Debate Watch Party

We had another one.  Not bad.  Chris Christy came on strong on the junior debate.  Fox and WSJ did a highly professional job with the questions and with the moderation, far far superior to those CNBC clowns last month.  In the main event,  everybody looked pretty good.  I didn't see a clear cut winner, everyone looked pretty good.  No body choked up. 

Headlights, auto turn off

Used to be, headlights were on a switch on the dash. They came on when you pulled a knob out, and went off when you pushed the knob in.
    Simple days, long gone.  Now the car's microprocessor leaves the headlights on to give you some light to get to the door and find the front door key. 
   Except, the microprocessor doesn't get it right.  Either the headlights go off too soon, leaving you fumbling in the dark, or they stay on too long, leaving you standing out in the rain, watching to make sure the microprocessor does finally turn the headlights off, to avoid running down the battery.  Most of us have experienced a car with a flat battery after someone failed to turn ALL the lights off.  And we don't trust microprocessors to get it right.
   Mostly  the microprocessors start timing the head light turnoff time from when the ignition is turned off.  Bad idea.  Better results would be had by starting the turnoff timer when the driver's door opens and closes. The driver may have some packages on the passenger's seat he needs to bring into the house.  Which requires some fumbling around in the dark.   For that matter, the microprocessor should check for other door openings and closings.  The driver may have some groceries in the back seat, and the headlamp timeout should start when the last door is closed. 
   It will take Detroit about 50 years to get this right.

Specter, the movie

It's a Bond movie.  I'd rate it medium good against all the other Bond movies.  We don't watch Bond movies to see character development, true love, political points made, conventional tragedy, or Shakespearean eloquence.  We go to Bond movies for the action, the pretty Bond-girl, the evil Bond-villain, Q's lethal gadgets, the car chases, the fighting, and the shooting.  In this vein, Spectre delivers.
   Daniel Craig delivers a satisfying Bond.  He plays a taciturn, driven Bond, with some scores to settle, and some lost loves to mourn.  He has an icy stare.  And a good right hook.  He needs a better tailor, his suits don't fit him very well.  Bond has no sense of humor, never cracks a joke or uses a pun.  This is one serious and scary dud
   Lea Seydoux makes a decent Bond girl.  She is plenty good looking enough, and has some of her own issues.  We see her standing up to 007 and making it work for her and for Bond.
    The movie suffers from some poor technical work.  The soundman doesn't capture all the dialog.  It could be worse, but a fair number of bits of dialog were unintelligible.  It was not a full fledged curse of the soundman, but more like just bad wishes from the soundman.  And the camera man was into under exposure.  A lot of scenes were just annoyingly DARK, the only thing you could see was the actor's face, and sometimes not even that.  I'd find myself saying, "Open up your damn lens" to the screen.  When the camera man did set the exposure properly, he would introduce a misty soft focus effect similar to filling the set with smoke.  Also annoying.  At least we didn't have to put up with 3-D goggles.
   The car chase didn't seem very real, not real the way Steve McQueen's Mustang blasting thru San Francisco did in Bullitt..   The cars sort of floated and pulled off some unbelievably sharp turns into alleys at speed, to the point where I figured I  was watching CGI.
   A lot of plot holes.  For openers, Bond manages to get from London to Rome, with his car (Q's hottest newest Aston Martin) in one quick cut-to-black.  You'd think at least a shot of driving the Aston onto a Channel car ferry would be in order.  Bond manages to collapse an entire 6 story masonry building with a few rifle shots.  There is a lot of travel, but it is never clear where they are going to, coming from or traveling thru.  The Bond-villain goes from fairly handsome, to horribly scarred and I never knew how.  There is some high level skullduggery between the new M, and a snivel service weasel dubbed C which is unclear.  Bond confronts the father of the Bond-girl with a lot of snarling back and forth which was unclear to me, and the resolution of the face-off  is brutal and weird and unexplained.  Ah well, it's a Bond movie and it don't have to make sense.    
   Anyhow, if you like Bond movies,  this one is pretty good.  The critics panned it, but the critics don't like Bond movies, they like Shakespeare, which Bond movies are not. 

