4/28/2013

Thoughts On A Sunday

The warmer weather has returned, and with it, more outdoor activities.

BeezleBub and I spent part of this morning clearing away more of the brush we cut back last weekend. I also started removing debris and dead weeds from the ornamental vegetation in the front of The Manse.

One sure sign the weather is good – the Official Weekend Pundit Clothesline got its first workout for the year. With a few exceptions, the need to use a clothes drier will be eliminated.

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The farm's retail operation opened this weekend, meaning summer is fast approaching. While there will be some greenhouse-grown vegetables for sale, it will be mostly flowers, bakery goods, and some dairy products that are being offered to the public this early in the season.

Even though the farm stand is now open, BeezleBub still has two weeks of classes until the end of the semester. But he's already been ramping up the amount of time he spends working at the farm. Once classes end he''ll be at it 6 days a week, 12+ hours a day.

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The trend of parents not vaccinating their children due to an unfounded (and disproven) belief that vaccines cause autism has claimed yet another victim.

In this case a baby died from whooping cough, a preventable disease. There has also been an increase in cases of measles and rubella, all due to the lack of vaccinations.

When uninformed parents respond to unscientific claims about something that has been used for over 200 years to help prevent debilitating or deadly diseases by denying their children the benefits of vaccinations, it should be considered child neglect. And should their child contract one of those otherwise preventable diseases and die, they should be prevented from suing anybody except the idiots that sold them on the idea. (I hope Jenny McCarthy's liability insurance is paid up.)

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At first I thought it was just incipient old fogeyism creeping up on me, but now I see that my observations about some members of the younger generation refusing to grow up were not unfounded.

When I look at BeezleBub, soon to be 19 years old, and compare him to others 5 or more years older than him, he comes out far ahead in regards to maturity, responsibility, and fiscal smarts. (This isn't just a thoroughly biased dad speaking as I've heard that observation again and again from a lot of others. It might explain why some “older” women – those in their early to mid 20's – find him so appealing: he's a grown up.) While it's true that he still lives here at The Manse, he pays his way including paying for his tuition and books when he's attending college.

The extended or never-ending adolescence certainly isn't helping our younger generation learn about coping with the adult issues the rest of us deal with every day. And whether they realize it or not, it also makes them less suitable as potential mates, the “hook-up” culture notwithstanding.

The authors point out that even young people who appear to be succeeding by conventional standards wake up in their mid-twenties clueless about how to find a job, manage money, cook, or live on their own. They are educated but unable to care for themselves. “Twenty-five is now becoming the new fifteen.”

According to the authors, teens are living in a “bubble” that is undermining their development. They have their room at home, school, the shopping mall etc. but it cuts them off from meaningful roles in the adult world, cuts them off from close day-to-day contact with adults, and it hyperexposes them to peer relationships, which become their primary socializing influences.

There are a whole host of reasons why this is happening, but I can point a finger at one of the major contributors: the push to eliminate competition during childhood because it isn't “politically correct” or because it doesn't help build their self-esteem.

If I had to make a wild guess, I'd bet that most of those endless adolescents were raised by liberal parents.

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The liberal gun grabbers in New Hampshire are trying hard to make it illegal to defend oneself with a firearm unless the situation meets a bunch of darned near impossible set of conditions. They're trying to repeal the state's Stand Your Ground law, implying that it will lead to blood flowing on the streets because it will be used as an excuse by drug dealers and other criminals for killing their rivals.

Liberals love to ignore inconvenient facts. Stick fingers in ears, close eyes and yell, “La-la-la-la-la!” Franklin [NH] resident Craig Moses was acquitted under the Granite State’s “Stand Your Ground” law.  Moses was arrested nearly a year ago in Nashua outside a nightclub and charged with criminal threatening with a deadly weapon after he and his cousin were severely beaten.

I attended the Senate hearing on HB 135 this week. As I sat there in that hearing with Attorney Penny Dean, I marveled at how the left who advocate for repealing Stand Your Ground worked tirelessly to make this exclusively a bill about gun use. Countless leftist, anti-freedom Kool-Aid slurpers step up to the table, many with pre-canned scripted arguments, sounding like a broken record, same theme, same concept, different verbiage. “We have to focus on the ridiculous level of gun violence in our country,” one Salem woman testified. I scratched my head with confusion.

I think I would have, too. If they want to deal with the “ridiculous level of gun violence” best that they see to it the perpetrators are arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced. It isn't law abiding citizens causing the problems with gun violence. It's the effin' criminals who should have guns in the first place. If more of an effort was made to make sure these miscreants were properly treated by our justice system and the powers-that-be actually enforced the laws already on the books, much of the gun violence problem would disappear.

But the bill in question, HB 135, actually has nothing to do with guns, the liberal lamentations notwithstanding. It has to do with tying the hands of law abiding citizens by making illegal to defend themselves with force, not just with guns. In effect, it's saying, “If you fight back against an assailant, we'll arrest, try, convict, and imprison you for doing so.” It's just like Great Britain, where if you are assaulted and effectively fight back, it is you who will be facing charges, not the criminal who actually committed the crime. We don't want that silly nonsense here as I see it as just another step towards repealing the castle doctrine as well.

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This has gone beyond farce and well into psychosis.

Apparently a UConn feminists is afraid of the new Huskies logo because she believes it will lead to rape. I. Kid. You. Not.

This freakin' wacko has got to get a life! As Bob Owen opines: If you see a cartoon dog and immediately think of violent sex, you’re the one with issues.

She should seek help immediately...and stop watching Cartoon Network.

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Is it time to scrap Affirmative Action? I'd say that after 40+ years the answer is yes. Using racism to 'cure' the effects of racism doesn't work, and never has. All it says is that non-white races are incapable of attaining the same level of achievement as white without special treatment and lower standards. How is that not racist?

Like Martin Luther King stated, “I have a dream that one day my children will be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.” I think that time is long overdue. Now if we can only get those crypto-racist liberals to see the light.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where post-winter yardwork continues, some boats are already in the water, and where the honey-do lists are getting longer by the minute.