Obama does an Op-Ed in the WSJ

Nice big half a page with am illustration Op Ed piece.  "Protecting US Innovation From Cyberthreats". Sound great.  Only trouble is, the Op-Ed contains zilch about protecting anything.  Lotta nice empty words, typical Obama speak, but nothing of substance.  He does promise to spend money,  $19 billion on the "Cyber Security National Action Plan" what ever that might be.  And another $3 billion on federal IT.  And a new bureaucrat,  the Chief Information Security Officer, salary unspecified.  And another unfunded effort to "build a corps of cyber professionals" to "push best practices at every level".   And a new "cyber security Center of Excellence".  And a new "bipartisan Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity".
   Does anyone really think adding more bureaucrats, more funding, and more bureaucracy is gonna keep the hackers out?
   The real situation is this.  Any computer connected to the public internet or the public phone system is vulnerable to invasion and plundering.  Windows computers are ten time more  vulnerable than any other sort of computer.  We must never store valuable information on computers connected to the public internet.  And we should never store valuable information on any sort of Windows computer. They are like Swiss cheese, full of holes.  If we made this nation wide policy we would be a helova lot more secure than we are now.
   Obama doesn't understand any of this.  In fact I doubt that Obama knows how to boot up his laptop. 

I just voted in the NH primary

Turnout is heavy.  Down at Franconia town hall, the parking lot is full.  I've been doing elections at town hall for quite a few years and that's as busy as I have ever seen things.  I voted at mid morning, in between the vote-on-the-way-to-work rush and the vote-over-lunch-hour  rush.  Secretary of State's office is predicting a heavy turnout, and I think they have it right. 
  The Republican ballot had 30 names on it. Half of 'em I've never heard of.  

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

Well, we got an inch and a half.  Disappointing, especially as the weatherweasels had forecast 3 to 5 inches. It's cold, 20 F so they can make snow. 

If it can orbit a satellite it can put a warhead anywhere on Earth

The NORKs just launched an Earth satellite.  If your rocket has the delta V to achieve orbit, it can put that "satellite" anywhere on Earth.  I haven't heard just how heavy the NORK satellite was, but it's a start.  A helova start.  To have an ICBM, the payload has to be enough to carry a nuke.  We think, we don't know for sure, that the NORK nukes are "first generation" i.e. heavy, weighing a matter of tons.  Back in the fifties, when both we and the Soviets were getting into the ICBM business, the war heads would be first generation and be very heavy.  The Americans decided that the necessary rocket to hoist a first generation nuke would be ridiculously huge and so we didn't get  seriously to work on a missile until the later generation of nukes came along with weights down into the 100 pound area.  The Soviets wanted a missile so badly that they set to work to build the ridiculously huge rocket.  That rocket came on line about 1957. launched the first Sputnik, and did all the Soviet space launches for the entire Cold War.  We didn't come up with anything to match it until Saturn 5 in 1968. 

So who will I vote for tomorrow?

Gotta make up my mind today.  First off, being a Republican I am gonna vote in the Republican primary.  Second off, The Bern will win in NH if the polls mean anything at all.  Third off, I don't see much to choose between The Bern and Hillary.  The Bern will continue Obama's job of wreaking the US economy.  Hillary will continue to produce the string of overseas disasters of her tour as Secretary of State  Things like Syria, ISIS, Libya, Benghazi, Boko Haram, Ukraine, NORK nukes, and more.
  The Republican field is down a lot.  Iowa shows that the Donald, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio are the best bets, everyone else is an also ran with very low poll numbers.  Even though I like Carly, I'm not going to vote for her 'cause I don't want to throw my vote away.  I'm not gonna vote for the Donald 'cause I think he will loose.  According to Gallup, 60% of the voters nationwide don't like him.  That is not a recipe for collecting the essential-to-victory independent voters.  Gallup says 43% of the voters are registered independent.  If they don't like you, your campaign is going nowhere. 
  So who's left?  Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio both gained enough votes in Iowa to look like possible winners. I like Marco a little bit more than Ted.  Too bad Chris Christy really clobbered Marco on Saturday night.  Too bad that no sitting senator seems to like Ted Cruz much, it shows the Ted has trouble getting along with peers.  Not a good thing for a president. 
   JEB would probably make a decent president, but I don't like the idea of three Bush presidencies in my lifetime.  And he is not a speaker to get the voters fired up for anything.  Chris Christy looks fairly competent but I have my doubts about his appeal outside of the Northeast.  Kasich has campaigned hard up here, and has a good record as governor and US representative but somehow he doesn't appeal to me. 
   Perhaps it is time to toss a coin?

The Bern says Wall St is all fraud

He was saying that on one of the Sunday pundit shows.  He is half right.  Half of Wall St activity is raising money for economic growth, the other half,  futures and derivatives and mortgage backed securities and short term security lending, is pure gambling.  When the bets go bad, it crashes the world economy, like back in 2007.
   Economic growth means building factories, airliners, pipelines, office buildings, residential housing, and new product development.  All of these activities require financing, you have to pay the workers and the suppliers, but the project doesn't bring in any money until it's finished.  So the project borrows the money to get up and running, and pays it back out of earnings from the finished project.  No money for investment, no economic growth. 
  The working part of Wall St raises the money and lends it out to worthwhile projects.  The tricky part of  finance is deciding which projects will succeed and pay off their loans, and which ones are flaky and will go bust, taking all the money down the drain with them. 
  The gambling part of Wall St does deals that lack any clear economic purpose, and are usually short term.  Real economic growth requires long term patient money, you cannot build anything worthwhile over night, worthwhile projects take months and usually years to pay off.  There are Wall Street operations that do overnight loans of both money and securities.  I submit that nothing worthwhile can be accomplished overnight, and that kind of short term lending is really gambling. 
   We need to identify gambling, and drive it off of Wall St, probably by taxing it heavily. 

The Questions Sucked

It went on for three whole hours. "So and so said this about you, Take 60 seconds and trash him back." was the question, asked over and over again.  Boring.   There were a few amusing moments such as young Florida tourist bumps up against Tony Soprano from New Jersey.  Bush got in a solid hit on The Donald about eminent domain. 
   Questions that did not get asked but should have.  How far will you go to wipe out ISIS?  How large are the American armed forces today and how large would you make them?  What will you do to get GNP growth back up to 3.5% from this quarter's 0.7%.  What kind of fortifications will you build along the Mexican border and how much would it cost?  What is "net neutrality" and where do you stand on the issue? Will you reform patent and copyright law?  And if so, how?  What deductions and exemptions will you remove from the personal income tax?  Mortgage interest?  EITC?  Charitable givings?  Marriage and children exemptions?  What will you do to take Wall St out of the casino and back to financing economic growth? 
   Any how, that is the last presidential debate I am going to watch.  And I still have not decided who I will vote for the coming Tuesday.