Do you believe in Evil?

I do.  I believe there is evil in the world, and evil people out there doing evil.  Many people do not believe in the existence of evil..  Scratch a multi cultural liberal, and you will find someone who believes that all people are good, and evil doers are simply misinformed.  Or misunderstood. 
   Me, I believe that evil exists, and that it is good to oppose evil.  The most effective opposition comes from the use of firearms.  Certainly in the United States, the availability of firearms deters a lot of crime.  The would be robber has to worry about the storekeeper with a handgun in the cash drawer.  The would be house breaker has to worry about the homeowner with a shotgun.  The would be carjacker has to worry about a piece in the glove compartment.  And even the American police are usually quite polite, partly because they know the citizen they offend might be armed, and might do something about it. 
   And so, I believe in the private ownership of firearms.  And I want my firearms to be as deadly as possible, within certain limits. Once firearms are displayed, I want to win the ensuing gunfight.   The biggest limit is the prohibition on private ownership of machine guns.  This was made law back in Al Capone's time.  It seems reasonable, and the law is still on the books and still enforced. 
  The AR-15 (and lookalikes from SIG Saur and others) has been Army issue since the Viet Nam war.  Most  guys were trained on this rifle in the service.  After they leave the service and go out to buy a deer rifle, they often choose the AR-15 'cause they are familiar with it.  It's enough gun for deer, it doesn't kick much. Ammunition is cheap and widely available.  There are a LOT of them out there, and taking them away from that many owners would be VERY difficult indeed. 
   The current Democratic push for more gun control (more ways to take citizen's guns away) leaves me cold.  Ordinary citizens ought to have a gun around the house, just in case ISIS come calling, or the house breakers turn up. 

What did the founding fathers mean by the word "militia"?

Something different from what we moderns think it means.  In the eighteenth century there were two kinds of armed force.  Regulars,  well drilled, uniformed, paid, and used by the king to suppress his political enemies.  And militia, amateur, not uniformed, little training.  In a standup fight, regulars could beat militia every single time. But, in colonial America, it was the militia that stood to arms in the event of Indian raids, pirate attacks,  French attacks, Spanish attacks, and plain old banditry and cattle rustling.  The militia may not have been as effective as regulars, but in roadless heavily wooded America, the militia were there when they were needed.  Where as it might take a month for a regular force to march up from barracks and engage the enemy.  And, the militia were politically reliable.  You didn't have militia out enforcing the king's taxes, the king's press gangs, arresting smugglers and political enemies.  Being members of the community, the militia wasn't going to oppress their own community like the way regulars were happy to do.
   And so, the founding fathers, setting up a democratic government over a vast territory, decided the militia were the obvious solution to the defense problem.  Militia would not become a Praetorian Guard, making and unmaking presidents and Congresses.  Militia didn't get paid, a great savings on the public purse. And you could have a really big militia, essentially every able bodied man in the country.   Hence the second amendment, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state...."
  The militia principle was effective as late as 1940 when Japanese admiral Yamamoto said " To invade the United States is impossible.  There would be a rifleman behind every blade of grass."

Finding Neverland 2004

It has a great cast, Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Dustin Hoffman.  It's set in Edwardian London, sets and costumes are superb. Charming London horse drawn cabs, equally charming turn of the century automobiles. The story is that of J.M. Barrie creating Peter Pan as a stage play on the London stage.  Barrie is married, but for the duration of the movie, he neglects his wife, and hangs out with a charming widow and her four boys.  All that said, the movie doesn't click.
   First off, it suffers from the curse of the soundman, probably as bad as it gets.  I could not hear the dialog.  The actors whispered, spoke in thick dialect, and mumbled.  No names were ever mentioned.  I had to check IMDB this morning to learn the widow's stage name.
   And it is slow moving.  Takes forever to get to the point.  Plot is weak.  For instance, we never see how Barrie manages to bring such an unconventional play as Peter Pan to the stage.  Is he independently wealthy and financed it himself?  Is Barrie enormously effective in selling the concept to dubious theater owners and backers, kind of like Peter Jackson in our own time?  something else? We never know.  The nameless widow, comes down with something, and dies in the last reel.  For no good reason I could see.
Too bad.  It could have been cool. 

Do you want to let the FBI cancel your 2nd Amendment rights?

