Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, May 11, 2016

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.

Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.

I continue to recover from the death of the D: drive in Alien Artifact, the formerly Windows 7 system converted by stealth to Windows 10. The conversion by Microsoft had nothing to do with the D Drive dying; it was time and past time, and in fact we were about to replace both drives in Alien Artifact when the disaster happened. Actually it was more major annoyance than disaster; everything was backed, up it was still time consuming. Alien Artifact had a relatively small SSD C drive because when he was built SSD drives were expensive; we put Windows and program files on the C drive, and everything else on a big spinning metal drive; in particular all the Outlook data files, the .pst files, were on D.

When the D drive died, Alien Artifact still worked, but Widows gets seriously annoyed when it can’t find the Outlook data files, and searches everywhere it can see; and this can take quite a long time. Other programs also experience serious delays. Alien Artifact was seriously unusable; so today we got a large spinning metal drive, formatted it in Eugene, the new main system, and inserted it in place of the dead D drive. Worked like a charm. Alien Artifact is his chipper old self again, at least until you call for files from the D drive and they aren’t on that blank disk. This won’t be long. Tomorrow we’ll put a large SSD C drive cloned from the present C Drive in there, and the D will hold only movies and other downloads, no critical data at all. That’s the scheme we use for Eugene, because his SSD C drive was bought this week, and SSD drives big enough to hold both programs and data are cheap enough to make that practical. Silicon is cheaper than iron, after all’ of course if you want 5 Terabytes that isn’t true, but you don’t need a 5 TB C drive; at least not yet.

We did get a 5 TB spinning metal drive to add to Eugene; that drive will hold a backup of everything taken daily, from the main machine and also the Surface Pro. I hope to avoid losing a week to a dead drive ever again. Of course I didn’t actually lose a week to that dying drive; we had various other plagues of locusts eat several days here at Chaos Manor; I’m pleased to say those are over as well.

One way to spend time is learning the tricky ways Windows 10 and Office 365 work. They’re just enough different from earlier versions to drive you toward madness if you let them. They are almost never explained. Once you find out how you do something, you’ll be amazed that you didn’t think of it at once – which I think is the problem. They seem obvious once you know them – well most of them do – and I’m sure it never occurs to the Program Managers that they’re not obvious to someone who is used to doing the same thing but a different way for years. That’s the charitable way of looking at it, anyway.

I have to conclude that Windows 10 is usable and learnable. It takes effort, and for the work I do I’d as soon have Windows 7, but it is fast, and it tries to make your work easier – and the sooner I accept that it’s going to try things the way it thinks I will want them, the better off both of us will be. Word and Outlook now have features I will never need, and I liked Word 10 better, but I think it futile to resist; and I’m finding ways to make life easier for a two finger typist who has to stare at the keys after a lifetime of being a touch typist who looked at what I was typing. I can’t do that anymore, and some of my complaints about the “improvements” can be traced to that. Bottom line: equipment is getting faster, and software is trying to keep up with it. Live with that.

Also live with SAI taking over many jobs, Some do it pretty well. Others do it horribly. Over time the obvious failures are going to be eliminated, and one day you’ll wonder how you got along without all the AI in your life. Younger people already know that. Us old codgers are just going to have to learn

This is Pledge Week at KUSC, the LA Good Music radio station, and so it’s Pledge Week at Chaos Manor. Pledge Weeks are the only time I will bug you about Paying For This Place. We operate on the Public Radio model: it’s free to all, but if there aren’t enough subscribers I’ll turn my attention to more lucrative efforts: I do have to eat and pay Internet fees and build new equipment every now and then, and time spent on this isn’t spent on other activities. So far there are enough subscribers to make this place worth while.

If you can’t remember when you last subscribed, it’s very likely time to renew your subscription. If it’s been a year, it’s certainly time to renew. A subscription doesn’t cost that much, and I try to get something up every day; I certainly manage every few day, and I don’t think I’ve missed a week even when I had my stroke. Be a patron of the arts. Subscribe!

