Words of the Weasel Part 55

Passed away, or just plain passed.  You ought to say died.  Passed is a euphemism intended to blunt the pain of  death and dying.  Death is painful, always has been painful. We ought to say what we mean, and we mean died when talking about someone who died or is dead.  Say it, died.  dead.   

What is California doing wrong that NH is doing right?

Out in Cali they turn off electric power, closing schools and businesses and putting the traffic lights out. That was supposed to prevent wildfires.  Then California just had yet another heavy duty wild fire that destroyed 85 houses.  We never do that here.  When the power goes out in NH it means a tree has fallen on the wires.  I never heard of an NH power company deliberately shutting off the power.  Nor do we have wildfires burning down houses.  We have plenty of woodlands, but they don't catch fire.  Is it better forestry practices in NH?  Is it more rainfall in NH?  Why does California burn down in the dark and NH goes about normal life and keeps the lights on? 

Cosequin for cats

I took my senior (14 year old) cat to the vet this summer.  She had been limping and gimping as she walked, or slinked around the house and I thought a visit to the vet might do her some good.  She is a good cat and I am fond of her.
   The vet said my cat was in good health and recommended I give her Cosequin for cats.  It has been advertised on TV and after a few weeks I think the stuff has done good things for my cat.  She has been able to jump up on furniture that she hasn't been able to handle for years.  She goes out more.  She doesn't limp as much.  The stuff is $30 a bottle but she is a good cat and I am fond of her and I can afford $30 a bottle. 

Drum beating for abolishing the electoral college

The electoral college is a deal in the US constitution concerning election of the president.  It's been there a long time, since the original ratification of the Constitution in 1789.  The founders intended the electoral college to equalize the power of large states and give small states (like New Hampshire) a stronger voice  in presidential elections.  There have been a few presidential elections, most recently 2016, where the winner in the electoral college received fewer popular votes than the loser in the electoral college did.  Trump for example.
   Since 2016 a push to dump the electoral college and go with a straight popular vote has arisen.  Even Youngest Son is in favor.  As a citizen of a small state, I am against the idea, because New Hampshire gets to exert a lot more influence in the federal government than it would in a straight popular vote deal.  For instance the NH first-in-the-nation  presidential primary is important, all candidates have to show themselves in New Hampshire and  pass muster with the New Hampshire electorate, a patriotic, well informed, and fair minded bunch.  In a straight popular vote setup only primary elections in big states (California, New York, Florida, etc) would count. 
   Anyhow the "popular vote is all" people got my address and mailed me an 8.5 by 11 inch, two inch thick, five pound trade paperback urging the "popular vote is all".  Massive it is.  I don't plan to read it, I am against the idea.  I wonder where this outfit got my name and address.  It was addressed to "The Hon. David Starr".  I only got elected NH senator less than a year ago, so they must have done some research fairly recently. 
   Anyhow, Long Live the Electoral College. 

We need to outlaw robocalling

We could do it with a state law.  Or a federal law if you thought the Congress would ever vote on anything. Many state legislatures are still interested in constituent service, unlike our noble Congresscritters. 
   Step 1 of such a law would be to require the telephone companies to implement a spoof proof caller ID system.  Today's caller ID can be easily spoofed by robocallers and spammers.  Making caller ID spoof proof would give us voters and small chance to not answer calls from numbers we never heard of.  Penalty of say $10,000 to the phone companies for each spoofed caller ID incident.
  Step 2 of such a law would define the felony of robocalling.  Placing a cold call to anyone and giving a pitch for any product or political party, candidate, or idea is robocalling.  Playing recording or speech from electronic devices to the victim is robocalling.  Uttering false hoods such as claiming to be calling from the IRS, Social Security, Microsoft, or any other  institution is robocalling.  Persons who place the call, who speak to the victim, who maintain or service the robocalling equipment are all robocallers and subject to the penalty of law.  People who support the robocaller[s] with workspace or money are guilty of robocalling.
Step 3 of such a law would spell out penalties for convicted robocallers.  I would suggest five years in jail for the first offense, and ten years for repeat offenses. 
  There is still a good deal of work to do, namely catching robocallers, after passage of an anti-robocalling law, but we must have the law making robocalling a felony before we can expect law enforcement to do anything about it. 

Who is that masked whistleblower?

The democrats want to keep the identity of their Ukrainian telephone call whistle blower secret.  They are talking about having him (her?) testify using an electronic voice distorter and wearing a mask. 
  That ought to give us all a good warm feeling that this whistle blower is telling the truth.  It will look really strange on TV too.
Rots of Ruck  Democrats.

