Thoughts On A Sunday

We've had a respite from the wet weather with one full day of sun and low humidity to help things dry out. It's been wet enough that I haven't been able to to mow anything other than one flat patch of the lawn here at The Manse. The rest has been too wet or the soil underneath too saturated which makes for slippery footing on an already dangerous slope. If this keeps up I may have to resort ti using a machete to mow the lawn!

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Cap'n Teach delves into the driving habits of others that annoy the crap out of him.

I have to agree with him on his choices and can add one or two of my own, including the motorist that will pretend like they're the next Mario Andretti, weaving and bobbing through traffic on the highway in order to get ahead of everyone else. What makes this even more annoying is that for all that effort they really don't make all that much progress but they sure as heck put a lot of other people at risk.

Another: the person behind you at a traffic light that lays on their horn the instant the light turns green, and I'm not talking about ofter the light has been on for a second or two. Once the red light turns off and the green has barely flickered to life the jerk behind you is on the horn.

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Internet connectivity has been spotty all day here at The Manse. The cable company's customer service line has a recording telling us that there are service outages in the area and that “'service personnel' are working on the problem.”

What a pain.

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After all the hype about Tropical Storm Dorian and the finger-pointing by the AGW crowd using it as 'proof' of global warming, it turns out that Dorian is a tropical storm in name only.

Remember when the AGW faithful kept warning us that hurricanes, tropical storms, and tornadoes would become more numerous and much more powerful? Yet just the opposite has occurred, media reports to the contrary. It all comes down to belief and not actual proof.

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Anyone who's been paying attention already knows this: ObamaCare will raise health insurance premiums..a lot.

What makes the so-called Affordable Care Act even more of a misnomer is that it won't be affordable and the “30 million Americans without health insurance” still won't be covered. So why was this foisted upon us?

Another 'unforeseen' factor affecting it is that the young, who were supposed to help pay for most of it, won't be. They won't buy insurance, particularly if they'll pay a ton of money for insurance and get little in the way of coverage for it.

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A point that Glenn Reynolds brings up about race hustlers like Sharpton and Jackson that explains quite a few things. For them it has to be 1963 forever otherwise they cease to be meaningful. They behave as if without them Jim Crow will be reinstated and that racism is as rampant as it was 50 years ago. What they fail to understand is that they have the very thing they protest against: racists. What's worse is that they practice racism against their own, saying one thing but working to keep their people down as it's the only way they can remain relevant.

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And that's the very abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the humid weather has returned for a couple of days, Internet issues continue, and I could use a couple of more days off.

The Media Lynching Of George Zimmerman Continues

In light of ABC News' creative editing of juror B29's interview about George Zimmerman, I have to offer a rebuttal that covers facts and evidence that changes the dynamics of what happened between Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, information that was not allowed to be presented during the trial but maybe should have been.

Here's Bill Whittle describing what has been ignored by the media and never presented in court:



I can understand why these facts weren't offered – they would blame the 'victim' for the actions that caused his death - though under the circumstances I think they should have been presented in court because they led to his death.

The evidence, in this case the autopsy, is not in dispute. Trayvon Martin was a drug user, his purchase of Skittles and Arizona Watermelon Fruit Juice Cocktail not an innocent one to feed his sweet tooth or quench his thirst. Instead they were two of the three ingredients needed to make a concoction called Lean, something Martin's autopsy showed he'd been using for quite some time. Two of the side effects of regular Lean use? Heightened aggression and paranoia. This puts Martin's actions on the night of his death into question. He wasn't an innocent 12-year old kid making a snack run but a 17-year old drug-using gangsta wannabe collecting the components needed to make a batch of his drug of choice.

And there's another media dirty trick that is still being perpetuated: Martin's and Zimmerman's pictures. As Whittle shows, the media has been using the most flattering (and old) picture or Martin while at the same time using an unflattering (an old) picture of Zimmerman in an effort to change the narrative. But if you see the pictures of Martin and Zimmerman as they were around the time of Martin's death you are presented with reality...but neither fits with the racist narrative being pushed by the media, the usual race hustlers (Sharpton and Jackson as well as Charles Rangel), the racist DOJ, and the Racist-in-Chief, President Obama. They have all tried to portray Zimmerman as the next Grand Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan, some if it perpetrated by NBC with creative editing of the recording of his call to the police dispatcher. (Zimmerman is suing NBC for that bit of defamation.) But Zimmerman's history proves he is anything but a racist, again something that has been left out of the media and not presented in court.

