Big Split between Dems and Republicans & Independents

On Fox, the carried Obama's State of the Union shindig.  They played that popularity graph that Bret Bahr has been showing on the 6 o'clock news, the one derived from Bing.  It plots Democrats, Republicans and Independants feelings about what is being said.  Blue for Dems, Red for Republicans, Green of Independents.
   Usually, on the evening news, the chatty time with Charles Krauthammer, Ron Williams,and others, all three groups track pretty close,  indicating general agreement among all sides about what the Fox talking heads are saying.
   Not so last night.  The running graph showed the Dems loving Obama's every word, with Republicans and Independents detesting them.  Big split.  Polarization shown graphically. 

Should I bother to watch Obama tonight?

He is giving the State of the Union address, tonight.  It's a slow news week, so all the TV news talks about is the president's address coming up in prime time tonight. 
   Obama's speaking style,  tossing out glittering generalities, feel good words that mean nothing, or mean what ever you want them to mean, is plain aggravating.  Plus, I can no longer trust what he says, not after "If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor". 
   I wonder how many voters feel the same?

Jointers

A simple power tool, that's been around for a long time.  My Grandfather had one, which was passed down to my father and then to my brother.  It's just a flat iron table with a rotating cutter that pokes up thru a slot in the table.  They have been around, in sizes affordable by home hobby shops since the 1920's. 
   But I never really appreciated their usefulness until yesterday when I tried to use some ordinary lumberyard two by fours for a project.  I ripped some pieces out of the two by four.  Next day I found what had been fairly straight pieces, had curled like potato chips.  Cheap modern lumber, sawn from fast growing weeds, instead of proper pine trees. 
   Each piece warped, one side was concave, touched the benchtop only at the ends.  I  jointed the concave sides until they were flat.  Don't joint the convex side, it will rock back and forth spoiling the cut.  Didn't take long, even the piece that had a quarter of an inch of daylight showing under the middle.  Eyeballed the grain, and ran each piece thru my jointer, a humble elderly 4 inch Sears Craftsman, with the grain falling to avoid chip out.  And, they did come out flat, flatter than I will ever do with a hand plane. 
   This gave me all my pieces, flat on one side and bowed on the other.  I just ripped off the bow with my radial arm saw.  If I owned a thickness planer I would have used that to plane off the bow.  But thickness planers are new fangled tools that didn't reach the home hobby shop until the 1960's.  I still don't have one, partly cause I don't have space for one, and partly 'cause I haven't seen one on Craig's list that wasn't 50% plastic. 
   Anyhow, with just a jointer, you CAN make stock straight and flat starting with something all twisty and curly.

Obama says pot no worse than alcohol

I think I agree with him.  Alcohol can get you into a lot of trouble.  Start with DUI (serious offense most places), press on to ruining any relationships (with parents, siblings, girlfriends, boyfriends), getting into accidents, getting into petty crime and moving up to felonies, flunking out of school.   For girls, drinking too much can lead to rape and pregnancy.   Pot  can get a kid in trouble too, but I never saw a case where pot smoking turned out worse than drinking too much.  So,  I agree with Obama, pot is not much worse than alcohol. 
   We need to remember that alcohol is very dangerous.  It's legal, but it's dangerous.  Pot is just as dangerous. 

Republicans vote for a shorter presidential primary season

A good idea.  As it is now, they start the primary season better than a year before the elections.  And things change in the course of a year.  Candidates that looked good a year out, often look less good on election day.  And the ceaseless inane TV coverage gets tiresome.  And the year long ordeal drives off good candidates.  I mean what sane person wants to give up a year of his life, to be on the road constantly, making the same speech over and over again?  To say nothing of making himself and his family targets for the MSM.
   Far as I am concerned, a three month primary, say April, May, and June, followed by a convention to ratify the primary elections in late June early July,  followed by a summer and a fall to patch up wounds inflicted in the primary, and campaign against the other party, instead of campaigning against people in your own party. 
    Of course the newsies love primaries and wish they would last forever.  Primary campaigns require no knowledge of anything to write a story.  Just report the poll numbers and then opine about why so and so is ahead or behind.  No more challenging than writing about baseball games or horse races.  Newsies love this kind of simple story, 'cause most of 'em don't understand anything complicated. 

Penny Ante at Fox News

Fox TV News was complaining about pork in the recently passed "continuing resolution" that funds the government for the next few months.  And rightly so.  In a bill the funds the entire US government, there are plenty of diark corners to hide pork.  Like who can read a thousand pages of legalistic gooble-de-gook?
  But, all pork that Fox can cite is some penny ante stuff, mere 10's of millions of dollars a year.  That's chicken feed.  Stick with Everett Dirksen's famus quote, "A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking about real money". Skip the mere million dollar scams.
   And I can think of  lots of them.  How about $27 billion subsidies to farmers?  How about about the huge (but secret) NSA budget?  How about the TSA spending?  How about ethanol in gasoline?  How about the Space Launch System, a new NASA rocket booster that duplicates the performance of TWO existing rocket boosters.   How about the highway bills, billions to road contractors, that should properly be paid by the states in which those roads run.  How about "Nextgen", a vastly expensive program to replace the current air traffic control system with a satellite based one. 
   Fox has a point about "continuing resolutions", but they need to pick up on some real examples.  Skip the chicken feed.

Some smoke, no fire

Boeing's mods to the 787 battery system are at least partially successful.  On 14 Jan, this year, A JAL 787 started to smoke while standing on the ramp.  A single cell in the eight cell main battery got in trouble, heated up, and vented.  The main part of the 787 mods was a fireproof metal battery box vented overboard.  That part worked fine, the overheated cell did not touch off the rest of the cells in the battery, the ovrheating/fire was contained inside the new battery box.  Not clear is the effects of such a failure in flight.  Depends upon the flight I suppose.  If the engines keep running, the engine driven alternators will supply plenty of juice.  If we have first a battery failure, and then total engine failure, will the batteries ( there are two of them) have enough juice to get the gear and flaps down,  power the radio, and keep the cockpit instrument lights alive?  And keep the fancy fly-by-wire system working? 
   Anyhow, doesn't look like they have licked the battery bursts into fire problem, but the battery box is strong enough to contain the fire.