RINO's rule

The RINO's like Obamacare.  After a whole bunch of happy talk about repeal and replace, the RINO's had the votes to retain Obamacare, and they used them, successfully so far.  The Ryan bill to replace Obamacare was withdrawn from the floor of the house today, presumably 'cause they lacked the votes to pass it.
 Thanks RINOs.   We need to publish the names of House RINOs and find better people to fill their seats in 2018. 
  And we need to know the names of all the members of the "Freedom Caucus"  aka RINO headquarters.

Should health insurance pay for...

Used to be, you could buy low cost but effective health insurance.  "Major medical" or "Hospitalization only" coverage.  You paid the ordinary stuff, yearly physicals, colonoscopies, prescription drugs, children's doctor visits, etc, yourself.  The insurance paid for the biggies, operations and the like.  Such a policy was cheap, $3000 a year.  Compared to the covers-everything family policy that cost $12000 a year.  If you and your family were in decent health (the usual case) you could cover the ordinary stuff and still have a lot of money left over at the end of the year. 
   Obamacare outlawed major medical policies.  The medics loved that.  They could proceed with all sorts of expensive procedures without patients objecting to them, because "it's all paid for".  The insurance companies sent Harry and Louise on vacation.  Chiropractors loved this.  Obamacare policies have to have pregnancy coverage even for men, let alone women past child bearing age.  No wonder heath insurance premiums have soared under Obamacare. 
   Now that the heat is on, and the MSM is finally talking about the contents of Ryan's health insurance bill, we find that Ryan's bill does nothing to drop all the cost enhancing " essential health benefits" from Obamacare.  At first the excuse was "Senate rules".   "Reconciliation" a Senate rule that Harry Reid slipped in to get the budget approved some years ago, allows a bill to pass the Senate on simple majority (51 votes) but "reconciliation" could only be used for "budget matters".  No reduction of "essential health benefits", that's not budgetary.  Or is it? Today the Wall St Journal is suggesting that they could indeed repeal the costly "essential health benefits" in the Ryan bill and still get itl thru the Senate on "reconciliation".
   Let's hear it for "Senate Rules".  

Advertisers object to Google and Facebook content

According to the Wall St Journal, HSBC Holdings and L'Oreal reduced spending with Google because Google was serving their ads on controversial websites, or worse, on U-tube videos made by terrorist groups such as Islamic State and a violent pro-Nazi group.  This made the Journal's front page.  Google promises to move the ads away from the objectionable content.  But Pivotal Research Group stock guru
Brian Wieser has downgraded Google stock from buy to hold.
   Question for Google:  Why are you allowing posts so raunchy, and from crazy extremist groups, on your platform at all?  No newspaper or commercial radio or TV station would carry slime like this, why should Google?  If it's offending advertisers, it's gotta be really bad.  Advertisers are happy to snuggle up to all sorts of repulsive things and people if only it gets their ads out.  The stuff has to be really bad before advertisers care.
   All those "self radicalized" terrorists, (Pulse nightclub shooter in Miami, Nidal Hassan, and plenty more) claim they joined ISIS or Al Quada and went on to real terrorism after watching extremist rants and videos on the internet.  Google should not be aiding and abetting Islamist terrorists. 

Windows 10 weirdnesses

All of a sudden I found a new program that called itself TiWorker, which I had never heard of before, was active and sucking up 24% of CPU time.  Arrgh.
   So I Googled on it and found quite a bit of discussion.  Not all of it consistent.  The least harmful suggestion was to bring up Windows Control Panel, select "Troubleshooting"  Then select "System and Security" and under that, Run Maintenance Tasks".   The only task that showed was "System Maintenance.  I ran it, and TiWorker disappeared, back to where ever it came from.  System Maintenance didn't brag about what it was doing, but it ran fast and whatever it did made TiWorker go away and stop eating 24% of my CPU.
   Your mileage may vary.  

