Thoughts On A Sunday

I spent part of the day Saturday at our local airport for its open house. One of the local aviation interest groups holds what they call “Touch a Plane, Touch a Truck” event which allows local residents the opportunity to get up close and personal with aircraft and ground vehicles of all kinds. One of the more interesting aircraft there was an old Soviet Air Force YAK-52 trainer, similar to the old AT6 Texan trainer used by the US Army Air Corp and US Air Force.

The YAK is configured with tricycle landing gear while the AT6 was a tail-dragger.

There were also fire engines, police vehicles, construction equipment, and a huge snowblower mounted on the front of a loader that’s used to clear the runway and taxiways at the airport after snowstorms.

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That wasn’t the only excitement taking place around here as our town also christened its new fireboat today, replacing a very old and well-worn fireboat that served our town for years. Considering the lengthy coastline of Lake Winnipesaukee and the 200+ islands scattered around the 72 square miles of the lake, a fireboat is a necessity.

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Three elections in the anglosphere have confounded the polls, giving results that were the exact opposite of what the polls would say what happened. Could it be that people are lying to pollsters to keep from being harassed by all of the “right thinking people”?

Brexit, Trump and now the drubbing of Australia’s Labor Party show just how wrong the pollsters have been. If this is any indication I have a feeling this will only get worse for the various polling organizations. When people can be attacked, both verbally and physically, for expressing their opinions, they won’t speak about it but will make it known in the voting booth. As the Progressives have become far more vocal, doxing opponents, and in some cases, physically assaulting opponents and/or damaging their property, their opponents have gone underground, showing their true opinions when it really counts and generating election upsets.

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I’ve written this here before, but it bears repeating as the over-the-top #MeToo movement has generated one heck of a backlash and unintended (but totally predictable) consequences. Those consequences?

Fewer men are willing to mentor women in business because they do not want to risk their own careers should a false accusation be made against them. All it takes is an accusation to end a career. It needn’t be proved. The accusation alone is enough to convict the accused. Even of it is found the accusation is proven false, the damage will have been done and the accused will be permanently painted as an abuser or rapist.

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Why is the Pentagon interested in UFO sightings when in the past they worked so hard to debunk them? Could it be that these days UFO’s are more likely to be advanced aircraft/spacecraft belonging to the US or other nations?

Umm. Yes.

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Despite the warnings of “true believers” about the coming climate catastrophe, most people are now balking at the prohibitive costs of implementing various climate policies. Seeing the effects of those ill considered policies, from rapidly rising energy costs to increasing unreliable energy sources, is it any wonder that the people being affected by such policies are rethinking their support of those policies?

What’s worse is that the proponents of those policies choose to ignore the unproven theories upon which the policies are based are more destructive than doing nothing at all. All one needs to do to see a small example of the disruption such policies have created is to look at what’s happened to South Australia after it implemented a change to renewable energy to generate electricity. To say things have not worked out is understating the problems being experienced there. What we must keep in mind is that the true believers want to do the same thing to the rest of us.

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And that’s the somewhat abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer is fast approaching, the slips around the lake are rapidly filling, and plans for summer vacations are being made.

The Best Comeback Against Gun Control Advocates Ever

I think we’ve all heard the arguments both for and against gun control, with much of the arguments for being emotional in nature and those against being based on statistics. (That is my observation, not from some questionable media source or blog. I can read crime statistics just like anyone else willing to make the effort.)

One of the lamest arguments I’ve heard is equating licensing gun ownership to licensing drivers. One must understand that driving is a privilege and keeping and bearing arms is a right. (By that reasoning the argument could be made that free speech needs to be licensed, too.)

Then I saw the following on the ‘Net and realized those against the idea of gun control could also use a variation of the automobile licensing argument to their advantage:

To stop drunk drivers from causing accidents and killing sober drivers just prevent sober drivers from driving.

That’s how gun control works.

That’s one of the best analogies I’ve seen to dismantle the gun control argument. And you must remember, driving is a privilege that can be revoked at any time for any reason if the state feels it is justified, even if the reason is total bulls**t. That the gun control advocates want to be able to take away your guns for any reason is something that should scare the bejeezus out of every law abiding citizen.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was another traveling week for yours truly, with a second trip down to Virginia in a month. In this case I was in Richmond to run some tests on a customer’s equipment. That part was routine and there were no surprises. But there were two things I noticed all throughout the Richmond area.

First, a lot of pedestrians and bicyclists seem to have no problem with wandering along and across heavily traveled streets with little regards for their safety. I don’t know how many times we almost collected one of those people on the hood of our rental car. I am tempted to look up the traffic accident statistics for the Richmond area to see how many car vs. pedestrian/bicyclist accidents take place compared to the rest of the nation.

