What makes a Republican?

After the NY 23rd disaster, where the RNC backed candidate withdrew and then supposed the democrat, I suppose we need to make it a little clearer who is a Republican and who is not. The RNC has offered this: My comments are in italics.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee identifies ten (10) key public policy positions for the 2010 election cycle, which the Republican National Committee expects its public officials and candidates to support:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill;
Good.

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;
Good.

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
Awkward wording, but OK

(4) We support workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check;
Good

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
I am uncomfortable with this one. Immigrants become intensely loyal citizens. I’m for cutting them as much slack as possible. Current US immigration law is a tangled mess and decent hardworking people who apply for admission wind up waiting for decades. We are a country of 300 million, we ought to be able to assimilate a million immigrants as year.


(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
Good, but it could be shorter and sweeter, just a plain “We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. Period.

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;
Weak. Are we willing to use force to deny either country nuclear weapons? If not, then giving them a diplomatic cold shoulder after they test their first nuke seems irrelevant.
And speaking for myself, the use of force seems awfully drastic.

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
I’m against this one. It’s a divisive issue that offends as many voters as it gains. If two guys or two girls what to shack up and call it marriage, I don’t approve, but I don’t need to make it illegal.

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing, denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and....
Seems redundant. We are against Obamacare, and if we can defeat Obamacare then this becomes irrelevant.


(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms.
Good.

RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy positions of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee.....

Cannon to construct a new chairlift next year.

Cannon Mountain is on a roll. This year they renovated the Peabody Slopes base lodge, added a Cannonball Pub, a Peabody family room, more ski shop space and a bigger deck. Now they announce plans to put in a new chairlift, running up the old Baron's Run chair track. This will give chair lift access to the Mittersill slopes. Right now you have to climb the Saddle to ski Mittersill.
Cannon gained owner ship of the Mittersill slopes early this year in a land swap. The State of NH gave the US Forest Service a bit of state land containing part of the Appalachian Trail, in return NH gained rights to ski on Mittersill trails which were cut thru Forest Service land. Cannon mowed the trails and cut the brush back this summer. This winter will be skiing for souls hardy enough to climb the Saddle. No grooming or snow making this season. Next year the new chairlift will be operating and presumably some grooming will be done.
Bicknell's Thrush is still hard at work slowing things down. There was an assessment of the impact of skiing on the Thrush's habitat. "There is so much habitat it's hard to disturb it." said John Devivo, the Cannon Mt manager.

Roger Aldrich receives WWII medals from Jean Shaheen

Front page news in the Littleton Courier. Who is Roger Aldrich you ask? He is a helova nice guy, I know him, he is a friend of my mother, he is a pillar of the local community, he and his family operate Polly's Pancake House up in Sugar Hill.
US Senator Jean Shaheen got some nice local news coverage for clearing up 60 year old Army paperwork, and getting Roger's WWII medals awarded to him, some 60 years later.

Global Warming Data hacked

Some 61 megabytes of data, computer programs and emails was extracted from Britain's Hadley climate research unit and posted on the internet a couple of days ago. The Hadley troops have admitted to the data loss. This blog posts a very damning email admitting to data fudging to avoid showing a temperature decrease. The blog goes on to explain how the data was being "smoothed" to make it "look better".
Smoothing data by computer used to be my day job, so I know a little about it. The discussion in the blog makes no sense at all to me. "Smoothing" can be abused to create "trends" where no real trend is present. I think this true of the Hadley data.
The amount of global warming detected by the warming true believers is only a fraction of a degree. The raw data jumps around more than that. In short, the global warming is not really visible in the raw data, only after the data is "smoothed" heavily does a tiny trend emerge.
It's always best to look at the raw data, on a graph. The human eye is superb at detecting tiny trends. If you cannot see trend by eye looking at the raw data, the trend probably doesn't exist.

Innumeracy and Mammograms

Quite a bit of heat, but little light, has come from the government's recent declaration that yearly mammograms are no longer necessary for women under fifty. Neither side has shown any numbers defending or attacking the proposition. How about some graphs showing deaths from breast cancer over the years, number of breast removals, number of less drastic treatments, survival rates after treatment, number of mammograms administered, number of false positives for mammograms, false positives from breast self examination, number of breast cancers detected by mammograms, number detected by other means.
The proposition that yearly mammograms after age 40 saves lives, and/or reduces breast removals, is a numerical proposition, and the advocates on either side could strengthen their arguments with some numbers. If the numbers cannot be found, perhaps a study could be funded.
So far the public debate has been number free.
Probably because reporters are innumerate.

In Fed We Trust by David Wessel

Good read. Blow by blow account of the Fed and the Treasury reacting too, and dealing with, the onset of Great Depression II last year. Describes how Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, and AIG failed, and the decisions to bail them out (all except Lehman that is). The story is told largely from the Fed's point of view. Essentially the senior government money men, Hank Paulson at Treasury and Ben Bernanke at the Fed feared total system collapse and decided to pour in taxpayer money to keep the system afloat. Much as they would have enjoyed watching the stupids go broke, they didn't dare, for fear the country would be thrown into a bottomless economic disaster. At first Paulson and Bernanke used Fed money. By fall things were so bad that they went to Congress for the $750 billion TARP appropriation. As Wessel tells it, things were so bad that fall that Congress passed the TARP within days. The money guys walked into the room and said Great Depression II would start next week without TARP, and Congress believed them.
The writer is a Wall St Journal reporter, so he knows some of the stuff. The weakness of the book is the failure to describe why these enormous financial companies failed. What killed them? For instance Lehman folded up after rumors of insolvency ran around Wall St and nobody would loan them any more money. He doesn't tell us how the rumor got out, how it spread. What mistakes did Lehman make that turned them into a pariah? Was it mortgage backed securities? Credit default swaps? some big loan going sour? Bad karma? Wessel is silent in this most interesting aspect of the disaster.

GM lost $5000 per Saab sold for the last 8 years.

From The Truth About Cars. GM senior management had brains made of solid concrete. Buying into SAAB was a dumb idea in the first place, and running it at a loss for 8 years is even dumber. SAAB made an interesting niche car that had a loyal fan base. But you can't make money on niche cars. They don't have the sale volume to afford the mass production tooling needed to get the cost down to compete with real volume makers like Toyota. If they reduce costs by replacing expensive handmade European engines (and other items) with nice cheap dependable Detroit production line V-8's the loyal fan base stops buying, insulted by the presence of mass produced Detroit iron in their beloved European hot rods. It's a no win situation for a US company buying a European luxury maker. If US management had been real car people they would have understood this and saved their money. But at GM senior management is all bean counters and MBA's.
Ford made the same mistake getting mixed up with Jaguar. But Ford brought in a savvy CEO (Mullaly from Boeing). He figured out that Jaguar and Volvo were losers and was able to sell them back before Great Depression II made raising money for takeovers impossible.