Where does CIA hire these losers from??

Valerie Plame, worked for CIA until she was outed by Robert Novak in a Wash Post column back in 2003.  The resulting furor went far to destablize the Bush administration and resulting in the conviction of "Scooter" Libby on shaky evidence.   That was then.
   Now, many years later, Valerie pops back into public view with some internet postings where in she claims that Jews are responsible for getting America into war, and ought to wear special ID badges when on TV.  In addition to being despicable, this is pure fantasy.  What did this screwball do back when she was working for CIA?  How did CIA ever hire such a weirdo?  She must have contributed to CIA's many intelligence failures in at least a small amount.  
   CIA has needed a serious housecleaning for many years.  Valerie Plame is just one more reason to get on with it. 

NHPR talks about opioid prescribing

It was a long piece on the FM radio this morning.  A lotta talk about how prescribing opioids for pain is humane and proper.  Several doctors spoke at length, guardedly in favor of giving patients enough opioids to kill their pain.  Much of the doctor's talk was baffle gab, nice sounding words that don't mean anything.  Nobody gave any numbers.  No surveys, no comparisons of opioid use now and opioid use in the past. No figures on how many addicts got started with medically prescribed opioids. No discussion of the difference between a dose strong enough to kill pain and a dose strong enough to create addiction.   Assertions that things had been tightened up so much that legitimate patients could no longer get prescriptions, or had the prescriptions filled should they have them.
   I'd rate this as a NHPR editorial supporting prescription of opioids. 

Prisoner of Zenda. Best costume drama.

Turner Classic Movies had this on last night.  An old favorite from 1952.  Rudolf Rassendyll, a British gentleman on vacation, played well by Stuart Granger, while traveling in a Central European country gets sucked into top level intrigue and skullduggery, involving the king of the country, to whom Granger bears an uncanny resemblance.  The gentlemen all wear snappy uniforms, with great coats and rakish service caps.  The women all wear ball gowns.  Granger, in full uniform, gets crowned as king, a really memorable scene, fancy interiors, massive chandeliers, organ music, cheering crowds, hundreds of well dressed extras.  He meets and falls in love with the beautiful Princess Flavia (Deborah Kerr), takes Flavia to the royal coronation ball, and then with derring-do rescues the rightful king from captivity, and defeats the wicked half brother Michael and the slippery Count Rupert of Hentzau (James Mason).  The movie ends with heartbreak as Rudolf Rassendyll has to leave the country and Flavia has to marry the true king, who she has known since childhood and doesn't like much. 
   The original story was a novel by Anthony Hope, published in the late 1800's.  IMDB shows that it has been made into a movie seven different times, the first in 1913, the latest in 1988.  IMHO the 1952 version is the best, Technicolor, flawless camera  and sound work, great cast.  Romance, action, humor. Very enjoyable. 

Dawn over Marblehead

The Stupid Party finally wises up.  Failure to repeal ( or at least do some fixes to) Obamacare will torpedo the party's chances at the polls in 2018.  This fact is sinking in, slowly, but better late than never. They are making another try to pass something.  Anything actually.   I wish them luck.  They are gonna need it.   

Navy orders ships to turn on electronic beacon

They called it Automatic Information Data Beacon AIDB.  I never heard of it before.  Let's assume it is like IFF, an electronic beacon that gives identification.  It also gives away your position, and apparently the Navy usually operated with AIDB turned off for stealth reasons.  Now they have ordered warships to turn it on claiming that it would talk to merchie autopilots and get them to change course to avoid collisions. 
   Yeah right.  the big merchies, supertankers and the like, draw so much water that they will run aground if they steer out of the dredged channel.  Running a big merchie aground costs like crazy and the owners figure running anything down is cheaper than running their ship aground.  Their skippers are not going to maneuver to avoid cross traffic like US destroyers.  They are going to steer straight ahead, and lesser vessels better get out of their way.  It seems like our Navy doesn't understand this. 
   Old Admiral Dan Gallery, writing in the 1960's, understood this.  He wrote "Steer well clear of any merchie, lest he decide to liven up your day by ramming you."  I wonder what orders the officers of the deck on those two US destroyers had.  Were they ordered top steer well clear, or were they ordered to insist on their right of way?
    

