NH Senate Session 14 March

Senate session, Thursday 14 March.  88 bills on the calendar.  Session ran until 10 PM.  I didn’t get home til nearly midnight.  They promise worse is coming.  We knocked off 18 bills on the Fast Track calendar with one voice vote.  We bumped SB 143, dealing with state aid to special ed students off the Fast Track calendar into the hurley burley of the regular calendar ‘cause it involved a LOT of tax payers money. 

   We had a few good bills and a lot of bad bills. For good bills we passed SB 266 which makes state aid to education cover kindergarten students on the same basis as grades 1-12 and redirects the Keno revenue from kindergarten to school building aid.  That passed 24-0 on a roll call vote. 

   We passed suicide prevention training for students and teachers 24-0 on a roll call vote.  We are loosing all too many students to suicide.  We need to let all students know what suicide is, and what they should do or who they should contact should they find that a friend is contemplating suicide.  Certainly back when I was in grade school I would confide a lot of stuff to my closest friends than I would to teachers or parents.  And back then I had no idea what suicide was or what to do should I learn of a friend thinking about it.  

   We passed SB 306 establishing a housing board of appeals to which builders and developers could go after a build-absolutely-nothing-anywhere (BANANA) planning board refused to grant a building permit, especially a building permit for workforce housing or affordable housing.  Way things are going, without the housing board of appeals nothing will get built anywhere is the state inside of five years.  SB 306 passed on a voice vote, no nays were heard. 

     And now for the bad bills.  The democrats voted SB 135 and SB 301 thru.  Both bills raised the business profits tax a lot.  Like $37 mil a year.  Most of us know that last year was a very good year indeed and this year is shaping up nicely.  GNP growth is up, unemployment is down, stock market is up (mostly) and taxes are down.  Out in the real world, where I come from, it is generally accepted that the good economy of last year was caused by tax cuts, both federal and state.  In the not so real world of the Senate, democrats believe they can raise taxes without stalling the economy.  Nobody out in the real world believes that.  Anyhow the democrats have voted in heavy duty tax hikes.  Hopefully the governor will veto them. 

   The democrats passed SB7, the motor voter bill on a roll call 14-10.  This bill would register anyone to vote who registered a car or obtained a driver’s license.  If you are a driver you are a voter, zap.  Me, I think the voters ought to go to town hall and register BEFORE the election.  Far as I am concerned, any voter who lacks the motivation to get out and register himself is so unmotivated that we don’t need his vote. 

   And the democrats passed SB 249 to allow state house employees to unionize.  We really really needed that.

   They also passed SB 71 allowing the state to interfere in the party’s delegate selection.  I believe the two parties ought to select their delegates anyway they please, without any state interference.  No matter, the democrats pushed this turkey thru 14-10 on a roll call. 

   And we had some Mickey Mouse bills. SB 133 about definition of emergency vehicles.  We need this?  We all know that flashing lights and a siren mark an emergency vehicle.  And SB 275 requiring the state to replace the entire fleet of state vehicles with battery operated vehicles by 2039. 

Life in the NH Senate

I have been posting the goings on in Concord on my campaign Facebook page.  Lately Facebook has gotten flaky and refusing to accept my posts.  So I'm going to start posting them here as well.

Tuesday, 12 March.  Ed Committee hearings.  Started off at 9 AM with SB 267 bearing the suspicious title of “Relative to the release of student assessment information and data”   New Hampshire Dept of Ed requires yearly testing (assessment) of all NH students.  The tests are sent off to the test provider to be graded.  State law currently requires that student’s names, birth dates, addresses, and other identifying information be kept confidential.  So the schools erase the student ID info from the tests before sending them off and replace it with an ID number.  Thru some bungle or other, the tests come back, scored; the Dept of Ed admitted that only 80% of numbers matched up with children’s names.  The Ed folks wanted to just leave the children’s names on the tests to solve the bungle.  Just great.

   It gets worse.  I asked why the tests were not graded by the home room teacher and be done with it.  The Dept of Ed representative explained that the tests were administered by computer.  If the child was doing well, the computer would switch to more difficult questions.  If the child was doing poorly, the computer would switch to easier questions. In short no two children got the same questions on the test.  This is not right.  It is unfair to give some kids easier tests and some kids harder tests.  After hearing this, I am convinced that the entire NH yearly testing deal is corrupt, and should be scrapped. 

   Didn’t bother anyone else on the committee.  In executive session they voted the bill Ought To Pass 3-1.  I was the one, everyone else was perfectly happy with the bill and the testing protocol. 

   Next was SB 137 which wants to set up special certification of school nurses by the Dept of Ed.  In addition a nurse being licensed to practice in New Hampshire, she had to get “certified” by the Dept of Ed.  Job security for some Dept of Ed bureaucrats.  Plus, what does Dept of Ed know about the practice of medicine?  Never mind, in executive session we voted it Ought To Pass 3-1.  Again I was the one. 

   Finally we got to a bill that I submitted to authorize Signum University to grant degrees.  Signum is a startup.  It is an internet deal, I have talked with the Signum people and they sound real to me, not just a diploma mill.  They specialize in English literature (Tolkien) and Germanic philology.  The Tolkien part makes them OK in my book, I first read Tolkien in middle school, I read it to all my children, and I still occasionally read it to myself.  Anyhow we voted Ought To Pass 4-0. 

  

Ethiopian Airlines crash

It was a brand new Boeing 737 MAX, the same plane that Lion Airlines crashed a couple of months ago.  In the Lion crash, it is believed that the autopilot got into a snivit and thought the plane was stalling.  It took control of the stick, pushed the nose down to get out of the stall, and flew the aircraft into the ground, over the strenuous objections of the crew, who pulled back on the stick as hard as they could.  Aircraft hit the water, killing all on board.   This Ethiopian crash looks like it might be the same problem.  It's too early to be sure, we have not had time to read out the cockpit recorders, but it sure looks suspicious.  The Lion air crash investigation is not complete, and they have not issued any fixes to the 737 MAX based on that disaster, yet.
   The 737 MAX is the well known 737 which has been flying for decades.  The MAX part is a re engine mod, putting on bigger, more powerful and more fuel efficient engines on a well proven airliner. The anti stall feature in the autopilot is a reaction to the Airbus crash in the south Atlantic a couple of years ago.  In that disaster the entire flight crew, three qualified pilots in the cockpit, failed to recognize they had stalled the aircraft and failed to pull out of it.  The plane hit the water, all on board were killed, and it took a couple of years of searching the ocean bed to find the flight recorders and figure out what had happened.

