8/31/2017

Are Some Cultures Superior?

David P. Goldman asks the totally politically incorrect (but necessary) question: Are some cultures superior?

My totally politically incorrect answer: Yes.

But a better question that should be asked and answered again and again: Are all cultures equal?

The answer (not just my answer): Absolutely not.

Some cultures, including some in present day, were/are absolutely effin' evil. They flourished briefly, then die away because they were not sustainable. (Cultures that act more like death cults always destroy themselves in the end.)

This also beggars the question: Is cultural appropriation wrong?

No. Without cultural appropriation, cultures stagnate and whither away. But it seems that many of our college youth seem to think that cultural balkanization is desirable or even possible. The seem to forget that the very culture they live in has become what it is through cultural appropriation. It is by taking the best of each culture into our own that makes ours dynamic and ever changing. Remove that and our culture too will whither away and die. (It seems that's what many of those college nihilist want. Woe be unto them if they ever achieve their dream because they'll find that out it isn't all it's cracked up to be. In fact, I have no doubt that many of them would then pine away for “the good old days”.)

In any case, read Mr. Goldman's screed as well as the comments because you'll find a number of interesting things to ponder.

8/27/2017

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was Old Home Day in our little town yesterday. It started with breakfast hosted by one of the local non-profit organizations at our village church, then a 5K road race, followed by a parade, and then the official start of the festivities at the community field in the village.

There was plenty to see, eat, buy, and sample along the 'midway' as well as games and contests for the kids, music from some of the local bands, and to top it all off, fireworks in the evening.

All in all, it was a good time had by all.

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Have you ever wondered where political correctness came from?

I know I have. I've always seen it as a pernicious and viral sickness that has infected our society, replacing common sense and long used phrases and terms with things that offend everyone all in the name of trying to offend no one.

Ironically, the term itself came from a comic strip, meant as something of a joke. The problem is is that it is not a joke.

It is the great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead in Europe, in Russia, in China, indeed around the world. It is the disease of ideology. PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious.

Read The Whole Thing.

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I find this one a little heard to believe.

As much as I love my home state of New Hampshire, I think that US News & World Report got this exactly wrong.

US News & World Report rated states from best to worst. My home state was rated as #2, just below Massachusetts. If this had been the 'old' US News & World Report, I might agree with the rating. But over the past decade the magazine's ideological shift from center-right to left has me questioning their rating system. In more than one rating area, specifically government and crime & corrections, Massachusetts rated much higher than New Hampshire. I don't know for sure how the weighted these factors, but something seems off.

This is the same magazine that rated school systems in each state and rated the schools in our town at #6. Anyone living here would know that isn't the case as most would rate them as just above average. This is particularly galling considering that we have one of the most expensive school systems in the state.

Another useless article signifying nothing.

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As the good Perfessor Reynolds asks again and again, “Why are Progressive Utopias such cesspits of racism?” In this case he's referring to Portland, Oregon driving away new residents of color.

At a lecture in Portland last October, Isabel Wilkerson—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who wrote about the great migration of Black Americans from the south to the north—said that when people leave a place, it’s often a referendum on the very place they leave.

So then what does it mean when I, and other people of color (POC), walk away from Portland because we can no longer stomach its racism? What does it say about Portland and specifically, the failure of its liberalism?

--snip--

When I lived in other more diverse US cities, I didn’t feel such a pressing need to talk about race. But in Portland, I often felt forced to do so because of the daily slights I, and so many other POC, experienced. It was taxing and unfair—especially on my partner, who rightfully missed the days when I wasn’t so obsessed with the topic. And thanks to living in many other cities, I also know that racism doesn’t exist in only one locale (or in one economic/educational class). But part of what makes it so tricky to be a person of color in Portland is that the city is often in denial about its racism because it’s so liberal and progressive on other issues.

So it turns out that the oh-so-tolerant city isn't so tolerant at all. It's racist as many Southern states during the height of the Jim Crow era, but just more subtle and backhanded. It's almost as if the denizens of Portland have never heard of Martin Luther King, Jr. or his dream that people “will be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.”

