Category Archives: Mail

Mail 708 Thursday, January 05, 2012

Sorrow for Harry Erwin’s passing Dr Pournelle

I feel sorrow for the loss of Harry Erwin. I have prayed for the repose of his soul and for the comfort of his family.

I knew Harry only as a correspondent to Chaos Manor. Even at that great remove, Harry made my life richer. I shall miss him.

Thank you for introducing me to Harry Erwin.

Live long and prosper h lynn keith

This is typical of many messages I have concerning the late Harry Erwin. His Letter from England was read by many people, as were his astute comments on science and education. We will all miss him.

Power Grab III

Another power grab, this one is a jobs program:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/01/white-house-cant-wait-to-help-young-people-get-summer-jobs/

—– Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC Percussa Resurgo

I am unaware of the numbering scheme you are using, and I suspect that I would assign a far higher number if I were numerically tracking the current President’s usurpations, but it is a rather breath-taking achievement. From the article:

“America’s young people face record unemployment, and we need to do everything we can to make sure they’ve got the opportunity to earn the skills and a work ethic that come with a job. It’s important for their future, and for America’s. That’s why I proposed a summer jobs program for youth in the American Jobs Act — a plan that Congress failed to pass. America’s youth can’t wait for Congress to act. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment,” Obama said in a written statement. Given that there are a dozen House passed bills lying dormant in the Democratic controlled Senate, this is pure politics and usurpation of the power of Congress. If the Democrats really want to help they can do a bit of compromise across the aisle; but since the President’s sole strategy is to run against a “do nothing Congress,” it is very much in his interest to be certain that Congress does nothing by killing all House bills in the Senate. And the people never catch wise.

Hot Mic

An interesting hot mic.

As C-SPAN was waiting for President Obama’s Defense Strategic Review press conference to begin a hot mic caught a reporter taking a swing at Ron Paul.

"See this room? Two-thirds of us laid off when Ron Paul is president," the reporter said.

Before the comment was made, the reporter could be heard laughing about Ron Paul.

Soon after the reporter made his remark C-SPAN turned down the audio while an anchor announced the details of the press conference. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/01/05/hot_mic_at_pentagon_presser_catches_reporter_see_this_room_two-thirds_of_us_laid-off_when_ron_paul_is_president.html

—– Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC Percussa Resurgo

Another data point on the supposed objectivity of the media.

From Bunny Inspectors to Whale Feeding Regulators

(Note the catch-all "lying to investigators" charge, thrown in to ensure that she’ll be found guilty of SOMETHING and they can claim that this was a successful prosecution at the end-of-year budget-justification review.)

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_19675364

Grand jury indicts marine biologist for allegedly feeding killer whales in Monterey Bay

By Howard Mintz

A prominent Monterey marine biologist who specializes in the study of whales is the target of a federal grand jury indictment accusing her of violating various marine mammal protection laws, including two alleged instances in which she fed a killer whale in Monterey Bay’s waters.

Nancy Black, whose expertise on killer whales and other species has been featured everywhere from National Geographic to Animal Planet, was charged in San Jose federal court Wednesday with committing the violations in 2004 and 2005 while operating her whale watching business in Monterey Bay.

The four-page indictment alleges that Black twice violated provisions of federal laws barring a host of activities involving protected marine mammals in national marine sanctuaries such as Monterey Bay. Among other things, the indictment alleges that Black violated provisions that bar the feeding, or attempted feeding, of whales, a rare prosecution under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

…Black is also charged with lying to investigators about altering an October 2005 video of a whale watching expedition involving possible illegal contact with a humpback whale in the bay. Monterey Bay was designated one of 13 federal marine sanctuaries in 1992.

Should we be borrowing money from China in order to investigate and prosecute people who may have fed a whale? Is this a reasonable use of public money in a time of bankruptcy? Yet another instance of the Iron Law in action.

Colonizing the asteroids

Dr. Pournelle,

I’m not sure how much bearing your L5 Society lunar colony project has on colonizing the asteroids. I would think that asteroid mining would look more like the boom towns of the American west in the 1880’s, with large numbers of transient young men showing up to a dig, then moving on as the strike plays out.

It seems to me that what you’re really after is something more like what happened in the Midwest (or the Northwest, as it was then called) or the Great Plains. Those settlers were looking for what we would call an independent career, and a chance to own real property that produced an income. The factors which made that possible were relatively rich natural resources of food, fuel, and building materials; relatively cheap transportation (via the Mississippi river system and the Great Lakes/Erie canal/Hudson River system, and later via railroad); and security, from both physical and legal threats. I could probably make a case that the early English colonies embodied the same three factors.

I’m not sure what piece of attainable real estate would encompass those three factors, but I’m pretty sure that’s what is required to engage individual aspirations in developing "another basket" for our "eggs".

Neil Tice

Question about e-mail formatting

Jerry:

I’m curious as to why the e-mail you posted from me in Mail 708 about the marine cribs came out double-spaced.

I’m one of those old-fashioned guys who tries to use only ASCII plain text in e-mail. I use Eudora, which does not put a hard return at the end of each line, and I double-space only between paragraphs.

I notice some other e-mails you posted display as double-spaced, but many others do not.

Best regards, –Harry M.

I view mail in a plaintext preview window, and copy and paste from that. Your mail, pasted into Word, has a carriage return at the end of each line as well as a double cr at the end of each paragraph. I have a macro to deal with that, and I have used it on this mail – which did have that feature – but I don’t always think to do that until after I post. I ran it this time.

Health Care, Your Response To Jim

Jerry,

One of the wisest things our Founding Fathers did was leave us with a living constitution. They understood that they could not write a constitution in 1787 that would remain 100% in accord with our society into the indefinite future. So, while the intentions of our Founding Fathers are important and must be considered carefully in any debate over the meaning of any clause of the constitution, their intentions cannot be the only consideration.

That being said, I agree with you over the issue of health care and general government involvement with anyone’s personal life. When I become responsible for paying for another person’s health care, do I not also become responsible for their behavior? Do they not become accountable to me for making bad choices? This is where seatbelt laws and helmet laws come from. If we follow this line of reasoning, should I not have the right to make smoking out-right illegal as it is the source of nearly half of our national health care woes? How about teenage pregnancy? The list goes on.

