Snow White and the Huntsman 2012

Some how I missed this one back in 2012 when it came out. Netflix brought it to me last night.  I should not have bothered.  What little plot the movies might have had was never shown to us in the audience.  In fact there was almost no dialogue for any of the characters.  No one addressed another character by name, making it hard to keep every one straight.  If the Huntsman had any romantic feelings for Snow White he never showed them.  Likewise Snow White doesn't display any romantic interest in anyone.  She falls in with a band of forest bandits, like Robin Hood's men, all of whom are over age, overweight, and balding.  It is never clear just what they expect from Snow White, or what Snow White expects from them.  A long scene has Snow White fleeing the Evil Queen's troops, on foot, thru the forest, while wearing a full length ball gown.  Would have been core convincing if the long skirt had got torn off on thorns,
   This flick is two hours, too long for the material to carry it.  Cameraman does alright, manages to turn the lights on before filming.  Puts the camera on a tripod. 
   Too bad.  With a decent scriptwriter this could have been a fun medieval fantasy romance. 

Rape is a serious crime

And should be dealt with by the police and the courts.  Not college kangaroo courts.  The college kangaroo courts have a nearly perfect failure rate.  Most students condemned by such bodies sue the college.  And a lot of 'em are winning.  Colleges would be ahead if the real criminal justice system handled cases of rape and "sexual assault" on campus, at least they won't get sued over the decisions of a real judge.  For students, the regular criminal justice system is fairer than anything a bunch of "college administrators" can do. 

Your Congress at work

Congress is voting to outlaw the selling of meat from cats or dogs.  We really really need this.  Every grocery store in the land has a meat case just stuffed full of dog and cat steaks.  People grill them every weekend.  Serious problem here, deserving of Congressional attention.
   Some how the nation has endured since 1789 without this absolutely vital law.  In actual fact nobody feels good about eating beloved house pets, and so it just doesn't happen.  No law required. 
   Just another reason to throw the bums out in the coming November elections.

California law to require 100% renewable energy

The deadline in the law is 2045,  27 years into the future.  If CA sticks with this, doesn't water it down when they discover how expensive it is, they are talking about putting in enough solar and wind generation to carry the entire load of the state.  Trouble is, solar panels don't give juice after the sun goes down, and windmills don't give juice when the wind doesn't blow. 
   Which means, CA will have to maintain in operating condition, all the real power plants they have today, AND pay for building and installing renewable energy plants sufficient to carry the state wide electrical load, during daylight and when the wind is blowing.  At night, and on calm days, the real power plants will have to keep the lights on  state wide. 
  In short, CA is planning to spend enough money to install statewide renewable energy plants with capacity to power the entire state.   Figure this will cost as much as the real power plants CA already has.  This amounts to paying for two sets of electrical plants, one real, one renewable, instead of one.  Which will double the costs, and then double electrical bills. 
   Of course, CA may back off after it becomes clear how expensive this is gonna be.  They have 27 years in which to waffle. 

First Amendment, why we have it

Been a lotta talk about the first amendment on the media, TV and internet lately.  Lotta things said, most of 'em valid.  "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press."  But none of them gets right down to the meat of the matter.
   The meat is simple.  Without the first amendment, the government can call any speech it doesn't like treasonous, blasphemous, disloyal, seditious, unAmerican, or other bad name and zap, speaker gets jailed, which shuts him up.  The founders believed in democracy, by which they meant every man could speak in support of his political ideas without fear of government reprisals.  And without free speech, we don't have a democracy.  

Saving money on healthcare

America spends 19% of GNP on healthcare.  That is twice as much as any other country in the world.  After spending this ridiculous amount of money, our health, as measured by infant mortality and life expectancy, is no better than other first world countries.  That also means that American products are 19% more expensive than they might be, just to pay the workers health care.   Here is my list of things we ought to do about the health care cost crisis.
1.  Allow duty free import of drugs from any reasonable first world country, like Canada, the EU, and Japan.  Many US rip off priced drugs can be bought overseas for half their US prices. 

2.  Allow competition in the health insurance business.  NH could pass a law saying that any American health insurance company, licensed in any state of the union, can sell health insurance in New Hampshire, no more paper work required. 

3.  Clamp down on the malpractice racket.   We could pass a law stating that prescription, manufacture, and administration of any FDA approved drug or device is never malpractice, even if the FDA later withdraws their approval. 

4.  Stop prescribing so many opioids.  The Wall St Journal says that 80% of Medicaid patients in West Virginia and Kentucky are getting prescriptions for pricey opioids.  Which gets the patients hooked on heroin when the opioid prescription runs out. This is a mixed issue, part federal, part state, part medical profession.

5. Bring back “hospitalization only” policies.  Back before Obamacare forbade them, you could buy a regular, covers everything family plan for $12,000 a year.  Or you could buy a $3000 a year hospitalization only policy that only covered things bad enough and expensive enough to put you in the hospital.   With the $9000 a year saving, you can pay for a lot of yearly physicals and childhood earaches.  For ordinary people, with a little money in the checking account, hospitalization only is a good deal.   

Kavanaugh hearings off on snarling and backbiting

The hearing has senators interrupting senators,  members of the audience screaming at the top of their lungs.  Democrats moving to close the hearing because the truck loads of documents about Kavanaugh already delivered are not enough, they want to see 100,000 more documents.  You would think the Kavanaugh's published rulings as a judge ought to be enough to figure out where he is coming from.  Now they are off letting all the Senators on the committee have their say. That is expected to take the rest of the day.  I'd be more interested in hearing what Kavanaugh has to say, but that doesn't happen until later this week. 

Difference between Democrats and Republicans

Democrats are the party of more free stuff.  Republicans are the party of the taxpayers. 

US Civil Servants don't deserve a pay raise.

They don't do much, they cannot be trusted, they cannot be fired, no matter what, and they are overpaid.  Trump wants to cancel their pay raise.  Good for him. 

