Strict Construction versus the living Constitution

The late Supreme Court Justice Scalia was famous for his belief that cases should be decided upon the original intent of the founders.   Since the founding occurred way back in 1789, it requires some research, some history, to understand the intent of men who lived better than 200 years ago.  There have been changes in the language over that much time, but the founders intent is discoverable with only a modest effort.
   Strict constructionists feel the duty of the courts is to judge cases according to existing law, not to make new law from the bench.  If new laws are needed it is the duty of the elected legislature to vote them in, not for single judges, or small groups of judges to make up new law out of whole cloth.
   Living Constitution people say that things have changed since 1789 (true enough) which requires changes in the way we interpret the Constitution to bring it up to date.  And these changes should be made by the courts.  This view is popular with people who have not been able to muster the votes to get their changes passed by the legislature[s].  It is also popular with judges, since it puts them in the driver's seat.  And it is popular with law schools and legal pundits because it makes legal history more interesting.  In modern times it has been easier to sell new ideas to the nine justices of the Supreme Court than to sell new ideas to the general public or  to the elected legislatures.
   I hope President Trump nominates a strict constructionist to fill retiring Justice Kennedy's seat on the Supreme Court.   I don't want to live under a dictatorship of the bench.

Representative Government

The ancient Greeks invented democracy.  In those days all the citizens of the city state would meet and vote on public issues.  This was clumsy, did not scale well, (what works for a city-state, won't work for the entire Roman empire), and led to some really disastrous decisions (the Athenian Syracuse expedition for example). 
   The solution was representative democracy, pioneered by the British parliament and championed by the United States.   Individuals are selected as representatives of their district and they meet to pass laws.  This works, as long as the representatives remember that they are supposed to represent.  In today's US Congress we have a horrific example of representatives failing to vote as their district wants and getting totally wrapped up in petty feuds and back stabbing.  At the rate the Congresscritters are going, I doubt that they will be able pass anything for the next 10 years.  They will draw their pay however.
   Look at today.  Polls show that 70% of Americans want us to do something for the "DACA" people, immigrants brought to the US illegally as small children and who grew up in America.  The third try to pass a DACA bill failed a few hours ago.  In short, all the Congresscritters are failing to pass a law that 70% of the population want passed.  That ain't representative democracy.
   We voters do have a remedy coming up in November.  We could vote all the current Congresscritters out.  

Chevy Equinox

I had to leave the Buick at the dealer for some heavy duty and super expensive repair work.  The dealer loaned me a brand new (2018 1880 miles) Chevy Equinox.  It's quite a car.  Actually I would call it a minivan but I dare say Chevy calls it an SUV, or a crossover (car industry jargon for small SUV).  Minivan is too closely associated with soccer moms to be a good name for a product these days.  SUV  sounds much cooler.  And the Equinox has four regular car doors rather than the one big side sliding door that was the mark of Dodge and Plymouth minivans.  It only seats two in front and two more in back.  The Dodge and Plymouth minivans would seat two in front and five in back.  
   It's got plenty of power.  It charged right up three mile hill without pausing for breath.  It's lost the ignition key.  You have a clever radio gizmo in your pocket, and if the car detects the gizmo, then the "Start" button works.  Press it to crank and run.  Press it again to turn the engine off.  It doesn't have AM_FM radio, it has satellite radio.  Which is cool, but last time I checked you have to pay the satellite company cash money to keep the satellite radio working.  This satellite radio only picked up half a dozen channels.  It lost the parking brake.  Either I could not find it, or it is all automatic.  It's got rear view mirrors AND a snappy color rear view TV camera that comes on when you put the tranny in reverse.
   The owner's manual was not in the glove compartment, so I could not figure out how a lot of stuff works.  Chevy must figure owners are illiterate.  All the dash board controls have cute little pictograms instead of real English language labels.  Lot of the pictograms meant nothing to me.  
   Any how all this fanciness makes my 2003 Buick feel like a Model A.  Only $36K.  Back when I was driving minivans, (80's and 90's)  I got them new for $12K.  If you got kids, then each kid can have his/her own seat, a blessing on long trips  I didn't measure to be sure, but it looks like it would take 4 by 8 sheet goods, or modest sized furniture in the wayback.
  Further update.  The Equinox does have a parking brake, it's a tiny shiny ring on the transmission shifter housing. It's a power operated parking brake.  It also has radio controls hidden underneath the steering wheel.  You can change channels and work the volume without taking your hands off the wheel.   The windshield wiper control acts oddly, but it does work after you figure it out. 

A newsie writes about engineering history

Saturday's Wall St Journal had book review of Richard Rhodes "Energy a Human History".  The reviewer was Charles R. Morris.  Reading Morris's review made it clear to me that Mr. Morris is one of those "cannot change a light bulb" newsies.  For instance, Morris is describing early steam engine operation.  Morris says " Steam was pumped into the piston".  Not so.  The piston is a round metal part that moves back and forth. No where for steam to go into.  The piston moves inside the cylinder, into which steam can go.  Any motor head, like me, knows the difference between pistons and cylinders. Apparently Mr. Morris does not.  Plus, you don't pump steam into anything.  Just open the intake valve and steam under boiler pressure will flow in freely.  No pump required.
   Then Mr Morris writes "Franklin's famous wet-kite experiment demonstrated that ordinary static electricity and the same stuff as lightening by capturing its charges in Leyden jars, primitive batteries."  Not so.  The Leyden jar was an early version of a capacitor, not a battery.  Improved versions of the Leyden jar were called condensers up until the 1950's when the name capacitor was introduced.  All your electronics, TV, stereo, smart phone, desktop, whatever, contain lots and lots of capacitors. 
   And then we read "DC systems drew their power from low-voltage battery storage."  "DC was dependent on battery charging, it had limited range, only a half mile or so."   Not so.  Both DC and AC systems obtained their power from steam driven DC generators or AC alternators.  Edison's first commercial power station at Pearl St in New York city  had a generator.  So did all the later power stations, both AC and DC.  It isn't right to say that DC has limited range.  The right thing to say is that there was/is  no way to change the voltage of DC.  For transmission over distance, you want to set the voltage as high as you dare, thousands of volts, to reduce line losses.  Once the electricity gets to where is was going, you want to reduce the voltage.  Nobody wants thousands of volts in their lamp sockets and wall outlets.  A hundred volts or so is plenty running around your house.  With AC, transformers can change the voltage up for transmission and and then down again for use.  Transformers only work on AC.  Which accounts for the universal use of AC by today's electric companies. 
  "the disgraceful story of leaded gas-its toxicity especially on the brains of children."  Not the problem with leaded gas.  When we got serious about cleaning up the smog problem we put catalytic converters on all our cars.  Leaded gas poisoned the catalyst rendering the converters inoperative.  So the industry switched over to unleaded gas some time in the late 60's to early 70's.  They put smaller fill pipes on cars requiring unleaded so the standard leaded gas nozzles would not fit, and put smaller nozzles on the unleaded gas pumps. 
   I was surprised that the usually dependable Wall St Journal would publish a piece with so many glaring errors.

