Watching Chuckle the Schumer on TV

Chuckie was summing up the Democrat case for impeaching Trump.  He spoke at length.  He never mentioned a specific act of Trump's worthy of impeachment.  He did a lot of bad mouthing, name calling.  He kept saying "lots of facts" and "proves beyond the shadow of a doubt" and other such platitudes.  Schumer never said "Trump did thus and so, on such and such a date, as proved by this witness or that document,"  That makes me think the democrats don't have anything on Trump, except for hatred. 
    It might be that Trump pressured  the Ukrainians to dig for dirt on the Bidens. Trump denies it, the Ukrainians deny it and who do we believe? Maybe I don't approve and maybe I don't believe.  But compared to Abraham Lincoln (suspended Habeas Corpus ) and Franklin Roosevelt (placed Japanese Americans in concentration camps)  pressuring an ally to dig up a little dirt is petty change.  And I still think Abraham Lincoln was a great American President.  And, despite the fact that one of my oldest and dearest friends was born in an American concentration camp, I still think Franklin Roosevelt was a great president. 
   So when I hear Chuckles deriding Trump as an existential threat and worst president ever, I tune him out.

More Adventures in TVland

Yesterday, as I was watching the TV, the digital audio output, which drives my stereo and gives nicer sound than the tiny speakers crammed into the TV set, died.  Cut my sound to a whisper.  PITA.  This morning I messed with it, cycled power on the digital audio gizmo, and powered up the TV, and magic happened.  The digital audio sound was back.  Hurrah.
   I think power cycling the digital audio gizmo was what did the trick.  Might have been just turning the TV off overnight but I don't think so. 

In Harm's Way, movie, 1965

In Harm’s Way, an oldie but a goodie.  I just finished watching it (again). It is World War 2, in the Pacific with John Wayne as tough and competent Navy admiral Rockwell Torrey.  We have a lot of action, Admiral Torrey is sent out to capture a couple of key Japanese held islands and turn them into US Navy bases.  We have a parachute assault, by US marines to take to first target.  Followed by a sea battle featuring a PT boat attack on the Japanese fleet followed by a broadside to broadside gunnery duel between the heavy ships.

   Torrey spends much of the movie forming a relationship with Maggie Haynes, a tough Navy nurse, played by Patricia Neal. She is reasonably good looking, although I would not call her cute.  She likes what she sees in John Wayne and works to catch him.  For cute, John Wayne has a son, just graduated from college, just into the Navy as an ensign.  Played by Brandon DeWilde, Jere Torrey is young, blond, slim, and cute.  Jere is establishing a relationship with an equally cute young Navy nurse.  She is Annalee Dorn, played by Jill Hayworth, and has her hands full coping with Jere who is pushy.  She manages him with a firm hand.  Jere was raised by his mother after she and Rockwell split when Jere was only four.   Initially Jere takes his mother’s side in the marriage split, but over the course of the flick he comes to appreciate his father.    The movie moves right along, good pacing.   Each scene contributes to the story and lasts long enough to get its point across. 

   The movie is based upon a novel of the same name, written by James Basset and published in 1962.  Much of the action in the book and the movie is based on real WW2 events, but loosely based.  The movie was made in 1965.  A reasonable number of WW2 aircraft and ships were still in commission in 1965 and were placed at the disposal of Otto Preminger and his crew.  The costumes and uniforms are realistic WW2 styles.   The whole movie gives the flavor of 1943 very nicely. 

    The movie is in black and white.  That was the custom for war movies back then.  Probably because we were all used to watching black and white newsreels, which were always played in movie theaters before the main attraction.  Since the movie was made back in the 1960’s, the technical work, lighting, filming, and sound is all superb.  You can hear and understand all of the dialogue, something I cannot do for modern movies.  No shake-the-camera shots, no turn-the-lights-out scenes.

  All in all, a good flick.  If you haven’t seen it, you can rent it from Netflix.

Censoring social media, how to do it

Been a lotta talk about censoring Facebook, Instagram, Google, Twitter, and some others for allowing fake news, antisemitism, far left, far right, Islamic terrorist, and lots of other postings.  The talkers so far are pushing for  the social media site to censor posts they don't like.   In addition to free speech violations, there is no way that the bigger sites can have enough censors to even skim postings fingered by some kind of AI software.  Let alone think hard about the fringe cases.  And the people they can hire as censors will be mostly lefty democrats.  The situation has gotten so bad that advertisers are cancelling ads. 
   We ought to use free market incentives to get the worst stuff off the air.  Break the bigger social media companies in half, and let the two half compete with each other for viewers, posters, and advertisers.  We have Sherman Anti Trust, and a whole department of lawyers to enforce it.  Far as I am concerned, any company with more that 50% market share is a monopoly and ought to be broken up into smaller companies.  Just for being too big. 

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

We got 8 inches of fresh powder yesterday.  It is clear and sunny and ZERO F this morning.  Skiing ought to be fantastic this weekend.

Hacking US voting machines

Another piece about this on Fox News tonight.  Fox urged buying new and less hack prone voting machines.  Wanted voting machines to output a paper trail for use in case of recounts. 
   Actually, we need to scrap all the voting machines and go back to paper ballots.  A voting machine is just a desktop computer running a "look-at-me-I-am-a-ballot" program.  They can all be hacked in all the ways computers can be hacked.  At least a dozen different ways occur to me.  It was suggested to have the voting machine output a paper trail (print out a ballot showing how the voter voted).  This doesn't do any good.  Hack the voting machine's code and you can make it print out anything you want.  And the voter doesn't get a chance to review it and take action if it isn't right. 
   Paper ballots can be saved in case of recount.  Paper ballots cannot be hacked over the internet.
Let's go low tech.

