Sunday, October 23, 2016

It's a Winta Wundaland





Snowed last night.  2 1/2 inches.  Photos taken outside my place up in Franconia Notch NH this morning.    Global warming strikes again.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Win10 Spy Disabler V 1.4, Making it work

Win 10 is very snoopy, and in factory trim reports everything about you and your browsing habits it can back to Microsoft.  Youngest son recommended Win 10 Spy Disabler freeware to tighten things up.  Nice little program, gives you all kinds of options on what you can kill.  Only problem, it never seemed to DO anything, no matter what options I selected. 
   I finally got the thing to work this morning.  The program window is too big for my screen (I'm a laptop) and the "APPLY" button was off the bottom of the screen and out of reach.  You cannot click on buttons that are off the screen. 
   Fix:  move the task bar out of the way.  My task bar is on the bottom of the screen where it belongs.  But in "Settings" there is an option to move it to the right hand or left hand side.  Which gives just enough more screen to show the "APPLY" button. 
   Win10 Spy Disabler ran to completion and offered to reboot.  Which I did.  And the laptop survived the experience.  Whether the program actually did anything is hard to tell. 

Friday, October 21, 2016

American Rifleman magazine rates candidates.

American Rifleman is the NRA magazine, widely read and trusted by NRA members, a numerous group of voters.  The October issue arrived, and it lists every candidate for public office in NH.  And it rates them, A thru F on their position on fire arms issues (gun control mostly).
   As a rule Republican candidates receive a A rating and Democrats Ds and Fs.  If you are wondering who all is on the ballot in your district, check out American Rifleman.   Candidates who neglected to return the NRA questionnaire receive a question mark rating. 

Office                  Candidate          Party        Rating
US Senate           Kelly Ayotte       R             A
                           Maggie Hassan   D             F
Governor             Chris Sununu      R             B
                           Colin Van Ostern D            ?
US Rep               Frank Guinta       R            A
                           Carol Shea-PorterD           F
                           Jim Lawrence       R           A
                           Anne Kuster         D           F


Thursday, October 20, 2016

Third Presidential Debate

So I jotted down some of the things they said while they were saying them to help me memory along.  Hillary was coming out strong against the "Gunshow Loophole".  Which sounds good, but there is no gun show loophole.  I bought a gun at a gun show some time ago, (Nice Marlin 30-30 lever action) and they did instant background checks on all of us purchasers. 
   The Donald said that his supreme court picks might well repeal Roe vs Wade.  I wouldn't have said that.  It offends about half the voters.  Roe vs Wade has been the law for nigh on 50 years now, and overturning it would cause as much commotion and bad feeling as imposing it did.  Then he got off on a riff condemning partial birth abortions. 
   They got onto building border walls.  Hillary suggested that we wait for improved technology.  Improved technology for walls?  They had wall technology down pretty good in Troy, and it hasn't changed much in the 3000 years since Achilles slew Hector.  If she is talking about electronic widgets, forget it.  We tried that in Viet Nam.  Didn't work.  Put your trust in a plain old chain link fence. 
   Hillary was selling the idea that Putin is trying to help Trump with his leaks to Wikileaks.  Why would Putin do that?  Hillary is a known quantity, she isn't very effective, she isn't very smart, she isn't very polite, her mandate from the voters will be weak.  As the dictator of a Russia competing with the USA, Putin would be much better off with Hillary.  As ex head of KGB Putin knows this.  It's been suggested that the reason they only leak Democratic dirty laundry is that the Replublicans have tighter security and the hackers were not able to break in.  If true, that's a good reason to vote Republican. 
   Hillary claimed that Obama cut the national debt.  That's a flat out lie, the national debt doubled under Obama. 
   Hillary derided all tax cuts as "tax cuts for the rich".  Well, since half the population pays NO federal income tax, tax cuts only benefit the taxpaying half of the population.  If paying income tax makes you rich, then I suppose so.  But cutting taxes is good.  It's good for the economy, it worked for both Kennedy and Reagan, its good for taxpayers.  And a mere 5% of the taxpayers pay most of the taxes. 
   The Donald failed to nail Hillary on what she has accomplished on all her years on the public teat.  The real answer is she accomplished nothing.  No bills, no laws, no treaties, no peace talks, nada. 
   And finally Hillary wants to forbid anyone on the no-fly list from buying guns.  The no-fly list is maintained by bureaucrats somewhere and is completely arbitrary.  Citizens get stuck on it and there is no way off.  I don't want to give faceless federal bureaucrats the power to take away citizen's second amendment rights on a whim.
  The Donald came on pretty strong.  He'd be better if he could stick to the subject, and not go rambling off about pet peeves that the voters either don't care about or don't like.  He did get in a fair number of solid slams on Hillary.  Hillary wasn't quite as good.  I'd give this one to The Donald, but just barely, a squeaker.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Leaf Peeping.

It was a lovely day, sun, warm, clear sky.  Leaves still bright.  I decided I had to get out and look.  So I drove over the Kancamagus to Conway, and back thru Crawford Notch.  Foliage was magnificent all the way.  Whole hillsides showing gold and red. Individual trees all bright red. I brought the camera, but I already have, and have posted, a bunch of pix of brightly color leaves, so I didn't take any more.  Plus a lot of really beautiful scenes don't photograph well, you have to be there and see them.
Good Trip.  At the right time of year. 

Selecting a "man-on-the-street" for inteview. NHPR style

NHPR newsie in Orlando Florida is interviewing a "representative" voter.  Didn't give his name.  It became clear listening to this guy that he is gay, and pretty much all his waking thoughts are about his gayness and how it effects his life, his relationship with his mother and family, and the world in general.  It's hard for me to take this guy as representative of the typical Orlando (or anywhere else) voter.  Real people have other concerns than their sexual identity in their lives,  stuff like jobs, sports, hobbies, cars, politics, computers, music and more.  All this guy could talk about was his sexual identity.
   Granted that being gay can bring unusual stresses.  But 95% of the population is straight, and has interests other than sex and sexual identity.
   I don't think this guy is representative of anybody except himself.  And the NHPR newsies were too dumb or too PC to figure that out.  Or they just wanted to put a gay guy on the air. 

Moderators, Presidential Debate type.

The last two presidential debates had dreadful moderators.  They asked dumb ass questions, they were profoundly ignorant of many simple matters, and they both tried hard to help Hillary and hinder Trump.   Chris Wallace ought to be better.  He is smart, knowledgeable and fair.
   Far as I am concerned,  Republican presidential candidates ought to be pickier about debate moderators.  They should veto any rabid democratic moderators like Candy Crowley along with other more ignorant newsies.  And since newsies are a fairly low grade lifeform, they ought to look for prominent Americans from other walks of life.