So we inaugurated Sleepy Joe Biden today

 On TV it looked reasonable.  The camera's didn't show the lack of spectators.  Biden spoke of improving unity, pulling the two sides together.  Sounds good, but will Biden actual do anything to unify the Country.  They say he has 17 executive orders ready to file today.  I bet they all repeal or cancel things that Trump did.   Unifying that is   

   Better would be to explain in detail just what each of the 17  executive orders will do.  And where it clearly reverses a Trump policy, give a rational, a reason, for doing so. 

   Another unifying thing Biden could do is call for an end to the Trump impeachment.  Most of us think losing the  election is punishment enough.  Ending the impeachment would sooth a lot of people.  Not a word of this came from Biden's mouth today

I suspect that Biden is just giving lip service to the unification idea.  I think he really wants to cancel out every thing that Trump did.  Just because Trump did it. 

Howcum no talk about Sherman Anti-trust??

 Been a lotta talk about Facebook and Twitter shutting off Donal Trump and what to do about it.  I have not heard any talk about using Sherman Anti-Trust to break them up.  Both of them are clearly monopolies and Sherman Anti Trust was intended to break up monopolies just for being big, they did not have to misbehave to fall under the hammer.  

   Of course, Biden's democrats like what Big Tech is doing, silencing the political opposition, so I don't expect them to make a move to break up Big Tech.

That $15 an hour minimum wage

 Getting $15 an hour is groovy, IF you stay employed.  Retailers are tooling up to replace workers with automation.  The Tilton Mcdonalds is all automatied right now.  You walk in the door and see a dozen giant touch screens.  You touch what ever it is you want to eat, slide your credit card into the slot, and bingo, your order pops up back in the kitchen.  Cashiers and counter people are gone.  Next they will automate the kitchen jobs.

   The big box stores (Wallymart, Home Despot, Lowes, Shaws and the like) are training us customers to work the bar code scanners and pay with credit cards.  Bye Bye cashiers jobs.  

   For that matter, Bye Bye to the little local shops and eateries that cannot afford to buy all that automation.  Get ready to eat only in the big chains, McDonalds, Applebees, 99, and such.  Tasty they are. 

Entry level jobs that currently pay less than $15 will just go away 'cause the employer will be losing money on them when he has to pay $15 an hour.  It's gonna be tougher for kids entering the workforce to find a job at all. 

The right to keep and bear arms.

 You would think that elected representatives, both federal and state, would be solid responsible citizens.  Just the kind of people you would trust to carry a gun.  And yet we have Nancy Pelosi down in DC and the Democratic leadership in the NH house (last session) putting in metal detectors and forbidding concealed carry in the NH house.  

   Every so often terrorists work their way into the visitor's gallery or the legislative chambers.  It would be nice if those terrorists were met with gunfire from their targets.  In Concord NH the reps have to walk considerable distances to their parked cars, often after dark.  I know a fair number of female reps would feel better about taking a walk on dark city streets if they were carrying a gun.  Just in case.  

   We should not be denying the right to keep and bear arms to our most responsible citizens. 

Cobra Kai, TV series from Karate Kid

 So I watched the first disc of the series.  It picks up the story from Karate Kid I movie 20 years later.  Daniel LaRusso is married and a successful owner of a string of auto dealerships.  Johnny Lawrence (Daniel-san's opponent in the big karate tournament) , is not doing so well, in fact is unemployed.  He some how gets the money to start up the old Cobra Kai dojo.  Some amusing scenes of Johnny doing the hard ass act on his Karate students.  The plot is shaky bordering on non existent.  The chicks are not all that pretty.  Mr. Miyagi is dead and buried and the series needs him, or a replacement, badly.  Not as good as the first two Karate Kid movies from years ago. 

15000 National Guard troops for inauguration security??

 I will grant that after last Wednesday we probably need to beef up security.  But with the inauguration parade canceled for corona virus do we need a full division of troops?  That's more troops than we have in Afghanistan.  Hopefully they won't issue live ammunition like they did at Kent State years ago.

America needs a press that we can believe in

 The average citizen has a life to lead, children to raise, a job to go to.  These ( and other things) fill most of his time.  He lacks the time and the skills to dig down and find out what is really happening.  Most of us average citizens get our news from NPR (NHPR) while driving to work, and off the TV in the evening.  For a democracy to work, the voters need to know what is going on.  And American news media have little to nothing about what is really happening.  They have a lot of commentary, and what little news we get is heavily slanted.  Stories that support "the narrative" get lots of coverage.  Stories that contradict the narrative get buried.  And the citizens know this, and hence don't know what's going on, and so vote their built in prejudices, which ain't always good for the country.

