Monthly Archives: October 2013

View 794 Sunday, October 13, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

What we have now is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

Still recovering from whatever I picked up in San Diego. The afternoon was taken up with doing a TWIT broadcast http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-tech/427 which was interesting. Since it’s pledge week I have to remind you that this would be a great time to subscribe to this site http://www.jerrypournelle.com/paying.html or just use the subscribe button over here on the right.

I continue to be depressed about the crazy state of things in Washington. I do wonder why the Democrats didn’t take the life buoy thrown to them by the Republicans in the offer to put Obamacare off for a year; given that they had three years to bring out this center piece of the Obama administration and enrolling in the new plan is so difficult, the chance to put it off a year and blame the delay on the Republicans seems irresistible, I must have missed something.

I do have this good news

Grasshopper

Dr Pournelle

You’re gonna get your DCX and SSTO. http://www.newspacejournal.com/2013/10/12/grasshopper-flies-again-sets-new-altitude-record/

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

Which is to say that private enterprise is taking mankind to space. After all that’s how the airlines were built.

I had meant to do a full mail tonight but it would have been short shrift, and much of the mail deserves comments. Apologies but I am recovering.

This is Pledge Week at KUSC which is when I traditionally annoy you about subscribing or renewing to this site. This place operates on the Public Radio model, free to all but it stays open only if enough subscribe to keep it open. It has always been that way and we have always had enough subscriptions and renewals. I run my subscription drives in the weeks when KUSC the Los Angeles good music station runs its public radio pledge drive, and they have started their pledge week.

I do things this way so you won’t be continuously annoyed with commercials for the site and of course I don’t take advertisements here.

So if you have not renewed your subscription for a while, this would be a good time to do that. And I hasten to add, if the economic times are getting to you, I am not after eating money. Just some of your beer and wine money. Paying for this place…

View 793 Saturday, October 12, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

What we have now is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

I have been much under the weather to the extent that I will have to miss an old friend’s birthday party tonight and have had little energy. Apologies, particularly since this is Pledge Week when I traditionally annoy you about subscribing or renewing. This place operates on the Public Radio model, free to all but it stays open only if enough subscribe to keep it open. It has always been that way and we have always had enough subscriptions and renewals. I run my subscription drives in the weeks when KUSC the Los Angeles good music station runs its public radio pledge drive, and they have started their pledge week.

I do things this way so you won’t be continuously annoyed with commercials for the site and of course I don’t take advertisements here.

So if you have not renewed your subscription for a while, this would be a good time to do that. And I hasten to add, if the economic times are getting to you, I am not after eating money. Just some of your beer and wine money. Paying for this place…

I will try to get more up tonight, but Mike Flynn has sent me an excellent essay summarizing discussion on the Climate Debates.

It tends to be a bit wordy, but this comes as close to my view as anything I have seen:

A physicist on climate science

Readers may find this interesting:

http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/12/a-physicist-reflects-on-the-climate-debate/

MikeF

Here is an extract. There is a great deal more.

The climate science debate is something that matters, it cannot be simply neglected or ignored. Whether or not there are reasons to be alarmed is beyond the point. The point is that many people are getting emotionally alarmed with economical and geopolitical consequences that are enormous. Under such panicking pressure, and the stronger pressure of financial interests, gigantic sums are invested in wind-mill farms and electric cars, just to quote two very controversial initiatives. Decisions are taken on nuclear energy, on fracking, on deep-sea drilling, etc. Not to mention crazy geo-engineering projects that are being contemplated.

I naturally should like to be well informed of the bases on which such decisions are taken. I am prepared to adhere to some precaution principle and accept that we should be careful with injecting CO₂ in the atmosphere at the scale of what it already contains when we do not know enough to be sure that it is reasonably harmless; I understand that answering many of the open questions in climate science may require more time than we can afford to wait. But I find it difficult to find a good summary document where I can read what I need. The IPCC report was not written with this in mind and it makes statements on the probability, or level of confidence, of model predictions that are not scientifically acceptable. The way they quantify their ignorance of many parameters and phenomena of relevance, as if they were arguments governed by statistics, or worse by voting, makes no sense to me.

