Thoughts On A Sunday

Here we are, the last weekend of April. How time flies.

We had Ice Out on the lake just a little under two weeks ago. More boats are appearing on the lake and boat slips. I see other boats being “de-winterized” in preparation for being put back in the water. (Mine is one of those boats.) One of my favorite seasonal restaurants has opened again, though only on weekends and only the ice cream stand is open for now. Our local Dairy Queen has also reopened. We have also seen road repair/reconstruction starting up again, with one of those roads affected being one I take to get to and from work. More yard work is being done, cleaning up the detritus of the past fall and winter. (I still haven’t started on yard work here at The Gulch…yet.)

We’re slowly shaking off the last reminders of winter.

Heck, I might even run the trusty RAM 1500 through the car wash later this week.

==++++++==

As I was driving to and from my Sunday morning pre-church shopping at Wal-Mart, I saw the electronic billboard for our local concert venue advertising another act that will be appearing this summer. The act?

Bob Dylan.

Yet another member of the Before I Get Too Old Or Die Tour making an appearance.

==++++++==

It has become more apparent that there is no one party “running the show” in Iran. That certainly explains the conflicting messages everyone is getting from Iran. It also points to the possibility that Trump is playing 4-D chess while the various Iranian ‘government’ factions are playing checkers. (Ironic considering chess was likely a Persian invention and the term “checkmate” comes from the Persian Shah Maht which translates as “The King is dead”.)

As Roger Kimball notes, “Trump isn’t negotiating with Iran—he’s dismantling its regime piece by piece, leaving a hollow state with nothing left but bluster and collapse.”

I wonder if the thugs and theocrats who have been plundering Iran for the last 47 years have read Chekhov. If so, I conclude that they are slow learners. In January, the Iranian authorities slaughtered more than 40,000 protesters—Iranian citizens, mind you, who were fed up with the oppressive death cult that has been oppressing Iran since the dour clown Ayatollah Khomeini waddled off that plane from Paris in Tehran in 1979. Over the course of about a month this past winter, the US assembled a huge military presence in the waters around Iran: two aircraft carrier strike groups and innumerable air assets.

An update: There are now three aircraft carrier strike groups in the waters around Iran. The US military has sunk every ship in the Iranian navy, is using A-10 Warthogs to take out Iranian gunboats firing on ships or laying mines the Straits of Hormuz. They have blockaded Iranian ports to prevent ships from entering or leaving those ports. Iran has no income, cannot ship oil anywhere, and can’t receive aid in the form of military arms from the likes of China or Russia. They are in a weak negotiation position.

And then there’s this:

The Iranians have been engaged in a Persian version of the Lobster Quadrille, blustering, pretending to negotiate, then walking off in a huff. As I write, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are en route to Islamabad, Pakistan. They were supposed to be going in order to negotiate with the Iranians. But, as usual, the Iranians, once negotiations were announced, are playing hard—not hardball, mind you, but their coquettish version of hard to get. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is in Pakistan. For talks? Yes. Wait, make that No. Witkoff and Kushner were supposed to go to negotiate. But Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency says that no talks are slated to take place. Vice President JD Vance was “standing by,” just in case the negotiations turn out to be serious for once. In the event, they didn’t. At the last moment, Kushner and Witkoff got out of their 17-hour plane ride and JD got to go to the White House Correspondents Dinner.

My question about this is just who we would be negotiating with? The nominal civilian government, of which there seem to be more than one faction? The IRGC which seems to have factions within that organization? Who would we be negotiating with, and if we did would they have the power to honor the terms of any agreements reached?

If previous performance is any indicator, then I doubt it.

More of those in power in Iran need to be removed one way or another before that will happen.

==++++++==

From the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department comes this gem:

British Internet Providers May Have To Ration Access Due To High Energy Prices

Really? Something sounds fishy.

Mobile network operators have warned they could be forced to ration phone signal access to combat soaring energy prices triggered by the war in Iran.

In a stark warning to the Government, telecoms giants including VodafoneThree, Virgin Media O2 and BT-owned EE said they were drawing up emergency contingency plans after being excluded from Rachel Reeves’s energy support scheme.

