Who Runs the Biden Administration (WRBA)?

I think Joe Biden signs what they put before him and says on TV what appears on his teleprompter.  I don’t think Joe writes his own stuff, someone[s] does it for him and he pretty much signs it or says it. 

I have never heard who these invisible controllers might be.  Only suggestion was from Instapundit a while ago.  He thought Joe’s wife Jill was doing the controlling.  Instapundit just said this, he didn’t offer any evidence.  I haven’t heard anyone else offer suggestions.  It could be coming out of the White House staff.  It might be some Svengali like character of whom we have never heard.  It could be anyone anywhere.  

I haven’t heard much if any discussion as to who it might be.  Who ever it is, he/she wields a lot of power. 

 

You would think the Australians ...

 Could have figured out a way to have the world's champion player, Novak Djokovic play in the Australian open.  I mean just one guy isn't going to release the Black Death in Australia, even if he manages to sleep with a couple of cute chicks who want to be able to say they slept with a world champion athlete.  I would think the publicity advantages to having a world champion competing in the Australian Open would override any health worries. 

Great Snow storm peters out

 The weather wienies have been talking up a huge snow storm for today.  Well, we get some snow, but so much of it was blown into the weeds that it doesn't look like much now.

Beat The Press beats on Joe Biden.

They started off describing this last week as bad for Biden.  In detail, and harsher than I have heard a leftie TV show like Beat the Press than I have heard.  More like Fox News than the nice democrat MSM. 

   They showed majority democrats jumping all over Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema for refusing to vote to kill the filibuster.  Filibuster, for those of you just coming to this story, is a Senate rule allowing any Senator to require a 2/3rds majority to pass most bills.  It protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority, something that has been a problem for democracies since Pericles ran Athens.  For the majority to push thru something that the minority is against, the filibuster requires a good solid majority, not a tie vote broken by the vice president.  The current 50-50 split of senators makes calling for a filibuster a bill killer.  The democrats have some bills they want to pass that will never get 60 votes, so they want to scrap the filibuster and allow anything to pass with 51 votes.  Fifty democrats plus a democrat vice president will get them 51 votes.

   Frankly, the way things look today, the democrats will be in the minority by next year.  At which time they will need a filibuster to prevent the Republicans from walking all over them with track shoes.  Manchin and Sinema seem to understand this, Chucky the Schumer and Nasty Pelosi seem oblivious. 

 

Facebook Breakup.

Fox news was talking about some judge will now allow the suit to break up Facebook to go forward. Fine by me. Then Fox had a bunch of talking heads talk about the possible Facebook breakup. None of the talking heads understood what a breakup is about. You take a monopoly, Facebook is surely that, and break it up into two or more pieces that are supposed to compete with each other.

In that way one piece of Facebook, lets call it Goodbook, does things that attract users and advertisers. The other piece, call it Badbook, does things that repel users and advertisers. Pretty soon the suits at Badbook notice that they are losing ground to the competition, and order changes to make Badbook more competitive.

The talking heads were talking about regulation. In this case, all the important decisions of Facebook are done by a small cadre of programmers, writing in C or C++ or some networking computer language are the only documentation that means anything.

Regulators cannot read computer code (most of 'em cannot read comic books) and so, not knowing what is really going on, cannot effect it. In short, a regulator of Facebook can draw his pay but cannot change the way Facebook does things.

0 Comments

Chilly!

 It was 12 F below zero this morning, as late as 9 AM.  It has warmed up by 1PM to 2F above zero.

Shopping is better in the North Country than on TV

 

I made a liquor store run.  The liquor store is out of Wild Turkey bourbon, at least the 80 proof version.  They had the 100 proof Wild Turkey but some how it is not as tasty as the 80 proof.  I have found that Evan Williams bourbon is quite tasty.

I made a store run to Shaws in Littleton.  The shelves were mostly stocked, none of the empty shelves going down a full aisle like they are showing on TV.  They even had scrapple. I was able to find everything on my shopping list except frozen breaded fish fillets.  With those, and some frozen French fires I can make a fairly decent fish & chips dinner.  I got the french fries, and I can get the fish fillets down at Presby's in Franconia. At least they had them last week.   

Anyhow,  if the rest of the country is in as good shape as upstate NH, it is in pretty decent shape.  If it is like the TV, things are gonna be tough. 

Vaccine mandates struck down

   The Supremes just released their ruling on vaccine mandates.  I think (the story on Fox TV was garbled) that they struck down the Biden administration requirement for employers of more than 100 workers to fire all the employees who refused to get themselves vaccinated.  And they upheld to requirement that health care workers must get vaccinated.  The justices said the reason to uphold the health care workers was because of federal funding that seeps thru out the medical business, starting with Medicaid and working down.  That may be a legal argument.  Personally I believe health care workers ought to be vaccinated because in the ordinary course of their work they come in contact with patients who have Corona virus and they catch it from them.  Then they spread it to other patients in the facility they work in.

   As far as vaccine mandates for ordinary (non health care) businesses, I don’t care if they are vaccinated or not.  I am vaccinated and from what I hear, the vaccines work and I won’t catch it even working hand in glove with someone who is not vaccinated.  It’s a free country; let the citizens do what they want to do.  If you personally fear being infected with Corona virus, go get yourself vaccinated.   

