For one, only 11% of the $787 billion bill has actually been spent. That's only $86 billion, about the amount of money poured down GM.
A good portion of the Porkulus is tax cuts, which adds to the federal debt but don't stimulate the economy. With everyone worried about a layoff, nobody is spending any tax cuts/rebates/handouts. The money is going into peoples checking accounts and paying off bills or credit card debt. Nobody in their right mind is going to splurge on new cars, clothes, or anything but groceries with a layoff looming in the future. We aren't going to see consumer spending come back until unemployment has been licked.
You could get quite a bit of economic stimulus by just repealing the Porkulus bill. That would show people that the US government isn't completely spendthrift.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Robert McNamara, his impact on history?
In case you missed it, Robert S. McNamara died today. He was Secretary of Defense during the Viet Nam war for those of you younger than I. I watched a lotta bloviating about it on the Lehrer Newshour tonight. None of the talking heads had a clue as to what McNamara was, what he did, and how he should be evaluated.
As Secretary of Defense, McNamara's duty was to win the Viet Nam war. He failed to do this, in fact, he lost Viet Nam big time. No Newshour talking head mentioned this ugly fact. What's worse, many years later, McNamara published his memoires and said the Viet Nam war was a big mistake and he apologized for fighting it. The lefties loved this.
Those of us who served in Viet Nam were infuriated by this. If, back in 1964, McNamara thought the war was a bad idea, it was his duty to go on TV, say the war was a bad idea and then tender his resignation to Lyndon Johnson. He failed in this duty as well as failing in his duty to win the war.
Those of us who served back then came to know McNamara as an enemy as deadly as the Viet Cong. His whiz kids cut funding, canceled needed weapons programs, and foisted turkeys like the TFX, the C5, and the M16 on long suffering troops. He micromanaged the war from DC.
As far as this veteran is concerned, McNamara was a self important bean counter whose ignorance of warfare lost the Viet Nam war. Winning a war is different from running Ford Motor Company and McNamara didn't understand the difference.
As Secretary of Defense, McNamara's duty was to win the Viet Nam war. He failed to do this, in fact, he lost Viet Nam big time. No Newshour talking head mentioned this ugly fact. What's worse, many years later, McNamara published his memoires and said the Viet Nam war was a big mistake and he apologized for fighting it. The lefties loved this.
Those of us who served in Viet Nam were infuriated by this. If, back in 1964, McNamara thought the war was a bad idea, it was his duty to go on TV, say the war was a bad idea and then tender his resignation to Lyndon Johnson. He failed in this duty as well as failing in his duty to win the war.
Those of us who served back then came to know McNamara as an enemy as deadly as the Viet Cong. His whiz kids cut funding, canceled needed weapons programs, and foisted turkeys like the TFX, the C5, and the M16 on long suffering troops. He micromanaged the war from DC.
As far as this veteran is concerned, McNamara was a self important bean counter whose ignorance of warfare lost the Viet Nam war. Winning a war is different from running Ford Motor Company and McNamara didn't understand the difference.
Eugene Volokh on Flag Burning
Eugene Volokh is a University of Tennessee law professor whose blog, "The Volokh Conspiracy" is a good read. He usually makes a good deal of sense.
He had a piece in the Wall St Journal the other day on the legality of an anti flag burning law.
Some how I just wonder at the need for such a law, and the need to devote any thought to it. Now I don't hold with burning the American flag, but I hardly think we need burden the statute books with a law agin it. If you burn a flag in most places a large number of rough people will take great offense. In fact they will be offended sufficiently to take action right then and there.
Which is why very few flags are burned in public.
I am surprised that Eugene doesn't seem to understand this and wastes his time on a non issue.
He had a piece in the Wall St Journal the other day on the legality of an anti flag burning law.
Some how I just wonder at the need for such a law, and the need to devote any thought to it. Now I don't hold with burning the American flag, but I hardly think we need burden the statute books with a law agin it. If you burn a flag in most places a large number of rough people will take great offense. In fact they will be offended sufficiently to take action right then and there.
Which is why very few flags are burned in public.
I am surprised that Eugene doesn't seem to understand this and wastes his time on a non issue.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Whither Sarah Palin ?
