Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a cloudy and cool day here at the lake. Things have been pretty low key today with our two most important things today being attending church and having a visit from my Dear Brother and his missus. About the only other thing the WP Mom and I did today was watch the New England Patriots play the Las Vegas Raiders down in Foxborough. The rest of the day was taken up with a little TV, some YouTube videos, and some reading. And seeing that I have Monday off I will likely be busy as all get out doing things I would likely have gotten done today.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, plans for pulling the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water are being made. I expect it will be safely ensconced at The Farm (the official name of BeezleBub’s new home) long enough to be cleaned up and all of the boating gear pulled out and stored away. Then it will make its way to the boatyard for winterization and shrink-wrapping before returning to The Farm for the winter.

==++++++==

You would think that after all these years we would know how to bathe, and more specifically, how to take a shower. Apparently that is not always the case.

Turns Out There Really Is a Right Way to Shower

I am one of those adults who much prefers showers to taking a bath. Mostly, it has to do with the fact that it takes a lot less time to take a shower than to take a bath. I can generally perform all of the showering “tasks” in less than 10 minutes including turning it on, stepping into the shower, cleaning myself, shutting off the shower, and drying myself.

I am not going to delve into all of the recommended steps and how they should be performed, but I will say that I have been doing them for most of my life. But I am going to mention one that I didn’t expect:

Showering thrice a week is optimal, but seven times is the limit to avoid stripping skin of essential oils.

I will admit that I do not shower every day. I do skip a day now and then, so I’ll shower four, five or six times a week. Most of that depends upon the time of year as I may shower less often over the winter. However, when I was doing heavy physical labor back in my youth I showered every day, usually after work.

Every time I think there’s nothing new to learn, I find I’m wrong.

==++++++==

The Winter Is Coming! The Winter Is Coming!

Yes, I know we’ve not even made it through the first month of autumn, but we do need to start thinking about the coming winter. Winter up here in New England can be harsh with lots of snow, sleet, freezing rain along with sub-zero temperatures and high winds that can cause problems with power outages and wind chill factors that are well below zero.

However, it seems that 19 states may be seeing heavy “snow blasts” this coming winter.

A recent long-range forecast model from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revealed a massive shift in the bands of heavy precipitation between December 2026 and February 2027.

That map shows a growing chance that the entire US East Coast will see above-average precipitation this winter, from southern Maine to the tip of Florida and stretching across the country into Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas as well.

On the West Coast, California is also expected to see above-average precipitation this winter, which likely means feet of snow in the Sierra-Nevada mountains and other high-altitude areas out west.

I remember more than a few winters with heavy snows. One of them was when I still resided at The Manse where one winter we saw 150 inches of snowfall. We usually see an average of 60 inches. In any case I think we’ll be okay as we’re used to severe winters around here. The only concessions I will make will be ensuring I have enough propane on hand for the Official Weekend Pundit Portable Generator to operate for 5 days straight, dig out my tire chains in case I need them for the trusty RAM 1500 pickup, and make sure the winter emergency kit is checked and stored in the pickup as well.

Other than that I doubt I will need to make any additional changes to the usual winter preparations.

==++++++==

When I first heard about this, I wondered if they had the age of the schoolchild involved wrong. But it turns out it was correct and it is disturbing to no end.

The Six-Year Old Psychopath

You may have come across this video of a 6-year-old who shot and almost killed his teacher:

🚨 A 6-year-old shot his teacher. Richneck Elementary, Jan 6, 2023. Court unsealed Officer Brian Torrez's bodycam Oct 6, 2026. 🎥 The Virginian-Pilot / Daily Press https://t.co/TPphaycltx

— Patriot (@_Patriot1776Q_) October 7, 2026

--snip--

It seems this child was already lost at the age of 6. Can a child who clearly has been exposed to terrible parenting be saved if rescued at that age? I would say it depends. It depends on whether he’s a psychopath. Let’s just say I wouldn’t want him mainstreamed. But what to do with a child who’s already shown such a propensity for evil?

