Pre existing conditions and 26 year olds on their parents health insurance.

Trump was talking about "modifying"  Obamacare repeal to preserve these two Obamacare benefits.  I'm not agin the idea, but Trump ought to do it this way.
1.  Have Congress pass, and he sign,  a simple one page bill repealing Obamacare root and branch.  Just to make a point.
2.  Promise to sign a preexisting conditions law and a separate 26 year old children law, should Congress get its act together and pass them some time in the future.

If Trump allows "modification" of Obamacare, the special interests come out of the woodwork, all bets are off, all sorts of "stuff" will get packed into the "modification".  Better to kill the whole thing, and require Congress to pass new legislation from scratch to pass out any goodies to the voters.  Make sure to record the names of Congresscritters proposing and voting for such laws.

Post Mortem, which minority group tipped the election to The Donald?

The American Pundit Class has been crying in their beer since Tuesday night.  They didn't want The Donald to win, and they had predicted that he wouldn't.  Now,  they are upset to find The Donald will be President of the US in a couple of months, and they are scrabbling around for an excuse for their failed predictions.
   They talk about the Hispanic vote, the black vote, the LGBT vote, the college educated vote, the White Working Class (now sporting a new acronym, the WWC) vote, the millennium vote (was that the name of a Star Wars spaceship?), and every other minority group they can invent.  Or they are blaming the pollsters.
   Little to no talk about the women's vote.  Women are half the population, vastly larger than all the "minority groups" put together.  A couple of internet postings mention in passing that Hillary got 54% of the women's vote.  They didn't give The Donald's share of the women's vote, but let's just assume any women who didn't vote Hillary voted Trump, which would give Trump 46%.  And a difference of 8%.   From a  women voting population of 123 million, 8% is 9.84 million more women's votes for Hillary than for Trump.  Are there that many Hispanics or blacks in the whole country?  Given The Donald's crude remarks about women that came out in the campaign,  that 8% margin for Hillary is understandable.  The Donald can be very offensive when he sets his mind to it.
  The real question about the election results is how The Donald managed to squeak out his victory over that 9.84 million women's votes against him.  He did, somehow, and that's impressive.
  Next time, the Republicans need to think about doing something about that ginormous number of women who didn't/won't vote Trump.  Next time the Democrats will have stronger candidate, nearly anyone with a pulse would be a stronger candidate than Hillary was.
   I wonder why the pundits aren't talking about the women's vote?  

Trump ought to do Income Tax Reform ASAP

The income tax, both personal and corporate, is killing the economy.  Taxes are too high, highest in the world for corporations.  No wonder American corporations are leaving for overseas, the taxes are lower overseas.  And too damn complicated.  Ever since income tax was invented way back in 1913, every special interest has been adding little loopholes to the tax code to let them skate free.  Big companies and rich people who can afford enough lawyers can figure out ways to avoid taxes. Ordinary people just get soaked. 
    Carly Fiorina had the right idea.  "Close every loophole, lower every rate."   Gaping loopholes needing closure:  Mortgage interest deductions, depreciation of real estate, capital gains, loss carry forward, carried interest, electric car subsidies.  And lots more.  I only know the income tax code well enough to do my own taxes, with an assist from Excel.  The real tax dodger lawyers, and for that matter The Donald himself, know of plenty more.  Loopholes favor the big and the wealthy, finding them or making new ones gives big money to the lawyer class, and  it makes people and companies pour money into things that don't produce wealth, they just dodge taxes.  We would be better off without loopholes.   I'd trade my loopholes for a couple of percent lower tax rate any day ( or any tax year).
   We ought to have just three tax rates, one for the very wealthy, one for ordinary citizens, and one for the truly poor.  I do believe the truly poor ought to pay a little something, just so they feel some hurt every time a new handout is voted in.  The "breakpoints" between truly poor, ordinary citizen and very wealthy ought to be indexed for inflation.  Otherwise Uncle Sam gets an automatic tax hike every year as inflation pushes everyone up into the next higher tax bracket.
   Ignore the Democrats who will claim that tax cuts are "for the rich".  Right now half the population pays no income tax.  Tax cuts only help those who pay taxes.  The way Democrats say it, if you pay taxes you are a member of the evil rich.  Ignore this malarkey.

Facebook and Fake News

Facebook has been running a series of fake news articles.  Each one announces the death of a celebrity (Clint Eastwood, Angelina Joli, and the like).  In actual fact, all these "victims" as still alive and well.  Facebook really ought to shut this down. It ruins the Facebook reputation. 
   Right now, I don't believe any news posted on Facebook.  If in doubt, I go to good old reliable InstaPundit or Drudge.  If it ain't on either of those, then it didn't really happen. 

Does the Pentagon Need an Acquisition Chief??

Title of an article in Aviation Week.  They have one now.  The incumbent, Frank Kendall, claims that cost overruns were 51% before his time and he has reduced them to 5%.  His job is on the line, latest Senate defense authorization bill would remove it and replace it with two lower ranking slots, one for R&D and one for "management and support"  what ever that might be.  Pure paperwork perhaps?
  Acquisition is a serious problem at the Pentagon.  Look at the F35 program, a decade late and zillions over budget.  There was a new Marine One helicopter program that got so far out of line that Obama had it canceled.  The KC-46 tanker is years late and under attack by nit pickers.  I don't follow the new programs as closely as I used to back when I was a serving Air Force officer.  So there has got to be more grief out there.
   Success or failure (cost overruns and delays) rest with program management.  Take F-35 for example.  It's problems can be laid at the feet of F35 program management.  Extra layers of Pentagon paper pushers have nothing to do with it.  
   Every military officer in program management needs to know that his Officer Efficiency Report (his future promotion chances)  rest upon program success.  Bring the program in on time and under budget and you get ranked at the top.  If the program is late or overbudget, you get ranked at the bottom.
   Program management needs to have input to the specification writing.  Many program disasters result from ridiculous specifications, spec that called for unobtainium, or faster than light, or other things impossible to actually make.  Or, gold plating the project with nice-to-have but not really necessary expensive gadgets.  I'm thinking of the Tactical Situation Display in the old F106.  It never worked, and the plane flew and fought successfully without it. Or the C-5 program which sank under the weight of impossible to make requirements.  Or the F35 burdened with an airborne digital networking system, and Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) systems neither of which are needed in a fighter.  Fighter planes are expensive and should concentrate on air superiority, shooting down enemy aircraft and attacking enemy ground troops.  We have recon aircraft, drones, and satellites for ISR.
   Then program management has to iron out the myriad boggles and whoopsies that come up during the program. Specifications almost but not quite met.  Subsystems that just don't work.  Program management must be prepared to accept small shortcomings when the cost of fixing them is high.  And be prepared to just dump subsystems that aren't working.  And accept cost reduction suggestions from the contractor. 
    Trump needs a good, intelligent defense secretary to sort this stuff out.  The current secdef, Ash Carter isn't bad.  John McCain would be good, he at least knows the issues and knows which end is up. 

