Promoted From "Promoted From The Comments"

To borrow a subject line from Skip at Granite Grok, the following was promoted from the comments at GG about a subject near and dear to yours truly, that being the problem when folks “from away” relocate here to New Hampshire. We aren’t the only ‘locals’ that worry about such problems as we see the same concerns in places like Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and Wyoming worried about folks relocating from California trying to turn their states into the very place the fled from. In our case it’s folks from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York coming here and trying to recreate the very places they came here to get away from.

Over the years, I have seen many folks from away move into our town and they can be categorized into three different and distinct groups.

The first group are those who move here, do their best to fit in and enjoy their new home town, and after a few years you’d swear they’ve always lived here. That’s a good portion of the folks coming here from away.

The second group are those I call “drawbridge” folks.

They move into town and then want to freeze everything, allow no changes of any kind. In effect, they want to ‘raise the drawbridge’ to prevent change from entering the town. While I can understand this mentality, it isn’t realistic. Change is inevitable. Some changes will happen quickly, usually forced by circumstances. Other changes will take place slowly, a little at a time and barely noticeable, but it will happen.

Most “drawbridge” come to realize their expectations are unrealistic and eventually come around. Those who can’t come around fight against every change, large or small, and tend to be unhappy about the changes they see. There is no mollifying them. Fortunately they tend to be a very small minority of those moving here from away, but they can be the most problematic.

The third group tends to be the loudest, most disruptive, and least likely to listen to reason. It is this group that Skip and commenter NHNative address (hence the “Promoted from the Comments” tag) .

They are the folks that move here to get away from wherever they came from, and the first thing they do I try to recreate the very place they fled, recreating the very conditions that caused them to flee “back where they came from” to begin with. They want all of the amenities of their old home towns and expect the rest of us to pay to provide them, amenities the rest of us couldn’t possibly care any less about than we already do. They make a big stink if we bumpkins don’t automatically bow to their ‘superior’ wisdom, not understanding that their wisdom isn’t all that wise and rarely applicable to their new situation. Those with lots of money tend to be the most obnoxious, not understanding that some of the bumpkins have even more money than they do or, lacking that level of cash, have far more influence in the town/county/state than the newcomers could ever hope to have.

It is to this group the following message is addressed:

They should take the message to heart.

Thoughts On A Sunday

We’ve seen a preview of summer with nice sunny weather with temps in the 70’s, light winds, and the wide open lake. Very few boats have been venturing out on the lakes, and those that have have been mostly fishing boats, trailered in and launched by their owners for the day. I have seen only a handful of boats at their slips in the marinas and coves here in my town, but that will be changing with every day as the boatyards, marinas, and residents launch their boats and get them to their summer berths.

About the only dark cloud making itself known is the cost of gasoline, up about $1/gallon from a year ago. (Gee, I wonder why that might be?)

Despite the higher gas prices, the enthusiasm for the upcoming boating season here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire is quite high, with the demand for new boats outstripping supply.

Despite the age of the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout (28 years), it is still quite serviceable and I expect to get quite a few more years out of it. (I would like to get a new boat at some point, but I have other priorities for my money for the time being.) With regular maintenance I should be able to keep it in running shape for as long as necessary, something that, for the time being, is a lot cheaper than buying a new boat. But some day...

==+==

Are we seeing yet another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences coming to bite President *’s administration in the butt? Of course. This isn’t the first such instance nor will it be the last. This latest iteration?

His threat to order the banning of a whole host of ‘scary’ guns has driven the sales of AR’s, ammunition, and “ghost” guns to unbelievable levels.

Then again, SloJo has already stated he believes the Constitutional restrictions on government can be ignored because none of them are absolute. It seems he (or WRBA) thinks the Second Amendment can be ignored despite the phrase “Shall not be infringed” being part and parcel of the Amendment. In effect, Biden’s proposed gun policies will treat everyone as a criminal, except for the real criminals, of course.

Once he disposes of the Second Amendment the focus will shift to the First.

They are about to find out the hard way that a majority of the American people won’t stand still for that.

==+==

At least our governor has gotten one thing right: He says New Hampshire will not have so-called “vaccine passports”.

