Federal Reserve ought to raise US interest rates tomorrow. Don’t wait til March.

 The Fed’s primary job ought to be keeping the economy growing.  Making money available to buy inventory, build new factories, hire more workers, raise their pay, finance building new aircraft, new cars and trucks, new ships, new railroad rolling stock.  Part of this is keeping prices stable.  If companies and people get the idea that the dollar will be worth less tomorrow, they will buy stuff today, before the price goes up.  Resulting demand will raise prices because the supply side isn’t big enough to supply everybody’s wants today.

 

Unfortunately the Fed usually sees it’s job as to keep the stock market speculators speculating.  They borrow money to buy stocks, running up the price of the stock.  Then they sell.  For this to work, the Fed has to make borrowing money reasonable cheap.  And stock speculation does not grow companies or hire more workers.  We don’t need it.

 

Better would be a Fed policy to keep prices stable, and money for real economic purposes available.  If this means interest rates so high that stock speculation becomes a loser, tough. 

I don’t know if we would do things like that today.

Way back in the 1950’s USAF had Convair design the “ultimate interceptor” for homeland air defense.  In those days the big worry was Russian bombers flying over the North Pole and nuking our cities.  ICBM's were still experimental in those days. In the search for an interceptor to stop the Russians,  Convair had already struck out once with the F102, which was nowhere near fast enough.  The best the poor old Deuce could do was Mach 1.2.  Convair’s political connections were excellent in those days, and USAF gave them a second chance.  Hughes Aircraft got the contract for the radar fire control in the F106 project.  When the red tape unwound, Convair got paid $8 million apiece for the airframe and engine, and Hughes got paid $8 million apiece for MA-1 radar fire control. 

   At this time, everyone wanted a missile armament, 50 cal machine guns were considered old school, WWII stuff.  Years later Viet Nam would change minds on this issue and guns came back into style.  Anyhow, the F106 carried two heat seeking guided missiles, two radar seeking guided missiles, and a single MB-1 Genie nuclear war headed unguided missile.  No guns of any kind. The nuclear warhead was of about the same yield as the one we used on Hiroshima only ten years earlier and the tremendous blast would make up for any minor errors in aim.  In actual fact, the blast from an MB-1 warhead would have done serious damage to anything on the ground as well.  Nobody talked about that.  Today, with the voters far more sensitive to issues of radiation, fallout, and blast damage, I don’t think the nuclear idea would fly.  I never heard that any of the later USAF fighters carried nukes. The F106’s in my squadron were built between 1957 and 1960.  They remained in service into the 1980’s.

 

Open mouth, Insert Foot.

 I just heard Lloyd Austin, Biden's defense secretary say "Biden has ordered that no US troops will be deployed to Ukraine".  Stupid thing to say.  Biden should not have said it.  Austen should not announce it on TV.  You don't want to tell an adversary what you will or will not do.  Let the adversary guess.  Maybe it will deter him.  Maybe he will guess wrong.  You don't tell adversaries what you plan to do.  Lets go Brandon.

Beans and Franks Harmful??

 I was doing a little websurfing and I run across a site "25 Foods you should never eat".  Having a little time on my hands I clicked on it.  They listed a whole bunch of junk food that I never buy.  But, they blackballed hot dogs  and then baked beans.  Picture of a can of Bush's baked beans.  Arrg.  I do beans and franks now and then.  My mother used to serve beans and franks and brown bread for family dinner, oh once or twice a month.  She baked the brown bread at home.  She liked raisins in the brown bread.  Dad detested raisins in anything.  So she put the raisins in one end and left the other end raisinless for Dad.  Then came the night a trouble making raisin escaped from detention and popped up in Dad's slice of raisin bread.  Dad didn't say anything, but his grumbles carried to all us kids. 

Biden wants to bring the "living Constitution" back to life

 Now that Justice Breyer has announced his retirement, Biden gets to nominate a supreme.  Back during his campaign he promised to nominate a black woman.  The Wall St Journal showed five leading candidates, all black women.  None of their names meant anything to me.  At least all five had "Judge" in front of their names.   

The doctrine of a "living Constitution" means that a lot of changes have occured since the Constitution was ratified way back in 1789.  And it is the duty of judges and courts to change the Constitution to support their view of the proper course of modern events, leftie, greenie, and worse.  I don't believe this.  It is the duty of elected legislatures, both Federal and state, to pass new laws or amend the constitution if necessary.  If the voters are in favor, the changes will happen.  If the voters are not in favor, or just don't care, changes won't happen.  That is representative democracy.  When unelected judges change the law it is tyranny. 

