7/30/2017

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was quiet around The Manse all weekend. Deb was away and BeezleBub was working. I was left to my own devices and focused primarily on yard work, with mowing the lawn and cutting back the sumac that has been invading the property for years. (Sumac is a weed, insidious and fast growing. It takes constant work to keep it at bay and prevent it from choking out all other growth.)

A lot of cutting and hauling took place, with a couple of trips to the town's brush pile to offload what I'd managed to cut. (Some of the grass clippings were also hauled to the town's compost piles.)This was in between a trip to our town's annual Household Hazardous Waste Collection Day and to one of the local service shops to have the new Ram pickup get it's state inspection sticker.

It wasn't a bad day yesterday despite the work I did. I have to admit that I was worried that the injury I experienced this past winter would be aggravated by the work, but there was nary a twinge. I do have to admit that it did limit how much I could get done as there are still some duties that I did not dare attempt as I knew I wasn't quite up to doing them yet. (Yeah, it's an excuse. But it's a darned good one and one I can use with BeezleBub until mid-fall at least.)

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It's summer, so where have all the kids gone?

In this overly neurotic society where helicopter parenting isn't just encouraged, but darned near mandated by the busybodies driven by the Precautionary Principle, the kids are “contained in structured, adult-led, often indoor activities where they are told what to do, what to think, and how to act.” They are no longer allowed unstructured outdoor play where they can let their imaginations can run free.

Is it any wonder we're seeing more kids with mental health issues?

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Are the unions finally getting tired of the Democrats?

Yup, without a doubt. Particularly when the rank and file see the Democrats making it more difficult for them to keep their jobs by making it more attractive for some industries to move offshore or regulating their jobs right out of existence. The push by Democrats for a $15 minimum wage isn't helping things either as the 'experiments' with it in places like Seattle and San Francisco are proving to make jobs go away.

As an aside, I know a lot of union members from a number of different labor unions and good portion of them aren't Democrats. They belong to unions because they have to in order to work. Many would leave their unions if given the choice. Is it any wonder Right To Work has been making some inroads into some of the Rust Belt states?

New Hampshire has failed to go RTW, with the first attempt vetoed by then-governor Maggie Hassan, a True Blue Democrat beholden to the New Hampshire State Employees Association (an SEIU union). The second attempt failed in the legislature, failing by a bare minimum of votes.

Maybe next time. After all we did manage to get Constitutional Carry passed during this year's legislative session, though it took a number of attempts before it finally passed. Maybe RTW will pass next time it's presented.

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Ah, yes! One of my favorite examples of how government can take something that has worked well for generations and f**k it up beyond all reason by regulating the hell out of it. What am I talking about?

The oft mentioned and commented upon gas can.

It is something I've written about on numerous occasions as I see it as the perfect example of why government should butt out when it comes to the little things...and maybe even the mid-sized things (but I digress).

This latest tale starts with someone running out of gas because their gas gauge was broken and they had to call the local gas station to come out with a can of gas.

The gruff but lovable attendant arrived in his truck and started to pour gas in my car’s tank. And pour. And pour.

“Hmmm, I just hate how slow these gas cans are these days,” he grumbled. “There’s no vent on them.”

Who would make a can without a vent unless it was done under duress?

That sound of frustration in this guy’s voice was strangely familiar, the grumble that comes when something that used to work but doesn’t work anymore, for some odd reason we can’t identify.

I’m pretty alert to such problems these days. Soap doesn’t work. Toilets don’t flush. Clothes washers don’t clean. Light bulbs don’t illuminate. Refrigerators break too soon. Paint discolors. Lawnmowers have to be hacked. It’s all caused by idiotic government regulations that are wrecking our lives one consumer product at a time, all in ways we hardly notice.

Surely, the gas can is protected. It’s just a can, for goodness sake. Yet he was right. This one doesn’t have a vent. After all, everyone knows to vent anything that pours. Otherwise, it doesn’t pour right and is likely to spill.

Indeed.

I know I've spilled far more gasoline using the government 'approved' gas cans than I ever did in the four or so decades I used the old tried and true gas cans with vents. How much more gasoline vapors have been released due to more frequent and larger gas spills as compared to those released due to vents on the old cans? The latches on the new cans can be difficult to release and requires the use of two hands to do so while the old cans only required one hand. It is also far more difficult to control the flow of gas from the new cans as it surges and stops as a vacuum builds in the cans because there is no vent. (That's why I believe I see more gas spills than in the past.)

In this case the cure for a perceived problem was far worse than the problem it was supposed to cure.

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I like this idea from Iowahawk:

Let's have engineers invade a Diversity Trainer conference & force them to solve differential equations for an hour.

His tweet is in response to this bit of idiocy, something that greatly deserves all the mocking it receives.

This politically correct bulls**t has gone too far, takes up too much time, and has been shown to have little if any effect in regards to actual changes in regards to whatever The PC Powers That Be are trying to train people to avoid, be it microagressions, sexual harassment, LGBTQ issues, diversity, or whatever bit of PC lunacy they come up with next.

Leave me alone and let me get back to work so I can make the world a better place by inventing something new that makes everyone's lives even easier, thankyouverymuch.

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Why does the US, a First World country, have Third World cities?

Because the party in power in those cities (Democrats) made them that way.