 

Horror Movie, “Becky” rated R.

 I don’t remember ordering this one from Netflics.  But it came in the mail.  So I watched it.  Plot is simple; four ugly cons escape from prison and descend upon the pleasant rural home of the various protagonists.  Daughter Becky hangs in there and kills all four of the convicts, one by one, using ordinary stuff, no weapons.  One bad guy she stabs to death using a school ruler in place of a proper knife.  She gets them all, hand to hand, except the last one who she shoots dead using a hand gun that one of the other bad guys dropped on the ground. 

   Becky is maybe 15.  Not quite old enough for a driver’s license.  Becky is cute, blonde, and deadly. She makes the movie.  I watched it to the end just to see how Becky would kill each bad guy. They open the movie with a shot of Becky with blood on her face, ready to kill the next bad guy who shows up.

   I cannot recommend this movie for all the blood and guts.  But I did want to mention it since I had watched it.

US senate candidate from NH.

 

We have a good Republican candidate for US Senate from New Hampshire.  Chuck Morse, currently NH Senate president.  I served one term in the NH senate with Chuck.  He is a good guy.  He remembers his friends and does what he can for them.  He is a solid Republican.  He has good name recognition across New Hampshire.  He ought to be able to beat Maggie Hassan who has done nothing good for us up here in New Hampshire, and in fact Maggie has done us a lot of bad, starting with the Keystone XL pipeline.  She has also put the kibosh on a good natural gas pipeline out to the Bakken.  Out there they have more natural gas than they know what to do with.  Like they are paying contractors to make the stuff go away.  With a good pipeline to New England we could enjoy plentiful natural gas all year round, rather than the deal we have now, outrageous price spikes in heating season, which cause outrageous electric rates in heating season. 

Can I make a yes or no answer?

 I got one of those “surveys” that end up by asking you for a donation to their cause.  I got one from “Patriotic Voters” (new name to me) with former US senator Rick Santorum on the letterhead.  The survey had some questions that could be answered with “yes” or “no”, like “Should important medicines come from Communist China”.  Then there were others that I could not answer yes or no. 

   For example, “Do you agree with granting citizenship to 11 million illegal aliens?”   For me, that depends.  An illegal alien who has a job, pays taxes, is married, is raising children, speaks reasonable English (at least  I can understand most of what he says), has stayed out of serious trouble with the law, sounds like a good sound citizen to me.  We need more citizens like that.  Or he has served a hitch in the US armed forces that makes him a good citizen in my old veteran eyes. 

    On the other hand, an MS -13 gang member, someone with a serious criminal record that sounds like a prime prospect to kick out of the country. 

   For another example “Should abortion on demand be legal in New Hampshire?”  Good question.  I thought abortion was legal in New Hampshire.  I am of mixed minds on this one.  In general I am against abortion, seeing it as very close to infanticide.  Not good.  On the other hand, I have a daughter, a good girl of whom I am extremely fond.  Had she needed an abortion in high school or college, I would have been right out there finding her a place to get an abortion.  This did not become a problem; daughter was an intelligent girl who managed to avoid pregnancy until after marriage.  So down deep, my attitude about abortion boils down to it should be forbidden to every girl except my daughters.  Even I can understand that this is a morally bankrupt point of view.   Some day I need to straighten myself out on this issue.

More Tests, more Covid cases.

 The more Covid tests they have the more cases of Covid they discover.  As I have previously mentioned, there is a strong group of organizations that want to keep the Covid pandemic going.  They are making money and gaining power from Covid.  Right now even the Who Runs the Biden Administration (WRBA) are Covid pandemic boosters.  

    Reporters are right now grilling Psaki at the afternoon press conference about why not more Covid tests available.

 As a side issue, Mayor Lightweight in Chicago is unhappy with the Chicago teachers union that has refused to teach.  An off-the-record strike.  If Mayor Lightweight was serious about getting Chicago schools open, she would tell the teachers “If you don’t teach, you won’t get paid”.  I haven’t heard her say that, or anything close to that.  Until she does, she isn’t serious. 

Horrible NYC fire.

My sincere condolences to the 19 dead, and their families, in that horrible apartment building fire in New York City today. 

   How ever there are a few questions that come to mind.  How do tenants on the top floor (19^th floor) leave the building?  Elevator[s]?  Was there more than one elevator in the place?  Did the elevator[s] keep working thru out the fire?  What happens when the down button on all 19 floors is pressed at once?  I assume there were stairs.  Were the stairs open or were they blocked by fire?  Did the building have sprinklers?  If not why not?  Can you install outdoor fire escapes on a 19 story building?

New York City is in for some amusing times.  They elected a new mayor, Eric Adams who sounds a lot better than the outgoing De Blasio.  Adams was a member of NYPD for a good long time, worked his way up to serious rank in the department.  Adams has promised to crack down on crime and clean things up.  Sounds good to me, although living way up in New Hampshire, I may not be fully in touch with New York City doings. 