Leaf Season in Franconia Notch

The Mittersill Inn from the lower part of Hubertus Ring Road

The Mittersill Inn driverway

A really red tree on Three Mile Hill Road

The Cannon M Peabody Slopes driveway.

Very bright tree at Peabody Slopes.

Bright trees on Three Mile Hill road

Bright tree at Mittersill.

Finding password. How deep can Windows bury something?

I managed to knock out my internet connection the other day.  I had been troubled by a wireless modem that failed to connect automatically upon power up.  I dug out the documentation on the wireless and found the CD with the wireless driver on it.  And a bright red label reading Stop!  Insert CD first!.  I didn't remember doing that when I just plugged the modem into a new-to-me Dell Optiplex 900. So I tried it, stuck in the CD, and all sorts of things happened.  And my internet connection went away. 
   Quite a bit of fiddling and running the Windows troubleshooters and clicking on every box on all the screens that showed up finally this morning got me to a screen that showed the router's password.  All the wireless routers come with a factory password burned into their PROMS.  I suppose the user can change the router password, but few of us do.  Anyhow, the password, smoothprairie295, was misspelled.  I fixed that and bingo, Internet came back.  Dunno how the misspell got into Win 10, but while trying to get internet back I went to a lotta places and typed in a lotta stuff. 
  Anyhow, this is what I had to do to reach the password screen.  You may want to do this when you bring home a new computer or want to get a house guest's computer to work on your internet.

Right Click on the network icon on the taskbar
Click on network and connections setting
Open Network to Internet Setting 
Click on Change Adaptor Setting
Right click on your network device icon
Click on Status
Click on Wireless Properties
Click on the Security Tab
Click on Show Characters.

And now we are deep enough.  Took me a long time to go this deep.  Should you need to know your password, and you forgot to write it down, that's what you have to do to retrieve it from Windows.

$2000 for Samsung Galaxy Fold Smartphone.

Wow.  My HP laptop was only $300 at Staples three years ago.  My lightly used Dell desktop was only $200.  $2k for a smartphone seems like a lotta money.  It is cool, I think.  The thing unfolds like a book, the screen has a fold in the middle.  Gotta wonder about screen life.  How long does it take for a fold line in the screen to become permanent? 

American Flag flies in Hong Kong

Wall St Journal had a photo of Hong Kongers waving American flags above a piece on "unrest" in Hong Kong.  I was touched that a people on the far side of the world, under attack by their communist government, would find inspiration in the American flag.  I guess what America stands for still has meaning around the world. 

Words of the Weasel Part 53

Accountable.  As in " hold him accountable".   In real life accountable means to express mild disapproval in cases that call for indictment, trial, and 20 years in slam. 

The great Ukrainian telephone call kerfuffle

The TV news has been talking about nothing else for several days now.  The Democrats are calling impeachment.  The Republicans are not saying much.  I have not seen a good believable write up of what really happened. I have seen a lot of highly partisan write ups, from both sides, and I have trouble believing any of them.   Impeachment is going to make it impossible for Congress to do anything else for months, maybe years.  Impeachment talk won't go away until November 2020.   I tend to think this is a tempest in a teapot, a revival of the Mueller report, but going for impeachment makes it more serious.  It ought to do Biden some harm, the stories of Hunter Biden taking a $50,000 A MONTH salary from a Ukrainian firm are disgraceful.   Far as I can tell public opinion is still out on this great telephone kerfuffle.  I have no idea where it will eventually settle. 

Another great business name, Night Line Legal

Night Line Legal, they are getting air play, for some lawyers advertising for plaintiffs.  Sounds as reputable as Midnight Auto. 

Congress finds a new out

They are going to impeach Trump, or at least talk about it even if they lack the stones to actually do it.  This will tie Congress up for the rest of this year, and maybe a good slice of next year.  They won't deal with any of the things they ought to be dealing with.  Immigration, copyright and patent reform,  passing spending bills before the end of this fiscal year, dropping the magical 50 mpg CAFE standard, allowing import of medicines, eliminating boutique gasoline blends that make it illegal to ship gasoline from one state to another,  allowing sale of health insurance in all 50 states, shutting down the highway trust fund now that the interstate highway system is finished, and rolling back political correctness on campus.  And probably more stuff that escapes my memory right now.
   Not that Congress was doing any of these things, they have more fun trashing Trump.  And, now they have the impeachment thing to occupy all their time and energy.  The excuse this time is a telephone call between Trump and the newly elected president of Ukraine.  Apparently Trump mentioned young Hunter Biden drawing $50K salary PER MONTH, in Ukraine and maybe it should be looked into.  Congress has been running an investigation on TV all day talking about procedural issues, like which computer system the transcript was saved on.  Apparently there is not much in the way of actual wrongdoing or unethical conduct, so they talk about procedure. 