Trump ought to cancel Obamacare ASAP

Obamacare is going broke, insurers are bailing out, and it is a terrific drag on the economy, plus most of the voters don't like it.  First we need to get a simple one page bill  thru Congress that completely puts away the present 5000 page law.  Democrats in the Senate will try to block it, but we ought to be able to stir up public opinion to undermine them.
   After the present law is scrapped pass a few things to help out.  Most (75%) Americans get very decent health insurance thru their jobs.  Obamacare only effected the self employed, and the unemployed.  The big companies have lawyers and experts and they drive a hard bargain with the insurance companies.  Any insurance company will bend over backward for a customer like GM or Walmart.  This makes the company insurance policies the best and cheapest it is possible to write.  All that is necessary is to pass a law requiring insurance companies to sell their best policy to the general public at the same price their big company customers pay for it.  This will let the self employed get insurance at a reasonable rate. 
   Then a little competition is good for pricing.  Pass a law that allows any American insurance company to sell insurance in all fifty states of the Union.   Right now, to sell insurance in a state, the insurance company has to go to the various state insurance commissions, do a thousand pounds of paperwork, kneel on the floor and bang there heads against the bureaucrat's desk.  This is such a drag, that for small or thinly populated states, they just don't bother.  And so, the citizen's of such states (like New Hampshire!) only have one insurance company to buy from.  And ripped off they get.  We could fix that easily.  The insurance companies won't like it, but they don't vote.
   Then we could cut drug prices with a law that allows duty free import of medicine to the US from reasonable first world countries (Canada, Britain, Japan and so forth).  Whether or not said medicine has FDA approval.  If the authorities in reasonable first world countries have OKed the drug for their citizens, then it's good enough for American citizens.  The drug companies and the FDA will hate this idea, but again, they don't vote.

Stock Futures? Investment or Gambling?

First I have heard that we even had a stock futures market.  During the long election night Fox mentioned that US stock futures had taken a serious dive, hundreds of points, as Trump's election victory became clearer and clearer as the night wore on.  But, in the morning when the real stock market opened, everything was hunky dory, the Dow went up a couple a hundred points over the day.
   Why do we have a futures market in stocks.   Futures markets were invented for agricultural commodities, crops, which are in oversupply right after harvest, and become scarcer and scarcer as the once a year harvest gets used up.  Used to be, if you were a farmer, you could get much better prices for your crop if you waited til well after harvest to sell it.  Which takes money for the farmer to do.  He has bills that have to be paid, and he needs the money from selling the crop.  If said farmer has some cash in his checking account, he can wait, but few farmets have that much money in their checking accounts. 
  So, they invented futures markets.  The producer makes a contract with the consumer to deliver a big load of crop, sometime in the future, at an agreed on price.  And these contracts can be traded or sold, along with the crops.  This smooths out crop prices over the year, which is a good thing for the producers.  And as crop prices move up and down, futures contracts offer a way to bet on price movements.  In fact the gambling angle proved so popular that futures markets in things that are not seasonal, like gasoline and jet fuel,  were created.  Southwest airlines was very good at playing the futures market in jet fuel and saved themselves a ton of money. 
   And, so, we now have a futures market in stocks. They are not seasonal, and the real stock market is open five days a week  every week.  Far as I can see, stock futures are just pure gambling.  We ought to tax the hell out it. 

Healing the wounds of the election. Let Hillary off.

I'm gonna offer advice to the incoming Trump Administration, while it is still incoming.  My first advice is to drop prosecution of Hillary Clinton over the emails or any other matter.  She lost the election.  She doesn't hold public office, she will be too old to run again in 2020.  She's harmless now.  Let her go.  You could probably gin up your Justice Dept to prosecute and even win a court case against her.  Don't.  She cannot do you any harm now.  And prosecuting her will really piss off  all her friends and supporters.  Of which there are a lot. People you want to win over to your side, not  kick in the head.  Don't be divisive when you don't need to be.

So what happened election night?

The pollsters had Hillary ahead by a little.  But Trump won.  What happened?
   The short of it is, we voters were given two unpalatable candidates.  One candidate promised to get the country back on the right track.  The other insisted that we were on the right track all along.    But we weren't, we still aren't, and everybody except newsies know it.
   Basically Wall St speculators crashed the world economy back in 2008.  And it has stayed crashed.  US GNP growth has been a measly 1% per year for the eight years of Obama.  It should be 3%.  Obamacare, the war on coal, 80,000 pages of new federal regulation, crazy federal tax policies and general federal meddling has combined to flatten US economic growth.  And people feel it, they cannot find jobs, their children cannot find jobs, they don't get raises, they loose their houses to foreclosure, and everything costs more.  The country is on the wrong track and everyone knows it.
   So, faced with two unpalatable candidates, voters went for the unpalatable candidate that promised to fix the economy, rather than the unpalatable candidate that claimed things were just peachy.
   The profession of economics did not help the situation.  Economist say a depression is over when things stop getting worse.  Great Depression 2.0 flattened out way back in 2008 but it hasn't gone away, the economy is still not growing.  Voters, workers, and citizens don't think a depression is over until things climb back up to where they used to be (ought to be).  So we had all the economists (a lefty lot) claiming Great Depression 2.0 was over back i9n 2009.  The Obama administration liked this myth, and spread it around, and the newsies (another lefty lot) picked it up and pushed it.
   But truth is stronger than fiction, and the voters knew things were bad and voted for a guy who said he would fix them, despite  that guy's big mouth. 