Law schools are hurting for students

Lengthy piece somewhere on the internet whining about the troubles of law schools.  They are not getting the enrollment they enjoyed only a few years ago.  To weather the lack of students they are raising tuition.  The students, all taking out student loans, can just take on more debt. And they are laying off faculty.  The writer went on at length about how terrible laying off faculty was.  Not a whisper about laying off any administrators.  Administrators don't teach, they do nothing to get students in, thru, and graduated, they just draw their generous pay.  Most of 'em are making 6 figures. Most colleges have as many administrators as they do real teaching faculty. 
   Sounds like law students have figured out that most of 'em just get to do house closings after they graduate.  Not so exciting.  Instead of law school they are going for MBA's. 

Roast a Chicken. Here's how.

A roast chicken dinner is festive, suitable for company,. and easy to do, in fact, foolproof.  Here is how.  First buy your chicken.  You get a choice between 4 pound fryers, and 6-8 pound roasters.  The fryers are tender and tasty.  The bigger roasters are mostly old laying hens that have stopped laying because of age.  They are chewy.  A fryer will serve six people, no sweat.  Used to be, both fryers and roasters came with giblets, now a days they are leaving out the giblets.  You want giblets to make gravy.  The plastic package will sometimes tell you if you are getting giblets or not.
  I stuff my chickens with ordinary supermarket stuffing mix, which is mostly bread crumbs.  I like to jazz the stuffing up with some chopped onion, some chopped celery, the chicken liver, some grapes in season or raisins out of season, some chopped apple.  Put some oil in a big frying pan and saute the chicken liver, and the onion.  Chop the chicken liver after you saute it.  Then press on and do the stuffing mix in the same pan.  The directions will call for bringing water and some oil to a boil and then adding the dry bread crumbs.  You might want to adjust the amount of oil to account for the oil you used to saute everything but that isn't critical.  Fill the chicken with the stuffing and then tie the chicken's legs together to keep the stuffing in.
   Roast in a 375 degree oven for 20 minutes to the pound.  The chickens all come with little plastic "bird watcher" thingies that pop open when they think the chicken is done.  Time is not critical, an extra 20 minutes won't hurt anything.  Baste the chicken with either the fat that cooks out of the bird or some olive or veggie oil.  Baste every 20 minutes or so.  Get a head start on basting by rubbing the chicken down with oil before putting him in the oven.  On the top of the stove, put the giblets into a pan, full of water, with some Bell's Poultry Seasoning.  Bring to a boil, back off the heat until you get to a low boil.  Let them cook until the chicken is done.
   When done, remove the chicken to a serving platter and let it rest while you make the gravy.  Add as much flour to the roasting pan as the grease will soak up.  Then add all the water from the giblet pan.  And perhaps some more,  you want about a quart of gravy.  Put the roasting pan on the stove top and set one or two burners to medium.  Then just stir until the gravy thickens.  While that is happening chop the giblets up fine and add them to the gravy.  With a couple of forks pick the meat off the neck and add it as well.  Season the gravy with some Bell's Poultry Seasoning and a little salt.  Taste and adjust.  Go easy on the salt. 
  You are done, call the guests to the table.  Don't forget the cranberry sauce. You can serve a green veggie and some rice to go with it.  Traditionally white wine is served with poultry, but you can do what ever suits your fancy.
   You can do turkey or Cornish game hens the same way as chicken.  

Foreign students are good deal for America

America has something like a million foreign college students.  Invisible benefit to us, most young folk have a good time doing an American college education.  I think the vast majority of them carry away a nice warm feeling about America after graduation.  And its a good bet that a lot of 'em will wind up influential citizens back in their home country.  In short, as we offer a good college education we are also making friends around the world.  This has got to be a good thing.  Plus foreign students help keep America green, they send money. 
   So let's not hassle them over visas.  Let's make it easy to enter America.  And for that matter, lets make it easy for them to stay here, even after graduation.
   Of the million odd foreign students, a third of them are Chinese.  There has been some rumblings in the media, and some FBI investigations, all concerned with Chinese intelligence agencies using Chinese students as information sources, or worse.  We are now presenting Chinese students with a hostile stare rather than a friendly greeting.  Let's not drive Chinese students away thru plain unfounded suspicions.

Soup has too much salt

The ordinary supermarket canned soups, Campbell, Progresso, and others all have so much salt they taste too salty.  The doctors mostly think salt is bad for you but I am not on that bandwagon.  I figure when it tastes too salty, it is too salty.  Only reason I can think of for the makers to add so much salt is to cover up for some fresh ingredients that are not as fresh as they ought to be.  In fact  ingredients that are on the verge of going bad.
   And the bouillon cubes are just as bad as the canned soups.
  Yummy. 

Did we get Soleimani like we got Adm Yamamoto?

During WWII we broke the Japanese radio codes and read their messages.  We came across Adm Yamamoto's planned itinerary of an inspection trip to the forward areas.  We sent a squadron of P-38 Lightening fighters to intercept him.  They shot down Yamamoto's plane killing the admiral in the crash.  This removed Japan's best admiral, the man who planned and executed Pearl Harbor, and the only senior Japanese leader who understood the United States.  A carefully arranged plan based upon solid intel.
    Was the hit on Soleimani like that?  Did we have the necessary intel?  Or did we just get lucky, putting a Hellfire anti tank missile into a suspected Iranian headquarters, or safe house or whatever and Soleimani just happened to be there at the wrong time?  Someone knows and so far has kept his/her mouth shut to preserve the secrecy of our intel operations.  We will see how long that lasts. 

Cannon Mountain ski weather

Today, 5 Jan, Cannon got 2 inches of new snow.  It's still falling.  It's 27, maybe 28 F.

