Buck passing, finger pointing, and Gov'mint shutdown

Congress is supposed to fund the federal government by passing appropriation bills, one for each department (defense, state, treasury, HHS, etc).  Congress did manage to pass a few appropriation bills this year, but appropriation bills for a lot of paper pushing departments never got passed.  And so they are furloughing their civil servants just in time for Christmas. 
   Let's blame that on footdragging by the Democrats and obstructionism by right wing Republicans.  But if Congress had done its duty, we would not be having a shutdown right now.  The Democrats like to wait til the last minute and then pass a "continuing resolution", one giant bill funding the whole federal government.  The one giant funding bill is so big that nobody understands it, anything goes into it,  and there are plenty of hiding places for juicy pieces of pork.  Where as an appropriation bill for just one department can be understood (with a lot of study) and once understood, can be changed to give Congress some control over what each department can do.
   This time the TV tells me that 75% of the government has been funded, and thus stays open.  Only 25% is shutting down.  The list of shutting down departments they flash on the TV screen seems to be mostly departments that don't do anything for citizens, and which we could do without, for ever.  It's a little tough on the civil servants who are gonna miss a pay check at Christmas time.  On the other hand, civil service jobs pay better and have better benefits and retirement than private sector jobs.  And civil servants are mostly Democrats. 

Congress lacks the stones to vote to keep the government open

Both House and Senate, facing important votes to keep the government running and fund President Trump's border wall, have failed to vote on the bill[s].  Instead they have been conducting meaningless "procedural" votes.   The one in the Senate has been stalled, killing any Senate business for 4 hours now.  A real vote is a vote to pass or kill the bill on the floor.  Procedural votes don't do that, they soak up time, they give legislators the opportunity to vote one way on the "procedural" vote and the other way on the real vote, so they can tell their constituents  both yes and no, I voted for it on the procedural vote and against it on the real vote. 
  If the government shuts down, blame it on totally opaque Congressional procedures that failed to bring the needed legislation to a real up or down floor vote.   Lack of stones.

Wall Street Wails over 2.5% interest rate from the Fed.

The Fed bumped interest rates up by 0.25% to 2.5% overall.  The Dow Jones dropped 400 points and every pundit is crying that the Fed is killing the recovery and throwing the country back into Great Depression 2.0.  Right.
   6% has been considered a proper interest rate, going back to  medieval times.  I remember my first house mortgage at 7 and 1/8th, way back in the 1970's,  thinking at the time that I had a pretty decent mortgage rate.   Far as I am concerned all the weeping and wailing  over 2.5% is coming from modern snowflakes.    Bring on that global warming and melt those crybaby snowflakes. 

Spiderman, the Spiderverse

Saw this yesterday in Lincoln with youngest son.  Its long.  It moves slowly.  The animation and art  work is good, fine images.  Give the video folks a few more years and we will not be able to tell live actors from CGI actors.  Aunt May is very convincing, in a few more years they will be able to slip her into a live action movie and we could not tell that she was not acted by a human.  Sound man does good, I could understand all the lines.  Camera man (CGI artists?) done good, all the scenes are properly lighted.  It's animation all the way, no live actors at all.  
    Miles some-thing-or-other, is the teen age protagonist.  He is drawn as black or Hispanic.  He serves mostly as a punching bag thru out the film.  He doesn't seem to have a mission, he doesn't do much, he gets dumped on, he seldom  acts for himself.  He has an impenetrable relation with his father (a cop) and an uncle who alternates between family member and masked villain.  The artist doing Miles should have made him cuter, more like the ultra cute but nameless Spider girl.
   Plot is strange.  Some kinda inter dimensional door opens and Spidermen (and girls) from a dozen strange dimension turn up, including Peter Porker.  
   Only diehard Spiderman fans need to see this flick.  It's too long and slow moving for  kids.

Bimbo payoffs are now campaign finance violations???

Paying off a bimbo to keep her mouth shut is kinda slimey, and NOT an indicator of good moral character, but it ain't a campaign finance violation.  Even  Alan Dershowitz  agrees with me on this point.  Why this Cohen character, former fixer for Donald Trump, is pleading guilty to a campaign finance violation 'cause he cut the check[s] to one or two bimbos is a mystery to me.  You would think an experienced lawyer/fixer would put up more of a fight in court.  And for that matter,  I'd expect Donald Trump to do more than he has to keep an old buddy/fixer out of jail. 

Congressional Hearing on Google reveals smart phones report your position, every minute

Scary,  Testimony in front of Congress this morning claims that Android cell phones report their ( and their owners) position about once a minute.  I only carry a cheap dumb phone.  I wonder what it is reporting, and to whom it reports to.    The idea that the government, the cops, NSA, FBI and who knows who else can know where I am, minute by minute, is scary.  I certainly am not gonna update to a smart phone. 

NH Senate Organization Day

Second day on the job.   Left the house at 7 AM.  Got to Concord a little past 8 8AM.  Since they had not assigned me a State House parking space, I parked in the shopping mall and walked up.  It's only a couple of blocks. 

   We met in the newly refurbished Senate chamber.  Lovely corner room, with lots of nice big windows on two walls.  Lots of sunlight.  All the elaborate wood work had a fresh new coat of cream colored paint, new carpet,  half the murals had been cleaned.  Governor Sununu swore us all in. First order of business was to elect Donna Soucy of Manchester as the new Senate president.  She was nominated and then we did a voice vote.  All aye's, no nays.   Then we re-elected Tammy Wright as Senate clerk, same procedure  just one nomination followed by a unanimous voice vote.

    Then we got down to a substantive vote for the Secretary of State.  We moved into the house chamber, they had seats for us in front.   Bill Gardener  is the incumbent, has been for better than 40 years.  He has kept NH scandal free, no Florida style disasters.  He favors the use of paper ballots, which I agree is a good idea.  They cannot hack  paper ballots over the internet.  Colin Van Osten  was the challenger.  A lot of democrats like Van Osten because he looks likely to enfranchise a bunch of democrat leaning voters that Gardener won't.  After nominating speeches, followed by seconding speeches,   we voted by paper ballot.  When those were counted, we had 208 votes for Gardener, and 207 for Van Osten.   That caused a tizzy, the Speaker declared the margin too thin and we would have to vote again.  This set off  an hour of  motions and speeches  and citing of  "rules".  Then we did a second paper ballot  and Gardener squeaked by 209 to 205.

    By then it was 4 in the afternoon and getting dark.  The bankers threw a free beer and munchies event across the street at Tandy's.  Naturally I stopped in, I never turn down free beer.  Spent about an hour, chatting with a whole bunch of people.  Got on the road home at 5 PM.  It was pitch dark by then.  Traffic going north on I93 was heavy, but it kept moving right along at 70 mph.  Got home a little after 6PM.  Cat was overjoyed to see her human back safe and sound.