Regulation piled upon regulation

For the third year in a row, the NH legislature will discuss allowing Public Service of New Hampshire (PSNH) to build a wood fired electric plant. Under a green initiative from our new Democratic governor, electric companies are required to get 25% of their electricity from renewable sources. PSNH is attempting to meet this requirement (wood IS renewable) but the state government won't approve building the plant. Talk about catch 22. With one hand the State government giveth green power and with the other hand taketh it away.

You can't make everyone happy

Now that Mitt Romney has withdrawn, John McCain will be the Republican nominee, barring an act of God. Scrounging around for more copy to put on TV, the newsies have found the inevitable soreheads who don't like McCain and are giving them air time. After allowing aforesaid soreheads to ventilate on national TV, the newsies then declare the Republican party "deeply split" and offer advice. Do a little groveling and then kiss and make up is the tenure of the advice. And, to his credit, McCain did some of this yesterday in front of the Conservative Political Action Comittee (CPAC) yesterday. He was gracious to the withdrawing Mitt Romney, polite to Huckabee, and told the assembled CPACers that he would do his best as president. He got a good hand for that. McCain has been in politics a long time and he knows you don't kick people, even liberals, in the shins just for the fun of it. They remember and will get even if they can.
Actually, McCain is the strongest candidate the Republicans can field. He has a compelling personal story and respect bordering upon awe among the electorate. I won't soon forget the deference, politeness, and respect offered the senator at a campaign stop in northern New Hampshire some months ago. There was snow on the ground, the modest meeting room was jammed with voters, all wearing heavy boots and winter coats. John McCain walks into the room and everyone rises and gives the senator a standing ovation. None of the other candidates got that kind of respect up here.
Of the detractors actually named by the TV, few of them deserve much credence. Ann Coulter writes a lot of rabble rousing stuff, James Dobson said he wouldn't vote for anyone, and Rush Limbaugh, well, Rush is Rush.
The endorsements from prominent politicians indicate that professional Republicans think McCain is a good candidate with a chance of winning. They don't indorse losers, it makes them look foolish.

Windows 7?

According to Lee Gomez at the Wall St Journal, the Microsofties are planning the next step after Vista, currently called Windows 7 internally. Wow, Vista sputtering, everyone likes XP, and they are working on yet another Windows.
They must be thinking up yet more features to burden Windows with. For me, I don't want more features. Windows XP has about 20 zillion "features" that I know nothing about, don't trust, and wish would go away. Can I think of a feature that I want in Windows, that isn't already there? No.
Windows is one of those facts of life that you have to live with. All the computers come with it, all the programs you care about run under it. If you are doing a software project, it has got to run under Windows. Programs that don't, are dead on arrival.
Windows XP does all the things an OS ought to do (and a few that it ought not to do). Vista is XP with copy protection. Vista has all kindza code to prevent duplication of music CD's. MP3s, DVDs and what ever. Why should I want Vista, which is slower than XP and gives me a hard time about copying anything? Even my own stuff?
This is the time for someone to introduce the mini OS. Smaller, faster, leaner and meaner than Windows. Runs Office and Firefox. Virus proof. Prevents web sites from running code on your computer. Limits email programs to viewing email, prevents email from loading malware into Office.

Reflections on a Revaged Century by Robert Conquest

Conquest attributes the disasters of the 20th century to the related ideologies of Communism and Naziism. He explains how both movements recruited and created true believers who would commit any crime to gain the ends of the party. And crimes they did commit, the Soviets killed tens of millions of Russians during the terror of the 1930's, the Nazi's killed 6 million Jews, a million or so other Germans, and then started World War II which resulted in more tens of millions of dead. Conquest defines a dangerous ideologue as a person willing to commit crimes against people to further their ends. Clearly some of the blogosphere qualify here.
Conquest declares that George Orwell (1984 & Animal Farm) and Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon) did as much, or more, to bring down communism than anything else.
Moving on, Conquest mentions modern fads of environmentalism, global warming, and multi culturalism as insipient ideologies gathering strenght. His book is copyright just be for 9/11 and as a consequence does not mention Islam.
It is a good read.

MRAPS is put out to pasture

Back in October last year, the army was getting ready to buy better than 2000 heavy armored trucks (MRAPS). I posted about it here. These babies were heavy and tough enough to survive running over a land mine (IED in today's jargon). $28 billion dollars (one hellova lotta dough) was appropriated for these behemoths.
Well, now it seems that MRAPS isn't quite so cool, the Marines are scaling back their buy from 3700 to 1300 trucks. The Army is considering a similar cut.
MRAPS is a mine proof version of the hummer. To achieve mine-proofness, MRAPS weighs 16 tons vs the hummer's 3 tons, and requires 330 horsepower vs the hummer's 160 horse. Could it be that MRAPS is just too heavy to be useful?

Conservatives Thirst for Death

Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and some right wing bloggers are trashing McCain for "not being conservative enough", what ever that means. Too bad. McCain is the most electable Republican out there. Better McCain and campaign financing than either democrat and US tax payer funded health care.
McCain will win the Iraq war, the democrats will turn Iraq over to Al Quada. Sensible Republicans will go with a winner rather then turn the presidency over to the democrats.
Politics is not about "ideological purity". Politics is "Let's make a deal". A deal means each side gets some of what they want. A well crafted deal will stick 'cause each side gets enough to keep 'em happy. The skillful politician can expect "his" side to trash him for "compromising our principles" and "back room deals" after cutting the deal.
McCain has cut a few deals in the past that I don't really like, but he is still the most electable Republican, and I'll put up with the deals I didn't like rather than give the White House to the democrats.
The "conservatives" who don't want McCain to win the nomination have a death wish.

Miserable election coverage

Both Fox and MSNBC don't know how to cover an election with more than two candidates. Watched both channels last night, 'cause I wanted to see how Super Tuesday came out. Hopeless. Never did they display a chart with ALL the candidates on it, ranked by vote totals or delegate totals. In stead they had a miserable tote board display that only had room for TWO candidates to show at a time. The turkeys then scrolled the display. By the time it had scrolled to the bottom you forget what the top results were.
Fox had a great big map of the USA with some states colored silver against a beige background. No state names, no capitals, no vote tallies, no color coding, nada. Even funnier, Bill Hemming finally tries to chalk up a vote total on the state of NY. Does he use a white board marker? No, Bill makes scribbling motions and two seconds later you see the numbers wipe onto the map from the electronic back room. We had better visual aids back in third grade.
Couldn't stay awake long enough for California to come in. So, next morning, I listen to NPR on the clock radio. The NPR guys are innumerate. In a half an hour of bloviating, they never told me the delegate count, or the vote totals. They used a lot of adjectives like big, heavy, large and so on, but never a number.