Listening to how this child acted and how he spoke he sounded more like a hardened street thug rather than a six-year old. It begs the question whether or not this is something he hears and sees at home. If so, it seems he’s been learning the wrong things. If not, then it has to be determined if the child is a murderous psychopath. Either way, this is scary.

==++++++==

This is another thing I had to read more than once to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood what it said. What is “this”?

The City by the bay admitting it f**ked up?

You see what I mean?

Did you know the Mayor of San Fransisco is a jewish son of a Rabbi Democrat Capitalist? Yeah try and string that sentence together in another context. Anyway, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie blamed the city’s progressive politics for fueling its homelessness, drug overdose and business exodus crises, admitting in a new interview that the city had “lost its way.”

Lurie, who has made restoring San Francisco’s battered public image a priority since taking office, told CNN’s Dana Bash that his administration is taking a more hard-nosed approach to crime while working to make the city friendlier to businesses. But Bash pressed the mayor on why San Francisco needed a turnaround in the first place - prompting a blunt admission about the city’s far-left reputation.

“We lost our way as a city. We were focused on the wrong things and today we’re focused on common sense,” he said. “I mean, we got so, entrapped in our progressive values and talking about progressivism that, we weren’t taking stock of what was happening on our streets,” he added.

If Lurie is serious it may be possible that San Francisco can be saved from itself. If he can change the focus of San Francisco government and political policies in favor of “things that work” rather than those Progressive things that sound good but don’t work, there may be hope for the City By The Bay.

It’s been years since I was in San Francisco, the last time I was there being 1996. Back then things weren’t all that crazy and SF was one of the places to be. However, over the past 30 years it has deteriorated to a place most folks don’t want to visit, businesses and residents have been leaving, and nothing seems to work anymore. (Two friends of mine who escaped from San Francisco years ago for the freedom of New Hampshire stopped going back there to visit friends and family because it was too depressing to see the city where they were born and raised turned into a Third World s**thole. They took to the New Hampshire way of doing things not too long after they arrived here.)

Of course, the mayor will have to fight the Leftist establishment and the Progressive lock on California’s state government to make progress, but who knows what will happen at the November elections. Maybe California could end up with a Republican governor.

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the foliage colors are approaching peak, the weather is cooperating, and where I won’t have to deal with Monday this week...

Random Thoughts While Out And About

I took a ride around some of the local towns with my 92-year old mother, something she asked to do to “just get out of the house for a while.” It was certainly a nice day for it with blue skies, some wind here and there and cool temperatures. All in all, it was a great day for taking a ride.

While it is fall the fall foliage colors are still developing here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire and probably won’t be at peak for another week. However, that didn’t diminish what foliage we did see with a lot of reds and yellows mixed among the leaves that are still green. Traffic wasn’t all that bad, particularly once we got off the main roads and onto the back roads that still got us where we were headed even though they were a more roundabout way of getting where we were going.

Like the main roads, the back roads were festooned with campaign posters for state offices in the legislature – the House, Senate, Executive Council, and Governor – and federal offices – two House seats and one Senate seat, all of which will be voted on this coming November 3rd. (I have to admit that the TV ads have reached the point where I no longer hear or see them as it’s the same campaign rhetoric over and over and over again, ad nauseum.)

There were plenty of leaf peepers out and about. (Leaf peepers are what we call foliage tourists up this way.) Unlike the summer tourist, most of these folks are well behaved and cordial. They want to drive around and look at the landscapes bright with reds, oranges, and yellows of the leaves. Certainly the local restaurants and hotels are loving the influx of tourists. Though not quite to the level we see in the summer, there are more than few up here in the Lakes Region and large quantities of them up the White Mountains and North Country where the foliage is at peak.

I have been considering pulling the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water sometime over this coming week. The weather is expected to be rather nice and will give me time to remove all of the boat gear and give the boat a good cleaning before I have it winterized and shrink-wrapped for the winter. There are still a lot of boats in the water from what I’ve seen at the local marinas, but not for much longer.