Second, the one thing I noticed were the large number of empty store fronts in and around the city. I mean there were a lot of empty store fronts. Some were relatively new looking and others were in established strip malls.

It doesn’t look like things are going so well in the capitol city of Virginia, while things are booming in Norfolk and the Washington DC area. I guess there aren’t enough US government employees in the Richmond area..

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Another thing I found surprising? The CDC report showing Hepatitus A cases have increased by 300 percent over the three past years.

It seems all kinds of diseases we had either controlled or conquered are returning with a vengeance. Measles is back and spreading now that the vaccination rate has declined. The same is true of mumps. Typhus has made a big comeback for many of the same reasons as Hep A - the living conditions of drug addicts and the homeless. There are also the seemingly limitless supply of illegal immigrants crossing the borders, some of which carry once eradicated diseases including drug resistant versions of things like tuberculosis.

To quote the Instaprof, “The 21st century isn’t turning out as I’d hoped.”

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Gee, somehow they sound surprised about this.

The more people see of Hillary Clinton, the less they like her.

I haven’t liked her for years, particularly when she decided she needed to become a senator from New York. She was okay as a First Lady, but once her wider political aspirations came to the forefront I realized she was just another ambitious politician who finally displayed her dark side. Everything prior to that was an act.

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So Alyssa Milano is calling for a “sex strike” as a means of protesting the recent “heartbeat” bills passed?

As if that’s going to work because I know I have no desire to have sex with her. She’s not my type. Now if she were a blonde or redheaded Irish girl that might be a different story….

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Did Representative Al Green (D-TX) reveal the real reason the Democrats want to impeach President Trump?

Yes. Yes he did.

Rep. Al Green (D., Texas) said … that if Democrats don't begin impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, "he will get re-elected."

Green, who has called for Trump's removal from office since 2017 and introduced articles of impeachment that year, told MSNBC that he dismissed the idea that impeaching Trump could help him politically.

"I'm concerned if we don't impeach this president, he will get re-elected. If we don't impeach him, he will say he's been vindicated," Green said. "He will say the Democrats had an overwhelming majority in the House and they didn't take up impeachment. He will say that we had a constitutional duty to do it if it was there, and we didn't. He will say he's been vindicated."

Hasn’t he?

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You know the insanity has spread and is intensifying when California college students equate Chick-fil-A to pornography and Hooters restaurants. (Yeah, I didn’t understand their reasoning either.)

The Cal Poly academic senate passed a resolution Tuesday calling for the removal of the franchise, which has been a campus dining staple for 25 years, according to KCBX. However, the establishment signed a five-year renewal contract with the university just last year, reported the San Luis Obispo Tribune. It also happens to be the only Chick-fil-A in the entire county, grossing $2 million in 2018 sales.

According to Academic Senate Vice Chair Thomas Gutierrez, Chick-fil-A’s donations to “anti-LGBTQ” groups are grounds for removal of the establishment from campus. He claims that these donations don’t align with the university’s values.

But it isn’t Chick-fil-A making those alleged donations, but the owner of the company. It’s not quite the same thing, is it?

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Now #MeToo is getting people killed.

In this case a man gets on a bus in Logan, Utah. A 16-year old girl on that bus calls her 17-year old brother and tells him that the man sexually molested her on the bus. A few minutes later the man gets off the bus and the 17-year old brother sucker punches the man, knocking him to the ground where the man’s head strikes the pavement, causing head injuries and rendering the man unconcious. A few days later the man dies in the hospital from his head injuries.

The kicker? The video from the surveillance camera on the bus shows the man never touched the girl but had merely walked past her. The girl lied, and an innocent man died.

The kicker, part II? The case is still under investigation and no arrests have been made. They know the identities of both the girl and her brother. It is likely the man who died will be laid to rest before his killer is arrested and charged.

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Since the economy is booming and just about everyone who wants to work has a job, it short-circuits any claims the Democrats can make about “how bad the economy is” as part of the ongoing 2020 campaign season. Of course they can try to make the claim that the good economy is only benefitting the wealthy, but the economic numbers are saying the exact opposite.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week that "the evidence shows that most of the economic gains continue to benefit those already well-off." House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer claimed, "wages aren’t growing fast enough to allow millions of workers to keep pace and feel that real economic security is within reach." And Sen. Cory Booker broadly asserted that "Americans are struggling."

This Democratic characterization of Trump's economy is not new. Earlier this year, Kamala Harris said, "The economy is not working for working people.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer complained that “the state of the Trump economy is failing America’s middle class.” And for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the economy is perpetually "rigged" -- whatever that means.

This diversion tactic fails on its merits. Start with unemployment rates, which are at or near record lows for Hispanic, black, female, and young workers. The unemployment rate for Americans without a high-school education, supposedly a group that's been shafted in today's economy, is hovering near a record low. The rate for those with disabilities has fallen by more than 20 percent over the last year to a mere 6.3 percent -- the lowest level on record.