So much for that.

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And the hits keep on coming!

In this case the story about Trump's travel “bankrupting the Secret Service” touted by the various organs of the DNC-MSM have turned out to be...wait for it....FAKE NEWS.

While it sounded like it was true, it turns out the Secret Service has been having some budget issues since the beginning of Obama's first term.

Now I'm waiting for them to blame Hurricane Harvey on Trump...uhh...too late.

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One of my favorite working men, Mike Rowe, schools a smug snowflake who had the audacity to call him a “White Nationalist”. As Mike states, the snowflake uses logical fallacies to 'prove' that Rowe is an anti-intellectual white nationalist. But what the snowflake shows is that he is instead a grossly misinformed and unthinking tool of his fellow snowflakes.

Writes Mike:

Since we’re being candid, allow me to say how much I dislike your post. Everything about it annoys me – your smug and snarky tone, your appalling grammar, your complete lack of evidence to support your claims, and of course, the overarching logical fallacy that informs your entire position. What really bugs me though, is the fact that you’re not entirely wrong. It’s true; I haven’t shared any political opinions this week, in part anyway, because doing so might very well be “bad for business.”

What can I say? I work for half-a-dozen different companies, none of whom pay me to share my political opinions. I run a non-partisan foundation, I’m about to launch a new show on Facebook, and I’m very aware that celebrities pay a price for opening their big fat gobs. Gilbert Gottfried, Kathy Griffin, Colin Kaepernick, Milo Yiannopoulos…even that guy from Google who just got himself fired for mouthing off. There’s no getting around it – the first amendment does not guarantee the freedom to speak without consequences. And really, that’s fine by me.

So no – I’m not going to share my personal feelings about Charlottesville, President Trump, or the current effort to remove thousands of statues of long dead soldiers from the public square. Not just because it’s “bad for business,” but because it’s annoying. I can’t think of a single celebrity whose political opinion I value, and I’m not going to assume the country feels any differently about mine. So, rather than blow myself up, or chime in with all the obvious observations about the cowardly scum in the pointy hats, I’m going to talk instead about my belief that comments like yours pose a far greater threat to the future of our country than the existence of a memorial to Thomas Jefferson, or a monument to George Washington. Ready? Let’s start with a closer look at your claims.

The rest of his response is a thing of beauty, something all of the other celebrities should take to heart. No one really cares what celebrities think, particularly Hollywood types. Their beliefs and endorsements mean nothing to me because, quite frankly, so many of them are ignorant and uninformed. They have absolutely no understanding of the rest of America, particularly flyover country.

Read the whole thing!

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Jonah Goldberg serves up a heaping portion of STFU to the Entitled Loud Mouths.

They want to order off the Chinese menu of modernity, picking and choosing the dishes they like, while at the same time cursing the cuisine and the culture that created it. It’s like Hollywood lefties who crap on America, the only society in the world that could have ever made them incredibly wealthy for making movies about fart jokes. The universities infested by entitled little Jacobins are Western institutions, but every day the rabble take sledgehammers to the soapboxes they stand on. They take for granted their rights and privileges that derive entirely from the tradition they denounce. They think they are heroes in the real world, never realizing they are playing a game only made possible by the tradition they ignorantly claim to hate. And if they took the goals of the game and successfully applied them to the real world, they’d be the first to whine about how backward, unfair, and hard the world they created was. They have no real tradition to draw upon save the one they claim is oppressive and cruel. They literally speak its language, use its laws, and benefit from its institutions, while claiming to be part of something more authentic.

I wonder how many of them would really like living in a world where 'their way' became reality? I have a feeling that most of them would find themselves on the wrong side of the power curve and end up in Hell rather than their faux Utopia.

(H/T Granite Grok)

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer is hanging on, we're glad that we aren't in Texas this week, and where the new football season starts in a couple of weeks.