Gitmo

Obama has been trying to close the place since he was elected.  Seems to be very firm on it.  Has not had much luck.  The thugs still in Gitmo are really bad people who will go back to waging guerrilla war on the middle east if we turn 'em loose. 
   These guys are in Gitmo for waging war on the US.  They were captured on foriegn battlefields.  They aren't regular criminals, in stir for murder, rape, arson, and drug dealing.  They are in stir for fighting against the US armed forces.  Under the laws of war, we are entitled to hold them prisoners until the war is over.  Which isn't gonna happen anytime soon.  It's more humane than what used to happen in the bad old days.
   The intense opposition to closing Gitmo and moving the prisoners to stateside lockups comes from the public distrust of US judges.  The public fears judges will turn these guys loose inside the country because they have not been accused, let alone convicted of a crime in court.  The normal civilian law of the United States, based on the 13th amendment, requires conviction of a crime in order to hold people in jail.  These guys haven't committed crimes in the ordinary civilian sense of the word.  They are Islamist fighters, who will burn, bomb, and kill if let out.  It's preventative detention, but US law doesn't allow preventative detention. 
  And US judges, cut from fairly stupid cloth, might well turn them loose.

Syria

Syria a smallish wartorn middle east country just to the north of Israel.  Has been run by the Assad family and the Alawite sect for decades, maybe more.  Dunno just how the Alawites differ from Sunni or Shia, but its enough to matter somehow.  Could be the Sunni and or the Shia detest the Alawites.  Could be the Sunni  would rather have the Alawites running things than the Shia.  Or vice versa.  I don't know, and our clueless newsies have no idea either.
   The current Assad running Syria, a certain Bashar, fairly recent heir to the throne, has not been doing well. He has angered a sizable portion of his population to the point of armed rebellion against his regime.  ISIS has set up shop and controls a big slice of Syria.  Other "moderate" non-ISIS but anti Assad rebel groups are active, but probably not as active as ISIS.  By now, Assad's control of the country is shaky, ISIS is as strong (or stronger) than he is.  The Russians have decided to back Assad, probably in return for basing rights in Syria. Assad needs all the support he can get.
   US policy, such as it is, favors dumping Bashar Assad.  Not a a bad idea, but for it to work, we have to have someone to replace him with.  We need a name, and we don't have one.  ISIS has a name, Allah.  The "moderate" rebels must have some leaders, but who ever they are, they haven't made it onto US TV news.  Until we find a Syrian leader with some name recognition, at least inside Syria, and some popularity, our anti Assad, anti ISIS operations are going exactly nowhere.
   We should be talking to the Israeli's about Syria.  They have agents in Syria, who actually speak the language, and a much better idea of who is who, and which end is up, than CIA ever will. To bad Obama has been dissing Netanyahu.  The Israelis are less likely to level with Obama than with someone who has supported Israel over the years.

Flak for Ben Carson

The MSM, democrats to a man, are shooting at Ben Carson.  They been getting plenty of coverage on TV. They have been checking out Carson's autobiography, published years and years ago, and claiming that Carson claims things that they cannot verify, or uses more enthusiast language than they can approve of.  This morning's Wall St Journal did not defend Carson much, but they did pooh pooh some of the nastier slams on Carson. 
    As far as the West Point scholarship thing goes, Carson, was top ROTC cadet, black, with excellent grades.  I'm sure someone said "Son, you ought to go to West Point, you are a natural, put your name in and they will accept you".   Was I Carson, writing my autobiography fifty years later, I could easily write that I was offered a scholarship to West Point, even if I never put in my paperwork to attend.   I'm not going to get excited about this smear from the likes of the MSM.  Especially as I like Carson. 
    Carson does understand that dirt sticks.  He has been on TV, calling his harassers to be liars.  That's good.  Mud sticks, if he doesn't call the MSM on this, we voters will begin to think that maybe there is something to the stories.   Romney didn't understand this, and it lost him the presidency. 