Yet the Democrats will try to sell the idea that the economy sucks and that’s it’s all the fault of Donald Trump and the GOP and that things were wonderful under Obama and the Democrats, something they want to return us to. Yeah, that’ll be a real selling point, telling people who now have jobs that they are better off unemployed and deeply in debt.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has taken a cooler and wetter turn, more boats are appearing at docks, more summer camps are opening up, and Memorial Day is two weeks away.

Thoughts On A Sunday

The boating season here at Lake Winnipesaukee has started. While running errands and taking care of some chores I saw more than a few boats plying the waters, including a couple of marine construction boats heading out to one of the lake’s islands.

Plans for getting the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout launched have been made, with a tentative date of May 14th. I will require the assistance of BeezleBub’s girlfriend to pull the boat gear out of storage and get it stowed away on board before we put it back into the water.

I can hardly wait!

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If you want to survive a gunfight, the best advice is to go back to basics.

As the Instaprof suggests, the first step is to make sure you have a gun.

The second step comes from Robert Heinlein, that being “Get your first shot off fast. That will startle your enemy and give you enough time to make your second shot perfect.”

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Speaking of Heinlein, here are two quotes that are quite timely.

“It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn't the whole population.”

“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”

Sound familiar?

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Taking a look at today’s economic news – record low unemployment, record labor participation, low inflation, rising wages – one has to remember that Democrats want to take all of that away from you “for your own good” or because “you didn’t build that” or because of income inequality or a whole host of other reasons to explain why we don’t deserve economic success and that only the Democrats can provide what they truly believe we need but are too stupid to realize. They’ve been pushing the false narrative that the minimum wage is supposed to be a living wage capable of supporting a family of four and have instituted in a number of cities with the expected “unintended” consequences of job loss, business closures and relocations. They also seem to believe they can cure poverty by impoverishing the wealthy and regulating businesses to the point where they can’t even change the locks on their doors without permission.

As long as you remember that, the Democrat’s economic policies make perfect sense. Too bad they don’t reflect economic realities and will cause damage to America’s economy.

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If murals portraying George Washington in a high school named after the first President of the United States are “traumatizing” the students attending that school, one has to wonder why they haven’t been institutionalized.

Of course, I must wonder whether that is really the case as I have my doubts that it is the students really complaining. (If they are, it might be at the urging of their teachers.) Instead, I think it is more likely one or more of the administrators and/or teachers who are projecting their own feelings of inadequacy as compared to accomplishments of George Washington. After all, this high school is in San Francisco, one of the centers of a spreading mental illness that causes people to try to erase history, eliminate concepts such as manners, and chooses to reverse hundreds of years of hygiene science by allowing defecation in the streets. Or could it be Russian collusion?

In 1936, Victor Arnautoff painted the 13 panels that make up the “Life of Washington” mural at the San Francisco Unified School District campus. Arnautoff was a prominent Russian-American painter who created the murals as part of a Works Progress Administration project undertaken during the New Deal.

Russian-American painter? That’s why! San Francisco, perhaps the most liberal city in America believes their mural colluded with the Russians.

The people in coastal California have lost their minds and the best thing that could happen to the US is that they secede and form their own People’s Republic of Kalifornia (and the rest of the US builds a wall around it to keep them from infecting the rest of the US), or that a major earthquake causes it to slide into the ocean.

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Has Burger King just committed suicide? Not that it’s been all that healthy over the past decade. But offering things like a new menu of meals like McDonald’s Happy Meals may have sounded like a good idea when Burger King’s Powers That Be got drunk that one time and brainstormed this lame concept.

Does anyone really want a DGAF (Don’t Give A F**k) meal?

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It’s telling that even after the successes of the use of stealth technology by the US Air Force during the Gulf War and subsequently in other conflicts, the Russian military has tried its best to denigrate and minimize the importance and efficacy of stealth even as they have been developing their own stealth capability.

The successful employment of the F-117 during the 1991 Gulf War vindicated the utility of stealth. Soviet/Russian opinions, however, were mixed, often assuming a dismissive tone. As former Senior Research Associate at the RAND Corporation, Dr. Benjamin Lambeth, observed in a 1992 RAND study on Soviet/Russian reactions to Operation Desert Storm, “there was a tendency in some Soviet circles after the Gulf war ended to depreciate the tactical advantages offered by the F-117’s low-observability features during the earliest days of Desert Storm.”7 These claims, however, were erroneous, running contrary to findings by the comprehensive Gulf War Air Power Survey (commissioned by the USAF following the war), which concluded that USAF “EF-111s never provided jamming into the Baghdad area during the first strikes, so that F-117s that attacked the first targets in the capital… flew into, over, and through the heart of the fully operating air defences of Baghdad with no support from electronic countermeasures.”

