Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s another wonderful weekend up at Lake Winnipesaukee. Looking out from the deck at The Gulch I can see that the lake is fully frozen over and that fishermen and snowmobilers are making full use of the ice.

It’s also February Vacation week down in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, meaning a lot of folks from there are up here for the week. That means the ski slopes are busy as are the cross-country and snowmobile trails. It also means the cash registers are ringing as both restaurants and outlet malls are busy. (New Hampshire has no sales tax so a lot of people cross the border to shop tax-free. During this week a lot of visitors will take advantage of their time on vacation to ‘kill two birds with one stone’.)

With more snow on the way tonight and again on Thursday, the conditions will be perfect for those vacationing here this week.

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I have to admit that I was surprised to see a tweet from Sarah Jeong slamming anti-vaxxers. But the follow-on tweet from Brian Rockwell brings things back into perspective.

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You tell them and you tell them and they still refused to listen.

In this case, proponents for $15/hour minimum wage in New York were warned that there would be fallout if it ever came to be. Much of that fallout would be in the form of reduced hours or loss of jobs because of the artificial increase in the cost of labor.

Now that $15/hour has come to be in New York City, fast food workers are losing their jobs and the NYT is saying they are being laid off without “just cause”.

Did proponents really think that affected businesses wouldn’t take steps to deal with their greatly increased cost of doing business? With labor being a third to a half of a restaurant’s operating costs, is it any wonder they would try to reduce their costs when the cost of labor was artificially increased?

As far as the layoffs being called “without just cause”, does the NYT think the businesses should be forced to keep employees they can no longer afford just to make them and the $15 proponents feeling good about what they did? Isn’t “I can’t afford to keep you because I have to pay you more than I can afford” a just cause? How much will employees be paid when the business they work for closes its doors when it goes bankrupt?

That the NYT and $15 proponents chose to ignore the lessons of other places like San Francisco and Seattle when they imposed a $15 minimum wage shows they are either willfully ignorant of the side effects or didn’t really care because the whole thing was just a ploy to make them feel like they were “doing something” to help the poor and oppressed. Too bad their help had just the opposite effect.

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The Democrat-majority New Hampshire Legislature has put forth a list of gun control legislation that, as far as I can tell, does nothing but strip law abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights. This in a state with very low crime rate and constitutional carry.

They are trying to fix problems that don’t exist all in an effort to make themselves feel safe. But the proposed legislation will have just the opposite effect. While they may feel safer, the truth is that they will be less safe. This is particularly true for one law that will allow local school boards to ban possession of firearms on school grounds. It allows them to create so-called Gun Free Zones. Not that such designations have ever stopped anyone who ignores such laws (like criminals) from carrying guns in those zones. There are enough examples of just how much Gun Free Zones haven’t prevented anyone from entering them with their guns and shooting/killing people.

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Speaking of second Amendment Rights, it appears that a number of county sheriffs in New Mexico have already taken a stand in regards to a number of restrictive gun laws making their way through the state legislature. They plan to support becoming “sanctuary counties”, counties that will not enforce any state gun laws that are seen as violating the US Constitution’s Second Amendment.

This follows actions taken by counties in other states like Washington to provide sanctuary from state laws severely restricting the rights of citizens to bear arms.

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I have watched the feminist movement in the US since the late 1960’s and seen it devolve from an equal rights movement to a “We demand superior rights to those of those misogynist men because we’re helpless and need protection from the patriarchy even though we can do everything they can do” movement that has no grounding in reality.

Here’s a single photo that will show the difference between feminists here and in other countries:

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It has come to this in the Progressive World:

Comrade Vlad Linen has had to denounce new California Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision to cancel the $100 billion High Speed Train To Nowhere, which has upset AOC’s plans for her Green New Deal.

Ocasio-Cortez has said these would make air travel obsolete, which means she has a solution to take us to Hawaii and all the continents. Probably even the moon and Mars by way of train! Does anyone realize the harm to the climate that happens when people use a rocket to go to the moon?? So, naturally a high speed rail network to everywhere in the solar system would be the better option.

