Congress does it again. 2300 Page Omnibus Spending Bill

No Congressman, except for maybe Paul Ryan, has any idea of what all is in it.  At best they know that their pet spending got in, along with every one else's pet spending.  Which is why the Federal deficit is so bad.  Nobody can read 23,000 pages of Congressional gobble-de-gook, even if given a year to do it.  Probably a few congressional staffers, like the one's who wrote this thing, have a general idea, and that's about it.
  This  disgrace is caused by the Senate.  The House wrote, debated and passed 12 spending bills, one for each major Federal department.  The Senate failed to even bring them up for debate, let alone pass them.  Let's hear it for Senate Rules.  Bulwark of democracy they are.
   So the end result, a few anonymous congressional staffers control all the spending of the Federal government. 
   Senators let this happen because it allows them to avoid voting on anything that their constituents might object to.   And who might write them nasty letters, or threaten to vote against them.  So they allow staffers to pack all the spending decisions into one vast unreadable swamp.  Since nobody, constituents, political opponents, the MSM, bloggers know what's in there, they cannot got on Senator Phogbound's case about  what he voted for. 

Safe guard the voters lists from hackers

Been a lotta talk on the 'Net and on the tube about Russians hacking the 2016 election, and what we oughta do about it.  Step one is to dump the voting machines and go back to paper ballots.  A voting machine is just a desktop computer running a special ballot program.  It is subject to all the hacks that ordinary computers are subject to, which is too damn many. 
Step two is safeguarding the voter lists.  You know those lists they have at the polls and upon which they check off your name as you vote.  And if your name isn't on the list you either have to do some extra paperwork, or you don't get to vote.  Suppose the other side had used a program to go thru the voter's list and erase 10% of your party's voters?  Or I can think of worse.
   Best security would be to go back to keeping the voter's list with pen and ink.  Barring that, if you just gotta have the list on computer, best would be not to use Windows.   Windows is totally and irredeemably security compromised.  It's Swiss cheese, fulla holes.  Use a Mac, use Linux, use anything except Windows.  Only allow one computer for updating the list, printing it out, and making backups.  Keep that machine in a locked room to which only a very few have a key.  DO NOT allow that machine to connect to any other machine, the public internet, the telephone network, anything.  Do not allow anyone to insert flash drives, floppy disks,  CD's or other media into the machine.   Periodically do a backup of the voter list to CD-ROM.  Store one copy of the backup CD-ROM off site so it will be available in the event of fire or flood at Town Hall.  Periodically compare the master voter's list on the computer to the most recent backup and decide if the changes, and the amount of change is reasonable. 

You gotta wonder about that FBI

Jeff Sessions just fired the FBI's number two man, Antony McCabe, based upon the FBI inspector general's written recommendation.  Just to make it hurt a little more, McCabe was within hours of retirement, with a full pension.  Getting fired means no pension, a pretty harsh penalty. 
   Question, if McCabe was such a crumb bum, how did he rise so far in the FBI?  I assume McCabe joined the FBI twenty years ago as a junior agent, or what ever the FBI calls new troops.  Since over twenty years, he got himself promoted up to number two at the Bureau, he must have had a lot of supervisors writing good performance reports on him over the years.  Is it a case of a good guy turning bad in his later years? Or is it case of a lot of McCabe's supervisors thinking McCabe's way of doing things was good?  That in fact a lot of the Bureau's supervision is just like McCabe?  And that maybe some more weeding out is in order?

Don't Fire Mueller

The lefties have been drum beating for Trump to fire special prosecutor Robert Mueller.   If Trump were so foolish as to do so, it would convince an awful lot of voters that Trump has something to hide.  That he is dirty. 
   I like to think that Trump understands this and that he is smart enough to avoid shooting himself in the foot.  Let's hope.

Beat the Press

They were at it again this morning.  Lotta talk about firing that FBI guy, Tony something-or-other.  More talk about Trump's tweets, investigations into Russian collusion, and that Pittsburgh special election that the Democrats won by a hair. 
  No talk about dealing with the NORKS,  Trump's tax bill, the steel and aluminum tariffs, dealing with the Russians. Does this mean that the Democrats think these subjects make Trump look good?  So they don't talk about them? 

