Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

Sob.  No snow all night.  All we got was and inch maybe an inch and a half from yesterday.  It helps, mountain ought to be quite skiable.  But we were anticipating a lot more snow. 

Cannon Moutain Ski Weather

Today (Thursday) started out raining.  Cannon decided it was too miserable to open.  It has cooled down, we are now (3 PM) below freezing.  We have had two serious snow flurries, between the two they laid down an inch, maybe inch and a half.  More snow is forecast for tonight.  Cannon was hoping for 4 to 8 more inches.  I will post again tomorrow when we know what happened.  The weather forecasters are talking about more snow in the White Mountains tonight.  Lets see if they know what they are talking about.

FISA court is a rubber stamp. Let's stamp it out.

The TV news is jubilating over Justice Department news/leaks about "improper" FBI testimony to the FISA court that caused said court to OK snooping on the Trump campaign during the election.  Bear in mind that of the thousands of requests to snoop on American citizens only a dozen are rejected.  99.9% of all requests to snoop are approved.  This is a rubber stamp.  What's worse, the FISA court is secret.  We don't know who the judge[s] are, where and when it meets, where it's records are kept, nothing.  A FISA judge can rule any old which way and we citizens will never know.  And they have rubber stamped a helova lot of snooping over the years.
  We ought to shut the whole FISA court thing down.  Intelligence and police agencies wanting to snoop will have to get their warrants from a real judge in a real court, one that tries cases and is open for business 9/5  five days a week. 

Democratic Debate. A lot of bashing.

Politicians usually don't bash or trash each other, the thinking being that they might need the guy for something in the future.  But at the last debate before the South Carolina primary and Super Tuesday they figured their only chance of winning was to convince the voters not to vote for The Bern.  So The Bern had a lot lotta stuff dumped on his head this time.  A lot of it was old old old.  Some of it I didn't believe.  I'm a Republican, I don't have to vote for any of 'em.  Just between thee and me, I would love for the Democrats to select a candidate that would be easy meat for Donald Trump.  The Bern will do just fine.  Actually all of 'em look highly defeatable. 

Is India a member of the Anglosphere?

The Anglosphere is an informal interest group that goes way back, back as far as WWI, perhaps further.  Originally the Anglosphere was Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.  All English speaking British colonies or former colonies.  There is no treaty creating the Anglosphere.  As one might imagine, Great Britain and the United States are the biggest and strongest members, but the Anglosphere takes care not to trample on the smaller members.  Much of this is arranged in informal settings.  Since all the members share culture and history, they all tend to think alike and that makes for smooth and easy negotiations.

The Anglosphere fought WWII; they crushed the Nazis (with a lot of help from the Soviets) and set up the post war world.  The Anglosphere leaned pretty hard on the Soviets to keep them in line and contain communism.  They fought several small wars, Korea, Viet Nam, and Singapore. 

   Tonight I am watching the Indians putting on a show for President Trump’s visit.  They are doing it right.  The red carpet leading out of Air Force One has a band and dancers, all wearing colorful native garb, and belting out the tunes.  A fleet of shiny black SUVs and limousines.  I wonder if they are manufactured in India.  India has a decent sized auto industry. I could see the maker’s badge on the grilles but I didn’t recognize it.  It wasn’t a Caddy badge.  Indian Prime Minister Modi was on hand.  They did a motorcade, heading for either the Taj Mahal or Gandhi’s place, both were mentioned.  The streets were lined with cheering Indians.  Clearly a warm and enthusiastic for President Trump. 

   Can we admit India to the Anglosphere?  The British ran the place for a couple of hundred years and did a lot of Anglicization during that time.  We certainly have more in common with, and good feelings about, India than we do toward China or Russia.  Since the Anglosphere is informal, we would have to watch and see what happens.  If India supports the Anglosphere, and the other members talk with the Indians and gain their support before doing things then India is a working member.  Which would be good, India is an important country.  Indian science and industry are strong enough to launch a Mars orbiter.  India is a big place both in land area and population.  Many Indians speak English.  They have a lot of good engineers, many of whom work in US firms.  They have a fine national cuisine. 

Nevada can count. We have prelim results.

Looks like they know how to count in Nevada. The TV is giving early returns at 5 PM. Say 20 % of the vote is in. Saunders is doing well, 45%, with Biden trailing at maybe 19%. Not bad Nevada. Here in NH we don't give results until after the polls close at 7 PM. If this keeps up, Saunders has it knocked.

