Thoughts On A Sunday

Old Man Winter has been showing us he isn’t quite done yet, sending snow, sleet and freezing rain our way since early yesterday. While we haven’t seen much more than an inch of snow here at The Gulch, there has been quite a bit of sleet and mixed in with some freezing rain now and then. A close friend of mine in a town northwest of here has received over 6 inches of snow. However, another friend living just north of New Haven, Connecticut was telling me it was 76ºF down her way yesterday while we were getting the snow and sleet. And so it goes in New England.

The roads are slick, hence our church canceling in-person services and resorting to an online church service this morning.

But wait, there’s more!

It looks like all of this precipitation will be changing to rain sometime tonight with some of it being heavy. I have no doubt the snow and sleet will all be melted and washed away by tomorrow’s rains.

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What happens when men are denigrated, marginalized, stuck with nonsensical “toxic masculinity” accusations, told they aren’t needed, are blamed for all the ills in the world, and deemed expendable in this modern world?

For some men it means nothing. They soldier on, ignoring the vicious and ignorant diatribes. For others it means they see themselves as nothing but a burden and withdraw from society. And for others, it means they see themselves as useless and they end themselves, slowly through drug and alcohol abuse or quickly through suicide. What’s worse is that some of the more vacuous members of our crumbling society see it as a good thing.

What many of those vacuous members seem to overlook is that without men, modern civilization and all its amenities will die. As one commenter on the linked post explained it:

What amuses me is how many modern women believe the trope that "they don't need men."

But then their car breaks down or a pipe springs a leak or their house needs a new roof or...well, you get the idea. They also don't seem to understand that it is those 'men they don't need' that make their comfy lives possible, that build and maintain the infrastructure upon which they are totally dependent.

The willful blindness about these issues both baffles and disappoints me. This is something that can come back to bite those same ‘vacuous members’ in the butt.

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Could it be that preventing and treating Parkinson’s Disease is as simple as taking extra B vitamins?

Researchers have suspected for some time that the link between our gut and brain plays a role in the development of Parkinson's disease.

A recent study identified gut microbes likely to be involved and linked them with decreased riboflavin ( vitamin B2) and biotin (vitamin B7), pointing the way to an unexpectedly simple treatment that may help: B vitamins.

"Supplementation of riboflavin and/or biotin is likely to be beneficial in a subset of Parkinson's disease patients, in which gut dysbiosis plays pivotal roles," Nagoya University medical researcher Hiroshi Nishiwaki and colleagues wrote in their paper published in May 2024.

It’s seems to be turning out that a number of degenerative diseases may be tied to the human gut biome. If Parkinson’s can be prevented or treated via nutrition, be it by supplements or a change in diet or both, then this is groundbreaking.

There has also been some connection suggested between gut biome and Alzheimer’s. If that is also the case then we might see the scourge and heartbreak of Alzheimer’s disappear.

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Oh, yeah, this will be a winning team for the Democrats to push an increasingly Socialist agenda.

There are just some things so ridiculous they defy parody. Putting 83-year-old-shakes-fists-at-clouds, communist Bernie Sanders or finds-math-hard AOC as the new face of the Democratic Party for 2028 is even beyond The Babylon Bee’s imagination.

Who knew this Marxist interpretation of Burns and Allen would be traveling the nation on an “Embrace Covetousness Tour” so soon after the majority of citizens made it clear that it rejects Leftwing ideology which, over the last several decades, has made life worse for proletariat while delivering goodies to the Inner Party.

--snip--

The AOC/Bernie populism goes about promoting values — like males can be women by declaring it — that an overwhelming majority, even among Democrats, reject.

Kinda puts lie to populism, eh?

So, the cabal that runs the DNC has decided to double and triple down on a narrative that a growing number of Democrats are rejecting, figuring that somehow it will return them to power? As I have asked before, will the Democrat Party end up going the way of the Whigs?

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It seems that Germany is suddenly taking military spending and readiness seriously. Is it the Trump Effect?