Yahoo admits to snooping all emails going thru its site

Email is forever.  If it embarrassing, revealing, and anything you would mind posting on the bulletin board at the local supermarket, DON'T put it in email.  Yahoo has just admitted to snooping email on their site, and it would not surprise me that others are doing it too.
   If it is a company email, and your company gets sued, they will demand to see all the emails from every one.  So don't bad mouth customers (or anyone else) never discuss pricing, never discuss technical shortcomings, never discuss anything that might make your company liable.  Sensitive topics should be handled face-to-face, away from phones.  
   Next job interview, figure they can see all your email, going way way back, all your facebook postings, everything you every put on the net.  Sexting can be really really embarrassing.  If its a good hot pic, a lotta guys will pass it on to their buddies.  It never goes away. 
   For that matter they can see all your medical records now that Obama forced the doctors to keep patient medical records on computer. 

Federal Money given to secure NH electoral system.

Well, I'll take the money, money is nice, I can always find something to spend it on.  But we can secure our election system with two simple steps, no money required. 
1.  Use paper ballots, everywhere, every time.  They cannot hack a paper ballot over the Internet. 
2.  Secure the voter registration lists.  That list upon which the poll workers check off your name as you vote.  If the list is destroyed, or altered, bad things happen.  Legitimate voters will be denied ballots,  illegitimate voters will be given ballots.

In this PC age, every thing is kept on computer.  There was a time when the voter registration list was kept by town clerks, using pen and paper.  We could go back to that, but all the poll workers would scream and cry and threaten to hold their breath.  Since we seem to be stuck with computers, we can at least take some obvious security measures.  The computer[s] upon which the voter registration list is kept shall NOT be connected to the public internet (or the telephone network).  The computer[s] shall be kept in a locked room, with the keys restricted to a very few people.  All floppy disc drives shall be removed and all USB connectors snipped off.
   A paper listing shall be made periodically and stored off site.  An electronic backup (CD-ROM) shall be made periodically and stored off site.  Each time a new backup is made, it shall be compared with the previous backup to see if any changes are reasonable. 

Spectre, a Daniel Craig Bond Movie 2015

It's been out a few years, I have seen it before, but I Netflixed it just for old times sake.  It's a perfectly watchable Bond movie.  Daniel Craig plays as good a Bond as any of them, tough, humorless, relentless, and a lady killer.  The special effects are good, for openers Bond shoots a couple of bad guys thru an upper floor window.  By the time every one's gun runs out of ammunition, the entire multi story Mexico City building collapses.  Not bad for some small arms fire.  And Bond manages to shoot Blofeld's helicopter out of the air using just a hand gun.  Bond's handgun is bigger than the puny Walther PPK that shows up in most of the earlier Bond movies.  Looks to be a Smith and Wesson or Sig Saur 9mm automatic. 
   The script writers have some continuity problems.  We have Bond in London, getting chewed out for exceeding his authority in Mexico City by blowing up a couple of bad guys without proper paperwork.  Next thing we know, Bond, with a brand new Aston Martin DB10,  much sleeker and lower than the DB-6 he drove in back in Goldfinger, is in Rome.  How he and the car get from London to Rome is not even hinted at.  Did he drive the Chunnel? Or put the car on a Channel ferry? Just a short clip showing Bond and the Aston Martin  doing either would have been helpful to us viewers.  Apparently Bond does intercontinental travel instantaneously, like magic.  He and the Bond Girl get from Rome to North Africa, and then back to London from North Africa all instantaneously,  Never a clip of him boarding an airliner. The Bond Girl is cute, as all Bond Girls are.  I never picked up on her name watching the movie.  I had to look it up on IMDB.
   Filming in 2015, three years ago, the annoying "Shake the Camera" style of camera work was gone, but the "Film it in the Dark" style is fully there.  Lots of night action, with the lights out, where I could not tell Bond from Blofeld. Not as bad as Game of Thrones, but annoying.  The sound man was only fair, I missed some of the more breathy dialog. 

Farewell John McCain

TV just reported his death this evening.  We will miss him.  I was in South East Asia with the Air Force the year McCain got shot down over North Viet Nam.  That year my unit, 343 Tactical Fighter Wing, lost a plane a day, for the first 90 days I was in the wing.  It took enormous courage to climb into the cockpit and fly into North Viet Nam, and our pilots did it every day.  So did John McCain.
   Years later, John McCain, campaigning for president, came to an event at the Littleton VFW.  I and my brother were there.  It was winter, the place was full of shaggy people, all wearing parkas and snow boots.  When John McCain entered the room, every one stood up for him as a mark of respect.
   Over the years I have been to a lot of campaign events, for a lot of presidential candidates, and I have never seen another man get that mark of respect that we gave John McCain just automatically. 

Why Communism/Socialism/Democratic Socialism is a disaster

Historically, all this started with Karl Marx, a writer back in the mid 19th century, say 1850 or so.  In those days, and on continental Europe especially, there was a serious discrepancy in wealth.  The workers got little, the owners, capitalists, got a whole bunch more than the workers.  Marx felt this was unfair.  His solution was to share the wealth equally.  The state would own all the means of production, from steel mills, railroads and farmland, down to corner bodegas and restaurants.  The state would set equal wages for all.  Marx wrote all these ideas in his book "Das Kapital" which was widely read. 
   The messy part of Marx's plan is how the state obtains owner ship of nearly everything.  The owners resisted this idea strongly.  In Russia it took a massive social revolution in 1917 to bring this about.  Owners, kulaks the Russians called them, were liquidated.   Massive propaganda efforts and a powerful secret police were used to overcome resistance of kulaks.  Kulaks, entrepeneurs, who escaped liquidation fled the country.  Taking their ideas and initiative with them.
   Production sinks under socialism because the highly motivated entrepreneurs are gone.  Since every one gets paid the same, nobody is motivated to work hard, since there is no reward for hard work.  Starting a new business is forbidden by law.  You can see this in Soviet Russia, even today, 30 years after the fall of communism.  You can see it today in Venezuela.  "They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work" was a cliche from Soviet times. 
   The only real difference between Communism and Socialism back in the day, was how the party would obtain power.  Communists believe they should obtain power by revolution and force of arms.  Socialist believe they should obtain power thru political action and the ballot box.  Once in power there is little difference between them.
  Modern "Democratic Socialism" is mostly undefined, especially by its advocates, say Bernie Saunders, Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez, and Elizabeth Warren and their followers.  The followers are looking to a regime of more free stuff, and the leaders are looking for political power.  Elizabeth Warren was talking about the federal government taking over all of big business, which sounds pretty Marxian to me. 

