Franconia Old Home Day Parade.

So Franconia does it's parade on Saturday (2 July) partly 'cause we always do it that way, partly to avoid going head-to-head with the Woodsville parade and partly 'cause everybody has Saturday off.  We have a huge mob of parade marchers forming up, we have my Buick doing a little electioneering, we have a Junior ROTC color guard, and we have the Jeanne Forester people.
   By the way, the Blogger people have been messing with the photo uploader again.  At least it still uploads although I had to do it twice before it worked. 

DEC makes the market, adapts to a changing market, finally fails and dies

Digital Equipment Company moved into the big time when it invented the minicomputer, back in the early 1960's.  The legendary PDP 8 wasn't much of a computer, only 12 bits wide, the largest number it could handle was only 4096, not much.  And it could only address 4096b words of magnetic core memory, RAM had not been invented yet.  But it was a computer, it was small compared to the only other computers available that year, namely mainframes costing in the millions and filling an entire room. 
   The PDP8 only cost $8000 (1960 dollars) and was smart enough to do a fair number of things.  A whole bunch of  automatic test sets were built, with a PDP8 built in and running the show.  So many were sold that DEC became rich and famous.  All looked well until the micro processor came on the scene in the early 1970's.  One of my first projects coming out of engineering school was to design a microprocessor board to run a test set.  My board had plenty of punch and only cost $200, parts.  That pretty much killed the $8000 PDP8 for that role.
   DEC recovered, they juiced up their minicomputer and sold it for timesharing.  A PDP11-35 could support a couple of dozen timesharing terminals, enough to run a small company. The later PDP11-70 and the VAX were even stronger. And the timesharing rig, with disk drives and mag tapes might cost $100,000.  Still cheap compared to a mainframe.  This kept DEC going thru the 1980's. 
  Then the desktop computers appeared.  The IBM PCs, and the Compaqs.  These sold for $3000 or so, and were every bit as good as the the DEC minicomputers, and they were cheap enough for every engineer to have one for his very own. 
   And that was the end of DEC.  Compaq bought them up, and then HP bought Compaq, and now there is hardly a trace of DEC left. 

Wall Street Futures Contracts

Gambling? Or shrewd investment?  The Wall St futures market is big enough for NPR to report on it.  Like Friday, when the Brexit vote was counted and announced, NPR said that Wall St futures had dropped a lot before the market opened.  At any rate, a good deal of money is invested in "futures".  Does this money do anything to encourage economic growth, employment, new product development, in short, good things for America as a whole, or just some profits to lucky gamblers?
   I have never dealt in futures, and a quick Google  didn't say just how stock market futures work.  Let's assume they work like commodity futures.  Two parties reach a deal, sign a contract, to deliver so much of something, or buy so much of something,  for such and such a price, on a date in the future.  If the market price of what-ever-it-is changes before the due date, one party makes money, and the other party does not.
   Does this kind of deal make sense for the larger economy?  Hard to tell.  Certainly the money spent on futures contracts does not go to a company in return for stock.  Companies print and sell their stock, for cash, to obtain money to run the company, grow the company, pay the workers, lots of things that create jobs.  And the stock market makes people willing to buy stock.  With an organized stock market, open for business five days a week, a stock holder knows he can sell his stock holdings when he needs some cash.  And the trade will go thru, and he gets a check, within a day or two.  This is a goodness, it gives companies a fine way to raise money.
   But I don't see how a stock futures contract does anything good for the economy.  It surely doesn't funnel money to companies.  I don't see it increasing market liquidity.  I think it's just plain gambling, of no benefit to anyone except lucky winners.
   I'm not an economist, I'm just a plain engineer.  I've never read anything about the economic effect of futures trading.  I wonder what the economics community thinks about them.  

NAFTA, pro and con

According to Wikipedia (a reasonably impartial source)  NAFTA dropped tariffs between the three countries to zip in nearly all cases by now.  It took President Bill Clinton's best efforts to get NAFTA ratified over the dead bodies of US unions. NAFTA did increase trade between Mexico, Canada and the US by a lot, perhaps 50% over the years since 1993 when NAFTA was ratified.    It also did contribute to US job losses of maybe 500,000 jobs.  These numbers can be controversial, but Wikipedia is the most balanced source I am aware of. 
   We had The Donald on TV yesterday trashing NAFTA up one side and down the other.  He promises to "renegotiate" the NAFTA treaty.  He claimed that NAFTA is a US job killer.  In this, he has, or ought to have, the warm support of US unions who have been anti NAFTA since the beginning. 
   We had the "three amigos) (Obama, Trudeau, and I can't remember the name of the Mexican president) on TV today.  All saying nice things about NAFTA, and the need to keep it going.   
   Nobody said anything about admitting the UK to NAFTA. 

Why we need President Trump

Best reason.  If elected, The Donald might actually do something in office rather than just going with the flow.  The polls have 70% of the population saying America is on the wrong track.  Trump might get us back on the right track.  Hillary won't.  She is totally owned by Wall St and special interests (who paid $40 odd million for her).  She thinks things are just fine, and is promising not to change anything.
    Of course, it would be nice to know just what Trump might do in office.  So far his campaign promises have been either vague, or improbable.  He needs to work on that.  At least he isn't owned by any one. 
   Trump is loyal to the United States and to its people.  Hillary is only loyal to Hillary.  I really do think The Donald will act in the best interests of the country.  He may not always get it right, but he will try.  Hillary is more interested in lining her own pockets.
   Trump does know something about business in the real world.  He has survived, and even prospered in the New York real estate business, a very tough business.  He knows how to read a balance sheet, he knows the difference between income and expenses, he knows what it means to meet payroll.  I doubt that Hillary even knows how to balance her checkbook.
  Trump might even fix the federal income tax.  Close every loophole, lower every rate.  Hillary won't do that.
  Trump won't try and take everyone's guns away.  Hillary will.
  Trump will sign an Obama care repeal.  Hillary won't.  Obamacare is such a drag on business that it has sucked our GNP growth down to less than 1%.
  Trump will nominate decent Supreme Court justices.  Hillary will pack the court with lefties. 

Benghazi, more stuff they won't talk about.

I posted about the firing of US general officers shortly after Benghazi.  Right here.

Benghazi, what they don't talk about

We have Trey Gowdy on TV right now, and as you might imagine, what he is saying isn't very complementary to Hillary.  He is urging everyone to read his 800 page report.  Whew. 
   Trey never talked about air support, or the lack of air support.  We should have had fighters over Benghasi within two hours.  We have plenty of fighter bases and aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean.  They should have had alert birds standing 5 minute alert.  That's what my old USAF fighter squadron did 50 years ago.  We kept two birds, fully armed and fueled, on five minute alert 24/7.  Pilots sitting in the ready room.  Occasional scrambles, just to make sure everything works. 
   I will grant that supersonic fighters are not my first choice for defending a consulate on the ground.  But having fighters overhead would be a tremendous morale boost for the defenders on the ground.  A low level pass, supersonic, is very discouraging to attackers.  Even more discouraging when you do a little strafing on the way.  And the fighters can get there faster than anything else.
  Along with the fighters, we should have dispatched armed troops by air.  Helicopters if  they are close enough, fixed wing if not.  For fixed wing, the troops parachute in, or the aircraft lands on the closest airport. Surely Benghasi has a city airport.  C-130's have been landed on aircraft carriers, which means they can get into any imaginable airfield, no matter how puny.  
  Finally, Trey Gowdy did not talk about the two US general officers who were relieved of duty that very night.  These two officers were canned for preparing to send relief forces to Benghazi.