During his first term, President Donald Trump was mocked when he wanted our European allies to spend more on their defense while relying less on Russian energy. Ironically, After Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, many European countries moved in the direction Trump tried to get them to move years earlier. Conversations about Europe in the leaked text did not appear to be what Europe wanted to hear either. The Europeans may be starting to get the message that they need to increase their own capabilities instead of taking advantage of their arrangement with the US.

Germany has increased military spending, meeting the 2% of GDP required under NATO and slowly exceeding that amount. It has also been providing more military equipment and armaments to Ukraine. The first is something that Trump brought up during his first term, castigating our European allies for not meeting their military spending commitments and coming to depend increasingly on the US military umbrella and the US taxpayers that pay for it all. It looks like that is coming to an end as other NATO nations have been increasing their military spending and readiness as well.

==+++++==

So, how did the “We Hate Elon And Tesla” protests on Saturday go for the Left?

Not so great.

The left built up March 29th as some epic, anti-Elon Musk, anti-Tesla day of rage… The so called “protests” turned out to be complete and total flops.. Not only was attendance at these hate rallies much lower than the left was expecting, but these bone headed communists needed to read their chants off large font scripts, you know like Hollywood liberal actors.. What a complete and total failure!

Not that I really expected there to be a big turnout or the effects the Left was hoping for. It looks like the whole thing can be summed up with one word:

“Meh.”

‘Nuff said…

==+++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the rain has been just rain for the past few minutes, the ice has melted away on the trusty RAM 1500, and where Monday is returning...again.

Save The Movies And The Theaters

Movie ticket sales have been dropping for years. Part of that can be laid at the feet of Hollywood because they decided to go woke and started making preachy movies that no one wanted to see. So what does one of the ‘Hollywood’ magazines, Variety, suggest as a way to solve the problem?

Allow patrons to smoke pot and text during the movie.

Really? They think that will fix the problem rather than showing movies people actually want to see? This, just when I thought they couldn’t possibly get any stupider.

“Imagine how much better Barbie or Deadpool & Wolverine would be if you could see it” while smoking a joint, asks Variety rhetorically. “Selling weed could bring fresh revenue and new customers to theaters.”

What?

Both of those movies were monster hits, the top grossers of their respective years. Who in their right mind believes allowing pot smoking and texting in the theater would have improved their box office?

Granted, Variety’s idea is to have exclusive screenings for potheads and texters. Nevertheless, the entire theater will still stink of that crap.

Here’s Variety lobbying for texting: “Although cinephiles might object, if movie theaters want to attract younger audiences who refuse to give up their devices during the two-hour running time of most films, they might need to stop banning phones.”

Of course Variety does ignore something that would stop the smoking of pot in theaters, that being that smoking in theaters, be it tobacco or pot, is illegal in most states. But what they’re really trying to sell us is that the only way to make gawdawful movies palatable is if the movie patrons are stoned. However, I have an ever better idea.

Start making movies that people actually want to see rather than the crap that’s been coming out of Hollywood over the past few years or so. Then the theaters would be full, the concession stands would be doing well, and the studios would stop losing money.

As I have mentioned before, Hollywood fell into a similar trap back in the late 60’s and unto the mid-70’s. They started making so-called ‘message’ movies that tried to preach to their audience rather than entertain them. The moviegoers stayed away in droves and the studios lost money on those stinkers. Then they stopped making those movies and returned to entertaining their audiences with great movies. One of those was Star Wars which came out in 1977 and was an absolute smash hit.

The ‘message’ movie was dead...until woke Hollywood decided to give it another go. It seems like it will have to learn the same lesson it did back in the 70’s, but with a modern twist. That lesson?

“Get woke. Go broke.”

Friday Funny - Things You Can Say About Your Car, But Not Your...

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s officially spring and Lake Winnipesaukee and other bodies of water in the area are showing that as the ice covering them recedes. I noticed there were more openings in the ice on Winnipesaukee and open water in a some of the coves and along one of the state beaches. Fortunately I haven’t seen any stranded bob-houses out on the ice, at least not on the southern part of the lake. It would be difficult and dangerous to retrieve them if there were as the ice is quite thin and incapable of supporting much weight.

