Stone Age Genesis

Both the Economist and the Wall St Journal carried the story of really old stone tools.  Archaeologists excavating at Pinnacle Point in South Africa found "microlith"  (we used to call them "flake") tools.  Flake tools are harder to make than the older "core" tools.  The oldest stone tools found are merely pebbles that have been bashed hard enough to fracture them, yielding a sharp cutting edge.  They are so crude that some argue that they are merely random stones.  Next step in stone tools was the "core".  Start with a fist sized chunk of flint.  Whack at it to form two sharp edges, and you have the "hand axe".  It was probably used to butcher killed game, to slice off roasts and chops for grilling over the fire. 
  Next step was to work with "flakes"(now called "microliths").  Start with a chunk of flint,  Strike it just so and a "blade" a thin piece of flint with two razor sharp edges flakes off.  Just as is, a flake is as useful as a modern straight razor blade.  And it's a great starting place to make arrow heads, or the famous folsom points that tipped throwing spears. 
   The South African site that is getting all the press coverage yielded flakes about 1 and a quarter inches long.  A little big for arrow heads, and no where as neatly chipped as American Indian arrow heads.  They lack any sign of a retaining groove to lash them to a shaft.  They look about right for points to a throwing spear. 
   So what makes this find so exciting?  The date.  The archaeologists are claiming they are 71,000 years old, making them the oldest flake tools ever discovered.   Too bad the archaeologists don't tell us how they dated their find.  Surely no one counted 71,000 layers in the dirt wall of the excavation.  Radio carbon dating only works back maybe 15,000 years.  So how did they estimate 71,000 years?  As the oldest flake tools ever discovered, they are interesting.  Other wise they are just crude chipped stone. 
   Then the "journalists" at both publications segued off to speculating upon the birth of modern minds, capable of art and music, poetry and the finer thoughts.  Sounds great.  Me, I think flake tools come from superior small motor skills.  I could make a "core" hand axe, no problem.  But to strike a chunk of flint and get a 4 inch long sliver with razor edges to pop off, in one piece,  I could never do that.  The flint would shatter, fail to flake, and after days of flint knapping, I'd wind up with nothing useful.  But there are guys who can do it, and do it well.  

War for Women

There are a lot of reasons for last week's Republican defeat.  A big one, not the only one, but a big one, is loss of the women's vote.  Exit polling shows  women voted Obama by 55% to 45%.  That's a 10% hit.  And half the voters are women.  If the Republican party ever wants to thrive again, it's gotta  make itself acceptable to women.
   Far be it from me to claim to understand women.  The nature of the fair sex has been a matter of debate going back to Genesis, and I certainly ain't smart enough to improve upon four of five thousand years of learned writing.  But I do know this, women are against getting raped. 
   But this election saw two, not one but two, Republican senate candidates make totally repugnant public statements about rape.  Their remarks indicated a light hearted attitude toward this crime.  "Boys will be boys" and " They were just fooling around" and "It isn't all that serious, you won't get pregnant".  And somehow Republicans nominated these two chuckleheads for high office. 
   Republicans need to agree that rape is a horrible crime.  Perpetrators shall be prosecuted, convicted and punished.  Victims will receive all possible aid and succor, including abortion services, as some small mitigation of  their plight.
   If the party continues to harbor and nominate chuckleheads who think rape is sort of OK, and not too bad, it will disappear from the face of America.
  

Words of the Weasel, Part 31

From The Economist.  "Earlier this year private sector bond holders reduced their nominal claims by more than 50%".
How nice and cooperative that sounds.  In actual fact the Greeks gave lenders a 75% haircut.
The Economist went on to urge canceling more Greek debt and lending them more money.  After all ,  the poor things cannot improve their economy with out lots of foreign investment.   Wouldn't we all like to lend them more money?

Grasping at Straws

Wall St Journal, back pages, "US Unit takes Permanent Posting In Poland".  A 10 man USAF detachment is assigned to Lask, Poland. The Poles are ecstatic to have a real US military detachment to their soil.  They hope that even the tiniest US deployment to their territory will ward off a Russian invasion.
   There is a color picture.  Shows ten of USAF enlisted men, commanded by a major standing around on a Polish air base.  Pretty small command for a major.  I commanded better than a hundred men as a second lieutenant. Good old USAF, a lot of the men have their hands in their pockets, only a few of them are wearing gloves. Most of them are wearing service caps (wheel hats) and wearing them poorly.  Others are wearing flight caps.  A couple of Polish officers are welcoming them.  The Poles are wearing insignia on their collars that look like American sergeant's stripes.  In the background we have a C-130 transport plane with "Polish Air Force" lettered on the fuselage, in big letters,  in English. 
    After a generation of Polish jokes in USAF, you would think the Poles would come up with something else to put on their planes.   "Air Force of Poland" would sound a lot better. 

Demographics vs Republicans

The Wall St Journal ran some interesting numbers about the election yesterday.  Percentage of population for various politically interesting groups and the percent of Romney votes in each group.  Many of the groups have overlap, such as college graduates and women.  About half of all college graduates are women and so there is lot of overlap.  And we are missing some groups like blacks,Jews, and  veterans. 
But notice that the big groups like woman and whites contribute a lot more votes than the little groups like Hispanics, who have been getting a lot of attention from the chattering classes. If Romney had attracted 10% more women's votes like Obama did, he would be president today.
   Republicans are gonna do something to try and win next time.  They oughta do something to get more women to vote for them.  That's the way numbers point.  