Counter Cyberattacks with lawyers

Since Friday's Iranian dustup, which snuffed Suliemani, the newsies have been warning of cyber counter attacks from Iran.  If that happens, and if they put anything important down, we have a vast surplus of lawyers sloshing around the country looking for something to do.  We should sic 'em on the companies careless enough to fall to cyber attack.
   There is no excuse for a company to fall victim to a cyber attack.  Straight forward simple procedures will keep Iranian hackers from putting out the lights in the US.  Some rules follow
1.  Never use the public internet, or the public phone system to remote control or monitor anything.  If you just have to have remote control, string your own fiber optics.  In most cases this is the power company, which owns their own poles and has their own line crews to string new fiber optic cable.  This way you have to climb a pole and splice in an optical signal splitter to tap into the control signals.  Hackers don't climb poles.  If they cannot get to the target over the public internet, sitting comfortably in their offices, they don't go there.
2.  Don't run Windows for anything important.  Go with Apple or Linux or anything other than Windows.  Windows is like Swiss cheese, holes every where.  Windows does autorun, any media (floppy disc, CD, DVD, flashdrive) plugged into a Windows computer is checked for  music and code.  Music gets played. code gets run. Malicious code gets loaded onto disk and run.  That's how we spread the Stuxnet virus onto Iranian computers controlling centrifugal uranium isotope separators.  Stuxnet ordered the centrifugal separators to run full speed until they self destructed.  We put the Stuxnet code onto flashdrives and scattered the flashdrives over Iranian parking lots. Sharp eye Iranian workers spotted them on the way into work, picked them up, took them into work, and plugged them into work computers.  The centrifugal isotope separators started blowing up shortly there after.
  Should Iranian hackers knock out anything we care about, we should sic our vast surplus of lawyers on the stupid company.  They ought to be able to sue them, and get convictions for pure stupidity.  The thought of an army of hungry lawyers suing them down to their socks ought to stimulate even Dilbert's pointy haired boss into action.

So we snuffed Iranian big wig Sulimani (sp?)

I never heard of this guy before today.  But the TV newsies are claiming he was a big deal, and snuffing him will cause a war with Iran.  Far as I am concerned Sulimani was just another Iranian terrorist, and we did good to kill him.   It should send a simple message to the Iranians, namely "Mess with the American and they will mess with you".  Are the Iranians smart enough to take the hint?

Let's keep private health insurance

Something like 3/4 of Americans have pretty decent health insurance thru their company or their union.  I enjoyed it for 40 years.  It covered everything, and it covered my wife and my three children.  I'd still be on it if I had not retired and gone onto Medicare.  
   I am listening to most (all?) of the Democrats calling to kill private health insurance and force us all onto "medicare for all" or "single payer" schemes that do not exist yet.  So we have no idea what we are getting into, but anyone who has ever had to deal with departments of motor vehicles to register a car has the deepest suspicions.  Most of us want to keep our private health insurance.
  I will grant that the self employed who have to go out and buy individual family policies are getting screwed.  We could fix that.  All it would take is a law requiring the insurance companies to sell the same policy they sell to big companies, at the big company price, to ordinary citizens.  Probably a federal law.  Having the 50 states each enact such a law, good only in state, would be extra messy.  And welfare for lawyers.
   Somehow I don't think the Democrat approach to health insurance this year is going to get them elected.

Keeping the narative alive. Trump Impeachment version.

As long as Nancy Pelosi keeps sitting on the Great Impeachment Show (GIS) paperwork the newsies keep the subject alive.  Should she send the paperwork over to the Senate, the Republicans will do their best to finish it up as quickly as possible.  They have the votes to do it.  Then GIS is done and gone and we can move forward. 
   Chuckie the Schumer  and some other Democrats are complaining that the Senate won't call this witness or that witness and it's all unfair.  Jeez.  If they had such terribly important witnesses they should have had 'em testify during the months long House version of GIS. 
   Could it be that the Democrats like it this way?  As long as GIS is in town they don't have to do any real lawmaking. 

Keeping consumer spending alive and well

Consumer spending is 70% of American GNP.  That's a lot and it is what keeps the US economy humming.  And consumer spending has its ups and downs.  When it is up, things are good all over.  When it is down people are thrown out of work, business profits disappear and gloom covers the land.  The financial pundits at least understand this, and they have devised theories to account for swings in consumer sentiment and even indexes of consumer sentiment that claim to predict consumer behavior. 
   Most things consumers spend money on are discretionary.  They don't have to buy a new car, at least not this year.  They can postpone buying a new house.  They can put off home maintenance projects like new siding, remodeling the kitchen, or reroofing.  They can skip back to school buying and send the kids to school in hand-me-downs.  They can put Santa in the closet and put the Grinch in charge of Christmas buying.  About the only things consumers absolutely have to buy are groceries, utilities, and the rent.  When consumers feel stressed, they cut back spending as much as they can, which sends the larger economy into a tailspin. 
   A powerful driver of consumer spending is the job market.  If the consumers fear loosing their jobs, they will cut back everywhere they can.  If they feel their jobs are safe and secure, then they are willing to spend on stuff.  Obama and Obamacare made everyone fear layoffs which kept GNP growth down around 1%.  With Trump everyone feels secure in their jobs and we have GNP growth up around 3%. 
    Not to panic the American consumer.  Bad things happen if you do.

Effective new car advertising

They been running this one on Fox News several times a day.  Beige SUV pulls up a steep driveway and stops at the front door.  Scene has the color canceled out for a nice arty black and white look. Woman gets out, opens front door , enters her house to find it is a mess.  All the children are in the living room playing mess making games.  Room is super untidy.  Woman backs out the front door, gets back in her SUV and reclines the driver's seat. Closes eyes.
Message to us car buyers, our SUV interior is more comfortable than your child infested house.  And, you Mom get little pleasure from your children and you don't like keeping house.  So buy a Lincoln SUV to get away from it all parked in your driveway. 
   I think it might have been a Lincoln Navigator but they never mentioned the product name on air. 
   This ad is REALLY going to motivate me (a guy) or any chick I ever knew to buy a Lincoln Navigator.  Or any other Lincoln SUV. 
   Can you say "Turnoff"?

Bipartisan means everybody gets lots of money.

