What's going down in Congress about the Dreamers?

The Senate voted to discuss the matter.  Typical Senate malarky, you don't vote to have a discussion.  You bring a bill to the floor and discuss it.  Then you vote to pass it or kill it.
Far as I can see, the Republican position, as outlined by the president is this.  We do something nice (unspecified) for maybe 1.8 million DACA eligibles.  We fund the border wall.  We limit chain migration to immediate family, spouses and minor children.  We shut down the 50,000 person "diversity lottery".  We do all of this or nothing.
The Democratic position is murky.  They don't talk about it.  At a guess, they want nice things for at least the 800,000 people who signed up for DACA.  Maybe they are OK with the border wall.  They want to keep chain migration and the "diversity lottery" the way it is now.  They haven't really said all this out loud, but from listening to the TV newsies, I think this is where they are coming from.  I might be wrong.  The democrats would do them selves a favor by a  clear statement of where they are coming from.
  The Republicans have some internal problems.  An unknown number of Republican congress critters don't like the idea of letting anyone into the country and are against doing anything nice for 1.8 million DACA eligibles.  The president ought to be able to get enough Republicans to vote his way, but you never know.  The rest of the presidents ideas, border wall, chain migration and diversity lottery ought to OK with most Republican congress critters.
   Neither side has described just what nice things for DACA eligibles might be.  Was it up to me, I'd offer citizenship anyone who looks like a good, loyal, production citizen.  Say a clean criminal record (no felony convictions) graduated high school or college, married, employed, children, veteran or some subset of these.  Anyone who looks like trouble, gang members, drug runners, car jackers,  and such, deport them ASAP.  Short of citizenship we offer them ID cards that allow them to stay in the US, take a job, get a driver's license.  For extra niceness we could make them eligible for welfare, food stamps, Medicaid.
   The 800,000 vs 1.8 million comes from DACA eligibles fearing that going and registering with Mr. Migra was dangerous.  Mr. Migra might betray them and use the registration to hunt them down and deport them.  Which may happen unless Congress gets its act together in the next three weeks.  The administration estimates that about another million DACA eligibles were smart enough to keep their heads down and stay out of sight. 

How to prevent foreign meddling in US elections

   Get rid of electronic voting machines altogether.  Go back to paper ballots, that can be saved and recounted.  The voting machines are merely desktop computers running an "I am a ballot" program.  They can be hacked before election day, on election day, and after election day.  The can be hacked over the internet, at the factory, in storage at town hall, during software updates, by sticking a flash drive into their USB port, and  a bunch of other ways.  You cannot recount a voting machine the way you can paper ballots.   Use paper ballots.  That will prevent anyone from hacking the election results.
    Demand source information for social media stories.  And for MSM stories.   If the story, no matter how juicy, doesn't have a source, it's fake news.  If a juicy story lacks a source, or the source doesn't check out, you gotta say to yourself that this story is BS.    
    Remember that the MSM is mostly the NYT and the WaPo, and the TV networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, and CNN.  These are all run by democrats and see their mission as electing democrats, not reporting the news.  The NYT has been in love with Communists since the 1930's.  They supported Josef Stalin, Fidel Castro, and the Viet Cong. 

So what hath Congress Wrought?

This morning's Wall St Journal was less than clear.  Partly because the Journal's stories went to press last evening before Congress voted on the thing. Far as I can tell it is yet another continuing resolution that runs out 23 March.  It lifts the Federal debt limit until March next year.  It lifts the spending caps by $160 billion on the military and about the same amount on "discretionary spending".  It does NOT authorize spending for the entire fiscal year, just for the rest of February and most of March.  And it  has a lot of pages, few of which anyone has seen, let alone read. 
   The House voted it thru at o'dark thirty, and Trump signed it sometime after 9 AM this morning. 
   Between the Trump tax  cut and this spending authorization every one expects the US to go in the hole by $1 trillion for this fiscal year. 

Cannon Mt Ski Weather. Six inches of new powder snow

I just put a yard stick onto the snow on my deck, and we got a real six inches of [powder yesterday.  No rain at all. Very light wind so the snow is on the trails, not blown into the woods.  Skiing at Cannon will be great this weekend.

Lets have a Parade

Parades are economical.  They show off your military strength to potential enemies.  The Soviets used to do a big one every year on May Day.  Aviation Week always ran a fair sized article about what the Soviets had displayed this year.  Seeing troops and tanks marching down the street carries more impact than dry intel reports. 
  And, parades show the tax payers that they are getting something for their tax money.  What's not to like.
  And parades are cheap, especially compared to even the smallest military action.  After all, the troops are all ready in the service, getting pay, uniforms, rations, and board.  The extra money for a bit of parade practice and transport to and from the parade site is chickenfeed as military expenses go. 
   And everyone likes to watch a parade. 

