Shoot down the NORK missile launch?

Pudgy NORK dictator Kim Jung whats-his-face is threatening an ICBM test launch of a missile that could reach the US with a nuclear warhead in a few days. 
   Today's Wall St Journal suggests that we ought to shoot it down.  The Journal would have a Navy Aegius cruiser standing off shore put a SAM thru the NORK missile as it boosts up. 
   Not a bad idea.
   If I was doing it, I would have an Air Force AC-130 gunship orbit the launch pad and ventilate the NORK missile with 20mm Vulcan cannon fire.  This would need some fighter escort against NORK fighters, and some Wild Weasel support against NORK SAMs, but it's doable.  The strike force could assemble out to sea, over international waters, and fly into NORK airspace only after intelligence positively located the missile standing on the pad.  North Korea isn't all that big and a strike force flying at 400 knots can be anywhere inside North Korea in no time at all. 

What to do about Obamacare?

Obamacare is a disaster.  The costs it lays on business has stalled hiring, stalled expansion, and generally slowed the economy.  Obamacare is one of the reasons for the miserable 1% growth of GNP in the Obama years.  GNP growth used to be 3.5% back before Obama.  Obamacare along with some other misguided Obama policies knocked it down to 1%.  That's not enough growth to offer employment to match our population growth let along reduce unemployment and raise wages.
   And, the US spends too darn much on healthcare.  We spend 19% of GNP on healthcare, where as all the other countries in the world only spend half that.  And US health is no better than many other countries who spend much much less.  This means that US exports have to be priced 19% higher than direct manufacturing cost, just to pay for the workers healthcare.  Whereas our international competitors, places like Japan, the EU, South Korea, even Canada, only have to mark their products up 9.5%   That's a crippling price disadvantage in the marketplace.  And it drives US companies to move operations overseas to avoid US healthcare costs. 
    The Obamacare law is some 10,000 pages long.  Nobody can read 10,000 pages of legal gobble-de-gook and understand it, even if it doesn't drive them mad.  Trump needs to repeal all 10,000 pages just to eliminate surprise clauses springing to life and doing badness.  Modifications or amendments are a slippery slope that open the door to all sorts of crookedness.  Trump needs to kill the whole thing, root and branch.  If there are parts of Obamacare that people want to keep,  pass them as new laws and Trump will sign them.
   Most Americans (say 80%)get their healthcare insurance thru their employers, or from Medicare after they retire.  Obamacare only helped the self-employed, and the medium poor, the extremely poor get Medicaid.  First thing to do is to increase competition by allowing interstate sale of health insurance.  Any insurance company, based in any state, should have the right to sell insurance in all 50 states, WITHOUT doing any paperwork anywhere except in their home state.  Right now, to sell insurance in any state, the insurance company is required to do a couple of tons of paperwork for the state "regulators".  For small rural states (like NH) most insurers just don't bother, the market ain't that worthwhile.  Which is why we only have two companies offering insurance up here.  Allow interstate sales and we would get more choices and better prices.
   Then to curb drug price ripoffs, $800 Epipens and $100 pills,  we need to allow duty free import of drugs from any first world country, Canada, the EU, Japan and places like that.  Any drug the authorities of a first world country have approved can be imported, even if the US FDA hasn't approved them yet.  FDA will scream and cry, and so will big Pharma, but too bad. 

Did Snowden have a "Need to Know"?

You gotta blame NSA for first of all, not checking Snowden's background before issuing him a security clearance.  You would think a simple background check would have turned up evidence of flakiness.  Back when I got a Top Secret clearance, the FBI followed up and interviewed my references.  I do remember going back to my high school reunion and running into old Fred Swan, teacher of physics, swim team coach, and all around decent man.  Fred says to me, "Did you know the FBI has been around asking about you?"   I wonder if they did the same for Snowden.
   Second of all, for granting him access to so much stuff.  We used to have a doctrine of "Need-to-Know".  You didn't get to see classified material unless you had a clearance, AND, a need to know the information. 
   Seems like NSA gave Snowden free run over all their classified.  And I never did hear just what Snowden was supposed to be doing on the job.  Other than passing every thing to the Russians. 