Throughout the United States, I frequently come across what I call "third world cities in first world countries" - whether it is Detroit, Baltimore, or even my beloved New Orleans. These third world cities all have one thing in common: an absence of free and open markets.

There is a wide consensus amongst economists that economic freedom largely determines the wealth of nations and metropolitan areas are no exception to this rule. As Economist Dean Stansel, in his paper, "An Economic Freedom Index for U.S. Metropolitan Areas," states, “higher levels of local economic freedom are found to be correlated with positive economic outcomes.”

So regulating and taxing the heck out of businesses and business owners has a major negative effect on US cities that do so? Who'da thunk it?

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As if we need even more proof that California is committing slow-motion suicide, there's this:

California lawmakers pass 400% increase in gas taxes then give themselves free gasoline and cars.

Here is more evidence of California's decline:

California is in debt $1.3 Trillion. That means every citizen in California is in debt almost $33,000. That is, unless you just move out!!! This represents a significant debt burden even by international standards.

Not included are billions of dollars in deferred maintenance and upgrades to California’s infrastructure. To the extent California’s government has not maintained investment in infrastructure maintenance, it has passed this cost on to future generations who will have to issue additional debt to pay for this expense.

On top of that, California's AG has decided that the 'Calexit' secession effort can go forward. Even if it does happen, I still think that California should be broken up into different states as it is the coastal elite pushing for this. A lot of non-coastal California wants nothing to do with leaving the US as they are an entirely different political entity and identity than the coast.

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Twitter is losing almost $40 million per month and they can't seem to figure that the reason why is that they've pissed off half of their customer base.

There is an undeniable pattern of bias at Twitter, whose executives consider their political agenda more important than profit. Does anyone imagine that a company staffed by social justice warriors (SJWs) is a smart investment? Twitter management has effectively yielded control of the company to socialists, anarchists and other enemies of capitalism. Are you surprised that they’re losing nearly $40 million a month?

I'm not surprised in the least. If nothing else Twitter will be used as an example why SJW agendas should never be used as the basis to run a company. It will always fail.

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Oh, yeah, this will work out for them as well as that whole BLM kerfuffle worked out for Mizzou.

It appears the University of Michigan is hiring an administrator for Cultural Appropriation Prevention.

I have to ask whether the still to be named administrator will be preventing cultural appropriation only by white students or whether such appropriation prevention will be applied across the board? If I had to guess, I's say it is more likely to be the former rather than the latter. But that's just me.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it's been a glorious weekend, the summerfolk have been well behaved, and the ice cream stands have been running flat out.

7/29/2017

Net Neutrailty Debate Begins...Again

I have mentioned my co-worker before, he of many liberal outlooks gained by his many years in a college environment. There are a number of things that we disagree about and that we debate about, here and there, now and again

One of the latest topics has been about Net Neutrality and his take on the matter is that the Trump Administration is undoing “all of the good work done by Obama and his minions in the FCC.” I took a different tack, letting him know that much of the debate over Net Neutrality took place during the Bush Administration. It was the Obama Administration that screwed it all up.

My point to him was that putting Net Neutrality under Title II was the wrong way to go about it and that stripping the existing Net Neutrality rules was the right thing to do while he though we should tinker with it until “it was right”.

I admit that there are times when tinkering with some of the rules and regulations can fix some smaller and less intrusive problems with government regulations, but that when the problems are huge and would require tweaking over years or even decades that some times it is better to scrap the whole thing and start with a clean sheet of paper. Tweaking Net Neutrality is one of those huge problems that won't be solved that way. Here's why.

Net Neutrality is the good principle that a provider of information access service, a device, or a platform must be neutral regarding the content accessed or transmitted by its service, device, or platform.  In particular, Internet Service Providers must not discriminate between net traffic based on the content or originating website.  Also, they must not give preferential treatment to their own services, such as voice over IP, relative to their competitors. The principle of Net Neutrality was accepted and applied by the George W. Bush administration toward broadband ISPs.

...[W]hen Obama was elected in 2008, he appointed his classmate and fundraiser Julius Genachowski as Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman.  Under the pretext of net neutrality, FCC crafted multiple regulations that made broadband ISPs almost unable to manage their own networks, and put their whole operations in the legal grey area.  Not incidentally, the robust growth in broadband providers’ competition that preceded Obama election stopped and many new broadband technologies (like WiMAX) became buried. For the first time in the history, Internet access prices started to rise!  But that was only a prelude to the real action.

That “real action” was writing the rules in such a way that the Internet was no longer an open system with “the FCC vested into itself total control over the whole Internet backbone, all Internet access (other than obsolete dial up) by all consumers, and all broadband and mobile ISPs. The order sprawls on more than 300 pages, never mentions “net neutrality” (except in the footnotes).”

I could go on and on ad nauseum but it's better if you Read The Whole Thing for yourself. Pay particular attention to the comments as they are even more informative that the post itself.

New Hampshire's Governor Makes The Right Move

I have to admit I have had mixed feelings about our governor, Chris Sununu (R-NH).

There are times when I wonder if he really is as conservative as I had hoped he would be. The recently passed state budget and his push for all-day kindergarten (funded by expanding gambling by way of Keno run by the state lottery) made me wonder if he was just a version of Maggie Hassan, former spend-thrift governor and now US Senator (D-NH).

