Chris Christy vs Rand Paul

They got into a shouting match on the Thursday night TV debate over cell phone surveillance.   Rand Paul insisted that investigators need to get a court issued search warrant before the telephone company would turn over  phone records.  Christy wants to continue current practice by which NSA scarfs up all the phone records of every one and keeps them for ever.  Christy claimed the current system is crucial for security. 
   On this issue I find myself siding with Rand Paul, even though I have serious reservations about a lot of things Paul says.  When I think of a future Lois Lerner going over my telephone records, identifying those I called, and scheduling them for IRS audits, I get very scared.  I am an extremely low level Republican party official, I serve on a town committee in a small town, which is as close to the bottom as you can get.  That future Lois Lerner would have to be out of her head to bother about me and my friends, 'cause we are too small to be worth it, especially when there are bigger and more important targets to be hit.  Like my US rep, my senator, my governor. 
  But, I don't like the idea of democrats getting access to phone records.  They could easily find and harass every Republican in the state.  They may say that NSA would never let the democrats into the phone records.  And you can believe as much of that as you like.  I would feel a lot safer if the phone records were not kept on everyone.
   Investigators ought to go before a judge, a real judge not that rubber stamp  Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), and show a real cause to snoop the phone records.  If the judge goes along with the investigators, he issues a search warrant, the investigators take the warrant to the phone company, and the phone company causes its computer to print out the suspects phone records.  We stop the NSA bulk collection of every phone call made in the USA (and over most of the world as well)  This matter is currently before the courts, lower courts have ruled one way, appeals courts have ruled the other way, and the matter has yet to make it to the Supremes. 

Good Show

I watched it.  Started at 5 with the lower tier.  They done good.  Watched the varsity at 9.  They done good.  The Fox crew had good questions, did followup, and were a helova lot more professional than the major network newsies were last time.  Give Fox one attaboy. 
   They opened the major event asking everyone if they would support the party nominee and not go third party.   The Donald said no.  That drew boos from the audience.  Upon cross examination, The Donald stood by his words.  That might have been the biggest bombshell of the night.  And it forbodes trouble in the general election.  There is a good chance The Donald won't get the nomination.  If he runs as a third party it will most likely tip the election to the democrats.  That's what third party runs have done in the past, starting with Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose effort that put Woodrow Wilson into the White House.
    Carly Fiorina, although relegated to the minor league, really really looked and sounded good.  She had a doozy of a zinger for The Donald.  She speaks well, speaks of substance rather than vagueness, comes across as sharp, balanced, and fair.   

Foreign Policy experience, or lack theref

You hear it every day.  "So and so has not foreign policy experience."  This slam is most often leveled at domestic politicians, governors say, as a way of saying "He can't be a good president".    Usually it's a newsie using this slam on a Republican. 
   Actually, a president of the US can call upon every experienced person in the entire country to be in his cabinet, give him advice, or join his administration.  Eisenhower had John Foster Dulles for secretary of state, Nixon had Henry Kissinger.  Truman had John Marshall.  George W. Bush had Colin Powell.  FDR had Cordell Hull.
   First of all, foreign policy is very similar to domestic politics.  Deal cutting, figuring out what they really want, and what they might settle for.  Assessing foreign leaders, is this guy trustworthy or will he stab me in the back just for grins?  These considerations are the same for domestic politics as for foreign relations.  Anyone with the political skills to get elected president will be pretty sound on this sort of thing. 
   The real question:  Does this presidential candidate have the necessary people skills to pick good cabinet officers and advisers?  Can this candidate tell the Henry Kissingers (who knew what he was doing) from the John Kerrys (who really doesn't know what he is doing). Does the presidential candidate have the managerial savvy to avoid micromanaging everything, and get out of the way and let the secretary of state and/or the national security adviser do his job without being nitpicked to death?
   So, when I hear a newsie (democrat with byline) slamming a Republican for lack of foreign policy experience  (or any other kind of experience) I don't take him seriously

Pageview spikes

Every so often I look at the page view counts (traffic counts or hits) on this blog.  Naturally I get a good warm feeling as traffic increases over time.   Right now I get maybe 70 hits on an ordinary day.  Then there are extraordinary days where I get a spike of 250 hits, all in a short period of time.  I'm guessing that the spikes are not real readers, but computer programs sampling my blog perhaps to index my posts into search engines or perhaps some unknown reason. 

WaPo declares colesterol OK to eat

Attention grabbing headline in WaPo, seen on the internet.   Sounds good to me, I like my fried eggs and bacon same as anybody else.  Fairly long article.  But, they don't describe any evidence in favor of their brand new view on diet.  I expect claims like this to came from patient studies or biochemical experiments or statistical work or something.  Some numbers would be nice.  The lengthy WaPo article fails to offer any solid evidence for their position.  They quote a lot of people saying it is so, but nothing to back the sayers up.  Opinions are fine, everyone has one, but opinions ain't science. 
   Does this lack of science in the article reflect the real world (like there is no evidence) or does it reflect the ignorance of WaPo reporters?

New Hampshire TV debate

So I watched it.  This one was organized by the Union Leader.  One Union Leader reporter did all the interviewing.  He called each candidate up on stage, one by one, and asked a few questions.  The questions weren't bad, better than back in 2012.  The candidates did not get a chance to speak to each other, it was strictly one on newsie interviewing. 
   Trump didn't come. 
   Nobody made a gaffe.  They all looked good, sounded good, gave perfectly reasonable answers.  Nobody looked much different from all the others.  Nobody announced any substantive policy. 
   Actually, the reason we watch these things is the same reason people go to bullfights.  If someone is going to get gored, we don't want to miss it.  Well, nobody got gored last night, so much for seeing blood flow. 
   On to Fox on Thursday night. 

Everything takes forever to do

Happy home hobby crafting to you.   I had a sticky closet door.  Been sticky for years.  But under my New Year's resolution to do something nice for the house everyday, I figured it was time to fix this sticky door.
    Right.  Plan A, take the hinge pins out, carry the door down to the shop and plane it down to fit. Keeps the sawdust and plane shavings in the shop, rather than all over the bedroom.  So, I took a punch and a hammer to drive out the hinge pins.   Surprise, the damn hinge pins would not budge.  I broke the punch trying to drive them out. 
   Right, move on to Plan B,  use my ancient belt sander to sand down the door in place, spreading sanding dust far and wide across the bedroom. 
  Step 1, change the sanding belt from a fine grit, used to sharpen knives, to a coarse grit to cut rapidly thru softwood.  OK, I remembered the trick to loosen to belt, push hard on the front roller and it will lock into a retracted position and the old belt comes off.
 Step 2.  Could not for the life of me remember the trick to unlock the front roller and tension the belt for use.   Got on the internet and wasted an hour looking for the manualon the sander.  No joy.  But I did stumble across some one who said the trick to unlock the roller was to whack it with  a hammer.  That actually worked. 
Step 3.  Get a kitchen chair to stand on to hold the sander to the top of the door.  Give it some juice, and lo and behold, it cuts.  And  the door actually closes for the first time in many years. 
Step the last.  Return all the tools to the shop.  Vacuum up the sawdust.  Vacuum down all the cobwebs in the corners of the room.  And so, another home project is done.  Damn this is tiresome.