These include rationing access to their networks or slowing down speeds to help reduce energy use. Another option is surge pricing, which would charge customers an additional fee at peak times.

Is this really due to higher energy prices? Or is the UK government using this as an excuse to start limiting access to the Internet under the guise of saving energy? I think it might be both, though the bigger portion of that is rising energy prices. While they have been laying much of the blame for this on the Iran War, much of it must be laid at the feet of the UK government and their push of their Net Zero policies.

The British government appears disconnected from the reality of energy expenses and seems unwilling to address the economic distress affecting what remains of Britain’s industrial base. Their repeated promises that affordable renewable energy solutions are imminent, or that their grid-ready nuclear fusion facility in Nottinghamshire will be operational by 2040, primarily resonate with those already committed to climate-focused policies rather than convincing skeptics or addressing immediate business concerns.

What good does a nuclear fusion facility do today when it might be ready 14 years from now? They need energy now. They know how get the energy they need, but are ignoring them in favor of renewable energy sources that are too variable and not readily dispatchable. I have three words for the Brits when it comes to this:

Small Modular Reactors.

‘Nuff said…

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where were seeing more amenable spring weather, the trees are starting to bud (and some already have leaves showing), and Monday is rolling around again to bring an end to another weekend.

Guilty Pleasures

I have a confession to make.

I am a YouTube junkie.

While I look at all kinds of videos running the gamut from New Hampshire stuff to cat videos to military news to the goings on in China to the history of World War II to the relationships between men and women, there are videos covering two particular subjects I like watching above all the others, those being dashcam and reaction videos.

If nothing else I like dashcam videos because the show us just how clueless, idiotic, dangerous, lucky, or good some drivers can be. Some of the incidents are not much more than fender-benders. Some have me wondering how anyone survived some of the worst accidents depicted. Yet others have me shaking my head when road rage incidents take place for no reason I can figure. And yet others have me scratching my head wondering how so many accidents take place at certain intersections.Two intersections in particular make it onto YouTube constantly, one on the East Coast and the other on the West Coast.

The East Coast intersection is in Charleston, South Carolina. There is a webcam located at 783 Meeting Street pointed at an intersection next to that address that shows accident after accident after accident. Two side streets have stop signs while the main road – Meeting Street – does not. Vehicles constantly run the stop signs on the side streets and are either hit by vehicles on Meeting Street, or they hit vehicles on Meeting Street. Sometimes there are multiple collisions at the same time. But as many accidents that take place there, the West Coast intersection has even more accidents.

The West Coast intersection is in Fresno, California where Friant Street and Shephard Avenue meet. It is a tee intersection with Shephard being the side street and Friant being the main drag. What makes this more ‘interesting’ is that there is a traffic light at that intersection and people on Friant Street moving away from the webcam run the red light there with regularity. You will see that sometimes the videos from that webcam are labeled as “Friant Roulette”, an apt title. For the life of me I can’t figure out why motorists run that red light constantly. I haven’t seen any of the vehicles approaching the webcam in the other direction ever run the red light. I haven’t seen any videos showing vehicles on Shephard running that red light. (Yes, it could be that they do take place, but with nowhere the frequency we see in the ‘dangerous’ direction.) While there have been only 42 collisions on record between 2020 and 2024, I have seen dozens of accidents well above that number showing up on YouTube.

The reaction videos cover both music and movie clips. I admit that I really enjoy music reaction videos when Gen Z and Millennials listen to music or watch music videos of songs from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Probably the biggest reactions I see are when they react to music from Pink Floyd, ELO, Queen, and Boston. More than a few have made the observation that their own music sucks. Then again, back then there was no auto-tune, artists had to be good, and synthesizers either didn’t exist or were in their infancy. They are amazed at how good the music was back then.

The movie clip reactions are also fun, seeing people react to scenes from movies they have never seen or watched years ago but barely remember. I think some of the most popular movie clip reactions I’ve been seeing recently come from Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, SpaceBalls, John Wick, The Avengers, Thor, the Jack Reacher movies and TV series, and Ghost Rider.

