Does it matter if Republican apparatchniks dislike Trump?

TV news this morning is full of serious Republicans saying that they cannot support The Donald.  Well, it's understandable.  The Republican party establishment, elected officials, party workers, pundits, activists, people whose day job is politics, never liked Trump.  They did their best to stop Trump.  But the voters do like Trump, they voted for him, and there are a lot more voters than establishment types. 
   So, does it really matter if the establishment types still don't like Trump and refuse to support him?  Trump communicates with the voters thru TV and Twitter, not endorsements from prominent politicians.  In fact, Trump's voters are mad at the political establishment for the miserable state of the country, and they tune in to Trump's TV appearances.  They don't have any respect for the opinions of politicians, most of whom they call RINO's.

Election Results. Nada

Polls closed in California about 11 hours ago.  So I'm listening to NPR talking about the results on the clock radio this morning.  In an hour, they never mentioned the election results. They had a lot of happy interviews with Hillary people saying how wonderful Hillary's victory was, but never in an hour of NPR talk did I hear any real results, like how many votes cast, how much the winner won by, size of Republican and Democratic turnout.  Just an hour of happy talk.  So I got up, turned on the TV to Fox, and not much better.  I did learn that Hillary beat The Bern by 11% in California, which is solid,  but that's it.
  So I got in the net.  To bad, Fire fox was unable to connect to anything.  So, I trudged down to the basement, found my cable modem and my router.  Unplugged both for the count of ten.  Plugged back in, and voila, internet connectivity was back.  So I decided to post on my blog. Next I'll see if we have any election results on the net. 

Day After D-Day

I know I am a day late.  Success of the D-day landings was crucial to the defeat of Hitler.  It was a humungus enterprise,  thousands of landing craft, all built just in time, a million soldiers, tanks, floating harbors, fuel pipelines laid across the channel, and a zillion other things cranked out by British and American industry.
   It was extremely dangerous.  It might have failed.  It was so chancy that Eisenhower, the supreme commander, and the man with the best information, penned a press release announcing defeat of the invasion.  Fortunately he never had to use it.  With a little more luck, and a better German command structure, Rommel might have been able to throw German armor into the battle on the day of the landings instead of a day later.
   Defeat would have been a disaster.  It took all of 1942  and 1943, and half of 1944 to build up for D-day.  After a defeat on the landing beaches, it would have taken at least another year to build up to a second try.  Hitler would have been able to move all the troops guarding France against invasion to the Russian front and that surely would have slowed the Red army down, perhaps even defeated it.  It would have given Hitler time to bring secret weapons, V1, V2, jet fighters, guppy submarines, even nuclear weapons into action. 

Payday loans.

The Diane Reams show was whining about pay day lenders this morning.  Lender's are accused of making very high cost short term loans to borrowers who cannot actually pay off the loan off, they just keep rolling it over, at horrible rates of interest, and get skinned. 
  Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants to increase paperwork, and make the lender learn the borrowers income , expenses, and calculate his chances of repaying the loan.  Does not sound very effective to me, although it will furnish work for bureaucrats. 
  They used to have laws against usury,  usually defined as loans at 35% per year or worse.  The payday lenders are charging more like 350% per year, which is really really bad.  Usury laws used to be a business of state law.  I understand that the payday lenders have managed to get usury laws repealed, or watered down in many states to allow them to operate.  The payday lenders claim that they cannot do business at 35% and allowing the really poverty stricken access to loans is a social good. 
   I'm thinking that an old fashioned usury law, criminalizing doing loans at more than 35% would clean up the payday lender situation.  It would deny credit to people on the bottom, no income, no assets, no job.  These people are not good credit risks, and mostly don't have the money to pay off a payday loan.  I think it's better for such people to do with out, rather than lend them money that they will be unable to repay. 

Fair Point phone book fail.

So I need to renew my drivers license.  I know there is or was (haven't checked lately) a DMV office on US 302 in Twin Mountain.  Decide to give them  a call, just to see if they are still there, and if there is any paperwork I might need to bring. 
  Open the Fairpoint phone book.  Check the Government Offices, State section.  No phone number there.  Call the Littleton State Police office thinking they might have the number.  They didn't, although the officer was very polite on the phone.  Check the town of Franconia website, looking for a phone number for Franconia police.  No phone numbers on the website.  Finally dial 911.  Convince the 911 person that it is not an emergeny, I just need a phone number.  She finally comes up with a number.  I call it. They give me another number, which finally works.
  Save your old Verizon phone books, the Fairpoint one is mostly useless.
  Or is it the death of phone numbers?

Agencies shall make no law...

Right now federal agencies, IRS, FDA, EPA, FHA, FAA, FCC, FEC, NRC, BATFE, NSA, BLM. et cetera, ad nausium, issue regulations, lots of regulations, all of which have the force of law, and are binding upon us poor citizens.  Regulations that can favor one company over another, regulations that tear a man's house down, regulations that can shut a business down arbitrarily, and regulations that make every thing more expensive.
  I think we ought to take the power of regulations away from all agencies.  The only laws a citizen should have to respect are real laws, passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president.  
  Should an agency want to bind the public to something, they can try and get Congress to pass a real law.  If perchance, Congress fails to pass the agency's little brain child, then it means it's a bad idea.
  And while we are at it, no agency should have it's own private police force, with badges, guns, and the power of arrest.  Should an agency want some law enforced, they can jolly well call the regular police, just like us citizens have to do.
  In a real democracy, laws are passed by the legislature, not written by bureaucrats in secret. 

Trump figures out the media

The Donald figures that the media are Democrats to a man, and out to get him, and elect Hillary.  So, rather than the usual shtick of trying to placate them, which is what the usual pol does, Trump is trashing them, figuring that it gets him air time, and the media is so hostile now, that good solid trashing won't make things any worse than they already are.  Plus the voters like watching the Donald trashing the media. 

I predict more solid anti-media words coming toward the media.  If Trump gets elected, he will have the bully pulpit and at least four years to let 'em have it. Fun fun fun. 

SpaceX wants to go to Mars. Year after Next.

