Thoughts On A Sunday

There was no post yesterday, obviously. I do have a valid defense, however.

I was down in the Boston area attending my high school reunion.

I didn’t have my laptop with me, hence no post. I didn’t get back to The Gulch until just before midnight and all I wanted to do was go to bed. I didn’t even get arlound to cleaning the feline contingent’s litter box until this morning. (Yes, I know that makes me a bad cat dad.)

One thing I noticed during my trip to the reunion was the very heavy northbound traffic as leaf peepers were heading into New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont to catch the brilliant fall foliage. Even southbound traffic was affected as a trip that would have taken me about two hours to the reunion venue took almost three hours, the traffic hangups taking place at highway junctions. At least on my way home there wasn’t much in the way of traffic to slow things down.

This morning I noticed the higher than normal traffic when I was making my usual pre-church Walmart run. A lot of the ‘extra’ traffic had out-of-state license plates, meaning they were likely leaf peepers getting an early start (a little past 7 this morning) and hitting some of the diners for breakfast.

We are pretty close to peak colors here in the Lakes Region so this might be the peak leaf peeper traffic we’ll be seeing...until next year.

Oh, and the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout is being pulled from the water today. My boating season is over.

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So much for ‘spontaneous’ support of Kamala in Philadelphia.

==++++==

Matt Margolis is asking the question “Is Kamala’s campaign collapsing?”

Seeing the recent shift in campaign tactics, I’d have to say the answer to Matt’s question is “Yes”.

The one that sticks out the most is her questioning Trump’s health and ability to do media appearances. That’s laughable considering Kamala (or her handlers) worked to avoid open media events.

This shift was inevitable. Kamala is a terrible campaigner who thought she could get away with not doing any interviews for weeks, and she still hasn’t done a single press conference. Yet she's trying to accuse Trump of being too "exhausted" to do media appearances. She spent weeks avoiding unscripted media appearances, and when she finally started doing them, they were with friendly networks with interviewers who openly support her. She's trying to hit Trump on his age and stamina now because, frankly, the issues aren't working for her.

The reason why Kamala changed her media blackout strategy to a media blitz strategy is that the polls were telling her that the voters wanted to know more about her and her vision. Voters know Donald Trump and have already made up their minds about him. Yet, she hasn't figured that out yet. She won't get anywhere trying to give people reasons to vote against Trump, she needs to give voters a reason to support her, and she's proving once again she has no idea how to do that.

Her entire campaign has been about attacking Trump, period. You don’t win a campaign by focusing all your efforts on trying to paint your opponent as a “poopy head”, particularly if you put zero efforts into promoting reasons for people to vote for you.

==++++==

And the hits keep on coming.

You know it’s bad for Kamala if even a cultural icon like Lizzo is saying outright that if Kamala becomes president, the country will be like Detroit. It so happens that I agree with Lizzo even if she didn’t realize she’d just thrown Kamala under the bus.

Lizzo claimed if Harris wins next month the country will look like Detroit, which is honestly not a good thing.

The singer brought up supposed voter suppression, too. She claimed people discourage youngsters from voting.

Ugh, Lizzo also reminded us that Harris has spent her entire career in the public sector. Yeah, another career politician.

How can Harris possibly understand the economy when she has no experience in the private sector?

Talk about being absolutely clueless and disconnected from society. One would think a “cultural icon” like Lizzo would know better. Instead we get someone who knows very little about how things actually work making statements that has done more to damage Kamala’s campaign than help it.

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Has Michigan been taking lessons from the city of Chicago about how to fix elections? It appears so considering the state has a lot more people on its voter rolls than there are eligible voters in the entire state.

One has to ask this question: Just how many of the dead will be voting Democrat in the upcoming election?

It’s being reported now that Michigan has way more people on their voter rolls than there are voting-age residents in the entire state and that’s a huge concern given that it’s a battleground state.

According to the report their voter rolls have nearly half a million more voters on the list than the 8 million voters in the state.

Around 8.4 million people are registered to vote in Michigan, but that’s nearly 500,000 more people than the total number of voting-age residents in the state.

The inflated voter rolls in Michigan, a vital battleground state in the 2024 election, are one of the largest imbalances in the country, Bridge Michigan reported. The Republican National Committee sued Michigan Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson over the inflated voter rolls earlier this year, along with filing lawsuits over other election-related issues in the state, but Benson’s office dismissed the concerns on Wednesday, arguing that the lawsuits “lay the groundwork to overturn the results of the election if they don’t like them.”

