ban” we had back in the 80’s and 90’s reduced mass shootings and that mass shooting went back up when the “assault weapons bas” was allowed to expire in the ‘00s.  Karl Rove, speaking right after Biden said this was false, the “assault weapons ban” did not reduce mass shooting and when it expired mass shooting did not go up.  Given a choice between Joe Biden and Karl Rove, I will believe Karl Rove.

2. He want “red flag” laws.  These laws permit anyone, parents, girl friends, teachers, doctors, ministers, Scout leaders, anyone to go to a judge and say “So-and-so is acting weird, I think he is a danger to himself or others, and we should confiscate all his guns.  The target/victim does not get a chance to defend himself.  If we think so-and-so is that messed up then we ought to involuntarily commit him to a mental hospital.
3. He wants longer and harder background checks to buy a gun.  I don’t know about this one.  Last time I bought a gun at an auction we all had to wait around for a couple of hours while a guy from Corey’s gun shop telephoned somewhere to get “instant” background checks done.  They allowed that the buyers of black powder guns didn’t have to do background checks
4. He wants to require all gun owners to buy gun safes.  I suppose.  But if this goes thru I have no good place in my house to take a gun safe.  They are BIG, and heavy.
5. He wants to raise the age to buy guns to 21 years old.  This is a judgment call.  My children were responsible enough to buy guns at 18 years old. How about yours?
6. He wants to outlaw “ghost guns”, home made guns with no serial numbers.  This seems like a paperwork thing, lots of paperwork must require the gun serial number.  On the other hand a Dremel will take the serial number off any gun in a few minutes.
7. He wants to outlaw all magazines that hold more than 5 rounds.  This is pretty much all magazines.  The magazine for my 1911 army automatic pistol holds 7 rounds; the magazine for my Ruger 10-22 holds 10 rounds.  My Hi-Standard 22 revolver holds 9 rounds in the cylinder.  My Marlin 30-30 lever action holds 7 rounds in the tubular magazine under the barrel.  I would have to do something about every gun I own.  
8. He wants to revoke the gun manufacturer anti lawyer protection law.  The lawyers were beginning to sue the maker of any gun involved in crime or accidents.  Like suing the car company every time a car was involved in an accident.  No manufacturer has the time or money to fend off all those law suits.  Revoking the gun manufacturer’s protection amounts to putting every gun manufacturer out of business. 

The Brits are having a fine time

It's the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II.  They have the  queen, dressed in light blue, including a hat, looking fine despite her 96 years, standing on the balcony at Buckingham palace.  Later joined by the entire royal family.  The have a parade, redcoats in tall bearskin hats, cavalry wearing fancy helmets and breast plates, marching bands, horse drawn artillery, all putting on a good show.  Yuge crowd of British citizens to see the show.  Everybody, including Her Majesty, having a fine time.  Enormous support for the royal family is demonstrated.   

Long live the queen.

Lying to the FBI should not be a crime

 The FBI are cops.  To find out what is really going down they need to get off their duffs, get out of the office and do some investigating.  They should not be relying on perps telling them the truth.  Right now "Lying to the FBI" gives the cops an easy charge when they don't have the evidence to charge the perp with something real. 

  So I am OK with that DC jury acquitting Sussman, the "lying to the FBI" charge because I don't think the "crime" is legitimate.  Sussman sounds like a no-good-nick but the FBI  has to come up with some real evidence of a real crime. 

AR15 is popular

The Army adopted the AR15 under the designation M16 back during the Viet Nam war.  That’s maybe 60 years ago.  Many men learn to shoot the M16 in the Army and find they like it.  Later, in civilian life, when they want a deer rifle, they tend to buy the AR15 because they have shot it a lot in the army, and liked it.  It’s an easy gun to like, it’s light, and recoil is very low.  The .223 round is powerful enough for deer and it is light, so carrying a good many rounds is easy. 

   What’s the difference between and AR15 and an army M16?  They are basically the same rifle, most parts interchange.  The AR15 is a semi automatic rifle, pulling the trigger gives you one shot.  The M16 used to be fully automatic.  Pull the trigger back and hold it and BRAP, the entire magazine was fired off. The Army decided that this used up too much ammunition, leaving patrols out of ammo after a single brush with the enemy.  So the new M16’s only fire a three round burst instead of the entire magazine.  I suppose we can call this fully automatic.

   Anyhow that is why there are a lot of AR15s and AR15 clones out there.   Guys learned them in the Army and liked them.