SpaceX is creating a manned vehicle to take astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).  Essentially they are adding life support equipment, an air plant, and retro rocket engines to the existing ISS resupply carrier.  And doing 50,000 pounds of NASA paperwork to "man rate" the vehicle.
   SpaceX wants to send one, unmanned, to Mars in 2018.  They have a signed agreement with NASA regardng intellectual property for SpaceX and NASA support for the mission.  The vehicle ("Red Dragon") would make a jet landing on Mars, under control of the autopilot.  SpaceX has been able to jet land the Falcon booster on a raft in the ocean which seems like a harder job than landing on Mars with it's lesser surface gravity. 
   "Red Dragon" has impressive engine power.  Eight engines, burning nitrogen tetraoxide and hydrazine, produce 33,000 pounds of thrust, call it 16 tons of thrust.  The vehicle only weights 15 tons on earth.  If the fuel holds out, it has plenty of thrust to slow down and even hover briefly before touchdown. 
   Takeoff will be atop a Falcon Heavy booster which is three Falcon Nine boosters, strapped together.  That will be 27 rocket engines, producing 5.1 million pounds of thrust.  Design goal is deliver 15 tons to Mars surface.  Straight thru, no earth orbit rendezvous.

The Norks and their nukes

The Economist ran a cover story about the need to do something about North Korea's nuclear program. They went on about weakness and craziness in the Kim regime.  Like it might be so crazy as to not be deterreable. The Norks have a missile operational today with enough range to hit all of South Korea and all of Japan.  They have missiles under development with enough range to hit the western US.  They managed to launch a satellite which means they have a missile that can reach anywhere in the world.  Might not have the throw weight to loft a nuclear warhead, yet.
   The Economist claims that the Bill Clinton administration considered an air strike on the Nork's nuclear facilities, but Clinton backed off,. fearing that it would touch off a second Korean war.  I never heard that story before.  There has been some talk that the Norks have dug in so deep that even our 15 ton Massive Ordinance Penetrator bomb couldn't take 'em out.
   The Economist does acknowledge that non-military ways of pressuring the Norks pretty much don't exist, especially as the Chinese like having the Norks as a buffer state between them and the South Koreans.  The Chinese are sending enough food and fuel to North Korea to keep 'em alive.  The Chinese fear the Kim regime is shaky, and that any serious pressure might cause it to collapse.  The Chinese don't want that to happen, cause the likely result is the South Koreans take over from the Kim regime, giving the Chinese a pushy, industrialized competitor, who is hand in glove with the Americans, right on their border.
  Best the Economist can suggest is installing anti missiles, THAAD and Patriot.  They compute that such a two layer defense, each layer having a Probability of kill (Pk) of 70% would yield an overall effectiveness of 90%.  Not bad, but not very reassuring when you think about how bad just one nuke can be.
   Of course Aviation Week doesn't see things quite that way.  They have reported that each of the Nork nuclear tests had a yield of about one kiloton of TNT.  That's so weak that most people call it a fizzle.  So maybe the Nork's don't really have nukes, yet.

Snowflakes on NPR

The morning story is from an NPR chick.  She had a flat tire, and 5:30 in the morning.  Rather than opening her trunk and breaking out the jack and the spare, she started off by finger stroking her smart phone.  She found out she was not a member of AAA, and AAA memberships would not be effective for 48 hours.  But she did find some obscure web site that offered road service.  It took service better than an hour to get there, and only three minutes to change her tire.  She closed the piece by raving about clever new websites.
  She would have done better  just changing her own tire, all by her little snowflake self.
  I can remember insisting that my teen age daughter change a tire right in our driveway before I allowed her to drive herself to school. 

Sorry about the Gorilla

On the other hand, I know nothing about gorilla's, and I know nothing about the specific gorilla that got shot. I am not going to second guess the zoo personnel who had to deal with the situation.   I'm sure the zoo people feel terrible about killing their gorilla, and did every thing they could to avoid it.  They clearly did the best they could in a bad situation.  And, the life of a four year old boy is more important than the life of a gorilla.  I'm glad the boy lives.
 A  question that the newsies have been too ignorant to ask. .  How does a small boy get into an enclosure stout enough to hold an adult gorilla?  If the enclosure can keep gorillas in, why did it not keep small boys out?
   Something for all parents to consider.  Small children think live animals are cute and huggable.  In the Disney movies all the animals talk and act like people.  There was a time when a wild black bear strolled by my NH house.  All the small children playing on my deck dashed down after the poor bear.  They wanted to pet it.  The bear, seeing what was coming for him, increased his pace smartly and disappeared into heavy woods before the kids got too close.   Fortunately that bear did not have any cubs with it, or things might have gotten very ugly.
  Parents ought to make sure their children understand that wild animals are dangerous, and should NOT be pursued.   Wild animals are safe as long as you keep your distance.  I have wild bears strolling about up here all the time. I keep my distance, the bears keep their distance, and we all stay very happy. 

Xmen Apocalypse

Spent Memorial Day weekend at youngest son's brand new house.  Since it rained Saturday, we went to the movies.  This is the newest Xmen flick, just out.  It might as well have been titled "Xmen versus the Mummy".
Lotta CGI special effects. Explosions, fires, collisions, Magneto's strange powers destroying whole cities.  According to the rather weak plot, an God/Demon/Evil Sorcerer from Egypt of 3600 BC  comes to life in fairly modern times and starts doing evil.  Never mind that First dynasty Egyptian Old Kingdom didn't get started until about 2900 BC.  This is the prequel Xmen, set in the 1970s or 1980's.  Whole new cast, all younger.  The guy playing a younger Charles Xavier isn't as good in the role as Patrick Stewart was.  Nice costumes, the chicks look sharp and sexy, the guys look hunky, mostly.  Hugh Jackman gets a brief (5-10 minute on screen) part.  He never gets to speak a line, he just kills a bunch of soldiers, and the last we see of him he is dashing off into a snow covered forest, bare foot, and wearing only Bermuda shorts.  Does adamantium warm a body as well as make it bulletproof? 
   Nobody has a line as good as Storm's line in the first Xmen, "Have you ever seen a toad struck by lightning?"
   OK for kids, or dyed in the wool Xmen fans, but not as good as the first two Xmen flicks.