So, how can I be responsible for the health care bills of all Americans without being allowed to control their actions? Is this what we all want?

Kevin L. Keegan

You either believe in self-government and consent of the governed or you do not…

Health Care as a Social Concern

When it comes to infectious diseases we are not individuals. We are all vectors in the disease pool. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the growth of cities which have always been pools for infectious diseases. I suspect this is not unrelated to the growth of welfare states, from Bismarck’s to Roosevelt’s at the time. Nobody, no matter how libertarian, says people in cities should be free to store shit in our apartments. The great Victorian public sanitation systems were carried out by city governments run by unrepentant capitalists.

For the long term i.e. decades not presidential terms, the important fact is that infectious diseases are no longer serious killers (with the possible exception of AIDS) but diseases of age and lifestyle to which we react as individuals not vectors. This means that much of the social basis for welfare is gone.

In some ways i regret this. As a society we are far richer than the Founders could imagine & we can afford to look after people to an extent they couldn’t.

Neil Craig

B36

The article referenced in your post about the B36 mentioned watching B36s flying out of San Antonio is in error. The B36 was never stationed at Kelly field. That was the XC99, the one cargo version of the B36. In 1954, I was an aviation cadet going through preflight training at Lackland AFB. About once a week, the XC99 would take off hauling cargo to a base on the west coast. After taking off from Kelly AFB, the XC99 would circle around over Lackland at about 2000 feet. Quite an impressive sight and I will never forget the sound. Not quite the same as the production B36 since it didn’t have the four J47 jet engines.

Chuck Anderson

Education in the Nation’s Capital

Jerry,

The new year has brought some rather interesting, if conflicting, attitudes in DC towards education:

D.C. bill mandates college application for high school diploma Brown also wants all students to take entrance exams http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/3/dc-bill-mandates-college-application-for-high-scho/

EEOC: High school diploma requirement might violate Americans with Disabilities Act http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/1/eeoc-high-school-diploma-might-violate-americans-w/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS

Karl

Hawking turns 70

Jerry,

http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/01/05/3638890/stephen-hawking-to-turn-70-defying.html

I think I first heard of Hawking, as a high school student, in my first-ever issue of Galaxy, which featured a column about a Niven-Pournelle field trip (to JPL? Stanford?) to hear him speak. "Fuzzy black holes have no hair."

(I can’t however say that it influenced my career choice — that was set when I decided to become Fred Rodebush and Lyman Cleveland in 8th grade…not that I’ve gotten close to that. Yet.)

Jim

Pentagon Day Care Center

Sir:

I had not checked into your site for a quite a while. I was totally consumed with a special study for KSC much of last year (into other uses for the VAB) and with various other personal things since then.

I had not heard the story of the Marines circling the cribs but I was at the Pentagon for 4.5 years, 1988 -1993, and can tell you that the installation does have a day care center. It is not located within the 5 sided structure itself but is on the edge of the parking lot on the side nearest to the White House, to use an imprecise direction.

This location means that it is perhaps not "near" the impact point of the airliner on 9/11/01 (compared to some other parts of the building) but it was not very far away at all and was within easy sight of it. It is not at all difficult to think that the people operating the day care center would be concerned with evacuating it; the smoke from the impact area may have been reason enough. As I understand it from people who were in the main building at that time, all non-essential personnel were evacuated in any case.

May you have a Happy New Year!

Wayne Eleazer

The Marine story was probably a myth, but it’s the kind of myth we are not harmed by knowing. Removing myths from the world is not always a good thing.

‘Our government has built an anti-Constitutional framework that can and will eventually be turned against our citizens.’

<http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/12/our_growing_police_state.html>

–

Roland Dobbins

Mail 708 Wednesday, January 04, 2012

First the retraction:

40 marines circle the cribs

Jerry:

The story you repeated in Mail 708 about 40 marines circling the cribs from the Pentagon daycare has been circling the internet since at least 2008 and is reported to be false. There is no evidence that it is true.

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/glurge/daycare.asp

It is now widely posted on the web, always it seems without documentation.

Best regards,

–Harry M.

It probably isn’t true, then. I hadn’t heard it before, and on reflection given the geometry of the Pentagon it seems unlikely.

Of course I didn’t bother to do any fact checking for the simple reason that if it turned out to be made up, someone was certain to write me – and unlike some stories, which I do try to confirm before printing them, there was no harm to be done on this one. It’s not as if it couldn’t be true, or even that such activities by Marines would be all that unusual. But, as I said, on reflection given the geometry of the Pentagon, it does seem unlikely. Precisely where would this stockade have been built? I don’t know which ring has a nursery – indeed, I don’t think, on reflection, that there is one. On the other hand, things were much more open prior to 9/11; in my day you took a taxi to the Mall Entrance, walked up a ramp, and you could walk pretty well anywhere without being challenged or stopped. There were parts of the E Ring that were guarded, and a few project offices, but in general anyone could go almost anywhere in the building without challenge, and it’s not impossible that there had been a nursery area.

As to Snopes, I avoid that site. I find their attitude unpleasant, and their agenda is not mine.

But we are justified in deciding that this particular story of helpful Marines has been made up. I assure I can find lots of similar stories that are quite true.

Space colonisation

You say we can colonise the asteroids in much the same way we colonised Australia. Well, I disagree. One point is that Australia was colonised at least initially with criminals; I find it difficult to believe that such people will number among them enough people with sufficient technical savvy to keep the machinery going.

The other point is related to the first one. Anyone involved in exploiting space resources is not too far enough away from having access to WMDs. This might not matter after a century or two, when humanity has more than one basket to keep its eggs in, but early on it will matter. Which leads to a sub-point; there are some people, and IMHO some groups of people, who should never be permitted to go into space. Never.

Ian Campbell

Well – yes. I am familiar with Botany Bay and Captain Bligh and the other stories about convicts and the Australian settlement, but I hadn’t supposed that was the element alluded to in the letter I was answering. I had presumed that “in much the same way as we colonized Australia” meant long and uncomfortable voyages, and a rather small and slow return on the initial investment, but immediate payoff from mines and minerals. Given the cost of transportation it’s highly unlikely that even the Moon would receive involuntary colonists, and the costs of transport to the asteroids is far greater. It never occurred to me that anyone seriously meant colonization of the asteroids by convicts.