--snip--

Secretary of State spokeswoman Angela Benander told Bridge Michigan that the GOP’s legal challenges “are an attempt to cause people to question the process.” The spokeswoman added that Michigan is expected to clear 606,800 inactive voters from the rolls, but that won’t be completed until 2027. Federal law requires voters to be removed from the rolls by state or local officials if the state is notified that they moved to a different state or if election mail sent to their home is returned as undeliverable. Voters are also removed if they do not vote in two consecutive federal elections.

How in the hell does it take until 2027 to get inactive voters removed from the state’s voter rolls??? That right there is how you know Michigan officials want cheating to occur because it should only take months to do this, not multiple years.

I have to agree that it looks like the perfect setup to commit election fraud, particularly since it the state won’t purge the voter rolls until the year before the 2028 presidential elections. But by then the damage could be done and the Michigan state government won’t care. But the rest of the nation could be paying the price...and become Detroit.

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That this is just now coming to the forefront is disturbing to no end, “this” being the Left’s war on straight, white masculine men.

This is something that has been discussed in the so-called ‘Manosphere’ for years now, but it’s gotten to the point where it is difficult for even the most brain-dead person to ignore.

The Left has been waging war on straight, white masculine men for quite a while now. According to liberals, we’re the one group it’s okay to discriminate against, the one group where no one should have a voice, and the one group we need to replace in America. In fact, simply speaking out AGAINST DISCRIMINATION aimed at straight, white, masculine men makes liberals angry.

--snip--

In fact, name ANY GROUP that Democrats care less about than dudes that just want to be dudes. Particularly straight white dudes who want to be dudes. They care more about the Palestinians. More about Ukrainians. They care more about illegal aliens.

When they’ll start placing sanctions on straight, white masculine men, some twisted version of the Jim Crow laws that discriminated against our black citizens back in the Bad Old Days? Will there be restricted seating on buses, on airplanes which relegates straight, white masculine men to the proverbial ‘back of the bus’? Will they be restricted to dining in certain sections of restaurants, or banned outright from eating with people who aren’t straight, white masculine men?

Just how bad will it get?

==++++==

How long will it take for the “tax the rich into oblivion” Democrats to realize their plans to tax the bejeezus out of everyone, not just the rich, will collect less revenue than they believe will be collected?

I doubt they will ever be able to be convinced of that truth despite mountains of evidence showing that belief is wrong.

Earlier today I came across a claim from Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who said that Donald Trump's tax cuts brought in a record amount of revenue.

An old House GOP Ways and Means Committee post from April 2022 backed that claim by suggesting, "Total federal tax collections, including payroll and other taxes, are on track to reach $5.04 trillion in FY22, or 21.0 percent of GDP. This would be a new all-time high in both cases."

To your liberal friend or relative, such a number does not make sense. How does reducing taxes make more money for the government?

It's quite simple. Just ask: "Would you rather collect 20% of $100,000 in taxes or 20% of $1,000,000 in taxes?"

If they say 20% from one million, say that you, as the government, should incentivize people and businesses to make that million dollars as easily as possible. And thus, to do that, you should not tax them as heavily.

As a result, because everybody is making more money, the amount of money they pay in taxes is greater, even if they are all paying at the same rate, which also makes a flat tax more sensible than a progressive one.

Do the Democrats really want to boost revenues, or do they want to use confiscatory taxes to impoverish the wealthy who aren’t Democrats while also destroying the middle class? I am inclined to think it is more the latter than the former. If they are truly interested in boosting revenues, maybe they should look at the evidence and check out the Laffer Curve.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the trees look like they are on fire, the leaf peepers are here looking at them, and where I am still feeling the afterglow from my high school reunion.

Friday Funny - Test Drive

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s Columbus Day Weekend and the leaf peepers have arrived in droves. It isn’t near peak here at the Big Lake but it is up north in the mountains. We knew it would be a busy weekend for traffic when the youngest WP Sister made the drive up to The Gulch from her home in Massachusetts, a trip that normally takes about 2 hours. This time it was a 4 hour marathon as traffic was heavy and bumper-to-bumper...and she left her home at just past noon on Friday. Between the leaf peepers heading up early – the weather for it being very good on Friday and Saturday but not so great for Sunday and Monday due to rain – and other folks coming up to finally close up their cottages and summer homes and pull their boats from the water, get them winterized and into storage for the winter, there’s been a lot of heavy traffic. (My boat comes out next weekend as I didn’t want to get anywhere near the docks and boat ramp in our town this weekend.)

The restaurants have been busy, even here in the Lakes Region. While the summer businesses have been closed since just after Labor Day, the year round businesses are seeing plenty of customers, a bit more than I recall seeing this time of year. It’s the “last gasp” of the tourist season and once the fall foliage is gone so will the tourists. It will be quiet until ski season arrives around Christmas time.

And so it goes.

