"Slants" is derogatory?

An Asian American rock band wanted to call themselves "The Slants".  Some well fed bureaucrat refused to let them trademark the name.  He claimed "Slants" was derogatory. 
  Strange.  I was in the Air Force, I did a turn in South East Asia during the Viet Nam war.  We had a lot of bad names for things we didn't like, the enemy, the locals, the food, the weather, the service, and others.  I don't remember "slant" as one of them.  "Slope" you heard, and slant-eye ( as opposed to round-eye) you heard, but  I don't remember "slant" by itself as a put down. 
   Any how they took this one to the Supreme Court, and won,  The band may trademark "Slants".  Owners of the Washington Redskins, and the Cleveland Indians, both facing similar harassment from bureaucrats are relieved.  They figure they will win their Supreme Court cases.  
   Welfare for lawyers.

Suppose we assassinate Kim Jong whats-his-face, NORK dictator

That ought to slow 'em down a bit.  The NORKs already have nuclear weapons and rockets.  It's only a matter of time (a year? two? three?) before they have a nuke mounted on a rocket with the range to reach US soil.  We need to prevent that.  Nobody wants to start up the Korean War again, that is too awful to bring back. Diplomacy has been tried for twenty years or more to no avail.  Getting a nuclear deterrent (strike force) is so important to Kim that no amount of diplomacy will get him to stop. 
   If we bumped off Kim, it would leave a leadership vacuum.  There would be a struggle between the various number 2 men to take his place.  Kim has been executing anyone who looks dangerous to him and so the bench of number 2 men is pretty thin.  To take over as NORK dictator you have to have some name recognition and some friends to back you up.  We don't know if anyone up north has both the name recognition and the friends required. 
  The NORK regime might just come apart.  It's already under strain, what with peasants starving the the villages and shortages of nearly everything.  The only thing holding it together is the army and the secret police.  With Kim gone, nobody knows if they would stay loyal to the regime.  They might not.  At which point, there are very strong forces to pull North and South Korea back together.  Much stronger forces than any number 2 man struggling to take over could muster.  That result would be wonderful for us and for South Korea. 
   How to off Kim?  Simplest is a smart bomb thru his bedroom window.  Or a Hellfire on his official limousine (with Kim inside it of course).  Or a very gutsy sniper team parachutes in somewhere, gets to within 500 yards of Kim, plugs him and then boogies to a pickup spot and waits for the Jolly Greens to pick them up.  

Fueling up for Winter

 That's one cord, two winter's worth of firewood. KK Brooks delivered last Friday.  I get to stack it under the porch. 

 Stack beginning.  The criss cross log stacks on the end are the secret to preventing the ends of the stack from avalanching into the driveway.  I use the biggest heaviest logs on the end stacks.

Here we are half stacked.  Care is required to avoid breaking the cellar windows with carelessly tossed logs.  That happened once long ago.  Andersen Thermopane which is beyond my home glazing skills. I had to order a replacment sash from Andersen.  They still had them after some 25 years, but it was a year before the replacement got shipped to me.  

All stacked up.  Took about 5 hours, working in half hour stints.  I'm set for another couple of winters.

Predictions are hard, especially about the future.

The Democrats dropped $25 mil into the Georgia special election.  The Republicans dropped $30 mil, which is more money than has ever been spent running for a US rep's seat.  Looks like both national parties have plenty of cash, which is a little surprising what with an expensive presidential election just last November.  You would  think they would still be paying off loans taken out for Hillary and the Donald.
   The Republican (a chick I'd never heard of before) won, 53 to 47 percent which is decent, better margin than Trump got in that district.  Way I look at it, anything better than 1% is decent, anything better than 10% is a landslide.  NHPR called the margin of victory "thin" and "close" but they are just democrats with bylines. 
  Naturally, this win, and the win in North Carolina, delighted Republicans and disheartened Democrats.  But I don't think it predicts anything about 2018.  In a year anything can happen.  If Trump gets health care and tax reform thru Congress the Republicans will be in decent shape.  If he fails, Democrats will capture control of one or both houses of Congress. 
   The msm keep saying that the Republicans control both houses of Congress.  But they have a lot of RINO's in both houses, who are OK with tax-and-spend and fear to rock the boat.  And who may not vote the party line.  Republicans also have a lot of super conservative crazies who don't under stand about compromise and that half a loaf is better than no loaf, and who will vote against anything on the slightest pretext.  And there is always a pretext on any bill, no bill ever satisfies every one all the way, there are always things they want and didn't get, or things that they don't like, and are in the bill.  Look at the Chinese fire drill in the House over health care.  Ryan had to withdraw the Republican bill and rewrite it before he could get enough Republicans on board to vote it thru. 
  Republicans have a lot of work to do if they want to retain control of Congress in 2018.

Some questions about druggies

With deaths from drug overdoses at a record high we have calls to do something about it.  Good idea, but what should we do?  Before I can get on board some one's magic cure, there are a few things I need to know about.  Such as:
1.  Every young person ought to know that anything harder than pot will ruin their lives and/or kill them.  Have we gotten this word out to this year's young people?  Do they believe it?
2.  Are all the institutions and media on board with getting the message out about the dangers of drugs?  Schools, churches, parents, radio and TV, Facebook and its competitors, video games, movies, the music business, and others that might come to mind? 
3. Why do people  get into drugs?  Is it just the pleasure of the high?  Especially as a lot of drugs need injection, sticking a needle in your arm, an event I have detested ever since injections of penicillin as a small child.  For me personally, doesn't matter how great the high is, I won't stick a needle in my arm because it hurts.  If it isn't just the pleasure of the high, then what is it that makes the druggie keep doing it? Are there things in the druggie's life that we could change to get him/her off the stuff?  If so, what might they be?
4.  Does drug rehab really work?  How many people have entered drug rehab and how many of them actually get off and stay off drugs?
5.  What are the generally accepted medical guidelines for prescribing the stronger opioids like  Oxycontin. Do these guidelines make sense?  I know that Oxycontin is so dangerous that many pharmacies refuse to stock it.   How many current druggies got hooked on prescription opioids?
6.  Does methadone work?  Working means getting the druggie off the really ruinous drugs and stabilize things enough that the druggie can hold a job.
7.  What happens to druggies over time?  Do they eventually get off the stuff? Or does it kill them? Or what?
 

A hero's reward, from the msm

Everyone at that terrible Congressional shooting scene praised the bravery of the two Capitol Police officers on duty.  All the Congressmen under fire say they would have been shot dead except for the bravery of the two officers who moved toward the sound of the guns. 
   As a reward for her bravery, the msm (Fox News no less) outed the female officer as lesbian.  I didn't need to know that.  It probably hurt the poor officer.  A harsh reward for bravery above and beyond the call of duty.
   Good work msm.   

Kiss your Navy career good bye.

Skipper of USS Fitzgerald, which collided with a container ship off Japan.  How that happened is hard to understand.  A destroyer is far faster, and much more maneuverable than a big container ship.   Destroyers have all kinds of state of the art radar which should have no trouble detecting a big, clunky container ship from 50 miles away.  Plus he ignored Admiral Dan Gallery's advice concerning right of way at sea.  "Steer well clear of any merchie, lest he decide to liven up your day by ramming you."   Gallery is a WWII US Navy skipper, he is the guy that captured a German U-boat and towed it home as a prize. Which shows him as a man of imagination and superb seamanship.   U505 has been an exhibit at the Chicago science museum ever since the war.