It was quite warm yesterday, having reached the mid-50’s here. However, that warm weather has been driven out and it was in the low 20’s this morning along with some brisk winds. There’s snow forecast for tomorrow though not large amounts. Here at the lake we might see between 1 and 3 inches before it’s all over and even then most of that snow will accumulate on the grass and not the roads...maybe. The rest of the week looks like it will be closer to normal temperatures for late March – in the mid to upper 40’s – with some chances of rain here and there.

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I’ve been seeing this meme pop up here and there, both on blogs and FB posts and there is a ring of truth about it. There are variations but they all pretty much say the same thing. (I wish I could post one of the pictures of the meme, but Blogger still won’t let me post pictures.)

We disagreed with a Anheuser-Busch’s values, so we stopped buying Bud Light.

The Left disagrees with Elon Musk regarding DOGE, so they decide to vandalize and set Teslas on fire, shoot at Tesla dealerships, and dox Tesla owners.

We are not the same.

‘Nuff said.

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In line with above comes this from Washington State where a man chased down and blockaded a woman’s car, then accosted her because she was driving a Tesla.

Seeing the video, watching his actions, and seeing that the man was masked, my reaction would have likely been pulling my piece and telling the miscreant to get down on the ground. I then would have called the police to report an attempted carjacking.

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Yeah, I’ve been hearing this line from Democrats for decades now and it’s just as phony today as it was “way back when”.

“One of the Swamp’s favorite debating tricks is to pretend that the only way to meaningfully cut the deficit is to cut Social Security.”

That’s the lazy way and it always gets folks riled up. That’s why they make that claim. It’s also a blatant lie.

The way to do it is to cut all the “waste, fraud, and abuse” line items through the entire budget. Of course if we leave that to Congress it will never get done, or if they actually try it will take them years and even then they might only get rid of 10 percent of that “waste, fraud, and abuse”...while adding on 20 percent more in the process.

And the Democrats wonder why so many Americans support DOGE.

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Is it time to change the name of the Department of Defense back to the Department of War?

In what can only be described as an unusual move, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has sparked debate over potentially renaming the Department of Defense back to its original name: the Department of War.

Hegseth took to X to conduct an informal poll that garnered roughly 170,000 votes in just 18 hours. The results show Americans narrowly prefer "Department of War” over “Department of Defense.”

While I like the idea I do have to ask this question: How much will it cost to do so? Signs will need to be changed. Stationery will need the letterhead changed as will many publications.

I think it would be better if we don’t make the change because we’re trying to cut government spending, right?

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Is this yet another sign that Europe is becoming more of an Islamic state?

Middle school students assigned book that glorifies jihad and the Islamic State.

What did the EU think would happen if they allowed large numbers of Muslim immigrants into their respective counties? Many of them are already seeing the negative effects with so-called “No Go” zones in some towns and cities, a rapidly increasing number of rapes of women being committed by Muslim immigrant males, the push for Sharia to replace long standing laws, attacks on Christians and churches. I have to wonder just how much longer the EU will exist if they don’t stop this madness.

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Here’s one from the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department.

It seems Australian universities are urging the Prime Minister to declare a state of emergency after the Trump administration has informed them that funding from the US taxpayer will likely end.

The US has been funding Australian universities?

One particular quote from within the Sky News article below seemingly encapsulates the mindset of the situation in the land down under:

AUSTRALIA […] Last week after it was revealed the universities had been asked to justify their funding, the National Tertiary Education Union called on the government to “guarantee Australian researchers would be protected”.

“The federal government must push back on the Trump administration’s blatant foreign interference in our independent research in the strongest possible terms,” NTEU president Alison Barnes said.

One would think the NTEU would be happy for an enhanced opportunity for “independent research.”

Excuse me? Whose money is it and why is the US in any way obligated to fund Australian universities? It’s one thing if the research being performed was being done on the behalf of the US government. But it’s sounding like this is not the case.

Entitled and arrogant much, are they?

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice is slowly breaking up, winter isn’t really over yet, and where Monday will prove that with some snow.

I Hate Greatly Dislike Windows 11

How can I put this delicately?

I detest Windows 11.

