That giant leak of off-shore tax dodgers

So far, all the low lifes exposed have NOT been Americans.  They got Putin and Assad and the premier of Iceland, and a whole bunch more, but no American names that mean anything to me.  This may change, but for the time being I can enjoy a little smugness. 

The Donald trashes NATO

We set up NATO shortly after WWII in order to keep the Soviets from gobbling up western Europe the way they did eastern Europe.  In those years the European countries were still all smashed up from WWII and pretty helpless against the USSR.  The NATO treaty was mostly D'Artangnan's cry from the Three Musketeers, "One for all and all for one".  It told the Soviets that the United States would resist any further takeovers in Europe.
   And it worked.  The Iron Curtain stayed where it was, and didn't move west.
   And in 1989 the Soviets collapsed, ending the threat for many years.  NATO kept going, doing a bit here and a bit there, helping out in Afghanistan.  Until we got Putin in the last few years and all of a sudden, the Russians are looking dangerous again.  Since Georgia and the Ukraine, and Syria, the Europeans can see a need for NATO, especially the eastern Europeans like Poland and Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
   I dunno where Trump is coming from when he calls NATO obsolete.  It is an anti Russian alliance, which was needed in the 1950's and look to me like we still need it in the 2010's for the same old reason.  

Daredevil, the TV show

Youngest son is a fan and he played me one episode.  It's bad TV.  The camera man is into the very very dark look.  No lights on anywhere.  All the characters appear as black silhouettes,  no light on their faces, and I could not tell one from another.  Lotta hand to hand slugging matches, where none of the characters were recognizable.  Lotta fast cuts from one story line to another, and back again, with no point except confusing the viewers.  Nobody ever addresses anyone else by name.  At least the dialog was audible, but the camera work was so bad as to make the show painful to watch.

New villain, "Fossil Fuel Companies"

We used to call 'em oil companies, or "Big Oil" and they have been a punching bag since John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil.  But we got a new name for 'em now. 

Is the MOM airliner single aisle or twin aisle?

Boeing is arguing this out internally right now.  MOM is Middle of the Market in case you had not heard.  Single aisle is a smaller jet liner say 180 to 200 seats.  Twin aisle is a substantially bigger plane, say 250 - 300 seats.  Right now, 2015, the airlines like smaller planes, and more frequent schedules to capture as many passengers as possible.  If they offer 3 or 4 departures a day of a smaller airliner, they are more more likely to all the passengers to be had on that city-pair.  If they only offer one departure a day of a bigger airliner, the passengers that want to depart earlier or later, are more likely to book with a competing carrier. 
  On the other hand, should over loaded airports like La Guardia impose departure limits (you airline so-and-so only get so many departures from here) then the airlines are likely to fall in love with bigger planes.
   Boeing is doing bet-the-company forecasting right now.

Batman vs Superman the movie

All the critics panned it.  But, raised as I was on Batman and Superman comics,  I had to see it, just for old times sake.  And, turned out, the critics were right, it was a terrible movie.   Scene after scene, each one full of fighting rolled by, but they didn't connect with each other.  Only in the last half of the movie with the grudge match between the lead characters, followed by a just as big fight against a monster conjured up by Lex Luther, was there some continuity.  Basically this flick suffers for giant plot holes and lack of any continuity from scene to scene.  I got lost following a comic book movie.  The only character with good lines was Lex Luther, and who cares if the bad guy sounds witty?   
   Costumes were meh.  Superman's red and blue outfit was dulled down to dark blue gray and an odd shade of red for his cape.  Batman's costume was all black plate armor that made his look like an overweight gorilla.  Wonder Woman was not wearing her bright red white and blue bikini, she was in some kinda one piece bathing suit in neutral brown.
   Poor Wonder Woman, she doesn't get any lines, she just turns up in the last reel and does some whacking on Lex Luther's monster.  She has a human secret identity but you don't know it, and the scenes in which she appears have little meaning, she is just another tall chick with no real reason for existence.  
   And a few anachronisms.  Lois Lane gets captured by terrorists, who proceed to pop open her 35mm camera and pull the film out of the cartridge, exposing it to sunlight.  I gave up using my 35mm five years ago, Lois is a real reporter, you'd think she would have gone over to a DSLR years ago.  The hoods who knock off Bruce Wayne's parents use a Government model .45 automatic.  That kind of hood ought to be using a .38 revolver. 
    Anyhow, you can save your money and not go see this one.

It's the economy, Stupid

Looking at polls, and just talking around,  the economy and the chances of keeping your job, are the top concerns among US voters, going into this election.  Incumbent politicians tend to say the economy is better or getting better.  Insurgent politicians harp on how bad things are.  Who's right?
  Who knows?  The two numbers the guvmint sends out are bogus.  The unemployment rate the newsies report is actually the number of workers drawing unemployment benefits.  When unemployment runs out, that worker is no longer unemployed.  He may not, probably does not, have a job, but since he ain't drawing unemployment any more, he ain't unemployed.  At the depths of Great Depression 2.0, back in 2008, unemployment got up to 9 or 10 percent.  Since then it has dropped back to 5% nationwide, 2.7% in New Hampshire.  Much of this "improvement" represents people's unemployment benefits running out. 
   Then we have "New Jobs Created".  This number  represents new hires in companies big enough to have to report such things to Washington.  But the number doesn't take layoffs into account.  A company could layoff 1000 senior employees and hire 1000 new high school grads at minimum wage in the same year, but it counts as 1000 jobs "grown". 
   With statistics this flaky, politicians can say the economy is getting better, or getting worse and have statistics to prove it either way.
   "Lies, damn lies, and statistics"  was Mark Twain's slam at this sort of thing.