Smartphone required for parking meters in Cambridge MA

So I find a legal street parking space in Harvard Square.  I park, get out, and face up to the parking meter.  The meter has a plaque on it directing me to download a "Pay Cambridge Parking Meters" app.  I guess the city fathers of Cambridge figure that all their citizens, or at least all Harvard students have smartphones.  I'm behind the times, I just have a dumbphone.  I finally wind up in a public parking garage that charges $16 an hour. 

Farewell Charles Krauthammer

The cancer got him yesterday.  He will be missed.  His commentary on current events was inspired, intelligent, and at times very witty.  The Fox people have been eulogizing him since last night.  NPR hasn't even mentioned his death.  They don't call it National Progressive Radio for nothing. 

United States Space Force (USSF)

President Trump is now pushing this.  As an old Air Force veteran I am luke warm to the idea.  I assume he is talking about creating a Department of the Space Force, with a separate Congressionally approved budget, and moving all the Air Force people and facilities working on space projects over to the new service, creating a new uniform, titles of rank, and regulations for the Space Force, in short setting it up like they did the Air Force back in 1947.  
   One objection to the idea.  The existing armed services actually engage in real combat, the kind where people get killed.  I don't see the Space Force mission as involving combat.  Launching missiles from an underground command center is pretty risk free.  Much of the morale that makes the current armed services so effective comes from membership in an elite fighting force.   In my Air Force units the enlisted men never fired a shot in anger or flew into enemy airspace, but they took great pride in keeping their fighter planes in the air, and combat ready.  Plus, the enlisted men bore the title of "Airman", until they made sergeant.  How would the Space Force enlisted men feel about bearing the title of "Spaceman"?
   The United States presently relies upon a whole lot of satellites, recon sats, comm sats, GPS sats, and others.  These satellites are not that far up, and in wartime the enemy could shoot them down, or jam their transmissions.  It would be nice to defend them somehow.  But I don't really see how this might be done.  All the enemy needs to do is lob something, with a little maneuvering fuel and an IR sensor, up as high as the target.  The target satellite is moving at 18,000 mph, and when it runs anything at that speed it is blown into dust.  Bright flash, easily seen from the ground.  Short of equipping all the satellites with a battery of anti-missiles, or nuking the enemy launch sites, I don't see any way to stop it. 
   If the independent Space Force could be freed of the existing Department of Defense (DoD) procurement regulations, it could achieve faster, cheaper, and better procurement, especially of expensive, custom built flight hardware.  Current procurement regulations slow everything down, jack up cost, and deliver inferior flaky hardware.  Getting out from under them would be a big improvement.  But, since the new Department of the Space Force would be under DoD, I don't see this as very likely. 

I'm running for Senate!

The phone rang the other day.  It was Bruce Perlo of the NH Republican Party asking if I would stand for election to the NH senate.  I was flattered, and honored, and so I said “yes”.  Filing for the September primary closed last Friday and since no one had filed, the party is entitled to submit a name.  My name came up. 

   It’s the NH first senate district.  The district is Coos and Grafton counties.  It starts at the Canadian border and reaches down a bit south of Franconia Notch. The current incumbent is Jeff Woodburn, a democrat.  It’s the biggest NH senate district, at least in land area.  It’s thinly populated, but that doesn’t make driving around the district any easier. 

   I got down to the Secretary of State’s office in Concord yesterday and filed the necessary paperwork.  It was $10 to file, I had the cash on me, and I got a receipt.  Chuck Morse, Senate President wanted to meet me.  We had a nice talk.  I should have worn coat and tie, but Jeanie Forester had assured me that it wasn’t necessary. 

   What can you do to help me run?  First, just tell everyone you know that I am running, and I am a good guy.  I’m not a household name up here, especially in Coos County.  Next time you have a party or a cookout, invite me.  I don’t eat much, and I am a fairly entertaining speaker.  I’ll say “Please vote for me” and give reasons, and tell a few war stories.

Combined arms operations. Test of the officer corps

The German army in WWII showed the world the power of combined arms, infantry, with artillery support, tank support, air support.  It was potent enough to crush the French, largest army in Europe in 1940, an army that had stood off German attacks for four years just twenty years earlier.  The Anglo Americans needed a year of combat experience in North Africa to learn how to do it. 
   Doing combined arms operations is complicated.  To order a single infantry or tank unit into action is simple, give them the objective, and the time and date.  Then it's up to the unit commander to bring his men into action.  Not too hard. 
   Now consider doing an operation with artillery support.  You want the guns to shell  enemy positions until your men reach them.  Then you want to "lift" the barrage to strike enemy rear areas while your men assault the front line positions.  You have to order the artillery units into position, and make arrangements to get tons and tons of shells up to the guns.  You have to coordinate with the artillery, make sure that both artillery and infantry are using the same maps of the action.  You have to make sure that both the artillery and the infantry know just where the attack is going in, and especially when the attack goes in.  Before the introduction of walkie talkies in WWII, the timing was the Achilles heel.  The attack usually was late, for any one of a number of reasons, and there was no way for the artillery to know this.  So they would lift the barrage as scheduled, even if the infantry was hours from making contact with the enemy.  Once the infantry had walkie talkies to control the artillery things got a lot better. 
   Tank support was not as complicated as artillery.  Order the tank unit[s] to attack at the same time as the infantry.   Make sure the infantry is knows the tanks are friendly tanks, lest they start pot shotting them with bazookas. 
   Air support can be tricky.  The aviators, especially single seat fighters, are never all the sure where they are.  It's real easy to get confused and bomb your own forces.  This happened repeatedly.  The best of coordination, aerial photos of the target area, special marking on friendly vehicles, and forward air controllers will improve things. 
   Getting all this stuff right is what you have officers for.  If they don't get it right, they are apt to loose the battle. A division commander who could put all this together and get it right was a rare asset. 