First, I have to state that there are only two computers in The Gulch that use Windows, both of them being laptops I use for work and came from my employer. The first is an almost eight-year old Lenovo P50 which originally came with Windows 7 and was later upgraded to Windows 10. The second is a Lenovo P16 laptop that is replacing the P50. It came with Windows 11 and I really don’t like it, “it” being Windows 11.

The other four computers at The Gulch use Linux, with a Lenovo W510 laptop and my 12-year old HP Pavilion tower using Ubuntu, and the two newer mini-PCs from Ace Magic running Linux Mint which uses Ubuntu as its base.

The only problem I ever had with Linux was with my laptop which wouldn’t boot properly after a Linux update. It was easily fixed when I used a bootable USB key to force another update which fixed the problem.

I received the new work laptop about 3 weeks ago and have been spending my own time on weekends configuring it and loading the programs I needed in order to do my job. The new User Interface (UI) looks nice, but it isn’t really all that intuitive, particularly if I need to look for a specific program that does not appear in the ‘Start’ window. One thing I liked about both Windows 7 and Windows 10 is that the ribbon that opened when when the ‘Windows’ key was pressed made it easy to find even rarely used programs. That’s not true with Windows 11.

One of the biggest problems I’ve had is that some programs I use under Windows 10 don’t/won’t work in Windows 11 without a lot of tweaking. I’m still struggling with a couple that I use all the time.

Another problem was configuring the display settings so the dual displays I use will show my desktop properly. It isn’t as straightforward as with Windows 10 or Linux. A co-worker has been struggling with this problem for over a week now as it seems that his laptop, the same model as mine, doesn’t seem to remember the settings and he has to reset them every time he boots his laptop. I haven’t had that problem, but it has taken a lot of time to get the displays set up the way I like. Neither Windows 10 or Linux had that issue.

I have found that the Office 365 suite on my new laptop does have a few quirks, but nothing major. The only thing that surprised me was that the ‘new’ Outlook isn’t nearly as friendly as the version I’ve been using on my old laptop. This isn’t just my opinion as I have asked others I know who are using Windows 11 and they made the same observation.

It seems Microsoft has forgotten the lesson of Windows 8. It was an awful version of windows, the UI set up more top look and act like a tablet even though the computer it was being used on wasn’t a tablet and didn’t have a touch screen. That’s the reason Windows 8.1 was released as people liked the ‘old’ UI used on Windows 7. Windows 10 returned to that UI. Why Microsoft thinks they have to redesign the UI with every new version is necessary baffles me. I can see a tweak here and there if there is a problem, but why change everything if what you have works and works well?

And so it goes.

Friday Funny - When You Realize You're An Old Fart

Thoughts On A Sunday

While the calendar says spring doesn’t start until the end of the week, spring weather is certainly here. We saw almost 60ºF yesterday and might see that today despite the cloudy weather and rain we’re going to experience today. It’s meant I haven’t had to crank up the temperature on the thermostat nearly as high as usual, and not at all on the second floor thermostat.

However, I know that Old Man Winter can throw us a curve now and then with a Spring snowstorm. We certainly saw that last April when we experiences a Nor’easter that dropped almost a foot of snow here at the lake. It knocked out power here at The Gulch for almost two days. (Thank goodness for the Official Weekend Pundit Generator which kept the lights and heat on!)

But for now it looks like it will be pretty decent weather with rain here and there over the next few days. The snow banks are melting away, but I think they’re still going to be around for a couple of weeks at least.

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This certainly doesn’t surprise the Conspiracy Theorists in the least.

It turns out the lockdowns during Covid were neither needed or effective.

That isn’t news to me seeing as how countries that neither locked down or took draconian measures such as mandatory masking and vaccinations to prevent the spread of Covid - Sweden and Denmark coming to mind – had nowhere near the number of cases or deaths seen per capita that were seen in countries that did.

‘Nuff said.

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Yeah, this isn’t good news.