   Same time New York is getting a new District Attorney, a certain Alvin Bragg.  Alvin is a soft on crime guy and on his first day in office released a long list of crimes that his office would no longer prosecute.  Criminals accused of these no longer prosecuted crimes would be turned loose.  This ought to handicap Eric Adams efforts to crack down on crime.  Back in the day, Rudi Guiliano introduced “broken windows policing” namely arresting and charging for minor offenses like jumping subway turnstiles on the theory that you often caught wanted criminals and it put out the word to the underworld that the cops were serious.  Alvin clearly doesn’t believe in “broken windows”. 

   I don’t know how Alvin came into office.  If he was elected, then the good citizens of New York who elected him are going to have to suffer.  If he was appointed somehow, New Yorkers ought to be looking for the scalp of who ever appointed him. 

9-Lives vs Friskies

 I fed cat on Kibble for years.  She used to eat it.  Couple of years ago, something happened and cat stopped eating Kibble.  She is a nice cat, been with me for 14 years, so I bought her some canned catfood.  That comes in two styles, Shreds and Glop, and Pate. I like Pate, it is less messy.  Cat likes shreds and glop.  When I fed cat with pate she would nibble around the edges and leave a good deal of it in her bowl. I like cat, so I weakened and bought her shreds and glop, Friskies by name.  So now we are dealing with a cat food shortage.  I cannot buy 40 can cartons of Friskies at Walmart any more.  Best I could score just before Christmas was a 24 can carton of 9-Lives shreds and glop.  Not good.  9-Lines doesn't put enough glop in with the shreds so the stuff won't shake out of the can into cat's bowl.  I have to use and dirty a spoon to get 9-Lines out of the can into the cat bowl.  And then wash the spoon.  PITA.   

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

 It snowed all day today (Friday). It was snowing by 6:30 this morning and just let up a few minutes ago (4:30 PM)  We got 3 inches on my deck, which is within walking distance of Peabody slopes.  It's nice fluffy powder, skiing ought to really good tomorrow (Saturday). No wind.  Temp about 28F up here, 24F down in the valley. 

Whither Corona virus?

 The Biden administration is finding that public opinion is firming up about their handling of the omicron variant of the Corona virus.  The public is beginning to think that Biden isn’t handling it well.  The folks that are benefiting from Corona virus, big pharma, most governors, the president, Tony Fauci, the MSM, and probably more, have seized upon the emergence of omicron as an excuse to keep the pandemic going.  So they talk it up as the second coming of the Black Death. 

   There are stories going around, that while omicron is very infectious, it isn’t really a very serious disease.  It hasn’t killed more than a handful of people so far.  The symptoms are so mild that a lot of people don’t notice that they have anything.  Only when someone runs a lab test on them, and gets the test to give a positive result do they chalk up another Covid case. 

   The MSM is not carrying this story yet, it is against the narrative, but they have not denied it either.  If true and I have no way of checking out the story, then we could call the Corona virus pandemic over and get the country going again.  I think the public is beginning the think this way, and it makes them think the Biden administrative doesn’t know what it is doing.  If the omicron strain is reasonably mild, the Administrative could declare victory over Corona virus and claim credit for the victory.  Who Runs the Biden Administration (WRBA) may catch on shortly.  Or they may not, or omicron is not as mild as some stories say.  

  Time will tell.  The mid term elections are coming.  

Looking back on last year's Capitol riot.

 The Democrats are celebrating 6 January, the day of the Capitol riot last year.  They love it.  It is a chance to trash Donald Trump, can’t miss out on that. 

   Couple of things I remember from this time last year.  Two Capitol security chiefs resigned the next day.  Obviously they, or their bosses, didn’t think they had done a good job securing the Capitol building. TV doesn’t talk much about that any more.  And then there is that video showing Capitol police holding a door open and waving the demonstrators inside.  The TV hasn’t shown that video for a long time, but they aired it a couple of times last year. 

It ought to take a solid majority to pass a law.

 A law that does not command a majority of the country, and the Congress, is probably a bad law and we should not pass it.  The Senate requirement for a 60 vote majority to pass most laws is a good idea.  It will prevent a lot of bad laws from getting passed. 

   For instance, most voters in all states like the idea of voter ID, with a picture ID.  Voter ID laws make it harder for out of state shills bussed in just for the election to effect the out come.  The Democrats are trying to override state laws requiring a picture ID with a federal law outlawing voter ID and they want to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate to allow them to pass this controversial and bad law with just 50 senators and the vice president’s vote.  Bad idea in my book. 

Remember the blizzard of '78

The TV is showing a spot of trouble down in Virginia today.  Snowed on I95 and traffic got stuck.  One trucker was saying he was stuck for 5 hours, someone else claimed to be stuck for 14 hours.  But, eventually traffic started to move, and the cars and their passengers made it out.

   The newsies don’t seem to remember the blizzard of ’78 up here in Boston.  It started to snow, and kept on snowing for three days.  Rte 128 has a few modest grades, and they got too slippery for the trucks to get up.  Traffic stopped moving and the snow kept falling.  It got so bad that everybody abandoned their cars on 128 and walked out in the snow storm.  That left 10 miles of 128, solid with abandoned cars with snow up to the roofs.  Only the radio antennas showed.  Best the public works people could do was start at both ends with tow trucks, and tow the cars out, one by one.  It took ‘em a week to get 128 back to being a road. 

