D-Day 6th of June.

On this day 76 years ago, the Anglo American armies landed on the French coast of Normandy and stood off a fierce German counter attack.  Then the allies drove forward and crushed the German armies in France, liberated Paris, and pushed into Germany.  This was a turning point in WWII, which had been raging for 5 years and had another year to go.  The Germans kicked off WWII by attacking and defeating Poland.  Then they proceeded to conquer Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. They drove the British into the sea at Dunkirk.  Fortunately the Germans never had the sea power needed to move their army across the English Channel. 

   At Churchill’s insistence, the British and the Americans were fighting the Germans in North Africa.  Churchill plainly saw that the British and American civilian populations would not put up with years of wartime privation without fighting the Germans.  Churchill sold his view to Roosevelt and Roosevelt ordered the American Joint Chiefs of Staff to prepare and execute Operation Torch, an amphibious landing in North Africa going up against the Germans, under Rommel.  This meant a lot of heavy fighting until Eisenhower and Montgomery surrounded the Germans at the site of ancient Carthage and took them all prisoner.  The Anglo Americans took nearly as many German prisoners as the Russians had taken at Stalingrad, a few weeks before.

  But, the North African victory was something of a sideshow compared with Russians and the Germans who were going head to head with armies of several million men each.  Not until the successful Normandy landing did the Anglo Americans confront the Germans with as big an army as the Russians were doing.

   Fortunately D-Day was a success.  It could have been a terrible failure.  Things were so touchy that Eisenhower, the supreme commander, man with the best view of the operation, prepared a short speech to give in the event that he had to withdraw the troops and accept defeat.  On the day before D-Day the weather was so bad that the Allied nearly canceled the operation.  One brave and sincere weatherman convinced Eisenhower that the weather would lift that night making the landings possible.  As it worked out, the Normandy landings, except Omaha beach, were successful, the troops got ashore, got their armor and artillery ashore and emplaced before the German counter attack got rolling.  Even blood soaked Omaha beach was secured in the end.     

My furnace is still firing, in June.

 June is supposed to be summer.  Must be more of that Global Warming. 

Biden caused the gas price hike, now he says it will go on.

Biden is doing the bidding of the extreme greenies, the ones who want us to live without gasoline, furnace oil, electric power, and natural gas.  I would like to see just one of those greenies spend a winter up here north of Franconia Notch. 

 Biden moved against the oil companies his first day in office.  He canceled the Keystone XL pipeline.  He stopped issuing leases to explore for oil and gas on federal land.  He stopped oil exploration in ANWR, (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a stretch of tundra above the arctic circle) and he jawboned the banks and financial operations to stop financing oil and gas drilling.  These adverse actions cut US oil and gas production by a million barrels a day.  And that is why gasoline prices have been skyrocketing ever since Biden was inaugurated.

 Biden was on TV just this morning saying that high gasoline prices will continue.  He won’t do anything about it.  You Americans just suck it up.   The extreme greenies rule.

 Every American should vote a straight Republican ticket in November.

 

Joe Biden’s anti gun speech this evening.

    1. He wants an assault weapons ban.

There is no difference between an “assault weapon” and any other sort of rifle.  So an “assault weapons ban” will outlaw all rifles.  The anti gun folks are happy with this, the more guns they can ban the better.  Biden claimed that the “assault weapons ban” we had back in the 80’s and 90’s reduced mass shootings and that mass shooting went back up when the “assault weapons bas” was allowed to expire in the ‘00s.  Karl Rove, speaking right after Biden said this was false, the “assault weapons ban” did not reduce mass shooting and when it expired mass shooting did not go up.  Given a choice between Joe Biden and Karl Rove, I will believe Karl Rove.

2. He want “red flag” laws.  These laws permit anyone, parents, girl friends, teachers, doctors, ministers, Scout leaders, anyone to go to a judge and say “So-and-so is acting weird, I think he is a danger to himself or others, and we should confiscate all his guns.  The target/victim does not get a chance to defend himself.  If we think so-and-so is that messed up then we ought to involuntarily commit him to a mental hospital.
3. He wants longer and harder background checks to buy a gun.  I don’t know about this one.  Last time I bought a gun at an auction we all had to wait around for a couple of hours while a guy from Corey’s gun shop telephoned somewhere to get “instant” background checks done.  They allowed that the buyers of black powder guns didn’t have to do background checks
4. He wants to require all gun owners to buy gun safes.  I suppose.  But if this goes thru I have no good place in my house to take a gun safe.  They are BIG, and heavy.
5. He wants to raise the age to buy guns to 21 years old.  This is a judgment call.  My children were responsible enough to buy guns at 18 years old. How about yours?
6. He wants to outlaw “ghost guns”, home made guns with no serial numbers.  This seems like a paperwork thing, lots of paperwork must require the gun serial number.  On the other hand a Dremel will take the serial number off any gun in a few minutes.
7. He wants to outlaw all magazines that hold more than 5 rounds.  This is pretty much all magazines.  The magazine for my 1911 army automatic pistol holds 7 rounds; the magazine for my Ruger 10-22 holds 10 rounds.  My Hi-Standard 22 revolver holds 9 rounds in the cylinder.  My Marlin 30-30 lever action holds 7 rounds in the tubular magazine under the barrel.  I would have to do something about every gun I own.  
8. He wants to revoke the gun manufacturer anti lawyer protection law.  The lawyers were beginning to sue the maker of any gun involved in crime or accidents.  Like suing the car company every time a car was involved in an accident.  No manufacturer has the time or money to fend off all those law suits.  Revoking the gun manufacturer’s protection amounts to putting every gun manufacturer out of business. 

