How deep does the sequester cut?

Pretty deep. At least according to Aviation Week.


                                                   US Military Power
                             1988                    Today                  After Sequester 2021

Army Divisions       20                        10                       6
Air Force Fighters  2788                     1493                  1157
Navy Ships             588                       275                    228

In 1988 we had 20 Army divisions.  Today we have 10. After a bit more sequestering we will be down to 6.  That's not enough to do Iraq again.  A division is 15,000 men.  Six divisions is 90,000 men.  We put 130,000 men into Iraq, without pulling our 50,000 troops out of Korea or Germany.  With only 6 divisions, we could no longer deal with regional threats like Iran.
    I feel less worried about the Air Force.  A thousand fighters is a lot, especially now that they all carry smart bombs.  One sortie with smart bombs, that hit the target, is worth hundreds of sorties with iron bombs that mostly miss. 
    Dunno what to say about the Navy.  Now that the Soviets are gone, we don't have any enemies with fleets.  But the Chinese are clearly interested in building up a real navy. 

Red Sox Win the World Series!

Hurrah.  Everyone in Boston, and in the Boston States (most of New England) is overflowing with joy.  A fine time was had by all.
  It's impressive that we can derive so much fun and joy from such a simple low tech event.  The game hasn't changed in any important way since the Civil War.  Especially as most kids are brought up playing soccer instead of Little League baseball. 
   Go Sox

Grilling Sibelius

Congressional hearing with Secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sibelius as witness.  Big house committee with lots of members, each one waiting for his moment of fame on TV.  Sibelius was evasive, and ducked and weaved.  She was clearly attempting to reveal as little as possible.  Democratic reps spend the morning thinking up softball questions to give her a break.  Republicans were unable to stay on topic long enough to really nail her down on anything.  The Democrats are totally into Obamacare and are defending it to the death.  A lot of Republicans opened their remarks by reading letters of insurance cancellation from their constituents.  There is a lot of that going around, Humana cancelled my Medicare Advantage last week. Sibelius did admit that a full up system security test had never been run.  That's scary.  Figure everything you put into Healthcare.gov is available to every hacker, including your social security number, your address, home phone, and medical history.   They got under Sibelius' skin when they asked why she, the head of Obamacare, was NOT on Obamacare herself.  Good question.  Apparently we did manage to force the Congress onto Obamacare, but the executive has skated, and stayed with their cushy gov'mint health insurance. 
   Anyhow everyone had a good time yelling at each other.  Little real information came out of it.  

Why the Obamacare Website is flaky

Because Sibelius's HHS bureaucrats decided that they could play system integrator.  System integration is a VERY difficult task, its taking pieces of code from different programmers and getting them to play nicely with each other, and testing the entire system to make sure it  works, doesn't crash, and gives the right answers.  I have done this in my past life.  It's the trickiest part of getting a software product running. 
  Commercial practice is to have the system engineer of the prime contractor to do this.  Until the system passes system acceptance test, the prime contractor doesn't get paid.
   HHS decided to play the prime contractor role themselves.  A job which they are totally unfitted for.  You need programming experience and leadership experience on at least a couple of big software jobs to gain the necessary experience to integrate even a kid's game program, let alone something as as big and tricky as Obamacare. 
   They should have selected a competent contractor (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, someone with a national rep) to serve as prime.  Selection should have been by sealed bid.  Lowest bidder gets the job.  With the government retaining the right to disqualify bidders who clearly don't have the right stuff.  The winning prime contractor gets to select what ever subcontractors he likes.  The prime doesn't get paid until the system passes system acceptance test, so he will be careful to select sub contractors who know what they are doing. 
   HHS bureaucrats probably selected subcontractors from a list of Obama supporters. 

The Problem with NSA

It's not that they tapped Angela Merkel's phone, it's that they couldn't keep it secret.  America has long profited from  snooping.  H.O. Yardley's black chamber decrypted everyone' diplomatic cables from the Washington Naval Conference in the 1920's.  The American delegates, armed with Yardley's decrypts, were able to make the conference come out favorable to US and British interests, not so favorable to the Japanese.  Breaking the Japanese "purple" cypher in WWII led to decisive victory at Midway, and the killing of Japanese admiral Yamamoto. 
  But we were able to keep these deals secret.
  Today, NSA issues clearances to flakes like Snowden, and when they flake out and spill all, it hurts.  It's not all about technology.  People count too.
   It's also about need-to-know.  Snowden was given access to a whole bunch of stuff that he had no business seeing.  So was Bradley Manning. 

Coming from behind

Someone in Missouri is doing a web poll on the most famous Missourian.  This morning, some MD who invented "osteopathy" was on top.  This afternoon Robert A. Heinlein has pulled ahead, partly from a mention on Instapundit.   Anyhow, now is the time for all you Heinlein fans to go to the Missouri website and vote for the Grand Master. 

Hacking your electric company

National Geographic will air a TV docudrama where in enemy hackers cause electric power failures nationwide.  With the juice out, water systems stop delivering water, cell phones stop celling, gasoline pumps won't pump, freezers thaw out, the Internet goes off the air, along with TV and radio.  Wired phones may last longer, but don't count on it.  In short, Western Civilization crumbles.
   One simple rule would prevent this.  No control signals of any kind may be transmitted over the public internet or the plain old telephone system (POTS).  Companies must be required to string private wires, preferably optical fibers for all remote control and monitoring. 
    Reason.  Connect anything to the public internet, and every hacker on the planet has access to it.  All the hacker needs is to learn the control codes and he can order the remote controled machinery to do anything he likes, go off line, shut down, blow up, you name it.  Whereas  with a private line, the hacker has to get a ladder and climb a pole to tap into it.  Fiber optic is even better, you cannot tap fiber optics, you would have to cut the fiber, insert a splitter, and then rejoin the cut fiber.  Few hackers will climb a pole, let alone splice optical fiber.  And you have to be there, you cannot climb an American pole from your basement in Lower Slobbovia. 
    Companies won't like this, it's expensive.  Using the public internet or POTS is free, where as a private line costs you, for installation and maintenance.  The power companies won't  comply unless the public utility commissions demand it. 
   If they don't,  better check out your backup generator.