Nuking Hiroshima was the right thing to do

The Japanese started WWII by attacking Pearl Harbor, in time of peace, without a declaration of war.  They sank the Pacific Fleet battle line, which gave them naval supremacy thruout the Pacific, at least by the thinking of 1942.  They inflicted several more humiliating defeats upon us and upon the British.  They treated our prisoners of war like dirt, many of them died in Japanese captivity. 
   The Japanese fought hard.  Guadalcanal, Saipan, Okinawa, Io Jima, Tarawa.  Based upon bitter experience gained on Okinawa and Saipan, we figured invasion of the Home Islands would cost us a million casualties, and the Japanese far more.  By 1945 US submarines had blockaded Japan, nothing big enough to be worth a torpedo was getting in or out of the Home Islands.  The Air Force had total air superiority, and were fire bombing every city in Japan.  Even at this low point, with their backs to the wall, the Japanese refused to negotiate. 
   Offered a chance to end the war, Truman took it.  And it worked.  The first nuke on Hiroshima shook 'em up, but not enough to bring them to their senses.  The second nuke on Nagasaki finally did the trick.  The bitter end generals were pushed out of government, and some rational men took over and ended the war. 

Horatio Hornblower, The Mutiny

Good flick.  Came to me thru Netflix.  The Brits started a series of TV movies about Hornblower, starring Ioan Gruffyd, nice young guy, who looks the part and acts the part well.  This one is maybe #5 or #6 in the modern series.
   Horatio Hornblower is a Royal Navy officer, serving during the Napoleonic wars,  invented by author C.S. Forester back in the early 1940's.  Forester wrote half a dozen Hornblower tales over the years and they are still in print.   The TV movies are all good.  Costumes are really good.  The naval officers, the petty officers, the seaman, the marines all wear different uniforms, nicely made.  I'm not a real expert on period costumes, but they all look right to my eye.  Most of the action is filmed at sea, on board ship.  The ship[s] are convincing.  Makes you think they took the trouble to find or build real sailing warships.  Either that or the CGI folks are getting really good.  The ships in this modern series are much more convincing that the ship[s] in the old 1950's Hornblower movie with  Gregory Peck and Virginia Mayo.
   Anyway, it's a good watchable flick, good camera work, good soundtrack.  Lots of action, great scenery, excellent plot.  The other Hornblower flicks are just as good. And the books are all good reads. 

So what is Congress planning for Puerto Rico?

Puerto Rico is broke.  They owe $70 billion on loans taken out in the past.  Between pensions, welfare, lotta featherbedding, and plain old graft, the Puerto Rico government spends far more than it collects in taxes. They cannot make payments on the loans coming due. 
   Thru some quirk in the law, Puerto Rico as a US territory, cannot declare bankruptcy the way cities and towns, and possibly states can.  The idea in bankruptcy is to prevent everyone and his cousin suing, which is more than anyone can defend against, and have an "impartial" judge divvy up the bankrupt's assets.  For companies, the judge usually decides to keep the company going, and avoid laying off all the employees. To this end, the bankruptcy judges usually tells the lenders to just suck it up, cancels  the debts, makes some company reforms and sets the company going again. 
  For places like Detroit and Puerto Rico, the path is less clear.  No bank with two brain cells firing is going to loan a nickel to places like that.  The unions, the pensioners, and everyone else will die in the trenches before allowing any cost cutting.  Which leaves the cash strapped government to make payroll with IOU's.
   Mean while, all the big New York banks, who made all the totally foolish loans are down in DC right now lobbying Congress to bail out Puerto Rico, i.e. have taxpayers pay off the loans, so the banks don't have to to confess how stupid they are.  The banks are asking for $70 billion in comfort money.  That's a lotta money.
   There is some kinda Puerto Rico deal going thru Congress right now.  Speaker Ryan is pushing it.  Nobody knows what's  in it. 
   A Puerto Rico deal should merely make it possible for Puerto Rice to declare bankruptcy and be protected from a zillion lawsuits while they work out the details.  The bankruptcy court should have the power to cancel debts, cancel contracts, fire politicians, and raise taxes. It should NOT pay off the lenders.  The lenders made stupid loans, anyone could tell Puerto Rico could not pay off the loans, even twenty years ago.  For being stuck on stupid, the banks oughta take a $70 billion hit.  Maybe it will learn 'em some.
   And our noble MSM ought to find out what is going down in DC and clue us in.  Perhaps the banks have bought them off? 

Let the passengers carry heat. Safer that way.

Things have changed.  Back before 9/11 passengers all understood that when hijacked, they should sit tight, don't give the hijackers any trouble, and they will come out of it alright.   9/11 changed all that.  Now passengers all understand that if they let the hijackers take control of the aircraft,  they will die a fiery death in the crash.  Since then, a few "unruly" passengers have been subdued in flight by fellow passengers. In one case a fire axe was used as a pacifier. 
   If we just let the passengers carry heat, then Abdul the Hijacker has to worry about some little old lady passenger in economy taking a .38 out of her purse and splattering his brains all over the cabin ceiling.  And certainly hijackers armed with box cutters aren't going to win over passengers with handguns.  And if we say handguns are OK, then TSA can stop hassling passengers over the odd Swiss Army knife in some guy's pocket.  And we can drop that stuff about liquid explosives.  The liquid explosive is so touchy that Abdul the Hijacker is more likely to have the stuff go off in the taxi on the way to the airport than in flight.  Real terrorists use Semtex, a plastic explosive. 
   If one in twenty passengers carries, then the hijackers will face a fusillade from  five to ten armed passengers no matter what flight they try. 
  And we could solve the long security line problem that TSA is putting us thru.  For that matter we could lay off TSA and save our selves a lotta hassle and a lotta money.
  All we need for decent security is to X-ray all the checked bags to keep the terrorists from putting a bomb in the baggage compartment.  And  X-ray the hand luggage as well.  We could solve the long line problem overnight.