Our stealth technology has evolved since then, is being more widely deployed by the USAF as well as the Navy and Marines, and along with networking capabilities that act as a force multiplier by giving our forces better situational awareness, knowing where the enemy is as well as where it is not.

That’s something not easy to beat.

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A new experiment has proven the Double-Slit Experiment also works with anti-matter which means that it keeps with quantum theory.

Who says there’s nothing new to discover?

All they need to do now is figure out how to build a warp drive.

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From the Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider Department comes this.

Apparently the SJWs have their knickers in a twist over Brie Larson’s portrayal of Captain Marvel because she’s a white heterosexual female. They have demanded she step down in favor of a gay woman of color.

Really? This crap has gone too far. Hollyweird should tell them to go to hell, that they aren’t going to bow down to these snowflake idiots who seem to believe their opinions and ‘feelz’ outweigh everyone else’s wants, needs, or demands.

Maybe the only option is to nuke Hollywood from space. It’s the only way to make sure the madness doesn’t spread.

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If we need yet another example of why we should be ignoring the demand we switch a majority of our electrical production to renewables, all we need to do is look to Sweden and the major negative effects that country has been suffering when they started in that direction.

From a financial point of view, the push to renewables has never made sense to me. The numbers didn’t add up, particularly the all-in costs that also took the tax incentives/subsidies into account. From an engineering point of view renewables have never made sense to me either because of both technological issues that have not been resolved (storage) and resistance to construction of the powerlines needed to get the power from wind turbines, solar arrays, and other renewables to where it is needed.

New Hampshire saw that when a major powerline that would bring cheap and clean hydropower from Quebec into the state was killed off because of over-the-top NIMBYism and BANANA foolishness. The objections were based upon appearances even though the more critical and visible paths would have seen the powerlines buried and out of sight. What’s ironic is that many of the same people who worked to kill of the powerline project complain bitterly about the cost of electricity and the size of their electric bills. Talk about cognitive dissonance!

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the number of boats on the lake are increasing daily, more boats are being pulled out of storage, and summerfolk have been starting to get their cottages and lake houses ready for the summer.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was an uneventful weekend here at The Gulch with just routine chores to take up our time. The only exception was dinner with my dear brother and his wife. We went to one of our favorite restaurants, knowing it would be one of the last we’d be eating there until after the summer season.

Some of the seasonal restaurants have opened their doors starting this weekend and will be open only on weekends until Memorial Day weekend. Other seasonal businesses have opened this weekend or will be opening next weekend, including some of the local farm stands.

It’s hard to believe that the unofficial start of summer is only a month away. But with that in mind I have already made arrangements for the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout, aka The Boat to be prepared for launching and hope to get it into the water some time in the next two weeks.

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This isn’t something I would expect to hear in the second decade of the 21st century.

A professor of anthropology at Dartmouth College has come to the conclusion that “the mere presence of a gun, especially if one makes physical contact with it, can transform a good person into a bad one.”

Does this academic truly believe in magic, most particularly the Law of Contagion? It certainly appears to be the case. He’s certainly implying that the occult has some power over the fate of people near guns.

Is this what passes for serious academic research these days? If so, we are doomed.

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I knew the human feces issue in San Francisco had become a real problem, but that it has required the creation of a “poop” map to keep people in San Francisco informed of where human waste has been piling up shows just how bad it’s become. The same problem has been appearing in New York City, where the derelicts see no issue with dropping trou and defecating on the sidewalks and walkways.

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It has become evident the anti-vaxxers are starting to reap the rewards of what they have sowed through their willful ignorance and belief in pseudoscience. Measles, a disease once vanquished here in North America, has returned and done so with a vengeance. Measles is easily prevented through vaccination, but difficult to treat once it has established itself. It is one of the most contagious diseases known. Yet the anti-vaxxers have chosen to not have their children vaccinated based upon a fraudulent study, since withdrawn. Now the bill for having done this has come due and it is their children who suffer. Some will be damaged. Some will die. And all of it was preventable.

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What happens to your business when you intentionally insult and piss off half of your potential customer base?

You go out of business, and rightfully so.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the last vestiges of winter have melted away, tress are budding, and boats are appearing at docks around the lake.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Between the warm temperatures and heavy rain we’ve experienced over the past few days much of the snow and ice that was still surviving in piles and shadowed areas has disappeared. Not that it’s all gone by any means as there are still sheets of ice out on portions of Lake Winnipesaukee. Ice out has not been declared yet. (Ice out is defined when the MS Mount Washington cruise ship can make all five ports of call.)

Thoughts of time out on the lake in a boat have been becoming far more frequent as the weather have been increasing every day.

