The Word from Biden, published in the Wall St Journal 31 May 2022

 Biden, or his handlers, ran a long piece in the Wall St Journal today explaining what he would do to save the country.  It was written in politician's bafflegab.  I cite a few of the more outrageous statements translated into plain English.  

“In January 2021 when I took office, the recovery had stalled and Covid was out of control.”

Not True.  When Biden took office the United States was self sufficient in oil and Trump had gotten a two working vaccines into production.  Trump had to twist arms of the paper pushers to get the paperwork done and approve the vaccines and twist more arms at Big Pharma to producethe vaccines, but he succeeded and Trump’s vaccines were ready to be administered when Biden took office.

“The US is in better economic position then almost any other country.”  

If this is true than a lot of other countries must be in terrible shape.

“I ran for president because I was tired of the so called trickle down economy.”    

Actually the Democrat party ran you for president for reasons that escape me.

"The price at the pump is elevated because is elevated in large part because Russian oil gas and refining capacity are off the market."

Not true.  Gasoline prices are outrageous because you shut down the Keystone XL pipeline on your first day in office, you stopped issuing leases to drill for oil and gas on federal lands and ANWR, and you convinced the bamks and money people not to lend to drillers and you threatened them with legal action if they lost any money financing oil and gas drilling.

“My plan would reduce the deficit even more by making common-sense reforms in the tax code.”

In plain English, I would hike taxes.

Every American should vote a straight Republican ticket to avoid destroying our beloved country.

 

 

 

 

Biden trying to sound like a real gun buff.

 He isn’t.  And he sounds dumb talking about stuff he knows little to nothing about.  He was describing ordinary 9mm handgun ammunition as “powerful” and “strong enough to rip your lungs out”.

  In actual fact, 9mm is an ordinary handgun round.  Convert mm into inch measure (25.4 mm to the inch) and you get .36 caliber, about the same as the .38 handguns the cops carried back before they all converted to 9mm Glock automatics.  9mm is a perfectly reasonable pistol cartridge, widely used, but nothing special in the power department. 

   You want real power in a handgun?  Try the old .45ACP round used in the 1911 army automatic.  Try 357 Magnum or 44 Magnum. 

What should parents do to raise decent children and not Texas shooters?

I am writing as a veteran parent.  I had three children, they are all grown up now, they all graduated college, they all stayed off drugs. The oldest is married, the middle daughter is sadly doing a divorce, and youngest son has found a very nice girlfriend.  I count my parenting as a success.

For openers, parents of young children should try to stay married, at least until the children have grown up some.  To the point where I think state child services should seize children of divorced single parents and put them up for adoption, should those children fail to obey teachers or get into crime.

Kids need to be loved by their parents. They need encouraging words, praise, stories.  They need to be scolded, not too often, when they mess up.  They need a lot more love and encouragement than scolding.

All parents ought to take the kids to church on Sunday.

Small children ought to have a regular bedtime, say 8 PM, every night.

Kids ought to get fed three squares a day, with no, or at least very lightweight snack times in-between.

Kids ought to do a few hours of homework every school day.  Doing homework on the kitchen table while a parent prepares dinner is good.

Kids ought to go outdoors and play with neighboring kids as much as possible.  Playing with peers is far better for kids than letting them watch TV or play computer games.

Parents should read a bedtime story to their kids, every night.

Older kids ought to have bicycles, and ride them to school, baseball games, and other kid activities.

Kids ought to have good kid’s books to read at home.

Kids ought to be taught to swim as early as possible.  It is a tragedy to have a child drown.

Kids should go hiking and climbing.  Kids should be enrolled in Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and summer camp.

Kids should have pets, dogs or cats or something.  And be responsible for their care.

Some of this stuff may be beyond the means of some parents.  As a parent you do the best you can.

 

 

 

 

 

So what about the Texas shooter?

The TV newsies have not said much about the shooter, Salvador Samos I think his name is.  They did mention that he was a high school dropout.  A bad sign.  High school is great fun, you get to meet friends and girls, they have sports and activities.  Even if your grades stink, they will graduate you and having a high school diploma is very helpful when you start job seeking.  If I could go back and do high school over again I would be right there, especially if I could become 15 years old again.  Looks like none of this good stuff mattered to Salvador. 