Commissar Newsom will now have to go the way of Debbie Whatshername-Schultz. Yes, still with a political position, but a non-person who will go nowhere nonetheless.

The Leftist autophagy continues!

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where winter is safely ensconced, winter activities abound, and where we have more snow on the way.

Thoughts On A Sunday

An exciting week has come to an end, one that saw the New England Patriots triumphant (again), temps swinging from single digits below zero to above 50°F, rain, snow, snow & rain, as well as the exercise of small town democracy (town and school district meeting), and editorial sparring in the local paper’s Letters section.

We’ve also seen a number of possible Democrat presidential contenders visiting New Hampshire, trying to get a feel if there is any support for their possible campaign to become the Democratic nominee for President. It signals that the political silly season has started and that soon we’ll be seeing an increasing and endless train of candidates, camp followers, and press. It will be absolute madness as we get closer to the New Hampshire Primary.

This might be a time to start drinking heavily.

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This isn’t news to any of us engineering types.

It turns out that cold weather can have a negative effect on the batteries of electric vehicles.

Under ideal conditions, these [EVs] can deliver more than 200 miles per charge and, in some cases, even 300. But as many owners discovered last week as winter storms slammed much of the country, cold weather conditions do not qualify as "ideal." A new AAA study finds that when the thermometer drops to 20 degrees Fahrenheit, range falls by an average of 41 percent on the five models it tested.

"We found that the impact of temperature on EVs is significantly more than we expected," said Greg Brannon, AAA’s director of Automotive Engineering."

Some EV drivers — including this correspondent — recently found that range can drop by half when the mercury tumbled into negative territory. But the AAA study appears to be the first to have used standard, repeatable methodology to confirm the problem and compare the effect of winter temperatures on different models.

Once it gets below freezing the battery chemical reactions can slow down and the internal impedance can go up, meaning the battery can’t deliver all of its stored charge. While heating the battery system will help maintain the full capacity of the system, the extra drain placed upon the batteries to keep them warm decreases the energy available to drive systems. Now add the need for the environmental system to keep the passengers comfortable and the vehicle range will go down even more.

EVs will be fine when the weather is warm, but for places like here in New Hampshire we might find that EVs are a not a viable means of transportation during the depths of winter.

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As if we need yet another in an endless series of proofs that socialism just doesn’t work, there’s Panera Bread’s experiment in socialism that has ended in a dismal failure.

Panera Bread’s ‘pay-what-you-want’ socialist program goes totally belly-up.

Panera Bread will be closing its last pay-what-you-can restaurant, located in Boston, on Feb. 15.

The move comes after the business’s “nonprofit” restaurant concept became unviable. On Tuesday, Eater reported that none of the restaurant’s five locations was self-sustaining.

Better that an experiment in socialism be a small one that affects a single business (Panera) rather than a big one that ruins an entire nation (Venezuela, for instance).

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One of the things that at least one potential Democrat Presidential contender has put forth as part of their platform is the oft-touted Universal Basic Income. While it may sound like a good idea at first glance, once one delves into it and takes human nature into account, the idea falls apart. That’s certainly what Finland found out when it tried as an experiment.

When it launched the pilot scheme back in 2017, Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income. It was run by the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), a Finnish government agency, and involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits.

It immediately attracted international interest – but these results have now raised questions about the effectiveness of such schemes.

Did it help unemployed people in Finland find jobs, as the...Finnish government had hoped? No, not really.

Mr Simanainen says that while some individuals found work, *they were no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren’t given the money. They are still trying to work out exactly why this is, for the final report that will be published in 2020.

I can explain why they saw what they did: human nature. It always wins in the end.

But will that stop the experiment from being tried again? Unfortunately the answer is no. It seems the city of Chicago wants to give it a go.

Giving people something for nothing and not expecting anything in return gives you... nothing in return. But it sure makes lefties feel good to be giving out other people's money for such a good cause.