That FBI Inspector General Report

The report includes numerous emails and text messages showing ridiculous amounts of anti Trump bias on the part of FBI personnel, but the report writers claim that this appalling attitude did not affect their actions.
   I say that is Bulls**t.  People displaying that sort attitude, in writing no less, will do whatever they can to tip the election their way. Leaking of uncomplimentary material, spying, politically motivated prosecution, intimidation, and more. 
   Surely Comey's work in the Hilary Clinton email scandal, first declaring it to be un prosecutable, then declaring that the Anthony Weiner laptop information required re opening the case is heavy duty interfering the in the 2016 election.  Fortunately it damaged Hilary's chances more than it hurt Trump's chances.  Comey was never a very smart guy, he thought he was helping Hilary when in actual fact he was damaging her.  

Courts are OK with AT&T - Time Warner Merger

The courts may be OK with it but I am not.  Both companies are huge, revenues in tens and hundreds of billions a year.  Both are plenty large enough to prosper on their own.  Both are so big that they won't get any economies of scale by merging. 
   Both companies are in the same line of work, namely providing cable TV.  Merge them and they will find it easier to hike my cable fees.  Just by example Time Warner managed to chisel my cable bill up to $62 this month from $35 a few years ago.  They just hike my cable bill a few dollars here and a few dollars there.  And Time Warner (now calling itself "Spectrum") is the only game in town up here.  It's pay what ever they ask or do without broadband and Fox News Channel. 
   The Wall St Journal was all in favor of the merger.  They did a lot of fancy explaining that this was a vertical merger, and that both companies were really in different businesses.  This I do not believe.  They are both TV cable companies.
   If the anti trust people were doing their jobs, we would not need "too big to fail" protection in things like Dodd-Frank.  If it's too big to fail, then it ought to be broken up as a monopoly.  

They have given up advertising cars on TV

It's been years since I saw a TV ad for Chevrolet, or Ford, or even Prius.  I do see ads for Jaguar and Range Rover and Lexus, and the car dealers still run ads now and then, but the big three US makers have pretty much given up on TV ads.  For GM and Chrysler, this was forced on them when they declared bankruptcy during Great Depression 2.0.  They just didn't have the money.  Ford was better managed, and didn't have to declare bankruptcy, but money was tight at Ford too.
   Things are better in Detroit now a days, compared to say 2009, but the big three car companies still don't advertise on TV.  Could it be that they have decided that TV ads cost more than they are worth? 

Thoughts for new College Freshmen

College is expensive, thanks to plentiful government loan money.  You can go into hock for as much as $200,000 for four years of college.  That's new house money.  And you are stuck with it forever, bankruptcy won't get you  out of it.  To pay it off in 10 years, you have to come up with better than $20,000 a year, for ten years. 
    And all that money only pays off for you if you finish college and graduate.  If you give up or flunk out, you still owe all the money but  it won't get you a job.
    So, think real hard.  Do you have the stick-to-itness to get thru college and graduate?  Do you like academic work, writing papers, doing research,  listening to lectures, doing homework?  A lotta people do, and a lotta people don't.  Where do you stand?  Your odds of graduating are much better if you like academic work.  If you don't like academic work, you may not make it.  
   If you have some doubts about academic work, think about doing something besides going to school for a while.  Join the armed services, take a job, travel, do a winter ski bumming, hike the Appalachian trail, anything.  You been sitting in classrooms since kindergarten, and you may be just plain tired of school by now.  A year or two doing something else will do wonders for your attitude. 
   Do you like working with your hands more than you like paper pushing?   A lot of skilled trades jobs pay as well as the average white collar job, don't require college, get you out of doors, and can be very satisfying.  Think about getting into welding, electronics, heavy equipment operator, lineman, machinist, construction, truck driver, logger, fish and game warden, fireman, lots of other things. 
   When you start college, you really need to know what you want to do to make a living after graduation.  And pick your college major to make you employable in your chosen field.  This is a big decision, but you have to make it, by Christmas time freshman year at the latest.  Talk to friends, family, anyone you trust, do some reading about the field.  Then pick your major with an eye to making yourself employable.  Colleges offer all sorts of interesting majors, many of which are totally worthless when it comes to finding a job.  Gender studies, Ethnic Studies, anything with "Studies" in its name, sociology, anthropology, art history, under water basket weaving, all are worthless unless you are independently wealthy and don't need a job after you graduate. 
                                 

So how lucky were we in Singapore?

Hard to say.  The NORKs made vague promises to denuclearize.  No specifics, no deadlines.  We gave Kim a nice worldwide propaganda platform and promised not to run any more joint South Korean-US military exercises.  We only do that once a year, and we just finished up this year's joint exercise a few weeks ago, and the next one wasn't scheduled until next year.  If the NORKs prove uncooperative, we can easily reschedule a joint exercise for 2019.
   Denuclearization will take some time, months at least, even with the best of good will from the NORKs.  With just a tiny touch of bad will, it will take years.   With a large dose of bad will it will take forever.  The key issue is admission of American inspectors to North Korea, with no-knock authority,  ability to go anywhere, inspect anything, with no advance notice given.  The NORKs aren't gonna like that.  It will take time to get that going, months, or worse.  Until we get the NORK working bombs handed over to us, and our inspectors working in the North, we don't have much.  It will take a long time to make this happen.  Until it does, we cannot really say whether Trump's mission to Singapore was a success or not.  We have a bunch of Lefty-Democrats on TV right now claiming Singapore was a failure, but it is really too early to tell.  
   For good things to happen, Kim whats-his-face needs to feel secure.  If he and/or his regime loose power for any reason, he will loose his life, and he knows this.  So distasteful as it may be, we will have to prop up the NORK regime.  
  