Wall St Journal is OK with stock buybacks

We been hearing a lot of talk from both left and right about the evils of corporations buying back their stock. Like talk of banning the practice. It's not that corporations need the stock, they can print new stock certificates for nearly any amount of money for pennies, cost of paper and ink.  It's not like buying raw materials or building new factories.  It is believed that buying up the company's stock will raise its price, supply and demand, make the stock scarcer and its price will rise.
   Saturday's WSJ editorial came out strongly in favor of  allowing stock buybacks.  They didn't give any numbers.  The traditional way for a company to raise the price of its stock is to declare a big fat dividend, Which is paid to all stock holders and can be expensive for a company like GE with a zillion shares outstanding.  The idea behind stock buybacks is you only have to pay off the investors that actually sell their stock, rather than all shareholders.  Might be cheaper that way.  The WSJ didn't give any numbers supporting that idea.
   On the other hand, the main reason companies want to boost their stock price is to reward executives with stock options.  I had a stock option once, with Bernie Gordon's Analogic, and it paid off like crazy.  On the other hand, if the company wants to pay off a hardworking successful CEO, they can jolly well vote him a cash bonus. They don't have to manipulate the stock market to reward successful executives. 
   And, you would think that companies could find constructive things to do with extra cash in the till rather than doing stock buybacks.  Like new product development, new factories and distribution centers, improved manufacturing techniques to lower product cost, more publicity and advertising, buying up competitors,  stuff that would increase their income. 

What will it take to get the Jewish community to vote Republican?

Obama was not a supporter of Israel.  This new rep Omar from Milwaukee is a friend of Palestinian terrorists and no friend of Israel. So is Alex Occasional Castro. The US Jewish community ought to wise up and dump the Democratic party for the Republican party.  The Republicans are long time friends of Israel, and reliably against  antisemitism in all its forms. It was Trump who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem.  It was the Republican party that led the civil rights movement of the 1960s.  The Democrats pander to their black supporters who are antisemitic at heart.

Beat the Press brings on Cohen

In case you hadn't noticed, the democrats have had Micheal Cohen, Trump's long time lawyer and fixer, testifying in front of Congress.  Even Fox News carried the hearings live, for hours.  Today, Sunday,  Chuck Todd on Beat the Press summarized the testimony, actually Todd reran video clips that he thought would hurt Trump the most.  I watched.  Actually, I didn't think that any of the things Todd showed were particularly bad, evil, or even just crude.  Todd showed a clip about Trump knowing about an upcoming Wikileaks dump of Hillary's damaging emails. So?  This is a violation of what?  Then there was a lotta talk about Trump trying to build a hotel in Moscow.  So?  To build anything in New York you gotta pay people off.  I'm sure it works the same, maybe worse, in Moscow.   And more talk about a meeting in  New York with a Russian agent who claimed to have dirt on Hillary to share with Trump.  So?  If I am running for election and anyone turns up dirt on my opponent, I'm gonna listen.  As I heard the story, the Trump people decided that the dirt on offer was fake at the first meeting with the agent  and didn't buy.  Not so dumb. 
   In short, Todd's best picks from Cohen's testimony failed to convince me that anything was out of order.  I am OK with Trump, but I would not describe myself as a true believer.  If the Cohen testimony doesn't convince me, it won't convince any of the Trump base voters. 
   Too bad the MSM wastes all that press coverage on a nothingburger story, rather than informing us of what is really going down in Washington. 

Lost Wax Casting, ancient technology, still in service

The process goes like this.  Make a wax version of the desired part or artwork.  Then cover the wax master  with clay.  The clay was fired (like pottery) to make it hard and tough.  In the firing the wax melted and ran out.  Then molten metal was poured into the clay mold and allowed to cool and harden.  When cool, the clay mold was broken off and you had a shiny new part or art object.  And no mold parting marks.  Aviation Week claims the lost wax process is 5000 years old.
   Today we call the process "investment casting"  and a lot of key aerospace parts are still made that way.  In fact Aviation Week was complaining about a lack of investment casting capacity  slowing production in the aerospace industry.   One key part made by investment casting is the turbine blades for jet engines.  The tougher you can make the turbine blades, the hotter you can run them which gives better fuel mileage, which translates into better range and better carrying capacity.  Modern turbine blades are very tricky, they have cooling passages up the center, they are cast from secret alloys involving a lot of nickel, and who knows what else, and they are cooled slowly and carefully so that they come out as single crystals of metal.  Some one commented "There are nine countries in the world that can make nuclear bombs, but only two, the US and the UK, that can make modern jet engine turbine blades."

USAF manages the KC-46 tanker contract

The KC-46 tanker job should have been a straight forward contract.  Take a well proven airliner which has been in production and flying for decades, take out the seats and install fuel tanks, plus an air-to-air refueling boom in the tail.  No high risk new technology.   Piece of cake, right?
   Well, first the Air Force decided that it knew more about how to wire an aircraft than Boeing did.  Air Force insisted that Boeing re do all the aircraft wiring "to bring it up to Air Force standards".  Good cost enhancer that was. 
   And then, the Air Force wanted a fancy remote vision system, rather than a plain old reliable glass window, to let the refueling boom operator see his boom and steer it into the receptacle of the receiving aircraft.  Now Air Force is complaining that the remote vision system  lacks contrast and looses detail when the receiving aircraft is backlighted by the sun.  (Beware the Hun in the Sun).   For the last two years USAF has refused to accept new KC-46 tankers 'cause of  the remote vision system and 40 brand new KC-46 tankers have piled up at Boeing's  Everett field.  Now, the Air Force has agreed to accept the aircraft, but they will withhold $28 mil per aircraft until the remote vision system is fixed. 
   How to screw up a simple procurement.   Way to go USAF. 
   Note: I am a USAF veteran. 

Green New Deal, or New Green Deal

Speaking as an electrical engineer, let me address one part of the Green New Deal, electric power generation.  We need to keep the power on for customers, all night, and all day.  "Alternate energy" (windmills and solar cells) won't do that.  For example, I live up in the north country where it gets very cold (20 below) and stays cold for days.  My oil burner won't run without electricity.  Should the power go off, my heat goes off, and my pipes will freeze after a couple of hours.  Lots of industrial processes, from traditional ones like baking bread to high tech ones like fabbing semiconductors need the power to stay on while the batch, be it loaves or LSI semiconductors is in the oven.  If the power quits while a batch is in process, that batch is ruined.  Loss of a batch of loaves is a loss of hundreds of dollars, loss of a batch of semiconductors is tens of thousands of dollars.  Plenty of other batch processes will be ruined if the power fails while the batch is in process.
   Solar cells stop making electricity when the sun goes down.  Which happens every evening.  Windmills stop making electricity when the wind stops blowing, which happens less predictably, but often enough. My house is high in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and I get plenty of dead calm days.  In fact it's a dead calm as I write this.  A power system based on solar and wind will suffer frequent power outages, like every night.  Which is unacceptable, except for those who advocate a return to the Hiawatha life style, teepees heated by wood fires. 
   The greenies have poisoned the waters concerning nuclear power.  We have built dams on all the rivers.  Just the middle sized Connecticut river has six power dams on it starting with Moore Dam in Littleton.  If we want the power to stay on all night, we need to burn natural gas.  Fortunately we have plenty of natural gas.  It's becoming a waste product of fracking.  Out on the Bakken they are paying people to take the gas away.  Natural gas is out competing coal in the power generation business.  
   So, Alexandra Occasional-Castro's call for elimination of fossil fuel ain't gonna happen, not unless we put up with power failures on a daily basis. 