Many years ago the L5 Society conducted a survey and registry: we wondered if there would be any volunteers for colonization of the Moon. I was pretty sure there would be: after all, we colonized the West, and that was with horses and oxen. I found that the cost in 1979 dollars of a covered wagon, team of oxen, a horse, plow, shovels and axes, guns and ammunition, and enough food to last several weeks delivered to Independence Missouri was about $100,000. The L5 Society then looked to see if educated couples of fertile age would be willing to sign up for a Lunar Colony on the condition that return was not guaranteed and passage back to Earth was at the convenience of the colony company; the investment would be $100,000 US dollars. We started the registry, but we soon gave up: this was before we had small computers and could do this electronically, and frankly there were too many people volunteering. The paper work was overwhelming the tiny L5 staff.

Now true enough, many of those so eager to go one-way to the Moon might not be so quick to board an actual ship and head out, but it is astonishing how many said they were willing to do so and were willing to explain where they expected to get the money. If Lunar and asteroid colonies ever become a reality, I do not think we would lack for a few thousand well educated fertile couples who would undertake to try it. At least that was true of my generation. It may no longer be true, of course.

As to who might be permitted to go to space, and the need for a Space Navy, I agree, and in fact have written about that. A small rock with a mass driver is very much a weapon of mass destruction.

Health care

Jerry,

Responding to Mr. Johnson’s letter:

I think there is little doubt that providing services to manage public health (sanitation and infectious disease) falls under "general welfare," and much of trauma medicine and occupational disease research can be justified by the need to "provide for the common defense" and "general welfare," though providing such services could arguably be limited to soldiers and federal workers (including contractors) in such environments.

Other medical research — and other medical services — are provided by the government as a public charity, albeit in principle one with a direct return to the general welfare through more productive citizenry. (Medicare, as a supposed "pay while you’re employed and we’ll take care of you later" insurance plan is something different from charity).

My personal preference in this regard would be:

1. Continued private medicine with health insurance reform that equalizes costs-per-patient for insured and uninsured patients. (I find it ludicrous that a doctor can see a covered patient and collect a $30 copay and get a $30 reimbursement with the ensuing paperwork, while an uncovered patient — just "cash the check" without the paperwork — is billed $120.) Services provided should be sharply limited, and (as an obese Type II diabetic) I would consider it fair to have to pay higher costs for related medical care as an incentive to mitigate the problem.

2. Something like the Ryan plan to maintain Medicare for current beneficiaries while weaning people from it.

3. The federal and state governments should offer a clinic service, fees commensurate on ability to pay but not exceeding private clinic reimbursements, staffed by nurses and interns. Government funding of health care is relegated to subsidies to such clinics. We should also encourage the return to charity clinics and offer tex incentives to private doctors to see charity and Medicare patients.

Jim

The notion that you ought to pay my doctor bills as general welfare would have astonished nearly everyone at the Convention of 1787.

Juan of the Dead

Dr. Pournelle

The West’s cultural weapons of mass destruction seem to have been effective in Castro’s Cuba. Someone down there is producing world-class zombie comedy.

http://www.firstshowing.net/2012/focus-world-releasing-cuban-film-juan-of-the-dead-vod-this-year/

Sadly, I believe that we are running out of time for the same implements to finish working in Tehran. The mullahs may have a nuclear weapon before we see "Mohsen of the Dead".

Gregory Norton

We have wasted four years in which the cultural weapons of mass destruction – iPhones, iPads, blue jeans, rock music, and other cool stuff – might have been directed against both Iran and North Korea. The current administration has chosen speeches and ‘engagement’.

Tripolitanian ‘Democracy’ in action.

<http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.ac8ca97b7248a2fcb350950c1c4b4b92.291&show_article=1>

Roland Dobbins

Alas neither the first nor the last of such stories.

Peacemaker

http://paulinhouston.blogspot.com/2012/01/peacemaker.html

03 Jan 2012 – 17:00 – I’ve already gotten a bit fond of this post,so naturally I just had to tweak it, play with it and add a couple of pictures.

Will I ever learn to just leave well enough alone?

Probably not. 🙂

—

Paul Gordon

I once flew a 24 hour flight mission on the B-36 (as a civilian operations research/human factors boffin). She was an impressive airplane.

Subject: Even the Washington Post is Against Energy Subsidies

Yes, the Washington Post comes out against ethanol and electric vehicle subsidies. Maybe there is some hope. They even point out the silly prediction of President Obama that there will be a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/overcharged/2011/12/30/gIQAzQ0yUP_story.html?hpid=z2

—

Dwayne Phillips

A continuing story.

Geoengineering in reverse

A state of the art model of clean air mandate driven aerosol reduction suggests that angels can fall up :

http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering/browse_thread/thread/b8adf28ac78f88f3.html

—

Russell Seitz

If you say so…

Searching the moon for lost keys?

Hi Jerry

Just a minor comment about the SETI search of the moon:

"Although there is only a tiny probability that alien technology would have left traces on the moon in the form of an artifact or surface modification of lunar features, this location has the virtue of being close, and of preserving traces for an immense duration."

When I read this, I can’t help but think of the old story of the drunk looking for his lost keys:

"A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks whey he is searching here, and the drunk replies, ‘this is where the light is.’"

Surely there are better ways to invest the time and money SETI plans for this project?

Cheers

Brad

Depends on whose money. I certainly would not borrow money from China to pay for it; in other words, I would not at the moment think it a good public investment. On the other hand, it’s a free country, and if the SETI people want to raise the money to try this, they are welcome to do so and I’ll watch with interest.

One thing about liberty, lots of people do things I wouldn’t pay for, and more power to them. It’s when they want to do it with my money that I get concerned.

New self publishing options: Audiobooks through ACX.com, which is, of course, an Amazon.com company

Dear Jerry:

Here is a short article about doing audiobooks of your existing books through ACX.com. I wrote this for my fellow members of the Military Writers Society of America, but see no reason why you should not use it as well.

And a reminder. The special holday sale on the e-book edition of "The Shenandoah Spy" for 99 cents ends on January 8th. The price goes back up because we’re not selling enough copies to make up for the margin we have at the higher price. This seems to be another bifurcated market. There are e-book consumers who want good books and will pay for them and others who just want cheap books, regardless of their quality. Well, quality costs. The experiment continues.