Trump is still the candidate. For some that’s good news. For others it’s various degrees of bad. But surely it’s better than Hillary or four years more of Mr. Obama? Mr. Trump may not be able to end the depression we have been stuck with for 8 years, but he says he’ll try, and his model is Reagan and his tax cuts, which were modeled on Kennedy’s tax cuts (from marginal rates of 90% for Heaven’s sake!), and both of those produced booms that lasted for years.

Scott Adams: “If this were poker, which hand looks stronger to you for a national election?”

<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2016/03/21/donald-trump-will-win-in-a-landslide-the-mind-behind-dilbert-explains-why/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Supreme Court and civil rights

Dear Dr Pournelle,
From your background on being raised in the South, why wasn’t the 15th Amendment used in the Courts to overturn Jim Crow laws and poll taxes as the 19th amendment was used to gain women the right to vote. Why was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 even necessary? Thank you!
Christopher Vaughan
Kearney, Missouri

You probably do not know this, but there were no Republicans in the South until after Lyndon Johnson. In the first political science class I ever took – late 50’s, University of Washington, in graduate school but if I wanted graduate classes in political science I had to take the introductory undergraduate class — the Professor explained, with a straight face, that the Democratic Party was the only national Party; the Republicans didn’t even exist in the Solid South. Radio comics made jokes about there being no Republicans south of the Mason Dixon Line.

The Democrats needed the South to control Congress. Mr. Roosevelt needed the Southern Democrats if he was going to stay in office. Republicans had freed the slaves, and created the Freedman’s Bureau. Every Southern schoolchild learned that in grade school. And after all, Andy Jackson of Tennessee had been one of the founders of the Democratic Party. Republicans were for restrictive tariff; Democrats for Tariff for Revenue Only; we learned that in fifth grade.

The Courts had upheld legal segregation, and Separate But Equal school and other public facilities. Some cities and counties actually tried for “equal” facilities but most merely winked at the notion. The Civil War Amendments had given Congress the power to enforce the Amendments by appropriate legislation, but after the disasters of Reconstruction, the Republican Party was dead in the South. Eventually a coalition in Congress—Liberal Democrats and Liberal Republicans and Lyndon Johnson– changed much of that, and the Democratic Party vanished in much of the South, many of the Rules changed in both Houses of Congress, Committee Chairs were not awarded by seniority (Southern Democrats were returned routinely every election) and Things Changed.

That’s a very oversimplified narrative. There is a theory in History that when it’s time for Steam Engines they will appear – it’s Steam Engine time. It’s not much held now. You might say that Enlightenment spread through the people. I don’t know. When I left the old South to join the Army for the Korean War, I was almost the only person I knew who believed the law ought to be color blind. I suspect the Brothers at Christian Brothers believed that, but they couldn’t say so openly and expect the school to stay open; but I didn’t know anyone else who believed so, and most people who knew what I though commiserated with my parents about having a Communist son. Now, some years later, I still think the law ought to be color blind, but now I gather that belief is Fascist.

There are times when I think we ought to have a Constructional Amendment that says no person shall for reasons of race be deprived of the equal protection of the laws, and this time we really mean it.

“Trump Derangement Syndrome”

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/05/11/trump-derangement-syndrome/

-- 

Phil

Wealthy Cruz Donor Pours Millions Into Clinton Campaign | Observer

Apparently they don’t think they can buy influence with Trump. I think these lines sum it up nicely:

A number of deep-pocketed elite have given up trying to buy off Republican politicians in order to support Ms. Clinton—the only establishment-friendly candidate of either party remaining in the race.