    We have not heard much from Salvador’s parents and grandparents.  The TV said his mother was a druggie and his father was a felon, not an encouraging background for parents who are supposed to be teaching their son how he should behave.  For some reason, tension at home? Salvador spent time (I wonder how much) with his grandparents.  The grandfather claimed on TV not to know of his grandson’s attitude problems.  For some undisclosed reason Salvador shot his grandmother in the face the morning he attacked Robb elementary school.  I had two grandmothers, I loved them both dearly, I cannot imagine even raising my voice to them, let alone shooting them.  This is weird behavior on Salvador’s part.

   Salvador bought two AR15 rifles.  The TV did not say but I assume he bought them new at a gun store.  Those things cost like $500 apiece, two of them is $1000.  And he bought either 360 or 1000 rounds of ammunition.  Last time I bought center fire ammunition it was $1 a round.  So that’s $1360 or $2000 depending upon whose story you believe.  I wonder where unemployed high school dropout Salvador got that kind of money.

   Then to shoot 19 appealing young kids in cold blood is beyond my belief.  The kid’s pictures are so cute, I would adopt any or all of them in an instant, Salvador kills them. 

   And we have not heard from any of Salvador’s teachers, doctors, priests, any grownup who knew Salvador.

Assault Weapon Ban

 Trouble is, there is no real difference that you can measure with a ruler between “assault riles” and deer rifles.  An “assault weapons ban” would be a ban on all rifles because there is nothing you can point to that makes assault rifles different from any other rifle. 

  In actual fact, there are styling differences.  The “assault rifles” are, or look like; AR-15’s, black plastic stock, detachable magazine, chambered for .22 center fire, and finished in some military antireflective and water resistant finish.  Hunting rifles usually have walnut stocks, any kind of ammunition feed, chambered for any cartridge ever manufactured, and blued metal work.  I submit that these are styling differences and do not make one more deadly than the other.

 

   The anti gunners pushing to revive the old “assault weapons ban” are perfectly happy to ban anything that shoots, so they don’t care. 

Gun Violence

 The newsies are using this phrase all the time.  Makes it sound like the gun did the crime.  “Gun violence” on the media is better described as either murder or armed robbery.  Both of these crimes are listed in the Ten Commandments. 

   Use of the “gun violence” phrase suggests the speaker is anti gun and wants to ban all the guns in America. 

Biden will switch us to battery cars

 rather than increasing US oil production.  He said as much on the last news conference.  "Transistion" he called it.  

Trouble is, new battery cars cost $60K as compared to a new econobox for a bit more than $20K.  And, cars last ten years nowadays so it would take 10 years to re equip everyone with a $60K battery car.  That's assuming people only buy new cars when the car they are driving needs replacement.  And the best they have claimed for battery range is 400 miles.  And it takes 2-3 hours on the battery charger to charge it up.  So a trip more than 400 miles will take 2-3 hours longer while you cool your heels waiting on the battery charger.  Whereas my old Buick with a full gas tank will go 500 miles (far enough to reach my daughter's place in Maryland).  And the gas tank refills in a couple of minutes.  And want to bet the 400 mile claim of battery range is inflated?  And nobody is talking about how long the battery lasts, and what a replacement might cost.  Ordinary car batteries only last 4 winters up here.  I have no idea how long a lithium battery might last.  Or what the chances of it bursting into flames are.  

Let's elect Republicans who will increase US oil production. 

Texas School Shooting is terrible.

 I an horrified by the Texas school shooting.  My sincerest sympathies to the bereaved. 

How useful is a hyprsonic missile?

 The Air Force announced a successful test flight of one just the other day.  Since the Chinese had announced they had a hypersonic missile a week or so ago, it sounds like the Air Force has had a hypersonic program going for quite some time.  It takes more time than a few weeks to get something like a hypersonic missile to fly.  Sounds groovy but... It takes a lot of fuel to get up to mach 5.  Wanna bet the range of this missile isn't so great?  Existing cruise missiles like Tomahawk fly somewhat below mach 1 and have transcontinental range.  You can launch from say England and hit most of Russia, all of the middle east, the northern half of Africa.  Tomahawk flies so low that ground radar cannot see it.  If the radar cannot see you the fighters cannot find you.  