A Global Test for Kindergarteners???

Piece in today's Wall St Journal.  Some ed group I never heard of is proposing a world wide test for 5 year olds, so we can compare the effectiveness between kindergartens in various places.  Right.
   The kids don't get taught to read until first grade.  I didn't get good at reading till half way thru third grade.  What kind of test can you run on kids that cannot read the questions and haven't even learned how to write (Print!)  their names yet.  And we are going to do this world wide?  In every important language? 
   I always thought the purpose of Kindergarten was to get the kids used to being away from home for half the day, and to give 'em some experience in making friends and playing together.  Important socializing, but how do you grade socializing?  By how well the kids know the Alphabet Song?
   Is this a bunch of ed majors looking for something to get funding for?

Good Day. Falcon Heavy launch successful. Stock Market is up 500 points

All 27 engines worked and worked right.  Booster separation worked.  A Tesla roadster is on its way to Mars.  Both boosters  landed safely at Cape Canaveral.  The main stage was supposed to land on a ship at sea.  Haven't seen the video of that, but it probably worked.  Good job SpaceX.  Take a few Attaboys.
   And the stock market came up 500 points.  It was dicey, lot of up and down movement all day, big moves too, but after yesterday's 1200 point "correction" (we don't dare say crash anymore), it is good to see the market go up instead of down.
   The TV is talking about "program trading".  By which they mean the computers panicked on Friday.  The computers all issued sell orders which drove the Dow Jones down 1200 points, a record one day drop.  Once the market starts down, the computers all have preprogrammed sell orders (sell this and that stock if the Dow drops below whatever).  The computers are quick, and all their sell orders hit the market within milliseconds. 

We oughta reform US Copyright law

Right now copyright lasts for 70 years plus the life of the owner.  Any thing can be copyrighted, leading to endless welfare for lawyers like the lawsuit over one click or two clicks to place an item in your digital shopping basket.
   We ought to go back to a 17 year limit on terms of copyright.  All the real money is made by the time 17 years is up.  The author ought to get off his couch and write something new after 17 years of royalties.
   US Constitution Article I Section 8 clause 8 reads "To promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."  Note to the reader.  This clause does not authorize copyright of "business methods" (that one-click two-click foolishness) nor mathematics, nor software, nor music.  The exclusive rights are granted only to "Authors and Inventors", real individuals, not corporations, not patent trolls.
   And copyright should only last while the book is in print.  Once out of print, it should be legal to Xerox copies as needed.
   And makers of toys and models should be immune from predatory lawyers owned and operated by the real life businesses.  GM should not be able to shake small makers down just cause they are making Hot Wheels toys or plastic models of GM cars.  Railroads should not be able to shake down model train makers for painting rolling stock in proto type paint schemes.  
  

Has anything important happened in the real world lately?

The news is full of unimportant stories.  The classified memo.  Superbowl.  Guvmint shutdowns, they have another one coming up this week just for your entertainment.  Didn't anything  important happen all week?

So I read the famous classified memo.

Less than earth shaking.  It says the FBI flimflammed the FISA court to get a warrant for surveillance of Carter Page, a new name to me.  The FBI showed the Steele document, opposition research paid for by Clinton and the DNC, to the FISA court as evidence that Carter Page needed his phone and email tapped.  The FBI also showed a Yahoo news article based on leaks from Steele, as independent corroboration of the Steele document.   
   Seeing as how the FISA court is a pure rubber stamp, out of thousands of requests for warrants submitted to FISA,  only dozen or so are ever rejected.  So the famous memo identifies one case where the FBI flimflammed the FISA court and obtained a warrent improperly.  Wanna bet the FBI has been doing this all along and of those thousands of warrents issued, many of them are just as bogus as the one obtained on Carter Page? 
   The FISA court is secret.  We don't know who the judges are, where the court meets, we never get to see their transcripts and records.  They can order surveillance on anybody on the flimsiest of evidence, and have been for decades.  It's a rubber stamp.
  We ought to close the entire FISA court thing.  Law enforcement, including the FBI, should have to go to a real court, the kind that tries cases, in order to spy on American citizens.

Was it AmTrak's fault?

Certainly embarrassing to wreck a train full of Congressmen.   The train hit a truck at a grade crossing doing 70  mph.  Killed the truck driver, shook up a lot of Congressmen who were not in their seats.  Train stayed on the track, which is a good thing. 
   I think the fault lies with the truck driver.  The grade crossing was protected, crossbucks, automatic red flashers, and automatic crossing gates.  On TV you could see that the crossing gates were down.  We can assume that the crossing protection gear functioned,  that stuff is pretty reliable and I cannot remember a case where it failed to work.  Still, someone ought to check that, just to be sure. So how did that truck get on the tracks?  Either he got stuck on the tracks before the train arrived, or he was in a hurry and drove around the crossing gates.   So far the newsies have not said anything about that.  And, why did not the people in the truck get out and run when they heard the train coming.  Trains are required to whistle (sound the horn now a days) as they approach grade crossings, two longs, a short and a very long.  Those horns are loud, easily heard over the sound of a truck engine. 