Requiring citizens to have a government-issued vaccine passport to travel and to attend public events would needlessly stir more controversy over the risk of contracting COVID-19, Gov. Chris Sununu said Tuesday.

“Washington is so removed from what is happening on the ground. We shouldn’t be mandating anything. These vaccine passports, creating the haves and the have-nots, you are just going to create a lot of problems and anxiety,” Sununu said.

Sununu said the passport runs counter to New Hampshire’s tradition of treating vaccines as voluntary.

“I am very hesitant about any of that. At the end of the day, it is an individual choice,” Sununu said.

Of course the Left will need to silence the Governor because he is refusing to follow the narrative, refusing to create or follow a system that will ask “Papiere, bitte!”

==+==

A quote from Pete Buttigieg: “Freeways were built on a “racist” system, and built at the expense of communities of color.”

So now even highways are racist? What’s next? Water mains and sewers? Electricity?

If everything is racist, then nothing is racist.

==+==

One of my friends was up visiting today and on his way back home he called me on the phone to share a sign he saw outside a business:

We warned you about Joe Biden, but did you listen?

No. No they did not.

==+==

One thing that has become a concern, at least here in New Hampshire (but also seen in other places), is the spreading phenomenon of short-term rentals, particularly those booked by way of services like AirBnB, VRBO, and other similar operations. There has been a growing problem with such short-term rentals, both here and in other towns, one of them being poor behavior by those renting the short-term rentals. None of those problems are the fault of the rental servcies. Some of the problems are resolved by the owners of the short-term rental properties, particularly those who also reside in or nearby them. (Some owners only offer to rent their properties during certain time periods such as for a couple of weeks when they are away on their own vacations.)

A more recent phenomenon has been properties bought for the sole purpose of using them as short-term rentals. That has been seen here on an increasing basis. What’s even more disturbing is corporations – LLCs – buying up such properties, sometimes paying well above the market value for ‘vacation’ homes, then listing them via the aforementioned services. This has certainly skewed the housing market, making homes that would have been occupied by owners, i.e. families, unavailable, particularly since some corporations have been paying well above market value to acquire them.

The problem we’re seeing with this? If there are issues regarding the property, who do the parties concerned contact? Some anonymous LLC in Boston or New York whose only concern is that they keep making money back from their investment and not quality of life issues caused by those renting their properties? Will it be a property management company who will handle it? One of the members of the LLC? A law firm representing the owners? Who does a municipality contact of there are immediate problems...or chronic problems that constantly plague neighbors, and by extension, the town?

We haven’t figured out the answer to that question...yet.

==+==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer has been been giving us sneak previews, summerfolk have been showing up to get their vacation homes ready, and where everyone is anticipating the summer restaurants reopening in a few weeks.

Yes. Yes It Does.

Umm, yeah. I think this explains real racism pretty well.

(H/T Powerline)

Thoughts On A Sunday

It is Easter and we are celebrating the Resurrection, something that has brought Joy to many throughout the centuries. He is Risen!

==+==

This will be a short TOAS as we are on the road, visiting family to share Easter Dinner. Since most of those participating have been immunized, we believe the risk is small. Those who aren’t yet immunized have been working from home for months.

==+==

One of the side effects of last week’s visit to Southwestern New Hampshire was a couple of tires in the trusty RAM 1500 being out of balance. I thought I had managed to get all of the mud and gravel out of the wheels after our trip down there (the last mile or so of our trip to our family’s home was on muddy dirt road), but I was wrong. I didn’t manage to get the last of it removed until Saturday afternoon, being aware of our trip to the older WP Sister’s place for Easter dinner would be much less comfortable if I didn’t restore the wheel balance.

==+==

Is it just me or have our adversaries realized that no one really appears to be in charge at our highest level of power? Certainly China and Russia understand this.

The new administration started off using virtue signaling as an important component of foreign and domestic policy. But now even the “only adults in the room” suddenly suspect that Woke garlic doesn’t repel vampires. Russia and China continue to defy the rules of the Biden-Harris administration despite their expectation that the world would return to its pre-2016 order.

--snip--

Russia and China — not to mention North Korea and Iran — are all on the move and don’t seem deterred by Washington. If disaster overtakes the Biden Harris restoration future historians will conclude that organized self delusion played a leading part. The cultural and political establishment belief in the Great Reset after Trump sputtered and instead of the predicted return to normal the global world has continued its descent into crisis.

