Newsies love the Veepstakes

Endless TV time talking about who will be Romney's VP.   It's a simple topic, easily understood by journalism school grads.  It doesn't mean much, this election is a showdown on Obama and Obamacare, doesn't much matter who Romney picks for VP.  Romney won't say anything until the right time, because there is no gain in announcing his pick early.  This story doesn't need any research, all you have to do is get one or more talking heads on camera to pontificate. 
   But the newsies think people will watch stories on the Veepstakes, the stories are easy and cheap to do, and so we get a lot of them.

If Obama had balls, he woulda taken Bin Ladin alive

They could have done it.  Jumped Bin Ladin and loaded him into a chopper.  Alive, he surely had intelligence that we needed. Nobody would whine about waterboarding Bin Ladin.   A patriotic judiciary (any of those left around?) would have put Bin Ladin on trial, on TV, in an orange jumpsuit and shiny handcuffs.  We could have done some good work convincing the rest of the world that Bin Ladin is a no-good-nick who deserved what we were gonna give him. 
  But Obama didn't want to take a chance on bat brained US judges turning Bin Ladin loose on a technicality, so he told the SEALS to whack him.  Courageous that is.

Coulda Woulda Shoulda

Watched Meet the Press this morning.  New Democratic line.  " Romney would not have OK'ed the Bin Ladin raid."   Really.  And how do you all know that? 
   Then there as a lot of stuff about how fearless and brave Obama was for OK'ing the raid.  I don't buy much of that either.  What really happened is some operational types (shooters) decided that  they knew where OBL was and they thought they could hit him.  They went up thru the chain of command to get approval.  They obviously made a good enough case to convince  the chain of command to let them go ahead. 

How Europe is dealing?

The weak Euro countries found that no one would buy their bonds, not at an affordable rate anyhow.  All these countries had to sell bonds 'cause they were spending more money than tax revenues were bringing in.  They all started wailing and crying, 'cause not paying wages and pensions really upsets people.  Some of the small ones got bailed out (Iceland, Ireland, Greece)  The bigger ones are so big that nobody, not even Germany, has that kind of money.  
   So the European Common Bank gave everyone a Christmas present last Christmas.  The ECB is like the US Fed, in that it can print Euro's.  As many Euro's as it likes.  So ECB offered European banks the opportunity to borrow (at low rates) some trillion or more Euros.  The Euro banks lapped it up, and borrowed all the Euro's offered.  This made the banks happy, they had cash in the till.  It made ECB sorta happy in that every bank in Europe owed them money, and less happy 'cause putting a trillion Euros into the economy makes prices of everything go up. 
    So, with freshly printed Euros clogging their cash drawers what do the European banks do with the money?  Well, they didn't make loans to industry to expand production.  No, they bought up Euro government bonds, 'cause the governments were offering really fat returns, AND under Euro accounting rules, government bonds, (sovereign debt) are "risk free" (governments always pay their debts 'cause they can always raise taxes to get the money).   Banks don't have to hold cash in reserve for risk free deals.  They can loan it all out, and get higher returns.
    Apparently a trillion Euros doesn't go far these days.  In the 90 days since the great Euro loan, all of it was spent.  And now it's gone, and the weak Euro governments are still in a jam.  They are still spending more than they take in, so they HAVE to sell bonds lest their checks bounce.  Other than Euro banks, nobody else wants to buy shaky looking Euro bonds.  The Euro banks are out of money again, and the Euro economy is not growing at all.
   Good luck, you're gonna need it over there.

Winter hangs tough in the North Country

It's snowing up here, again.  And I was going to do some more lawn work.  Guess I'll wait til the snow stops.

"Revered institution"

Used by an NPR radio commentator about the Secret Service.  I wonder what planet that reporter comes from.  The Secret Service used to be thought of as competent and brave, but not revered.  The US Marine Corps is a revered institution,  the Secret Service is merely OK.

NASA. Lost in Space

Or somewhere.  Having phased out the Space Shuttle and flown surviving orbiters off to museums, NASA finds that we have no way to get astronauts up to the International Space Station.   NASA is buying tickets to the ISS from the Russians, at $20 million a seat. 
   Sometime we ought to have our own transportation into space.  We have two good booster rockets, the SpaceX Falcon 9 and  the United Launch Association's Atlas 5.  Both rockets are real,  have flown many missions, and have plenty of power to boost a minivan load of astronauts up to the ISS.  But NASA and Congress (Senators Kay Bailey Hutchenson and Richard Shelby)  are "investing" in yet a third rocket booster, the "Space Launch Vehicle" (SLS).
   This is a black hole money sink.  The SLS offers nothing that the existing Falcon and Atlas boosters don't already have.  But a new rocket will require dozens of test flights and years of fiddling around.  A rocket is made up of a zillion parts, all of which get really stressed hard during flight.  Despite the best efforts of the engineers,  a few of those zillion parts will break and the rocket will be destroyed.  Only after figuring out what broke after each rocket failure, and beefing it up,  for the next flight, can we then find the next part that will break under load.  By experience, we know that it takes 20-40 disasters, before a good flight is achieved. 
   Falcon and Atlas have aready gone thru all this pain, the weak spots have been found and fixed, and both of them fly dependably now.  That cost a lot of money.  Now that we have two working boosters, NASA should use them. 
   Instead, NASA pushed by a pork loving Congress, and full of the good old Not-Invented-Here syndrome is pouring taxpayer money into an unneeded third booster.  The same money would move more cargo  using existing boosters.
  Then we have the same trick going on with crew capsules.  SpaceX has already flown their Dragon capsule and NASA wanted to fund private development of a second capsule.  Instead, Congress wants NASA to develop inhouse the "Orion" capsule.   Again NASA ought to use the existing flight tested Dragon capsule just because it's ready and it works. 
  Granted, capsule development ain't as hard as booster development.  Boosters have to handle tons of explosive cyrogenic fuels, withstand  fierce thrust, and provide perfect autopilot performance.  If anything goes wrong the explosion is in the kilotons of yield range.  Capsules just have to hold air, and hang onto their heat shield.  Much easier engineering proposition. 
   Want to bet some gutsy contractor would be able to fly astronauts to the ISS right now, using an existing booster and the existing capsule?  And do it for less than the Russki's are charging for a SINGLE astronaut flown to the ISS?  All it would take is some funding.