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A rather heated discussion about President Trump took place between me and the oldest of the WP Sisters yesterday.

She made it perfectly clear that she believed that Trump was an awful president, not because he wasn’t getting things done, but because of his “rude and crude” tweets.

I did remind her that Trump is not a politician, at least not in the traditional sense, and that he speaks his mind. I also reminded her that his public persona is not his real persona. It’s a suit of clothing he’s put on whenever he’s doing business, and that’s the one that so many see. He knows how to get things done behind the scenes. It’s that ability that makes him effective as a president.

A metaphor I have used on more than one occasion is that Trump is a stage magician, showing everyone the shiny object with one hand while performing the trick with his hidden hand. That’s how he’s managed to get so much done with little MSM/DNC attention. Business-killing Obama era regulations have been eliminated one by one, reducing the regulatory burdens by billions of dollars for American businesses, big and small. There are still more he regulations he is working to eliminate, many which were out in place to more tightly constrain business with no real justification for doing so other than proving that the government was in charge. (I have never understood how anyone can believe more and heavier business regulation has ever improved economic performance. I couldn’t find any instances where that’s been true.)

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This is an idea I can get behind>

President Trump has considered relocating illegal immigrants awaiting deportation/amnesty hearings to sanctuary cities, something that had many of those ‘sanctuary’ cities crying foul because in effect Trump is calling their bluff and trying to make them live up to their rules. Now one mayor of a sanctuary city – Burlington, Vermont’s Mayor Miro Weinberger – has challenged Trump to send as many illegal immigrants as he wanted to send.

I’m sure the mayor’s constituents will just love having all of those illegal immigrants from Central and South America flooding northern Vermont and will welcome them and everything they bring with them with open arms.

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Speaking of Burlington, Vermont, it’s former mayor and now US Senator Bernie Sanders is proving once again that facts need not apply when it comes things like renewable energy, nuclear power, and CO2 because his uninformed opinion is much more believable than actual numbers from both the feddle gummint, Vermont state agencies, and independent organizations.

Then again, socialists and communist don’t like being confused by reality, otherwise they wouldn’t be socialists or communists, would they?

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Oh, yeah!

Do you want to Make America Great Again? Then let’s Make Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Bartend Again!

One thing that might cement AOC’s One-And-Done time as a member of the US House is the accompanying video satire pulled of by an eight-year old.

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It seems that New York State has had a problem with state tax revenues falling by $3.7 billion.

While state officials have tried hard to lay the blame at bookkeeping changes and/or the limiting of State And Local Tax (SALT) deductions on federal tax returns to $10,000, the truth is more likely that taxes and fees have reached the point of diminishing returns. One has to wonder if the New York State tax-and-spenders will learn the lesson being learned by neighboring state Connecticut where successive tax-and-spend/regulate-to-death legislatures and governors have so damaged the state that cities are verging on bankruptcy and both major corporations and wealthy taxpayers are leaving in increasing numbers to escape the now hostile business environment.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee this Easter Sunday, where church services were well attended, Easter dinners were eagerly consumed, and where almost all of the ice is gone from the lake.

Thoughts On A Sunday

The weather was beautiful up here in central New Hampshire yesterday, with temps just missing 70°F. I opened a few windows here at The Gulch to air things out a bit, something the feline contingent here enjoyed. It was almost as warm today, but with a little bit of rain now and again.

Still, it wasn’t a bad weekend weather-wise. However the lake is still iced over though we are seeing some open water here and there.

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From the “Just When I thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department comes this howler from Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR).

In true tax-and-tax-and-tax-and-spend fashion, Wyden has put forth the idea to tax unrealized capital gains on an annual basis, meaning rather than taxing capital gains when finally paid out, he would have the government tax them every year whether or not they are paid out. In other words, you wouldn’t have to sell off your stocks in order for the government to tax your theoretical capital gains, and they would do it every year. That the idea is unworkable, unwieldy, and would be expensive as hell to implement and maintain hasn’t crossed the Senator’s mind. Oor if it has he really doesn’t care because it’s not about collecting more revenue, but about punishing investors. (That investors include things like pension funds and retirement accounts seems to have escaped the Senator’s notice.)

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Another item from the “Just When I thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department is AOC’s unthinking slam against Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s (R-TX) tweet in regards to Ilhan Omar’s diminishment of the actions of Muslim terrorists on 9-11. Then again, most of what AOC does is unthinking, driven by feels and her Marxist indoctrination. Is it any wonder she’s known as Occasional Cortex?

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Paul Craig Roberts opines that America is no longer a nation.

