7/07/2013

Thoughts On A Sunday

All too soon my extended 4th of July weekend has come to an end. Now I feel I need a vacation to recuperate from my vacation! (Isn't that always the way?)

While I didn't get anywhere near what I'd hoped to do completed, I did get some of the things on the never ending Honey-Do list done.

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Call it the 21st Century version of Lysenkoism, where ideology defines science and kills off scientific inquiry.

When the modern Lysenkoists start claiming that scientific inquiry is nothing more than another form of hatred or racism, you know the Church of Feelings Over Facts has its minions out in force. We've certainly seen this over the past few years when it comes to Anthropogenic Global Warming, where evidence and data that go against the Watermelon Environmentalist Narrative is either ignored or is trivialized despite the fact that the all of the climate models being used to prove their point do not reflect the observed reality.

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Speaking of Watermelon Environmentalists, there's this from No Frakking Consensus that shows they have no love of democracy and will work to demolish it. Since they failed to take control of democracies during the Cold War, they have shifted tactics and are working from within, using 'concern for the environment' as a false flag argument.

What to all comes down to is that they want to control every aspect of your life and will use any means to achieve their goals. That certainly seems to be the case Down Under.

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After a discussion with one of my more liberal acquaintances, I realized he didn't understand the difference between the U3 and U6 unemployment rates. I had to explain to him the U3 rate reflects how many people still receiving unemployment benefits are out of work while the U6 rate shows us how many people are out of work, including those whose unemployment benefits have run out.

We also got into a discussion that about how the 99-weeks of unemployment benefits were a big mistake. He thinks we should extend them again while I am of the opinion that they never should have been extended past 26 weeks. As more than a few studies have shown, a goodly percentage of those on unemployment don't start seriously looking for work until a few weeks before their benefits run out. After 99 weeks a lot of folks are unemployable, at least in the eyes of potential employers, because their skills have deteriorated after almost 2 years of being out of work. It also implies that these folks were too damn lazy to go out and get a job until their benefits ran out. (It may be a false implication, but that's how a lot of employers will look at it.)

It might certainly help explain why we've reached the lowest level of labor participation by working age people since the Great Depression. It may seem counterintuitive, but lengthy unemployment benefits tend to increase the unemployment rate and decrease the labor participation rates. There have been plenty of examples over the past 40 years or so that illustrate this particular phenomenon, but our Teleprompter-in-Chief and his minions have chosen to ignore them. Our dismal unemployment rates and labor participation rates are indicative of this.

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This ought to fit in well with the gun-grabber narrative. It won't matter one bit that this fellow stole the body armor, the guns, and the truck he planned to use for a bomb attack on or near the University of Washington campuses in and around Seattle.

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Glenn Reynolds links to and comments about the skewed expectations and legal obligation differences between men and women when it comes to reproductive rights.

Over the past several decades, women have asserted a right to make all the judgments in matters of gender and sexuality. And, in fact, we do “facilitate” destructive choices, when they’re by women. We subsidize unwed mothers, we give women a pass on sexual behavior that would be considered predatory if it were done by males, we give them all sorts of “choice” that men don’t have and then absolve them, culturally and legally, from judgment over the way they exercise those choices. No similar dispensation is given to men.

In many cases choices about abortion and adoption are made by women and men have no legal recourse in the matter...except when it comes to having to support a child over which they have no say in their upbringing. This is particularly galling when the child they're supporting isn't even theirs. The law needs to catch up with the realities of 21st Century America.

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Writes Skip over at GraniteGrok, “When is the last time a President decided to kill off an entire private sector industry?”

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Bogie celebrated the return of NHRA Drag Racing to New England Dragway. As she states, the Dragway upgraded its facilities to accommodate 20,000 spectators. She also included a number of photos and a video of some of the action at the Dragway this weekend.

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As David Starr asks, why are authorities in San Francisco calling the crash of an airliner an “incident” when what it was was an accident? An incident is something like a blown tire or engine failure or on-board medical emergency. When an airliner runs off the runway and catches fire, with numerous injuries and some fatalities it is an accident.

It also appears the authorities also have a problem with innumeracy to go along with it.

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It doesn't surprise me that despite the perception by the Left that whites are the most racist, at least in the US, a Rasmussen poll shows the Left's perception is flawed.

I think if the poll had provided an option to select Leftist whites as being the most racist, then I think the poll would have shown different results. Over the years I have come to realize that those professing to be against racism – meaning the Left – are the actual racists in the room. They merely couch their racism in language that at first makes it seem they're for equality between the races. But once you start paying attention to what they're saying you realize they really don't believe minorities can be equal unless the Benevolent Left intercedes for them, a form of backhanded racism if there ever was one.

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One of the chores on my Honey-Do list was repairing one of the garage doors. At one point in the past BeezleBub needed to use the trusty F150. When he backed out of the garage he had forgotten to open the garage door and banged into it with the rear bumper. It knocked a number of the wheels out of the guide rails on one side. I had made a quick fix to get it working again, but it really needed to be done properly to ensure everything lined up. I finally got around to doing that earlier today and now the door opens and closes with nary a clack, clatter, or squeal.

What motivated me to make the repair was the need to also see if I could get the proximity sensor on that door working again. It hadn't worked properly since we took that lightning strike two weeks ago, meaning the door wouldn't close automatically because it thought there was something in the way. The door could be closed by holding down the door button in the garage until it was all the way down and the remote could open it, but it has been a small inconvenience.

Unfortunately it looks like I will have to replace the sensor as no amount of rewiring or troubleshooting was able to get it working again.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the holiday weekend has wound down, the weather is still in the the Hot, Hazy, Humid mode, and Monday will arrive just in time to allow us to recuperate from the long weekend.