Syria’s President Signs New Constitution Establishing the Country as an Islamic State

There is not much that can be said in favor of the Assad regime in Syria, but it did generally protect the rights of Christians, Alawites, and others who were not Sunni Muslims. Those days, however, are gone forever. In recent weeks, every day brings new evidence of the violent persecution of Alawites and Christians in Syria, and there is no end in sight. And now the country’s interim president, former (and possibly current) jihad leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, has signed a provisional constitution that could seal the second-class status of religious minorities in Syria, as it establishes the country as an Islamic state.

I figure the persecution of Alewites and Christians will continue, if not escalate. I figure we’ll also start seeing public executions of members of the LGBTQ+ community, be it by hanging or being thrown off a roof like happens in Iran.

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Has the federal Department of Education actually improved educational outcomes?

This is a question I would like to see answered, too. As I have read in a couple of different places, the US used be be #1 in education in 1976. This is before the Department of Education came into being. Almost 5 decades later we’re now #40 and falling.

What evidence is there that the federal Department of Education, or that the Democrats being in charge of education, has had any positive effect on actual student achievement? We previously noted then candidate for the Democratic mayoral nomination Helen Gym, who was supported by the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, campaigning in front of the Edward T Steel Elementary School, telling us how she saved that school from ‘going charter,’ but Steel Elementary, was ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools. 8% of the students scored at or above grade-level proficient in reading, and a whopping 1% of students scored at or above in math.

There is simply no evidence that the education bureaucracy in this country has improved actually educating students.

The left love the federal Department of Education for two main reasons: it has enabled the policies from liberal districts to be imposed on schools in conservative areas, and has allowed the liberal advocates to have to lobby only one set of bureaucrats, at the federal level, rather than fifty state education boards and thousands of local school districts for the policies they prefer.

It seems the Department of Education has little to do with actual education and more with indoctrination. After all, it is easier to program and indoctrinate students if they remain deficient in reading, writing, arithmetic, and critical thinking skills.

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You’ve probably heard that a US District judge has ordered the government to stop deporting illegal immigrants, particularly violent criminal members of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua.

On Saturday, without giving the Trump administration any time to respond, Judge Boasberg issued an immediate temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking DHS, Customs and Border Patrol and ICE from deporting illegal aliens and narcotrafficking gang members belonging to Tren de Aragua (TdA), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Boasberg ordered the flights of criminal gang members to turn around and immediately bring the criminals back to the USA to enjoy a life of criminal conduct and terrorism in the USA. National security is secondary to the rights of criminal aliens to sell drugs, continue child/sexploitation, murder American citizens and rape their targets.

The problem with Judge Boasberg? He is apparently as corrupt as the system he’s protecting.

This is the same Judge Boasberg who sat as presiding judge on the FISA court. The same Judge Boasberg who gave FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith a slap on the wrist for manufacturing evidence used in the Carter Page FISA application that defrauded the court. The same Judge Boasberg who appointed former DOJ-NSD head Mary McCord as amicus curiae advisor to the court, after she knowingly and fraudulently submitted the FISA application to the court.

This is the same Judge Boasberg gave J6 FBI agent provocateur Ray Epps a sentence of probation. This is the same judge who, on his vacation, went to sit in the DC courtroom to observe defendant President Trump who was forced to appear in DC court. This is the same Boasberg who established a horrible precedent in forcing Vice-President Mike Pence to testify before a DC grand jury about his conversations with President Trump (breaking executive privilege).

It appears Judge Boasberg twists the law into an unrecognizable shape in order to let the Deep State get away with actions and crimes that would get anyone else sent to prison. It seems that The Narrative must be preserved even if it means ignore the law, ignoring the Constitution.

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I have to wonder if the following is a case of “Too little too late.”

Colleges are finding out they are in trouble and that they don’t have many allies.

What did they expect after years of supporting causes many Americans find abhorrent, protesting on behalf of regimes, organizations, and ideologies that are murderous, genocidal, and would have no problems killing the very people protesting on their behalves?

Columbia University is just the start of a long-brewing backlash. On Monday of this week the Trump administration's Department of Education put 60 schools on notice that they will lose federal funding if they don't do more to crack down on antisemitism on campus.

--snip--

On Friday the DOE sent another letter to more than 50 schools warning them that discriminatory DEI programs would no longer be tolerated.