Re: A Disturbing Thought

Jerry,

I note that since I wrote last, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has testified to the Senate about missing his October 17th debt limit deadline.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/running-transcript-jack-lews-testimony-on-debt-ceiling/2013/10/10/3edc0122-31b0-11e3-9c68-1cf643210300_story.html

Among the obligatory parroting of White House talking points (the sky will fall, it’s already starting to, the President is a paragon of reasonableness who’s always been willing to negotiate, we’ve always been at war with EastAsia – oh, and broadly hinting that if you think they’ve made the shutdown gratuitously painful, just wait until they’re deciding whether to cut checks for veterans or retirees) he did make one seriously convincing point:

The Treasury Department may simply not be competent to handle what any struggling business routinely does, dealing with limited cash flow by prioritizing bills. They may simply not have the IT expertise to tell the massive computer systems involved to cut only selected fractions of the usual torrent of checks without causing things to collapse into chaos.

Given the IT magnificence that is Obamacare, I find this argument far too plausible.

A further thought: On top of my previous reasons why he might be willing to steer straight into a head-on collision, there’s the President’s recent negotiating record – getting snookered on the Sequester domestically, inspiring a fake(?)-but-accurate Putin "playing chess with a pigeon" quote internationally. He may well see that his best chance of coming out of this still wearing his pants is to stonewall all the way.

Assuming nobody has meanwhile provided a convincing argument that I’m

(excessively) paranoid about all this, I conclude that the Tea Party Republicans need to back down fast, save what face they can, then set about the serious business of taking the car keys away from Harry Reid next fall and away from the White House two years later.

Anger and pride may make it hard to swallow this, but what’s more important – short-term pride, or saving the country from short-term and long-term disaster?

It won’t be easy regardless. We’ll have to do this despite the worst the (by then desperate) Dems and their partisan Federal apparat can do.

And despite the usual ongoing can’t-beat-’em-lets’-join-’em lemming urge of the country-club set…

But consider, by next fall, Obamacare in all its magnificence will have hit tens of millions of voters, and I don’t expect most will like it any more than I do so far. Long after the current shutdown is forgotten, the fact that it was the Tea Party that stood up and tried to stop this disaster will be remembered. Build on that.

courage to us all – we’re gonna need it

Porkypine

Peggy Noonan has something of the same sort to say in today’s Wall Street Journal. She points out that good or bad, Obamacare was not ready for prime time although they had three years to prepare for its opening; it needs to be delayed long enough to fix the obvious flaws so that people can get in on it before it is brought out.  We will see.

I now have to go do grocery shopping. We have interesting mail and a short dialogue of value. And of course the shut down continues. Later. And thanks to those who subscribe.

Dr. Pournelle

You’re gonna get your DCX and SSTO. http://www.newspacejournal.com/2013/10/12/grasshopper-flies-again-sets-new-altitude-record/

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

It is sort of marvelous. I discussed VTOL vs. wings and horizontal with Elon Musk when I spoke at a fund raiser in the Space X headquarters a couple of years ago, and he didn’t like the idea;  I wonder if I had anything to do with persuading him.  I’ll have to ask when next I see him.

Progress. Slow, but progress.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/must-see-video-spacex-grasshopper-rocket-makes-half-mile-hop-8C11380772

View 793 Thursday, October 10, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

I am a bit under the weather today.

A Disturbing Thought

Jerry,

The thing about playing Chicken is, both drivers get into the contest assuming that the other doesn’t actually want a head-on collision.

The game changes fundamentally if one driver believes he’s immortal and doesn’t really like his old clunker anyway. This by way of introducing a truly disturbing thought about the upcoming debt-limit deadline.

It seems universally agreed that an actual default on US debt instruments would be a disaster, likely precipitating a worldwide financial crisis and greatly diminishing the US’s international economic clout.

The Republicans are explicitly acting on the assumption that the President would, on hitting the debt limit, continue making payments on US debt instruments while cutting elsewhere the approximately 20% required to keep overall Federal spending within current revenue absent new borrowing. At some point, they assume, he’ll come to the table.

The President and Democrats in general are obfuscating for political advantage the difference between hitting the debt limit and actual default, and also asserting that ALL government spending (that they

like) is sacred and that the current Congress MUST do whatever it takes to fund everything (that they like) passed by a previous Congress.

