The timing was auspicious as the 90th Laconia Motorcycle Week started this weekend and will run through next Sunday. About 300,000 motorcycle enthusiasts are expected to visit over the nine day rally.
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I have always had a pretty good ear when it comes to accents. That might be because I grew up around people from different parts of the country, have lived in a number of different states, as well as having spent my formative years around people who spoke English as a second language (including the WP Mom's parents, who were from Scandinavia).By way of Maggie's Farm comes this series of maps that show how Americans speak differently from each other depending upon where they live in the US.
This is not news to me nor should it be to anyone who watches TV or movies. Then again, TV and movies have lessened the regional differences in the pronunciations of various words due to the wide exposure, though I doubt they will ever go away entirely.
Regional vernacular has always been an interest of mine for many of the same reasons I listed above. It helps that there's a Dictionary of American Regional English to help decipher the meanings of common words that have different uses and definitions depending upon where you live. One of my favorite definitions has dealt with the words used to describe deli sandwiches. Here in northern New England and eastern Massachusetts it's called a submarine, or “sub”. In Connecticut it's a grinder. In Pennsylvania it's a hoagie. In New Yawk, it's a hero - “A 'hero' ain't nothin' but a sandwich.”
Looking over the maps I see what appear to be errors, probably the biggest being the word for a carbonated soft drink. It shows that in eastern Massachusetts, particularly around the greater Boston area, the word used is “soda”, but from my experience the most used word is “tonic”. I've also heard it used in parts of southern New Hampshire as well, usually border towns. This error could be because of the granularity (the smallest sample areas) of the maps is too coarse.
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Here in New Hampshire there's a push by the governor and the Democrat majority House to expand Medicaid coverage. Governor Maggie Hassan (D) seems to think the federal government will keep its promise to fund the program in perpetuity, with 100% funding for the first three years and 90% thereafter. But as we have learned from past experience, it's likely the feds will renege on that promise and lay most of the burden on the state a few years down the line. That's what happened with special education, which left New Hampshire and a lot of other states in an education funding bind when the feds pulled the plug on funding.To trust that Congress will continue to fund something that will take an ever increasing bite out of the already bloated and deficit-ridden federal budget is foolish. One has to wonder what the Democrats are smoking down in the state capitol.
As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” The only problem with being fooled twice is that it will force the state to pick up the slack once the feds bail out on funding. It doesn't help that Medicaid will be expanded to cover those who have never been covered under the program before, a byproduct of that steaming pile of manure called ObamaCare.
One has to ask why Granite State Democrats keep buying the BS that the Obama Administration keeps shoveling despite evidence and history that shows Obama and his cronies will put the screws to us? Are they truly that blind?
It seems that they are.
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Here are two related education posts, one that deals with what is coming to be called Waiter and Waitress Nation and the other showing the signs of the coming K-12 education implosion.The first deals with the higher education bubble and the side effect that leads a lot of college grads to end up working in jobs far outside their field of study. Part of that is caused by too many students having chosen majors that did not prepare them for work in the real world while at the same time having to borrow outrageous amounts of money to pay for it all. A lot of those grads end up working as waiters and waitresses, something they could have done right out of high school rather than wasting four years and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars before they became waiters and waitresses. When a fifth of the jobs created last month were restaurant jobs, that is not a good sign. Remember when Democrats slammed Bush for creating so-called McJobs during the last recession recovery? This time it's much worse and it belongs entirely to Obama. And this time there are also a lot more college grads with useless degrees in fields that have little prospect for jobs.
The second shows us how home-schooling children has been growing seven times faster than public education enrollment. Considering public schools have become more like indoctrination centers that fail to teach our kids what they need to know, is it any surprise more parents are opting out of public education and doing it themselves? Studies show that home-schooled children consistently outperform and outscore children in public schools. The performance imbalance between boys and girls is insignificant with home-schooled kids as compared to public schools. It's no wonder why more parents are going this route.
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One has to ask what has happened to America's entrepreneurial spirit as it isn't what it was even 10 years ago. The answer is simple: government is taxing and regulating it out of existence.When government makes it increasingly difficult and expensive to start new businesses, fewer new businesses are created. Call it an economic version of “beatings will continue until morale improves.”