The house needed both Democratic and Republican votes to pass the federal budget and avoid yet another federal government shutdown.  So, the Republicans got a big boost (maybe $100 billion) in defense spending, and funding for the Mexican border wall.  Democrats got $75 million (chicken feed really) for a gun control study group.  At least that is all I have heard about.  I daresay a good look at the budget will find more spending and a good helping of pork.  But the newsies are all hypnotized by the Great Impeachment Show (GIS) so we don't really know what all got slipped into the humongous federal budget.  Plus the entire budget is so big and complicated that the newsies would not understand it.  Few newsies can do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, even with a smart phone to help out. 
   We should not be passing great big fund everything bills.  Those are just to big and complicated for anyone the understand what is really going on.  We ought to pass one funding bill for every Federal department, defense, state, treasury, homeland defense, education, health and human services, and so on and so on.  The smaller one department spending bills are small enough for one person to understand and tell us voters what is really going down. 

Not impressed with Democrat debate

Timing was not ideal, coming as it did while the smoke was still settling from the Trump impeachment.  They were all eloquent, spoke well (except maybe Biden).  They all supported far left ideas, of the more free stuff sort.  Free college, forgive college debt, medicare for all, and a bunch of other stuff that I forget.  Some of 'em even talked about new taxes on "the rich" to pay for all that free stuff.  All of 'em claimed that the US economy was unfair to just about everybody while the Trump boom is in full swing.  At least the PBS anchors doing the questions were pretty good, the questions were tough and relevant. 
   Side issue.  Where does the impeachment go from here?  They say the Senate cannot deal with the issue until the House (Nancy!) submits the paperwork.  Which sounds reasonable.  Nancy adjourned the House, won't be back until after New Year.  So The great Impeachment Show (GIS)  goes on, and gets yet more TV coverage.  Could this be Nancy's plan, drag things out as long as possible?  Certainly the Senate would try to finish the impeachment off as quickly as possible.  Then it's gone and we could move on to real public business.

The gravitational constant is increasing

Gravitational Force F = G * (m1 * m2) / r squared.   In plain English, gravitational force is equal to the gravitational constant times the product of the two masses involved divided by the square of the distance between the two masses.
  When G increases, gravitational force increases. 
   Which is the only explanation I have for the increased number of thing I drop.  Must be the increased gravity is sucking them right out of my hands to crash on the floor.  Couldn't be that I am loosing my grip.

US House changes rules of debate on every single bill

The "Rules Committee" is doing the great impeachment show on Fox today.  The voice over explains the rules committee make up a new and different rule for every bill going to the floor of the House.  This ain't right.  Every bill ought to be treated the same, which means the same "rule" on every single House bill.  No Rules Committee greasing the skids for or against a bill.  Treat them all the same, that's fair.  This special-rule-for-every-bill scheme is clearly unfair. 

Representatives are supposed to vote their district

Discussion on Fox TV of all places about some 17 odd democratic reps elected from districts that Trump carried in 2016.  The tone of the anchor person implied that any true blue democrat ought to vote with the party, to impeach Trump.  Heaven forbid that they ignore the Congressional party and vote for what their district wants.  This from a Fox anchor person.  In case you are not following the great impeachment show closely, 17 House votes is probably enough to defeat impeachment in the House. 
   Speaking as an elected NH senator, I under stand my job to be voting for what my constituents want.  And if I don't vote my district, I expect my voters will vote me out of office, with the election just a year away.  Fortunately, in most cases, my own views match the views of my constituents.  That must have something to do with my getting elected in the first place. 
   Anyhow, the great impeachment show will probably run thru Christmas and into next year.

Democrats release 659 page "Impeach Trump" document

Ayup.  I am really going to read all 659 pages.  And should I do so (not likely), what will I know after reading that much lawyer gobble-de-gook.  I think the Democrats have missed something here. 

FISA court[s] is/are rubberstamps

The the cops, the FBI and the intelligence agencies submit thousands of requests to snoop on citizens and foreigners every year.  The FISA court[s] approve all but a half dozen or so.  In short, the cops and intel agencies get to snoop anyone they please, anytime they please.  And a FISA snooping license allows them to tap your phone, intercept your email,  see your Facebook page, and do other  stuff that we don't even know about.
   Since the FISA court[s] approve nearly all snooping requests why have them at all.  Just let the cops and the intel agencies get on with it.  The results are the same as we have right  now.
   What we really ought to do is require the cops and the agencies submit their snooping requests to real courts, the kind that do business five days a week and try real criminal cases, in front of real juries, and sentence real criminals.

I'm not impressed. Is anyone impressed???

The Democrats invented a new one "Obstruction of Congress" to throw at Trump.  First time I ever heard of this what-cha-may-callit.  They asked the administration for pounds of paperwork and live witnesses to grill in front of the TV cameras.  The administration refused the requests, probably citing executive privilege.  I did not catch just what reasons the administration gave for refusals.    For the other count they are going for "Abuse of power".  They cite the famous Ukraine telephone call. 
   No real crime (like breaking and entering) was cited.  Both counts are essentially government infighting counts.   When the US is passing out foreign aid we often ask the lucky recipient to do a few things.  If you want a handout from US taxpayers you need to be responsive.  The Congress always asks for a ton of documents, it's easier than doing their own investigating.  The administration always refuses to deliver papers except under court order.  Things have worked this way in the federal government for a long time.  I don't think we have enough here to impeach a president.  I'm thinking there are a lot of people out there who feel the same way.  I wonder if there are enough to stop it. 

Do-Nothing US House claims "Progress" on USMCA

The Democrats are saying they have made progress on the USMCA agreement. This is a NAFTA enhancement or replacement that the Trump administration managed to negotiate with Canada and Mexico last year.  It has been sitting in the US House for a year while the House plays around with fun and games and impeachment.  Everyone, even AFL-CIO, thinks it ought to pass. 

   The Democratic claim to have amended the bill and made it better sounds like fake news to me.  This is an international treaty, agreed to by Canada and Mexico.  I don’t think the US house has the power to modify a treaty without getting Canada and Mexico to say OK.  Which they probably won’t.  Any changes dreamed up by Democrats in the US House will make things better for the US and worse for our trading partners. 