Puerto Rican bonds are hot on Wall St this year

Cannot understand why.  Puerto Rico is broke.  They will never have enough revenue to pay off their bonds.  In fact they have declared bankruptcy, after getting a special act of Congress allowing them to do so, and a bankruptcy judge will decide how much (how little) the bond holders might get paid, if Puerto Rico ever comes up with some cash.  Which they probably cannot do.
   So why does a Puerto Rican bond have any value what so ever on the Street?  Inquiring minds want to know.  

The New Hampshire Death Penalty

Concord is all hot and bothered about repealing the death penalty.  I wonder why.  NH hasn't executed anyone since 1939, nearly eighty years ago.  We have one cop killer on death row right now. He has been there for ten years, with lawyers billing the state for ten years of appeals and foo for raw. 
   Could it be that our gallant state reps and senators have found a headline grabbing issue, that doesn't require any funding, and are playing it for publicity? 

That Miami bridge collapse

It got a lot of TV coverage yesterday and the TV newsies are still going on about it today.  I gather that the bridge was a prefab and newly installed.  No mention of the installing contractor's name.  Far as I am concerned the guys who installed it are liable if it falls down within a week.  Also no mention of the company that made the prefab bridge.  When sued, the installer will claim his people did everything right but the prefab bridge was defective in design or manufacture. 
   Either the TV newsies are so ignorant as not to understand the liability issues here, or they are being paid off to keep it quiet.  Trust worthy those newsies are. 

The many names of a house cat

Cat came to me from my daughter.  It had been her college cat.  She graduated, and signed up for a hitch with the Peace Corps.  She said something like "Aw Dad, you will take care of the cat.  Won't you?"  And since I am very fond of daughter, and it was a decent cat, the deal was done.  The cat bore the name of Hecate, which seemed like a pretty pretentious name for just a house cat.  After a couple of highly amusing goofs on the cat's part, I began to call her Stupid Beast.  For a while I could stand out on the deck and call "Stupid Beast" and the cat would actually come home. 
   In warm weather, cat would sprawl out flat on the floor, spread out to lose as much heat as possible.  I began to call her "Flat Beast"   This lead to "Fat Beast" and "RAF", short for Round and Flat.  Along with Her Flatness, and Fatress.  And often I just call her Cat, as in "Hello Cat" when she greets my return from a store run. 

Cannon Mt ski weather

Heaviest snow of the winter.  Started yesterday at 9:30.  This morning I have 13 inches piled up on my deck. And it's still coming down, lightly.  Nice light powder.  No wind so the snow stays on the trails instead of blowing away into the woods.  This is on top of a good eight inches late last week.  Mountain is a fantastic shape.

Trump nominates old CIA hand to run agency

Thie morning's US gov shakeup.  Rex Tillerson is out as Secretary of State.  Mike Pompano from CIA is nominated as new Secretary of State.  Gina Haspel nominated to run CIA.
   The newsies are all atwitter about Gina Haspel, first woman CIA director, ever.  Cool.  But she is an old CIA hand, been working at the agency since the 1980's.  CIA has a poisonous corporate culture.  Specializing in  gross intelligence failures, damaging leaks to the NYT,  attempts to destabilize all Republican administrations, disastrously wrong predictions. 
   Not a promising background.

Win 10 shows phantom files and folders

Back in the real versions of Windows, (95,98,NT,2000,XP), Explorer showed a straight forward picture of your hard drive.  Each file of folder showed as a single icon, in it's proper place in the hierarchy.  You could move, rename, delete, execute, display and change file properties.  This worked.
   Micro$oftware weenies couldn't leave stuff that worked alone.  For Win10 we get an Explorer that displays a single folder icon or file icon multiple times, at different locations.  Some of the icons cause error messages when clicked upon.  Some icons can be deleted without deleting the real disk file that the icon stands for. 
   It's irritating, in fact so irritating that I am thinking about upgrading this laptop to Linux.