I wish President Trump all the luck in the world for Singapore Mtg

It's gonna be tough.  Kim feels his nukes are his security blanket.  But it might work.  I hope it does.  Best of luck to our side. 

Game of Thrones, Season 7 is out on Netflix

So I added all the disks to my Netflix Queue.  Then I decided to refresh the series in my mind by watching season 6 over again.  I've just finished watching the first three episodes and they are bad.  Black out camera man gives us pure solid black scenes with maybe just a single faint white face showing out of blackness.  Rest of the actor, costumes, sets, completely invisible, lost in the darkness.  No character every addresses any other character by name, leaving us audience wondering who they all are.  They start to magic John Snow back to life in episode 1 and it isn't til episode 3 that they get the job done.  
   Let us hope season 7 is better.

D-Day. Sixth of June

It was really before my time.  I was only one year old back in June of 1944.   D-Day was the first time the Anglo American forces were strong enough to fight the main German army on the German's home turf.  Previous combat in North Africa and Italy were against small detachments like Rommel's Africa Corps, or bloody but small scale combat against limited German forces, fighting a defensive battle in very defensible Italian terrain. 
   Humongous forces were poured into D-Day.  The operation looked all kinds of dangerous.  Eisenhower, supreme commander, the man with the best view of the situation, found it so dicey that he prepared a press release, to be issued in case the landing was defeated.  Had he needed to use it, the setback  to Anglo American arms would have been staggering.  1942 and 1943, two whole years of war production and training, went into marshaling the D-Day forces.  Had the Germans won, much of this vast investment in infantry, tanks, artillery, warships, and warplanes would have been lost.  It would have taken at least another year, probably two, to build up to launching a second invasion.  Give Hitler another year or two and there is no telling what might have happened.  The Germans might have perfected nuclear weapons.  The V-weapon program would have had another year or two to rain destruction upon London.  Time to bring a radical new U-boat, the type 21, into operation.  Lots of things could have given Hitler victory.
   Anglo American victory was possible by defeating the U-boats in the Atlantic in 1943.  We could not have moved our troops, let alone the vast quantity of supplies needed to support our forces, and keep England fed and producing,  had the U-boats kept sinking ships at the rate they had in 1942.  Second, USAAF and the RAF had pretty much blown the Luftwaffe out of the air by 1944.  This guaranteed that the Germans couldn't sink the D-Day armada in mid channel, or render close air support to advancing Panzer divisions.  Finally, the Germans did not know where the Anglo American invasion would come.  The entire coast of France, including the Riviera, and the low countries, was possible.  The Germans had to spread their troops  up and down the European coastline, whereas the Anglo Americans could concentrate all their forces on the invasion beaches, giving a solid superiority in numbers at the crucial spot. 
   As it was, it was a tough fight.  A lot of bravery, and sacrifice carried the day, just barely.  And, once ashore, the Anglo American armies could beat the German army in a standup fight. 

So who should we believe?

We have President Trump, saying that the entire Mueller investigation is phony.  We have the MSM claiming that President Trump is saying mean things about them, and about Mueller.   The MSM claim that Mueller will show that Trump did something illegal and bad during the campaign back in 2016. 
   So far Mueller hasn't shown any evidence of anything much.  You would think that by now he would have something, if there was anything there to find.  He has frightened a few Trump people into confessing to minor sins that don't have much to do with the campaign or the Russians.
   President Trump has indeed laid into the MSM with an ax.  On the other hand, who can blame him?  The media hates Trump and has been doing their damndest  to discredit him and his administration.  The media are never going let up, they want Trump's scalp just so they can enter the Woodward and Burnstein  Hall of Fame.  Trump's best strategy is to discredit them, and he has been fairly effective in doing so.
   So for the time being, I am going to believe that Trump got elected fairly and squarely, and the Russians had little or nothing to do about it.  Should Mueller come forward with some solid evidence, a creditable witness say, or some real documents (the paper kind with signatures)  I could change my mind.   

If the Democrats win Congress this fall

They will immediately start to impeach President Trump.  All they need is a simple majority in the House to impeach.  They need a 2/3rds majority in the Senate to convict, which they probably won't have.  So about a year will go by with only impeachment proceedings, testimony, votes, and procedural maneuvering.  The newsies will eat it up and cover nothing else.  In short, the federal government will be paralyzed for a year or more.  Nothing else will get done in DC.  In the bitter end, the Democrats won't have the Senate votes to convict, and  so the whole exercise will be in vain.
   So, unless you are a deep dyed yellow dog Democrat, you ought to vote Republican this fall, just to permit the federal government to operate at all.  Votes for Democrats are votes to stop all government activity. 
   Despite what you may think of Trump, you gotta admit that GNP growth is up from Obama's miserable 1.5% to nearly 3%.  Unemployment is way down, 3.8%.  Stock market is up.  Wages are up. Taxes are down.  These are all good things. 

Baking a cake for a Gay wedding

This case has been stumbling along for 6 years now.  Generating billable hours for lawyers.  Got all the way to the Supremes yesterday to little good.  The Supremes did hold that the Colorado people had been mean to the baker, and displayed hostility to religion, and the baker should be let off oin this one case.  For all this legal mickey motion, sucking up 6 years and countless legal bills, no new broad principle of law came out of it.  We can expect more years of profitable lawyering, at tax payer expense, on this issue.
    What I would like to see is a law that says caterers, contractors, the self employed, people rendering custom services, cakes, photographs, music,  hair care, flowers, don't have to serve customers they don't want to serve.  They are different from retailers, restaurants, hotels, motels, gas stations, railroads, airlines, and bus companies, who are rightly obligated to serve everyone who walks in their door.  These people are rendering custom services which makes them into supporters of the customer served.   The baker felt that by baking a custom cake for a gay couple, he was supporting gay marriage.  Which is understandable on the bakers part. 