8/26/2017

The Lunatic Fringe Spin On Hurricane Harvey

I read this by way of Twitchy and I knew I could not ignore it. “This” is a Twitter post that proves that the lunatic fringe has gone over the edge. The topic of the tweet?

Hurricane Harvey.

Tweets Kate Aronoff:

A reminder for the next few days: Hurricane Harvey is not a natural disaster.

Oh, really? Then what exactly is it?

She goes further by blaming “capitalism and austerity” because “weather doesn't cause natural disasters.” Really? Then what does cause them? Or better yet, what is her definition of “natural disaster”?

The Stupid is strong in this one.

8/24/2017

This Is How Science Is Supposed To Work

While I haven't vented about the ongoing Anthropogenic Global Warming debate for some time, it appears that one of the more recent posts on Watts Up With That has goaded me into doing so. The post which covers the New York Times editorial claiming that we should trust climate scientists because of the recent eclipse certainly had me scratching my head. How could the NYT in any way link the solar eclipse to the veracity of the warmist cabal? It's pretty lame, using an apple to oranges comparison but stating it's an apples to apples comparison.

I won't go into any details on the post as you can easily read it for yourself. But I will quote one of the comments in its entirety as it gets to the heart of the matter as to how science is supposed to work (emphasis in the original comment):

Definitions of Fact, Theory, and Law in Scientific Work from National Academy of Sciences Science uses specialized terms that have different meanings than everyday usage. These definitions correspond to the way scientists typically use these terms in the context of their work. Note, especially, that the meaning of “theory” in science is different than the meaning of “theory” in everyday conversation.

Fact: In science, an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as “true.” Truth in science, however, is never final and what is accepted as a fact today may be modified or even discarded tomorrow.

Hypothesis: A tentative statement about the natural world leading to deductions that can be tested. If the deductions are verified, the hypothesis is provisionally corroborated. If the deductions are incorrect, the original hypothesis is proved false and must be abandoned or modified. Hypotheses can be used to build more complex inferences and explanations.

Law: A descriptive generalization about how some aspect of the natural world behaves under stated circumstances.

Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.

Source – https://ncse.com/library-resource/definitions-fact-theory-law-scientific-work

Not a Theory yet. They Skipped a Step somewhere, since the Hypothesis stage hasn’t been verified, tested or corroborated.

The “climate scientists” have discarded much of this, telling us instead to “Trust us. We're scientists!” instead of showing us their work, the algorithms they've used to run their calculations, or even the data and other factors they've used to come up with the conclusion that “We're all gonna DIE!” if we don't impoverish ourselves to stop climate change. They are sounding more and more like Professor Irwin Corey - The World's Foremost Authority, all the time. I wouldn't mind that all that much if they were nearly as funny as he was. While he used his scientific sounding gobbledygook to comic effect, the so-called climate scientists are serious, at least when it comes to making sure they keep receiving funding.

It would be nice if they got back to doing real science.

8/20/2017

Thoughts On a Sunday

It seems the whole nation is focused on the upcoming solar eclipse, with some sections of ther country being inundated with eclipse tourists who want to experience totality.

While we will only see a partial eclipse here in New Hampshire, there are still plenty of people who will take time to watch it as it progresses.

Frankly, this kind of news is far more refreshing than the garbage we've been hearing from the MSM over the past 10 years or so.

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Jerry Lewis has died at the age of 91.

He was always a part of my childhood, between his movies, TV appearances, and the Muscular Dystrophy telethon he hosted every Labor Day weekend.

Yet another part of my childhood and teen years has vanished.

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So, violence committed by the far Left cannon fodder like Antifa is okay? So says the New York Times.

As Glenn Reynolds writes:

The press is happy to have people hurt, so long as it’s the right people. Remember this when they start their “have you no decency?” routine.

Indeed.

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If this isn't a sign of the Apocalypse, it comes pretty damned close.

A new bill in the California legislature would imprison health care workers for using the incorrect pronouns for patients.