We need a better battery.

   Title of a letter to the editor of the Wall St Journal Friday.  People have been saying this ever since Alexander Volta demonstrated the first battery back in 1799 (Ben Franklin’s time) Volta’s battery had electrodes of copper and zinc and used salt water as the electrolyte.  It wasn’t very powerful and I don’t remember ever reading about things being powered by Volta’s battery.  It was a piece of laboratory apparatus used to demonstrate “current electricity” as opposed to static electricity which involved rubbing dry things together, creating hundreds of volts and virtually no current flow.  Volta’s battery would make a frog’s leg twitch, but I never heard of it doing any else. 

   Since Volta’s time, invertors have created the lead acid battery (used to start cars), the carbon zinc dry cell (used in flashlights) the alkaline battery (a better flashlight battery), the nickel cadmium battery, the silver zinc battery (only ever used in the F106 fighter plane due to outrageous cost) and finally today’s lithium batteries used in battery cars.  And there was an Edison battery whose chemistry escapes me now.  The letter’s author, an MIT professor who ought to know better, called for yet better batteries. 

   We have been hearing this complaint about batteries for better than 200 years.  

Advanced Technology at work

 It has been snowing lightly all day.  Put down about an inch, enough to make driving tricky.  Clever little weather routine down on my task bar of my Windows 10 machine says  "Cloudy". Well it is cloudy, but the snow is of greater interest to drivers and skiers. Didn't say squat about the snow.

Afghanistan

We have been in Afghanistan, in strength, since 9-11.  That’s 20 years ago.  In that time we should have reformed the madrassahs into schools teaching the three R’s, rather than Jihad.  We should have done land reform, so that the peasants, who worked the land, owned the land.  This would have required dispossessing a lot of land lords, who would have bitched to high heaven, but so what?  We should have insisted on fair elections in each district of Afghanistan to select representatives to an Afghan central government.  We should have insisted that as a first act, the new central government approve a national constitution that we wrote with a lot of help from serious Afghans. 

   I am not sure just what we actually did in the last 20 years in Afghanistan.  Our noble MSM didn’t tell us much.  Apparently we left a lot of Taliban sympathizers alive and in business.  Enough Talibansters to lead to the shameful bugout from Afghanistan back in August. 

 

Recovering from the US Civil War.

 There was plenty of bad feeling to go around in 1865.  Sherman had inflicted lots of pain in Georgia.  John Wilkes Booth had assassinated Abraham Lincoln.  Plenty of white southerners who had enjoyed being superior at law to black slaves were disappointed.  The subdued southern states were occupied by the US Army. The massive casualties of the war, 600,000 men, inflicted great pain on many many American families. 

   But, the Civil War had abolished slavery.  The southern states attempt to pull out of the Union and set up their own country was defeated.  These things stuck. 

   The part that is not told by the history books I have read, and I have read quite a few, is how all the bad feelings were, if not defeated, at least reduced a lot.  By World War I times, say fifty years after the end of the Civil War,  the old south had been converted into as loyal and patriotic part of the United States as any other part, and in fact more loyal and patriotic than many other parts. 

   It is difficult to imagine the course of world history if the Confederacy had survived or reappeared and made good its departure from the Union.  Certainly all the bad feelings from 1865 would have contributed mightily to such an outcome.  The Cold War with the Soviets would be all sorts of difficult for Washington DC had it been required to deal with a not very friendly Confederacy whose territory started at the city limits of DC. 

Stalingrad WWII 1943

The decisive battle between Germany and Russia.  The Russians took horrendous losses but won the battle.  And went on to win all the future battles with the Germans.  Turning point in WWII.  Stalingrad was a medium duty Russia city on the Volga River.  Not the size or importance of Moscow or Leningrad, but a serious city with some serious industry.  Paulus, the German commander completely blew it.  To take a city or a castle you have to encircle it, cut it off from supplies and reinforcements and starve it out.  Paulus didn’t bother, he didn’t cross the Volga river to get on the far side of Stalingrad and surround it.  He called on the Luftwaffe and artillery to blow the place up and ordered his infantry to assault it.  The Russians dug in and shot down the attacking Germans in droves.   
   Georgy Zukov, Stalin’s top general, the man who had clobbered the Japanese in 1939, talked Stalin into fixing the Germans at Stalingrad.  The local commander was told to hang on, help was coming.  Two huge Russian armies of 250,000 men each were launched against the German supply lines and cut them.  Suddenly Paulus found himself cut off in Stalingrad with no rations or ammunition.  The German’s “fireman” Walter Model organized a rescue mission.  Paulus should have ordered all his troops to pull out of Stalingrad and head for a roundez vous with Model.  Paulus failed to do so, partly because Hitler was against the idea, and partly thru who knows what personal failings.   
    The Russians captured or killed all of Paulus’s 250,000 men.  The German army never recovered from this terrible loss.  

Who should a political representative answer to??

