Feeling the Bern

NHPR gave Bernie Sanders a good long interview on the radio this morning.  Let's see here.  Bernie said he had two litmus tests for any Supreme Court nomination.  The nominee must be against the Heller decision (campaign finance) and for Row vs Wade (abortion).  And the nominee must believe in the Constitution as a "living document", which is a code word for bending the law to support your politics.  Bernie than ranted on about rich people buying elections via campaign contributions.  He didn't mention that George Soros puts five times as much money behind Democrats as the Koch brothers put behind Republicans. 
   Bernie came out four square for a $15 minimum wage.  And free health care for all.  He didn't mention that a $15 minimum wage locks teenagers out of the labor market.  Unions like that.  I don't.  Then he went on about income inequality, a terrible thing Bernie opined.  He never did mention that  people on unemployment widen income inequality.  He never did say anything about getting the US economy growing again, which would do good things for income inequality.  Bernie doesn't seem to understand that private enterprise creates all the wealth in the country, wealth to feed, house, clothe, employ, doctor, defend, and educate our citizens.  One of government's jobs is to encourage private enterprise so it will spread its benefits over the land.  Our population grows every year.  If our economy doesn't grow to match it, everyone gets poorer.
   Bernie didn't say anything coherent about ISIS.  He was real firm about no US boots on the ground, but other than that, he had no plan to destroy ISIS. 
   I'm voting in the Republican primary.

You can't keep 'em out, ya gotta catch 'em

The United States has a 3000 mile long northern land border.  A great deal of it runs thru primeval forest, un roaded, un settled, un patrolled.  Anyone can hike across the border for little more than a decent pair of boots.  We have two long coasts, 2000-3000 miles each.  Each coast is covered with harbors, ports, boat launch ramps, marinas, gas docks, shore restaurants, you name it.  Come in from the sea in a small craft and you are just another fisherman or sailor, or boater coming in at end of day.  No papers needed.  It doesn't take much cash to rent a slip at a marina to leave the boat.  Light aircraft can fly across the border and land at any of thousands of tiny town airports, the kind that doesn't even man the tower, let alone a customs and immigration post.  So, the terrorists who want in, can get in, even if they don't have the paperwork to fly in by commercial airline.  And, we cannot subject every tourist to the sort of background investigation that we use on personnel cleared to handle nuclear weapons.  It just costs too much. 
   So anyone from a reasonable country, a place like France or Germany or Britain, who has a passport, can just fly over here.  And people from crazy places like Syria, there is little a US passport agent can do other than interview the traveler and take a hard look at his/her passport, make sure the picture matches the face in front of him, look for signs of forgery.   Sometimes that works and some times it doesn't.
    We have to catch them here.  That takes tips to the cops, wiretaps (or the internet equivalent thereof), and checks for papers (aka stop and frisk) as often as legally permissible.  The cops would get more tips if they were more careful about gunning down innocent citizens.  And us loyal citizens ought to make it a point to always have some ID on us.  

We need more concealed carry, not more gun control

Had anyone been carrying at San Bernardino they could have shot both terrorists long before they killed 14 people and wounded 21.  Far as I am concerned one answer to terrorist shooters (and any other kind of shooter) is to have a gun on you, and return fire.   The other answer is to have enough intelligence to detect and arrest them before they strike.
   Speaking of which, the TV news this morning claims the San Bernardino shooter was in contact with "a known ISIS recruiter" located in Minnesota.  My question is, why is a "known ISIS recruiter" running around loose?  He ought to be in jail, ASAP.  Why wasn't he? 

Strange things about San Bernadino massacre

The shooters don't appear to be nutcases, they seemed to have a rational plan to do a lot of killing.  Unlike the school shooters who appear to be taking out their personal mental hangups on innocent bystanders. 
     They say the man, Farook, was an employee of the department doing the Christmas party, that he attended the party and left early.  So he drove back to his house, changed into tactical garb, picked up his wife, picked up rifles and pistols, drove back to the party and started shooting.  How far away from the party site was the shooter's house?  How long to drive to and fro?  Seems odd.
    The shooters had a plan to hit the party, but their get away plan didn't work so well.  Seems like they left the shooting site and went home, and were still at home when the cops turned up a few hours later to check things out.  Why did they not immediately put that SUV on the road heading out of state at 65 mph? 
    Why such a low profile target?  They could have hit a church congregation, a sporting event, a mall, a government facility,  an airport, lots of high profile stuff. 
    From what I see on TV, it looks like the wife might be the real terrorist who radicalized her fairly new husband.  They had a child, so there must have been some feeling between them.  Did they really meet on line? Or was the marriage arranged by the families?  Just where do those families stand on the matter of ISIS?
   The cops haven't been telling the newsies much, probably 'cause the cops don't trust newsies.  Don't blame them, we learned not to trust US newsies way back in Viet Nam.  The word was, don't talk to the press, no matter what you say, they will twist it to make you look bad, make your unit look bad, and make your branch of service look bad.  

Windows 8 forgot the ABC's

Back on the last decent Windows to come out of Redmond, you could right click on your desktop, click on "sort by name" and all your desktop icons would be arranged in alphabetical order.  Convenient.  On this year's Windows 8.Flake  the right click on the desktop is still there, and the "sort by name" is still there, and the icons get moved around when you click on it but they don't get moved into alphabetical order.  In fact the order seems purely random, although repeatable, you get the same strange order each time. 
   Micro$oft managed to spend untold amounts of programming time but all they get is a fatter slower product with broken features.  Stuff that used to work, doesn't anymore.

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

I have four inches of fresh new snow on my deck.  From my deck it is an easy walk to the Peabody slopes chairlifts.  It started snowing sometime before sunrise and is just tapering off now, a little before three in the afternoon.  It's just above freezing, so the snow is heavy and wet, with a bit of cold it will freeze hard making an excellent base.  The wind isn't blowing so the snow fell on the trails and stayed there. 

San Bernadino

The shootings at San Bernadino yesterday were horrible.  My deepest sympathies to the victims and their families.