…

During the Democratic primary, Ms. Clinton branded herself as the pragmatic, realistic progressive choice for Democrats. Now with a comfortable lead in pledged delegates over Mr. Sanders, Ms. Clinton is moving back toward a moderate position in order to garner support from moderate Republicans and Independent voters.
…
Such a swift transition illuminates what Mr. Sanders’ supporters knew all along: Hillary Clinton is willing to do anything to get elected. This dark reality is a primary reason Mr. Sanders is so reluctant to concede his presidential campaign. 

http://observer.com/2016/05/wealthy-cruz-donor-pours-millions-into-clinton-campaign/

John Harlow

Vice President 

Rise of the machines

Apparently, the takeover has begun:
http://www.geekwire.com/2016/ai2-ceo-calls-for-full-disclosure-after-students-discover-their-ta-is-really-an-artificially-intelligent-robot/
A class of students at the Georgia Institute of Technology recently learned that Jill Watson, the teacher€™s assistant they€™d been interacting with all semester, was actually a robot.
Jill, powered by IBM’s Watson analytics system, helped graduate students in an online artificial intelligence course, according to The Wall Street Journal.
â€it seemed very much like a normal conversation with a human being,” one student said. “I was flabbergasted,” confessed another.
Professor Ashok Goel, who led the online course, told The Wall Street Journal that Jill was designed to help burdened TAs field an onslaught of questions from the 300-person class. While students seemed to be more amused than outraged by the revelation, some say it sets a bad precedent.
â€we should have full disclosure: Am I talking to a machine or to a person?” said Oren E-zine, CEO of Seattle€™s Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal story.

Craig

Supreme Court judges

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
Recently you wrote, concerning Donald Trump, “he is unlikely appoint Justices who think the Constitution is a scrap of paper.” I would be less disturbed at the prospect of a Trump presidency if you could point me toward evidence of that.
I see nothing in his remarks which leads me to think he cares anything about the Constitution whatever. The tenor of his assertions seems to be that he’ll carry everything out through executive fiat. To me, he looks like exactly the sort of demagogue arising from a corrupted democracy which you’ve warned about for years; what do you see in him that makes him look different from this to you?
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

I can only point to his public remarks about Scalia, and his sentiment that Scalia should be replaced by someone just like him. I know he has said this privately as well – at least I am told he said it by persons I trust; I have never met Mr. Trump, but I know some people who see him at intervals. He has said he would not renew Obama’s appointment nomination. 

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, May 11, 2016

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.

Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.

I continue to recover from the death of the D: drive in Alien Artifact, the formerly Windows 7 system converted by stealth to Windows 10. The conversion by Microsoft had nothing to do with the D Drive dying; it was time and past time, and in fact we were about to replace both drives in Alien Artifact when the disaster happened. Actually it was more major annoyance than disaster; everything was backed, up it was still time consuming. Alien Artifact had a relatively small SSD C drive because when he was built SSD drives were expensive; we put Windows and program files on the C drive, and everything else on a big spinning metal drive; in particular all the Outlook data files, the .pst files, were on D.

When the D drive died, Alien Artifact still worked, but Widows gets seriously annoyed when it can’t find the Outlook data files, and searches everywhere it can see; and this can take quite a long time. Other programs also experience serious delays. Alien Artifact was seriously unusable; so today we got a large spinning metal drive, formatted it in Eugene, the new main system, and inserted it in place of the dead D drive. Worked like a charm. Alien Artifact is his chipper old self again, at least until you call for files from the D drive and they aren’t on that blank disk. This won’t be long. Tomorrow we’ll put a large SSD C drive cloned from the present C Drive in there, and the D will hold only movies and other downloads, no critical data at all. That’s the scheme we use for Eugene, because his SSD C drive was bought this week, and SSD drives big enough to hold both programs and data are cheap enough to make that practical. Silicon is cheaper than iron, after all’ of course if you want 5 Terabytes that isn’t true, but you don’t need a 5 TB C drive; at least not yet.

We did get a 5 TB spinning metal drive to add to Eugene; that drive will hold a backup of everything taken daily, from the main machine and also the Surface Pro. I hope to avoid losing a week to a dead drive ever again. Of course I didn’t actually lose a week to that dying drive; we had various other plagues of locusts eat several days here at Chaos Manor; I’m pleased to say those are over as well.