I have a feeling that none of this is going to end well for Zimmerman. With the media and the race hustlers egging them on, it's only a matter of time before someone decides it's time to lay some 'justice' on him and he's going to end up dead. And if the actions of the DOJ are an indication, whoever does it is going to get off with a slap on the wrist and be hailed as a hero by the racist Left.

Another Attempt To Change Over To The Dollar Coin

Hey, it's deja vu all over again!

There have been a number of attempts over the past 30 years to move the US away from paper dollars over to dollar coins, but every attempt has failed. The reasoning behind the change has been a simple one: minting coins is cheaper than printing bills, at least in the long run.

This is something I've covered more than once, wondering when Congress would finally make the decision to pull the plug on the dollar bill. It looks like coin advocates in Congress are going to give it another try.

I expect the usual pushback from opponents to the idea, but I think the time has come to get rid of the dollar bill because of it's cost. While it's cheaper up front to print bills, they generally don't last very long as compared to coins. While the article linked just above states that dollar bills last 48 months, in truth they last an average of 20 months. Higher denominations do last longer, with $100 dollar bills remaining in circulation the longest.

Coins, while they cost about 3 times more to make than bills, last an average of 30 years, or about 15 times longer than bills. Overall that means the $1 coins are cheaper because they only need to be replaced one-fifteenth as often as the dollar bill.

While it makes economic sense to make the change to the $1 coin, every attempt has failed because Congress refused to eliminate the $1 bill. Until that is made a condition of issuing dollar coins, the coins will fail, just as they have since the Susan B. Anthony dollar in 1979. (The Anthony dollar coin failed for another reason – it was almost indistinguishable from the quarter. That's why the follow on attempts like the Sacagewea and Presidents dollar coins looked different, sporting a gold color and smooth edges.)

It's time to save the taxpayers some money by changing over to a less expensive means of making our currency.

Some Folks Take Veganism Too Damn Far

It's one thing to be a vegan and disdain partaking of any animal protein. That's perfectly their right to do so. It's another thing when they make the decisions for others, particularly children.

Children cannot thrive on vegan diets as they do not provide essential nutrients needed for their proper physical and mental development. That's been proven time and again, more than once with tragic results.

But what really pisses me off is when some vegans decide that their pets are better off on vegan diets even though the animal is a carnivore.

A kitten has almost died after its owners fed it a strict vegan diet.

Lort Smith Animal Hospital veterinarian Leanne Pinfold said the kitten was brought in this month by its owners, who were believed to be vegan.

She said the kitten's diet of potatoes, rice milk and pasta had caused it to become critically ill.

"It was extremely weak and collapsed when it came in. It was almost non-responsive," Dr Pinfold said.

The kitten was given fluids via a drip, placed on a heat pad and fed meat.

Dr Pinfold said as obligate or true carnivores, cats needed meat to survive.

She said people who wanted a pet that did not eat meat should consider other animals, such as rabbits.

Call it a case where an almost pathological believe in veganism almost caused the death of an innocent animal. Some folks take this crap too far. Folks like that should not be allowed to have kids or pets of any kind.

Thoughts On A Sunday

We've gotten a respite from the hot and humid weather over the next couple of days. Temps will be in the lower 70's to upper 80's and the humidity will be lower as well which means the air conditioners will be off. This also means it will be easier for me to attend to some of the more labor intensive yard work without the fear of heat-related health issues.

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I can see the race hustlers are wasting no time, calling for federal civil rights charges to be filed against George Zimmerman. Not that there is a case to be made there, but that won't stop Sharpton, Jackson, and their new bud Eric Holder from pushing forward for a judicial lynching. Not that it was unexpected, particularly with the Number One Race Hustler, Barack Obama, having inappropriately injected himself into matter with his “Trayvon could have been me” comments.

I get the feeling that even if there had been a video of Martin confronting and savagely beating Zimmerman, pounding his head into the concrete, that Sharpton and Jackson would still be calling for Zimmerman's blood.

Yet for all the cries of 'Racism!' by these race baiters, there are many more who wonder what the heck they're talking about. Most of those asking are immigrants who have an entirely different view and wonder what the heck Sharpton et al are talking about.

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When I read this headline of Matt Walsh's blog post, I realized the person he quoted was being hustled by their kid.