 There are two legitimate choices and a bunch of illegitimate choices, with the illegitimate choices shading over into crime.  The first legitimate choice is his/her district, the voters who elected him/her.  (Note: I need some unisex pronouns for use in cases where I don’t know the sex of the person I am writing about) The second legitimate choice is the political party, democrat or republican in the American case.  After the representative gets to Congress he/she will feel great pressure from the other representatives to vote to support the party every time.   Senator Joe Manchin (R West Virginia) was subject to this strain last week.  The party wanted him to vote for Biden’s “Build Back Badder” bill, a $2 to $4 trillion collection of freebies and  pork.  Senator Manchin’s district did not want “Build Back Badder” they felt (correctly) that it would increase inflation and raise their cost of living.  Senator Manchin, to his credit, voted for his district, and has been heavily dumped on by the democrat party for not supporting them.   

How to pronounce omicron (latest corona virus strain)??

 I pronounce it like it is spelled, starting off with "O".  I hear people on TV and radio pronounce it like it was spelled Armicron, starting off with "A".  Dunno how that happens.  I don't do radio or TV. 

So who will the Democrats run in 2024?

 They could run Biden again.  I think any Republican could beat Biden in 2024.  Biden's health might fail in the next three years and he will say he won't run again.  Or the democrats decide that running Biden is just handing the presidency to the Republicans, and decide to pick a more electable candidate.  Trouble is, just this year, I cannot think of any democrat that would make much of a president.  Scratch Kamala Harris.  Scratch Elizabeth (Fauxahontis) Warren.  Scratch AOC.  The Bern?? Who else do they have?  Must be somebody but I cannot think of a name.

  For that matter, I wonder what the Republicans are going to do for 2024.  There is The Donald.  Formidable candidate, who brings a lot (37 million?) of voters with him.  He also brings a horde of bitter enemies.  Ted Cruz?   Marco Rubio?  someone else? who knows?  A lot can happen in the next three years.

Don't infect friends and family.

 Why the lines to get tested for Corona virus?  Even if you test negative today, you can catch it before you get to Grandmothers.  If you are serious about it, get vaccinated, that works and it lasts.  This testing business seems like a waste of time to me.

55 MPG CAFÉ is greenies idea to push sale of battery powered cars.

 There is no way Detroit can make even the smallest cars do 55 mpg.  Heck, a 250 CC motorcycle won’t do 55 mpg.  They will have to resort to cheating, like the flex fuel rule that lets automakers collect a serious CAFÉ credit for each flex fuel (runs on alcohol or gasoline) car they make.  Or miss the 55 mpg target and pay Uncle some extra money to sell the non performing cars, (and raise their price). 

  This all comes from the greenies idea that they can prevent climate change (global warming we used to call it) by reducing the use of oil and gas.  This is why Biden killed the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office.  This is why Biden has canceled all oil and gas leases on federal land.  Doing both of these things hiked the price of gasoline from $2.20 last year to $3.40 this year.  The greenies believe that they can save the earth by killing off real cars and converting us all to battery cars.

   Couples of things the greenies don’t know or ignore.  Mining and refining the substantial amounts of lithium to make a battery car’s battery produces as much green house gas as a gasoline car will over its life time.  The electricity to charge a battery car comes from power plants burning coal, natural gas, or oil.    Thermodynamics says that only 30-40 % of the heat energy in the fuel comes out as electricity, the rest goes into the plant’s cooling system.  The greenies are dead set against nuclear power and over the years have pushed thru safety regulations so bad as to make nuclear prohibitively expensive. 

Bake a mince pie.

  Buy a 27 ounce jar of Non Such mince meat.  Find a 9 inch pie pan.  If the pan looks old and dry, grease it lightly with veggie oil or butter, or what ever. Make enough pie crust for a bottom AND top crust.  2 ½ cups flour, ½ Tsp backing soda, 1/2 Tsp salt, ½ to 1/3 pound of fat.  I use butter. In the old days we used Crisco. Sift the dry ingredients together.  Add the butter.  Use a pair of table knives to cut the butter down into pieces the size of a navy bean.  Add ¼ cup good cold water.  Knead the pie crust until it is uniform and medium sticky.  Add a small bit of cold water if the pie crust needs it.  Divide the pie crust in half. Put the top half into the freezer.  On a floured board press the bottom half of the crust as flat as you can, then roll it out good and flat.  Check the size of your rolled out crust against the 9 inch pie pan, roll some more.   Slide the rolled out crust off the board and onto the pie pan.  Fill the pie fan with the Non Such Mince Meat.  Roll out the top crust and put it on the pie pan.  Trim the crust around the pie edges and use a fork, tines out, to crimp the top and bottom crusts together.  Bake for 30-35 minutes at 400-425 F.  Back the heat off to 300 F and give it another 10 minutes.  Remove from oven and let cool enough to eat. 

  If you want to bake ten inch mince pies, buy two jars of Non Such mince meat.  Roll the crusts out extra thin and things will work.  

 

 Merry Christmas everyone!

National Inventiveness.

 Been a lot of talk on the internet about the Chinese are getting ahead of us at inventing new products and new weapons.  We here in the United States were the world’s champions of inventiveness for many years.  Even so, there are a few things we could do to improve the situation.

