First we have Chuck Hagel for defense. He is at least a Viet Nam veteran with combat experience. That's a good thing. The Wall St Journal is unimpressed, citing a number of opportunistic votes Hagel cast back in the day.
Then we have John Kerry for defense. Kerry went to Viet Nam as a junior Navy officer about the same time I was over there. I served the regular one year tour. Kerry managed to get home after only 8 months in country. He must have been some kind of jerk. Years later when he ran for president, men who had served with him were still mad enough to form the Swift Boat Veterans lobby and torpedo Mr Kerry.
And finally we have this guy John Brennan for CIA. That's a new name to me. He spent twenty years at CIA doing this and that, did some outside consulting, and finally joined Obama's campaign in 2008. I know little about him, but I'm suspicious of old CIA hands. CIA is a snake pit of intelligence agents who want to make policy, they made major mistakes, and spend much of their time attempting the destabilize Republican administrations. Not a good background. Certainly not a man to clean house at CIA.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Monday, January 7, 2013
Winter Weasel
I saw one today, right in my front yard. All white, really slender, moving fast. Dunno what it lives on up here, I haven't seen a tasty chipmunk running around in months. I didn't know there were any weasels, white or otherwise, left around here. Apparently there are.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Better than the Debt Ceiling
Newt Gengrich was on Meet the Press this morning, and he did toss out one good idea. Newt is full of ideas, many of them bad, but this is a good one.
We have the federal debt ceiling coming up and the newsies are talking up a big fight along the lines of "Do spending cuts or we shut the government down". They tried this two years ago, gained a lot of negative press and just a few fake cuts.
Newt points out that we have a "Continuing Resolution" coming up. The Republicans could refuse to pass that, and instead pass the proper spending bills, one for each department. You want the cut spending? Then cut the spending bill. Works like right now. Newt suggests that a spending cut fight centered around the continuing resolution and spending bills would be easier to win, less damaging, and very effective.
Could it be, that politicians like the debt ceiling 'cause it's just money, we aren't talking about cutting any interest group's program. Whereas when you get into appropriations, you have to vote on real programs, each of which has people getting money thru it, and who will be angered if their gravy train stops running.
We have the federal debt ceiling coming up and the newsies are talking up a big fight along the lines of "Do spending cuts or we shut the government down". They tried this two years ago, gained a lot of negative press and just a few fake cuts.
Newt points out that we have a "Continuing Resolution" coming up. The Republicans could refuse to pass that, and instead pass the proper spending bills, one for each department. You want the cut spending? Then cut the spending bill. Works like right now. Newt suggests that a spending cut fight centered around the continuing resolution and spending bills would be easier to win, less damaging, and very effective.
Could it be, that politicians like the debt ceiling 'cause it's just money, we aren't talking about cutting any interest group's program. Whereas when you get into appropriations, you have to vote on real programs, each of which has people getting money thru it, and who will be angered if their gravy train stops running.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
So what do we Republicans want, REALLY?
The fiscal cliff bill, which kept income taxes the same for those making under $400K (most of us) was better than doing nothing and having everyone's income taxes go up. Raising taxes in a depression is a downer leading to more Great Depression, more layoffs, and less hiring.
And 150 Republicans voted FOR doing a cliff dive. What did they want? And did their constituents agree with their vote? Did they think going all the way over the fiscal cliff was better than a taking half-a-loaf? Taking more money away from working stiffs and giving it to Obama to fritter away on Solyndra is better? I haven't heard any of these fiscal cliff divers explain what they want to do. Possibly they don't know themselves.
The Republicans need to figure out what they want and where they are going. And then push laws thru the House getting what they want. If they want Paul Ryan's plan for Medicare, they need to pass it thru the House. If they don't have the votes to go that far, nobody will think they are serious. You gotta vote your plan into law or you are just a bunch of whiners.
"Negotiating" with Obama is a non starter. Obama likes federal spending, wants more of it, and wants more taxes to pay for it. He will spend any extra revenue he gets, he won't use it to pay down the US debt. And he is a lousy negotiator. Obama's idea of negotiating is "my way or the highway". Don't negotiate with this turkey, just vote your plan into law. If you can't do that, then you don't have a plan worth talking about.
We are bumping up against the federal debt ceiling. If not raised, the US will be unable to borrow more money to keep federal spending going. Which means a lot of feeders at the federal trough will go hungry.
The Republicans are talking about playing chicken with Obama, give us our spending cuts or no debt ceiling hike. Unless they get together and agree just how far they are willing to go, Obama will call their bluff and the wimpier RINO's will fold. And unless they can vote their desires thru the House, nobody will believe they mean it.
So what do we Republicans want? How bad do we want it? Are we willing to cut off borrowing and force a massive reduction in federal spending. Like right now, not ten years from now? How much metaphorical blood are we willing to spill? How much do we dare spill?
And 150 Republicans voted FOR doing a cliff dive. What did they want? And did their constituents agree with their vote? Did they think going all the way over the fiscal cliff was better than a taking half-a-loaf? Taking more money away from working stiffs and giving it to Obama to fritter away on Solyndra is better? I haven't heard any of these fiscal cliff divers explain what they want to do. Possibly they don't know themselves.
The Republicans need to figure out what they want and where they are going. And then push laws thru the House getting what they want. If they want Paul Ryan's plan for Medicare, they need to pass it thru the House. If they don't have the votes to go that far, nobody will think they are serious. You gotta vote your plan into law or you are just a bunch of whiners.
