Courts are OK with AT&T - Time Warner Merger

The courts may be OK with it but I am not.  Both companies are huge, revenues in tens and hundreds of billions a year.  Both are plenty large enough to prosper on their own.  Both are so big that they won't get any economies of scale by merging. 
   Both companies are in the same line of work, namely providing cable TV.  Merge them and they will find it easier to hike my cable fees.  Just by example Time Warner managed to chisel my cable bill up to $62 this month from $35 a few years ago.  They just hike my cable bill a few dollars here and a few dollars there.  And Time Warner (now calling itself "Spectrum") is the only game in town up here.  It's pay what ever they ask or do without broadband and Fox News Channel. 
   The Wall St Journal was all in favor of the merger.  They did a lot of fancy explaining that this was a vertical merger, and that both companies were really in different businesses.  This I do not believe.  They are both TV cable companies.
   If the anti trust people were doing their jobs, we would not need "too big to fail" protection in things like Dodd-Frank.  If it's too big to fail, then it ought to be broken up as a monopoly.  

They have given up advertising cars on TV

It's been years since I saw a TV ad for Chevrolet, or Ford, or even Prius.  I do see ads for Jaguar and Range Rover and Lexus, and the car dealers still run ads now and then, but the big three US makers have pretty much given up on TV ads.  For GM and Chrysler, this was forced on them when they declared bankruptcy during Great Depression 2.0.  They just didn't have the money.  Ford was better managed, and didn't have to declare bankruptcy, but money was tight at Ford too.
   Things are better in Detroit now a days, compared to say 2009, but the big three car companies still don't advertise on TV.  Could it be that they have decided that TV ads cost more than they are worth? 

Thoughts for new College Freshmen

College is expensive, thanks to plentiful government loan money.  You can go into hock for as much as $200,000 for four years of college.  That's new house money.  And you are stuck with it forever, bankruptcy won't get you  out of it.  To pay it off in 10 years, you have to come up with better than $20,000 a year, for ten years. 
    And all that money only pays off for you if you finish college and graduate.  If you give up or flunk out, you still owe all the money but  it won't get you a job.
    So, think real hard.  Do you have the stick-to-itness to get thru college and graduate?  Do you like academic work, writing papers, doing research,  listening to lectures, doing homework?  A lotta people do, and a lotta people don't.  Where do you stand?  Your odds of graduating are much better if you like academic work.  If you don't like academic work, you may not make it.  
   If you have some doubts about academic work, think about doing something besides going to school for a while.  Join the armed services, take a job, travel, do a winter ski bumming, hike the Appalachian trail, anything.  You been sitting in classrooms since kindergarten, and you may be just plain tired of school by now.  A year or two doing something else will do wonders for your attitude. 
   Do you like working with your hands more than you like paper pushing?   A lot of skilled trades jobs pay as well as the average white collar job, don't require college, get you out of doors, and can be very satisfying.  Think about getting into welding, electronics, heavy equipment operator, lineman, machinist, construction, truck driver, logger, fish and game warden, fireman, lots of other things. 
   When you start college, you really need to know what you want to do to make a living after graduation.  And pick your college major to make you employable in your chosen field.  This is a big decision, but you have to make it, by Christmas time freshman year at the latest.  Talk to friends, family, anyone you trust, do some reading about the field.  Then pick your major with an eye to making yourself employable.  Colleges offer all sorts of interesting majors, many of which are totally worthless when it comes to finding a job.  Gender studies, Ethnic Studies, anything with "Studies" in its name, sociology, anthropology, art history, under water basket weaving, all are worthless unless you are independently wealthy and don't need a job after you graduate. 
                                 

So how lucky were we in Singapore?