I expect the experiment will show the same results as the one in Finland.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the poster child of today’s biased colleges.

Considering her disdain for anything not of a socialist bent, her willful ignorance of socialism’s history, let alone history of any kind, and her stunning lack of knowledge of economics despite an Economics degree from Boston University.

Do you think AOC has read one word of Friedrich Hayek? Do you think that she has even heard of him? What do you think she knows of history in general? We already know how informed she is about the Middle East.

This is a new form of proud Know-Nothingism. We can't even say it will come back to haunt us because it already is doing just that. Reforming our educational system is the most important mission of our time. Presidents come and go. Even media grandees come and go — after a while (too long a while). But education remains, shaping our future. Change it or everyone sitting in Congress will be AOC. (No it doesn't stand for All-Out Communist. But wait long enough and it could.)

And people wonder why she is disparaged with the moniker Alexandria Occasional-Cortex. It’s because she only uses her brain oh a now and again basis.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re expecting some more snow later this week, thoughts of the coming boating season in 3 months, and the realization that Monday is coming upon us once again is disturbing to no end.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Super Bowl Sunday has arrived (also known as New England Patriots Invitational Sunday).

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We survived the arctic blast that afflicted the Midwest, though it was attenuated as compared to what was seen in Fargo, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Chicago. We’ll be seeing temps swing into the 50’s by Tuesday, meaning we should be able to get some of the accumulated ice and snow to melt away, making room for more snow slated to arrive next Friday.

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Seeing as it is Super Bowl Sunday, it’s time to address the myth about sex trafficking and domestic abuse increasing during this particular weekend.

Police reports do not show an increase in either. However there are more incidents of drunk and disorderly as well as DWI.

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It’s one thing to make promises during an election campaign, and another thing to find some way to keep those promises and pay for them. That’s something rookie governor Gavin Newsom is learning the hard way.

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Why doesn’t this surprise me?

CBS has rejected an ad from Line Nine Apparel that is the antithesis of Nike’s Colin Kaepernick ad.

I guess patriotism is out of fashion at CBS. I wonder how long it will be before CBS cancels shows like NCIS or Blue Bloods because they are two patriotic?

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Steve MacDonald will get no argument from me on this one.

Anarchists and Leftists share a common blind spot – Ignoring Human Nature.

The always do which is why the fail again and again and again. Human nature is stronger than either anarchist or socialist theory. It always wins in the end.

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“Right to be Safe” is more important than the “Right to Bear Arms”? That’s what California Democrat Eric Swalwell believes. Remember him? He’s the one who threatened to use nukes against gun owners.

One commenter to the above post had a suggestion to make those like Mr. Swalwell feel safe. However I doubt he’d ever be willing to give up everything just to feel safe.

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This is irony, squared.

Cory Booker (D-NJ) was the first mayor of Newark in over 45 years who left office without being indicted.

Was it because he was a straight arrow or that he left before they found any evidence of corruption? Considering every one of the indicted mayors was a Democrat I’d say it was more the latter rather than the former.

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And that’s the abbreviated Super Bowl Sunday news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather is warming up, the supermarkets are full of people stocking up for the big game, and where just about every TV in New England will be tuned to the game.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a quiet weekend for a change, with no real chores needing attending to or places I needed to be. There’s also no football games other than the Pro Bowl and I have no plans to watch it. Weekends like that don’t come along very often so I am enjoying it as much as I can.

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Seen at Powerline:

NFL has changed the name of the Super Bowl to New England Patriots Invitational!

Hmm. Seems about right considering that out of the 53 Super Bowl games, the Patriots will have played in 11 of them.

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Some people are saying that President Trump has caved in to Pelosi and Schumer, funding the government without any promises for funding a wall. But others are saying he has done no such thing because the funding Trump has signed is only good for three weeks and that it is a calculated move on his part.