Better double check your yearbook, while you are in the school

A 30 year old yearbook is causing Virginia governor Northam all sorts of grief today.  Lesson to all graduates,  better double check your year book page while you are still at the school.  Remove anything that might cause you grief in the future, should you be successful in your career.  I would recommend strongly against gag photos, photos in any kind of costume, nick names, any kind of sexting, any kind of political remarks.  Keep it down to a professional portrait of yourself, honors, sports played, club memberships, good simple stuff that will look good 20-30 years in the future. 

MAGA hats show support for our president and the administration

Which is a good thing.  Americans ought to support their president.   As a symbol, the Make American Great Again slogan was created by the Donald Trump campaign in 2016 as part of his effort to win the election.  The acronym and the hat were created a few weeks later.   The MAGA hat means support of the sitting president, nothing more.
   There has been plenty of opining on the tube about the MAGA hat representing racism, white supremacy, un-Americanism, Satan worship, and other malarky.  That's all a crock.  We elected Donald Trum p to be our president in 2016.   To see high school students wearing MAGA hats is a goodness.  The current administration, under attack from the media and the democrats, needs all the support it can get. 

900 year New England temp record meets Shannon's sampling theorem

A post in Phys.org claims to have used a new method to find and plot the temperature recorded in the bottom of a deep Maine lake.  They perform some unspecified analysis of a chemical that I have never heard of to determine the temperature of long ago.  They don't explain this bit of chemistry at all.  They claim to have taken 136 measurements over some 900 years of lake bottom sediments.  And they claim to have discovered previously unknown temperature variations of 50-60 year duration.
Good paper,  the authors feel they have made a breakthru.
I think they have not taken enough samples.  Temperature in Maine can get up to 90F in the summer, I've been there, I know, and Maine winter runs 20F with cold snaps down as far as -40F.  And  this temperature variation, 70 to 130 degrees, happens quite regularly, summer and winter happen every year.  So we only take 136 samples over 900 summers and winters.  Suppose our samples hit mostly summer for a few years?  Bingo, a heat wave wave, global warming strikes early.  Suppose our samples only hit winter for a few more years in a row?  Bingo, a mini ice age.  
   To do this right, you have to take at least two samples for every year.  That's Shannon's Sampling Theorem, you have to sample twice in the period of the highest frequency  in the signal you are sampling.  If you don't take enough samples, you get aliasing.  That is what causes the wheels of the stagecoach to start turning backwards as the stage gathers speed on the way out of Deadwood.  The movie camera samples the wheels 24 frames per second.  When the wheel spokes move too much in between camera frames, the wheel appears to move in reverse. 
   This paper claims to find 10  different 50-60 year periods of heat or cold.  Since they are not taking enough samples, they could well be seeing an alias.  Their samples  just happen to hit summer for a long stretch of years, or just happen to hit winter for a long stretch of years.  That's aliasing, and will show you imaginary hot spells and cold spells.  Just as imaginary as the stagecoach wheels running backwards.
  About the best you can do with this under sampled data is divvy it up into convenient slices, say 100 years each, and take the average over each 100 year slice.  Then you can look for temperature changes from century to century. 

Microbrewers hung up by the Shutdown

According to today's Wall St Journal, micro brewers need approval from some federal bureau or other before they can market new brews or new labels.  The brewers have thousands of gallons of suds sitting in tanks, waiting for that bureau to come back to work and do their paperwork.
   Sounds like a severe case of micromanagement to me.  I don't see why brewers, or any other company, except maybe drug companies,  need federal bureaucrats to approve labels, recipes, packaging, or anything else.  If the customers don't like the new recipe or label or whatever, they will stop buying the product.  That ought be enough to keep the brewers and other companies  making good stuff. 

Drug Pushing Robo Callers and the Opioid Crisis

I am getting a phone call every other day now.  It's a robocaller who starts out asking if I am feeling any pain, and goes on to point me toward a pain clinic that will prescribe any kind of happy pill I might want.  I wonder how many opioid addicts get started by such drug pushing robocallers.  For that matter how many opioid addicts get started at those pain clinics, like the one that opened up here in Littleton a year or so ago?  Anyone have any numbers on this?

Near Money and the federal deficit.

Money goes back to King Croesus of Lydia, 595-547 BC.   In his time money was precious metals (gold or silver, sometimes copper) stamped into coins of uniform size and purity.  Coins made commerce easier, you could do a deal by simply counting the coins,  prior to that,  you had to find a balance and a set of trusted weights and weigh the gold or silver in order to do the deal. 
   In those days there was not much that could be done to alter the money supply, short of a silver or gold strike.  The Athenian fleet that crushed the Persians at Salamis was built with the proceeds of a rich silver strike on Athenian soil.  More commonly kings would debase the coinage by adding lead to the silver or copper to the gold.  But they could not debase the coinage so far that the coins looked funny, which was probably in the order of 50%, which is the same as doubling the money supply.
   Paper money was invented in the middle ages, after Gutenberg invented printing.   The obvious benefit was there was no shortage of paper and the king could print as much money as he needed to meet payroll when times were tight.  The drawback to paper money is a lot of people distrust [ed] it.  As late as the American Revolution the printing of Continental dollars to finance the war was controversial and there is language in the Constitution forbidding the states to "make Anything but Gold and Silver coin a Tender in Payment of Debts"
   Paper money finally won, certainly because huge amounts of money were needed to run the huge new economies that came out of the Industrial Revolution.  There just isn't enough gold and silver to make the vast modern economies work.  We also learned that printing too much money reduces it's buying power.  When I was a child ice cream cones were 5 cents, comic books were 10 cents, and gasoline was 28 cents.  Now ice cream cones are $2.50, comic books are $4-$5, and gasoline is $2.80.  In short the buying power of the US dollar has gone down by a factor of ten over my lifetime. Any money in bank accounts is only worth a tenth of what it was worth 60 years ago. 
    Now we come to my college economics course,  using Samuelson as a text,   Samuelson wrote about "near money" by which he meant government bonds.  He wrote that issuing a bond was just about the same as printing new dollar bills.  Consider the US T-bill.  It is backed by the full faith and credence of the United States, the most powerful nation on earth with an enviable record of never welshing on its debts.  There is a bond market, where the bond can be converted into real cash on any working day,  Holding a bond is nearly as good as holding cash, plus you earn interest on the bond.  So Samuelson called government bonds "near money". 
   Now we get the point.  When the federal government is short on money, ("runs a deficit") it sells bonds  to raise the cash to meet its bills.  Which is just about the same as printing dollar bills.  It's inflationary,  Printing money is why the value of the US dollar has dropped to a tenth of what it was when I was a child.  Printing "near money: works about the same. 
  So far, despite humongous deficits run up by Obama, and the humongous bond sales to make payroll, the inflation rate has remained under 2%.  Dunno how that  happens, but is has. 