Let's just charge him with nine counts of murder

Dylan Roof is headed to FEDERAL court first.  The Feds want to charge him with 50 counts of this and that.  This is malarkey.  Roof committed premeditated murder of nine completely innocent strangers.  In front of witnesses no less.  Murder is a state crime in the US.  There doesn't appear to be any controversy over the facts of the case.  Roof ought to be in state court facing nine counts of murder.  The law on murder is clear, and hasn't changed much since Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mt. Sinai.  And murder has always been a death penalty offense. 
   The feds are charging "thought crimes" (hate crimes) and weapons charges and welfare for lawyers.  This ain't justice.
   Justice is an atrocious criminal brought to trial and convicted of straight forward well understood crimes.  And executed for murder. 

Lamenting ( or cheering for) the death of democracy. NHPR

NHPR was on this depressing theme all day Saturday.  The were talking about "economical man" the theoretical man of the economics text books who does every thing for money.  The claimed that such a man would never bother to vote, because there is no money in it, and because his one vote won't count for much in the myriad of other votes.  They ragged on about this for a half an hour.  Depressing talk.
   Of course the entire concept is malarkey.  People don't vote 'cause there is money in it, they vote cause they believe in the cause.  It doesn't cost money to vote, and the trivial amount of time it takes is of little account.  I managed to vote for fifty years stopping at the polls on my way to work or on my way home from work.  Not a significant burden. People vote for either a candidate they like, for an ideology they like, or against a candidate or ideology they despise.  Except in the simple case of vote buying by party bosses, money is not the question.  Which means voting is not properly a subject of economics, or concepts like "economical man"
   And, American democracy has a good track record of selecting decent leadership.  For the great crises of American history, Revolution, Civil War, the two world wars,  our democracy  put forth good strong effective leaders, Washington, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt. 
   We did better than Europe.  European leadership was monarchies, and the governments, even France and Britain, were staffed by the aristocracy.  They weren't very good at their jobs.  In the supreme crisis of 1914 they allowed events to drift into a terrible war, a war that wrecked all of Europe for good.  US democratically elected leadership knew enough to stay out of it, and once it became clear that we had to step in to prevent the bad guys from winning US leadership brought the united backing of a large industrialized country into battle, and in both world wars,  created the moral high ground, Wilson's 14 points, FDR's four freedoms.  "In war the moral is to the physical as three is to one," said Napoleon once upon a time.  US democratically elected leadership understood this where as European aristocratic leadership did not. 
   Churchill once said "Democracy is the worse form of government, except for all the others."   I like that.

FBI Director Comey says there is nothing in the Weiner computer emails

This is the 600,000 odd emails found on Anthony Weiner's computer.  How in the name of all that's holy can anyone, any gang of agents look at 600,000 emails in eight days?  That's 75000 emails a DAY.  Maybe the FBI had a computer program scan them looking for keywords?  That sounds sorta flaky.  Any how, the FBI director said he wasn't going to prosecute Hillary again last night. 

Man vs Clocks Going back to Standard Time

So, this morning I  did the clock reset  thing.  First my wrist watch, that's easy, just turn the knob.  Then the clock radio.  Not too bad, has a button marked "clock set" and a couple of arrow buttons. Now things get sticky.  Antique Tiffany mantle clock, inherited from my long dead grandmother.  Gotta be a hundred years old.  I've been told you NEVER push the hands of such a clock backward, it breaks things and/or seriously confuses the hour striking mechanism.  So I stop the pendulum swinging with my fingers, wait an hour, and restart the pendulum.  And then we check the cell phone.  Wonderbar, cell phone has automatically gone to standard time, hands off, no tinkering required.  Wonder how cell phone managed that trick.  Does the internal program have the dates of Daylight time burned in it?  If so, does it still work after the Congresscritters change the dates again?  Or does the cell phone home base broadcast a "Change clock now" signal to every cell phone in the land? 
  Then the VCR.  Not that I use it much anymore, but it's still there.  I find it is showing standard time.  I guess I never bothered to set it on daylight time.  It's a yard sale machine, with a remote picked up at a different yard sale.  
   And desktop, still running old but fast and trusty XP, made the change automatically.
   Shortly I will go down to the garage and tangle with the car clock.  Last time I had to dig the car manual out of the glove compartment to figure out how to set the car clock.
   If I had my druthers, we would stay on Daylight time all year.  We don't have enough sunlight in winter to give us light for both the drive to work and the drive home.  Druther drive to work in the dark, when I am fairly rested, and have some coffee in me, and get a virtuous feeling of getting up early, than drive home in the dark, tired, and feeling like it's midnight cause it's black everywhere.  Depressing that is. 

Can we believe the polls?

Good question.  Especially as the wall-to-wall TV coverage of the election consists mostly of reading the latest poll over the air.  That's why newsies love elections, they are so easy to cover, you don't need to know anything, you don't have to get out of the office and talk to people, you just read the poll results over the air. 
   Longish piece in the Wall St Journal over the difficulties of the pollsters in this cell phone age.  The Journal says that a special law passed back in 1991 forbids the use of demon dialers on cell phone numbers.  For a pollster to call a cell phone number, he has to hand dial the number.  Which is slow.   So all the pollsters prefer to call real wired phones.  But, the Journal says that most of the people who answer the wired phones are over 65, which is not very representative.  I can believe this, none of my three grown children has a wired phone.  To add insult to injury, a large number of people just hang up the phone when they hear it is a pollster.  I can believe that too.  I have done a bit of political phone banking over the years.  Used to be, the voters were sort of pleased to receive a call from the party and would talk to you about politics and stuff.  Not any more.  Now a days, they just hang up as soon as they learn who you are.
   So the pollsters have trouble reaching a representative sample of voters.  They compensate by "weighting" the sample they do manage to get.  "Weighting" is adjusting the results based on past experience, or hunch, or voodoo.  Actually it is surprising that they do as well as they do.  And they have missed trends, like Brexit completely.
  So, it might be worthwhile watching the election results come in next Tuesday.  There might be a November Surprise for all of us. 