--snip--

Colleges are clearly getting the message which is why many of them put hiring freezes in place this week, in anticipation of being short on cash very soon.

--snip--

Unfortunately for many of these schools, they are only now realizing that they don't have a lot of friends to take up any slack if their budgets are cut.

When alumni with deep pockets start backing away from supporting their alma mater because it has become too radical, have lost their reason to exist, you know a college is in trouble. We saw that happening at Harvard as alumni stopped funding endowments because of its apparent support of blatant antisemitism. How many other colleges will see donors stop giving because those institutions of higher learning have instead become institutions of indoctrination for heinous ideologies and wholly against Western Civilization?

Are our colleges finally learning there is a price for taking and supporting such positions?

Let us hope so.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow banks are rapidly melting, thoughts of the upcoming boating season are starting to intrude, and where we’ll see plenty of rain on Monday.

Tariffs - Carrot and Stick Diplomacy?

Listening to a number of people debate as well as letters to the editor of our local paper and plenty of opinions on the Web, I have come to the conclusion that far too many people haven’t a clue about tariffs, what they are, how they work, and that the US isn’t the only one that uses them. In fact, you will see that a lot of our present trading partners have them on US goods coming into their countries with some of them being outright draconian. Yet somehow tariffs are only bad if it’s the US imposing them, at least according to the Left and the clueless...who are often the same people.

Yes, tariffs can be punitive. Some can be responses – tit fo tat – to tariffs imposed by other countries. And others can be used as tools of diplomacy, in many cases so-called “Carrot and Stick” diplomacy. What we’ve been seeing from President Trump has been more of the third type followed by the second type.

According to Victor Davis Hanson the “Carrot and Stick” application appears to working.

President Donald Trump is not using tariffs for their historical purpose, which is to protect and promote domestic industry. Instead, Trump, as Victor Davis Hanson argues, is using tariffs to hold countries, like Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and China, accountable. And it’s working.

On this edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Hanson dispels the Left’s hysteria over President Trump’s tariff policies:

“So, if you take Venezuela and Colombia, he's saying that ‘you people deliberately emptied your jails and you sent them to the United States—sent them being felons—violent felons. And you're not going to do that anymore’.

And they said, ‘we're not taking them back’. He said, ‘you're going to take them back, or I'm going to put a tariff’. So, it was a lever of diplomacy, and it worked. They backed down completely.”

That’s just one instance of it which took place back in February. The EU is trying to punish the US so it imposed tariffs on US whiskey and other spirits and the US has responded with tariffs on EU wines, champagne, and distilled spirits. Will tariffs on Canada and Mexico work? Only time will tell if Trump will get his way. The same goes for China which has heavy tariffs on US goods and has had them for a long time.

This is going to be interesting.

Friday Funny - Live Free Or Die

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a bit of a schizophrenic week at the lake, at least weather-wise. Below zero windchills to sunny, warm, and in the 50’s and back again over the period of a few days. That’s New Hampshire in March. Not that we don’t have to worry about snowstorms. To the contrary, we’ve had some of our biggest snowstorms in March. Last year we had a heck of a Nor’easter in April that dumped a lot of heavy snow and knocked out power across the state. We were without power here at The Gulch for almost 2 days after that storm. Thank goodness we had the Official Weekend Pundit Generator which did a great job of keeping the lights on and the heat operating.

Ice fisherman have been reminded they need to remove their bob houses from the ice by April 1st. They also closed the ice runway in Alton Bay this past week, the only official ice runway in the Lower 48 recognized by the FAA. The ski areas are still quite busy though our local ski resort will close for the season on the first weekend of April regardless of the ski conditions as they start transitioning from winter operations to summer operations. (Yes, they are a two-and-a-half season resort covering summer, foliage - in fall, but it only lasts a few weeks - and winter.)

I have already received an e-mail from the boatyard that takes care of the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout – aka The Boat – about scheduling de-winterization and pre-launch prep, something I have already scheduled. (I’m hoping to put the boat back into the water during the second week of May, lake conditions permitting.)

However, all of that is still some weeks away as I still have huge snowbanks surrounding The Gulch to deal with. That, and getting used to Daylight Savings Time again.