The Democrats are pushing for it.  They are making a fuss in the Senate right now about a bill to prevent gun sales to anyone on the FBI's no-fly list.  Scary.  The FBI runs the no-fly list.  They can put anyone on it, no evidence required.  There is no way to get off it.  Once on, you are stuck on. 
  Right now, only conviction by a judge in a real court, with a jury, a defense lawyer, and an appeal process gets you on the cannot-buy-firearms list.  The Democrats want to hand that authority down to rank and file FBI agents.  I think that's a bad idea.  We ought to leave citizen's rights with the courts, not the cops. 
Democrats love the idea. 

More thoughts about Orlando

This horrible event has completely dominated the TV news since Sunday.  They don't talk about anything else. Here are some things that are true but the TV newsies don't talk about it much.
1.  Two senior American Muslim clerics denounced the killings, in strong terms.  That's the first time I have ever heard of that.  It is a good thing.
2.  The dead all bear Hispanic names, yet the newsies talk about the killer bearing a grudge against gays.  From the evidence, the killer might as well have born a grudge against Hispanics. 
3.  There are no objective differences between "assault rifles" and deer rifles.  Objective differences are things you can measure with a ruler.  The anti gun people are calling for an "assault rife" ban  hoping that  all rifles will be declared to be "assault rifles" and thus banned. 
4.  The FBI interviewed the shooter TWICE and decided that they didn't have enough evidence to charge him with a crime.  What should have happened, and did not.  The FBI agents should have evaluated the shooter as a violent nutcase, a homicidal maniac.  They should have been able to initiate proceedings to confine the shooter to a mental hospital, before he flipped completely out and killed 50 people. 
5.  The United States has 5000 miles of land border, much of it running thru roadless wildness. Anyone with a pair of decent hiking boots can just walk across the border.  Plus we have 4000 miles of seacoast, studded with marinas, boat launches, yacht clubs and docks.  Any small boat coming in from the sea is just another yachting or fishing party coming back to port at the end of the day. You can't keep 'em out, you have to find 'em and catch 'em after they get here. 

Pulse nightclub massacre, Orlando. Nobody shot back.

My deepest sympathies to the victims and their families.  Newsies are still not fully up to speed on this one.  Question nobody is asking:  Howcum in a crowded club, several hundred patrons, nobody was carrying?  Just one little pocket pistol might have stopped the bastard before he killed so many. 

Teacher Training

Cover story in the Economist.  Their shtick is teacher training this week.  We can solve all our education problems with radically more effective teacher  training, so says the Economist.  Good teachers are not born, they are trained.  No discussion of phonics vs whole word method of teaching reading.  No discussion of Common Core.  No numbers anywhere.
  Me, I'm not so sure.  To teach public school in the US, you have to suffer thru the education major in college.  Four years of meaningless blather.  Those who survive and go on to teach, either were highly motivated, or totally dull, to put up with the total boredom of the ed major.
   I went thru nine years of public school, three years of a very good prep school and four years of a good college.  In this sixteen year educational odyssey I encountered quite a few teachers, most decent, some extra ordinary, and some worthless.  Then I went into the Air Force, and took a few classes from the Field Training Detachment (FTD in USAF speak).  The instructors in FTD were uniformly excellent, as good as any teacher I'd ever had.  These instructors were just ordinary enlisted men, pulled right off the flight line, no college, on their second hitch in the Air Force.  And they were good.  Their students were all teenage guys, of prime trouble causing age, but they never had any trouble.  And the students learned the stuff.  They paid attention, did the homework, passed the tests.
   What made the FTD instructors so good?  First of all, they knew their subject matter, backwards and forwards, standing on their heads and underwater.  Then the subject matter was interesting, jet engines, machine shop work, hydraulics, aircraft instruments, guided missiles, radar, autopilot, sheet metal work, avionics and more.  For young guys with a day job doing aircraft maintenance, all this stuff was interesting.  It really helps the instructor to be teaching something his students care about.
   And the instructors were motivated.  They knew that the teenagers they were instructing were the future of the Air Force, and they were all career Air Force men, who deeply cared about the Air Force.  They gave their best, and it worked.
  Bottom line, I don't think good teachers are born or trained.  Good teaching happens when the teacher knows his subject thoroughly, and cares about his students.  And it really helps to teach subjects that the students care about. .  

