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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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’.

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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.

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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.

It's Only Going To Get Worse

Every time I think it can’t get any worse I am proven wrong, particularly when it comes to political ads. As is always the case, the closer we get to the election in November the worse it’s going to get.

While the ads for the federal offices like President/Vice President, the House, and the Senate will get loud, often, and nasty even oftener, some of the state races are likely to get just as nasty.

While some of the ads I’ve seen for the two House races here in New Hampshire haven’t been all that numerous or loud, the ads for gubernatorial race here have gotten loud, endless, and mostly focus on one issue, one that I doubt I could care any less about than I already do. That issue?

Abortion.

The Democrats in New Hampshire are dumping millions into pro-abortion ads, slamming the GOP gubernatorial candidate, former NH Attorney General and former US Senator Kelly Ayotte, for her alleged stand on abortion. Just about every ad is about abortion, or a counter ad saying the Democrats are lying about her position(s) on abortion.

It seems the ads run at every commercial break, which means every 10 or 15 minutes. It’s annoying. It’s “All Abortion All The Time”, as if this is the only issue worth paying attention to during this election and that nothing else matters.

The Democrats are trying so hard to make this a single-issue election and in the process, pissing off a lot of people. I know it’s certainly pissing me off.

I have always had problems with single issue elections. I have an even a bigger problem with single issue voters as I find so many of them tend to be closeminded, or worse, uninformed and/or misinformed.

The only saving grace is that we only have to put up with it until November 5th.

The bad part of this is that we have to keep putting up with it until November 5th...and it can’t get here soon enough.

NOTE: I will state clearly that I don't like elective abortions. I never have. I have moral objections to it except under special circumstances. But is legal and as such protected under law. And that's all I'm going to say about it.

Friday Funny - A Husband's Letter

Thoughts On A Sunday

While the calendar and the weather say it’s still summer, one sign of fall’s approach that is unmistakable is acorns, specifically acorns as they fall from the oak trees. It happens every year, starting towards the end of August and picking up as we progress through September. Most years the number of acorns falling are nothing spectacular. But the past two years have seen huge numbers of acorns falling, sometimes so much so it sounds almost like rain. But there is also the ‘thud’ when they hit the roof, the ‘bang’ when they hit the roof of a car or truck, or the ‘smack’ when they hit the driveway or road. There are pieces of acorn all over road, crunching under the tires as we drive along the road.

Another sign of the fall’s impending arrival is the foliage starting to change color. There isn’t much in the way of change yet, but the swamp maples are usually the first to change and I’ve seen a few already starting, with some sections of the tree already changing from green to red. I’ve also seen some of the birches, those ‘stressed’ during the April Nor’easter this past spring, changing earlier than the rest of them.

We won’t see peak foliage until early October, something I plan to take in from the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout as that’s one way to see it all without having to worry all that much about leaf peeper traffic on the roads.

==++++==

We’ll be experiencing a ‘twofer’ Tuesday night with a combination of a “super moon” and partial lunar eclipse. A super moon is when the moon is closer to the Earth which makes it appear larger than usual. Add in the partial lunar eclipse which will take place for about a half-hour between 10:15 and 10:45PM and it’s a nice twofer.

==++++==

This has certainly been true around here.

Housing prices have jumped more than 30 percent under Biden-Harris administration.

The majority of voters believe in the American dream but find it less attainable, a new poll found, thanks to sky-high housing prices, which have jumped more than 30 percent under the Biden-Harris administration.

The poll, conducted in July by the Rainey Center think tank and released through a report this week, found that although 54 percent of Americans believe in the American dream, 66 percent say it has fallen further out of reach. Respondents cited home ownership as a top source of pessimism—57 percent said owning a home has become less attainable over the last decade, compared with just 19 percent who said it's become more attainable.

Home prices have skyrocketed under the Biden-Harris administration, with the median price for an existing home jumping a whopping 17 percent in 2021. Housing affordability has since emerged as a top issue for young voters in November's election, polling shows.

Thirty percent? Around here, it’s closer 100%.

Checking the comments from the Instapundit post that linked the above article certainly seems to back up some of what I’ve seen regarding housing costs, with prices having doubled or more. They also back up the poll’s findings about housing costs.

