Crony Capitalism comes to the US Commerce Dept

Tuesday's Wall St Journal main editorial has this story.  After Trump's heavy steel and aluminum tariffs, lots of injured companies are filing complicated paperwork to claim "exemptions" from the tariff.  The Journal laments all the time wasted on complex government red tape. 
   The real outrage is that some companies get exempted from the tariff, giving them a huge advantage over their competitors.  The is crony capitalism at its most blatant.  If we are gonna do tariffs, everyone ought to pay them.  Letting some companies off with "exemptions" is pure injustice, bribery, and conduct unbecoming a trash collector, let alone an elected  democratic government. 
  No exemptions for anyone, ever.
 

Facebook wants banks to share depositors data???

This was front page in Tuesday's Wall St Journal.  Facebook's story is that they want to be able to show their users their checking account balance, and by looking at who we are writing checks to, tailor the ads they show to appeal to us.
Arrgh.
   I don't want anyone to know how much money I have in my checking account, whether or not I bounce checks, and who I am writing checks to.  I certainly don't want anyone to get my passwords, SSN, account numbers, transfer codes or anything else that would let them steal my money.  If I found out my bank was giving access to Facebook, I would close my account and find another bank, ASAP.
   I am still unhappy about Obama's decision to force all the doctors to put patients medical records on computer.  Any half way competent hacker can crack hospital network security and put every medical record up for sale.  God help those with serious medical problems, they will never get a job again. No company will hire people whose medical problems will jack up the company health insurance costs.

Shadow Banning sitting Congressmen??

Monday's Wall St Journal has an op-ed denouncing Facebook's practice in the matter.  From reading the article it is not clear just what "shadow banning" really is, or how much it hurts.  But to lay any sort of sanctions or restrictions on sitting Congressmen is absurd. 
   Congressmen get to be Congressmen by winning a majority of the votes.  Which means their view points are acceptable to a lot of people.  When Facebook decides that they are smarter or more political correct than someone who won an election, they are being profoundly undemocratic.  They are claiming the right as lefty techno weenies to silence people who have broad support, broader than any bunch of techno-weenies. 
   I can understand Facebook's desire to keep pornography, neonazis, Islamic terrorists, bots and bot nets, Russian trolls, and clearly deranged individuals off Facebook.  But to attack sitting Congressmen is beyond the pale. 

US Congress should be totally replaced

Congress was created back in the 18th century to give the newly United States a representative government, namely a government that does what the people want. 
Today's Congress is failing.  Instead of addressing issues, they are locked into partisan squabbling, back stabbing, buck passing, and obstructionism.  They haven't passed a thing this year, and from the looks of it, nothing is going get passed for a long long time.
  This isn't what we voters want.  I'll grant that we voters are deeply split on many issues.  But we do all agree that we ought to do something nice for the DACA young people.  Congress has done zip for the DACA folks.  And a whole bunch of other immigration reforms have gone nowhere.  Surely with a little log rolling, something could be worked out that would get enough votes to pass. The voters do agree that we need Obamacare reform, what we got costs too much and is a business killer.  Congress has done zip.   The voters want Congress to confirm more of Trump's appointees, rather than stalling them for months and months.
  In short, we voters ought to vote all the current Congresscritters out this fall and vote in a bunch of new ones that will vote for things that we voters want passed and drop all the partisan bickering.  I know there are plenty if issues where we voters are totally split.  But there are a number that we agree on, and those ought to pass.  

ICE Roadblocks on I93

ICE  is doing it, right around Ashland.  I read that ICE is allowed to put up roadblocks anywhere within 100 miles of a US border.  Ashland is very near to 100 miles from the Canadian border.  ICE claims they are making arrests.  Most of the ones I hear about are for things like drug running or DUI rather than straight up immigration violations.
   I have been thru the Ashland roadblock a couple of times this summer.  Both times the officers just  waved me thru.  I guess they see white hair, a white guy, a four door Detroit sedan, and instate plates.  And they figure I must be clean, at least clean enough to wave thru.  Profiling they used to call it.  I guess profiling is OK when it works to my advantage. 
   I imagine the people who get stopped and searched feel differently about it. 

Jeff Woodburn gets arrested for assault and domestic violence.

Jeff Woodburn is the incumbent Democratic NH Senator of district 1 and my opponent in the November general election.  Neither of us face primary challenges, the general election in November is everything.  He was arrested by the Concord police department late Thursday afternoon and charged with assault and domestic violence.  He will be arraigned in Lancaster county court later this month. 
   Speaking personally I have to feel sorry for Mr Woodburn.  This affair is likely to become a professional and perhaps a  personal disaster for him.  Under American justice, a person must be presumed innocent until proven guilty.  On the other hand, the New Hampshire attorney general must feel he has a strong case to charge a sitting Senator with a crime.  
   I filed for election weeks ago, long before this unfortunate news broke.  I intend to continue to campaign for office.
   I need all the help I can get to win this election.  I need people to put up my yard signs, and people to invite me to any kind of gathering, cook out, barbecue, rally, parade, meeting, what have you.
 
  

Rasmussen says Democrats hate Trump deal with the NORKs

Rasmussen Reports says there is a big split between Republicans and Democrats regarding President Trump's dealing with the NORKs.  Rasmussen doesn't give numbers on this split, but it is right up there in the article's headline.
  I wonder how that happens.  I have some doubts that things will work out with the NORKs, but they might, and that makes it certainly worth trying.  Why should Democrats dislike our effort to denuclearize the NORKs? It is surely better than starting up the Korean War again.  Are the Democrats so anti-Trump that they wish ill toward what might be an important breakthrough?  Just to spite Trump? 
   In the end, the Trump diplomatic offensive may not work.  On the other hand it might.  I cannot tell, and I doubt that anyone else can either.  The chance that it might work makes it worth trying. 

Harley Davidson Goes Hog Mild to Attract Younger Bikers

Headline in Tuesday's Wall St Journal.  Gist of the article, Harley is thinking about introducing smaller bikes. cause sales of the big Hogs are tapering off. 
  This is nothing new.  We bikers have been saying this for 40 years.  The big 1000 cc Harley's are magnificent machines, any biker would like to own one.  But they are pricey, about the cost of a small car.  And they are too big and heavy to take off road.  Most of us got started on much smaller and cheaper bikes.  My first bike was a mere 120 cc Suzuki, which was a little slow for my tastes.  My 2nd bike was a 250 cc Yamaha which had enough power to scare me, even back when I was young and reckless.  At the time, the Yamaha only set me back $500, where as the big Harley's were going for $5000. 
   Harley should have figured out, maybe 30 years ago, that a small, low cost bike would sell, in fact sell more than the big Hogs were selling.  To make a small bike Harley might have had to give up on their beloved four stroke engines and make some other changes to compete with all the well built rice burners on the market, but they could have managed. 
  I hope Harley isn't too late.

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

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

Plastic straws?

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

Facebook stock tanks today

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

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

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

NPR played the Cohen tape over the air this morning

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

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cute but dumb

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

Bears over the years

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

Middle Kingdom in the Middle East

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

Lynne Blankenbecker at the PBVRC Spaghetti Dinner

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

Career Choice for college students.

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

12 Strong 2018

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

Has anyone seen any Russian hacks on Facebook or Twitter?

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

Drug pushing robo callers

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

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

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