One thing I did notice during our trip around the area – gas prices have fallen a bit more. Towards the end of our trip today I stopped by my go-to gas station and filled up the gas tank of the WP Mom’s car and paid $4.06 per gallon. That’s down 5 cents from last Wednesday.

I did have to put on the heat here at The Gulch the other morning to take the chill off the inside. Not that I needed to leave it on for very long, but it had reached the low 40’s outside overnight and the heat was on just long enough to get the temp inside up to 69ºF. It took less than 15 minutes and then I shut the heat off. I will have to do that every now and then until we get into the consistently colder weather.

And so it goes.

Friday Funny - And They Say We Don't Listen

Thoughts On A Sunday

There have been two big events for the WP family that have taken place over the past few days. The first?

On Wednesday BeezleBub closed on the farmhouse he bought here in town.

The second?

It was 21 years ago yesterday when I adopted BeezleBub as my son. It was one of the best days of my life and I am very happy that I’ve been able to be his dad.

Today was the day that BeezleBub picked up the trailer for the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout from the boatyard. It will reside at his new house until we pull the boat from the water in a couple of weeks and it makes the trip to the boatyard for winterization and shrink wrapping. Then it will return to BeezleBub’s to be stored for the winter.

A lot of boats have already been pulled from the water as can be attested to by empty slips and a lot of boats on trailers waiting at marinas and boatyards fro winterization and storage. However, there is still plenty of boating activity seen on the lake. From prior experience it is likely lake area residents enjoying the lake and the coming foliage colors without having to worry about summerfolk being out on the lake, too.

==++++++==

I saw this over at Instapundit 10 days ago and it took me a while believe that it wasn’t a joke. Kamala Harris is really that clueless.

@LeadingReport https://t.co/dgHWny6Ljo

— Bored Certified (@Bored_Certified) September 23, 2026

To quote the late great Kevin Samuels, “You can’t make this s*** up!”

==++++++==

I’ve been having discussions with folks about high gas prices and many of them are surprised when I tell them prices were higher about 4 years ago. They didn’t believe me. I showed them a picture on my phone taken at a gas station in my area from about 4 years ago showing the prices or Regular gas and diesel and they saw that the prices back then were indeed higher. (I wish I could post pictures here on Blogger, but I still can’t as something is still broken and Blogger has been absolutely no help in fixing the problem. However, I can embed posts from ‘X’.)

This is something I also saw on Instapundit recently and it addresses some of the gas price issues.

Wow I can't believe Diesel is over $9/gallon Wait nevermind this was 2022 under Biden https://t.co/YzxSsFjeaN

— RightWI (@RightWI1776) September 19, 2026

Yes, this is California and prices still aren’t as high today as they were 4 years ago despite its efforts to make sure it will be a dwindling supply over time.

==++++++==

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

White Paint is Racist

My first thought was somebody must be off their meds or has escaped from a mental institution. But this appears not to be the case as Associate Professor Wendy S. Walters at Columbia University has actually written about this.

According to Professor Walters, there are “black transwomen murdered with alarming targeted frequency”. When she saw the walls of her children’s school, she felt “apprehension” and wrote, “I could not stop thinking about the walls. I said to myself: They are so very white.…”

Oh The Horror!

A less sensitive person might assume that white is the most reflective color and painting walls white maximizes the effectiveness of natural and artificial light. But that person is probably a white racist who drinks milk, lives in a house with white walls and has never even thought about the targeted campaign of mass murder against “black transwomen” by Sherwin-Williams.

What gets me the most is that other people are taking her seriously. Really? White paint is racist? This is effin’ ridiculous.

It’s getting to the point where everything is racist. But if that’s the case, then that means that nothing is racist, right? The folks that believe this tripe need to give it a rest because this has slid from the sublime to totally and inequivocally insane.

