Thoughts On A Sunday

The rains arrived with a vengeance this morning. Not that I minded its arrival. We’ve needed the rain as it’s been rather dry here the past month. However the rain brought all work outside The Manse to a halt.

There’s still some painting and repairs to complete before The Manse goes on the market and we really didn’t need yet another delay. We are already three weeks behind schedule and the ‘hot market’ window will be closing when school starts late next month.

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With the ongoing debate about energy, specifically the means of generating electricity, the push seems to be for expanding renewables in favor of other more traditional technologies like oil, coal, natural gas, and particularly nuclear.

While renewables sound appealing, the reality is that they aren’t all that great (with the exception of hydro), particularly when you look at the costs. The cost of maintaining the renewables like wind and solar is much higher than originally forecast and their service lifetime is shorter. Because of the intermittent nature such renewables, meaning they cannot be counted on to generate power at any specific time, something that makes them non-dispatchable. The rest of the system has to adjust to the variable nature of renewable sources, making the system less stable.

Another downside to renewables – subsidies.

While many utilities receive subsidies of one form or another, renewables cannot exist without them. The others can, even nuclear. (Yes, the federal government heavily underwrites the storage/disposal of spent nuclear fuel, but that’s under federal non-proliferation laws.)

With all of that in mind, nuclear is one of the best non-carbon energy sources available. And if Elysium Industries has its way, nuclear power may be on the brink of a resurgence.

While a number of companies have been working on next generation reactors, many which have yet to build their first prototypes, Elysium is building upon already proven molten salt technology using materials that are already nuclear qualified. While it is taking a slightly different path in regards to the molten salt, preferring to use chloride salts rather than the fluoride salts of other reactor. As molten salt thorium reactors have a number of advantages over uranium/plutonium reactors, I think it is time that we make the move in this direction.

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Why doesn’t this surprise me?

If you have the misfortune to be a young Republican in Washington, DC, or worse, a Trump staffer, the dating scene is all but non-existent. Considering the atmosphere in the District, particularly after eight years of the Obama Administration and the entrenched Deep State it left behind, that Republicans are in effect social outcasts is to be expected. After all, they are not of the proper political ideology and do not live within the constantly shifting confines of the Left’s paradigm. They are the untermenschen of Washington, to be devoutly ignored, minimalized, and disparaged.

Yet another gleaming example of the intolerant Tolerant Left.

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After the Supreme Court decision that allows states to collect sales taxes from other states where their residents make Internet purchases, one has to think that the 45 states that do have sales taxes expected the revenues to start rolling in once they enacted legislation to collect them. However they may find that a few states, particularly those 5 states that have no sales tax of their own may balk at collecting them for the states that do. That’s certainly the case with my home state of New Hampshire.

While New Hampshire doesn’t like the idea of collecting revenue for other states (and there has been a NH Supreme Court decision – Town Faire Tire vs. Massachusetts Department of Revenue Administration - that have stated that New Hampshire doesn’t have to), it may be forced to do so. However that won’t come without a cost for those states demanding our state do so.

Since New Hampshire does not have a system in place for collecting sales taxes, retailers will have to invest time and money to install the software in their systems to do so as well as pay for the constant updates that will be required to keep the tax requirements up to date. So what plan does the state legislature and the governor have in mind to deal with this?

Make the states demanding we collect sales taxes for them reimburse all of the businesses for the expenses they incur to implement the collection of those taxes. They will also be required to present themselves to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office and prove they have the legal circumstances to ask for the collection and aren’t unfairly targeting small businesses.

How many states will want to go through all of that to collect what will in the end be less than what they think they will get? (I expect that California, Illinois, and Connecticut will do so because they desperately need the revenue. And maybe New Jersey. Of course there will be many different sales tax rates in some states, between the state, county, and municipal sales taxes that exist that have imposed.)

As one commenter to the linked post suggested, “Ironically, my fee, for administration and management of your taxes, is the EXACT amount of your taxes...PLUS postage.”

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I haven’t quite figured out the math, but so far no one has been able to explain to me how it is that having more than one job lowers the unemployment rate. Does the Department of Labor automatically assume that one job filled equates to one person? Or do they look at how many people are looking for work versus how many people have jobs?

Senator Elizabeth Warren seems to think that all of the real reason the unemployment rate is so low is because everyone is working more than one job. This is a similar point that Congressional hopeful Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has brought up as well. What makes it worse is that she has a degree in economics and should know better. But she’s pushing the Progressive narrative and purposely ignoring real world economics as a means of gaining elective office.

To this point I haven’t seen where having more than one job affects the unemployment rate. Using Warren’s and Ocasio-Cortez’s reasoning, we could have a theoretical unemployment rate in the negative numbers if everyone capable of working had more than one job. The labor participation rate could exceed 100% under that same reasoning.