   So to show that the do-nothing House is actually doing something, the Democrats now say they are "making progress".  I say they are do-nothings until they actually vote to pass the USMCA.  Which they should have done a year ago.

Origin of Species. House cats are a species.

Those small furry carnivores who chase mice really ought to be classified into two distinct species.  House cats have taken up with humans and get food and shelter from the humans, and alley cats who live out of doors.  Anyone can see that the house cats are doing better than the alley cats.  House cats are well fed, fur is nice and clean, they stay indoors, warm and dry during bad weather.  Alley cats are skinny and ill fed, their coats are in terrible condition, and they have to survive out of doors in snow storms. 
   We used to think that house cats adopted their first humans back in ancient Egyptian times, say 5 to 6  thousand years ago.  Lately a grave was excavated on Cyprus with a cat buried along with its human.  This site was dated to 9000 years ago.  But  either date is not all that long ago, compared to dogs who have been domesticated for 50,000 years. 
   House cats, in addition to having the right attitude about people, have a couple of things that endear them to us humans.  First of all, purring.  We find  a purring cat, sitting in our laps, creates a wonderful feeling of peace and warmth.  And cats have the finest, silkiest coats of any common animal.  It is a pleasure to stroke a cat, far more so than to stroke a dog which has a much coarser coat.  Just how cats managed to evolve both purring and their silky coats, thousands of years before they adopted their first human, is a mystery that evolutionary theory fails to explain. 

Pearl Harbor was a massive Japanese screw up

The United States was solidly isolationist in the 1940's.  We were determined not to get sucked into overseas wars, ever again.  Even Franklin Roosevelt, perhaps the strongest US president of the 20th century, could not move the country toward intervention.  He tried, and he could not do it. 
   Nothing the Japanese were doing in China and Southeast Asia could have caused America to do more than send them diplomatic nastygrams.  No way were we going to do anything of a military nature about Japanese aggression in China.  After the Germans defeated and occupied  the Netherlands and France in 1940, the French and Dutch colonies were pretty much up for grabs.  Japan could have kept on going after the American oil embargo by getting oil from the Dutch East Indies where the crude oil was so pure that it could be pumped into the tanks of warships without any refining. 
   Type 1 less provocative method, send a fleet of tankers with a strong (like really strong) naval escort and some bank guys with a good strong checkbook.  Send the bankers ashore to negotiate a sale of oil. 
   Type 2 more provocative method, send a fleet and land marines and take over the place.  We would have screamed and cried and threatened to hold our breath, but we would not have intervened militarily to save a Dutch colony.  We did not approve of colonies.  We still don't.
   As long as the Japanese did not mess with American possessions like the Philippines or the US Navy, they could have done pretty much anything they liked in China and Indonesia.  Japan's diplomats and intel people failed to clue the Japanese government into the real state of affairs in America at the time.  (Or the government failed to listen to their diplomats and intel people.)
   As it was, Pearl Harbor total destroyed American isolationism, we got good and mad, smashed the Nazis, and nuked Japan, after sending her fleet to the bottom.  Total defeat and occupation.  War outcomes don't get much worse than that.

"Identity Politics" is divisive and destructive of liberty.

A Democratic party speciality.  Appeal to any kind of minority group you can think of (or invent). Do pitches aimed at blacks, Hispanics, gays, men, women, union workers, Indians, non-union workers, anybody.  The essence of these tailored pitches is always "We will do nice things for you, at the expense of everybody else."  and "You deserve some nice things to make up for past inequities."  Identity politics violates Jefferson's statement "All men are created equal".  Identity politicians are advocating unequal treatment of each little identity group.
   Proper politicians advocate for things that improve life for everyone, not just some identity group.  "We are all Americans together" is a better thing to say. 

Shopping around for Cosequin for my cat

In was $30 for a white plastic bottle of 60 doses from a big pet store down in Concord.  It is $18  for an envelope of 84 doses of a product called Dasuquin from my vet in Whitefield.  Whitefield Animal Hospital on Rt 3, right on the steep grade on Rt 3 going north out of town.  It is still doing my cat good, she goes outside more often, can jump up on furniture that she hasn't been able to manage for years, less limping as she slinks around the house. 

Talking Politics at Thanksgiving dinner

NHPR has been running a piece on why you should not talk politics.  Polarization is mentioned.  And, the Number 1 political subject, impeachment of Trump, is all the MSM has been covering.  Fox news runs the Adam Shifty hearings live all day long.
   Watergate this is not.  Watergate started out with the arrest of burglars inside the DNC headquarters.  That was clearly a crime and ought to be investigated, everybody understood that.  And one thing lead to another until Nixon resigned before the House impeached him.  Now all we have is an unknown whistle blower claiming that Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden and both Trump and the Ukrainian president deny it.  Most of us voters out in the real world don't see a real crime here.
   So what's to discuss?  Lot of people want to impeach Trump, and a lot of people don't want to impeach him, but what's to discuss?   Adam Shifty hasn't given us any real evidence of anything so what can you say?  And what else is there to discuss?  As far as the MSM is concerned, the Trump impeachment is the only thing happening all over the world.  

Electoral College.

  What it is and why we care.   Back when the Founders were setting up our constitution they made a number of decisions to even things out between big states and small states.  They had to; otherwise the small states would not join up.  The concept of the Senate where each state got two votes was intended to put the smaller states on a level with Virginia and Massachusetts.  When the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia, the big states were all in favor of a legislature where big states got more votes than small states.  The small states came to Philadelphia planning on a legislature where each state gets the same number of votes.  After a lot of dickering back and forth they adopted our current bi-cameral (two house) legislature.  Neither side was completely happy, but the compromise was enough to prevent anyone from walking out.  

   The Electoral College was another such big state-small state compromise.  Direct popular vote would have made it impossible for anyone to win the presidency who was not a citizen of a big state.  In those days Virginia and Massachusetts were the big states, every other state was small.  The thinking was that any candidate from a big state (a native son) would of course take all the votes from his home state, which would be enough to win the election.  It was believed that candidates from small states would not stand a chance under a direct popular vote system. 