==++++++==

It seems Hollywood is about to prove that they’ve lost their ‘mojo’ if what I’ve heard about Tom Cruise’s latest movie is true.

Tom Cruise’s Global Warming Propaganda ‘Digger’ About to Lose $100+ Million

Based on several reviews, even from leftist critics, Tom Cruise’s Digger is a shrill, unsubtle, 129-minute attack on those of us who dare to use oil to better our lives.

And it’s about to lose a fortune.

--snip==

“Endless speeches, most involving the horrors of Climate Change and how dern evil oil is. Cruise’s Digger gets an extended close-up where he rants, raves and reveals the truth about oil and culture,” warns Christian Toto. “We need it. We crave it. We’ll risk everything to burn it. So this is all our fault.”

“Digger is bloated, dull, obvious, utterly lacking in self-awareness and, yes, exhausting. Would you want to spend two hours with grown men screaming at the top of their lungs?” Toto asked.

Yet another ‘message’ movie that no one wants. Hollywood has indeed forgotten the lesson from the late 60’s to mid-70’s, that lesson being “No one wants ‘message’ movies. If people want to be preached to they’ll go to church.” Moviegoers avoided those movies like the plague. Studios lost money. Studios stopped making ‘message’ movies and started making movies that people wanted to watch again.

I just have to wonder if what’s left of Hollywood will learn that lesson again in time to save themselves. If I had to guess, and I do, I’m going to predict that they won’t.

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the leaves are turning color, die-hard boaters are still out on the lake, and where Monday is showing up prematurely.

Educational Spending In New Hampshire - Who's Keeping An Eye On The Ledgers?

While the topic upon which I am pontificating about tonight is more New Hampshire-centric than it might otherwise be, I think it has some relevance in other states, too. To what am I referring?

Education funding.

I will not be getting into the bits and pieces about how it is handled in New Hampshire as there is already debate enough about it going on and there is one ballot question related to it that will be addressed during the election in November>

Instead, I have some questions for the school systems in New Hampshire that had some pretty large budget deficits over the past school year. One community, Claremont, has a $5 million deficit. Concord’s school budget deficit was almost $17 million back in February of this year. Yet another town, Milton, is also reporting that it has a $2.5 million school budget deficit.

Just what the heck is going on in these communities that is causing such large deficits? Haven’t there been any audits that show where the money has gone? When an audit of Windham’s school was performed a while back it showed all kinds of vulnerabilities which could lead to misspent funds. I have to ask just how often such audits are performed in our towns and by whom? My town’s school budget is around $32 million for the present school year. I’d like to make sure it is being spent properly and that we aren’t overpaying on some line items. I’d also like to see whether what are normally “Nice To Have’s” haven’t been morphed into “Need To Haves” when they really aren’t. That goes for our municipal budget as well.

Considering that the school budget in most towns ans cities are between 60% and 70% of all municipal spending, ensuring the spending of those funds is being handled properly is paramount.

Friday Funny - Dirty Old Lady

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a rainy and windy weekend up here at the lake. We’re at the northern edge of the Nor’easter that made its way up the Atlantic seaboard over the past couple of days. We haven’t had to deal with the heavy rains and wind being seen along the seacoast, but we are seeing some rain. The winds aren’t nearly as strong as seen elsewhere but there have been a few power outages due to the winds knocking down trees and tree limbs here and there.

If we’re lucky we’ll see about 1.5 inches of total rainfall here by the time this Nor’easter wraps up sometime tomorrow. Goodness knows we have certainly needed it.

At least once this Nor’easter has departed we’ll be seeing warmer temperatures.

==++++++==

Just when I thought those running my alma mater couldn’t get any stupider they prove me wrong. What’s it doing that has me making this declaration?

The University of Connecticut will be holding three sex toy workshops this fall.

My first thought was that was an article from the Babylon Bee because it must be satire. But it’s the real deal.