Does anyone else see a problem with this?

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Oh, noes! Colorado snowflakes has a sad because Starbucks has released a coffee mug showing that state’s oil and gas industry.

The blue Colorado mug, part of the coffee giant’s “Been There” series touting the distinctive features of U.S. states and cities, included drawings of bighorn sheep, pine trees, mountains, skiers — and a drilling rig.

Losing their minds over a friggin’ coffee mug? These folks need to get a life.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the rains have arrived for the next couple of days, all outside work has come to a halt, and where once again I look forward to Monday because it means I can get some rest at work.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Another weekend winds to close, meaning that the work I’ve been doing to prep The Manse for sale is slacking off. Work intrudes on doing the work that remains. Little will be done tomorrow due to other commitments and Tuesday looks doubtful as thunderstorms are forecast for the afternoon, meaning any work to be done after work is likely to be pre-empted by Mother Nature.

Isn’t that always the way?

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Could it be that women are avoiding STEM careers not because they aren’t interested, but because they are dissuaded by college professors outside the science fields?

It doesn’t surprise me if this is indeed the case. After all, things like engineering “is only for those who enjoy “rote” work. Engineering is not creative. There’s only one right answer. You’ll live your life in a cubicle. It’s dehumanizing. You’ll never talk to anyone. And, of course, it’s sexist. All this from professors whose only substantive experience with STEM is a forced march through a single statistics course in college, if that.”

I find it amusing that some of these professors seem to think that engineering has “only one right answer”. Not in my 40-some years of engineering it doesn’t. What a lame claim.

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Wirecutter gets into the whole “Why do women always try to change the man they’re involved with?” thing. As he writes:

It seems like damned near every relationship I’ve been in, the woman felt like I could be improved on. I never could understand that s**t – you got together because you like each other, but after you get together you find out that you’re basically just the rough draft. Sure, there’s always something about the other person that you don’t care for, but with guys it’s different. Sometimes we just accept the fact that that’s the way that particular woman is and hey! accept her for who she is. Other times we just figure it ain’t worth the f**king time and effort so we just deal with it. If she blows monster farts right before she wakes up, get up before she does. That’s dealing with it.

I’ve been involved with a few women like that and the relationships didn’t last as it was quite apparent to me that weren’t really interested in me as I was. They wanted to turn me into someone else, someone that was nothing like the real me and that wasn’t going to happen.

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If you need any more evidence of the fake news being put forward by the MSM all one needs to look at the Washington Post’s story that got it wrong about US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley.

With their ‘layers and layers of fact-checkers’, you’d think that could have got this one right, wouldn’t you? But then again, it doesn’t fit the Progressive narrative so the facts must be ignored and the hit piece on Nikki Haley must be published. Too bad it backfired on them…again.

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See what happens in the real world when Progressives run cities? In case you didn’t know, nothing good. Between rising crime rates, shootings, feces in the streets, increasing numbers of the homeless, decaying schools, and rising taxes, endless examples show us that the Blue Model just doesn’t work.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer continues apace, NASCAR returns next weekend, and where Monday is getting here none too soon. (I need to rest!)

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s nice to have a decent bout of weather, with the high temps and humidity being replaced with temps in the 70’s and dew points in the low 50’s. It’s made for much better weather for working outside The Manse in preparation for putting the place on the market.

All kinds of outside work is easier when you don’t have to worry about heat stroke. Painting is easier without worrying about sweat dripping on the wet paint.

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Speaking of heat waves, it was 107 years ago that a heat wave slammed the northeast, killing an estimated 2000 in New England alone. Temperatures in excess of 100°F slammed cities from Baltimore to Bangor for eleven days. While I didn’t see any reports about the relative humidity, I am assuming it was probably very high which added to the misery.

No air conditioning. Fans and ice were luxuries. Removing clothing was not considered an option due to the morals of the time which only added to the injuries and deaths.

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At the other end of the temperature spectrum, it has snowed in Capetown, South Africa.

Obviously it’s all global warming’s fault…or Al Gore was visiting South Africa.

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Between all of the hate directed against Trump and his staffers, intolerance towards Trump supporters including attacks against minors, fake news propagated by a major news organization (AP), Democrats trying very hard to make good economic news appear to be awful along with their promises to raise taxes, re-impose taxes and regulations done away with by Trump, open the borders, impose sanctions on anyone and everyone disagreeing with them, is it any wonder people are turning away from the Democrat party and joining the #WalkAway movement?