Global Warming according to the Economist

Got my new Economist in this morning's mail.  Cover is a clever climate graph, so clever that I had to read the article to understand the graph.  Anyhow the Economist graph shows global warming only starting in the 1990s and getting really hot in the 2010's.  .  Everything is cool  from the beginning of time (of graph) (1850) until the 1990's.   Trouble is, that is wrong.  NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has temperature records going back to the invention of the thermometer ( late 1600's).  I downloaded the records some years ago and graphed them out with Excel.  Global warming flattened out in the 1990s and has remainded flat to this day.  Dunno where the Economist got their data, but there is a publicly available database from a reasonably reliable institution that does not support the Economist's colorful cover graph. 

Things Detroit ought to do

   They ought to put an outside thermometer in every car.  They are not expensive, the sensor can be had for a couple of bucks.  And some software to read the sensor, scale the answer into degrees F, and display it on the digital dashboard.  Software is free. 
   They ought to give us back a dimmer knob for the dash lights.  My current car, a Buick, has a daylight sensor that looks for sunlight and when it fails to find any it figures it is nighttime and dims all the dash lights.  It gets things wrong, a lot.  Just pulling into a parking garage is enough to make it think its nighttime, and then it makes everything on the dash, the clock, the radio, all the instruments, too dim to read.  A good old fashioned knob that you turn by hand to set the brightness of the dash would be a blessing.
   They ought to make the digital dash readable.  Mine shows everything in a single tiny display which hides behind one of the spokes of the steering wheel.  It has 5 push buttons to select which is displayed, oil pressure, battery voltage, coolant temperature, mileage, fuel economy, etc, etc.  The display is so small I cannot read it wearing my driving glasses.  Better would be good old analog gauges, the kind with a needle in them, all on the dash all the time.  And mark the dials with green for normal operation and red for trouble.
   Then it would be nice if they made a sporty car that can be driven in snow.  The current sporty cars, Camaro, Mustang, Challenger, are so bad in snow that people laugh if you turn up with one at a ski resort.  Or for that matter just in Littleton NH, the locals figure anyone driving a sporty car is a flatlander.   

Let's not get cocky, but...

I think the Democrats have shown enough crazy at their debates that Trump will get himself re elected.  We don't want "medicare for all" sucking down $10 trillion tax dollars and we like our good private or company or union health plans.  We don't want Beto taking our AR15s away, Hell, we don't want Beto taking our Daisy BB guns away. We don't want to give up driving our cars, we want to keep out houses heated.  Fracking has done us a lot of good and we want to keep on doing it.  The whole Green Nude Ell thing sounds like returning to the Hiawatha live style.  Who wants to go thru a New Hampshire winter living in a teepee?
   Now what we need to do is keep control of the Senate and regain control of the House.  To which end we have four democrat Congresscritters from NH.  None of them has done anything good for NH since they got elected.  We ought to vote them all out of office.  Both reps and one senator are up for re election.   We have Republican candidates and we ought to get out and support them.  We have Don Bolduc running for US Senate against Jeanne Shaheen.  We have Steve Negron running for one house seat against Anne Kuster.  We need someone to run for the other House seat, against Chris Pappas.
   If we could get out the votes and send a Republican delegation to Congress next year, that would really get New Hampshire some good publicity.  And help get some action out of Congress. 

Thoughts on gun control

Gun control, every one’s favorite topic since all those terrible shootings in the last few weeks.  Democrats in Congress are all hot to pass new gun control laws, whether we need them or not.  Remember that Democrats have wanted to outlaw private ownership of firearms for many years now.  This looks like their opportunity. 

   They are pushing an “assault weapons ban”.  Trouble is, there is no difference between “assault rifles” and deer rifles.  In short, an “assault weapons ban” would become a ban on all guns.

   And then they talk about the “gun show loophole”.  I bought a gun at a gun show a while ago.  I, and everyone else, had to wait on the “instant background check” which took about an hour and a half.   Background checks are required at gun shows except for antique black powder guns.  