Too Damn Long. Vote it down

Trans Pacific Trade that is.  It is 2 million words, 2000 pages, and that's too much.  It would take months to figure out what it will do.  Passing it just gives to bureaucrats the power to do any thing they want.  In that much verbiage  a bureaucrat can always find a paragraph to justify what ever he is doing or wants to do. Passing another super-obfusticator bill is Congress abdicating to the bureaucracy.
   Congress ought to have a policy, never pass any bill, treaty, whatever that is longer than the US constitution. 

Drug Overdoses

It's getting bad.  This year death's from drug overdoses exceed deaths from car accidents.  Car accidents have been running around 50,000 deaths a year, for a long time.  By way of comparison, total deaths from the entire Viet Nam war are only 50,000.  Ten years of war in the jungle didn't kill as many as car accidents killed in a single year.  And now deaths from drug overdoses have risen to the same appalling level. 
   The MSM don't talk about why the increase in drug deaths.  Could it be, Obama's Great Depression 2.0 threw a lot of men out of work?  And the depression and poverty caused by unemployment drives a lot of guys to drugs and suicide?  You don't hear the MSM talking about that.  Doesn't fit The Narrative.
    You do hear a lot of talk in the MSM about setting up "drug courts".  Dunno about that.  Seems like we need drug treatment programs more than courts.  We got plenty of plain old courts.  Most judges are intelligent enough to sentence first offenders, even if they been doing a little dealing to feed their habit, to drug rehab rather than jail.  Everybody knows that jail is bad for people.  First offenders come out of jail in worse shape than they went in. 

No bailouts, Let 'em sink. Nobody too big to fail

Dear old Uncle Sam has gotten into the habit of bailing out big companies that get into trouble.  GM, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG are the most flagrant examples.  The usual excuse is that allowing a big boy to go belly up will scare the market, causing a lot of other big boys to croak.  Causing a lot of money to be lost. 
   And, we passed a law, Dodd-Frank, which makes bailouts policy.  Dodd-Frank  sets up which companies will get bailouts, how much.
   The real problem with bailouts, is they urge on crazy behavior.  In no-bailout world, company management is pretty careful about the risks it runs.  If they do something really risky, and it fails, the company is toast, they and everyone in the company are out of work, the investors loose everything.  All around badness.
   But when Uncle Sam says he will bailout companies, all bets are off.   Now management can do all those crazy things, and if they fail, the company survives, they keep their jobs, and the investors are untouched (mostly).  No pain.  And without pain, nobody learns anything.  No pain, no gain.
    We ought to repeal Dodd-Frank.  We ought to make it real clear world wide that we don't bail out nobody, and we need to carry thru, and actually flush some loser down the drain, just to make the point.
     To run a capitalist society, which has made us all rich, you need capital.  We cannot afford to flush capital down the drain doing mortgage backed securities, credit default swaps,  futures trading, derivatives trading, and all those other risky gambling games they run on Wall St.

New Canadian government drops F-35

The new government in Canada, with whats-his-name Trudeau has fulfilled a campaign promise to drop out of the F-35 program.  Canada was going to buy 65 fighters at something like $80-90 million a piece.  That's going away.  The F-35 program people are smiling and saying the program is still on track.  Right.  And every air framer in the world is hustling salesman to Toronto peddling fighters. 

More on Long Range Strike Bomber LRS-B

According to Aviation Week, it is going to be another flying wing, like the B2, only about half the size of the B2 to get the costs down.  They say the rather short range (2500 miles) comes from the "Tank on the way in, Tank on the way out" tactic.  Tankers to stay 500 miles off the enemy coast to be safe from SAMs and fighters.  Aviation Week has a map showing the LRS-B being able to reach everywhere inside China.  And they think Northrup Grumman got the job 'cause of their B2 experience, and that Lockheed Martin has the F35 contract, and Boeing has the KC-46 contract. 

