Romney would be the best VP for Trump

To follow up from some comments:

The best possible VP pick for Trump would be Romney. Romney would help bridge the gap between Trump and the establishment. There’s not a single establishment Republican better liked and respected than Romney. That’s why people are even talking about Romney being picked as the nominee if there’s a brokered convention.

Remember the VP’s only job is to attend funerals. He has no constitutional authority to set policy. Based on these criteria, Romney would obviously be best at the job because he looks really good in a dark suit, he’d look very vice-presidential at funerals.

The problem is that I don’t think Romney wants the job. A second problem is that Romney has said some negative things about Trump, but Trump, who is the master of making deals (he wrote the book), would surely be willing to make peace in order to increase his chance of winning the election. But once again, I don’t think that Romney wants the job.

Big crime increase in Los Angeles

For the first time in more than a decade, all categories of crime rose across Los Angeles in 2015 as police struggled to get control of the problem, according to LAPD data.

Violent crime in L.A. climbed 19.9% and property crime increased 10.3% through Dec. 26 compared with the same period last year, according to the police data. It marked the second year in a row that violent crime rose, but the first time since 2003 that both violent and property crime rose.

The increases follow more than a decade of steep declines in crime, particularly in homicides. Police officials said the recent upswings should be viewed in that larger context. [Los Angeles Times ]

This is a nationwide trend, except for New York City which, despite De Blasio, allegedly didn’t have a crime increase. Maybe there is some statistical deception involved in that. Or maybe even De Blasio is unable to stop the massive gentrification trend as all of the smart educated people in the entire country continue to move to NYC, pushing the poor people out to places like New Jersey or maybe they are packing up and leaving the northeast entirely and moving to the South.

Sense8

I just finished watching the 12-episode series. Very enjoyable, except for the disgusting gay porn scenes.

Second tier candidates are helping Trump

As the calendar draws closer to the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, the second tier of GOP candidates – along with the super PACs supporting them – are unloading on each other in a blitz of ads, videos, tweets, stump speeches and interviews. [Fox News ]

Ha ha. The second-tier candidates still believe that Trump will magically disappear and then there will be a “real” race between the establishment candidates. Which is why ¡Jeb! is attacking Rubio and Christie and vice versa. Meanwhile they are helping Trump.

How can Trump lose when he’s at 39% and the highest-polling establishment candidate, Rubio, is only at 12%? (Reuters tracking poll.) This isn’t months before the people start voting. It’s only one month until the Iowa caucus. Social proof will quickly bring Trump’s support over 50% after he wins a few primaries and then he will be the obvious winner a lot sooner than any of those worthless Republican strategists think. Karl Rove didn’t even graduate from college; no wonder why the Republicans have been so screwed up.

Preschool outdoors

Look at the pictures in the NY Times article.

The program, in its third year, is less than seven miles from Microsoft, which means some parents sit in front of computers all day inventing the digital future.

Certainly none of the Indian programmers at Microsoft send their kids to this kind of preschool. It’s a very white phenomenon, with the exception of one little child with a Japanese name.

Delicious muesli

Just got back from the organic supermarket around the corner to buy a package of Seven Sundays Original Toasted Muesli. I think that $6.49 for 12 oz is kind of expensive, but it tastes so good.

We were halfway across the world when we fell in love with breakfast again. The muesli in New Zealand was nothing like we were used to – no puffs, flakes or clusters; just unprocessed ingredients that came together in a perfectly flavorful and nutrient-dense breakfast. Once back home [in Minnesota], Hannah began crafting her own toasted muesli using gourmet fruit, nut and spice combinations.

I wonder what people in flyover country eat for breakfast?

Yay, Medicaid!

I told New York State I don’t plan on having any income next year (which as far as I know is true since no one is offering me a job), and they gave me Medicaid. Thank you Obama.

I wonder if there’s a catch?

Tiny houses

I was watching some stupid cable show on Christmas Day about so-called “tiny houses.” I believe that the SWPL types who idolize “tiny homes” are so out of touch with regular America that they are totally unaware that tiny homes have existed for decades and large numbers of people live in them.

This blog post sums it up best:

The fact is, tiny home communities DO exist. We call them mobile home parks.

Mobile homes are tiny. They are portable. They are efficient designs that are very affordable. Why have the tiny house proponents overlooked them?

Because hippies don’t live in them, rednecks do.

Hippies are too good to park their homemade tiny homes in a mobile home park because that’s where the lower classes live. They don’t want to admit that their choice to simplify looks an awful lot like just being poor.

…

Stop whining about city planners, vacation rentals and McMansions. There are tiny home communities all around you and you don’t even see them because you consider them unwashed masses. We poor folks have been living tiny for a lot longer than you hippies. You might actually LEARN something from us if you didn’t consider us beneath your notice.

I especially like the observation that living in a tiny house “looks an awful lot like just being poor.”

The real dilemma facing adherents of the “tiny house movement” is how can they live in a tiny house and also have only college-educated neighbors? And preferably be within or a short commute from a SWPL power center like Manhattan or San Francisco. And preferably, the tiny house should somehow not look low-class despite being tiny.

I figured out the solution: a zoning law that allows tiny houses only to be owned and lived in by people who have college degrees! Unfortunately, someone would probably find it unconstitutional. (And even then, it may attract the wrong kinds of college graduates.)

CMM Level 5 and India

India has more CMM Level 5 certified companies than the rest of the world combined. Indians are very good at bureaucracy, which is what CMM Level 5 is about. Creative white programmers, the kind who create successful and popular apps, could never put up with that sort of stifling bureaucracy.

CMM Level 5 doubles the amount of manpower needed to create software, but because Indian employees are so cheap, they are able to be Level 5 compliant and still less expensive than western companies.

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In response to a comment, if you really want to know about CMM, here’s a Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model

Basically, it means there’s lot’s of documentation and QA and management, which doesn’t mean the software is actually any good.

* * *

I found the following comment at an online forum:

It sucks all the fun out of writing software. An awful methodology. I left the company that used it after only 3 months (would have been sooner if I found another job sooner).

Indians don’t expect to have fun at work. Which doesn’t necessarily give them the advantage you might think, because the best software is going to be written by people who actually enjoy what they are doing.

Trump tied with Clinton

Rasmussen automated telephone poll shows that Clinton beats Trump by only 1 percentage point, which is within the margin of error of the poll.

However, there’s a very large percentage who have not chosen a candidate.