Thoughts On A Sunday

The weather up here at the lake has been delightful this weekend, with temps in low 80’s and relatively low humidity. That’s meant the A/C wasn’t used, the windows were open, and it’s been comfortable all weekend. The Weather Guys^TM are saying we’ll likely be back into the hot and humid weather starting on Tuesday, but it is summer, after all.

The summer crowds are here without a doubt. Both our town beach and the beach at the state park down the road from the town beach have been busy, with parking lots full before noon. Lots of boats out on the lake. (It’s one reason I prefer to use the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout during the week – less Cap’n Boneheads out on the lake!)

Our favorite ice cream stand has been busy as well, and not just during the weekend.

Concerts at our local venue continue, with the latest one from the Before We Get Too Old Or Die tour being The Guess Who this past Friday and Bob Dylan playing there next Saturday night. Sarah McLachlan, she of In The Arms Of An Angel fame is playing there tonight, though she is not part of the Before We Get Too Old tour.

I will be at BeezleBub’s late this afternoon to help him christen his new grill, though my help will mostly consist of staying out of his way. That works for me!

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I heard early this morning that Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) passed away last night.

He was a quiet powerhouse and came through when the Democrats were holding a “sham hearing against Brett Kavanaugh” and rallied the troops to fight back against the witch hunt and saved Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

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When I first heard this story I can honestly say it didn’t surprise me in the least.

That Gay Cruise Ship Denied Entry Into Turkey? Egypt Just Said “No” Too.

It amazes me that ‘woke’ and ‘enlightened’ folks from here assume their sensibilities and beliefs carry weight in foreign countries. Then they’re dismayed, shocked, or pissed off when they find out that isn’t true.

What were they thinking, scheduling a gay cruise to visit Muslim countries? It’s not that Egypt or Turkey is exactly a craphole—both have been centers of civilization at times, and neither is crushingly poor in the way that Conan O’Brien’s and Anderson Cooper’s favorite vacation destination, Haiti, is.

I wonder of they’ll learn the lesson...this time? My guess is no.

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It seems the EU is doing everything it can to make sure that it fails and will be a financial basket-case. Increasingly harsh environmental regulations that make it increasingly difficult to run a business in the EU or to do business in the EU aren’t helping things. (I have to deal with those growing environmental regulations at work and they are taking up an increasing percentage of my time with little to show for it.) But one of the things I think is really going to hurt the EU is their push for deep “financial surveillance” by approving the creation of a digital Euro.

Europe has just taken a major step toward creating the digital euro, a project that could soon open the door to leaving Europeans’ financial freedom at the mercy of Brussels.

On Thursday, July 9th, the European Parliament’s plenary adopted a text on the creation of the EU’s own CBDC (central bank digital currency), sending the file to the final stage of interinstitutional negotiations before the digital euro’s planned issuance from January 2029.

That could mean that every single financial transaction will be open to scrutiny by Brussels, be it something as simple as paying for a morning espresso or closing a multimillion Euro business deal and everything in between.

Since the details are still a bit sketchy, I have to wonder if that means they will phase out actual physical money and all transactions will be electronic? If so, I can see a number of problems such an all electronic form of currency transactions will create. One of the biggest being that if the electronic exchange fails due to buggy code, hacker activity, or something as simple as a power outage, everyone depending on it will be poor because they won’t be able to access their money. It will in effect all be locked away in a digital vault that can not be opened. You can’t tell me that won’t affect people if/when it happens.

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Could it be that the folks who have been telling us that a 200ppm increase in atmospheric CO₂ would cause up to a 0.5ºC increase in the average global temperatures have been wrong all this time? According the some of the latest environmental lab research, it may be that climate sensitivity to CO₂ is nowhere what has been claimed.

New lab experiment research shows that the addition of 100,000 ppm (10%) CO2 – a volume orders of magnitude greater than today’s 425 ppm (0.0425%) – leads to a temperature change of about 1.0°C.

--snip--

“With an initial temperature of the earth plate of +30°C, a temperature increase of 1.0°C can be observed after adding [100,000 ppm] CO2.”

