Thoughts On A Sunday

Thanksgiving here at The Manse went well, with only Deb, BeezleBub, the WP In-Laws, and yours truly celebrating. It isn't that I don't like the large family gatherings, because I do. But this year the smaller gathering suited us. There wasn't as much food to prepare, less to clean up, and more time to just 'hang with the homies'.

The WP Parents and my dear brother's family made the trip down to my youngest sister's place south of Boston for the 'big' gathering.

All in all, it was a great holiday (and my personal favorite).

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BeezleBub was back working at the farm yesterday. His boss needed him and one or two others for hay and firewood deliveries as well as some odds-and-ends work that needed to be completed before winter arrives.

That pleased BeezleBub to no end as he's been feeling a little out of sorts without his weekend job.

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It was quite windy here in the Granite State yesterday, causing power outages all over the state.

During one of my trips out yesterday I was able to look out onto Lake Winnipesaukee and see whitecaps, rollers, and even some much larger breakers. It was almost like watching Deadliest Catch, the water was that rough. I wouldn't have wanted to be out there even on the Marine Patrol's 41-foot patrol boat.

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It would be best if I do not allow the feline members of the WP household to see this article about cat-friendly house design. I thought our cat condo and the connecting catwalk to the penthouse BeezleBub designed and built was pretty cool. But the features I saw in the article make the accommodations at The Manse look lame in comparison.

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And the hits keep on coming.

Reboot Congress has extensive links and quotes to a number of Eric S. Raymond posts and comments about ClimateGate, the fraud committed, analysis of the computer code used to create the required AGW results, and the damning e-mails from the perpetrators.

This is an issue that isn't just going to go away, and is something that must be addressed, particularly at the upcoming Copenhagen conference. To base both an international treaty and US policy on a fraudulent theory is madness and will, in the end, come back to bite us all in the butt.

(H/T Instapundit)

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Will the US be able to turn things around and become economically and politically robust like Texas, or will we continue on our present path and end up being an economic/political basket case like California?

I'm hoping and working for the former rather than the latter.

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This doesn't surprise me in the least.

The poor in America today are better off than the average American in 1971.

Of course the Democrats in Congress are working hard to change that...and not for the better. That doesn't surprise me either.

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William Briggs offers up some predictions of the aftermath of ClimateGate. The first one rings all too true:

Die-hard “activists” will develop a conspiracy theory of how skeptics are deliberately misinterpreting and/or inventing the emails/computer code to confuse the public. A rumor will float that Big Oil, or other “denialist” bugaboo, was involved in the conspiracy.

I've already seen some inklings of this in comments made to a number of blog posts and on-line articles, claiming the CRU data hacked from the University of East Anglia was a hoax. Never mind the University has admitted the files were likely accurate. (That must mean the University is in on the hoax!! OMG!!!!)

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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In light of ClimateGate, Senator Jack Inhofe (R-OK) says the Cap-and-Trade bill is dead, particularly if Democrats want to remain in office after 2010.

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Yet another hit from Climategate – the torturous code used to analyze the climate data that gave them their original results was so complex and convoluted even the CRU's own programmer couldn't recreate it.

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It's a shame that Washington no longer believes in Main Street, USA. But that's all right because Main Street, USA no longer believes in Washington, DC either.

"Elites like President Obama see government as a force for protecting the little guy," explains University of Arkansas political scientist Robert Maranto. "But regular folks on Main Street see government as incomprehensible and unpredictable."

--snip--

Much of the nation can buy a nice house for $150,000, live in a safe neighborhood with good schools and in general have peace of mind - and do it on one income.

For folks in places like Indiana, Pa., the economic insecurity of Chicago or both coasts - where people may work two jobs to live in a safe neighborhood - is totally foreign.

Even here in New Hampshire we see the same thing, with the exception of Rockingham and Hillsborough Counties (the two southernmost counties and closest to Boston). It's not uncommon for families in those two counties to require two incomes to survive. It's also not all that uncommon for one or both breadwinners to work over the border in the People's Republic of Taxachusetts. The political divide is just as broad, with a far more registered Democrats in those two southern counties while independents and Republicans tend to be the majority in the remaining eight counties. So even though we are on the East Coast, we tend to look at ourselves as also living in flyover country, just like the folks in Indiana, Pennsylvania. And like them we just want the government, both state and federal, to leave us alone.

From one of the comments:

[Main Street Americans] are really tired of being told their values and way of life are not politically correct.

We are tired of being told what [to] think, period.

Amen.

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From our friend Skip over at GraniteGrok: Who went to Fort Hood when it mattered?

You can probably guess the answer to this one.

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At least one part of New Hampshire state government is moving into the 21st Century.

Now if we can get the rest of it updated the cost of state government will fall. To quote former New Hampshire Governor Craig Benson, “Clicks, not Bricks.”

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Representative Paul Hodes (D-NH) of New Hampshire's 2nd Congressional District (Yes, there actually is a 2nd Congressional District in New Hampshire) tries to spin his support of and vote in favor of the g*d-awful PelosiCare bill.

From the comments many of his constituents aren't buying it. The few that are are showing the typical symptoms of having imbibed on Leftist kool-aid, using the typical and tired platitudes and accusing anyone opposing health care reform as written as being un-American.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the power is back on, BeezleBub is working again, and where we're still feeling the dietary aftereffects of Thanksgiving.