Article begins here:

At Brass Cannon Books we have started publishing audiobook editions of some of the works we have on Amazon Kindle, in a co-production deal with producer/narrators. When we started looking at doing this about two years ago, it was pretty daunting. Audiobooks , unless you narrate and produce them yourselves, are as expensive to make as your first hardbound edition in offset. Several thousand dollars. Why audiobooks? Because this is a whole new audience for your work. There is very little overlap with traditional print readers or e-book readers. If my neighbors in Kern County are an example, the main audience are all those people who do not read at all, but like to listen to a good story while driving long distances. Call it the truck-and-road warrior market rather than the brick-and-mortar one. Seriously. These folks balk at paying eight bucks for a mass-market paperback, but regularly plunk down forty dollars for a new audiobook.

ACX.com is an Amazon.com company and this is a place where their desire to own the universe actually can work for you. Because they also own Audible, which distributes through Amazon and is also on iTunes. Most of the audiobook market now is downloads to the MP3 player and like devices. On ACX there are rights holders and there are producers, who are usually narrators as well or can hire them. And you can hire a producer or make a partnership them to divide the royalties 50/50.

Given that good narrators go from $100 to $1.000 per finished hour and a 100,000 word novel will be about 12 to 14 hours long, it wasn’t a hard decision for us to give up half the royalties. Most narrators there simply want to get paid their fee, but there are some that will take the 50/50 deal because they see the potential of the piece. As rights holder, you control the process. They audition the voices for you. They post samples of their narration. You can also ask for a reading of the first few minutes of your book. The 50/50 deal gives Audible exclusive distribution rights, but your up-front investment is very small. And Audible has a big chunk of the market. Their license is only for seven years. After that you can make other arrangements.

We have been insisting that the narrators and producers read the entire work before we do a deal. We have parts that some people can’t handle (sex, violence, politics) or find that there are more voices than they can comfortably do. While this is not a traditional performance, it does require someone who can act and change the tone of the narration to fit the text. There are hundreds of different ways that any text can be read aloud. So you have to choose wisely.

We started with two full novels and three shorter pieces of fiction. There are not many short pieces in the Audible catalog, and we think this might be a profitable niche. Two of the shorter pieces are in production and should be available for download by next month. The text are on Kindle, so we hope that the availability of a Kindle edition will spark the audiobook sale and we note that one writer who has become famous for offering full novels at 99 cents sells the audiobook edition for eleven or twelve times as much.

We take our time reviewing and approving the final product because it has our name on it. We own it. So quality is a concern. Rather than replicate everything on the ACX.com site here, I am going to recommend that you go check it out yourself. It’s easy to navigate and easy to use, and it doesn’t cost anything to register your work. You should have a Kindle version in the system for them to look at and approve.

Francis Hamit

I have found Audible to be a good source of income, but I have no direct experience with them. I would think that the same techniques that make podcasts work could be used to do audio books. In my case I almost never read from my own works in public, but some authors do, and some have the voice quality to make it sound good.

The following is a press release:

Facebook cybercriminals rip-off consumers and companies, says Commtouch 2011 Year in Review Report

Dear Jerry,

Not only are cybercriminals using Facebook for “traditional” fraud like phishing and identity theft, but they are also using it as a “gray” market for building – and defrauding – affiliate businesses.

Facebook threats have become so prevalent that Commtouch has devoted much of its 2011 Year in Review Trend Report to them. Commtouch® (NASDAQ: CTCH) provides Internet security solutions to more than 150 security companies and service providers including Google, Microsoft and Rackspace.

http://www.commtouch.com/threat-report- <http://www.commtouch.com/threat-report-january-2012> january-2012 <http://www.commtouch.com/threat-report-year-end-2011>

View the infographic at: http://www.commtouch.com/facebook-threats

We invite you to download the report and graphic and use them in any of your materials; we simply ask that you attribute Commtouch.

The report’s author is available for personal interviews, if you’d like me to set up a call.

Please let me know if I may assist in any way.

Over 2012 (and immediately), we invite you to visit blog.commtouch.com for twice-weekly threat updates. Feel free to use the content here, too. Again, we just ask that you attribute Commtouch.

Happy New Year!

Regards,

Amy

Amy Kenigsberg

K2 Global Communications

I include this largely because I have a number of messages warning me of Facebook frauds. I don’t Facebook so I wouldn’t know much about it.

Big Government Conservatives Dear Jerry,

Using Milton Friedman’s idea that best way to measure the size of government is by how much it spends (not how much it taxes), we could say that a "Big Government Conservative" is one that endorses a lot of government spending. Thus, conservative supporters of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could be an example of "Big Government Conservatives". Or, consider that a few days ago Rep. Steve King of Iowa stated in an interview on CNN that Ron Paul’s foreign policy of withdrawing U.S. troops from around the world would not only embolden China, but possibly result in a Chavez-led revolution in Cuba! (I would have thought we could project enough force from Florida or Georgia to prevent that.) True, he did not mention wars with Canada or Mexico, but, we have fought them before, and if they continue to grow marijuana it is not too hard to think that King would endorse warring with them again. Can’t be too careful, you know.

As to enhancing the power of local governments, that is an interesting idea, but one shockingly at odds with the notion of state constitutions; thus, showing that while you may be a conservative, you are no mere worshipper of tradition! For myself, I would prefer that local power be enhanced privately via covenants that run with the land, rather than by more majoritarianism. Local power might not be properly called "Big Government", but I think the real concern is with Meddlesome Government regardless of party affiliation.

Gordon Sollars

I am quite certain that simple populism will result in many injustices; indeed, it was fear of simple democracy that spurred the drafting and adoption of the Constitution of 1787. Regarding local powers being devolved from the states, I understand that’s a fairly radical proposition. I reserve the right to bring up such notions for discussion. I can see how states like California that have Initiative and Referendum for Constitutional Amendment might manage to get there from here. Whether it’s likely is another matter entirely.

I do think that consent of the governed is important, and that the best way to see that most people live under governments they consent to is to break up the jurisdictional areas, so that everyone gets a bunch of the laws and conventions they want. But then I am not running for office and I don’t have to worry about such speculation.

I completely agree that Meddlesome Government and the Nanny State is undesirable; but since there seem to be a lot of people who think that’s a great idea, I would like to see such things implements in local areas, rather than across a whole state. It’s unlikely, I admit.