Things I don't understand about Manafort and Cohen Cases

I understand Manafort made substantial money (like $millions) overseas, advising or fixing or something for the Ukrainians.  He put the money in an overseas bank.  The government claims this is tax evasion.  Just what law requires US citizens to report income from overseas sources, left overseas, to the IRS? And how soon must the report be made?   None of the TV newsies addressed this issue.
   And, just what were those 10 counts the Manafort jury deadlocked on?  Was the prosecution railroading Manafort with a bunch of trumped up charges?  Ham sandwich nation?   As Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) said, "Under current US law I could indict a ham sandwich."
    On the Cohen case, I don't understand how paying hush money to bimbos is a campaign finance violation. Campaign finance laws concern money given to politicians as campaign contributions.  Giving money to bimbos to keep them quiet is not the same thing.  It's distasteful, and reflects badly upon the payer, but I cannot see how it is a campaign finance violation.
   What is clear, is that if the Democrats take control of the House in November, they will proceed to impeach the President, starting in January 2019.  Which will make all the newsies turn pink and glow in the dark from pure happiness.  And figure impeachment will go on and on and on, at least a year, probably two.  The newsies will report on nothing else.  And the Congress will be unable to pass anything for a year or two.  In short, it impeachment will stall the federal government for the next couple of years, like Watergate did. 
   Voters who want to keep the feds moving need to vote Republican, in large numbers.  Trump has got the country moving and moving in a good direction.  Like lower unemployment, more GNP growth, lower taxes, rising stock market, less red tape.  Taking a two year timeout for impeachment will bring all that movement to a screeching halt. 

The Shannara Chronicles Season 2

I Netflixed Season 1 a year or two ago.  It was OK, a fantasy story that borrowed from both Game of Thrones and Tolkien.  Season 2 just turned up on Netflix and I watched the whole season.  Things have changed a bit.  Handsome boyish hero, Wil, has got a new and more becoming hair cut.  We also see some broad shoulders, narrow hips and six pack abs, making him more of a hunk than he was in season 1.  Good chick Amberle mostly appears in dream sequences.  Makes me think I missed catching her death somewhere.  In season 1 she had a magic talisman that she was trying to take somewhere.  She doesn't talk about that in season 2.  Bad Chick, Eretria has come over to the good side and she is helping Wil as much as possible.  Her highway bandit father does not appear this season.  Both Good Chick and Bad Chick still dress alike, in riding leathers which show their figures to advantage, and they still  look alike.   A couple of new good looking girls show up, one is Alenon's daughter, not quite sure what the other one is.  Nobody ever addresses anyone by name on stage, making it difficult to follow the story.  At least the cameraman knows enough to turn the lights on before filming, and the soundman does a fairly good job. 
   Season 2 lacks plot,  I was unable to understand what the heroes were trying to do.  It is entertaining to watch, the characters are all good looking and interesting, but I had no idea what was going on.

Why capitalism is superior to Communism/Socialism

To put it crudely, capitalism works and makes us all rich.  Communism/Socialism  is about equal sharing of misery [and control of everything by the government].  Years ago I did Friends Service Committee work weekends in darkest Philadelphia.  That neighborhood was poor by American standards, no doubt about it.  But everyone had decent clothes (important in a Philadelphia winter) color TV,  plenty of heat in their homes, and nobody looked undernourished.  Some years later, on duty over seas, I saw plenty of people who were a lot worse off than that Philly slum.  In short, capitalism produces better living conditions in city slums than either Thailand or the Philippines did thru out the country.
   What makes capitalism so productive?  Answer: Bunches of entrepreneurs who build factories, housing, electric grids, aircraft, telephone networks, trade commodities, buy and sell everything and anything,  open mines, drill oil wells, irrigate desert lands, build railroads, and in general  create wealth.
   What does a society have to do to get capitalism working for them?  First off, the society needs to create a rule of law that protects private property from seizure by warlords, political bosses, competitors, gangs, the EPA, and other  assorted nogoodnicks.  Entrepreneurs are motivated by the money they can make, and the social standing that successful entrepreneurs enjoy.  If everything they create can be swiped in a few hours by some thugs, it is intensely discouraging to the ripped off entrepreneur.  He/she is likely to be discouraged and give up trying, or to pick up stakes and immigrate to America.   So, the society that wants the benefits of capitalism has to protect the capitalists from all the various sorts of bandits who will otherwise rob them blind.
   Next comes defense.  Nothing wipes out more capital and capitalists than an invading army.  It took the American South a hundred years to recover from the devastation of the Civil War.  One thing that allowed capitalism to flourish in England was the English Channel and the Royal Navy. They have prevented invasion of England ever since 1066.   And effective defense requires enough patriotism in military age citizens to enlist in the armed services, or at least, not resist draft notices with violence.
   And now we come down to freedom.  Freedom to set prices and wages in response to market forces.  Freedom of workers to change jobs for better wages, and move about the country to take the best paying  jobs available.  Freedom to form unions.
   And probably a few other things.  I am not an economist and so a few things probably escape me. 
   It would help if we taught our children that capitalism makes everyone rich.  I note that a couple of recent surveys found that millennials prefer communism/socialism.  What kind of schools did they go to?

Self Driving Cars: Would you ride in one?