Airbus fesses up to bribery to sell aircraft

From this week's Aviation Week.  Airbus has agreed to pay a fine of 3.6 billion Euros to French, British and American authorities over a number of cases of bribing overseas government officials to buy Airbus aircraft.  Airbus is not admitting guilt and the case never went to court.  No Airbus employees are facing charges.  Airbus is paying up to get every one off their case.  The fine is substantial, Airbus annual revenues are 64 billion Euros  for 2018, of which 5 billion Euros are earnings.  So Airbus will notice those 3.6 billion Euros.  It will hurt.  The bribery acts occurred between 2008 and 2015. 
   One scam was a 5 million Euro bribe to Ghana to clinch the sale of C295 turboprop airlifters.  At a guess the C295 is a bit smaller than our C130 Hercules and costs maybe 45 million Euro's each.  Other bribery charges include a variety of mid east and far each airlines with names that mean nothing to me, two satellited deals and some military aircraft sales. 
   I am sure clearing this up makes Airbus' future more predictable.  They can go out and sell, sell, sell while Boeing is all wrapped around the 737 MAX axle. 

What was the worst mistake [you pick it] made in WWII?

Common question on Quora.  The worst mistake Japan made in WWII was attacking Pearl Harbor.  Prior to Pearl Harbor America was deep into isolationism, the idea that we could stand proud here in North America while the rest of the world sank into chaos.  Isolationism built on the unsatisfactory outcome of WWI and claimed that all we got out of WWI was profits for arms manufacturers (merchants of death they were called).  Japan had been agressing against China, and was running Korea and Manchuria as colonies.  We did not approve, and we had sent a lot of diplomatic nastygrams to Japan.  We finally decided to stop selling crude oil and scrap iron to Japan.  The Japanese could have replaced American sources of supply with oil from the Dutch East Indies, and scrap metal from somewhere.  The Germans had invaded and occupied the Netherlands, the Dutch colonies were on their own.  Should a Japanese task force conveyed a few Japanese bankers and their check books to the Dutch East Indies the Japanese could have acquired all the oil they needed.  We would have sent them a few more diplomatic nastygrams, but there was no way we were going to intervene militarily.  Japan could have done pretty much anything they pleased in Asia so long as they didn't attack American territory.
   After Japan sank our battle fleet at Pearl Harbor isolationism vanished, poof, within a few hours.  We were pissed off.  We had a far larger population than Japan, we had a far larger industrial base, we were a continental power, self sufficient in just about everything.  And we were mad. Japanese Admiral Yamamoto said at the time "I fear we have awoken a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve."  He had that right. 
   As it was, the Pearl Harbor attack changed the course of WWII.  We got our act together and clobbered both the Nazis and Japan.

Burning Bill Barr, Attorney General

The TV newsies have been dumping on Barr for listening to President Trump.  That's wrong.  The Dept of Justice, which the Attorney General runs, is a cabinet level department, just like State or Defense or Treasury.  They work for the President, and the President is perfectly entitled and empowered to give them orders.
   On this Stone case, where the president tweeted that 9 years was too long a sentence for a man in his 60's who had not broken any real laws, they convicted him of "lying to Congress".  That is a Mickey Mouse charge.  It just means a different of opinion between the Congress and Stone.  Lying to Congress, lying to the FBI, and lying to the police should not be crimes.  Ham sandwich nation.  They aren't like perjury, lying under oath.  And I think 9 years is entirely too long for a Mickey Mouse conviction.  So does Trump.  So does Barr.
   The four prosecutors who want off the case and out of DOJ, they are all long service snivel service, fireproof lifers.  These guys are all Democrats, and they enjoy doing anything they can to make life hard for the Republican Trump Administration.  Let 'em resign.  Good riddance to them.  
   I hear 1100 former (and perhaps current) DOJ employees have signed an anti Trump petition.  Same goes for them.  Died in the wool Democrats out to cause trouble for a Republican Administration.  Fire 'em all.  Cancel the pensions of the retired ones.

Trump goes to Daytona for the NASCAR race

They are having a wonderful time. Nice low fly over in Air Force One.  President to take a lap in the presidential limo.  And say a few words to the Yuge crowd.  Stands look full.   Continuous  live TV coverage on Fox.  What's not to like?

Boeing is hurting

Boeing has not sold a single airliner this last month.  This week's Aviation Week had two pieces on Boeing's plight.  Boeing lost $600 million on 2019.  They wrote about the "New Midmarket Aircraft"  (NMA) development of which is sorta underway with a delivery target date of 2025.  At the rate things are going Boeing will be toast by 2025.  Nothing was said about getting the 737 MAX ungrounded.  Things got so bad that Boeing stopped production of the 737-MAX, they must be running out of places to put them all.  And shutting down production has hurt/panicked/destroyed all the vendors that made parts for the 737-MAXes.  Boeing was one of the few American companies that did much exporting, and the 737-MAX grounding has done bad things for the US trade deficit. 
   As far as ungrounding the 737-MAX, the problem is the FAA people are just snivel servants who know little about flying.  They do know that if they let the 737-MAX fly and there is another accident fingers will be pointed at them, and heads may roll.  So they are shuffling papers, milling around, and demanding more and more engineering data from Boeing.  Boeing knows that it cannot press the FAA for fear of getting them more bent out of shape and less likely to ever let the 737MAX fly.