I also like some of the so-called HFY stories (HFY = Humans, F*ck Yeah) where humans are feared not because they’re an evil race, but because they come from a Death World (a world where everything is trying to kill them – the weather, the flora, the fauna, bacteria, viruses, earthquakes, floods, and other humans) and survive things that would kill alien races. They are also very good at war.

One other thing that has been popping up on YouTube are AI generated videos showing Chuck Norris showing up in all kinds of other movies. Some of them are quite good.

I could go on and on ad nauseum, but I think you get the idea.

Frankly, I am more entertained by some of the YouTube videos than anything I see on TV.

Friday Funny - The Secret

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been raining all day here at the lake, something we’ve needed statewide as the ground is quite dry and flammable. There have been brush fires here and there due to the dry conditions, but this day-long soaking rain will certainly help reduce the fire risk, at least for now. It has also meant that any outside work at The Gulch has been postponed. Not that there’s a lot to do, but it looks like it isn’t going to be taken care of until next weekend. It also means that I couldn’t move some of the last pieces of furniture from my ex’s garage to BeezleBub’s house. At least he and I can take care of that sometime during this coming week.

I’ve noticed some of the summerfolk have been up, opening their summer camps/cottages/houses. I have no doubt some of that is purely to determine if any repairs are required after the ‘normal’ winter we experienced may have caused some damage. I have also seen a few more boats tied up at a few slips in the cove where the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout is berthed during boating season. I don’t expect to see a big surge of boats being launched for at least a few more weeks starting about one or two weekends before Memorial Day. (It still amazes me that almost one-third of 2026 is already gone!)

==++++++==

One thing I have been seeing and hearing about is why it is not a good idea to buy new cars, between some of their vulnerabilities older cars do not share and dealerships not really wanting to sell new vehicles for cash.

Addressing the second issue first, it seems that too many car dealerships are more interested in selling the financing for a new vehicle rather than the new vehicle itself. I have seen a couple posts and videos about this (I couldn’t readily find them to link as I wasn’t smart enough to bookmark them at the time), as it seems the dealerships make more money through the financing rather than just the sale of the vehicle. There was more then one account of dealerships trying to discourage cash purchases of new vehicles and pushing customers hard to finance their purchase instead. Why would they do that unless there were some kind of financial incentive to do so?

Then there’s the problems with newer vehicles as they aren’t as reliable or as hardy as those that are 20-years old or older. Most of the older vehicles either have less computerized control of all functions or none at all. The powertrains in older vehicles were designed and built to last. The vehicles in general are easier (and cheaper) to service then newer vehicles. Most do not have touchscreens that are ubiquitous in today’s vehicles and that’s a good thing. It explains why smart drivers are buying 20-year-old cars without screens.



One of the reasons I have been working to keep the trusty 2014 RAM 1500 running has been the replacement cost. As I have mentioned in other posts, it would cost me about $80,000 to buy a 2026 version of my RAM. That’s more than three times the cost of its original MSRP in 2014. However, my salary hasn’t increased more than three times since then and paying about $1100 per month in payments is not appealing to me…or anyone else, for that matter.

It is cheaper for me to pay for repairs to keep the trusty RAM 1500 running than to buy a new one. Even though I have laid out about over $7500 over the past 4 years for repairs and body work, it’s a lot cheaper than new truck payments. There is one more thing that needs repair and will be taken care of later this summer is replacing the heater core which has become clogged. (There is an aftermarket fix to prevent it from happening again once the core is replaced and that will cost me an extra $100 to have installed.) I keep up with all the scheduled maintenance, abd have had it inspected every year per state law. (That law was repealed so annual inspections would no longer be required, but I would still have a ‘wellness’ inspection done every year to make sure everything was in good condition.)

Another reason to get an older vehicle is that most of them use switches, dials, and buttons to control vehicle functions like heat/AC, fan speed, temperature, headlights, windshield wipers, radio volume and tuning, and so on. Too many of the modern vehicles require use of a touchscreen to control most of those functions. However, switches, dials, and buttons are making a comeback as the auto industry has found that: 1.) Motorists hate using the touchscreen for standard functions; and 2.) it’s dangerous using the touchscreen while driving because the driver must take their eyes off the road to use them. So-called ‘muscle memory’ that lets us use those switches, dials, and buttons without needing to look at them doesn’t exist when it comes to touchscreens.