I'm sorry, but what is a “gifted” 29-year old unemployed college grad doing living in his parent's basement, living off his parents as if he were still a high-schooler? If he were truly gifted he would have a job, even if it was delivering pizza, digging ditches, or mucking out stalls. No kind of work should be beneath him...unless he's one of those grads with a totally useless and expensive degree that did not in any way help prepare him to survive in the real world. If he's truly “gifted” then maybe he could have started his own business and be on his way to becoming wealthy rather than still leeching off of his parents.

Maybe part of the problem lies with the definition of “gifted”. As Matt writes, “the 'gifted' standard is getting lower day by day.”

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The refrain from a former Detroit City Council member: Nothing works here.

You know it's bad when those with the means to do so hire private security firms to do the job the Detroit Police Department can no longer do, like protect the citizens. So many other services in the city are no longer readily available is it any wonder that few homeowners in the Motor City are paying their property taxes?

One has to wonder, is it time to take Detroit private?

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If you want to see how far journalism has fallen, then consider this about a 'report' by a Guardian journalist that seems to think that name calling is the same thing as journalism. It used to be journalists reported the news or covered topics of interest. Now more often that not they are writing opinion pieces masquerading a journalism.

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It's time for liberals calling out for the blood of George Zimmerman to shut up and listen for once.

The idea that the criminal-justice system discriminates against blacks — and that this bias explains blacks’ disproportionate presence in custody — is a staple of civil-rights activism and of the academic Left. Every effort to prove it empirically, however, has come up short. A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases from the country’s 75 largest urban areas discovered that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution following a felony than whites did and that they were less likely to be found guilty at trial. Alfred Blumstein has found that blacks are underrepresented in prison for homicide compared with their arrest rates. A meta-analysis of charging and sentencing studies showed that “large racial differences in criminal offending,” not racism, explained why more blacks were in prison proportionately than whites and for longer terms, according to criminologists Robert Sampson and Janet Lauritsen.

Yes, the justice system is racist. It discriminates against Whites, Hispanics, and Asians.

(H/T Cold Fury)

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GraniteGrok's Skip Murphy recounts a blowout he had with a local reporter who believed our little town – a 'rich' town in his eyes - owed it to other towns who were not as frugal as our town to send our tax dollars to them to bail then out. How is it we were somehow obligated to 'help' towns that were fiscally irresponsible who spent money they didn't have for things they didn't need? As Skip wrote:

...[H]e could not understand (or stand) the idea that I (and my town, and other political entities) refused to raise the taxes on our residents simply to send that money to towns and cities that were broke.  Broke not because the single industry in town just up and left (and to which I would have some empathy) but because of years and decades of Progressive / Liberal / Democrat rule – the largest example now being Detroit. As I have written here before, we had a screaming match over the fact that I refused to send money to the leaders of those towns, who have already proved that they are incapable of wisely spending their taxpayers monies. WHY would I want to send them more and “enable” their bad habits?  His response was that ‘we are all in this together, that there were people still hurting in those cities, that the intent to help was paramount, and it was irrelevant that the political and appointed leaders would just waste that extra money.

--snip--

But [he] believes that I, and folks that believe like me, am the bad guy ’cause I refuse to put my hand in my pocket, pull out the green, and blithely send it away simply because I live in what he believes to be “a rich town”. In short, he exhibits all of the attributes of a Progressive – only intent counts, results don’t matter, the Status Quo demands to be upheld and the only accountability is to demonize those that disagree with them.

Now apply that belief to the Detroit, where you know the Progressives will demand that the rest of us bail out that failed dystopian city, a shining example of decades of Progressive rule. Not that we really needed it as we've had more than a few examples of failed socialist states to learn from. But most progressives are incapable of learning lessons from reality because their ideology – empathy politics – is far more important than the harsh reality of the world: socialism is a dismal failure and will always be a dismal failure.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where cooler summer weather has returned for a day or two, the beaches were still full, and where Monday has returned all too soon.

Big Government Has Imploded

Have we reached a tipping point in this country, where the size of government is now nothing more than a hindrance to the people and the economy of the US? Daniel Henninger thinks we have.

Mark July 3, 2013, as the day Big Government finally imploded.