I wonder how those five leading candidates feel about living constitutions.  Someone ought to ask them during the confirmation hearings.  Courts should enforce the law as written, not the law they wish was written.

 

That gas pipeline from Germany to Russia

 Nordstream 2 they call it.  TV news is saying that the US will do something to kill the project if the Russians invade Ukraine.  Question.  How come the US has a veto power over a European project?  The pipeline will run underneath the Baltic sea, which was international waters last time I looked.  The Germans have plenty of money to finance the job, which will bring Russian natural gas to heat German homes and fire German power plants.  The Russians like the idea of earning German money for the sale of their gas.  

   What gives the US any kind of control of Nordstream 2?

SR71 Blackbird

 The TV has William Devane giving the pitch to invest in gold and silver. He is standing in front of an SR1 Blackbird in some aviation museum.  Plane looks good.  Devane says "Just as this plane evaded radar...:   Fun fact, the Blackbird was not radar stealthy.  It was designed before the stealth technology had been discovered, and it (and its crews) did not really care if the plane showed on Russian radar.  It was faster than anything the Russians were flying and it could fly higher than anything the Russians were flying.  If a Russian fighter showed up while the Blackbird was photographing inside Russia, or anywhere else for that matter, the Blackbird could just out run it. 

Russian army trucks travel by rail.

 I am looking at a picture in the New York Post showing a long railroad train of flatcars, loaded with Russian army trucks bound for Belarus to beef up the Russian forces on the Ukraine border.  Hmm, shipping trucks by rail?  Does this say something bad about the condition of roads between Moscow and Belarus?  Or something bad about the reliability of Russian army trucks operating off road?  Or on road?  The US army was practicing up for WWII in the 1930’s with large road movements by tanks and trucks.  You need the trucks to allow the infantry to keep up with the tanks, and to bring up rations, ammunition, and fuel.

Give heat'n eats 40 minutes and 300F

 The heat'n eat makers are down on conventional (real) ovens.  More and more of the heat'n eats in the food store only have instructions for microwaving them.  Me, I don't have a microwave, my kitchen is too small to fit one in.  But I have found, the the heat'n eats come out tasty if I pop them in the oven at 300F for 40 minutes.  Use a fork to stab a few vent holes in the plastic top cover. 

How many people do we have in that Ukraine embassy??

The State Dept has put out the word for 7000 dependents  at the Ukraine embassy to leave the country ASAP (before the Russians invade).  That's a lot of dependents.  Assume dependents for one embassy employee to be a wife and two kids.  That gives an embassy headcount of 2333 workers.  That is a lot of State Dept weenies all in one place.  Do we really need that many workers to handle affairs with a smallish European country?  

  For that matter the state dept put out the word to all US citizens in Ukraine to leave the country, ASAP.  TV mentioned that we have 30,000 US citizens in the country.  If we use our biggest jet liner, the Boeing 747, which seats 500 passengers, we are talking about 60 flights to get everyone out.  Will the Russians give us that much time?

Cannon Mountain ski weather

 We got 5 inches of light fluffy power snow last night.  There was no wind, so the snow stayed on the trails instead of getting blown into the woods.  It's cold, 10F but the sun is out. 

Wither Ukraine?

 From what little I know of Russian history, the country we now call Russia, get started in Ukraine way back in the middle ages.  Kiev (surprise new fangled spelling Kiyv) started as a Viking (Rus) trading post way back when and the Viking culture spread to the rest of what is now a days Russia.  Took a while and the Russians look on Ukraine as the place their nation got started.  Ukraine was a sizable part of the old Soviet Union.  A lot of the Ukrainian populations were Russians, speaking Russian.  I have heard that the Ukrainian language is pretty close to Russian; close enough that Russians and Ukrainians can speak to each other without using translators.  I have not traveled to Ukraine to check that out myself, but I have read it. 