Group	Group Size	Voted Romney	Total Romney Vote
Whites	72%	61%	43.9%
Women	53%	45%	23.9%
College Grad	48%	50%	24.0%
Mid Income	32%	54%	17.3%
Independents	28%	55%	15.4%
The Young	19%	40%	7.6%
Union Homes	18%	42%	7.6%
Hispanics	10%	29%	2.9%

Rough Neighborhoods

Aviation Week reports on a bombing raid outside of Khartoum, Sudan back on 24 October of this year.  Satellite photos in the article show before and after.  Before shows a bunch of containers (the ship carried sort) neatly stacked in a yard.  After shows a huge crater in the same yard, no sign of any containers.  Locals reported jet aircraft noises just before the place blew up around midnight.  Explosions and fires raged for hours.  The containers are believed to have held some 200 tons of munitions bound for Gaza or the Sinai peninsula.
   No comment from Israel.
   Rough neighborhood.  Back in 2007  the al- Kibar Syrian nuclear reactor was bombed flat.  In 2009 and Iranian truck convoy in Sudan met with a high explosive mishap while crossing the desert.  Stuxnet went to work back in 2007 and wasn't detected until 2010.  In 2011 a Hamas arms smuggler in Port Sudan was killed from the air. In 2012 electric power lines to Iran's nuclear facilities were bombed.
   No one has claimed credit for any of this.  No comments from Israel either.
   When your existance is threatened, take steps.

Impulse Drive under development in China

Captain Kirk called it impulse drive.  Larry Niven's stories called it a reactionless thruster.   A device that makes thrust without throwing propellant out the rocket nozzle.  Pure science fiction.   Until Aviation Week ran a story this week about the "Emdrive".
   It started back in 2001 when a British inventor named Roger Shawyer set up a company to develop the drive aided by a grant from the British government.  Needless to say, a number of people denounced the concept as quackery.   Shawyer built a prototype that produced 85 milli newtons (1/4 ounce) of thrust from an input 300 watts of microwave power.  A Chinese research group claimed an improved model developed  720 milli newtons (2.5 ounces) of thrust from 2.5 KW of input microwave power.
    Boeing's "Phantom Works"  took a look at the device some years ago, but is no longer pursuing the approach and Shawyer's government funding has gone away.
   If it works, it's pure science fiction, and the door to interplanetary space craft.  Aviation Week is a sober industry magazine.
   Except for now and then.  Aviation Week ran a story about a secret US project that built a single stage ground to orbit space craft on their cover some ten years ago.
    Very Interesting.  Believe as much as you like. 
 

De Tocqueville can be really gloomy.

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”

Alexis de Tocqueville.  Democracy in America

Bummer, Four More Years

Every thing I might say has already been said, ad infinitum. I guess the voters want four more years of the same.  Too bad, I thought Americans were smarter than that.

Poll Standing

I was at the polls at 8 AM, opening time.  It was cold, 20F, below freezing.  Fortunately the sun was out and it wasn't raining or snowing.  Which has happened in the past.  Anyhow my long woolen underwear and SmartWool socks felt pretty good. At the Bethlehem polls we Republicans were the only ones there, no Democrats.  Turnout was decent. 
  At Franconia,  Bob Mead (long time town moderator) called the turnout heavy.  Bob oughta know.  We had 4  poll standers, and the Democrats had 2.  
  Gotta go back out to catch the evening crowd.  Then turn on the TV to find out what happened.  Might be a long night.

Wreckit Ralph

Good flick.  Funny enough to make me laugh out loud, something I don't do very often.  It's from Disney, the old Disney animation studio, which is nice.  They still can make a good animated movie.  The premise of the flick is those characters on the screens of computer games actually have a real life, after the arcade closes.  Wreckit Ralph is a big clumsy bad guy from one game who wants to become a good guy, just once.  After closing time, Ralph journeys to Game Central Station and thence to some other games in search of his dream.  Since it's a Disney flick, Ralph eventually triumphs and returns to his own home game a hero.
  The dialogue is very funny, even the puns are amusing.
  I enjoyed it.  It's one of the better movies to come out of Hollywood this year.  

Second Snow of the season

Looks like winter is serious.  We got enough to stick.  The ground isn't frozen yet, so it's melting off the roads and lawns, but I still have nearly an inch on my deck railing. 

Words of the Weasel Part 30. Issues

Issue.  All purpose word used in place of failure, breakdown, bug, or problem.  Sounds much better.  Like something you can debate, rather than getting down to work and fixing it. 
As in "We have generator issues" from a lower Manhatten brokerage house explaining why they were not open for business on Wednesday after Hurricane Sandy. 
  Sounds much better than "Our generator is down".

Business Administration Blather on NPR

NPR was interviewing some Brit business administration guru early this morning.  The Brit was discussing the American automobile market, and how Japanese imports rose from nothing to 25% market share.  He said the imports entered the low end of the market and then the domestic makers "retreated" from that end of the market.  He obviously thought the domestic makes should have stood their ground and fought the imports on the beaches, on the landing grounds, and never surrender.  He didn't quite say it like that, but you got the message.
    And this guru was spouting nonsense. Detroit never retreated from the low end of the car market.  They were never in it.  Detroit was building famously large cars, six passenger, eight cylinder, automatic transmission, land yachts.  The imports were way smaller cars, four passenger, four cylinder, manual transmission.  Detroit never made anything like that.  And these minimal cars sold for about two thirds of what Detroit was getting for baseline sedans.   And a whole lot of customers decided that a minimal car at a good price was all they needed to get to work and chauffeur the kids around in.
   The decision facing Detroit was not whether to defend the low end of the market, it was a decision to enter the low end with a totally new small car design, or just keep on making what was selling well.
   Only GM took the plunge and decided to produce a true low end car, Saturn.  Ford and  Chrysler punted.   Saturn could have worked out, but GM suits saddled the operation with too much expensive overhead.
   Our Brit guru doesn't understand that the importers created a new market for a new kind of car.  The imports didn't invade the existing market, their created a whole new market.  And did very well at it.