The Donald is rising in the polls

My major objection to The Donald used to be national polls showing him losing to Hillary.  Well, that seems to be turning around.  This weekend the TV newsies began to cite new polls showing The Donald level, or slightly ahead of Hillary.  The lead isn't decisive yet, but compared to where The Donald was a couple of months ago, it's a whole bunch better. 
   The Republic might be saved yet.

Ergonomic Fail. My Cell Phone

It's extremely small, it's black, which makes it hard to see.  Set it down somewhere and you cannot find it.  Inoffensive computer casework beige would be easier to see.  And I would be happy to have one a tad bigger if it held a bigger battery. 
  Control of this miniature wonder comes from stroking the touch pad with your finger.  The poor thing sports just two real physical buttons.  One button is the "wake up" button.  Press it and the phone comes to life, touch screen lights up. Press it again and all sorts of weird stuff happens, including missing my incoming call.  The other button adjusts the loudness of the ring. 
  Should phone ring in my shirt pocket, I'm bound to press one or both real buttons while fishing phone out of my pocket.  Which means ring loudness randomly changes from max to zero, and the incoming call gets lost.
   For my simple needs, the ring loudness might as well be another "app" on the touch screen menus, I'm less likely to screw up the ring settings by just handling the phone.  The wake up button ought to be a slide switch, so you cannot press it by accident. 
  My other gripe, the phone has TWO keypads, a numeric pad like a standard desk phone, and a qwerty keyboard.  So, entering a new contact, it asks for contact name.  And shows the telephone keypad.  It takes four or five finger strikes to find the qwerty keyboard. 
   This is a lower end Trak Phone, no monthly contract.  God help us from the smarter phones.

The Curse of the Cameraman

Newly fashionable among Hollywood cameramen, the under exposed shot.  In a recent Bond movie (Skyfall) we have a furious hand to hand fight between to black silhouettes.  I guessed one was Bond and the other was a Bond villain, but there was no way to tell  one fighter from the other.  Which makes the whole fight scene pretty meaningless.  A recent Marvel comic book movie (Dark Thor) all the scenes are super dark. Ocasionally we can make out the actor's faces in an otherwise black scene, but some times not even that.  These aren't the only ones. 
   This ultra dark fashion makes watching movies a real PITA.  It's as bad as the fad for shake-the-camera shots of a few years ago. 
    And we still have the curse of the soundman out there.  You know, the sound man allows the score or the sound effects drown out the dialog.
    Hollywood used to get this right, well lit scenes with understandable dialog.  But lately directors have been allowing cameramen and soundmen to screw things up. 

EgyptAir Crash

It's a terrible story.  My deepest sympathies to the victims and their families.
The TV newsies have been talking and talking about the story, mostly revealing their total ignorance of aviation.  For instance I heard one of the saying the winglets (little upturned fins at the wingtips) were there to improve maneuverability.  No way.  Winglets reduce the drag caused by the wing tip vortexes.  No body talked about the time the vertical stabilizer snapped clean off an Airbus departing New York, causing a crash that killed all on board.  At the time, Airbus claimed the failure was caused by the pilot applying too much rudder.  The newsies mostly let Airbus get away with this canard years ago.  Real aircraft are built strong enough to withstand the force of hard over control surfaces.  In an emergency the pilot needs to apply full control forces and not have to worry about the aircraft breaking up in mid air.
   Lotta talk about terrorism.  It's certainly a valid suspicion.  So far there is no evidence (at least on TV) of terrorist action.  Evidence like hearing "Take this plane to Mosul" on the cockpit voice recorder.  Or flight data recorder showing massive failures all over the plane at once.  Or some low life confessing that he put the bomb on the plane.  Or intercepted phone or text messages, or email, or snail mail of the low lives gloating about their success.  So far we don't even have any terrorist claiming the hit.
  I got my suspicions, just like the rest of you, but so far, they are just suspicions. We need to find the wreck and recover the recorders before we know anything. 
  Also note, EgyptAir is a government of Egypt operation with a mediocre to poor safety record.  The Egyptians have plenty of motive to blame the crash on terrorists, as opposed to shoddy maintenance or poorly trained aircrew.  It was the Egyptians who first started crying terrorist within hours of the tragedy. 

NPR ran a story about a four year old being "transgendered"

Was on the FM radio yesterday.  I was appalled.  How can a four year old know any such thing?  Could this be a case of the parents wanted a child of the opposite sex?  And rather than having another child, they decided to warp the one they had?
And the pros don't approve either.

JFK wanted to send a man to the moon.

Obama wants to send a man to the ladies restroom.   Good slam.  From Texas.

Third Party Presidential runs

In 1860,  Democrat John Bell split the Democratic Party into Northern and South wings.  He tipped the election to Republican Abraham Lincoln. 
In 1912, Republican Teddy Roosevelt  ran as the "Bull Moose Party" candidate.  He tipped the election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. 
In 1968 Democrat George Wallace ran as a third party. He  tipped the election to Republican Richard Nixon.
In 1993 Independent Ross Perot ran as a third party. He tipped the election to Democrat Bill Clinton.

Since the modern party system was created with the establishment of the Republican Party in 1856, these are the four "third party" campaigns that garnered enough votes to get into the history books.  Just about every election had third party candidates but mostly they never garnered enough votes to matter.  These are the four big third party campaigns that did well enough to matter.
  In all four cases, the third party was a split off from either the Democrats  (Bell and Wallace) or the Republicans (Roosevelt and Perot).  In each case the presence of the third party campaign tipped the election to the other side.  
   So today we have unhappy Republicans talking up a third party campaign.  If they get it off the ground, history says it will tip the election to the other party, Hillary.
   I don't want Hillary as president.  The Donald would be much better. 

Supremes cannot decide. Both plaintiffs claim victory

The eight surviving Supremes have lost all ability to discuss issues among themselves.  Four of them vote leftie, the other four vote rightie, they cannot reach agreement.  In short, the eight top legal beagles of America cannot agree on what the law means.  Good work law schools.
  In the Little Sisters of the Poor case, where Obama is trying to force a Catholic order of nuns to furnish birth control to their employees, the Supremes just ruled that the case must be reheard in the lower courts. 
  Both sides, the nuns, and the Obama administration claim victory. 
  They cannot both be right, Can they?