House passes Puerto Rico bill.

The Hill, usually a pretty good source, is fairly clueless on this one.  They give a good discussion of the back and forth tugging to pass it.  Nothing about what's in it.  They give one brief quote from Paul Ryan to the effect that there is no taxpayer money going to Puerto Rico, but that's it.  I hope that's true.   There was talk a few weeks ago, about setting up a special board/commission/bureau in Washington to supervise Puerto Rico's government and it's spending habits.  The Hill didn't say anything about that.
   Such a bill ought to offer Puerto Rico protection for law suits while a bankruptcy court sorts out the island's finances.  Without the customary protection from lawsuits, Puerto Rico and the courts would be swamped as every lender and every supplier, and every union, and every body else sues Puerto Rico for the money they think they are due.  You gotta shut all that off to get any where.
   Was I the bankruptcy judge, with full powers, I would tell the lenders to suck it up.  It's been obvious to anyone for the past 20 years that Puerto Rico had no way, and never would have a way. to repay the loans.  For making dumb loans, the lenders deserve to loose.  I'd  review all the island pensions, and chop them back to barely enough to live on.  I'd  review the government payroll, I understand that a third of the island's residents are on it, and lay off a lot of 'em.  I'd shake up the island's tax collection department and drive them to collect all the taxes owed, by everyone. 

Does it matter if Republican apparatchniks dislike Trump?

TV news this morning is full of serious Republicans saying that they cannot support The Donald.  Well, it's understandable.  The Republican party establishment, elected officials, party workers, pundits, activists, people whose day job is politics, never liked Trump.  They did their best to stop Trump.  But the voters do like Trump, they voted for him, and there are a lot more voters than establishment types. 
   So, does it really matter if the establishment types still don't like Trump and refuse to support him?  Trump communicates with the voters thru TV and Twitter, not endorsements from prominent politicians.  In fact, Trump's voters are mad at the political establishment for the miserable state of the country, and they tune in to Trump's TV appearances.  They don't have any respect for the opinions of politicians, most of whom they call RINO's.

Election Results. Nada

Polls closed in California about 11 hours ago.  So I'm listening to NPR talking about the results on the clock radio this morning.  In an hour, they never mentioned the election results. They had a lot of happy interviews with Hillary people saying how wonderful Hillary's victory was, but never in an hour of NPR talk did I hear any real results, like how many votes cast, how much the winner won by, size of Republican and Democratic turnout.  Just an hour of happy talk.  So I got up, turned on the TV to Fox, and not much better.  I did learn that Hillary beat The Bern by 11% in California, which is solid,  but that's it.
  So I got in the net.  To bad, Fire fox was unable to connect to anything.  So, I trudged down to the basement, found my cable modem and my router.  Unplugged both for the count of ten.  Plugged back in, and voila, internet connectivity was back.  So I decided to post on my blog. Next I'll see if we have any election results on the net. 

Day After D-Day

I know I am a day late.  Success of the D-day landings was crucial to the defeat of Hitler.  It was a humungus enterprise,  thousands of landing craft, all built just in time, a million soldiers, tanks, floating harbors, fuel pipelines laid across the channel, and a zillion other things cranked out by British and American industry.
   It was extremely dangerous.  It might have failed.  It was so chancy that Eisenhower, the supreme commander, and the man with the best information, penned a press release announcing defeat of the invasion.  Fortunately he never had to use it.  With a little more luck, and a better German command structure, Rommel might have been able to throw German armor into the battle on the day of the landings instead of a day later.
   Defeat would have been a disaster.  It took all of 1942  and 1943, and half of 1944 to build up for D-day.  After a defeat on the landing beaches, it would have taken at least another year to build up to a second try.  Hitler would have been able to move all the troops guarding France against invasion to the Russian front and that surely would have slowed the Red army down, perhaps even defeated it.  It would have given Hitler time to bring secret weapons, V1, V2, jet fighters, guppy submarines, even nuclear weapons into action. 

Payday loans.

