Where has all the Gas Mileage Gone?

Wall St Journal was explaining about the differences between EPA fuel mileage and actual fuel mileage.  For instance Ford Fusion was EPA rated at 28 mpg, but Consumer Reports, and owners, reported actual mileage of 24 mpg.
   Talk about puny fuel mileage.  My '99 Cadillac DeVille (V8 boat) could do 32 mpg highway and 27 overall.  Why cannot a teeny weeny econocar with a wimpy motor do better than a full size Caddy with a real engine?  
    Ford could take lessons from Caddy.  I finally replaced the beloved '99 Caddy with a 2005 Mercury Grand Marquis.  Last of the Detroit V8 boats.  With exactly the same size engine, the Mercury can only do 23 mpg and has a lot less power than the Caddy had. 

Immigration policy for Republicans

America needs immigrants.  We as a nation are not bearing enough children to maintain our population.  This is bad.  It takes a large population to continue to be the superpower.  We need young workers to keep the economy running as the senior generation retires.  And to support all those retirees.  China and Japan are showing what happens to a nation's demographics when birthrates decline.
   Immigrants fill in for the lack of native born children, and once inside the US, they tend to have more children than native born so they keep the birthrate up. Immigrants make the most loyal US citizens, they know how good things are in the US and how much better off they are as US citizens than as citizens of where ever they came from.   
  Since we have created something pretty good here in America, everybody in the world would like to live here.  So we can afford to be choosy about who we let in.  We want young immigrants who will take jobs, pay taxes, raise families, stay out of trouble and contribute to the American society.  We want immigrants with skills and advanced education; technicians, plumbers, electricians, medical doctors, engineers and scientists.  We don't want so many immigrants that they swamp the native born and change the character of the country.
  Our population is 300 million last time I checked.  We could surely admit a mere one million immigrants a year without diluting the essence of America.  Each would be immigrant is ranked, so many points for a STEM degree, so many points for being young, for being married, for speaking English, for having minor children, for having a company job offer, and so on.  We admit the top scoring one million applicants, every one else waits til next year. 
   Then we need to do something about the 10 or 11 million illegal immigrants inside the country.  Right now these people are outlaws.  They don't dare go to the police when they are robbed, assaulted, swindled, or cheated.  They don't even dare take out a public library card.  Each time they drive they are in fear of a minor traffic stop getting them fired and deported.   Most of 'em work hard, stay out of trouble and out of sight.  They would make fine hard working citizens.  Keeping them outlaws certainly doesn't accord with Jefferson's notion that all men are created equal. 
  I don't have the heart to deport them all.   Keeping them on as outlaws is offensive to my sense of right and wrong.
  Which gets around to the business of legalizing them.  Was it me, I'd give anyone who has stayed out of trouble a green card, permission to work and live in the US.  I'd offer real citizenship (right to vote, eligibility for social security and medicare) to  anyone willing to jump thru a few more hoops. 
  

Cannon Mt ski weather.

More woe.  It stayed at 50 all day yesterday and last night.  It rained a lot overnight.  It's still warm and rainy this morning.  The lawn is all green again. 

Cannon Mt. Ski weather

Woe to the snow.  It's 50 degrees and raining lightly.  Forecasts are for more of the same.  They canceled snow making last night on account of warmth.
 

Rustling amid the Grass Roots

This morning I sent the following e-mail to both my Senators, Jeanne Shaheen and Kelly Ayotte.

Dear Senator,  

   Please vote against any “assault weapons” law.  There are no objective differences between deer rifles and “assault rifles”.  An “assault weapons ban” in real life is an attempt to ban everything that shoots. 

   Please vote against making the current background checks more onerous.  Background checks are a way for bureaucrats to deny citizens the right to purchase firearms.  Background checks are a way for creating a government list of guns and gun owners.  Such a list can be used to confiscate citizen’s guns or target them for harassment. 

   America remains one of the last countries of freedom and liberty on Earth.  We prize that and want to keep it that way.  Since colonial times armed citizens have defended the land against Indian raiders, Caribbean pirates, and Redcoats, to name a few.  As late as 1940, Japanese Admiral Yamamoto said “To invade the United States is impossible.  There would be a rifleman behind every blade of grass.”

   Armed citizens stop a great amount of crime.  Criminals know that citizens will shoot to kill in self defense.  They also know that many citizens have arms.  A large number of would be criminals are unwilling to risk their lives for small gains.

  The massacre in Connecticut was horrible.  It was committed by a homicidal maniac.  Depriving honest citizens of access to firearms won’t stop homicidal maniacs in the future; in fact it will encourage them.

--

David J. Starr

Blog:  http://www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com

Bombing the Syrian reactor

Elliot Abrams, long time man about the state department, writing in Commentary about the Syrian reactor.  Way back in 2007, the Israelis asked the Bush administration to receive Meir Dagan, chief of Mossad, at the White House.  The Bush people asked  Dagan to make his presentation to the National Security Adviser, Stephan Hadley, Elliot Abrams, and Dick Cheney. 
   Dagan's presentation was explosive.  The Syrians were building a nuclear reactor from North Korean plans, with North Korean technical assistance. 
   Revelation of this hot potato led to a series of joint US-Israeli meeting on what to do. Options were military (air raid)  or diplomatic (UN security council).  Somehow Washington managed to keep this super juicy secret secret.  Finally Bush decided to go the diplomatic route.  The Israelis told Bush that going to the UN was unacceptable to them and they would have to act. 
     A couple of months later, the Israeli Air Force blew the reactor to bits.  Afterwards Bush told the Israelis that he understood.  Both the Americans and the Israelis said nothing about a reactor as the target of the Israeli air strike.  Neither did the Syrians.  The Syrians just bulldozed the bomb craters and the wreckage flat and pretended that nothing had happened. 
   I wonder if the Israeli's will dare to share such intelligence with the Obama administration when Iran's turn comes up.  Or will they figure Obama will leak it to the press?
Come to think of it, there was a mysterious explosion at an Iranian nuclear facility a few days ago.  Wonder who knew about that one.

787 battery fires

A front page piece in the Wall St Journal on the 787 battery problems.  After three weeks of investigating they haven't been able (or willing) to point a finger at the problem.  "Laboratory tests have not produced any 'significant findings'". 
  There is one interesting fact that has not been published.  There were battery chargers aboard those two 787s.  Did they survive the fires?  If so, are they working properly now?  When bench tested, did they pass all requirements properly?
The battery charger takes electricity from the aircraft generators and charges the batteries at the right rate and stops charging when the batteries reach full charge. Failure of the battery charger can overcharge the batteries which can cause the fires.  If the battery chargers are OK, then it points a finger at the battery itself.  If the battery charger is defective, then that points the finger elsewhere.
   Meanwhile Boeing and Boeing's customers are loosing money.