The Brits are having a fine time

It's the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II.  They have the  queen, dressed in light blue, including a hat, looking fine despite her 96 years, standing on the balcony at Buckingham palace.  Later joined by the entire royal family.  The have a parade, redcoats in tall bearskin hats, cavalry wearing fancy helmets and breast plates, marching bands, horse drawn artillery, all putting on a good show.  Yuge crowd of British citizens to see the show.  Everybody, including Her Majesty, having a fine time.  Enormous support for the royal family is demonstrated.   

Long live the queen.

Lying to the FBI should not be a crime

 The FBI are cops.  To find out what is really going down they need to get off their duffs, get out of the office and do some investigating.  They should not be relying on perps telling them the truth.  Right now "Lying to the FBI" gives the cops an easy charge when they don't have the evidence to charge the perp with something real. 

  So I am OK with that DC jury acquitting Sussman, the "lying to the FBI" charge because I don't think the "crime" is legitimate.  Sussman sounds like a no-good-nick but the FBI  has to come up with some real evidence of a real crime. 

AR15 is popular

The Army adopted the AR15 under the designation M16 back during the Viet Nam war.  That’s maybe 60 years ago.  Many men learn to shoot the M16 in the Army and find they like it.  Later, in civilian life, when they want a deer rifle, they tend to buy the AR15 because they have shot it a lot in the army, and liked it.  It’s an easy gun to like, it’s light, and recoil is very low.  The .223 round is powerful enough for deer and it is light, so carrying a good many rounds is easy. 

   What’s the difference between and AR15 and an army M16?  They are basically the same rifle, most parts interchange.  The AR15 is a semi automatic rifle, pulling the trigger gives you one shot.  The M16 used to be fully automatic.  Pull the trigger back and hold it and BRAP, the entire magazine was fired off. The Army decided that this used up too much ammunition, leaving patrols out of ammo after a single brush with the enemy.  So the new M16’s only fire a three round burst instead of the entire magazine.  I suppose we can call this fully automatic.

   Anyhow that is why there are a lot of AR15s and AR15 clones out there.   Guys learned them in the Army and liked them.

 

The Word from Biden, published in the Wall St Journal 31 May 2022

 Biden, or his handlers, ran a long piece in the Wall St Journal today explaining what he would do to save the country.  It was written in politician's bafflegab.  I cite a few of the more outrageous statements translated into plain English.  

“In January 2021 when I took office, the recovery had stalled and Covid was out of control.”

Not True.  When Biden took office the United States was self sufficient in oil and Trump had gotten a two working vaccines into production.  Trump had to twist arms of the paper pushers to get the paperwork done and approve the vaccines and twist more arms at Big Pharma to producethe vaccines, but he succeeded and Trump’s vaccines were ready to be administered when Biden took office.

“The US is in better economic position then almost any other country.”  

If this is true than a lot of other countries must be in terrible shape.

“I ran for president because I was tired of the so called trickle down economy.”    

Actually the Democrat party ran you for president for reasons that escape me.

"The price at the pump is elevated because is elevated in large part because Russian oil gas and refining capacity are off the market."

Not true.  Gasoline prices are outrageous because you shut down the Keystone XL pipeline on your first day in office, you stopped issuing leases to drill for oil and gas on federal lands and ANWR, and you convinced the bamks and money people not to lend to drillers and you threatened them with legal action if they lost any money financing oil and gas drilling.

“My plan would reduce the deficit even more by making common-sense reforms in the tax code.”

In plain English, I would hike taxes.

Every American should vote a straight Republican ticket to avoid destroying our beloved country.

 

 

 

 

Biden trying to sound like a real gun buff.

 He isn’t.  And he sounds dumb talking about stuff he knows little to nothing about.  He was describing ordinary 9mm handgun ammunition as “powerful” and “strong enough to rip your lungs out”.

  In actual fact, 9mm is an ordinary handgun round.  Convert mm into inch measure (25.4 mm to the inch) and you get .36 caliber, about the same as the .38 handguns the cops carried back before they all converted to 9mm Glock automatics.  9mm is a perfectly reasonable pistol cartridge, widely used, but nothing special in the power department. 

   You want real power in a handgun?  Try the old .45ACP round used in the 1911 army automatic.  Try 357 Magnum or 44 Magnum. 

What should parents do to raise decent children and not Texas shooters?

I am writing as a veteran parent.  I had three children, they are all grown up now, they all graduated college, they all stayed off drugs. The oldest is married, the middle daughter is sadly doing a divorce, and youngest son has found a very nice girlfriend.  I count my parenting as a success.

For openers, parents of young children should try to stay married, at least until the children have grown up some.  To the point where I think state child services should seize children of divorced single parents and put them up for adoption, should those children fail to obey teachers or get into crime.

Kids need to be loved by their parents. They need encouraging words, praise, stories.  They need to be scolded, not too often, when they mess up.  They need a lot more love and encouragement than scolding.

All parents ought to take the kids to church on Sunday.

Small children ought to have a regular bedtime, say 8 PM, every night.

Kids ought to get fed three squares a day, with no, or at least very lightweight snack times in-between.

Kids ought to do a few hours of homework every school day.  Doing homework on the kitchen table while a parent prepares dinner is good.

Kids ought to go outdoors and play with neighboring kids as much as possible.  Playing with peers is far better for kids than letting them watch TV or play computer games.

Parents should read a bedtime story to their kids, every night.

Older kids ought to have bicycles, and ride them to school, baseball games, and other kid activities.

Kids ought to have good kid’s books to read at home.

Kids ought to be taught to swim as early as possible.  It is a tragedy to have a child drown.

Kids should go hiking and climbing.  Kids should be enrolled in Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and summer camp.

Kids should have pets, dogs or cats or something.  And be responsible for their care.

