Tax and Spend, or Spend and Tax

Fiscal Cliff.  Let's cut spending first.  Go for a big cut, a real cut, not fake cuts like last time.  After getting some spending cuts on the books, then, maybe, we could think about a tax hike.  But unless the cuts are nailed down first, the tax hike will just be spent, and the deficit will be just as bad.  There is a farm bill, a highway bill, an energy bill, the entire Dept of Education, the TSA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, SEC and the federal flood insurance program, all of which could be zeroed out and the budget would be balanced.  And nobody except bureaucrats would miss any of them.
Hint.  Every time Obama says "balanced" he really means "Tax Hike".

What goes around, comes around

In 1937  German Field Marshall von Blomberg, Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht, entered into a second marriage with his secretary, Erna Gruhn.  Shortly afterward a police report surfaced that showed Frau Gruhn was an ex prostitute.  Hitler fired him.
   Colonel General Freiherr Werner von Fritsch was second in command and the logical officer to succeed him.  Himmler's SS furnished paperwork showing that General Fritsch had entered a homosexual relationship with a man named Schmidt.  A subsequent German Army courtmartial ruled that the SS paperwork was a pure frameup.  Never the less, von Fritsch, and 16 other senior generals were retired.  Forty five other German generals were transferred to less important posts.
   This all comes from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer.
In 2012 two top American generals were re leaved of duty following mysterious and suspicious charges. 

Stone Age Genesis

Both the Economist and the Wall St Journal carried the story of really old stone tools.  Archaeologists excavating at Pinnacle Point in South Africa found "microlith"  (we used to call them "flake") tools.  Flake tools are harder to make than the older "core" tools.  The oldest stone tools found are merely pebbles that have been bashed hard enough to fracture them, yielding a sharp cutting edge.  They are so crude that some argue that they are merely random stones.  Next step in stone tools was the "core".  Start with a fist sized chunk of flint.  Whack at it to form two sharp edges, and you have the "hand axe".  It was probably used to butcher killed game, to slice off roasts and chops for grilling over the fire. 
  Next step was to work with "flakes"(now called "microliths").  Start with a chunk of flint,  Strike it just so and a "blade" a thin piece of flint with two razor sharp edges flakes off.  Just as is, a flake is as useful as a modern straight razor blade.  And it's a great starting place to make arrow heads, or the famous folsom points that tipped throwing spears. 
   The South African site that is getting all the press coverage yielded flakes about 1 and a quarter inches long.  A little big for arrow heads, and no where as neatly chipped as American Indian arrow heads.  They lack any sign of a retaining groove to lash them to a shaft.  They look about right for points to a throwing spear. 
   So what makes this find so exciting?  The date.  The archaeologists are claiming they are 71,000 years old, making them the oldest flake tools ever discovered.   Too bad the archaeologists don't tell us how they dated their find.  Surely no one counted 71,000 layers in the dirt wall of the excavation.  Radio carbon dating only works back maybe 15,000 years.  So how did they estimate 71,000 years?  As the oldest flake tools ever discovered, they are interesting.  Other wise they are just crude chipped stone. 
   Then the "journalists" at both publications segued off to speculating upon the birth of modern minds, capable of art and music, poetry and the finer thoughts.  Sounds great.  Me, I think flake tools come from superior small motor skills.  I could make a "core" hand axe, no problem.  But to strike a chunk of flint and get a 4 inch long sliver with razor edges to pop off, in one piece,  I could never do that.  The flint would shatter, fail to flake, and after days of flint knapping, I'd wind up with nothing useful.  But there are guys who can do it, and do it well.  

War for Women

There are a lot of reasons for last week's Republican defeat.  A big one, not the only one, but a big one, is loss of the women's vote.  Exit polling shows  women voted Obama by 55% to 45%.  That's a 10% hit.  And half the voters are women.  If the Republican party ever wants to thrive again, it's gotta  make itself acceptable to women.
   Far be it from me to claim to understand women.  The nature of the fair sex has been a matter of debate going back to Genesis, and I certainly ain't smart enough to improve upon four of five thousand years of learned writing.  But I do know this, women are against getting raped. 
   But this election saw two, not one but two, Republican senate candidates make totally repugnant public statements about rape.  Their remarks indicated a light hearted attitude toward this crime.  "Boys will be boys" and " They were just fooling around" and "It isn't all that serious, you won't get pregnant".  And somehow Republicans nominated these two chuckleheads for high office. 
   Republicans need to agree that rape is a horrible crime.  Perpetrators shall be prosecuted, convicted and punished.  Victims will receive all possible aid and succor, including abortion services, as some small mitigation of  their plight.
   If the party continues to harbor and nominate chuckleheads who think rape is sort of OK, and not too bad, it will disappear from the face of America.
  

Words of the Weasel, Part 31

From The Economist.  "Earlier this year private sector bond holders reduced their nominal claims by more than 50%".
How nice and cooperative that sounds.  In actual fact the Greeks gave lenders a 75% haircut.
The Economist went on to urge canceling more Greek debt and lending them more money.  After all ,  the poor things cannot improve their economy with out lots of foreign investment.   Wouldn't we all like to lend them more money?

Grasping at Straws

Wall St Journal, back pages, "US Unit takes Permanent Posting In Poland".  A 10 man USAF detachment is assigned to Lask, Poland. The Poles are ecstatic to have a real US military detachment to their soil.  They hope that even the tiniest US deployment to their territory will ward off a Russian invasion.
   There is a color picture.  Shows ten of USAF enlisted men, commanded by a major standing around on a Polish air base.  Pretty small command for a major.  I commanded better than a hundred men as a second lieutenant. Good old USAF, a lot of the men have their hands in their pockets, only a few of them are wearing gloves. Most of them are wearing service caps (wheel hats) and wearing them poorly.  Others are wearing flight caps.  A couple of Polish officers are welcoming them.  The Poles are wearing insignia on their collars that look like American sergeant's stripes.  In the background we have a C-130 transport plane with "Polish Air Force" lettered on the fuselage, in big letters,  in English. 
    After a generation of Polish jokes in USAF, you would think the Poles would come up with something else to put on their planes.   "Air Force of Poland" would sound a lot better. 

Demographics vs Republicans

The Wall St Journal ran some interesting numbers about the election yesterday.  Percentage of population for various politically interesting groups and the percent of Romney votes in each group.  Many of the groups have overlap, such as college graduates and women.  About half of all college graduates are women and so there is lot of overlap.  And we are missing some groups like blacks,Jews, and  veterans. 
But notice that the big groups like woman and whites contribute a lot more votes than the little groups like Hispanics, who have been getting a lot of attention from the chattering classes. If Romney had attracted 10% more women's votes like Obama did, he would be president today.
   Republicans are gonna do something to try and win next time.  They oughta do something to get more women to vote for them.  That's the way numbers point.  

Group	Group Size	Voted Romney	Total Romney Vote
Whites	72%	61%	43.9%
Women	53%	45%	23.9%
College Grad	48%	50%	24.0%
Mid Income	32%	54%	17.3%
Independents	28%	55%	15.4%
The Young	19%	40%	7.6%
Union Homes	18%	42%	7.6%
Hispanics	10%	29%	2.9%