Or would you buy one?  Long article in the Wall St Journal this Saturday about self driving cars, relations between Silicon Valley high tech and Detroit car makers.  Gist of article, Detroit ignored self driving cars until very recently, and now wants in. 
  Possibly, or perhaps not, the technology will mature to the point where the car's sensors (radar? TV cameras? lidar?) are good enough to detect the road, the shoulder, the center strip, and ignore the humongous radar returns from large signs, detect pedestrians, bicyclists, deer, objects fallen off trucks, and other cars all well enough to avoid collisions.  And can handle driving after dark, in the rain, and handle snow safely. Assume that the self driving car will not attempt passing on two lane roads.  Assume that the self driver keeps acceleration, steering and braking gentle enough to avoid panicking passengers.  And it has mastered things like parallel parking, and pulling up to the gas pumps without bending a fender.  All of these are stiff technical challenges that today's self driving car cannot meet, yet.
   But  assume they do perfect the self driving car.  Would you ride in one, in city traffic?  Would you feel comfortable riding in one?  Would you buy one with your own money, even if the self driving equipment were  fairly cheap?  I wouldn't.  I enjoy driving, been doing it for years, and feel best when I am at the wheel.  Even with one of my own grown children at the wheel, I get tense.  Eldest son is fairly good, but middle daughter and youngest son are down right scary.  Will I feel better about turning the wheel over to a microprocessor?
   I can see where the Ubers and Lyfts of the world would buy self driving cars.  If they work, don't scare the passengers, and don't get into many expensive traffic accidents,  they would eliminate paying drivers, which will do good things for the bottom line.  But  how many vehicles would Uber and Lyft buy, compared to the 10 million new cars sold each year to the general public in North America?  Enough to interest Ford or GM?
  Could it be cost effective for third party companies to sell and install self driving equipment in an otherwise standard car?  Or is it cheaper and easier to build the self driving equipment into the car on the production line?  I can remember when automobile air conditioning was just coming in.  You could get air conditioning installed by third parties, but every one agreed that "factory air" was better.  Will self driving equipment work out that way? Or not?   

Gender & Ethic Studies profs earn more than peers???

According to Campus Reform colleges are paying professors of various "Studies" some $12,000 a year more than the average.  Which is odd, seeing us how "Studies" majors are mostly unemployable when they graduate.   My standard advice to college students is to decide what they want to do after graduation, and then pick a major that makes them employable in their chosen field.   Why should colleges pay professors of a boutique course of study extra, when that course of study is an invitation to bankruptcy for any student foolish enough to major in it?? 

Aircraft don't have ignition keys

After Friday's joy riding/ joy flying story, where an airport maintenance guy took off with a medium sized turbo prop airliner, did some really decent stunt flying and then crashed it, killing himself,  the TV newsies have been talking about why aircraft ought to have doors that lock and ignition keys. 
  Back in USAF, none of our aircraft had either.  And the two alert birds were armed with nuclear weapons back in those days.  We had a good chain link fence around the flight line, with a couple of gates.  We had armed guards, air police, on the gates and more of them on the alert hanger.   Everyone had to have a security badge to get onto the flight line.  And, with just a few exceptions, like company tech reps, everyone had to be wearing Air Force uniform.  
   So, hearing that a guy with apparently employment, a security clearance, and experience moving aircraft was able to take off with an aircraft is not surprising.  We might take a look at how he obtained his security clearance, but once he did, he could easily do what he did.   

The NFL hasn't figured it out yet

The players are claiming a first amendment right to take a knee during the national anthem.  They think they are advancing their political cause[s].  What they fail to understand is their fans, customers, see kneeling during the national anthem as pure disrespect for the flag, and the republic for which it stands.  Gestures mean what people think they mean, not what you want them to mean. 
   We will see if the fans are sufficiently turned off to stop watching football on TV.  I think the players are stupid not to understand that they cannot afford to anger their fans. 

Prevent Hacking the US Electric Grid

Been a lotta talk about this, in the Journal, on the internet, on TV.   It works like this.  Lots of stuff, generators, transformer banks, substations, and more are remote controlled.  It saves money by eliminating expensive workers at each site.  The remote controllers will accept remote commands such as "Start Up", "Shut Down", "Increase Voltage", "Change Transformer Taps", "Speed Up", and many more.
   The cheapest communication link is the public internet, it's practically free. And the public switched telephone network is nearly as cheap although slower.  Trouble is, when you set all your generators and other equipment to accept commands from the public internet, that means every hacker in the world can send commands to your equipment.  There are some codes and addresses and computerish languages to learn but it isn't all that hard.
   The solution is to prohibit use of the public internet by the utilities.  These are power companies, they own power poles, they have line men, and  they can jolly well string fiber optic control lines on their own poles out to all their remote equipment.   Hackers don't climb poles, to tap fiber optic lines.  In addition to the hackers reluctance to leave their warm and cozy computer rooms, fiber is tough to tap.  You have to cut the glass fiber, insert an adder, bring your own fiber line all the way from your own computer, and then splice the two cut ends and your new line into the adder.  Splicing fiber can be done but it's hard, few techs know how.  A bad splice will block the light signal.
  The various public utility commissions, all 50 states and the feds,  need to post regulations prohibiting any kind of remote control over the public internet or the telephone network and demand private fiber optic control lines owned by the utility company.  This will hackers from ordering all the generators in the country to shut down some dark and snowy night.  

Crony Capitalism comes to the US Commerce Dept

Tuesday's Wall St Journal main editorial has this story.  After Trump's heavy steel and aluminum tariffs, lots of injured companies are filing complicated paperwork to claim "exemptions" from the tariff.  The Journal laments all the time wasted on complex government red tape. 
   The real outrage is that some companies get exempted from the tariff, giving them a huge advantage over their competitors.  The is crony capitalism at its most blatant.  If we are gonna do tariffs, everyone ought to pay them.  Letting some companies off with "exemptions" is pure injustice, bribery, and conduct unbecoming a trash collector, let alone an elected  democratic government. 
  No exemptions for anyone, ever.
 

Facebook wants banks to share depositors data???