Cis

As in cis-gendered.  New one on me.  First ran across the term/prefix while web surfing.  Finally looked it up and apparently it means "not trans" as in "not trans gendered"  The trans gender activists felt the need for a word to apply to everyone who is not in their group, i.e. regular people.  If you are doing a culture war, it helps to have a word for the enemy.
   In the real world then cis-gendered means girls who think they are girls and want to grow up to be women, and boys who think they are boys and want to grow up to be men.  In short,  kids who lack psychological hangups about their sexuality. 
   Why does the invention of this new trendy word bother me?

Dune, Frank Herbert, the 2000 miniseries

This miniseries was the second attempt to bring Frank Herbert's huge novel to the screen.  It's not bad, it's at least as good as the 1984 movie.  The the long three episodes allows a fuller development of Herbert's long and complex novel. Sets and costumes are good, which can be expensive in a science fiction movie.  Casting is metza metza.
   William Hurt gives a fine performance as planetary Duke Leto Atreides.  Too bad Frank Herbert killed him off early in the book.  Alex Newman is less satisfying as Paul Muad'dib.  He is too old, too tall, and too burly.  Paul Atreides was written as a teen age boy, somewhat small for his age, and lightly built.  Which gave a tug on the heartstrings as his beloved father is killed and Paul must pick up the load of being a planetary Duke before he is fully grown.  And Paul has to meet both fremen and imperial enemies, hand to hand in gladiatorial duels, and prevail by speed and cunning.  Reading the book, you root for the smaller younger lighter Paul to survive each deadly encounter.  Watching the miniseries there is no doubt that Alex Newman is taller, stronger, and buffer than his opponents.  You know he is going to win the knife fight just by looking at him.  In the book, young Paul Atreides does an enormous amount of coming of age.  In the miniseries he enters the action fully come of age. 

Graduates of "research universities" earn more than liberal arts colleges

This from today's Wall St Journal.  Well, we sorta knew this, graduates with real engineering degrees earn more than graduates with art history degrees.  It's been a cliche that engineers make good well paid husbands.  For numbers, liberal arts graduates pegged out a $50,000 a year ten years out of college where as "research university" graduates made $65-70K at the median.  All of them made more than $50K.
    The Journal article skated over a couple of key points.  The never did define what they mean by "research university".  That's a new one on me.  I assume they are thinking of places like MIT, Georgia Tech, and CalTech.  Place which mostly grant engineering degrees and have strong STEM programs.
   Then they didn't pin down liberal arts.  Do they group the talkie-talkie majors (gender studies, art history, ethnic studies) or the wannabe sciences (sociology, anthropology, psychology, etc) in with the traditional seven liberal arts (English, foreign languages, history, mathematics, music, art, philosophy). 
   The traditional seven liberal arts ought to lead to better jobs than the talkie-talk majors and the wannabe sciences. 

Questions they ought to ask and have not so far

1.  What would you do to get America's GNP growth up to 3.5% or better?
2.  Will you authorize the Keystone XL pipeline?
3.  Will you lease off shore parcels for oil exploration, on the east coast, and the west coast?
4.  Will you stop the EPA's war on coal?  and the new and very expensive ozone limits?
5.  How will you reform personal and corporate taxes?
6.  Will you authorize interstate sale of health insurance?
7.  Will you authorize duty free imports of drugs from any reasonable first world country?
8.   Explain your reforms of the Pentagon procurment bottle neck.
9.   Explain how large our armed forces need to be.How many soldiers, warships, warplanes?
10. Explain what you will do to increase the ratio of tooth to tail in our armed forces.
11. Explain how the Trans Pacific Partnership will increase US exports and jobs.
12. As president what will you do about ISIS?  Send them nastygrams? Use the armed forces to destroy them?
 13. Will you defend NATO countries from Russian aggression or invasion?
14.  Will you defend South Korea from Chinese or North Korean aggression?
15.  What will you do about dredged up Chinese islands in the South China Sea?
16.  Will you authorize oil exploration in the "Arctic National Wildlife Area"?

Anyone got any more?

$43 Million for an Afghan gas station?