NH Senate debate on WMUR

We have Republican incumbent Senator Kelly Ayotte going up against Democratic Governor Maggie Hassan.   First issue discussed was cyber security.  Both candidates managed to speak for several minutes on this issue without ever mentioning the name of the cyber security problem, namely Windows.  Any Windows computer connected to the internet can be secretly taken over, everything on its hard drive transferred to the attackers, malware emailed to every address in the victim's address book, keylogger installed to capture all the victim's passwords, and DDOS attack software installed.  Plus other bad stuff.
   Windows is so riddled with security holes as to be unfixable.  If you want any security at all, you must run something else, Linux or Apple. 
   Anyhow neither senatorial candidate seemed to be aware of this.

Obama is on TV trashing the Donald for not paying enough taxes

Obama, your IRS has audited the Donald every year of your administration.  They didn't find anything wrong with his tax returns.  If The Donald ain't paying enough taxes to suit you, your IRS was OK with it. 

Will this endless election actually end next week?

Lord I hope so.  But it might not.  The polls are very tight, the election could go either way, or worse,  deadlock.  That would throw the election into the US House of Representatives.  Where the current Republican majority ought to be able to elect Trump.  Even after they vote by states, one vote per state, as required by the 12th amendment, which was passed after the disputed Adams/Jefferson election of 1804.
  Or it goes to the Supremes.  Last time (2000) the Supremes had a 5 to 4 conservative majority.  This time, since the death of Justice Scalia, the court is split 4-4.  The Supremes are as partisan as all the other Washington pols, and so would be unable to reach a decision.  What happens after that is any one's guess. 
   The newsies like elections.  They are simple, horse races, and even the dimmest newsie can find things to saw that don't make him/her sound too dumb.  So they will do what they can to keep this one going.  That's essier for them than starting up the coverage of the 2020 election, which the newsies would otherwise do a couple of days after the polls close next week.  We will surely hear more about Hillary's email and the FBI, whether she wins or looses. If she wins, the constant harping on the emails won't help her.  If Trump wins, the newsies will settle down to harassing him for his entire term.
   And, the voters on the loosing side are going to be unhappy, and stay unhappy.  If you believe the polls, that's gonna be about half the country.  Can the winner find anything to do or say to ease that unhappiness?

WMUR (channel 9) TV NH governor's debate.

On one side we have Democrat Colin Van Ostern.  Colin is in favor of  building commuter rail, offering universal prekindergarten, funding alternate energy, signing up for Medicaid expansion.  He is against the Northern Pass power line project. When asked how he plans to pay for all this goodness Colin claimed that he could do cost savings in NH state government which would be enough.  Right. He did have enough political sense to say he would not put in a state income tax or state sales tax.  " He took the pledge" as we say up here.  Only smart thing he said all night.
   Chris Sununu talked about trying to bring more business into NH, something we need.  He is against commuter rail, pointing out that the $350 million for commuter rail would finish the widening of I93 and fix every worn out highway bridge in the state.  He said that "alternate energy" merely raises every one's electric bills. 
   They both agreed that NH needs better mental health and drug therapy facilities.
   None of the newsies on the panel had the stones to ask about right to work.  
  

Alley Cat Appreciation Month

We are in it.  Although "Alley cat" is non PC.  The PC word is feral cat.  Seen a couple of pieces in the Wall St Journal, lotta posts on the 'Net.  All saying nice things about alley cats.  I met my first real alley cats when youngest son went to college in Brooklyn.  They made me feel sorry for them.  Skinny, grubby, coats in poor condition, living outdoors in a New York winter, it was clear that house cats have a much better life than alley cats. 
   There was a piece in the Journal about keeping feral cats around the Jacob Javits center to keep the rats in check.  Nice color picture of a loading dock with a nice looking black and white cat on it.  Except, that cat looked more like a house cat than an alley cat.  It was well fed, it's coat was fine and glossy, it was sitting in the middle of the loading dock.  Alley cats remain in corners, under cars, outta sight, they don't plunk themselves down in the open to get their pictures taken. 
   Then a nice puff piece on alley cats made it onto my facebook page this morning. 

There has gotta be something wrong

With a national political party going thru TWO party chair women in just one election season.  First they had to dump Debbi Wasserman Schultz over her work against The Bern in the primaries.  Now they dump Donna Brazille for feeding debate questions to Hillary.  How do the Democrats select their chair persons? 

FBI shrinks from getting their hands dirty

According to Fox last night, the FBI got a search warrant for the Weiner/Adebin laptop.  I assume they were investigating the charges against Weiner for sexting a minor.  After a WEEK, the laptop was turned over.   Hell, give me just an hour and every single bit on the hard drive goes bye-bye for good.  After looking thru the laptop the FBI discovered a deep pool of really ugly mud.  To avoid going for a swim in filth, the FBI decided they needed another search warrant to look into it.  They must have been hoping the courts would be slow.  Well the second search warrant turned up in time for the election.
   For me, the take out is :  ONE search warrant is all you need to search ONE laptop.  The FBI was stalling, hoping the matter would go away. 

   Afterthought:  They are now saying the laptop has 650,000 emails on it.  Best I can think, they backed up Hillary's server onto the laptop.  And that's a lot of emails.  That's 445 emails a DAY, for the four years Hillary was Secretary of State.   

The economy is most important issue.