Slanting the news same-same Freedom of the Press

They have been all over Facebook and Zuckerman over the accusation of slanting the "Trending" column by dropping conservative stories.  A Congressional hearing is promised. 
   Not that I approve, I'm conservative too, but the United States has been blessed with slanted news reporting since the founding of the Republic.  Look at the New York Times.  In the 1930's they supported Soviet communism.  "I have seen the future and it works".  In the 1950's they supported Fidel Castro, strongly enough to make him dictator of Cuba.  In the 1960's they backed North Viet Nam.  They published the Pentagon Papers in order to destabilize the Nixon administration.  They published a leak from CIA about tapping Osama bin Laden's satellite phone, result, Bin Laden ditched the phone and went back to messengers. 
   I don't see much difference between want the Times does and what Zuckerman is accused of doing at Facebook. 

More Global Warming

It snowed up here, light, only 1/4 inch, but mid May is very late for snow, even in New Hampshire.  Clearly global warming at work. 
Then my electric bill shows power use by month over the last 12 months.  This year, May 2016, average temperature was 43F and my daily power use was 19 KWH.  Last May, it was 57F and daily power use was 15 KWH.   More global warming at work. 

Wendy's to install automatic kiosks in 6000 outlets

This story has gotten some serious airplay, always followed up with tsk-tsking about how $15 minimum wage causes low end jobs to be automated out of existence.  
It reminders me of  an old old Robert A. Heinlein story.  Our intrepid teen age hero has been invited to breakfast at a truck stop, by a trucker.  To make conversation the trucker says,
   "This joint used to be automated.  Then it went broke, and the trade all went to the Tivoli, down the road apiece.  Then the new owner threw out the machinery and hired girls.  Business picked up."
   At this point the waitress is taking their order and the trucker says to her,
   "I want that egg just barely dead.  If it's cooked solid I'll nail it to the wall as a warning to others."
   "I doubt that you will be able to get a nail thru it," replies the waitress.
   "See what I mean," says the trucker to our intrepid teen age hero.  "How can machines compete?"

   Good luck with automation Wendy's.

Trashing Sikes Picot

NPR and the Economist have been blaming the woes of the Arab world on the Sikes Picot Agreement of 1916.  Must be the centennial that brings this out.  I'll grant every one of the Arab woes, but I cannot believe they have anything to do with Sikes Picot.
   The Ottoman empire (forerunner to modern Turkey) used to own, operate, tax, and run all the the modern middle East, Greece and the Balkans, Egypt and North Africa.  Turkish/Ottoman control began to slip in the 19th century and World War I brought Lawrence of Arabia to completely tear up the Ottoman empire.  In 1916 the British and the French had Sikes (for Britain) and Picot (for France) draw up a plan to divvy up the Ottoman lands after the war.  The British, the French, the Italians, and the Russians all got a big slice.  Old style imperialism at work.  But that's the way things worked a hundred years ago.
   In reality, the local Arabs were too dis organized, too tribal,  too uneducated, and too primitive to actually run things.  It took 30 years for the Arabs to get up to speed and push out the European imperialists and set up their own regimes.  To a certain extent, but not entirely,  the boundaries of the new Arab states followed the boundaries drawn by Sikes and Picot, but so what?  The populations were/are  all Arab, they all speak Arabic, they are all Muslims.  With the exception of Egypt, there are no natural geographic borders (mountain ranges or rivers, or deserts) so one boundary is about as good as any other.
   The entire region is huge,  no Arab government has the smarts, the charisma, or the military force to run the whole place.  Best the Arabs can manage is to run smaller chunks of it, hence the multiplicity of regimes, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Qatar, Syria, and so on.
   So far as I am considered, the woes of the Arab lands are of their own making, it's not the fault of a diplomatic agreement among European imperialists a hundred years ago. 

Where have all the retail sales gone?

WashPo has a long article here bewailing the lack of retail sales.  One reason might be the really utilitarian product retailers have to sell.  Consider Walmart.  A worthy place, the price is right, the stuff is OK, and I shop there.  But only for pretty utilitarian things, like Jockey shorts, prescription medicine,  and paper towels.   Over the last few years we have lost the Radio Shack, a nice kitchenware place, a decent used book store, a very decent new book and toy store, an Ace Hardware, two video stores, and The Oasis restaurant.   All that's left is Lahout's, Walmart, Staples, Home Despot, and Lowes.  None of them are very gifty stores.
  For Christmas, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, I go on line to find nice stuff to give as gifts.   I gotta drive a long way south on I93,. Tilton or Concord.  to find anything much better.  So this Christmas, Amazon, Lee Valley, Signals, and Garrett Wade got all my Christmas buying. 

Cluelessness runs in the family

Apparently Chelsea Clinton's husband, Marc Mezvinsky, some kinda stock broker wheeler dealer has lost humungous amounts of his clients (suckers) money.   According to the Daily Mail, he lost the money speculating in Greek bonds.  That's a maximum stupid in my book.  Anyone with two brain cells firing knew that the Greeks were broke and would never be able to pay off their bonds.  Looks like Chelsea married a chucklehead.

There IS a difference in supermarket brands

Surefine (Mac's Market house brand) 100% Colombian coffee tastes better than Shaw's house brand 100% Colombian coffee.  Was in Shaw's the other day and picked up a can of their stuff by mistake.  Bad idea, it was harsh and bitter.  Even youngest son commented on how bad it was.  Whereas the Surefine at $4 and change a can tastes as good as jazzier coffees going for as much as $9 a can. 

North Carolina Bathroom Brouhaha

The Obama justice department and the state of North Carolina are now suing each other over the bathroom bill.  The Feds are threatening to cut off some serious federal money unless North Carolina knuckles under.
   Leaving the bathroom bill issue for a bit, let's ask why the Feds were giving a state that kind of money in the first place.  Education is a state and local responsibility, and should be paid for by state and local governments.  When the folks that spend the money have to raise the money, they are a bit more frugal in spending.  Where as free money handed out by the Feds gets spent as fast as possible.  There is always something to spend money on. 
  In short, why is my federal tax money being set to North Carolina?  It's a nice place and all, but I think it ought to be raising its money from its own citizens, not freeloading off of me, up here in New Hampshire.