The America in which I grew up and lived my early adult life was a nation. Over the course of my life I have watched my country turn into a Tower of Babel. Homogeneity and shared values permitted us to understand one another. This doesn’t mean that there was uniformity or that things were perfect. A Baptist wasn’t a Catholic. A WASP was not a black laborer. A female was not a male. Blacks and poor whites had a hard time becoming middle class, but it could be done. It was possible for middle class people to become “well off,” but difficult to become rich. Immigration was controlled, and the reduction of inflows had helped the Irish and Italians to integrate into society.

Police were helpful and didn’t burst into homes with guns blazing or rough you up on traffic stops. On important issues, compromises could be reached and reforms implemented. English was the language. If you telephoned a service provider, utility, or bank, you quickly were connected to a real person capable of handling every aspect of whatever you were calling about. Today you wait through the Spanish language option for the robo-voice listing the options that might have something to do with the reason for your call. The companies save money and make profits by imposing their service costs on customers.

Technology seems to have worsened the functionality of society. Diversity and multiculturalism definitely have. It used to be that taking or giving offense was something that good manners prevented. Today members of those groups that are entitled to be offended are ready to take offense at any excuse. Today it is easy for a white person and a male to give offense without intending or even knowing that what he did or said was offensive.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

(H/T Knuckledraggin’ My Life Away)

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I thought the possibility that President Trump would consider having illegal immigrants dropped off in sanctuary cities would be poetic justice. (It’s so much better than ‘social justice’ which has absolutely nothing to do with actual justice.)

When then-Senator Harry Reid exercised the ‘nuclear’ option in the US Senate, the Democrats chose to ignore that the rules change he made would some under the sway of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Now that so many blue cities have decided they wouldn’t help ICE by detaining illegal aliens if they were arrested for other crimes, and in some cases worked against ICE by obstructing them in the performance of their duties, it seems only fitting that they now be made to live by the rules they themselves have created. They may also come under the sway of the Law of Unintended Consequences. It would serve them right if all the illegals seeking asylum were dropped of in all of those nice sanctuary cities. Let them take care of them if they care so much about them.

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Despite the fact that this is about a year old, it lessen the message: What White Privilege Lessons Did To My High School.

The story boils down to this: students were called into a mandatory assembly, topic unknown. A ‘panel’ of experts spent time talking to them about diversity and the evils of white privilege. At the beginning of the ‘indoctrination’ the kids were a group of high school students. At the end they were no longer high school students, but oppressors and the oppressed. Unity amongst the student body no longer existed. It was whites oppressing everyone else. Comradery was replaced by anger, recriminations, and incipient hatred.

All these ‘diversity’ experts managed to do was divide students, foster anger and hatred, and then leave, feeling they had “done something” even though that something was damaging and racially charged. No one came away better off from that indoctrination. No one. And these assholes see this as a positive.

That whirring sound you hear? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spinning in his grave now that all of his work is being undone all in the name of ‘equality’.

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If the media didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.

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I always thought nonconformity was a paradox. This is why.

Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformists who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform to with nonconformity. – Eric Hoffer

I was something of a nonconformist nonconformist during my high school years. Everyone had long hair and wore bellbottom jeans. My hair was quite short, and I wore what are now called boot cut jeans, and either work boots or ‘cowboy’ boots. I had more than a few of my fellow students comment about my “giving in to the Man” and I usually countered with something along the line of “So you want me to be different, same as you?” They usually didn’t know what to make of that and that was fine by me.

(H/T Moonbattery)

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One would think that state Democrats would learn the lesson from previous years and not go for ‘crazy’, but you’d be wrong. In this case the New Hampshire Democrat majority legislature decided they absolutely needed to increase state spending by a whopping 13% and boost state taxes and fees by almost 17%, ignoring the facts that closely controlled state spending increases and tax cuts have done more to help the economy of my home state recover quickly from the Obama years and have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the entire nation. But they felt the uncontrollable urge to undo all of that and try to bring back the bad old days of the Obama economy, and smiling while they sabotaged the New Hampshire Advantage.

The question is whether or not our GOP governor will wield his veto pen and kill off the Democrats plans to damage our economy and more heavily burden the taxpayers of our state in order to make themselves feel better about themselves for having done “something”. That kind of something we don’t need.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice is thinning, work on getting boats ready for the summer has started, and where I’m hoping the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout will be on the lake in 4 weeks.

Thoughts On A Sunday

I got a little bit of a late start on this week’s TOAS as I am still revering from my day trip down to Washington, DC late this past week. I can say that I did the appropriate precautions, mainly making sure that I had my Beltway Mind Alteration Force Field Protection Shield (i.e. tinfoil hat) in place before entering the Beltway environs. I know it was working because as I got closer to Washington, my shield became warmer.

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One thing I noticed from my single day down in Washington is that TDS is quite prevalent. About the only place I didn’t witness TDS was at the customer site I was visiting, techies like myself (but not like those seen in Silly Cones Valley).