Of the two options presented, I am more inclined to go with calculated move as Trump is not one known to cave when there’s something he really wants. Too many people are judging Trump as if he were the usual Washington politician. After two years in office one would think that the Washington establishment/media/insiders would have stopped trying to fit Trump into the usual political pigeonholes because he doesn’t fit into any of them. But they haven’t which is why they constantly underestimate him.

Keeping that in mind, what Trump has shown is that he’s open to compromise and negotiation and that Pelosi and Schumer are not. He’s the adult in the room and they’re the spoiled children throwing temper tantrums unless they get their way.

Should the Nancy & Chuck show drive the government back into shutdown it will be them taking the heat, not Trump. He’ll be able to show he made the effort to solve the impasse and Pelosi and Schumer are being closeminded and stubborn, not for the benefit their constituents but for their egos.

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Are we seeing another victim of the Mueller investigation’s overreach in the person of Roger Stone?

Yes. Yes we are.

Has he been charged with activities that could be part of the alleged collusion between Trump and the Russians? No.

Has he been charged with crimes that are tied in to Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016? No.

Was he charged with helping the Trump campaign ‘steal’ emails from the Democratic National Committee or their publication by Wikileaks? No.

So what’s he being charged with?

There is nothing wrong with what Stone did. Mueller charges, rather, that Stone lied to a Congressional committee about his actions. If that is true, Stone is in trouble. But the charges against him do not support the theory that the Trump campaign colluded with Russians to invade the DNC’s email system. On the contrary, the Stone story is just more confirmation that the Trump campaign had nothing to do with it.

That’s it? He allegedly lied to Congress about his actions even though those actions weren’t themselves crimes? So as it has been pointed out before, he’s possibly guilty of a process crime, not an actual crime.

That’s pathetic…and desperate on the part of the Mueller investigation.

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Here’s yet another history lesson that will be devoutly ignored by the socialists amongst us. The latest lesson? Another nation having run its course of socialism – Venezuela.

A very wise person once said that "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." Venezuela has reached that point and now is paying the price, for once you're out of money in a socialistic country the only thing left of value is blood. It is indeed a tragedy as this nation was once South America's wealthiest.

Venezuela's dictator, Nicolas Maduro, is fighting to retain power. At least four people are dead in rioting that broke out today. Millions have left the country due to a failing economy, hyperinflation, no food, no medicine … you know, socialism at its best.

Fraudulent elections have a way of supporting socialism and Venezuela is no different. The Presidential elections last May were plagued with allegations of fraud and rigged voter registration.

This is the path that those like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Occasional-Cortex, and Nancy Pelosi would like to see the US go down. But of course they believe it won’t happen like that here because they’re smarter than the others that have gone before them.

Yeah. Right.

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I don’t know if you have experienced this:

You get a call from a phone number you don’t recognize and when you answer it you find you are being asked if you are in pain.

I certainly have, sometimes as many as three times a day. So has David Starr and he’s tired of it.

I am getting a phone call every other day now. It's a robocaller who starts out asking if I am feeling any pain, and goes on to point me toward a pain clinic that will prescribe any kind of happy pill I might want. I wonder how many opioid addicts get started by such drug pushing robocallers. For that matter how many opioid addicts get started at those pain clinics…?

Another question to ask: Who is paying for these robocalls?

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It looks we’ll be heading back into the deep freeze later this week. While we won’t see the kind of temps that the upper mid-West will be experiencing – they’ll be experiencing temps as low as -30°F, and that’s before any wind chill is factored in – and we’ll be seeing temps in the single digits below zero. Though with wind chills we might see down to -20°F. It will mean I might need to start up the trusty RAM 1500 a few minutes before I depart from The Gulch for work.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where bobhouses are dotting the ice, ice fishing has been increasing daily, and where we’re looking forward to the Ice Fishing Derby in a couple of weeks.

Thoughts On A Sunday

As I write this we are still experiencing snow, now mixing with sleet. We got about 10 inches of snow before the sleet started mixing in. While I have shoveled around the environs of The Gulch, there’s still more to move.