Then there's this move by him that has me thinking that he is more conservative than he lets on. “This” is his move when he was asked if he would have New Hampshire sign on to the United States Climate Alliance, a state-level agreement to uphold the objectives of the Paris climate accord developed after President Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from that do-nothing accord.

Sununu hit it right on the head when he called the alliance “quasi-meaningless” and “more of just a political statement than anything.” When one thinks about it the alliance is nothing more than a means of virtue signaling writ large. As Sununu also stated, the alliance founders – the governors of California and New York – are championing the alliance as a means to “distract from their states’ shortcomings.”

One of my co-workers, a dyed in the wool liberal, decried Trump's decision to have the U.S. withdrwaw from the accord. I asked him if he had actually read the conditions and obligations the accord would impose and he said he hadn't. My response to him - “Then read the damn thing. You'll find it isn't what you've been told what it does or what it obligates the U.S. to do while at the same time allowing both China and India to dramatically increase their CO2 emissions.”

A few days later he came back to me and told me he actually spent the time to read it. He then stated that Trump was right to “get us out of that awful agreement.” Apparently his only knowledge of the contents and obligations of the Paris Accords were what he heard on NPR, saw on MSLSD and CNN, or from friends who were part of the same political echo chamber. They never made mention that the only nation that would have to greatly reduce their already reduced emissions and pay hundreds of billions of dollars to “fight climate change” was the U.S.

So my co-worker learned two valuable lessons from this: Climate change agreements that punish the only major nation that has actually decreased its CO2 emissions aren't worth the paper they're written on and; his favorite news outlets have been going out of their way to lie to the American public while also ignoring the truly important stories.

There's hope for him yet.

7/23/2017

Thoughts On A Sunday

No post last night as it was a busy day and I realized I hadn’t written anything just as I was heading up the stairs to bed. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen now and then. This was one of those times.

Part of the day included a trip to the WP In-Laws as it had been a while since I had seen them, having been laid up over the winter and early spring. The trip also allowed me to show off the new Ram 1500. (‘New’ is a relative term as the truck is a 2014 model. The last time I bought a new vehicle was in 1995. Every one since then has been a used vehicle.)

Between my regular Saturday chores and the three-hour round trip for my visit little time was left to do anything other than feed the feline contingent here at The Manse and go to bed.

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Oh, yeah, this will play well in West.

North Korea has opened a tourism website. As the news article posits, what’s their catch phrase for the tourist trade?

“You’ll never want to leave — and may not be able to.”

I expect our Progressive brethren to sign up in droves so they can get first had experience in running a Stalinist state. The only problem I can see they might have is resolving the paradox of totalitarian rule that suppresses all religion and their support for a religion that is all about suppressing freedom, particularly the rights of women, believes in slavery, and has no problem killing anyone (including Progressives) because they are infidels.

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This observation by Ed Driscoll is spot on:

“You condemn yourself to a life of misery when you make politics your religion.”

This quote is in relation to an article he linked about how Trump’s election victory ruined a bisexual wedding.

The woman in the article needs and intervention, or maybe some time in her local mental institution to help her reconnect with reality.

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A friend at work slammed President Trump about wasting time and being so caught up in the Russia controversy that he hasn’t kept any of his campaign promises or accomplished anything. Not that he’s a supporter of Trump. He’s anything but, being an almost-progressive stooge. (I have been working with him and showing him alternative media outlets that don’t play to the line the DNC-MSM has been putting forth for over a year.)

I did mention to him that the whole “Russia controversy” is something only the DNC-MSM has been pushing and that most Americans are more concerned about health care. Russia isn’t even number two on their list.

But now I can point him to Trump’s actual accomplishments that the DNC-MSM outlets he usually peruses doesn’t (and won’t) cover. I will warn him that it comes by way of Fox News, but I can also point him to government websites that cover proposed and passed/signed legislation and executive orders that aren’t beholden to any news media.

President Trump has signed more than 40 bills and nearly 40 executive orders on everything from health care to energy, infrastructure and more.

While the previous administration turned to federal agencies to enact its agenda, President Trump has signed more laws to slash through federal red tape than any president in American history and has saved businesses up to $18 billion a year in costs.

A lot of those businesses mentioned above aren’t big conglomerates, but small businesses that were being buried under increasingly burdensome (and costly) regulations, eating deeply into profit margins and threatening their very existence. Most of those regulations don’t actually do anything except allow the government to intrude more deeply into business. They serve no real or needed purpose. (I can speak from experience as the small business Deb and I owned in the past became more troublesome to run because we had to spend increasing amounts of time and money dealing with government regulations paperwork. That meant we had less time to actually operate our business even as we saw our profits being eaten up by the costs of complying with all of those nonsensical regulations.)

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Due out in August: iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy–and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood–and What That Means for the Rest of Us.

With generational divides wider than ever, parents, educators, and employers have an urgent need to understand today’s rising generation of teens and young adults. Born in the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s and later, iGen is the first generation to spend their entire adolescence in the age of the smartphone. With social media and texting replacing other activities, iGen spends less time with their friends in person—perhaps why they are experiencing unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness.

With interactions becoming more electronic and less face-to-face, is it all that surprising that ‘iGen’ is suffering from the aforementioned anxiety, depression, and loneliness?