Just to set the record straight, I like Sarah Palin. Anyone who can work up from PTA to state governor, raise an big family, and manage a husband who races snow mobiles has got to have something on the ball.
Her announcement of resignation on Friday was a total surprise, and I have no idea what it means. It might be that the relentless media assault on her and her family is just to much, either for Sarah or for the family. I'm sure if Sarah decided that her children were at risk due to her political career, she would retire from political life. Mark Stein sees it this way, and laments that a real citizen in politics has been driven out by a vindictive MSM. He says this leaves us with monomaniacal single minded Clintons and Obamas, old party hacks like Biden or McCain, or dynasties like the Bushes and the Kennedys. If this is the case it's a shame.
Or, she might have decided that there are better platforms for a presidential bid than governor of Alaska. She is enough of a celebrity now to get plenty of national coverage doing anything. I hope this is the case, but what do I know?
Well, I know more than George Will does. George was opining on ABC this morning that Sarah might do well in Iowa but won't stand a chance in New Hampshire. I got news for you George. Everyone up here loves Sarah Palin. She is our kind of people. Men like her, women like her, kids like her, and we like her family too. Everyone who stepped into our Littleton HQ during the election was a huge Sarah Palin fan.
Anyhow, I wish Sarah well and I hope she stays in national politics. We need her more than we need the MSM.
Her announcement of resignation on Friday was a total surprise, and I have no idea what it means. It might be that the relentless media assault on her and her family is just to much, either for Sarah or for the family. I'm sure if Sarah decided that her children were at risk due to her political career, she would retire from political life. Mark Stein sees it this way, and laments that a real citizen in politics has been driven out by a vindictive MSM. He says this leaves us with monomaniacal single minded Clintons and Obamas, old party hacks like Biden or McCain, or dynasties like the Bushes and the Kennedys. If this is the case it's a shame.
Or, she might have decided that there are better platforms for a presidential bid than governor of Alaska. She is enough of a celebrity now to get plenty of national coverage doing anything. I hope this is the case, but what do I know?
Well, I know more than George Will does. George was opining on ABC this morning that Sarah might do well in Iowa but won't stand a chance in New Hampshire. I got news for you George. Everyone up here loves Sarah Palin. She is our kind of people. Men like her, women like her, kids like her, and we like her family too. Everyone who stepped into our Littleton HQ during the election was a huge Sarah Palin fan.
Anyhow, I wish Sarah well and I hope she stays in national politics. We need her more than we need the MSM.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Fourth of July
Got up at 6 AM to go down to the church pancake breakfast. Mixed pancake batter until 10 AM. The luck of the republic is fleeting up here, it rained most of the day. Made five pounds of potato salad for a 5 PM cookout. Hopefully the rain will back off by five.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Windows Auto Insert Notification, How to Disable it
Auto insert notification is a Windows "feature" that makes music CD's play in your computer automatically, just insert CD and the music starts to play. Convenient if you use your computer as a CD player. I play my CD's on my stereo, it sounds better.
Convenience has a high price. Auto insert notification does more than just start your music player. It also automatically loads and runs programs from the CD, from any flash drives, floppy drives, and USB gadgets. Virus's (Virii?) spread themselves via auto insert notification. The virus merely copies itself to the CD or flash drive, and it gets loaded and executed every time the infected media is inserted into a victim computer. The notorious Sony rootkit spread itself this way. Unless you disable auto insert notification, your computer is vulnerable to virus every time you insert a CD, a flash drive/thumb drive, or a USB gizmo.
Plus, auto insert notification is a CPU hog. When active it can suck up 10-20% of your CPU time. Working on a video capture project some time ago, we found the video dropped frames until we tracked down and killed auto insert notification.
With auto insert notification turned off you do have to click on your CD player program to play a CD. With a CD-Rom you will have to use explorer to launch the "autorun" program in the CD root directory by hand on install CD-Roms. That's the only down side to killing auto insert notification.
To kill auto insert notification on XP you hand patch the registry, using regedit. Regedit.exe comes with Windows and is found in directory c:/windows/system32. If you can't remember that, you can search for it with Explorer. There usually is a regedit and a regedt32, they both work pretty much the same.