It appears the DNC is doing everything it can to make sure it will lose the mid-term elections. Of course I expect they’ll be trying to figure out what happened and will crank up the rhetoric and calls for confrontation and violence against anyone not supporting them. And should that happen I expect there will be bloodshed and it will be their ‘supporters’ committing it. Then, of course, they will decry the actions of those who defend themselves by wounding or killing their assailants.

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Mind you, this is only one poll, but this one by Rasmussen shows that 74% of likely US voters prefer a free market economic system over a socialist system.

We’ve seen more than enough socialist economic systems to know that they just don’t work. Such a highly controlled economic system has one major flaw and it always has – it short circuits all of the market feedback systems and the economy doesn’t respond to the needs of the consumers. Shortages of needed goods become a constant experience. Even if those goods are available their quality will be low. “Standing on line” will become an everyday experience…except for the governmental elite. They will not be standing in line for anything. They will have access to goods and services that everyone else cannot get.

Socialist economic systems could work, but only one way: keep the damn people out of it. If everything were controlled by an AI it might work. But once people get involved in controlling any aspect of the economic system it will deteriorate and become highly dysfunctional.

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Gee, I remember when ignorance of the law was no excuse. But in Canada all you have to be is from a different culture in order to be acquitted of sexual assault.

The perpetrator has been in Canada for 3 years. He understands the laws there. But because he is from Syria he gets a free pass? I have a feeling that if tried something like that someplace like Texas he’d either be convicted, or assuming he didn’t get dead by the actions of one of the parents of his victims. (“Why did you shoot the victim 17 times?” “Well, your honor, he just plain needed killin’.” “Oh, why the heck didn’t you just say so? Case dismissed!”)

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Despite not being part of either the Kyoto Protocols or the Paris Accords, the US has managed to lower its CO2 emissions to a level not seen since 1985.

How many other nations have managed to even come close to matching the US in lowering their CO2 emissions? Let’s take a count, shall we?

Hmm. Nope, not that one…or that one.

Ahh, here we are!

None. Not one. NOT. ONE.

We could do even better if we decided to go whole hog for nuclear power, specifically the Third or Fourth Generation plants. If we can get thorium reactors online we’d have all of the energy we would ever need, wouldn’t have to use up large tracts of land for solar or wind, could get rid of all of the existing nuclear fuel waste, build small modular reactors (which lowers costs) and cluster them together rather than building One Big Reactor, and make our power generation system more dispersed. Then the only need we’d have for natural gas-fired power plants would be as ‘peaker’ plants, power plants used to hand peak demands. (Nuclear plants don’t throttle up and down very quickly. Gas plants can be brought on and off line quickly, hence their use as peaker plants.) Our CO2 emissions could be reduced by an even greater extent.

Of course I expect the ‘usual suspects’ to discount the decrease in the US emissions and find some way to blame other nation’s failures to reduce their emissions on us.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the summerfolk up for the Fourth of July holiday have headed home, the lake has calmed, and where I’m glad Monday is arriving so I can get some rest.

Thoughts On A Sunday

We are in the second day of a forecast 8-day long heat wave, with temps today in the 90’s and the heat index around 100°F. Work around The Manse has been curtailed a bit with the bulk of it taking place in the morning before it gets too hot…for the most part.

I have been refinishing the three decks and front steps, working on them when they are being shaded by The Manse. That has meant working on them until 2PM or so.

The weather has also lent itself to late day trips out onto the lake in the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout over the past three days. I expect to hit the lake after work tomorrow before heading home. (Needless to say, The Boat has been used quite a bit since Memorial Day and I’ve gone through three tanks of gas - about 90 gallons - since then. It hasn’t been sitting idle at the dock for days on end.

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Have you ever noticed the biggest socialists all tend to come from wealthy families? That certainly seems to be the case for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democrat running for one of New York’s congressional districts. The so-called “Girl from the Bronx” is the product of a well-to-do family.

Most socialists tend to be insulated from the effects of their ideology, having the money and ‘pull’ to distance themselves from having to live the lifestyle of the proletariat. It’s why they push so hard for socialism because it will only affect those ‘beneath’ them.

I think if they knew they would be obliged to live the same ways as the proles they would abandon the idea of socialism and distance themselves from it as far as possible.

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Apparently not everyone is enamored of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. A former co-worker has less than kind things to say about her and her work ethic. She appeared to show her true colors in regards to her belief that what’s hers is hers and what’s yours is negotiable, just like a true socialist.

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The #WalkAway campaign is growing as more disaffected Democrats are leaving the Democrat Party over its extreme leftward shift and abandonment of moderate Democrats.

How many potential Ronald Reagans have found that, like him, they didn’t leave the Democrat Party so much as it left them? What will this mean for the DNC going forward, particularly if the minority voters they have always counted on turn their backs on them because they no longer represent their interests and beliefs?