   One fine day while I was in the Air Force Air Defense Command we were practicing.  We sent a target aircraft (a helpless T-33) up north and then turned him around to come south.  The radar guys got to practice tracking, the SAGE center got to practice vectoring fighters and the fighter crews got some flight time.  Only this day, the radar guys could not see the target.  "Can you come up another thousand feet?" the controller asked the target.  No joy, we still could not see it.  We had to get the target up to 10,000 feet before he showed up on radar.  I am sure that a Tomahawk cruise missile down at 1000 feet will never show on radar.   And Tomahawk has the range to go about anywhere. 

   So, groovy as hypersonic sounds, I am betting on conventional cruise missiles to do the work.

Lunch at Chik Fil A

 We don't have Chik Fil A up in New Hampshire, not yet at least.  They got a lot of press coverage a while back.  I cannot remember the issue now.  So when I saw one in the shopping center I just had to try it out. Anyhow had lunch, a Chik Wich, Fries, and coffee only $8.69.  That's cheaper than McD's.  Very good.  Most customers stayed in their cars and lined up for the takeout window.  I wanted to see a menu so I parked and ate inside.  

Note for Plumbers

Water faucets ought to have a marking on them that shows which handle is for hot water and which is for cold water.  It need not be much, a red dot for hot and a blue dot for cold works.  But new and shiny faucets with no marking it all are annoying.

I don’t see much about Ukraine lately

 I, like many, expected the Russians to roll right over Ukraine.  I am all kinds of impressed that they have not.  I think it is great that the Ukrainians got it together and stopped the Russian army.  At least that is what my internet and my TV are telling me.  All I know comes from my internet or my TV or the Wall St Journal.  I have been out of town for a while and have not seen the Journal.  I am at my daughter’s house where the TV only plays kiddy cartoons, so I am down to just the internet. 

   Could it be that Putin is happy to let the Ukraine fighting die down or die off and drop out of the news?  He will have to do some more expensive fighting to get anything out of the Ukrainians now. And maybe he doesn’t want to do any more expensive fighting and see more Western press coverage about how wimpy the Russian army really is?

Fair Elections

I have a few suggestions for fair elections.

 

1. Voters must present a good picture ID at the polls.  All Americans have driver’s licenses.  If they don’t, how do the get to work, or to the grocery store?  Plus states ought to issue picture ID free to citizens that lack them.  After they make sure the citizens are really citizens.
2. Voters must register BEFORE Election Day.  No same day registration. Voters who cannot get down to town hall a week before the election to register are unmotivated.  Do we need unmotivated voters? Same day registration makes it easier for busloads of out of state voters to get to vote after only one trip to the victim state.  Voters must show an in-state driver’s license, in-state plates on the car, and an in-state residency.  College dorms are not in-state residencies.  College students must register and vote in their home town.  
3. Votes are counted on election day, not earlier, not later
4. We do absentee ballots for voters who cannot make it to the polls on Election Day such as members of the armed forces stationed overseas.  We will allow hospital patients and the ill and infirm also.  We do not allow absentee ballots to voters who fear that will catch Covid or something else at the polls. 
5. Absentee ballots must arrive by US mail, with a postmark with a date, before the polls close on Election Day. Undated postmarks and late absentee ballots will be discarded. Drop boxes are not permitted.
6. Use paper ballots, not voting machines.  They cannot hack paper ballots over the internet.
7. 
   

60th High School Reunion

 

 Or about.  Actually the 60^th reunion for the class of 1960 should have been 2020.  But the Covid panicked the school and so we only get to do the 60^th this year.  The school is Westtown Friends School in West Chester PA.  I took two days to drive down.  Leaving Franconia Notch on Thursday morning, not a green leaf to be seen on any trees.  Wasn’t til I got over into the Connecticut River valley that I saw any green.  By Massachusetts all the trees were in full leaf, looking very lush. 