Water Vapor is a bigger deal than Carbon Dioxide

The greenies have been crying for years about the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.  They say that CO2 is a "greenhouse gas" which absorbs the infrared heat the earth is trying to radiate into space, thus warming the earth and the root cause of GLOBAL WARMING.  Analysis of ancient air bubbles trapped in arctic icecaps shows the CO2 content in ancient times was around 300 parts per million (PPM)  Analysis of modern air shows a CO2 level of 400 PPM.  A 25% increase, which the greenies say will lead to the heat death of the earth day after tomorrow.  Or sooner. 
   The greenies claim that the CO2 increase comes from burning coal starting with the industrial revolution (1750 or so) and burning oil starting with the development of the automobile (1900 or so).  To halt the CO2 growth the greenies want to put us all back in to a Hiawatha lifestyle,  no cars, no oil furnaces, no electricity after dark, and a bunch of other uncomfortable ideas.  Gotta save the world you know.
   In actual fact, the air is also full of water vapor.  Which is as strong a greenhouse gas as CO2.  And there is a lot of it.  About 11,000 PPM give or take a scosh.   It varies from time to time as we all know, some days are very humid others are bone dry.  Take 50% relative humidity at 20 C as representative.  An increase of 100 PPM of CO2  compared with 11,000 PPM of H2O isn't going to matter for world temperature. 
  The greenies are getting all hot a bothered by a 1% increase in greenhouse gas in the air. 
Relax people, we can drive our cars, travel by air, light our furnaces, and generate electricity and the planet will be just fine. 

Putting a nuclear warhead on a missile

Pundits have been on TV claiming that making a nuke small and light enough to go on a missile is very difficult and it will take the NORKs years to accomplish it.
   I doubt it.  The first nuke, the one we used on Hiroshima was so big and heavy that it was all a B29 could do to get off the ground with one on board.  By the 1950's we had one small enough to fire out of an 8 inch cannon.  Which is small enough to fit on any missile.  At least any missile bigger that a 4th of July skyrocket.
The NORKs probably have a little work yet to do before they can nuke the western US, but not much.  Secretary Tillerson is saying the right stuff about the NORKs and their nukes. 

54.5 MPG. No way

That was Obambi's fuel economy regulation.  Trouble is, nobody will buy the resulting automobile.  Heck you cannot get 54.5 MPG out of motorcycle, let alone any sort of decent car.  Gasoline engine technology was well understood by the 1950's.  We had cars that could do 20 mpg back then.  Fifty years later the average car is not doing much better, maybe 24 mpg.  No way will the technology get to 54.5 mpg for anything more than a motorcycle. 
  Especially as the Environmental Pollution Agency limits what they call "NOx" emissions.   Air is 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen.  Heat air hot enough, say in an engine combustion chamber, and the oxygen and nitrogen go together forming various nitrogen oxides, nitrates,  NO, NO2, N2O4, and a bunch more.  Old style LA smog formed when the nitrates mixed with oily vapors and sunlight formed that yellow cloud we used to see over city skies.  So, rather than clamp down on oily vapors from leaked fuel, the EPA decided to clamp down on NOx emissions.  The only way you do that is lower the combustion temperate in the engine cylinders.  Which ruins fuel economy and power.  Car engines are heat engines, the hotter you can run them, the better they perform.  If we dropped the NOx limit we would get a 10% maybe 20% performance improvement right then and there. 
   Or we could convert to battery powered cars.  Trouble is, the best battery powered cars can barely get you to work and back.   And they cost twice what a real car costs.  No way could a battery car get you to a ski resort for a weekend, or even to grandmother's house unless grandmother lives right next door.  The battery is the most expensive part of a battery car.  Nobody dares say what battery life might be, but battery replacement is so expensive that you might as well scrap the whole car and buy another one, new.   Plain old lead acid car batteries only last 4 winters.  How long will your Tesla battery last? 
   So, Trump is telling Detroit that he is going to "review" (drop) the 54.5 MPG regulation which allows Detroit to keep making cars that people will buy.  Good oh.  Right on Donald.
   Market pressure is there to get fuel economy up and keep it up,  all things being equal, customers will buy the car with better fuel mileage and everyone in Detroit knows it.
   And, don't fault people for buying SUV's  You need an SUV to get Mom, Dad, the kids, and the luggage onboard.  The little econo-boxes are horrible on a long trip with kids.  Trust me on this.