State of the Union

I stayed up and watched it.  Trump mentioned the successes he has had so far,  spoke to and of some impressive people in the visitors gallery, a policeman, a soldier, grieving parents, a 12 year old boy, a Korean freedom fighter,  good people all.  He  announced his DACA policy, infrastructure policy, military funding policy, all good stuff, but nothing I hadn't heard before.   Trump was doing a national pep rally, and doing it well.  He even had me clapping in front of my flat screen TV, and I'm a cynical senior citizen.   The democrats were not into pep rally, they didn't clap or stand and clap hardly at all.   Cold water is what the democrats were into.  Fortunately there were enough Republicans at the show to give Trump a lot of standing ovations and keep the pep rally spirit up. 
    So all full of good patriotic spirit I stayed up and watched young Joe Kennedy give the Democrats reply to Trump's State of the Union.  Boy what a downer that was.  I remember young Joe's grand father RFK, and his grand uncle JFK, and neither of them ever talked like that.   Young Joe just gave a long lament about how terrible everything is, business is making money, taxes are being cut, all sorts of guvmint freebies are going away, one wail after another.  A real glass half empty talk. 

The losers always cry Gerrymander

Gerrymander, the art of drawing voting district lines to favor your own party and disadvantage the opposition party.  After the election, the losing party always blames a gerrymander.  We have to have voting districts, otherwise everyone runs at large.  Which is difficult and expensive, the candidate has to run ads, make campaign appearances, and put up yard signs all over the state, rather than just his own district.   To gerrymander, you arrange the voting districts either to pack the opposition voters into a few districts which you cede to the them, or to dilute the opposition voters among your strong districts, where they never have the numbers to win the district.   Elbridge Gerry, a serious Massachusetts politician, signer of the Declaration of Independence,  was governor of Massachusetts after the Revolution when redistricting created an odd shaped district, long and wiggly and looking like a salamander.  It was dubbed a Gerrymander, and the term has stayed in American politics ever since.
   Trouble is, gerrymandering is hard to define, and thus hard to legislate against.  So far all we have tried is the appointment of a "non partisan" commission to draw district lines.  Such commissions are better than nothing, but not all that effective.
   What we might try is a law that requires districts to be reasonable compact.  Define "reasonable compact" as the longest way across the district may not exceed twice the shortest way across the district.  That would outlaw the long and skinny districts.  

The engineer missed the 30 mph speed limit sign

That's from the Wall St Journal on that train crash in Tacoma Washington this winter.  Reasonable, and easy to do.  And that's the engineer's story.
   My only question is, after spending $180 million on bringing this line into service, why is a dangerous 30 mph curve left in the track?  With $180 million to spend, I'd think they could have straightened that curve out to allow 80 mph running clean thru the whole line. 

I'll wash your mouth out with soap

Common threat to children using bad language.  Or sassing their parents.  Now the children say "I'll eat a Tide Pod"???  
Even on a dare,  I would not eat soap or Tide Pods, no matter what.  I learned that soap tasted awful at a very early age, probably from tasting it accidentally during bath.  
I don't understand the growth of Tide Pod eating among the young.  When I was a kid we knew better.

Why is Washington so disfunctional?

This came up in a discussion with youngest son.  We are still close enough to talk politics even though his politics don't always agree with mine.    To which I said, neither side (party) has enough votes to pass their program.  The Republican majority in the Senate is now down to one since the Alabama election.  The Republican majority in the house is a little bigger, but  the "House Freedom Caucus"  RINO's all, cannot be counted to vote with the party.  In short, the Congress is deadlocked between the two parties, neither has enough votes to vote their program thru and get on with things.
   The only solution is to convince more voters to join one side or the other, and give their side a solid majority.  This is hard.  First off, neither party has made (and published) a clear and simple statement of their views.   Partly because they cannot come together on one view, and partly because of the modern conviction that stating your views just makes you enemies, never friends. Which is why politicians refrain from saying any thing of substance  and talk about motherhood and apple pie. 
   Lacking any thing from the two parties, the voters will listen to respected public figures.  But we don't have many of those any more.  Used to be guys like Walter Cronkite, Jim Lehrer,  and David Brinkley had the respect of the public and were listened to.   Now a days all we have is Dan Rather,  Rachel Maddow, and Opray Winfrey.  Nobody respects them much.  And the entire MSM has destroyed any confidence the public might have held in them.  Nobody believes any politician much.   Public opinion isn't going to change much in the current absence of trusted voices urging change. 
   So, the current deadlock looks like it will continue for a long time. 