But this CO2-induced (or Ar or HCG) temperature change (~1.0°C) is accomplished when assessing only radiation heat transfer effects and excluding the effects of convection. In the real world, heat is not transferred solely via radiation. In fact, convection, not radiation, dominates the heat transfer process here at the surface and throughout the lower troposphere.

So when convection is included as a contributing factor in these lab experiments (see also Wagoner et al., 2010 or Seim and Olsen, 2020), the temperature effect of adding 10% CO2 is reduced to just 0.1°C. This temperature change is so negligible that it is effectively below the resolution of the measurement sensors.

Is what they are saying is that previous estimates of the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide ignored convection and focused entirely on radiation? If that is indeed the case, then the climate cult faithful have some explaining to do...and a lot of money to return.

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And that is the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer is now in full swing, the ice cream stands are busy, and where even Mondays don’t seem all that bad...for now.

Iran Cannot Be Trusted

Once again I have been hearing that Iran can’t seem to keep its promises about the Straits of Hormuz, with the IRGC firing on cargo ships transiting the straits. The US Navy then retaliates, taking out military targets along the Iranian coast, some of those targets being locations from which the IRGC launched their strikes.

As I have mentioned more than once, either the Iranian government is lying when they say they will abide by the ceasefire arrangements or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) is ignoring the government because various factions within the government are still fighting over who’s in power.

It still comes down to we really don’t know who is “running the show” in Iran, so making any kind of deal with whoever claims to be in charge is a crapshoot at best, and so far we haven’t seen any real ‘ceasefire’ at all. And then of course Iran fires at a number of the Persian Gulf Arab countries, tryibng to rack up as much destruction and civilian casualties as it can. Basically the strikes are terrorists attacks. Not that it’s surprising considering Iran has been a huge supporter of Islamic terror groups since 1979.

My biggest concern is that Iran will overstep which will mean the US military will pull off the kid gloves and go all in, hitting not just military targets but going after all of Iran’s infrastructure like the electrical grid, water supplies, refineries, bridges, highways, factories, and so on. We have been trying not to go that route because we know Iranian civilians with no connection to the mullahs, Basij, or IRGC will suffer. They are as much victims of the Iranian government and IRGC as anyone in the Persian Gulf states. But if the “mad mullahs” and the IRGC escalate, we may have no choice.

And once again, I am going to remind you that we have been in a de facto state of war with Iran since 1979 when they invaded the US embassy in Tehran which is considered an act of war.

Let us hope we won’t have to go that far.

Friday Funny - A Happy Relationship Will Ruin Your Life

Thoughts On A Sunday

The Fourth of July fireworks started Friday night, with some towns having them Friday night and others last night. One of my neighbors who lives on the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee had his own fireworks show Friday night which meant all I had to do was sit on a next door neighbor’s deck to watch the show. He’s been holding this show since the Bad Old Days of Covid and certainly all of the folks in this part of town have certainly appreciated it. While neither I or the WP Mom did much on Fourth, though we did partake of the Boston Pops Fourth of July concert on TV, something we’ve been watching on and off for years on those nights when we didn’t attend a fireworks celebration in person.

One thing that was nice was that Saturday wasn’t nowhere near as hot as the previous four days, being only in the mid 80’s, though the humidity was still a bit on the high side. Today was a little cooler but the humidity was down quite a bit. All in all, I have no complaints about the weather.

One the really hot days during this past week I managed to get most of my errands and chores taken care of during the morning hours before it got too hot. In a few cases that meant I was out and about a little after 6:30am and back at The Gulch before 10am. (I took a couple days off from work to give me a five-day holiday weekend. Most of my vacation time is used to extend holiday weekends by a day or two.)

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Seen over at Powerline in it’s “The Week In Pictures” feature are these two gems:

“White Time”: Dutch professor argues that time itself is racist.

and

Expecting people to be on time is part of “white supremacy culture”, Duke Medical School proclaims.

Just when I thought the Left couldn’t get any crazier and/or deluded, they prove me wrong.