The University of Connecticut (UConn) in Storrs will hold three workshops on Oct. 6, Oct. 22, and Nov. 16 where students can handle demonstration versions of sex toys, including vibrators and plugs.

The events, titled “Good Vibrations: A Pleasure Pop-Up Workshop,” will be led by the “Sexperts” student group and are being advertised by the university’s Student Health and Wellness.

Really? Is this something that really needs to be taught? Are student activity funds being used to pay for this?

This is the same university that wanted to bring back segregated dorms at the request of minority students but decided not to go forward when both the state and federal government reminded them that segregated housing was illegal and could mean the loss of both state and federal funds.

If I went back in time and visited the Storrs campus in 1978 and told the students, faculty, and staff that this would be happening in the future, I doubt anyone would believe me.

==++++++==

By way of the comments to this Instapundit post – Why Are Heterosexual Women Attracted To Each Other – comes this comment that almost had me spewing coffee on my monitor:

As the joke (?) goes, “All women are bi. It’s up to you to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”

‘Nuff said.

==++++++==

Anyone paying attention knows this was coming.

Trump Ends Joe Biden’s Electric Vehicle Mandate.

It’s about time. Such a mandate may have sounded good, but it wasn’t realistic for a number of reasons. Two that came to mind when I first head of it were these:

Where were we going to find the materials needed to manufacture the number of batteries that would be needed?

Where were we going to get the electricity needed to charge all of those EVs?

To address the second question first, I (and others) figured it would require a doubling of the electrical grid capacity in the US to meet the demand. Anyone understanding how long it can take to expand grid and generation capacity knew that wasn’t going to happen. It didn’t help that a lot of the focus on new generation capacity in general was on renewables, something we have come to see isn’t workable. We have an endless number of examples showing renewables aren’t nearly as effective as claimed and are a lot more expensive per megawatt-hour than some of the more traditional generating technology. (I know from the options we have here in New Hampshire for electrical suppliers - not to be confused with the electrical utility companies that provide the transmission grids - the higher the percentage of renewables we select should we desire, the higher the price we pay for the electricity.)

As to first question, considering the materials needed to make the present generation of EV batteries, in this case lithium-ion batteries, both the cost and the means of obtaining some of the needed materials are too high.

Removal of the mandate is a move in the right direction. Let the market decide. If EVs are viable, let the market decide that question, not the government.

==++++++==

Could the Governor’s office in Oregon flip from blue to red in November?

According to some of the latest polls the GOP challenger Kristine Drazen is polling 2% over the incumbent governor, Democrat Tina Kotek.

Two percent is within the margin of error for most polls. Seeing that the election is still over a month away that lead may not last long...or it could widen as more Oregon voters decide they’re tired of Kotek’s leadership.

Only time will tell.

==++++++==

It appears the Governor Kotek isn’t the only one who may have a reason to worry about the November election. Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazer (FL-27) released a campaign ad that has been receiving quite a bit of backlash.

On September 17th, Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27) released a campaign ad in both English and Spanish in which she lectured President Donald Trump about immigration policy while standing in front of the White House.

In it, she suggested that some of his “immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” pointing to ICE data she claimed showed that 50% of detainees apprehended in July “had no criminal convictions or pending charges.”

“Be careful what your advisors are telling you on immigration policy,” she went on to warn, adding that “the same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”

Towards the end of the clip, Salazar stressed that she wasn’t “talking about giving them amnesty. I’m talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land, and only you can do that.”

--snip--

Salazar is facing a tough reelection fight in a midterm election year. The Cook Political Report noted that “though Salazar has a history of overperforming the top of the ticket, Trump’s sinking approval rating in South Florida will be an anchor on the congresswoman.” On September 25th, it changed its race rating for the district from Likely R to Lean R.

One has to wonder what the heck she was thinking. Her claim that Hispanics who help Trump gain the White House are feeling betrayed seems to go against polls and studies that show no such disatisfaction.

Again, only time will tell.

