We need to do more than alert homebased units.

 The Biden administration is breaking their arms patting themselves on their backs for putting 8500 state side troops on alert for movement to eastern Europe.  We should have deployed them already.  The Russians have 100,000 of their soldiers on the Ukraine border, camping out in the snow.  Compared to that 8500 men in the US doesn't seem like much.  The Russians ought to know that unprovoked attacks on US forces can make the American's go wild and crazy.  Ask the Japanese about this.  Korea and 9-11 are other examples. 

  If we stationed a full US armored division in Ukraine, the Russians would not dare attack.

 

Tom Brady.

Farewell Tom Brady.  I am a casual Boston football fan, but I always watch the Superbowl when the New England Patriots are playing.  I clearly remember those Superbowl games where you got the ball and made a pass.  Connected, made another pass and another pass and marched the Patriots down the field to a goal.  Again and again in the same game.  Wonderful. 

  You are entitled to retire.  I wish you and your family all the best.  You gave us New England fans a wonderful show. 

No American should vote for democrats.

 The Democrats brought us Joe Biden.  The nominated him, they voted for him.  Democrats gave us Kamala Harris, who is so bad that nobody wants to impeach Biden, because that would give us Kamala as president.  Biden gave us the shameful cut and run from Afghanistan.  He gave us $3.50 gasoline.  He gave us the worst inflation in forty years.   He has promised to nominate a black woman for the Supreme Court, which sounds both racist and sexist to me.  

   Democrats brought us De Blasio for mayor of New York.  And Alvin Bragg for DA in Manhattan.  And Nasty Pelosi and Chuckie the Schumer and AOC and the Squad in Congress.

   All Americans should vote a straight Republican ticket.   

Outlaw gas stoves.

Just read something about the greenies wanting to outlaw gas stoves.  They think gas stoves emit too much carbon dioxide.  Typical greenie idea.  They don’t realize that the electricity for an electric stove has to be generated.  Power plants are only 40% efficient.  Only 40% of the heat energy goes into making electricity, the other 60% goes into the electric plant cooling system.  Whereas 100% of the heat energy of the natural gas going into a gas stove winds up heating the meal.  With electric stoves the power plant has to burn 1.6 times as much fuel to put the same amount of heat into the meal than a gas stove uses.

    As a rule of thumb, appliances that heat something, your home, your hot water, your kitchen stove all are more efficient (burn less fuel) if they work by burning a fuel in your house.  Electric appliances have to take a 60% fuel loss back at the power plant.

   I think the greenies are just looking for something else to do.  Something else to make life more difficult and expensive for us regular citizens.  Many greenies want to force all of us to live the Hiawatha life style, no central heating, cook over a wood fire in a tepee.  Camping out is fun in the summer.  Winter up here is different. 

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

 We got 6 3/4 inches of snow from yesterday's snow storm.  Nice fluffy powder.  It's cold, I have 1F up here in Mittersill. Ski is clear and blue, sun is out.  TV weatherman promises some warming over the week, getting up to 40F on Friday. 

Federal Reserve ought to raise US interest rates tomorrow. Don’t wait til March.

 The Fed’s primary job ought to be keeping the economy growing.  Making money available to buy inventory, build new factories, hire more workers, raise their pay, finance building new aircraft, new cars and trucks, new ships, new railroad rolling stock.  Part of this is keeping prices stable.  If companies and people get the idea that the dollar will be worth less tomorrow, they will buy stuff today, before the price goes up.  Resulting demand will raise prices because the supply side isn’t big enough to supply everybody’s wants today.

 

Unfortunately the Fed usually sees it’s job as to keep the stock market speculators speculating.  They borrow money to buy stocks, running up the price of the stock.  Then they sell.  For this to work, the Fed has to make borrowing money reasonable cheap.  And stock speculation does not grow companies or hire more workers.  We don’t need it.

 

Better would be a Fed policy to keep prices stable, and money for real economic purposes available.  If this means interest rates so high that stock speculation becomes a loser, tough. 

I don’t know if we would do things like that today.

Way back in the 1950’s USAF had Convair design the “ultimate interceptor” for homeland air defense.  In those days the big worry was Russian bombers flying over the North Pole and nuking our cities.  ICBM's were still experimental in those days. In the search for an interceptor to stop the Russians,  Convair had already struck out once with the F102, which was nowhere near fast enough.  The best the poor old Deuce could do was Mach 1.2.  Convair’s political connections were excellent in those days, and USAF gave them a second chance.  Hughes Aircraft got the contract for the radar fire control in the F106 project.  When the red tape unwound, Convair got paid $8 million apiece for the airframe and engine, and Hughes got paid $8 million apiece for MA-1 radar fire control. 

   At this time, everyone wanted a missile armament, 50 cal machine guns were considered old school, WWII stuff.  Years later Viet Nam would change minds on this issue and guns came back into style.  Anyhow, the F106 carried two heat seeking guided missiles, two radar seeking guided missiles, and a single MB-1 Genie nuclear war headed unguided missile.  No guns of any kind. The nuclear warhead was of about the same yield as the one we used on Hiroshima only ten years earlier and the tremendous blast would make up for any minor errors in aim.  In actual fact, the blast from an MB-1 warhead would have done serious damage to anything on the ground as well.  Nobody talked about that.  Today, with the voters far more sensitive to issues of radiation, fallout, and blast damage, I don’t think the nuclear idea would fly.  I never heard that any of the later USAF fighters carried nukes. The F106’s in my squadron were built between 1957 and 1960.  They remained in service into the 1980’s.