July 3 was the quiet afternoon that a deputy assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy announced in a blog post that the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate would be delayed one year. Something about the "complexity of the requirements." The Fourth's fireworks couldn't hold a candle to the sound of the U.S. government finally hitting the wall.

Rules, regulations, laws, and bureaucratic incompetence have reached a level where government has become the biggest drag on our liberties and our wallets. ObamaCare is but one symptom, a program so large, complex, unmanageable, and highly unpopular that the government is finding out that it may nigh well be impossible to implement.

A number of government agencies have gone past their charter and tried to push themselves into areas they were never authorized to go, “eating of our substance” by imposing draconian rules no one can possibly meet. One such rogue agency is the EPA which has become less about protecting the environment and more about controlling ever more portions of our economy. It kowtows to radical environmental ideology and ignores science in an effort to choke off any industry the wacko environmentalists don't like.

I could go on and list all of the federal agencies that have made it more difficult to get anything done, but it would be a lengthy list and all it would do is make me even more pissed off than I already am.

Detroit Falls Into A Financial Abyss Of Its Own Making

As day inevitably falls into night, so too did Detroit fall from decades of Democrat cronyism rule into bankruptcy. It was never a question of whether Detroit would go bankrupt, it was a question of when.

Mayor Dave Bing gave it his best shot, knowing that “business as usual” was a road to financial ruin. But he was stymied at every turn by a deeply entrenched Democrat political machine and the unions that supported that machine. A once vibrant city of 2.1 million that had the highest per capita income in the nation is now a bankrupt wasteland with a population less than a third of the size than during its peak.

The bankruptcy’s effects won’t be felt just in Detroit or in Michigan, but across the nation. It could affect “the nation’s municipal bond market and the sanctity of public pension funds…”

The Chapter 9 bankruptcy was filed after the Emergency Manager of the City of Detroit Kevyn Orr was unable to come to agreements with a number of the city’s creditors after more than 100 meetings with them.

Did these creditors really think the city wouldn’t file for bankruptcy if they couldn’t come to some kind of agreement? It’s obvious they did because they tried to get a restraining order to prevent the city from filing. Too bad the order was issued 18 minutes after the city had filed their paperwork with the bankruptcy court.

The White House allowed Detroit to go under, all efforts by Orr to garner a federal bailout of the city to the contrary. As Walter Russell Mead writes:

This is where blue governance has brought Detroit in the end: not even a liberal Democratic administration will step in to save the pensions of thousands of public workers and African Americans, condemning countless innocents to having their pensions and health benefits gutted in bankruptcy court.

--snip—

Progressive politicians, wonks, and activists can only blame big corporations and other liberal bogeymen for so long. The truth is that corrupt machine politics in a one-party system devoted to the blue social model wrecked an entire city and thousands of lives beyond repair. The sooner blues come to terms with this reality, the greater chance other cities will have of avoiding Detroit’s fate.

Or not. Cities like Chicago seem to be heading down the same path yet have chosen to ignore the lesson of Detroit. But it’s not just cities that have to look to Detroit as an object lesson, but states as well.

Do you think those in power in California will look upon Detroit’s fate and see a possible future for the Golden State? Or do they think themselves immune from the effects of the very same factors that brought Detroit to its knees? If I had to guess, I’d say it was the latter and not the former. They certainly haven’t learned from the bankruptcies of a number of cities in their own state, why would they take one from a city a couple of thousand miles away?

Thoughts On A Sunday

It looks like our respite from hot and humid conditions is just about over up here in New England. The 90ºF+ temps and high humidity return starting tomorrow (not that today is going to be all that comfortable). It was nice not having to run the air conditioning 24/7, reducing our power bill and the constant droning noise of the fans and compressors. I have a feeling I'll be turning the A/C on before the day is out today (which I did).

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The expected fallout and uproar over the George Zimmerman verdict continues. As a thread on Twitter put it, “So a Hispanic shoots a black and is acquitted by women, but it's still white men's fault.”

I didn't watch the trial and saw only snippets of the prosecution's case, but what I did see was a trial that probably shouldn't have happened being emotionalized by a prosecutor that really had little evidence to show intent or malice, being egged on by a Department of Justice that did its best to play the race card among local residents at the behest of the White House. If Martin and Zimmerman had both been white or black or hispanic or asian, this trial would not have happened. But because it was a black teen and a mixed race Hispanic it was turned into a race crime.

