Monday Musings

It's Monday and everyone is fretting about the debt deal. It looks like the Tea Party has managed to bump the ship of state into a new heading. A few degrees from the course we were on, but it's a course change nonetheless. I've been listening to the radio and if seems everyone is howling. The Congressional Black Caucus doesn't like it, the Huff Post says that it's going to be the end of Keynesian economics, Senator McCain is calling us Hobbits. Some of the new Tea Party congressmen aren't happy with it because it doesn't go far enough.

Baby-steps are fine when we're changing the course of government. Small course changes are necessary sometimes so you don't throw the whole vessel off kilter. Paul Krugman believes that the deal is an unmitigated disaster.

It is, of course, a political catastrophe for Democrats, who just a few weeks ago seemed to have Republicans on the run over their plan to dismantle Medicare; now Mr. Obama has thrown all that away.

It's okay, Paul. The sky is not falling.

In other news, I found a vise at the auction Saturday. A big red vise and I've mounted it on my bench. It's marked Sears, but the baseplate is stamped Taiwan. I've lubed it and lagged it down. It will be a counterpoint to the smaller vise that's mounted on the other end of the bench.

From doing a little research, it appears that I've got a late '60s vintage vise made by Wilton vise company. It's marked Sears, with a model number 506.5182. Wilton sold those vises under their brand as the Columbian model, and sold them to Sears as a private brand.

Before anyone hollers at me for using lag screws instead of properly bolting it down, it's on a light-duty bench and will get nowhere near the stress that I might subject it to if it were on a proper bench. Those lag screws will hold it just fine.