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First, the over-the-top municipal bureaucrats work to kill off kids’ lemonade stands, something kids have been doing for generations.

Now they’re making pet sitting illegal in New York City.

This is one of those “WTF?” moments. This is yet another example of government overregulation. Thanks goodness that type of asinine sickness hasn’t reached too far outside of the urban areas. (Yes, I know some suburban areas are doing the same stupid things, but most of them are located next to Big Blue Cities.) Were something that stupid happen here we’d see a major change in the makeup of the state legislature and a new occupant in the governor’s office.

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As David Starr asks, “A Jaguar SUV?”

My comment to his post dealt with the “British ‘movie bad guy’” and that they won’t use a black Escalade. Why not a Jaguar SUV?

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Despite all of the temperature data tweaking and ‘fixes’ to the climate models, none of them track what has actually been happening or been able to “reproduce even the most fundamental cycles.”

Under those circumstances how can anyone use to them to predict what the climate will be like 83 years from now. On top of that how can anyone in good conscience base policies and regulations upon those same defective climate models? Or are the warmists using the much abused Precautionary Principle as an excuse to push draconian measures ‘just in case’?

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I find the claim that 22 million Americans will lose their health insurance if the GOP health care reform plan passes to be disingenuous at best. But of course the media and pro-ObamaCare folks are playing it up to the max.

But one thing you never hear about are the millions of Americans who are paying through the nose for health insurance they cannot use. A family member is in that boat, paying $12,000 a year for insurance and a huge deductible ($6,000, if I recall correctly), meaning the family member has to shell out $18,000 before their health insurance kicks in. That’s thousands of dollars more than they had to pay prior to ObamaCare kicking in. Please remind me, what was the promise of ObamaCare again? Something about saving $2500 a year in premiums?

What has really happened is the 22 million Americans receiving health insurance through ObamaCare are having their insurance coverage paid for by Americans like my family member. They pay and pay and get nothing in return. In effect, they lost their health insurance but still have to pay. How many are doing so? If I had to guess, at least 22 million Americans.

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Vigilantism, California-style.

Heavy rains caused potholes in Santa Cruz County, CA – potholes which the local government doesn’t have the funds to fix. The local government officials told the residents to “be patient” and have said the repairs could take more than a year to finish.

Residents got tired of the delay and the lack of solid answers so they decided to fix the potholes themselves.

Of course, the citizen led solution doesn’t sit well with government officials.

Of course not. The dysfunctional county government can’t fix the potholes because they don’t have the money. The roads are deteriorating faster than the county can repair them. The citizens are tired of seeing their cars and trucks being damaged by the unrepaired roads yet have been told by the county that they won’t be fixed any time soon. The citizens go out and fix them themselves. The county goes apoplectic and complains that “We can’t have people running out into traffic and filling up potholes by themselves. It just could end up impeding our efforts to actually fill more potholes if we end up getting sued because we’re letting people do this.”

They’re going to get sued if they don’t fix the roads, particularly if someone gets hurt or killed because they roads haven’t been fixed. The people are performing functions the county government can no longer perform and the people are being slammed for it.

This is a form of vigilantism I can get behind.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has been glorious, the boating has been great, and where we’ll be assaulted by yet another Monday.

7/16/2017

Thoughts On A Sunday

The King is dead! Long Live the King!

Or in this case the trusty F150.

Yes, my trusty 14-year old truck is no longer here. After years of faithful service the body rust got so bad that it would have taken a minimum of $6000 to make it roadworthy. While the frame and mechanicals were all in great shape, both the bed and cab had extensive rust and after some thought both Deb and I came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth dropping that kind of money into a vehicle that wasn't worth that even if it had been in pristine condition. So it was time to find a worthy replacement.

The trusty F150 languished in the garage since January, trapped there for two reasons: I wasn't able to drive due to an injury that left me dependent upon others to get around and; the F150 failed its annual safety inspection (the rust) and couldn't be driven until the rust was repaired and was deemed safe to drive again. In May I started gathering estimates for the work and almost every shop told me the same thing – it wasn't worth fixing unless I was going to keep it for sentimental reasons. (I haven't been sentimental about any vehicle with the exception of my dear departed grandparents' 1960 Cadillac coupe as I remember so many trips with them in that land yacht of a car.) So it was time to find a replacement.

It took almost 6 weeks, but I finally found a truck I liked that was within my price range: a 2014 Ram 1500 4X4. I did all of the due diligence, checking websites like Edmunds, NADA, and Cars.com for reviews of this particular model, looking for any problems or issues. With very few exceptions, everyone liked the truck and sang its praises. That was enough for me.

So this past Tuesday Deb and I climbed into the trusty F150 for the last time, hoping the local gendarmerie wouldn't notice I didn't have a valid inspection sticker, drove it the 11 miles to the dealer who was taking it in trade, handed the keys over. Ten minutes later we had finished the last of the paperwork, the temporary license plate was in place, and Deb and I headed home in the trusty Ram 1500. Hopefully it will serve me as well as the F150 did and last as long, if not longer.

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This is disturbing on so many leevls I haven't a clue as where to begin.

You know a feminist really hates any human with a 'Y' chromosome when she publicly condemns her sons as rapists and sexists because they will no longer endure her constant emotional abuse. Not that they've actually done anything wrong. But she apparently hates the idea that she wasn't able to turn them into women with penises. Instead, they have done what anyone would under those circumstances – rebel. But wait, there's more!

