Ford wants to drop out of the car business

Ford announced this change of course last week.  They are going to concentrate on pickup trucks, SUVs, crossovers and similar stuff.  They will keep making Mustangs and one new sedan design.  But Fiesta, Focus, Taurus, and a couple of other econoboxes will be dropped. 
   Ford didn't give reasons for their plan.  At a guess, they like the higher margin in pickups and SUVs as opposed to the close to zero margins in the little econoboxes.  At the time, I thought it was short sighted to abandon the bulk of the car market to the Japanese.  I think the big boys, Ford, GM, and Chrysler/Fiat need to compete head on for a share of the biggest part of the car market.  Driving to work, or anywhere, the bulk of the vehicles I see on the road in my part of the USA are little econoboxes.  There may be be much margin in econoboxes, but there is real volume.
   Now this week some new info comes to light.  According to the Wall St Journal, both Honda and Toyota are having trouble moving their Accords and Camrys, despite new redesigns on both models, and excellent reputations going back many years.   And on Saturday, an article speculating that the sedan as a product is going away for ever, just like the station wagon did. 
   Hmm.  Maybe Ford is onto something? 

$130K Bimbo Hush Money

Did anyone, for even a minute, think that Trump's lawyer paid off Stormy Daniels out of his own pocket?  $130K may be pocket change to billionaires like Trump, but for ordinary folk like New York lawyers, $130K is real money, far too much to just kick in out of friendship. 
   Apparently it's a big surprise to the TV newsies.  They have been talking about little else ever since Rudi Guliani said that Trump reembursed the lawyer for it yesterday.  I mean, what else did you think happened?  

Speed up your computer. Uninstall Avast

Computer had been getting sluggish and flaky.  So bad that I dared to run ComboFix, world's most aggressive anti virus.  Combo Fix didn't find much, but it did demand I shut down Avast's active virus scanner, 'cause it was interfering with ComboFix.  The only way I could find to shut down Avast was to uninstall it.  The Avast uninstaller whined a lot and took forever, but it did get Avast off the machine. 
   After killing off Avast, Trusty Desktop is perceptibly more lively.  He is an older machine, but he has a 2.19 gigahertz processor and nearly a gigabyte of RAM, not too shabby, even today.  He is still running XP, which is leaner and meaner than the later Micro$oft offerings. 
   These virus scanners hook onto the network port, and inspect every packet, in coming and out going,  which slows your internet a lot.  It was really showing up running Firefox.  Downloads were flaky, and Firefox would freeze for long enough to irritate the bejesus out of me.  Getting rid of Avast cleaned up a lot of that.

Those questions for President Trump

The ever clueful  New York Times is the source for the list.  It might have been leaked from the Mueller investigators (doubtful)  or Trump's people (somewhat more likely) or just invented out of clear blue sky by the NY Times people (highly likely).  I notice a senior Times editor just left the Times, could it be over inventing fake news?
   The questions that I saw are kinda awful.  Totally vague, which allows the prosecutors to bear down and take the interview anywhere they want.  Lots of "what did you think" questions,  which is fishing for a thought crime.  Covering vast stretches of time, which makes it hard for the target to remember everything he said or did going back 10 and 20 years.  And opens the target up for perjury charges should he misstate or misremember any picayune detail. 
   Was I Trump, I'd hold out for written questions, asked in writing and replied to in writing.  And I get some very clever lawyers to go over each answer with a fine toothed comb to weed out any booby trap answers.  

I don't believe in thought crimes

Crimes, that get you hauled into court, ought to be things you did, not thoughts you had.  To be a free country, like we claim to be, one should be free to think anything they like.  Only actions can be criminalized. 
And not too many actions either.  I believe Moses got the number just about right, and Moses lived and died thousands of years ago.  

  Take that newsie's Watergate Wail, "What did he know and when did he know it?"  That's a cry to pursue a thought crime.  "Knowing" is pure thought.  It's perfectly legal to know damn near anything.  Why do the newsies go about siccing cops and courts on people just for knowing something?  A far better question is "What did he do, and when did he do it?"  

   A lot of places have passed new laws penalizing "hate crimes".  These are things already crimes, they just added some extra jail time if the crime is motivated by prejudice against minorities.  I don't hold with that.  The law should punish actions, crimes, the same way no matter what the perp was thinking, before during, or after committing the crime.  Murder is murder, doesn't matter why the accused committed murder. 

Cultural Appropriation

The social justice warriors are attacking a good looking young woman for wearing a prom dress with some Chinese style to it.  Despicable.  Its a good looking dress, makes her look good.  You ought to be able to select your prom dress on how it looks on you, not whether SJW fanatics will dump on you for your choice.
   Western civilization has been very effective over the centuries at adopting important technical ideas from other cultures.  Magnetic compass, which vastly improved the odds of your ship returning safely, came from China, and only appears in Western literature in the time of King Richard the Lionheart.  Gunpowder also came from China, although the idea of putting it into cannon is probably a western idea. Some early cannon were taken to the battle of Agincourt in 1415.
   I am in favor of cultural appropriation.  If other cultures have good ideas, or well styled garments, or well cooked food (chili, pizza,bleu cheese,lots of other goodies)  we ought to adopt them.   

Trump vs the NORKs

Hard to tell how things are going.  According to the newsies, Kim Jong whats-his-face has offered to denuclearize the Korean peninsula.  Assuming that's what Kim really said, and not an overly wishful translation by peacenik newsies, it's good.  That's more and better  than any NORK offer since 1953.   Granted we have some well founded trust issues with the NORKS, i.e. we think they are liars, it's still good to have them making the denuclearization offer.
   And certainly we have one idea of what denuclearization means and the NORKs have another, and we may not be able to come up with a compromise acceptable to both sides,  there is still a possibility of success  We ought to go for it.
    Big question.  Why is Kim making nice now?  Possibly the US led trade embargo is beginning to bite?  Possibly the Chinese are worried about American tariffs on their goods killing their economy, and so have decided to make nice with the Americans by leaning on Kim?  My sources say that the NORKs are totally dependent upon imports of fuel and food from China.  Perhaps the Chinese are telling Kim to cool it with the Yankees or face a cutoff of vital imports. Although the Chinese like having the NORKs around as a buffer state between them and the pushy American allied South Koreans, and as an attack dog who they can sic on the Americans any time they want to , they cannot be happy with the idea of a nuclear armed North Korea.  And both we and the Chinese have doubts about the stability of Kim's government.  If  revolution breaks out in the North,  the Chinese fear that the South will take over all of Korea, the way West Germany took over all of Germany.  Bye-bye buffer state and attack dog.  So the Chinese may be reining Kim in to prevent him from over stressing his hold on power in the North.
   Who knows? 
   If things work out right, President Trump ought to get a Nobel Peace Prize.