I did leave some snow behind, but it was with a purpose in mind, that being as a buffer should the sleet change over to freezing rain. That snow will make it easier to keep the driveway and walkway from becoming a sheet of ice, allowing me to remove it once the snow/sleet/freezing rain ends this afternoon.

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It’s Playoff Sunday, with the NFC and AFC championship games taking place today. These games decide who will be playing in the SuperBowl in two weeks.

I am not as interested in the NFC game because my favorite NFC team, the Philadelphia Eagles, isn’t playing this year, having been eliminated last week. However the AFC game is one the WP Mom and I will be watching intently as it’s between the New England Patriots and the Kansas City Chiefs.

The Chiefs are three point favorites, but as many have learned over the years, never underestimate the Patriots.

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Since Trump has called the Democrats’ bluff, offering a compromise in regards to the DACA and TPS programs in regards to illegal immigrants, one they rejected out of hand, it appears the Dems are ready to double down on stupid.

At a Thursday conference, some Democrats floated the idea of forcing cancelation of the SuperBowl as a means of ending the government shutdown.

Yeah, that’ll work…NOT.

One way to make sure a good portion of Americans never vote for Democrats again is to screw around with the SuperBowl.

While the NFL has tarnished its image by caving in to BLM protests, a lot of people will gladly back up the NFL if the congressional Democrats go full ‘stupid’. So will a lot of corporations that spent millions of dollars on ad buys for the big event. I would also expect millions of dollars of campaign funds to not make their way to Democrat coffers if they actually did this.

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I find it interesting, but not surprising, that US CO2 emissions have been rising as nuclear plants have been closed. What makes it worse is that some plants are being closed prematurely, not for technical or safety issues but purely political reasons.

Trying to force US energy production towards renewables, a technology that isn’t as green as proponents keep claiming, isn’t nearly as efficient as claimed, and is nowhere near as reliable as proponents want it to be. They have to be backed up by fossil-fueled plants using coal or natural gas, hence more CO2 being emitted.

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Is the whole kerfuffle about the border wall really nothing more than a Democrat scam? It is, according to Harry Reid.

What's in the news day and night? The wall.

It's all anyone talks about or thinks about or debates. Have you heard? The U.S. government is partially shut down over the wall.

But it's all a massive liberal scam. A Ponzi scheme. Pure fraud. Bernie Madoff couldn't come up with a better scam.

Because the same liberal politicians and donors who scream about the "racism" and "immorality" and "ineffectiveness" of a wall all live behind walls.

President Trump needs to buy TV infomercial time and run a 30-minute TV show in a Ross Perot fashion -- featuring aerial views of the mansions and estates of liberals, protected by walls, gates, and armed guards. You know, the exact same protections they don't want you and me or our children to have.

Exhibit A is Harry Reid, the Democratic former Senate Majority Leader from my home state of Nevada.

Read the whole thing.

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Does it really surprise anyone that families are pulling up stakes and leaving states like New Jersey, New York, Illinois, and Connecticut?

Considering the confiscatory taxes, business-hostile policies and regulations, profligate state spending, and willful lack of economic understanding, is it any wonder people are leaving those states? Why remain someplace where the government is doing everything it can to damage the economy, make it more difficult to do business, and make day to day living more expensive?

The thing that makes this even more ironic is that the governments in these states think that by doubling down on what they’ve already done they can somehow make things better, not understanding that their previous actions are the very things that caused the decay of their state.

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With the inclement weather we’ve experienced it behooves us to take a look at Skip Murphy’s take on the media feeding frenzy such weather events create.

It happens every time we have a significant snow event, one that most of we New Englanders see as part of a normal winter. To hear the news media you’d think snowstorms like these have never happened before and that everyone is gonna DIE unless we stay in and watch their news coverage.

Yeah. Right.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow and sleet are still falling, the temps are going to drop to single digits with well below zero wind chills tonight, and where dreams of this coming summer’s boating season fill our dreams.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Winter temps have returned with a vengeance, with our overnight lows in single digits above and below zero. The lake is quickly freezing, with the bays and coves already solidly frozen over and the main part of the lake following suit.