--snip--

While Biden-Harris sees itself as “back” in charge, recent Great Power challenges treat them as a fading, decadent relic. At a top-level diplomatic meeting in Alaska, the Chinese envoy said: “The United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength” according to the New York Times.

They realize the US is no longer cohesive, that those in power are nothing like the previous administration, the one they disliked but respected since it spoke from a position of power and strength. Now we have SloJo “in control” and Whoever is Running the Biden Administration believes they can make nice with China, Russia, and even scarier, Iran and, that because they’ve done so, they will fall in line. But not so ancient history (just 5 years ago) shows they won’t. They will exploit the Biden Administration’s focus on making sure no Democrat will ever lose an election again and fomenting a for-the-moment cold civil war.

One thing we can count on: If the feces hits the rotary oscillator and adversaries like China and Russia make moves against Taiwan and Ukraine respectively, SloJo and WRBA will find some way of blaming Trump...and will do absolutely nothing about it.

==+==

And that’s the abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where there’s still snow on the ground here and there, Ice Out is close, and where boats are already being unwrapped and prepped for the upcoming boating season.

Irony...Writ Large

How does one define irony? Let’s give it a try, shall we?

(H/T Powerline)

Prepping For Summer

Normally I would be writing about this subject on Sunday, but with it being Good Friday today and Easter on Sunday, I figured I’d delve into this subject today, that being preparations for the upcoming summer. There was another motivation for this subject, that being a discussion with an old friend, talking about Covid-19 and the differences between the mandates here in New Hampshire and her home state of Connecticut.

One big difference – restaurants and bars are fully open here, but still locked down in Connecticut.

That got us talking about summer in general and what I’ve got planned.

The first thing: Ensuring the slip for the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout – aka The Boat – will be ready. The rent for the upcoming boating season has already been paid and the owner has already made arrangements for any repairs that might be needed to ensure the docks are serviceable.

The second thing: Calling the boatyard where The Boat is stored and asking that it be taken out of storage and serviced by the second weekend in May. (It needs to be unwrapped, the hull acid-washed to remove the algae buildup that collected during last boating season, and the oil changed in the engine and stern drive.)

The first and second things are probably the biggest things that need to be taken care of before summer since boating is one thing we do a lot from May to October.

The third thing: Since it looks like summer will again be summer around here, that means we’ll see cookouts again. One thing we lack here at The Gulch is a grill, a lack I plan to correct sometime in the next week or two. (When we left The Manse a little over two years ago, we left our gas grill behind at the request of the new owners. We have been grill-less since then and last year it didn’t seem like we really needed one since cookouts were strongly discouraged...and we didn’t have too many family or friends visiting.) I have seen some nice ones over at Lowes and Tractor Supply Company, so time permitting, I will swing by sometime this weekend to see what’s available and how much they want.

The fourth thing: Spring cleaning. There are a number of items in the attic and the storage area above the garage that we neither need or want, so would be better off going to the dump, Goodwill, or St. Vincent de Paul. A few more will go to rental storage. There are some items elsewhere in The Gulch the WP Mom would like to see go away as she has no use for them and they are doing little more than taking up space. Some will go to family members as they are family heirlooms. Some will go to the Goody Shack at the local dump, some will go to Goodwill, and others will be sold. We hope to have more friends and family visiting, but we need to make room and make sure we have the amenities available for guests. As part of this effort I will be bringing a few items from storage to The Gulch to help with those needed amenities.

The fifth thing (sort of): It looks like I will be residing here longer than originally planned. With the housing market being what it is and the high demand (and costs) for building materials, starting construction on The New Manse makes absolutely no financial sense. Finding a general contractor has been a problem as well as many of them are booked out until next year. Better to maintain the status quo for the time being and wait until the housing bubble deflates. I don’t want to spend a penny more than necessary so I am willing to wait this out.

And so it goes for the upcoming Summer of 2021.

Scary Thought Of The Day

Seen over at the comments at Knuckledraggin comes this scary thought of the day:

Every time you say this year's name, it reminds you that 2020 won.