  We really need a trustworthy press, and we don't have it.  And we know that.  Fox News and the Wall St Journal are perhaps the best of 'em.  PBS ain't what it used to be back when it was the Mac Neill-Lehrer news hour.   But we need more reliable news sources.  And we don't have them. 

America needs to get off the dime.

 

America is split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats.  The Georgia elections were very close, nearly 50-50.  The US Senate has 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats.  The US House has the narrowest margin in years, only about 5 more Democrats than Republicans.  For a body of 425 members, 5 is very close.  As a result or this even Steven split, it is impossible to get anything done.  Congress has done very little in recent years.  They need to do something about the DACA children.  They need to do immigration reform.  And a lot of other things.  But, being split so evenly, they don’t have the votes to pass anything.  

   The Republicans need to attract more voters.  Trump did some good work in this area.  He attracted a lot of union voters, a lot of black and minority voters.  It wasn’t quite enough to get him re elected, but it was close. 

   American political parties run on ideology, a platform, and personalities.  Republican ideology comes from the Declaration of Independence, “All men are created equal”.  Republicans were started as the party to free the slaves.  Republicans fought the Civil War.  In the 1960’s Republicans passed the Civil rights acts.  Republicans believe in free enterprise and capitalism as the system that creates vast amounts of wealth.  Under free enterprise factories and farms and everything else is owned by individuals or groups of individuals (corporations) and the owners are strongly motivated to run them efficiently. Republicans believe in American exceptionalism, the notion that America has a glorious history of which we should be proud. 

    Party platforms were more specific lists of laws the party would support, and other laws the party would oppose.  In recent years both parties have pretty much stopped doing platforms.  Partly because it is hard to come up with a platform that everybody in the party approves.  Partly because advocating specific acts gains the party more enemies than it gains them friends.  And probably other reasons as well.  Net result, no platforms for this last election. 

  And finally, personalities.  Right now the biggest personality in the Republican Party is Donald Trump.  He will be around for quite a while.  Nobody else in the party, Cruz, Rubio, Graham, McConnell, Romney, and you-name-him is as big as Trump.  Unfortunately Trump has as many bitter enemies as he has die hard supporters. 

   Looking at this I can suggest Republicans need to talk about the party ideology more often.  They need to get a platform out.  They need to recruit more personalities, especially electable personalities.  Republicans used to get personalities from the military, Eisenhower, Powell, and McCain for example.  We don’t seem to have that many military men with strong reputations to recruit as we used to.

Beat The Press. An hour about the Capitol riots

 Chuck Todd was in full voice this morning.  Spent the entire one hour show talking about Wednesday's Capitol Riot.  Blamed it all on Trump.  Called for impeachment, a bill of attainder, everything.  

  Did not mention the three resignations of capitol security chiefs.  No mention of the video showing Capitol police standing back and letting the rioters stream into the building.    No mention of the Rasmussen poll showing Trump's approval rating rising since Wednesday.

Fox News needs to move the studio to a quieter part of town

 I watch Fox (in case  you had not guessed).  They have fire sirens, police sirens, ringing telephones, and a bunch of other noise in the background of the news stories.  Pain in the A**.  I hear this stuff coming off the TV set  and I start looking out my windows for the fire trucks.  They ought to move the studio to a quieter part of town. 

So what is Parler's Beef?

 Apple has threatened to toss Parler off their Apps Store unless Parler applies the same heavy handed censorship of conservatives that Facebook and Twitter are starting to do.  

Why does Parler need anything from anyone's app store?  I think they can make Parler work by just putting up a website and having the users go to the website and read and comment.  That works for most web places right now.  If for some obscure reason Parler needs to load code onto user's desktops or smartphones, then they just put up a website and let the users download the code over the web.  What's so hard about that?  

So what's the beef??

The democrats, the MSM, all Trump's enemies, blame him for the DC riot

And all of them are so overjoyed to have Trump supporters doing the rioting.  And so they all say the riots are Trump's fault.  It makes them all sooo happy.  It fits the narrative.