The Diane Reams show was whining about pay day lenders this morning.  Lender's are accused of making very high cost short term loans to borrowers who cannot actually pay off the loan off, they just keep rolling it over, at horrible rates of interest, and get skinned. 
  Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants to increase paperwork, and make the lender learn the borrowers income , expenses, and calculate his chances of repaying the loan.  Does not sound very effective to me, although it will furnish work for bureaucrats. 
  They used to have laws against usury,  usually defined as loans at 35% per year or worse.  The payday lenders are charging more like 350% per year, which is really really bad.  Usury laws used to be a business of state law.  I understand that the payday lenders have managed to get usury laws repealed, or watered down in many states to allow them to operate.  The payday lenders claim that they cannot do business at 35% and allowing the really poverty stricken access to loans is a social good. 
   I'm thinking that an old fashioned usury law, criminalizing doing loans at more than 35% would clean up the payday lender situation.  It would deny credit to people on the bottom, no income, no assets, no job.  These people are not good credit risks, and mostly don't have the money to pay off a payday loan.  I think it's better for such people to do with out, rather than lend them money that they will be unable to repay. 

Fair Point phone book fail.

So I need to renew my drivers license.  I know there is or was (haven't checked lately) a DMV office on US 302 in Twin Mountain.  Decide to give them  a call, just to see if they are still there, and if there is any paperwork I might need to bring. 
  Open the Fairpoint phone book.  Check the Government Offices, State section.  No phone number there.  Call the Littleton State Police office thinking they might have the number.  They didn't, although the officer was very polite on the phone.  Check the town of Franconia website, looking for a phone number for Franconia police.  No phone numbers on the website.  Finally dial 911.  Convince the 911 person that it is not an emergeny, I just need a phone number.  She finally comes up with a number.  I call it. They give me another number, which finally works.
  Save your old Verizon phone books, the Fairpoint one is mostly useless.
  Or is it the death of phone numbers?

Agencies shall make no law...

Right now federal agencies, IRS, FDA, EPA, FHA, FAA, FCC, FEC, NRC, BATFE, NSA, BLM. et cetera, ad nausium, issue regulations, lots of regulations, all of which have the force of law, and are binding upon us poor citizens.  Regulations that can favor one company over another, regulations that tear a man's house down, regulations that can shut a business down arbitrarily, and regulations that make every thing more expensive.
  I think we ought to take the power of regulations away from all agencies.  The only laws a citizen should have to respect are real laws, passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president.  
  Should an agency want to bind the public to something, they can try and get Congress to pass a real law.  If perchance, Congress fails to pass the agency's little brain child, then it means it's a bad idea.
  And while we are at it, no agency should have it's own private police force, with badges, guns, and the power of arrest.  Should an agency want some law enforced, they can jolly well call the regular police, just like us citizens have to do.
  In a real democracy, laws are passed by the legislature, not written by bureaucrats in secret. 

Trump figures out the media

The Donald figures that the media are Democrats to a man, and out to get him, and elect Hillary.  So, rather than the usual shtick of trying to placate them, which is what the usual pol does, Trump is trashing them, figuring that it gets him air time, and the media is so hostile now, that good solid trashing won't make things any worse than they already are.  Plus the voters like watching the Donald trashing the media. 

I predict more solid anti-media words coming toward the media.  If Trump gets elected, he will have the bully pulpit and at least four years to let 'em have it. Fun fun fun. 

SpaceX wants to go to Mars. Year after Next.

SpaceX is creating a manned vehicle to take astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).  Essentially they are adding life support equipment, an air plant, and retro rocket engines to the existing ISS resupply carrier.  And doing 50,000 pounds of NASA paperwork to "man rate" the vehicle.
   SpaceX wants to send one, unmanned, to Mars in 2018.  They have a signed agreement with NASA regardng intellectual property for SpaceX and NASA support for the mission.  The vehicle ("Red Dragon") would make a jet landing on Mars, under control of the autopilot.  SpaceX has been able to jet land the Falcon booster on a raft in the ocean which seems like a harder job than landing on Mars with it's lesser surface gravity. 
   "Red Dragon" has impressive engine power.  Eight engines, burning nitrogen tetraoxide and hydrazine, produce 33,000 pounds of thrust, call it 16 tons of thrust.  The vehicle only weights 15 tons on earth.  If the fuel holds out, it has plenty of thrust to slow down and even hover briefly before touchdown. 
   Takeoff will be atop a Falcon Heavy booster which is three Falcon Nine boosters, strapped together.  That will be 27 rocket engines, producing 5.1 million pounds of thrust.  Design goal is deliver 15 tons to Mars surface.  Straight thru, no earth orbit rendezvous.

