Still Not Impressed

I caught the impeachment hearings on  the radio while driving up to Berlin, and back from Berlin this Friday.  About an hour each way, so I heard maybe two hours of chit chat.  The committee had Marie Yavonovitch, former US ambassador to Ukraine, on deck.  She never said anything of substance.  Every statement was bland, and qualified, heavily.  She spoke in a voice so wimpy and indecisive that I judge her unfit to be an ambassador to anywhere, in fact unfit to push a broom.  Don't understand how she ever got appointed ambassador.  She felt (never said directly) that Trump forced her out of her ambassadorship.  For which I say, good work, badly needed housecleaning.  We don't need anyone that wimpy and indecisive representing the United States of America. 
   Bottom line, in two hours I never heard the witness said anything about Trump doing anything bad at all, other than getting her fired that is.

I watched the public impeachment hearing today. Not Impressed

They did a lot of talking, about process and procedures, and secret diplomatic back channels.  The diplomatic witnesses were questioned about their backgrounds, and they were impressive.  Top 1% of his class at West Point, infantry company commander in Viet Nam.  And a good deal of other stuff all good sounding. 
   They never got down to brass tacks.  Like reading the transcript of the famous telephone call aloud.  Or discussing other matters that might convince me, or others, that Trump has got to go.   Or testimony from the famous whistleblower (Eric Ciaramella???).   Chairman Adam Shifty was fairly objectionable.
   I'm thinking that the Democrats don't have anything on Trump, at least not anything that is all that serious.  Watergate this is not. 

DACA, Why didn't Congress deal with this years ago???

DACA, I forget just how the acronym works, but it was/is an Obama policy of leniency toward young adults brought into the US as small children, by parents who are/were illegal immigrants.  Obama asked Congress to do something but Congress doesn't pass laws anymore and the DACA bill never happened. 
  Me, I feel for kids brought into and raised in the US from early childhood.  They are now old enough for high school and college, old enough to enlist, and they are on Mr. Migra's hit list because they are not citizens, don't even hold a green card.  For the vast majority of them, who have stayed out of trouble with the law, are gainfully employed, paying taxes, married, raising children, hold honorable discharges from the armed forces,  they sound like solid desirable citizens to me.  Let's naturalize them.  We need more good solid citizens to keep the country running.  It takes many tax paying citizens to pay for just one druggie drawing welfare. 
   Anyhow, the Trump administration isn't behind DACA, and revoked much, maybe all of the Obama executive orders that created DACA.  And the matter is now going to the Supremes. 
    This should not be happening.  We should have insisted on the CongressCritters passing a DACA bill.  This kind of policy ought to be set in law by Congress, it should not set by presidential say-so (executive orders) or by the Supremes.  We need to get on the CongressCritter's cases and insist that they stop messing around, and pass a reasonable DACA bill. 

Let's hear it for paper ballots. Down with voting machines.

I have been saying this for years.  Here we have a computer scientist saying the same.  Voting machines are merely ordinary desktop computers running a "Look-at-me-I'm-a-ballot" program.  They are vulnerable to all the hacks and malware that Windows computers are vulnerable to.  Plus, since voting machines are all stored together at city hall in between elections,  a determined agent can get his hands on them and always crack them.  A patched ballot program that discards say 10% of the votes for one party can tip any election.  They don't leave a paper record, all the votes are recorded in their internal memory and can be erased.  There is no way to do a recount.
   Whereas the good old paper ballot is secure against hackers coming over the internet, or carried on thumb drives.  They can be saved and recounted.  If the poll workers whine about the effort to hand count them all, they can buy ballot reading machines that work like the test grading machines used in schools.  I remember the teachers using test grading machines back when I did elementary school, and that was a long time ago. 

Capitalism makes us all rich.

  America runs (mostly) on free market capitalist principles.  And it works.  We have plenty of food, fuel, clothing, new cars, electronics, housing, electricity, clean running water, movies, schools, roads, every material thing imaginable.  We have it.  The socialist countries go hungry. 

   Part of our plenty comes from the free market regulating how much of each thing should be produced.  If we don’t have enough of something, the price goes up, and people produce more of it.  If we have too much of something, the price goes down, and people produce less of it.  This works, and we have just the right amount of everything.  The Russians used to have a bureau in Moscow that set production quotas for the entire country.  They never got it right, and the Russians were constantly plagued with shortages or surpluses.  There are so many different things needed by a modern industrial economy, nuts and bolts, gasoline, corn, spark plugs, broccoli, automobiles, etc, etc,) that no bureau can keep track of all of them, let alone figure out how much of each to produce.  The free market system, working on supply and demand gets it right automatically, no central bureau required (or wanted).

    The second thing about capitalism is that it puts its money into the right things.  Society only has a limited amount of capital.  Just operating a business, let along starting one up from scratch, requires capital.  Here we raise that capital by borrowing from banks or selling stocks and bonds.  Investors and banks put their capital (money) into things that look like they will turn a profit, and refuse to loan to things that look like losers.  Being that we have a lot of banks, and a lot of investors, they mostly get it right.  Capital is available for successful enterprises like Apple and Amazon.  Losers like Sears cannot get any.  We direct our limited capital into the right things and don’t waste it on boondoggles. 

   And finally we offer incentives for hard work.  Starting up a new business is a lot of hard work.  The entrepreneur has to put in 60 and 70 hour work weeks for years and years before it pays off.  He has to work so hard that he endangers his marriage, looses touch with his children and his friends, develops ulcers.  People, guys mostly, only put themselves thru this sort of ordeal because they can see a handsome reward, maybe not as handsome as Bill Gates, but at least enough to put all their kids thru college.  And without all these entrepreneurs working their hearts out we would be much poorer. 

    I am hearing that the youngest generation wants to convert to socialism, which is just a nicer name for communism.  Those kids are either misinformed, or just plain stupid.

Good old daylight savings time. Set all the clocks, watches, VCR's, car clocks, clock radios, back one hour. I don't dare turn the hands backward on my 100 year old Tiffany mantle clock that was a wedding present to my grandmother. I stop the pendulum and wait one hour and then start it up again. Cable box set himself back all automatically. So did the clock radio. Laptop running Win 10 set himself back all automatically. Desktop, also running Win 10 did not. I had to set him back by hand. I wonder what made that happen.
   We ought to stay on daylight savings all year round.  Up here, in winter, there is not enough daylight to drive to work, work an 8 hour shift, and drive home all by daylight.  You either drive to work in the dark, or drive home in the dark.  Of the two, I would might rather drive to work in the dark, I am more awake in the morning, it gives me a good virtuous feeling being up before the sun. Driving home in the dark is a drag.  

New York has gotta be crazy

Donald Trump announced that he was changing his residency to Mar a Largo in Florida so he doesn't have to pay New York taxes.  And the New York governor AND the mayor of New York city got on TV to say "good riddance Donald Trump".  Dumb move.  Donald Trump was a maga tax payer. I haven't seen his tax returns, but he must have been putting serious money into New York, both state and city. 
   Say goodby to some serious tax money New York.  You ought to be sad to lose a prominent citizen who has a lot of money.  Even if you don't like his politics.