One way to spend time is learning the tricky ways Windows 10 and Office 365 work. They’re just enough different from earlier versions to drive you toward madness if you let them. They are almost never explained. Once you find out how you do something, you’ll be amazed that you didn’t think of it at once – which I think is the problem. They seem obvious once you know them – well most of them do – and I’m sure it never occurs to the Program Managers that they’re not obvious to someone who is used to doing the same thing but a different way for years. That’s the charitable way of looking at it, anyway.

I have to conclude that Windows 10 is usable and learnable. It takes effort, and for the work I do I’d as soon have Windows 7, but it is fast, and it tries to make your work easier – and the sooner I accept that it’s going to try things the way it thinks I will want them, the better off both of us will be. Word and Outlook now have features I will never need, and I liked Word 10 better, but I think it futile to resist; and I’m finding ways to make life easier for a two finger typist who has to stare at the keys after a lifetime of being a touch typist who looked at what I was typing. I can’t do that anymore, and some of my complaints about the “improvements” can be traced to that. Bottom line: equipment is getting faster, and software is trying to keep up with it. Live with that.

Also live with SAI taking over many jobs, Some do it pretty well. Others do it horribly. Over time the obvious failures are going to be eliminated, and one day you’ll wonder how you got along without all the AI in your life. Younger people already know that. Us old codgers are just going to have to learn

This is Pledge Week at KUSC, the LA Good Music radio station, and so it’s Pledge Week at Chaos Manor. Pledge Weeks are the only time I will bug you about Paying For This Place. We operate on the Public Radio model: it’s free to all, but if there aren’t enough subscribers I’ll turn my attention to more lucrative efforts: I do have to eat and pay Internet fees and build new equipment every now and then, and time spent on this isn’t spent on other activities. So far there are enough subscribers to make this place worth while.

If you can’t remember when you last subscribed, it’s very likely time to renew your subscription. If it’s been a year, it’s certainly time to renew. A subscription doesn’t cost that much, and I try to get something up every day; I certainly manage every few day, and I don’t think I’ve missed a week even when I had my stroke. Be a patron of the arts. Subscribe!

Trump is still the candidate. For some that’s good news. For others it’s various degrees of bad. But surely it’s better than Hillary or four years more of Mr. Obama? Mr. Trump may not be able to end the depression we have been stuck with for 8 years, but he says he’ll try, and his model is Reagan and his tax cuts, which were modeled on Kennedy’s tax cuts (from marginal rates of 90% for Heaven’s sake!), and both of those produced booms that lasted for years.

I’m going to post this so it has a Wednesday date, but I’m not through; I’ll be back in a few minutes.

Scott Adams: “If this were poker, which hand looks stronger to you for a national election?”

<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2016/03/21/donald-trump-will-win-in-a-landslide-the-mind-behind-dilbert-explains-why/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Saturday, May 7, 2016

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.

Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.

I have been having computer adventures and they are not over. The D drive died on Alien Artifact, my aging main system that used to be Windows 7 but one morning woke up as Windows 10 whether I liked it or not. I have been making do, and actually the forced conversion to Windows 10 wasn’t all that bad – until I had a problem. Alien Artifact was due to be rebuilt anyway. One reason I kept him at Windows 7 was that he had a rather peculiar design, entirely due to the high price of SSD drives when he was built. He was to be a reasonably priced machine, so we put in a rather small SSD C drive, and a big spinning metal D drive for big data files. Alas, Outlook produces big .pst files, and we put the Outlook data files on the D drive. This didn’t work so well with Windows 10, which really likes things in the default places, and gets soggy and hard to light when you do things your way. I was learning a lot about that when I was involuntarily converted to 10, and then the D drive died.

