New Hampshire TV debate

So I watched it.  This one was organized by the Union Leader.  One Union Leader reporter did all the interviewing.  He called each candidate up on stage, one by one, and asked a few questions.  The questions weren't bad, better than back in 2012.  The candidates did not get a chance to speak to each other, it was strictly one on newsie interviewing. 
   Trump didn't come. 
   Nobody made a gaffe.  They all looked good, sounded good, gave perfectly reasonable answers.  Nobody looked much different from all the others.  Nobody announced any substantive policy. 
   Actually, the reason we watch these things is the same reason people go to bullfights.  If someone is going to get gored, we don't want to miss it.  Well, nobody got gored last night, so much for seeing blood flow. 
   On to Fox on Thursday night. 

Everything takes forever to do

Happy home hobby crafting to you.   I had a sticky closet door.  Been sticky for years.  But under my New Year's resolution to do something nice for the house everyday, I figured it was time to fix this sticky door.
    Right.  Plan A, take the hinge pins out, carry the door down to the shop and plane it down to fit. Keeps the sawdust and plane shavings in the shop, rather than all over the bedroom.  So, I took a punch and a hammer to drive out the hinge pins.   Surprise, the damn hinge pins would not budge.  I broke the punch trying to drive them out. 
   Right, move on to Plan B,  use my ancient belt sander to sand down the door in place, spreading sanding dust far and wide across the bedroom. 
  Step 1, change the sanding belt from a fine grit, used to sharpen knives, to a coarse grit to cut rapidly thru softwood.  OK, I remembered the trick to loosen to belt, push hard on the front roller and it will lock into a retracted position and the old belt comes off.
 Step 2.  Could not for the life of me remember the trick to unlock the front roller and tension the belt for use.   Got on the internet and wasted an hour looking for the manualon the sander.  No joy.  But I did stumble across some one who said the trick to unlock the roller was to whack it with  a hammer.  That actually worked. 
Step 3.  Get a kitchen chair to stand on to hold the sander to the top of the door.  Give it some juice, and lo and behold, it cuts.  And  the door actually closes for the first time in many years. 
Step the last.  Return all the tools to the shop.  Vacuum up the sawdust.  Vacuum down all the cobwebs in the corners of the room.  And so, another home project is done.  Damn this is tiresome.  

Words of the Weasel Part 44

"Holistic"   nice sounding but meaningless adjective applied to all sorts of things.  "A holistic approach" is a favorite usage.   Figure that user's of "holistic" don't really know what they are talking about. 

The gun doesn't work, but the F35 is combat ready

The Marines announced that the first 12 aircraft F35 squadron is now combat ready.   There is a long list of technical problems, needed software upgrades, but the Marines say that what they have is good enough to fly combat.  Nothing was said about the engine flex problem.  When the F35 pulls Gs the whole engine flexes, allowing the compressor blades to rub on the engine casing.  One F35 was destroyed in the resulting engine fire.  They didn't say, but I suspect they have limited the amount of G the aircraft can pull.  The gun is supposed to start working after some more software upgrades. 

Mark Steyn on The Donald

Mark Steyn was on Fox this afternoon.  He said Trump's appeal comes from failure of the Republican establishment.  The grass root republicans came out in 2010 and 2014 and elected a solid Republican majority in Congress.  But the Republicans haven't done anything now that they control both houses of Congress.  They haven't gotten Keystone XL thru.  They haven't taken any scalps at the IRS.  The EPA is still killing jobs from coast to coast. They haven't slammed the door on illegal immigration.  Plus a lot of other things.  Trump sounds like he will fix some or all of these failures.  The Republican base likes that.  They have little use for the RINO establishment. 
   Steyn makes a lot of sense here.  I think he is onto something. 

Dawn over Marblehead

According to this, the IMF has decided that a third bailout for Greece would be a waste of money.   Jeez, took 'em long enough to see the light.  The noise from Europe is when the IMF backs out, so does every one else.  All the Greek  bailout will do is finance the Greeks in paying off some of their fantastic international debt.  It would be cheaper just to stop bailing Greece, let the Greeks default on their loans, and learn to run a balanced budget.  All that debt was run up by Greeks spending more than they take in with taxes.  Time to stop subsidizing them, Greece can learn to cut spending and hike taxes just like a real country.  And the banking idiots who loaned the money deserve to take a good solid loss.  Maybe that will learn 'em. 

Ant Man

It was hot last night, so I decided to beat the heat with an air conditioned movie.  It's new, it's getting good box office sales.  It's a Marvel comic book movie.  It has a handsome superhero, a slightly mad scientist (Michael Douglas), and the scientist's beautiful daughter.  It has a lot of CGI, explosions, and deeds of derring do.   The beautiful daughter spends a good deal of time attempting to straighten out her father (guess how that works out) and beat some sense into handsome hero AntMan.  This works out better for her, and by the last reel they are on the verge of proposing marriage, or maybe they do propose, I might have missed that part.  Handsome hero is a divorcee, with a little daughter who adores him, even if mom has custody and is being sticky about visitation.  It's cute.   Antman comics came out long after I stopped reading comic books, so I cannot said how well the movie tracks the books.
Good movie for kids, at least kids of 6 or 7 years or more.  Younger kids may not "get it". 
    And it is NOT three D, a blessing.