What's Fourth of July without a Parade?

I dunno. Franconia ran off a Fourth of July parade today. Heh, it's Saturday. We had floats, antique cars, WWII veterans marching, bands not marching (they ride on trailers), Ray Burton and his yellow 60's convertible, and a horde of little kids wearing orange T-shirts and carrying Stop Northern Pass signs. There will be a duck race this afternoon, a tuba concert on the Dow Academy field and fireworks when the sun goes down.
The fire trucks are enormous. All built on ten ton Mack or International Harvester truck chassis, they tower over the one story buildings along Franconia's main drag. And there are a lot of 'em. Like ten, from Franconia, Sugar Hill, Easton, and Bethlehem. All glittering in good paint, freshly waxed. In the up country, we are prepared, perhaps overprepared, for Armageddon.
A good time was had by all, Contrary to recent items on Fox News, Democrats were out in force and enjoyed the festivities.

Plastic Corks

Arrgh. Some are too slippery, and the corkscrew just make's 'em turn round and round in the neck of the bottle. The other sort let the corkscrew pierce the cork but the piercing doesn't heal, so wine dribble out the hole in the cork when you put the bottle on it's side in the fridge.
If they can't afford real cork for the cork, they are better off with (gasp) metal screw tops on wine.

Speaking of tax loopholes

Loss carry forward. If you loose money, you can apply the loss you had last year to this year's taxes. You say to the IRS "Yes, I made $47 million dollars this year, but I lost $99 million dollars last year, so I own no taxes at all." This is how GE managed to pay no federal income tax this year.
Loss carry forward subsides losers. If you subsidize it, you get more of it. Why do we want to do this?
Eliminating tax loss carry forward won't hurt the vast bulk of taxpayers, both individuals and corporations, 'cause most taxpayers don't loose money, they make money. It will certainly simplify tax filing.

Youngest son vs Windows 7

Youngest son bought a new laptop. UPS delivered yesterday, and he spent last evening tinkering with it. He reports that Windows 7 comes with 86 "processes" sucking up RAM and CPU time. (Windows XP gets by on 15 "processes"). It's slow. And fat. And power management comes set to automatically turn the machine off after 15 minutes without a keystroke, even running on AC power. He noticed this feature after setting the machine up to download a raft of stuff over night.
Youngest son is about to reload with Windows XP.

Is it a loop hole to be closed or a tax hike?

Strange bedfellows. Last week the Senate voted to end US tax breaks for the ethanol industry. Then Grover Norquist, long time anti tax activist popped up and complained that closing this tax loophole was actually a tax hike and he opposed it. Norquist does his homework, and has persuaded most congressional republicans to sign his no-tax pledge. So he is hard to ignore.
Then Obama came out four square for tax changes to cut the budget deficit. He wants to close a loophole for corporate jets, another he claims is for the oil industry but is actually available to all US manufacturers, and a tax break he says applies to hedge fund managers.
So are these tax hikes or loophole closings? And is this real money or chickenfeed? The corporate jet loophole actually applies to all new aircraft, and Obama hasn't said what he is proposing, killing it for all aircraft, changing it to exclude small jets, or to exclude all light aircraft.
The oil industry is taking advantage of the 8% US manufacturing tax credit which was passed in 2004. Oil drilling counts as manufacturing.
The hedge fund tax break is "carried interest", IRS jargon meaning the right to treat manager's bonuses as capital gains. Managers get a bonus based upon how much the funds assets appreciate, and the IRS allows this to be taxed at the 15% capital gains rate rather than the 35% ordinary interest rate. The democrats tried to make this law last year but failed. This one is probably real money, the other two are chicken feed.
So what we have here is probably loophole closing, but the Republicans are properly rejecting it as tax hikes, because you don't want to give Obama anything on the revenue side until you have pinned him down on spending cuts.

Waterboarding

"The Interrogator: An Education" by Glenn L. Carle. Reviewed in the Wall St Journal by Ali Soufan. The author retired from CIA, the reviewer retired from the FBI, and both of them did some of the interrogation of 9/11 detainees. They both conclude that "enhanced interrogation techniques" (aka waterboarding) did no good. Under duress, all but the dumbest detainee would tell the interrogator anything he wanted to hear, just to make it stop hurting.

What price Alternate Energy?

Harbor Freight, a low end retailer of low end tools and hardware, is offering a 45 Watt solar panel for $169.99, or $3.77 per watt. Same catalog offers a 800 watt gasoline generator for $99.99, or $0.12 per watt. Or, a utility can buy a 1 Gigawatt nuclear plant for $6 billion, or $0.006 per watt.
Solar cells are not going anywhere because they cost way too much. And they don't give any electricity after the sun goes down, which is when I really want my electric lights to work.