I must make a note that while my trusty RAM 1500 does have a small touchscreen, it only controls the radio/media player (but not volume or manual selection) and some settings like date and time. There is no built-in GPS navigation system. Also the ‘cell phone’ function (mentioned in the video above) that allows the automakers to collect data from your vehicle no longer functions in my RAM because it was a 3G system and that system was shut down years ago.

I think I’ll keep my pickup, thank you very much.

==++++++==

I have been listening to the media reporting that Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz and doing so with glee. They see it as a failure on the part of President Trump. However, I have a different take on this that I doubt the media would care to ponder:

The Iranian government is fractured, and no one knows who the heck is running things.

One faction negotiates with the US, agrees to open the Strait. Another faction, likely the IRGC, says “No it isn’t! Everyone pays a toll and we’ll blow up any ship that tries to transit the Strait.” That would certainly explain the disconnect.

I think it’s time to send the A-10C’s back into the air and start sinking Iranian gunboats again.

==++++++==

Just when I thought the media couldn’t get any stupider, they prove me wrong.

In this case it’s The Atlantic that has decided to commit suicide by publishing a story making all kinds of accusations against FBI Director Kash Patel with absolutely no proof whatsoever. They can cite nothing that proves any of the allegations.

The response?

The FBI denied every word of it before the article ever went live. Attorney Jesse Binnall sent a formal letter to The Atlantic and Fitzpatrick ahead of publication, putting them on notice that the claims were "categorically false and defamatory."

--snip--

The bureau's response was even more direct: "Print it, all false, I'll see you in court — bring your checkbook."

They printed it anyway.

I have a feeling this could be the beginning of the end for The Atlantic.

You know it’s bad when the National Enquirer is a more reliable and believable source than much of the rest of the media, including The Atlantic.

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the rains are now fading away, the temps are getting a little cooler, and where Monday is returning to plague us again.

Up And Down And Around

It has been a very “up and down” week this past week, at least when it came to the weather up here in New Hampshire. Some days the daytime temps were in the 60’s or 70’s in central parts of the state and others only in the lower 40’s. Nighttime temps ran anywhere from just above 32°F to somewhere in the mid-50’s. The windows at The Gulch were open on more than a few days…and nights. And now we’re headed for cooler temps over the next couple of days and then back into 50’s and 60’s. It’s been sunny on most of the warm days…but fully cloudy, too. We also had thunderstorms sweep through right around bedtime just the other night. (It was really kind of neat seeing the flashes of lightning lighting up the lake and the surrounding hills and mountains as they swept across the lake and hearing the rumble of thunder echoing off the hills and along the lake.)

I’ve seen the landscaping crews that take care of the neighborhood around The Gulch cleaning up the post-winter detritus. Some neighbors have already picked up mulch to spread around their homes. (It’s mostly mulch around the homes here so there’s no lawn to mow.) I will be doing likewise once I take care of few things prior to picking up some mulch.

Starting next week, I’ll be prepping to get the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee out of storage, get it cleaned up, mount a new fire extinguisher near the helm, install a new out-drive angle indicator, ‘new’ being a relative term seeing as I bought it from a salvage yard. There will also be some cleanup in the cockpit as I wasn’t able to remove all the dog hair from the carpeting before the boat was stored for the winter. There are also a few small fiberglass repairs that will need to be taken care of before the end of the boating season, the damage being cosmetic rather than structural. If things work out then I’ll be launching to boat sometime during the second week of May.

The last of the work needed to restore the two WP computers is almost done, having made sure that I have downloaded the last of the configuration files I need so I won’t have to reconfigure the desktop and apps manually. I am also making sure I have copies of all the files from both computers backed up on external drives. I have been taking my time as I didn’t want to screw anything up that might cause any issues. I have also been looking at resurrecting another desktop computer with the idea of turning it into a backup server for all computers here at The Gulch with the exception of my work laptop. That gets backed up to the servers at work and any active files I’m working on are copied to a separate external drive “just in case”. (That’s saved me more than a few times when our work network was down or when I lost my Internet connection due to bad weather.) I hope to have everything back up and running by next weekend.