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One thing I have mention is that the younger WP Sister is our family’s token liberal. Talking to her while she was here made me realize she’s imbibed in too much of the Kamala Kool-Aid, as she thinks that she’s been an effective Vice President, US Senator, California AG, and District Attorney. It tells me she really hasn’t bothered to do her own research, looked at Kamala’s record, and is swallowing the MSM propaganda whole. To my dear little Sis, she walks on water and is akin to the Second Coming.

I can only hope that when or if she realizes that Kamala’s image is as real as a cartoon that it won’t crush her.

We’ll be here for her should that happen.

==++++==

I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d like Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance. After hearing about this little back and forth between Vance and ABC’s Martha Radditz, I can say I do like “the cut of his jib”.

Raddatz: "The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes… A handful!"

Vance: “Do you hear yourself? Only a handful of apartment complexes were taken over by Venezuelan gangs and Donald Trump is the problem and not Kamala Harris' open border?"

Only a handful? There should be none.

==++++==

This post dealing with Gen Z mental illness being a lifestyle had me thinking, and this is the comment I made:

I suffer from mental illness...not mine, but other people's. This is particularly true of the woke whose delusions about themselves drive me to distraction, if not a little crazy.

I'm too busy to spend time feeding other people's delusions.

As we all should be.

==++++==

One thing that shows the election is less than a month away?

The explosion of campaign signs.

While they have been around here since mid-August due the state primary, it seems like they have multiplied by an order of magnitude since then. They’re everywhere, particularly the ubiquitous 2ft x 3ft campaign signs that line every road and intersection.

The wide range of offices up for grabs running the range between some county offices like Clerk of Probate, to the NH House, NH Senate, Executive Council, Governor, US House of Representatives, and President and Vice President, of course. (Neither of our US Senators are up for reelection this year, but one will be in 2026.) The local office campaign signs far outnumber the rest, but then I would expect nothing less.

One of the more interesting things about all of the signs will be how long it will take before all of them have been taken down. They are supposed to be taken down within 7 days after the election, but more often than not it takes a little longer than a week for them to disappear. Some reappear come spring when the snow is finally gone, though those are few and far between.

All I know is that I will be glad when the calendar says November 6th and this election foolishness will be past us...until Town Meeting in March.

==++++==

We keep hearing that the only way to “Save Democracy” is to elect Kamala Harris. But we’ve been mishearing what Kamala and her ‘supporters’ have been saying.

We think they’re saying “democracy” when what they’re really saying is “democrisy”. The definition of “democrisy”?

A fusion of democracy and hypocrisy, something that has little to do with freedom.

This is what the Democrats and their puppet Kamala Harris have in mind for us.

==++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where mid-fall weather has arrived a little early, the leaves still haven’t changed here yet, and where we don’t have to worry about Monday this week because it’s a holiday.

Is Mental Illness Is Just Another Path To Victimhood?

I came across this about mental illness over at Instapundit and I have to say it immediately had me nodding my head as I had to agree with the premise, that being mental illness is more prevalent today than in the past, and that too many people their mental illness “is an important part of [their] identity.” As I saw in the comments:

My generation grew up looking for frogs and sh*t.

Your generation grew up looking for a WiFi signal.

We are not the same.

I have to think that might have had something to do with it. And then there’s this:

Boomers were free-range children, outside in the sunlight.

The youth today are over scheduled and inside too much.

I have to wonder if mental illness is just another way for some people to claim victimhood, perhaps as a means of not having to grow up and be an adult.

Friday Funny (Saturday Morning Edition) - Things That Don't Make Sense To Engineers

It being a holiday weekend and having family coming up for a visit kind of screwed up my day yesterday and I didn't get around to posting my usual Friday humor post. It happens now and then, this being one of those times. But better late than never.

And now, without further delay. I present a (rather) late Friday Funny:



Being an engineer, I find I agree with everything he listed.

Thoughts On A Sunday

We’ve been seeing fluctuating temperatures here at the lake, with them swinging between above normal and below normal high temperatures. In other words, a typical fall weather pattern. The foliage colors are changing across the area and I expect them to hit peak here right around the coming holiday weekend. This also means that my boating season has only a couple of weeks to go before the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout is pulled from the water, a couple of weeks earlier than usual.

Normally the boat would be pulled out at the end of the month, but the boatyard I use to winterize and store the boat has changed hands as the original owner retired and sold his business. The new owners have a ‘cutoff’ date which is two weeks before I would usually pull the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water. However, I am not complaining as there have years when I’ve pulled the boat out of the water earlier than usual.

