Is India part of the Anglosphere?

Hard to say for real. Interesting discussion here.
The MSM doesn't talk much about the Anglosphere these days, but it is the same alliance that won WWII and has called the shots world wide ever since. It is able to formulate policy and get the members to accept said policy without the baring of teeth.
India has become enormously more powerful than it was in the 1940's. Will the Indians join the Anglosphere or not? In the early days the Indians were "non aligned" which meant they could express some independence from Britain without falling under Soviet control. Now that the Soviets aren't the players they used to be, "non aligned" doesn't mean so much.
Joining the Anglosphere has two parts, the members of the club have to like and respect the potential member, and the potential member has to be sympathetic to the ideals and culture of the Anglosphere.
Never having been to India, my mental picture of the place comes from Kipling, Kim, and the Jungle Books. Kipling painted a colorful, romantic, likable country. I'd be happy to have India join the Anglosphere because of Kipling's inspiring stories of the place. Most Americans feel the same way for the same reasons.
Let us hope the Indians want to join.

Charlie, I never knew ye.

Charlie Bass may not be everyone's favorite candidate for Congress. But he does have some useful friends. Yesterday I received a pro-Bass letter from the NRA. Nice one page letter explaining how Charlie had been on the right side of a number of gun control votes over the years and a Bass for Congress bumper sticker.
Damn. I gotta confess the NRA endorsement means something to me. I'm a member myself, and I feel better about Charlie after reading the NRA endorsement.
We certainly do not want to elect the democrat, Kuster. Kuster is as far left as Obama and is full of new federal programs and the new federal taxes to pay for them. She doesn't talk about the tax part much, but you gotta figure she will vote for them.

Cost effective

A green was enthusing on NPR about a wonderful new thermal solar electric plant in the Mohave desert. They have the permits and the environmental impact statement out of the way. All they have to do is raise the money.
Plant is supposed to generate 1 gigawatt and cost $6 billion dollars.
For $6 billion I could buy a nuclear plant that size and have my lights stay on after dark.
Good luck with the funding. And good luck finding customers in the middle of the Mohave desert.

Time Warner Cable Broadband going Narrowband

My cable modem service has been going down hill. More and more websites fail to connect. Is it Time Warner? Is it growing Internet traffic overloading the web sites? Is it Firefox? Is it malware?
Might have to try dial up again.

NH Republican State Convention

As a genuine Republican candidate for state office, I rate as a delegate. Easily flattered as I am, I hopped in the car and zoomed down to Concord to strut upon the floor of the convention with real credentials hanging around my neck. That early on Saturday morning we had a bit of fog, actually clouds flying close to the ground. It was pretty hard to see as I zipped down I93 at 80 MPH.
The affair was in the Arts Center on Main St Concord. Lobby of the theatre was packed with pols. all sipping coffee and eating donuts. The morning was given over to stemwinding speeches by the major Republican candidates and special guest Mitt Romney. I guess Mitt is thinking about 2012. He has a good store of one-liners and was the most entertaining of the speakers.
Since the invention of primary elections, political conventions have little to do. The only substantive business was to approve the rewritten Republican platform. The platform rewrite is an improvement, the platform is now readable and you can show it to voters and it will mean something. The old platform was a jumble of special interest group gobbledegook.
A motion from the floor to favor state run gambling was defeated. As was a motion from the floor to deny Republican party support from any candidate who failed to take a pro life pledge and an anti gay marriage pledge. That motion was actually kinda dangerous in a procedural way. It wanted to boot out of the Republican party any candidate that isn't anti abortion and anti gay. That's undemocratic. Any winner of the Republican primary is a legitimate Republican. I don't want other people disqualifying candidates for insufficient ideological purity.

Words of the Weasel Pt 15

"Company ships jobs over seas." Right. What actually happens is rising wages, rising health care costs, rising taxes, rising energy costs, and rising regulation raises a company's costs to the point that it ceases American production. No point in making stuff if you are loosing money on it.
To fill the market need for product, foreign competitors step in.
First make the US uncompetitive and then blame it on the American companies driven out of business. That's the Democratic way.

NH state budget according to Josiah Bartlett

Josiah Bartlett Institute is a free market think tank based in Concord. They gave a "how the NH Budget works" talk last night which I attended. The speaker was Charlie Arlinghaus and the hall was well filled.
The State budget is complex, possibly deliberately so. Much, but not all, spending comes from the "General Fund" But there are a lot of special dedicated funds like Highways and Turnpikes and Fish and Game. There is an "Education Trust Fund" which is sort of, partly, but not completely, separate from the General Fund. In actual fact the legislature can and does move money between the General Fund and the Education Trust Fund pretty much at will. And Education Trust Fund money can be used for purposes other than educational. The General Fund accounts for only 44% of state spending, the other funds kick in to supply the remaining 66%.
Then the budget is supposed to be for two years. But the funds allocated are allocated by year, so the two year budget looks a lot like two one year budgets packed into the same yellow manila envelope. Whether the legislature gets to revise the two year budget every year was not made clear.
Between the "44% budget" and the "100% budget" and the one and two year budgets there lie enormous possibilities for confusion. From now on, I will be skeptical of claims that the budget has been cut, raised, saved, spindled, stapled or mutilated. I will suspect that the advocate is comparing the two year budget with the one year budget, or the 44% budget with the 100% budget.