First of all we could clamp down on patent trolls.  Anyone who introduces something new will be sued for patent infringement just as soon as something new looks like it will make money.  The trolls, pretty much all lawyers, hold vaguely written patents with claims as broad as all outdoors, pop up out of the woodwork and demand money.

   We need to reform the patent office.  No patent should be granted unless it describes a device in enough detail as to permit someone to make said device, and that the device works after it is built.  This means the patent application shall contain a drawing with dimensions, a test procedure so you can see if it is working, a parts list, an electrical schematic, and a parts list.  Patents of devices containing computers or micro processors shall contain a listing of the computer program. Patents that lack this detail will not be granted. 

   All patent applications shall be publicized so that interested parties, often competitors, have time to review the patent application and if it conflicts with patents they already hold, or is ordinary prior art well known in the trade, they can make objections.  The patent office shall hold a meeting on each patent application where interested parties can voice their objections to granting the patent. 

    Interested parties may sue the patent office to repeal old patents which do not conform to these new guidelines.

   Much research is conducted by universities, using grant money.  A distressing number of papers published by these scientists fail to duplicate.  In other words when other people attempt to duplicate the reported results they cannot do it.  This is so common that I encountered it myself.  I had searched the literature, found a paper describing a method that we needed.  I spent a week coding it up and debugging it.  It worked, only the performance was only half what the paper had claimed for it.  I finally telephoned the author and asked him what I was doing wrong.  The author, somewhat sheepishly, admitted that he had left out a factor in his computation of efficiency, and the method was only half as effective as claimed in the paper.

    This sort of thing wastes a lot of time and money.  Grantees ought to keep track of research they funded that fails to repeat.  The scientists who publish fails-to-repeat papers should become ineligible for any more grants. 

  Doing just these two things would increase the number of new things invented and developed, a lot. 

 

Dumbo. Disney. 1940.

Rumor got around saying that Disney was going to vanish Dumbo, probably over those scenes with a flock of black crows, speaking in black accents.  I kinda liked Dumbo, having seen it in my childhood.  Timothy the mouse was an attractive character and so was Dumbo.  So I rented it from Netflix before Disney made it disappear.  Actually, looking at it today in 2021, 60 years after it was made, it was still pretty good.  Animation was excellent.  The stork expressman delivering Dumbo to his mom was excellent.  He was so good that he appeared in a couple of other Disney movies.  Actually the most anti black scenes were some short shots of black roustabouts hammering big top tent pegs into the ground in a rain storm.  Although I am pretty sure that circus roustabouts when Dumbo was made were all black.  The scenes with the black crows speaking in black accents seemed pleasant enough to me.  The crows were friendly, they encouraged Dumbo, including giving him the famous magic feather.  

   Anyhow I think the talk of Dumbo as a racist film is malarkey, it is a good fun film that has been around for a long time. 

Corona Virus tests.

 President Biden has called for millions of test kits.  Fox had Robert Redfield of CDC on this morning.  Redfield thinks we need more tests. 

   I have a few questions about all this test talk.  Do we need a lab test to tell if someone is sick?  And, what do we do about cases where the test comes back positive yet the patient is perfectly well?  Is this a real case of Corona virus or is it a false positive from the test?  How was the test verified?  How many subjects were tested by the test?  And how did we verify the test results.  Do we have other tests or procedures?  What might they be?  And how accurate are they.  In short, what makes us think this un-named test really works?  Some numbers would be convincing.  So far the TV news has offered NO numbers.

  And, even if the test works, how is it going to help in the Corona virus pandemic?  We can tell patients who are sick without using lab tests. 

Senator Manchin voted for his constituents.

 

Senator Joe Manchin just announced that he cannot vote for the Build Back Badder bill, a favorite of Joe Biden and leftie democrats that is pure pork and freebies.  Manchin said his constituents were solidly against the Build Back Badder bill and as their representative, he had to vote the way his constituents want, not the way the Democrat party wants.  Naturally the lefty side of the Democrat party was furious, called Manchin names, and acted out in other ways.

   I say more power to a politician who votes his district.  We have four congressional reps here in New Hampshire who don’t vote for what their constituents want; instead they vote for what the Washington Democrat party wants.

Why we don’t want Putin to invade Ukraine.

   We remember that Hitler started WWII by invading Poland in 1939.  We figure that if we forbid the invasion of neighboring countries, we can prevent WWIII.  And we don’t like invasions on humanitarian grounds; the people in the invaded country take it in the neck.  Ask any Pole, they will tell you. 

Ever since WWII America has believed that national borders should be inviolate.  We have even fought wars over this, the Korean War being the clearest example.  North Korea invaded South Korea with out warning.  We raised a huge army, fought a vicious 3 year war, and preserved the original state of South Korea.  As a side effect, today’s South Koreans have a warm spot in their hearts for Americans.  They have industrialized and are now an important power.  They were nowheresville back when the Korean War started.

One other factor in the Ukraine situation.  Today’s Russia is smaller; less populated, and has fewer natural resources than the old Soviet Union had it its disposal.  We would just as soon keep things that way.  The old Soviet Union was a dangerous competitor.  When the Soviet Union broke up in 1989, about a third of it became independent of Russia.  The new Russia, although a powerful state, is not as powerful as the old Soviet Union was.   

