Election Predictions from the NRA

Ya gotta hand it to the NRA, they are effective.  They have a large and committed membership that votes, and the national organization is very effective at getting out the word to the member ship.  They are good at what they do. 
   Yesterday a piece of election "information" drifted into my mailbox.  It has a map of the US, with the states colored red or blue.  The old confederacy, the mid west and west are solid red.  The coasts are solid blue.  The few tossup states are left white.  They count 206 electoral votes for the Repuyblican who ever that may be, 217 electoral votes for Hillary, and 115 tossup electoral votes.  Who ever wins the tossup votes wins the election. 
    BTW, they show New England and New York solid blue EXCEPT New Hampshire.  We are a tossup.

The Thursday night Republican debate

I didn't watch it live, 9 o'clock is my  bedtime these days.  Plus I figured I would get plenty of instant replay and bloviation on TV over the next few days or weeks.  So far  I have not been disappointed.  All the TV people (New Yorkers all) have decried Cruz's slam on New York.  They think it is dreadful. I'm not so sure, certainly a lot of unpleasant and destructive thoughts and words come out of New York.  Dunno about how they feel about New York out in Iowa, but up here in NH there is no love lost on New York City.
   The pundits all think the Republican field has narrowed to Trump, Cruz, and Rubio.  I wonder about that.  Christy still has a good standing in the NH polls.  And the results from Iowa and NH will change everything.  And I don't think the polls are really telling us anything we can trust about Iowa and NH.  Up here lotta people just haven't made up their minds.  Enough people to tip the primary any old which way.

Baltimore wants to demolish 7000 city houses

But why?  I've been to Baltimore.  The city houses are all solid brick two story row houses.  Decent city living.  Don't demolish them, sell them.  Somebody will buy if the price is right.  And fix 'em up.  And pay taxes on them. 
   Probably democrats behind this.

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

It just started to snow.  No much down yet, but it's still falling.  Temperature is high, 32F.  Up to 8 inches is FORECAST.  We will see what we get.  No use of the R-word on the forecasts.

Obama wants to spend $4 billion on self-driving cars??

Why?  Private industry has already developed self driving cars using private money.  Why throw in taxpayer money?  What do we taxpayers get out of it?  According to the Union Leader, Obama thinks self driving cars will eliminate traffic accidents.  Let's hear it for the microprocessors.  They never screw up.  Right. 
   The only role I can see for guvmint in the self driving car thing is establishing uniform nation wide rules for how capable a self driving car has to be in order to be allowed to drive on the public roads.  Say a driving test, the self driving car has to negotiate the test with out bending any fenders or hitting anything.  Such a test would have to have some real traffic to avoid, some ice and snow, some cross winds, potholes, soft shoulders, some night driving, and what else?

Glass-Steagall

After the Great Depression was kicked off by the 1929 stock market crash Congress passed some laws intended to prevent a recurrance, ever again.  One of the contributing factors to the 1929 crash was big banks playing the stock market, with depositors money.   And in the 1930's Congress passed a law preventing banks for buying and selling stocks.  This was the Glass-Steagall act and it remained the law of the land for 60 years. Banks hated Glass-Steagall 'cause there is a lot of easy money to be made in the stock market, particularly if you have a lot of money to invest. It took the banks 60 years of solid lobbying and "campaign contributions" to finally repeal Glass-Steagall some time during the Clinton administration. 
   And now after Great Depression 2.0, kicked off by banks making dumb ass mortgages, people are calling for some regulation to curb big and brain dead banks from crashing the economy.  Bernie Sanders is calling for reinstatement of Glass-Steagall.   Actually this is a fairly good idea.  Banks primary purpose is to finance construction and house sales, and finance business activity.  Buying and selling stocks just soaks up bank assets and does not contribute to economic growth. 
   The other thing banking needs is some incentives to write decent mortgages.  The "Ninja" mortgages (No income, No job or assets)  caused the crash of 2007.  A mortgage must not exceed the real market value of the property, in fact the buyer ought to put up 10% or so of his own money to buy the place.  And the bank needs to see that the borrower is gainfully employed and is making enough to make his monthly mortgage payments.
   One way to make this happen is to require that the bank that issues the mortgage must hold that mortgage to maturity.  If the bank knows that it will b holding the bad should the borrower default, they will be fairly careful not to write mortgages for untrustworthy borrowers. 

Where was their air cover??

Two US Navy small craft some where in the Persian Gulf (the Obama administration won't say exactly where) where captured by the Iranians.  Where was US air cover?  There were two boats, each one ought to have had a working radio.  The Gulf isn't very big.  Jet aircraft can be anywhere in the Gulf in a matter of minutes.  Some aircraft ought to be on five minute alert in such a near-to-war zone.  My fighter unit kept two fighters on five minute alert 24/7, and that was back in heart of the US, namely the state of Minnesota. 
   Those two boats should have radioed for air cover as soon as the Iranians hove into sight, and they should have had air cover within 15-20 minutes of making the radio call. 
   Let's guess, Obama didn't want to upset the Iranians and he refused to allow the jets to take off.