It appeared traffic was down, but only at the 'center' of Bike Week, Weirs Beach. But bike traffic was great all throughout the state as the visiting bikers took the opportunity to ride the highways and back roads across the state. Officials estimate about 300,000 motorcycle enthusiasts visited New Hampshire over the past 9 days.
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BeezleBub and Horse Girl attended an after-work First Day Of Summer gathering at the farm which included food, drink, music, and a fire in a fire pit. The local fire department also took part as someone apparently mistook the fire in the pit for a fire at the farm and called 911. It might have had something to do with the fire being a bit larger than usual (but still safe), visible from the state highway that passes nearby the farm.Farmer Andy did have a fire permit, the conditions being a little dry, and all was well.
Still, it's nice to know someone is keeping an eye out for unusual events. Better safe than sorry.
Oh, yeah, BeezleBub and Horse Girl had a great time.
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It seems someone in Congress is paying attention, stymieing the Pentagon's plans to kill the A-10 Warthog, one of the most effective and devastating close air support aircraft to ever fly. While the USAF is claiming they can save approximately $3 billion by eliminating the A-10, they also state that it will take about $35 billion more to get its purported replacement, the F35 Joint Strike Fighter, on line and ready to fly.This isn't the first time the USAF has tried to kill off the A-10, that being just prior Desert Storm. But the A-10 proved to be so effective that they canceled their plans to 'retire' it. I guess it just wasn't sexy enough or high tech enough for the higher ups in the Air Force even though it was the most effective close air support aircraft ever.
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A Harvard staffer adds his 2¢ to the “rape culture” debate, opining that the meme is seriously flawed and out of control, helping no one, generating nothing but a lot of acrimony, the result of two clashing principles and the reality that conflicts with those principles.Feminism is in control of America’s colleges and universities, where its principles at least are held as dogmas unquestioned and unopposed. Yet in what should be a paradise with those principles at work, women speak of a “rape culture” that sounds like the patriarchal hell we thought we’d left behind.He goes on to pull apart the arguments put forth by modern feminists (not to be confused with classic feminists), showing that what they want isn't going to be achievable not because of the “patriarchy”, but because of their own flawed perceptions and refusal to accept human nature. They put forth conflicting and mutually exclusive ideals and then wonder why they aren't getting their way, or worse, see a backlash.
To look at the principles of feminism will help to understand the situation. Two of them are most relevant: that there is no essential difference between men and women, and the corollary that men and women are not real beings but arbitrary “social constructions” containing nothing “natural” or permanent. Then the second has the function of guiding the construction of a society in which women’s independence will be secured. The two are maintained without proof and to the exclusion of doubt, and are not subjected to debate.
The trouble is that the two do not work in concert. The unintended result is that women are defined by their listeners, by their desire to imitate men, not by themselves. The feminist desire for independence is defeated by the feminist principle of social construction that was designed and adopted to achieve it.
As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.
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Cap'n Teach gives us a twofer, with two posts dealing with climate change alarmists and how they're putting forth their agenda even though real world data tells us (and them) they're wrong.The first equates the moves by the AGW faithful to an old style Mafia “protection” racket.
The second delves into the efforts of Jon Stewart to convert climate skeptics into climate change alarmists. (Talk about a major #FAIL!)
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The “dog ate my e-mails” excuse proffered by the IRS sounded fishy from the get go. Now it turns out there were offsite third-party backups of IRS e-mails, something the IRS conveniently forgot to mention to Congress. What we don't know is if they backed up all IRS e-mails or just those from certain offices or districts.I hope the subpoenas are on their way before those backups mysteriously disappear, too.
(H/T Instapundit)
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Tom Bowler adds his thought about the “dog ate my e-mails” excuse, and he's not buying it either.It so happens that the emails requested by Ways and Means included Lerner's communications with the White House, the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice, the Federal Elections Commission and the offices of congressional Democrats. Just those communications, for just that particular time period when the IRS was admittedly targeting Tea Party and conservative groups, are the ones that the IRS now claims were lost because of the crash. How is that possible?If she did indeed e-mail others in those departments and agencies, then wouldn't they have backups of the e-mails they received from Lerner as well as any replies they might have sent? Or did the dog eat those e-mails, too?
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Another thing to remember about the IRS scandal, something history should have taught the alleged perpetrators: The cover-up is usually worse than the crime.It wasn't the Watergate break-in the brought Richard Nixon down, but the cover up. Like Santayana said, “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.”
Indeed.
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What he said.**************
And what he said.**************
What he said, too.**************
Assistant Village Idiot delves into the subject of accents, something near and dear to my heart. As AVI writes, accents can give the wrong impression about someone's intelligence or worth. (As I've heard more than once from some of our Southern brethren, “Just because I speak slow doesn't mean I'm stupid.”)I have no problem with them, be they regional accents here in the US or foreign accents. (I grew up around a lot of people with foreign accents – English was their second or third language – so I usually have little problem with them even if their English isn't all that great.) I can mimic most American accents as well as the variety of British accents. I can even pull off an Australian accent..at least for a little while. Of course my favorites are the N'Hampsha and Down East Maine accents. They're great for storytelling, making the stories much more humorous. Or at least I hope so.
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I have to admit to not linking to Mike of Cold Fury more often. I used to link his stuff all the time, but for some reason my visits to his blog dwindled away to once in a while even though his stuff is pretty darned good. So in order to rectify that failing on my part, I'm going to link to this piece about Liberty versus Equality....[I]t’s worth pausing to admire anew the very different, and very realistic, modesty underlying Thomas Jefferson’s deathless declaration that all men are created equal. We are equal, he went on to explain, in having the same God-given rights that no one can legitimately take away from us. But Jefferson well knew that one of those rights—to pursue our own happiness in our own way—would yield wildly different outcomes for individuals. Even this most radical of the Founding Fathers knew that the equality of rights on which American independence rests would necessarily lead to inequality of condition. Indeed, he believed that something like an aristocracy would arise—springing from talent and virtue, he ardently hoped, not from inherited wealth or status.Of course the Left wants equality of outcome, something entirely different from what Jefferson hoped for us. We have seen such egalitarian “utopias” in the past and without fail Every. Single. One. turned out to be a totalitarian society where everyone one was equally miserable, equally poor, and equally under the boot of government. Two still exist in the Western Hemisphere – Cuba and Venezuela – and they are such good examples of why we should strive to stay as far away from turning the US into yet another egalitarian hellhole as we can.
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Fire Andrea Mitchell has a great comparison between the first week sales of Hillary's book versus Sarah Palin's.They ain't even close.
Which one sold more books? Do I really need to answer that?