Obama tries to delegitimize Trump with Russians

Obama is making this big Russian hacking fuss to make Trump's election win seem illegitimate.  He is saying that Trump would not have won with out help from Russian scumbags.  Obama came out on TV and blamed the Russians for the Democratic National Committee hacks and claimed they tipped the election to Trump.  Trump went on TV and pooh-poohed the Russians-did-the-hack theory.  And surprise, surprise,  the voters believed Trump's story rather than Obama's.  Even when Obama claimed the CIA and 17 other intelligence agencies support the Russians-did-it story, the public has real doubts about the intelligence and honesty of CIA and 17 other faceless intelligence agencies.
   So Obama declared 35 Russian "diplomats" to be persons non grata and must leave the country ASAP.  I'm thinking Obama did that to support the Russians-did-it story rather than to make the Russians smart.
    And for a side effect, it might make President Trump's dealing with the Russians harder in the future. That makes it a twofer.
    I will grant that the DNC hacks and the Podesta email hack didn't help Hillary, but I won't think they were decisive.  The Hillary private server, which was outed by the New York Times, hurt Hillary more.   

Happy New Year

Things to be thankful for.  The endless election is finally OVER.  Maybe in a few more weeks the MSM will figure that out too.   And the Republicans won.  Hallelujah.   And old 2016 may be the year the MSM finally blew it and people no longer believe what they say.  And I'm gonna miss Carrie Fisher.  She put a lot of life into the Star Wars movies. 
   Things to hope for.  Economic recovery in the US.  1% GNP growth is miserable and just this side of Great Depression.  Let's do better in 2017. 

Traveling for Christmas

This year, a breakthru in family Christmas tradition.  Instead of all the children coming home to my place, I went down to spend the holidays with daughter Karen in DC.  Due to the load of Christmas presents, including a cradle for the coming child, dislike for air travel, and desire to have the car with us in DC, we drove down from NH. 
   Looks to me like the infrastructure between here and DC is a pretty good shape.  Even clapped out New York has down some work on the Cross Bronx expressway (I95) and the potholes are filled.  Looks like they resurfaced it.  Still a lot of medium bad chuckholes between the Connecticut border and the Bronx.  New York is still the infrastructure fail in the North East.  I'm thinking all the happy infrastructure talk on TV is coming from New Yorkers like Trump, who only see New York roads.  And maybe DC roads, DC has a fine herd of chuckholes and waterbars so bad I feared for my suspension.  Fortunately the Buick is pretty tough and nothing broke.   NJ has finished widening out the NH Turnpike.  The twelve lane wide part now is usable all the way to Philadelphia. 
   And the NJ tolls are fierce.  The GW bridge toll is now $15.  The NJ Turnpike toll from the bridge to Philadelphia was $11.80.  Then with the Del Mem bridge ($4), the Del TP toll ($4), the Maryland TP toll ($4) and the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel Toll ($8)  toll money is getting up closer to gas money. 
   Noticed a whole bunch of new pricey electric signs flashing harmless platitudes.  More infrastructure money at work.  And the shiny new mile markers, every 0.2 miles are spreading, like kudzu.  Wanna bet each one of those mile markers costs us taxpayers $100 to buy and plant? 
   Daughter's DC neighbor hood is coming up.  New condo's for yuppies under construction.  They finally got the trendy H Street trolley car to run.  Took 'em five profitable years. Everybody loves it, it's quaint, and it's free since they haven't figured out how to collect fares in cars with front and back doors.  At least so says Daughter.  The new cars have TWO, not one but TWO hinges in them to allow the car to handle tight curves.  That's two hinged sections to leak rainwater.  When the Boston T, with the sharpest curves in the nation, bought new cars from Boeing Vertol, they only needed one hinged section.  And the hinge has leaked rainwater onto passengers for 20-30 years now.  By the Way, the H Street trolley line runs straight as an arrow, no curves at all. 