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Gee, it seems that ‘millennial’ women aren’t really happy with their sex lives. It isn’t so much that they aren’t having sex so much as the sex they’re having isn’t all that great.

The idea that women are programmed by the patriarchy to agree to sex even when they don’t want to is not a novel concept among modern feminists. The 2017 viral New Yorker story “Cat Person” dealt with this issue, as havenumerous advice columns and women’s magazines. How is it possible, though, that the generation of women’s sexual empowerment is the generation most in need of this advice?

Perhaps their expectations are too high, particularly in light of the “modern feminist expectations for their sexual encounters.”

If I had to guess, those ‘expectations’ are unrealistic.

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Anyone who knows anything about guns understands that reporters really don’t understand guns.

They cannot tell us what defines an assault rifle (other than they are ‘scary looking guns’), do not understand the difference between clips and magazines, do not understand the difference between semi-automatic and fully automatic weapons, and haven’t a clue about how a shotgun works or its limitations. It seems all of their knowledge is based upon what they see in the movies, much of which tends to violate a few laws of physics, and inaccurately portrays how easy it is to hit a target, particularly when said target is moving.

But we know that none of that will stop them from ‘reporting’ about how bad guns are while ignoring the person wielding them.

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Can wind turbines make you sick?

Yes.

It is something that has been known for some time but dutifully ignored by proponents of wind power. After all, negative health effects of a renewable energy source doesn’t fit the narrative. Therefore there can be no negative effects of wind turbines, even if there are.

Does that clear things up?

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I find it interesting to look at two entirely different viewpoints about Donald Trump. The Daily Beast calls him an “Early Stage Mussolini” while the Sydney Morning Herald reminds us that he has been keeping his campaign promises.

One has to wonder where Trump’s promises to ‘make the trains run on time’ were in his platform. I certainly haven’t been able to find it.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the hot weather has settled in, the summerfolk are keeping cool, and where going to work on Monday gives me a chance to rest in air-conditioned comfort.

Thoughts On A Sunday

I wish I could say it was a quiet weekend here around The Manse, but between trying to get more chores done in preparation for putting The Manse on the market, helping the WP Mom shop for a new car, and making an attempt to repair some yard equipment, it hasn't been quiet or restful by any means. The wet weather hasn't helped either, meaning some outside chores had to be postponed for a few more days.

All in all, getting a house ready to sell is taking a lot more time (and money) than we had originally expected. It has also eaten into what little time off I usually have, meaning much of my weekend posting tends to be shorter than what I am used to posting.

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I find it both amusing and disturbing that many of Trump's Democrat detractors seem to have very short memories and a distorted sense of time. They act as if the so-called illegal immigrant crisis at the border is something that only now has come into being. That it has been going on for years, well before President Trump even thought about running for office, is somehow his fault? Worse, some of the photos used to prove the 'crisis' is real were misleading, showing young children separated from their parents by an unfeeling US government when their parents were really just off camera, and in many cases, others showing children in 'cages' were taken during the Obama Administration. Yet somehow it's all the fault of the Trump Administration.

I think too many of these folks going out of their minds about this non-crisis have been off their meds.

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Discussions I've had with the token Progressive at work have covered a wide range of topics. The latest has been the pending trade war because Trump's threatened imposition of tariffs to match those imposed upon US goods. More than once I told him that the move was strategic, getting those nations to the negotiation table. He saw it as the opening shots in a lengthy and costly trade war.

Apparently has has had no problem with the lopsided application of tariffs, seeing it as a way to make us pay for our sins (though he never has told me what these supposed 'sins' are).

Surprise surprise when the nations threatened with tariffs suddenly decide that maybe talking things through and perhaps even lifting the tariffs might be an idea whose time has come.

The other nations really don't want a trade war because they know it will likely hurt them as much if not more so than it will hurt us. They want trade to continue, so reducing or removing tariffs suddenly seems like a good idea.

Gee, it's almost like Trump knows what he's doing.

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I honestly have no words to describe my reaction to this story.

Really. None.

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I love it when the local media get something so wrong that there's no way they can explain it away. In this case the story about an 18-wheeler accident, with the truck hauling a load of liquid nitrogen. According to the news report, a half-mile area around the tanker was evacuated due to the risk of a tank explosion.

Anyone who remembers their basic high school chemistry knows that nitrogen is not flammable. There would have been no danger of a tank explosion. On the other hand a tank rupture was a possibility, something that would have spilled thousands of gallons of liquid nitrogen, something that would immediately freeze anything it came into contact with, making it as brittle as glass. That in itself is one heck of a hazard and is a more likely explanation for evacuation of the local area.