Greenies snooker US Navy

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/03/08/the-us-navy-is-cancelling-a-program-to-turn-gas-guzzling-destroyers-into-hybrids/

US Navy allowed greenies to start up a hybrid propulsion program for destroyers.  Musta been a bunch of pure USN desk weenies to fall for this scam.  No real sea officer would have fallen for it.  Hybrid propulsion sort of works in cars because a car only needs full power for a few seconds to accelerate to speed.  Once at speed, the power demand on a car engine drops way way down.  Hybrid cars have small engines, just enough to keep the car moving at speed and charge the battery.  To accelerate a hybrid car uses battery power.  Hybrids get slightly better fuel economy than straight gasoline powered cars, at the expense of carrying essentially twice as much propulsion machinery.  And costing $10k more than a straight gasoline powered car.  It is doubtful that the small fuel saving of a hybrid will pay off the extra $10K cost over the life of the car.
  This doesn't work in ships.  The water drag is so high all the time that the engines must produce serious power all the time to keep the ship moving.  In fact a ship's top speed occurs when the water drag matches or exceeds engine thrust.  The engines never get a break  during which they can charge batteries.   Since a ship's engines never get a chance to loaf at part throttle, carrying extra electrical equipment, generators and motors, just adds weight, it doesn't save any fuel. 
  You gotta wonder about the Navy officers who fell for this scam.  Were they Annapolis grads?  Does not Annapolis teach engineering anymore? 

Summit Meeting with the NORKS

This ought to keep the newsies busy for a long long time.  Mostly it's a propaganda exercise between Donald Trump and Little Rocket Man.  The winner is the one who convinces the world press that he is a reasonable man and the the other guy is a loon.  Donald Trump has a lot of experience in this area.  And he speaks English, the world wide language.   Does Little Rocket Man speak English? 
   If any agreements are reached, I suspect that the NORKS will violate them, just as they have violated past agreements. 
   Churchill once said "Jaw, jaw is better than war war."  Of course he said this back before nuclear weapons were invented.    Starting up the Korean War again is a bad thing.  On the other hand leaving the NORKS with nuclear tipped ICBM's is a bad thing too. 
   Let's hope that gaining a propaganda victory in the summit meeting does not allow the NORKs to continue with their nuclear missile program. 

Big Brother Facebook is getting pretty snoopy

So I'm checking Facebook this morning to see what my friends might have posted overnight.  And bingo, a message from Facebook itself.  Saying something like this. "We have detected a friend request from someone you don't know.  If you decide that this request is from a fake personality you can report it to us be clicking here and here." 
Wow.  They really are checking closely.
 So I check my friend requests, and sure enough, there is a new one.  A gorgeous woman judging from her photo.  No mutual friends.  No friends at all.  No photos.  Looks like a fake personality sure enough. 
  And thinking I might report this I click back to my "home" only to find the provocative post from Facebook has disappeared.  So I let it slide. 
   Take away.  Big Brother Facebook is really watching you.  Beware of what you do.

NPR blathering

Yesterday I had NPR on my car  radio.  They started out discussing a report that Lyndon Johnson had authorized after riots in Detroit and Newark in the later 1960's.   The report picked up the name "Kerner Commission Report" after the name of the commission chairman.  The report blamed the riots in Detroit and Newark on "white racism".  That was fifty years ago. 
   NPR ran on talking about the Kerner Report for a good hour.  All the speakers said that white racism was terrible.  Nobody gave specific examples of said white racism, naming names and dates.  Nobody suggested ways to improve the situation, new laws, regulations, prayers, education policies, anything.  For an hour of airtime all we learned was the NPR and their on-air guests were against white racism.  Groovy, I'm against it myself.  But to serve as useful public discourse, rather than just feel-good BS, you have to suggest courses of action, not just a dislike. 

I'm so glad my tax money goes to support this kind of broadcasting. 

Farewell to Radio Shack

I needed a one ohm resistor, fairly high wattage, to use to measure current draw on a DeWalt thickness planer.  The planer had been blowing circuit breakers.  I was about to set off for the Radio Shack in St Johnsbury until I decided to check it's location on Google Maps, it has been some time since I last visited it.  Surprise.  Google Maps showed the St Johnsbury Radio Shack as "closed".  In fact it showed a whole bunch of New Hampshire Radio Shacks as closed.   Closest one still open was all the way up in Colebrook. 
   Well it was a nice sunny day, the car needed a little exercise anyhow, so I drove up.  And they had the needed resistor, and I bought some other hardware too.  Poor old Radio Shack stopped selling, or lost, or something, the high value high margin product you need to make enough money to stay alive.  Back in the old days, Radio Shack sold stereo equipment under their own Realistic brand name.  And ham gear and TV sets, and they pioneered the personal computer business with the TRS-80.  Back in the day, the Trash-80 sold as well as Apple II.  Somehow all the decent high margin products went away and Radio Sack was left with hardware bits and pieces, batteries, cables.  Low value stuff.  And now they are closing up.  Too bad. 