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the wind and the rain have yet to depart, preparations are being made to pull the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water, and where Monday is yet again harshing our weekend mellow.

The Rhetoric Is Cranking Up

Watching the multitude of campaign ads on TV, Letters To The Editor in our local paper, posts on blogs and on Facebook, it is easy to see the political rhetoric has been cranked up to ‘11’. There’s a lot of opinion out there about various candidates or government policies and so on. There are plenty of reasoned opinions on both sides and well as wholly delusional and ignorant opinions, too.

However, one topic that has been very hot, specifically on Facebook, has been something I wouldn’t have expected, something that crosses political lines as those on opposite sides of this issue does not fall along political lines. What issue am I talking about?

Daylight Saving Time.

There has been a running debate between people who want to remain on DST year round and those who want to remain on Standard Time.

I have been passionate about wanting to remain on DST or , if not possible, switching New Hampshire (and Maine) to the Atlantic Time Zone. Then I would be quite happy to remain on Standard Time.

As I have mentioned now and then, here and there, I think the support for remaining on DST is probably heaviest for those who are on the eastern edge of the four time zones in the Lower 48. This also implies that support for remaining of Standard Time is probably heaviest from those who live on the western edge of the four time zones.

I dislike the idea of remaining on Standard Time over the summer because that means sunrise will be taking place at just after 4AM here at Lake Winnipesaukee on the first day of summer. Thanks, but no thanks. Sunset will be at 7:30PM. On the first day of winter sunrise will be at a little after 7AM and sunset will be at a little past 4PM. (Both of these times are a little misleading because with the hills and mountains around the lake, sunrise and sunset is a little later or earlier, respectively. Here at The Gulch the sun disappears behind the surrounding hills at between 2:30PM and 3:30PM during winter months.)

I know I would much prefer to have light in the afternoon rather than the morning over the winter months. Those against the idea of DST year round keep bringing up the issue of kids having to go to school in the dark. During the depths of winter, quite a few of our school kids do that anyways because they have to catch a school bus at a little after 6AM which means they are going to school in the dark. It seems to me that in a lot of places kids are going to school in the dark, particularly places that even farther north than New Hampshire and Maine and they don’t seem to have problems doing so. Another solution is to start school later in the morning, something that a number of groups have been advocating for, specifically for teenagers as their circadian rhythms are off and they do better with a later starting time.

A number of states have already passed legislation to remain on DST year round, neighboring Maine being one of them.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out going forward. One thing that both the pro- and anti-year round DST folks do have in common is they both hate having to change their clocks twice a year and deal with the aftereffects of doing so. Count me as of those folks.

Friday Funny - Abandoning My Family

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a cool weekend here at the lake and rainy today on top of it. Of course ‘cool’ is a relative term. In this case it’s meant high temps in the 60’s (Saturday) and in the 50’s today. Overnight lows have been in the 40’s. And it’s not even officially Fall yet. We have also been seeing some of the trees starting to change color. Generally the first trees to change tend to be the swamp maples followed a couple of weeks later the other tree species.

We’ve barely recovered from summer and now we’re having to get ready for foliage season. A lot of the ‘leaf peepers’ will be heading up north of the lake into the White Mountains and the North Country as the foliage there is ahead of what we’ll be seeing here by a a couple of weeks or so. The leaf peepers will follow the colors as they make their way south through New Hampshire and Vermont and into Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

The leaf peepers are a different crowd as compared to the summerfolk being as they aren’t nearly as numerous and are from more diverse locations, with quite a few visiting from foreign countries. For the most part they won’t be flooding our roads, hotels, and restaurants to the level seen when the summerfolk are around and the won’t be here nearly as long, either.

==++++++==

Why doesn’t this surprise me in the least?

Things that are now rightwing: Investigative journalism Academic rigour Scientific dissent Nature Facts Biology Politeness Punctuality Normality Free speech Individual rights Rationality Objectivity Self-reliance Emotional restraint Delayed gratification

— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) August 15, 2026

I remember when these were pretty much normal across all political and socioeconomic classes. And it wasn’t all that long ago.