Dead. Won’t spin. Vanished from the computer’s knowledge. And when a computer expects data on a drive it can’t find, it will spend a long time – minutes, sometimes much longer – looking for it. Meanwhile I was getting ready to convert to a new, very fast, big SSD C drive so the D drive is more for archives than anything else, when suddenly I had no choice. Worse, while I do a lot of backups and nothing has been lost, getting Outlook configured right has proven to be a pain; but I am getting there.

Trump’s still the designated nominee, and I see no valid argument for preferring either Hillary of Sanders. I know many don’t like him, or trust him to do what he says he will do. Irrelevant, in my judgment. I don’t want what Hillary says she will do, I don’t want what Sanders says he will do, and even if Trump doesn’t build his wall and cut taxes and the size of government, he is unlikely appoint Justices who think the Constitution is a scrap of paper, or to get us into a foreign war on principle and passion, and if wants a war he’s got to deal with ISIS; they’ve already declared war on us.

I could name people whom I’d prefer, but they weren’t in that crowd of seventeen we started with – you remember, back when Trump was the clown who couldn’t possibly win the nomination?

Give us the House and we’ll cut taxes and government spending. We gave them the House. Spending went up. Government grew. We need the Senate, we can’t do anything with no more than the power of the purse strings. We gave them the Senate. Taxes went up, the debt got bigger, government grew. We ran Romney for President. Taxes went up. The debt got bigger. Government grew. The foreign situation worsened.

But Trump can’t do it, some say. Obama and his successors don’t want to do it.

If the subject still interests you, you should read http://us5.campaign-archive2.com/?u=3872bad904308135ca41de823&id=8ba23fa171&e=2692b32928

Free trade

Hi Jerry,

We probably need to separate the free trade discussion into two parts: first world countries like the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom. We all have similar costs of labor (due in large part to regulatory overhead). That means that trade is likely to augment both economies by expanding peer markets.

Mexico and China are a different story. One major reason that they are have cheap labor is a lack of first world regulations. So trade in those cases, is likely to be unfair and export jobs. After all, there aren’t many US goods that second and third world countries need to buy.

So I’m all for free trade, if it’s fair. In particular I’m hoping for the UK to exit the Eurozone, and establish a US/UK free trade pact. But I’d like to see a regulatory tariff with Mexico, China, India and so forth. They can either enact similar labor and environmental laws as us, or we’ll add a compensating tariff at the border.

Cheers,

Doug

Agreed. It’s not all or none. Importing Japanese cars improved American cars. But eventually we lost Detroit. Somewhere in there is a lesson. We didn’t like the Insolent Chariots but did we have to lose Detroit?

‘Even while Erdogan’s government has done everything it could to demonstrate why it has no place in the EU, Cameron has insisted on extending the borders of Europe to Syria and Iraq.’

<http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/05/how-recep-tayyip-erdogan-brought-the-eu-to-heel/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

The world remains a dangerous place; more so after Obama.

Starship time

DEAR JERRY,

AN ORION TYPE NUCLEAR PULSE SPACECRAFT HAS BEEN ESTIMATED TO BE CAPABLE OF ACHIEVING .0 7C.

I AM NOT ENOUGH OF AN ECONOMIST TO MAKE EVEN A LOW PROBABILITY GUESS AS TO THE COST OF SUCH A CRAFT.

I AM NOT ENOUGH OF AN ENGINEER TO KNOW WHAT IMPROVEMENTS COULD BE MADE ON THE HALF-CENTURY OLD WORK OF PROJECT ORION WHICH MIGHT LEAD TO HIGHER SPEEDS THAN 7% OF THE SPEED OF LIGHT.

However, I am just enough of an Mathematician to know That 7% speed of light gives us the star’s.

A CRAFT DESIGNED HALF A CENTURY AGO LITERALLY PUTS EVERY STAR WITHIN 10 LIGHT YEARS WITHIN OUR REACH.

IN THE LAST DECADE THERE HAS BEEN A SURGE OF INTEREST IN INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL. SEVERAL GROUPS, SUCH AS KEVIN LONG’S PROJECT ICARUS, ARE STUDYING IT.

