10/11/2015

Thoughts On A Sunday

Here it is, Columbus Day Weekend, and the leaf peepers are here in force.

While the Lakes Region of New Hampshire is nowhere near peak color, the White Mountains to the north are very close to peak and the Great North Woods are at full peak. Between the foliage and the holiday weekend the traffic hereabouts resembles that seen during a summer weekend, but with a lot more folks from farther away than southern New England or New York. In fact the number of tour buses being seen make it seem as if that's all that exists!

A stop at the farm yesterday saw the parking lot at the farm stand full and then some, with a lot of vehicles parked along the side of the road and at the edge of one of the farm fields. Between the corn maze, the large crop of pumpkins, and some of the fall specialties, the place was packed. Talking to Mrs. Farmer Andy let me know the place had been very busy from the time it opened that morning and that reservations for the night-time corn maze were full.

Welcome to fall in New Hampshire!

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Is the 'Thanksgiving' pumpkin doomed? So say the folks at Scientific American.

To what do they attribute this doom? Why climate change, of course!

As Cap'n Teach writes about this whole debacle, “By Monday they'll be telling us Halloween is doomed.”

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Another from Cap'n Teach blows the “1000 year flood” meme in South Carolina out of the water, so to speak.

USGS research has shown no linkage between flooding (either increases or decreases) and the increase in greenhouse gases. Essentially, from USGS long-term streamgage data for sites across the country with no regulation or other changes to the watershed that could influence the streamflow, the data shows no systematic increases in flooding through time.

A much bigger impact on flooding, though, is land use change. Without proper mitigation, urbanization of watersheds increases flooding. Moreover, encroachment into the floodplain by homes and businesses leads to greater economic losses and potential loss of life, with more encroachment leading to greater losses.

Anyone paying attention would have known that as we've seen that effect over the years – changes in land use altering runoff patterns, particularly when wetlands were drained and/or filled.

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As the number of victims of the Department of Education's “Dear Colleague” letter start adding up, more people are waking up to the fact that the kangaroo courts run by our institutions of higher education are both incapable of dealing with the issue and are unconstitutional as well.

The kicker is that the “Dear Colleague” letter does not have the power of law, is in no way binding or enforceable, and that the bureaucrat who issued the letter had no power to do so.

Unfortunately the damage has been done and has fueled the continuing War on Campus Men. Too bad it will be the colleges and their insurance providers bearing the brunt of the lawsuits and payouts to the victims of this illegal mandate.

Sexual assault should be handled by the police, not untrained and clueless college administrators.

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The EPA has been slapped down again by the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, issuing and injunction against the agency from enforcing its new rules based upon the Clean Water Act that to all intents and purposes was a land grab.

This isn't the first time a federal court has stopped the rogue agency. More than once courts have stopped implementation of new rules that have gone far outside the agency's charter, and in some cases, in violation of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

It's gotten to the point where I think the agency should be abolished because it appears that it is so far outside its charter that it can now be considered a criminal organization.

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Allen West's opinion on the new bill signed by Governor Brown in California that allows automatic voter registration?

State sanctioned voter fraud.

This law is supposed aimed at raising voter turnouts after a number of election cycles with dismal voter turnout. It also opens the way to all kinds of fraud because a lot of people who are allowed to get a drivers license in California are also ineligible to vote, but that doesn't seem to be a concern in the once Golden State.

I have two questions for the California Assembly and Governor Brown: 1) Did any of you ever think the reason for low voter turnout is because there's no one worth voting for during those elections? 2) Isn't this in effect Voter ID, something so many Democrat politicians and their handlers are against because it supposedly disfranchises minority voters?

Just asking...

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Sultan Knish has the right of this:

Of all the Alinsky rules, the most relevant one is, "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." But he simply codified and made pragmatic the most destructive of the left's rules which is, "Make the enemy live up to his ideals." Even if those ideals are often the invention of the left.

Ideals are by definition impossible to live up to. Human societies aren't ideal, they're real. Ideals are absolutes and an unflinching attempt to live up to them destroys individuals and societies. More subtly, the failure to live up to them justifies hatred and self-hatred toward nations and peoples.

Forcing your enemy to live up to impossible-to-meet ideals makes it easier to paint them as something less than human and allows you to take actions that would otherwise be considered barbaric and inhumane.

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Last weekend it was me and my friend Ev moving and stacking two cords of firewood inside the garage.

This weekend it's Bogie moving 5 tons of wood pellets into her basement and garage.

Both of us are ready to heat our homes without using the dreaded (and still expensive) fossil fuels. Of course that's just a misdirection because both the firewood I have and the pellets Bogie has relied on fossil fuels for processing (kiln drying for the firewood, grinding/shaping/packaging pellets, and the fuel needed by the trucks to transport it all).

Still, I like the heat from a woodstove even if it isn't as convenient as turning up the thermostat on the wall. And unlike pellet stoves, it doesn't require electricity to work.

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Women in Blue are not Blue women!

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the leaves are staring to show their fiery fall colors, boats still ply the waters of the lake for leaf peeping, and where some of us still have to work on Columbus Day.