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Reading about and listening to reports on TV about the inadequate government response to Hurricane Helene, particularly when it comes to western North Carolina, has me wondering just what the hell is going on. With FEMA officials threatening volunteers with arrest if they try to get aid and help to the areas requiring such help and the FAA issuing NOTAMs (Notice To Airmen) banning flight operations in the affected area by civilian aircraft capable of delivering supplies to affected areas, I have to wonder if it is incompetence or malice driving this.

Knowing the Biden-Harris administration as we do and seeing how they have handled everything since January 2021, I have to say it’s both. Nothing else explains the weak and wholly inadequate response. Both President Biden and Vice President Harris had more important things to do than deal with the widespread destruction, like vacation and a Nevada fundraiser, respectively.

Government nonfeasance and interference reached the point where reports were appearing the North Carolina State Police and/or a number of Sheriff’s departments were threatening to arrest federal government officials interfering with ongoing emergency operations. Whether this is accurate is not known (at this point), but it sounds like a darned good idea, particularly if it’s true that FEMA has been “actively blocking shipments” of relief supplies.

On top of that, the feds have threatened to arrest one civilian helicopter pilot if he continues to fly relief/rescue missions.

The GOP should be hammering the Biden-Harris administration for its weak response and the apparent lack of interest in getting help to a disaster zone. Trump should keep reminding people at every rally and speech about the administration’s disdain for people who aren’t “them”.

And then there’s this as a possible motive for slow-tracking relief efforts, “this” being that most North Carolina voters back Trump, but will have a hard time voting come November, something which will work in favor of Kamala Harris.

Am I being cynical about possible motives to leave those North Carolina residents in dire straits? Or am I on target?

Axelrod noted that many victims of Hurricane Helene in the region are primarily Trump supporters, which could impact their ability to vote in the upcoming 2024 election. He mentioned that while Democrats in Asheville are likely to find ways to vote, those who have suffered extensive losses in western North Carolina may not be as easily mobilized for the Trump campaign.

--snip--

A number of communities in Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee have been devastated by Hurricane Helene, including massive structural damage and flooding in Ashville, known as the San Francisco of the South. The fact that Axelrod would even raise this, instead of expressing concern for the welfare of hurricane victims, speaks volumes in which he has essentially said the quiet part out loud.

It is abundantly clear that the Biden-Harris administration is deliberately delaying or preventing recovery efforts in North Carolina and other swing states as Election Day approaches. This done in hopes of gaining some sort of electoral advantage come November 5th.

Of course this could backfire, particularly if Trump makes it a topic during his campaign over the next four weeks.

==++++==

Seeing Kamala Harris’s frozen teleprompter moment reminds me of Obama, someone who was quite articulate...as long as he had a script, but foundered when he had to speak off the cuff. It seems to be a common problem with the previous Democrat president as well as the present Democrat President and Vice President. (At least SloJoe has the excuse of dementia. Harris does not...which might explain why she never speaks unscripted.)

==++++==

I saw this video this morning and I have to admit that if the woman in this video was for real, then we have a real problem.



Talk about a self-centered and selfish individual!

The YouTube guy lambasting this woman put his money where his mouth is. He understands what’s happening in western North Carolina. She’s friggin’ clueless...and entitled.

==++++==

Speaking from an engineering point of view, more people need to be aware of the downsides of EVs, particularly when it comes to safety and specifically when it comes to the batteries. EVs have their issues, one of them being that they aren’t really “green” considering the the environmental issues with the extraction of the materials needed for the batteries and the electric motors. And then there’s the human cost considering one of the materials used to manufacture the lithium-ion batteries – cobalt – is mined by children and slaves. This is something devoutly ignored by EV proponents because it is inconvenient to The Narrative.

And then there’s the safety issues which have been increasingly in the media, with the batteries being one of the major ones.

It is now, or should be, common knowledge that electric vehicles—cars, trucks, buses, bikes, scooters—under conditions of even low humidity or water damage, are prone to catching fire, owing to the unstable nature of the lithium-ion battery. As Chris Morrison writes at The Daily Skeptic, EVs are known to explode “with the force of a bomb blasting super-heated jets of flame, melting and decomposing nearby structural materials including metal and concrete, and sending vast amounts of toxic fumes into any enclosed atmosphere.”

Jammed into underground parking garages or packed in ferries, EVs are harbingers of almost unimaginable disaster—ecological and safety menaces to which the Net Zero fanatics among our political leadership are comatosely indifferent.

We have witnessed lethal battery explosions in South Korea and elsewhere with significant loss of life. QBE Europe reports that such fires are increasing at a worrisome rate and explains: “Lithium-ion fires are the result of thermal runaway, where batteries start to irreversibly overheat, usually due to impact damage, over-charging or over-heating... The resulting explosive fire incidents are significantly more energetic [than ordinary fires], causing extensive damage, and potentially injury or even death.” They cannot be readily put out and will often re-ignite.