Victory At Sea

Shortly after World War II, NBC television created the Victory at Sea documentary, and aired it in the very early 1950's.  I can remember watching episodes of it from a 14 inch portable TV on rabbit ears.  NBC got Richard Rogers, of the famous Rogers and Hammerstein Broadway show business, to do the musical score.  Back in the day you could buy LP records of just the score.  The documentary makers picked the best of thousands of feet of news reel film,  added Roger's score and some narration.  They made better than 30 episodes. 
  I ran across a DVD set of the whole series in the $5 a DVD bin at Wallymart.  Been playing it on evenings when I lack a new Netflix to watch.  It's all black and white of course.  Color film and just been invented but was so slow ( insensitive to light) that everybody shot the faster black and white film.  And even the black and white film wasn't all that good.  Lot of shots have the sunlit topsides of things over exposed (burned out white) and the shadows pure black.  A fair amount of the footage is enemy footage captured during or after the war.
   If you have children or grandchildren Victory at Sea is a good thing to show them.  It moves right along, all the footage is genuine WWII footage, and there is plenty of action to keep a kid's interest.  From what I hear, schools have pretty much giving up teaching history.  WWII is the formative event of  the 20th century.  Watching this show, even just a few episodes of it will give the children an idea of the vastness of the war.  Although this show emphasizes the Navy side of the war, it gives a fair showing to the land side of the conflict.  

Irreversible. Wonder how that works? Really.

That's one of the American demands upon the NORKs.  We want denuclearization that is irreversible.   Just just how do we prevent the NORKs from deciding to scrap whatever deal they make and start up their nuclear program again?   Even if we insist on daily no knock inspection of their nuclear sites, they can just create new secret sites, keep 'em secret, and go merrily on enriching uranium, making plutonium, and building bombs. 

Wants the Yankees to pick up his motel bill

Little Rocket Man doesn't have the cash to pay his own motel bill in Singapore?  Wow.  Talk about cheap cheap cheap.  He wants us to pick up his tab.  So far all he has managed is to convince all the Americans that he is broke, cheap, and a shameless panhandler. 
    The NORKs are a nation state.  They can afford a nuclear program, a million man army, a ballistic missile program but they cannot afford their own motel bills?  Come on. 

All the News that fits we print

Fox News did a short peace on a new air vehicle, looked like an air car.  Talked about it's use evacuating the wounded from the battlefield, and speeding civilian auto accident victims to the hospital.  Mentioned that getting the wounded/victims to the hospital within one hour would greatly improve survival rates.  Probably true. 
  They failed to give any useful information about the vehicle.  They failed to give the name of this wonderful machine, or the name of the Israeli company developing it, or the name of the US company that might produce it.  They didn't tell us the range of the vehicle.  They didn't state the engine horsepower it uses to get airborne.  They didn't state the payload.  To be useful it has to be able to get off the ground with a single patient, and the pilot. 
   The thing might be a success if it had a 50 mile range, and could land and get airborne again with a 200 pound patient and and 200 pound pilot aboard.  No indication of the capability of the flying prototype shown in the TV piece.  The prototype might not have the range and payload to be a success, but if we knew how close it was to successful performance, we could form an idea of how far it has to go to make the grade and be a successful product.  I assume the flying prototype they showed was a full scale prototype.  But they didn't tell us that.  It could have been a small scale model, a drone, no way I could tell watching TV.  And the TV people didn't tell us what we were watching, full scale working prototype, or tiny model drone. 

Logan 2017

I missed it in theaters back in 2017.  I got it on DVD thru Netflix.  Not impressed.  Although we have Hugh Jackman playing Logan, not much else is right.  Logan has gone to seed, drinks too much and uses stuff.  Drives an airport stretch limo, nicely washed and polished, but still a stretch limo.  You would never catch me behind the wheel such an under powered, ungainly, hard to parallel park tank.  Logan spends a fair bit of his time taking care of Charles Xavier, played by Patrick Stewart.  Like Logan,  Charles Xavier has gone to seed too.  He no longer sees the whole of mankind's future, nor can he do anything about it.  The plot, if any, never became clear to me, the movie just kinda rambled along, and never getting anywhere.  If Logan or Charles Xavier was trying to accomplish anything, I never figured out what it might be. 
   Not the best X-man spinoff movie.

military-still-wants-belly-gun-v-22-osprey

Full article here.  According to the article, Osprey fans and supporters have been calling for a research and development project for a belly gun for the Osprey for years.  Strange.  We figured out how to mount machine guns on aircraft back in 1915, Antony Fokker did the deed.  Bolt the gun to the fuselage somewhere, cut a hole for the gun muzzle to stick out of, and the job is done.  You have to steer the aircraft to lay the gun, but that's easier and more instinctive and more reliable than some kinda steerable gun mount.  No R & D required, just go do it.  We did it back in Viet Nam, the local boys managed to mount a 30 cal Gatling gun on an F4C, and Chuck Yeager scored a number of kills with it.   It worked so well that the next version of the F4, the F4D, was built with an internal gun.
   Plus, the mission of the Osprey is to carry troops and land them behind enemy lines.  Adding guns and ammunition costs range and payload, i.e. an armed Osprey is less effective at its primary mission than an unarmed one.  If the landing zone is hot, send some armed escort fighters along with the Ospreys to dust off any bad guys stupid enough to stick their heads up.  
    

Obamas to do TV show. It will be non political

According to Variety the Obamas will get a TV show with Netflix.  Netflix claims the show will be non political.  Really. 

Palestinians firing mortars into Israel from Gaza

That sort of thing has been an act of war since the invention of cannon.   Last time the Palestinians did this they provoked an Israeli invasion that did them a lot of hurt.  Seems pretty obvious that the Israelis are prepared to do that again.  How much hurt do the Israelis have to inflict to get their message across?  And how crazy is the Hamas leadership, asking to get their asses kicked again, for no reason?
   I know the Palestinians are still sore about Israeli victory back in 1948.  But they gotta learn that they lost, and it ain't likely that they ever will be able to beat the Israelis.  Keeping up the hostilities ain't gonna do the Palestinians any good, the Israelis are better educated, more unified, more dedicated, and generally tougher than the Palestinians will ever be.  