If Big Government advocates are those who want a lot of government spending – a perfectly good definition in my judgment – then Mr. Santorum can hardly be called in favor of Big Government. He is adamant about cutting spending.

The Golden State Turning Brown

Jerry,

The obvious continues…

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

<http://news.investors.com/Article/596620/201201031854/california-business-leaving-child-booster-law-arson.htm>

The money paragraphs

"….While the California legislature spent 2011 fiddling with nonsense legislation, the state’s business environment continued to burn. Joe Vranich, a business consultant who monitors the Golden State’s exodus, said in November that "large corporations, family-run companies and even startup enterprises in all industries continue to leave" due to high business taxes and excessive regulation "imposed on commercial enterprises of all types."

Vranich calls California the worst state in the nation to locate a business, Los Angeles the worst city. He estimates a business can save 40% in costs just by leaving…."

You did have to remind me, didn’t you? Ah well.

Mail 708 Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Did You Know? – YouTube

Jerry

Don’t know if you’ve seen this video before:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY

It was prepared by Sony for its 2009 shareholders’ meeting.

Ed

A very disturbing video. Well worth the time to watch. Thanks.

Both of these are from the same reader:

RE: the American Workforce

Steve Jobs wanted better technicians? Why didn’t he train them himself, then? “Because then they’d go work for IBM.” So pay better than IBM does. “They aren’t worth that much.” Hm. So Steve Jobs wants people who work cheap and can’t leave. He doesn’t want employees—he wants slaves. And if he has to go to China to get slaves, well, that’s where he’ll go. Meanwhile we’re told that there’s Jobs Americans Just Won’t Do.

Building Swarms of P-47

There’s a little more to modern manufacturing than riveting sheet metal. Saying “we built lots of things in World War II, therefore we should be able to build lots of things today” is the kind of thinking that suggested we’d colonize the asteroid belt the same way we colonized Australia.

M

I do not think that most Apple employees think of themselves as slaves. If the problem of well educated technical workers is that they are in short enough supply that they can demand such high wages, the obvious first thought is to increase the supply. With a population of more than 300 million we certainly have the potential. And given the technical educations we observe in the Orient we were once able to provide that to a large part of the population in California and in Tennessee (two places I am familiar with), so I see no real reason why we can’t have superior schools in most of the country.

Of course this isn’t Lake Wobegon, and half of the children are below average; but we have more above average now than we had as a total population when I was born. There’s no shortage of people smart enough to benefit from a decent education. Moreover, the problem isn’t money or resources: when I went to first through eighth grades, my schools had two grades to a room and 20 or so children per grade. At Capleville there were only 4 teachers for the entire school and the principal taught 7-8^th grades. Yet we learned quite a lot, including an introduction to algebra and geometry, and had a fairly decent introduction to Western civilization and its literature.

As to manufacturing, perhaps so, but I would have thought that propeller driven airplanes were quite complicated, and the electronics of the day were very complex requiring a lot of hand work; we didn’t have much in the way of robots and automation.

And I continue to believe that we can colonize the Moon, and thence the asteroids, in much the same way that we colonized Australia. I have written a number of novels about doing that.

Rising to the occasion

Jerry,

I do believe there are times that this country can still rise to the occassion, although perhaps not quite as broadly or as lengthy in duration as occured in WWII. Witness the history of the GBU-28 bunkerbuster… from the drawing board to field deployment during Desert Storm in a time measured in weeks.

Whether we could repeat a sustained effort like the Liberty ship program, I have my doubts. But there are still some things we can pull off if we put our minds to it.

Karl

This came with impossible formatting. I have tweaked it a bit. I would request that in future don’t send me mail with weird formatting. Plain text with two carriage returns at the ends of paragraphs is good. I can manage much other.

"Fathom the Hypocrisy of a Government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured…. but not everyone must prove they are a citizen."

Ben Stein

: During a visit with a fellow chaplain, who happened to be assigned to the Pentagon, I had a chance to hear a first-hand account of an incident . This is little-known story from the Pentagon on 09/11/2001: that happened right after Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.

The chaplain told me what happened at a daycare center near where the impact occurred. This daycare had many children, including infants who were in heavy cribs. The daycare supervisor, looking at all the children they needed to evacuate, was in a panic over what they could do. There were many children, mostly toddlers, as well as the infants that would need to be taken out with the cribs.

There was no time to try to bundle them into carriers and strollers. Just then a young Marine came running into the center and asked what they needed. After hearing what the center director was trying to do, he ran back out into the hallway and disappeared. The director thought, ‘Well, here we are-on our own.’

About 2 minutes later, that Marine returned with 40 other Marines in tow. Each of them grabbed a crib with a child, and the rest started gathering up toddlers. The director and her staff then helped them take all the children out of the center and down toward the park near the Potomac and the Pentagon. Once they got about 3/4 of a mile outside the building, the Marines stopped in the park, and then did a fabulous thing – they formed a circle with the cribs, which were quite sturdy and heavy, like the covered wagons in the Old West. Inside this circle of cribs, they put the toddlers, to keep them from wandering off. Outside this circle were the 40 Marines, forming a perimeter around the children and waiting for instructions. There they remained until the parents could be notified and come get their children.

The chaplain then said, "I don’t think any of us saw nor heard of this on any of the news stories of the day. It was an incredible story of our men there. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room. The thought of those Marines and what they did and how fast they reacted; could we expect any less from them? It was one of the most touching stories from the Pentagon."

Remember Ronald Reagan’s great compliment: "Most of us wonder if our lives made any difference. Marines don’t have that problem."

God Bless the USA , our troops, and you. If you care to offer the smallest token of recognition and appreciation for the military, please pass this on and pray for our men and women who have served and are currently serving our country and pray for those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for freedom.

Will the real Cheetah please stand up

Dr. Pournelle,

You wrote

"Did the real Cheetah die in 1938? "

Reminds me of the oft repeated rumors of the death and replacement of Sir Paul McCartney. One wonders if playing the soundtrack of the Movie "Tarzan finds a Son" backwards will somehow reveal Johnny Weissmuller chanting "Cheetah is dead" buried in the elephant noises. If we cannot convince the crazies about the continuing good health and creative output of a modern artist, I’ve little hope of convincing any of the identity of a chimp.

