Whap!

That's the noise a bird makes flying into my Thermopane windows. They been doing it more and more. Just this morning I watched a blue jay perched on my porch railing. The jay spread his wings and took off, gathered speed and whap! Right into the window. He must have survived, I didn't find him lying dead in the driveway.
And it ain't like that window wash commercial "Our Stuff makes glass so clean it seems to disappear." My windows have a goodly selection of bug smears, condensed wood smoke and they all need cleaning.

Mitt or Newt?

Newt is an interesting guy. I'd love to have him over for dinner. Newt is an idea man, he has ideas running out of his head and all over the floor. Most of them are good ideas, some of them are bad ideas. We could be in a lot of trouble should a President Gingrich push thru one of his bad ideas. Mitt is a nice guy, nice wife, nice kids. He has real executive experience and can get uncooperative legislators, investors, and promoters to cooperate. Mitt is a middle of the road guy. He isn't going to go to the mat against abortion, gay marriage, legalized grass, amnesty or any other wedge issue. He will do his best for the economy, employment, and the deficit. The independents are more likely to vote for Mitt, which makes Mitt a better bet to beat Obama.

How did that US drone come down in one piece?

Iran is displaying a futuristic looking drone it claims is of US origin (despite the lack of USAF markings) . How did it fall into Iranian hands in one piece? Did the Iranians get onto the drone's command frequencies and order it to land? Did the drone encounter some kind of in flight failure and the on-board artificial intelligence made a safe landing in a field? Were the Iranians merely lucky? Like the US was in WWII when we found a crashed Japanese Zero in Alaska in good enough shape to salvage and even fly.
If Iran did force the drone down via the radio command link, how come said radio command link was not encrypted? There are plenty of uncrackable encryption schemes that can be realized on a 3 by 5 inch printed circuit board. Why did not this top secret drone have encryption?
And, why is the US admitting that the Iranians have a top secret US drone in their possession? We don't have to lie about, we just say nothing. In response to reporter's questions refuse to answer. That way anyone who wants to believe the Iranians are not being truthful, can go right on believing. But once some big fat mouth in DC says "Yeah, that's ours" the jig is up. Once the Americans themselves confirm Iranian claims everyone will believe those claims. If we could just say nothing (difficult for politicians and bureaucrats) we would leave the matter in some amount of doubt.
Finally, does this drone have anything to do with the series of massive explosions plaguing the Iranian nuclear program?

Plumbing

My least favorite household activity. The bathroom sink faucet has been leaking for months. Not on the floor, just a little dribble on the sink. I finally got irritated enough to fix it. Drive in to Littleton, all the while thinking to myself "Lowes or Home Depot?". We have both, next door to each other. Eventually I found myself in the Lowes parking lot.
They had a lot of faucets. Shiny Chrome, gun metal, porcelain knobs, all pricey. I settled on an el cheapo Pfizer model for $18, thinking that the fancy jewelry grade faucets would look out of place in my humble bathroom. Only when I got it home and unpacked it did I see the "Made in China" sticker on this old line American plumbing fixture company's product.
Now the fun begins, getting the old faucet out of the bathroom sink. That fellow has been peacefully rusting in place since the house was built in 1962. The brand new $15 basin wrench was able to loosen one of the four nuts holding it in place. A heavy shot of PC blaster loosened a second nut enough for the basin wrench to turn it, but the last two were stuck fast. A half an hour of groveling around on the floor and using bad language convinced me that those two nuts were really stuck. So I disconnected the pipes lower down and took the entire sink off the wall and down to the shop. There a one and one eighth inch Craftsman deep well socket made the last two rusty nuts say uncle.
More fun was in store. Replacing the sink on the wall revealed that the new faucet was a quarter of an inch shorter than the old one, and the hot and cold water supply tubing didn't quite reach far enough. Damn.
Make a quite speed run to the hardware store, arriving just before closing time. Bought two new supply tubes. Returned to the job, and found the new supply tubes were the wrong size.
And now it was after five o'clock and the hardware store was well and truly closed. Another struggle and I was able to stretch the old supply tubes just enough to fit. And wrenched them good and tight, and Halleluiah, they don't leak.
I hate plumbing.

Bankers must do their own risk assessment

Rather than depending upon ratings agencies. Well how about that? Bankers will have to work at their trade, inside of accepting outside opinions. About time. The secret of banking is making loans that will be repaid. Any turkey make made a loan, the trick is to make loans that get repaid. On time, with interest.
The Wall St rating agencies, Standard and Poor's, Moody's Investor Services, and some others, have been "rating" investments, banks, and even countries as AAA, A,B,C just like grades on report cards. Trouble is, the ratings agencies made some astoundingly poor ratings over the years, such as rating mortgage backed securities AAA. Banks have been dumb enough to accept agency ratings and been burned badly.
Apparently the word is getting around. Congress required the the FDIC to remove any language referring to agency rating from the banking regulations. This is finally filtering down to even the dumbest banks.

Don't blame Wilileaks

Blame some government weenie who gave Army privates access to State Dept classified. Today's WSJ has an op-ed piece by Floyd Abrams decrying the really bad effects of Wikileaks posting classified State Dept cables. Numerous US diplomats expelled after their classified cables containing perfectly true but uncomplimentary information became public.
Abrams blames all this on Julian Assange, Wikileak's founder.
Wrong. The blame belongs to the un named bureaucrat who gave Army private Bradford Manning access to State Department classified. Manning turned into a traitor of the Benedict Arnold class and stole thousands of classified documents and gave them to Wikileaks. Manning is in custody, but the unnamed bureaucrat who gave Manning access is getting away scot free.

Gotta prove intent in order to prosecute

That's the whine I read in the Wall St Journal. Some investigator working to nail somebody, anybody, for causing Great Depression 2.0, or at least profiting by it.
What is this? Intent is thought. Are we trying to prosecute thought crimes? Real crime, which juries will convict for, involved actions, not thoughts. Taking cash out of the vault, out of safety deposit boxes, out of customer accounts (Corzine!), forging signatures, that's crime. The law has been real clear on this sort of thing since Moses's time.
Buying a stocks and bonds that go down in value ain't criminal, dumb maybe, apt to get you fired, but it ain't a crime.
What this guy is complaining about is really one of two things.
A. Nobody committed any crimes.
B. He is too stupid to prove the crimes. (You gotta be smart to be Sherlock Holmes. Few guvmint employees are very smart)

Crime should not rest upon mental attitude. Proof of a crime should be proof of some action, not wheither the perp was thinking impure thoughts as he did the actions. Juries largely agree with this, and have been returning verdicts of "not guilty" when the government brings a thought crime case.
And no, we do not need more vague laws making impure thoughts into felonies.