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I will admit that I haven’t seen the trailers for this movie, but after hearing review after review after review, I won’t be adding it to my “Must See” list...ever.

Woke Supergirl Movie Belly Flops In Movie Theaters

The semi-sequel to last year’s Superman stars Milly Alcock as the hard-partying Krypton cousin scrambling to find the antidote to her drugged dog Krypto.

Yes, that’s the film’s plot, and the dog in question was obviously CGI. That may partially explain the film’s tepid reception. This failure is far from an orphan, though.

Let’s start with the main character, a minor player in the DC Comics universe. Alcock, a relative unknown, introduced the character via a boozy cameo at the end of Superman.

Apparently it all goes downhill from there. It seems Hollywood still hasn’t gotten the message that people want to be entertained, not preached to. It has forgotten the lesson of the late 1960’s/mid 1970’s that ‘message movies’ do not sell and is not learning it today.

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I have enjoyed Rick Beato’s YouTube channel for years. He’s a musician, producer, and educator about all kinds of things musical. One of the first videos of his I watched was one of his regular features - What Made This Sing Great - with the first one I caught being about Boston’s More Than A Feeling. I’ve seen him do interviews with all kinds of musicians, songwriters, and producers about a wide range of musical topics. One of my favorites was with Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, an out-of-this world guitarist and songwriter.

But the video I am writing about today is one that Rick posted a couple of days ago about AI and how too many people are using it to copy or rip off YouTube content creators.


I have to agree with Rick on this.

I have seen more than a few AI generated ‘talking head’ reports about one timely topic or subject or another. It’s one thing if they are labeled as being AI generated, but too many of them aren’t. As I have mentioned in a few other posts, all it takes is paying attention to head movements, eye blinks, and if their hands are visible, the hand movements as the AI speaks as they do not match what the AI is saying as far as cadence or tempo is concerned to determine if the talking head is AI generated.

Frankly, I find it annoying.

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The World Cup has been in the news for some time and I will admit I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to it once Scotland was eliminated. But one thing I have been paying attention to is the World Cup fans who have discovered America, finding out they’ve been lied to about it all these years. I have seen numerous YouTube videos from these fans who have come from all over the world, showing their shock and amazement about what they’re experienced here in the US, including experiencing America’s 250th birthday celebration on the Fourth.







This is but a small sampling of what’s out there on YouTube about foreign visitors discovering that America is not what their news media has been portraying.

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I have to agree with the following sentiment.

The ‘transgendered’ would find their lives far simpler if they’d stop trying to make their beliefs other people’s business

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” ― George Orwell, 1984

Living on a rural farm, in a small, mostly rural county, in a very politically conservative state, I only rarely see the ‘transgendered.’ I saw one such gentleman pretending to be a lady, as a customer, in the Corto Lima restaurant in downtown Lexington several years ago, and another such gentleman working as a waiter in the now-several-years-closed Applebee’s on Bypass Road in Richmond. I thought such was humorous, because neither one came anywhere close to ‘passing’ as a real woman, but I had no interactions with either of them. They were doing what they wanted to do, in a manner which had no impact on me at all. Unlike the “Party’s” most essential command, I accepted the evidence of my eyes.

That, of course, was simple: these gentlemen who thought they were ladies weren’t trying to force me to accept them as ladies. The problem today as that so many of the ‘transgendered’ are attempting to compel the rest of us to accept their delusions.

And therein lies the problem. So many of them get in everyone’s faces about their transgenderism to the point where it is intrusive and annoying. That is not how one wins over the general population. Instead it tends to have just the opposite effect and it pisses people off. Then those same transgendered individuals claim they are being oppressed and vilified and that people don’t like them. They claim victimhood for being annoying a**hats.

Read The Whole Thing.

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I was wondering when someone was going to mention the following:

Europe’s Heat Wave Isn’t The Crisis — Energy Poverty Is

I admit I have had difficulty understanding Europe’s hatred of air conditioning, or more accurately, the various European governments’ hatred of air conditioning, particularly in light of the brutal heat wave they suffered last week. Knowing that some European countries’ electrical grids cannot handle the load due their conversion towards “Net Zero” systems, it really isn’t all that surprising, is it?