First Snow of the Winter

It's falling up here.  It's light and it ain't sticking much, but it's snow.  Winter is coming. 

Firing Generals and Admirals over Benghazi

The TV news has mentioned this, but let it drop. Obama fired General Carter Ham, head of Africom. Then he fired Rear Admiral Charles M. Gaouette from his command of the powerful Carrier Strike Group Three (CSG-3) currently located in the Middle East . General Ham was fired right in the middle of the Benghazi attack, and Admiral Gaoutte was fired shortly afterwards. Service rumor has it that both officers were re leaved of command because they were sending re inforcements to Benghazi against Obama's orders to let the consulate be overwhelmed

Disgraceful.

Offshoring to the US.

Why Bizjet makers are going stateside.  Cover article in Aviation Week.   Embraer, a Brazilian aerospace firm, opened a $52 million assembly, completion, and painting facility in Melbourne Florida.  Honda has a 500,000 square foot facility in Greenboro, North Carolina employing 700 people.  France's Dassault has a plant in Little Rock, Arkansas to make Falcon jets employing 1600 workers. 
   All this investment went to right-to-work southern states, rather than old union strongholds in Wichita Kansas and Seattle Washington. 
   Said one executive "Why in the world would you go to Wichita and take all that trouble. You'd be nuts."

   And this is why we need to pass a right-to-work law here in New Hampshire.   Industry won't invest in states that are not right-to-work.

This is job growth?

Early this week they announced a mere 360,000 "new claims for unemployment" i.e. people out of a job.  This morning they announced a "job gain" of 171,000 jobs.  Boy that sure sounds like a net loss of  360,000 minus 171,000 equaling  189,000 jobs. 
  This is good economic news?

Federal regulation of Cell Phone Carriers?

Good old lefty NPR was calling for this today.  They claim the FCC wanted to require each and every cell phone tower have enough backup power to keep it on the air for 8 hours after the electricity failed.  The cell phone carriers successfully sued to block this regulation, some time ago, like right after Katrina.  NPR  is obviously in favor of this, and speculated that the issue might be revived after Sandy blacked out NYC. 
   Hmm.  What do I think?  You can always spend more money to harden the cell phone system more.  How much  money should be spent  to keep every one's cell phone working during a future Hurricane Sandy?  Every buck spent on backup power, secure land links,  tree trim back and such goes right onto your cell phone bill. 
   Who should decide how much money to spend?  The government or the cell phone carriers?  The carriers have some incentive to provide reliable service.  Certainly carriers who stayed on the air thru out Sandy will attract  subscribers from carriers that died at the first raindrop.  We could let market forces control the level of backup, which will result in a leveling off between reliability and cost.  The carriers will put enough money into disaster proofing to give them a competitive edge, but not so much as to drive off subscribers thru increased fees.  And, knowing the business a whole lot better than any bureaucrat, they will put the money where it will do the most good. 
   That FCC proposed eight hour backup power rule wouldn't do New York much good now.  Power has been off for a lot longer than eight hours, and it doesn't look like it will be back on any time soon. 
   People who really care about uninterrupted phone service can get a land line. 

Demo Slams

   US representative race up here.  We have Anne Kuster (D) TV ads slammng Charlie Bass (R) for voting against the minimum wage act.  Hell, that might be the best vote Charlie has cast.  Minimum wage doesn't boost wages, it kills entry level jobs.  A whole lot of entry level jobs (life guard, pizza delivery, retail work, fast food) are just barely profitable to the employer.  Raise the pay and the jobs go away 'cause the employer starts to loose money on them.  These are the summer jobs for high schoolers, first jobs out of welfare, the no experience needed jobs. 
  Passing a law to raise the pay on these jobs just makes the jobs disappear. 
  So Charlie, I'll vote for you if you keep voting against minimum wage.

Christmas Catalogs

They ain't what they used to be.  Used to be, the Christmas season kickoff was the arrival in the mail of the Sears Roebuck Christmas Catalog.  Full color illustrations.  Full of toys, clothes, tools, Christmas decorations and fruitcakes.  As kids we used to go thru it page by page.   When we wrote letters to Santa Claus, my father demanded Sears Roebuck stock numbers.  Well, Sears dropped out of the catalog business 20 years ago.
   Today the Walthers catalog (model trains) arrived.  It's the Christmas issue, we have a picture of Santa in his shop, painting a train model.  Inside we have lots of train sets.  Train sets are strictly gift-for-kid items, the grownup hobbyists buy stuff car by car and locomotive by locomotive.  About half the train sets are steam engines, the other half diesel.  Times are changing.  Used to be, every kid knew that a decent road steam engine had pilot wheels and trailing wheels.  Steamers with just drivers were humble yard switchers, never seen on the mainline. 
   That's gone now.  Half the steam sets had just all all-drivers switch engine.  Probably 21st century parents and kids don't know the difference.  And the prices.  A G gauge (really big) set with just two passenger cars $500.  O- gauge (Lionel) $300 a set.  HO gauge $129 a set. 
  