"Technology" in place of a real wall

We tried that once.  I was in Thailand back during the war.  We tried to close the Ho Chi Minh trail.  It was a real foot path, running from North Viet Nam, down thru Laos, to South Viet Nam.  The Viet Cong got all their supplies back packed down the trail.  It took a lotta comrades with back packs to equal what we brought to our troops using a single Army truck.   The trail ran under triple canopy jungle all the way.  You could not see it from the air.  The jungle canopy was so thick that when we dropped 1000 pound bombs we could not see the leaves even ripple when they exploded on the ground. 
   So, we dropped sensors up and down the trail where we thought it ran.  We brought in a squadron of big four engine C121 Super Constellation  recon aircraft to fly up and down the trail reading all the sensors, which were mostly microphones.  The plan was to have the Connies call in air strikes when ever they detected anything on the trail.  All they ever picked up was some monkeys, screaming at each other, and some water buffalo crashing thru the underbrush.  Never detected any comrades for us to bomb. 
   Now I am hearing Democrats on TV saying that "technology" is better to secure the southern border than a plain old wall.  Every time I hear that it reminds me of closing the Ho Chi Minh trail with "technology". 

Beat the Press goes up against the Shutdown

Host Chuck Todd spent much of his hour ait time wailing about the government shutdown.  Strange.  They have been shut down for two weeks and I haven't missed them at all.  My mail is getting delivered.  I don't expect a refund check from the IRS, so they can stay shut down forever far as I am concerned.  I don't fly much so I don't care about the TSA. 
   Far as I can see, things are working with some 800,000 civil servants off the job.  Maybe we could keep on that way and save some taxpayer money.  These people get paid far better than they would in the private sector, far better than most of my constituents in Coos county, they have first class medical benefits, first class pensions, and they are all democrats.  My sympathy for them is limited.  If they run out of money they can go out and get a real job in the private economy. 
   And, if the Congress had done their duty earlier this year, and passed the federal funding bills like they are supposed to, the government would be open right now. 

The Last Kingdom 2015

It is a TV series for 2015.  I netflixed the first disk.  It is a historical drama, Vikings vs Saxons in 900 AD England.  I watched episode 1.  I don't think I will bother with the rest of them.
   They hired the worthless cameraman from Game of Thrones, the one who turns the lights out on set before filming.  Some black on black scenes, and all the scenes so poorly lit I could not tell one character from another.  Plus everyone dressed alike,  identical outfits of furs and grey homespun.  We see the protagonist start off as a 12 year old Saxon heir to an important Saxon noble family.  He gets captured by and raised by the Vikings.  We see him as a 12 year old, and suddenly a time jump and he is a young man.  Uhtred serves more as a target for abuse, both from his Saxon family and his Viking adoptive family than a real protagonist.  If Uhtred has a mission to accomplish, or a quest to go on, you couldn't prove it by me.   His relationship with a girlfriend is pretty tentative, we never hear the girlfriend's name.   

Beware *.mov files

A new piece of malware places files with names like AB1234.mov on your hard drive.  They are badness, and clicking on them, to see what is in them, crashes my XP computer.  A quick search with Explorer found 11 of them.  I zapped them all.

Aquaman 2018

Saw it down in Lincoln last night.  It's long.  2 & 1/4 hours.  It doesn't move very fast.  Lots of really pretty CGI work creating Atlantis under water.  Lots of combat, chases, smashing and crashing.  Much of the movie is underwater down in Atlantis.  The underwater bit is convincing, the actor's hair waves gently in water currents, they float in the water, feet not touching the floor.  Lots of battle scenes, actors riding huge unlikely sea beasts.  When the sea beasts take enough hits from energy weapons they burst into flames, under water, which is a little confusing.  There is a plot,  Aquaman must retrieve a lost magical trident.  We only learn this halfway thru the movie.  Aquaman's girlfriend Mera has really outstanding bright red hair.  Brighter and redder than anything I ever saw on stage or in real life.  I kept wondering how they did that.  Was it a superior hair dresser?  A wig?  Digital retouching  with a professional movie maker's version of Photoshop?  It was striking no matter how they did it.  Nicole Kidman played Aquaman's mother, starting by falling in love with Somebody-or-Other Curry, a Maine light house keeper.  She is as cute as Mera.  Nobody addresses anyone by name in the movie, I had to go to IMDB to find the stage names. 
   The camera man did turn the lights on, and all the scenes were watchable, no black on black mystery scenes.  Sound man was adequate but not great.  The guy who did Spiderman was better, but I caught most of the dialog.
    Lots of hand to hand combat, fighters tossed each other tremendous distances, landing with a hard crash that ought to have killed an elephant, but everybody bounces right up and goes for another fall.  Atlantians (except Aquaman) wore armor and carried energy weapons.  Aquaman was into tridents and the bare chest look. 

Beat The Press does global warming today

Host Scott Todd started off the Sunday show by saying, "We are not goi9ng to discuss the science (that is settled) or give deniers a voice"  Translation "Ye shall believe in Global Warming and why are you not sacrificing to it?"  Well, I believe in thermometer readings.  Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS for short)  maintains a database of every temperature reading going right back to the invention of the thermometer.  I downloaded the whole schmeer.  It was old fashioned, data in fixed length 80 byte records, no separators, clearly a file going back to punch card times.  I wrote a simple data swabber in C to convert the old GISS data into comma separated variable format acceptable to Excel.  Plotted in Excel, the data shows that global warming leveled off 19 years ago.  Not a peep since 1999.  So, no I don't believe in global warming since it doesn't show up to thermometers.  I am an engineer, I believe in instrument readings. 
   The show went on.  They gave Governor Moonbeam a lot of air time. He spent it ranting against Republicans who fail to sacrifice to global warming.  The gist of the show, we need a good stiff "Carbon tax" to curb the burning of fuels.  And politicians who fail to vote to tax their constituents to support the holy cause are sinners.