I can understand some of the black community's outrage at the verdict, but I think they have to look to the 'usual suspects' - meaning race hustlers not unlike Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, and Jeffrey Holder – and start asking questions about their motives behind stirring this up as a race-based killing. I doubt justice had anything to do with it.

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One thing I have to fault the media with on the Zimmerman trial is their deceptive use of both Zimmerman's and Martin's photos. Zimmerman was always shown using a photo that seemed to show him in a most intimidating manner while using a 5-year old photo of Martin when he was 12-years old. They didn't show 17-year old Martin's 'gangsta-look' photos. Neither did the media dig into Martin's past that would have showed he wasn't the innocent everyone tried to portray him as being.

This whole thing was being tried in the media and the media made up its mind a long time ago that Zimmerman was guilty. No facts or evidence need apply.

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Stuart Schneiderman exposes the latest cause of French malaise, that being its famous cuisine.

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that much of  the delectable French cuisine you find in neighborhood restaurants was not been prepared sur place by a master chef cuisinier. It was thrown together in a large, industrialized suburban kitchen, fast frozen and delivered to the restaurant where the chef cuisinier shouldered the inglorious task of heating it up in a microwave.

Qu'elle horreur! How...how....American! But it isn't the sole source of malaise in France. As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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It's amazing to see how many on the Left who once supported ObamaCare have turned against it now that they see what it really entails. The latest defectors: labor unions.

The leaders of three major U.S. unions, including the highly influential Teamsters, have sent a scathing open letter to Democratic leaders in Congress, warning that unless changes are made, President Obama’s health care reform plan will “destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.”

If that’s not bad enough, the Affordable Care Act, if not modified, will “destroy the very health and wellbeing of our members along with millions of other hardworking Americans,” the letter says.

This is fallout from Nancy Pelosi's “You have to pass it in order to see what's in it” ploy. Now that it has become apparent that ObamaCare's intent was not to provide health care insurance to the ever-present “30 million Americans without health insurance” as those same 30 million will still have no coverage, we know it for what it is – a government takeover of one-sixth of the American economy.

The government will ration health care. They will use the shortage of health care personnel as an excuse to do so. What the government isn't telling you is that it is creating that shortage by making it very unattractive for doctors, nurses, and other professionals to remain in that field or to get into it to begin with. Talk about history repeating itself! (That's what happened in both the UK and Canada when their national health care systems were put into place.)

(H/T Viking Pundit)

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Yeah, this ought to help.

It appears the federal government has decided that it's easier to allow states waivers to No Child Left Behind rather than hold them to the standards set by the law. Not that I was ever a supporter of NCLB. But the government, in granting the waivers, has let slip the racism of its decisions by endorsing bigotry within the school systems by assuming black students cannot do as well as white students. In effect the government is holding blacks to a lower standard, something inherently racist because the government believes they aren't capable of being held to the same standards as everyone else.

What a bunch of schmucks.

From the comments comes this observation from Robert Brooks, an famed actor who also happens to be black:

Blacks will not be truly equal until they are allowed to fail.

Indeed.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the hot hazy humid weather has returned, too much of the outdoor chores still need to be done, and where the beaches will be packed over the next five days.

Sum Ting Wong Indeed

Oh, yeah, those folks in the media are really good at fact checking.

NOT.



If nothing else a nameless NTSB intern has illustrated that the media is falling down on the job. Maybe KTVU-TV should have had one of their interns check the list of names as I have no doubt he or she would have realized the names were fake.

The Political Attack Ad Of All Attack Ads

I heard about the 4-year old mayor of Dorset, Minnesota late last year. Apparently the young man is mayor of a small town that boasts the highest number of restaurants per capita in the world. But that isn't why I'm writing about the small town of Dorset.

Mayor Robert “Bobby” Tufts is up for reelection. As in any election season there is more often than not a challenger, and it's no different in Dorset. In fact Tuft's opponent has already started running an attack ad:



And so it starts....

Thoughts On A Sunday

All too soon my extended 4th of July weekend has come to an end. Now I feel I need a vacation to recuperate from my vacation! (Isn't that always the way?)

While I didn't get anywhere near what I'd hoped to do completed, I did get some of the things on the never ending Honey-Do list done.

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Call it the 21st Century version of Lysenkoism, where ideology defines science and kills off scientific inquiry.