Army to Shrink to 480,000 troops

  So how many are real combat soldiers, infantry, artillery, and armor, and how many are paper pushers and Rear Echelon Mother F----rs (REMF)   480,000 real combat troops is on the thin side, but possible. We only sent 140,000 troops to take out Saddam Hussein a few years ago.  But 480,000 who are mostly REMF's is scary.   
   In the real world, the troops are dispatched on one year overseas, unaccompanied, combat tours, and then they expect at least one year back home with their families.  When there ain't enough troops, the same guys get sent back on second and third and fourth combat tours with only a few weeks at home in between each combat tour.  This is pretty damn hard on the troops.  
    

Why we don't want a President Hillary

She would pack the Supreme court with lefties, who would rule against liberty and in favor of regulations, bureaucrats, against the second amendment, and uphold rights for tiny minorities at the expense of the general public  They would support all kinds of government snooping on citizens  These lefties  would stay on the bench for decades suppressing liberty and enhancing federal power. 
  She would veto repeal, or even any changes to, Obamacare. 
  She would bungle US foreign policy the way she has bungled Syria, Libya, Tunisia, Ukraine, North Korean, Iraq, and Iran.  She is possibly clumsy enough at foreign relations to get us into yet another war.
  She is a gun control freak and will attempt to take our guns away. 
  She will continue Obama's economy killing policies.

   The "Never Trump" people talking up Hillary as better than Trump need to think about these things.  

Selling the Nerd Mobile on TV

One of those  successful car commercials.  Opens with a sporty looking little red car zipping down an empty road. (When was the last time you got to drive on a road empty of cars?).  Camera zooms in on the driver's seat and we have the biggest nerd you ever saw driving the car.  That's gonna make me want to buy it.  Then we see a cop car, bubble gum machine flashing blue and red in the rearview mirror.   Commercial ends, mercifully, before we get to the cop writing the nerd a ticket.
   Do they really think this is gonna sell cars?

Computing Gross National Product (GNP) according to the Economist

Actually, in these PC days they call it Gross Domestic Product (GDP) .  National has become a dirty word in PC circles.  But it was GNP when I went to school and I am not PC.  The statistic began to be computed in the 1930's as a measure of an economy's war potential.  The Americans managed to shift a third of their massive GNP into war production by 1945, and that buried the enemy under an avalanche of ammunition, rations, tanks, jeeps, warplanes, army trucks, aircraft carriers, radar sets, and finally nuclear weapons.
   GNP is defined as the total output of goods and services, expressed in dollars, and figured on a yearly basis.  Goods is easy enough to understand, goods are packed in cartons, stacked on loading docks, shipped to customers.  Services used to be necessary things like transportation (rail, shipping, trucking) or utilities (electricity, water, sewage)  As time went on, service providers of lesser importance wanted the prestige of  being included in GNP figures.  In the UK they now include the services of "sex workers" and there is a push to include housekeeping and child care into GNP figures.
   The Economist did not explore a few issues in GNP computation.  Consider automobile production.  Clearly number of new cars produced times the average sales price of new cars goes into GNP.  But, consider this, Detroit doesn't make everything that goes into a new car.  They buy tires, batteries, spark plugs, wire, fasteners, glass, paint, sheet steel, lotta stuff from other companies.  Think about that spark plug company, Champion say.  They ship a lotta plugs to Detroit, which have an average sales price.  That goes into GNP as well as the new cars do.  In this case the plugs get counted twice, once as the leave the spark plug company, and a second time as they leave the auto plant, securely screwed into the engine of the new car.
   Then how do you handle big construction projects.  Say the World Trade Center.  That took years to build.  Did they estimate the amount done each year and add that into GNP?  Or do they wait until the building is finished and sold?  We are talking of a billion dollar project here.  Lumping years of work into the last year gives you a GNP bump in the year the job finishes.  And what does 9/11 do to GNP?  Do they even count that in GNP? 
   Anyhow the Economist devoted a full page to GNP calculation this week.

We is stuck with Trump.

Yesterday's solid Trump win in Indiana got Cruz, and now Kasich to both throw in the towel.  Barring an act of God, The Donald is the Republican nominee. 
   The Donald is not my favorite candidate, but, druther him than Hillary.  Gotta start thinking up things to say to get people to vote Republican. 

Book cooking for fun and profit.

Companies are required to publish periodically their profits or losses.  Computation of profit can be pretty slippery.  In principle, profit is gross sales less legitimate expenses.  Legitimate expenses can vary a lot.  When doing the books, any clever accountant can find various ways to make profit come out higher or lower.  When doing the books to show to the taxman, the accountants work real hard to make profit as low as possible, since the company is taxed on profit.  When doing the books to show Wall St investors and sell the company's stock, the same accountants work real hard to make the profit higher. 
  This is natural, not good, but natural. 
  But, in the United States, we allow companies to keep two sets of books, one to show the taxman, another to show to stock buyers.
   This should not be.  We should insist that companies keep one set of books, and the profit they brag about to investors is the profit upon which they pay taxes.  In fact, the IRS could do investors a favor by merely publishing all the company tax returns.  They are public companies after all, and so their tax returns are public information. 