HIding "Libraries" in Win 10

Micro$oft decided to clutter up Explorer with the concept of "Libraries".  They musta had a lot of software weenies hanging with nothing to do.  A library shows up in Explorer and looks pretty much like a file folder.  Win 10 comes with four built in libraries, Documents, Videos, Pictures and one other.  Although a "Library" looks like a file folder, it is not really a file folder, it's a collection of shortcuts.   If there is any use for "libraries" I have yet to discover it. 
I was able to clean up my explorer display by going to "View" and then "Navigation Pane" (far left and lower down)  Uncheck "Libraries" and bingo, most, maybe all of the duplicate file entries go away.  Making it much easier to find files.  Since Micro$oft assigns ALL your files to one of the four "libraries" it blesses you with, then ALL your files show up TWICE in Explorer, a PITA.

Now, if I could find a way to make Explorer search the ENTIRE hard drive, I might really have something.

Game of Thrones Season 7

I think this show is wearing out.  Too bad, it has been fun.  They killed off too many of the interesting characters.  About all we have left are Denarys and Arya.  The camera man is still on his turn-the-lights-out kick, producing totally black scenes, and a lot of scenes so poorly lit I cannot identify the characters in the scene.  The sound man isn't doing very well.  I cannot catch a lot of the dialog.  They would do much better with the soundman from the newest Spiderman flick,  I could understand every line of dialog  the spidermen spoke.  Why cannot Game of Thrones do as well?  So far in season 7 they are bracing for the attack of the White Walkers from north of the wall.  John Snow is trying to cut some kinda deal with Denarys and her dragons.  Some great scenes of flying dragons spouting fire on enemy infantry and barbecuing them all.   We don't see much of Denarys' Dothraki horde, although she has finally gotten them to Westeros. I got a couple of more episodes to watch, but so far nothing much has happened.  Things move slowly.  

Half the history books look like political rants

I am Christmas shopping at Gibson's bookstore in Concord NH.  They have been in business a long time, and now occupy a fine big new building right on Main St.  Good stock.  Lots of books.  I am browsing the history shelf.  It struck me that at least half the books called history had titles and dust jackets suggesting either a political rant or a strong lefty slant.  I wonder where the schools are going for textbooks these days.  No sign of Morison and Commager, the college level go to US history book when I went to college.   Or Bruce Catton.  Or Shelby Foote.  Or Winston Churchill.

Buck passing, finger pointing, and Gov'mint shutdown

Congress is supposed to fund the federal government by passing appropriation bills, one for each department (defense, state, treasury, HHS, etc).  Congress did manage to pass a few appropriation bills this year, but appropriation bills for a lot of paper pushing departments never got passed.  And so they are furloughing their civil servants just in time for Christmas. 
   Let's blame that on footdragging by the Democrats and obstructionism by right wing Republicans.  But if Congress had done its duty, we would not be having a shutdown right now.  The Democrats like to wait til the last minute and then pass a "continuing resolution", one giant bill funding the whole federal government.  The one giant funding bill is so big that nobody understands it, anything goes into it,  and there are plenty of hiding places for juicy pieces of pork.  Where as an appropriation bill for just one department can be understood (with a lot of study) and once understood, can be changed to give Congress some control over what each department can do.
   This time the TV tells me that 75% of the government has been funded, and thus stays open.  Only 25% is shutting down.  The list of shutting down departments they flash on the TV screen seems to be mostly departments that don't do anything for citizens, and which we could do without, for ever.  It's a little tough on the civil servants who are gonna miss a pay check at Christmas time.  On the other hand, civil service jobs pay better and have better benefits and retirement than private sector jobs.  And civil servants are mostly Democrats. 

Congress lacks the stones to vote to keep the government open

Both House and Senate, facing important votes to keep the government running and fund President Trump's border wall, have failed to vote on the bill[s].  Instead they have been conducting meaningless "procedural" votes.   The one in the Senate has been stalled, killing any Senate business for 4 hours now.  A real vote is a vote to pass or kill the bill on the floor.  Procedural votes don't do that, they soak up time, they give legislators the opportunity to vote one way on the "procedural" vote and the other way on the real vote, so they can tell their constituents  both yes and no, I voted for it on the procedural vote and against it on the real vote. 
  If the government shuts down, blame it on totally opaque Congressional procedures that failed to bring the needed legislation to a real up or down floor vote.   Lack of stones.

Wall Street Wails over 2.5% interest rate from the Fed.

The Fed bumped interest rates up by 0.25% to 2.5% overall.  The Dow Jones dropped 400 points and every pundit is crying that the Fed is killing the recovery and throwing the country back into Great Depression 2.0.  Right.
   6% has been considered a proper interest rate, going back to  medieval times.  I remember my first house mortgage at 7 and 1/8th, way back in the 1970's,  thinking at the time that I had a pretty decent mortgage rate.   Far as I am concerned all the weeping and wailing  over 2.5% is coming from modern snowflakes.    Bring on that global warming and melt those crybaby snowflakes. 

Spiderman, the Spiderverse

Saw this yesterday in Lincoln with youngest son.  Its long.  It moves slowly.  The animation and art  work is good, fine images.  Give the video folks a few more years and we will not be able to tell live actors from CGI actors.  Aunt May is very convincing, in a few more years they will be able to slip her into a live action movie and we could not tell that she was not acted by a human.  Sound man does good, I could understand all the lines.  Camera man (CGI artists?) done good, all the scenes are properly lighted.  It's animation all the way, no live actors at all.  
    Miles some-thing-or-other, is the teen age protagonist.  He is drawn as black or Hispanic.  He serves mostly as a punching bag thru out the film.  He doesn't seem to have a mission, he doesn't do much, he gets dumped on, he seldom  acts for himself.  He has an impenetrable relation with his father (a cop) and an uncle who alternates between family member and masked villain.  The artist doing Miles should have made him cuter, more like the ultra cute but nameless Spider girl.
   Plot is strange.  Some kinda inter dimensional door opens and Spidermen (and girls) from a dozen strange dimension turn up, including Peter Porker.  
   Only diehard Spiderman fans need to see this flick.  It's too long and slow moving for  kids.

Bimbo payoffs are now campaign finance violations???