Click on regedit and it will open a pair of side by side windows. The left hand window has a tree structure that looks just like the one in Explorer. Open Hkey_Local_Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom Once you navigate to the CDrom registry "leaf" the right hand window will fill with assorted icons.
Look for one named "Autorun". If it does not exist, you will have to create it. Click on Edit, click on New, click on Key. Make the new key a Dword and name it AutoRun. Capitalize the R just in case Windows cares about case.
In the right hand window right click on the AutoRun key and set it's value to zero.
That's it, you are done, close regedit and you have a faster and more secure XP machine.
You do it this way for XP. It's a good guess that Vista and Win 7 work a little bit different, but they both have auto insert notification and you want to turn it off. A bit of googling should turn up kill instructions for Vista or 7.
Convenience has a high price. Auto insert notification does more than just start your music player. It also automatically loads and runs programs from the CD, from any flash drives, floppy drives, and USB gadgets. Virus's (Virii?) spread themselves via auto insert notification. The virus merely copies itself to the CD or flash drive, and it gets loaded and executed every time the infected media is inserted into a victim computer. The notorious Sony rootkit spread itself this way. Unless you disable auto insert notification, your computer is vulnerable to virus every time you insert a CD, a flash drive/thumb drive, or a USB gizmo.
Plus, auto insert notification is a CPU hog. When active it can suck up 10-20% of your CPU time. Working on a video capture project some time ago, we found the video dropped frames until we tracked down and killed auto insert notification.
With auto insert notification turned off you do have to click on your CD player program to play a CD. With a CD-Rom you will have to use explorer to launch the "autorun" program in the CD root directory by hand on install CD-Roms. That's the only down side to killing auto insert notification.
To kill auto insert notification on XP you hand patch the registry, using regedit. Regedit.exe comes with Windows and is found in directory c:/windows/system32. If you can't remember that, you can search for it with Explorer. There usually is a regedit and a regedt32, they both work pretty much the same.
Click on regedit and it will open a pair of side by side windows. The left hand window has a tree structure that looks just like the one in Explorer. Open Hkey_Local_Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom Once you navigate to the CDrom registry "leaf" the right hand window will fill with assorted icons.
Look for one named "Autorun". If it does not exist, you will have to create it. Click on Edit, click on New, click on Key. Make the new key a Dword and name it AutoRun. Capitalize the R just in case Windows cares about case.
In the right hand window right click on the AutoRun key and set it's value to zero.
That's it, you are done, close regedit and you have a faster and more secure XP machine.
You do it this way for XP. It's a good guess that Vista and Win 7 work a little bit different, but they both have auto insert notification and you want to turn it off. A bit of googling should turn up kill instructions for Vista or 7.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
787 Structural Problem
Boeing has postponed the long awaited first flight of the all new, all plastic, 787 Dreamliner. This is a tremendous disappointment to Boeing and Boeing customers.
Apparently something (no photos so it could be anything) showed up during static wing bending tests on the ground. According to Aviation Week the problem was "delamination and deformation on body (presumably wing-to-body) join points during a routine stress test". The wings are attached to the body with titanium bolts. There was discussion of a fix, stiffeners. "The parts needed are small, only an inch or two." Eighteen (one for each bolt?) will be applied to the top side of the join.
More discussion followed about the Computer Aided Design (CAD) procedures. The author clearly feels that this problem should have showed up in computer simulations long ago, and he faults Boeing's CAD work.
For Boeing's sake lets hope the one inch stiffeners are readily available and solve the problem.
Apparently something (no photos so it could be anything) showed up during static wing bending tests on the ground. According to Aviation Week the problem was "delamination and deformation on body (presumably wing-to-body) join points during a routine stress test". The wings are attached to the body with titanium bolts. There was discussion of a fix, stiffeners. "The parts needed are small, only an inch or two." Eighteen (one for each bolt?) will be applied to the top side of the join.
More discussion followed about the Computer Aided Design (CAD) procedures. The author clearly feels that this problem should have showed up in computer simulations long ago, and he faults Boeing's CAD work.
For Boeing's sake lets hope the one inch stiffeners are readily available and solve the problem.
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