The Norks and their nukes

The Economist ran a cover story about the need to do something about North Korea's nuclear program. They went on about weakness and craziness in the Kim regime.  Like it might be so crazy as to not be deterreable. The Norks have a missile operational today with enough range to hit all of South Korea and all of Japan.  They have missiles under development with enough range to hit the western US.  They managed to launch a satellite which means they have a missile that can reach anywhere in the world.  Might not have the throw weight to loft a nuclear warhead, yet.
   The Economist claims that the Bill Clinton administration considered an air strike on the Nork's nuclear facilities, but Clinton backed off,. fearing that it would touch off a second Korean war.  I never heard that story before.  There has been some talk that the Norks have dug in so deep that even our 15 ton Massive Ordinance Penetrator bomb couldn't take 'em out.
   The Economist does acknowledge that non-military ways of pressuring the Norks pretty much don't exist, especially as the Chinese like having the Norks as a buffer state between them and the South Koreans.  The Chinese are sending enough food and fuel to North Korea to keep 'em alive.  The Chinese fear the Kim regime is shaky, and that any serious pressure might cause it to collapse.  The Chinese don't want that to happen, cause the likely result is the South Koreans take over from the Kim regime, giving the Chinese a pushy, industrialized competitor, who is hand in glove with the Americans, right on their border.
  Best the Economist can suggest is installing anti missiles, THAAD and Patriot.  They compute that such a two layer defense, each layer having a Probability of kill (Pk) of 70% would yield an overall effectiveness of 90%.  Not bad, but not very reassuring when you think about how bad just one nuke can be.
   Of course Aviation Week doesn't see things quite that way.  They have reported that each of the Nork nuclear tests had a yield of about one kiloton of TNT.  That's so weak that most people call it a fizzle.  So maybe the Nork's don't really have nukes, yet.

Snowflakes on NPR

The morning story is from an NPR chick.  She had a flat tire, and 5:30 in the morning.  Rather than opening her trunk and breaking out the jack and the spare, she started off by finger stroking her smart phone.  She found out she was not a member of AAA, and AAA memberships would not be effective for 48 hours.  But she did find some obscure web site that offered road service.  It took service better than an hour to get there, and only three minutes to change her tire.  She closed the piece by raving about clever new websites.
  She would have done better  just changing her own tire, all by her little snowflake self.
  I can remember insisting that my teen age daughter change a tire right in our driveway before I allowed her to drive herself to school. 

Sorry about the Gorilla

On the other hand, I know nothing about gorilla's, and I know nothing about the specific gorilla that got shot. I am not going to second guess the zoo personnel who had to deal with the situation.   I'm sure the zoo people feel terrible about killing their gorilla, and did every thing they could to avoid it.  They clearly did the best they could in a bad situation.  And, the life of a four year old boy is more important than the life of a gorilla.  I'm glad the boy lives.
 A  question that the newsies have been too ignorant to ask. .  How does a small boy get into an enclosure stout enough to hold an adult gorilla?  If the enclosure can keep gorillas in, why did it not keep small boys out?
   Something for all parents to consider.  Small children think live animals are cute and huggable.  In the Disney movies all the animals talk and act like people.  There was a time when a wild black bear strolled by my NH house.  All the small children playing on my deck dashed down after the poor bear.  They wanted to pet it.  The bear, seeing what was coming for him, increased his pace smartly and disappeared into heavy woods before the kids got too close.   Fortunately that bear did not have any cubs with it, or things might have gotten very ugly.
  Parents ought to make sure their children understand that wild animals are dangerous, and should NOT be pursued.   Wild animals are safe as long as you keep your distance.  I have wild bears strolling about up here all the time. I keep my distance, the bears keep their distance, and we all stay very happy. 