Some of this stuff may be beyond the means of some parents.  As a parent you do the best you can.

 

 

 

 

 

So what about the Texas shooter?

The TV newsies have not said much about the shooter, Salvador Samos I think his name is.  They did mention that he was a high school dropout.  A bad sign.  High school is great fun, you get to meet friends and girls, they have sports and activities.  Even if your grades stink, they will graduate you and having a high school diploma is very helpful when you start job seeking.  If I could go back and do high school over again I would be right there, especially if I could become 15 years old again.  Looks like none of this good stuff mattered to Salvador. 

    We have not heard much from Salvador’s parents and grandparents.  The TV said his mother was a druggie and his father was a felon, not an encouraging background for parents who are supposed to be teaching their son how he should behave.  For some reason, tension at home? Salvador spent time (I wonder how much) with his grandparents.  The grandfather claimed on TV not to know of his grandson’s attitude problems.  For some undisclosed reason Salvador shot his grandmother in the face the morning he attacked Robb elementary school.  I had two grandmothers, I loved them both dearly, I cannot imagine even raising my voice to them, let alone shooting them.  This is weird behavior on Salvador’s part.

   Salvador bought two AR15 rifles.  The TV did not say but I assume he bought them new at a gun store.  Those things cost like $500 apiece, two of them is $1000.  And he bought either 360 or 1000 rounds of ammunition.  Last time I bought center fire ammunition it was $1 a round.  So that’s $1360 or $2000 depending upon whose story you believe.  I wonder where unemployed high school dropout Salvador got that kind of money.

   Then to shoot 19 appealing young kids in cold blood is beyond my belief.  The kid’s pictures are so cute, I would adopt any or all of them in an instant, Salvador kills them. 

   And we have not heard from any of Salvador’s teachers, doctors, priests, any grownup who knew Salvador.

Assault Weapon Ban

 Trouble is, there is no real difference that you can measure with a ruler between “assault riles” and deer rifles.  An “assault weapons ban” would be a ban on all rifles because there is nothing you can point to that makes assault rifles different from any other rifle. 

  In actual fact, there are styling differences.  The “assault rifles” are, or look like; AR-15’s, black plastic stock, detachable magazine, chambered for .22 center fire, and finished in some military antireflective and water resistant finish.  Hunting rifles usually have walnut stocks, any kind of ammunition feed, chambered for any cartridge ever manufactured, and blued metal work.  I submit that these are styling differences and do not make one more deadly than the other.

 

   The anti gunners pushing to revive the old “assault weapons ban” are perfectly happy to ban anything that shoots, so they don’t care. 

Gun Violence

 The newsies are using this phrase all the time.  Makes it sound like the gun did the crime.  “Gun violence” on the media is better described as either murder or armed robbery.  Both of these crimes are listed in the Ten Commandments. 

   Use of the “gun violence” phrase suggests the speaker is anti gun and wants to ban all the guns in America. 

Biden will switch us to battery cars

 rather than increasing US oil production.  He said as much on the last news conference.  "Transistion" he called it.  

Trouble is, new battery cars cost $60K as compared to a new econobox for a bit more than $20K.  And, cars last ten years nowadays so it would take 10 years to re equip everyone with a $60K battery car.  That's assuming people only buy new cars when the car they are driving needs replacement.  And the best they have claimed for battery range is 400 miles.  And it takes 2-3 hours on the battery charger to charge it up.  So a trip more than 400 miles will take 2-3 hours longer while you cool your heels waiting on the battery charger.  Whereas my old Buick with a full gas tank will go 500 miles (far enough to reach my daughter's place in Maryland).  And the gas tank refills in a couple of minutes.  And want to bet the 400 mile claim of battery range is inflated?  And nobody is talking about how long the battery lasts, and what a replacement might cost.  Ordinary car batteries only last 4 winters up here.  I have no idea how long a lithium battery might last.  Or what the chances of it bursting into flames are.  

Let's elect Republicans who will increase US oil production. 

Texas School Shooting is terrible.

 I an horrified by the Texas school shooting.  My sincerest sympathies to the bereaved. 

How useful is a hyprsonic missile?

 The Air Force announced a successful test flight of one just the other day.  Since the Chinese had announced they had a hypersonic missile a week or so ago, it sounds like the Air Force has had a hypersonic program going for quite some time.  It takes more time than a few weeks to get something like a hypersonic missile to fly.  Sounds groovy but... It takes a lot of fuel to get up to mach 5.  Wanna bet the range of this missile isn't so great?  Existing cruise missiles like Tomahawk fly somewhat below mach 1 and have transcontinental range.  You can launch from say England and hit most of Russia, all of the middle east, the northern half of Africa.  Tomahawk flies so low that ground radar cannot see it.  If the radar cannot see you the fighters cannot find you.  

   One fine day while I was in the Air Force Air Defense Command we were practicing.  We sent a target aircraft (a helpless T-33) up north and then turned him around to come south.  The radar guys got to practice tracking, the SAGE center got to practice vectoring fighters and the fighter crews got some flight time.  Only this day, the radar guys could not see the target.  "Can you come up another thousand feet?" the controller asked the target.  No joy, we still could not see it.  We had to get the target up to 10,000 feet before he showed up on radar.  I am sure that a Tomahawk cruise missile down at 1000 feet will never show on radar.   And Tomahawk has the range to go about anywhere. 

   So, groovy as hypersonic sounds, I am betting on conventional cruise missiles to do the work.

Lunch at Chik Fil A

 We don't have Chik Fil A up in New Hampshire, not yet at least.  They got a lot of press coverage a while back.  I cannot remember the issue now.  So when I saw one in the shopping center I just had to try it out. Anyhow had lunch, a Chik Wich, Fries, and coffee only $8.69.  That's cheaper than McD's.  Very good.  Most customers stayed in their cars and lined up for the takeout window.  I wanted to see a menu so I parked and ate inside.  