GDPR Notice on my blog

The blogger people tell me that they have posted some kind of message on the overseas versions of my blog, to comply with the new European data privacy law.  I cannot see this message.  I have no idea what it says.  It's a message from the blogger people, not me. 
   All I can say is that my posts, and your comments, stay on the blog pretty much for ever, and are visible to anyone who visits the blog. 

Do the players and/or the owners understand?

Understand the real issue that is.  The real issue is that we fans don't like players dissing the US flag and/or the American national anthem.  It irritates us down deep.  I will avoid the more descriptive words for our feelings because they are a little too vulgar for my blog.   And when we fans get irritated, we stop buying game tickets and we stop watching games on TV.  Which is bad for business.   Any fool ought to understand this by now. 
   Apparently there are a bunch of fools out there.  I have heard one bunch  claim that President Trump's disapproval was divisive with the owners.  Nonsense,  the president is just one guy.  It's the masses of football fans who have been turned off to the game that matter.
   Another bunch of fools say dissing the flag and the anthem is free speech.  Maybe it is, but just because speech is free doesn't mean we fans have to like it.  We don't.   That sort of free speech has taken a solid hit on TV viewership.  A little more such free speech and NFL football will be down there with European soccer matches.  And only available on U-Tube.
   Good luck NFL.  Maybe common sense will penetrate before it's too late.  

US has been getting hostages released

Let's see, those three from North Korea, now one from Venezuela.  Neither country is a friend of America.  But they released their hostage[s].  Either out of fear of what we might do to them, or a desire to butter up the Yankees to get something from us.  Either way, we get our people back.  Which is a good thing.

Keep the banks from going broke

Great Depression 2.0, back in 2008, was caused by big banks and insurance companies going broke.  They went broke by making loans to flaky borrowers (Greece, Puerto Rico) and flaky deals (mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps), not keeping enough cash on hand to cover losses.  As the smoke cleared, and we launched into an 8 year depression, the Democrats passed a bunch of regulations (Dodd Frank) , and failed to prosecute anyone who was running the failed firms.
   I say we could have a more dependable financial sector if the people running it, CEO's and the like, had a real fear of personal retribution when they drove their companies onto the rocks.  Start with more aggressive prosecution under existing laws.  Pass a law making financial executives personally liable for failure of their firms.  Enlist that army of unemployed lawyers to sure to socks off  anyone who bankrupts his bank.
    In short, scrap the regulations.  Bring on the ambulance chasing lawyers.

The NORKs, on again, off again, maybe on again?

At least President Trump understands that his mission is to obtain a deal helpful to the United States, rather than just obtain a deal that looks good in the democratic MSM, like Obama did.  We want the NORKs denuclearized.  We offered the NORKs an end to the embargo, a signed peace treaty to end the Korean War, a guarantee of survival of Kim and of his government, and maybe some investment to spiff up their disastrous economy.  Apparently this ain't enough to get Kim to give up his nukes.  I assume Kim feels that a good dozen working nukes is a better guarantee of his and his regime's survival than any amount of Yankee promises.  Can't say that I disagree with Kim on this.
   So, the NORKs made noises about keeping their nukes.  And President Trump replied by cancelling the summit.  Probably the right move.  As of this morning the NORKs are making back off noises, and making  lets do the summit anyhow noises. 
  Say tuned for further developments. 

Words of the Weasel Part 52

Informant vs Spy.  In real life these two nouns mean exactly the same thing.  But in today's strange politics the democrats seem to think that "informant" sounds better than "spy".  They are calling the spy planted upon the Trump campaign in 2016 was really only an informant, which sounds so much nicer than spy.
   I will admit that "informant" is used in law enforcement stories whereas "spy" is used in military and international stories, but they both work the same.  A harmless looking individual is planted on the enemy and passes useful/damaging information to the other side. 
   If the spy/informant planted on the Trump campaign story holds up, it will cause a furore, probably as big as Watergate. 

Difference between investment and gambling

I think there is one.  Investment means taking good real money and lending it to business enterprises to build factories,power stations, and pipelines, purchase machinery, aircraft, motor vehicles, and ships, to buy inventory,  stuff that grows the business.  Gambling is fun, but the money doesn't go to finance business, it goes back and forth between players.  To keep the economy growing we need to encourage investment and discourage gambling with laws, regulation, and taxes.  
    The stock market makes investment in stocks attractive, mostly because investors can sell their stock for cash, anytime.  And quickly, call your broker, and the sale will go thru that day or the next, and the cash will be in your checking account in another day or so.  That's liquidity, and it vastly increases the desirability of stocks as an investment.  And companies can issue and sell stock, raising cash for merely printing a stock certificate.  If you are starting a company, the ability to issue company stock to raise money is a real boon.
   And then we have those things that are mostly gambling.  The morning NPR news regularly reports "Dow futures are up (or down)".  I don't really know just how Dow futures work, but I seriously doubt that any of the money that changes hands gets to businesses for investment.  I think  the money just goes back and forth between financial players.  Pure gambling.   Same goes for "derivatives"  another poorly understood (at least I don't really understand them)  financial deal which just passes money around among players. 
   We always need more investment and less gambling. 

Oxford History of the American People by Samuel Elliot Morison

This is American history as it ought to be written.  Morison starts with pre Columbian America and takes the story right up to the present day (in Morison's case 1965).   Morison is a fine writer, his text reads as well as anything by Bruce Catton  or Shelby Foote.  He covers everyone of any interest, and every political thought that occurred in America.  He leaves nothing out. And he make it all interesting.  The book is massive, 1150 pages.
   Morison is an fascinating guy.  He was a Harvard professor.  He held a commission in the Navy reserve.  When WWII broke out, Morison became the Navy's historian.  He went to sea, pretty much for the duration.  He was at the Torch landings in North Africa, he was at Midway.  After the war he single handedly wrote the Navy's history of World War II, in  fifteen volumes, The History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II.   And he collaborated with Henry Steele Commager to write Growth of the American Republic, (usually known as Morison and Commager) which was the standard college US history text for decades.  They don't make Harvard professors like that anymore. 
   It's a fine read by one of the best American historians ever. 