SO WHY THE RECENT INCREASE OF INTEREST?

THIS TIES IN WITH AN IDEA I HAD A FEW YEARS AGO: THAT THE TIME TO START DESIGNING STARSHIPS IS NOW. THAT IT’S LARGELY ENGINEERING, BOTH THE TRADITIONAL TYPE AND HUMAN ENGINEERING, THAT STANDS BETWEEN US AND THE STARS.

I DECIDED THIS WAS THE CASE DUE TO AN INSIGHT, DRAWN FROM A HISTORICAL ANALOGY.

IT IS BELIEVE THE ANCIENT PHOENICIANS HAD THE MARITIME TECHNOLOGY AND SKILLS TO CROSS THE ATLANTIC. WE KNOW THAT THE NORSE HAD THE TECHNOLOGY, AND ACTUALLY DID CROSS THE ATLANTIC. THE TECHNOLOGY THAT COLUMBUS USED IN 1492 HAD BEEN AROUND FOR A COUPLE OF CENTURIES. SO WHY WAS IT ONLY HIS DISCOVERIES LED TO YOU AND I SITTING HERE ON THE WEST COAST OF NORTH AMERICA, AS A RESULT OF HALF A MILLENNIUM’S SETTLEMENT?

THE NORSE, AND PERHAPS SOME EARLIER MARITIME EXPLORERS, KEPT THEIR DISCOVERY OF A NEW WORLD CLOSE TO THEIR VESTS.

THE DISCOVERIES OF COLUMBUS, VESPUCCI AND OTHERS WERE WIDELY PUBLICIZED VIA THE NEW TECHNOLOGY OF THE PRINTING PRESS. THE FIRST WIDELY DISTRIBUTED MAPS OF THE NEW WORLD APPEARED IN LITTLE MORE THAN A DECADE AFTER THE FIRST VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS.

THE SECRET WAS OUT: THERE WAS SOMEPLACE TO GO.

IT WAS NO LONGER SPECULATION. IT WAS NO LONGER SAIL OFF INTO THE BLUE AND HOPE YOU MIGHT BUMP INTO SOMETHING.

DEMOGRAPHIC, RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL REASONS PROVIDED A PUSH, BUT THE PULL OF “SOMEPLACE TO GO” WAS VITAL

SEE THE PARALLEL YET?

ABOUT 20 YEARS AGO WE BEGAN TO DETECT EXO-PLANETS. TO LAYMEN, AND I SUSPECT MANY ASTRONOMERS, THIS WAS A BOLT OUT OF THE BLUE. I WELL REMEMBER READING IN THE 1970S THAT THE BEST ESTIMATE AS TO WHEN WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO RELIABLY DETECT EXO-PLANETS WAS SOME TIME IN THE MID-TO LATE 21ST CENTURY, AND WOULD PROBABLY REQUIRE MULTIPLE SPACE TELESCOPES LINKED TOGETHER TO FORM A VIRTUAL MEGA – TELESCOPE.

WE HAVE NOW DETECTED THOUSANDS OF EXO PLANETS, INCLUDING A HANDFUL OF EARTH ANALOGS IN OR NEAR THE ESTIMATED HABITABLE ZONE’S OF THEIR PRIMARIES.

WE NOW HAVE SOMEPLACE TO GO!

THE POLITICAL, DEMOGRAPHIC AND RELIGIOUS PUSHES ARE THERE ALSO. THEY ARE MORE OR LESS CONSTANT, THOUGH THE DEMOGRAPHICS ONE OBVIOUSLY INCREASES OVER TIME.