Imagine what it must feel like to know if you ever end up in court your own mother is going to testify for the prosecution! When your own mom views your natural masculinity as "toxic," it's probably not going to foster a tight relationship or respect for her dearly held belief system. It's sad to imagine teen boys in that terribly awkward time trying to figure out who they are and what their passion is while this woman is flogging them in the newspaper for the sins of rapists (even though they never raped anyone). Lady, high school is hard enough. Maybe you should refrain from blaming the world's ills on your own flesh and blood. But that's just me.

It gets worse. It appears that Allard wrote an article several years ago claiming one of her sons was suicidal and yet she continues to write about him as being culpable for rape culture. She's done it again in a new article titled, “I'm Done Pretending Men Are Safe (Even My Own Sons)”.

Her problem isn't the patriarchy or rape culture. It has nothing to do with “toxic masculinity” or humans with a 'Y' chromosome. It has everything to do with the fact that she is a one mentally ill shithead who should have never been allowed to raise her kids. The only thing toxic in her life is her own delusions and that they've driven her to emotionally abuse her sons because they aren't girls. Normally I am not one that would suggest such a thing, but I think it's time for Child Services to do their job and get her kids away from this abusive excuse for a woman.

It's all about toxic feminism! Reading the comments to the linked post, just about everyone agrees her kids would be better off with someone else.

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The past few months have been like a flashback to the 1950's where Democrat Congresscritters are almost wetting themselves as they look for Russians under Trump's bed. They see them everywhere even when no one is actually there. Every time the DNC-MSM creams themselves because they think they've found the last little bit of evidence that will force Trump out of office it turns out to be a “nothingburger”.

I have to wonder who will end up being the Democrats' version of Tailgunner Joe McCarthy? So far no one wants to take that position. Considering what his downfall looked like I doubt anyone is in a hurry to fill that slot.

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There's deluded, and then there's deranged. This is deranged.

Silly reason why mother won't allow her son to accept a perfect school attendance award: “In this family you are not shamed for ill health.”

My question: Did he ever make fun of or shame anyone who didn't have a perfect attendance record? Somehow I doubt he has.

His mom has imbibed of the Progressive kool-aid. The only one that should be ashamed is her.

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Oh, Yeah! Let's bring back segregation! It worked so well the last time it was tried.

What makes this idea even more ludicrous is that it isn't even white people bringing up the idea, but black people. It's quite evident they never learned or were never taught the lessons about segregation in the South. If they see it as panacea to all their ills then they have chosen to ignore what's already happened in some of the self-segregated sections of cities like Detroit and Chicago. That's worked out so well for our African American brethren.

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I don't know why I missed this, but it's been out there for a month.

All my Progressive friends are members of the #Resist movement.  I am not a Trump supporter, but I'm not suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, either.  He's had mixed results so far.  Nothing outlandish, nothing crazy. I think he's accomplished quite a bit (both better and worse) for not passing a single piece of major legislation.  His bluster and hyperbole bug me, but that's just talk and Tweets.  I've seen and heard worse from regular politicians.  Yet it's these words that set off the #Resist people.  They go bonkers over every little thing!  It's fascinating.

Prior to the election, when it seemed Hillary was a shoo-in, they were treading lightly, saying nice things like "Whoever wins, we should unify after the election, the nation needs to come together."  Their hubris and expectation of a big win offered them the comfort to feel they could say this, with smug delight, to set off anyone who might consider Trump a viable vote.  These are the same people that spent 8 years complaining about Republican filibustering and 'obstruction' of the Obama agenda.  "Why can't the Republicans stop OBSTRUCTING when we want to get things done?"  Well, smarty-pants, that's how the system works, isn't it?  It's designed to prevent a tyranny of the majority, and your smug nonsensical philosophy is forcing tyranny down our throats.

Read the whole thing.

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This is something I've known since my high school years, over 4 decades ago. What is this something?

Women hate harmless men.

Many modern men have been propagandized to believe that modern women want nice, sensitive, empathetic guys who make them feel safe.

And then they are perplexed and frustrated when they eventually find themselves dumped, divorced, or relegated to the friend-zone for perpetuity.

The only time making women feel safe works is when a man protects them from a dangerous situation, doing so with action, be it as simple as showing their sidearm, wreaking violence upon a miscreant, or somewhere along that spectrum. (I have experienced that personally when three toughs accosted my then fiancee on the Tube in London. One ended up with a broken nose, the second with a dislocated shoulder, and the third, apparently smarter than his mates, decided to back away when he saw what had befallen his fellow thugs. The fiancee looked at me in an entirely different light after that, and I mean in a good way.)

Check out the post and particularly the included video of Dr. Jordan Peterson explaining why this is so.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it's NASCAR weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, the lake is busy with lots of boats out there, and where I'm glad I can do most of my boating during the week.

7/15/2017

Sometimes They Do Talk To Their Constituents!

It's not often one has a chance to spend time with their representative in state legislature. It's even better when you can do so at their home, or if there are some conflicting activities, on the phone.

In this case, I called my state representative to find out how things went during this year's legislative session. To say I got a not unexpected earful would be an understatement. (It was a lengthy and contentious session, so there was a lot to talk about.)