Why?  Because with a strong economy all other things become possible.  With a strong economy everyone can find a job, and the 10% of the working age population that doesn't have a job, or can't find full time work, or is on the official unemployment rate will all have jobs.  And they will pay taxes instead of absorbing welfare bennies.  Boosting tax revenue by 10% would do good things for the deficit, and provide money for all sorts of social bennies, better schools, more infrastructure, maternity leave, you name it, money makes it all possible.  A strong growing economy throws off money like a tree shedding its leaves in the fall. 
   A strong economy reduces crime.   It employs people.  The unemployed have the time and motivation to do a little burglary, deal some drugs, steal a few cars.  Put 'em to work and we will have less crime. 
   A strong economy improves civilian morale.  When the economy is strong people feel better about life in general 'cause they no longer worry about loosing their jobs.
   A strong economy gives the muscle needed to deal with Islamic crazies,  Vladimir Putin, the NORKS, and the rest of them.  Remember WWII, our economy won that one.  Starting from scratch the American economy poured forth the war material, aircraft, tanks, rifles, av gas, rations, army trucks, and nuclear weapons that doomed the enemy. American av gas fueled the RAF for the Battle of Britain.  Dodge army trucks and LL Bean shoepaks made the Red Army mobile.  British troops drove American Sherman tanks to victory at El Alamain.  Our economy was efficient and strong enough to keep running at the wartime pace even after 10 million men were taken out the economy and enlisted in the armed forces. 
   The economy has to grow 3% a year just to keep up with population growth.  It has to grow to offer jobs to each year's crop of new high school and college grads.  Obama has failed in this.  Under Obama economic growth has been 1.5% instead of 3%.  That's why so many new grads are still living at home and playing video games, they can't find jobs.
   We need a new president who will make the economy grow.  Open up all federal lands, and offshore waters to oil exploration.  Restrain the NIMBYs and BANANAs who are stopping every sort of construction.  Close tax loopholes and reduce the rates to keep business from fleeing the country.  Shut down the patent trolls.  Repeal Obamacare.  Repeal most of Obama's business killing regulations.  Stop pouring good money into greenie "alternate energy" ratholes. 

Musta been a lotta heat.

After FBI director Comey let Hillary off last month, it must have taken a hell of a lotta heat to make him change his tune, in public, so close to the election. I've heard that a lot of FBI people are still mad about letting Hillary off.  Maybe something really juicy turned up, and Comey had to fess up or they would leak it.  Certainly most Republicans, especially the ones in Congress, were unhappy about letting Hillary off.  The ones in Congress can make trouble for the FBI when budget time comes around. 
   There is talk that what ever it was turned up during the investigation of Anthony Weiner for sexting a teenage girl.  Weiner clearly has some kind of psychological hangup.  Some how, Huma Abedin, Hillary's close advisor, married the guy, and even had a child with him.  Make you wonder about Huma, how smart is she really, if she couldn't figure out that Weiner was a screwball.  And how smart is Hillary to rely on a woman who isn't very bright as a close advisor?
   And how did the FBI get their hands on what ever it is?  On Huma's computer?   Hillary should have given Huma some lessons about wiping hard drives clean.  Let's guess that "it" is an email from Hillary.  A lot of the stuff Hillary wiped off her server must have been emails to Huma.  And the FBI found them still on Huma's computer?  
   Come on FBI, let us see the dirt too.  It's selfish to hog all the mud to yourselves. 

Wonder how many early voters wish they had waited?

For the latest FBI blockbuster to come out. 

Heat makes light

The blockbuster announcement by the FBI today that they are re opening the Hillary email case is a result of heat applied to the FBI.  Enough heat will make some light.

Old USAF Cliche

"Any landing you can walk away from is a GOOD landing."   I never really appreciated this cliche until the time we ground looped in a Gooney bird at Takli Thailand.   We passengers were VERY appreciative and we all shook the pilot's hand.
   Betcha Mike Pence understands the old cliche now. 

Rail vs Air travel?

Europe and Japan take great pride in their high speed passenger rail.  I've been to both places, ridden the trains, and they are slick.  You board the trains in the center of town, no $100 cab ride to the airport, and you get a fine view of the passing countryside, and they drop you off in the center of town, where you can walk or take the subway to your hotel. 
   Why don't we have trains as nice in America?  Simple, the US is too big, train takes too long to get anywhere.  When I had business on the west coast, I could board a jet liner at Logan and be in California before lunch.  That's 3000 miles at 600 mph.  Even a science fiction 300 mph train would take all day.  A practical 21st century high speed train (150 mph) would take a day and a night. 
   The only place in America with cities close enough for train travel to compete with air is the Boston-Washington corridor up the east coast.  And, we have Acela, a medium high speed train.  Not as fast as the French TGV or the Japanese Hikari superexpress, but fast enough.  Acela can do the Boston New York run fast enough beat airline time, you can skip the taxi to the airport and the hour to get thru security.  Funny thing,  Acela fares are higher than airline fares. 
    Governor Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown out in California is trying for high speed rail the length of California.  It's gonna cost billions.  Real passengers will fly anyhow.  Good luck California taxpayers. 

They voted for this or that awful thing

Hourly now, I have negative TV ads claiming that this candidate or that candidate voted tax breaks for big oil, or supported the "special interests" or some other just plain awful vote. 
   Never do these ads mention the name or number of this dreadful bill the target is accused to voting for, or the date of the vote, or anything that would allow you to fact check the claim. 
   And in this age of Democratic footdragging in Congress, that puts off voting funding bills until the last minute and then voting thru a 5000 page "omnibus spending bill" to keep the government running for another three weeks, it's meaningless.   The Congressperson can vote for the omnibus and keep the government funded, and lay himself open to all kinds of charges, because an omnibus bill contains all kinds of bad stuff.  In 5000 pages they can and do hide funding for damn near anything.  Or he/she can vote against it, and get trashed from all quarters for shutting down the government.  All the feeders at the federal trough will rise up in righteous anger against anyone who threatens to derail their gravy train. 
   So I ignore all the "Did you  know so-and-so made some dreadful vote" ads.

New engines for the B-52 fleet?