Bye Bye Sandy

It's nice being far off the storm track.  My deepest sympathy for the Mid Atlantic states suffering power outages, flooded everythings, downed trees and 2 foot of snow. 
  Yesterday the wind picked up around mid afternoon and it started to rain, lightly.  That kept up all night.  Our power stayed on, phone works, internet works, no trees down.  We've done much worse in the past. 
    There was that mini tornado thru here five years ago that dropped a tree on the house, blew off a neighbor's roof, and put the lights out for a week.  Those were the days.  Sandy was nothing like that up here.

So far, so good

We are pretty far off the hurricane track, so we have no rain, no wind, about 50 degrees and overcast skies.  We are ready, the grill is secured for winter, grass mowed for the last time, sun brolly stowed away, deck clear of deck chairs, and stuff.  I'd put the car inside the garage, except there is still too much stuff left over from the bathroom remodeling project for the car to fit. 
  TV is on, yakking away about Sandy.  We finally have a story other than the election. 

A Democracy, if you can keep it.

Actually Ben Franklin really said, "A Republic" but I will ignore that.  I was listening to one of those NPR pieces about bipartisanship and polarization, and how the federal government worked better back in the old days when all the congressmen lived in Washington and went out to dinner with each other and socialized and became friends.   Sounded wonderful.
   Then someone said when they assembled focus groups of ordinary voters and  "acquainted them with the true facts, they came to the right decision every time."
   And there lies the rub in this election.  Constant blatant lying by politicians, media, and advocacy groups.  How is a plain ordinary voter to know what is true when the air is so full of lies?  Just this morning Rachel Maddow said Obama has reduced the federal deficit every year.   Yeah, Right.  "Obama has created 5 million new jobs." Yeah Right.  "Our consulate was burned and sacked because of an internet video."  Yeah Right.  "Republicans reduced the state cigarette tax to aid Big Tobacco."  Yeah Right.  "Green jobs will reduce unemployment".  
   It just goes on and on.  One lie after another.  It's hard, and takes a lot of time and energy, but we voters ought to keep track of who is lying to us and vote against them just 'cause they lie.  In the case of media lying, change the channel. 
 

Leon Panetta. Worthless SecDef

I watched Leon Panetta on TV tonight.  He said that he didn't have enough intelligence to send troops in harm's way, to the Benghazi consulate.  "If you don't know what you are going up against, you cannot commit forces." he said.  On TV.
   Sorry Leon.  You had all the information you needed. You knew an American outpost was under attack in a foreign land.  America always  reinforces its men under attack.  You didn't. You don't deserve to be an American Secretary of Defense.  In fact, you don't deserve to be an American citizen.
   We had Predator drones sending real time TV back to the White House.  We have AC-130 gunships nearby.  We didn't do squat, we let our men on the ground die.
  Disgraceful.

Republican Get Together

Charlie Bass, our Republican incumbent US rep, standing for re-election, held a spaghetti dinner at the Littleton VFW hall the other night.  I went, along with a whole bunch of  other Republicans.  I've been around long enough that I knew nearly everyone in the room by name.  And I'm bad on names.  To the left, we have Charlie, saying a few appropriate words, from the podium.  Too bad the airconditioner shows up bigger than the candidate.

 Here we have Ovide Lamontagne, Republican candidate for governor of NH.  Very nice guy, also being upstaged by that air conditioner.  I estimate his chances of election as decent, not a sure thing, but decent.  His democratic opponent talks too much about tax hikes. 

Ovide shaking hands with youngest son, Jonathan.  I didn't get a photo of Ovide and a very cute little girl.

Anyhow, that's what the NH Republican establishment looks like in their native habitat.  We had nearly every important Republican in the state at this remote upcountry shindig.  We only  missed Kelly Ayotte (US Senator) and Bill O'Brien (Speaker of NH house) but we had just about everyone else.

In the old days this place would be referred to as a "smoke filled room". Nobody in this country smokes anymore, and they don't allow smoking indoors most places, so that colorful description is going out of date.  
   Anyhow a good time was had by all.

My color is Mud

Finished another round of car shopping.  Stopped at a dozen dealers over in St Johnsbury.  Each lot filled with very average looking cars, mostly painted mud color.  Mud has taken over from gray as the most popular car color.  Each one of these cars was new once, and each new car buyer opted for a mud paint job.  Taste they had, lots of taste. 
   Why is it that I see multiple stories about the end of stainless steel as America's favorite kitchen appliance finish, but I don't remember a single one on the rise of mud as America's favorite car color?