When temperatures elevate in Europe, political rhetoric rises even faster. Within days of the June 2026 heat wave, familiar voices rushed to assign blame. John Kerry, speaking to the BBC, labeled the current U.S. administration “dangerous and reckless” on climate.

U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell declared that “Europe’s savage heat wave has the fingerprints of the climate crisis all over it; it’s the latest price to pay for fossil fuel pollution baking our planet.”

This hyperbole has no scientific basis. The urgency of assertions that carbon dioxide (CO2) is overheating the atmosphere is never matched in reports about cold snaps that are at least as dangerous.

The imbalance reflects an apocalyptic narrative that prioritizes fear and ideology over nuance and evidence.

Seeing how many electrical grids no longer have the on-demand capacity to meet electrical demand should air conditioning be used, it certainly makes sense that the climate cultists would aim hatred and animosity towards air conditioning. It keeps them from having to answer the real question, that being “How come we don’t have the capacity to support such lifesaving equipment during heat waves?”

If they can lay blame on the US for those heatwaves it shifts focus away from the real issue. (I have to mention here that if the Euro-climate cultists want to blame carbon dioxide emissions for their heat wave problem, they should be focusing on China and not the US seeing as China has many times the carbon dioxide emissions of the US, Europe, and most of Asia. It doesn’t help that their emissions keep on climbing.)

Maybe Europe needs to get rid of the “Net Zero” nonsense and start building more nuclear. Their windmills aren’t going to be able to meet the demand, particularly when they aren’t running because there’s little or no wind.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the heat and humidity have dropped, the A/C is turned off, and where once again Monday is coming to harsh or weekend mellow.

Declaration Of Independence - It's Time To Remember Why

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Friday Funny - Living With A Teenager

Friday Funny (Wednesday Edition) - Air Conditioning

Considering that I am on vacation and dealing with a heat wave where temps will be in the upper 90's with high humidity over the next few days, I though this would be appropriate, particuarly in light of Justin mentioning Lake Winnipesaukee which is where The Gulch is located.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s weekend before the Fourth of July and people are already gearing up for the big party. Many of the summerfolk are already here. People are checking to see when the various fireworks shows will be taking place. I plan to attend at least one of them, weather permitting. (The chance of thunderstorms is pretty good considering how hot and humid it’s going to be here over the coming week. It will all depend upon timing.)

We’ll be seeing 90°F starting Tuesday with high humidity and higher temperatures being added to that starting on Wednesday which could last until Saturday. It looks like the the A/C here at The Gulch will be getting a workout leading up to the Fourth. In other words, a pretty normal summer week.

This also means I will check out the A/C in the trusty RAM 1500 as I usually have to add refrigerant to the A/C system every year or so. I didn’t have to do that last year so it wouldn’t surprise me if I need to take care of that this year. At least it is something I can take care of here at The Gulch.

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This isn’t news to any of us space geeks that have been paying attention to the news.

Boeing’s Starliner Is Such a Disaster That We Don’t Even Have Words

I don’t know if it is just Boeing or if it’s NASA or both that have led to this piece of junk.

Boeing's Starliner, originally intended to serve as an alternative to SpaceX's workhorse Dragon spacecraft, has been nothing short of a disaster.

It's been just over two years since the spacecraft launched to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams on board, a maiden crewed voyage following years of delays and major technical setbacks. But thanks to persistent issues with the thrusters and major helium leaks, the capsule stranded the duo in space for nine months, and eventually returned without anybody on board.

Since then, Boeing has continued to struggle to get its act together — over a decade and a half after it struck up its Commercial Crew Program contract with NASA. As Spaceflight Now reports, the long-awaited follow-up to the calamitous test flight — which won't even have a crew on board — still doesn't have an official launch date and could be as far as a year away.

Not that it really matters all that much seeing as the ISS will only be in service for another 4 years (maybe) and the Starliner will have no reason to exist. NASA has spent a couple of billion dollars (that’s billion with a ‘b’) on this barely functional piece of junk.