They can't even get a story like that straight? Even if the authorities had made that claim, one would think that there was someone at the station that might have realized the explanation was bogus. But maybe that's too much to hope for these days as most journalists tend to be woefully ignorant about how things actually work.

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How do you get more Trump? This is how:

“The Resistance simply is against everything President Trump does. He figured out more than a year ago how to work this to his advantage. The Resistance now opposes tax cuts, a booming economy, and peace in Korea. The Resistance also now supports MS-13, open borders, and Kim Jong Un.”

Do they honestly think they have a winning platform for the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential race with the above? It's obvious that they do, not understanding that most of America doesn't agree with them. Do they think that people really want to return to the Bad Old Days?

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And that is the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather was wettish, the indoor activities took precedence, and where we're hoping to get some dry weather over next weekend.

Thoughts On A Sunday

The last day of Motorcycle week is upon us as the visiting bikers get in some of the last activities of the festival and many make their way home. Some will linger for another day or two, but most will have departed by early evening today.

The large influx of motorcycles gave me the perfect excuse to not travel, giving me plenty of time to work around The Manse in preparation for putting it on the market. Yesterday and today was spent stripping the decks with a pressure washer (mostly to remove dirt, grime, and loose paint, not strip all of the paint off) in preparation for repainting them some time over the next few days. Some of the yard work was also done, though it is nowhere near being finished. (Then again, it never really is, is it?)

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This is something I think more college kids should be doing. For that fact, so should adults from the Blue urban areas.

On a blustery afternoon in April, I filed into a van along with 10 students from Harvard. We had just spent the last two days in Chicopee, Mass., where we had chatted with the police chief and his force, the mayor and his staff, small-business owners, waitresses and firemen about their struggles living in small-town America.

The undergrads were buzzing with their impressions. Chicopee is about 90 miles west of their prestigious university in Cambridge, but when it comes to shared experience, it might as well have been 1,000 light years away.

As they settled in, I looked at them.

“So,” I said, “who do you think most of the people you just got to know voted for president?”

None of the students had an answer. It hadn’t come up in their conversations and they didn’t know I had privately asked each person who they’d voted for.

So, I let a minute pass and told them.

“Nearly every one of them voted for Trump.”

My students looked stunned, at first. But then a recognition crossed their faces.

We were only a few days into a new course I had developed with Harvard’s Institute of Politics, called the Main Street Project, where students are immersed in small-town America. Even though these kids had almost all been raised in the United States, our journey sometimes felt like an anthropology course, as though they were seeing the rest of the country for the first time. And this was their opening lesson.

Too many kids in college these days, particularly attending one of the Ivies, have little exposure to rural America, so-called “flyover country”. The only thing they know about the people living there is what they've been told in their classes or by the media, and just about everything they've been told is wrong. But they won't know that unless they experience small town America first hand.

The Main Street Project is but one small step to correcting the many misconceptions people have about small town America.

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While the idea of renewable energy sounds great and billions have been spent on promoting and building renewables, the actual fraction of power that comes from those sources really hasn't grown all that much.

I could dig deep on why this is so (as I have done in the past), but a lot of it still boils down to the cost of renewable energy being very high, even with government subsidies. The rest deals with dispatchability, meaning they generally cannot supply power on demand, they are highly susceptible to weather conditions, and they take up a lot of land area compared to the more traditional coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power plants.

Until those other issues are solved, renewables aren't really a viable alternative to the other sources of power.

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There's nothing I can add to this. Nothing at all.

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Yeah, this worked out so well the last time that they decided to try it again.

The Left has called for a boycott of Chick-fil-A because the corporate owners don't support gay marriage.

In case you don't remember, the last time the Left called for a boycott of this restaurant chain, just the opposite occurred – a buycott. Chick-fil-A saw more customers coming through its doors and buying their chicken sandwiches than before the announced boycott. How much do you want to it will have a similar effect this time as well?

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People complain about how bad the air pollution is here in the US. Most of those making that claim weren't alive in the 60's and early 70's when both the air and water were quite polluted. Since then we have cleaned up the air and water to the point were much of the pollution can be measured in parts per billion or parts per trillion, not parts per thousand or parts per million. In fact, a lot of the air pollution to which we are exposed is not generated here but comes from overseas, specifically China. Yet we have people who fervently believe that we must be punished for the pollution caused by other countries, hence their support of things like the old Kyoto Protocols and the Paris Accord, neither of which really did anything other than demand a lot of money from the US.

But do we hear much about the horrendous air pollution in places like China or India? Of course not.

One tends, as a matter of course, to inveigh against pollution in China. The world has never seen a quicker leap into industrialization than what has happened in China over the past four decades. But, we also know that industrialization is the enemy of the pristine purity of nature. And we are well aware of the fact that China sports an authoritarian government, one that keeps its hold on power by poisoning its people.