Not only is$43 million a ripoff, but the gas station was not a gasoline station, it was a compressed natural gas (CNG) facility. 
  Who in their right mind would have a CNG vehicle in Afghanistan?   You cannot find CNG stations in America right now to keep a CNG vehicle running.  In a backwater like Afghanistan, there are even fewer.
   Aside from making the greenies feel all warm and fuzzy, a CNG station in Afghanistan is a total waste of money.  Even if we didn't get ripped off.

Getting ready for a trip

Pack the laptop, and its charger.  Pack the cell phone, and its charger. Pack the camera, and its charger.  That's three chargers just for a weekend trip. 

Cats have nine names, as well as lives.

This cat came to me bearing the name Hecate.  My daughter's choice, which I found a bit pretentious for a mere house cat.  After a few amusing mishaps, such as falling off a table, falling off the deck, I took to calling her Stupid Beast.  This worked, the cat would even come when I called Stooopid Beast from the deck.  As time went on, Stupid Beast spent more and more time racked out flat on the rug.  I began calling her Flat Beast.  I considered Flat Cat, but I feel Robert A. Heinlein has some ownership on that name.  Variations such as Her Flatness, just plain Flat, followed.  Also Round and Flat, abbreviated to RAF.
   This might be family tradition.  We had a family cat, a Siamese, who came into the family named Cleopatra.  This did not last, and we kids called her Puddy Tat.  Then after Puddy Tat put on weight, my Father started calling her BasketBall.

Flat or Graduated?

Tax that is. A lotta Republicans pitched a flat tax during the CNBC debate last week.  A lotta TV lefties claimed that a flat tax would never produce the revenue they want for all the lefties redistribution plans and free stuff.
  I been figuring and paying my own income tax for 50 years.  Each year, after doing all the crazy worksheets and capital gains and deductions and bulls--t on the 1040, I wound up paying 17%, every year, for the last fifty years.  If everyone paid 17%, Uncle would have plenty of money.  Especially when you consider that under the current system, about half the taxpayers pay nothing at all due to "Earned Income Tax Credit".  When half the population starts paying 17% instead of zip  that's not revenue neutral.
    So arguments against a flat tax based on lack of money are wrong.  The true argument against a flat tax is fairness,  the idea that the wealthy ought to pay more than the poor.  17% income tax when you are just scraping by hurts a lot more than it does for Donald Trump. As a matter of fairness, the wealthy ought to pay a higher rate than the poor.
   Which is what we have now a graduated tax.  We have seven or eight or maybe too many to count tax brackets.  Last time the wealthy paid a huge slice of tax money, far far more than the middle or poorer classes.  This is a graduated tax.  In my estimation, it's too graduated.  I strongly feel that everyone ought to pay something.  From the poor, a few percent, from the wealthy, a lot more, maybe 25%.  Everyone ought to feel the pain of taxes, so they understand that voting for more free stuff is gonna hurt them.  When we allow half the population to escape tax free, they will march right out and vote for more free stuff, 'cause it doesn't cost 'em anything.
   Then, we come to the issue of tax breaks aka loopholes.  There are a lot of 'em.  We get a tax break for having children, for paying a mortgage, for calling it capital gains instead of ordinary income, for health insurance some times, for buying professional books and equipment, for paying state and local taxes, for charitable contributions, for being over 65,  and a ship load of other stuff that I forget, but Turbo Tax can remember for me at tax time.
   I think I'd like to abolish every single one of 'em.  That would cause a mighty howl from parents, the real estate industry, H&R Block, and every other special interest group in the land.  If the howling is too great, maybe I'd compromise on charitable contributions and the tax break for having children.  Set the middle tax bracket to 17%. and revenue would stay about the same. 

Obama dispatches two platoons to Syria

Fifty men, allegedly all Special Forces, ain't much in any scheme of things.  It ain't enough to make a difference in Syria.  To hear to lefties and the isolationists wailing on TV,  you would think Obama had done something serious like declaring WWIII.
   I wish our men well.  I don't think 50 guys can accomplish anything much.  To do Syria right would take a full armored division, say 10,000 men, a lotta tanks and APC's, and air supremacy.   With that, we could depose Assad, push the Russians out, establish a decent government of our choosing. and destroy ISIS or drive them out of the country.
   To win WWII we mobilized a hundred divisions.  Seventy years later, we ought to be able to mobilize just one.