It doesn’t help that Boeing is the aerospace company it used to be after McDonnell Douglas took it over years ago and changed from a ‘can do’ engineering company that also built airplanes and spacecraft to one that managed to screw up the venerable 737 airliner, the mainstay of commercial aviation for decades.

Rather than wasting anymore taxpayer money trying to make this hanger queen serviceable, it would be cheaper for NASA to buy Dragon spacecraft from SpaceX...or better yet, hire SpaceX to take care of all its manned mission requirements. At least SpaceX still has that “can do” mindset that used to be part and parcel of NASA in the past and can do it a heck of a lot cheaper than Boeing can.

As someone who has been space geek since Alan Shepard became the first American in space, I have to say that NASA has become one big disappointment.

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I saw this earlier last week and it took me a while to decide whether or not it was good news or bad news. Maybe you can figure out which it is.

Auto Glass Repair Businesses Suffer As Oakland Break-ins Decline

So, it’s good that people smashing glass to break into cars and trucks has declined, meaning less property crimes of that type in Oakland.

But it’s bad news for all the businesses that have been replacing all that broken glass because there’s not as much business as there was in the past.

I’m leaning more towards the “It’s Good News” side of the debate.

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I have to agree with those who think that SNAP benefits should not be eligible to be used for junk food.

Republican Texas Rep. Brandon Gill pressed a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) advocate Thursday on why taxpayers should pay for sugary drinks.

The House Oversight subcommittee examined waste, fraud and abuse in SNAP, a roughly $100 billion program that provides food for more than 40 million Americans. Gina Plata-Nino, director of policy and advocacy for the Food Research and Action Center, could not provide a straight answer on why tax dollars should cover SNAP recipients’ sugary drinks.

“You think they need Coca Cola to survive?” Gill asked. “You think that’s the most appropriate use of our tax dollars? … Do the American people need Coca-Cola to survive? You think there’s some Americans who need Coca Cola to survive? Is that your testimony? … I think most people can rationally say that you don’t need Coca Cola to survive, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I agree that we have a hunger crisis and that we need to address it by ensuring that people have the food resources that we need,” Plato-Nino said.

Coca-Cola, Cheetos, Doritos, Twinkies, and thousands of other ‘junk’ foods are not necessary to meet the nutritional needs of SNAP recipients. That’s just more of our hard earned dollars going to waste and running up the size of the grocery tab while at it.

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I had to read this three times to make sure that it wasn’t a typo or an unlabeled Babylon Bee post. But it looks like it is legit.

Don Lemon Admits Trump Is a ‘Media Genius’ Who Played CNN Like a Fiddle

According to one of CNN’s more infamous ex-anchors, the network’s adversarial relationship with President Donald Trump isn’t actually quite as antagonistic as it seems.

Ex-CNN host Don Lemon — no stranger to recent controversy — recently appeared on the “What Now?” podcast, which is hosted by former “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah.

The two men covered a wide range of topics, all with a heavy leftist slant, but the conversation did get a bit critical of a nominally left-leaning network in CNN.

“Did you guys at CNN ever know that [Trump] was, like, playing you guys like puppets?” Noah asked Lemon. “Did you ever figure it out at some point?”

“Oh, yeah,” Lemon replied.

The 60-year-old Lemon continued: “So, I think, honestly, they maybe knew somewhere in the beginning, but it was good for business. Do you remember Les Moonves? He goes, you know, ‘Trump is bad for the country, but he’s good for business.'”

It seems they didn’t realize that Trump has always known how to play the media. He’s been doing it for decades. He understands how the media works, understands how politics works...though I will admit that he didn’t truly understand how Washington works at the beginning of his first term in office. (He more than made up for that during his second term when he hit the ground running and didn’t waste any time after taking the oath of office.)

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it again – Trump is like a stage magician showing the rubes (the media and the Democrats) the shiny object in his right hand, using it to distract them while with the left hand he’s getting things done.

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In last week’s TOAS, I mention the underwhelming response to the opening of the new Obama Presidential Library.

Now to add insult to injury, it seems that none of the visitors to the Presidential Library could name a single accomplishment by The Won during his eight years in office.