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

 Just for the record, I am in Mittersill.  I am close enough to walk to the Peabody slopes chair lift.  I get the same amount of snow as Cannon, at least Cannon base.  Cannon summit often gets a bit more that the base.  I measure the snow fall on my deck with a wooden yardstick.  I am an old Cannon skier, I started skiing Cannon when I was four.  I finally gave up downhill skiing when I turned 70, which was a few years ago.

   It is 9:30 AM and the snow seems to have stopped, although the weather people are talking up a "winter storm warning" lasting until 11 AM.  They forecast 4 to 8 inches.  I got 5 inches.  That is enough to make the skiing really good at Cannon.  

How dangerous is the omicron variant of Corona virus??

How dangerous is the omicron version of the Corona virus? Really?  Guys like Tony Fauci are claiming it is worse than the original.  Some TV news states that NO ONE has died of omicron (yet).  Other TV newsies have said the omicron is very contagious but the symptoms are milder and less likely to kill than the original version of Corona virus.   No one has presented any numbers, so anything might be true.  It would be nice to have one of the few responsible news outlets left to give us some facts. 

Putin and Ukraine.

 

According to today’s Wall St Journal the Western Europeans told Russian dictator Putin that serious economic sanctions would follow an invasion of Ukraine.   You would think that would carry some weight with Putin, but who knows?  Putin may not believe the Europeans mean it; he may believe that Russia’s economy is so local and so self sufficient that European and American economic sanctions won’t hurt. 

   Driving Putin toward invading Ukraine is history; Ukraine has been a central and famous part of Russia since medieval times.  Putin undoubtedly wants to own Ukraine for its historic significance to Russia.  He may want to invade while he still has an army to do it with.  Russia’s birth rate is in a death spiral, and Russia may not be able to recruit a decent army by 2040 for lack of young men to draft

Merry Christmas.

 

Merry Christmas is almost dead.  Clerks and cashiers and bag boys are saying “Happy  Holidays” or “have a nice day”.  No “Merry Christmas”.

Improve the criminal justice system.

 

The American criminal justice system is run by lawyers, largely for lawyers.  Lawyers love to drag things out; it gives them more billable hours.  For instant the Boston Marathon bomber was sentenced to death five years ago.  He is still alive, in jail, with lawyers arguing the rightness of his sentence.  He will probably die in prison of old age.  The lawyers have collected five years worth of billable hours.

Reforms we ought to make:

1.       Prosecutors should only be allowed to charge a criminal with ONE offense for each arrest.  Right now the lawyers charge the criminal with half a dozen crimes, some more serious, some less serious.  Then they say “plead guilty to this lesser offense.  If you insist on going to trial we will prosecute you for this really terrible offense that has a mandatory 20 year minimum sentence.”  This is plea bargaining and most American criminal cases are settled by a plea bargain.  It’s cheaper than a trial.  It’s not very fair. 

2.       We ought to go over our criminal statutes.  There has got to be a whole bunch of offenses from the old days that nobody cares about in the 21^st century.  Remove them.  Decriminalize possession of pot.  I see no reason to jail people for mere possession.  Rewrite what is left using plain Standard English, no Latin, and no lawyer gobble de gook.

3.       Forbid no knock raids.  Bust down someone’s door at o’dark thirty, and they will shoot, every time.  A no-knock raid is just provoking a gun fight in which some one gets killed.  Not good law enforcement.

4.       Justice delayed is justice denied.  I think one year is plenty of time for lawyers to run off a trial, yielding a sentence or an acquittal.  If the lawyers cannot get the lead out, the defendant should be acquitted after one year from his arrest.  

Lame Duck

 As soon as Biden announces that he is not running in 2024, he becomes a lame duck.  Many (most?) politicians figure that a fellow pol who won't be around in power very long doesn't need my political support.  Such a pol is called a lame duck and looses much of his ability to influence people and events.  So Biden won't say he won't run in 2024 until the very last minute, convention time in 2024.  Biden's statements that he will run in 2024 might be real but probably aren't.  

I assume the heavy duty democrats are feeling around quietly for someone to run in 2024.  Kamala Harris does not look good.  Biden doesn't look good.  Pelosi and Schumer are too old, not not very presidential.  I cannot think of a democrat state governor who is any good.  Who is left??

For the Republicans, Trump is there.  If his health holds up and he wants the nomination it is probably his for the asking.  If he decides not to run, we have Ted Cruz, Desantos. and Marko Rubio and probably more.

Would you give a floor mat as a Christmas gift?

 Weathertech is all in favor.  They are running TV ads saying that their floor mats are made in the USA, with American labor, and American raw materials, not stuck on a slow boat from China.  All very virtuous, but somehow the idea of a floor mat under the Christmas tree does not catch on with me.

Biden is blaming the tornados in Kentucky on Climate Change.

 Yeah right, we blame everything on climate change these days. We used to call things like this acts of God.  Now we call them climate change.  I liked God better.

Vote a straight Republican ticket this time.

