Egypt. Part 2

Some TV newsies have been calling for the US to support the Egyptian rebels. Others have been calling for support of Mubarak, likening Mubarak to the Shah of Iran. The shah was overthrown after Carter withdrew American support, and Iran was taken over by Islamic fundamentalists led by the Ayatollah Khomeni. Iran was converted from a US ally to a relentless adversary in a matter of days. They are still an adversary.
In actual fact, we cannot support the Egyptian rebels, yet. The world is full of shaky regimes, all of which fear an American attempt at regime change will be effective. The US cannot be perceived as a superpower willing to foment revolution in countries that displease it, not if we want to do any sort of business, diplomatic, commercial, cultural, or whatever. Which means we cannot jettison the Mubarak regime just yet.
Plus, we aren't sure we like the Egyptian opposition all that much. CIA has done its usual sloppy job, and we have no idea who, if anyone, is behind today's Egyptian uprising. We ought to fear that the real leaders might be the Muslim Brotherhood. They are an old and powerful Islamic movement that goes back to the 1920's. They got started as anti colonialists. Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak considered them dangerous radicals, outlawed the party, and slung every party member they could catch into jail. Despite this pressure, the Brotherhood was able to assassinate Anwar Sadat and give birth to Al Quada.
At this moment it looks like Mubarak might be able to survive, but he is in his eighties, in poor health, and he isn't going to last much longer. If a halfway decent Egyptian leader were to surface in today's confusion, we could do worse. Unfortunately, we have no good intelligence from Egypt and we cannot tell real leaders from useless windbags. So we have to wait upon events.

Egypt

The TV newsies have been yakking all day about the uproar in Egypt. What none of them seem to understand is
1. We don't know who is going to come out on top. Might be Mubarak, might be someone else. We won't know until one side wins.
2. We want to be friends with the winners. Which means we don't want to piss the winners off by supporting the losers. And we don't know who is going to win.
3. Given 1 and 2, the correct action for the US is to stand on the side lines until we know who is running the place and then, only then, reassure the government of Egypt, be it new or old, of continued US support.

Whither TV?

TV is facing the Internet challenge. Ever since the switch to digital broadcast wiped out many folks TV reception, viewers have been turning to the Internet to watch programs. For instance at my place we used to get 8 over-the-air channels. After the switchover to digital broadcasting we only get one. Lotta people who don't have or cannot afford cable don't get to see much TV anymore. At my daughter's place in DC they don't have TV anymore. They have three reasonable modern but non functional TV sets piled up in the dining room to form a modern object d'art.
Enter the Internet. Hulu.com has been offering streaming TV right to your computer. Hulu is a joint venture between NBC, News Corp, and Disney and offers TV programs. Hulu is free (right now anyway) but the owners are conflicted over the Hulu business model. In plain English, they cannot figure out how to make money giving stuff away free. Competitor Netflix charges $8 a month for roughly the same thing.
One unsolved problem, at least in my house, is how to get the Internet TV signal onto the living room TV. The main (desktop) computer is some distance from the TV and running a video cable across two rooms under the rugs is un inviting. I could put a wireless card into backup (laptop) computer) and set the laptop down close to the TV. My newer TV accepts VGA (computer monitor) video. Many (but not all)laptops will output regular composite video (standard analog TV signal like a VCR outputs) if your TV is a little older.
Another unsolved problem is internet bandwidth. There isn't that much of it. If you think the Internet is slow now, wait til everyone is watching TV over the 'net. The "net neutrality" scuffle is an attempt by Hulu and Netflix to force the ISP's not to put their streaming TV on the back burner. The ISP's, given a choice between delaying a website from painting, a matter of a few dozen packets, and delaying some of the 4 million packets for a movie, are going to paint the web site first and do the movie later.
Internet TV may force the ISP's to change their billing practices. Right now broadband is billed at one flat monthly rate. The ISP's find that a small percentage of their customers are hogging most of the bandwidth. To make the bandwidth hogs pay their fair share, the ISP's may have to bill by the byte. The more you download the higher your bill. Hulu and Netflix are against that idea.

HoHum State of the Union

Words roll off Obama's tongue so smoothly but they don't mean anything. With the US about to go as broke as Greece, Obama didn't talk about cutting spending on anything. He wanted more spending on high speed rail and education. Oh sorry, it's investment now, sounds so much better than spending.
Arrgh.

How cold did you get?

Well, both Franconia and Littleton were 25 below zero yesterday morning about 8:30. Didn't warm up much all day.

New Hampshire's deficit is as bad as California's

New Hampshire is looking at a $900 million deficit this year. State spending will exceed tax revenue by that much. California is looking at a $28 billion deficit. Who is deeper in the hole?
New Hampshire's population is 1.3 million people, California's is 37 million.
Divide New Hampshire's deficit by the population to yield deficit per citizen.
$900 million/1.3 million = $692 deficit per citizen.
Divide California's deficit by the population to yield deficit per citizen
$28 billion/37 million = $756 deficit per citizen

In short, we in frugal New Hampshire are nearly as broke as free spending California.

NH Republican Annual Meeting

It was cold yesterday morning, about 4 above zero. Trusty car started right up and by 7:30 we were heading downstate to Derry at a sedate 75 mph. Google maps brought me right to the front gate of Pinkerton Academy, whereat the meeting was supposed to be held. Not a sign of a meeting. 30 or 40 other cars showed up at the same place, and everyone looked around and shrugged their shoulders. Some casting about found the event, it was in a theater up the road, only the theater building was signed as the school gym.
Meeting opened at 10 AM. Lots of pep rally type speeches, reports from various committees, and back patting talk soaked up the morning. Business really got started after lunch with the election of party officers for the next two years.
Fun started there. Outgoing party chairman, John Sununu, retired NH governor hauled out of retirement in 2008, had done a smashingly successful job, leading the state GOP to major victory. Supermajorities in the house, the senate, and all five executive councilors. Victory doesn't get much better than this.
The party establishment nominated Juliana Bergeron to replace Sununu for the next two years. The Tea Party backed Jack Kimball, would had run for governor in 2010. Juliana stood for a quiet bureaucratic party leadership that wouldn't rock any boats. Jack stood for an activist leadership pushing for real change. Both sides campaigned hard before the meeting. I got emails and snail mails by the bushel, plus phone calls from both sides. Juliana called herself, in person, not a robo-call. Two old friends, whose judgment I respect, called me on behalf of Jack Kimball.
On the way in, partisans for both sides were handing out buttons. I got a two inch round button that read simply "Jack". The razzle dazzle ran down and just about 3 PM we had the vote for new chairman. After a lengthy delay to count the paper ballots, outgoing chairman Sununu announced the results. 223 for Jack, 199 for Juliana. The house erupted into cheers. Shortly the Kimball folks started a chant going "Jack! Jack! Jack..."
At that, I figured my civic duty was done. I found the car and started the two hour drive back to Franconia.