Harley Davidson to produce motor cycles in China

This from the Wall St Journal.  Harley says the Chinese manufacturer will build the bikes for sale in China.  The piece had an artist's rendering, meaning they didn't have a prototype to photograph.  The Journal described the proposed Harley as " small" to suit the Chinese market.  They said it would have a 382 cc engine which isn't very small.  I rode a 250 cc Yamaha for several years.  The Yamaha had plenty of power, enough to scare me, even when I was younger and crazier than I am now.  Harley has been bemoaning a sales drop off in the US for years.  This is because the big Harleys are too expensive for all but the most well heeled bikers.  They are magnificent machines but they cost as much as a new car.  Which is a awful lot of money for a recreational vehicle.  Up here in snow country you cannot ride in winter, a motorcycle is strictly a summer toy. 

That US drone the Iranians shot down

The TV news shows a picture of a sizable airplane shaped drone,single engined,  jet powered.  I didn't catch the name.  Too big to be a Predator.  They say it has the wing span of a 737 jet liner, and a price, $180 million, that would buy us a new 737.  Seems a bit much for a single engine sub sonic aircraft, with no cockpit, no pressurization, no manual flight controls, no cockpit windows.  Granted such a beast needs an autopilot fancier than most, some high powered camera's and a telemetry transmitter to send the photos back to base.  But I would expect a photo recon drone to cost less than an airliner.  A lot less.

More Free Stuff party offers reparations for slavery

Reparations, cash given to blacks 'cause their ancestors were slaves, surely ought to get more black votes for the Democrat party of more free stuff.  Buying votes, much?  Ultimate identity politics? 

Single failure must not put every store down

Target has managed to hook every cash register in every store to somewhere central.  Somewhere center broke yesterday and the day before, locking up every single cash register all over the country, forcing customers to stand in line for hours, or, just leave their purchases and go home. 
  This should not happen.  A Target store is large enough to afford the computers to be stand alone.  Target didn't  bother to do this, and it will cost them.  Certainly I will think twice before doing business with Target, lest I get stuck in line for hours, or have my account information broadcast to every hacker in the world. 
   Target's disastrous cash register setup has to be the work of ignorant Target suits.  No competent engineer would design a system like that.  Engineers understand that things break every so often, and that to tie every cash register in the company into a central point is a company wide failure just waiting to happen. 
   For that matter, cash registers used to work just fine before computers were even invented.  And we managed to use credit cards for decades before the automatic approval systems we use today were installed.  Target would do well to revive these antique ways of doing business.

Han Solo. 2018.

   This is Han Solo’s origin story.  It came out in theaters last year and some how I missed it.  I am a long time Star Wars fan, I can remember catching the first Star Wars on opening night in Boston back in the 1970’s.  I have caught all the following Star Wars flicks in theaters, except this one some how. 

   First thing I noticed is the cameraman has a new shtick.  Instead of the blackout look, this guy has a new look.  The color is faded out to nearly black and white, contrast is way down, brightness is way down, and the studio air seems filled with smoke, blurring everything out.  Makes it hard to recognize the actors, they all look like fuzzy shadows floating thru the gloom.  Only in the last reel do we get some decent video.  To see what was happening I had to pull my chair up to within 4 feet of the TV screen. 

    Plot is indescribable.  IMDB took a whole page to summarize it.  WE meet a young Han Solo, played by an actor I never heard of before.  He did not look at all like Harrison Ford.  He carries a blaster in a low slung holster but somehow his blaster is not as neat as the one Harrison Ford used to carry. Han has a girl friend, and the relationship is intense enough that first thing they do upon meeting is an impressive kiss.  She is there for the whole movie but only in the last reel do we learn she is a traitor working for Darth Maul.  We have a repeat of the Moss Eisley bar scene, a train hijacking like the one in Firefly, the scene where Han wins the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian at cards and some others too.

    They do the really fat stereo bit so good that I could hear things coming from way off the screen.  Like when Beckett busts in on Han and girlfriend smooching in the clothes closet you can hear him coming from way off the screen. 

    All in all a meh movie. 

Senate Session June 13

Senate Session, 13 June.  We are getting to the bottom of the bill pile, finally.  For openers we sustained the Governor’s veto of SB 5.  All ten of us Republicans voted to sustain, which was just enough to do the job.  This bill would have increased Medicaid provider rates.  The governor’s stated reasons were that this bill was only good thru 1 July of this year, a date that is nearly upon us, and that this kind of funding ought to be part of the budget.  

   Then we did a lot of house keeping.   75 bills, previously passed by the Senate, had gone over to the house, and the house had made small changes in them.   Working off of 50 pages of spreadsheet we plowed thru all 75 of ‘em, approving the house changes by voice vote in nearly every case.  Six bills were controversial enough to get a roll call vote.  In each case the Democrats voted it thru, 14-10.  These were:  SB 99 and expansion of worker’s compensation to cover partial disability, SB 148 that allows union recruiters access to all new employees, SB 196 that allows non academic surveys on our school children, SB 168 that raises electric rates by requiring more renewable energy, SB2 which raided the business & economic affairs fund to more “workforce development”. And SB 263 which would allow disgruntled parents wide latitude to sue schools and school districts. 

   We were able to whisk thru all 75 bills by 12:30.  The house was still chewing over more bills, so we adjourned til 1:30 for lunch.  This was a picnic, hot dogs and potato salad out on the lawn.  Would have been more fun if it had not been raining hard.  My umbrella was in the trunk of my car, way off in the LOB garage.  I got fairly wet. 

   By 2 PM the house finished up, no more changes and so we adjourned for the week.  I drove home in the rain.  Sun did not show itself until I was going up into the Notch.        

WSJ says medical marijuana laws reduce opioid deaths

That's in today's Journal.  Funny, NH has medical marijuana and we have an opioid crisis of too many opioid overdose deaths.  What's different about NH?  Or is the Wall St Journal piece based on flawed research?  The Journal piece didn't give any numbers.  Is this a reverse New Hampshire advantage?