Rogue One, The New Star Wars movie

Saw it today in the Smithsonian Air & Space museum Imax theater.  Nice big screen , good sound system, good seats.  It was in an  annoying three D, glasses required.  This three D system had a terrible depth of field problem.  Everything in the foreground or background was really blurry, only the middle ground was sharp.  PITA.  Camera work was only fair, too many superquick shots, cut too fast.  Too many scenes poorly lit.
   Other than that, it was a decent flick,  Better than the last one, far better than the three followon movies.  The story is set before the time of the first Star Wars (A New Hope) and has a whole new set of characters, no reviving of the old traditional cast,except Darth Vader.  The story line is the Rebel Alliance obtaining the Death Star plans that Luke and Leia will deliver in A New Hope.  We have a dynamic and pretty heroine, Jinn sonething-or-other  who has a good role and plays it well.  We have a handsome hero, whose name escapes me, (whole flick was weak on names) who has a good role but Jinn has a better one.  We have a blind and somewhat crazy Jedi master who is into whacking down Storm Troopers with a staff. We have a big ugly mercenary, with a heart of gold and a taste for heavy weapons.  And a big long armed long legged Droid with a sense of humor.   Lots of  booms amd blasts and space combat and special effects, all nicely done.  The flick keeps things moving and isn't too long. 
   A good Christmas flick. 

On the road for Christmas

Posting may be a little thin, perhaps nonexistent for Christmas week.  I am going to spend the holidays with my children, and may not get around to posting til I get back.

Rehashing Ancient History on NHPR

Way back in 1953, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were tried, convicted and executed for passing the secret of the atomic bomb to the Russians.  As far as the judge and the jury were concerned, the Rosenbergs had given the secret of the ultimate weapon to our mortal enemies.  The Left (we called them communists back then) in those days called the Rosenbergs innocent victims of a judicial murder.   In later years declassification of the "Venoma Papers", intercepted communications between the Soviet embassy and Moscow, showed the Rosenbergs guilt.
   And so, better than 60 years later, NHPR ran a lengthy piece, rehashing the whole affair.  Apparently there are two Rosenburg children, still alive, who are petitioning Obama to posthumously  pardon Ethel Rosenberg, their mother.  They feel she is innocent, and apparently, since they are only asking in her name, they finally think Julius, their father, was guilty as charged.
   I'm so glad NHPR brought this bit of ancient history back to life, and as befits NHPR's rather lefty stance, they give the Rosenbergs a very sympathetic treatment. 

Executive Action by Tom Clancy

I wonder if Donald Trump has read it?  In this novel, Tom Clancy's hero,  Jack Ryan, becomes President of the US.   Ryan receives plenty of sage advice on how the Presidency works,  and the good guys win in the end.   Plenty of US political ideas get tossed around, and in some cases nailed to the carpet.  It's a fun read.

Should you warm up your car engine in winter?

Popular Mechanics and Road & Track are saying "NO!"   I say yes.  In proper cold weather, say below zero, your engine oil gets stiff and sticky.  The oil pump may be be able to force enough thick and sticky cold oil thru the engine bearings to prevent damage to the engine.  And, the defroster won't throw any heat til the engine warms up. 
   What you ought to do, is give the engine 20-30 seconds at idle to get the deep chill off it.  Then drive away gently, no foot to the floor acceleration, until the temp gauge gets up somewhere near normal, or the defroster starts throwing a little heat.   Takes a few minutes and then all is well. 
   There is no need to leave the car idling for 10-20-30 minutes before driving it, but you do want to keep your foot out of it until the engine is warm. 

