Nancy and the Democrats throw in the towel

 This morning the TV news announced that ONE of the TWO big spending bills will not be brought to a vote.  Presumably this means that Nancy counted votes and found that the bill would loose.  So, better not to have a losing vote, just don't have a vote at all.  I think the bill that got withdrawn today was the smaller $1.5 TRILLION bill that had a fair amount of real infrastructure spending in it,  Infrastructure is stuff like roads, airports, stuff you can see and touch.  There is a second $3.5 TRILLION spending bill kicking around which is just hand outs, freebies and pure pork.  With luck, that one will die quietly in a corner somewhere, and soon.

Fox News shows off their totally remodeled DC studio

 It looks cool.  Lots and lots of TV sets everywhere.  Painted a light shade of Landlord White.  The Fox people talked about all the fancy electronic stuff built in to their nice new studio.  I wondered if they had done anything about all the emergency vehicle sirens, gunshots, and other loud noises that kept interrupting the programming on their old studio.  Nobody said anything about that.

The Marksman, Liam Neeson 2021

 Not bad.  I Netflixed it and watched it today.  We meet Liam Neeson as a kinda washed up rancher on the Mexican border, so washed up that the bank is going to reclaim his ranch.  He is also very tough.  A mother and her 12 year old son make it on to his property, pursued by the cartel.  Liam opens the flick by shooting a coyote, he moves on to shooting a cartel member.  What thru one plot twist after another, he winds up headed for Chicago with the boy, Miguel.  They make it,  They kill the pursuing cartel members.  Sound man does the right thing and I can hear and understand all the dialog.  Camera man keeps the camera on a tripod and keeps the lights on.  

Not a bad flick, but not so good as to duplicate and keep.

A lotta talk about "over-the-horizon" operations

 This talk is mostly BS.  It is just photo recon flights, with camera's, talking pictures from 10,000 feet.  This works for large targets like cities and towns that cannot move.  The WWII 8th Air Force was able to find and bomb German cities from just overhead photos.  But you cannot find and strike smaller and mobile targets like enemy infantry, or enemy leadership.  Despite a lot of technological progress since WWII,  our " over-the=horizon" capabilities are no better than they were back in 1944.

  So when you hear Democrats talking about "over-the-horizon" operations on TV, know that you are hearing mostly happy talk, trying to make our pullout from Afghanistan sound less dreadful and less shameful than it really is. 

Congress is grilling the generals responsible for the Afghan disaster

 They been yakking for nearly an hour.  NOBODY has asked the key question, namely why did we not evacuate the civilians, Americans and our Afghan friends, BEFORE we pulled our troops out? 

Federal Government Shutdown? How bad? How likely?

 Last time, some years ago, don't remember just how many years, it wasn't all that bad for us just plain citizens.  Post office kept on delivering the mail.  The armed forces got paid. Air traffic control stayed on duty.  A fair number of bureaucrats got laid off for a couple of weeks.  I think that eventually got paid for the time they were out.  IRS workers got laid off, but that was no loss from my point of view, I wasn't expecting a tax refund, and I paid my income tax, by mail, on time.  The whole thing made you wonder just how many useless bureaucrats we are paying.  

  This time, I cannot tell if the CongressCritters will be able to pass a raise to debt ceiling.  In the Senate, just one Democrat deciding to vote against the debt ceiling raise would do the trick.  There might be some Democrats appalled by the deficit spending, on the other hand there might not be.  I cannot tell.  Things are a little looser in the house, the Democrats have a 5 vote majority.  I think Pelosi will be able to deliver the house for the Democrats.  

TV sounds

 My TV makes the sound of telephones ringing, electronic gadgets beeping, cats crying, sirens screaming, cars crashing and many more.  Each time I hear one of these sounds I stop, listen, and ask my self "Is that sound mine? Is it real? Should I answer my phone?"  PITA.  

   The TV people could help, by relocating their studios to a quieter part of of town so they don't have emergency vehicle sirens drowning out the newsie who is pontificating in front of the camera.