America needs more good citizens

Those DACA kids/young people.  When your parents decide to slip into the United States, kids don't have a choice, they have to go where mom and dad go.  Ain't the kids fault that mom and dad are illegal immigrants. 
   For the ones that have grown up in the US, have stayed out of serious trouble with the law, have reasonable English language skills (speak even if with a thick accent,  read a road sign, and sign their names) I am willing to extend them US citizen ship.  Especially if they have graduated high school, or even better college, have a job, are married, are veterans.  These are desirable citizens, and we need more good citizens. 
   Polls show that  a fair number of my fellow citizens think the same way.  Can the Congress Critters get their act together to pass a law letting the stay in the country, or even better make them US citizens?   I know that a lot of 'em will vote for Democrats once they are registered. but that's OK.  I'm happy to have good US citizens even if they don't vote Republican. 

World is getting noisier

Watch some TV news, which is pretty much all from an indoor studio somewhere.  Notice the background noise of ringing phones, emergency vehicle sirens, yelling and shouting,  car crash noises.  Let's hope all this noise is coming from outside the studio.  It's pretty damn loud.   Out on the street it's gotta be worse.  

Walls, Border type.

The Trump administration is now talking about a combination of masonry wall, cyclone fencing, and electronic surveillance.  The MSM is criticizing them for backing off from a 2000 mile masonry wall.  Does not bother me much, at least the cyclone fence part.  A good cyclone fence, with three strands of barbed wire on top is pretty effective.  You cannot get vehicles thru such a fence, at least not without leaving a whacking big hole which is a tip off to the Border patrol. 
   I am not impressed with the electronic surveillance idea.  I was in South East Asia during the war when we tried electronic surveillance along the Ho Chi Min trail.   We air dropped a humongous load of sensors, microphones mostly, up and down the trail.  Mostly the sensors went dead in a few days.  Some of them picked up monkeys howling in the jungle or water buffalo snorting and stomping.  Never did detect a Cong. 

USAF talking about buying lightweight fighters

The first line jet fighters (F22 and F35) cost $50-80 million a piece, and cost $35000 per flying hour.   They are fast, loaded with fancy avionics and expensive missiles, and need long paved runways.  
   For ground attack missions, something simpler and cheaper with modest performance can do the job. Some recon, some close air support bombing, some strafing, and some training.  Modest performance might be  500 knots top speed, 100 knots landing speed,  propeller driven, 700-800 horsepower turbine engine.   With some really sharp bargaining, you might be able to buy such a plane for $1 million apiece.    If  the enemy doesn't have an air force, or a squadron or two of our high performance fighters  takes care of enemy fighter opposition,  such a modest performance (approximately the performance of a good WWII fighter) aircraft could be very effective. 
   There are a number of American allied countries that have  security problems, that a little air power might solve, who could afford some $1 million warplanes,  but could never afford high performance high cost  jet fighters.   If USAF were to demonstrate the effectiveness of light weight fighters,  they would be encouraged to try some.  "If the Americans are flying them, they must be OK."

Oscar Nominations for Best Picture 2018

They nominated nine movies.  Five of them I never heard of before.  Fine publicity work there. Two of em (Dunkirk and Darkest Hour) I have seen, in theater, and they are not bad.   I had actually heard of another two (The Post and Shape of Water).  I cannot imagine ever going to see either them. 
   Perhaps there is a connection between mediocre to miserable Oscars and the worst year for box office receipts?

Darkest Hour 2017

Good Flick.  Gary Oldham plays Winston Churchill and plays him well.  Churchill was the key allied leader in WWII.   The movie shows Churchill  rallying the British rank and file, silencing the appeasers,  launching Operation Dynamo (the evacuation of the British Army from Dunkirk).  This is a crucial period in WWII.  England was the only important European power that Hitler never conquered.  Had England crumped, Hitler and his Nazis would have owned Europe, pretty much forever.  The movie ends with Churchill giving his "fight them on the beaches, fight them on the landing grounds.  We shall never surrender." speech in Parliament.   Far as I can tell, the movie follows the real history of the time.   The real history is so dramatic that nobody can imagine a way to make things more dramatic. 
    I liked this movie better than Dunkirk.  We watch one key protagonist (Churchill)  leading his country to fight against the Nazis.  Dunkirk was more into battle field views of anonymous British soldiers.  
    Costumes and sets were excellent.  Sets were ingeniously lit with the brightest light centered on the important actors in the scene.  Most scenes were the famous smoke filled rooms, the air blue with tobacco smoke.  Lots of very fancy period bric a brac every where, on desks, bureaus, and whatever.
    I saw the movie at the Lincoln NH theater on a Sunday night.  Crowd was light.  In fact there was only one other person, aside from myself in the theater.