We did see one optimistic ice fisherman arrive at our town docks, towing his bob house behind his truck. But once he saw the ice wasn’t as far out or as thick as he might have thought it was, he decided it probably it wasn’t a good time to put it out on the ice and drove off, taking his bob house with him.

One positive thing about the cold temperatures – the LA Chargers aren’t used to playing in temps this cold which might give the New England Patriots an edge when they play them this afternoon.

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David Graham asks Why hasn’t Trump folded?

Why fold when he’s winning/

I have had conversations with a number of my liberal friends and they lay the blame for the government shutdown on Trump. But I reminded them that the story has two sides and that Pelosi has the mistaken impression that she runs the government. He knows that if he capitulates and gives Pelosi and Schumer what they want that they will kill any attempt to discuss funding the border wall. Everyone else knows it, too.

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I keep waiting for the miracles of the 21st Century to arrive and I have to admit to some disappointment that some of those miracles are nowhere to be found. Things like flying cars, colonies on the Moon and Mars, and nuclear power everywhere should already be here, yet we are without those things.

But every now and then one of those 21st Century miracles appears suddenly, catching us off guard. The latest ‘miracle’? How about wood that is stronger than most metals.

Engineers at the University of Maryland have found a way to make wood more than 10 times stronger and tougher than before, creating a natural substance that is stronger than many titanium alloys.

"This new way to treat wood makes it 12 times stronger than natural wood and 10 times tougher," said Liangbing Hu, the leader of the team that did the research, published in the journal Nature. "This could be a competitor to steel or even titanium alloys, it is so strong and durable. It's also comparable to carbon fiber, but much less expensive." Hu is an associate professor of materials science and engineering and a member of the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute.

This certainly looks promising.

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It’s one thing to be accused of fearmongering in the cause of promoting AGW, but it’s an entirely something else to be accused of ‘factmongering’, using facts to “cause irrational calm and complacency.” That’s so much worse than fearmongering, using misinformation to cause irrational fear and panic.

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The picture at Climatism should put the green energy scam into context.

Call it a perfect illustration of why green energy isn’t as green as proponents make it out to be.

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Then there’s another looming green energy crisis, in this case what to do with all of the solar panels out there when they reach the end of their useful life cycle? They cannot be merely disposed of in a landfill because they contain a number of toxic substances, meaning the panels must be treated as toxic waste. Did anyone think of this problem when they were promoting solar as an alternative energy source, or did they merely kick this problem down the road like so many others have been?

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And now it’s time for me to put down the laptop and pay attention to the Patriots/Chargers game, so that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the temps are frigid, the skies are bright, and where Monday is returning all too soon.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Here it is, the first TOAS of 2019.

I wish I could say that with the change from 2018 to 2019 that there have been profound changes for the better, but six days into the New Year it doesn’t seem that that’s the case. There appears to be a lot of the Same Old Same Old.

Even with the change of the majority in the House of Representatives down in the Swamp, or here with the New Hampshire legislature, I doubt we’ll see anything new. Only the faces and the names will have changed. For the most part it’ll be easy to predict what we’ll see both from Congress and from the state legislature.

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One thing the new members of the House need to learn is that the rhetoric they used while campaigning (and during their prior protests/community organizing/general PITA efforts) doesn’t always play well on The Hill. One thing that draws the wrong kind of attention is when a representative uses invective aimed at the President that would be better left to their constituents. They have to understand that the rules on The Hill are different from what they’re used to and that those rules won’t bend to their will. Flouting them is a great way to end up being censured by the very people they may consider their inferiors.

That’s not a good way start their congressional careers. Now if only some of the veteran Representatives (like Maxine “Mad Max” Waters) understood that.

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Is it possible Netflix could go the way of Sears?

The consensus appears to be “Yes”.