Note for Plumbers

Water faucets ought to have a marking on them that shows which handle is for hot water and which is for cold water.  It need not be much, a red dot for hot and a blue dot for cold works.  But new and shiny faucets with no marking it all are annoying.

I don’t see much about Ukraine lately

 I, like many, expected the Russians to roll right over Ukraine.  I am all kinds of impressed that they have not.  I think it is great that the Ukrainians got it together and stopped the Russian army.  At least that is what my internet and my TV are telling me.  All I know comes from my internet or my TV or the Wall St Journal.  I have been out of town for a while and have not seen the Journal.  I am at my daughter’s house where the TV only plays kiddy cartoons, so I am down to just the internet. 

   Could it be that Putin is happy to let the Ukraine fighting die down or die off and drop out of the news?  He will have to do some more expensive fighting to get anything out of the Ukrainians now. And maybe he doesn’t want to do any more expensive fighting and see more Western press coverage about how wimpy the Russian army really is?

Fair Elections

I have a few suggestions for fair elections.

 

1. Voters must present a good picture ID at the polls.  All Americans have driver’s licenses.  If they don’t, how do the get to work, or to the grocery store?  Plus states ought to issue picture ID free to citizens that lack them.  After they make sure the citizens are really citizens.
2. Voters must register BEFORE Election Day.  No same day registration. Voters who cannot get down to town hall a week before the election to register are unmotivated.  Do we need unmotivated voters? Same day registration makes it easier for busloads of out of state voters to get to vote after only one trip to the victim state.  Voters must show an in-state driver’s license, in-state plates on the car, and an in-state residency.  College dorms are not in-state residencies.  College students must register and vote in their home town.  
3. Votes are counted on election day, not earlier, not later
4. We do absentee ballots for voters who cannot make it to the polls on Election Day such as members of the armed forces stationed overseas.  We will allow hospital patients and the ill and infirm also.  We do not allow absentee ballots to voters who fear that will catch Covid or something else at the polls. 
5. Absentee ballots must arrive by US mail, with a postmark with a date, before the polls close on Election Day. Undated postmarks and late absentee ballots will be discarded. Drop boxes are not permitted.
6. Use paper ballots, not voting machines.  They cannot hack paper ballots over the internet.
7. 
   

60th High School Reunion

 

 Or about.  Actually the 60^th reunion for the class of 1960 should have been 2020.  But the Covid panicked the school and so we only get to do the 60^th this year.  The school is Westtown Friends School in West Chester PA.  I took two days to drive down.  Leaving Franconia Notch on Thursday morning, not a green leaf to be seen on any trees.  Wasn’t til I got over into the Connecticut River valley that I saw any green.  By Massachusetts all the trees were in full leaf, looking very lush. 

   The old school was started way out in PA farm country back in 1799 to preserve Quaker teenagers from the fleshpots of Philadelphia.  Back in 1960 it was sill pretty rural.  Not any more.  The road into West Chester that used to run thru apple orchards, corn fields, and some dairy cows, is now spiffy new single family houses all the way.  Suburbia has engulfed Westtown.

    Turnout for this first alumni day since Covid started was thin compared to the good old days.  Only about a third of my class made it.  Friday night was a cookout on the old first association soccer field, renamed Raiford Field to confuse us alumni.  Saturday was a lot of standing around and talking.  Bertie Bonner from our class threw a fantastic dinner for the class at her place Saturday night.  Sunday we did meeting.

   Westtown has gone on a door locking frenzy.  Every door on the big old main building now has a fancy power lock.  If you are out doors when the rain starts you will get pretty wet before you get inside.   

   And Westtown is going anti-sexist.  The signage now reads "East End" and "West End" rather than "Boys End" and "Girls End"  I heard a student say Westtown was considering co-ed dorms.  Too bad I am too old to enjoy that.

Admiral Jackie Fisher and the battle cruisers.

Jackie Fisher was appointed commander in chief of the British Royal Navy in the years before WWI.  Aircraft had not been invented yet.   Fisher saw his problem as finding the German Navy at sea and engaging it with the larger Royal Navy.   The Germans (and everybody else) would have a screen of cruisers around the battle fleet.  Cruisers could easily sink contemporary destroyers so having destroyers search for the enemy would just get a lot of destroyers sunk.  Fisher demanded a special purpose vessel, the battle cruiser, to go looking for the enemy.  The battle cruiser had to be fast, which called for a big ship, and heavily armed so it could blow enemy cruisers out of its way.  The result was a fine looking vessel, as big and handsome as a battle ship, but lacking a battleship’s armor.   The officers appointed to command the battle cruisers though they had command of a battleship and acted accordingly. 

   At the climatic WWI battle of Jutland, the British battle cruisers were commanded by flamboyant Admiral Beatty.  Beatty took his fleet of four battle cruisers out into the North Sea and located the German battle fleet.  At this time, Beatty should have broken off the action, radioed German position course and speed to British Grand Fleet and then run for it.

   Instead, Beatty engaged the German battle ship fleet and had three of his four battle cruisers were sunk by German fire.  “There seems to be something wrong with our ships today” said Beatty at the time. Beatty didn’t even bother to radio the German’s position, course and speed back to Grand Fleet.

    Fortunately for the British, Grand Fleet was commanded by canny old Admiral Jellico.  Jellico looked at the weather, the tides, and what Intel he had, and figured out just where the German fleet was going.  He got it right, and Grand Fleet was able to find the Germans, and cross the German’s Tee, the decisive maneuver in battle ship actions. 