The NRA counts coup

The new American Rifleman magazine, the NRA house organ, got to me today.  In it, the NRA leadership spent several pages patting themselves on the back for Donald Trump's win.  NRA backed Trump from the very beginning and are overjoyed at his win. 
   Aside from a few Democrats bad mouthing the NRA,  the MSM hasn't let out a peep about how effective they were.  Actually, the NRA has several million dues paying members,  mostly single issue, support of second amendment voters.  The NRA magazine goes to all of them.  Every election American Rifleman will have a two page center spread, listing every office in each state, from US senator down to dogcatcher, and naming all the candidates, and giving each candidate a grade, A thru F, on where they stand on the second amendment.  The membership reads the magazine and finds it highly credible, much more so than any of the MSM. 
   I'm thinking that several million motivated single issue voters swung more weight in the election than anything the Russians could even think of doing.  Funny that the MSM never writes about it.  Probably the MSM writers are all city boys who don't like guns. 

How "Identity Politics" failed Clinton

"Identity Politics" as played by Hillary, amounted to identifying some group[s], blacks, women, Hispanics, LGBT, and others, naming them, and asking them to vote for Hillary.   Some did, just being named is powerful, but many did not, because Hillary never addressed their wants and grievances.  She just asked  for the votes.  No quid pro quo.  No campaign promises. 
   In some cases, the "identity group" wants something repellent to the rest of the country.  Hispanics want easier immigration and a path to citizenship for the illegals allready in the country.  This is anathema to large number of  regular voters.  Women want free contraceptives and abortion on demand which is anathema to large numbers of voters. 
   To do "indentity politics" well, you need some genuine members of the group, leaders, come out and campaign for you.  Hillary didn't have any prominent blacks, hispanics or LGBTs on TV, calling for Hillary's election.  Actually The Donald did better in this respect.  He had Ben Carson, a highly respected black man, come out and publicly support him.
   My advice to the Democrats in the aftermath of this year's election, is to go back to political basics, come up with a party platform, that states issues, that actually mean something real to voters.   This requires some head banging within the party to accept some controversial issues.  What to do about pipelines and transmission lines, oil exploration, charter schools, taxes,  law enforcement, and more are all controversial inside the Democratic party.  One reason Hillary never campaigned on any of them is that doing so would have brought a storm of criticism down on her from the numerous opponents of each and every issue. 

Companies need to train their employees

Companies are wailing that they cannot find workers with the right skills to fill some 5 million job openings.  Stop wailing.  Hire some likely young guys (and girls).  Run 'em thru a training course, on company time and on payroll.  Flunk out a few losers, and in a few months you have all the new skilled workers you might need. 
   But, after we spend money on training them, they quit and go to work for our competitors.  That mean you aren't treating them right, not enough pay and benefits, or an unpleasant work environment (dirty dingy shop, nasty foremen, crummy hours, and other things) 
    The public schools need to teach the three Rs, reading riting, and 'rithmetic.  It's unreasonable to expect them to teach CNC machining, vapor reflow soldering, digital signal processing, use of logic analyzers, operation of bulldozers and backhoes.  This sort of specialized state of the art technology must be taught by industry, not public high school.  Let the schools teach fundamental things of use anywhere and let companies teach their special technologies. 
   Judging by the corporate whining about lack of suitably trained workers, I don't think many American companies understand this. 

What does CIA know about hacks and hacking?

Probably very little.  CIA's history is not encouraging.  They failed to predict the breakup of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.  They spent eight years attempting to destabilize the Bush administration with embarrassing leaks and the Valery Plame affair.  They  claimed the Iranians had closed down their nuclear weapons program. They failed to warn of 9/11. They still have their agents working out of US embassies.  Not an impressive record.
   Today CIA is claiming the hacks against the Democrats were done by the Russians.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Granted the Russians have the capacity, but so do a bunch of others, ranging from individuals, small groups, large groups and plenty of nation-states.   China and the NORKs have the capability and they don't like us much.  ISIS has the capability and they really don't like us.  Plus the democrats were a pretty soft target.  Word has it that Podesta was so clueless as to fall for a phish email, you know the ones that claim there is a problem with your account and you need to give us your password to make it right.  According to the Wall St Journal, the Republicans had tighter security and the hacker[s] failed to penetrate them. 
   I'd give more crediblity to the Russian theory if I heard it from some truly competent people, like Microsoft, Kaspersky, Malwarebytes or even NSA.  I used to do contract work for NSA, and NSA did have people who knew what they were doing.  I cannot say that about CIA. 