   But, the DC police chief, the House Sergeant-at-Arms and the Senate Sergeant-at-arms have resigned their offices, which says to me that security precautions were not taken, or not taken enough to prevent the break ins at the Capitol.  If they thought they had done a good job, they would not be resigning.  I think they all believed that Republicans and Trump supporters are peaceful and law abiding and don't break into buildings.  A small group of fanatical troublemakers worked their way up to the front of the mob and started breaking doors and windows.  Once the way was opened, a whole bunch of normally decent law abiding people in the crowd followed the troublemakers into the building. 

Facebook and Twitter hurt themselves

 By banning Trump.  The social media giants don't like The Donald, but 74 million Americans voted for him and will log into Twitter and/or Facebook just to see what Trump has to say.  Trump is still the president of the US and a whole bunch of people want to keep up with him.  Locking Trump off of Twitter and Facebook just kills their ratings, which is what advertisers pay for.  I believe the phrase is "shooting yourself in the foot."   The TV networks,NBC CBS and ABC, don't like Trump any more than Facebook or Twitter do but they never failed to put Trump coverage on because Trump is good for ratings. 

Rioters storm Capitol Building

 I don't approve.  Rioters breaking into our legislative chambers is the sort of thing they do in South America, not in the United States of America.  On the other hand it does show we have a lot of really pissed off people.  Messing with the election will do this to people. 

   They should have had enough cops, secret service, capital police, US Army, National Guard, FBI, you name them, to keep the rioters out.  Somebody did not prepare properly for this one.  I don't know who "somebody" is.  Will our noble MSM mention the name? 

The DC mayor declared a curfew for 6 PM.  Too late, it is full dark at 5 PM in DC.  You want to get people off the streets before it gets dark.  

Let's hope things simmer down.  If this kinda stuff keeps happening, it will give Joe Biden a lot of grief.

If not Pelosi, who??

 TV newsies are doing a lotta talk about re electing Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.  They point out that the Democrats only have a 5 vote majority in the House and that 10 Democratic reps voted against Nancy last time.  But they don't talk about who might replace Nancy.  "You cannot beat somebody with nobody." to quote some old time politico.  Unless and until I hear a name, I don't believe all the "Nancy won't be re-elected talk".

Microsoft is out of the browser business

 At least looking at the page hits I get on this blog.  The two big browsers are Safari and Chrome.  Poor old Firefox is nearly gone, although it is still #3, behind Safari and Chrome.  Microsoft's Internet Exploder doesn't show, and that new Microsoft browser, Edge, doesn't show either.  Color them gone.

For that matter, Apple OS is giving me more hits than Windows. 

Road and Track: Best sports car ever

 They had a grunch of 'em, going all the way back to an MG TC.  Somehow they did not have a Corvette.  All American, cheap for what it did, very fast, good car.  I remember going up to Watkin's Glen NY many years ago to watch the Can-Am.  The Glen also ran off a "production"sports car race that weekend.  That year the only two production sports cars that competed were Porsche 911 and Corvette.  Nothing else in production that year was fast enough.  The 911 cornered better than the 'Vettes and would work past them in the corners.  After a couple of laps of hard driving a 911 driver might think he had it made.  Then came the back straight, nearly two miles long.  And we could hear the big Chevy 396 V-8's come on full song.  And the 'Vettes just out dragged the 911's, catching all the cars that had slipped by them in the Esses.  "There is no substitute for cubic inches".  

   After that long ago happy weekend I always considered Corvette one of the best sports cars in the world.

"New strain" corona virus

 

That new Corona virus strain.  The Brits announced that they just discovered it in Britain last week.  Now we have a Colorado man, with NO recent travel, has it.  I don’t believe the “new strain” travels that fast.  I figure the Colorado man caught it from someone in Colorado.  Makes me think that the “new strain” has been around, world wide, for quite some time, maybe since this whole Corona virus disaster started. 

   Does the “new strain” behave differently in patients than the old strain?  Higher death rate?  More infectious? Worse symptoms?  Do we have any clinical data (observations of real patients) to support any of these ideas?  I don’t believe computer models for this, I want real observations.  Far as I am concerned the computer models are merely a Wild Ass Guess (WAG) dressed up as real. 

   How do we tell the difference between patients with “old strain” and patients with “new strain”?

I suppose we use some kind of laboratory test.  This is not confidence building.  A commonly used laboratory test has a distressingly high (20%) false positive rate.  Is the test for “new strain” any more accurate? 