While proponents claim EV fires aren’t nearly as numerous as claimed, one has to remember that there aren’t all that many EVs on the road compared to ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) vehicles. As mentioned in the quote above, “they cannot be really put out and will often re-ignite”, something local fire departments have found out the hard way when dealing with EV fires. They have to douse the burning vehicles with tens of thousands of gallons of water, not to extinguish the fire but to keep it from spreading to other vehicles or nearby structures until it finally burns itself out. That the number of EV fires has been increasing doesn’t help.

A lot of parking garages won’t allow EVs to park on lower levels, requiring them to park on the top level if it is open to the sky in case there is a fire. Chargers are located on the top level for the same reason.

As I have mentioned on more than one occasion, a work I am the “Battery Guy” in our engineering department. I remind my colleagues the lithium-ion batteries we use in our instruments are really unstable incendiary grenades with a loose pin. We over-designed the battery charging, management, and safety systems to help reduce the possibility of a catastrophic battery failure, and even then we wonder if it will be safe enough. Those are generally single cell battery packs.

Now picture EVs with thousands of battery cells, and all it takes is for one of those thousands of cells to fail, overheat, and ignite to start a cascade failure that turns the EV into an incendiary bomb. That cell can be one that is weaker than the thousands of other cells, was damaged while the battery pack was being built or installed in the EV, or was ‘tweaked’ during an accident that eventually caused it to fail and ignite.

Yeah, I think I’ll stick with ICE vehicles as they seem to have less of a propensity to spontaneously ignite.

==++++==

That’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the leaves are continuing their change to their fiery fall colors, the traffic on the lake is a fraction of what it was a month ago, and where we’ll be spending as much time out on and around the lake looking at the colors as we can.

How Convenient

When I heard the September jobs report on last night’s local news, my first thought was “Oh, how convenient for the Harris campaign.” Considering how many times over the past three-plus years jobs reports have been revised downwards, in some cases by quite a bit, I am skeptical that new jobs are suddenly well above expectations. The timing is suspicious, at least to me. I have to wonder if those wonderful September jobs numbers will be revised heavily downwards the day after the election?

If those job numbers are not artificially inflated, then I have to ask whether they were because of the actions of the Biden-Harris administration or in spite of them? Seeing the employment numbers track record of the present administration I am heavily inclined to believe it is the latter rather than the former.

The latest report states the U3 unemployment rate is ~4.1% and the U6 rate of 7.3% which includes the U3 rate (unemployed but collecting unemployment benefits) plus those who are unemployed but no longer collecting benefits and those who are underemployed (working but in jobs that pay less then their previous jobs or only working part time).

It will be interesting to see what the job numbers look like after the election on November 5th.

Friday Funny - Vintage SNL - Point/Counterpoint

This is from when Saturday Night Live was relatively new and cutting edge comedy.

Thoughts On A Sunday

We’re starting to see more trees shifting from green to the reds, oranges, and yellows of fall. While peak foliage colors aren’t expected to be seen here until the first full week of October at the earliest. The “leaf prognosticators” have predicted the colors will be brilliant, but they will appear quickly in an explosion of colors, and then fade almost as quickly.

This is quite different from what we experienced last year since we had a lot of rain all summer and through early fall which meant muted colors. (If my understanding is correct, this was due to a fungus that grew on the leaves because of the wet conditions that caused the colors to appear ‘dusty’ – the expert’s words, not mine.)

While we haven’t seen the leaf peepers – foliage tourists – in large numbers, that will change shortly as the colors appear. This will be the ‘last gasp’ for tourist dollars for the year, though a lot of those tourists will be from overseas. Then when foliage season ends we won’t see much in the way of tourists until winter when the ski areas and snowmobile open. Even then we won’t see nearly as many visitors as we do during late spring, summer, and early fall.

Not that we mind all that much as we do need a breather between tourist seasons to recuperate. It allows us to visit our favorite places without the folks from away being there.

==++++==

It seems we’re getting conflicting information (or dis-/misinformation) from the media and the Harris campaign. We see MSM outlets like CNN – once fully in the pocket of the DNC, particularly during the Obama administration – slamming the Harris campaign for an increasing number of falsehoods being sold in campaign ads and speeches.

Then add on the Biden administration’s double ‘F’ grade on the White House Report Card from both conservatives and Democrats. We have to remind potential voters that Kamala Harris is part of the Biden administration and has failed to deliver (or even perform) two duties assigned to her – Border ‘Czar’ and Broadband Expansion – with the border being wide open and unvetted illegal immigrants flooding across the border with many of them being members of violent criminal gangs and other criminals that then commit crimes here, and billions of dollars in BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment) program funds sitting idle because she can’t be bothered to do that job either.

