Micro$oft breaks Win 10, Again

Back in Windows XP, you were protected against accidentally copying a old version of a file over the latest version of the file.  Wind 10 no longer protects against this.  There I am backing up Trusty Desktop onto Flatbeast my laptop.  On Trusty Desktop I copy my recent files, such as my checkbook, my list of books, my medications, a bunch of photos, and other stuff onto a flash drive.  I carry the flash drive over to Flatbeast  and start copying the latest versions of the files off the flash drive onto Flatbeast's hard drive.  Of course,  I have done this in the past, and Flatbeast's hard drive already contains old versions of these files.
  Back in the good old days of Win XP, you would get a message box saking "Do you  REALLY want to overwrite file such-and-such date such and such with  same file name, date somthingelse?"   And you would look at the file dates, and most often you would say "Go for it" if you were overwriting an older file with a newer one.
   Now we are stuck with Win 10 and we get a similar message box, EXCEPT,   one of the file dates comes up as "Unknown".  So the question now reads "Do you REALLY want of overwrite file such-and-such date such-and-such with same file name, file date UNKNOWN?  
   Of course you don't want to do that.  Do you?  So maybe you don't back up your files, maybe you say "Press on regardless", maybe you do some double checking.  But on Win 10 you have a lotta ways of messing up in file back up which good old Win XP handled correctly.
   Looks like the  Micro$sofies have been spending programming effort in breaking things that used to work.

Birth right Citizenship

Amendment 14.  Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the Stte wherein they reside."    I am not a lawyer, my degrees are in history and electrical engineering.  Lawyers have odd ways of reading and writing.  "Subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in ordinary English means citizen, legal alien, green card holder, and at a stretch, tourist visa holder.
  So to an ordinary reading of the 14th Amendment, there is no requirement to grant citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants, they are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.  Newsies who claim that a constitutional amendment is needed are just plain wrong.
   Trump could stop Birth Right Citizenship by executive order.  Politically it would be better to get an act of Congress on the matter.  Any such change will be opposed in court, and the courts give a lot more deference to acts of Congress than they do to executive orders.
   In all the talk about process and legality and constitutional change, we haven't heard much about the real issue here, namely does our current policy of birthright citizenship cause real harm to us.  And what might that harm be?  As it is, travel agencies in China make arrangements for Chinese mothers to fly to the US to give birth here so that their children will have US citizenship.   Which is kinda flattering to us that people would spend all that money, and be away from friends and family for the birth of a child.  They really care about having US citizenship.  And the Chinese are already citizens of China, an important country, which speaks their language and embodies Chinese culture.  We Americans have created a good thing here if so many people want to come here.

   

Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS)

The Wall St Journal floated a trial balloon today.  The plan would have Uncle Sam calculate a "fair" price for drugs, based on overseas drug prices, and then tell Medicare, Medicaid, and the rest of 'em to only pay the drug companies the computed fair price.
   The price of American made drugs sold overseas is a lot lower, like half the price, of the same drug sold in the US.  This happens because  the US health agencies are forbidden to bargain over drug prices.  Overseas the health agencies do bargain over prices and generally get a price one half the US price, or better.  
   I have a better fix for the problem.  America passes a law permitting duty free drug imports from all reasonable first world countries (Canada, Britain, the EU, Japan, maybe a few more).  This is a free market fix, no bureau crats computing prices, Health agencies just go out for bids and buy from the lowest bidder.  No flimflam over "list" prices, discount prices, special prices, what ever.  Lowest bidder gets the sale. 
   This would have to be a federal government fix, the state of New Hampshire doesn't get to set US import duties. Peaking as a candidate for the NH legislature I won't have much to say about this issue, other than to root for it, should I be elected.

They caught them alive. They are both nutcases

And the evidence against them looks strong from here.  The Florida mail bomber left a fingerprint on one of the bombs which is pretty solid evidence against him.  The synagogue shooter was taken alive, gun in hand, at the scene of the crime. From what I see on TV (highly reliable source that) both criminals are nut cases, with social media postings and vehicle stickers to prove it.  Various TV newsies have blamed President Trump or Democrat politicians for inciting them to violence.  I don't buy that.  These two guys are nutcases.  We allow nutcases to run around loose until they kill someone.  We ought to change that policy.
  Let's hope our legal profession has the stones to convict and execute these two murderers, and do it within a year. 

Driving people out of restaurants is disgusting

And trying to kill them with pipe bombs in the mail is worse.  I hope law enforcement will catch the bombers and do it quickly. 

Canceling nuclear disarmament treaties

Trump and John Bolton are talking about doing it.  I don't remember just what the Intermediate Range Forces agreement called for.  There has been some vague talk on TV about restrictions on short range nuclear missiles.  Consider the fact that long range missiles can hit short range targets.  About all I can think of is that short range missiles are small enough to be road mobile, which makes it easier to disperse them and make it hard for counterforce strikes to take them out.
   There hasn't been much talk about disarmament treaties in many years, actually since the Soviet Union collapsed in way back in 1989.  And, what's in it for us?  Do we, owners of the largest air force in the world, really want or need yet another nuclear missile system?  Especially one that has to be based in the EU in order to hit the Russians?  Do we believe that the Russians really want to nuke the EU?  As opposed to taking it over piece by piece?
   And, just what have the dead broke Russians been doing that we think is against the treaty?
   In short, I don't understand why the Trump administration is threatening to pull out of an international treaty that has been around for like 30 years, and doesn't seem to be doing any harm.  Unless they think they can browbeat the Russians into signing a better (in our view) treaty, just to keep the disarmament thing running. 

Bye Bye local politics

Every day this election season I get mail from congressmen and governors from all the 50 states, you know the usual "dear voter please make a campaign contribution" sort of letter.  Also robo calls.  For me, I will support my local NH candidates, my state wide NH candidates, and presidential candidates.  I don't have either the money or the inclination to support candidates running for office in the Carolina's, California, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Montana, or any other state.  But I still get the out of state letters.  Many of them franked (send for free by congressmen who enjoy free mailing privileges). 
   How do the rest of you feel?