Is Obama dumb enough to default?

First let's define terms.  Default means failure to pay interest upon the national debt.  Which is treasury bills. T-bills for short.  Default does not mean failure to pay social security, pay the bureaucrats, pay the troops, make home loans, open the national parks, pay medicare, or do all the other things the Federal government does.  It just means failure to pay off the T-bills, or pay interest on the T-bills. 
   Right now American T-bills are the safest investment on the planet.  America has always paid off on bonds, and this goes way back, like back to the Revolution.  T-bills are issued by the strongest government on the planet, backed by the strongest economy on the planet, protected by the strongest armed forces on the planet.  As a result, we can raise money anytime we please by printing up some more T-bills and selling them.  People give us real cash money and we give them paper T-bills.  And we don't even promise them very much interest.  This is VERY useful to us.  It's a national credit rating of 1000, the best you can get. 
   Default, will screw this up for ever.  Default means we stop paying interest on T-bills and refuse to redeem them for cash when they mature.  Do this just once, and  the trust is broken.  We will have to pay much higher interest rates to borrow, and we face the prospect of not being able to sell T-bills when we need to. 
   Any man of even marginal intelligence would know that we ought to pay off on the national debt BEFORE we pay anything else. 
   Is Obama a man of even marginal intelligence?  To hear him talk, no.  He has been threatening default for weeks.  What if he carries thru on his threats? 
   Judging by the way he has made the "shutdown" as painful as possible, he is a man who enjoys inflicting pain on his citizenry.   Is he dumb enough to default just to inflict more pain on his citizens? 

  

Warthog Fan Club

The Warthog, more formally the A10, is a close support aircraft.  It isn't a supersonic fighter, it's a jet version of the Stuka.  Which is why ground troops love it and the Air Force wants to retire it.  With a 30 millimeter (inch and a quarter) Gatling gun it is tank buster supreme.  What the rotary cannon cannot deal with, bombs and rockets slung under the wings can.  But, with a top speed of less than 500 mph, it's dead meat against enemy fighters.  The Air Force, run by fighter pilots,  wants to fly air to air against enemy fighters.  You don't make ace no matter how many tanks you bust.
   Any how, there is now a Save-the-A10 Facebook page with 2722 likes, and any number of after dinner speakers supporting the old Warthog. 

Redskins, Washington type

I'd be more excited about this issue, if I thought the team name offended real American Indians.  I know it offends paleface liberals,  but hey, what's new?  Paleface liberals are so easily offended.

Weather

That line of windstorms that showed up on TV got to NH yesterday. It blew really hard up here, trees were whipping around, leaves were flying thru the air. At 6 PM a tree somewhere let go of the ground, fell, and took out the power line. I broke out the propane camping lantern and settled down for some reading. I found out what propane lanterns do as the propane runs out.  They just get dimmer and dimmer.  So I turned it off, let it cool (they get HOT) and put on the backup propane can.  She lit right up. 

 Electric lights came back at 9 PM.

Bookstores. Need to stock the FIRST of a series

More and more light fiction comes in series.  Once an author gets something published, it's easy to publish sequels, unending sequels, leading to a whole series of books.  Cool and all that, plus doing a sequel is easier on the writer, and the publisher is more likely to make an advance on a known property than take a flier on something new.  So far, so good.
   But, when I am book shopping, the stores don't stock all the books in the series, and even worse, don't stock  the first book of the series. 
  This is a serious turnoff for this reader.  Even if the series has an attractive title, and an intriguing cover illustration and a good blurb, I probably won't buy it if the cover says "Book N is the exciting Yada Yada series". 
  Why?  Simple, authors writing sequels assume the read has read the previous book [s], and save time and work by skipping  (or failing to repeat) essential development material.  In the sequels characters appear, do something, and move on, with never a word about who they are, what side they are on, who they are involved with. 
  Anyhow, you book store operators, you could boost sales by making an effort to keep the first book of the series in stock. 

Peak is passing

Windstorm last night.  A lotta leaves on the ground that were on trees Saturday.

Economist loves traffic circles

For some reason the Economist loves traffic circles ( aka rotaries or roundabouts) ) enough to run TWO articles reminiscing fondly about them in the same issue.  The Economist thinks the British invented them and seems proud of the fact.  You gotta wonder why.
  Actually, a traffic circle is what you build when you cannot afford a proper clover leaf intersection.  Some people think a traffic circle is better than a plain grade crossing of two roads.  Other people think they are death traps. 
   The Economist has some strange numbers in their articles.  They claim that traffic circles were introduced into the United States by Nevada in 1990.  That ain't right.  Memorial Drive in Cambridge MA has a pair of vicious traffic circles on Mem Drive that have been bending fenders since the 1950's to my certain knowledge. In fact their have probably been there since the 1930's, but that's before my time.  And there was another lethal traffic circle on US route 1 in Saugus, now happily gone, that bent it's share of fenders in the 50's and 60's. 
   Must be a slow news week at the Economist.