   And they are talking about toughening up the background checks.  Dunno just what that means, but I suspect it could get really ugly.

    The gun control people are saying that some guns, “military grade weapons”, “AR-15’s”, are more dangerous than other guns and we can make progress by banning the more dangerous guns, hence the push for an “assault weapons” ban.  This is wrong.  All guns are lethal.  Deer rifles are just as lethal as “assault rifles” In fact many states won’t allow deer hunting with AR-15’s, they don’t think the AR-15 is powerful enough to kill a deer cleanly. 

9/11 eighteen years ago.

Does not seem that long ago.  I was at work, Analog Devices in those days.  I brought our lab TV out into the main aisle so everyone could watch.  We were stunned.  I remember later all the vehicles driving around with American flags flying off them.
We do need to remember that we, Americans, have enemies out there that want to kill us all.  They got 3000 of us eighteen years ago. 

Effective new car advertisement

I was web surfing and I bumped into a Cadillac ad on The Hill.  Curious to see what the new Caddies look like, I clicked on it.  They have about 5 or 6 models.  Hard to tell them apart.  Models don’t have names anymore, just numbers, all starting with XT.  They have an XT4 and an AT5 and some other ones.  The only model that still has its name is Escalade, the big SUV.  Escalade was the only model that gave a price, horsepower, and some other info.  The other XT models just had photos, except for XT4 and XT6 which lacked photos entirely.  Stylists worked at giving all the XT models a family resemblance, they all have the same grille, and the same fore and aft creases in the sheet metal, the same nose down fanny up in the air look.  None of them have much of a trunk anymore.  Most of them are higher than traditional Caddies.

   Who ever put this ad together just googled for luxury cars and put the search results in the ad.  So right below the Caddy listing we have listings for all the competition, Lincoln, Mercedes, BMW and so on.  That’s not how I would do a Caddy ad.  

  I am an old Caddy owner.  Had a 99 Deville sedan once.  It was a nice car, lots of power, plenty of room, 27 mpg.  I ran it up to 140 K miles.  At that point the NH road salt finally managed to rust the entire rear axle off the car, and nobody wanted to fix that, so I traded it.  None of the new 2020 Caddies looked very attractive to my eye. 

Wall St Journal ranks US colleges.

The Journal ran a long piece today listing the top 500 US colleges.  I looked thru the list of names, looking for colleges that I and my family attended to see where they ranked today.  Looks like we all attended pretty highly ranked colleges.  

1 and 2.  Harvard and MIT.  I lived 9  years in Cambridge MA , used to rent to Harvard and MIT students,  walked both campuses, very scenic.
7     Brown University in Providence RI.  I applied there, many years ago.  Did not get in.
9     Cornell in Ithaca NY .  My cousin Andrew graduated there.
12   Johns Hopkins, Baltimore MD.  My daughter graduated there.  Majored in international relations, minored in Russian, both stood her in good stead when she did a 2 year tour with the Peace Corps in Kirghistan.  
15   Columbia NYC  My brother and his daughter (my niece) both graduated  there.
24   Wellesley, Wellesley MA.  My mother graduated there.
30   Tufts, Medford MA.  My sister in law graduated there.  Her older daughter, my other niece also graduated Tufts.
35    Middlebury, VT  my other brother graduated there.
91    Franklin and Marshall, Lancaster PA.  I graduated there.  BA in history
148  University of Delaware, Newark DE.  I graduated there with a BS in electrical engineering after my 6 year tour in USAF. 
176  St Olaf College, Northfield Minn.  My brother in law graduated there.
217  Drew University Madison, NJ.  My oldest son graduated there. Majored in theater.
237  Pratt Institute, Brooklyn NY.  My youngest son graduated there, BS in Mechanical Engineering.

North Grafton Republican host Bill O'Brien as speaker.

North Grafton Republicans had Bill O’Brien for their featured speaker last night.  Bill is running for US Senate, going up against Jeanne Shaheen, the democrat incumbent.  Bill has been around in NH politics for a long time.  Back about ten years ago, when the Democrats had driven the state budget $1 billion into the hole, Bill was speaker of the NH house.  He managed to cut the state budget 18%, bring it into balance, without hiking taxes. 

   He opened his remarks by saying that he was Trump before there was Trump.  He doesn’t support Planned Parenthood, saying that they are still selling body parts of aborted infants.  Bill sees “identity politics”, beloved by Democrats, as basically divisive, setting one group of Americans against another group.