Aviation Week had a short piece lobbying for a B-52 re engine project.  From a technical standpoint, this might make sense, it would certainly give a nicer B-52 with more range, better takeoff power, and lower maintenance.  Especially if a modern engine with enough power were selected that would allow the B-52 to fly on four engines instead of the current eight.  As an old flight line maintenance officer, I can tell you, that maintaining four engines is a helova lot easier than maintaining eight engines. 
   But, speaking as a taxpayer, is it worth it ?  Engines are the most expensive part of an aircraft.  For a new airliner, the engines are a quarter to a third of the overall flyaway cost.  The Aviation Week article didn't breathe a word about cost.  The B-52's are old, so old that we ought to replace them all, right now, on general principles.  Does it make sense to plow serious money into a plane that ought to be retired, and probably will get retired in the foreseeable future?  Especially as the engines on the B-52 work, are reliable, and are efficient enough to give the old B-52 better range than any other USAF bomber, either in service or on the drawing boards. 

Shed a tear for the business jet business

Great Depression 2.0 put the kibosh on bizjet sales.  Aviation Week shows a graph with a big peak in 07 and 08 followed by a steady decline.  Naturally, as an industry spokesmagazine, Aviation Week is all in favor of more bizjet business. 
   In actual fact, the bizjets are mini airliners, nearly as expensive as a full size single aisle airliner.   Expensive to own and expensive to fly.  Only the biggest and richest companies have the money to play with them.  For the top brass of a big rich company, a company jet is a very nice perk.  Tax exempt too.  For the shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders, a bizjet is money wasted that could have gone to expansion, new product development, dividends, wages, and plenty of other useful ends.  In actual fact, the company brass can jolly well fly commercial, everyone else does. And since Great Depression 2.0 struck, the company stakeholder's views are prevailing over the views of top management. 
     In the real world, jet aircraft are so expensive that only air carriers who will fly them everyday can make economic sense for ownership.  No corporate flight operation is going to fly a bizjet as hard as a real aircarrier will.  If for some obscure reason the company bigwigs cannot fly commercial they could charter a bizjet for a lot less than it costs to own one. 
    And Aviation Week goes on at length about new and advanced bizjet models that might revive the market. 

Voting machines

The first all mechanical voting machines were introduced in the 1930's.  At that time it was thought that the machines would reduce scams like ballot box stuffing.  And the machines counted up the votes and displayed the sums on the back of the machine, so vote tallies were available as soon as the polls closed, and the poll workers didn't have to know how to add, subtract or count.  Lotta places bought them, and they lasted for decades.  I never heard of anyone trying to hack one.  Tools were needed just to get the covers off, and under the covers the maze of little whirring moving parts defied all but the most skilled and trained mechanics. 
    After decades of service, the mechanical machines started to wear out, and the manufacturers had gone the way of the buggy whip makers.   As cities and towns looked around for replacements,  because after voting on machines, going back to paper ballots seemed primative, and a horde of eager beaver vendors (Diebold!) were offering electronic voting machines.  These gadgets are basically low end desktop computers.   A program displays the candidates names to voters and records the touches they use to vote.  Groovy.  But these voting machines have all the weaknesses of Windows computers.  Anyone with access to the machines, before or after the election, can change the programming to help his party.  And this scam is undetectable.  They is no paper trail.  The machine's program is unreadable.  With the old fashioned paper ballot, the ballots were saved, and could be recounted in case of challenge.  
    We ought to go back to paper ballots.  Up here in NH, we still use them.  Works fine.  If counting all the ballots in a big city is too much work, buy ballot reading machines.  They work like the test scoring machines used in school and if the machine score is challenged, the paper ballots are still available to be hand counted. 

Who should I vote for? Hillary or The Donald?

Barring a massive miracle, one or the other will be president in a couple of months.  Voting for anyone else isn't going to accomplish anything.  Whereas the race between them is so close that your vote just might tip the election your way.
   Lets not look at the candidate's pasts.  They both have lotta problems.  But the past is past, what's done is done.  Constructive thinking is thinking about what each of them might do to America (for America?) if elected.  You ought to vote for the candidate that might provide the best future for the country.
  President Trump would cut federal taxes.  He would sign an Obamacare repeal bill. He would oppose monopoly mergers, like the recent InBev merger.   He would support Congressional term limits, he might not be able to get the votes to do it, but he has promised to try.  He has promised a federal hiring freeze.  President Trump would appoint real judges to the Supreme Court, judges who believe in enforcing the law as written and not writing new law from the bench.  Trump believes in the second amendment.   
   President Hillary would hike your taxes.  She would veto Obamacare reform.  If you like your Obamacare, you can keep your Obamacare.  She would play nice with Wall St, signing bills to give 'em tax loopholes and reduce regulation.  She would continue to set the Middle East on fire, al la Libya, Syria, Iraq, Boko Haram, Turkey, and ISIS.  You gotta figure that  as president she would keep on doing the same stuff she did as Secretary of State.  President Hillary won't freeze federal hiring, she thinks more government jobs are good for the Democratic party.  President Hillary would appoint Supreme Court judges who believe in "a living Constitution" a liberal idea that allows judges to make up law out of thin air.  Hillary believes in global warming and will sign legislation restricting citizen's rights to heat their houses, fuel their cars, and giving handouts to greenie scams like solar electricity and wind energy.   Hillary is a gun control freak.  
   If you call yourself an American citizen, you need to vote for one or the other.  Real Americans look toward the future, not back to the past. 

It's a Winta Wundaland

Snowed last night.  2 1/2 inches.  Photos taken outside my place up in Franconia Notch NH this morning.    Global warming strikes again.

