What is gonna happen in November?

 The Wall St Journal had two op ed pieces about this.  One piece by Daniel Henniger of the Journal and the other piece by Karl Rove, political advisor to George Bush.  Both of these guys have been in the business for a long time.  They usually get it right.  I trust them both. 

   They both think the democrats are gonna get creamed in November.  So do a lot of other political pundits, both the newspaper kind and the TV kind. 

   I am all in favor.  Far as I am concerned Biden is responsible for $4.25 a gallon for gasoline, 8.5% inflation, the disastrous bug out from Afghanistan last August, and shortages and outrageous prices at the grocery store. I hope the voters are sensible enough to vote a straight Republican ticket in November.  We need 10% margins in Congress to get anything done.  That is 40 house seats and 10 Senate seats. 

Let’s get that FBI warning off the DVDs

    Every DVD I play still has an image of the FBI’s badge above a copyright warning that threatens to sick the FBI on anyone who duplicates the disk or plays it over the air or some other obscure crimes.  Let’s be real, the FBI exists to investigate crimes and enemy spies, and over just the last few years they have been taken up investigating Republicans.  Copyright infringement of a DVD is a minor civil offense, which should be investigated at the copyright holder’s expense.  The FBI doesn’t have to time or the inclination to go after teenagers who duplicate DVDs. 

    And, the younger generation feels it is perfectly OK copy anything they like, music, movies, games, Mickey Mouse or whatever.  When they get old enough, they will vote against parties and politicians who support copyright law.  The Republicans could gain a foothold with the younger generation by supporting sensible copyright reform, such as copy right lasts for only 17 years, for music, movies, and Mickey Mouse.  The labels would scream and cry and threaten to hold their breath, but the labels don’t have the vote.  The younger generation does have the vote.

   At a minimum we could tell the labels that the FBI badge is copyright to the government and it will cost the labels $5 a DVD to use it. 

 May I offer my sincerest sympathies to the family of that brave Texas soldier who lost his life attempting to rescue some illegals crossing the Rio Grande.  That soldier should be awarded a medal.

Howitzer.

   Up til, or perhaps thru WWII artillery was composed of guns and howitzers.  Guns had longer barrels and longer range.  Howitzers were built the same as guns but had shorter barrels and could elevate them higher than guns.  The shorter barrel made them lighter and easier to move.  Forty five degrees of elevation gives best possible range for artillery. After WWII, since the pieces were mostly the same, parts would interchange, we stopped making much talk about the differences.  The 155mm (6 inch) howitzers we are sending to Ukraine can fire a 95 pound shell a tad more than 7 miles.  I am using figures from “Shells and Shooting” by Willy Ley published way back in 1942.  I am not aware of any technical improvements since then that would increase range or weight of shell much. 

   For artillery fire to do any good at seven miles you need recon to spot your target, and ideally a forward observer to report where the shells are falling and allowing the artillery to correct its aim.  Seven miles is a long way out for recon and a long way to push out forward observers.  The 7 mile range of the 155mm howitzers is probably plenty.

Election Strategy for Republicans

The woman’s vote is more important than the black vote, the Hispanic vote, the Asian American vote or any of the other groups.  Women are 50% of the population, which is more than all the blacks, all the Hispanics and all the Asians all put together.  Last couple of elections the Democrats won the woman’s vote by 10%.  That wins the election for Democrats, right there. 

  As a party we Republicans need to win the woman’s vote if we want to win the midterm elections in November.  Despite all the happy talk on the TV about a Republican year, if we don’t get the women to vote Republican, we are stuck with Democrats, including that clueless Biden.

   One thing to do, don’t talk about abortion.  Some woman are for it and some are against it and no matter what side a Republican takes it will hurt, not help.  If there are other issues we Republicans need to address, I don’t know what they might be.  There ought to be some pollsters who might know something.  We ought to find them and listen to what they have to say.

The homelessness crisis.

You can see video from California towns mostly showing streets, parks, vacant land anywhere full of tents.  This seems to work out in California where the winters are not too bad.  It doesn’t work in New Hampshire where the winter temperature can drop down well below zero and stay there for a week.  Nobody can live in a tent, be it unheated or even heated in that kind of weather. 

The problem has a number of angles to it.

   There is not enough housing, and little new housing is being built, and the existing housing is too expensive for ordinary people to afford.  This unfortunate state of affairs is caused by snob zoning.  Many many towns don’t want more housing, the residents think the town is too big as is and they don’t want it to grow bigger.  So they zone for nothing but single family houses, on quarter acre lots.  They zone out apartment houses, trailer parks, and “tiny” houses.  The only fix I can think of are state laws restricting the powers of town zoning boards. 

   There are a lot of unemployed people.  When you are unemployed, you cannot afford any kind of housing.  One part of our unemployment problem comes for having a lot of citizens who lack any usable skills, who cannot get to work on time, and who cannot come in to work every day, or have criminal records, or are drug addicts.  In short they are not employable. This is the result of the failure of the public schools to teach any thing of value and who waste time on lefty things like Critical Race Theory.  We could try remedial operations like the CCC camps we used to run back in the Franklin Roosevelt years.  Such a camp would take in anyone, give them three square meals a day, give them 40 hours a week of work, and offer medical care for any problems the campers might have.  The work might be kinda low end like picking up trash along public roads, raking leaves, or shoveling snow.  It might be things like digging needed drainage, or clearing land for farming or building.On the other hand CCC campers mostly created the Cannon Mountain ski area back in the 1930s.

  And we need to reduce the number of drug addicts.  Right now a lot of doctors prescribe opioids to everyone who comes in their door.  Some states have opioids prescribed in 75% to 85% of   all office visits.  That is ridiculous.  I have lived a long life, I have gone to the doctor’s numerous times, and just once, after a tooth extraction, did the dentist proscribe Percoset for me.  And the patients find the opioids make them feel good.  When the prescription runs out they start to buy street drugs, which are a lot cheaper than prescription drugs.  We need to clap down on doctor’s proscribing practices.  We also need to spread the word that street drugs are souped up with fentanyl.  About 20% of street drugs have enough fentanyl in them to kill you.

Biden offers to spend $6 billion on nuclear power.

 Good idea.  I am surprised that he got the idea past his greenie backers/controllers. Greenies have been against nuclear power, fearing that nuclear reactors can turn into nuclear bombs and kill them all.

  Greenies also fear that CO2 in the atmosphere will cause global warming and fry us all.  This is not actually a problem; the atmosphere already contains a hundred times as much water vapor a CO2, as strong a greenhouse gas s CO2, so a puny 400 ppm of CO2 is not going to make much of a difference. 

   Good thing about nuclear power is it is there when we need it, after dark and on windless days.