Unless it can rein in its debt and get its fiscal house in order it may find itself in financial trouble pretty darned quick.

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It seems that “Alex from the Bronx” Occasional-Cortex is the gift that keeps on giving.

She continues to display her expansive ignorance about how government works and keeps digging the proverbial hole even deeper with each tweet.

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It may be time to finally stick a fork in Twitter as it seems that posting facts is considered “hateful conduct”.

The victim of censorship by Twitter in this case is feminist Megan Murphy who had her account suspended because she tweeted that “men aren’t women”.

This is yet another example of “Just when I thought they couldn’t get any stupider…”

At this rate no one will be able to tweet about anything without running afoul of Twitter’s Terms of Use. So what use is Twitter under those conditions?

While this incident occurred a couple of months ago, it seems the problems with Twitter have only gotten worse since then.

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Is CNN going to go the way of the Dodo and Passenger Pigeon?

Their ratings continue to suck, with very few actually watching the news network by choice.

When CNN is being beaten by the Hallmark Channel, History Channel, and TNT you know they’re in trouble.

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The government shutdown is being blamed on President Trump when in fact that it can be laid entirely at the feet of the House. When they say it’s up to the President to compromise on this matter, they are reverting to the Obama definition of compromise – Sit down, shut up, and give us what we want.

But when the Democrats won’t even discuss the matter with the President and choose to ignore the realities of what’s been happening on the southern border, then the fault is theirs and theirs alone.

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This explains everything in regards to the Progressive Left.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the lake has not yet frozen over, our local ice fishing derby is less than a month away, and a lot of people are wondering if we’ll be able to pull it off.

Thoughts On A Sunday - End Of Year Edition

Here it is, the last TOAS of 2018, and it is time to take stock of the past 12 months.

While the Number One story (for me) was the sale of The Manse and the subsequent move to The Gulch until The New Manse is built, there were plenty of other events and stories that were more important in the greater scheme of things.

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One of the most annoying things I (and many others) have dealt with all year is the media’s constant barrage of the Orange Man Bad meme. It seemed to me that every news broadcast begins with three or four stories slamming President Trump for offenses real or imagined (mostly imagined). It got old after the second day. I have learned to not tune into the any newscasts for the first 5 minutes or so as they are usually reserved to bashing Trump.

This phenomenon is one I expect to continue during Trump’s entire time in office. After all most of the MSM have been a major part of the propaganda wing of the Democrat National Committee for years.

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One of the biggest non-stories of the year has to be Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations and unsubstantiated testimony against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. She couldn’t remember where or when the party took place thirty years prior where the alleged assault took place. Friends of Kavanaugh couldn’t remember any such party where the alleged assault took place. Two other men claimed it was they who were the ones who ‘felt up’ the young Christine Blasey at a party when they were all teens. (The assault that was alleged would have been considered fourth degree assault, a misdemeanor in the state of Maryland where the alleged assault took place. The statute of limitations for misdemeanors is one year and is not something that is extraditeable.)

Blasey Ford’s testimony was further debunked by an expert in reading body language that reached the conclusion that she had been coached, using facial expressions, poses, and changes in the pitch of her voice to portray herself as an “innocent young girl”. The expert caught on to expressions that indicated that she was ‘reading from a script’ and not actually addressing the memories about the assault.

It was the biggest ‘non-event’ to take place on national television.

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The new Congresscritter representing the Bronx, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (D), is the gift that keeps on giving. The freshmen representative has overblown expectations of the power she’ll be wielding, either not caring or not understanding that she’ll have little if any power during her first term. Of the two, the latter is the more likely as she has shown a particular lack of knowledge about how things actually work, a bad case of biblical illiteracy, and a troubling lack of understanding about economics considering her economics degree from Boston University. The fact that the only job she could seem to find after graduating from BU was as a bartender is an indicator that something doesn’t add up about Ms. Occasional Cortex.

She even plays the “I grew up a poor Latina in New York” game even though she and her family were and are quite well off.