    So they set up the Electoral College system.  The college consists of electors, chosen by the states. Each state gets as many electors as it gets representatives plus senators in Congress.  We have 100 US senators, 435 US house members, and they give the District of Columbia three electors.  Which makes an electoral college of 538 electors.  Of which New Hampshire gets four, or ¾ of one percent.  Not much, but better than what we get in a direct popular vote.  New Hampshire’s population is 1.35 million.  The population of the entire country is 330 million, so New Hampshire’s popular vote is only 0.41 of 1 percent.  In short, the Electoral College system gives New Hampshire a bigger slice of the presidential vote than we would get under direct popular election.  As a resident of New Hampshire, I like the Electoral College system just the way it is. It’s been there since the Founding.  It makes the New Hampshire first in the nation primary work.  Every presidential candidate has to come to New Hampshire and pass muster with the New Hampshire voters, who are a conscientious, well informed, and fair minded bunch.  I like that.  Under a direct popular vote for president system only the primaries in the big states would matter. 

$2295.50 for a Z-scale briefcase layout

The Lilliput catalog come in amidst the usual shower of catalogs for Christmas.  Full of neat toys with scary prices.  The Z-scale (as small as they make) layout, nicely scenicked, Alpine setting, your choice of winter snow or summer leaf, is 22 inches by 17 inches.  You can close the brief case and take it with you, to work, to a party, whatever.
   It is EXPENSIVE.  I have a round the walls HO layout, and a collection of rolling stock that will not quit, but I didn't put anything close to $2295.50 into my entire HO layout and rolling stock collection.   

Regulating Facebook

There is talk about doing something about Facebook.  They complain that Facebook is canceling posts, and closing accounts of posters they object to.  I dunno what to make of this. Both right wingers and left wingers are calling out to do something. 
   Me, I am a medium speed Republican New Hampshire politician.  I created a Facebook page to support my campaign for NH Senate.  It was very useful, every post I made got read by nearly 100 people.  I got elected.  Facebook never interfered.  I did try to be fair in everything I posted, largely because I believe my voters want a fair minded representative.  It may be that my fairness kept Facebook from interfering.  Anyhow, I consider my Facebook page to have contributed my election.
   Should we decide to "do something" about Facebook, (I am not convinced that this is necessary, but you never know what CongressCritters may do) the only effective thing we can do is use the anti trust laws to break Facebook up.  What actually happens at Facebook is controlled by software.  Only a very few people who write the software really know what is happening, and these people are Zuckerburg's people.  Doesn't matter what a regulator might demand, the software programmers control what really happens, they work for Zuckerburg and will do what he tells them to.  And the regulator's people cannot read the code to know what is really going on.  For instance Facebook recently promised to stop logging some users data and selling that data.  I bet that somewhere in the software that data is still being logged out to some obscure disk file.  And I am sure they back up all their data onto CD-ROMs or flashdrives and store them off site, just in case of fire or flood. 
    A breakup would create two companies to compete with each other for advertisers and users.  We divvy up Facebook's computer centers, users, advertisers, workers, stock, office buildings 50-50.  Then users and advertisers would migrate to the company with the policies they like best.  Assuming both managements were competent,  both companies would adopt policies about privacy and political correctness and other things that the users and advertisers like.  Because if they did not, they would dwindle down and go out of business.  Like Yahoo did.

Lotta talk about thinking and feelz, little about doing anything of substance

I had the house impeachment hearings on all day.  A lot of yak.  Talk about influencing people's (mostly Trump's) thinking.  Emails and discussions and talk and yak.  Little to no talk about doing anything of substance.  Like sending rations or weapons or US advisors to the Ukrainian army,  broadcasting pro Ukrainian propaganda to Russian occupied Ukraine,  jamming Russian newscasts, you know real actions to tip matters against the Russians and in favor of the Ukraine.  In sort, a whole day of nothing burger on TV.  

Still Not Impressed

I caught the impeachment hearings on  the radio while driving up to Berlin, and back from Berlin this Friday.  About an hour each way, so I heard maybe two hours of chit chat.  The committee had Marie Yavonovitch, former US ambassador to Ukraine, on deck.  She never said anything of substance.  Every statement was bland, and qualified, heavily.  She spoke in a voice so wimpy and indecisive that I judge her unfit to be an ambassador to anywhere, in fact unfit to push a broom.  Don't understand how she ever got appointed ambassador.  She felt (never said directly) that Trump forced her out of her ambassadorship.  For which I say, good work, badly needed housecleaning.  We don't need anyone that wimpy and indecisive representing the United States of America. 
   Bottom line, in two hours I never heard the witness said anything about Trump doing anything bad at all, other than getting her fired that is.

I watched the public impeachment hearing today. Not Impressed

They did a lot of talking, about process and procedures, and secret diplomatic back channels.  The diplomatic witnesses were questioned about their backgrounds, and they were impressive.  Top 1% of his class at West Point, infantry company commander in Viet Nam.  And a good deal of other stuff all good sounding. 
   They never got down to brass tacks.  Like reading the transcript of the famous telephone call aloud.  Or discussing other matters that might convince me, or others, that Trump has got to go.   Or testimony from the famous whistleblower (Eric Ciaramella???).   Chairman Adam Shifty was fairly objectionable.
   I'm thinking that the Democrats don't have anything on Trump, at least not anything that is all that serious.  Watergate this is not. 

DACA, Why didn't Congress deal with this years ago???