Hard to say.  The NORKs made vague promises to denuclearize.  No specifics, no deadlines.  We gave Kim a nice worldwide propaganda platform and promised not to run any more joint South Korean-US military exercises.  We only do that once a year, and we just finished up this year's joint exercise a few weeks ago, and the next one wasn't scheduled until next year.  If the NORKs prove uncooperative, we can easily reschedule a joint exercise for 2019.
   Denuclearization will take some time, months at least, even with the best of good will from the NORKs.  With just a tiny touch of bad will, it will take years.   With a large dose of bad will it will take forever.  The key issue is admission of American inspectors to North Korea, with no-knock authority,  ability to go anywhere, inspect anything, with no advance notice given.  The NORKs aren't gonna like that.  It will take time to get that going, months, or worse.  Until we get the NORK working bombs handed over to us, and our inspectors working in the North, we don't have much.  It will take a long time to make this happen.  Until it does, we cannot really say whether Trump's mission to Singapore was a success or not.  We have a bunch of Lefty-Democrats on TV right now claiming Singapore was a failure, but it is really too early to tell.  
   For good things to happen, Kim whats-his-face needs to feel secure.  If he and/or his regime loose power for any reason, he will loose his life, and he knows this.  So distasteful as it may be, we will have to prop up the NORK regime.  
  

I wish President Trump all the luck in the world for Singapore Mtg

It's gonna be tough.  Kim feels his nukes are his security blanket.  But it might work.  I hope it does.  Best of luck to our side. 

Game of Thrones, Season 7 is out on Netflix

So I added all the disks to my Netflix Queue.  Then I decided to refresh the series in my mind by watching season 6 over again.  I've just finished watching the first three episodes and they are bad.  Black out camera man gives us pure solid black scenes with maybe just a single faint white face showing out of blackness.  Rest of the actor, costumes, sets, completely invisible, lost in the darkness.  No character every addresses any other character by name, leaving us audience wondering who they all are.  They start to magic John Snow back to life in episode 1 and it isn't til episode 3 that they get the job done.  
   Let us hope season 7 is better.

D-Day. Sixth of June

It was really before my time.  I was only one year old back in June of 1944.   D-Day was the first time the Anglo American forces were strong enough to fight the main German army on the German's home turf.  Previous combat in North Africa and Italy were against small detachments like Rommel's Africa Corps, or bloody but small scale combat against limited German forces, fighting a defensive battle in very defensible Italian terrain. 
   Humongous forces were poured into D-Day.  The operation looked all kinds of dangerous.  Eisenhower, supreme commander, the man with the best view of the situation, found it so dicey that he prepared a press release, to be issued in case the landing was defeated.  Had he needed to use it, the setback  to Anglo American arms would have been staggering.  1942 and 1943, two whole years of war production and training, went into marshaling the D-Day forces.  Had the Germans won, much of this vast investment in infantry, tanks, artillery, warships, and warplanes would have been lost.  It would have taken at least another year, probably two, to build up to launching a second invasion.  Give Hitler another year or two and there is no telling what might have happened.  The Germans might have perfected nuclear weapons.  The V-weapon program would have had another year or two to rain destruction upon London.  Time to bring a radical new U-boat, the type 21, into operation.  Lots of things could have given Hitler victory.
   Anglo American victory was possible by defeating the U-boats in the Atlantic in 1943.  We could not have moved our troops, let alone the vast quantity of supplies needed to support our forces, and keep England fed and producing,  had the U-boats kept sinking ships at the rate they had in 1942.  Second, USAAF and the RAF had pretty much blown the Luftwaffe out of the air by 1944.  This guaranteed that the Germans couldn't sink the D-Day armada in mid channel, or render close air support to advancing Panzer divisions.  Finally, the Germans did not know where the Anglo American invasion would come.  The entire coast of France, including the Riviera, and the low countries, was possible.  The Germans had to spread their troops  up and down the European coastline, whereas the Anglo Americans could concentrate all their forces on the invasion beaches, giving a solid superiority in numbers at the crucial spot. 
   As it was, it was a tough fight.  A lot of bravery, and sacrifice carried the day, just barely.  And, once ashore, the Anglo American armies could beat the German army in a standup fight. 

So who should we believe?