Winning World War II, Combined Arms Operations

WWII broke out in September 1939 with Hitler's invasion of Poland.  From there, going on til 1942, the Germans' won every battle.  They crushed Poland, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Yugoslavia, Greece,and finally France.  They drove the British into the sea at Dunkirk. 
   What accounts for the amazing German combat power?  Answer: combined arms.  German attacks had tanks as the spearhead, with the infantry right behind them.  They had artillery support and air support.
This is effective as all getout.
   It took the Anglo Americans three years to catch on and launch their own combined arms attacks.  It's tricky.  For something real simple, just order an infantry battalion, about 1000 men, to attack somewhere.  This is straight forward, you pass the word to the colonel of the battalion.  Where, when, and that's it.  Now lets add artillery support.  You have to get the guns moved up into range, get the ammunition (heavy stuff that) moved up and the guns emplaced.  Then you have to coordinate so that the artillery knows where and when the infantry will attack.  You want the enemy's front lines shelled just before the infantry moves up, but not too early, shelling tells the enemy that an attach is coming and all chance of surprise is lost. And you want the barrage lifted just before your troops get there. You want the enemy head quarters shelled, you want enemy artillery batteries shelled, and you DON'T want your infantry shelled as they press the attack. You need to make sure the artillery and the infantry are using the SAME maps, with the same names and numbers for terrain features.  You want to have artillery forward observers, with radios, with the infantry so they can let the artillery know when the infantry falls behind the schedule.  All this is complicated. 
   Then if you have tanks, you want the tanks to lead the attack, at least as long as the terrain allows the tanks to pass.  Tanks are maneuverable, but they cannot climb roadless hills, cross swamps, or climb vertical cliffs. Takes more coordination to get the tanks to show up at the right place and do what is necessary.
   Even trickier is arranging for close air support.   Step one is to avoid fratricide.  Your ground units need to be distinct from the enemy's units lest the Airedales bomb your own men.  More coordination.  Get anything wrong and lots of bad stuff can happen.
   It took the Anglo Americans about a year of fighting Germans in North Africa to get all this straight. 

Retraining for workers whose jobs have fled overseas

NHPR was pushing retraining for the jobless this morning. But if there are no jobs, all the training or retraining in the world won't help.  We gotta do the hard stuff, create new jobs, foster new business formation, drive off the hordes of bloodsucking paper pushers and their job killing regulations, make taxes lighter and fairer.  Keep the NIMBYs and BANANA's from stopping projects. 
    Liberal NHPR isn't going to understand any of this.

I watched The Donald's foreign policy speech yesterday

It was fairly sanitary, no gratuitous slams on Mexicans, women, Chinese imports and other things that have made the headlines over this campaign.  He used a teleprompter, which means he took this one seriously and didn't want to make off-the-cuff blunders.
   It was pretty vague.  He came out for defending and advocating American interests, with out ever saying what those interests might be.  He said ISIS would be gone, soon, but he never said how, or how far he would go to waste them.  Would he send in the US Army to deal with them? Would he nuke them?  Who knows?  
   He never did really say where he stood on free trade, although he made disparaging remarks about NAFTA.  He is against "nation building" but he never addressed the problem of weak or failed nation states that revert to wildlands, harboring terrorists.  You need to remember that Osama Bin Ladin settled into the wildlands of Afghanistan, where there was no effective national government.  From this safe haven Bin Laden set up the 911 operation.  This would not have happened had the United States done some nation building in Afghanistan after the mujahedin drove out the Soviets in the 1980's.  Go watch the movie "Charlie Wilson's War". 
   The Donald made few to no concrete promises in this speech.  Applause sounded kinda thin, to the point where I wondered how full the room was. 

Democratic Turnout Down 4 million

So says the Drudge Report.  Does this show a significant party switch in the electorate?  Or does it show four million democrats who wanted to vote in the Republican primary, but will vote Democratic in the general election?  Who knows? 

Progress in DVD burners

After ten years of service, the DVD burner in Trusty Desktop stopped playing.  Something got jammed and the tray would no longer open.  Even after pulling the drive from Trusty Desktop and prying it open, I could not get to tray to move, at least not with the amount of force I dared apply. 
  So ho, for a new one.  A bit of internet research disclosed that the design of DVD burners changed a year after Trusty Desktop left the factory.  The DVD burner that came with him has an IDE connector, a parallel interface with 40 odd pins in the connector.  The new DVD burners have a serial interface (only four wires).  They haven't made the DVD burner that fit Trusty Desktop for the last ten years. 
  OK, so there is a salvation.  They now make USB DVD burners, USB is universal, Trusty Desktop has plenty of USB ports.  So I bought a Verbatim model down at Staples, only $50.  Very small, only 1/2 inch high, compared to old one and 1 1/2 inches high.  It's faster too.  Burns a 4.7 Gig DVD in about half the time the only one needed.

To Alpha Centauri in just 20 years?

Sounds good.  Ultra small spacecraft, one big silicon chip containing camera, radioactive thermal electric generator, comm and nav systems, to weigh a couple of grams.  A light sail one meter square.  A 100 Gigawatt laser plays on the light sail for 10 minutes and accelerates the micro probe to 20% of the speed of light.  That will get it the four light years to Alpha Centauri in 20 years.  Then it radios back what the camera's see. 
   One sticky point, how does a micro probe, weighing only grams, have enough transmitter power to drive a radio signal back to earth? 
   Idea comes from internet investor Yuri Milner.  He is making grants to fund research.

Weak Tea from The Economist

Cover story this week "Can She Fix it?"  Cartoon on cover shows Hillary, dressed in mechanic's coveralls, holding a monkey wrench, studying a beat up engine hanging on a chain hoist.  Said engine's outline is the lower 48 of the United States.  Of course no mechanic has used a monkey wrench since WWII, real mechanics all use Snap-on socket wrenches.  But that's all right, the guys who write for the Economist were never hot rodders. 
    The think piece article goes on for three quarters of a page laying out the woes of the American economy, low growth, growing unemployment, stagnent wages, and all the rest.
    But the Economist doesn't suggest any serious fixes for all this woe.  They call for "slashing unnecessary regulations" without naming a single regulation in need of slashing.  "Ensuring big firms no longer operate in protected markets"  without naming a single protected market or big firm wallowing in one.  And they call for more government bailouts to companies going down the drain.  And retraining for workers in down the drain companies. 
   Some how I had expected better from a newsmag named "The Economist".
   

