A really different Republican National Convention??

A Federal judge in Virginia has just ruled that VA delegates are free to vote any way they want at the Republican convention.  He has dissolved the requirement under state law for delegates to vote the way the primary election turned out.
Wow.  If this decision stands, the convention will be strange, very strange.
   The convention delegates are all old Republican hands.  Everyone wants to go to the convention, it's a blast.  Hell, my mother got to be a delegate to the 1964 convention.  Needless to say, the plum of going to the convention is handed out as a perk to solid Republicans by various strange party systems, a different system for each state.  The lucky delegates were then informed that they had to vote this way or that way.  And all the delegates are old Republican people.  Some office holders, some party workers, some big donors, some activists, but all members of the Republican establishment.
   And the Republican establishment doesn't like The Donald.  If the delegates are told they can vote their consciences,  a lot of em will vote against Trump.  Nobody knows who they would vote for, but someone will turn up.
   The Republican National Committee doesn't like this idea at all.  They have rightly figured that the dyed in the wool Trump voters are absolutely necessary for winning.  Without the Trump voters, Hillary wins.  So opening the door to dumping Trump is opening the door to losing big.  Nobody is sure that Trump can win, but they know that without Trump they loose.  The RNC understands this.  Not sure if the Republican establishment understands it.
   The Wall Street Journal sees this as a big issue.  They ran an editorial about it today.  They were sorta whistling past the grave yard, opining that Trump would make it even if all the delegates are unbound.  Maybe, but I wouldn't bet on it.  There is a lotta NeverTrump sentiment out there.  

US race relations not as bad as 1968

So says Obama on the tube this morning.  Of course, as soon as he said it,  I thought to myself, that actually things are as bad as 1968.
   Obama has made things worse.  Polls show things are a lot worse now than back in 2008 when Obama first took office.  Every time an ugly incident happens, Obama jumps right into it, and takes sides. Guess which side he takes. Every time.  After Obama jumps into it, the rest of the MSM get on the story and their reporting just pours gasoline on the fire. 

You gotta get your story out, right away.

After any of these terrible confrontations between citizens and authorities (cops), there are always TWO stories.  There is the victim's story, and there is the authorities story.  There will always be some differences, which can cast the entire incident in one light or another.  For example "Hands up don't shoot", which the Michael Brown supporters claim happened vs the cop's story that Michael Brown was trying to grab his gun when he was shot. 
  Moral of the story, the authorities must get their story out, right now.  Even better if they have video to back up their story.  They need to know that the other side will get their story out, and when there is only one story out there, that's what people believe.  So the authorities must get their side of the story out, right away.
  Lots of cops and prosecutors complain that releasing a story ahead of the trial does bad things for their case at trial.  Piffle.  The real trial, the one that counts, is the trial by public opinion.  If the public thinks the authorities behaved badly, it doesn't matter what a judge declares, usually years later.  The lawyers have so degraded the American justice system that it doesn't really matter any more.  Today's courts take years and years to come to a decision, and they usually let the perp off.  Better to win in the court of public opinion than wait for the wheels of justice to get turning. 
   Historical example.  Right after the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Americans wrote up their story, emphasizing patriot heroism and really stunning Redcoat casualties.  The rebels got their story onto a fast Yankee schooner and it was in London within three weeks.  General Gage on the other hand, sent his dispatches back on a slow Royal Army merchantman which took three months to get to London.  Result, the American version of the battle, with it's story of Patriot bravery, went the length and breadth of England for two and a half months before the British side of the story got out.  Needless to say, the American version, so favorable to the Patriot cause, is the one every Englishman heard.

Dallas was horrible.

Five dead police officers, seven or eight more wounded. In a totally unprovoked ambush. My sincerest sympathy to the victims and their families.  According to the TV newsies, the shooter, a US Army veteran who served in Iraq,  had no indications of craziness before opening fire Thursday night.  That's scary.  It shows the bonds that hold our society together are failing. 
   The bonds go way back, to childhood.  Sunday school teaches the Ten Commandments, and "Thou shalt not kill." is easily understood even by five year olds.  Movies and TV shows depict police as good guys, and those that shoot at them as bad guys.  Nobody wants to think of himself as a bad guy.  Parents and teachers constantly keep on kids about fighting, with siblings and classmates.  This training was so effective that in WWII, General SLA Marshall noted that a large number of American soldiers were reluctant/unable to shoot the enemy.  Apparently this shooter was not so inhibited.  How many more like him have we raised up?
  