We keep those facts and beliefs firmly in mind when we examine the state of today’s largest democracy. That would be India. How is democratic India doing with air pollution? We note the said pollution is not the same as the greenhouse gases that our environmentalists hate so much. Those latter include large quantities of carbon dioxide, aka, plant food. Pollution in India is of another order.

Anyway, India is not doing so well on the pollution scoreboard. If you think that toxic masculinity is a problem, wait until you get a whiff of toxic smog.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the roar of motorcycle engines are fading away until next year, the vendors are counting cash stuffing their cash register drawers, and where peace and quite is returning even if it is on a Monday.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Motorcycle Week has returned to central New Hampshire! The roar of motorcycles has ramped up since Friday evening and bikes galore have been on all of the roads. Some people hear the noise of the bike engines. Others hear the ringing of cash registers all over the state.

While in the past most of the focus of Bike Week was here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, it has since spread out to other areas around the state. That has given the mistaken impression that not as many bikers have been coming up for the festivities because the not quite as many people congregate around Weirs Beach, the 'HQ' of Bike Week. But looking at the tourism dollars rolling in and full hotels and campgrounds, it is obvious that just the opposite is true.

At least this year's Bike Week looks to have great weather all week, with only a chance of thundershowers sometime on Thursday.

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Much has been made of the increasing suicide rate in the US, with a 25% increase seen across the nation over the past few years.

There are all kinds of theories as to why this is occurring running the gamut of the decay of the nation's moral fabric, the attacks on religiosity, readily available abortion which cheapens the value placed upon life, the war against men (most suicides are male, with the number rising alarmingly amongst middle aged men), the jungle that is social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.), and one of my favorites, the rapid increase in the use of SSRIs, a class of drug used as an anti-depressant. Considering one of the side effects in children and young adults can be suicide ideation, is it any surprise that all of these factors are contributing to the rising suicide rate?

I doubt there is one factor that we can point to and say “Aha! Here's the problem!”

What's the solution? Frankly, I have no idea. But I do have on suggestion that I think many should consider, that being to “drop out' of social media. Take a break from it all. Don't log in to any of your electronic addictions. Wean yourself off of the electronic fentanyl, or better yet, go cold turkey for a while. Also consider staying away from all of the so-called news websites and apps. You might be surprised just how much better you feel after a week or so away. You'll likely also come to realize just how much time you have been wasting on something that has no socially redeeming values and lets you get back to living life again.

Will this solve the problem? Again, I have no idea. But it doesn't take any time or money to give it a try and you just might find yourself enjoying the real world again.

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How many times over the past few years have we heard about some busybody bureaucrat shutting down a kid's lemonade stand? Call it the height of asininity and government overreach spuured on mby the Left's need to control every aspect of our lives.

But now folks are fighting back against that crap, specifically the men and women of Country Time Lemonade. They've started a legal defense fund to help entrepreneurial kids fight the bureaucrats and run their pop-up lemonade stands, just like we did when we were kids. Call it one more fight against those who seem to think they know how we should live our lives better than we do.

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As if we had any doubt that 'comedian' Bill Maher is a douchebag, he proves it to us yet again by wishing the economy would tank and hurt millions of Americans just so he and his cohorts can get rid of Trump. Of course HE wouldn't be hurt by such a slump because he is, after all, wealthy. But the rest of us would have to suffer just so he can feel better about who's president?

And then there's his whole 'losing democracy' shtick which makes us realize he doesn't understand that America is not a democracy, but a constitutional republic.

Then again, the elite don't need to understand these things because everything is about the 'feelz', not the facts.

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For a change of pace (and a palate cleanser), how about a documentary about Mister Rogers?

Apparently it is quite good and confirms many of the good things I've heard about him over the years.

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Apparently even the people living in Massachusetts hate Massachusetts because they are refusing to have kids there. The Pay State has the lowest fertility rate in the nation, has seen its influence in Congress withering away as its population grows slowly (if at all) and other states with higher fertility and immigration (from other states) grow more rapidly, taking away their House seats in Congress.

While not quite a one-party state like California, it does have way too many Democrats spending the taxpayers' money on useless and stupid things. While it's taxes aren't quite as bad as those in neighboring Connecticut, it's still known by many as 'Taxachusetts' as there is little its legislature won't tax.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the roar of engines is expected to get louder over the next 7 days, cash registers will be ringing up sales from visiting bikers, and where for once I have no issue with Monday's imminent arrival.

Where Did All The Time Go? It's Been 16 Years!!

It's hard to believe that this blog has been around for sixteen years, but it has.