   The old school was started way out in PA farm country back in 1799 to preserve Quaker teenagers from the fleshpots of Philadelphia.  Back in 1960 it was sill pretty rural.  Not any more.  The road into West Chester that used to run thru apple orchards, corn fields, and some dairy cows, is now spiffy new single family houses all the way.  Suburbia has engulfed Westtown.

    Turnout for this first alumni day since Covid started was thin compared to the good old days.  Only about a third of my class made it.  Friday night was a cookout on the old first association soccer field, renamed Raiford Field to confuse us alumni.  Saturday was a lot of standing around and talking.  Bertie Bonner from our class threw a fantastic dinner for the class at her place Saturday night.  Sunday we did meeting.

   Westtown has gone on a door locking frenzy.  Every door on the big old main building now has a fancy power lock.  If you are out doors when the rain starts you will get pretty wet before you get inside.   

   And Westtown is going anti-sexist.  The signage now reads "East End" and "West End" rather than "Boys End" and "Girls End"  I heard a student say Westtown was considering co-ed dorms.  Too bad I am too old to enjoy that.

Admiral Jackie Fisher and the battle cruisers.

Jackie Fisher was appointed commander in chief of the British Royal Navy in the years before WWI.  Aircraft had not been invented yet.   Fisher saw his problem as finding the German Navy at sea and engaging it with the larger Royal Navy.   The Germans (and everybody else) would have a screen of cruisers around the battle fleet.  Cruisers could easily sink contemporary destroyers so having destroyers search for the enemy would just get a lot of destroyers sunk.  Fisher demanded a special purpose vessel, the battle cruiser, to go looking for the enemy.  The battle cruiser had to be fast, which called for a big ship, and heavily armed so it could blow enemy cruisers out of its way.  The result was a fine looking vessel, as big and handsome as a battle ship, but lacking a battleship’s armor.   The officers appointed to command the battle cruisers though they had command of a battleship and acted accordingly. 

   At the climatic WWI battle of Jutland, the British battle cruisers were commanded by flamboyant Admiral Beatty.  Beatty took his fleet of four battle cruisers out into the North Sea and located the German battle fleet.  At this time, Beatty should have broken off the action, radioed German position course and speed to British Grand Fleet and then run for it.

   Instead, Beatty engaged the German battle ship fleet and had three of his four battle cruisers were sunk by German fire.  “There seems to be something wrong with our ships today” said Beatty at the time. Beatty didn’t even bother to radio the German’s position, course and speed back to Grand Fleet.

    Fortunately for the British, Grand Fleet was commanded by canny old Admiral Jellico.  Jellico looked at the weather, the tides, and what Intel he had, and figured out just where the German fleet was going.  He got it right, and Grand Fleet was able to find the Germans, and cross the German’s Tee, the decisive maneuver in battle ship actions. 

    HMS Hood was laid down as a battle cruiser during WWI but was not finished and launched until the war was over.  After the destruction of three battle cruisers at Jutland, the British beefed up the armor on Hood.   But they treated her as a battle ship even though her armor was only 6 inches instead of the 12 inches considered proper for real battleships.  Twenty years later Hood was send out to stop Bismarck.  Bismarck scored a single hit on Hood’s deck, the shell went right thru and exploded and Hood sank in minutes.  The last of the battle cruisers.

Just in case, New Hampshire abortion law needed.

 From the looks of things on the TV news (highly reliable source that) there is a good chance that the Supremes will repeal Roe vs Wade, their abortion ruling.   Roe vs Wade requires abortion to be legal and available to every woman, over ruling laws in every state that criminalized abortion back then.  I think it would be a good thing for New Hampshire to pass a state law on abortion with some fancy language in the bill's header saying this only takes effect after Roe vs Wade is repealed.  

For me, I think such a law should declare abortion to be legal and available to all women, especially young women who  become pregnant in high school or college and giving birth would prevent them from graduating.  I think it should forbid late term abortions, which more and more seem like infanticide.  Pregnancy lasts nine months.  I would forbid abortion after 6 months (call it 24 weeks).  I don't believe that tax payers money should be used to fund abortion.  I think the woman, or her family, or a private charity should pick up the bill. 