  He is against Occasional-Castro’s Green Nude Eel; he sees it as imposing fantastic costs upon us citizens, as well as imposing harsh government controls on simple necessities like heating oil. 

   Bill is in favor of ending illegal immigration and sanctuary cities. He wants to fix the porous asylum system, and stiffen border defenses.  He wants a strong economy, because a strong economy creates jobs, the best thing we can do for people, and creates the wealth to deal with all the rest of our problems.  To which end he opposes red tape and regulations, and opposes government takeover of industries, and tax hikes.  He thinks US healthcare costs too much.  He opposes Medicare for All which would destroy Medicare and destroy private health insurance. 

   Far as I am concerned, Jeanne Shaheen has been a totally worthless Senator. She even wants to abolish the Electoral College, which was put into the Constitution to even things up between big states and small states.  New Hampshire is a small state and we would be crazy to give up the needed extra political power that the Electoral College gives us at the federal level.  In opposing the Electoral College Shaheen is opposing her constituents in New Hampshire in favor of the DNC. 

How did the 737 MAX get gounded, perhaps for ever?

It goes back to 2010 when Airbus announced a re engined A320, their workhorse single aisle air liner, that would save 15% on fuel.  Next year 2011, American Airlines told Boeing they better have a reengined 737 or else American would buy the Airbus 320 neo.  Boeing started the 737 MAX project a year later.  This project was a straight forward engine swap, replace the existing engines with newly designed engines that would give better fuel economy, leave the rest of the 737 alone.  It took Boeing four years, until 2016, to get the engine swap designed and built and get the first flight accomplished.  This is a rediculous length of time.  Back in the day, the British were able to swap out an anemic US engine for the 2000 hp Merlin engine on a North American fighter plane over a weekend.  The result of the British engine swap was the famous Mustang fighter.  You would think if the Brits could do it in a weekend, Boeing ought to be able to do the same thing in less than four years. 
   One of the constraints, was the 737 MAX had to fly like the preceding 737s.  And, the bigger engines of the MAX had a tendency to push the nose up when power was added.  So Boeing added code into the autopilot software to push the nose back down and make the new MAX fly just like the old 737.  Unfortunately for Boeing, the new code, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, MCAS for short,  could fail disastrously.  When things went wrong, MCAS could dive the plane into the ground.  This happened twice within a few months.  All on board were killed in both accidents.  Which caused the 737 MAX to be grounded.  It's been grounded for 5 months now. 
   Boeing hopes to present corrected autopilot MCAS code to the FAA for approval this month, September.  FAA, being a government bureau, can take as much time as they like to decide to OK the new code, or call for yet changes and/or testing.  When (and if) FAA ungrounds the 737 MAX then all the other regulators around the world will begin to unground the plane for their airlines and airspace.  At this point Boeing is hoping to get the 737 back in the air before the end of 2019.  This may be a vain hope.  

Solar Comes to Groveton NH

I attended a briefing up in Coos County about plans to build a 5 Megawatt solar power plant just outside of Groveton.  Present were Bennie Lamontagne from the department of business and economic affairs, Senator David Starr, Tara Giles from Salmonpress, and Barry Normandeau of Normandeau Trucking.   Tom Wemyss of Pure Point Energy gave the briefing.  He showed maps.  They already own a 600 acre site on the east bank of the river (Groveton is on the west bank) of which they plan to clear some 60 acres to make room for the solar panels.  The solar arrays will be mounted on solar tracking bases to improve power output.  The topography is such that the solar array will not be visible from the roads which will preserve the up country ambiance of the area.  There is a big Eversource substation close by to accept power to the ISO New England grid.  At one point Tom Wemyss mentioned selling power in Groveton for 8 cents a kilowatt hour.  That sounded good to me, since I am paying 20 cents a kilowatt hour in Franconia. 

    The project is waiting for the NH Legislature to authorize net metering for operations as large as 5 Megawatts.  Right now net metering is limited to plants no larger than 1 Megawatt.  Costs to install are roughly the same for large or small solar plants.  A five Megawatt plant can make enough revenue to justify construction, a smaller plant cannot.  There is a bill, HB365, to raise the net metering threshold to 5 Megawatts.  We passed it thru both House and Senate this spring.  Unfortunately the governor vetoed it.  A veto override will be voted upon in September. 

   Assuming a successful veto override, they have to do some more paperwork with DES and others.  Funding is in hand and construction could start next summer. 