We have President Trump, saying that the entire Mueller investigation is phony.  We have the MSM claiming that President Trump is saying mean things about them, and about Mueller.   The MSM claim that Mueller will show that Trump did something illegal and bad during the campaign back in 2016. 
   So far Mueller hasn't shown any evidence of anything much.  You would think that by now he would have something, if there was anything there to find.  He has frightened a few Trump people into confessing to minor sins that don't have much to do with the campaign or the Russians.
   President Trump has indeed laid into the MSM with an ax.  On the other hand, who can blame him?  The media hates Trump and has been doing their damndest  to discredit him and his administration.  The media are never going let up, they want Trump's scalp just so they can enter the Woodward and Burnstein  Hall of Fame.  Trump's best strategy is to discredit them, and he has been fairly effective in doing so.
   So for the time being, I am going to believe that Trump got elected fairly and squarely, and the Russians had little or nothing to do about it.  Should Mueller come forward with some solid evidence, a creditable witness say, or some real documents (the paper kind with signatures)  I could change my mind.   

If the Democrats win Congress this fall

They will immediately start to impeach President Trump.  All they need is a simple majority in the House to impeach.  They need a 2/3rds majority in the Senate to convict, which they probably won't have.  So about a year will go by with only impeachment proceedings, testimony, votes, and procedural maneuvering.  The newsies will eat it up and cover nothing else.  In short, the federal government will be paralyzed for a year or more.  Nothing else will get done in DC.  In the bitter end, the Democrats won't have the Senate votes to convict, and  so the whole exercise will be in vain.
   So, unless you are a deep dyed yellow dog Democrat, you ought to vote Republican this fall, just to permit the federal government to operate at all.  Votes for Democrats are votes to stop all government activity. 
   Despite what you may think of Trump, you gotta admit that GNP growth is up from Obama's miserable 1.5% to nearly 3%.  Unemployment is way down, 3.8%.  Stock market is up.  Wages are up. Taxes are down.  These are all good things. 

Baking a cake for a Gay wedding

This case has been stumbling along for 6 years now.  Generating billable hours for lawyers.  Got all the way to the Supremes yesterday to little good.  The Supremes did hold that the Colorado people had been mean to the baker, and displayed hostility to religion, and the baker should be let off oin this one case.  For all this legal mickey motion, sucking up 6 years and countless legal bills, no new broad principle of law came out of it.  We can expect more years of profitable lawyering, at tax payer expense, on this issue.
    What I would like to see is a law that says caterers, contractors, the self employed, people rendering custom services, cakes, photographs, music,  hair care, flowers, don't have to serve customers they don't want to serve.  They are different from retailers, restaurants, hotels, motels, gas stations, railroads, airlines, and bus companies, who are rightly obligated to serve everyone who walks in their door.  These people are rendering custom services which makes them into supporters of the customer served.   The baker felt that by baking a custom cake for a gay couple, he was supporting gay marriage.  Which is understandable on the bakers part. 

Victory At Sea

Shortly after World War II, NBC television created the Victory at Sea documentary, and aired it in the very early 1950's.  I can remember watching episodes of it from a 14 inch portable TV on rabbit ears.  NBC got Richard Rogers, of the famous Rogers and Hammerstein Broadway show business, to do the musical score.  Back in the day you could buy LP records of just the score.  The documentary makers picked the best of thousands of feet of news reel film,  added Roger's score and some narration.  They made better than 30 episodes. 
  I ran across a DVD set of the whole series in the $5 a DVD bin at Wallymart.  Been playing it on evenings when I lack a new Netflix to watch.  It's all black and white of course.  Color film and just been invented but was so slow ( insensitive to light) that everybody shot the faster black and white film.  And even the black and white film wasn't all that good.  Lot of shots have the sunlit topsides of things over exposed (burned out white) and the shadows pure black.  A fair amount of the footage is enemy footage captured during or after the war.
   If you have children or grandchildren Victory at Sea is a good thing to show them.  It moves right along, all the footage is genuine WWII footage, and there is plenty of action to keep a kid's interest.  From what I hear, schools have pretty much giving up teaching history.  WWII is the formative event of  the 20th century.  Watching this show, even just a few episodes of it will give the children an idea of the vastness of the war.  Although this show emphasizes the Navy side of the war, it gives a fair showing to the land side of the conflict.  

Irreversible. Wonder how that works? Really.