    HMS Hood was laid down as a battle cruiser during WWI but was not finished and launched until the war was over.  After the destruction of three battle cruisers at Jutland, the British beefed up the armor on Hood.   But they treated her as a battle ship even though her armor was only 6 inches instead of the 12 inches considered proper for real battleships.  Twenty years later Hood was send out to stop Bismarck.  Bismarck scored a single hit on Hood’s deck, the shell went right thru and exploded and Hood sank in minutes.  The last of the battle cruisers.

Just in case, New Hampshire abortion law needed.

 From the looks of things on the TV news (highly reliable source that) there is a good chance that the Supremes will repeal Roe vs Wade, their abortion ruling.   Roe vs Wade requires abortion to be legal and available to every woman, over ruling laws in every state that criminalized abortion back then.  I think it would be a good thing for New Hampshire to pass a state law on abortion with some fancy language in the bill's header saying this only takes effect after Roe vs Wade is repealed.  

For me, I think such a law should declare abortion to be legal and available to all women, especially young women who  become pregnant in high school or college and giving birth would prevent them from graduating.  I think it should forbid late term abortions, which more and more seem like infanticide.  Pregnancy lasts nine months.  I would forbid abortion after 6 months (call it 24 weeks).  I don't believe that tax payers money should be used to fund abortion.  I think the woman, or her family, or a private charity should pick up the bill. 

Home solar energy.

You want your house to face south.  With big picture windows, facing south, to pick up sunlight.  You might need to buy a new house, or do some very heavy duty remodeling if your house faces the wrong way or lacks the necessary picture windows.  This works for me, on a sunny winter day my windows pickup enough warmth from sun that my furnace doesn’t run until the sun goes down.  While the sun is up it pours enough warmth into my house to keep it pleasantly warm all day.  No moving parts, no huge and leaky silicon solar cells, no DC to AC inverters, no battery banks, no deals with the electric company to keep my lights on after sundown. 

 You also want some big eaves to keep the summer sun out while letting the lower winter sun in.  You want your roof in a light color, not black, to ease the load on the air conditioner in the summer.  Here in North America the prevailing winds come out of the west, so you want some windows on the west side to open to let in some breeze.  And about the same amount of window on the east side that opens, so the breeze can blow right thru the house.  Some shade trees to shade the house in the summer are good too.

 Builders might keep these ideas in mind.  They don’t add much, if anything, to the cost of the house at the time it gets built.  They do yield a more comfortable and more energy efficient house.

You nuke Ukraine and we will nuke you back, harder

 That's what the United States ought to say to Putin next time he threatens to use his nukes.  For that matter, make it "nuke Ukraine or anywhere else".   Trouble is, if Biden said this, nobody would believe he meant it.  Everybody would expect him to chicken out in the clutch.  So we need a better president to make this work.

Puberty.

   Children are born with no feelings for or knowledge about sex. Other than the fact that young girls tend to hang with girls and young boys tend to hang with boys, little kids are unconscious of their sex.  This persists even though parents cut girls and boys hair differently and dress them differently.   It is not until maybe seventh grade, (14 years) that boys and girls begin to dance together, flirt with each other, date each other, and go steady with each other.  This change has been known for a long long time and is referred to as puberty. 

   Talking to kids about sexual matters before puberty is a waste of time; the kids don’t understand the talk.  Or misinterpret it to mean odd or harmful things the speaker cannot imagine.  After the kids go thru puberty then talks about sexual matters become understandable to them.  The kids may not grasp everything said, but at least they have a broad idea of what is being talked about. 

  Florida just passed a law forbidding schools to talk about sexual matters to kids in third grade and below.  That’s a good start, but I would make it kids in sixth grade and below. 

Supreme Court Leak.

    Leaving aside the intelligence supplied by the leak (court may dump Roe); the discouraging part is the existence of the leak and the leaker.  The leaker abandoned loyalty to the court, one of America’s oldest and most revered institutions, to merely serve the interests of the Democrat Party.  If an institution like the court cannot secure the loyalty of its personnel, what organization can?  Employees who place the interests of the Democrat party ahead of the interests of their employer, be it the court, the  armed services, the police, the lower courts, and more the nation is in deep trouble. 

   Many of the great things America has done over the years, winning wars, abolition, civil rights, huge engineering works, the moon landings, and more, were done by institutions, often against great opposition.  The institutions could not have succeeded if their personnel failed to support their institution, but instead had betrayed their institution to the opposition. 

   As to the issue at stake, overturning Roe vs. Wade, I am in favor.  Even though Roe has been the law of the land for 50 years, which ought to make it settled law, but hasn’t, I think it was a poor decision by a handful of lawyers on a matter that properly should have been decided by an elected legislature, either federal or state. 

Misinfornation, Disinformation, Malinformation or truth versus falsehood?

 Liberals having hissy fits over Musk’s buyout of Twitter keep talking about the terrible effects of misinformation, disinformation and now malinformation.   I don’t hear any talk about truth versus falsehood.  I think the liberals are whining about truth that does not support “the narrative”.  And they want those truths suppressed less they waken or even destroy the precious “narrative”. 

   Which is a lot different from what we expect of the media.  We want the facts of the case, not rooting for the Democrats.  We think any newsie who slants the news to favor the Democrats ought to be ridden out of town on a rail.

 

Detroit Iron

 Detroit is hurting.  Last couple of car postings, 20 hottest cars of 2022 and the like, were all foreign cars, mostly Japanese or Korean.  Except for single mentions of Corvette, nothing made in Detroit.   It didn’t used to be that way.  Ads and TV shows needing wheels now a days always show a nice Detroit car, usually a convertible, from the 60’s or 70s.  Never a Toyota or a Honda. 