His list of successes and failures:

State Budget – FAIL: (Still too fat and carrying over items from the previous spendthrift Democrat governor.)

Business Tax Reduction – PASS...sorta: (The two taxes, the Business Enterprise Tax and Business Profits Tax, have been reduced. However the aim by a number of Republican legislators was to eliminate them altogether. Maybe next time.)

Repeal the Interest and Dividends Tax – FAIL: (New Hampshire has no income or sales tax, but it does have the Interest and Dividends tax which doesn't affect wage earners but does effect retirees and prudent investors. There has been an effort to eliminate this for some years as it doesn't really help all that much in the way of revenues but does hurt some Granite State residents.)

Return To Biennial Legislative Sessions – FAIL: (Back in 1984 the citizens of New Hampshire were sold a pig in a poke, that being that a single ~6 month legislative session every too years was too long. Two annual ~3 month sessions would be better. The voters changed the state constitution to go to annual sessions and it's been all downhill from there. Now there is an annual ~6 month session which means legislators must put in twice the amount of time at twice the cost to the state's taxpayers, but not all that much more gets done than if there had been a single every-other-year session. The bill to return to that schedule died in committee...darn it.)

Constitutional Carry – PASS: (A permit to carry a concealed weapon is no longer required. New Hampshire has had Open Carry for years and this was the next logical step. Despite both Open Carry and Concealed Carry there has not been bloodshed on the streets nor 'OK Corral' style shootouts as predicted by the anti-2A folks. New Hampshire has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the nation.)

Tighten Election Law – PASS: (Same Day registration has been grossly abused, used by 'transient' residents with no real domicile in the state. This law is designed to stop that kind of abuse by making proof of domicile a condition for voter registration. It is expected the ACLU and LoWV amongst others will be taking the state to court on this one.)

There were a host of other items we discussed, including issues in our county. (The state representatives also serve as county delegation members to the County Commission in each county and vote on things like the county budget and taxes.) My representative has stated it's been a learning experience as this was his first session as a representative. He and 399 other members of the New Hampshire House had to slog through governmental inertia, back channel deals, the reluctance/refusal of state funded entities (like the University System of New Hampshire) to open their books while at the same time demanding more money, and a whole host of pigheadedness and ideological blindness to try to get anything done. At least he now has a better understanding of the swamp that is state government.

As my representative said, “Take this experience at state level, multiply it by 50 states, then add on the even greater swamp of government in Washington DC.”

Scary thought, ain't it?

7/09/2017

Thoughts On A Sunday

The craziness of the Fourth of July holiday has faded away, allowing us a brief respite before this weekend arrived. While the crowds aren’t nearly as big as they were over the Fourth, they’re still here. In other words, it’s a normal summer weekend here in the Lakes Region. There’s a lot of boat traffic out on Lake Winnipesaukee, something to be expected on a beautiful weekend. (It’s one reason we rarely travel out on the lake during the weekend unless it’s first thing in the morning or late afternoon/early evening when there’s little if any boat traffic.)

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By way of Instapundit comes proof of something I knew way back when it was first put into place: Obama’s Cash For Clunkers was a complete waste of time and taxpayer money. It also had a net negative effect on car sales as compared to if the program had never been implemented.

One must also remember that the Obama Administration pushed for the closing of car dealerships as part of the automaker bailout (Chrysler and GM) because “there are too many dealerships.” The problem is that a good number of those dealerships slated for closing were selected based not upon their sales but upon the owner’s political leanings. A lot of very successful and prosperous dealerships saw their franchises ended because the owners did not identify as being with the correct political party (meaning they were Republicans and therefore not worthy of retaining their businesses).

Cash For Clunkers was an unmitigated disaster. Then again most politically motivated economic programs have no relation to economic realities and end up doing little to help the economy and, worst case, end up having negative impacts on the economy and the wallets of consumers.

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Though over a year old, this piece by Richard Fernandez stands as a warning to both tyrannies and self-deluded democracies (in this case, the EU). It boils down to one simple principle:

…people, under pressure to conform by culture leaders, often told public lies to get the pollsters and thought police off their backs, even as they nurtured largely undetected private resentments inside them. Over time, two divergent perceptions would emerge: the public lie would determine how the regime thought about itself while the private truth contained the real, but hidden data.

When both the public lie and the private truth are exposed, the government falls, sometimes violently.

How does this apply to the EU, a nominal democracy? The elite have been telling themselves and the citizens lies in order to fit a narrative, one that has now come back on them in spades.

It's becoming evident that the European elites failed to understand how explosive the migrant issue was until it detonated full in their face. Now it is in the midst of a crisis which could literally bring down the European Union. Why didn't they see it coming? Because they believed their own Narrative, even when they should have suspected it was a lie of their own making. If the PC Western elites are overtaken by a cascade similar to that which collapsed the Soviet Union, the ultimate irony will be that the very migrants which they had counted on to create the Curley Effect will turn out to be the engine of their own destruction.

As one of my favorite movie characters said, “Welcome to the party, pal!”

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I’ve known this for years.

If you believed the DNC-MSM, it appears Trump had a bad time at the G20 summit. But if you read the foreign press you get the impression that Trump kicked ass.

When you get better coverage of US national news from newspapers like the Telegraph rather than the New York Times or the Washington Post, you know they’re in trouble.