That's one of the American demands upon the NORKs.  We want denuclearization that is irreversible.   Just just how do we prevent the NORKs from deciding to scrap whatever deal they make and start up their nuclear program again?   Even if we insist on daily no knock inspection of their nuclear sites, they can just create new secret sites, keep 'em secret, and go merrily on enriching uranium, making plutonium, and building bombs. 

Wants the Yankees to pick up his motel bill

Little Rocket Man doesn't have the cash to pay his own motel bill in Singapore?  Wow.  Talk about cheap cheap cheap.  He wants us to pick up his tab.  So far all he has managed is to convince all the Americans that he is broke, cheap, and a shameless panhandler. 
    The NORKs are a nation state.  They can afford a nuclear program, a million man army, a ballistic missile program but they cannot afford their own motel bills?  Come on. 

All the News that fits we print

Fox News did a short peace on a new air vehicle, looked like an air car.  Talked about it's use evacuating the wounded from the battlefield, and speeding civilian auto accident victims to the hospital.  Mentioned that getting the wounded/victims to the hospital within one hour would greatly improve survival rates.  Probably true. 
  They failed to give any useful information about the vehicle.  They failed to give the name of this wonderful machine, or the name of the Israeli company developing it, or the name of the US company that might produce it.  They didn't tell us the range of the vehicle.  They didn't state the engine horsepower it uses to get airborne.  They didn't state the payload.  To be useful it has to be able to get off the ground with a single patient, and the pilot. 
   The thing might be a success if it had a 50 mile range, and could land and get airborne again with a 200 pound patient and and 200 pound pilot aboard.  No indication of the capability of the flying prototype shown in the TV piece.  The prototype might not have the range and payload to be a success, but if we knew how close it was to successful performance, we could form an idea of how far it has to go to make the grade and be a successful product.  I assume the flying prototype they showed was a full scale prototype.  But they didn't tell us that.  It could have been a small scale model, a drone, no way I could tell watching TV.  And the TV people didn't tell us what we were watching, full scale working prototype, or tiny model drone. 

Logan 2017

I missed it in theaters back in 2017.  I got it on DVD thru Netflix.  Not impressed.  Although we have Hugh Jackman playing Logan, not much else is right.  Logan has gone to seed, drinks too much and uses stuff.  Drives an airport stretch limo, nicely washed and polished, but still a stretch limo.  You would never catch me behind the wheel such an under powered, ungainly, hard to parallel park tank.  Logan spends a fair bit of his time taking care of Charles Xavier, played by Patrick Stewart.  Like Logan,  Charles Xavier has gone to seed too.  He no longer sees the whole of mankind's future, nor can he do anything about it.  The plot, if any, never became clear to me, the movie just kinda rambled along, and never getting anywhere.  If Logan or Charles Xavier was trying to accomplish anything, I never figured out what it might be. 
   Not the best X-man spinoff movie.

military-still-wants-belly-gun-v-22-osprey

Full article here.  According to the article, Osprey fans and supporters have been calling for a research and development project for a belly gun for the Osprey for years.  Strange.  We figured out how to mount machine guns on aircraft back in 1915, Antony Fokker did the deed.  Bolt the gun to the fuselage somewhere, cut a hole for the gun muzzle to stick out of, and the job is done.  You have to steer the aircraft to lay the gun, but that's easier and more instinctive and more reliable than some kinda steerable gun mount.  No R & D required, just go do it.  We did it back in Viet Nam, the local boys managed to mount a 30 cal Gatling gun on an F4C, and Chuck Yeager scored a number of kills with it.   It worked so well that the next version of the F4, the F4D, was built with an internal gun.
   Plus, the mission of the Osprey is to carry troops and land them behind enemy lines.  Adding guns and ammunition costs range and payload, i.e. an armed Osprey is less effective at its primary mission than an unarmed one.  If the landing zone is hot, send some armed escort fighters along with the Ospreys to dust off any bad guys stupid enough to stick their heads up.  
    

Obamas to do TV show. It will be non political

According to Variety the Obamas will get a TV show with Netflix.  Netflix claims the show will be non political.  Really. 