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Bernie Sanders is still getting it wrong, just as he always has. In this case he is lambasting the “right-wing authoritarians backed by a network of billionaire oligarchs,” while ignoring the left-wing totalitarians backed by a network of billionaire oligarchs, totalitarians who would have no problem eliminating Bernie once he was longer of any use to them.

It doesn’t help things that Bernie’s definition of ‘democracy’ is different from most other folks. Why he would want to inflict that kind of democracy on people proves to me that he really doesn’t like people because he certainly is doing his best to make sure everyone is going to be equally miserable, equally fearful, and equally disposable by The State.

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If we need more evidence that even state level Democrats are totally effin’ clueless when it comes to guns and violence, all one needs to do is look to New Hampshire, where the Democrat-majority legislature has pushed legislation that will make schools and school-owned property “Gun Free” zones. The legislation is so broad that an otherwise law abiding citizen carrying a gun would be in violation of the proposed law if they passed a school bus out on the road. Anyone paying attention knows that Gun Free Zones are merely feelgood actions. They provide no security (other than a false sense of security), signal pissed off people with a grudge that there are plenty of free fire zones available to vent their rage.

The legislators have been acting as if gun violence is epidemic in New Hampshire, but New Hampshire is one of the safest states in the nation with a very low violent crime rate. It is a constitutional carry state and a large percentage of its citizens carry concealed. The only shootouts that have taken place in recent memory is one between a notoriously violent drug dealer and local and state police. The drug dealer didn’t survive, though he killed two fellow drug dealers and wounded two police officers before he was brought down by police.

Would Gun Free Zones have made any difference in this event? Of course not, but that wouldn’t stop our anti-gun legislators and their supporters from making a claim to the contrary. They don’t let data, facts, or statistics get in the way of their beliefs.

These ‘beliefs’ have also extended into other legislative areas as well, such as so-called ‘Red Flag’ laws that will violate due process for law abiding gun owners, increased fines and fees, increases in rooms and meal taxes, adding new licensing requirements for occupations that have not required them before, as well as downshifting more state costs to towns (something inherently unconstitutional) and trying to impose a stealth income tax by calling it a family leave fee to fund family leave for workers that do not already have such perks or insurance coverage. (Everyone knows the Democrats will then expand that ‘fee’ to pay for all kinds of nice-to-haves they deem as need-to-haves as a means staying in power.

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When is property tax relief not property tax relief? When Democrats (again in New Hampshire) raise taxes and fees by $417 million and then return $12 million (a measly 0.3%) of the taxes collected to the towns. I see that as an excuse to increase taxes, not the actual reason.

It’s the old bait-and-switch.

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And that the abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice still covers the lake, snow is predicted for Monday, and everyone is prepping for summer.

Thoughts On A Sunday

The weather here in New Hampshire was schizophrenic over the weekend, with temps in the southern end of the state in the 60’s and in the upper 30’s in the northernmost part of the state on Saturday. It reached 45° here at The Gulch.

Such is the weather here in New England.

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If you thought the Democrats focus on Trump would subside now that the Mueller Report has exonerated him in regard to Russiagate, you were wrong. If nothing else congressional Democrats are going to double down on stupid, continuing their witch hunt…er…investigation of Trump’s collusion with the Russians during his election campaign. The just know he had to have colluded with the Russians (even though it was Hillary’s campaign that did that). It is the only explanation for Hillary’s loss in 2016 they’ll accept.

As Senator Ted Cruz explained it to CNN’s Dana Bash:

“Yesterday, the Mueller report was going to be the end all and be all. It was going to be the salvation for the Democrats and destroy President Trump. Now, you can already see the Democrats pivoting away and saying, 'Okay, we need to do other investigations. There's gotta be someone else. There's gotta be the Southern District of New York. It's gotta be the New York Attorney General. It's gotta be Congress.'”

“But, Dana, my point is, you ask Congressman Nadler whether the House is going to impeach the president and I'll answer that for you. Yes. They fully intend to impeach the president and they don't care about the basis," Cruz explained. "Twice Congressman Nadler said something remarkable. He said, 'Listen, the special counsel's focused on crimes. We're not all that concerned with crimes. Our focus is – this is Democrats in the House – is much broader than crimes.' What they're basically saying is they're going to impeach the president for being Donald Trump and they don't care about the evidence, they don't care about the substance."

Cruz is absolutely right. The House is going to move forward with impeachment proceedings, regardless of what is found. Just remember: we had freshman Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) talk about "impeaching that mother f**ker" on her very first day in Congress.

Democrats won't be happy until Trump is no longer in office. And now their witch hunt will continue.

One has to wonder whether this obsessive need to “get Trump” will become so all consuming that House Democrats will abandon the rest of their congressional duties to do so. If so, President Trump will have them right where he wants them.