I have a feeling she’s burning bridges she can ill afford to burn in her quest to turn the US into a failed socialist state.

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The “We’re All Gonna DIE!!” warmists are trying hard to ignore the 2018 weather record that shows there have been no violent tornadoes in the US. Zip. Zero. Nada. Not one. After all, that news doesn’t fit in with their narrative that hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, and all other kinds of weather events would become more numerous and stronger, causing far more damage than we’ve ever seen.

The only other news that is upsetting the warmists is Judith Curry’s study that shows that a lot of the supposed sea-level rise has less to do with actual rising sea-level and more to do with sinking land.

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Voter fraud was front and center this past November as a number of races were decided by ‘found’ ballot boxes, questionable absentee ballots, and ballot harvesting that singlehandedly changed the outcome of a number of congressional races all by themselves.

The one thing all of these ‘found’ ballots had in common? They always favored the Democrats. Every. Single. Time.

Statistically that’s impossible, particularly when it occurs in election after election. Yet the Democrats keep telling us that we’re just sore losers and that we should ignore any improprieties because SHUT UP!

We seriously need to do away with things like ballot harvesting, something that lends itself to voting fraud. Ballots need to be counted where they are cast, not boxed up and carted off to a central location for counting because it lends itself to voting fraud because it too often leads to ‘found’ ballot boxes. Absentee balloting needs better security because too many voters have been disfranchised when they show up at the polls and find out that they had already “voted” by absentee ballot, meaning someone else voted in their place and stole their vote.

Unless these issues are addressed, faith in our election system will erode to the point where no one will trust the system and elections will be meaningless.

But then, that’s what the Left wants, right?

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One has to wonder if the Mueller investigations will ever end. Two years plus and what does the investigation have?

Nothing.

What was supposed to be an investigation into possible collusion by the Trump campaign with the Russians has turned into a never-ending witch hunt that has only managed to trap some former Trump staffers with ‘process crimes’, basically made up crimes that were created just to get someone Mueller wanted to use as leverage against Trump.

This has to be the least productive and most expensive open-ended investigation in US history. Unless Mueller comes up with something that directly ties with the original purpose of the investigation it should be shut down.

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And that’s what I have for a look at ‘The Year That Was’ from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it looks like winter weather has finally returned, the shopping malls are back to normal, and where we’re hoping that 2019 will be even better than 2018.

Tall Men, Short Women

From the “Just when I thought they couldn’t get any stupider” Department comes this latest bit of scholastic insanity.

It appears that Mizzou still hasn’t learned its lesson when it comes to being “woke” and is working hard to further destroy its already diminished enrollment. It’s latest means of self-destruction?

Claims by one of their officials that “tall men asking short women out could constitute sexual misconduct.”

Say what?

Unless the biological differences between men and women have drastically changed recently, most men in general are taller than women. They’re also bulkier and stronger. So what are men at Mizzou supposed to do if they want to ask a woman out? Only ask out women that are of a similar size to the man asking? Yeah, that’ll work.

For years, we have been told that one must receive “affirmative consent” before anything of a dating or sexual nature takes place. Critics of such policies, such as this reporter, have often wondered what would happen if the mere ask is unwanted, does that also constitute sexual harassment or assault?

Now we appear to have our answer: Yes.

When a Mizzou official was questioned regarding a case where a black male Ph.D. candidate at the school asked out a white female fitness trainer, she bizarrely suggested that the fact that the male student was larger than the female student gave him “power over her” and violated school policy. (Emphasis mine.)

This is taking this crap too far. The reasoning is bizarre at best, sexist at worst, and completely disconnected from reality. Then again these woke college administrators don’t live in the real world.

It’s long past time for this nonsense to be removed from college campuses, if need be removed with prejudice. Administrators like this one need to be fired and banned from ever working in a college environment ever again. They’ve already caused far too much damage to our youth and it has to be stopped before the damage is irreversible.

Merry Christmas

A very Merry Christmas from the WP clan!