Some of the follow on responses delve into that, too.

==++++++==

Uh-oh. It seems that San Francisco has reached another tipping point.

It seems that robbers and thieves have announced they are going to be leaving the city because they’re running out of things to steal.

You know it’s bad when even the criminal element is leaving because of the effects of decades of bad government by California Democrats. Is Los Angeles next? It seems so as it appears Hollywood is packing up and leaving.

==++++++==

I find this hilarious if for no other reason that I’ve been thinking this for some time.

Zero Hurricanes Formed By Peak 2026 Season.

I have been seeing claim after claim after claim that this lack of Atlantic hurricanes so far this year as all the fault of climate change. But, weren’t these the same folks claiming that climate change was going cause more hurricanes, with most of them being more destructive?

A former climate reporter said she deliberately avoided covering positive weather developments because doing so would have complicated the narrative that climate change posed an existential threat.

“When I was a climate reporter, I never covered positive climate stories because it would ‘muddy the narrative’ that climate change was an existential threat,” Lucy Biggers wrote Tuesday on X. “No one told me to behave this way. I chose to do this of my own volition.”

Biggers, who now works for The Free Press, pointed to the historically quiet 2026 Atlantic hurricane season as an example of the type of story she believes climate reporters may be reluctant to highlight.

“I think this is why we rarely see events like this year’s historically quiet eastern hurricane season covered widely by the news,” Biggers wrote. “Many reporters believe covering it will ‘give fodder to climate change deniers.’”

Yup. Can’t have any reports getting out that go against The Narrative that climate change is going to kill us all and that it’s All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans.

That much of the lack of Atlantic hurricanes can be laid at the feet of this year’s ‘Super’ El Niño is being ignored by the climate change faithful.

Meteorologists have largely blamed the unusually quiet season on a powerful El Niño, a climate pattern marked by an unusual warming of the Pacific Ocean’s surface temperatures. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said El Niño increases vertical wind shear over the tropical Atlantic, making it harder for hurricanes to form and organize.

I wish I could remember where I saw the following, but I did see an article that dove into the whole “Carbon dioxide concentration increase will destroy us” claim and finding the experiments that correlated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration with rises in global temperatures were flawed, not because anyone was trying to deceive anyone, but because the experiments only looked at one aspect of the effects of carbon dioxide – radiative heating – but ignored convective heating which counteracts a good portion of the radiative heating. Recent follow-on experiments show the atmosphere isn’t nearly as sensitive to carbon dioxide concentrations as was once believed.

In the mean time, I am going to enjoy what I hope will be a relatively quiet Atlantic Hurricane season which ends on November 30th.

==++++++==

I’m sure just about everyone has been hearing the ongoing saga of the Lindsay Clancy case and particularly the revelations that have come from interviews with jurors which may end up with some of them being brought up on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. One YouTuber, a fellow I watch to from time to time, delved into this with the subtlety of a semi crashing the front of a toy store.


Do I agree with everything Dan brings up? For the most part, yes. And if I disagree it’s a matter of degree and not magnitude.

One thing he brings up is a question he asks right at the beginning of the video, that being “Were they actually looking for justice or were they looking for an excuse?” Listening to some of these jurors it seems they weren’t going to convict her no matter what. The had their minds made up before the trial even began. They were not impartial by any measure. They also seem to forget why Lindsay Clancy was on trial – she murdered her three children by strangling them to death. No one denies that, including her defense attorney. But these jurors, with one brave exception, chose to make this about her and not about her children.

I hope they decide to try her again, maybe with a change of venue to one of the rural counties in central or western Massachusets where this nonsense is nowhere near as prevalent. And this time voir dire has to be harsh and unforgiving to weed out the bias seen in the jurors of the first trial.

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where it’s presently raining to beat the band, the weekend traffic was light, and where Monday is returning again all too soon.