  Today, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin wants something from the Ukraine.  Satellite photos show a huge Russian army, (100,000 men?) build up on the Russia-Ukraine border.  I’m thinking a Russian army that big can invade and conquer all of Ukraine.   And surely Putin, as a good Russian, would like to incorporate all of Ukraine into Russia.  So far Putin has asked for beyond the pale political concessions from NATO and the US.  Like promising to never offer NATO membership to Ukraine.  And probably some other stuff that I missed on the TV.  So far we (NATO and the US) have promised economic sanctions against the Russians if (when?) they invade Ukraine.  I have not heard what those sanctions might be.  Nor have I heard how much they would really hurt the Russians.  The Russian economy is mostly about selling crude oil.  That can be sold for cash; no bank need meddle with the deal.

  Good Luck.   Lets Go Brandon.  

Would you buy a battery car?

 For me, probably not.  Battery cars are about the same on the environment as real (gasoline) cars.  Refining the materials to make the huge battery takes a lot of energy which is a lot of carbon dioxide. Generating the electricity to charge the battery; unless your electric company is hydro or nuclear powered, releases about as much carbon dioxide as running a single tank of gas thru a real car. 

  It can take better than two hours to charge up a battery car.  We did this, I stopped in to visit an old high school friend.  He had just bought a battery powered Toyota SUV.  We drove over to the local shopping mall which had a free 440 volt car charger.  We plugged the car in and then strolled around the mall spending money.  Two hours later the car was not fully charged.  And the 440 volt charger only gives you two hours, and then it insisted on allowing someone else to charge their car. 

   In short, a long trip, longer than the battery can do, will take a couple of more hours while you wait for the battery to recharge.  My Buick will get from here (upstate NH) to Maryland, 500 miles away, on one tank of gas. 

   Battery cars are expensive; say $10K more than a real car, even with the federal government giving out generous tax breaks for buying electric.  Good use of my tax money that.

Crime Fighting is a state and local duty.

 Crime fighting is not a federal job, mostly.  The TV has been trashing Biden's news conference for a lot of reasons, including no questions about crime control.  The cops and the courts are run by states and cities and towns.  The federal judiciary is mostly reserved for cases of constitutional interpretation.  Plus, it seems to me, that the voters of New York City in electing a soft-on-crime DA asked for more crime.  After electing Alvin Bragg as city DA they are going to get more crime.  How much more crime in the streets and passengers pushed to their deaths in front of subway trains will it take to wise up New York voters??

The Winter Car

 It’s zero F this morning so I started thinking about what I would like in a new car for winter driving.

 

1. An outside thermometer so I can tell if that black patch up ahead is glare ice or just a puddle.  The sensor has to be properly located so it reads right if it is raining, and doesn’t read engine heat when it is supposed to read outside temperature.
2. Front wheel drive or even better all wheel drive.  For all wheel drive to be worth it the car needs the same amount of weight on each wheel.  It also needs limited slip between the wheels on each axle and between the axles, so that a few wheels that have traction can pull the car even if a couple of wheels are just slipping.
3. Manual transmission so I can rock the car back and forth by shifting from 1^st to reverse and back again rapidly.
4. Ski rack.
5. Windshield washer reservoir positioned so it gets some engine heat to keep it from freezing.
6. Battery under the hood to make a jump start easier than a battery under the read seat cushion does. 
7. Dash light brightness controlled by a knob, rather than those fancy intelligent deals where the car automatically dims the dash lights when it senses sunlight.  And dash light bright enough to read the instruments in full sun.

Where is the Justice Dept Anti Trust Division? On vacation? sound asleep?

 Micro$oft, a massive company, who owns the desktop and laptop operating system buisiness, and Word and Excel, and a bunch of other stuff, wants to buy Activision, a video game maker (Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush, and some other stuff).  The deal is said to be $75 billion.  That's quite a chunk of change, even for Micro$oft.  

   This should not be allowed.  Micro$oft is entirely too big right now.  We don't need a Micro$oft that is $75 billion bigger.  Anti trust ought to send Micro$oft a nasty gram and threaten to take them to court if they push this deal thru.  That is what the anti trust division of DOJ is for.  Lets have them earn their pay.

Why do we care about Corona virus testing?

    We can tell if someone is ill by talking to them, taking their temperature and doing those med school things that doctors are taught in med school.  If the person doesn’t think he/she is ill, and a face to face examination fails to reveal any illness, why do we care about a lab style test?  If the test reports illness in an obviously well patient, the test has reported a false positive.  Do we need to run a laboratory style test to determine that a person is ill?  I think not. 

   And, test results are subject to change without warming.  You can test negative in the morning and catch Corona virus in the afternoon. 

