Words of the Weasel, Part 31

From The Economist.  "Earlier this year private sector bond holders reduced their nominal claims by more than 50%".
How nice and cooperative that sounds.  In actual fact the Greeks gave lenders a 75% haircut.
The Economist went on to urge canceling more Greek debt and lending them more money.  After all ,  the poor things cannot improve their economy with out lots of foreign investment.   Wouldn't we all like to lend them more money?

Grasping at Straws

Wall St Journal, back pages, "US Unit takes Permanent Posting In Poland".  A 10 man USAF detachment is assigned to Lask, Poland. The Poles are ecstatic to have a real US military detachment to their soil.  They hope that even the tiniest US deployment to their territory will ward off a Russian invasion.
   There is a color picture.  Shows ten of USAF enlisted men, commanded by a major standing around on a Polish air base.  Pretty small command for a major.  I commanded better than a hundred men as a second lieutenant. Good old USAF, a lot of the men have their hands in their pockets, only a few of them are wearing gloves. Most of them are wearing service caps (wheel hats) and wearing them poorly.  Others are wearing flight caps.  A couple of Polish officers are welcoming them.  The Poles are wearing insignia on their collars that look like American sergeant's stripes.  In the background we have a C-130 transport plane with "Polish Air Force" lettered on the fuselage, in big letters,  in English. 
    After a generation of Polish jokes in USAF, you would think the Poles would come up with something else to put on their planes.   "Air Force of Poland" would sound a lot better. 

Demographics vs Republicans

The Wall St Journal ran some interesting numbers about the election yesterday.  Percentage of population for various politically interesting groups and the percent of Romney votes in each group.  Many of the groups have overlap, such as college graduates and women.  About half of all college graduates are women and so there is lot of overlap.  And we are missing some groups like blacks,Jews, and  veterans. 
But notice that the big groups like woman and whites contribute a lot more votes than the little groups like Hispanics, who have been getting a lot of attention from the chattering classes. If Romney had attracted 10% more women's votes like Obama did, he would be president today.
   Republicans are gonna do something to try and win next time.  They oughta do something to get more women to vote for them.  That's the way numbers point.  

Group	Group Size	Voted Romney	Total Romney Vote
Whites	72%	61%	43.9%
Women	53%	45%	23.9%
College Grad	48%	50%	24.0%
Mid Income	32%	54%	17.3%
Independents	28%	55%	15.4%
The Young	19%	40%	7.6%
Union Homes	18%	42%	7.6%
Hispanics	10%	29%	2.9%

Rough Neighborhoods

Aviation Week reports on a bombing raid outside of Khartoum, Sudan back on 24 October of this year.  Satellite photos in the article show before and after.  Before shows a bunch of containers (the ship carried sort) neatly stacked in a yard.  After shows a huge crater in the same yard, no sign of any containers.  Locals reported jet aircraft noises just before the place blew up around midnight.  Explosions and fires raged for hours.  The containers are believed to have held some 200 tons of munitions bound for Gaza or the Sinai peninsula.
   No comment from Israel.
   Rough neighborhood.  Back in 2007  the al- Kibar Syrian nuclear reactor was bombed flat.  In 2009 and Iranian truck convoy in Sudan met with a high explosive mishap while crossing the desert.  Stuxnet went to work back in 2007 and wasn't detected until 2010.  In 2011 a Hamas arms smuggler in Port Sudan was killed from the air. In 2012 electric power lines to Iran's nuclear facilities were bombed.
   No one has claimed credit for any of this.  No comments from Israel either.
   When your existance is threatened, take steps.

Impulse Drive under development in China

Captain Kirk called it impulse drive.  Larry Niven's stories called it a reactionless thruster.   A device that makes thrust without throwing propellant out the rocket nozzle.  Pure science fiction.   Until Aviation Week ran a story this week about the "Emdrive".
   It started back in 2001 when a British inventor named Roger Shawyer set up a company to develop the drive aided by a grant from the British government.  Needless to say, a number of people denounced the concept as quackery.   Shawyer built a prototype that produced 85 milli newtons (1/4 ounce) of thrust from an input 300 watts of microwave power.  A Chinese research group claimed an improved model developed  720 milli newtons (2.5 ounces) of thrust from 2.5 KW of input microwave power.
    Boeing's "Phantom Works"  took a look at the device some years ago, but is no longer pursuing the approach and Shawyer's government funding has gone away.
   If it works, it's pure science fiction, and the door to interplanetary space craft.  Aviation Week is a sober industry magazine.
   Except for now and then.  Aviation Week ran a story about a secret US project that built a single stage ground to orbit space craft on their cover some ten years ago.
    Very Interesting.  Believe as much as you like. 
 

De Tocqueville can be really gloomy.

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”

Alexis de Tocqueville.  Democracy in America

Bummer, Four More Years

Every thing I might say has already been said, ad infinitum. I guess the voters want four more years of the same.  Too bad, I thought Americans were smarter than that.