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Ed Driscoll gives is a Spring Fascism Preview, a head’s up for the upcoming Earth Day and Venezuela’s involuntary participation in Lights Out for Earth Hour.

Then again, Venezuela has been participating in Lights Out every day for weeks now and it looks like they will continue to participate for weeks to come.

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At least one prankster is finding out the hard way that “swatting” someone is not a prank.

In this case, Tyler Barriss, a gamer living in California, called the Wichita, Kansas police, “pretending to be a deranged man with a gun holding members of his family hostage, giving what he believed was the target's address.” The problem beyond trying to swat a fellow gamer, Shane Gaskill of Wichita, is that he gave the police the wrong address.

The police arrived at the home of Andrew Finch, someone in no way connected to the dispute between Barriss and Gaskill. In the end Finch was shot dead by Wichita police as one officer thought he was reaching for a gun as he came out of his front door.

Barriss was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for Finch’s death in a Kansas federal court. It seems like justice has been served, right? Maybe not.

It isn’t that Barriss is getting off easy. He’s not. Barriss isn’t going to a nice “country club” federal prison, but a “take it up the butt” federal pen. One other thing he’s not: remorseful.

"I love swatting kids who think that nothing's going to happen," Barriss said in a YouTube interview hours after Finch's death.

In April, the incarcerated Barriss briefly gained access to the Internet—and he took the opportunity to demonstrate that he had learned nothing from his time behind bars.

"All right, now who was talking shit?" he tweeted on April 6, 2018. "Your ass is about to get swatted."

Barriss is an ass, one that who still hasn’t learned that actions have consequences, that life isn’t a game of Call of Duty (which is what prompted the dispute between Barriss and Gaskill to begin with) where one can push ‘reset’ or start a new game if things don’t go right. I have a feeling he’s going to learn the hard way that he isn’t all-powerful in prison. Instead, he’s going to end up being someone’s “bitch”.

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Just when I think congressional Democrats couldn’t get any more arrogant (or clueless), one of them proves me wrong. In this case, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), one of my state’s senators, has decided that her Senate seat belongs to her and, more specifically, to the Democrat Party in perpetuity. She has also branded anyone that doesn’t support her as ‘thieves’. From Shaheen’s office:

This is it, friends. The GOP is starting to build up its operation to steal this seat and protect its Senate majority.

After CNBC one of the two most endangered Democratic senators in the country, an out-of-state, right-wing group started running attack ads against us. Not long after, Ted C ruz started trying to recruit a far-right conservative to run against me.

And the worst part of it all? It’s working. A recent poll showed me tied with right-wing Gov. Chris Sununu. And if we lose, it will all but guarantee a Republican majority in the Senate for another two years. (emphasis in original – ed)

She only seems to dislike out-of-state groups if they aren’t supporting her. Double standard much, Senator? That she seems to believe that her senate seat belongs to her and the DNC shows her belief that the Democrats are a permanent ruling class and anyone that wants to disabuse her of that notion are criminals. The thing is, if she gets her way, anyone disagreeing with her or the DNC will become criminals and will be disposed of accordingly.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the lake is still iced over from shore to shore, more thoughts of the coming boating season are intruding, and where Mondays keep ending our weekends all too soon.

MSM-DNC And Their Lackeys Scrambling To Find Something On Trump

After watching a couple of days worth of the MSM-DNC reactions to the Mueller Report and all I can say that it appears the media is trying to spin things around to still make President Trump guilty of something. They couldn't get him on collusion with Russia (though it looks like that might be something Hillary and the DNC might have to worry about), so now they want to see him fall based upon obstruction of justice charges, something Mueller couldn't pull off after 22 months of investigation.

Of course the Congressional Democrats want to pick up the mantle, desperate to find something with which to charge Trump and members of his administration. That they hate Trump with a passion, are pissed off at him because he beat Hillary (How dare he!) is not in question. It is something they cannot hide, nor have they tried very hard to do so.

Those who lambasted Trump, wringing their hands at the prospect of impeaching him are now scrambling, trying to change the narrative to make it seem as if they weren't really after Trump's hide. Some have even gone as far as to condemn their brethren for the rhetoric they spewed over the past 22 months.

It's been pathetic.

In response to Hillary's loss in 2016, the Democrats are trying very hard to change election law to make sure that no one but Democrats will ever win the White House or Congress again. Democrats on the state level have been trying to subvert the Electoral College with legislation that basically strips the voters in their states of their voices. As I have mentioned in other posts, Colorado has pushed legislation that will award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of the election results in Colorado. The Democrats in Colorado have basically just told their citizens that their votes for president don't count anymore, that heir electoral votes will be decided by voters in other states. I have to ask yet again, how can that be constitutional?

I see a trip the United States Supreme Court in the future for the Attorney General of Colorado to defend such an anti-American piece of legislation.