Thoughts On A Sunday

BeezleBub and I made it out on the lake yesterday afternoon. The weather was gorgeous, the lake not all that crowded now that a large portion of the summer folk are gone, and the water was calm.

We had a great time out on the lake.

It's a shame it was ruined at the very end of our time on The Boat by one of the last of the “summah people” just as we were approaching our slip.

We were inbound and this guy was outbound. As we passed each other in the channel he says to me in a nasty manner “Why the hell don't you learn how to drive that thing, buddy!” His wife then chimed in, saying pretty much the same thing. They continued on this vein even when they were long past us, their obvious Boston accents carrying across the cove. I have no idea what his problem was, but he ruined an otherwise nice day on the lake. One of the other boaters across the channel from our slip who witnessed this shook his head and shrugged, as puzzled about the incident as I.

One rejoinder came to mind, but as Deb always tells me, I am far too nice to stoop to their level. But if I'd had my druthers, I would have used this quote from Monty Python's Holy Grail:

“I fart in your general direction!”

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We here at Weekend Pundit will be guest blogging over at Dodgeblogium, adding our political commentary about the New Hampshire State Primaries this month.

While there are only a couple of days before the primary, we will attempt to give the folks out there a little taste of what is happening and the possible consequences as candidates make the grade or fall by the wayside.

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The protests by former Clinton Administration officials about ABC's upcoming Path To 9/11 is making them sound petty and foolish. While there was little political brouhaha over a critical and overly fictionalized miniseries about Ronald Reagan by members of the Reagan Administration, one would think that ABC had fabricated the Clinton Administration's part in failing to bring down Al Qaeda when it had the chance. But much of what is being said about it in tonight's miniseries is a matter of public record.

Even so, I wouldn't take anything shown in Path To 9/11 as gospel.

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BeezleBub has asked me more than once why it is that we can't seem to get Osama Bin Laden. My answer to him has been that it isn't like we haven't tried, but that he's pretty darn good at hiding out and appears to be in the Waziristan section of Pakistan, an area not truly under control of Pakistan's government. Many of the Waziri are supporters of Al Qaeda and aren't likely to help outsiders capture him.

On the other hand we have taken Bin Laden out of the command loop because he can't use electronic communications, something we're very good at tracking. This has left him to using hand carried messages, a very inefficient means of command and control and not anywhere near real-time. This has left him as more of a figurehead and not as a real commander. That's almost as good as capturing or killing him.

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Even though the New Hampshire Presidential Primaries are still over a year away, a number of presidential hopefuls have visited the Granite State, pressing the flesh and speechifying. Most of them have been Democrats, including former Senator/vice presidential candidate John Edwards. His running mate from the 2004 election, John Kerry, has also made a number of appearances.

So far I can't recall any Republican hopefuls making appearances any time in the recent past, but that will change once we get past the 2006 elections in November. Then I expect that we'll be seeing plenty from both parties making the rounds.

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Speaking of the New Hampshire Presidential Primary, many are still wondering about the DNC's efforts to dethrone New Hampshire as “First in the Nation”, supposedly in an effort to make the primaries and caucuses more...umm...ethnically balanced.

Their efforts will have effect of compressing the primary schedule even more than 2004, heavily front-loading them, something that worked against them last time. They still haven't glommed on to the fact they've disfranchised less well funded candidates in the process, meaning that many otherwise better candidates may never make it out of the primary cycle. John Kerry was a beneficiary of the front loaded primaries in 2004, but he was also the worst possible candidate the Democrats could have put forward. The only thing he really had going for him was large amounts of cash, particularly that of his extremely wealthy wife, Theresa Heinz.

That's a piss poor way to select a party's presidential candidate.

One-on-one, retail political campaigning will go out the window only to be replaced with sound bite campaigns. How the heck can anybody decide whether a candidate is someone they can support if the only thing they ever hear or see of them is 15 to 30 second TV or radio ads?

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The NFL season began for the New England Patriots. It didn't help that 12 seconds into the first period the Buffalo Bills ran a blitz and caused Tom Brady to fumble the ball, allowing the Bills to pick it up and get a touchdown.

At least the Patriots came right back from that and scored a touchdown, making it 7-7.

Unfortunately Buffalo scored twice more before the half, making it 17-7.

But all was not lost as the Pats pulled it off by tying the game in the second half and then forcing a safety, giving them the lead and the game 19-17.

Not a bad start.

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The New Hampshire state primary is on Tuesday, September 12^th. It is expected that the voter turnout will be light, predicted by New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner to be approximately 14%. Could this be because there are few really interesting races for those wishing to go against the incumbents in November?

Only time will tell.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where a little fall weather has settled in, a last few lingering “summah people” are still around, and where there are still a few good weeks of boating ahead.