Palestinians firing mortars into Israel from Gaza

That sort of thing has been an act of war since the invention of cannon.   Last time the Palestinians did this they provoked an Israeli invasion that did them a lot of hurt.  Seems pretty obvious that the Israelis are prepared to do that again.  How much hurt do the Israelis have to inflict to get their message across?  And how crazy is the Hamas leadership, asking to get their asses kicked again, for no reason?
   I know the Palestinians are still sore about Israeli victory back in 1948.  But they gotta learn that they lost, and it ain't likely that they ever will be able to beat the Israelis.  Keeping up the hostilities ain't gonna do the Palestinians any good, the Israelis are better educated, more unified, more dedicated, and generally tougher than the Palestinians will ever be.  

GDPR Notice on my blog

The blogger people tell me that they have posted some kind of message on the overseas versions of my blog, to comply with the new European data privacy law.  I cannot see this message.  I have no idea what it says.  It's a message from the blogger people, not me. 
   All I can say is that my posts, and your comments, stay on the blog pretty much for ever, and are visible to anyone who visits the blog. 

Do the players and/or the owners understand?

Understand the real issue that is.  The real issue is that we fans don't like players dissing the US flag and/or the American national anthem.  It irritates us down deep.  I will avoid the more descriptive words for our feelings because they are a little too vulgar for my blog.   And when we fans get irritated, we stop buying game tickets and we stop watching games on TV.  Which is bad for business.   Any fool ought to understand this by now. 
   Apparently there are a bunch of fools out there.  I have heard one bunch  claim that President Trump's disapproval was divisive with the owners.  Nonsense,  the president is just one guy.  It's the masses of football fans who have been turned off to the game that matter.
   Another bunch of fools say dissing the flag and the anthem is free speech.  Maybe it is, but just because speech is free doesn't mean we fans have to like it.  We don't.   That sort of free speech has taken a solid hit on TV viewership.  A little more such free speech and NFL football will be down there with European soccer matches.  And only available on U-Tube.
   Good luck NFL.  Maybe common sense will penetrate before it's too late.  

US has been getting hostages released

Let's see, those three from North Korea, now one from Venezuela.  Neither country is a friend of America.  But they released their hostage[s].  Either out of fear of what we might do to them, or a desire to butter up the Yankees to get something from us.  Either way, we get our people back.  Which is a good thing.

Keep the banks from going broke

Great Depression 2.0, back in 2008, was caused by big banks and insurance companies going broke.  They went broke by making loans to flaky borrowers (Greece, Puerto Rico) and flaky deals (mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps), not keeping enough cash on hand to cover losses.  As the smoke cleared, and we launched into an 8 year depression, the Democrats passed a bunch of regulations (Dodd Frank) , and failed to prosecute anyone who was running the failed firms.
   I say we could have a more dependable financial sector if the people running it, CEO's and the like, had a real fear of personal retribution when they drove their companies onto the rocks.  Start with more aggressive prosecution under existing laws.  Pass a law making financial executives personally liable for failure of their firms.  Enlist that army of unemployed lawyers to sure to socks off  anyone who bankrupts his bank.
    In short, scrap the regulations.  Bring on the ambulance chasing lawyers.

The NORKs, on again, off again, maybe on again?

At least President Trump understands that his mission is to obtain a deal helpful to the United States, rather than just obtain a deal that looks good in the democratic MSM, like Obama did.  We want the NORKs denuclearized.  We offered the NORKs an end to the embargo, a signed peace treaty to end the Korean War, a guarantee of survival of Kim and of his government, and maybe some investment to spiff up their disastrous economy.  Apparently this ain't enough to get Kim to give up his nukes.  I assume Kim feels that a good dozen working nukes is a better guarantee of his and his regime's survival than any amount of Yankee promises.  Can't say that I disagree with Kim on this.
   So, the NORKs made noises about keeping their nukes.  And President Trump replied by cancelling the summit.  Probably the right move.  As of this morning the NORKs are making back off noises, and making  lets do the summit anyhow noises. 
  Say tuned for further developments. 