If it becomes law I expect it would be struck down, even by the Ninth Circus Court.

This is how far California has decayed. The lunatics are running state government.

I think from this point on, anyone leaving California for greener pastures should be screened for mental health. We don't need this kind of lunacy spreading any farther than it already has.

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“We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”

While the above is an allusion to a classic phrase from the days of the Vietnam War, it still applies. The ctrl-left seem to have no problems using violence to get their way. Of course one has to wonder what will happen if they escalate the violence and the rest of us decide we're not going to take it anymore. I expect they'll need “a large supply of body bags”. (Yet another classical reference.)

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What's really the reason more girls aren't drawn to STEM fields of study?

Could it be because men prefer working with things while women prefer working with people?

Some studies cited in the post linked to above seem to suggest that might indeed be the case and not gender bias, intentional or otherwise.

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Colin Kaepernick is the gift that keeps on giving, in this case his disrespect for the national anthem has helped fuel an 8% drop in NFL game TV viewership. That the NFL got involved in politics by taking a position in opposition to a bill in Georgia that would protect religious liberty certainly didn't help things either.

Roger Goodell has got to go. He should have suspended Kaepernick. He should have kept out of politics, particularly the politics within the Bible Belt. He was a wuss when it came to Inflategate.

If the NFL wants to see its fans returning it should fire Goodell. That will show the fans that the NFL is serious about getting back to the business of football.

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Daniel Greefield describes how civilizations fall. That he's seeing the evidence of moral decay here in the West, something that usually leads to civilizations falling, should worry everyone.

The ctrl-left and their cannon fodder – the college student robots and so-called 'Antifa' stormtroopers – are perfect examples of those working very hard to destroy the moral fabric of our civilization. Once that moral fabric is gone, the new barbarians will take over and everything that was once good will disappear. Western Civilization will fall. Anarchy will reign. We will enter a new Dark Age.

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And that's the abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we're all getting ready for an Eclipse Party, some schools are opening, and where summer is passing by all too quickly.

8/13/2017

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was a quiet weekend here at The Manse, between the somewhat wet weather on Saturday (meaning no real work outside), Deb being away visiting relatives in Vermont, and nothing much but chores to take care of today.

One of those chores has been cleaning out the garage, a task made more difficult due to a number of items in 'storage' for BeezleBub. Having to work around stuff he was supposed to have moved out months ago hasn't made the job very easy. At best I got about a quarter of the job done and the rest will have to wait until he moves his stuff out.

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That the continuing 'pearl clutching' by the DNC-MSM over Donald Trump's remarks about the homicide in Charlottesville, Virginia by the motorist who ran down a number of anti-Nazi/white supremacists protestors, in this case not following the Progressive script, amuses me to no end.

That he cast a wide net in his remarks proved to the media that he wasn't taking it seriously, but they choose to ignore the hatred and violence committed by the anti-fa and far Left protesters that has taken place over the past seven months or so.

As more people that I have said again and again, if they didn't have double standards they'd have no standards at all.

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Ed Driscoll illustrates Heinlein's axiom about history, that being that those who ignore history have no past...and no future.

In this case it appears the New York Times has forgotten about the Bad Old Days in Soviet Union, looking back at it nostalgically as if it were some kind of paradise. Never mind the KGB, the gulags, the long lines for every day staples, and a long list of things the Soviets did to their own people.

It's like they're trying to whitewash the excesses and tyranny of the Soviets, in the process of making iot more palatable for the masses.

One has to wonder when they'll change their name to New York Pravda.

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Sherlock Holmes explains why DWS IT scandal is not at the top of the news.

Indeed.

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Yet another crisis to panic about in the EU:

A butter shortage.

A group that represents bakers in France, the Federation des Entrepreneurs de la Boulangerie, called the lack of butter a “major crisis” that may lead to a steep price increase of pastries, croissants and brioches.

“The price of butter, while certainly volatile, has never reached such a level before,” the group said in a statement. “Butter shortages appear to be a real threat by the end of the year.”