   So far my TV news has not given me backup information about the “new strain”.  For all I know “new strain” is about the same as “old strain”. 

Medieval technological advances.

   The middle ages invented or imported a lot of new stuff.  Far more than the preceding ancient world did.  The last invention made in the ancient world was the discovery of iron working by the Hittites 600 or 700 BC.  The Roman Empire at its peak, say 200 or 300 AD, did not have any technology that the Hittites did not have 800 or 900 years before.  That is a long time for stasis.

   The Middle Ages start after the fall of the Roman Empire and last until Columbus time.  We date the end of the Roman Empire with the deposition of Romulus Augustilus in 470 something AD and Columbus is 1492.  You can round it off and say the Middle Ages run from 500 to 1500 AD, a thousand years.  In that time Europeans invented or imported the following:

1. Trebuchet, a stone throwing machine powerful enough to break stone walls.  It was a weight driven machine, replacing classic catapults, which were powered by skeins of springy materials, perhaps human hair.  Unfortunately the art of making such skeins and keeping them springy has been lost since ancient times.  Trebuchets can be built on site from local timber and some rocks for weight. 
2. Magnetic compass.  We think this was an import from China.  Having a compass on board your ship greatly improved the chances of said ship returning safely from voyages.
3. Wheelbarrow.  Very simple device that greatly improves the amount of stuff that one man can move.
4. Wooden kegs and barrels.  They replaced the clay amphora used as shipping containers in classic times.  Lighter and more rugged than amphora which were just big clay pots.
5. Gunpowder and the fire arms to use it.
6. Lenses and eyeglasses.
7. Stern rudder.  Far stronger than the classical steering oar and less likely to break off in bad weather.
8. Printing.
9. Cast iron.  Classical black smiths only had wrought iron. 
10. Crossbow.  Powerful and accurate.  Although known in classic times it was only used for hunting.  You could train any man to shoot a crossbow well in a matter of weeks.  Robin Hood’s long bow, although effective, required a bowman to start shooting as a child and practicing every day all his life.  The supply of good bowmen was limited.
11.  Water mills.  Although known in classic times, the middle ages made much greater use of watermills.  The Domesday Book, William the Conqueror’s inventory of all the land and buildings in England, lists better than a thousand water mills in England by 1080 AD.
12. Horse collars.  Far more effective horse harness that greatly improved the amount of stuff a horse could move. 

 

How much money can the US print?

 Now that we have a totally fiat currency, a pure paper money whose value is set by public opinion, it is possible for the government to pay its bills by simply printing fresh new greenbacks.  On one hand, most of us believe that printing more money reduces the value of existing money, our savings.  On the other hand some of us believe that we ought to increase the money supply as the economy grows.  

Question, just how much new money is healthy growth?  Who knows??  

   Every year Congress is faced with a gap between obligations and tax revenue.  We spend more than we take in.  The only ways to fixing this are to spend less or hike taxes.  Congresscritters hate doing either.  Spending cuts cause howling from who ever gets cut off from the gravy train.  Pigs hate being pushed away from the trough.  Tax hikes provoke howls from taxpayers.  Congresscritters fear the howling means they will loose the next election. 

  Lately we have been able to keep things going by running a sizable federal deficit each year.  This year is going to be a scorcher.  In simply terms, the US government has been covering the deficit by simply printing more paper money.  So far, nothing too bad has happened.  Perhaps the healthy growth of the money supply, what ever that may be, is enough to pay off the deficit.  I don't really believe that, but it might be true.  Or, far worse, we are printing enough money to crash the currency, sometime in the future.  Maybe next year.  May be five years from now.  Who knows?  But a crash would be bad for us.  Foreigners would stop accepting greenbacks in payment for imports.  Stores would stop accepting dollar bills.  The economy would grind to a halt.  This happened in Germany 100 years ago.  The pain was so intense that the Germans still remember it.  

So, I fear that Congresscritters will continue to follow the path of least resistance and keep right on running big deficits until something really bad happens. 

 I got with the Christmas tree program. I bought the tree from someone in Littleton selling trees at the Meadow St-I93 interchange. That's the last picture of the tree on the roof of the Buick. I left it on the deck until yesterday then I brought it indoors, put the tree stand on it, and set it in place. It brought a good deal of snow in with it, which melted out into the water bucket of the tree stand. Got the lights on it and got them to light. I have a bunch of grandchildren coming over the put the ornaments on it. And I have munchies and drinks for the grownups. If you have any small children who would enjoy hanging some ornaments, come on over. Tomorrow, Thursday, 3 PM, 22 Ridge Cut Road, Mittersill.