Give all the teachers a 40% raise

That's what an op ed in Tuesday's Wall St Journal calls for.  The writer seems to feel that teachers ought to get paid more, to bring their salaries in line with say civil engineers.  OK, nice thought and all.  But.
   I'm still a believer in capitalist free market theory.  You pay enough to attract the people you need, and no more.  The modest wages paid to teachers are a signal to young people that we have a goodly supply of teachers and you could do better and make more money in other lines of work.  That's what the market is supposed to do, issue price signals to workers and suppliers, when there is a shortage of something, be it Hershey bars or school teachers, the price goes up, more people take up teaching, or candy companies make more candy bars.  It's a system that has served us well, allocated labor and capital intelligently, and given us fantastic prosperity.  The Soviets tried to operate without the market and they only lasted 70 years. 
   The same op ed did note that teachers of math and science, who are always in short supply, get paid more than the average teacher.  Hint to aspiring teachers, do a math or science major in college rather than the ed major.
   I guess my other problem with the mare 'em more idea is that we have poured more and more money into public schools.  The vast funding increase has not improved our children's education, at least by objective measures like test scores.  They have remained flat over the decades while school funding has doubled. 

Why was Prince Harry wearing a black uniform?

I thought Harry had served in the British Army, you know, the Redcoats.  He was wearing a black uniform, with his pilot's wings and some ribbons, at his wedding yesterday.  

Hair Products popular with Black Women may contain harmful chemicals

Thus saith UnScientific American on their website.  They go on at some length, listing a whole bunch of organic chemicals that I am unfamiliar with.  I never took organic chem.  On the other hand, they failed to mention, anywhere, ever, just HOW MUCH of these allegedly harmful chemicals were present in the hair products.  Modern chemical analysis is so sensitive that it can detect small amounts of anything, just about anywhere.  The article failed to let us readers know if these harmful chemicals  were present in just tiny trace amounts, or in amounts large enough to matter.  

The Economics Profession ain't diverse enough

Thus saith The Economist.  They been running the occasional think piece about economics.  This week they ran the last of the series.  And all they had to talk about was the lack of diversity, women and blacks, in economics faculties.  It's a worthy thought, I think.
   But I'm more interested in whether economics as a "science" gets it right or not.  Actually I consider economics as much as an art as a science, sorta like history.  In fact economics could call itself economic history.  Since you cannot run experiments in economics, at least not on the scale of a national economy, the people object, the best economists can do is gather observations,  like they do in geology and astronomy.  So although economists use a lot of mathematics ('cause a page of equations looks so cool in a paper) it isn't really a full science like physics and chemistry.  It's scientific, sometimes.
   But the real question is do the economists really know what they are doing? 

Eradicating Polio

  A piece on NHPR the other morning talked about eradicating polio in Pakistan.  The Pakistani's mounted a massive vaccination campaign, thousands of workers, going every where, and vaccinating every child they found.  The case rate dropped from several hundred polio cases a year down to this year, just one case so far. 
   Trouble is, the vaccination program is encountering Pakistani parents who refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated. The one polio case this year was a child whose parents refused vaccination, several times.  Vaccination program workers are reporting resistance and threats of violence. 
   I gotta wonder about a culture so poisonous that it prefers to see their young children die of a horrible disease rather than give them a life saving vaccine.  I remember back when the polio vaccine was first invented.  They set up tables outside in the Saxonville School yard, and in one day, they vaccinated every single kid in Saxonville including me.  Parents supported it 100%.
    

Driving back from DC.

It took me 11 and 1/2 hours this time, from DC motel to Mac's Market in Franconia.  It was pouring down rain in DC when I left at 7 AM.  It was heavy enough to create that road fog, a mix of falling rain, real fog, and spray thrown up by tires, that hangs over the roadway obscuring vision.  It was so thick I could not see an unlighted vehicle at all, and even the lighted ones were hard to see until I was right on their rear bumper.  The rain lightened up by the time I got to Delaware, and was pretty much dry at New York.  The sun was out by the time I reached Vermont.
   Pretty much every thing moving up and down the East Coast has to get thru, or get to, New York.  I tried the George Washington bridge this time, right around 12 noon.  A mistake, traffic is terrible, long periods of just plain stuck in traffic.   I think Tappan Zee bridge is a better deal.  They have the new Tappan Zee span open to traffic, and they are taking the old span down.
   The other touchy spot is Philadelphia, the last break in I95.  Coming up from the south on I95 in Delaware, you want to take the Delaware Memorial Bridge.  Don't follow the I95 signs to Philadelphia, you will get dumped off on city streets in North Philadelphia, or pushed onto I295 going the wrong way.  Looks like they never will finish I95 thru Philadelphia.   Stick with the Jersey Turnpike. 
   

Win 10 makes posting photos a pain

Used to be, back in the last decent Windows, Windows XP, you could hit photo upload in say Facebook, and you would get a set of snapshots of each photo in the directory.  Which made it pretty easy to click the photo you wanted to post.   Not too shabby.
  Well, the Micro$ofties managed to break that in Win 10.   Aren't we glad that Micro$oft has such a large programming staff with time to break stuff.  In Win 10 all you get is a bunch of  faceless icons, all alike, and you have to guess which one is the one you want to post.
Good Work Micro$ofties.

Driving down to DC, surveying the traffic

After posting about Ford getting out of the car business, at least the small econobox car business. I took note of what was on the road on the way down from Franconia to DC.  It does seem like fewer econoboxes, more pickups, more SUV's and the smaller SUVs that the car people call "crossovers".   About half the pickup trucks had company names painted on their doors, but the other half looked to be be privately owned. 
   And lots and lots of heavy trucks, 18 wheelers.  I figure that's a sign of a good economy, all those 18 wheelers on the road are either hauling some company's product to the customer, or going empty to pick up a load.  Lots and lots of heavy trucks on the interstates is a good sign.