This is of course nonsense on stilts, but serves the purpose of motivating their partisans and terrifying the ignorant. The rest of us just shrug and assume it’s politics as usual, and that the two sides will come up to the brink then draw back and reach a compromise, business as usual.

Indulge me in an apparent digression… President Obama’s foreign policy arguably is built around the assumption that the US’s post-WWII preeminent status in the world is an historical error that needs correcting. He pays the necessary public lip-service to the US being Number One, but both his actions and his appointments arguably point toward a chastised and diminished US.

Suppose, now, for the sake of argument, some mix of:

– genuine belief ALL their programs are sacred

– genuine contempt and disdain for their opposition

– belief that their opposition would certainly take the blame

– cynical conviction that they could then increase their power in the resulting crisis, however diminished the country might be

– and an underlying ideological conviction that diminishing the US is good for the world in any case

should later this month cause the White House to say, what the hell, They Made Us Do It, and instruct the Treasury to start missing debt payments.

I’d really like to be able to believe that this administration’s obvious ongoing fundamental respect for the law, the Constitution, American tradition, and the American people instantly rules this scenario out as ridiculous paranoia. Alas, I’ve been paying attention these last five years.

cynically

Porkypine

I would like very much to dismiss this as ridiculous paranoia. If someone has good evidence to show this is ridiculous paranoia, I would welcome receiving it.

I’ll try to have more later tonight.

‘The National Park Service has every man, woman, and child in America on its enemies list.’

<http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/park-police-part-deux-hot-cops_762387.html?page=2>

—–

Roland Dobbins

Nasty and vindictive. Public servants.

The Servant When He Reigneth

"For three things the earth is disquieted, and for four which it cannot bear. For a servant when he reigneth, and a fool when he is filled with meat; for an odious woman when she is married, and an handmaid that is heir to her mistress." — PROV. XXX. 21-22-23.

Three things make earth unquiet
And four she cannot brook
The godly Agur counted them
And put them in a book --
Those Four Tremendous Curses
With which mankind is cursed;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Old Agur entered first.
An Handmaid that is Mistress
We need not call upon.
A Fool when he is full of Meat
Will fall asleep anon.
An Odious Woman Married
May bear a babe and mend;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Is Confusion to the end.

His feet are swift to tumult,
His hands are slow to toil,
His ears are deaf to reason,
His lips are loud in broil.
He knows no use for power
Except to show his might.
He gives no heed to judgment
Unless it prove him right.

Because he served a master
Before his Kingship came,
And hid in all disaster
Behind his master's name,
So, when his Folly opens
The unnecessary hells,
A Servant when He Reigneth
Throws the blame on some one else.

His vows are lightly spoken,
His faith is hard to bind,
His trust is easy broken,
He fears his fellow-kind.
The nearest mob will move him
To break the pledge he gave --
Oh, a Servant when he Reigneth
Is more than ever slave!
 
 
 
 
 
 

Rudyard Kipling

And Eric found this gem:

http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/10/10/Nevada-Health-Exchange-A-Case-Study-in-What-Went-Wrong

View 793 Wednesday, October 09, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

I am recovering from whatever I got in San Diego, and trying to get some work done. I continue to be amazed by the mess in Washington. Congress is down to 11% approval level. The Mayor of DC attempted to tell Senate Majority Leader Reid that DC has money but Congress won’t let them spend it, but he got no satisfactory answer. The President talks about negotiation, but it still sounds as if his model for negotiation is MacArthur on the deck of the USS Missouri in the Tokyo harbor.

The government shut down is a farce. It’s hard on the civil servants caught in the middle of it all, but it’s not a disaster. A default on the public debt would be. The President apparently will not even discuss spending cuts to reduce the deficit and is saying that he will put the nation over a cliff before he will stop the inexorable growth of government. I don’t know who he talks to, but apparently he believes he is winning. Winning! But continued rises in the deficit is a sure path to an eventual default; at the moment the nation has to take a heavy dose of salts to recover, but it can be done. We could live on a budget 1% lower next year than it was this year, and continue to cut back like that as the economy grows; but it doesn’t look as if that will happen.