When the modern Lysenkoists start claiming that scientific inquiry is nothing more than another form of hatred or racism, you know the Church of Feelings Over Facts has its minions out in force. We've certainly seen this over the past few years when it comes to Anthropogenic Global Warming, where evidence and data that go against the Watermelon Environmentalist Narrative is either ignored or is trivialized despite the fact that the all of the climate models being used to prove their point do not reflect the observed reality.

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Speaking of Watermelon Environmentalists, there's this from No Frakking Consensus that shows they have no love of democracy and will work to demolish it. Since they failed to take control of democracies during the Cold War, they have shifted tactics and are working from within, using 'concern for the environment' as a false flag argument.

What to all comes down to is that they want to control every aspect of your life and will use any means to achieve their goals. That certainly seems to be the case Down Under.

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After a discussion with one of my more liberal acquaintances, I realized he didn't understand the difference between the U3 and U6 unemployment rates. I had to explain to him the U3 rate reflects how many people still receiving unemployment benefits are out of work while the U6 rate shows us how many people are out of work, including those whose unemployment benefits have run out.

We also got into a discussion that about how the 99-weeks of unemployment benefits were a big mistake. He thinks we should extend them again while I am of the opinion that they never should have been extended past 26 weeks. As more than a few studies have shown, a goodly percentage of those on unemployment don't start seriously looking for work until a few weeks before their benefits run out. After 99 weeks a lot of folks are unemployable, at least in the eyes of potential employers, because their skills have deteriorated after almost 2 years of being out of work. It also implies that these folks were too damn lazy to go out and get a job until their benefits ran out. (It may be a false implication, but that's how a lot of employers will look at it.)

It might certainly help explain why we've reached the lowest level of labor participation by working age people since the Great Depression. It may seem counterintuitive, but lengthy unemployment benefits tend to increase the unemployment rate and decrease the labor participation rates. There have been plenty of examples over the past 40 years or so that illustrate this particular phenomenon, but our Teleprompter-in-Chief and his minions have chosen to ignore them. Our dismal unemployment rates and labor participation rates are indicative of this.

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This ought to fit in well with the gun-grabber narrative. It won't matter one bit that this fellow stole the body armor, the guns, and the truck he planned to use for a bomb attack on or near the University of Washington campuses in and around Seattle.

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Glenn Reynolds links to and comments about the skewed expectations and legal obligation differences between men and women when it comes to reproductive rights.

Over the past several decades, women have asserted a right to make all the judgments in matters of gender and sexuality. And, in fact, we do “facilitate” destructive choices, when they’re by women. We subsidize unwed mothers, we give women a pass on sexual behavior that would be considered predatory if it were done by males, we give them all sorts of “choice” that men don’t have and then absolve them, culturally and legally, from judgment over the way they exercise those choices. No similar dispensation is given to men.

In many cases choices about abortion and adoption are made by women and men have no legal recourse in the matter...except when it comes to having to support a child over which they have no say in their upbringing. This is particularly galling when the child they're supporting isn't even theirs. The law needs to catch up with the realities of 21st Century America.

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Writes Skip over at GraniteGrok, “When is the last time a President decided to kill off an entire private sector industry?”

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Bogie celebrated the return of NHRA Drag Racing to New England Dragway. As she states, the Dragway upgraded its facilities to accommodate 20,000 spectators. She also included a number of photos and a video of some of the action at the Dragway this weekend.

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As David Starr asks, why are authorities in San Francisco calling the crash of an airliner an “incident” when what it was was an accident? An incident is something like a blown tire or engine failure or on-board medical emergency. When an airliner runs off the runway and catches fire, with numerous injuries and some fatalities it is an accident.

It also appears the authorities also have a problem with innumeracy to go along with it.

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It doesn't surprise me that despite the perception by the Left that whites are the most racist, at least in the US, a Rasmussen poll shows the Left's perception is flawed.

I think if the poll had provided an option to select Leftist whites as being the most racist, then I think the poll would have shown different results. Over the years I have come to realize that those professing to be against racism – meaning the Left – are the actual racists in the room. They merely couch their racism in language that at first makes it seem they're for equality between the races. But once you start paying attention to what they're saying you realize they really don't believe minorities can be equal unless the Benevolent Left intercedes for them, a form of backhanded racism if there ever was one.