Notes to Architects of Hotel/Motel[s]

I've on a trip to DC and have stayed in two pretty new hotels or motels on the way.  Used to be hotel was a multi story city building where you carried your bags in the front door and up to your room, and a motel was a one or two story building, each room with an exterior door, and you parked in front of you room door and carried your bags in  These two places were sorta hybrids.  You entered thru the front door, they were only a few stories tall  On points I should call them hotels.  But somehow that seems pretentious for what these places were, so I think of them as motels.  

   Improvement number 1 would be to find a floor covering that is not slippery as ice when wet.   Bathroom floors were glossy ceramic tile.  Stepping out of the shower was just asking for a fall.  Surely there is a tile product with a little grit in it to give some traction to a wet foot.  One place had a nice looking asphalt tile with a wood grain pattern to it in the bedroom.  Looked OK, but was slippery as all hell when wet.   Place had big sliding glass windows, that leaked when it rained, giving puddles on the bedroom floor.  Nearly broke my neck getting up to go to the bathroom at night. 

  Improvement Number 2, go with US standard light switches.  Both places had groovy Euro style switches, that were hard to see, even by day, and didn't feel like light switches in the dark, when you need to turn the lights on. 

   And while we are at it, lets go with water faucets clearly marked for hot and cold water.  At least colored red for hot and blue for cold.  A single tiny color dot isn't enough.

   One place had high definition TV cabled into all the rooms.  The working channels did show nice video.  About half the channels showed just error messages suggesting I check the antenna connections.  Some channels flicked off and then on.  Changing channels was slow, it took the high def TV 10-15 seconds to lock onto the high def digital signal and show a picture.  The TV would not remember it's channel settings, so turning it on in the morning meant you had to go looking for a watchable channel all over again. 

   And signage.  The Holiday Inn folk had the right idea back in the '60s, big sign, bright lights, make sure every one can see the place.  The place in DC had a tiny little sign, hidden by the brighter lights of a gas station, that I missed in the dark.   

Glad to see three American's freed from North Korea

At least they got out of Kim's jails with their health, unlike poor Otto Warmbier.  All three of them are obviously of Korean ancestry, but the press has uniformly called them Americans, which is a good thing.  And the fact that Kim let them go indicates that Kim wants something from the Americans and he thought letting these guys go would put the Americans into a better frame of mind. 

Note to foreign governments

To make a deal with the United States you have to push thru a treaty, ratified by the Senate.  Otherwise you don't have a deal.  As the Iranians are finding out.  Obama knew he could never get the Senate to agree to the Iranian deal, so he never sent to to the Senate for ratification, which means it is not a deal binding upon the United States.  And probably Obama knew that the Iranians would never agree to the kind of terms that the Senate would ratify.  So Obama settled for a not-treaty scrap of paper that was only good as long as Obama remained President.  The ever sucking up newsies gave Obama the same good publicity as if he had gotten a real treaty, which was all Obama really cared about. 
   Anyhow, if you don't get a treaty ratified by the Senate, you don't have a binding deal.
   The real trick will be to get the Europeans and Boeing to forgo all those sales to Iran.  The Iranians have good money from crude oil sales to buy a lotta stuff.  They want to buy a flock of jetliners from Boeing (many $billion in sales) and about the same number from Airbus.  Plus a lot of other stuff.  It's gonna be hard to get everyone to forgo all that Iranian money.  

Turning point in history 1782

The American Revolution is just won.  The British have capitulated and will sign a peace treaty giving the Americans just about everything they fought for. 
   Thirteen Colonies, now thirteen independent sovereign states.  Each one possesses a state government, state courts, a state code of law, an army, a navy, a state establishment that runs things to their liking and wants to keep it that way.  They all have conflicting claims to western lands, their original charters tended to claim all the land clear out to the Pacific Ocean.   Each new state, born in battle, has plenty of reasons to want to retain every scrap of their hard won liberty.  Each new state was plenty big enough by the standards of the 18th century to be an self sufficient independent nation. 
   How did these thirteen independent states manage to bury their various hatchets and form the Union?  It helped that they all spoke the same language, and had fought side by side against the British.  It also helped that they all correctly viewed Britain as a super power, who was just itching to get even for loosing the Revolutionary War, and the slightest sign of American disunity would bring the Redcoats back in force.
   As it was, each American state had to give up important pieces of sovereignty, like the right to have armies and navies, to negotiate with foreign powers, to levy tariffs against each other,  and accept laws passed by the new Federal government.  Somehow, they managed to come up with a long lasting deal, the US Constitution, that they all bought into, and which has lasted to this day.  They could have so easily got into a large variety of petty squabbles or not so petty squabbles like slavery, and all gone home mad and determined to go it alone.  Which would have seriously changed history.  

Gina Haspell for CIA director

She is Mike Pompeo's choice to replace himself.  She is a new name to me.  Apparently she is an old CIA hand, been with the agency for 30 plus years.  Actually worked in the field, collecting intelligence, rather than being a paper shuffling desk weenie back at Langley.
   Democrats have been trashing her because some of the intelligence she gathered came from vigorous interrogation of,(possibly waterboarding of) Al Quada prisoners back right after 9/11.   I'm perfectly OK with this, it shows she was actually gathering intelligence rather than opining without facts.  Or leaking to the NY Times.
  If I was going to criticize Ms Haspell, I would ask her about her views on past CIA disasters, such as the failure to predict the fall of the Soviet Union, their prediction that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons, their prediction that the Iranians had stopped  their nuclear weapons program, the Valerie Plame case, and leaking the story of Bin Laden's satellite phone to the New York Times.  Bin Laden must read the Times too, after the satellite phone story broke, Bin Laden got rid of his  phone and ran Al Quada by messengers.  This probably extended his life by five years. 

Facebook's New "feature"

In the last few days, Facebook began placing tags on news articles that they force onto your Facebook feed.  Click on the tag and you get a short writeup containing the name of the source  of the article (useful) and Facebook's opinion of that source.  For Breitbart News, their opinion went on for two lines calling Breitbart right wing extremists and screwballs.  Neutral it was not.
  Question for Facebook.  If you think Breitbart is alt right trash, why do you push Breitbart articles onto my Facebook feed?