It seems the Harris campaign is trying to do as Victor Davis Hanson has posited: It’s trying to run out the clock and do as little actual campaigning as possible in order keep Kamala away from unscripted Q&A sessions because they know she’s an idiot.

Cynically running out the clock has been the overarching principle of the entire abbreviated 105-day presidential campaign of Kamala Harris—ever since Joe Biden, at the 11th-hour, dropped out in July.

Harris seems unwilling or unable to answer any impromptu question that she has not been previously prepped for. Her answers at the debate were memorized and canned. They never addressed the questions asked.

Her single, 11-minute post-debate Philadelphia interview was a shipwreck of dodging and dissimulating—even though the host was sympathetically left-wing.

Even socialist Bernie Sanders pointed out that for Harris to get elected, she must temporarily disown her lifelong leftist credentials.

As vice president, she must further deny co-ownership of the unpopular record of the Biden-Harris administration.

All we can do is hope the ‘run out the clock’ strategy fails and Kamala will be fully exposed for the lying Marxist she is.

==++++==

And then there’s this, just to add insult to injury:

The Biden/Harris administration is suing the state of Alabama in order to prevent it from removing illegal immigrants from their voter rolls.

WTF?

"The Justice Department announced a lawsuit Friday against Alabama, arguing the state’s effort to remove noncitizens from its voter rolls came too close to the November election," reports the Washington Times. "The department asked a federal judge to order Alabama to put the names — which the state says are ineligible voters — back on the active voter lists. The department said some actual citizens were sent notices that they had been moved to the inactive voter file."

--snip--

Alabama announced its plan to purge noncitizens from the rolls last month.

Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen said at the time that his office had identified 3,251 names of people on the lists to whom Homeland Security had issued what he called a “noncitizen identification” number. His office instructed registrars to inactivate those names and “initiate steps” to remove those who were found to be noncitizens.

Mr. Allen said Homeland Security refused to cooperate with his efforts.

He said it’s “possible” that some of the people the feds had issued the numbers to had later achieved citizenship and the process he started would allow them to verify their citizenship status.

One has to wonder how states are supposed to remove ineligible voters, dead voters, inactive voters, or voters who no longer live in the state from their voter rolls? Removing them certainly makes it harder for Democrats to cheat during an election.

==++++==

I think anyone who paid attention to this politically motivated case was expecting this:

NY Judges Scrutinize ‘Troubling’ $450 Million Penalty In Trump Fraud Case: ‘No One Lost Any Money’

A New York appellate court is raising questions regarding the penalty and the justification under which AG Letitia James brought the case.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron ordered in February former President Donald Trump to pay an approximate $450 million penalty in a civil fraud case in which there were no victims. Now, a New York appellate court is raising questions regarding the “troubling” penalty and Attorney General Letitia James’ justification for bringing the case in the first place.

James accused Trump of inflating his personal wealth to get better loan terms. Trump, for example, valued his Mar-a-Lago estate at between $427 million and $612 million, Forbes reported. Engoron, however, cited a one-off local Palm Beach County appraiser who valued the property as low as $18 million. Some experts have reportedly valued the sprawling property in the hundreds of millions.

As my colleague Mark Hemingway explained earlier this year, “Trump took out loans over several years, as real estate moguls are wont to do. For him to get approved for those loans, the banks did their own due diligence about Trump’s finances and ability to pay back the loans and decided to give them to him. Trump paid back the loans, and everyone made money.”

The process described above is pretty standard. Even the banks have said so which is why they do their own evaluation of properties to come up with an unbiased value of the properties in question. Sometimes they match. Sometimes they don’t.

The verdict in the trial, one that Letitia James said she’d pursue when running for the office of NY AG, sent shockwaves through the commercial real estate market in New York. Despite assurances from New York Governor Hochul that no one else would be targeted, investors didn’t believe those assurances which puts billions of dollars of investments in the Metro New York City area at risk. One such investor and “Shark Tank” host, Kevin O’Leary, said he will no longer invest in “loser” New York.

O’Leary issued his warning to real estate investors following [the] decision by Judge Arthur Engoron that Trump and his two eldest sons lied about his wealth and inflated the value of his assets.

“This award, I mean, just leaving the whole Trump thing out of it and seeing what occurred here … And I’m no different than any other investor, I’m shocked at this,” O’Leary told Fox Business Network…

O’Leary, a judge on the hit reality show known as “Mr. Wonderful,” said he “can’t even understand or fathom the decision at all.”

--snip--

O’Leary said that he has heard from peers in the business world who have pledged to shun New York, which “was already on the top of the list of being a loser state.”