Next year? That's 2020, too.

It. Is. Never. Going. To. End.

Thoughts On A Sunday

We had a lot of warm spring weather this past week, ending with a number of thunderstorms rolling through Friday afternoon.

Driving around portions of Lake Winnipesaukee yesterday while running some of my weekend chores/errands I saw that large portions of the lake were now ice free. I figure the heavy rain and the high winds helped break up the thinner sheets of ice. Much of the ice seen from The Gulch and along the southern shore had been a darkening blue as of Thursday afternoon. Most of that ice is now gone.

The cove where the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout docks during the boating season is mostly ice free, with a sheet of mushy ice along one side of the cove, pushed there by the winds.

Last week I figured Ice Out would be called on April 12th. I’m beginning to think it’s going to happen a lot earlier than that.

==+==

It seems Nancy Pelosi is bound and determined to foment the Second Civil War.

First with the execrable HR 1, and then with her move to unseat a duly elected Representative from Iowa from the House because she only won by 6 votes. I guess that means that even if a Republican wins, it only counts as a win if the Republican wins by a huge margin...and even then only temporarily until the Speaker can invalidate the election results by decree.

Every time I think Pelosi couldn’t be a bigger scumbag than she already is, she proves me wrong.

She needs to go before she destroys what’s left of our Republic and turns it into a Leftist dictatorship. She has already shown she has no respect for the law, the US Constitution, or the American people, at least not those who are not part of the Progressive ‘elite’. The rest of the people are just deplorables to be abused, ignored, or both.

==+==

Yeah, I see this, but I have a different take on it than Skip.

Skip writes:

The problem isn’t the number of guns in the US (estimated now at around 400 million) but the culture of those that have them. Culture counts and a culture that doesn’t value life has chart results like this. If you need any more proof, look at the stats in Chicago after almost every weekend.

And that Culture is? Gangbangers. Get rid of them (which Chicago assiduously refuses to do), and the chart goes flat.

Take away the top 5-10 counties in America where gun CRIME (not violence, CRIME) is tops, the chart goes flat.

But we can thank Progressives for moving the Overton Window to the left and removing Societal norms, like marriage, like respect, like Judeo-Christian values, like valuing Private Property Rights, like behavior, and all the other bricks that used to make up the Wall of Society.

And this is what we’re left with – chaos. For we Normals, a disaster. For Progressives wishing to both remake us AND remake our Society, a manmade opportunity not to waste.

The culture the Progressives have in mind is not a new one by any means, their protestations notwithstanding. They want a culture that is the recreation of a society that vanished 30 years ago, a society of misery and terror, of show trials, of the brutal repression of human rights, with a nomenklatura that saw themselves as an elite that tried its best to separate themselves from the proletariat, a society that was so dysfunctional its economy was wholly dependent upon its greatest adversary’s largess, a society that poisoned its own environment “for the Glory of the State”, a society that was so repressive that it killed the souls of so many of its people that it finally collapsed because no one believed anything its rulers said anymore.

They want to recreate the old Soviet Union, pine to replace it with their own version, because they will do it better. Of course they won’t because they will make the same mistakes, will ignore the same factors that destroyed the previous version of their Socialist ‘Utopia’, and will suffer the same fate. Only millions more people will be dead and they will have killed them, either directly or indirectly through neglect. That is what they want for us...because they know better.

Thanks, but no thanks.

==+==

By way of Chris Muir comes this, the New Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events which impelled our Founding Fathers to form a new Nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created free and equal and endowed by their Creator with the inalienable Rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, they determined to declare the reasons which inspired them to such a noble cause.

Because we hold to these same self-evident truths, we seek to adhere to these same timeless principles and to conduct our lives in a way which shows ourselves worthy of the precious legacy which has been handed down to us by such brave and honorable men.

WE are the worthy posterity of our noble Founding Fathers.

WE are the ones who have kept their Covenant and Constitution.

WE are the ones who recognize and revere the God of nature who has blessed us with the fruits of their labor.

All we have ever required of our fellow countrymen is to respect our Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness and, in turn, we have respected theirs.

Now our endowed Rights have been stolen by those especially entrusted for their protection.

Those who were created equal to us now think they have been elevated above us merely due to the office they have acquired solely through our good graces.