Paying off a bimbo to keep her mouth shut is kinda slimey, and NOT an indicator of good moral character, but it ain't a campaign finance violation.  Even  Alan Dershowitz  agrees with me on this point.  Why this Cohen character, former fixer for Donald Trump, is pleading guilty to a campaign finance violation 'cause he cut the check[s] to one or two bimbos is a mystery to me.  You would think an experienced lawyer/fixer would put up more of a fight in court.  And for that matter,  I'd expect Donald Trump to do more than he has to keep an old buddy/fixer out of jail. 

Congressional Hearing on Google reveals smart phones report your position, every minute

Scary,  Testimony in front of Congress this morning claims that Android cell phones report their ( and their owners) position about once a minute.  I only carry a cheap dumb phone.  I wonder what it is reporting, and to whom it reports to.    The idea that the government, the cops, NSA, FBI and who knows who else can know where I am, minute by minute, is scary.  I certainly am not gonna update to a smart phone. 

NH Senate Organization Day

Second day on the job.   Left the house at 7 AM.  Got to Concord a little past 8 8AM.  Since they had not assigned me a State House parking space, I parked in the shopping mall and walked up.  It's only a couple of blocks. 

   We met in the newly refurbished Senate chamber.  Lovely corner room, with lots of nice big windows on two walls.  Lots of sunlight.  All the elaborate wood work had a fresh new coat of cream colored paint, new carpet,  half the murals had been cleaned.  Governor Sununu swore us all in. First order of business was to elect Donna Soucy of Manchester as the new Senate president.  She was nominated and then we did a voice vote.  All aye's, no nays.   Then we re-elected Tammy Wright as Senate clerk, same procedure  just one nomination followed by a unanimous voice vote.

    Then we got down to a substantive vote for the Secretary of State.  We moved into the house chamber, they had seats for us in front.   Bill Gardener  is the incumbent, has been for better than 40 years.  He has kept NH scandal free, no Florida style disasters.  He favors the use of paper ballots, which I agree is a good idea.  They cannot hack  paper ballots over the internet.  Colin Van Osten  was the challenger.  A lot of democrats like Van Osten because he looks likely to enfranchise a bunch of democrat leaning voters that Gardener won't.  After nominating speeches, followed by seconding speeches,   we voted by paper ballot.  When those were counted, we had 208 votes for Gardener, and 207 for Van Osten.   That caused a tizzy, the Speaker declared the margin too thin and we would have to vote again.  This set off  an hour of  motions and speeches  and citing of  "rules".  Then we did a second paper ballot  and Gardener squeaked by 209 to 205.

    By then it was 4 in the afternoon and getting dark.  The bankers threw a free beer and munchies event across the street at Tandy's.  Naturally I stopped in, I never turn down free beer.  Spent about an hour, chatting with a whole bunch of people.  Got on the road home at 5 PM.  It was pitch dark by then.  Traffic going north on I93 was heavy, but it kept moving right along at 70 mph.  Got home a little after 6PM.  Cat was overjoyed to see her human back safe and sound. 

Ivanhoe 1952 Taylor and Taylor

Too bad Hollywood has forgotten how to make movies as good as this one.   It stars a young Elizabeth Taylor as Rebecca of York.  The movie is a love triangle with Joan Fountaine (Rowena) and Elizabeth Taylor (Rebecca) competing for the attentions of Robert Taylor (Wilfred of Ivanhoe).  Elizabeth Taylor is ultra cute, has good lines, speaks them well, and nearly snags Ivanhoe away from Rowena.  Robert Taylor plays a fine knight, brave, chivalrous, and a stout fighter. The movie is based on a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, published way back when, sometime in the 19th century.  It is set in the 12th century and revolves around ransoming King Richard Lion Heart from the Austrians and preventing his brother John from taking over England.  The history isn't bad, a few names have been changed but most of the stuff in the movie really did happen.  Richard's minstrel Blondell did actually go from castle to castle looking for Richard.  In the movie Ivanhoe gets Blondell's job, but heh it's a movie, a little poetic license is perfectly legitimate.  We have real jousting, on horseback and with long lances.  The knights wear period correct chain mail rather than gleaming plate armor which didn't come in until a couple of hundred years later. We have a castle stormed and taken by Robin Hood and his merry men.   We have King Richard returning in time to save the day in the last reel.  It's in Technicolor which always gives the best red rendition and good color saturation.  The costumes are good looking, and everyone wears a different color, so we can keep track of who is who.  Sound is excellent, I can understand every line.  In it's day Ivanhoe won three Oscars, and was nominated for four more. 
    Netflix has it.  Enjoy.

TV Newsies starting the 2020 presidential campaign right now.

I'm watching Beat the Press on NBC with Chuck Todd.  He said some nice words about President Bush, now deceased, and then moved on to prognosticating about 2020.  First of all, I am tired of election horse race talk, we have had too much of it for the last two years.  Second of all, nobody knows what's gonna happen in 2020.  Pure speculation, and I am tired of that. 
   Surely something real happened somewhere in the world worth a little air time?  

I don't understand all the Manaport and Cohen talk

The TV newsies are all excited about it.  Even Fox News who ought to know better. Me, I don't understand what either of them are accused of doing, I don't know if what they are accused of is a real crime, and I don't understand how this relates to Trump, other than both of them used to work for Trump.   Back in 2016, before Trump got elected, it isn't illegal to do a real estate deal in Moscow.  Might be stupid, because you cannot take Russian real estate out of the country, and inside Russia there are no courts that can protect your investment from seizure by the government.   But it ain't illegal for Americans to do business in Russia. 

What costs $1 million a pound?

Answer,  the Insight Mars Lander.  The lander weighs 850 pounds.  The Insight program cost $829 million.  How much of all that money went into engineering and manufacturing Insight and how much went into NASA paper pushing?

Orientation Day for new NH legislators.

First day on the job as NH senator. Tuesday was on-the-job training day at the Statehouse. Due to winter storm warnings, snowmageddon stories and general excitement on the TV I left for Concord half and hour earlier than I usually do. I swept about 2 inches of snow off the car. I93 was nice and clear, well plowed. Just a few slippery spots. All the flashing light signs were flashing "Slow Down" and "Speed limit 45". Traffic was moving at 70 all the way to Concord. Heaviest snow, maybe 6 inches, was south around Franklin and Tilton.  Heavy wet snow, it was bending the trees in U shapes with the treetops touching the ground.  I got to the Statehouse a half an hour early, Joe Burke, chief of security, was standing outside in the rain to wave me into a parking spot in the statehouse garage, real luxury.

The program for the day was lectures on legislative process, ethics over view, a walking tour of the statehouse, pitches by the council of state governments, and then the national conference of state legislatures, a nice lunch, how a committee works, media relationships.