Glad that your home is back together.

Thanks for re-releasing Starswarm. I enjoyed it, and it measures well against Heinlein’s. I also re-read _Podkayne of Mars_ on Kindle, so I have a basis of comparison.

-d

I haven’t heard more from any reliable source. One says the real Cheetah died early on, before 1945. The other says that this was the genuine article, an 80 year old chimp. Dunno.

California Declared Judical Hellhole

Jerry,

I know you are familiar with the legal situation in California based on your previous posts, but I thought you might find this report interesting.

http://www.judicialhellholes.org/2011/12/15/latest-report-names-philadelphia-as-the-worst-of-the-judicial-hellholes-while-courts-in-california-west-virginia-florida-illinois-new-york-and-nevada-also-make-the-list/#more-1197

The full report is available here:

http://www.judicialhellholes.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Judicial-Hellholes-2011.pdf

The section on California is pages 9-12.

Joel Upchurch

Thanks. And it is not an exaggeration. One chap brought several hundred suits against public establishments because men’s room mirrors were several centimeters too high for his comfort. He claimed that he could not properly preen himself from his wheel chair. He travelled from place to place looking for restaurants and bars so he could examine the restroom.

Another sued over 100 nail parlors for using the wrong polish remover. He would of course settle for a thousand dollars, otherwise you go to trial. And there are others.

In France they remedied much of this with guillotines after 1789.

Interventionism and the survival of the U.S. as we know it

"We are the friends of Liberty everywhere. We are the guardians only of our own. I see no need for a policy different from that, but I am willing to have it debated." {Pournelle, 29Dec2011}

If you really believe that, you should be supporting Ron Paul for President, not Gingrich.

I think that it is high time we pulled all our troops home, though retaining much of our capacity to project force should there be dire need, including, of course, much of our Navy. I would like to see half of the savings from this move spent on building out and maintaining state-of-the-art Star Wars defensive and counterstrike capability, and making significant improvement to our human intelligence, both in the field and analytically, back in the agencies. We also need to significantly improve our counter-intelligence, and in fact we need a thorough overhaul and consolidation of all central U.S. intelligence agencies into one.

The focus of our foreign policy should be limited to fostering and protecting the freest possible trade, and incidentally promoting free market capitalism based on absolute respect for property rights as the necessary foundation. We should return to serving as a shining example to the rest of the world in that regard by abolishing all Unconstitutional functions of government, i.e. all the sham regulatory agencies, starting with the DEA. The wars on terrorism and drugs should be declared over, and all future wars should be subject to the approval of the Senate, as the Constitution requires.

These are my views, but Ron Paul comes close to them in every respect. It is doubtful, given the state of our society, that anyone who is elected president can prevent the coming breakdown of the world financial system, and with it the U.S. government, even if that president’s party controls both houses of Congress. The reason for supporting Ron Paul is not because he has the best chance of being elected, but because he alone of all the candidates has the understanding, and the insight to grasp the radical changes that are necessary. Thus, he is the only candidate who provides a ray of hope that in time enough Americans can be awakened to the fact that the U.S. government is the problem, not the solution, that there’s a chance of avoiding our otherwise inevitable fate.

John Robb

I have not announced my support for any Republican candidate. Mr. Paul says he does not expect to be the candidate. His popularity has a great influence on whomever the candidate will be.

Our President is President of the U.N. Security Council and the U.N. flew flags at half mast for Kim Jong Il.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.55799cfbd389f865660da24bb02616c9.4f1&show_article=1

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

I do not think that a matter for either the Assembly or the Security Council; I believe it falls into the jurisdiction of the Secretary General.

The first Congress declined to appoint anyone from the US an ‘ambassador’ on the grounds that this was a royal title; the lack of that title meant that the US representative was always last in precedence.

I do appreciate the irony.

Health Care

Dear Mr. Pournelle;

While there’s a persuasive argument to be made for the position that health care is not a reasonable "entitlement" (though I do think accepting some responsibility for the welfare of all is a value I’d support), there are two other aspects to this which I think need to be worked through.

The first is the health of the herd. It’s simply dangerous to all of us if threats to the health of any of us go unaddressed. For example: it’s my impression that improperly treated tuberculosis is becoming more common in urban slums. Which increases the likelihood of drug-resistant strains developing. While one might argue that we have no *obligation* to act aggressively against tuberculosis in this population, it would be a foolish economy if drug-resistant TB came to haunt us all. In general, allowing a pool of infectious disease seems like a really bad idea.

The second issue is the cost of health care. The curve of health care costs against GNP is clearly unsustainable; we can’t spend *all* our production on hospitals. Obviously that won’t happen; so how will it stop? I’d rather look for a strategy which doesn’t rely on some catastrophic interruption. And I see nothing in the forces driving health care costs which suggests that they’ll be reined in by market forces.

The emergency room question which you raise is significant; not only are emergency rooms appallingly expensive, but with the exception of trauma care they’re hardly the best place to begin treatment. Presuming that we have not, as a society, made the decision to let poor people die untreated, why would we make the choice to make their treatment as expensive — and ineffective — as our technology allows? (I’ve been intrigued by recent pilot studies which suggest that health care costs can be significantly *reduced* by providing excellent and continuing health care to what appears to be a minority of the population which runs up heavy emergency room costs.)

How to bring health care costs under control, I *don’t* know. But since the only counterweight I am aware of would be governmental action, I think that’s where we need to look.

Thank you for your continuing attempt to promote civil and thoughtful conversation —

Allan E. Johnson

The question is whether someone ought to be made to pay for the health care of people who would otherwise burden the emergency rooms. I continue to ask the question: how did you get the legal obligation to pay for my health care? Is that also an ethical obligation or is it merely force majeure?

Sacco & Vanzetti

Hi Jerry!

Interesting reading your remarks about Sacco and Vanzetti (https://jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?page_id=491#note1), as I’ve been reading about the case recently, and have had some online exchanges with those who "know" what happened on April 15th, 1920 and subsequently, apparently by virtue of divine revelation.