DACA, I forget just how the acronym works, but it was/is an Obama policy of leniency toward young adults brought into the US as small children, by parents who are/were illegal immigrants.  Obama asked Congress to do something but Congress doesn't pass laws anymore and the DACA bill never happened. 
  Me, I feel for kids brought into and raised in the US from early childhood.  They are now old enough for high school and college, old enough to enlist, and they are on Mr. Migra's hit list because they are not citizens, don't even hold a green card.  For the vast majority of them, who have stayed out of trouble with the law, are gainfully employed, paying taxes, married, raising children, hold honorable discharges from the armed forces,  they sound like solid desirable citizens to me.  Let's naturalize them.  We need more good solid citizens to keep the country running.  It takes many tax paying citizens to pay for just one druggie drawing welfare. 
   Anyhow, the Trump administration isn't behind DACA, and revoked much, maybe all of the Obama executive orders that created DACA.  And the matter is now going to the Supremes. 
    This should not be happening.  We should have insisted on the CongressCritters passing a DACA bill.  This kind of policy ought to be set in law by Congress, it should not set by presidential say-so (executive orders) or by the Supremes.  We need to get on the CongressCritter's cases and insist that they stop messing around, and pass a reasonable DACA bill. 

Let's hear it for paper ballots. Down with voting machines.

I have been saying this for years.  Here we have a computer scientist saying the same.  Voting machines are merely ordinary desktop computers running a "Look-at-me-I'm-a-ballot" program.  They are vulnerable to all the hacks and malware that Windows computers are vulnerable to.  Plus, since voting machines are all stored together at city hall in between elections,  a determined agent can get his hands on them and always crack them.  A patched ballot program that discards say 10% of the votes for one party can tip any election.  They don't leave a paper record, all the votes are recorded in their internal memory and can be erased.  There is no way to do a recount.
   Whereas the good old paper ballot is secure against hackers coming over the internet, or carried on thumb drives.  They can be saved and recounted.  If the poll workers whine about the effort to hand count them all, they can buy ballot reading machines that work like the test grading machines used in schools.  I remember the teachers using test grading machines back when I did elementary school, and that was a long time ago. 

Capitalism makes us all rich.

  America runs (mostly) on free market capitalist principles.  And it works.  We have plenty of food, fuel, clothing, new cars, electronics, housing, electricity, clean running water, movies, schools, roads, every material thing imaginable.  We have it.  The socialist countries go hungry. 

   Part of our plenty comes from the free market regulating how much of each thing should be produced.  If we don’t have enough of something, the price goes up, and people produce more of it.  If we have too much of something, the price goes down, and people produce less of it.  This works, and we have just the right amount of everything.  The Russians used to have a bureau in Moscow that set production quotas for the entire country.  They never got it right, and the Russians were constantly plagued with shortages or surpluses.  There are so many different things needed by a modern industrial economy, nuts and bolts, gasoline, corn, spark plugs, broccoli, automobiles, etc, etc,) that no bureau can keep track of all of them, let alone figure out how much of each to produce.  The free market system, working on supply and demand gets it right automatically, no central bureau required (or wanted).

    The second thing about capitalism is that it puts its money into the right things.  Society only has a limited amount of capital.  Just operating a business, let along starting one up from scratch, requires capital.  Here we raise that capital by borrowing from banks or selling stocks and bonds.  Investors and banks put their capital (money) into things that look like they will turn a profit, and refuse to loan to things that look like losers.  Being that we have a lot of banks, and a lot of investors, they mostly get it right.  Capital is available for successful enterprises like Apple and Amazon.  Losers like Sears cannot get any.  We direct our limited capital into the right things and don’t waste it on boondoggles. 

   And finally we offer incentives for hard work.  Starting up a new business is a lot of hard work.  The entrepreneur has to put in 60 and 70 hour work weeks for years and years before it pays off.  He has to work so hard that he endangers his marriage, looses touch with his children and his friends, develops ulcers.  People, guys mostly, only put themselves thru this sort of ordeal because they can see a handsome reward, maybe not as handsome as Bill Gates, but at least enough to put all their kids thru college.  And without all these entrepreneurs working their hearts out we would be much poorer. 

    I am hearing that the youngest generation wants to convert to socialism, which is just a nicer name for communism.  Those kids are either misinformed, or just plain stupid.

Good old daylight savings time. Set all the clocks, watches, VCR's, car clocks, clock radios, back one hour. I don't dare turn the hands backward on my 100 year old Tiffany mantle clock that was a wedding present to my grandmother. I stop the pendulum and wait one hour and then start it up again. Cable box set himself back all automatically. So did the clock radio. Laptop running Win 10 set himself back all automatically. Desktop, also running Win 10 did not. I had to set him back by hand. I wonder what made that happen.
   We ought to stay on daylight savings all year round.  Up here, in winter, there is not enough daylight to drive to work, work an 8 hour shift, and drive home all by daylight.  You either drive to work in the dark, or drive home in the dark.  Of the two, I would might rather drive to work in the dark, I am more awake in the morning, it gives me a good virtuous feeling being up before the sun. Driving home in the dark is a drag.  

New York has gotta be crazy

Donald Trump announced that he was changing his residency to Mar a Largo in Florida so he doesn't have to pay New York taxes.  And the New York governor AND the mayor of New York city got on TV to say "good riddance Donald Trump".  Dumb move.  Donald Trump was a maga tax payer. I haven't seen his tax returns, but he must have been putting serious money into New York, both state and city. 
   Say goodby to some serious tax money New York.  You ought to be sad to lose a prominent citizen who has a lot of money.  Even if you don't like his politics.

Congressional Democrats are bungling impeachment

Impeaching a president is very unusual and requires really strong evidence, shared with all the voters to succeed.  In all the long history of the American Republic we only tried impeachment three times, Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton.  Only the Nixon impeachment succeeded.  Nixon resigned the presidency before the Senate acted, but I will count that as a successful impeachment.  I surely do remember the build up to Nixon's resignation, hours and hours of Congressional testimony on TV, the Saturday night massacre, John Dean, the tapes, Judge Maximum John, and many more.  All this had me, and the rest of the country convinced that Nixon had to go.
   Let is look at today's impeachment against Trump.  Congressional hearing conducted in secret.  Unnamed witnesses, a highly unreliable committee chairman, no House vote to impeach or even to investigate.  Nothing that is gonna convince the average voter that Trump has to go.
   The voters need the strongest and clearest evidence of "high crimes and misdemeanors" before they will go along with impeachment.  If the voters are not onboard, they will remember in November, and vote stupid Congresscritters out of office.  The more intelligent Congresscritters know this.
    The democrats ought to be doing Trump's impeachment like Watergate, lots of TV, lots of public testimony, lots of publicity everywhere.  All I can figure is that they really  don't have anything on Trump.  