And in other technology news, I finally made the changeover from my old Samsung Galaxy A50 to the new Galaxy A54 I picked up a few months ago. My carrier had offered me one heck of a deal, and I couldn’t turn it down. My A50 wasn’t in the greatest shape but it worked. But it got to the point where I was having some problems and the battery didn’t have the capacity it once had, so I made the changeover. It wasn’t bad as Samsung had clear instructions about how to activate the new phone and deactivate the old one. There was also an app that allowed me to transfer over all of the settings, apps, files, photos, messages, contacts and so on from the old phone to the new one. There were also a couple of YouTube videos I watched that ran through the process step by step.

The difference between the A50 and A54 isn’t anything startling. Yes, the menus looked a little different. The A54 is a 5G phone while the A50 is a 4G/LTE phone. I haven’t really noticed any difference in connectivity to the cell network so far, but then I didn’t really expect any. I don’t have any better connectivity to the cell network here at The Gulch than I did before and will still rely heavily on my WiFi network to make calls and to text.

One last thing, that being gas prices. My ‘go to’ gas station where I buy my gas for the trusty RAM 1500 reached a high of $3.89/gallon for regular before it fell to $3.71 towards the end of last week. It will ne interesting to see where it will be when I pass by Monday morning while on my way into work.

Friday Funny - Argument

Thoughts On A Sunday

Restaging the two WP computers I mentioned yesterday is coming along, though slowly. This is not a “reload the OS and copy files” operation so much as it is a reload, copy files, and ensure all bookmarks/login name/passwords have made the transition properly. Pulling those files is not as easy as just copying as sometimes those configuration files are hiding. But at least it is coming along.

As an aside, Ice Out was declared on Lake Winnipesaukee at 6:49AM EDT this morning. It is slightly earlier than the average date by 6 days, but no one is complaining. I have already seen a few boats out on the lake, most likely contractor boats and boats of those folk checking on how their island properties fared over the winter. I have already seen a few boats at their slips near where I dock the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout. (I won’t be launching that until around the second full week of May.)

I took the WP Mom for a drive around our little town yesterday to show her parts of town she rarely sees. While our town doesn’t have a large year-round population we do have a lot of land area, with about 50% to 60% more land area than many of the surrounding towns. But much of our town’s population lives closer to the lake than to more mountainous terrain on the other side of town. She says it always surprises her when she sees just how big, but sparsely populated our town is compared to other towns in the Lakes Region.

==++++++==

I did something else today that was scary.

I filed my federal income taxes.

While it didn’t take long to fill out the ‘paperwork’ (I did it online), it was a little daunting. But I got it done and found I was getting more of a refund than I usually do. This was mostly due to the change in tax laws that meant my overtime pay wasn’t being taxed and the higher Standard Deduction for us old folks.

My refund didn’t increase all that much as I usually ‘tune’ my W4 to keep any refund around $100 to $200. I’d rather have the ‘extra’ money in my bank account over the year than in the feddle gummint’s accounts.

With the extra refund money I might go out and have myself some food from our local Wendy’s someday.

==++++++==

Yeah, this isn’t a surprise to anyone that has paid attention over the past 20 years or so. The quote below is pretty much dead on:

An entire generation of men was repeatedly told "gender is a social construct" only for them to have the rug pulled out from under them because of their gender which the law has evidently decided is very much not a social construct.

Germany has instituted a military draft…but women are exempt. It has also implemented a restriction on men between the ages of 18 and 45 from leaving Germany without permission.

So much for equality.

==++++++==

You know the Democrats’ latest rhetoric and push to both impeach and “25th” Donald Trump has gone so far over the top that even CNN is sick and tired of it.

On Saturday, CNN's Michael Smerconish delivered a scathing rebuke of Democrats’ rhetoric and methodically dismantled their favorite talking point that Donald Trump is mentally unfit to serve as president.

