We need the Line Item Veto

But we are unlikely to ever get it.  The line item veto would allow the president to go thru pork laden spending bills and veto individual items without killing the whole thing.  The "everything including the kitchen sink" policies of our Congress make the line item veto necessary.   Congress allows absolutely anything and everything to be included in any bill, whether it has any logical connection with the bill's purpose or not.  For instance they tried (and failed) to tack an immigration reform (DACA) onto the omnibus funding bill.  Since the omnibus funding bill was a "must pass" bill (the government shuts down if they don't pass it) evry Congresscritter made sure to add his pet piece of pork (federal spending in his district) to the bill.  Result, a lot of wasteful spending.  If the president could go thru the omnibus spending bill and veto the more offensive pieces of pork, we could reduce federal spending by a lot. 
   Line item veto is unlikely to ever happen.  Congresscritters love their pork.  The thought that a president could veto a bit of pork they had worked hard to get into the funding bill just frosts Congresscritters.  Since a line item veto requires at least an act of Congress, and perhaps a constitutional amendment, the Congresscritters can stop it by simply voting against it, should it ever come up for a vote.  And Congress has plenty of file 13's entomb unwanted legislation, killing it with out having to go on record by voting against it.

Would you tell the Census you are an illegal alien?

Probably not.  I'd figure the Border Patrol would be on my case if I told them I was an illegal.  And gave them my name and address on the Census form.   
   I figure the illegals will  either lie, claiming to be citizens, (exposing themselves to prosecution for lying to the Census Bureau), or just not return the Census forms at all, or leave the question blank (which is as good as confessing to being illegal).
   I certainly would not believe any statistics based upon responses to the citizenship question.  

Out in California they are gunning for a President McKinley statue

Damn.  McKinley has been dead for better than 100 years.  Some anarchist shot him in the back, shortly after he got elected president.  He didn't live long enough as president to do much that got into the history books.  But the California SJW's are agitating to pull his stature down.   They must be out of  things to do. 

Capitalism or Communism?

Winston Churchill once said "The vice of capitalism is that it stands for  unequal sharing of blessings; whereas the virtue of socialism is that it stands for the equal sharing of misery."   Socialism being a politer word for communism.  Why is this? 
    Communism was invented to "level the playing field" by taking everything and dividing it equally and sharing it equally among all the people.  The biggest down side of  Communism, why even the Russians gave it up in 1989, is it gives no incentive to anyone to work hard.  Why work hard when you get paid the same for slacking off?  Other downsides come when ordinary fallible people take up the divide and share business.  Being fallible, these people skim plenty off the top for themselves before  doing any sharing.  Since nobody works very hard, there isn't much to share in the first place. 
  Under capitalism, people are allowed to own stuff (land, houses, factories, everything) and to keep the proceeds.  By hard work, or genius, it is possible to become wealthy, powerful, and important.  This motivates a lot of people to work really hard, take risks, invent stuff.  The overall result is a never ending fountain of material wealth, food and drink, clothing, shelter, toys for children and grownups, all at decent prices, and vast quantities.  Aided by capitalism's law of supply and demand which efficiently matches production with demand.  The entrepreneurs who create all this goodness get to keep a goodly share of it, but there is enough that everybody gets some.  Compare the standard of living for ordinary people in communist places like Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, with the standard of living in the United States.  This is why the United States has an illegal alien problem whereas the Communist countries have long lists of people wanting to leave, and not permitted to.
    This is what the Cold War was about, the Russians wanted to convert the entire world to Communism and we wanted to keep the entire world capitalist.  We won, and the wonder of our victory is that we managed it without touching off the Last War with the Soviets.   

It's the Post Office's problem

President Trump was bashing Amazon the other day. Among other things, he said the US Post Office is losing $1.50 on every parcel Amazon sends by mail.  And it's all Amazon's fault.
I beg to disagree. 
   If the Post Office is losing money on Amazon's business, it's up to the Post Office to either improve efficiency, or raise prices.  It isn't Amazon's duty. 
   As a matter of fact, back in the 19th century, when Congress authorized the Post Office to offer Parcel Post,  the original legislation demanded the Post Office set rates high enough to cover costs.  Probably because Congress didn't want to subsidize the big mail order companies of the day, Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck.   Sixty years later some business writer commented that the Post Office would never offer much competition to Fedex and UPS because of it's inefficiencies and high wages.   

I'd like to be just a plain American

All those questionaires that want you to classify yourself as white, black, Asian-American, hispanic, purple with polka dots, are offensive to me.  I want to check off an "American" box.  All those other categories are just fodder to fuel divisive identity politics.  I don't want to be classified as one or another identity group.  I am an American, and my sympathies lie with my country, not my narrow identity group. 
   And, while the Democrats are busy finding new identity groups, and talking them up, they don't actually promise these identity groups anything while campaigning.  No promises of  special treatment, special tax breaks, extra funding for pet projects, nothing.  I don't see any reason for the identity groups to vote for the Dems, there is nothing in it for them. 
   Trump on the other hand has lowered black unemployment to the lowest level on record.  That oughta be good for something. 

Vermont wants to regulate Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Sounds cool.  But what the newsies call "AI" is really just well programmed computers.  In the programming world, "AI" is a flexible sort of programming, where decisions (if-then branching) can be done with less than 100% positivity of the evidence.  And "AI" can be written to find it's goals by looking at data, which is more flexible than having the programs goals written into it by the programmers. 
  But when you get right down to it, what they are calling "AI" is really just programs running in microprocessors.  Modern programming is more flexible than the early FORTRAN programs that handled well understood problems like printing up the payroll checks.
    Long talk on Vermont public radio about the wonders of a Vermont state program to regulate "AI".  They don't have it yet, but this program was pushing the idea.  Since "AI" is really any programming, we are talking about regulating every product with a microprocessor in it.  Which is just about everything these days.  Your microwave, your automobile, your cell phone, your TV,  your FM radio, just about everything that uses electricity.  Do you really want to give a state commission the power to regulate just about everything?  I don't. 
   The free market is perfectly capable of controlling computer programs on the market.  Look at what's happening to Facebook over some data breaches.  Same thing will happen to any product or company that offends the broader market place.