Where did that massive hack of Dept of Energy come from??

Where did that massive DOE hack come from??       

 

Trump says it’s China doing the hack.  Biden says it’s Russia.  I doubt that either of them have any solid evidence.  I am talking about the big hack that penetrated the Dept of Energy last week; you know the dept that handles our nukes. 

I know that if I was a Chinese hacker I would try to camouflage my location on the net.  I would have an email account on a Russian email system.  I would use a Russian alias.  I would have social media accounts on Russian systems.  I would have everyone else on my team, and my superiors use my Russian email when they wanted to communicate. 

If I was a Russian hacker I would do the same stuff in reverse.  If I was a third world hacker or a criminal operation I would still use the big boys (Russia and China) for cover on the theory that nobody would believe I was capable of major league hacking and if I tried to look like I was a big boy  everyone would want to believe that. 

US history textbooks

 Anyone know of a good US history book for grade school?  I know some good ones, but they are all college level.  Starting grade school kids on Morrison and Commager isn't going to work.  I would like a text that tells US history straight, not the New York Times 1619 propaganda slant. 

Bullet proof armor

There used to be the Higgins Armory Museum out in Worcester Massachusetts.  Big building, three or four stories tall.  All filled with medieval plate armor.  The museum was put up by a Yankee millionaire who liked to collect armor.  His collection is what filled the museum.  I took my kids out the Higgins a couple of times.  They loved the place. Unfortunately the money ran out a few years ago and they had to close the museum.  A great loss.  

   Higgins did show that plate armor was bullet proof.  Most of the suits bore a proof mark, a bullet mark where the maker had tested the armor by firing a bullet at it.  As time went on, guns grew more powerful.  There was a suit of plate armor at Higgins that sported the proper proofmark, but also sported a big bullet hole in the breast plate.  That bullet probably killed the wearer.   

   Early suits of plate were "cap a pied" French for head to toe.  These had plates protecting arms and legs, including lovely plate armor shoes to protect the feet.  One of these suits would keep out Robin Hood's arrows all over.  Guns hit harder than arrows, and in the 1400's when muskets came into use, they had to make the breast plate thicker to make it bullet proof.  To keep the weight down they dropped the cap a pied and left arms and legs unprotected.  The thinking must have been that a bullet in the torso was probably fatal but a bullet in a limb, while a bad wound, was survivable.  

   By the 1700's the muskets were powerful enough to pierce any plate armor light enough to wear, and so troops stopped wearing armor and just went into battle wearing a colorful cloth uniform. 

Wanna bet all those Chinese and Russian hacks are against Windows?

 Everybody runs Windows.  It is the most insecure operating system in history.  Stick a flashdrive into a USB port and Windows will upload and execute any programming that might be on the flashdrive.  Windows allows any program access to the internet without ever asking the user if this program is safe. Windows comes out of the box with a remote access loophole that allows foreign computers to gain complete control of your machine.  

 I have to believe that the agencies that got hacked this week were all running Windows.

They all should have been running Linux. 

Who dines outdoors in the snow???

 With a lotta snow on the ground, the TV is still talking about dining out of doors.  They showed a clip of a New York restaurant taking in the tables and chairs with a foot of snow on the ground. 

Election integrity

 Ideally, voters ought to appear in person at the polls, on election day, show their picture ID, be checked off on the registered voter list, and then vote on a paper ballot.  No ballots of any kind submitted or "discovered" after the polls close shall ever be counted.  Absentee ballots should be provided only for voters who have a good reason not to be able to get to the polls on election day, such as members of the armed forces stationed overseas.  Fear of contracting a disease is not a good reason for voting absentee.  Ballots should never be mailed out to anyone.  Absentee ballots must be picked up at town hall in person or by a friend or relative who has a picture ID and the voter's signed application form.  

   Ballots shall be counted by hand.  Ballots shall be stored after counting in case of a request for a recount.  

So far as I know, New Hampshire is in fairly good shape except for allowing the use of voting machines.

Super Cute.

 That Chinese spy Fang Fang, or Christine Fang is CUTE. super cute. A lot of guys would do most anything to get a chance to sleep with her.