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It appears the experiment with school vouchers in Chile has proven to be a success. Of course I expect school voucher opponents to use the “But that’s Chile! It won’t work here,” line even though there’s plenty of evidence here in the US that proves that it does.

One commenter had the best take on this: “If vouchers didn’t work nobody would bother opposing them.”

Indeed.

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The Party of Peace, Love, and Tolerance strikes again.

In this case yet another “unhinged” liberal staked out a Harley Davidson dealership in Iowa in an attempt to kill US Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA).

Why is it that all of those attempting to kill members of Congress come from the Democrat Party, “unhinged” or not? The Left talks about all of the violence going to be committed by the Right, but the only ones actually committing the violence come from the Left. Projecting much?

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Want a preview of what single payer health care is like? Well here you go.

A million patients a week cannot see a GP.

Doctors said they were working “flat out” but under “unsustainable” pressure, leaving “worrying” numbers of patients without any help.

The NHS figures show the number waiting at least a week to see their GP has risen by 56 per cent in five years, with one in five now waiting this long.

The pressures left 11.3 per cent of patients unable to get an appointment at all – a 27 per cent rise since 2012. This amounts to around 47 million occasions on which patients attempted but failed to secure help from their GP, forcing them to give up, try again later or turn to Accident & Emergency departments.

It’s expected to get even worse. Is this something we really want to do? I doubt we’ll be able to do it any better than either the British or Canadians, and certainly not any less expensively.

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Step back: I’m a professional journalist!

And they wonder why the people hate the media.

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Helicopterswith frickin’ lasers.
It’s about time.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer has settled in, the summerfolk are enjoying themselves, and where the time to go back to work has come around again all too soon.

7/08/2017

Not What We Think Is Happening?

As much as many on the Left think that the parochial ways of non-urbanites will die away to be replaced with the values and mores of the enlightened Progressives (which resemble those of an overindulged and spoiled child), there is a flaw in their thinking and it all comes down to one simple thing – demographics.

In a comment to a post on PJ Media about Trump's visit and so-called Good News/Bad News for Poland opinion piece, one reader points out that the cultural divide between the Urban Elite and non-urban deplorables is not what some people think it is. Reader “Hornspe” uses a personally witnessed example from Paris that illustrates that division.

When a relatively homogeneous society implodes demographically, it is all well and good to draw data from the averages, but many of these European cultures are quite polarized. I was in Paris four years ago when many of the rural folks flooded into the city to express their anger about gay marriage. The French Government made it sound like an invasion, turned out huge numbers of police, shut the train stations etc.

Buses arrived with thousands and thousands of pleasant, friendly people and their children. I have never seen so many kids at a political rally. You would have thought it was a picnic (which it also obviously was). Someone unfurled a banner on top of the Socialist Party HQ that was unkind to the French President. That was the extent of the horror.

I would guess Europe is full of these people. Traditional Europeans who no longer participate in the post-modern cultural life of their country, and do not live like dissipated urban Leftists who eschew "bringing children into a broken world" in favor of being able to pay the rent in central Paris or London, and because kids don't fit in a 60sq/m flat.

If three pair of urban Leftists have no kids, and two pair rural traditionalists have 3 kids, the average is 1.2 kids. This doesn't mean the society is failing (particularly in a world of increased automation) it means the people with the really bad ideas are voting themselves off the island.

Leftism is a memetic disease. It kills its host's next generation. It is like the Black Death. It may wipe out a quarter of the population, but the death will be concentrated in the cities. If the Left is self-selecting out, let them. That's not the end of their civilizations but their renewal.

Do you have the data which falsifies this hypothesis? I can conceive that there might be demographic data cut by political or better, cultural viewpoint (since I think when your choices run the spectrum between Sanders and Clinton, if you like Trump you just quit showing up). Were that data to show this demographic collapse across the whole spectrum, that would suggest I am wrong.

I am taking a shot in the dark here, but I'll bet you'll find that Hornspe isn't wrong. And the speculation applied to Europe would hold true here as well. Many of the families I know in non-urban areas across this country have two or more kids. The single-child or childless couples are rare outside of the blue urban areas. (There aren't nearly as many Progressives outside the blue islands which may be one reason why the birth rate may be higher away from those blue islands.)

While all of this speculation is based upon anecdotal evidence, it would not surprise me in the least that the difference in birth rates is there. Whether or not there is any actual census data which shows the difference between urban and non-urban birth rates as well as differences between Left and Center/Right birth rates is something I do not know at the moment. It's something worth looking into.

If Hornspe's speculations are correct, a number of cultural and political problems are likely to address themselves as the Progressives remove themselves from the gene pool as they do not seem to reproduce in any great numbers, if they reproduce at all. But in the mean time they can cause a lot of damage if we don't counter their efforts to destroy the very things that define us as Americans.

7/02/2017

Thoughts On A Sunday

The long Fourth of July weekend is here, though the Fourth isn’t until Tuesday. Deb and I head out onto the lake at 10AM yesterday, hoping we’d beat the heavy boat traffic and be back in in an hour.

It didn’t work out that way.

It seems a lot of other folks had the same thought we did, making for a lot of wake driven chop, lengthy lines waiting to get through the Weirs Beach Channel, and then rain showers to cap it off. A leisurely 1 hour jaunt on the lake turned into two hours constant vigilance, rough water, aching knees, and a sweat/rain-soaked tee shirt.