Viet Nam War, Ken Burns

As a Viet Nam veteran the subject is of interest to me, so I had to watch it.  The first episode aired on PBS last night.  It goes all the way back to the French colonizing Viet Nam in the 1860's.  It brings the story up to about 1960.  They mention Ho Chi Minh showing up at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 with a petition for President Wilson to get some moderation of the French rule in Viet Nam.  They cover Ho Chi Minh's establishment of an independent Viet Nam right at the end of WWII, and how the British and the French moved in troops to turn the place back into a French colony.  This was a key moment, if Ho's regime had survived, running all of Viet Nam, the later Viet Nam war would not have happened.  If we Americans had been paying attention (we weren't) we could have told the British and the French to cool it.  This was 1946, and that year nobody dared talk back to the Americans.
     The show had an annoying number of "flashforwards"  Right in the middle of showing events of the 1940's or '50's they would cut to a scene from the 1960's, usually American soldiers in combat gear with a voice of from some veteran explaining how awful the whole thing was.  I didn't need this, I was there, both my brothers were there, I know how awful it was.  The antiwar movement in the '60s is still alive (smaller but still there) and they have made it plain to everyone how awful it was.  I was watching this to see what really happened not to hear yet another voice over telling me how awful it was.
   They told the story pretty straight, the way I remember it happening.  One minor goof,  in the early '50s they described Charles De Gaulle as president of France.  Actually that De Gaulle didn't come out of retirement and take over France until  December 1958.  One thing was new to me, they said that President Truman authorized $23 million in 1949 to support the French in Viet Nam.  They didn't explain just how this happened.  Did Truman just come  up with the money out of some fund somewhere in the vast federal budget?  Did he slip the money into an appropriate bill somewhere?  Who in the Truman administration  thought backing the French against the Viet Minh was a good idea in 1949? 
   The rest of the history, Diem Bien Pho, the partition into North and South, the promised election that was never held because everyone thought Ho Chi Minh would win it, the rise of Nguyen Do Diem in the south, is they way I remember it.  The episode ends before Tonkin Gulf, Johnson landing the Marines, but it's a good opener, covering important background.
   They did not discuss any "might have beens".  Times where someone could have changed the course of history and prevented the war from happening.  And they didn't discuss the mind set of most Americans, especially the American leadership.  Everyone remembered Munich, where decisive action could have deposed Hitler and prevented WWII.  They saw Ho Chi Minh as a communist (he was) and thus an agent of Russian expansionism.  In those years we saw the communist takeover of China as Russia taking over China (not true) and we were not going to permit any more communist expansion anywhere.  Opposing Ho Chi Minh was seen as what we should have done at Munich back in 1938.  This widespread attitude goes far to explain how we Americans got sucked into Viet Nam.   
  

Federal Flood Insurance

It's the only kind you can get.  Commercial insurance companies won't write flood insurance.  Cause, only homeowners liable to floods buy it.  When the flood occurs, all the insurance policies make claims.  Insurance only works when the majority of policy holders don't make claims, and their premiums go to paying off the few policy holders suffering losses.  Like fire insurance, the risk of fire is small, most homes don't burn down. Everybody buys fire insurance (homeowners insurance) because the banks won't do a mortgage unless the property is insured. At the end of the year, the insurance company has to pay a few claims and they have collected a lot of premiums.  With flood insurance, at the end of a flood year, the insurance company has humongous claims and not much in the way of premiums.  After the great Mississippi flood of 1927, the commercial insurance companies decided to not write flood insurance ever again.
   This caused a great hue and cry among owners of waterfront property, who found they could not sell their property, 'cause the banks wouldn't do a mortgage without flood insurance, and nobody would write flood insurance.   And so Congress created the federal flood insurance program.  The humongous losses now fall on taxpayers nationwide.  In effect, everyone is subsidizing owners of waterfront property.  And, since insurance is available people are building on scenic but flood prone properties.
  And, the federal insurance goes on and on, no matter how many times the property gets flooded.  There are properties that have been flooded and rebuilt up to 7 or 8 times.  On the taxpayer's dime. 
   The federal flood insurance program is up for renewal in Congress right now.  We taxpayers ought to get on our Congresscritters to put a limitation in the program.  A one flood policy.  The flood insurance pays off on the first flood, but won't renew after that.  Get flooded out once, and you ought to build on higher ground somewhere else.  If you rebuild on the same site, it's on your nickel, not the taxpayers.