"Negotiating" with Obama is a non starter. Obama likes federal spending, wants more of it, and wants more taxes to pay for it. He will spend any extra revenue he gets, he won't use it to pay down the US debt. And he is a lousy negotiator. Obama's idea of negotiating is "my way or the highway". Don't negotiate with this turkey, just vote your plan into law. If you can't do that, then you don't have a plan worth talking about.
We are bumping up against the federal debt ceiling. If not raised, the US will be unable to borrow more money to keep federal spending going. Which means a lot of feeders at the federal trough will go hungry.
The Republicans are talking about playing chicken with Obama, give us our spending cuts or no debt ceiling hike. Unless they get together and agree just how far they are willing to go, Obama will call their bluff and the wimpier RINO's will fold. And unless they can vote their desires thru the House, nobody will believe they mean it.
So what do we Republicans want? How bad do we want it? Are we willing to cut off borrowing and force a massive reduction in federal spending. Like right now, not ten years from now? How much metaphorical blood are we willing to spill? How much do we dare spill?
Friday, January 4, 2013
Good Stuff Cheap
A digital camera program, for free, Picassa by name. I came upon it after suffering thru the program that came with the camera ( a Kodak) . The Kodak program was such a ramhog that I had to buy another memory stick to prevent lock up, it was slow, and it kept trying to put all my photos on the Kodak for-pay website.
Picassa does the down-load-from-camera part with grace and ease. You plug your camera in to the USB and Picassa recognizes it. Picassa keeps track of what you have already downloaded to hard disk, and only downloads stuff from the camera that is NOT on the hard disk. Very handy for those of us that leave photos in the camera after we download them. Prevents the build up of multiple copies of the same thing on the hard disk.
Picassa allows grouping of photos into "albums" which you can name useful things like "Trip to Uncle Joe's" or "Christmas at Grandmothers". It allows hierarchical album structures such as "Model Trains" with sub albums such as "Structures" and "Rolling Stock" And the best thing about Picassa is the albums show up in Windows Explorer as file directories by the same names. Which makes working with your photos with other programs a lot more straight forward. You can locate a photo to upload to the web, or burn to CD-ROM, or attach to an email using the same names you use inside Picassa. All too many photo programs hide the photos out on disk in random number named files making it difficult-to-impossible to work with your photos with any ordinary Windows programs (browsers, CD-Rom burners or email). Picassa got this one right.
Picassa allows you to put a caption on each photo, and the captions stick. I can upload a Picassa captioned photo to Facebook and the caption uploads with the picture and shows up in Facebook without me having to type it in again.
Picassa will retouch photos for you. You can fix under exposure, bad color, red-eye, and a number of other things. The red eye corrector is cute. It uses face recognition to outline the subject's eyes and then it makes the red pixels go away. Turns red eyed demons back into cute and adorable children.
The face recognition part of Picassa goes thru all your pictures matching up faces. When you assign a name to one face, than all the other photos with that face get the name. You get a list of all your named people and their photo's. The face recognition is darn good, gets it right most of the time.
If you are into digital photography, Picassa is the way to go. And it's free.
Picassa does the down-load-from-camera part with grace and ease. You plug your camera in to the USB and Picassa recognizes it. Picassa keeps track of what you have already downloaded to hard disk, and only downloads stuff from the camera that is NOT on the hard disk. Very handy for those of us that leave photos in the camera after we download them. Prevents the build up of multiple copies of the same thing on the hard disk.
Picassa allows grouping of photos into "albums" which you can name useful things like "Trip to Uncle Joe's" or "Christmas at Grandmothers". It allows hierarchical album structures such as "Model Trains" with sub albums such as "Structures" and "Rolling Stock" And the best thing about Picassa is the albums show up in Windows Explorer as file directories by the same names. Which makes working with your photos with other programs a lot more straight forward. You can locate a photo to upload to the web, or burn to CD-ROM, or attach to an email using the same names you use inside Picassa. All too many photo programs hide the photos out on disk in random number named files making it difficult-to-impossible to work with your photos with any ordinary Windows programs (browsers, CD-Rom burners or email). Picassa got this one right.
Picassa allows you to put a caption on each photo, and the captions stick. I can upload a Picassa captioned photo to Facebook and the caption uploads with the picture and shows up in Facebook without me having to type it in again.
Picassa will retouch photos for you. You can fix under exposure, bad color, red-eye, and a number of other things. The red eye corrector is cute. It uses face recognition to outline the subject's eyes and then it makes the red pixels go away. Turns red eyed demons back into cute and adorable children.
The face recognition part of Picassa goes thru all your pictures matching up faces. When you assign a name to one face, than all the other photos with that face get the name. You get a list of all your named people and their photo's. The face recognition is darn good, gets it right most of the time.
If you are into digital photography, Picassa is the way to go. And it's free.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Nancy Pelosi, political animal
Nancy Peloisi gave an interview to NPR (a friendly media). It came on the radio this morning. Nancy spoke at length about the fiscal cliff bill. She discussed how it effected the fortunes of her party, the other party, and a little bit about the president. She declared her undying love for public programs, public health, public schools, public roads, public this public that. Her hopes for the democrats to retake the house. Her support of the "middle class".
She never spoke of the effect the the fiscal cliff bill might have upon the general welfare. Whether it would create jobs, economic growth, end Great Depression 2.0. She didn't say if it be good for the country as a whole. She spoke entirely about inside-the-beltway political struggle, never about making things better for the country.
Political animal.
She never spoke of the effect the the fiscal cliff bill might have upon the general welfare. Whether it would create jobs, economic growth, end Great Depression 2.0. She didn't say if it be good for the country as a whole. She spoke entirely about inside-the-beltway political struggle, never about making things better for the country.
Political animal.
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