The out-of-reach housing costs are having a negative effect on the economy, particularly for those looking for work. How can they take a job knowing they may not be able to afford a place to live. That’s certainly been the case here as we have lots of job openings but applicants can’t afford to move here if they take the jobs. It’s a Catch-22 that I have no doubt a Harris administration will make even worse.

==++++==

You know it’s bad when CNN is blasting the Harris campaign for spreading misinformation while at the same time aligning “herself with the kind of authoritarian logic that dictators throughout history have used to justify censorship, claiming it's necessary to protect the public from so-called disinformation.” It appears to be a “Do as I say, not as I do” moment for Harris. CNN lists a number of creatively edited video clips the campaign has used to make false claims about Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance.

A couple of examples:

The first post mentioned in the article falsely implied that Trump was confused about where he was during a rally in Pennsylvania by showing him mention North Carolina. In reality, he was acknowledging North Carolina supporters in the crowd. Another post falsely implied Trump was confused about his location again during an Arizona speech, but omitted the context that he was discussing Pennsylvania’s immigration issues.

--snip--

Kamala's campaign also lied about Sen. JD Vance. The campaign posted a clip suggesting he supported privatizing veterans' healthcare, but the full quote showed he advocated for more flexibility while maintaining federal care. Another post falsely tied Trump’s monument-damage penalties to Project 2025, "But the full video of the rally shows Trump was not even talking about Project 2025 or his future plans."

There are a number of other examples of other misinformation put forth by the Harris campaign. As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

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If we need yet another example of just how off track the Pyrite State has gone, there’s this one that has caused a foreseeable problem because of its energy policies. What is ‘this’?

The Hollywood Bowl had to cancel a concert because California’s electrical grid was so strained it caused a power outage in the area.

What did they expect when California has dismantled so much of its generation capacity all in the name supporting “Green Energy”?

The bill arrived because California chose to ignore reality in order to advance green energy initiatives based on dubious climate change theories. One of the first areas hit by a recent heat wave that overwhelmed the southern California power grid was directed at a Mecca of the environmentalist movement: Hollywood.

That seems appropriate, somehow. The ones who have pushed the unsustainable ‘feel good’ policies are some of the ones who suffer from the effects of those same policies. It might also explain why Hollywood studios are “moving to Las Vegas in which Nevada does a better job of providing reliable power to residents and businesses.”

I expect the problem will only get worse as California’s grid goes fully green. On the other hand, now that in increasing flood of businesses and residents are leaving the Pyrite State for greener pastures, the problem may solve itself. At the point the last businesses and last US citizens depart California, the green electrical grid will be able to supply all the power required for the few die hards, illegal immigrants, and government tools still living there. Maybe.

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Gee, this is a surprise...NOT.

It appears that yet another point that Donald Trump brought up during the debate that was “fact checked” by moderator David Muir and declared to be untrue was actually correct.

During the debate Trump stated “Crime here is up and through the roof. Despite their fraudulent statements that they made. Crime in this country is through the roof.”

Trump was correct, as Crime Prevention Research Center president John R. Lott Jr. wrote in a detailed piece published the next day:

In fact, Trump was correct about the increase in crime under Biden. While violent crime fell by 17 percent under Trump, Biden has seen it rise by 43 percent.

Muir doesn’t understand what the FBI is measuring. The FBI counts the number of crimes reported to police. Trump was right that less than half of police departments are now giving that data to the FBI, but, more importantly, Trump was discussing what was happening to total crime, not just the number of crimes reported to police.

But as it turns out, new data released by Joe Biden’s Dept. of Justice on Thursday essentially made Trump’s point for him:

The DOJ’s survey from the Bureau of Justice statistics is self-reported instances of violent crime over the last six months — meaning that it includes crimes that may not have been reported to police.

The annual National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) showed total instances of reported violent crime — including rape, robbery and aggravated assault — is up from 5.6 per 1,000 in 2020 to 8.7 per 1,000 in 2023.

The highest recent rate of violent crime was in 2022, when the survey tracked 9.8 instances per 1,000 people over the age of 12.