Win10 Spy Disabler V 1.4, Making it work

Win 10 is very snoopy, and in factory trim reports everything about you and your browsing habits it can back to Microsoft.  Youngest son recommended Win 10 Spy Disabler freeware to tighten things up.  Nice little program, gives you all kinds of options on what you can kill.  Only problem, it never seemed to DO anything, no matter what options I selected. 
   I finally got the thing to work this morning.  The program window is too big for my screen (I'm a laptop) and the "APPLY" button was off the bottom of the screen and out of reach.  You cannot click on buttons that are off the screen. 
   Fix:  move the task bar out of the way.  My task bar is on the bottom of the screen where it belongs.  But in "Settings" there is an option to move it to the right hand or left hand side.  Which gives just enough more screen to show the "APPLY" button. 
   Win10 Spy Disabler ran to completion and offered to reboot.  Which I did.  And the laptop survived the experience.  Whether the program actually did anything is hard to tell. 

American Rifleman magazine rates candidates.

American Rifleman is the NRA magazine, widely read and trusted by NRA members, a numerous group of voters.  The October issue arrived, and it lists every candidate for public office in NH.  And it rates them, A thru F on their position on fire arms issues (gun control mostly).
   As a rule Republican candidates receive a A rating and Democrats Ds and Fs.  If you are wondering who all is on the ballot in your district, check out American Rifleman.   Candidates who neglected to return the NRA questionnaire receive a question mark rating. 

Office                  Candidate          Party        Rating
US Senate           Kelly Ayotte       R             A
                           Maggie Hassan   D             F
Governor             Chris Sununu      R             B
                           Colin Van Ostern D            ?
US Rep               Frank Guinta       R            A
                           Carol Shea-PorterD           F
                           Jim Lawrence       R           A
                           Anne Kuster         D           F

Third Presidential Debate

So I jotted down some of the things they said while they were saying them to help me memory along.  Hillary was coming out strong against the "Gunshow Loophole".  Which sounds good, but there is no gun show loophole.  I bought a gun at a gun show some time ago, (Nice Marlin 30-30 lever action) and they did instant background checks on all of us purchasers. 
   The Donald said that his supreme court picks might well repeal Roe vs Wade.  I wouldn't have said that.  It offends about half the voters.  Roe vs Wade has been the law for nigh on 50 years now, and overturning it would cause as much commotion and bad feeling as imposing it did.  Then he got off on a riff condemning partial birth abortions. 
   They got onto building border walls.  Hillary suggested that we wait for improved technology.  Improved technology for walls?  They had wall technology down pretty good in Troy, and it hasn't changed much in the 3000 years since Achilles slew Hector.  If she is talking about electronic widgets, forget it.  We tried that in Viet Nam.  Didn't work.  Put your trust in a plain old chain link fence. 
   Hillary was selling the idea that Putin is trying to help Trump with his leaks to Wikileaks.  Why would Putin do that?  Hillary is a known quantity, she isn't very effective, she isn't very smart, she isn't very polite, her mandate from the voters will be weak.  As the dictator of a Russia competing with the USA, Putin would be much better off with Hillary.  As ex head of KGB Putin knows this.  It's been suggested that the reason they only leak Democratic dirty laundry is that the Replublicans have tighter security and the hackers were not able to break in.  If true, that's a good reason to vote Republican. 
   Hillary claimed that Obama cut the national debt.  That's a flat out lie, the national debt doubled under Obama. 
   Hillary derided all tax cuts as "tax cuts for the rich".  Well, since half the population pays NO federal income tax, tax cuts only benefit the taxpaying half of the population.  If paying income tax makes you rich, then I suppose so.  But cutting taxes is good.  It's good for the economy, it worked for both Kennedy and Reagan, its good for taxpayers.  And a mere 5% of the taxpayers pay most of the taxes. 
   The Donald failed to nail Hillary on what she has accomplished on all her years on the public teat.  The real answer is she accomplished nothing.  No bills, no laws, no treaties, no peace talks, nada. 
   And finally Hillary wants to forbid anyone on the no-fly list from buying guns.  The no-fly list is maintained by bureaucrats somewhere and is completely arbitrary.  Citizens get stuck on it and there is no way off.  I don't want to give faceless federal bureaucrats the power to take away citizen's second amendment rights on a whim.
  The Donald came on pretty strong.  He'd be better if he could stick to the subject, and not go rambling off about pet peeves that the voters either don't care about or don't like.  He did get in a fair number of solid slams on Hillary.  Hillary wasn't quite as good.  I'd give this one to The Donald, but just barely, a squeaker.

Leaf Peeping.

It was a lovely day, sun, warm, clear sky.  Leaves still bright.  I decided I had to get out and look.  So I drove over the Kancamagus to Conway, and back thru Crawford Notch.  Foliage was magnificent all the way.  Whole hillsides showing gold and red. Individual trees all bright red. I brought the camera, but I already have, and have posted, a bunch of pix of brightly color leaves, so I didn't take any more.  Plus a lot of really beautiful scenes don't photograph well, you have to be there and see them.
Good Trip.  At the right time of year. 

Selecting a "man-on-the-street" for inteview. NHPR style

NHPR newsie in Orlando Florida is interviewing a "representative" voter.  Didn't give his name.  It became clear listening to this guy that he is gay, and pretty much all his waking thoughts are about his gayness and how it effects his life, his relationship with his mother and family, and the world in general.  It's hard for me to take this guy as representative of the typical Orlando (or anywhere else) voter.  Real people have other concerns than their sexual identity in their lives,  stuff like jobs, sports, hobbies, cars, politics, computers, music and more.  All this guy could talk about was his sexual identity.
   Granted that being gay can bring unusual stresses.  But 95% of the population is straight, and has interests other than sex and sexual identity.
   I don't think this guy is representative of anybody except himself.  And the NHPR newsies were too dumb or too PC to figure that out.  Or they just wanted to put a gay guy on the air. 

Moderators, Presidential Debate type.

The last two presidential debates had dreadful moderators.  They asked dumb ass questions, they were profoundly ignorant of many simple matters, and they both tried hard to help Hillary and hinder Trump.   Chris Wallace ought to be better.  He is smart, knowledgeable and fair.
   Far as I am concerned,  Republican presidential candidates ought to be pickier about debate moderators.  They should veto any rabid democratic moderators like Candy Crowley along with other more ignorant newsies.  And since newsies are a fairly low grade lifeform, they ought to look for prominent Americans from other walks of life. 