On Thursday, Johnny Belisario, a producer for Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime, conducted a series of “man-on-the-street” interviews with visitors to the newly opened Barack Obama Presidential Center. He had one question: “What has been Barack Obama’s greatest accomplishment?”

The results were startling. Remarkably, none of the people interviewed — visitors who respected Obama enough to honor his legacy at his presidential center — could name a single success.

One middle-aged woman said, “Right now it is, you know, I can’t remember, it was a lot.”

A second woman replied, “I can’t think now. You caught me off guard. … Somebody help me out.”

“I’m gonna have to say just being there,” another responded.

That’s sad. Just sad. For all of the things he has claimed he’s done, visitors couldn’t name a single one? I find that disturbing to no end.

I am certainly not going to claim it was Obamacare, something that has failed spectacularly and made medical even more expensive all while eating up hundreds of billions of dollars. I am not going to say it was all the “racial healing” he brought up again and again, because if anything, he set back race relations years, if not decades.

I will give him credit for one thing, that being the ugliest Presidential Library in US history.

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Fortunately for me it is going to be a short work week as I will be taking a couple of vacation days the extend the Fourth of July weekend. As such, it means I only have to deal with Monday and Tuesday at work, and almost all of that will be paperwork.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where preparations for the Fourth of July continue, the weather looks like it’s going to cooperate (mostly), and where the thought of Monday doesn’t bother me this week because I have Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off.

Nuclear Power Returning To New Hampshire (And The US)?

It looks like New Hampshire is preparing for a nuclear power renaissance, something Governor Ayotte promised when she ran for governor.

Between signing an executive order earlier this year creating a road map for next generation nuclear power and a conference this past week focusing on a return of nuclear power to New Hampshire, with the focus being on Small Modular Reactors, it shows New Hampshire is serious about bringing modern nuclear technology back to the state and to greatly expand its power generation capacity.

The traditional look of nuclear power generation, with the big cooling towers, will most likely not be what next-generation nuclear energy looks like in New Hampshire.

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Small modular reactors were among the topics being discussed at the conference this week.

"This technology, we believe, could provide a real savings going forward," said Jared Chicoine, commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Energy. "When it comes to development, we believe we're a few years away from that, but New Hampshire is taking the steps to investigate what this could mean for us in the future."

New companies like StarCube are working on advanced portable microreactors. StarCube CEO Bill Spellane said it could be some time before such technology is deployed in New Hampshire.

"There's some policy decisions that have to be made," he said. "The ISO New England queue is three to five years long. We are looking to deploy our first reactor in a slightly different way before 2030."

There are skeptics when it comes to next-generation nuclear. Some like its potential to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, but they worry about how expensive it is to produce this kind of power.

The idea behind the use of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) is that they wouldn’t be expensive to build like the previous generation of nuclear power plants like the existing plants in operation, like the one in Seabrook, New Hampshire. The would be built on an assembly line, then transported to the build site, installed, tested, licensed, and turned on. Plants like Seabrook took many years to build, in some cases due to delays caused by lawsuits by anti-nuclear organizations and hostile state legislation that destroyed funding mechanisms that greatly increased the costs of construction. (Seabrook was plagued by both of these problems which caused the original price of $800 million to balloon to $6.2 billion and bankrupted the utility company building the plant.)

Nuclear power, at least here in New Hampshire, won’t be pursuing the old One Big Nuclear Power Plant model as it’s too expensive and take too long to build. SMRs can get the job done much more quickly and at a much cheaper price per megawatt-hour. The SMRs aren’t using “your grandfather’s nuclear technology”. (I have found that a lot of folks who are against nuclear power think we’ll b e building plants using technology from 60 years ago!) The new Generation III and Generation IV reactor technology is better, safer, and cost less money to build, operate, and maintain. Some of them can even use ‘depleted’ nuclear fuel from the older Generation II nuclear power plants for fuel which helps get rid of the nuclear waste problem.

Seems to me we should look more deeply into this across the nation.

Friday Funny - I Wish I Was Your Phone