   You would think one of the big three could pull the old tooling out of storage and knock off a few thousand classics from the old days and sell them.  AND, cars from the old days did not need semiconductors, except for a handful of simple ones in the car radio.

   Far as I can see, Detroit doesn’t make real sedans any more, just little econoboxes.  Closest you can come to a real sedan is a “crossover” SUV.  Crossovers are built on car chassis, the body extends the roof clear back to the rear bumper.  You don’t get a trunk, but you do get some storage space behind the rear seat.  Some models allow the rear seat[s] to fold down or come out to allow big stuff like sheets of plywood to fit inside. 

   The “crossover” name is historical.  The early SUV’s, Chevy carryalls and Jeep Wagoneers were built on pickup truck chassis, which yielded a big SUV that rode like a truck.  The “crossover” SUV’s built on car chassis are smaller, gas mileage is better and the ride is better.

War on Menthol cigarettes.

The Biden administration wants to ban menthol cigarettes.  They have not presented any evidence that menthol cigarettes (Kools) are any worse for your health than ordinary cigarettes.  The Biden people said that menthol cigarettes were favorites among the black community and outlawing them would encourage/force blacks to give up smoking. Speaking as someone who started smoking in college and smoked two packs a day for 20 years before giving it up, trying to force people to give up smoking is a lost cause.  The urge for a smoke can be extremely strong, far too strong to resist.  And, smoking tobacco has been legal in the US since Jamestown.  Trying to force people to give it up strikes me as tyranny, a specialty of Democrats. 

   I know, and they know, that smoking (with or without menthol) is bad for you.  Over the years a lot of people have given it up, and lot of people had not.  I think this country has bigger fish to fry than getting smokers to give up smoking. 

What is gonna happen in November?

 The Wall St Journal had two op ed pieces about this.  One piece by Daniel Henniger of the Journal and the other piece by Karl Rove, political advisor to George Bush.  Both of these guys have been in the business for a long time.  They usually get it right.  I trust them both. 

   They both think the democrats are gonna get creamed in November.  So do a lot of other political pundits, both the newspaper kind and the TV kind. 

   I am all in favor.  Far as I am concerned Biden is responsible for $4.25 a gallon for gasoline, 8.5% inflation, the disastrous bug out from Afghanistan last August, and shortages and outrageous prices at the grocery store. I hope the voters are sensible enough to vote a straight Republican ticket in November.  We need 10% margins in Congress to get anything done.  That is 40 house seats and 10 Senate seats. 

Let’s get that FBI warning off the DVDs

    Every DVD I play still has an image of the FBI’s badge above a copyright warning that threatens to sick the FBI on anyone who duplicates the disk or plays it over the air or some other obscure crimes.  Let’s be real, the FBI exists to investigate crimes and enemy spies, and over just the last few years they have been taken up investigating Republicans.  Copyright infringement of a DVD is a minor civil offense, which should be investigated at the copyright holder’s expense.  The FBI doesn’t have to time or the inclination to go after teenagers who duplicate DVDs. 

    And, the younger generation feels it is perfectly OK copy anything they like, music, movies, games, Mickey Mouse or whatever.  When they get old enough, they will vote against parties and politicians who support copyright law.  The Republicans could gain a foothold with the younger generation by supporting sensible copyright reform, such as copy right lasts for only 17 years, for music, movies, and Mickey Mouse.  The labels would scream and cry and threaten to hold their breath, but the labels don’t have the vote.  The younger generation does have the vote.

   At a minimum we could tell the labels that the FBI badge is copyright to the government and it will cost the labels $5 a DVD to use it. 

 May I offer my sincerest sympathies to the family of that brave Texas soldier who lost his life attempting to rescue some illegals crossing the Rio Grande.  That soldier should be awarded a medal.

Howitzer.

   Up til, or perhaps thru WWII artillery was composed of guns and howitzers.  Guns had longer barrels and longer range.  Howitzers were built the same as guns but had shorter barrels and could elevate them higher than guns.  The shorter barrel made them lighter and easier to move.  Forty five degrees of elevation gives best possible range for artillery. After WWII, since the pieces were mostly the same, parts would interchange, we stopped making much talk about the differences.  The 155mm (6 inch) howitzers we are sending to Ukraine can fire a 95 pound shell a tad more than 7 miles.  I am using figures from “Shells and Shooting” by Willy Ley published way back in 1942.  I am not aware of any technical improvements since then that would increase range or weight of shell much. 

   For artillery fire to do any good at seven miles you need recon to spot your target, and ideally a forward observer to report where the shells are falling and allowing the artillery to correct its aim.  Seven miles is a long way out for recon and a long way to push out forward observers.  The 7 mile range of the 155mm howitzers is probably plenty.

Election Strategy for Republicans

The woman’s vote is more important than the black vote, the Hispanic vote, the Asian American vote or any of the other groups.  Women are 50% of the population, which is more than all the blacks, all the Hispanics and all the Asians all put together.  Last couple of elections the Democrats won the woman’s vote by 10%.  That wins the election for Democrats, right there. 

  As a party we Republicans need to win the woman’s vote if we want to win the midterm elections in November.  Despite all the happy talk on the TV about a Republican year, if we don’t get the women to vote Republican, we are stuck with Democrats, including that clueless Biden.

   One thing to do, don’t talk about abortion.  Some woman are for it and some are against it and no matter what side a Republican takes it will hurt, not help.  If there are other issues we Republicans need to address, I don’t know what they might be.  There ought to be some pollsters who might know something.  We ought to find them and listen to what they have to say.

The homelessness crisis.