I finished off the day by meeting with a guy from the NH homebuilders association in the restaurant across the street.

Drove home, got their after dark. Driveway unplowed, although one of Ken King's people came by this morning and shoveled out the car.

Do the Brits understand Brexit?

Surely the Economist (a Brit publication if there ever was one) seems pretty clueless.  They ran a 4 page piece in the current issue about "no-deal" Brexit.   The deal that Theras May has gotten thru her cabinet and was approved by the EU according to this morning's Wall St Journal, was a pretty mild Brexit.  Britain would retain her current membership in the EU customs union, which I think means she retains duty free access to the rest of Continent.   She would have to abide by a lot of EU regulations about labeling and  lead free solder and safety and radio frequency emissions and the like, she would have to pay up some $50 billion of previous committments, and a lot of other stuff.  She get to keep duty free entrance to the EU.  The Economist is all in favor.  A lot, nobody knows just how many, members of parliament don't like it, they think it is Remain disguised as Brexit. 
   Numbers I have seen show 30% of Britain's economy is exports to the EU.  If all those British exports have to pay the going EU tariff of 10%, a lot of that business would go to continental suppliers.  The Economist dosn't talk about this at all. 
   They do kvetch about Parliament rejecting the Theresa May deal in favor of a "no deal" Brexit.  They wrote about all sorts of unlikely problems, like banning of air service to the continent,  problems with electric power exports or imports, a Northern Ireland customs border, lotta other stuff, all of which seemed sorta second rate to me.  The Economist piece never talked about the effect of 10% EU tariffs on British exports to the continent, which to my way of thinking is the major problem with the "no-deal" option of Brexit.

Turkey day travel

Drove from Franconia to Bowie Maryland on Friday.  Took 11 hours.  I left Franconia at 6 AM after brushing an inch of snow off the car.  Did the backwoods shortcut to North Haverill and then took I93, to I84, to Tappan Zee bridge.  Rpads were clear.  Hit the New York border and then encountered my first potholes, on an interstate no less, and then my first traffic jam.  Good work New York State.  Found the old Blue Colony diner at I84 exit 10.  In the old days the Blue Colony had signs up and down I84 for fifty miles in either direction.  Those are gone now, but exit 10 looked familiar, and when I pulled off, there she was.  So I had brunch, coffee and a Belgian waffle with strawberries and whipped cream. 
   Looks like the American sedan is going extinct.  I saw a lot of econoboes, pickup trucks, cross over SUV's and 18 wheelers.  very few sedans.  Ford said they were going to stop making them. 
   New York signage is as bad as ever.  I only saw three signs for the Tappen Zee bridge.  I also saw three signs for the Mario Cuomo Memorial Bridge.  I guess the guv'nor wants to rename a landmark bridge after himself.  That will confuse the tourists but good.
   I started off with the car heater set to full hot.  Every 100 miles or so I would set it a couple of notches toward cool.  But the time I got to Delaware I turned of the heater and set "Vent" forfresh air.  A couple of printed Google maps got me to Bowie and onto my daughters street, but I had to use the celery phone to call and find her house. 

That Brexit deal

Lotta talk about it.  None of the talk I hear talks about the really important issue.  Right now, British exports (like one third of GNP) go to the Continent duty free.  Come March, that might go away.  If British exports have to face full EU tariffs, that will hurt the Brits a lot.  The Continent has ridiculous unemployment, which means plenty of Continental suppliers will be happy to step in to replace British suppliers.   So, what kind of tariff deal will the Brits get after Brexit?  More of the current duty free deal?  Full EU tariffs?  something inbetween? 
   The newsies are not talking, either  they don't understand, or they don't know, or perhaps both.

So who is reporting the narrative?

California governor Jerry Brown is blaming the wild fires on global warming.  President Trump blames the fires on poor forest management, failure to log off dead trees.  Several people on Face book  support that view.  The MSM haven't said boo about forest management.  Certainly, back here in NH,  we know that wood lands need some logging to take out the dead and fully grown trees to remove fuel and open up the leaf canopy to let in some sunlight and encourage new growth.  I haven't been in California for thirty years, and I never got out in the California woods to see how things were, and I am not enough of a forester to tell a well tended forest from a poorly tended one.  We get a lot more rain in NH than they do out in  California, which surely reduces our fire hazard.  Nevertheless I find President Trump's position, poor forest management,  fairly convincing. 

Hillary to run again in 2020

That's what the TV newsies and the internet are saying this morning.  The never ending presidential campaign rolls on.  Speaking as a Republican, I hope she does run again.  She is as weak a candidate as you can find.  In 2016 she had no platform, she brought a whole railway car full of ugly baggage, she made no campaign promises, and she never spoke about anything except in that neutral campaign speak tone that pols use when they wish to conceal their true thoughts.  If the Democrats are misguided enough to nominate her, again, Trump will have no trouble beating her handily, again. 

World War I ended 100 years ago today

World War I ended just 100 years ago today.  It was a terrible war.  It lasted four awful years.  The war wrecked Europe.  It created Soviet Communism, a menace to civilization that would not be defeated for 70 years.  Before the war, Europe had ruled the world.  After the war Europe could barely feed itself. 

    The tragedy is that no one in Europe knew why they were fighting.  Woodrow Wilson had to create the 14 points to explain to Americans what their war aims were and why we should join the fighting.  The Europeans didn't have a clue as to why they were pouring out their blood and treasure. 

    The spark that set off WWI was a Serbian terrorist assassinating the heir to the throne of the Austro Hungarian empire.  Naturally the Austrians wanted to retaliate and kick some Serbian tail.  Serbia was a small backwards 3rd or 4th class power, and what should have happened was a short "police action" where the Austrian army occupied Serbia, hanged a few more terrorists, and incorporated  Serbia into the Austro Hungarian empire as a province.  Unfortunately the Russians, for reasons that have never been explained, decided they would protect Serbia from Austrian aggression.  The Austrians looked to their German ally for support, and they got it.  "I'm 1000% behind Austria" was the tone of the German reply.   Germany was run by a nincompoop emperor in those days.  A more developed state would have a foreign office, an effective parliament, and various other institutions of government, that would prevent a single klutz from leading the entire nation into war, especially a war over a worthless piece of real estate like Serbia.  

   None of the leaders of the time had any understanding of how the industrial revolution had increased the populations, the economies,  and the will to fight all over Europe.  The European great powers were able to field million man armies, where as the last serious war, the US Civil War,  General Grant only had 100,000 men under his command at Appomattox.  Ten times the manpower, and armed with small arms so good we still use them today.  After the war, all the surviving leaders of 1914 said that if they had known how bad the war would be, they never would have allowed it to break out.