   Why bother messing around with tests?  If you worry about catching Corona virus, get yourself vaccinated. 

Who Runs the Biden Administration (WRBA)?

I think Joe Biden signs what they put before him and says on TV what appears on his teleprompter.  I don’t think Joe writes his own stuff, someone[s] does it for him and he pretty much signs it or says it. 

I have never heard who these invisible controllers might be.  Only suggestion was from Instapundit a while ago.  He thought Joe’s wife Jill was doing the controlling.  Instapundit just said this, he didn’t offer any evidence.  I haven’t heard anyone else offer suggestions.  It could be coming out of the White House staff.  It might be some Svengali like character of whom we have never heard.  It could be anyone anywhere.  

I haven’t heard much if any discussion as to who it might be.  Who ever it is, he/she wields a lot of power. 

 

You would think the Australians ...

 Could have figured out a way to have the world's champion player, Novak Djokovic play in the Australian open.  I mean just one guy isn't going to release the Black Death in Australia, even if he manages to sleep with a couple of cute chicks who want to be able to say they slept with a world champion athlete.  I would think the publicity advantages to having a world champion competing in the Australian Open would override any health worries. 

Great Snow storm peters out

 The weather wienies have been talking up a huge snow storm for today.  Well, we get some snow, but so much of it was blown into the weeds that it doesn't look like much now.

Beat The Press beats on Joe Biden.

They started off describing this last week as bad for Biden.  In detail, and harsher than I have heard a leftie TV show like Beat the Press than I have heard.  More like Fox News than the nice democrat MSM. 

   They showed majority democrats jumping all over Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema for refusing to vote to kill the filibuster.  Filibuster, for those of you just coming to this story, is a Senate rule allowing any Senator to require a 2/3rds majority to pass most bills.  It protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority, something that has been a problem for democracies since Pericles ran Athens.  For the majority to push thru something that the minority is against, the filibuster requires a good solid majority, not a tie vote broken by the vice president.  The current 50-50 split of senators makes calling for a filibuster a bill killer.  The democrats have some bills they want to pass that will never get 60 votes, so they want to scrap the filibuster and allow anything to pass with 51 votes.  Fifty democrats plus a democrat vice president will get them 51 votes.

   Frankly, the way things look today, the democrats will be in the minority by next year.  At which time they will need a filibuster to prevent the Republicans from walking all over them with track shoes.  Manchin and Sinema seem to understand this, Chucky the Schumer and Nasty Pelosi seem oblivious. 

 

Facebook Breakup.

Fox news was talking about some judge will now allow the suit to break up Facebook to go forward. Fine by me. Then Fox had a bunch of talking heads talk about the possible Facebook breakup. None of the talking heads understood what a breakup is about. You take a monopoly, Facebook is surely that, and break it up into two or more pieces that are supposed to compete with each other.

In that way one piece of Facebook, lets call it Goodbook, does things that attract users and advertisers. The other piece, call it Badbook, does things that repel users and advertisers. Pretty soon the suits at Badbook notice that they are losing ground to the competition, and order changes to make Badbook more competitive.

The talking heads were talking about regulation. In this case, all the important decisions of Facebook are done by a small cadre of programmers, writing in C or C++ or some networking computer language are the only documentation that means anything.

Regulators cannot read computer code (most of 'em cannot read comic books) and so, not knowing what is really going on, cannot effect it. In short, a regulator of Facebook can draw his pay but cannot change the way Facebook does things.

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Chilly!

 It was 12 F below zero this morning, as late as 9 AM.  It has warmed up by 1PM to 2F above zero.

Shopping is better in the North Country than on TV

 

I made a liquor store run.  The liquor store is out of Wild Turkey bourbon, at least the 80 proof version.  They had the 100 proof Wild Turkey but some how it is not as tasty as the 80 proof.  I have found that Evan Williams bourbon is quite tasty.

I made a store run to Shaws in Littleton.  The shelves were mostly stocked, none of the empty shelves going down a full aisle like they are showing on TV.  They even had scrapple. I was able to find everything on my shopping list except frozen breaded fish fillets.  With those, and some frozen French fires I can make a fairly decent fish & chips dinner.  I got the french fries, and I can get the fish fillets down at Presby's in Franconia. At least they had them last week.   

