Thoughts On A Sunday

The fall foliage is past peak here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, but you can see a little bit of it in the banner picture at the top of the page. I might even get a few more photos posted here and there over the next week or so.

********

Another sign winter is approaching is the first delivery of firewood to The Manse. Even with oil prices dropping, heating fuel prices haven't dropped nearly as much as crude prices. One cord was delivered yesterday, with a second expected sometime today.

All we need now is for the chimney sweep to clean the chimney and we can start burning wood to heat The Manse rather than expensive propane. BeezleBub and I also have to remove the air conditioners, put in the glass on the storm doors, and start the annual winterizing to prep The Manse for the upcoming winter.

We still have to pull The Boat out of the water, something we delayed because of our need to deal with stacking cordwood. This will not be the latest we've pulled The Boat from the water, that being the second weekend of November, but it will mean we'll need to bundle up when we do as it's going to be quite chilly.

********

On Friday night, ABC's John Stossel took a chance and took a politically incorrect look at politics, exposing the silliness of the idea that government – Congress, federal agencies, and so on – are needed to 'make things work', and the roadblocks that are government bureaucracies; the farm subsidies that actually do more damage to small farms and farm towns rather than helping 'the family farm'; and comes down on the disaster that is election finance reform, aka McCain/Feingold. Call it a casualty of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

One scary thing to think about: how many of newly registered voters don't have a clue about the issues they'll be voting on? The answer: far too many.

********

Did Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) purposely cause the tanking of IndyMac Bank last summer at the behest of some of his contributors?

(H/T Instapundit)

********

Joe the Plumber strikes back!

********

At least I don't have to worry about watching the crippled New England Patriots play against the Denver Broncos today...because they're playing tomorrow night. I must admit to being morbidly curious about how the Pats will do considering how many of their first string players are injured.

********

The Red Sox have managed to stay alive in the ALCS, beating the Tampa Bay Devil Rays 4-2 in game 6 last night. The series is tied 3-3, so tonight's game will decide who goes to the World Series against the Phillies.

********

One more sure sign that summer is truly gone: BeezleBub and I pulled the air conditioners out of the windows at The Manse today. Not that we used them all that much during the summer as we had very few hot, humid days during July and August. More than anything we used to them to drop the humidity during the really rainy and foggy days.

They now reside in the basement, set in one corner to wait out the winter until needed next summer.

Next step for The Manse: sealing some of the windows and wrapping the hot water and heat pipes. I've also checked our electrical outlets and found those on the outside walls have no insulating foam under the outlet covers, something I'll correct over the next week or two.

********

And speaking of colder temperatures, another sure sign summer is gone: one of our Feline-American family members has taken to crawling under the quilt on our bed during the night to stay warm.

Minnie is a rather petite cat with very fine, thin fur, meaning she doesn't do well when it's chilly in The Manse. So she crawls under the quilt and snuggles up to my stomach to stay warm (Deb says I'm like a furnace at night – nice and warm).

********

Wondering what an Obama presidency will look like and what he will and won't be able to do? Here's a preview should he win in November.

********

Has the MSM's atrophied conscience come back to life? Or is it they think Obama has sewn up his ascendancy to the White House so now they can admit their bias and try to throw the moderate/conservative voters a bone by reporting about how the media has cut Obama a break?

I think we know it's the latter. Do they really think the voters and the blogosphere ever forget their betrayal? In their dreams.....

********

Could the character assassination of Joe the Plumber come back to haunt the Democrats and end up hurting Obama?

It seems like just yesterday that the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy was talking about income equality and civil rights and worker protections and going to bat for the little guy, the blue collar laborer, the everyday Joe the Plumber.

Now, the well-to-do elites who run the Democratic Party — and their surrogates — greet these people with brickbats. They insult them, talk down to them, and even try to destroy them. Isn’t that the sort of war on the working class that Democrats are always accusing those greedy and heartless Republicans of waging?

They want the working man to recognize the elites superiority, to understand the elites know better what the working man needs than they do. Of course it's a stinking pile of manure. No one knows what an individual needs more than the individual in question. The elites have problems with their own lives. What makes them think they're smart enough to run other people's lives?

********

And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the foliage is is slowly fading, the temperatures are falling, and where political campaign signs have replaced all the leaves on the trees.