That Federal Deficit, why it grows and what it means

The Wall St Journal and Fox News have been complaining about the federal deficit and debt this week.  They condemn both and let it go at that.  They never talk about fixes.  There are two fixes, both of them painful.  We could reduce federal spending or we could raise federal taxes, or both.  Do enough of this and the deficit goes away.  However any attempt to reduce spending will provoke howls of pain from those whose federal gravy train has been cut off.  Hiking taxes produces screams from taxpayers.  No congresscritter has the stones to brave either one, so nothing happens. 
   So, the feds continue to spend more than they take in from taxes.  How do they do this? Simple, they print more money and use it to pay the bills and meet payroll.  They do this every year, to the tune of trillions of new paper dollars.  And this works in a way.  Printing trillions of dollars makes the dollar worth less. 
  In my life time I have seen gasoline go from 28 cents a gallon to $2.80 a gallon.  New cars used to be $2000, now they are $20,000.  Comic books used to 10 cents.  Now they are $2.50.  In short, prices of everything are ten times what they were in my childhood.  Or put it another way, the US dollar is worth only a tenth of what it used to be worth.  This is a concealed tax on everyone  Over a lifetime, 90% of all the money everyone holds is sucked out by the feds. 
  How long can this go on?   Who knows?  We put up with a ten times devaluation of the dollar, we can probably put up with a lot more. 

Asylum ?? For entry to the US ??

Been a lotta talk on TV about asylum, some kind of US policy that might let people from hell hole countries into the US just because the place they come from is so bad. 
   Not sure I understand what' going on here.  Ought to be, used to be, that would be immigrants filed paperwork, perhaps too darn much paperwork, with someone, State Dept? ICE? and in all good time someone might get back to them with rejection notices or invitations to immigrate.  You would think that ordinary fairness requires that all would be immigrants get treated the same, no matter where they are coming from.  And you would think that in this age where everything and everyplace is on the internet, with broadband no less, that the someone who accepts the would be immigrant's paperwork get back within a reasonable length of time, say 5 weeks, not 5 years. 
   And just what is the US asylum policy? and how does it fit in?  And is it fair to give would be immigrants from hell holes a leg up on everyone else?  Just because there home country is dreadful?
   Inquiring minds want to know. 

Recesson Talk

Been a lot of talk on TV, even on Fox.  The newsies talk about rates of return on US T-bills.  Uncle sells a variety of T-bills, short term, long term, forever term.  The rate of return on the longer T-bills fell below the rate of return on shorter T-bills.  The newsies are claiming this is a sure fire recession indicator. 
   Dunno about that.  We have bond markets, open 5 days a week, every week.  You don't have to hold a bond until maturity, you can sell a long bond anytime.  Your broker can have the cash in your account within one business day.  That's faster than a check can clear.  People (people with money) buy T-bills when they don't have anything better to do with some excess money.  T-Bills pay a little interest, not much but better than nothing, and they are as safe as cash.  The US has always paid it's debts, ever since the revolution, the US economy is the largest in the world, it is protected by the strongest military in the world, and the US has anything thing you might want for sale, just as long as you have the money to pay for it.  
   If the investor doesn't have anything better to invest in, like new plant and equipment, new product development, dividends, hot stocks, whatever, he will park the unused cash in T-bills, until he needs it for something more lucrative.  I don't think investors really care if it is a 5 year T-bill or a 30 year T-bill.  They will sell their T-bill when they need the money for something else. 
  I don't see any connection between long and short T-bill returns and recessions.  The TV newsies do, and they are talking it up, but what do they know? Really?

Heal US political polarization. Stop Name Calling

Racist.  White Supremacist, Fascist, Nazi, and others.  I hear and read this trash talk every day.  It is just name calling.  It doesn't explain the writer's position, or offer alternative policies, it just slams political opponents.  We used to have a policy on the internet, the first one to mention Hitler or Nazis lost the argument.  We  should  bring it back. 
   Political pundits should concentrate on slamming or advancing policies, rather than doing character assassination on working politicians.  Start by giving the policy's name, or bill number, or case name, something so we could recognize it and maybe even Google it for more info or alternate opinions.  Describe just what the policy does that is good or bad.  Layout a better policy.  Explain how the policy is in line with, or dead set against, the basic ideas of America, like the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.   Make a case, for or against a policy.
   Understand, that it is far easier for newsies to just name call.  You don't have to know anything, research anything, or understand anything to call someone a name.  Understand that the newsies who name call do it because they have nothing of interest to contribute to the conversation.