Perhaps the most important books on this subject are two by the late Paul Avrich, a CUNY professor who was a historian of Anarchism: _Sacco and Vanzetti : the Anarchist Background_, and _Anarchist Voices : an Oral Oistory of Anarchism in America_. In _Anarchist Background_ he paints a picture of two men who were part of a violent revolutionary terrorist movement, men who’d been involved in bombings and other crimes years before they were ever arrested. In _Oral History_, you’ll find several people stating that Sacco was a participant in the robbery/double murder, and that one of the peripheral figures in the case, Mario Buda, was most likely the Wall Street Bomber, perpetrator of what was up till then the worst act of terrorism ever committed in the U.S. (38 dead, 143 seriously injured).

What’s amazing about the Sacco-Vanzetti case, the Hiss case, the Rosenberg case, and several other controversial convictions I’ve looked into over the years is that, when you go back to the original sources there was always a huge amount of evidence that the accused did it; that more such evidence appeared over the years; that the accused always acted in ways that showed they were probably guilty of something serious, even without considering what the prosecution said about them; and that their defenders obfuscated the issues relentlessly.

It just goes to show you how vicious and sinister the fascist U.S. govt. is: when they decide to persecute people for political reasons, they persecute people who actually did what they were accused of!

Best wishes, and Happy New Year,

Stephen M. St. Onge

Minneapolis, MN, USA

I t has been many years since Carlo Tresca, who as the anarchist leader presumably knew, said that Sacco was guilty but Vanzetti was not. I do know that a great deal of legal talent was employed in the case.

Project Icarus (1967).

<http://beyondapollo.blogspot.com/2011/12/project-icarus-1967.html>

Roland Dobbins

Forget The Bunny Inspectors

Jerry –

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/politics/Adult-Film-Porn-Sets-Condom-Ballot-Measure-136259473.html?dr

LA is proposing to fund inspectors for the porn industry, to enforce condom use.

Will conforming videos get one of those blue USDA stamps?

Regards,

Jim Martin

I have no comment…

"Although there is only a tiny probability that alien technology would have left traces on the moon in the form of an artifact or surface modification of lunar features, this location has the virtue of being close, and of preserving traces for an immense duration."

<http://news.discovery.com/space/seti-to-scour-the-moon-for-alien-tech-111227.html>

Roland Dobbins

At one time a common theme in science fiction. Obelisks, anyone?

Mail 707 Monday, December 26, 2011

Long time readers will remember Karen Parker:

Hello Jerry, and Merry Christmas

(This is the second day of Christmas, after all, two turtle doves, etc etc)

On Saturday (Christmas Eve day) I purchased a Kindle edition of Starswarm and began reading it on my iPad. I finished about 1:00 AM that evening. What a wonderful Christmas present! Thank you!

Even though I’m 60 years old, I still enjoy so-called “juvenile” science fiction, and this is among the very best, right up there with the best of RAH, and better than even some of his. And not one, but two, new, to me at least, ideas – the Starswarm entity itself, and the idea of an embedded connection to an AI program, from infancy.

I also read with great interest your introduction, and it reminded me of my first experiences with writing on a computer. In 1980 I joined Bell Labs, and very quickly learned to use the UNIX system for writing. In this case it was via a line oriented text editor (at least initially, within a year of so we’d transitioned to “vi”, a screen oriented text editor), writing files for nroff/troff, which used embedded formatting commands somewhat similar in concept but not in detail to HTML. Like you, I found the ability to change something without retyping the entire page was a massively liberating experience, which I put to good use over the following years, when I averaged between 40 and 70 internal papers a year for several years. So thank you, too, for a pleasant walk down memory lane.

Karen

Karen Parker

Thanks for the kind words.

I was looking for something else and found myself at http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail292.html . It’s another walk down memory lane. Not so terribly long ago, actually. By the way, you can find the many of the old Chaos Manor Views by going to http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view.html, and similarly for mail. These claim to show how to find any of them from inception on, but apparently don’t actually point back to the very early View and Mail. The very first View was http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives/archivesview/view1.html

The first Chaos Manor Mail is at: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/ancient/mail1.htm

After the first three, mail went to /archives/archivesmail#.html where # stands for a number between 4 and 83. It gets more complicated. At some point I’d like to do a better index to some of the early stuff: early being 1998 and on. I fear all the old Genie archives are long lost, and I doubt that McGraw Hill kept the BIX archives. Perhaps MIT kept the MC and TOPS20 correspondence, but I doubt it’s easily accessible. I suspect that much of the early history of the Internet is going mythical…

The first View and Mail went up when BYTE unexpectedly shut down, and the first few weeks were frantic as I tried to build this place and come up with a way to keep it going. That was in 1998, so clearly we were able to do it.

Word processors

Jerry,

One of the earliest public users and proponents of using word processors was the late William F. Buckley, Jr. who wrote his columns and novels on one beginning with the Zenith Z-89 in 1982.

“I began using a word processor, commonplace now at Yale, 15 years ago. Most writers will acknowledge that the word processor is conclusively useful in editing. There is the convenience of instantly reshaping a sentence or paragraph with this or that emendation or addition and then looking at it and evaluating the integrated modifications. I think it safe to guess that most writers who began composing by hand or on the typewriter have traveled, since word processing came in, through the predictable stages.”

http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/97_12/Buckley.html

Larry

Ireland

Yes. We corresponded on this, a very long time ago. On paper, I think.

Stars Wars Holiday Special

Dr Pournelle

The video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbF_ecnlyTk includes the entire show including commercials. I found the GM commercials alone worth the time to watch.

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

I fear it was not to my taste, but à chacun son gout .

Dr Pournelle

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that Kim Jeong-il’s official funeral is scheduled on the day of the Mass of the Holy Innocents?

Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

A good question.

Sometimes the truth hurts, and this may be it.

In the coming New Year, 2012, both Groundhog Day and the State of the Union address will occur on the same day.

This is an ironic juxtaposition of events:

One involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to an insignificant creature of little intelligence for prognostication.

The other involves a groundhog.

Niven was right.

Merry Christmas, Dr. Pournelle! And may you have a Happy New Year. In other news, I thought you might find this:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/xinjiang-procedure_610145.html

interesting. It’s pretty horrific.

Regards,

Tim Scott=

A free market will provide what the customers want. Morality comes from elsewhere. Chesterton is often quoted as saying that when a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing, he will believe in anything. This isn’t strictly true, although Father Brown, one of Chesterton’s characters – if you don’t know the Father Brown detective stories you may be in for a treat – comes close to saying it.