That Russian Hacking

The MSM are still talking it up.  Spreading the narrative that Hillary would have won, except for the Russians.  Sounds better than Hillary lost because of her nasty background going back 30-40 years, and she didn't promise to get the country back on the right track.  Polls from before the election showed everyone thought the country was on the wrong track.  Hillary never addressed this issue (and a lot of other issues) whereas The Donald promised to get the country back on the right track.  The voters found both candidates to be equally personally distasteful, but they all knew the country was on the wrong track, so they voted for the candidate who promised to fix things, rather than the candidate who kept saying that everything was just peachy.
   Hillary's secret server, FBI directory Comey's statements, and the leaked Podesta emails all hurt Hillary, but I don't think any of those things were decisive.  It was Hillary's frequently stated belief that the country was on the right track that convinced voters that she wasn't living in the real world. 
   But no Democrat, from Hillary on down wants to admit that, so they are puffing up the Russians were hacking story. 

The Fall of Aleppo

The fall of Aleppo to the forces of Bashar Assad and Vladimir Putin is the culmination of Obama's Syria policy.  It is a horrible human catastrophe.  But it's what Obama brought us.  It's a good thing it happened on Obama's watch, since he is fully responsible for it. 

So what happens to Dylan Roof?

Roof is the homicidal maniac who killed nine people in cold blood at a church bible reading session.  MSM is reporting that the jury has found him guilty.  But guilty of what?  This is federal court with charges of hate crimes and other mopery and dopery.  The feds don't do murder.  Question for you MSM, just what did they find Roof guilty of, and does it carry the death penalty? 
   Far as I am concerned, they should have put Roof up in state court on just nine charges of first degree murder.  Which carries the death penalty. 

New York Times. 80 years of disinformation

All the news that fits we print.  The Times got started in the 1930's with their man Walter Duranty, who sent back years of glowing stories from Stalin's Soviet Union.  According to Duranty everything was sweetness and light in Russia.  He never wrote a word about the great famines, the purges, and the secret police.  Duranty was so bad that even the NY Times finally admitted that his Pulitizer prizes were undeserved.  Of course they didn't come clean until the 1990's, but the Times did admit (then) that Duranty's reporting was not on the up and up.
   Then the Times had a love affair with Fidel Castro in the late 1950's when Fidel was just a revolutionary hiding out in the Cuban woods.  They ran a long series of stories, flattering to Fidel, condemning Batista.   They helped Fidel immensely, the Times had all of America convinced that Fidel was a good guy.  Which helped Fidel a lot.  He was running guns and stuff into Cuba from Florida.  Since everyone knew, 'cause the Times had told them, that Fidel was a good guy, we never cracked down on his smuggling into Cuba.  This wasn't the only reason Fidel won, but it was a big help.  It wasn't until Fidel had been in power for six months and made a bunch of rabidly anti American speeches that the Times finally admitted that well, yes, Fidel was a communist.
    Then in the late 1960's the Times sent their man Harrison Salisbury to North Viet Nam, where he sent back a flock of stories sympathizing with the Viet Cong.  Harrison wrote about this remote village, where the village chief kept a big written log of all the American air raids going back for years.  Horrors, four innocent villagers had been  wantonly killed by Yankee Air Pirate bombs.   Well, I was in South East Asia that year, and my unit, the 388 Tactical Fighter Wing, had flown missions to that little ville in North Viet Nam.  The biggest railroad yard you ever did see was smack dab in the middle of that little ville.  And we had raided it, heavily, several times.  If  "collateral damage" was limited to only four civilian casualties, I call that damn good bombing on our part.
   After that, I never paid much attention to the NY Times, since they had proven themselves unreliable.  They were back in fine form for this year's election, plugging for Hillary and trashing The Donald at every turn.
   An example of American journalism at it's finest.  
   
