10/18/2015

Thoughts On A Sunday

Very cool weather has arrived in New Hampshire, motivating me to fire up the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove for the first time. It wasn't until early evening the temps dipped below freezing and the time to fire it up arrived.

There were a few last minute tweaks needed to ensure everything would work correctly, then I laid in the firewood, newspaper, and kindling, set the damper, and then set the newspaper alight. Within a very short time the popping sounds of expanding cast iron could be heard and the first rays of radiant heat could be felt.

Enough wood was brought in to keep it going overnight and to stoke it first thing in the morning.

The feline contingent here at The Manse were happy to see it working again as they arrayed themselves around 'the warm box' and soaked in the heat it provided.

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There's poor. And then there's “poor”.

It's ironic that the poor here in the US are wealthier than the middle class in much of Europe.

Another factoid: The poor in the US today are wealthier than much of middle class in the US back in the 1970's and early 1980's. They have material wealth unimagined back in the Old DaysTM.

'Poor' is a relative term. No matter how wealthy a society has become there will always be those at the bottom of economic ladder. That they might be wealthier than Croesus* means nothing because the SJW's will find some way to make them out to be victims of the “greedy 1%”.

*For those of you who might be products of our modern educational system, Croesus was the King of Lydia from 560 to 546BC and was known for his extreme wealth. If you need more info, there's always Google. It must also be understood that my comparison of our 'poor' to Croesus is rhetorical, not literal. There, glad that I cleared that up for you?

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The Democrats/Leftists/Progressives are always preaching about diversity to we poor deluded greedy racist conservatives. But the message might have more of an impact if those same Democrats/Leftists/Progressives practiced what they preached.

So far it appears they have far less diversity than the GOP, particularly in regards to their presidential wannabes.

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Why carry a gun?

I agree with every single one.

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After watching the Gop debates and the recent Democrat debate on TV, I have to say I agree with David Starr on this one: The Parties should not let TV people control the debates.

Writes David:

The newsies are hugely partisan, and they rig things to help their candidates and hurt the other sides candidates. I see no reason why such poorly educated, biased, and ignorant people should be allowed to influence the elections.

Indeed.

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By way of a commenter on today's Day By Day cartoon comes this quote from Vox Day's SJW's Always Lie: Taking Down The Thought Police in regards to Marvel's changes to some of its characters to make them more politically correct and appealing to SJW's.

They are the Social Justice Warriors, the SJWs, the self-appointed thought police who have been running amok throughout the West since the dawn of the politically correct era in the 1990s. Their defining characteristics:

• a philosophy of activism for activism’s sake
• a dedication to rooting out behavior they deem problematic, offensive, or unacceptable in others
• a custom of primarily identifying individuals by their sex, race, and sexual orientation
• a hierarchy of intrinsic morality based on the identity politics of sex, race, and sexual orientation
• a quasi-religious belief in equality, diversity, and the inevitability of progress
• an assumption of bad faith on the part of all non-social justice warriors
• an opinion that motivation matters more than consequences
• a certainty that they are the only true and valid defenders of the oppressed
• a habit of demanding that their opinions be enshrined as social custom and law
• a tendency to possess a left-wing political identity
• a willingness to deny science, history, logic, their past words, or any other aspect of reality that contradicts their current Narrative.

After reading the list would those symptoms be found in the DSM under dissociative disorders or perhaps some kind of psychotic break.

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I would have thought that cases of Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) would have fallen to almost zero after all this time.

Apparently that's not the case.

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A survey run by Chapman University has the gun-grabbers swooning as it shows that Americans are more concerned about gun control than mass shootings.

That makes sense to me because if there is less gun control, and particularly if that lessening of control makes gun-free zones illegal, the incidents of mass shootings are likely do fall, if not end altogether. A potential mass shooter would be met with deadly force meted out to him by his potential victims. You can't have a mass shooting if the shooter is shot dead by the armed citizens he intended to kill.

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The New England Patriots are playing the Indianapolis Colts in Indianapolis. The game won't finish until close to midnight so no results are available.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the leaves are at peak, the woodstoves are keeping us warm, and where preparations for winter continue apace.