The rate of rape increased from 1.2 per 1,000 in 2020 to 1.7 in 2023, while robbery went from 1.6 per 1,000 in 2020 to 2.6 per 1,000 in 2023, and aggravated assault rose from 2.9 per 1,000 in 2020 to 4.5 per 1,000 in 2023.

This has me wondering how many other ABC “fact checks” are in error as well? We already know the Harris campaign has no problems with creative editing video to make it seem that Trump said ‘X’ when in fact he said “Y”. We also know ABC has no issues with overtly covering for Harris and inserting itself into the campaign, acting more like a propaganda organ rather than nominally neutral news media.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer weather remains, our boating season continues, and where Monday is coming back again.

A Tale Of Two States

This is about the contrast between two states, Ohio and New Hampshire, and specifically about how they handle voter registration.

Recently, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu signed a bill into law that removes exceptions to the state’s voter ID law and adds new requirements for registering to vote.

On Thursday, Gov. Chris Sununu signed a much-debated voting rules bill into law.

House Bill 1569 requires anyone registering to vote in New Hampshire to prove valid citizenship with documents such as a birth certificate, passport, or naturalization papers.

The new law also removes all exceptions to the state's voter ID requirements and eliminates the affidavit ballot system.

That system, signed into law just two years ago, allowed voters without an ID to sign a sworn affidavit affirming their identity. If the voter did not return with proof of identification within seven days, the ballot could be subtracted from the final tally of votes.

The problem with the affidavit system is that too many voters who voted via affidavit didn’t return within the 7 days with proper ID which means the system wasn’t working. Why stay with a system that isn’t working well? Another thing: How did election officials know which votes should be subtracted from the vote tally? No one was able to tell me how that was achieved. As such, the change in the law does away with this flawed system.

Voting rights activists had argued the bill would disenfranchise qualified voters.

"What we have here is a phantom, non-existent problem, which is what this bill is designed to address, and on the flip side, you have legitimate eligible voters who will be adversely impacted," Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, said.

Bissonnette said the ACLU had not ruled out challenging the law in court.

In a statement, Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen chastised the governor for signing the bill and called the law "un-American."

These are the same people who support out-of-state college students voting in New Hampshire elections even though they aren’t residents, using the “You can’t deny their rights to vote” excuse to allow such an illegal action. No one’s right to vote was being denied. They had every right to vote...in their home state via absentee ballot, just like anyone else. As best I know New Hampshire is the only state that allows non-resident college students to vote in such a manner.

And then there’s Ohio.

Ohio’s problem is different, in this case Haitian refugees registering to vote in the town of Springfield. How is it non-citizens are registering to vote?

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose warned election boards to be extra vigilant in the weeks before the November election after an investigation uncovered illegal voter registration forms circulating in Clark County.

In a media advisory, the secretary of state's office noted, "The office’s Election Integrity Unit recently concluded an investigation into the origins of an illegal voter registration form translated into the Haitian Creole language. The Clark County Board of Elections reported this form to our office after rejecting its submission by a local applicant." According to the Public Integrity Division, the form had a name written on it but nothing else. Under Ohio law, anyone who commits election falsification is guilty of a fifth-degree felony.

--snip--

Clark County is home to Springfield, Ohio, where as many as 30,000 Haitians have unexpectedly migrated—most of them semi-legally after the Biden-Harris administration extended Temporary Protected Status to 300,000 Haitian migrants in June.

The mass migration to Springfield has taxed hospitals, schools, and social services as the population went from around 60,000 to more than 80,000 overnight.

LaRose's press release noted an ongoing investigation into "evidence of a pattern of fraudulent voter registration activity in multiple counties under the paid employment of a group called Black Fork Strategies."

Apparently Black Fork Strategies has a history of fraudulent voting activities.
It is described as “an Ohio based progressive organization that touts itself as ‘Building Long-Term Progressive Power’.” Gee, I wonder just who they might be supporting in the upcoming elections in November?
Last month the Ohio Secretary of State’s office ”referred a number of election fraud cases involving Black Fork for prosecution.” Why doesn’t that surprise me?

One state is clamping down to make it more difficult to commit voting fraud while the other is having problems with fraudulent voter registrations that involve a Progressive organization that seems to have no problem with ensuring Progressive power...even if they have to cheat to do it. (Sound familiar?)

And so it goes.