 

US voters gave us Biden, a crime wave, the Afghan disgrace, the price of gasoline, the price of fuel oil, inflation, what have I left out?  We have a federal election coming up in 11 months, less than a year.  Voters ought to vote Republican now that we see how awful a Democrat administration can be. 

   We can help those voters.  We need to talk up the good points of the Republican candidates. Mention their names and where they are coming from.  Do a little research and talk up what they promise to do when elected.  Arguing with a voter is counterproductive; voters don’t want to be argued with.  Stick to talking about the goodness of Republican candidates. 

   We ought to be able to vote in a Republican majority in both the federal House and Senate.  That should stop the worst of the Democrat bills.  In New Hampshire we need good Republican candidates for our two US rep seats (Kuster and Pappas) and we need someone to run against Maggie Hassen for US senate.  We gained a Republican majority in state government last year, we need to keep that.  You can do the state good by voting a straight Republican ticket. 

    We need to get rid of Republicans in Name Only (RINO’s).  These are politicians who claim to be Republicans but down deep they are tax and spend democrats.  I don’t know of any in New Hampshire, fortunately.  Voters in other states should identify their RINOs and primary them.  I call any Republican who votes for Democrat laws more than just a few times a RINO.

Windows beat solar panels.

 

How to use solar energy for real.  Don’t mess with photo voltaic panels.  Go for plain old glass windows, facing south.  In my place, on a cold winter day, (10 F) I get so much solar gain thru my windows that my furnace doesn’t kick in all day.  Now the windows need to face south, where the sun is.  They ought to be thermo pane, two sheets of glass with ¼ inch airspace in-between the two sheets.  Just plain glass, one sheet, looses too much heat.  Saving my furnace from running half a day saves a LOT of expensive ($3.499 a gallon) furnace oil.  This is a far greater saving than solar photo voltaic panels offer.

  While we are at it, those big south facing windows need eaves, set so that the winter sun shines right in but the summer sun is blocked.   I am at 45 degrees north latitude (upstate New Hampshire).  The earth’s axial tilt is 22 degrees.  In summer, the axial tilt points toward the sun, giving us warm summer temperatures.  In the winter, the axial tilt points away from the sun, giving us snow.  In summer, the noon day sun is at 45 degrees (my latitude) plus 22 degrees (axial tilt) for a total of 67 degrees.  In winter, the noonday sun is 45 degrees less 22 degrees axial tilt for a total of 23 degrees.  You want eaves that give a 45 degree angle (shadow angle) to the bottom of the big south facing windows, this will let the winter sun shine in and block the summer sun.

   While we are talking about eaves, good deep ones will let the rain water run off your roof and fall upon the ground with out making the soil soggy around the foundations.  With good deep eaves you can skip gutters, downspouts, cleaning leaves out of the gutters, and ignoring all those ads for gutter screens. 

   Anyhow, good big south facing windows do more for your house  than solar photovoltaic panels.    

Stiffer Building Codes

 This morning's tornado hit has killed 70-80-100 we don't have a full count yet.  TV of the worst hit buildings show a lot of damage, some deaths, but the roofs look like they almost stayed on.  When things settle down, they might have the building code people look at the damage and make recommendations for stiffening the building codes for new construction to make the area a little more tornado proof.  More hurriquake nails?  more steel angles holding the roof on?  Something else?  Anything?

Let's hear it for companies.

 

Companies do a lot of good in America.  Many of us are employed by companies, paid by companies, given free health insurance by our companies, while the company is supplying product or services or entertainment to the most of us at attractive prices.  In America the streets are paved with gold the saying goes, and it is companies that do the paving.  Since the companies are owned, either by their stock holders or outright by their founders, or the children of the founders, the owners take home a generous, not to say outrageous, portion of the company’s earnings.  Far more than the average worker.

  Naturally, the various governments in America, federal, state, and local often do things helpful to companies on the theory that companies do a lot of good and need support.  Lefties hate companies and want to take every opportunity to tax them, regulate them, sue them, and make life difficult for them.  Only the fact that the company’s employees support their company and promise retribution at the polls (We will remember in November) keeps the lefties in check. 

   Lefties get their ideas from Karl Marx, who advocated getting rid of private property and having the government own “the means of production” and pay everyone a fair wage. By which Marx meant everyone got the same wage, from the new hires sweeping the floor, to the manager of the business.  And government got to install the managers, government bureaucrats to a man, who were not very good at running a business.  Dickering with suppliers for best price, hiring and firing, appointing people to important offices, setting prices, reviewing advertising, all those management things. 

   In America, we came up with a better way share out the profits of companies.  We invented labor unions.  The unions would negotiate for better wages and benefits, with the threat of a strike to back up their positions at the bargaining table.  Non union industries mostly pay union scale so that they can stay non union.  Management at every company I ever worked for would do almost anything to stay non union. 

Hold them accountable

 The TV people love to said it, "Hold so=and=so accountable".  Sounds really serious, particularly when talking about some no-good-nick who deserves to be boiled in oil.  In real life, we hold someone accountable by chewing him out and then letting him go.  Next time you hear someone use "hold accountable" know that they are lying to you.  The words I want to hear are "execution" and "long jail sentence".