You can see video from California towns mostly showing streets, parks, vacant land anywhere full of tents.  This seems to work out in California where the winters are not too bad.  It doesn’t work in New Hampshire where the winter temperature can drop down well below zero and stay there for a week.  Nobody can live in a tent, be it unheated or even heated in that kind of weather. 

The problem has a number of angles to it.

   There is not enough housing, and little new housing is being built, and the existing housing is too expensive for ordinary people to afford.  This unfortunate state of affairs is caused by snob zoning.  Many many towns don’t want more housing, the residents think the town is too big as is and they don’t want it to grow bigger.  So they zone for nothing but single family houses, on quarter acre lots.  They zone out apartment houses, trailer parks, and “tiny” houses.  The only fix I can think of are state laws restricting the powers of town zoning boards. 

   There are a lot of unemployed people.  When you are unemployed, you cannot afford any kind of housing.  One part of our unemployment problem comes for having a lot of citizens who lack any usable skills, who cannot get to work on time, and who cannot come in to work every day, or have criminal records, or are drug addicts.  In short they are not employable. This is the result of the failure of the public schools to teach any thing of value and who waste time on lefty things like Critical Race Theory.  We could try remedial operations like the CCC camps we used to run back in the Franklin Roosevelt years.  Such a camp would take in anyone, give them three square meals a day, give them 40 hours a week of work, and offer medical care for any problems the campers might have.  The work might be kinda low end like picking up trash along public roads, raking leaves, or shoveling snow.  It might be things like digging needed drainage, or clearing land for farming or building.On the other hand CCC campers mostly created the Cannon Mountain ski area back in the 1930s.

  And we need to reduce the number of drug addicts.  Right now a lot of doctors prescribe opioids to everyone who comes in their door.  Some states have opioids prescribed in 75% to 85% of   all office visits.  That is ridiculous.  I have lived a long life, I have gone to the doctor’s numerous times, and just once, after a tooth extraction, did the dentist proscribe Percoset for me.  And the patients find the opioids make them feel good.  When the prescription runs out they start to buy street drugs, which are a lot cheaper than prescription drugs.  We need to clap down on doctor’s proscribing practices.  We also need to spread the word that street drugs are souped up with fentanyl.  About 20% of street drugs have enough fentanyl in them to kill you.

Biden offers to spend $6 billion on nuclear power.

 Good idea.  I am surprised that he got the idea past his greenie backers/controllers. Greenies have been against nuclear power, fearing that nuclear reactors can turn into nuclear bombs and kill them all.

  Greenies also fear that CO2 in the atmosphere will cause global warming and fry us all.  This is not actually a problem; the atmosphere already contains a hundred times as much water vapor a CO2, as strong a greenhouse gas s CO2, so a puny 400 ppm of CO2 is not going to make much of a difference. 

   Good thing about nuclear power is it is there when we need it, after dark and on windless days.

 

 

 

You need votes in Congress to pass anything.

    Right now Congress is almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.  US Senate is exactly evenly split, 50 Democrats 50 Republicans. US house is close; the democrats have only a 5 vote lead out of a chamber of 400 or so members.  Which means, on any controversial bill, neither side will have the votes to pass it. 

   The country is divided between makers, who have jobs and pay taxes, and takers who are unemployed and drawing welfare.  Half the population pays no federal income tax.  They don’t make much, or any, money, and generous allowances in the Federal income tax for children, home mortgages, and other stuff reduces their federal tax to zip.  This isn’t right; all citizens should pay something, just to teach them that taxes hurt and should not be raised.  The poor don’t need to pay much, but they ought to pay something, just to give them the idea that taxes are bad. 

   Right now the Democrats are better known as the party of more free stuff and more taxes to pay for all the free stuff.  The Republicans are the party of the makers, they want to support business, which employs most of them, pays most people’s medical insurance, and produces the river of goods and services that make America the richest country in the world. 

   We have an election coming up in six months.  We have seen how bad a Democrat administration can be.  Every real American ought to vote Republican in November.  Give the proper party a sizable majority in Congress so we can get something done.    

Avenger’s: Infinity War 2018

    Meh.  A 12 foot tall bad guy with purple skin and a lot of muscles, Thanos I believe he is called, spends the 2 and a half hour movie beating the tar out of  Ironman, Spider Man, Thor, Rocket Raccoon , Groot, and a bunch of other super heroes whose names I missed.  It took me three tries on my DVD player to get to the end of this movie before falling asleep.  Most of the cast names meant nothing to me except for Robert Downey Jr doing Ironman and Chris Hemsworth doing Thor. 

   Thanos is ridiculously tough.  The space going super heroes guide an asteroid, solid rock, a thousand feet across and a mile long onto Thanos’ head.  For a minute we think maybe they got him.  Nah, Thanos shakes off all the rock a minute later and continues beating the tar out of the super heroes.

   They do a bit about an army in Wakanda fighting off an army of bad guys.  In other movies Wakanda shows up as a black inhabited and operated country in deepest Africa, industrialized, and equipped with advanced stuff like anti gravity stretchers and advanced aircraft/spacecraft like they have in Star Wars.  In this movie the Wakanda army, numerous and mostly infantry, is carrying short spears.  The few Avengers helping them out are carrying nothing heavier than shoulder fired assault rifles, which make a feeble “pop pop” noise when fired.  And in fact, the bad guys keep right on coming after even a lot of pop pops.  You would think that real Avengers would be carrying something that fired 50 cal Browning Machine Gun (BMG) rounds with a blam blam loud enough to damage the speakers in my TV set.  No such luck.  

550 Foot pounds per second equals one horsepower.

   The unit goes back to James Watt, who needed to sell his steam engines.  Watt was trying to tell customers than just one of his steam engines could replace so many expensive and hungry horses at their mines or mills.  We can assume that Watt chose a small and weakly horse for the comparison to make his engines look their best. 