College Paperpushers should not be trying cases of rape.

First of all, let's talk rape, a serious crime, a felony.  It's not "sexual assault" which can be anything the girl doesn't like.  Rape used to be a capital offense, subject to the death penalty.  Crime doesn't get more serious than that
   Now let's look at college administrators.  No legal training, no practical experience outside the ivory tower, and most of them true believers in various weird ideologies.  Do you want your son's future, his career, at the mercy of this kind of loser? 
  No way.  The police and the courts are the proper place to try cases of rape.  The courts have safeguards for defendants, some of them going back in time to Richard the Lion Heart.  They have been in business longer than any college.  They are fairer than any kangaroo court run by college administrators. 
   A girl who has been raped should go to the police.  If she goes to college administrators, they should be required to send her to the police.  They ought to offer transportation to the police station as well

Where can I see the next Republican TV Debate?

Word is that Fox Business News gets the next debate in November, like maybe 10 November.   Time Warner Cable doesn't carry Fox Business News up here in the wildlands.  Hell, they don't even carry CSpan up here.  Anyone know how I can watch the next debate?  I have cable, and broadband.  Any ideas?

Cyber Security Law, just passed Senate

After the horrible hacks lately the Congresscritters have decided to DO SOMETHING.  It is unclear just what they are doing, the newsies haven't talked much about it, but it sounds like a deal to allow companies and the government to cooperate, share information about hacks and attacks with out fear of prosecution for collaboration and price fixing.  We now have a House version, and a Senate version in need of "reconciliation" (quick rewrite to make them both the same) and Obama says he will sign it. 
   I suppose it's worthy, although I'd like to know what it really says, how many pages, and what damaging little clauses got tucked into the darker corners. 
   It isn't what we need.
   We need to close the gaping holes in Windows that allow any hacker, even grade school hackers, to take over Windows computers, remotely from the Internet, and suck every thing off them.  Microsoft deliberately created these vulnerabilities with the idea of increasing sales.  We need somebody or some organization to publicize these gaping holes and create public pressure on Microsoft to close them.
   Number one gaping hole is a Windows feature (bug?) called autorun.  Autorun has been causing trouble since Windows 95.  Autorun makes music CD's inserted in the drive start to play, automatically, hands off, no keystrokes or mouse clicks needed.  That part isn't too dangerous, but the dark side of Autorun loads and starts any code found on the CD.  When USB and flashdrives came along, autorun was extended to load and run any code found on a flash drive.  Just insert a flashdrive into a USB port, and zap, the machine is infected.  Autorun spread the Stuxnet virus in Iran.  Agents merely tossed a few flashdrives into the parking lots at Iranian nuclear facilities.  Iranian workers saw them, picked them up, took them into work, plugged them into their computers, and Zap Bang, the Stuxnet virus started blowing up Iranian centrifuges.  Set the Iranian nuclear program back a year or more. 
  Number 2 gaping hole is the Basic interpreters built into all the Micosoft Office products.  Basic is a full powered computer language.  Malicious Basic programs can be inserted into Office documents (Word .doc and Excel .xls files) and Word or Excel will execute them.  Worse, if you click on such an Office document attached to an email, Windows starts up Word or Excel and passes the attachment in.  Bam you are infected.
   Until we force Microsoft to close these two gaping security holes, we will continue to get hacked.  These aren't the only holes in Windows, but they are the worst ones that I know of.  And Microsoft can close them, in an afternoon.  All Microsoft needs is some incentive to pull up its socks. 

Had a debate watch party last night.

