Who has the patience to watch Obama tonight?

Not I.  I can get a quick recap a few minutes after he finishes.  Obama's speaking style, vague generalities with no substance, is just plain annoying. 

Greasing the skids

Greece, somehow has bamboozled the EU into giving them handouts.  After being allowed into the Euro back in  the 1990's, the Greeks managed to paper over their humungeous deficits by floating bonds.  Somehow, a bunch of sucker banks, mostly in Germany, was stupid enough to buy the bonds, thinking that they would get paid back on time.  The Greeks kept the illusion going by using the proceeds of the latest bond sales to the roll over old bonds. 
  This scam finally unraveled and every one, even the sucker banks, stopped buying Greek bonds, or making loans to Greece.  At this point, the Greeks owned so much money, that allowing them to default would cause intense pain thru out Europe.  The sucker banks cried that a Greek default would bankrupt them.  So, the EU decided to bail the Greeks out, a bit.  They demanded that the Greeks clean up their act, balance their budget, lay off the enormous number of Greeks on the Government payroll, and tighten up tax collection.  In return for promises to reform, the EU would give the Greeks enough money to pay the interest on their debts.  Which means that the sucker banks can carry their Greek loans as assets on their books.  If the Greeks stop paying, then sooner or later, the sucker banks would have to declare a whacking big loss.  A loss big enough to put a number of them out of business. 
   This stop gap situation may come unraveled this spring.  The Greeks have to hold national elections and the polls all show a new populist party Syrisa about to win outright.  Syrisa  is threatening to scrap all the promises of reform, and stop paying on Greece's foreign debt.  At which point the EU handouts will stop. 
   What happens to the EU and the Euro is unknown, but the Europeans are worried about it.  The Greeks will have to figure out how to live within their means.  They may decided to drop out of the Euro so they can print their own money, as much as they need, to meet payroll.  They may not, because all Greeks with any kind of money, in Euros, will be against the idea.  Dropping out of the Euro, would mean everyone's Euros would turn into Drachma, and then the Drachma would drop 50% or more against the Euro.  In effect, every Greek gets a real close haircut.  No one wants that. 

Woe to the Brits

Britain is heading for another election.  They have the Labour party, the Tories, and a new rising power the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP for short).  The way the polls have it, UKIP will have enough votes that they will have to be taken into a coalition government in order to get a majority in Parliment.
UKIP is anti immigrant and anti EU.  They want to pull Britain out of the EU.  Since Britain does about 60% of her export business with the EU that could really smart.  Right now as an EU member, British exports go into Europe duty free.  If Britain pulls out of the EU, that happy state of affairs is over, British goods will face full EU tariffs, and there are plenty of continental competitors eager to pick up that business. 
   The way things look now, Britain is sailing into a sea of troubles.

Who do you believe?

We got two polls out this morning.  Reuters, and Gallup.  Reuters scores Obama at 37%, where as Gallup has him much higher, at 46%. Both Reuters and Gallup have good reputations going back 80 years or more.  Both base their results on small samples of the population, 1000 to 1500.  It takes great care and skill to select a representative sample.  Select an unrepresentative sample, say at a Tea Party meeting or a ACLU gathering, and you can get just about any results imaginable. 
   I like the lower Reuters number myself, but perhaps it is too good to be true. 
   So what does one believe? 

Fox News Joins Nanny State

They are hard at it right now.  Cops are investigating a Silver Spring MD couple who allowed their grade school age children to walk home alone from a park, about one mile.  Fox has a couple of lady commentators raving about how terrible this was, it's cold, a mile is too far.  Yackety Yack.
    When I was in grade school we all walked home after school.  It was a mile. No school buses in that town. I walked that mile to school and back from school, every day, rain or shine.  That was in Saxonville, a medium tough working class town.  This was Silver Spring MD, a silver spoon bedroom community. 

Prisoners of War are not Criminal Defendants.

The prisoners at Gitmo are enemy soldiers.  They were captured on the battlefield bearing arms against US troops.  They are not criminals, they didn't commit robbery, murder, rape, arson, or other crimes.  They just fought against our soldiers.
   No American court, military or civilian is going to convict enemy soldiers just for being enemies.  The hundred or so prisoners left in Gitmo need to stay there, otherwise they will go back to fighting for Al Quada.  They haven't committed any recognized crimes, but you cannot turn them loose.
  US criminal law doesn't recognize prisoner of war.  In US jurisprudence,  only a court can convict a defendant to jail or worse.  Arrests cannot be made until the perp has committed a crime. The Gitmo prisoners haven't committed a crime, haven't been convicted by a court, but we are holding them in jail.  There is a good chance that if they were brought to the US, some bat brained judge (we got plenty of those) will order them turned loose.  That's why we parked them at Gitmo in the first place.
  Just to confuse the issue further, to be a prisoner of war, you have to be a soldier of a recognized nation-state.  Al Quada isn't a nation-state, it's a bunch of raghead terrorists.  We have international agreements about treatment of prisoners of war.  Things like "name, rank, and serial number" mean no interrogation of prisoners of war.  So we don't call them prisoners of war, we call them detainees.  And we used to interrogate them, harshly, but Obama lacks the stomach for this, so we don't anymore.  In fact, Obama has ordered the troops to take no prisoners, kill them all instead. 
  In short, the Gitmo prisoners need to stay in Gitmo.  Giving them trials won't solve anything, it will mostly turn them loose.  Bringing them to the US is quite dangerous, some judge may turn them loose. 

Cannon Mt Ski Weather

We got 3.5 inches of  fresh powder last night.  It's 2 below zero this morning, and colder is promised for tomorrow.