The Governments which have been instituted among us exclusively for the protection of our Rights, have become destructive of those very ends.

Our Safety and Happiness have been abused and usurped.

The principles upon which our Country was established are now distorted and derided, if they are remembered at all. As all of history shows, the pursuit of such a Government is designed to reduce us to absolute despotism.

Because we understand it is no light thing to alter, abolish or institute new Government, for far too long we have tried to content ourselves while evils were sufferable. But now there is no rule of law and our patience is viewed by our abusers only as consent to more abuse.

It is strongly suggested you Read The Whole Thing, particularly before it disappears.

==+==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the rains are heavy, the winds are getting heavier, and where the ice on the lake will soon be gone.

The Freedom Of Speech Is Becoming "You Are Free to Speak Only If You Agree With Us"

I have been watching Pat Condell’s videos for some time. While his point of view is quite often that of a UK citizen cover subjects of import to the UK, the points he brings up quite often apply equally to the US, Canada, and a whole host of other western nations.

His latest diatribe covers the constant erosion of the freedom of speech, where a small minority can control the content of speech by declaring anything they disagree with, anything they don’t like, or anything that makes them feel uncomfortable as “hate speech”. Such oversight stifles the free exchange of differing ideas, something every healthy society needs. In turn, censoring differing speech also stifles the society, something that is never good.



While Pat believes the US First Amendment will protect the free speech of those of us in the US, he is wrong. There are those among us who have been working hard to make the First Amendment moot. They have been trying to get their fellow travelers to push the idea that “hate speech” is not constitutionally protected. One example: they have tried to use the “Yelling ‘Fire!’ in a theater is not protected by the First Amendment” argument as if it is somehow germane to the discussion. I have responded “But there is a fire in the theater...and you set it,” to more than one woke snowflake who would like to control every aspect of our speech to prevent any ‘uncomfortable’ speech. Eliminating any speech they don’t like is their goal and the First Amendment be damned.

Think it won’t happen here?

It already is, with heavy censorship of posting to places like Twitter and Facebook, and the actions taken by those same media platforms, backed up by Amazon/AWS, Google, and Apple deplatforming and demonetizing websites, apps, and YouTube channels of those they disagree with. Their terms of service have been changed to the point that any speech used that their anonymous and ignorant censors deem offensive can be removed.

An example of this I came across personally: Someone writing a comment to a post about cats and the discussion was comparing the size and characteristics of Savannah and Maine Coon cats. The comment was removed “due to the use of offensive language”. The ‘nanny algorithm’ the censors used apparently didn’t like the name of the Maine cat breed, seeing part of the breed name as being racist in nature. Even an appeal to the human censors elicited a “continued use of the offensive term could result in termination of offending account” response.

How. Effin’. Stupid.

Now apply that to everyday speech. Think it won’t happen? It has already started. On YouTube you find that some YouTubers can’t mention terms like ‘feminism’, ‘sex’, ‘sexism’, and ‘MGTOW’ just to name a few, without YouTube algorithms/human censors tagging/removing their videos. Not all YouTubers, just some. It has also led to YouTube demonitizing their channels, while leaving others employing same language and terms untouched. The difference as best I can tell? Those allowed to keep using the questionable language appear to be the ‘correct’ kind of YouTuber.

Another place we see this, and it is nowhere near as subtle, is the halls of academia. Faculty, students, and guest speakers are silenced on campuses because many of the aforementioned woke snowflakes are so offended (or so triggered) they can’t allow those with differing viewpoints to speak. They label those differing opinions as “hate speech” and will do anything they can to stifle it. It has gone as far as physical attacks to prevent those they see as ‘whateverists’ from speaking.

It is as Pat described in his video – the claims that the speech they disagree with is “hate speech” is a lie, a pernicious lie. It’s only purpose is to silence those with differing opinions, period. Silencing free speech doesn’t make things better. It makes things worse. It always makes things worse.

Two Accomplishments Of The Biden Presidency...So Far

Shamelessly stolen from Instapundit:

Harsh...but fair.

And these are just the latest. One of his first accomplishments was when he made tens of thousands of good paying union jobs disappear with a stroke of the pen. (Keystone XL pipeline cancellation.)