Well, nobody self destructed.  Everybody did well except the CNBC moderators who were terrible, half way thru the candidates started chewing out the CNBC people.  The opening question "What is your biggest weakness" is an old goofy job interview question intended to shake up a less than quick thinking applicant.  These guys are all pretty quick thinking and smoothly sequed into what ever they wanted to say.  Everyone made a clear distinction between them and the Dems. 
   Having people over makes the thing more watchable, keeps you awake, Need to do that more often. 

Bambi overload

Some town in Oregon is over run with deer.  The deer are bullying pedestrians, intimidating dogs, and eating everything green, hedges, ornamental shrubs, gardens, lawn, you name it.  The residents were on TV whining about how terrible things are.
   Obvious solution, have deer hunt.  Low cost, hunters bring their own guns, and will even pay for the privilege.
   Nooo, can't do that.  It's killing Bambi, and that's evil. It's murder. 
   So suffer until you wise up, Oregon town.  We don't have that problem in NH, we have a deer season.

Northrup Grumman awarded the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) contract

100 aircraft at $550 million each, $80 billion overall contract.  It's broken down somewhat.  Phase 1 pays $21.4 billion and Northrup will deliver 21 aircraft.  Then subsequent phases will buy another 79 aircraft.  Looking at the over all contract for 100 aircraft they estimate the cost at $511 million each, and there is a cap of $550 million.  Assume cost enhancements push the cost right up to the cap.  That looks like $55 billion for deliverable aircraft and $25 billion for non-recurring engineering.  That's best case.  Aircraft to become operational in 2025.  Let's see if USAF has pulled up its socks enough to award a contract and not have it disputed in court.  Lockheed Martin was the other bidder, they have plenty of lawyers to challenge a contract award.
   This comes from the Wall St Journal, and it also made NPR.  No discussion of LRS-B performance, range, speed, payload, radar cross section.  The Journal suggested that the LRS-B mission would be strategic nuclear strike against Russia or China. 

So what's wrong with the the Ex-Im Bank?

Ex-Im has been around since the Roosevelt administration.  It borrowed money on the good credit of the United States, , and loaned the money to foreigners to buy US built products.  It returned a modest profit on each deal to the US treasury.  It surely boosted exports at no cost to the taxpayer.  Export mean jobs.
   Granted, the main beneficiaries were big companies like Boeing and Caterpillar.
    So?  They are US companies, employing US union labor.  All that is good.  I see no reason why the US government should not support US industry.  Industry creates jobs, and that deserves support.

Camelot, The TV series

It came out on Starz back in 2011.  I don't pay for payTV channels, so I saw it for for first time from a Netflix disc last night.  Which makes it a little old.  Being an old King Arthur fan, I had high hopes for this one. 
   Disappointing.  First it suffers from the curse of the soundman.  Much of the dialogue is inaudible, lost under the score, or the actors mumble, or the mike isn't placed right. Then it's hard to tell the characters apart, they all wear the same hairdo's and the same clothes.  I failed to distinguish Morgan Le Faye (villain) from Ygraine (goodguy) several times.  King Lot (villain) looks pretty much like Sir Kay (goodguy).  Arthur, the only blonde guy in this thing, is at least distinct in appearance.   
   The story starts around the end of "The Sword in the Stone" with a young Arthur pulling the sword from the stone and being acclaimed King of the Britons.  Jamie Bower is an unsatisfactory Arthur.  Although he looks the right age for the part, he isn't very handsome, he doesn't get any memorable lines (thanks scriptwriters),  his costume doesn't help him (huge fur trimmed cape with broaches the size of saucers), and he never does anything very heroic. Even in the climatic scene pulling the sword from the stone he never looks heroic.  He never displays the commanding presence that makes knights and warlords do his bidding.  In most scenes Merlin is obviously pushing Arthur into position on stage, and giving him his lines to say.
  

WHO goes there!

WHO == World Health Organization, although the TV newsies didn't say so.  WHO announced that processed meat causes cancer.  Actually they were not that straight forward, they said that eating processed meat increases your risk of cancer.  By-by hot dogs, bacon, ham, breakfast sausage, BLT's, bacon and eggs, bangers and mash, lotta good comfort food. 
Of course, the TV newsies did not bother to say HOW MUCH your cancer risk was increased  by eating stuff that has been part of our diet since prehistoric times.  Nor did they give any evidence, studies, biochemistry, anything of substance.  We peasants are expected to believe anything the TV newsies dish out to us without proof.  Like global warming. 