  

deer rifles vs assault rifles

There are no objective differences (objective means things you can measure with a ruler, or with fancier instruments).   Both deer rifles and assault rifles are chambered for center fire cartridges firing bullets from 0.22 inches up to 0.44 inches at muzzle velocities in the ball park of 2800 foot per second.  They have barrels ranging in length from 18 inches out to maybe 28 inches.  They can be self loaders, or lever action or bolt action.  Neither can be fully automatic (fully automatic is a machine gun).  Fully automatic guns were made illegal back in Al Capone's time.  
   The main differences between deer rifles and assault rifles are matters of styling.  Deer rifles are usually fitted with nicely finished walnut stocks and the metal is blued.  Assault rifles have black plastic stocks, and the metal is given a variety of military finishes that look black and non reflective in daylight. 
   Which means the current hue and cry for "an assault weapons ban" is really a call to ban all firearms ownership.  The anti gun crowd has taken the Parkland Florida massacre as an excuse to soap box for a ban on all gun ownership.  
   The Parkland shooter should have been identified as a homicidal maniac long ago and placed in a mental hospital.  If we allow guys like that to run around loose, they will find a way to do evil even if they cannot purchase a gun over the counter at a gun store.  
  

Why cannot American Steel and Aluminum compete?

President Trump wants to slap a 25% tariff in imported steel and 10% on imported aluminum.  He claims that foreign competition is so fierce that we need good stiff tariffs to preserve the American industry.  That American steel and aluminum companies will be driven out of business by the foreign competition.
  I'd like to know, just why the American industries cannot compete with the foreigners.  Is it the worker's wages? cost of raw materials, obsolete plant and equipment, outrageous pollution regulations, high taxes, stock buybacks, overly plump dividend payments, outrageous CEO pay, or what?  How plump were the last union contracts? Used to be, American industry was far more efficient than anywhere else on the globe.  What happened? Why do the US metals companies "need" tariff protection.  Protection that costs us consumers dearly.
   Another good question.  What gives the president the authority to raise tariffs on just his say-so.  I thought US tariffs were acts of Congress, not executive orders.
   The Journal and Fox News are running pieces against the tariff, but none of the MSM have investigated the national security ploy being used to justify a really stiff tax hike on everyone except the steel and aluminum industries.  

Thinking about going to college

It's that season, at least for high school seniors.  College is expensive as all get out.  A four year degree can cost $100,000.  Uncle Sam will loan you all that money, but you have to pay it back.  Declaring personal bankruptcy won't get you out of your college loan.  Most of us go to college to get a degree that leads to a good job.  This only works if you graduate.  If you don't graduate, you get nothing, except debts. 
    Time to ask yourself, do I have the stick-to-it-tivness to make it all the way to graduation?   How do you feel about schoolwork, really?  Does doing a term paper seem like fun?  Or a hateful torment?  Is reading a good history book fun? Or utterly boring?  How is your high school academic record?  College work is about like high school work.  If you are just scraping by in high school, college will be four more years of the same.
     Instead of launching into a doubtful college experience right after high school, think about doing something else after high school and then doing college later.  Think about enlisting in the armed services.  You will learn a lot of useful stuff, the GI benefits after I left the service paid for my electrical engineering degree, and employers like to hire veterans.  Think about getting a job, just about any kind of job.  After doing kindergarten followed by grades 1 thru 12 schoolwork can get old.  Try a change of pace by working.
   For that matter think about skilled jobs, welder, electrician, plumber, CNC operator, electronics tech, machinist, long haul trucker, lineman, heavy equipment operator.  They all pay well, as well as most college degree jobs.  If working with your hands in appealing to you,  give it a try. 