Despair is a sin. The nation is not doomed == the people remain, we are not in ruins (other than in some inner cities) as Germany was in 1945. We still have our resources. All that is needed to get out of this mess is energy and determination. We even know this. The German Economic Miracle is as nothing compared to the American Economic Miracle that happened in World War II, and the second American Economic Miracle after the war that made the blue collar workers middle class and changed the old notions of class limitations. They are now changing back but that need not happen. Economic freedom, energy, and determination will still do the job.

Of course that would end the rule of the bureaucrats and we have yet to see anything like that. President Obama threatens international financial disaster if we do not continue to pay the Bunny Inspectors and give them raises. So it goes.

Soldier’s Load

The article is comment enough.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20131009.aspx#startofcomments

David Couvillon

Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Avoider of Yard Work

Heavy Infantry has been the decisive arm for most of history, and the tension between heavier armor and lightening the load to increase mobility is the stuff of military historical analysis.  The reforms of Gustavus Adolfus changed the nature of combat.  The analysis and debate will continue forever.  This is an excellent summary of what’s going on today.  Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Why would the government want to take care of you?

Jerry:

Some of your correspondents and a couple of my friends think it would be good for the government to take control of their medical care. As my elderly retired friend (a medical doctor and an admitted spendthrift who saved nothing for his retirement) put it, "I just want to rest and let the government take care of me."

I asked him, "What makes you think the government will want to take care of you?"

When government controls your medical care, it follows from the Iron Law that your medical care will be no more than a tool for implementing the government’s social and political agendas, whatever those may under the fashions of the day.

Every day you can read articles about how government medicine works in other countries. For example, we read this week about a mother in China who was six months pregnant when she was taken from her home at night to a hospital where her unborn baby was killed. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/4/china-family-planners-drag-mom-forced-abortion/ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2443753/Mother-dragged-home-middle-night-forced-abort-baby-SIX-months-pregnancy-China.html

Also this week we read that a doctor in The Netherlands was happy to kill a 70-year-old woman because she was blind. http://www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/360668/euthanasia-blind-netherlands-wesley-j-smith http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2448611/Blind-Dutch-woman-euthanised-loss-sight.html

Your readers who expect themselves to be under the care of a physician at some time before death, may be interested in Dr. John Patrick’s lectures on medical ethics. Dr. Patrick is founder and president of Augustine College in Ottawa, Canada. http://www.augustinecollege.org/

Dr. Patrick considers what might happen as our society reverts to ancient pagan practices where doctors are employed not only as healers but also as killers. In such a society, when going to the doctor one must always wonder: Has someone else paid more for my death than I am able to pay for my life?

Good starting points are Dr. Patrick’s talks on Hippocrates and his oath at: http://www.cmf.org.uk/media/?context=entity&id=301 http://www.cmf.org.uk/media/?context=entity&id=302

Dr. Patrick has traced the inevitable logic that has led from contraception to occasional abortions to millions of abortions to coerced abortions to euthanasia. Dr. Patrick describes this sequence in several lectures. Your readers might find his reasoning interesting and useful as they try to deal with medicine’s new modes of thought. See for instance:

"The Domino Effect of Legalizing Abortion" http://blip.tv/lcc-videonet/the-domino-effect-of-legalizing-abortion-dr-john-patrick-md-2745200

"How Did We Get to Here? How Abortion Became Acceptable Parts One and Two"

These are the first two videos at

http://www.lutheranchurch-canada.ca/videonet.php?s=lectures_lovelife2009

"Pursuing Justice and Community – Hope for the unborn"

http://www.cmf.org.uk/media/?context=entity&id=300

As ObamaCare takes hold and our doctors work not for us but for the government bureaucracy, we all will be wondering: Why would the government want to treat me? What’s in it for them?

Best regards,

–Harry M.

You have of course asked the proper question, and one which few ask. Of course there is a good feeling reward for taking care of someone else, particularly if you are paid to do it and it is done with other people’s money, but sometimes there are other motives.  Pournelle’s Iron Law applies here as always. Doctors who care do not generally become administrators.

Obama’s feds

Here is a link I received today. I don’t know if it is accurate or not.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/armed-park-cops-locked-up-yellowstone-tourists-during-shutdown/

Cheers,

Peter

I don’t know whether or not it is true either.  Not many years ago I could have laughed and said it was certainly an exaggeration, but now, I can’t dismiss such stories out of hand.