War is Hell, Combat is worse.

Apparently the Obama people are having trouble with the word :"combat".  Master Sgt Wheeler was killed in action against an armed enemy of the United States.  This is a Master Sgt, nearly 20 years in the Army, kind of guy who knows all the answers, an old pro, it's not some 18 year old private who doesn't know enough to come in out of the rain. Sgt Wheeler knew what he was doing. 
   Let the Dem pencil necks quibble about words.  I mourn the loss of an American fighting man. 

Tactical lessons from the US Civil War

Defense always wins.  That's the lesson.  In most of the great battles of the Civil War, Fredricksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Antietam, Chickamauga, one side got there first, dug in, and awaited assault.  The offensive side would give enemy lines as much artillery fire as possible, and then send the infantry forward.  The new rifle-muskets of that year could reach out a couple of hundred yards and get hits.  The assaulting infantry had to cover the last two hundred yards under accurate fire.  In all cases, the defenders shot so many attackers down that they no longer had the numbers to win the hand-to-hand bayonet struggle for possession of the trench line.  Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg is the classic example, but there were plenty of others. 
   Grant was the only Civil War general who seemed to understand this.  Grant's decisive victories, Island Number 10, Shiloh, and Vicksburg were all won by maneuver, rather than bloody frontal assault.
    This tactical lesson held true thruout WWI.  Few European generals had read much about the US Civil War. 

Does Government funded R&D pay off?

Matt Ridley, writing in the Wall St Journal today says "No it doesn't."  As a retired engineer, who spent forty years gainfully employed in private industry, doing R&D, I can relate to this.  I created, either in part or in whole, an medical ultrasonic imager, a portable Holter monitor, a data acquisition system running off an IBM PC, a digital oscilloscope,  a cardiac Xray system, a video compression chip, and an overfill protection system for fuel tank trucks.  All of 'em privately funded, half of 'em made it to market.  Government funding is not required for technological advance.  Nor was basic scientific research in to basic scientific principles needed.  In fact, the one time I picked up some basic research from a scientific journal for a project, it turned out to be wrong, it worked, but at only one half the performance claimed in the journal article.  I looked up the author and telephoned him. After a lengthy conversation, the author admitted that yes, he had exaggerated his claims a little bit.
   On the other hand, during the existential struggle that was World War II, government funded R&D produced nuclear weapons, jet aircraft,  radar, airborne magnetometers, proximity fuses, handheld two way voice radios, and effective back pack anti tank weapons.  In the following Cold War, government funded projects took us to the Moon and launched the Internet.
   Much university research is funded by government grants.  On the other hand you have all seen the video of a shrimp on a treadmill, government funded all the way. As long as corporations are allowed to deduct R&D expenses for tax purposes, progress will be made.  
   

So who is our best candidate against Hillary?

The Dems are weeding out their field.  Jim Webb, Joe Biden, Lincoln Chaffee have all pulled out, leaving just Hillary and Bernie Sanders.  To me, a Republican, there is little to chose between them. Hillary is a liar who throws people under the bus, running on Wall St money.  Bernie is a Commie nutcase, locked in a time warp back to the 1960's, promising free stuff for all.  The pundits all say Hillary is gonna be the Dem candidate, and that's believeable.
   So who should we pick to maximize our chances next November?  Can Trump beat Hillary? Can Ben Carson? What about Cruz, Rubio, Carly, Kaisich, JEB, and the rest of 'em?  Right now, I got my doubts about The Donald, I think his negatives are too high.  Carson is polling well these last couple of days, but is he too soft spoken to make a decent president?  The rest of 'em are a tossup.  Carly was looking good, but then she said there is no need for entitlement reform, which I don't believe.  Either she is totally clueless, or she is lying.