North County Do, The Lincoln Reagan dinner

We do this once a year up here in Grafton county.  It's a big deal, everyone who is anyone in the state comes.  This year we had all four republican candidates for governor, and both candidates for US senate. and both candidates for NH senate.  And some candidates for NH house. I've been kicking around NH politics long enough now that I knew most of the people there. 
   For governor we have Frank Edelblut, youn guy, first term NH rep, enterpreneur,  talked about making live better for business.  And we have Ted Gatsas, four term mayor of Manchester, older guy, didn't talk much, I was sitting next to him.  And then Chris Sununu, comes from a good family, good name recognition, made a good talk, probably best of the governors.  And Jeanne Forester, current NH senator, well liked and respected, she has been around for a while and everyone speaks well of her. 
   The we come to the US senate race.  We have a primary challenger (Jim Rubins) to well liked incumbent Kelly Ayotte.  Far as I can see, Rubins is a loser, if he wins the primary, the democrat Maggie Hassan, current governor, will beat him.  Kelly Ayotte is sincere, hard working, and with luck and a lot of help, she can win. 
   I see men's fashions are changing.  Half the men there, myself included, were wearing blue blazers, the kind with brass buttons, and khaki slacks.  The other half were wearing dark business suits.  And some untraditionalists, like Jim Rubins, showed up in blue jeans. 

I'm voting Republican, even if it's Trump

First of all, you gotta vote for one of 'em.  I'll grant that Hillary and The Donald aren't anyone's idea of a dream team.  But, one is better than the other.  It's a citizen's duty to pick the better of the two and vote for him.  Staying home is for wimps.
   It looks like we will be faced with Hillary vs The Donald this time.  This isn't cast in concrete, yet. There is a chance Trump won't have the votes for a first ballot win, and the convention goes for someone else, Cruz, on later ballots.  But don't bet on it.
   So,  do you vote Republican, or vote for Hillary?
   Hillary is untrustworthy.  Weird things keep happening around Hillary, going way back.  There was Vince Foster, old Rose Law Firm friend and White House something-or-other, found dead in a Washington DC park one night.  They said it was suicide, but it sure is suspicious.  There was "Travelgate" when Hillary got upset with the employees at the White House travel office.  The employees got fired and replaced with people of Hillary's choosing.  There was Whitewater, an Arkansas real estate deal that the Clintons participated in.  They even got a special prosecutor onto that one, years of "investigation" let the Clinton's off, even though a fair number of other Whitewater participants went to jail.
   Then there was the Monica affair.  Hillary should have divorced Slick Willy over that one.  She didn't, God knows how the Clinton marriage has been doing since then, but it cannot be warm and loving. 
   Then there was Benghazi where four American diplomats were killed by Islamic terrorists.  Clinton, (and Obama) refused to sent rescue missions.  In fact they fired two US general officers that very night for declaring that they would lead rescuers to Benghazi.  Hillary basically wrote off the Americans serving in Benghazi.
   Then there was Hillary's tour as secretary of state.  She has the reverse Midas Touch. Everything she touched turned into disaster. Syria, Libya, Iraq, North Korea, South China Sea, Ukraine, and some more I have forgotten.  Add in the private email server by which she hoped to keep all her emails private, forever.
   And Hillary wants to take our guns away, leaving us at the mercy of whatever criminal or terrorist might happen by.
   Set this against The Donald.  The Donald is politically incorrect, vulgar, inexperienced, and unwilling to take advice from anyone (my way or the highway is The Donald's style).  I'd druther have that than Hillary.  At least The Donald is loyal to the United States of America.

Energy Bill

They are doing one.  The house passed its version a while ago, the senate just passed their version.  They now gotta do the conference committee bit and weld the two bills into one.  Obama has said he will sign it.  It's gonna spend $10 billion or so. 
   On what?  There is some unspecified research and development money.  Probably another try to convince people that solar or wind power is worthy and green, rather than a scam on tax payers and rate payers.  I, and a lotta other people and industries, need the power to stay on all the time.  We cannot stand hearing the electric company calling to say, "Sorry, the wind dropped, (or the sun went down) and we are going to shut your juice off for six hours."  For me, that means the furnace won't work and my pipes will freeze.  For industry it means that batches of product under going various heat treatments will be ruined.  Every something as old and well understood as baking bread cannot tolerate the oven going cold before the bread is baked.  High tech processes are even more sensitive.
  And there is money to work on "storage" of electricity on a utilities scale.  That's batteries which are ridiculously expensive.  A lead acid battery big enough to crank my V-8 car engine for a couple of minutes costs $50.  A lithium battery big enough to run my laptop for a couple of hours costs $50.  A battery bank big enough to run a small town would cost billions.  For that sort of money I can build a nuke plant, or two or three natural gas fired plants.   How do you say total waste of money?
  And there is some unspecified subsidy for those evil fossil fuels.  The ones that produce dependable power.   Even at today's price of oil, they don't need a subsidy.
   They tried to slip in a provision to clean up Flint Michigan's city water problem.  Worthy but hardly an energy concern.  There is probably a good deal more pork buried in it, which is why Obama said he would sign it.
   The TV newsies haven't said a word about it.  

How come we need bathroom laws now?

We have had men's rooms and women's rooms since the invention of indoor plumbing.  (sometime after the civil war).  How come just this year we suddenly need new laws about them?  How did we survive 150 years or so with out laws about bathrooms? 
   Could it be that the foerever-looking-for-a-cause crowd has just discovered a new cause, a wedge issue no less, that they hope to stir up more social unrest?
    I saw an internet ad showing a school shower room with the caption "How would you feel about a boy joining your 12 year old daughter in the shower?"  I thought about that for a minute.  I used to have a 12 year old daughter (she is much older now).  I know my daughter was tough enough to handle such a situation, had it arisen.  She would have hauled off and slugged the boy.  I watched her do something like that back when she was only six. 
   So I think the republic will survive without passing bathroom laws. 

Trusty Desktop is getting old

He is at least ten years old, still running strong, still running XP.  I gave him a new power supply maybe five years ago.  Lately, the DVD drive stopped working, jammed solid, won't open.  I pulled the drive out and got the covers off, but couldn't get it to open.
   So I googled for a new one.   They are really cheap, $35.  There was a time you had to pay more than that for a 5 inch floppy drive.  I was about to click it into my cart and go thru the checkout business, when I noticed an acronym, SATA.   A vague memory of SATA as a high speed serial interface surfaced from all the sludge sloshing around in my memory. Trusty Desktop used the old flat cable IDE interface.
 Ayup.  Times have changed, all the new optical drives are SATA, nobody makes the old IDE drives anymore.  Maybe E-bay?   I'd hate to junk trusty desktop and suffer thru Windows 10 on a new one.