“I would never invest in New York now,” O’Leary said, adding: “And I’m not the only person saying that.”

That the commercial real estate market in New York has tanked since then is an indicator that this may be a side effect of the Trump verdict. New York City has other issues that have negatively affected the real estate values in the city, the large influx of illegal immigrants, a D.A. choosing not to prosecute criminals, and a bail reform law that allow criminals arrested for crimes to walk out without bail being among them.

It will be interesting to see what the NY Court of Appeals decides in the Trump case. I have a feeling they will overturn the verdict, and if not, reduce if not eliminate the unconstitutional penalty imposed by Judge Engoron. There have also been questions about Judge Engoron’s impartiality during the trial, seeing many of his statements during the trial showed a blatant bias against Trump.

It would be interesting to see the effects if the NY Court of Appeals were to rule in favor of Trump prior to the November election. I would expect the Democrats would express outrage and Kamala Harris would generate yet another word salad meant to express her disappointment that the politically motivated lawsuit failed in the end.

==++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the leaves are turning, the weather has been nice, and where Monday will once again screw up the weekend.

It's Only Going To Get Worserer

Last week I wrote about how the campaigns for the November elections were going to get worse.

It’s only been a week and it’s already gotten worse.

The Harris campaign has cranked up the crazy by borrowing a lesson from past campaigns against Trump and piled one lie on top of another, making claims that smack so much of Hillary’s 2016 campaign misinformation and SloJoe’s 2020 campaign of nonsense.

Some of my not-so-favorites from some recent Harris campaign ads:

Trump is going to impose a 20% sales tax on everything which will bankrupt the poor and burden the middle class.

He’s going to ban abortion across the board with no exceptions.

He supports Project 2025 which the Harris ads claim will destroy democracy in the US. Neither Trump or Vance support it, something even CNN has verified.

He’ll cut or eliminate Social Security and leave millions of elderly destitute. This is also something CNN debunked along with Trump’s alleged support of Project 2025 goals. (You know it's bad when even CNN is slamming the Harris campaign's prevarications.)

And then there’s some of the same type of campaign ad lies going on in our local gubernatorial race, with Joyce Craig’s campaign digging up all kinds of things from speeches made by her GOP opponent decades ago but ignoring speeches or statements or votes made since then that disproves those claims. They also make claims about how Craig did such a wonderful job as the mayor of Manchester, NH even though she tried to raise taxes every year, mishandled the homelessness problems plaguing the city while also managing to wrangle a substantial pay raise for herself.

Am I being partisan about this?

Yes. Absolutely. I see what the Harris/Walz campaign has in store for our nation and I see the parallels to the old and long dead Soviet Union, which died for a good reason.

At the state level I see the Democrats trying to turn New Hampshire into a version of Massachusetts and leftist Vermont.

I have no doubt it’s going to get even worserer...

Friday Funny (Saturday Morning Edition) - N'Hampsha Humah - Live Free Or Die

It wasn't until I was making coffee this morning when I realized that it was Saturday morning. No, really! It was then that I also realized I hadn't posted the Friday Funny, so here it is, about 12 hours later than usual.


This was from 14 years ago, but it's still true!

Thoughts On A Sunday

This past week I had to spend Wednesday morning in the hospital for day surgery to deal with a small health issue, something I’ve been through before and will likely have to deal with again 10 or so years down the road. That meant taking a day off during the middle of the week and working from home the rest of the week. On Friday I made the mistake a taking a walk around the neighborhood to stretch my legs.

The ‘mistake’ had nothing to do with my minor health issue as the docs said I should get up and walk around in the days following the surgery. Instead, the mistake was neglecting to take an umbrella with me during that walk.

I didn’t need the umbrella for rain.

I needed it for the acorns.

My neighborhood has a lot of trees. A lot of those trees are oaks. All of those trees hang over the road and walking trail around our neighborhood. All of those oaks have generated a bumper crop of acorns this year and they are all dropping acorns. Lots of acorns.

Did you know that acorns hurt when they hit you on the head and shoulders after falling quite some distance from the upper parts of those oaks? This is particularly true when the they fall in large numbers at the same time when the wind picks up.

Hence, the need for the umbrella that I didn’t have.

==++++==

Was this a bit of a joke or was SloJoe cognizant enough to get some small revenge on Harris and the DNC for shoving him out of the campaign by donning a Trump 2024 hat in Pennsylvania?

I’d like to think it’s the latter.

==++++==

Despite what the Democrats have claimed about January 6th, it appears more evidence proves that President Trump wanted more security to “protect lives and property”. Where did this evidence come from?

By way of the House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight.

Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight Chairman Barry Loudermilk (GA-11) revealed that days before January 6, 2021, President Trump met with senior Pentagon leaders urging them to do their jobs to protect lives and property. The transcripts released show Trump gave senior Pentagon leadership directives to keep January 6 peaceful – including using the National Guard – which the Pentagon leaders ignored. This revelation directly contradicts the conclusions drawn in the flawed DoD IG reporton January 6, 2021.

If memory serves, Trump had also asked for additional Capitol Police and Speaker Pelosi quashed that request. Then there were the FBI instigators in the crowds, something that makes me think Pelosi knew there would be trouble and welcomed it as a means of “ridding herself of that meddlesome [Trump]”.

It was a setup from the word ‘go’.

==++++==

Sometimes a new word comes into existence, one that perfectly describes something that would take more than a few existing words to do so. The new word I’ve come across?

“Democrisy.”

A perfect blend of democracy and hypocrisy, something that perfectly describes the present day Democrat Party.

The party of more and more gun control are now buying themselves more guns.

We noted, 2½ years ago, that, in the aftermath of its bloodiest year on record — 562 homicides in 2021 — even Philadelphia Magazine’s Victor Fiorillo, who is so dramatically opposed to Fox 29 News Steve Keeley actually reporting on crime, told us about Philadelphians applying for concealed carry permits at a greatly increased rate.

Now it seems that significant numbers of the American left, who have been so vigorous in their demands to infringe upon our rights to keep and bear arms, have decided to keep and bear arms themselves.

Why are they now buying guns? Could it be because they want to protect themselves from “armed right-wing extremists”? Or could it be because they know the police can’t protect them and their Soros-owned prosecutors won’t prosecute violent criminals which leaves them on the streets?

Democrisy, indeed.

==++++==

Uh-oh, it looks like the Climate Change Narrative may have change as it seems NOAA’s prediction of a busy 2024 hurricane season is wrong.

Earlier this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted a very active Atlantic hurricane season for 2024.

One of the explanations for the lack of storm systems forming in the Atlantic Basin in recent weeks is due to the Saharan Dust moving across the Atlantic Ocean, scientists say. Large Saharan dust outbreaks brought widespread, intense plumes of dust and lots of dry air across the tropical Atlantic during July and much of August, Ed Nowottnick, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told ABC News.

Tropical waves have been exiting the African continent so far north that they have been pulling in lots of dust and dry air, limiting their chances for development, according to researchers at tropical weather experts at Colorado State University.

Looking ahead to mid-September, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center’s long-range Global Tropical Hazards Outlook calls for a slight to moderate chance of new tropical development over the Central Atlantic Ocean.

So, is it climate or is it weather?

I’m guessing the Climate Change Faithful will call it weather since it doesn’t meet The Narrative and therefore must be ignored (difficult) or explained away (most likely).

I expect they’ll find some way to blame Trump for this.

And so it goes…

==++++==

It seems the Harris campaign keeps coming up with one bad economic idea after another.

The latest one?

Nationwide rent control.

I’m sorry, but I can’t think of a single time that rent control hasn’t negatively affected the housing market in the long run, short-circuiting supply and demand. It’s been tried again and again, not just here, but in other countries, too. It has never worked.

One of the latest countries to try it, and fail, has been the Netherlands.

Kamala Harris wants to pass a national rent control plan that, if enacted, will only make rent more expensive and exacerbate the current housing shortage. We know this because that's what happens when rent controls are initiated. It's Econ 101: limit the supply of something and prices go up with no incentive to make more of it to alleviate the shortage.

The Netherlands enacted a national rent-control program in July. The Dutch already had rent control that covered about 80% of its rental housing. The new policy brought 96% of the nation's rental housing under the rent-control regime.

--snip--

“The sad reality is that for home seekers, it now has become harder than ever to find a rental property in an already tight market,” says Michiel Vrijman, who runs the Dutch operations of Heimstaden Bostad AB, a Swedish company.

The tight market is hitting the middle class hardest. The poor benefit from rent-controlled properties, but those in the middle find it nearly impossible to find a place to live.

"In a year, probably people will take to the streets to complain about this situation because it’s getting harder and harder to find a rental property,” says Jasper de Groot, CEO of property listings website Pararius. “The price will increase in the liberalized market because the demand is so high.”

Did anyone there stop to think what would happen to the housing market when rent control expanded? Obviously not. If they had it’s likely they never would instituted such an expansion.

Now Kamala Harris wants to make the same mistake here, ensuring that housing becomes unaffordable if it’s available at all. But then I doubt Harris really cares about it as it only affects the middle class, a group she’s shown she hates with a passion.

==++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where Fall has arrived, the acorns are still falling like rain, and where the leaf peepers will soon be arriving in droves.