While we did lose power for a couple of hours Thursday night/early Friday morning, there was no damage to be seen around The Manse.
That suits me just fine.
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We haven't made it out on to the lake lately due to a mechanical problem with the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout. It will run, but it won't go fast. We may take it out for a slow jaunt next weekend, but I have a feeling it will come out of the lake for the season just after then.And just like that, the boating season will come to an end.
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Ron of I Remember JFK regales us with the history of the telephone.I know I am dating myself when I say I remember having a party line when my family lived in Maine (1962-1964). For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a party line used a single phone circuit with two or more homes hooked up to it. Each home had its own distinctive ring pattern because the phones in all the homes sharing the line would ring at the same time. If I recall correctly ours was two short rings followed by one long ring. The party line was a means to keep the cost of providing phone service to rural areas to a minimum, but at times it was a big inconvenience when you had to wait for someone else to finish with their phone call before placing your own.
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For the first time this season I had to fire up the furnace.It was in the 30's this morning, with the inside temp just above 60ºF at 8AM. So I went into the basement of The Manse, opened the gas valve and turned on the power to the furnace. Then I went back up the stairs and set the thermostat of 67ºF. Fifteen minutes later the chill was gone and the thermostat was cut back.
While BeezleBub and Deb thought a fire in the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove was a good idea, I didn't want to go to all the trouble knowing it would overheat The Manse. Since I was up well before they were this morning using the furnace won out over the woodstove.
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This idea ought to work just fine:Tax all the millionaires and billionaires away.
That ought to make the economy as right as rain!
Yeah. Sure.
(H/T Instapundit)
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US freight rail traffic is up, so one has to wonder if new economic activity is driving freight volumes.On the other hand, it was reported that trucking freight volumes are down. Could the increase in rail traffic be due to freight shipments being shifted from trucks to rail cars?
(H/T Maggie's Farm)
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Talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences coming into play!
If the EPA has its way, the cost of replacing a door in a home could balloon from ~$490 to over $2300.
WHAT. THE. HELL?!
Because of the remote possibility of lead being present in and around the area where a door is being replaced, the EPA has decided all kinds of new requirements will be imposed on anyone replacing said door.
Read The Whole Thing.
(H/T Pirate's Cove)
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If you need any more proof the One Nation rally was not all it was cracked up to be, all you need to do is look at the two photos in Cap'n Teach's post. The differences between the One Nation rally (the first photo) and Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally (the second photo) are striking.Cap'n Teach also points us to Da TechGuy's comparison of the post-One Nation rally trash and that of the 9-12 rally a year ago. Our conclusion? Leftists are slobs. They don't know how to pick up after themselves and expect others to clean up for them.
Jay Tea also comments about the difference in attitudes between the attendees of the two rallies.
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Bogie gave notice to her employer last week and is moving on to something entirely different for her.Good luck, Bogie!
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Red light cameras are bad enough. But now California wants to install stop sign cameras? Really? How much weirder can California possibly become?**********
Glenn Reynolds writes about the Tea Party, its dominance in this election cycle, and why it's not going away any time soon.If any political party becomes unresponsive to its supporters it doesn't survive. The GOP has been ignoring its base by pandering to the RINOs and alienating the very people they need. The Tea Party is a wake up call to the leadership, telling them to lead, follow, or get out of the way.
I told you so.
On April 15, 2009, as the first nationwide wave of Tea Party protests broke out, I wrote: “What’s most striking about the tea-party movement is that most of the organizers haven’t ever organized, or even participated, in a protest rally before. General disgust has drawn a lot of people off the sidelines and into the political arena, and they are already planning for political action after today....
“This influx of new energy and new talent is likely to inject new life into small-government politics around the nation. The mainstream Republican Party still seems limp and disorganized. This grassroots effort may revitalize it. Or the tea-party movement may lead to a new third party that may replace the GOP, just as the GOP replaced the fractured and hapless Whigs."
Fast-forward to the present, and the Tea Party movement -- which didn’t really exist until about the time I wrote those words -- is now the single most powerful political force in the nation.
Democratic and Republican politicians alike fear it, and increasing numbers of Americans (including, in recent months, increasing numbers of African-Americans according to a PJTV Tea Party tracking poll) identify with the Tea Party movement and say they are more likely to vote for candidates it supports, and less likely to vote for candidates it opposes.
The Democrats aren't much better, ignoring the working men and women that have been their rank and file and falling under the sway of those who mouth the words but couldn't care one iota about average Americans.
Both parties are in danger of being swept aside if they don't start listening to the people they're supposed to serve.