Thoughts On A Sunday

Early Friday night Franconia, NH police officer Corporal Robert McKay was gunned down during a routine traffic stop on NH Rte 116. McKay's killer had shot him 4 times and then run over his body with his car. Liko Kenney, the shooter, was in turn shot dead by former Marine Gregory Floyd, who witnessed the killing and used Corporal McKay's .45 caliber service weapon to kill Kenney as he was reloading his gun.

Floyd had pulled his truck between Corporal McKay and Kenney, shielding the downed officer. He then picked up the officer's gun and shot Kenney dead.

At 6:30 p.m., McKay pulled over the 1984 Toyota Celica Kenney was driving on Route 116 in Franconia for speeding and a problem with the car's registration. Caleb Macaulay, 21, Kenney's best friend and co-worker at Merrill's Agway in Littleton, was in the passenger seat.

Kenney asked for another officer to handle the traffic stop when he saw it was McKay who pulled him over, according to Conte and friends of Kenney.

McKay and Kenney had a long-standing dislike of each other, according to Kenney's friends and family. Kenney was convicted in 2003 of assaulting a police officer -- McKay -- and resisting arrest, [NH Attorney General Kelly] Ayotte said.

This time Kenney did more than assault McKay. He killed him. He then paid the price for his act of murder, felled by the gun of the very officer he'd just murdered.

Some might say it was poetic justice.

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BeezleBub, Deb and I headed down to the WP In-Laws yesterday. BeezleBub and I spent time helping the WP Dad-In-Law split and stack firewood. He already had a good start on his firewood, with 3 cords already cut, split and stacked. Only 10 more to go!

Deb and her mom spent a couple of hours shopping in nearby Keene.

Then our friend and Official Weekend Pundit Real Estate Agent Wes showed up for a visit. He arrived in style in his new BMW Z3 sports car. Deb and I had the opportunity to take it out for a spin. What an incredible rush! As Deb told me, “I've never seen this side of you before! What brought this on? You usually drive like an old man!” She'd forgotten that I'd raced sports cars for a number of years with the SCCA. As I told her, “I wouldn't dare drive the Intrepid like this. It wallows like a garbage scow. But this car is awesome! Daddy likes!”

I can see some kind of sports car in my future.

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Today was a day for yard work around The Manse for all three of us.

I won't bore you with the details, but let's just say that we made a pretty good dent in the work that needed to get done. I figure we'll finish off the remainder during the week.

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Pam warns us about 'Moonbats masquerading as Republicans'. Though a commenter to one of Pam's earlier posts claimed to be a disgruntled Republican, the language and terminology used is of the type that we've only seen coming from Democrats suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. Read it and decide for yourself.

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I don't know about you, but maybe I'm starting to suffer from premature-election hype. I have my favorite possible presidential candidate, but at least he hasn't announced yet and may not until September. In the mean time I am quickly getting tired of the seemingly endless TV ads that have been running here in New Hampshire for the past few months, Republican and Democrat both. It's getting so bad that every time I hear a Mitt Romney or Bill Richardson ad I'm tempted to stick my fingers in my ear and say “La-la-la-la-la I'm not listening!” over and over again. ( I pick on these two because they seem to be the most prevalent ads so far. I'm sure the others won't be all that far behind.)

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One of the biggest problems we're facing in New Hampshire is the push by the state's Democrats to turn New Hampshire into an ersatz version of Massachusetts, with all of the problems that go with it. And it seems they don't care about the consequences of such actions as long as they get their way.

Whether it's school funding, transfats in food, helium balloons being released into the air, or banning smoking in restaurants, bars, and so on, they've got a hard on for making sure that we will no longer be allowed to make these decisions for ourselves. To quote Fergus Cullen, “That's not the new Hampshire way.”

What's worse is that the state's Republicans seem powerless to stop the expanded spending – the state budget saw a 16% increase – and the ever more intrusive legislation that seeks to take away the rights of New Hampshire citizens to decide for themselves what they will or will not do when it comes to their private lives.

The Democrats appear to be working very hard to remove the so-called New Hampshire Advantage when to comes to the state's economy by making it more expensive to do business here by unrestrained state spending and a push to institute some form of broadbased tax to fund this ever increasing spending. As history shows, this kind of tax and spend methodology has never benefited the citizens and has almost always hurt the economy.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summerfolk have been seen opening the summer camps, the kids are counting down the days until summer vacation, and where the taxpayers are holding onto their wallets while the legislature is in session.