Foot Shooting for Dummies

Operation Fast and Furious, where BATF allowed better than 1000 guns to walk into Mexico was just a medium duty administration scandal until today.  Congress  subpoenaed  100,000 documents from Dept of Justice and DOJ has been stalling on delivering them.
   Today Obama invoked "Executive Privilege"  to keep those documents secret.  Executive Privilege is a way of keeping information given to the president secret on the theory that the president needs to hear unvarnished truth from his advisers.  If every thing said to the president will appear in the public press, a whole bunch of stuff will never be discussed because it will look bad in the papers.
   So far so good.  But by invoking executive privilege, Obama is saying that he knew about Fast and Furious, something that he has been denying.  Plus, the last president to invoke Executive Privilege in a big way was Richard Nixon in Watergate.  We oldsters remember Watergate, and we remember that Nixon's use of executive privilege was fraudulent.  As soon as Obama tries it, we think Obama is fraudulent too.
   The documents in question are probably embarrassing, they probably will tell which DOJ chucklehead started Fast and Furious, and why.  But even if the disputed documents incriminated Eric Holder, AND showed that Fast and Furious was an attempt to discredit the 2nd Amendment,  Obama could have just thrown Holder under the bus along with Rev. Wright and pressed on.
   Now Obama has told us all that he was in on it, from the beginning.  Not smart.

Windows Speed Tweaks - Zap Indexing Services

Windows XP comes with a resource hogging "Indexing Services".  This sluggish CPU hog builds "indexes" of file contents to speed up searches.  It never sped up anything for me.  To keep the indexes up to date, indexing services constantly "sniffs" the hard drive, looking in files and updating the indexes. I have seen Indexing Services sucking up as much as 25% of CPU time. Your computer will run faster if you kill Indexing Services.
   This can be done from "Add | Remove Programs", a Microsoft applet on the Control Panel.  You get to Control Panel from the Start button.  Do Start, then Settings then Control Panel.
   Add | Remove Programs makes you wait while it builds a list of what's installed.  Once it comes back to life, click on "Add|Remove Windows Components.  This will display a list of  optional Windows bits and pieces.  Uncheck "Indexing Services" and he will be gone.
  While you are in here, any other Windows bit or piece you don't need can be unchecked.  This machine (Antique Laptop) has Fax Services, Management and Monitoring Tools,MSN Explorer, Other Network File and Print Services and Outlook Express unchecked and he runs just fine.  Even if you don't use Internet  Exploder for your browser, you want to keep him around.  Microsoft update (which brings you the latest Windows patches)  only works with Exploder.  No Exploder, no patches.

Selling Natural Gas Powered Cars

That's what the Wall St Journal was doing yesterday.   They mentioned lightly the major problem with the idea, namely the size of the gas tank.  Compressed natural gas (CNG) is less energy dense than gasoline, so the tank will have to be bigger, a lot bigger.  Imagine a 55 gallon oil drum.  And this is holding pressurized gas so the tank has to be a cylinder, none of those tricky shapes that fit into odd nooks and crannies.   I suppose the stylists will be able to do something, but I'm betting a CNG powered car will look odd, with that big cylindrical tank sticking out somewhere. 

Roger Clemens Skates

They acquitted Roger Clemens today.  I'm not much of a baseball fan and not much of a Clemens fan, but the guv'mint has no business on the athletic doping war path.  Doesn't matter what Clemens was or was not using, that's not a matter for the courts.  Might be a matter for Major League Baseball, but it isn't a fit matter for the courts.

Should Banks be allowed to Gamble?

Banks are supposed to finance business activity and economic growth.  Make loans to home buyers and car buyers.  Loan to businesses to purchase inventory, build new plants, purchase production equipment.  We all agree that this kind of lending makes the economy grow.
   But if you are a bank with a pile of money, there are other things you can do, things which to my way of thinking are just gambling.  If the bank bets right it makes money.  But no matter how it bets, it does nothing for the economy.  In the gambling department we have commodities trading, foreign exchange trading, playing the stock market, sub prime mortgages, credit default swaps, Greek bonds, mortgage backed securities, and whatever it was that JP Morgan lost $2 billion doing.  That deal was so opaque that even the Wall St Journal hasn't figured it out yet.
  Bankers love to gamble because the return can be very high.  And the risks always seem so small.  A bank can make more money gambling than it can doing 30 year fixed rate mortgages.
   Trouble is, when a big bet goes bad it can wreck the entire world economy.  The current Great Depression 2.0 was triggered by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac (special purpose government run banks) and some of the stupider Wall St banks got to playing with mortgage backed securities, especially the securities backed with sub prime mortgages.  This bit of gambling caused the economic crash that we still haven't fixed.
   Maybe we should forbid banks from gambling?
Limit banks to doing mortgages and car loans and making loans to real businesses, i.e. businesses that make things, grow things, mine things, sell things, transport things, or furnish telecommunications, gas, and electric power.  No loans to "businesses" that just play the various markets.   No loans to hedge funds or stock brokers or other banks.

I hate to say it, but Obama did something right

His new plan for illegal immigrants under 30.  Any who came here as children, and have kept their noses clean, graduated high school and/or served in the military, we let 'em stay.  at least for a couple of  years. I'm for it.  If you are a kid, and your parents cross the US border bringing you with them,  there is nothing a kid can do about it.  If the kid grows up in America, there is really no place to deport him too with any justice.   We as country are better off with decent young people as citizens, contributing to the legal economy than we are with illegal aliens hunted by Mr. Migra and willing to do almost anything to avoid getting caught.
  For a second point, I strongly believe that anyone who has served in the US military should be granted citizenship upon his honorable discharge from the service.  You cannot find better citizens than veterans, anywhere, anyplace.  For that matter immigrants make the most loyal citizens we have.  The United States needs loyal citizens.  What makes the US a superpower is a large and loyal population, and we need to keep it that way.
  Carping about immigrants taking jobs from citizens is small minded union talk.  We have jobs in America, and we can make more of them.
   Too bad Obama cannot do this kind of thing the right way, by getting a law thru Congress.  It's a measure of how ineffectual Obama is that he didn't propose a law, lobby Congress to pass it, made the needed concessions here and there to get it thru.  He cannot negotiate worth a damn, and after three and a half years few in Congress trust him much.  It's hard to cut a deal with a man you don't trust, 'cause you fear he will welsh on it.  Nobody wants to be taken for a sucker.

Marinade for Chicken

Marinaded chicken thighs in white wine and lemon juice with some Bell's Poultry Seasoning. Gave 'em about any hour and then grilled 'em on the Weber. Did good things for the flavor