This was front page in Tuesday's Wall St Journal.  Facebook's story is that they want to be able to show their users their checking account balance, and by looking at who we are writing checks to, tailor the ads they show to appeal to us.
Arrgh.
   I don't want anyone to know how much money I have in my checking account, whether or not I bounce checks, and who I am writing checks to.  I certainly don't want anyone to get my passwords, SSN, account numbers, transfer codes or anything else that would let them steal my money.  If I found out my bank was giving access to Facebook, I would close my account and find another bank, ASAP.
   I am still unhappy about Obama's decision to force all the doctors to put patients medical records on computer.  Any half way competent hacker can crack hospital network security and put every medical record up for sale.  God help those with serious medical problems, they will never get a job again. No company will hire people whose medical problems will jack up the company health insurance costs.

Shadow Banning sitting Congressmen??

Monday's Wall St Journal has an op-ed denouncing Facebook's practice in the matter.  From reading the article it is not clear just what "shadow banning" really is, or how much it hurts.  But to lay any sort of sanctions or restrictions on sitting Congressmen is absurd. 
   Congressmen get to be Congressmen by winning a majority of the votes.  Which means their view points are acceptable to a lot of people.  When Facebook decides that they are smarter or more political correct than someone who won an election, they are being profoundly undemocratic.  They are claiming the right as lefty techno weenies to silence people who have broad support, broader than any bunch of techno-weenies. 
   I can understand Facebook's desire to keep pornography, neonazis, Islamic terrorists, bots and bot nets, Russian trolls, and clearly deranged individuals off Facebook.  But to attack sitting Congressmen is beyond the pale. 

US Congress should be totally replaced

Congress was created back in the 18th century to give the newly United States a representative government, namely a government that does what the people want. 
Today's Congress is failing.  Instead of addressing issues, they are locked into partisan squabbling, back stabbing, buck passing, and obstructionism.  They haven't passed a thing this year, and from the looks of it, nothing is going get passed for a long long time.
  This isn't what we voters want.  I'll grant that we voters are deeply split on many issues.  But we do all agree that we ought to do something nice for the DACA young people.  Congress has done zip for the DACA folks.  And a whole bunch of other immigration reforms have gone nowhere.  Surely with a little log rolling, something could be worked out that would get enough votes to pass. The voters do agree that we need Obamacare reform, what we got costs too much and is a business killer.  Congress has done zip.   The voters want Congress to confirm more of Trump's appointees, rather than stalling them for months and months.
  In short, we voters ought to vote all the current Congresscritters out this fall and vote in a bunch of new ones that will vote for things that we voters want passed and drop all the partisan bickering.  I know there are plenty if issues where we voters are totally split.  But there are a number that we agree on, and those ought to pass.  

ICE Roadblocks on I93

ICE  is doing it, right around Ashland.  I read that ICE is allowed to put up roadblocks anywhere within 100 miles of a US border.  Ashland is very near to 100 miles from the Canadian border.  ICE claims they are making arrests.  Most of the ones I hear about are for things like drug running or DUI rather than straight up immigration violations.
   I have been thru the Ashland roadblock a couple of times this summer.  Both times the officers just  waved me thru.  I guess they see white hair, a white guy, a four door Detroit sedan, and instate plates.  And they figure I must be clean, at least clean enough to wave thru.  Profiling they used to call it.  I guess profiling is OK when it works to my advantage. 
   I imagine the people who get stopped and searched feel differently about it. 

Jeff Woodburn gets arrested for assault and domestic violence.

Jeff Woodburn is the incumbent Democratic NH Senator of district 1 and my opponent in the November general election.  Neither of us face primary challenges, the general election in November is everything.  He was arrested by the Concord police department late Thursday afternoon and charged with assault and domestic violence.  He will be arraigned in Lancaster county court later this month. 
   Speaking personally I have to feel sorry for Mr Woodburn.  This affair is likely to become a professional and perhaps a  personal disaster for him.  Under American justice, a person must be presumed innocent until proven guilty.  On the other hand, the New Hampshire attorney general must feel he has a strong case to charge a sitting Senator with a crime.  
   I filed for election weeks ago, long before this unfortunate news broke.  I intend to continue to campaign for office.
   I need all the help I can get to win this election.  I need people to put up my yard signs, and people to invite me to any kind of gathering, cook out, barbecue, rally, parade, meeting, what have you.
 
  

Rasmussen says Democrats hate Trump deal with the NORKs

Rasmussen Reports says there is a big split between Republicans and Democrats regarding President Trump's dealing with the NORKs.  Rasmussen doesn't give numbers on this split, but it is right up there in the article's headline.
  I wonder how that happens.  I have some doubts that things will work out with the NORKs, but they might, and that makes it certainly worth trying.  Why should Democrats dislike our effort to denuclearize the NORKs? It is surely better than starting up the Korean War again.  Are the Democrats so anti-Trump that they wish ill toward what might be an important breakthrough?  Just to spite Trump? 
   In the end, the Trump diplomatic offensive may not work.  On the other hand it might.  I cannot tell, and I doubt that anyone else can either.  The chance that it might work makes it worth trying. 

Harley Davidson Goes Hog Mild to Attract Younger Bikers

Headline in Tuesday's Wall St Journal.  Gist of the article, Harley is thinking about introducing smaller bikes. cause sales of the big Hogs are tapering off. 
  This is nothing new.  We bikers have been saying this for 40 years.  The big 1000 cc Harley's are magnificent machines, any biker would like to own one.  But they are pricey, about the cost of a small car.  And they are too big and heavy to take off road.  Most of us got started on much smaller and cheaper bikes.  My first bike was a mere 120 cc Suzuki, which was a little slow for my tastes.  My 2nd bike was a 250 cc Yamaha which had enough power to scare me, even back when I was young and reckless.  At the time, the Yamaha only set me back $500, where as the big Harley's were going for $5000. 
   Harley should have figured out, maybe 30 years ago, that a small, low cost bike would sell, in fact sell more than the big Hogs were selling.  To make a small bike Harley might have had to give up on their beloved four stroke engines and make some other changes to compete with all the well built rice burners on the market, but they could have managed. 
  I hope Harley isn't too late.