Senior Peacenik leaving the State Dept

The Wall St Journal calls Joseph Yun "Top U.S. Envoy for Pyongyang".   Sources are muddled on this story, but the Journal's take is that Joseph Yun is leaving the State Dept because he cannot get any support for negotiations with the NORKs.  They say his entire career at State was involved with relations and negotiations with Pyongyang.  
   Some how this guy manages to believe that the NORKS can be talked out of their nukes.  And he is miffed that the Trump Administration doesn't want to play the talks game.  As for me, I don't believe anything, talks, bribes, economic pressure, propaganda, even military action will get the NORKs to give up their nukes. 
   I wonder why we paid this delusional peacenik for so many years.  He clearly doesn't understand the situation.  But he drew his pay for many years. 

Interest rates going up against the Stock Market

Gospel at the Wall St Journal (and probably the other business publications too) is that raising interest rates hurts the stock market and falling interest rates help the stock market.  The Journal is the only business publication I read, so I don't really know if the rest of the business press follows the Journal's gospel, but it's a good bet that they do. 
   Why this link between market performance and interest rates?  Could it be that a lot of stock is bought for speculation, and on borrowed money?  Margin accounts with brokerages, where the stock broker loans the investor/speculator the money to buy the stock, and the investor/speculator pledges the stock as collateral to back the loan.
  Is this a good thing?  Margin accounts can really slam the market hard.  When the market goes down, like it did this month, the value of the stock pledged as collateral goes down.  And the broker calls the investor/speculator and asks for more money to back the loan.  A margin call.  The only way most investor/speculators have to raise the money is to sell the stock, which drives the market down further.
    The social good that the stock market performs is to make stocks into a very liquid asset.  I can buy stock with my extra cash, knowing that when I need the money for something, I can sell the stock, quickly.  Without the stock market, should I need to turn my stock into cash, it might take months to find someone who wants to buy my stock. And without the market doing deals and publishing the stock price, I would be hard pressed to get a decent price for my stock.  I might decide not to put my money into stocks, but rather such economy boosting assets as antiques, artworks, classic cars, coins, stamps, cyber currency, or betting on sports.  
   The social purpose of the joint stock company is to channel investor money into companies that use the money to build factories, build railroads, buy equipment, and grow the economy.   If the investor's money is just a loan, then the investor is sucking up loan money that could just as well be borrowed from banks by the company itself, rather than  giving the investor a cut.
    The stock market has a lot of gambling built into it.  Do margin accounts, and borrowing to buy stock make it easier for companies to raise money, or do they just support the gambling part of the market?  If we forbid borrowing to buy stock, would the market be steadier and more predictable?  
 

V-22 Osprey vs large Helicopters

A few numbers:
Chinook CH-47
Cost                   $38 million
Combat Radius 200 miles
Cruise Speed     160 knots
Payload             24,000 lbs

Super Stallion CH53
Cost                  $24 million
Combat Radius 621 miles
Cruise Speed     150 knots
Payload              30,000 lbs

Osprey V-22
Cost                   $72.1 million
Combat Radius  426 miles
Cruise Speed     275 knots
Payload              20,000 lbs

The Marine Corps loves the V-22.  Not sure why.  All the V-22 offers over the CH53 is much higher cruise speed.  The CH-53 has better combat radius and payload.  We could buy three CH-53 helicopters for the price of a single V-22.  

Taking Honest Work From Trial Lawyers

Yesterday's Wall St Journal had an op-ed piece headlined "Safety from Hackers -- and Trial Lawyers".  The author, Brian E. Finch is a lawyer working for a "cyber security" law firm.  He is advocating passage of the "Cyber Safety Act" thru Congress.  This  act would shield companies from law suits over security breaches.   
    Right now, companies can get sued down to their socks when hackers get thru their security and steal customer lists, with addresses and credit card numbers.  Mr. Evans thinks this liability is horrible and discourages innovation in the tech industry. 
   Me, I think fear of lawsuits is the only thing preventing companies from selling even more insecure products than they do today.  Suing Micro$oft for the uncounted security holes in Windows would improve world wide cyber security.  The hackers that cracked the federal Office of Personal Management got their hands on my old Air Force service records and records of security clearances that I held for years after leaving the Air Force.  Right now, any thoughtful company will take all the precautions it can think of to keep hackers out, for fear of dreadful law suits and market annilation when loopholes let the hackers in. 
   We got a lot of excess lawyers sloshing around the country, mostly causing trouble.  Let's put them to work suing companies that peddle insecure products or who fail to safeguard  their customer's records.