Anyhow,  if the rest of the country is in as good shape as upstate NH, it is in pretty decent shape.  If it is like the TV, things are gonna be tough. 

Vaccine mandates struck down

   The Supremes just released their ruling on vaccine mandates.  I think (the story on Fox TV was garbled) that they struck down the Biden administration requirement for employers of more than 100 workers to fire all the employees who refused to get themselves vaccinated.  And they upheld to requirement that health care workers must get vaccinated.  The justices said the reason to uphold the health care workers was because of federal funding that seeps thru out the medical business, starting with Medicaid and working down.  That may be a legal argument.  Personally I believe health care workers ought to be vaccinated because in the ordinary course of their work they come in contact with patients who have Corona virus and they catch it from them.  Then they spread it to other patients in the facility they work in.

   As far as vaccine mandates for ordinary (non health care) businesses, I don’t care if they are vaccinated or not.  I am vaccinated and from what I hear, the vaccines work and I won’t catch it even working hand in glove with someone who is not vaccinated.  It’s a free country; let the citizens do what they want to do.  If you personally fear being infected with Corona virus, go get yourself vaccinated.   

 

Horror Movie, “Becky” rated R.

 I don’t remember ordering this one from Netflics.  But it came in the mail.  So I watched it.  Plot is simple; four ugly cons escape from prison and descend upon the pleasant rural home of the various protagonists.  Daughter Becky hangs in there and kills all four of the convicts, one by one, using ordinary stuff, no weapons.  One bad guy she stabs to death using a school ruler in place of a proper knife.  She gets them all, hand to hand, except the last one who she shoots dead using a hand gun that one of the other bad guys dropped on the ground. 

   Becky is maybe 15.  Not quite old enough for a driver’s license.  Becky is cute, blonde, and deadly. She makes the movie.  I watched it to the end just to see how Becky would kill each bad guy. They open the movie with a shot of Becky with blood on her face, ready to kill the next bad guy who shows up.

   I cannot recommend this movie for all the blood and guts.  But I did want to mention it since I had watched it.

US senate candidate from NH.

 

We have a good Republican candidate for US Senate from New Hampshire.  Chuck Morse, currently NH Senate president.  I served one term in the NH senate with Chuck.  He is a good guy.  He remembers his friends and does what he can for them.  He is a solid Republican.  He has good name recognition across New Hampshire.  He ought to be able to beat Maggie Hassan who has done nothing good for us up here in New Hampshire, and in fact Maggie has done us a lot of bad, starting with the Keystone XL pipeline.  She has also put the kibosh on a good natural gas pipeline out to the Bakken.  Out there they have more natural gas than they know what to do with.  Like they are paying contractors to make the stuff go away.  With a good pipeline to New England we could enjoy plentiful natural gas all year round, rather than the deal we have now, outrageous price spikes in heating season, which cause outrageous electric rates in heating season. 

Can I make a yes or no answer?

 I got one of those “surveys” that end up by asking you for a donation to their cause.  I got one from “Patriotic Voters” (new name to me) with former US senator Rick Santorum on the letterhead.  The survey had some questions that could be answered with “yes” or “no”, like “Should important medicines come from Communist China”.  Then there were others that I could not answer yes or no. 

   For example, “Do you agree with granting citizenship to 11 million illegal aliens?”   For me, that depends.  An illegal alien who has a job, pays taxes, is married, is raising children, speaks reasonable English (at least  I can understand most of what he says), has stayed out of serious trouble with the law, sounds like a good sound citizen to me.  We need more citizens like that.  Or he has served a hitch in the US armed forces that makes him a good citizen in my old veteran eyes. 

    On the other hand, an MS -13 gang member, someone with a serious criminal record that sounds like a prime prospect to kick out of the country. 

   For another example “Should abortion on demand be legal in New Hampshire?”  Good question.  I thought abortion was legal in New Hampshire.  I am of mixed minds on this one.  In general I am against abortion, seeing it as very close to infanticide.  Not good.  On the other hand, I have a daughter, a good girl of whom I am extremely fond.  Had she needed an abortion in high school or college, I would have been right out there finding her a place to get an abortion.  This did not become a problem; daughter was an intelligent girl who managed to avoid pregnancy until after marriage.  So down deep, my attitude about abortion boils down to it should be forbidden to every girl except my daughters.  Even I can understand that this is a morally bankrupt point of view.   Some day I need to straighten myself out on this issue.