My dear brother made the first post 16 years ago today, our former website – World Domination, Inc – having become too cumbersome to maintain. (Our motto was and still is Subjugating Humanity, One Individual At A Time.) His first post can be found here. Just scroll down to the bottom.

This blog started on Blogger, then moved to Blogmosis (long defunct), then Nexcess, and finally back to Blogger. There have been thousands of posts, some lost (when Blogmosis went under), and the rest here at Blogger. The topics covered are too numerous to list, but most of them dealt with the Left, the Wrong (basically the same thing), the Constitution, and just plain tomfoolery of all stripes.

While life has intruded, making blogging much more difficult, I have managed to post on weekends. (I guess that makes the blog title accurate, eh?)

Some have asked if I will eventually give this up. The honest answer is I don't know. All I can say for sure is that if I do it won't be any time soon. It could be I might move my blogging to another well established blog. I might go back to almost daily blogging here. Only time will tell.

I any case, here's to 16 years on the blogosphere, and hopefully many more to come.

Thoughts On A Sunday

This is going to be a somewhat abbreviated post as I literally just got back from some time out on the lake. I hadn't figured I'd be out so late, but family was visiting from Nevada so BeezleBub and I took them out for a tour of the lake.

Frankly, between going out on the lake or working on a post, I'd choose time on the lake every single time.

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The whole dust up about whether or not Robert Mueller can subpoena the President is telling me that Mueller hasn't got squat after over a year of 'investigation' of any collusion with the Russians. There's been plenty of proof that the Clinton campaign had plenty of contact with the Russians, but has any time been spent looking into that? Not from what I can see.

This has been a fishing expedition/witch hunt from the very beginning, pushed hard by the DNC and the Clinton campaign. Millions have been spent and there isn't a damn thing to show for it. If there were we'd be hearing it from the DOJ and the MSM every minute of every day. But what are we hearing instead? Lots of conjecture and innuendo, but outside of that, crickets.

This is one heck of a nothingburger that the DNC cannot stomach.

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When I read the story about a Benghazi survivor, and Army Ranger, 'shooting down' David Hogg's take on gun control, I found myself agreeing with the man.

I honestly don't remember reports of school shootings of the type we've been experiencing since Columbine during the time I was in school – the 60's and 70's. It's only been since Hogg's generation came into being that we've seen this spate of school shootings.

Says former Army Ranger Kris Paronto, “I remember, it was before your generation started shooting up the schools David, even though we still had guns," Paronto tweeted. "Thank you for confirming..again...that it’s not the gun, it’s person, and in particular you & your peers millennial culture.”

With the wall-to-wall coverage given by the media whenever these types of shootings take place, sensationalizing the event and making a 'celebrity' out of the shooter, is it any wonder that there have been such school shootings? Even while reporting on the tragedy, they glamorize the shooter as if it were all part of some first person shooter game and this guy had the high score.

Just how twisted is that?

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Is that they don't care or that they really don't understand that they are shooting the proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs? Of the two, I'd have to say it's the second because it appears that they could that stupid.

To what do I refer?

The alleged plan by some of the NFL players to strike back against the league's kneeling ban by boycotting games.

I wrote 'alleged' because the report about this plan comes from notoriously unreliable Shaun King. If players actually decided to do something that stupid, I would expect them to be kicked out of the league and replacement players put in their place. Of course I would expect those same ex-players to file a lawsuit against the NFL, thought I doubt they could claim breach of contract because it would have been them breaching their contract with the NFL, not the other way around.

Are NFL players that stupid? On the whole, I'd say probably not. But that doesn't mean that one or two of them have so convinced themselves that they are indispensable that they would do something that stupid.

Only time will tell.

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I think it's time for Bernie Sanders to throw in the towel and retire. After all he can't seem to tell the difference between the people in his home state of Vermont and those in California.

Then again, he also doesn't know how economics works which is why he keeps pushing the free college and free s**t for everyone. He doesn't seem to understand that there is no such thing as free anything. Someone somewhere has to pay for it and that eventually he will run out of those other people's money.

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And that's the abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the warm dry weather will be gone for the next few days, school will be out for the summer soon, and where Motorcycle Week starts next weekend!

Thoughts On A Sunday

The first 'official' weekend of summer is here, and all that goes with it. That includes the insane traffic, most of which started Friday morning. I took Friday off in order to do some work on The Manse in preparation for putting it on the market, and that entailed running some errands during mid/late Friday morning. That there were traffic tie-ups at some of the local intersections was surprising. That many of the vehicles in those traffic tie-ups were from away was not.