Alternate History. What if Japan had NOT attacked Pearl Harbor in WWII?

Japan had a number of aggressive plans for their neck of the woods.  The US did not approve, and eventually embargoed shipment of oil and scrap metal to Japan.  But with Hitler showing us how dangerous Germany was, and isolationism running wild in America, we were not about to do anything to Japan short of diplomatic nasty grams and  embargoes. Had Japan understood this, they could have proceeded to take over places they wanted, like Dutch East Indies oil fields, and more of China.  We would not have gone to war with Japan over this kind of aggression.
   If Pearl Harbor did not happen, we would not have joined the British in the war against Hitler, even if Hitler had the British on the ropes.  Isolationism would have prevented it.  Churchill's entire plan for beating Germany consisted of getting the Americans to help him out.  Without Pearl Harbor, Churchill would have been severely disappointed.
  What's more, if the Nazi's had done some serious diplomatic work on Japan, they might have been able to talk the Japanese into attacking the Russians in the far east.  If this had gone down in the winter of 1941, when Hitler's army was at the outskirts of Moscow, the Russians might have cracked.  As it was, the Russians brought ten divisions back from Siberia and threw them into the battle to save Moscow.  They would not have been able to do that if the Japanese had attacked in the far east.  And the Japanese had memories of the successful (from Japan's viewpoint) Russo Japanese war of 1905.  And the Japanese were still smarting from a sharp defeat the Russians gave them in 1939.  Japan had tried to seize parts of Siberia.  The Russians sent a large army, with plenty of tanks, aircraft and artillery, under Georgi Zhukov, best Russian general of WWII,  and whipped the Japanese thoroughly at a place called Kalkin Gol.
  Any way you see it, Pearl Harbor in our real history, was a key decisive event.

Plastic straws?

Used to be, straws were paper.  They worked.  They issued straws at the soda fountain with milkshakes, frappes, and root beer floats.  Special treats, not every day drinking.  And they issued straws at lunch in school to sip the milk out of those tiny little paper milk cartons, if you had paid in your milk money that week.   Each classroom had a big box of straws sitting on a shelf.  Don't remember exactly just when plastic replaced paper for straws, must have been sometime in the 1960's
   I don't remember drinking soda (tonic in New England) with straws.  You popped the top off the bottle (canned soda was much later) stuck the bottle in your mouth and drank.  You had to learn the trick of putting your upper lip half way down the mouth of the bottle to let the air in as the soda was sucked out.  Most kids mastered the art by the age of three.  My parents didn't approve of soda, they thought it was bad for kids teeth, so I didn't get to enjoy it all that often. 
   The TV newsies have been doing a lotta talking about plastic straws filling the Pacific ocean with floating plastic.  Despite all the talk, I have trouble believing that plastic straws are a serious issue or yet another environmental hazard.  I'm kinda hazarded out these days. 

Facebook stock tanks today

Has the last few months of bad news, leaks of personal data, censoring of conservative posters, Russian trolls, fake news, and 'bots posting trash, finally caught up with good old Facebook?  Or was it a downer report issued by Facebook itself predicting loss of  customers?  Could it be that Facebook has reached a limit to growth, like every one with Internet access is already on Facebook?
  Anyhow their stock took a header today.  Down 23% by some reckoning.

Seattle is paying $5.2 million a piece for trolley cars.

Damn.  That's a ridiculous amount of money for a trolley car.  You used to be able to buy a brand new diesel bus for $50K. You would think you could buy a trolley car for about that.   What's worse, they are saying that these ultra pricey new trolleys won't fit into the car barns, or even on the tracks.

NPR played the Cohen tape over the air this morning

I could not understand most of what was said on the tape.  Nor could I recognize Trump's fairly distinctive voice.  I'm not saying it is fake news, yet,  but I have my doubts based on what I heard on my FM radio this morning. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cute but dumb

She IS cute.  Too bad she isn't blonde.  If she were, we could call her a dumb blonde.  Which has more bite to it than dumb brunette.
  She was saying that the reason Trump has brought unemployment down so far is that people are holding down two jobs, to make ends meet.   This does not compute.  If we have people filling two jobs, we will have fewer people employed than if we just allowed people to fill one job at a time.  Even a economics and international relations major ought to be able to figure that one out.
   Stay tuned, Alexandria ought to come up with some more amusing whoppers before election season is over.

Bears over the years

We have bears up here in the North Country.  Here are a few bears photographed from my deck.  I am OK with bears, I keep my distance, the bears keep their distance, and we are all very happy.  And I never put  trash out on the deck.  And I don't feed bears.  Next town over, they had some hippy dippies living right down town and feeding bears from their garden apartment building.  That town had to pass a town ordinance against feeding bears in town.  My town has smarter residents, even the Massachusetts retirees know enough not to feed bears in town, or anywhere else for that matter.  Bears are cool to have around.  But you gotta remember that they are very strong, very fast, and always hungry, and totally wild.  If they think you threaten them, or their cubs, they can become VERY nasty.  And being wild animals, they are impulsive, and easily scared.  You don't want to mess with a scared bear. 

Middle Kingdom in the Middle East

Nice color picture in The Economist showing President Xi and an aide, reviewing  a Saudi honor guard with MBS.  MBS is wearing white flowing Laurence-of-Arabia style robes and sandals.  Xi is wearing a standard western style dark business suit and a poker face, his aide is wearing a western style Chinese Army green Class A uniform. The Saudi honor guard are all wearing thick black full beards over jazzy western style military uniforms.  Since the Chinese don't grow beards, much, I had to wonder what Xi was thinking about looking at all those thick black beards on the Saudi troops.  