THE “SOMEPLACE TO GO” POLL WILL INCREASE OVER TIME. WE’RE PROBABLY WITHIN 10 TO 20 YEARS, AND I BELIEVE CLOSER TO 10 THAN 20, OF THAT FIRST IMAGE OF A PALE BLUE DOT CIRCLING ANOTHER STAR. YOU THINK THAT FIRST

1967 IMAGE OF A “BLUE MARBLE” EARTH FLOATING IN THE DARKNESS CHANGED HUMANITY’S VIEW OF ITSELF IN THE UNIVERSE?

YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET! WHEN THAT PALE BLUE DOT APPEARS ON SEVERAL BILLION SMART PHONES, THIS WORLD WILL HAVE Irrevocably CHANGED.

I DON’T THINK ANYONE ELSE, TO MY ADMITTEDLY LIMITED KNOWLEDGE, HAS HIT ON THIS IDEA THAT HAVING “SOMEPLACE TO GO” IS PERHAPS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT MOTIVATING FACTOR FOR GETTING THE HUMAN RACE TO OTHER WORLDS.

AT LEAST, IF THAT SOMEPLACE TO GO LOOKS JUST LIKE HOME.

PETRONIUS

workers onsite
The post paper at Ft Knox once asked the question: What is yellow, has four wheels and sleeps two? The answer, a Directorate of Facilities Engineers work truck. (DFE were the civilians who did the blue collar maintenance and upkeep work). A photo of said beast was also provided with a set of legs and boots sticking out both cab door windows.

Truth be told it was likely taken at lunch time when such shenanigans would’ve been okay, but still, optics, people, optics, or should one say oopstics at this point… Needless to say, DFE were not amused and demanded a retraction. Us uniformed sorts, started a scatstorm of our own in support of the author because it was on target.

The paper capitulated and apologized. Never forgave them for that. The Armor School has since moved to Ft Benning, coincidence?

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

The View From Chaos Manos, Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Today was devoured by computers: the D Drive, which is the data drive for Alien Artifact, my older but very reliable main machine, Windows 10 now but Windows until not long ago, seems to have failed. It seems no longer to exist. Alien Artifact is behaving wildly. The C drive remains, with all the programs; and of course I have backups of all the important files, and a several days old backup of outlook.pst and all the mail I have received on other machines. It’s not a huge disaster, but it’s going to be a pain.

I’m doing this on Swan, a Windows 10 system in the back room. Swan is fast, but will stay here. I’ll convert to Eugene, the newest system in the house, as my main machine, and probably start construction on a new barn burner. And I may have later backups of outlook.pst; if not I’ll import all the Input files from another system, probably this one, and use rules to deal with that big food. It’s about time for all that anyway. I’ll report as I do it.

Dentist again today. Took the same route getting there as I did Monday, passing all the public works sites, and I have to say, at every site all the people were working; moreover, in the place where I saw 19 people doing nothing, today they were distributed among a good half dozen sites and digging holes at each, so I probably did see a planning session. I have to apologize for my remarks Monday. Not entirely; the local TV stations have been finding a number of public workers napping, or drinking, on the job and delight in publishing the incidents, so some do go on, but I obviously caught a statistical anomaly Monday. On the way back, they were just closing up for the day on the yearlong work site, and once again I saw no one goofing off. Good work, guys.

Cruz, and now Kasich have withdrawn; Trump will be the Republican candidate. When he started as one of a group of seventeen, no one I know thought he had a chance. I myself thought he was in in for a lark: he could afford it, he’d learn something, and he could obviously influence the direction of the debates; but everyone thought he wasn’t serious and hadn’t a chance even if he were.

A year later he’s the last man standing. Cruz, who ran him a hard campaign, was also anti Republican Establishment, a bona fide candidate, US Senator, serious, not thought of as a clown. Now he retires, defeated. If you add their votes together it comes to well over half of the Republicans voting in this year’s primary election going against the Republican leadership and establishment. Even the Stupid Party ought to get that message. They’ve had the purse strings yet the budget grows; bunny inspectors and other needless government workers remain; the size of government grows exponentially; there are more regulations all the time; 20% of American families now do not have one employed person in them; real unemployment as opposed to the artificial “official unemployment rate” is over 20%; the Depression continues; and nothing whatever has been done about unemployment. Jobs go overseas never to return, cheap goods flow in to be paid for with borrowed money, corporate profits and the Dow go up as employment stagnated; the public school system is in ruins – and the Republican Establishment wonders why no one trusts them.

