Here at The Manse this mixture has made it difficult to keep the driveway passable. Thursday night's snowfall, though totaling only about an inch and a half, was followed the next day by rain and freezing rain. This turned the snow into a slushy mixture with the consistency of soggy mashed potatoes. It also made it very difficult to remove, something that needed to be done because once the temperature fell below freezing overnight it would leave an icy mess that would make the driveway nearly impassable. No amount of sanding would help at that point.
This has been the pattern since late December and frankly I think we're all getting tired of it. A straightforward snowstorm would be a relief because then all we'd have to do is move the snow, something easy to do with the Official Weekend Pundit Snowblower.
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Two of the big winter events here at Lake Winnipesaukee have been disrupted due to the mild winter weather.The annual Rotary Ice Fishing Derby is questionable this year because the lake froze over only last week, meaning the ice is very thin and won't support vehicles, bob houses, or people. If we have a few weeks of below freezing temps the ice might be ready by mid to late February.
The annual Pond Hockey Tournament has been moved from Meredith Bay on Winnipesaukee to nearby Lake Waukewan. At least Waukewan has been frozen over for some time and the ice is thick enough to support the tournament.
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Scary Yankee Chick has this one right:Calling mommy cause you don't know what to do when your dorm catches on fire may be a sign that you're not ready to live on your own.Heh.
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This is scary. A man was held for two years in solitary confinement in New Mexico's Dona Ana County Jail after a drunk driving arrest. No arraignment. No trial. No conviction. Jail personnel denied him medical treatment. At one point he had to pull his own tooth in his cell when he was denied dental care.A jury awarded him $22 million after he filed a civil rights suit against the county in federal court.
It took them two years to figure out he wasn't even supposed to be there, let alone that he never saw a judge or went to trial? $22 million isn't enough by half!
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Gee, it seems the MSM can't even get their hit pieces right. In this case Reuters went after Sen. Marco Rubio, trying to paint him as unfit to even be considered for a vice-presidential nod. The only problem with the article is that none of it was fact checked and glaring errors were found by a number of readers, including the Daily Caller's Matt Lewis.One of the most telling:
“Rubio also voted against Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s Supreme Court nominee who is of Puerto Rican descent…”There's only one problem with that claim, that being Rubio didn't enter the Senate until the year after Sotomayor was confirmed.
A number of other claims were made about financial difficulties or improprieties and investigations by the IRS, all of which were proven to be false.
Is it any wonder why more people have a growing distrust of the MSM?
As one commenter to the Lewis post wrote, “This kind of hit piece is just more evidence that Rubio is someone the left fears. And it's pretty pathetic, really. Rubio owes more on his home than it's worth? Welcome to the collapsed housing market! If anything, this smear piece makes Rubio come off more as a regular joe than anything.”
(H/T Maggie's Farm)
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Why doesn't this surprise me?The most popular online newspaper read by Americans is not the New York Times or the Washington Post but the Daily Mail in the UK.
This does not bode well for the US print media. They had better change their ways and actually start reporting the news rather than editorializing under the guise of reporting or they're likely to go the way Oldsmobile, Studebaker, and the dodo.
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The National Association of Realtors seems to be think the housing market will recover in 2012. But Megan McArdle points to a StreetTalk Advisors piece by Lance Roberts that begs to differ with that assessment. Even with historically low interest rates, too many Americans do not have the wherewithal to get financing due to their debt-to-income ratio.That's not the only thing that can put the kibosh on a housing market recovery.
With the large amount if shadow inventory waiting in the wings, there are far more properties waiting to be listed than there are buyers with the means to purchase them.
Shadow inventory is properties held by banks or other institutions that have been foreclosed upon but not yet listed for sale or auction. No one really knows how much shadow inventory is out there, but some have estimated it could be quite large. If all of the shadow inventory were to hit the market over a very short period of time, the already weak real estate market would collapse and with it, property values. Just about everyone with a mortgage would end up being underwater.
When will the shadow inventory hit the market? Nobody knows.
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Go see Wirecutter's Quote Of The Day.'Nuff said.
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Dems to Republicans: Do as we say, not as we do, at least when it comes to financing campaigns.But then the Dems have always been more than willing to apply a double standard to everything their opponents do.