Lynne Blankenbecker at the PBVRC Spaghetti Dinner

The Pemi Baker Valley Republican committee is a very active group, based in Plymouth.  They put on a monthly spaghetti dinner, which is always well attended and fun to go to.  Now that I am running for NH senate district 1, I went to the affair on Friday night, thinking to meet some voters, even though Plymouth is a little south of my district.   For everyone's edification, NH senate district 1 starts at the Canadian border and runs south to a line of Bath, Benton, Woodstock, and Thornton.   Any how I got to show my face and give my campaign speech.
  Best speaker of the evening was Lynne Blankenbeker. She is running for US rep from Congressional District 2, the western half of NH, currently held by Anne Kuster, a fairly worthless democrat.  Lynne has an impressive resume, service in both USAF and USN, attained the rank of captain in the Navy (Navy captains are much higher rank than Army or Air Force captains).  Ran for and won a NH house seat way back in 2009.  She spoke force fully and well Friday night.  I was impressed. 
   Everyone ought to make an effort to hear Lynne speak.  Her campaign website is https://www.blankenbeker.com.  They will have a list of Lynne's speaking engagements.  It's well worth your time to go hear her. 

Career Choice for college students.

Op Ed piece in last Saturday's journal entitled "Why do Women Shun STEM? It's Complicated".  The writer is a female professor of engineering.  She mentions a number of things, but she dwells on the effect of liberal arts faculty bad mouthing engineering and other STEM subjects to the students.  Women students get told that STEM subjects just lead to jobs in cubicles crunching numbers.  Which isn't true at all.  Engineering is very creative, engineers get to create new things with their own hands, work the bugs out, and bring them to market.  Beats selling life insurance or real estate all hollow.  I am retired after fifty years doing electrical engineering, it was fun, and it paid well. 
   As a college student, you need to decide on your career after graduation.  You need to do this early freshman year, by Christmas time at the latest.  Once you have picked a career, then you must pick a college major that makes you employable in your chosen field.   Career choice is tough.  As a freshman you don't really know what the ropes are, most of what you do know is vague hearsay.  What do  you really want to do to make a living?  So you talk to parents, friends, relatives, anyone about it.  One caveat.  Don't take advice from the faculty or your college advisor (who is also a faculty member).  Reason is simple.  Anyone who has pushed and struggled hard enough to become a professor of anything, is going to tell you that what ever it is that he/she is teaching is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  That's just the way people work. College faculty think their job is to train up students to become professors just like they are. 
   Couple of things to know.  First, teaching college isn't what it used to be.  Most college courses are taught by part timers (adjunct professors they are called) who receive miserable pay and no benefits.  And no chance of tenure.  Second, there are a lot of things taught in college that are of little to no worth out in the real world.  Majoring in "studies" (gender studies, ethnic studies, environmental studies, any kinda study) is a total loser.  Anthropology, sociology, astronomy, art history, music appreciation, are not much better. 
   One good trick, read a biography of someone who followed the career path you might be thinking of taking.  
  
  

12 Strong 2018

Netflix brought this to me yesterday.   It's a war movie, about a 12 man Special Forces team send to Afghanstan in the very early days after 9-11.  They served as forward observers and brought in smart bomb air strikes that enabled the Northern Alliance to overcome the Taliban in a matter of weeks, after years of loosing to the Taliban.  It's not bad, but not compelling.  I didn't watch it to the end. 
   A lot of internet critics slammed it for political incorrectness, they wanted a movie to trash the US intervention in Afghanistan.  This one portrays the American effort as good, and the special forces guys as heroes.  Which is fine by me.  Lots of action, explosions, fighting, not much dying.  They hired the blackout camera man from Game of Thrones.  He turned the lights out on the sets while filming, yielding the annoying but trendy black on black scenes where you cannot see anything. 
   Acting was only fair.  Despite some name brand actors (Chris Hemsworth and Michael Shannon) the actors failed to really engage us audience folk.  No really snappy lines of dialog, little background of friends, family, lovers, children.  No good jokes.  I couldn't related to any of the characters very well. 
   Overall a C movie. 

Has anyone seen any Russian hacks on Facebook or Twitter?

For all the talk about Russians and Trump in 2016, I have not seen any examples of things the Russians did, posted, tweeted, or commented upon.  So what did those alleged Russians do?  Can I see it anywhere?  For all the sound and fury, you would think there would be something that shows on the internet somewhere. 

Drug pushing robo callers

Lately I have been getting them.  There is the caller who tells me my shipment of pain killing drugs is ready for pickup.  And the caller who asks if I am over 65 and suffering from arthritis pain. And the caller who offers me any kind of prescription pain killer under the sun, just come down to our friendly pain management clinic.
   I wonder how much of the opioid crisis in New Hampshire is caused by telephone pushers of drugs.
   I don't have caller ID on my land line phone, and the robo callers don't answer my questions about who they are and what their phone number is, so I don't really have anything worth reporting to law enforcement.  

The Great Rift, by Michael E Hobart, Science vs Religion

Book review in Thursday's Wall St Journal.  Interesting writeup.  On the other hand, is the science vs religion topic truly relevant today?   Far back, in ancient times, before the invention of science, religion explained all things as God's will, the weather, disasters like volcano's, earthquakes, and  hurricanes, creation of the world and all that is in it.  Science, newly invented in the Middle Ages,  offered the Copernicus  heliocentric theory sometime in the 16th century.  That was the first  serious head-to-head set to, the Church espoused the older earth centered Ptolemaic system, for reasons that I no longer remember. They made life hot for Copernicus and then they laid onto Galileo even harder.   Darwin in the 19th century caused an even bigger fuss, a lot of people liked the creation story given in Genesis a lot better than they liked evolution and the idea that man was descended from apes. 
   But today, surely this is no longer a real issue.  I know the creation story in Genesis, I even read it aloud to my children.  I also know the creation story from astronomy, cosmology, geology, and evolution.  When I think about it, I realize that the two stories are incompatible with each other.  But,  that's OK by me,  I know and understand both stories (all except Guth's idea of inflation) , my head is big enough to hold them both and  let them be. I have no plans to resolve the issues, I know plenty of better men than I have tried and short of becoming an atheist, unattractive at my age,  there is no resolution.  The incompatibilities just don't bother me that much, I know they are there, I know they will be there for a long long time, and I know there is little I can do about it.  So I don't worry about it.
   