Xmen Apocalypse

Spent Memorial Day weekend at youngest son's brand new house.  Since it rained Saturday, we went to the movies.  This is the newest Xmen flick, just out.  It might as well have been titled "Xmen versus the Mummy".
Lotta CGI special effects. Explosions, fires, collisions, Magneto's strange powers destroying whole cities.  According to the rather weak plot, an God/Demon/Evil Sorcerer from Egypt of 3600 BC  comes to life in fairly modern times and starts doing evil.  Never mind that First dynasty Egyptian Old Kingdom didn't get started until about 2900 BC.  This is the prequel Xmen, set in the 1970s or 1980's.  Whole new cast, all younger.  The guy playing a younger Charles Xavier isn't as good in the role as Patrick Stewart was.  Nice costumes, the chicks look sharp and sexy, the guys look hunky, mostly.  Hugh Jackman gets a brief (5-10 minute on screen) part.  He never gets to speak a line, he just kills a bunch of soldiers, and the last we see of him he is dashing off into a snow covered forest, bare foot, and wearing only Bermuda shorts.  Does adamantium warm a body as well as make it bulletproof? 
   Nobody has a line as good as Storm's line in the first Xmen, "Have you ever seen a toad struck by lightning?"
   OK for kids, or dyed in the wool Xmen fans, but not as good as the first two Xmen flicks.

Nuking Hiroshima was the right thing to do

The Japanese started WWII by attacking Pearl Harbor, in time of peace, without a declaration of war.  They sank the Pacific Fleet battle line, which gave them naval supremacy thruout the Pacific, at least by the thinking of 1942.  They inflicted several more humiliating defeats upon us and upon the British.  They treated our prisoners of war like dirt, many of them died in Japanese captivity. 
   The Japanese fought hard.  Guadalcanal, Saipan, Okinawa, Io Jima, Tarawa.  Based upon bitter experience gained on Okinawa and Saipan, we figured invasion of the Home Islands would cost us a million casualties, and the Japanese far more.  By 1945 US submarines had blockaded Japan, nothing big enough to be worth a torpedo was getting in or out of the Home Islands.  The Air Force had total air superiority, and were fire bombing every city in Japan.  Even at this low point, with their backs to the wall, the Japanese refused to negotiate. 
   Offered a chance to end the war, Truman took it.  And it worked.  The first nuke on Hiroshima shook 'em up, but not enough to bring them to their senses.  The second nuke on Nagasaki finally did the trick.  The bitter end generals were pushed out of government, and some rational men took over and ended the war. 

Horatio Hornblower, The Mutiny

Good flick.  Came to me thru Netflix.  The Brits started a series of TV movies about Hornblower, starring Ioan Gruffyd, nice young guy, who looks the part and acts the part well.  This one is maybe #5 or #6 in the modern series.
   Horatio Hornblower is a Royal Navy officer, serving during the Napoleonic wars,  invented by author C.S. Forester back in the early 1940's.  Forester wrote half a dozen Hornblower tales over the years and they are still in print.   The TV movies are all good.  Costumes are really good.  The naval officers, the petty officers, the seaman, the marines all wear different uniforms, nicely made.  I'm not a real expert on period costumes, but they all look right to my eye.  Most of the action is filmed at sea, on board ship.  The ship[s] are convincing.  Makes you think they took the trouble to find or build real sailing warships.  Either that or the CGI folks are getting really good.  The ships in this modern series are much more convincing that the ship[s] in the old 1950's Hornblower movie with  Gregory Peck and Virginia Mayo.
   Anyway, it's a good watchable flick, good camera work, good soundtrack.  Lots of action, great scenery, excellent plot.  The other Hornblower flicks are just as good. And the books are all good reads. 

So what is Congress planning for Puerto Rico?