Deb and I went to one of our local eateries this morning and found we were going to have to wait to be seated as we had forgotten to take into account the summerfolk were back. When we did get seated we were fortunate enough to be at a table next to some other locals, and we got into a conversation about the heavy presence of folks from away. One of us (I forget who) made mention that it appeared that everyone from Massachusetts was up here for the weekend. It certainly seemed that was a a very large majority of the out of state plates were from there, with a smattering of Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey plates thrown in for good measure.

Summer has returned, even if the calendar say it won't actually be here for another three and a half weeks.

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One of the biggest problems I find in regards to alternative energy is that too many proponents choose to ignore the negatives. Between low energy densities (both wind and solar are actually rather diffuse compared to oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear), lack of dispatchability (immediate generation capacity decides on sources, not demand), their vulnerability to weather conditions, and lack of energy storage. These are all “problems to be solved down the road” that need to be solved now in order to make wind and solar viable at reasonable costs. But neither wind or solar provide power at reasonable costs.

While the energy for wind or solar is free, the costs of collecting and converting that energy is not. Both are horrendously expensive which is why they are subsidized, and even then they cost a lot more than conventional power sources.

Then there are the other hidden costs, particularly when it comes to both economic and environmental costs. One of the bigger issues being devoutly ignored by the renewable energy proponents is the amount of toxic waste generated by their manufacture. And that's just on the making them side. There's also the toxicity of panels when they reach then end of their useful lives.

Solar panels are not easily recyclable, they contain lead (which no one mentions), cadmium (which is far more toxic than lead, which no one mentions), antimony, and a host of other toxic substances than cannot be removed without breaking apart the entire panel and properly processing them to recover the toxic materials. Even that process can generate toxic waste all on its own.

Because solar panels contain those materials, they are not supposed to be landfilled because those materials can leach out and contaminate ground water.

So all of that so-called 'clean energy' isn't so clean after all.

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I find it interesting that the most of the media, specifically the LSM, haven't caught on to the fact that President Trump is playing them like a virtuoso violinist. He's had decades of practice at manipulating the media and he does it so well.

Or if that analogy doesn't work for you, how about this one: He's a stage magician that gets the media to focus on the shiny object in one hand while he uses the other one to 'take care of business'. Think about it.

He (or one of his staffers) posts a tweet about one subject or another. The LSM goes insane over the tweet, focusing all of their effort and attention on his latest Twitter 'outrage'. In the mean time they aren't paying attention to what's going on in the background. It's not that he's hiding anything as everything he's accomplished has been out in the open. It's that he's diverted their attention away from it by giving them something else to pay attention to. When they finally do pay attention, they're surprised. And then the process repeats itself.

Could it be that's how he's gotten the judicial nominees he's wanted appointed? Is that how he's managed to be so effective in regards to foreign policy? (You have to admit he's certainly gotten the attention of a certain leader in a country north of the 38th Parallel.) Is that how he's managed to roll back many of the economically damaging regulations imposed by his predecessor?

Yes.

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Truer words were never on a tee shirt!

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The more we hear about Stormy Daniels' lawyer, the more disreputable we're finding out he is.

Between stiffing his partner for monies earned by their practice, shorting clients on money they were awarded in lawsuits, and now it appearing that he's a tax cheat, why would anyone, including Stormy Daniels, trust this publicity-seeking shyster? He certainly has a less than stellar reputation.

I figure it's only a matter of time before he's busted for something or Stormy wises up, fires the jerk, and finds a more reputable attorney. Or maybe both will happen.

Either way she should put as much distance between her and this Avenatti guy.

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I have to add the same comment Glenn Reynolds added about this piece, that being “It’s very important to list all the things you won’t do for your future husband before you meet him.”

While I can understand why some women don't want to change their names after marriage, one has to wonder what other things some women might not do for/with their husbands after marriage.

I know I've mentioned overheard conversations between young women expressing their totally unrealistic expectations about marriage. More often it sounded like they were talking about a relationship with a monied doormat who would let them have sex with anyone they wanted outside of the marriage, not a man. (Not even a beta male.) That's not a marriage, that's a financial arrangement with a whore. No, strike that. A professional would give value for the money paid to her. These women wouldn't.

How did I make the connection between a women explaining why she wouldn't change her name after marriage to a cuckolding gold digger? I didn't really. It was just that Glenn's comment triggered the memory of the overheard conversations.

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If things go well on Monday I will have the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee in the water and tied up at its slip before the sun sets. I had to delay the launch as the owner of the docks where I berth The Boat informed me that they had not yet finished laying down the new deck after some structural repairs were made. Without that deck there was no way I would be able to make it from the dock to the shore without walking the proverbial tightrope. So launching The Boat was delayed.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer has (unofficially) arrived, as have the summerfolk, and where we're still plugging away at getting our house ready to sell.