Words of the Weasel Part 52

Informant vs Spy.  In real life these two nouns mean exactly the same thing.  But in today's strange politics the democrats seem to think that "informant" sounds better than "spy".  They are calling the spy planted upon the Trump campaign in 2016 was really only an informant, which sounds so much nicer than spy.
   I will admit that "informant" is used in law enforcement stories whereas "spy" is used in military and international stories, but they both work the same.  A harmless looking individual is planted on the enemy and passes useful/damaging information to the other side. 
   If the spy/informant planted on the Trump campaign story holds up, it will cause a furore, probably as big as Watergate. 

Difference between investment and gambling

I think there is one.  Investment means taking good real money and lending it to business enterprises to build factories,power stations, and pipelines, purchase machinery, aircraft, motor vehicles, and ships, to buy inventory,  stuff that grows the business.  Gambling is fun, but the money doesn't go to finance business, it goes back and forth between players.  To keep the economy growing we need to encourage investment and discourage gambling with laws, regulation, and taxes.  
    The stock market makes investment in stocks attractive, mostly because investors can sell their stock for cash, anytime.  And quickly, call your broker, and the sale will go thru that day or the next, and the cash will be in your checking account in another day or so.  That's liquidity, and it vastly increases the desirability of stocks as an investment.  And companies can issue and sell stock, raising cash for merely printing a stock certificate.  If you are starting a company, the ability to issue company stock to raise money is a real boon.
   And then we have those things that are mostly gambling.  The morning NPR news regularly reports "Dow futures are up (or down)".  I don't really know just how Dow futures work, but I seriously doubt that any of the money that changes hands gets to businesses for investment.  I think  the money just goes back and forth between financial players.  Pure gambling.   Same goes for "derivatives"  another poorly understood (at least I don't really understand them)  financial deal which just passes money around among players. 
   We always need more investment and less gambling. 

Oxford History of the American People by Samuel Elliot Morison

This is American history as it ought to be written.  Morison starts with pre Columbian America and takes the story right up to the present day (in Morison's case 1965).   Morison is a fine writer, his text reads as well as anything by Bruce Catton  or Shelby Foote.  He covers everyone of any interest, and every political thought that occurred in America.  He leaves nothing out. And he make it all interesting.  The book is massive, 1150 pages.
   Morison is an fascinating guy.  He was a Harvard professor.  He held a commission in the Navy reserve.  When WWII broke out, Morison became the Navy's historian.  He went to sea, pretty much for the duration.  He was at the Torch landings in North Africa, he was at Midway.  After the war he single handedly wrote the Navy's history of World War II, in  fifteen volumes, The History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II.   And he collaborated with Henry Steele Commager to write Growth of the American Republic, (usually known as Morison and Commager) which was the standard college US history text for decades.  They don't make Harvard professors like that anymore. 
   It's a fine read by one of the best American historians ever. 

Give all the teachers a 40% raise

That's what an op ed in Tuesday's Wall St Journal calls for.  The writer seems to feel that teachers ought to get paid more, to bring their salaries in line with say civil engineers.  OK, nice thought and all.  But.
   I'm still a believer in capitalist free market theory.  You pay enough to attract the people you need, and no more.  The modest wages paid to teachers are a signal to young people that we have a goodly supply of teachers and you could do better and make more money in other lines of work.  That's what the market is supposed to do, issue price signals to workers and suppliers, when there is a shortage of something, be it Hershey bars or school teachers, the price goes up, more people take up teaching, or candy companies make more candy bars.  It's a system that has served us well, allocated labor and capital intelligently, and given us fantastic prosperity.  The Soviets tried to operate without the market and they only lasted 70 years. 
   The same op ed did note that teachers of math and science, who are always in short supply, get paid more than the average teacher.  Hint to aspiring teachers, do a math or science major in college rather than the ed major.
   I guess my other problem with the mare 'em more idea is that we have poured more and more money into public schools.  The vast funding increase has not improved our children's education, at least by objective measures like test scores.  They have remained flat over the decades while school funding has doubled. 

Why was Prince Harry wearing a black uniform?

I thought Harry had served in the British Army, you know, the Redcoats.  He was wearing a black uniform, with his pilot's wings and some ribbons, at his wedding yesterday.