Meet Jane Walker

Big liquor company Diageo is launching a whiskey for women brand.  Called Jane Walker, with a snappy new label showing a sharp looking female version of Johnny Walker.  The scotch inside will be the same as what goes into Johnny Walker Black Label bottles. 
   Will it sell?  Consider that few guys will buy a women's whiskey, which cuts the new brand off from half the population, the harder drinking half.  How many women will buy a women's whiskey rather than the old reliable well known Johnny Walker?  Or old reliable Cutty Sark, J&B, or Ballentine for half the price of Jane Walker ?

Dr. Seuss is back on top

Wall St Journal, best selling books week ended 18 Feb.
Hardcover Fiction

Green Eggs and Ham                           Dr. Seuss   Number 6 in sales
One Fish Two fish Red fish Blue Fish   Dr. Seuss    Number 10 in sales.

Not bad for a couple of children's books that have been in print like forever. 

Alternate History: WWII Might have beens

Everyone agrees that Hitler's greatest mistake was to take on the Russians before finishing off the British. In 1940 the German army had shown it was lightyears ahead of every other army.  The Germans had occupied Denmark and Norway, invaded and conquered Poland, Holland, Belgium, and even France.  All the Germans needed to do, to settle Britain's hash, was to get their army, actually just a small part of their army, across the English Channel.  After Dunkirk the British Army was in no shape to stand off an invasion of Boy Scouts, let alone a couple of panzer divisions. 
   The only problem from the German point of view, was getting their army across the channel in one piece.  They had about 2000 Rhine river barges to make the crossing in.  These were seaworthy enough for a channel crossing in good weather.  Summer weather.  Trouble was, the British had a couple of hundred destroyers, fifty cruisers, and a dozen real battleships to oppose such a crossing.  When the British steam up along side a river barge in a destroyer,  that's the end of the river barge and all its troops, (or cargo).  The Germans only had about ten destroyers, some subs, a couple of cruisers, and a couple of light duty battleships.  The Royal Navy would have an enjoyable turkey shoot cleaning out that batch.   The only equalizer the Germans had was the Luftwaffe, and for that to be effective it had to defeat the Royal Air Force.  You cannot take out surface vessels when you have Hurricanes and Spitfires on your tail.  The Germans tried to take out the RAF in the summer of 1940, resulting in what we now call the Battle of Britain.  Unfortunately for Hitler,  the RAF out shot the Luftwaffe that summer. 
   One equalizer that the Germans might have obtained, the French Navy.  France was a great power, and had a sizable Navy, not quite as big as the Royal Navy, but far superior to what the Germans had in 1940.  The French were pissed off at the British, they blamed the British for their defeat by the Germans that summer.  According to the French, the British didn't send enough troops, enough aircraft, and they bugged out when the going got tough.  If the Germans had stroked the defeated French enough, they might have been able to get the French to join them in an invasion of England, and bring along their Navy.  This would have required a lot more diplomacy from the Germans than was usual for them, but it might have happened.  And if so, it would have been curtains for the Brits in 1940. 
This worried the British so much, that they sank a good portion of the French fleet in North Africa just to make sure they didn't join the Germans. 

Notes for auto designers

Let's talk about the driver on the interior of the car.  The dashboard has to be usable in full sun and in darkness.  Those dinky little digital displays, LED's usually, just aren't bright enough to see when the sun is shining in thru the windows.  Where as a good round dialface, with a nice bright pointer is readable day and night.  Even better would be the system we used in the Air Force.  All gauges were marked in green for their normal operating range and red for dangerous ranges.  Hence the term "redline". 
   And the cost cutters keep pushing the cheapest kind of control, a single pole single position push button.  And they make black buttons on a black control panel, with tiny little legends on the buttons.  Leaving us drivers fumbling in the dark just trying to change stations on the radio.  The radio on my car is so bad that Buick wired up a complete second set of radio controls on the steering wheel, to make it easier to use the radio.  Fine industrial design that, dual controls on a car radio.  If they just made the buttons a contrasting color to the control panel it  would help a lot.   And they could standardize those steering wheel stalks that work the wipers and washer, the lights, the turn signals, and the slushbox.   And important controls ought to be knobs that you can feel for in the dark, not pushbuttons.  For extra credit put different shaped knobs on different controls so you can tell them apart by feel in the dark.