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Speaking of Daylight Savings Time, I know more and more people are sick and tired of having to change their clocks twice a year. I know I am.

I live at the eastern extreme of the Eastern Time Zone, butting up against the Atlantic Time Zone, and during mid fall through mid winter the sun is generally gone by ~4pm. Here at The Gulch the sun disappears behind the hills to our southwest by 2pm. It’s even worse in eastern Maine.

It would work better for us if we could either remain in Daylight Savings Time year round or change from the Eastern Time Zone to the Atlantic Time Zone and remain in Standard Time year round.

Some people here have said that it would put children in danger if that was done because during the late fall and early winter months the kids would be going to school in the dark. That’s a specious argument because some of our school kids do that even if we’re in Standard Time. Previous experiments with year round DST – during the Nixon Administration during the Arab Oil Embargo back in the 70’s – showed that didn’t happen.

Reading the comments to the linked post saw a wide spread of opinions. One commenter questioned the polls and their conclusions:

"What we have is a bunch of polls with inconsistent results, meaning that the issue is likely divided three ways, with equal shares of the population wanting permanent DST, wanting permanent Standard Time, and wanting to keep things as they are."

This makes me wonder if when they selected those they would ask for their polls determined where within each time zone these folks lived. I'll bet depending upon where in their time zone they lived - eastern edge, mid-section, or western edge - the replies would be different. I live along the eastern edge of the Eastern Time Zone and while my polling was totally unscientific, most of the people who live here would prefer to stay in DST or jump over to the Atlantic Time Zone and remain in Standard Time year round. Those living in the middle or western edge might have different answers.

This subject comes up again and again every fall and late winter when we change the clocks. Congress has been dragging its feet in resolving this issue. We have heard a number of suggestions and opinions about how to solve this issue. I know I’d like this issue to be steeled once and for all. The same commenter as above provided this possible solution:

The problem is that those along the edges of some time zones find that Standard Time is problematic in the winter. Maybe it's time to shift some of the 'borders' of the time zones to eliminate that problem. That's why Maine and New Hampshire would rather be in the Atlantic Time Zone and remain in Standard Time year round rather than the Eastern Time Zone.

Indeed.

==+++++==

Maybe they should have remembered the adage about being careful what they wish for because they just might get it.

In this case it’s the price and availability of natural gas here in New England, and specifically in Massachusetts. It seems Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey says there is an energy crisis because “it’s impossible to get natural gas.” However she chooses to ignore she’s one of the people who worked to make it difficult to get the needed natural gas by killing off the pipelines needed to get that natural gas into New England, specifically the Kinder Morgan pipeline. That pipeline would have brought in inexpensive domestic natural gas from Pennsylvania. Instead, a lot of the natural gas comes in by ship to the Everett Natural Gas Terminal near Boston, that natural gas coming from foreign sources – a lot of itcoming into the Everett Terminal from Trinidad and Tabago – natural gas that was bought at world market prices.

So Healey and her kindred made sure it was impossible to increase the natural gas supply and then complain that there isn’t enough natural gas to meet demand. They got what they wanted and then complain that they got what they wanted.

Talk about hypocrisy.

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I have to wonder where the conspiracy theorists are on this?

First, we see the wildfires sweeping through sections of LA, taking out about 12,000 homes and businesses. It will take years to rebuild those areas. Now we see something similar happening out on Long Island in the Hamptons, the wildfires threatening the homes of the middle class and wealthy alike.

Seeing what’s been happening in the aftermath of the LA fires, with some stating the large real estate investment corporations salivating at the prospect of being able to pick up expensive real estate cheap and redeveloping it with multimillion dollar homes, one has to wonder if the same thing will happen in the Hamptons should the wildfires destroy homes there, too. I would have to wonder if the same corporations will do the same thing in the Hamptons if the fires spread to take out homes?

Or maybe it’s all just one big coincidence…

==+++++==

This doesn’t surprise me in the least.

CNN data reporter ‘shocked’ to see that American majority supports DOGE.

==+++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re getting some springlike weather over this coming week, the snowbanks will be melting away, and where Town Meeting season is starting.