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One of the chores on my Honey-Do list was repairing one of the garage doors. At one point in the past BeezleBub needed to use the trusty F150. When he backed out of the garage he had forgotten to open the garage door and banged into it with the rear bumper. It knocked a number of the wheels out of the guide rails on one side. I had made a quick fix to get it working again, but it really needed to be done properly to ensure everything lined up. I finally got around to doing that earlier today and now the door opens and closes with nary a clack, clatter, or squeal.

What motivated me to make the repair was the need to also see if I could get the proximity sensor on that door working again. It hadn't worked properly since we took that lightning strike two weeks ago, meaning the door wouldn't close automatically because it thought there was something in the way. The door could be closed by holding down the door button in the garage until it was all the way down and the remote could open it, but it has been a small inconvenience.

Unfortunately it looks like I will have to replace the sensor as no amount of rewiring or troubleshooting was able to get it working again.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the holiday weekend has wound down, the weather is still in the the Hot, Hazy, Humid mode, and Monday will arrive just in time to allow us to recuperate from the long weekend.

Something To Think About

I was watching Comedy Central the other day and caught the act of a comedian whose name escapes me at the moment. He brought up an interesting question and posited some hypotheticals that got me thinking.

The subject: Driving while using a cell phone.

He related the true story of his run in with a police officer who pulled him over for using a cell phone while driving.

Being the comedian he was, he asked the officer “If I'd been holding a banana to my ear would you have pulled me over?” The officer said no.

He then asked “If I only had one arm and was driving would you have pulled me over?” Again the officer said no.

“So I have one arm for driving and free arm that I don't need for driving that I can use for other things. So why is it against the law to use that arm for holding a cell phone to my ear?”

At that point the comedian said the officer told him to step out of the car and proceeded to place him under arrest. He also got in one last parting shot as the officer was handcuffing him.

“I bet you'd have a tough time doing that if I only had one arm, wouldn't you?”

July 4th - Then And Now

Compare and Contrast:

July 4, 1776

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

July 4, 2013

Interesting Observation In Regard To The War On Men

In this post from Glenn Reynolds about the continuing War on Men, and specifically about how boys in state custody are more often preyed upon by female staff members rather than the other way round, comes this observation from one of his readers.

Not only does shock at the idea of women abusing boys reveal a gender bias against men, I think it points out another potential factor in the War on men Dr. Helen writes so eloquently about.

As the father of 5 sons, the oldest of whom are big, strong, and well-spoken (we home school), I noticed something starting a few years ago-

Liberal women fear my sons. Not disapprove of, fear.

And it isn’t the size or the strength, it is the confidence.

Is part of the War on Men a fear of, well, grown men? Is there actually an increase in grown women preying on boys sexually because these women fear adult men?

As Glenn writes, “Call it 'Androphobia'.”

This certainly struck close to home as I have noticed the same thing with my son, BeezleBub. While he isn't a big lad – he stands about 5' 8” and weighs in around 145 pounds – he's solid muscle. That comes from hours of physical labor on the farm, six days a week. He's also self-assured and doesn't suffer fools or their opinions.

No one needs to tell him he's a man. He knows it and lives it every day.

While many of the young women around his age flock to him, it is some of the older women that seem to distrust or fear him when he's around the farm's retail stand. (I have a pretty good idea that most of them were likely liberal, mainly from the license plates and bumper stickers on their cars.) At first I thought it was me being a bit too much of a curmudgeonly and biased dad and that I was merely imagining it. I figured it might have been because he was usually dusty, sweaty, or muddy, depending upon the weather outside. But after reading the comment above and looking back over the past two years I realized it wasn't my imagination. They were uncomfortable around him. I guess he was too male, too confident for them and they were surprised that he wasn't intimidated by them or their presence. Androphobia, indeed.

This Is Ridiculous

If we need even more evidence that men are being marginalized by the feminazis, there's this little tidbit from Ohio, where a state lawmaker wants legislation that will force men to “see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and get a notarized affidavit signed by their sexual partner before allowing them to get a prescription for Viagra.” I guess the phrase “My body, my decision” applies only to women. Men need not apply.

The excuse? “...if state policymakers want to legislate women's health choices... they should also be able to legislate men's reproductive health.” Yeah, as if this is even in the same league as issues like birth control and abortion.

You only get one guess as to the lawmaker's gender and one guess as to the lawmaker's political party.

This crap has gone too far. It's time to tell people like this lawmaker to take their proposed law and shove it where the sun don't shine.