Getting things done WITHOUT using the military

   Both candidates spoke at length about the need for America to influence events overseas and in the Middle East, but without "putting boots on the ground".  Get foreign governments to do things our way but without using force.  Nice work if you can get it.  The voters approve, Americans have never supported agreements made at gunpoint.  We don't like to act the bully, we don't like getting our sons and husbands killed, and we don't like spending the necessary money.  America is not a war like country.  We don't see war as moral.
  So how do we influence events overseas?  We find individuals or groups,  politicians, newsmen, religious leaders, authors, unions, churches and political parties who support liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free market capitalism, and oppose terrorism, communism, and religious radicalism.  We offer these people and groups our support.  Money, web access, smart phones, color printers, favorable publicity in our press, intelligence, passports and visas, laptops, Xerox machines, and the myriad of useful devices that our economy produces in such abundance.  For a democratic resistance movement struggling to liberalize a repressive government, such assistance can be the vital edge that pushes them over the top.  It's generally accepted that this sort of encouragement and support to Lech Walensa's Solidarity movement  was very important in the overthrow of the  Polish communist regime.
  Of course, for this to work, it MUST remain secret.  Imagine what would happen to any American politician should it becomes known that he accepts help from the Russians, or the Chinese, or even the Saudis.  Likewise it would be the kiss of death to many overseas should it become known that they were working with the Americans.  
  Trouble is, no one overseas is willing to trust that the Americans will keep secrets secret.  They all fear that anything they share with the Americans will appear on the front pages of the New York Times in a few days.  Until we can tighten up our security and keep secret things secret, not even the best our our representatives be able to do much coordination with players overseas.  Those players fear that American leaks will cost them their lives.
   CIA is disgracefully leaky.  State isn't much better.  Until we tighten things up, we won't be able to do much influencing of anyone. 

No Knockout blows.

I watched the last Romney-Obama debate.  And watched the after debate spinners attempting to spin it their way.  Neither man made a fatal gaffe or landed a knockout blow.  Watching these things is like watching a bullfight.  You are waiting for someone to get gored. 
  Well, that didn't happen.  Romney came on as presidential, well informed, and reasonable.  He ain't gonna take us to war anywhere.  Obama did OK, defending the weak record of his administration.  He made the best of a bad situation.  The moderator, some old white haired coot from CBS news, was a lot better than the last one, Candy Crowley.  He had better questions and he didn't jump into the debate himself the way Candy did last time.  We TV viewers want to hear what the candidates have to say, we don't care what the moderator wants to say.  We don't like the moderator taking air time away from the candidates.
   I'll score this one as even-stephen.  Each man's  "base" will say (and think) their man did well.  I don't think there are many undecided voters left, so it's hard say what the effect on undecided or independents might be.  We will know in a couple of weeks. 

Car shopping

Youngest son took me car shopping today.  In the space of an afternoon we visited all four car dealers in Littleton.  Wow.  Most of ;'em started at $10k for high mileage mini cars.  We didn't find anything to fall in love with.  The best of the batch was a Kia with 93K miles on the clock.  It had a manual trans, which is a plus, but the road noise on the highway was a bit daunting. 
   Clearly more hunting is in order.

What should they talk about tomorrow night?

Tomorrow is the last Romney-Obama debate.  It's supposed to be about "foreign policy".  For a superpower with world wide interests, this is a fairly important subject.   So what should they talk about? Here is my list.
1.  Iranian nuclear program.  How bad would a nuclear Iran be?  What should we do to stop the Iranians from getting the bomb?  We have managed to crash their centrifuge computers and  their currency.  Can we go farther and destabilize the mullahs, bringing on a third Iranian revolution?  If worse comes to worse do we have the stones to do a regime change on them?
2.  China and the South China Sea.  China is claiming ownership of  some worthless rocks in the South China Sea as a way of pushing out the Philippines, the Viet Namese, the Japanese and the Koreans from oil exploration in the region.  Should we let the Chinese push our friends around? Should we tell China where to get off? 
3. How much military strength do we need to maintain the Pax Americana?  Let's talk real numbers here, numbers of Army and Marine divisions, Air Force squadrons, Navy ships. 
4.  Can we sign the outstanding free trade agreements which objections by US union have stalled?
5.  How hard do we want to bash China on currency manipulation and trade?  It wouldn't be hard to start a trade war here.  Who would get hurt worse, us or them?
6.  Do we just let the Arab Spring stew in its own juice, or do we try to restore some kind of order over there?

Wanna bet they waste the evening talking about Benghazi and who knew what and when did they know it?

What to regulate?

In the news have been fatal cases of fungal meningitis traced to drugs mixed or packaged at a Framingham MA "compounding pharmacy".  Nineteen people have died, more are ill.  Predictably there have been calls for more "regulation" of "compounding pharmacies". 
   More regulation means more tests, more paperwork, more QC inspectors watching production, more worker training and a big dose of Mickey Mouse.
   But, despite all the hooting and hollering, nobody has yet  figured out what went wrong, and how.  They had been making this stuff for some time and all of a sudden it goes bad.  What really happened?  Did they skip or botch some test for infectious matter?  Fail to sterilize something?  Buy some material from China?  Leave out some important preservative?  Change the formula somehow?  Or what?  I can imagine a lot of ways to let fungus infect your product. 
   Should some investigators figure out the problem and publish a paper explaining how to prevent this dreadful infection, I am 100% positive that every "compounding pharmacy" in the land would immediately make the needed changes to their production lines. 
  We don't need more "regulation".  We need to find out how the fungus got into the product and how to stop it from happening again.

