Thoughts On A Sunday

The Fourth of July weekend is winding down, and with it, the weekenders have been departing. (All day we've been hearing the corporate jets as they take off from the local airport.) Only those summerfolk on vacation or taking up residence in their summer houses will be with us a bit longer.

The weather has cooperated for the most part, with a few thundershowers making their appearance late in the afternoon yesterday. At least they cleared out well before it was time for fireworks around the lake, making for a good evening to watch them.

*********

It's quite breezy today, making an outing on to the lake in the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout less likely despite the nice weather. Because Deb prefers to cruise the lake at what we've come to call memé speed, i.e. really slow, it makes for a lot of work at the helm to keep the boat pointed where we want it to go. Venturing out in windy conditions triples the workload at the helm, making for a tiring trip. We'll probably delay our trip out onto the lake until after work during the week when boat traffic (and wind velocity) will be down compared to what we usually see on weekends.

*********

Despite the claim that the Cap-and-Trade program being pushed by Obama will create lots of new “green” jobs, there's plenty of empirical evidence that it won't. All one needs to do is look at Spain to see how that turned out.

*********

How well does socialized medicine really work? Not very well, particularly as shown by these two examples.

One commenter tried to poo-pooh them away, saying they were atypical. But another one in the know said that they were all too typical.

The point that both the UK and Canada ration care was somehow equated to health insurance companies in the US doing the same thing, but that isn't true. Insurance companies in the US may decline paying for certain procedures or treatments, but they are still available to the patient. It's just that the patient or their family will have to figure out how to pay for it. Care isn't denied by the insurance company. They're just saying they won't pay for it.

In the case of the UK and Canada, it is care that is denied. That's a big difference.

(H/T Viking Pundit)

*********

Bruce has his own take on Sarah Palin's resignation:

I'll say this. The last time we had someone on the national political stage who could generate this much press and [I]nternet buzz, simply by giving a five minute speech, the sumbitch became president.

Indeed.

*********

Neoneocon gives us her view of Sarah Palin's move and her remembrances of how far too many of the highly educated ultra liberal women looked down upon her for her humble background and non-Ivy League education.

My retort to women like would have been something along the lines of “So, how many of you have ever been governor of a state?”

Neo also makes this observation:

[E]ducation and intelligence are hardly mutually exclusive.

There was book learning and then there was smart, and the one didn’t always have that much to do with the other, although sometimes it did. I also found myself thinking that the highly educated could be dangerous in their hubris if their schooling wasn’t accompanied by a deep thoughtfulness, because it could instead be accompanied by arrogance and the idea that because they had that elite education they knew far more than they really did.

Far too often I have seen people with elite educations lacking a drop of common sense or experience also lacking the ability to put what they've learned to any good use. Instead they used it as a club with which to beat down those whom they perceive as inferior.

To quote C.S. Lewis, “Education without values only serves to make Man a more clever Devil.” (Shamelessly stolen from one of neo's commenters.)

*********

The questions over at Wizbang: Are you better off than you were two years ago? How about six months ago?

My answers: “No,” and “Hell, no!”

*********

Just for a change of pace:

Could it be that anthropogenic global warming is the cause of both higher than average and lower than average water levels in the Great Lakes over the past 40 years?

How can that be? It's either one or the other, not both. If all added up does the average water levels over those 40 years equal the long term averages? If so, then aren't the variations in water levels normal?

Now do you see why global warming 'science' is so difficult to comprehend? No matter what, every effect, positive or negative, is the fault of AGW.

*********

BeezleBub is learning first hand the some hard truths about working, particularly when working with a large group of people.

His problem? Some of the field crew he works with have a severe aversion to actually working. This is particularly true of some of the Europeans hired to work the fields. According to BeezleBub, they'll use any excuse to stop working: it's too hot (Huh? That certainly hasn't been true around here until this weekend.); it's too cold; it's too wet; I don't want to get muddy; it's too close to quitting time; it's too early; and so on.

This litany of complaints has left BeezleBub and the couple of other regulars picking up the slack, making for long hard days for them. He and the others have gotten tired of having to do so.

*********

And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the sun is finally shining, the weekenders are heading home, and where boating will resume this week.