Al-Bagdadi snuffed last night. Good show.

Actually, it is too bad that we didn't take him alive.  He doubtless knew a lot of things that we would like to know.  According to the TV news this morning Bagdadi wore a suicide vest which he detonated before he could be captured.  But the plan was good, helicopter in some troops to take him alive is better than using a Predator drone to snuff him with a Hellfire anti tank missile.   
   I like taking out the enemy higher ups.  Strikes me as more civilized than killing a lot of plain foot soldiers just because we can. 

Wood chip electric power plants in New Hampshire

The State of New Hampshire published “Study Pursuant to New Hampshire Chaptered Law 156:228 (2017), subtitled “Study on the economic viability of renewable portfolio standard Class III biomass electric generation resources in New Hampshire”.  Good lawyerly title to obfusticate understanding.  Dated 21/1/2018. 

  The executive summary contains a couple of just plain weird statements.  “these resources are less flexible than intermittent renewables.”  This is foolishness.  The biomass plants can come on line when needed, say after dark, or on calm windless days.  That’s flexible in my book.  Solar goes away at sundown, which is when most of us need our electricity, to run the lights, cook dinner, run the TV.  Wind goes away when the wind stops blowing, something that happens pretty regularly up here.

   “While biomass is a major market for low grade wood, it is not the only end use.”  Oh really?  And what might be another volume use for wood chips now that the paper mills are gone?  

  Interesting figures provided.  Each of the 6 bio mass plants used nearly a quarter million tons of wood chips a year, 1.36 million tons altogether.  That’s a lot of wood.   At 50 tons per truck load, that’s like 5000 truckloads per plant over the year.  Pretty heavy truck traffic for most places.

    Discussion of hit to the NH economy from killing off the biomass plants.  They only count the plant workers, say 500 men, as losing their jobs.  No mention of all the loggers who cut the wood chips.  I would expect at least as many loggers as electric plant workers to loose their jobs too.  Jumps the 500 job losses to at least 1000. 

   The report shows the New Hampshire wholesale price of electricity at $35 a Megawatt Hour.  Or $35 per 1000 kilowatt hours, or 3.5 cents per kilowatt hour.  I have to pay 20 cents a kilowatt hour at my home.  Somebody is making a killing.  I’m getting robbed.  It also drives industry out of New Hampshire.  Companies always check electric rates before moving to anywhere. 

Crapware comes back to life

I have been trying to speed up my Win 10 laptop.  I believe most software is evil and the machine will run better if unnecessary software is removed.  Unfortunately, good old Windows Update keeps reloading stuff I kill.  I keep a log of things I have done to Flatbeast, the laptop, just incase I need to do them again.  Couple of years ago I  killed of IaStorDataSvc, a RAID drive support some-thing-or-other.  Flatbeast is a laptop, doesn't have RAID drives and never will.  And I zapped Bonjour, an Apple network thingie the Itunes wants.  I don't have an Ipod, don't plan to get one, don't run Itunes and so it was adieu to Bonjour.
   Well, this morning I noticed that both of these turkeys were back and running.  Must have been Windows Update.  Thanks Micro$ofties. You make my day.  Fortunately both turkeys are easy to kill, Add/Remove Programs does them nicely.

The great debate.

  I caught it on CNN.  The democrats didn’t do themselves as much damage as they did last time.   The all came out for square for impeaching Trump.  None of ‘em gave any reasons, they just called him names.  They are all in favor of hiking taxes.  No discussion of why they might need the extra money, but they all want to hike taxes.  They all claimed only “the rich” would have to pay more.  They are all in favor of an “assault weapons” ban.  None of ‘em bothered to tell us what makes “assault weapons” so much more dangerous than deer rifles, or how one might tell the difference between deer rifles and “assault weapons” or why all this “assault weapons” ban talk when most shootings are done with handguns.  More talk about mandatory buybacks, voluntary buybacks, and mandatory background checks with out any discussion as to what these things might be.  Most of ‘em are in favor of “Medicare for all”.  None of ‘em talked about eliminating company and union (private) health insurance.  They all thought Trump did wrong by letting the Turks into Syria and abandoning the Kurds.  There was no talk about DACA immigration reform, border walls, or driver's licenses for illegal immigrants

   In short, I didn’t see much difference between any of them.  I think if Trump fails of re election, any one ‘em as president would put the economy back in the tank, outlaw private ownership of firearms, and stir up more domestic racial tension. 

   The TV moderators were fairly rude to the candidates.  They need to have a name sign on each of the podiums so we can tell who is speaking. 

Vote a straight Republican ticket.   

Words of the Weasel Part 55

Passed away, or just plain passed.  You ought to say died.  Passed is a euphemism intended to blunt the pain of  death and dying.  Death is painful, always has been painful. We ought to say what we mean, and we mean died when talking about someone who died or is dead.  Say it, died.  dead.   

What is California doing wrong that NH is doing right?

Out in Cali they turn off electric power, closing schools and businesses and putting the traffic lights out. That was supposed to prevent wildfires.  Then California just had yet another heavy duty wild fire that destroyed 85 houses.  We never do that here.  When the power goes out in NH it means a tree has fallen on the wires.  I never heard of an NH power company deliberately shutting off the power.  Nor do we have wildfires burning down houses.  We have plenty of woodlands, but they don't catch fire.  Is it better forestry practices in NH?  Is it more rainfall in NH?  Why does California burn down in the dark and NH goes about normal life and keeps the lights on?