NH Primary Results as of 11PM

With 75% of the vote in Donald Trump has 92,000 votes.  Bernie Sanders has 58,000.  Pet e Buttigieg is right behind Bernie with 52,000.  The rest of the Democrats are way down from the two front runners. 

Learning the Hard Stuff

To drink that is.  We are talking distilled liquors which are sold at 80 to 90 proof.  For those just getting into drinking hard stuff, a proof point is one half a percent of the alcohol content.  100 proof is 50-50 grain alcohol (ethanol) and water.  A jigger of the hard stuff has the kick of a 12 ounce can of beer or a small glass of wine. 
   Of the hard liquors my favorite is whiskey, which comes from four important places, Scotch from Scotland, Canadian from Canada, Bourbon from Bourbon county Kentucky, and Irish from Ireland.  They are all good.  When you first try them the fierce bite of the alcohol will numb your taste buds and you won't notice much difference between them.  With some experience you will find Scotch has a sharper tang to it, Bourbon is sweeter, Canadian is somewhere in between, and good Irish whiskey is just very very smooth. 
    I drink my whiskey with ice and club soda (Scotch and soda).  A jigger (or two if you are hard core), an 8 to 12 ounce glass filled with ice, and fill it up with club soda, and you have a very nice drink.  If you are hard core, you can drink your whiskey straight, just ice, no club soda.  If you are really hard core you can drink your whiskey neat, no ice. 
   You can buy quite decent whiskey for $15 a "half gallon" (actually 1.75 liters today). And you can pay a good deal more.  In the quite decent class is Old Crow bourbon, Canadian Club, and Clan McGregor Scotch.   A notch up is maybe Ballantine Scotch, Wild Turkey bourbon ,and Seagram's VO Canadian.  My sainted (and now deceased) mother drank little else  besides VO.  I can enjoy the pricier whiskeys but I don't normally spend the money to buy them.   

Cannon Mountain Ski Weather

We got 8 inches of fresh snow on Friday.  That will make all the trails super good.  I wanted to post this earlier on Friday but the cable went down, knocking out my broadband and my TV.  Cable just came back. 

Everyone should vote in the NH primary next Tuesday

The primary is this coming Tuesday. Everyone should go out and vote. New Hampshire has a lot of fun doing the First In The Nation (FITN) primary. We also get a lot of good publicity, we get increased clout down in Washington, and all those candidates and news people help keep New Hampshire green, they bring money. The way it is now, all presidential candidates have to pass muster with New Hampshire voters. This is a good thing. Let's keep it up. To do so we have to show a good turnout. We want to avoid a catastrophe like Iowa. I am sure that Secretary of State Bill Gardner and countless poll workers (unpaid volunteers mostly) will do their usual good job. As American citizens, our duty is to go to the polls and vote.

Iowa still cannot count. and it hurts

At this point they are all claiming victory.  They all put a good deal of time and money into the Iowa caucus and what did they get? Diddly Squat.  Wanna bet nobody does much campaigning (and spending) in Iowa in 2024?  And apparently this is all the fault of the Democratic party, both national and Iowa.  Takes a lot of workers to mess things up so badly.

Iowa has forgotten how to count

It's after 8 AM on Tuesday and Iowa still hasn't counted up Monday's caucus results.  The Bern released his own count, which shows him winning, but even the Bern admits it is only a partial count.
NHPR radio said that better than 1000 precincts were instructed to punch their results into a smart phone program.  Apparently said smart phone program stopped working (or never worked).  So the 1000 precincts were expected to telephone results into state HQ.  Resulting in busy signals, hour long waits for an answer, and a massive arithmetic challenge at HQ.   Smarter would have been to have the precincts call the results into county, and have county add them up and call the sums into state HQ.  Fewer phone calls and less adding up that way. 

College is too damn expensive

I paid tuition for all three of my children.  They all graduated.  It was expensive.  Like $8000 a year, per child.  It's worse now.
  Big part of the problem, Uncle Sam will loan a student all he/she needs.  If the colleges find things are a little tight this year, they just hike the tuition.  Uncle will pay.  The students will sign, they are so deep in debt that another couple of K doesn't sound so bad.  Students are graduating with $50K debts that cannot be dumped via bankruptcy.  Lot of 'em are putting off marriage, home buying, child raising, everything, until their student debt is paid down.  This might take 10 years.
   Colleges could cut costs.  First off, lay off ALL the administrators.  Administrators don't teach, don't do anything connected with education, but they draw their very handsome pay regularly.   Then lay off the janitors and the buildings and grounds folk.  Have the students sweep the halls, mow the grass, shovel the snow, set the tables, wash the dishes, what ever.  We did that at Westtown school, it worked out well.  Lay off the IT department.  Have the computer science majors keep the school computers humming.