        

Strzok Hearing. Shouting match.

Peter Strzok  is the very senior FBI agent who ran the Russian Collusion hearings and the FISA court warrants to investigate members of the Donald Trump campaign and was on the Muller investigation team.  He was having an affair with Lisa Paige, an FBI legal type, and they exchanged some text messages indicating a super high degree of hatred for Trump, and a desire to tip the election to Hillary.
  Congress has been grilling Agent Strzok on live TV all day.  I would have liked to hear about  what evidence Strzok showed the FISA court to get warrants to surveil Trump campaign workers, what evidence they turned up about Russian collusion, both of which Strzok knows a lot about.  They never did get down to that.  Strzok kept refusing to answer questions claiming the the FBI didn't want him to testify.  Congress should have said, "Answer or you are in contempt of Congress, which is 6 months in slam for each question you refuse to answer."  CongressCritters don''t have that kind of stones any more.  The Democrats spent all their floor time trashing the Trump administration rather than boring in on the Muller investigation and Strzok's part in it.  Lot of shouting, lot of points of order, little real info.  They are still at it as I write this. 

How combat ready is NATO?

I read a couple of web postings saying that the German Air Force only has ten jet fighters operationally ready.  The rest, hundreds of expensive warplanes, are down for maintenance.  With only ten flyable fighters,  German pilots won't be getting enough flight time to stay proficient.  
   That is a ridiculous figure.  When I was squadron level maintenance officer in USAF, we were required to show 70% of out fighters in commission and ready to fly every day.  Our squadrons were 18 aircraft in those days, and 70% came out to 11 aircraft.  And we made that 70% OR rate every day.  In short, a USAF squadron had more OR fighters than the entire Luftwaffe.
  The Germans claim to be spending something like $60 billion on defense, 1.2% of GNP.  Which ain't enough if it leaves nearly all of their fighter planes grounded for maintenance.  
   I think Trump is right to yell at them for not paying enough for defense.  The Russians still have a large army, they have grabbed off big slices of Georgia and Ukraine, and Putin is talking about grabbing more.  Not the right time to have most of your air force grounded for maintenance. 

Captain America, Civil War, 2016, I caught it on the tube last night

It was long.  Ran three hours what with the usual heavy load of commercials.  The camera man turned on the lights of the set BEFORE filming.  Give him points for that.  None of those black on black scenes that Game of Thrones likes so much, and I find totally annoying.  Give them credit for doing a good job rather than being arty.  The sound man was barely adequate, I had to turn up the volume, and boost the treble before I could catch all the dialog.  I had no trouble hearing all the dialog in the commercials, which means the sound man could do a lot better.  
   The movie has Captain Steve (America) Rodgers, Iron Man/ Tony Stark, a new young actor playing Peter Parker/Spiderman.  The Spiderman costume totally covers the face, and so even as Spiderman gets a good share of screentime, it's hard to relate to a superhero with out a face.  And a lot of Marvel Comics characters that are new to me.  I stopped reading comic books a long long time ago so I am not up to date on Marvel Comics Universe. Since nobody ever addresses anybody by name on screen, it is tough to figure out who is who. 
   There was a lot of hand to hand combat, jumping out of tenth story windows and bouncing when hitting the ground, and fantastic but fun to watch moves with that shield.  There wasn't much of a plot, or at least I never did catch on to what Captain America was trying to do to save the world this time.  They split the Avengers into two warring factions which resulted in a lot of hand to hand fist fighting between Steve Rogers and Ironman.  Somehow, no matter how hard Steve Rogers hit, Ironman's iron suit soaked up the blows.  Funny about that
  It was fun to watch, I stayed awake to the bitter end at 11PM.  Far past my usual bedtime. 

New Supreme Court Justice

Lot's and lots of yak on the TV about this.  Much of it phoney.  They talk about a tremendous floor flight.  Not very likely.  Either the Republicans have all their ducks in a row, and their mavericks and RINO's under control, or they don't.  Even with McCain out with brain cancer, they still have a one vote majority in the Senate, and a Republican vice president as a tie breaker.  If they don't have all their members on board, they won't bring the matter up until they do. 
   I don't know the names on Trump's picklist, but I assume they are all guys like Gorsuch, who has worked out well and is generally respected.  This kind of guy will believe in "stare decisus", Latin for "Let it Stand".  The doctrine that when in doubt, it is justice to rule the same way previous judges have ruled on the issue.  Which makes all the talk about over turning Roe vs Wade just scare talk.  Roe vs Wade has been the law of the land for nearly 50 years, a half century.  Stare decisus means stick with Roe, because it is the way things have been done for 50 years.  I don't think Roe vs Wade is in any danger from anyone Trump might nominate. 

Franconia NH, Old Home Day Parade

Franconia does Old Home Day on Saturday, as close to the 4th as they can get.  So I went.  Spent 6 hours smoothing with voters, asking them to vote for me.  A lot of people were out of state tourists, worthy folk who help keep NH green but cannot vote for me.  And a lot were voters in my district.  All were perfectly happy to say hello and shake hands.  Weather was ideal, cool, sunny, clear skies.  A good time was had by all.

Pocahontas Is Racially Charged???

The Hill was trashing back at President Trump yesterday.   The President is famous for calling Senator Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas" in response to Warren's claims of Indian ancestry.  The Hill called the nickname "racially charged".
   Really?  Back when my kids were doing elementary school, Pocahontas lunch boxes were all the rage.  Pocahontas beat out My Little Pony for most popular kids lunchbox.  Back when I was doing elementary school myself (long before the Disney movie) we knew of Pocahontas as a beautiful, romantic Indian princess, who had a thing going with John Smith, later married John Rolf, went to England were she was treated as if she was British nobility.  Pocahontas was cool, everybody knew that. 
   Dunno where The Hill comes up with "racially charged".