Congress grills FBI director Comey

They got on his case this morning around 11, and they are still whacking at him now at 2 PM.  Comey is standing up and hasn't really put his foot in his mouth, yet.  They are working on that as I write this.  The Democrats on the committee have been throwing themselves on the tracks in Comey' defense.  The main point of contention is the matter of guilty intent.  According to Comey, the ordinary law of the US requires guilty intent in order to prosecute.  Apparently a US law passed back in WWI times makes divulging  classified a crime no matter why the perps state of mind is.  Comey doesn't like that law and he claims that only once in the 99 years of the law's existence has anyone been prosecuted under it.  A lotta Congresscritters don't agree, they think leaking classified should be prosecuted no matter what.
   Nobody is talking about the basic insecurity of email, be it government or private or just plain old Gmail.  To my way of thinking, you should never put classified on email.  Back when I was in the service, and handled classified, email hadn't been invented, so the matter never came up.  But now, we should not allow classified to go by email.  Government email is same same, it's vulnerable.  Plus all the secretary of state's communication ought to treated as classified.  I sure don't want the Russians, the Chinese, or ISIS reading US cabinet officer's email.  I don't think cabinet officers should use email at all.  Nobody is talking about that at all.

The lights are going out, all over New Hampshire

The greenies, working thru the public utility commission, have bulldozed the local power company into closing their three remaining coal fired power plants.  One of them, was forced to install a $450 million scrubber back in 2009.  Part of the deal is that the power company can bill rate payers for the $450 million outstanding debt.  For the next ten years.  On top of the "Stranded Cost Recovery" charge they put on the bill for the Seabrook nuclear plant.  
    The power company is hoping to replace the lost generation capacity with hydro power from Quebec, to come over the yet to be built Northern Pass power line.  Which the greenies are fighting to stop. 
   The greenies managed to shut down the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant last year. 
   I ought to go out and buy a Honda generator set to get thru this next winter. 

Juan Williams on Johnny Can't Read.

Juan had a handsome op ed in the Wall St Journal yesterday entitled "The Scandal of K-12 Education".  He cited some really awful statistics on the terrible performance of black and Hispanic kids in the public schools. Without getting into the numbers, they are really really bad.  And Juan cries out to do something about it.
    Thinking back on my experiences learning to read, I don't really remember the school doing all that much for me.  I can still remember the night it all came together and for the first time I could actually read a real book, not a picture book.  It was "The Land of Oz",  (L. Frank Baum).  Granted the schools did some ground work, we all learned the alphabet song, we learned phonics, and we started with "Fun with Dick and Jane" a worthy but boring beginning reader.
  But, I learned to read because I wanted to read.  Reading was fun, an enjoyable pastime, as good as watching TV, especially TV way back then.  There was so much good stuff to read.  The Saxonville library was open every day and it was on my way home from school.  I stopped in every day or so to get new books.  And they had a bunch of really cool ones.  There was a series, bound in orange, of biographies of famous Americans.  I read them all.  There was the "Landmark" series with books about the Battle of Britain, the Tokyo raiders, the Royal Navy in WWII, and other things to catch the interest of an grade school boy. And really good science fiction by Andre Norton, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov.  And the Tarzan books, the Tom Swift books (the old series), the Oz books, the John Carter books, Tolkien, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, James Fenimore Cooper, Walter Scott,.  And comics.  If there was ever something printed that just cried out to be read, it was a comic book.  Scrooge McDuck, Blackhawk, Tarzan, Batman, Captain Marvel, Plastic Man, Superman, and more.  Parents and teachers disapproved of comic books back then, but they were a tremendous incitement to learn to read, certainly more stimulating than playing computer games.  We would spend our own money to buy them.  Ten cents an issue, they are more like four dollars now.  Every kid had a stash and every kid read them.
   The other incentive to read was that my parents did it.  Dad read the paper every day and he read bed time stories to us every night.  If Dad did it, I wanted to learn it too, just to get with it.
   Bottom line, learning to read is a self motivated thing, schools can help, parents can help, but the kid has to want to do it himself.