Smerconish began by recalling Bill Maher's now-infamous dinner with Trump at the White House last spring, which triggered the predictable meltdown from the left — including Larry David mocking Maher in the New York Times under the headline "My Dinner with Adolf."

"In a choice between two of my favorite comedians, I stood with Maher on [the] theory that it's better to have dialogue and to break bread than to demonize," Smerconish said. Maher had dinner, went right back on television, and kept up his criticism.

As you know, it was Trump's Truth Social posts during the Iran war that really set things off for the Democrats this past week, sparking the talks of impeachment and the 25th Amendment. The problem was, it worked, and 90 minutes before Trump's deadline, Pakistan brokered a two-week ceasefire.

Funny how that works.

Of course they never mention that it was both Obama and Biden who helped strengthen Iran’s theocratic dictatorship during their time in office by ‘returning’ money to the tune of billions of dollars that Iran used to try to develop nuclear weapons and fund terrorist operations around the world, including against Muslim countries. Heaven forbid they should point the finger at one of their own.

And so it goes.

==++++++==

Why would this surprise anyone…including the people living in LA?

It appears the definition of ‘affordable’ does not apply when it comes to ticket prices for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Event organizers consistently promoted tickets as “affordable,” but that wasn’t the case when LA residents got early access to tickets this past week. Despite the promise of tickets starting at just $28 (including a 24% service fee), presale lottery winners saw ticket prices soar into the thousands.

…“They told us that prices were going to start at $28 and that they were going to stagger the most coveted tickets so everyone had a fair shot,” Kelly Burson told The Times. “Either that was total incompetence or a total lie.”

Burnson bought two tickets for a swimming event at $1,230 apiece, and three tickets for the decathlon finals at $1,600 each.

Some prospective buyers reported a price tag of more than $5,000 per ticket for the Opening Ceremony. A few events on presale were simply listed as “unavailable.”

It appears their definition of affordable is entirely different from everyone else’s definition of the term. While I haven’t followed the Olympics nearly as much as I did in the previous century, it looks like I will be doing as so many others will be doing – watching the Olympics on TV.

It could be because I am broke that I couldn’t afford tickets to any of the Olympic events. I’m not.

It could be that I have no desire to go anywhere near the Pyrite State. I don’t, but that’s not the reason even though just getting there and finding lodgings will be difficult.

It’s just my Yankee frugality saying “Oh, HELL no!” when it comes to spending that kind of money to watch sports in person, particularly when I can use that money for something more useful and productive.

No, if I am going to watch the Summer Olympics in 2028 I’ll be doing it the same way as millions of others. I’ll watch it on TV from the comfort of my own home for free.

==++++++==

Is this true? Is the Left baffled and repulsed by the White Working Class?

Yes. Yes it is.

After failing to win Congress and the presidency in 2024, the Democrats conducted an internal postmortem of what went wrong. While they predictably did not divulge the full results, everyone knew what they had found.

Their obsessions with the low side of 30/70 issues had especially alienated Democrats from white middle- and working-class voters. Yet middle-class whites still comprise about 40–50 percent of the population and are perhaps overrepresented in voter turnout.

Democrats realize that their fixations on biological males competing in women’s sports, open borders and millions of illegal entries, radical green agendas, DEI-driven racial essentialism, and massive government entitlements rife with fraud have alienated the middle classes in general and white middle- and working-class voters in particular.

The question is will they be able to stop doing this or are they so clueless that they’ll keep angering their constituents, particularly middle-class votes regardless of their race, they they’ll be able to win elections and control of Congress, the White House, and state houses across the US?

Somehow, I don’t think they can. To quote Ronaldus Magnus, “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." If that is indeed so, it explains a lot.

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where Ice Out has been declared, thoughts of the upcoming boating season intrude, and where I still have a lot of work to do on the WP computers,

Computer Stuff

As you may have noticed, I haven't put up my usual Saturday post. I have been deep into computer restoration, reviving not one, but two of the Weekend Pundit computers - one desktop and one laptop.