Home solar energy.

You want your house to face south.  With big picture windows, facing south, to pick up sunlight.  You might need to buy a new house, or do some very heavy duty remodeling if your house faces the wrong way or lacks the necessary picture windows.  This works for me, on a sunny winter day my windows pickup enough warmth from sun that my furnace doesn’t run until the sun goes down.  While the sun is up it pours enough warmth into my house to keep it pleasantly warm all day.  No moving parts, no huge and leaky silicon solar cells, no DC to AC inverters, no battery banks, no deals with the electric company to keep my lights on after sundown. 

 You also want some big eaves to keep the summer sun out while letting the lower winter sun in.  You want your roof in a light color, not black, to ease the load on the air conditioner in the summer.  Here in North America the prevailing winds come out of the west, so you want some windows on the west side to open to let in some breeze.  And about the same amount of window on the east side that opens, so the breeze can blow right thru the house.  Some shade trees to shade the house in the summer are good too.

 Builders might keep these ideas in mind.  They don’t add much, if anything, to the cost of the house at the time it gets built.  They do yield a more comfortable and more energy efficient house.

You nuke Ukraine and we will nuke you back, harder

 That's what the United States ought to say to Putin next time he threatens to use his nukes.  For that matter, make it "nuke Ukraine or anywhere else".   Trouble is, if Biden said this, nobody would believe he meant it.  Everybody would expect him to chicken out in the clutch.  So we need a better president to make this work.

Puberty.

   Children are born with no feelings for or knowledge about sex. Other than the fact that young girls tend to hang with girls and young boys tend to hang with boys, little kids are unconscious of their sex.  This persists even though parents cut girls and boys hair differently and dress them differently.   It is not until maybe seventh grade, (14 years) that boys and girls begin to dance together, flirt with each other, date each other, and go steady with each other.  This change has been known for a long long time and is referred to as puberty. 

   Talking to kids about sexual matters before puberty is a waste of time; the kids don’t understand the talk.  Or misinterpret it to mean odd or harmful things the speaker cannot imagine.  After the kids go thru puberty then talks about sexual matters become understandable to them.  The kids may not grasp everything said, but at least they have a broad idea of what is being talked about. 

  Florida just passed a law forbidding schools to talk about sexual matters to kids in third grade and below.  That’s a good start, but I would make it kids in sixth grade and below. 

Supreme Court Leak.

    Leaving aside the intelligence supplied by the leak (court may dump Roe); the discouraging part is the existence of the leak and the leaker.  The leaker abandoned loyalty to the court, one of America’s oldest and most revered institutions, to merely serve the interests of the Democrat Party.  If an institution like the court cannot secure the loyalty of its personnel, what organization can?  Employees who place the interests of the Democrat party ahead of the interests of their employer, be it the court, the  armed services, the police, the lower courts, and more the nation is in deep trouble. 

   Many of the great things America has done over the years, winning wars, abolition, civil rights, huge engineering works, the moon landings, and more, were done by institutions, often against great opposition.  The institutions could not have succeeded if their personnel failed to support their institution, but instead had betrayed their institution to the opposition. 

   As to the issue at stake, overturning Roe vs. Wade, I am in favor.  Even though Roe has been the law of the land for 50 years, which ought to make it settled law, but hasn’t, I think it was a poor decision by a handful of lawyers on a matter that properly should have been decided by an elected legislature, either federal or state. 

Misinfornation, Disinformation, Malinformation or truth versus falsehood?

 Liberals having hissy fits over Musk’s buyout of Twitter keep talking about the terrible effects of misinformation, disinformation and now malinformation.   I don’t hear any talk about truth versus falsehood.  I think the liberals are whining about truth that does not support “the narrative”.  And they want those truths suppressed less they waken or even destroy the precious “narrative”. 

   Which is a lot different from what we expect of the media.  We want the facts of the case, not rooting for the Democrats.  We think any newsie who slants the news to favor the Democrats ought to be ridden out of town on a rail.