Free College. We used to have it.

I got one back in the 1970's.  My Air Force hitch was up, after a tour in South East Asia, and I enrolled at the University of Delaware for a Bachelor of Science Electrical Engineering degree.  I  had been stationed in Delaware long enough to qualify as a Delaware resident, entitled to resident's rates at the state university.  For residents tuition was super low, only a few hundred dollars a semester.  For a couple of semesters my text books cost more than my tuition.  My GI benefits covered tuition, books, and rent on my apartment.  Between that, and money I saved during my Air Force hitch, I graduated with no student loans to pay off and enough money left over to get married and take a honeymoon in England. 
   University of Delaware might not qualify as completely free in those days, but it was so cheap that anyone could afford it.   With Dupont and Hercules in the state, the engineering program at Delaware was good.  
   So when you hear Hillary campaigning for free college education, some one ought to ask her what happened to the ones we used to have. 

Words of the Weasel Part 48

"Bottle of flammable liquid"   That's what the cops called it on TV.   In real life, we call them Molotov cocktails.  

Words of the Weasel Part 47

Heard on TV this morning.  "I was self medicating myself with alcohol."   Sounds a helova lot better than "I drank like a fish."

Franconia Notch Fall Foliage

I took these pictures yesterday up in the Notch.

McDonalds is loosing it

I've been eating Big Macs and fries at McD's since forever.  Not so much lately.  Something has gone away, the Big Mac's are dry, cooked grey straight thru, the roll is soggy, and the fixings are tasteless.  The fries aren't as crisp as they used to be, and taste bland and mealy. 
   McD's used to be better.    Burger King is in the same hole.  Dunno what I am gonna do for lunch on the road.  Brown bag it I guess.

No-Fly zone in Syria?

Been some loose talk about taking the heat off Aleppo by declaring a no-fly zone over the city.  Keep Assad and the Russians from bombing the place.
   Not a bad idea, but you gotta ask one big question.  Are we willing to enforce such a no-fly zone?  Which means shooting down Russian aircraft.  The Turks did that a while ago and the Russians got awfully testy about it.  Do we have as much guts as the Turks? 
   If we aren't ready to enforce a no-fly zone, it's better not to declare one.  Something you learn from parenting.  Never make a threat that you are not prepared to carry out.   

The Donald has a lotta enemies to overcome

Enemy Number 1 is Democrats (natch).  Led by Hillary, they hope they can win in November.  Many of them detest Republicans on general principles, kinda like how cats feel about dogs.  It's not ideology or philosophy, it's just plain hatred.
Enemy Number 2 is the MSM.  Everybody in the MSM, reporters, editors, anchorpersons, janitors are  Democrats.  Only being in the MSM they have a really really loud megaphone to broadcast their propaganda.
Enemy Number 3 is the business establishment.  They have a cozy thing going with Hillary, they have contributed to the Clinton Foundation (paid their bribes).  They need favorable regulatory rulings, tax breaks, tariffs, and other crony capitalism things.  They are pretty sure that Hillary will do this stuff for them, as long as they keep paying her.  They have no idea what The Donald will do if elected.  That's scary.
Enemy Number 4 is the RINOs.  Once elected, the RINOs find they like the Democratic tax and spend policies, especially when it results in spending in their districts.  They don't care about tax hikes, they figure they can blame them on the Democrats.  The MSM won't call them on it, and the voters won't fact check them either.
Enemy Number 5 is all the women in the country.  The Donald is a boor, they know it, and that tape last Friday confirmed it.  Plus any woman has gotta like the idea of a female president.
Enemy Number 6 is academia.  Every college prof, every grade school teacher, and every administrator is a democrat.  They consider it their plain duty to brainwash their students, your children, with leftist drivel.  You wonder why the "millennials" are so pro Hillary and anti Trump?  They are coming off of 16 straight years of leftist indoctrination. 
  Good luck Donald.  You need all possible luck. 

Polls, more polls, and maybe some statistics

The TV is reporting that Clinton is up 9 % in the polls nationwide.  This comes after Debate #1, the Trump tape from 11 years ago, and Debate #2.  Bad news, if the polls are accurate. 
   My brother just got back from the great antique car show and auction in Hershey PA.  The show has been the second biggest thing in Hershey, after the chocolate company, for forty years or more.  He tells me the Trump signs were all over the place, not a Hillary sign to be seen.  Apparently car buffs are Trump fans.  Let's hope there are more of them.
   The pollsters got it wrong on Brexit.  They might get it wrong on the election.

How was 11 year old tape located in time?

I can see how TV networks would want to keep video of all the shows that they put on the air.  But the tape that did so much damage to The Donald was an out take, not broadcast video.  How come it was saved, and how did anyone find it 11 years later, just in time to do The Donald a lot of harm?  How much rummaging thru dusty boxes of video tape was required? And how much viewing of aged video was done, and by who? 
   There is a story here. Wanna bet the MSM won't touch it with a ten foot pole?  "All the news that fits, we print".

And I watched the 2nd Donald-Hillary debate

The Donald came on strong.  He answered some opening questions about THAT TAPE, pretty well.  He was able to move the discussion forward to some real issues, tax reform, Syria, repealing Obamacare, shutting down Obama's war on coal.  He also kept up a steady stream of zingers at Hillary. 
  Hillary was looking strong too, did not stumble or faint or show any kind medical problem.  She had a lotta zingers for The Donald. 
   Most of the questions sucked.  The moderators were a pair of newsies from ABC and CNN who tried to help Hillary and hinder The Donald as much as they could. 
   I think The Donald managed to erase some of the damage done by THAT TAPE. 

So I listened to the Trump audio tape.

Well, I've heard worse, actually a lot worse.  I was in the service once upon a time.  I played varsity sports in high school and heard a lot of crude remarks in the locker room.  But it's still kinda gross.  And the MSM are giving it all the air play in the world, hoping to sabotage Trump's campaign.