I have taken some time restaging them because thrre was some data I needed to recover before doing the job and I finally was able to do so over the past week or so with help from folks on one of the Linux forums.

I will post the usual Thoughts On A Sunda, though it may not be quite as big as usual. Time will tell.

Wish me luck in getting both of these computers fully restored.

Friday Funny - Marriage Differences

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a cool and rainy Easter Sunday up here at the lake. The WP Mom and I attended the Easter service at our church this morning and then went to one of our favorite local restaurants for Easter dinner. The rest of the day has been low key, not taking care of anything else except some laundry and some light housekeeping. I needed a day off considering just how busy this past week has been between work and helping my ex-wife, Deb, finish moving in to her new house down the street from The Gulch. This included a few trips to the dump, moving some things to BeezleBub’s house, and some things to mine. (I had emptied out our storage unit this past Monday and some of the things there ended up in her garage even though they belonged either here or at BeezleBub’s.)

Despite the cool and rainy weather today I saw that more of the ice on the lake was gone as compared to yesterday. I think Ice Out will be declared sometime this week. That brings us closer to when the first boats will appear on the lake and start filling the boat slips. I’m hoping that mine will be launched sometime during the second week of May, well before we start seeing the summerfolk up here.

==++++++==

I heard about the rescue of the American Airman shot down over Iran, but not the details. Then I came across this which certainly explained quite a bit and dug into the different viewpoints about men versus materiel.

“Americans place a high value on the lives of our soldiers. Equipment and shells could always be replaced.”

Read The Whole Thing. It explains a lot between our philosophy and those of our enemies…and allies.

==++++++==

I heard this news the other day – the jobs report – and saw that 178,000 new jobs had been created in March.

Like any jobs report, I know the numbers will be corrected later as more definitive data becomes available. During the Biden Administration is seemed the jobs numbers were always adjusted downwards…and during the 2nd Trump Administration it seems they have been adjusted upwards.

I guess we’ll find out for sure in a couple of weeks.

==++++++==

Hmm. I have to wonder how the Climate Change Cultists will handle this bit of news:

An inconvenient tree found in the Alps shows climate was warmer 6000 years ago.

In 2014, a massive Swiss stone pine (Zirbe) log weighing 1.7 tons was found in the retreat area of the Pasterze glacier at an altitude of 2,060 meters. The tree from which the log originates is dated to be 6,000 years old.

Dr. Steiner points out that no trees of this size can grow at that altitude today because it is currently just too cold, suggesting that 6,000 years ago, temperatures in the Alps were significantly warmer than now. That’s evidence that climate alarmists would prefer to censor.

How will believers in the Mann Hockey Stick graph explain this one away? Not that actual data was used to generate that graph as a belated random data analysis showed the algorithm used to generate the graph was designed to show that particular result. It didn’t matter which data was used with the algorithm, the hockey stick appeared in the graph. Some claimed it was just a poor Monte Carlo analysis that caused the problem, but I have to wonder as a single proxy – tree ring data - was used to generate the data. If memory serves, the proxy data came from a single geographic area rather than using proxies from around the world.

I expect the rending of clothing and tearing of hair among the Climate Change Cultists to commence in 3…2…1…

==++++++==

I have wondered about this, too.

Why don’t the left at least want to get rid of the really bad guys who are here illegally?

It seems like one heck of a paradox, doesn’t it? One would think they would have no problem with deporting criminal illegals, those that have been committing crimes both here and back in their home countries, particularly violent crimes. But you’d be wrong.

It seems they are even more vehement in their ‘protection’ of violent felons than they are for “those immigrants, even those here illegally, who have been committing no crimes other than those related to being in our country illegally, those simply trying to live a decent life for their families and themselves, being respectable members of their communities.”

I cannot wrap my mind around how the Left would be pushing so hard to keep the violent criminals here? I figure there is some ulterior motive for keeping them here, and in some cases, releasing them back into the general population. Could it be they want to foment a crime wave and the chaos that goes with it for some kind of political gain? Or are they just that deluded that they cannot see the problem?

Or worse, could it be a bit of both?

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice is receding, some warmer temps are on the way, and Monday is once again returning to ruin our weekend.