We need more nutcase control, not more gun control

Many, more than half, of the dreadful mass shooting are done by deranged people, people who every one, friends, family, police, school teachers, pastors, neighbors, knew had heavy duty mental illness.   These deranged people should have been committed to a mental hospital long before they cut loose and kill a dozen or more innocent people.   It's not the guns, it's the nut cases pulling the triggers.  Put the nut cases away and we will have less mass shootings.
   This needs very careful safeguards to prevent abuse.  We are talking about committing some one against their will, someone who has not committed a crime, yet.  The Soviets used to put their political opponents away in mental hospitals on flimsy evidence.  There ought to be some kind of board, with an experienced cop, a psychiatrist or two,  an experienced teacher, a priest and a minister, and perhaps more.  In each case they should take testimony from the accused nut case, his parents, siblings, friends, teachers,  and others.  The accused should be able to call witnesses in his behalf.  There ought to be some review. 
   Short of this, authorities, police, schools, should be more pro active when they encounter one of these nut cases.  Right now the authorities tend to just dismiss the matter to save  themselves a lot of paperwork.  They ought to take an interest, do some checking around, do a little surveillance, with an eye to prosecution.

It's snowing up in Franconia Notch

It's full dark so I cannot see much, but I have a lotta snow in the deck light.

Why I think the Mueller investigation is a crock

Mueller is trying to prove that the Russians tried to get Trump to win in 2016 by doing something, nobody knows what, to help Trump and hinder Hillary. 
   This is a crock because the Russians wanted Hillary as the new US president.  Benghazi showed that Hillary had no stomach for retaliation for destruction of a consulate and killing four of her people.  She isn't very brave, she isn't very smart, and she would not give Putin any trouble as he invaded various small countries around the Russian borders.   Trump on the other hand was an unknown quantity,  who might be belligerent, who would oppose Russian takeovers along their border, and might do almost anything. 
   Putin is an old KGB hand, he has good intel, and I am sure he understood the differences between Hillary and Trump back in 2016.  He probably expected Hillary to win in 2016 because the entire US mainstream media thought that Hillary would win. 
   I think the whole "collusion" (what ever that means) and Russian interference in the US election is a Democrat idea to give Trump some flak and conceal Democrat corruption of US intelligence agencies, especially the FBI.

New Hampshire, a red wave? or a red ripple?

Despite a good economy, low unemployment, rising wages, all the things a good economy brings, New Hampshire voters went Democrat.  They elected enough legislators to give the Democrats control of both houses and the executive council.  Democrats claimed both US representative seats.  Chris Sununu, the Republican governor survived with about a 5% margin over Democrat Molly Kelly.  Kelly is mostly known for her desire to raise taxes, all kinds of taxes.   I won the District 1 seat in the NH Senate, with no support from radio, TV, or print press.  This happened partly due to placing yard signs all over the district, and partly due to my Democrat opponent's indictment on charges of domestic violence back in August. 
   Why did all the voters go Democrat despite excellent economy and a balanced state budget?  All I can think of is a LOT of voters have been turned off by President Trump.  Despite excellent numbers on the economy (GNP growth is up, unemployment is down, stock market is up, taxes are down) Trump's personal style is offensive to many. 

TV newsies say the election is close, everywhere.

So, tomorrow I vote, I poll stand, and then I go home and watch the results on TV.  From what the newsies are saying, anything could happen. 

Everybody ought to go out and vote on Tuesday

It is the duty of all citizens of a democracy to vote.  Voting sets the course the country will follow. We need all our rational citizens to vote to keep our country on a rational course of action.  Even  if you don't like either candidate, one candidate will be better than the other.  Your duty as a citizen  is to vote for the lesser of two evils.   And your vote counts. 
   I remember dragging youngest son to a school board meeting at which the vote was to pass a serious (big bucks) bond issue to construct a new building for the school youngest son had just graduated from.  That bond issue passed by ONE vote.  On the way home I told youngest son that I never wanted to hear him bitch that his vote would not count.  It was his vote that got us a new school building.  

Micro$oft breaks Win 10, Again

Back in Windows XP, you were protected against accidentally copying a old version of a file over the latest version of the file.  Wind 10 no longer protects against this.  There I am backing up Trusty Desktop onto Flatbeast my laptop.  On Trusty Desktop I copy my recent files, such as my checkbook, my list of books, my medications, a bunch of photos, and other stuff onto a flash drive.  I carry the flash drive over to Flatbeast  and start copying the latest versions of the files off the flash drive onto Flatbeast's hard drive.  Of course,  I have done this in the past, and Flatbeast's hard drive already contains old versions of these files.
  Back in the good old days of Win XP, you would get a message box saking "Do you  REALLY want to overwrite file such-and-such date such and such with  same file name, date somthingelse?"   And you would look at the file dates, and most often you would say "Go for it" if you were overwriting an older file with a newer one.
   Now we are stuck with Win 10 and we get a similar message box, EXCEPT,   one of the file dates comes up as "Unknown".  So the question now reads "Do you REALLY want of overwrite file such-and-such date such-and-such with same file name, file date UNKNOWN?  
   Of course you don't want to do that.  Do you?  So maybe you don't back up your files, maybe you say "Press on regardless", maybe you do some double checking.  But on Win 10 you have a lotta ways of messing up in file back up which good old Win XP handled correctly.
   Looks like the  Micro$sofies have been spending programming effort in breaking things that used to work.

Birth right Citizenship

Amendment 14.  Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the Stte wherein they reside."    I am not a lawyer, my degrees are in history and electrical engineering.  Lawyers have odd ways of reading and writing.  "Subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in ordinary English means citizen, legal alien, green card holder, and at a stretch, tourist visa holder.
  So to an ordinary reading of the 14th Amendment, there is no requirement to grant citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants, they are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.  Newsies who claim that a constitutional amendment is needed are just plain wrong.
   Trump could stop Birth Right Citizenship by executive order.  Politically it would be better to get an act of Congress on the matter.  Any such change will be opposed in court, and the courts give a lot more deference to acts of Congress than they do to executive orders.
   In all the talk about process and legality and constitutional change, we haven't heard much about the real issue here, namely does our current policy of birthright citizenship cause real harm to us.  And what might that harm be?  As it is, travel agencies in China make arrangements for Chinese mothers to fly to the US to give birth here so that their children will have US citizenship.   Which is kinda flattering to us that people would spend all that money, and be away from friends and family for the birth of a child.  They really care about having US citizenship.  And the Chinese are already citizens of China, an important country, which speaks their language and embodies Chinese culture.  We Americans have created a good thing here if so many people want to come here.