Puerto Rico is broke.  They owe $70 billion on loans taken out in the past.  Between pensions, welfare, lotta featherbedding, and plain old graft, the Puerto Rico government spends far more than it collects in taxes. They cannot make payments on the loans coming due. 
   Thru some quirk in the law, Puerto Rico as a US territory, cannot declare bankruptcy the way cities and towns, and possibly states can.  The idea in bankruptcy is to prevent everyone and his cousin suing, which is more than anyone can defend against, and have an "impartial" judge divvy up the bankrupt's assets.  For companies, the judge usually decides to keep the company going, and avoid laying off all the employees. To this end, the bankruptcy judges usually tells the lenders to just suck it up, cancels  the debts, makes some company reforms and sets the company going again. 
  For places like Detroit and Puerto Rico, the path is less clear.  No bank with two brain cells firing is going to loan a nickel to places like that.  The unions, the pensioners, and everyone else will die in the trenches before allowing any cost cutting.  Which leaves the cash strapped government to make payroll with IOU's.
   Mean while, all the big New York banks, who made all the totally foolish loans are down in DC right now lobbying Congress to bail out Puerto Rico, i.e. have taxpayers pay off the loans, so the banks don't have to to confess how stupid they are.  The banks are asking for $70 billion in comfort money.  That's a lotta money.
   There is some kinda Puerto Rico deal going thru Congress right now.  Speaker Ryan is pushing it.  Nobody knows what's  in it. 
   A Puerto Rico deal should merely make it possible for Puerto Rice to declare bankruptcy and be protected from a zillion lawsuits while they work out the details.  The bankruptcy court should have the power to cancel debts, cancel contracts, fire politicians, and raise taxes. It should NOT pay off the lenders.  The lenders made stupid loans, anyone could tell Puerto Rico could not pay off the loans, even twenty years ago.  For being stuck on stupid, the banks oughta take a $70 billion hit.  Maybe it will learn 'em some.
   And our noble MSM ought to find out what is going down in DC and clue us in.  Perhaps the banks have bought them off? 

Let the passengers carry heat. Safer that way.

Things have changed.  Back before 9/11 passengers all understood that when hijacked, they should sit tight, don't give the hijackers any trouble, and they will come out of it alright.   9/11 changed all that.  Now passengers all understand that if they let the hijackers take control of the aircraft,  they will die a fiery death in the crash.  Since then, a few "unruly" passengers have been subdued in flight by fellow passengers. In one case a fire axe was used as a pacifier. 
   If we just let the passengers carry heat, then Abdul the Hijacker has to worry about some little old lady passenger in economy taking a .38 out of her purse and splattering his brains all over the cabin ceiling.  And certainly hijackers armed with box cutters aren't going to win over passengers with handguns.  And if we say handguns are OK, then TSA can stop hassling passengers over the odd Swiss Army knife in some guy's pocket.  And we can drop that stuff about liquid explosives.  The liquid explosive is so touchy that Abdul the Hijacker is more likely to have the stuff go off in the taxi on the way to the airport than in flight.  Real terrorists use Semtex, a plastic explosive. 
   If one in twenty passengers carries, then the hijackers will face a fusillade from  five to ten armed passengers no matter what flight they try. 
  And we could solve the long security line problem that TSA is putting us thru.  For that matter we could lay off TSA and save our selves a lotta hassle and a lotta money.
  All we need for decent security is to X-ray all the checked bags to keep the terrorists from putting a bomb in the baggage compartment.  And  X-ray the hand luggage as well.  We could solve the long line problem overnight.

The Donald is rising in the polls

My major objection to The Donald used to be national polls showing him losing to Hillary.  Well, that seems to be turning around.  This weekend the TV newsies began to cite new polls showing The Donald level, or slightly ahead of Hillary.  The lead isn't decisive yet, but compared to where The Donald was a couple of months ago, it's a whole bunch better. 
   The Republic might be saved yet.

Ergonomic Fail. My Cell Phone

It's extremely small, it's black, which makes it hard to see.  Set it down somewhere and you cannot find it.  Inoffensive computer casework beige would be easier to see.  And I would be happy to have one a tad bigger if it held a bigger battery. 
  Control of this miniature wonder comes from stroking the touch pad with your finger.  The poor thing sports just two real physical buttons.  One button is the "wake up" button.  Press it and the phone comes to life, touch screen lights up. Press it again and all sorts of weird stuff happens, including missing my incoming call.  The other button adjusts the loudness of the ring. 
  Should phone ring in my shirt pocket, I'm bound to press one or both real buttons while fishing phone out of my pocket.  Which means ring loudness randomly changes from max to zero, and the incoming call gets lost.
   For my simple needs, the ring loudness might as well be another "app" on the touch screen menus, I'm less likely to screw up the ring settings by just handling the phone.  The wake up button ought to be a slide switch, so you cannot press it by accident. 
  My other gripe, the phone has TWO keypads, a numeric pad like a standard desk phone, and a qwerty keyboard.  So, entering a new contact, it asks for contact name.  And shows the telephone keypad.  It takes four or five finger strikes to find the qwerty keyboard. 
   This is a lower end Trak Phone, no monthly contract.  God help us from the smarter phones.