Yet we still enjoyed it. A paradox, I know, but even a bad day out on the lake is better than a good day at work.

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The ongoing battle between the DNC-MSM and President Trump continues, with the duo of Scarborough and Brezenski seeing just how low they can go. They and their colleagues keep hammering at Trump as if they were back in high school and they show themselves to be the bullies, but their target stands strong and is not cowed by their tactics.

Is it childish? Yup, no doubt. But sometimes ‘childish’ is the only thing that gets through to these self-important defenders of the Leftist faith.

In the meantime Trump is getting things done while the DNC-MSM is focused on Trump’s tweets, remarks, and family. He has them totally suckered. Then again he’s manipulated the media for years and it comes to him as naturally as everyone else breathes.

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Those of us in the technical field understand things about the Internet that those outside the field rarely think about. That’s understandable. Most folks just want to know that it will work when they need it.

But too many, even in the tech field, have little if any understanding of the dangers that go along with the conveniences of the ‘Net.

As more things become connected to the Internet, more things can be controlled via the Internet, for good or bad.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes a reality, the vulnerabilities mount. Would you like it if someone could control all of the systems – lighting, heating/air conditioning, TV, appliances, the locks on your doors – from outside of your home? That’s what the IoT has as a major downside. While some of these things are quite convenient for a home owner, they have to understand the downside. (It’s one reason we have no such connections of anything to the Internet.)

As utilities and other infrastructure use the Internet for command and control, the ability by cyber-warfare hackers to shut down or damage that infrastructure increases. (None of that stuff should be ever be connected the Internet. They should be fully insulated from any Internet connections of any kind. While they would use the same kind of network structure as the Internet, they should be totally independent with no access from the outside.)

As one of the aforementioned engineering geeks, I am fully cognizant of the risks. It’s one reason I don’t have a smart phone. (I still use flip phone, something that can’t be hacked, or at least not as easily as smart phones.)

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It is one thing to not understand economics. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if someone with no such understanding figures they know better about how things should be run, doing things like artificially raising the cost of a commodity – labor is a commodity – and there being no fallout, then they are deluded. Such is the case with New Hampshire House Representative Timothy Horrigan.

After a post about McDonald’s installing ordering/payment kiosks in its US stores, Horrigan commented to the post, trying to use Switzerland’s McDonald’s franchises as proof that a $15/hour minimum wage won’t affect the costs of food, citing the “Big Mac” Index.

One thing Horrigan missed (or chose to ignore) is that they use ordering kiosks in Switzerland, just as they do through parts of Europe (France was where the first kiosks were installed some years ago, if memory serves). The McDonald’s franchises there have fewer employees than US franchises do, hence a skewed Big Mac Index.

Oops.

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I have to agree with David Starr on this: the F35 has turned the corner.

As the various problems have been sorted out, the F35 has turned from a very expensive dud to something that is making everyone sit up and take notice.

Let’s hope it turns out that it will be everything it was promised to be. If it does, it will be one kick-ass plane.

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Which state will default first- Connecticut or Illinois?

That’s a tough one to call, but I’m leaning towards Illinois.

Connecticut won’t be far behind, particularly in light that another corporate heavyweight, Aetna, is pulling up stakes and moving to another state. This follows on the heels of General Electric’s departure for Boston last year. Connecticut’s hostile tax code and business atmosphere has endeared it to no one and both businesses and the wealthy are leaving in droves, taking any tax revenues with them.

Illinois will fall first because they’ve been doing this for years longer than Connecticut and haven’t been able to pass a budget in three years. They’ve also had to stop selling some lottery tickets because they can’t guarantee they can pay off winning tickets. At least Connecticut can still make those payments…for now.

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OK, how do they explain this?

Phoenix, Arizona drops its sanctuary status and crime drops…unexpectedly.

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Any chance to play to the narrative that “We’re all gonna die!” if we don’t do something about climate change is used to prove the CAGW scenario. However, it’s one thing to take a catastrophic weather event to prove a point and yet another to turn a molehill into a mountain.

In this case a gust of wind was turned into a tornado in Hamburg, Germany. What’s worse, it was picked up by the international press even though there was absolutely no evidence such a tornado took place.

But it fits the narrative and that’s all that counts.

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Hey, SJW`s! Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you! You need to hear this:

With free speech comes consequences.

And here’s something else you need to know – Both the freedom of speech and its consequences also apply to you.

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Another note to the CAGW faithful: Too little CO2 is worse than too much. Of course “too much” CO2 is a matter of opinion.

As we’ve been seeing the increased CO2 has been beneficial, with increased greening of once barren areas, better crop yields (all while requiring less water), and apparently less severe and less numerous hurricanes. All of this is the opposite of what the CAGW faithful have been claiming. They have also been saying a major climate catastrophe will occur by 2100 if we don’t do something now despite even the best estimates showing that if we eliminated all anthropogenic CO2 the difference between CAGW climate models and ‘fixed’ CO2 models show such a small difference as to almost be lost in the noise. Yet we’re supposed to spend trillions of dollars on a problem that isn’t really a problem? We’d be better off spending that money on getting us out to other planets.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the summerfolk are here in droves, the lake is busy, and where we’re looking forward to our Fourth of July cookout and fireworks.