What to cut? Fannie and Freddy

Back during the New Deal, builders, real estate agents, bankers, insurance agents, and civic boosters of various stripes convinced the Roosevelt Administration that Great Depression 1.0 was caused because people weren't building enough new houses, and they were not building houses because there was a shortage of mortgage money.  And the federal government, with the power to print as much money as desired, ought to print up a bunch and put it into mortgages. 
  And so it happened.  Federal National Mortgage Something-or-Other, commonly known as Fannie Mae, was created.  Being an agency of the US government, the best credit rating on the planet, they could sell bonds for nearly as good a rate as Federal Treasury Bills.  They used this fountain of cheap money to purchase mortgages from savings and loans (remember them?) and ordinary banks.  The sellers could then use the cash to write more mortgages. 
   And what did Fannie Mae do with all those mortgages?  For many years they just cashed the mortgage checks and life went on.  Something in the '90s they invented a financial weapon of mass destruction, the mortgage backed security.  They proceeded to blow the global financial system to hell and back, and we are still living in the wreckage.  Great Depression 2.0 was caused by Fannie Mae, more than  anyone else.
  The destruction included Fannie itself, as Great Depression 2.0 threw everyone out of work, they stopped making their mortgage payments, and that cut off Fannie's air supply.  The US treasury had to step in and guarantee   Fannie's obligations.  This cost $140 billion of our tax money.  As bad as AIG.
  We ought to close down Fannie.  It isn't needed, and it has the power to do humungous damage.  It's still loosing money.  The financial world will be a better, safer, and cheaper place after we drive a stake thru Fannie's heart.  Revoke their charter, put 'em out of business.
   Obama hasn't said one word about Fannie.   But its a good bet that he would keep it going.
   Romney hasn't said much about Fannie either.  But I bet he would be OK with closing it down.                                         

Microsoft whines about America's Talent deficit

Today on the Wall St. Journal Op-Ed we have Brad Smith, executive VP and general counsel at Microsoft wailing about 6000 Microsoft job openings that they cannot fill.  Of these, 3400 are for "engineers, software developers, and researchers".  Brad Smith then goes on to cry about the US education system.  
   Tough cookies Microsoft.  If you need software people, you can train them yourself.  Run an ad. "Learn Programming.  Good pay.  No prior experience necessary."   That will get you all the applicants anyone could ever need.  Enroll the better half of them in a Microsoft run software training program.  In three months I can teach any decent college graduate how to program anything.  And so can Microsoft. 
   It is crazy for Microsoft to expect colleges to graduate students with five years experience in Windows internals, C sharp, Visual Basic.Net and Excel Macros..  The Microsoft HR droids want to hire people off the street with years of experience in very narrow specialties.  Got news for you HR droids, the world doesn't work that way. 

So where was the air support in Benghazi?

After a month of chattering about the Libyan outrage, who knew what and when did they know it, who was responsible for lack or security men, we have NOT talked about real issues.

1. Why no air support?.  The jets can move out at 600 mph.  We could have had fighters over the besieged consulate within an hour. 
2. Why no Marine reinforcements?  The V22 Osprey VTOL transports are slower than jet fighters, only 300 mph or so.  But they could have landed a company of Marines in the consulate courtyard within two hours. 

These are more important questions than why US ambassadors were pushing the "Video drove them crazy" story on the Sunday pundit shows a week after the attack.

357 Magnum in an automatic pistol?

That's what we get from Coonan Inc according to my latest American Rifleman.  It looks like a regulation .45 automatic but it takes 357 Magnum revolver cartridges.  Interesting and all that, but why?
   357, being a revolver cartridge, has a rim on the brass to seat on the back of the cylinder.  Without the rim, the hammer strike would merely push the entire cartridge up the cylinder instead of igniting the primer.  Revolver cartridges need that rim.  There have been several attempts to make revolvers that could fire rimless .45 auto cartridges, using clever metal clips that grab the extractor groove in the rimless automatic round.  They worked, mostly, but nobody was ever very fond of them.  Convenienal wisdom is that revolvers need rimmed cartridges.
   On the other side, rimmed cartridges don't stack neatly into a magazine  the way rimless will.  The rims have a tendency to catch each other and jam the gun.  Instead of stacking up straight, they stack in a curve, calling for a curved magazine.  Straight magazines, with a spring on the bottom are more likely to feed than curvy ones.  The moment of truth for an automatic pistol is when the slide jerks open, the empty brass is tossed out, the springs ram the slide home, stripping a new round off the top of the magazine and jamming it into the chamber.  As any automatic pistol owner can tell you, there are a thousand ways this can go wrong, jamming the gun.  I certainly don't want to give Murphy's Law something extra to work with like a rimmed cartridge.  I want rimless ammunition for my automatic pistol. 
   Plus, nobody has ever complained about the regulation .45 round lacking in power or accuracy.  357 is a fine round, but it doesn't hit any harder. 
   It's a nice looking gun, but I'd druther have a regulation .45 automatic. 

Obama does better at debating

Naturally I stayed up to watch the Romney-Obama rematch.  Not bad.  Obama looked better and did better than last time.  Romney was as good as last time.  Obama made up a few "facts" on the fly. He said he had called the Lybian outrage terrorism the day after it happened.  I certainly don't remember that, and ever diligent Fox News found the tape, and although Obama had used the word terrorism, it wasn't in connection with the Lybian outrage.  He was just trashing terrorism in general.  Romney got on Obama's case about the pipeline and drilling permits and Obama didn't have much in the way of answers.
  The moderator was a tubby women with an attitude and bad hair (Candy Crowley).  She interrupted, argued, sucked up valuable time, and was totally in the tank for Obama.  I'd never heard of her before.  The audience questions were bad.  I mean does anyone care about the "assault weapons ban" any more?  That question did give Obama a chance to declare himself in favor of the right to bear arms. 
   Nothing new in the way of ideas, issues, or policies came up.  Everything that was said the two candidates have said before and said many times.  What's fun in watching it to see them going at each other face-to-face and seeing how good they are at thinking on their feet.  Both candidates managed to avoid fatal gaffes, and nobody was ever at a loss for something to say.

