How to tell an advanced economy when you see one

Simple.  Advanced economies can export automobiles to the United States.  All others have to import cars from the few advanced economies that can make them.  This year only Germany, Japan, and South Korea make the cut.  Over the years the British, the French, and the Italians dropped out of the US car market.  The Chinese are clearly thinking about getting into the US market but they are not here, yet. 
   That's a remarkably small list.  Nice thing is that they are all three solid US allies (now). 
   The British had a nice US export business in sports cars in the '40s and '50s.  Road and Track magazine was started for sports car owners, owning mostly Austin Healey, Jaguar, MG, Morgan, and Triumph sports cars.  The imported sports car business finally began to fade in the '70s partly due to competition from Ford Mustangs, and partly due to the truly awful reputation for flakiness that British quality control (or lack of it) created.  "Lucas, Prince of Darkness" was the slam directed at British electrical systems (all built by Lucas).  The Italians had the same problem, Fiat was said to stand for "Fix it Again Tony".   The French tried to sell the Citroen DS-19, a distinctively styled car, very low, tail lights mounted on the roof, and an enormously complex hydraulic system that was virtually unrepairable.  Later they tried with Peugeot sedans.  I can remember car pooling out to Raytheon with a guy who drove a Peugeot.  In the winter he had to open the hood, remove some strange engine part and bring it inside to keep it warm so the car would start at 5 PM.

Flying a V2 rocket out of wartime Poland

This story comes from Antony Beevor's  "The Second World War".  The Polish resistance found a V2 rocket that had crashed in the Polish marshes.  The resistance got to the V2 before the Germans, took it apart and spirited it away.  The resistance contacted their Allied support in Britain, and a specially modified C47 transport was flown into Poland to fly the V2 rocket back to England for examination by Allied scientists.
   That must have been one awful hairy flight.  From Britain to Poland was just about the limit of a Gooney bird's range, even with extra fuel tanks.  The flight path either had to cross Germany, which was crawling with fighters and antiaircraft guns, or fly around Germany, presumable over the Baltic sea.   Find a landing strip, big enough for a C47, in the dark, with no electronic navigation aids.  Then they had to get the V2 rocket inside the Gooney bird, a tight squeeze.   And they had to find gasoline in Nazi occupied Poland to refuel the Gooney bird for the return trip.  And get off the ground before the Germans arrived to arrest them all.
   All  in all, flying a B17 to Schweinfurt, or a B24 to Ploesti would be less dangerous. 

Chromebooks for children

Article in the Wall St. Journal yesterday.  What sort of computer to get for a 12 year old.  Answer: a Chromebook.  Looks like a laptop, does NOT run Windows, and costs $300-$400. 
  Not cheap.  I bought a brand new HP Pavilion laptop running Windows down at Staples a little while ago for $300. 
   And for a 12 year old?  I can remember doing a lot of stuff when I was 12, all of it a lot cooler than websurfing on a laptop.  Fishing, skiing, bicycling, electric trains, building tree houses, playing guns with the neighborhood kids, toy soldiers, plastic models, wood working in Dad's shop, hiking, shooting bow and arrow... 

Cops should be fair minded and open minded.

This FBI guy, Peter Strzok, clearly is not.  And he is a cop.  The text messages between him and his girl friend, lawyer Lisa Page show hatred, minds made up, and a desire to influence elections, and possible thoughts of doing a political assassination, which no cop ought to do.
   How did this turkey get to be a senior FBI guy?  He was senior enough to be in on interviewing Hillary about that email server,  senior enough to be loaned out to the Mueller "investigation".  He's been at the FBI for years.  Surely FBI does yearly performance reports like we do in the armed services?  Over all those years nobody mentioned that Peter Strzok was a deep left screwball?  And they promoted him? 
   And there are enough deep lefties at the Bureau for Peter to hook up with a lawyer who shares his warped views?  God help anyone that lawyer prosecutes. 
   The only difference between the police force of a democracy and a Gestapo is the quality of the agents.  Clearly Peter Strzok, and his girlfriend lawyer are the dregs.  Both of them ought to be fired, ASAP. 

Most comments on proposed regulations are fake

Front page of today's Wall St Journal.  For example, a comment to the FCC opposing net neutrality was filed by a woman who died twelve years  ago.  The Journal mailed queries to the authors of a million comments.  7800 queries bounced back due to bad email addresses.  Of the queries that obtained a reply, 72% of the replies denied ever having sent in the comment.  Plus, looking at the comments received, the bulk of them are copies of each other. 
   The conclusion is that most of the comments are generated by 'bots, computer programs that just add false addresses and send the same message over and over again.  To the point that for the agency to read these comments and act upon them is folly.

The Roy Moore election is on today.

And the newsies are commenting about it.  But, they aren't saying anything about turnout at the polls.  Is it heavy? or light?  Polls don't close for hours, and they don't do exit polling like they used to so we won't know who won until late this evening or even until Wednesday.

Chain immigration and immigration lotteries?

That's what we are hearing about the Bangladeshi immigrant who tried to bomb the New York subway yesterday.  Both of these concepts are new to me.  I never heard of either of them before yesterday.  Apparently we are issuing green cards just cause someone has a relative already in the US.  And the lottery who knows how that works. 
   Both of these programs are unfair and wrong. 
   Immigration to the US is highly prized all over the world.  Everyone would like to move to the US.  Nobody wants to move to Venezuela, Cuba, or Russia.  We ought to take advantage of this and accept immigrants who will become loyal and valuable citizens.  
   We can only accept so many immigrants per year, lest they swamp the country.  I submit that we can handle immigration equal to say 1% of the present population.  Since US population is about 330 million, that allows 3.3 million immigrants per year.  I'm thinking we have ten times that many applicants.
    So, we set up a point system, each applicant gets so many points for qualities we deem desirable.  Like points for holding a doctorate in the hard sciences, points for speaking, reading, and writing English.  points for being of working age.  Points for assisting the US armed forces. Points for knowing a trade, publishing a book, points for engineering degrees, points for knowing how to program computers, points for being married, points for having children, plus a whole bunch more desirable and useful skills and accomplishments.  Subtract points for a criminal record, or membership in ISIS and the like. Some appointed committee can have a wonderful time setting up the point system.
   Then we assign a score to every applicant, and admit the top scoring 3.3 million applicants.  We tell the rest of them to try again next year. 
   That's fair.  And it will give us a lot of good decent citizens and fewer subway bombers.