What is true is that without God it’s very difficult to derive a system of morality and ethics that forbids or even discourages the harvesting of organs from criminals. Niven’s The Jigsaw Man (published first in the Ellison edited Dangerous Visions) shows what happens next: if there’s enough demand, and no taboos, a supply will be found. This is being illustrated quite well in today’s China. It’s even logical, given a belief in the legitimacy of the People’s Republic; the question is, at what point does it become a constitutional right under a Supreme Court of the proper political correctness?

Plants no longer to be given Latin name ‘so they can be classified before they die out’

Jerry

Plants no longer to be given Latin name ‘so they can be classified before they die out’:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2077542/Plants-longer-given-Latin-classified-die-out.html

“It was once the lingua franca of science, used to name animals and plants with precision. But now botanists will no longer be required to provide Latin descriptions of new species. The move is part of a major effort to speed up the process of naming new plants – because in many cases it is feared they might die out before they are officially recognised.

This link was sent to me labeled as ‘the ultimate dumbing-down’.

Ed

Neither you nor I find this astonishing. And the education system continues…

Hidden Dragon: The Chinese cyber menace [printer-friendly]

Jerry

A current fairly extensive summary of the Chinese cyber menace:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/24/china_cybercrime_underground_analysis/print.html

Apparently a workmanlike crew: “what’s striking is that all these attacks happen between 9am and 5pm Chinese time,"

Ed

On motivations 

 

Jerry,

On motivations:

As Dan Simmons reminded us (in his excellent "message" at http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message/2006_04.htm) ,

“Thucydides taught us more than twenty-four hundred years ago … that all men’s behavior is guided by phobos, kerdos, and doxa, Fear, self-interest, and honor."

Responsible capitalism is self-interest mitigated with honor — in the sense of doing things right and considering also the rights and interests of others. Irresponsible capitalism is unmitigated self-interest – caveat emptor.

Fascism and communism replace self-interest and honor with various degrees of fear, which gets worse, the worse the tyranny, ending with unmitigated fear as the only motivator.

Socialism attempts to replace self-interest without creating fear. That leaves honor — which is probably the laziest of the three drivers — as the only motivator for independence and excellence.

Honor is also the most easily perverted, because it is defined in a cultural context. Suicide bombers are honorable, in their own light … (which is NOT an endorsement of either them, or a system which finds honor instead of horror in such actions).

JIm

Actually it depends on your brands of fascism and national socialism, doesn’t it? Mussolini claimed to be restoring national honor and that share of glory to which Italy was entitled as the descendent of Rome, and held honor and patriotism in high regard. He did not in general reject conventional behavior although he often disregarded its restrictions.

Without a fountain of honor and justice and morality it becomes difficult to decide what is honorable and what is not. In modern France, the society is becoming anti-Semitic because there is a demand for toleration of the Islamic population and its prejudices. Hardly unpredictable. But then the victory of Charles the Hammer at Tours appears to be undergoing renegotiation.

National Health Care by Yuri Maltsev

Dr. Pournelle,

I thought you might be interested in this, it is a presentation by Yuri Maltsev. The talk he is giving is about his experience with the Soviet system. Formerly of the Soviet Union, he is now an educator in Wisconsin, a prof. of economics with close ties to the medical profession. He speaks about nationalized health care with some authority and much consternation.

best regards

Steve Mackelprang

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytLqGU4sjhs

Instructive. Thank you.

Godzilla Shrugged

The resurrection of a 1932 Japanese juvenal SF novel may explain Ian Plimers enthusiasm for fictitious CO2 eruptions calculated to rival the human flux:

Miyazawa Kenzi, 1932: Gusukô Budori no Denki (A Biography of Gusukô Budori).

Translation of the quotation by Kooiti Masuda

Budori:

Will it become warmer if carbonate gas increases in the atmosphere?

Dr. Kûbô:

Yes, it will. It is even said that the temperature of the earth since its birth has been basically determined by the content of carbonate gas in the air.

Budori:

If the Carbonado Island volcano erupts now, will it emit carbonate gas much enough to change the climate?

Dr. Kûbô:

Yes, I have calculated it. If it erupts, its gas will soon join the upper-level winds of the general circulation and will cover the whole earth. It will prevent radiation of heat from the lower atmosphere and from the surface, and I think that it will warm the whole globe by five degrees on the average.

Translator Masuda goes on to relate this to how Arrhenius;s work on CO2 was received in Japan:

http://macroscope.world.coocan.jp/en/sayings/volcano.html:

Russell Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics

Harvard University

We’ll see. I have no more confidence in Japanese models than in anyone else’s. No less, either. I will agree with Freeman Dyson that we don’t understand the effects. I also advise research on methods for dealing with possible problems including both warming and cooling, and increased atmospheric CO2; these are not likely to be solved by cap and trade.

Pipeline Decision

Jerry,

My understanding is that the Senate two-month compromise payroll tax-cut extension does retain the House’s provision that Obama must decide on the Keystone Pipeline within 60 days.

A quick scan of news stories seems to back that up – from http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/20/politics/congress-payroll-tax-cut/index.html, "While there are sharp differences over how to proceed, both the House and Senate versions of the legislation extend the tax cut, unemployment benefits and the doc fix. Both measures also would push for presidential action on the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico…"

Meanwhile, a nameless White House official claims that Obama will simply deny permission for the pipeline if forced to decide in sixty days. But then he said he’d veto any bill with a pipeline decision deadline, and that promise seems to have evaporated.

Boehner’s problem seems to be that many House Republicans simply don’t want to vote for something as demonstrably impractical as a 60-day payroll tax-cut extension. Everybody who’d be involved in administering that seems to agree that it’ll be a huge pain, fwiw. Expensive too.

Senate Republicans seem to be better than their House colleagues at voting for something ridiculously impractical, on grounds it’ll get fixed later, FWIW.

On principal, I agree with the House Republicans – do it right the first time rather than let it drag on into next year. There’ll be more than enough other things for the Congress to deal with next year.

Practically speaking, they seem to have been massively wrong-footed by the Democrats, helped by media coverage unclear at best and far too often partisan. (Newt, as you note, could have warned them that media malpractice would happen.) Will they stick to their guns, or just pass the Senate 60-day mess next week? Good question.

Henry

Well, we know the answer to that now, don’t we.