Nobody can vote for HIM because..

I hear this a lot.  But when I ask " What has he said or done that is so awful?"  they cannot think of anything.  But they KNOW that HE is awful and they could never vote for him, they just don't know WHY they feel that way. 
    And the MSM aggravate the situation, 'cause everybody knows they don't tell the truth.  So nobody listens to THEM. 
   Which might be why the debate was so effective, everybody got so see their guy, on national TV, all by himself. 

Libya is for Losers

The TV newsies have been talking about the Libya disaster for a couple of weeks now.  Coupla things they haven't talked about.
1.  Marines.  I watched the whole congressional hearing, where they had four State Dept guys getting grilled by 20 Congresscritters for hours.  During all that time the word "Marines" never passed anyone's lips.  The back and forth was all about additional State Dept security guys.  Now as for me, when I got Al Quada climbing over the consulate wall, I want a company of Marines.  They know how to handle this sort of thing.  Once over the wall, Al Quada is on American soil, and the Marines can shoot them all.  Nobody talked about this.
2.  Coverup story.  Just what is the White House trying to sell to the voters.  And why?  Apparently the real story is Al Quada planned to attack and burn the consulate, and they suceeded.  To which an intelligent White House would say "We are gonna track 'em down and kill 'em."  A lot of voters are OK with that.
Instead they said "We Americans are to blame for stirring up the natives with provocative Internet video".  Few voters like that story much.

Winter is coming

Mt Lafayette from the Mittersill Inn driveway.  Took this picture two days ago.  It snowed on the deck that night and it stuck up on the mountain.  Notice that leaves have not all fallen yet.

Drive away bill payments

Paying the bills on a rainy Sunday.  I open the bill from Time Warner Cable.  (cable TV & broadband). Inclosed is a nice form letter explaining that they changed my account number, for the convenience of their computer wienies. 
   And would you be so kind as to redo all the paper work for your credit card payments 'cause when the new account numbers go into effect, credit card payments to the old account number will no longer be accepted.  Likewise if you are paying by electronic funds transfer.
   Right.  I'll drop everything and go thru all that again.  Real Soon Now
   Fortunately I still pay with old fashioned paper checks so I don't have  to bother.
   I wonder how many payments Time Warner will never see because their computer wienies were too lazy to program the new bean counting system to use the old customer account numbers.

  

Scam. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT)

A legal US tax scam.  All a company has to do is convince the IRS that they are in the real estate business, at least that a lot of their business is real estate, and presto, chango, NO US CORPORATE INCOME TAX.
Nice deal if you can get it.  Right now a cellphone operator, American Tower is trying to become a tax exempt REIT on the basis that its cellphone towers are real estate.  In line behind American Tower are data center operator Equinox (they own a fair number of big buildings full of computers) and bill board company Lamar Advertising (billboard are real estate).
   This tax scam is essentially unfair.  Business is business and all businesses ought to be taxed alike.  No special deals for special business.  The REIT scam sucks money out of everything else and pours it into real estate.  Which might be why a real estate bubble caused Great Depression 2.0.  We would be better off to have investors decide where to put their money.  They will pick things that will make money (and employ workers).  The REIT scam is  picking winners and losers via the tax code.
   Romney and Ryan might be willing to repeal this ugly bit of tax favoritism.   

Ryan vs Biden last night

A slug fest.  Biden was a lot feistier than Obama and I scored the event as more even than last week's showdown.  Biden was rude, smirking, laughing and interrupting.  Color him obnoxious.  Ryan was cool, polite, knowledgeable, a nice civilized and polite man I'd happily invite  home for dinner.  Biden can go eat at McDonald's.
  The moderator asked stupid questions and interrupted too much.  Give me Jim Lehrer anytime.
  Both guys presented arguments for their sides, but they kept quoting "facts" that I had never heard of  to bolster their arguments.  Being something of a political junkie who follows this stuff, I figure any fact I never heard of before is likely made up on the spur of the moment.  Bogus.   

Four Careers are Toast

I watched the Darrel Issa hearings yesterday.  He had four State Dept people on the dock, two field guys who were on the ground in Libya and asked for re enforcements well BEFORE the legation was attacked and burned.  The other two were Washington desk wienies who had denied the requests for reinforcements.
The field guys reluctantly admitted under direct questioning that Washington had not given them anything. The desk wienies claimed that they had given the field guys "full support".
   Figure the State Dept bureaucracy will deal with these poor guys.  The two field guys will be dumped on for confessing to embarrassing facts.  The two desk wienies will be dumped on for not being more evasive under questioning.  All four of them can kiss off any thought of promotion in the next 100 years.
   The atmosphere was tense to the point of Chairman Issa offering his committee's protection to the two field guys against State Dept retaliation.   

What to Cut? Item 5 BATFE

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,Firearms and Explosives.  These are the guys that brought us Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Fast and Furious.  They are federal police, with arrest powers, badges, and guns and little discretion.  When they cause a major mess (Ruby Ridge and Waco) they have to call in the FBI to bail them out.  They have a history of harassing  and entrapment of firearms dealers, gun show customers, and ordinary gun owners. 
   We would be better off without these feeders at the public trough.  State and local police make the great majority of all criminal arrests.  We don't need armed federal policemen to collect liquor and tobacco taxes from legitimate manufacturers.  Smuggling and bootlegging untaxed cigarettes or liquor is a violation of state law and evasion of state taxes which state police forces are well motivated to pursue. 
  BATFE has a budget of $1.12 billion a year.  Small compared to farm bills and transportation bills.  But you know what they say, "A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking about real money."
   More competent and better balanced agencies like the FBI and the IRS could handle the few legitimate duties now handled by BATFE. 

