Debt ceiling hike

Congress is playing chicken with the debt ceiling, again.  It's one of those things that must pass.  Treasury cannot borrow any more money, sell any more T-bills until the debt ceiling is raised.  About one third of federal spending is financed by debt.  Unless we raise the debt ceiling we will have to cut federal spending by a third.  Which is inconceivable.  All the wrangling over "sequester" and budget has only managed to slow the rise of federal spending, the Congress critters lack the stones to actually cut anything. 
   With a must pass bill, the Congress critters all say to themselves "I will attach my pet bill to the must pass bill and it will go thru too."   Trouble is, the obvious things to tie to the debt ceiling hike are spending cuts.  But after a year of wrangling, there are no more cuts left to cut.  Or rather, the cuts that have enough votes to pass have all been made.  The rest of the spending has die hard defenders who promise to open their veins on the floor of Congress and bleed to death right on Cspan if their pet bit of pork gets cut.
   Exhibit A.  The farm bill they passed a couple of days ago.  Pure pork, but they all voted for it.  And now, they will have vote for a debt ceiling hike. 
   We need to remember in November.  And we ought to remember who voted for that farm bill, rather than who votes to hike the debt ceiling. 

Car Talk

The TV news has been talking about a "Vehicle to Vehicle" system whereby  electronics in cars would talk to other cars and somehow improve safety.  Presumably each car says "Here I am, Please don't hit me."  Receiving cars would compare their position with the position of the broadcasting car and if the on car microprocessor thinks there is danger of collision it brakes or, more daringly, swerves to miss. 
   Let's skip over some technical problems, like jamming of the airwaves during those 12 lane bumper to bumper traffic jams we get on the New Jersey Turnpike, or the Long Island Expressway.  And accuracy of the GPS signals the cars would use to figure their positions.    There is only 12 feet of difference between a car safely on coming in the opposite lane and a drunk coming head on in your lane.  If the GPS is off by only a few feet in either car, the microprocessors will panic and jam on the brakes.  This I do not need after dark in a snow storm.  Then you get no protection against a car whose electronics are broke and is off the air. 
   The radio signals don't penetrate dirt, hills, Jersey barriers, any sort of obstacle that would block your sight.  In short, if you cannot see the other car, the vehicle-to-vehicle signals cannot get thru either.  So the system is no better than driving by eye, and I have a lot more confidence in my driving skills as opposed to a microprocessor's driving skills.
   This sounds like a pure cost enhancement to me.  Makes the car more expensive, harder to repair and less safe.
   The TV newsies have been nattering about privacy.  They fear the system will broadcast your name, driver's license number, and every place you drive to.  That may be a problem, but I'd worry more about having the brakes jammed on in bad weather and throwing my car into a spin, or swerving into a telephone pole when evading an imaginary obstacle.  

US diplomat can't tell friends from enemies

F**k the EU.   This from a senior US diplomat, Victoria Nuland, an assistant secretary of state no less.  I suppose Hillary hired her.  With a klutz like this in a senior position in the State Dept no wonder America has been loosing out abroad.  Victoria doesn't know that the Europeans are friends and allies, unlike say Iran, China, Russia, and the Norks.   Telling friends and allies to f**k themselves turns friends into enemies pretty quickly.  That Hillary would tolerate an idiot like this at the top of the state dept is nearly as bad a scandal as Benghasi.
   In addition to having destructive attitudes toward allies, Victoria has a brain made of solid concrete.  Everyone knows that the Russians have been tapping US embassy phones since Lenin's day.  To badmouth our allies and then discuss a new Ukrainian government over a phone everyone knows the Russians have tapped, is beyond stupid. 
   Betcha she keeps her job.

When does a recession stop?

Depends who you ask.  Economists call a time of falling economic activity a recession.  They used to call it a depression, but after the great depression of the 1930's they decided to use a less scary word.  Anyhow, a recession is over when things stop getting worse.  In the case of the current great recession (or Great Depression 2.0) things stopped going down hill back in 2009.   So economists will tell you the recession is over.  The Obama administration loves this interpretation, and the newsies (Democrats all) have picked this up and spread it around.
  Trouble is, things haven't gotten much better since 2009.  Economic growth has been very low, 1 or 2 percent, less than population growth.  When the economy doesn't grow as fast as the population grows, everyone gets poorer.  You have more people and less stuff, and so people get  less stuff.  That's been the story since 2009, five years ago. 
   Ask a typical citizen when the recession is over.  He will tell you it's over when things are back to where they were before the economy went down the tubes.  When he has a job again.  By that standard, and it's a reasonable standard, we are still stuck in Great Depression 2.0.

Snowboards into Orbit

Been watching the Olympics.  The snowboarding is fantastic.  The boarders fly up in the air, 20, 30, 40 feet, flip over, turn around, twist and flip, do 3 and 4 turns, straighten out and land on their feet.  Incredibly good. They fly so high and so fast, that if anything goes wrong, they will get seriously hurt when they hit the ground, snow fences, rails, trees, what ever.  On TV it looks dangerous, but I didn't see anyone loose it and crash.  Really good TV watching, these kids are good, very good, and it's great seeing them fly.

Unemployment is so liberating

That's the new Democratic line now that CBO has told us that Obamacare will cause 2 million layoffs and push people down to 30 hour work weeks.  Workers should look forward  spending more time at home with their families.  Yeah right.  "Daddy daddy, how come you aren't going to work?"  "John, how are we going to pay the bills?"   Quality family time that is.  Been there, done that.  Being out of work is not liberating and is not quality time at home. 
   Both Chuckie the Schumer and David Gregory  were pushing this new democratic line this morning on Meet the Press.
  Gregory opened t he show by trashing the Russians over Sochi which seems kinda mean to me.  We won the cold war, they know it, no need to rub it in.  
  

BP is safer, sadder, and wiser

So says the Economist in a long sympathetic article about BP.  The Deep Water Horizon disaster in the Gulf knocked its share price down below $80, from $100.  Cleanup and payoffs cost them $42 billion.  They had to sell $38 billion worth of assets to raise the money.  They are desperate  enough to do deals with the Russians that the other western majors won't touch with a ten foot pole. 
   What the Economist fails to tell, is how a major oil company could be run by chuckleheads for so long.  BP blew up a refinery in Texas, with fatalities, due to skimping on maintenance.  They let the Alaska pipeline rust out and leak crude oil.   A couple of BP suits aboard the rig did the Deep Water Horizon explosion  The suits ignored protests by every experienced man aboard, and ordered the drilling mud pumped out.  The cement seal had failed to seal.  With the heavy drilling mud removed, explosive natural gas pushed up the drill hole and burst into flames when it reached the surface.  The Wall St Journal ran a series of articles afterward which make it quite clear that responsibility for the disaster rested entirely with the BP suits.  Who fled the country to avoid prosecution. 
   Just how senior management at a major oil company could tolerate, and even encourage this kind of bet-the-company risk taking is inconceivable to me.  No company I ever worked at would do things like that.  When it was a matter of things going boom, people getting hurt, or property damage everyone was damn careful.  Nobody wanted a catastrophe.  Apparently things were different at BP.
   They probably still are.  The Economist didn't tell about anyone getting fired at BP over Deep Water Horizon.