US spends 19% of GNP on healthcare

That's twice as much as any other country in the world spends.  And American health, as measured by life expectancy and infant mortality, is not a good as about 10 other countries.  In short, for spending twice as much, we don't get any healthier.
  So  Congressional attempts to cut the expense of Obamacare are the right thing to do.  We ought to cut healthcare spending down to 10% of GNP, from 19% today.  Every other country in the world offers health as good as in the US, and spends only 10% of GNP doing it.  It they can do it, so can we. 
  

Anti Russian voter hacking measures we ought to take

Go to paper ballots.  Keep them after the election in case of a recount.  Get rid of voting machines which are nothing more than desktop computers running a ballot program.  And could be hacked at the factory, at the polls, over the net, every which way, and you could never figure out what happened. 
   Let's have some security on voter registration lists.  If hostile hackers managed to erase say 10% of all Republicans registered, that would throw the election to the Democrats.  A voter shows up at the polls, and he isn't on the registration list, he doesn't get to vote.  Ten percent of either side is enough to decide most elections. 
   Since we cannot do any paperwork without putting it on computer these days, we need some security on the machines that hold  the voter registration lists at cities and towns.  The machine[s] that store and modify the voter registration lists must NOT be connected to the public internet in any way shape or fashion.  Keep the machines in a locked room and only allow a minimum of people access to them.  Backup the voter registration list[s] every week or so, and store the backups off line and off site.  When  new voters are registered give them a printed certificate of registration that they can use to prove they registered should the computers mess up some how. 

What is in those two healthcare bills?

We have one bill passed in the House, and second one about to be voted on in the Senate.  But I have no real idea what each bill does.  For that matter I don't know all the things tucked away in 10000 pages of Obamacare.  Nobody does really.  Nobody can read and understand 10000 pages of legal gobble-de-gook.
   The health care bill I  like would repeal the Obamacare requirements that have forced a lot of workers into part time work.  It would spell out who gets government subsidies and how much.  It would allow the sale of  "hospitalization only" insurance which is a quarter the cost of  "Obamacare covers everything" insurance.  It would  require insurance companies to maintain coverage on insured patients who get sick, and allow such "pre existing conditions" patients to even change insurance companies should they need to (say like they took a new job) .   Uninsured patients who get sick would have to pay something more to get insurance  than ordinary patients.  Medicaid should be reserved for mothers, children and the truly disabled.  Able bodied grownups should get a job with health insurance or pay for their own.  Health insurance premiums should be deductible on federal income tax to even things up between the self employed and the company employee who gets tax free health care thru hisher job. 
   I have no idea if either of the Congressional health care bills have any of these things.  Neither do the newsies. 

"Slants" is derogatory?

An Asian American rock band wanted to call themselves "The Slants".  Some well fed bureaucrat refused to let them trademark the name.  He claimed "Slants" was derogatory. 
  Strange.  I was in the Air Force, I did a turn in South East Asia during the Viet Nam war.  We had a lot of bad names for things we didn't like, the enemy, the locals, the food, the weather, the service, and others.  I don't remember "slant" as one of them.  "Slope" you heard, and slant-eye ( as opposed to round-eye) you heard, but  I don't remember "slant" by itself as a put down. 
   Any how they took this one to the Supreme Court, and won,  The band may trademark "Slants".  Owners of the Washington Redskins, and the Cleveland Indians, both facing similar harassment from bureaucrats are relieved.  They figure they will win their Supreme Court cases.  
   Welfare for lawyers.

Suppose we assassinate Kim Jong whats-his-face, NORK dictator

That ought to slow 'em down a bit.  The NORKs already have nuclear weapons and rockets.  It's only a matter of time (a year? two? three?) before they have a nuke mounted on a rocket with the range to reach US soil.  We need to prevent that.  Nobody wants to start up the Korean War again, that is too awful to bring back. Diplomacy has been tried for twenty years or more to no avail.  Getting a nuclear deterrent (strike force) is so important to Kim that no amount of diplomacy will get him to stop. 
   If we bumped off Kim, it would leave a leadership vacuum.  There would be a struggle between the various number 2 men to take his place.  Kim has been executing anyone who looks dangerous to him and so the bench of number 2 men is pretty thin.  To take over as NORK dictator you have to have some name recognition and some friends to back you up.  We don't know if anyone up north has both the name recognition and the friends required. 
  The NORK regime might just come apart.  It's already under strain, what with peasants starving the the villages and shortages of nearly everything.  The only thing holding it together is the army and the secret police.  With Kim gone, nobody knows if they would stay loyal to the regime.  They might not.  At which point, there are very strong forces to pull North and South Korea back together.  Much stronger forces than any number 2 man struggling to take over could muster.  That result would be wonderful for us and for South Korea. 
   How to off Kim?  Simplest is a smart bomb thru his bedroom window.  Or a Hellfire on his official limousine (with Kim inside it of course).  Or a very gutsy sniper team parachutes in somewhere, gets to within 500 yards of Kim, plugs him and then boogies to a pickup spot and waits for the Jolly Greens to pick them up.  

Fueling up for Winter

 That's one cord, two winter's worth of firewood. KK Brooks delivered last Friday.  I get to stack it under the porch. 

 Stack beginning.  The criss cross log stacks on the end are the secret to preventing the ends of the stack from avalanching into the driveway.  I use the biggest heaviest logs on the end stacks.

Here we are half stacked.  Care is required to avoid breaking the cellar windows with carelessly tossed logs.  That happened once long ago.  Andersen Thermopane which is beyond my home glazing skills. I had to order a replacment sash from Andersen.  They still had them after some 25 years, but it was a year before the replacement got shipped to me.  

All stacked up.  Took about 5 hours, working in half hour stints.  I'm set for another couple of winters.

Predictions are hard, especially about the future.

The Democrats dropped $25 mil into the Georgia special election.  The Republicans dropped $30 mil, which is more money than has ever been spent running for a US rep's seat.  Looks like both national parties have plenty of cash, which is a little surprising what with an expensive presidential election just last November.  You would  think they would still be paying off loans taken out for Hillary and the Donald.
   The Republican (a chick I'd never heard of before) won, 53 to 47 percent which is decent, better margin than Trump got in that district.  Way I look at it, anything better than 1% is decent, anything better than 10% is a landslide.  NHPR called the margin of victory "thin" and "close" but they are just democrats with bylines. 
  Naturally, this win, and the win in North Carolina, delighted Republicans and disheartened Democrats.  But I don't think it predicts anything about 2018.  In a year anything can happen.  If Trump gets health care and tax reform thru Congress the Republicans will be in decent shape.  If he fails, Democrats will capture control of one or both houses of Congress. 
   The msm keep saying that the Republicans control both houses of Congress.  But they have a lot of RINO's in both houses, who are OK with tax-and-spend and fear to rock the boat.  And who may not vote the party line.  Republicans also have a lot of super conservative crazies who don't under stand about compromise and that half a loaf is better than no loaf, and who will vote against anything on the slightest pretext.  And there is always a pretext on any bill, no bill ever satisfies every one all the way, there are always things they want and didn't get, or things that they don't like, and are in the bill.  Look at the Chinese fire drill in the House over health care.  Ryan had to withdraw the Republican bill and rewrite it before he could get enough Republicans on board to vote it thru. 
  Republicans have a lot of work to do if they want to retain control of Congress in 2018.