What to cut? Item 4. CIA

The trouble with CIA is that it is all too often wrong. They told Eisenhower that Fidel Castro was an agrarian reformer. They failed to predict the breakup of the Soviet Union, even after the fall of the wall.  They told George Bush and Colin Powell that Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons were a slam-dunk.  In actual fact, Saddam didn't have a nuclear program, which we found out AFTER invading the country.  They didn't  have even a single agent on the ground inside Saddam's Iraq.  CIA attempted to destabilize the Bush Administration by creating the Valerie Plame affair.  CIA agents still work out of embassies, which is like hanging a "kick me" sign on the back of your trench coat.  CIA announced  the Iranians did NOT have a nuclear program, just in time to scuttle some proposed sanctions.  CIA leaked the story about NSA listening into Osama bin Laden's satellite phone to the New York Times.  It took CIA ten years to finger Osama bin Laden. 
   With a track record like this, who in their right mind would believe anything CIA reported?
   Besides, America's best intelligence comes from NSA (who intercepts enemy communications) and the Air Force (who flies recon satellites). 
   CIA's budget is famously secret.  CIA appropriations are disguised somewhere deep inside the federal budget, so we don't know just how much money they spend each year.  But what ever they spend, it really ain't worth it, 'cause what ever CIA produces is suspect, 'cause it comes from an outfit with a long and well documented history of brain death.

What to cut? Item 3. Ground the FBI's Air Force

This came to light in a Wall St Journal piece last month complaining about Dept of Justice officials taking joy rides in FBI aircraft.  Apparently the FBI operates a fleet of executive jets for unspecified purposes. 
   Far as I am concerned, FBI agents ought to fly commercial, just like the rest of us.  And put up with taking off their shoes, nudity scanners, and groping by TSA agents.  If we citizens have to put up with this crap, so should they.   After all, they work for us.  
   You can fly anywhere in the country for a few hundred bucks.  Whereas a 10 seat executive jet costs $25 million to buy, and hundreds of dollars an hour to operate.  We could fly the agents first class for less than that. 
   This is small change compared with farm bills and tranportation bills.  I don't have real numbers, but if the FBI had a fleet of 10 aircraft, and flew each one 40 hours a week, at $200 an hour, we have $4.16 million a year for operating costs.  Small change, but every little bit hurts. 

What to cut. Item 2 Federal Transportation Bill

Used to be, streets and roads were built and maintained by cities and states.  They did alright.  They built the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the New Jersey Turnpike, the Merritt Parkway, the New York Thruway, the Connecticut Turnpike, and the Mass Pike, to name a few that I drive frequently.
  Then back in Eisenhower's time we got the Interstate Highway Program.  The Federal government put up 90% of the money, picked the routes and set the standards.  That was a half century ago.  And we got a magnificent highway system.  Best highways on the planet.  If you don't believe me, take a drive in Canada. 
   Anyhow, after 50 years of building, the Interstate system is complete.  We have superb roads going everywhere in the country.  Even way up here in the wilderness of northern NH, I have an interstate exit within walking distance of my front door. But, we keep spending federal highway money, whether we need it or not. 
  Back in June, Congress managed to pass a $227 billion-over-two-years highway bill.  That's $100 plus billion a year, about as pricey as the farm bill they haven't passed yet.  Put the saving from killing the transportation bill together with the savings from killing the farm bill, and we have better than $200 billion in savings to put against a $1 trillion federal deficit.  Not too shabby, and we haven't touched Social Security or Medicare.
    And this is politically do able.  Granted all the contractor's in the country are in favor of federal highway spending (the Feds will spend on anything, the staties are thriftier).  But there are more voters than contractors, and those voters ought to be worried about federal money printing turning their college savings, their retirement savings, and the value of their houses in to waste paper. 

What to Cut? Item 1. Farm Subsidies

This election features Democrats calling for tax hikes and Republicans calling for spending cuts.  Neither side has been specific about how bad the tax hike might be, or what might be cut.  Both sides fear that specific proposals will just mobilize opposition, so they stick to vague generalities that mean nothing.  So lets take a look at what we could cut. 
   Easy target Number 1 is farm subsidies.   There is a $1 trillion over 10 years farm bill wandering around capitol hill right now. It hasn't passed yet but they are trying hard.  Only farmers (less than 5% of the population) benefit. Most of us get taxed just to pass money to farmers.  Most of whom are corporations like Archer Daniels Midland, not family farmers.  Farming is just another business, like manufacturing or mining or trucking, or fast food.  Why should farmers get a $100 billion a year government subsidy that no other industry gets?
  We are talking about a lot of money here.  The yearly US deficit is $1 trillion, so the farm bill is 10% of the entire deficit.  Kill the farm bill and we have made a serious step toward balancing the US budget.  While we are at it, we could close down the Agriculture Department and save even more. 

7.8% unemployment, Hurrah

The Democrats and the newsies are talking this up like happy days are here again.  Right.  Does anyone really feel that Great Depression 2.0 is over?  I don't think a few tenths of a percent change in "unemployment" makes much difference to the voters.  Voters know that times are bad and jobs are hard to come by.  Talk it up as much as you like, it doesn't really mean all that much.