   

What's good for General Motors is good for the country

So said "Engine Charlie" Wilson, secretary of defense back in the Eisenhower administration.  The statement caused a furor at the time.  Democrats went into a tizzy.  But in real life, things that helped GM, the largest corporation in the world in those days, were good for the country.  When things were good for GM, they hired workers and spent money on supplies, parts, and new construction.  All of which is good. 
   Trump's many enterprises are reasonably important to the country, not quite as big a deal as GM was back in the good old days, but big enough.  It could be said that what's good for the Trump operations is good for the country.  Democrats would howl, again, but it's true.  President Trump's actions that help the Trump business empire will help plenty of other businesses.  The newsies are yelping for Trump to do something, anything, to separate himself from the business empire he built.  I don't see this as a real necessity.   He has tweeted that he will turn the business[s] over to sons Eric and Donald.  Both of whom have expressed love, loyalty, and respect for their old man during the campaign.  I think both sons see the world about the same way The Donald does, and will run the Trump empire about the way The Donald would.  And would listen to anything The Donald might suggest to them.  After all they are immediate family and any President is entitled to talk to his immediate family, in confidence for that matter.  I'm OK with that. 

SpyHunter 4

A virus got onto my desktop.  It started putting a bunch of files with the extension .osiris on the harddrive.  Googling on osiris  informed me that Malwarebytes (which I have and use and trust) and something called Spyhunter (which I had never heard of before) would settle osiris's hash.  So, I gave malwarebytes a run, and sure enough, it reported some viruses, and zapped them.  So just to make sure, and to see what would happen, I ran Spyhunter.  Not so good.  It crashed once.  Then it ran and found a list of stuff it didn't like.  So when Spyhunter finished scanning, I clicked to make it zap the stuff it found.  Instead of doing what it was told, Spyhunter demanded I pay $40 for the fancier version of the program.
   No way would I do that.  I  used Windows Explorer and Regedit to search for the objects Spyhunter was objecting to.  No soap,  I could find neither disk files nor registry keys to match anything Spyhunter reported.  So, I uninstalled Spyhunter.  I cannot recommend that program to anyone.
   I still have a bunch of .osiris files on disk.  And a file demanding ransom to decrypt them.  I'll do some more research tomorrow. 

The Russians are hacking, the Russians are hacking!!

Yeah right.  We know someone hacked the democrats, 'cause their stuff turned up on Wikileaks.  That's about all we know.  We have no way of knowing who dunnit.  The hacker causes disk files to be copied out to somewhere on the internet.  For looking at the disk files afterward, you cannot tell if they were copied or not.  The only way we know the hack occurred is that stuff turned up on Wikileaks.  Even if we can find the Internet address (URL)  to which stuff was sent, that could be anyone.  Any hacker will sent hot stuff thru an internet anonymizer site that  keeps no records and forwards stuff tracelessly. 
   No matter what the MSM or CIA or FBI or other pundits say, we cannot know who did the hack.  We can have suspicions, but we cannot know.  The world has plenty of individuals, small groups, large groups, and countries capable of doing the DNC and Podesta hacks.  Especially as it didn't take much to do the hack.  From what I hear Podesta was clueless enough to fall for a phishing email.   Which is incredibly clueless of him.  
   The folks we hear saying the Russians did it don't know that.  They are saying so because they think it will help their political position.   Which is hard to understand actually.   Getting hacked shows the victims (hackees) as sloppy, ignorant, and clueless.