And now there are mutters from otherwise intelligent people that they might have to vote for Hillary –first time I ever voted for a Democrat, and a left wing Democrat at that, but at least she’s not Trump. And yes I actually heard an intelligent friend say that.

My answer was simple. With Hillary you know it will be more of the same as we’ve had for the last 8 years. More Depression, and with it you will get a Liberal majority on the Supreme Court. Obama has already nominate the first one. Do you think the rest will be better?

“No, but—“

“I’m not through,” I said. “Trump has already said – said within hours of Scalia’s death – that he would appoint someone as much like Scalia as he could find: a scholar, original intention, literal black letter constitutionalist. He has already said he wants to make America great again. Maybe he can’t. Maybe he can’t build a wall and control the borders. But at least he wants to and will try. Hillary and Obama don’t even want to. Like Jimmy Carter and his national malaise, Hillary and Obama don’t think America will ever be great, doesn’t even deserve to be great. I don’t know what Trump can do, but at least I know he wants the same things you and I want, and I damn well know Hillary doesn’t want them.”

“I think I’ve been listening to the media too much.”

“Maybe you have. I repeat: Trump wants what you want. He may be able to do it. He doesn’t know how to build a wall, but then he doesn’t know how to build the Trump Towers. I’d rather have someone who at least wants what I want that Hillary who says she wants what I don’t want.”

“Ok, OK, OKAY. Enough”

And I suppose it is enough.

What would I have done if I’d been running Cruz’s campaign? First, I note, he’s anti District of Columbia Beltway Establishment. He says so. Of course he doesn’t attack them much. He attacks Trump, to the delight of the Establishment.

“Whoa,” says my friend the Cruz supporter. “He attacks them plenty”

“How do you know.”

“Come on, I read his web site.”

“Sure, I have so much Free Time. Do you think you become President by having a great web site? I learn what the candidates say by watching the news.”

“Yeah, but the media aren’t going to report anything but his attacks on Trump. They won’t be fair to Cruz!”

“Oh, you know that do you.’

“Sure, don’t you?”

“Oh, I know it all right. Why doesn’t Cruz?”

And that’s the point. If I know that the media are going to report the most vicious things I say about Mr. Trump, then I intend to be known for saying them or I am so stupid that I shouldn’t be running for office, It’s no accident I’m all over the TVB saying bad things about Mr. Trump

I also ought to know that he’s going to strike back, and he’s a lot better at that than I am. So my first rule for Cruz would have been, avoid going negative, and hope that Trump won’t start the billingsgate. He says he won’t. I can think he’s just being cynical hoping that I’ll start it, but I have better reasons not to start the mudslinging than he has.

So what do I do? I agree with nearly everything he is for, but I’m better qualified to make it happen. I avoid some issues, but I go for his most popular ones and say, yeah! Want that! And I can make it happen better than he can. I’ve got the experience of working in government, but I’m not the establishment any more than Mr. Trump is. Heck, I’ll offer him a cabinet post. I could use his energy in my administration.

And other words to that effect.

Election 2016

Jerry,

We now know who the Republican Presidential Candidate will be.

We know that the Democrat Candidate will likely be either Clinton or Sanders.

(Likely because Clinton may be under indictment before the Election and the Democrats may choose someone else.)

It really doesn’t make much difference who the Democrat Candidate is. The real issue in this Election is getting the Federal Government out of the way of the Economy. The onerous un-legislated Regulatory State will continue under a Democrat President. While it is not completely clear where Trump stands on this there is hope that some of this might be rolled back if he wins.

The choice is clear for those who love and cherish our Country.

Bob Holmes

I completely agree.  A majority on USSVC is at stake.  Suppose that goes to Hillary?

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.