  Many many years later, Detroit used the idea, and the unit to advertise the power of car engines.  Everyone knew that more power gave a livelier car.  They started out measuring the power of an engine removed from the car and mounted on an engine dynamometer.  The engine was tested “bare”, no generator/alternator, no power steering pump, no air cleaner on the carburetor, no exhaust manifold or mufflers.  All of these things took engine power to run, said engine power subtracted from the power shown on the dyno. 

   About 1971 the big three in Detroit got together and agreed upon a new test procedure, engine was to be equipped with all power robbing accessories, an exhaust manifold, a muffler, air cleaner, the works.  The idea was to give car buyers a more accurate idea of how much usable power their new car might have.  The other effect was to reduce the advertised horsepower of all cars by about 15%.  Although car salesmen groused about the reduced horsepower claims, all makes suffered about the same amount, so things came out more of less even. 

   Things trundled along for many years.  Until in very recent years, some imported cars began advertising huge horsepower out of very tiny engines.  One of them was claiming 200 horsepower out of a 120 cubic inch engine.  For comparison a Chevy 283 cubic inch two barrel carburetor V8 only claimed 180 horsepower when it came out back in 1956.  And that was under the more generous rating system in use up until 1971.

   The long and the short of it is, I don’t believe the incredible horsepower claims from some tiny engines.  As a rule of thumb, an engine can produce about one horsepower per cubic inch of engine displacement.  So 180 horse power from a 283 cubic inch Chevy V8 is believable.  200 horsepower from a 120 cubic inch engine is not believable. 

Teacher Training

    There has been a lot of criticism of American Schools, K thru 12 and college.  Some things we ought to keep in mind.  The Catholics run very good parochial schools at very reasonable costs.  We sent our three children to parochial schools and the experience was good.  The public schools should take notes.

   I did Framingham public school up thru 9^th grade and then Westtown Friends School and then college and finally the Air Force.  I had pretty good teachers all the way.  There were a couple of duds, Miss Waters and Miss Coyne, but the rest were all fair to very good.  But the best teachers I had in all that time were in the Air Force.  USAF ran Field Training Detachments (FTD) to teach aircraft maintenance, airborne radar, jet engines, fire control, guided missiles, instruments, electrical systems, lots of good stuff.  The teachers of this stuff were really good.  They were just flight line mechanics, pulled right off the flight line and run thru a three week “How to teach FTD” course.  None of them had ever been to college.  But they were good.  They knew their stuff, backward and forward. Their classes were all teenage boys, who could be troublesome.  The FTD instructors never had any trouble with student discipline.  The students all knew they had to pass the FTD courses in order to get promoted from apprentices to journeymen, so an instructor’s invitation to a troublesome student to leave the class was effective.  

   My take away from the Air Force was two things.  The students had to know the material was essential, and the teacher had to know the material cold. 

   Which to my mind means prospective teachers ought to major in stuff they need to teach, like English, history, mathematics, foreign language, physics, chemistry, biology?  Not “education”.  My college roommate wanted to teach after graduation so he majored in “education”.  He told me it was the most worthless, boring major imaginable, and he only put up with it to get a job teaching in the public schools.  After watching the FTD instructors do a super job with just a three week “How to be an FTD instructor” course I can believe that. 

  American education would be better if we scrapped the “education” major entirely.  

Moskva, Russian Black Sea flagship sinks.

   Russians lost a nice big modern cruiser, Moskva, in the Black Sea.  The Ukrainians claim to have hit Moskva with two cruise missiles.  The Russians talk about an on board fire setting off some ship’s ammunition.  The Russians just don’t say how that fire got started, so it could have been Ukrainian missiles.  The ‘Merkins are saying they lack evidence that missiles were used.  Not very helpful to the cause of Ukraine.  We would have done better to say nothing. 

   Pictures of Moskva show a very handsome heavy cruiser; the sort of ship a Navy will build when they cannot afford air craft carriers and the air wing a carrier needs to be battle worthy rather than being just a target. Our latest carrier cost $10-12 billion, and the air wing maybe another $4-5 billion.  I notice that Moskva, in addition to a substantial missile armament also carried a nice big battery of guns.  Modern US Navy ships only carry a single little wimpy 3 inch gun. 

   Anyway you slice it, accident or Ukrainian missiles, the Russians have lost the flagship of their Black Sea fleet.  All the TV newsies agree that this has hurt the Russians. 

FAA asks for modest 3.5% budget increase for 2023

    Considering the 8.5% Biden inflation loose in the land, a 3.5% funding boost is very modest.  Total budget request is $18.8 billion, which includes the big stick of the Air Traffic Control operation budgeted for $11.9 billion.  I have no idea how many air traffic controllers FAA employs or how much they get paid.   

   After the 737 MAX disasters, two deadly crashes within months of the aircraft’s release, FAA, prodded by Congress, is tightening up its certification and safety oversight operation by adding 57 new employees.  Too bad the Boeing suits pressured Boeing engineering into the 737 MAX disasters; they have raised costs thru out the industry thru more FAA required paperwork and more inspections. 

Biden going after guns instead of criminals

    Biden was on TV this afternoon, complaining about guns with no serial numbers (ghost guns he called them).  I don’t see the point.  We need to find, arrest, try, and convict the criminal, not the gun.  No point in investigating the gun, convicting the gun is meaningless.  Apparently you can now buy kit guns, mostly plastic.  The kits lack serial numbers.  The ones shown on TV look all sorts of rough and crude.  According to Biden, the lack of serial numbers is just awful, he didn’t spell out his specific objections, he just thought it was awful.  I got news for Biden.  A few minutes with a Dremel will take the serial number off of anything.