That's what happens when production of commodity goes down even as demand surges. It's Economics 101.

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Do the folks at CNN need a refresher course in US geography?

One has to wonder because they couldn't seem to tell the difference between Charlottesville, Virginia and Charlottesville, North Carolina.

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Considering Google's idiocy (and hypocrisy) in regards to the firing of James Damore for expressing his honest opinion about some of the corporate programs, most of my searches are now run on Duck Duck Go and Bing.

One of the WP nieces works for Google in the Boston area and, as liberal as she is, thinks that Google has done an incredibly stupid thing. She didn't disagree with anything Damore wrote, but said he could have been a bit less direct in his criticism. Here, I must disagree with her as sometimes only the direct approach works. If nothing else it has a lot of people both inside and outside of Google talking about the non-inclusive 'inclusive' social structure within the corporation.

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And speaking if hypocrisy, there's this story about a writing conference being canceled because there weren't enough non-white writers who were going to speak at the conference.

If the conference, which was about writing young adult fiction, was supposed to be about anything other than writing young adult fiction, then maybe there would have been a point to canceling the conference. In fact, the organizers of the conference stated:

“We have set a goal for ourselves to be inclusive and to work toward equity, and we didn’t think the conference would live up to that mission,” Britt Udesen, executive director of the Loft, said Wednesday.

Then why call it a writing conference? It was anything but. According to the post, “More the 30 people of color had been invited to speak at the conference who declined the invitation.” So the problem wasn't that no one invited anyone that would have helped the organizers reach their “equity & diversity” goal. It's that all but one declined the invitation. Maybe they had more important things to do than attend a diversity circle jerk rather than a writing conference. You know, like maybe writing young adult fiction.

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Here's yet another example of being forced to work against one's moral conscience and religious beliefs.

This story, taking place in Madison, Wisconsin, would be entirely different if the person involved were Muslim. But because person involved is a devout Christian, she gets no such pass. But at least the courts in Wisconsin seem to have a little more sense, saying the laws that would have forced this person, one Amy Lawson, a photographer, are not germane to her business because she is an artist without a physical storefront.

While a win for Ms. Lawson, it is still troubling because she found a loophole. But what of others without that loophole?

We have talked about this before. If you want someone to create something, the artist should not have to create things that are contrary to their beliefs. The Wisconsin law goes further than many states in that it also demands that people not turn down jobs based on political beliefs. That means a liberal copywriter would be forced to write a speech for Donald Trump. A Jewish graphic designer would have to design flyers for neo-Nazis. A pro-choice marketer would have to accept work from a pro-life group.

Insanity.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer rolls on, boating continues, and where yet another Monday approaches that's ruing a perfectly good weekend.

8/06/2017

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was a fifty-fifty weekend here at Lake Winnipesaukee, with Saturday being rainy by way of showers and thundershowers all throughout the day, and Sunday being sunny and cooler than the previous four days.

Not that I'm complaining, but the rains on Saturday did interfere with a number of chores I'd hoped to finish.

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The idea of “green energy” sounds great...until you see what the real cost is, and I'm not talking about money.

Then again it is a Third World problem, one the Greens can safely ignore because it isn't affecting them or their children.

Can you say “hypocrisy”? Sure you can.

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It wasn't if as I didn't see this coming.

The vote on unionizing Nissan workers at their Canton, Mississippi plant failed by a 2-1 margin.

All the usual bromides were rolled out by union supporters, including the old “Right To Work For Less” claim. Of course they usually choose to ignore the number of union plants (and jobs) that disappeared when it became too expensive to keep them because of the high costs imposed by the union wages and other compensations. A recent example was when Hostess shuttered their plants and laid off all of their workers because the union refused to reduce their pay increase and benefits demands. While the union 'beat' Hostess by not 'knuckling under', it was a Pyrrhic victory because their rank and file lost because now they had no pay and no benefits.

As a former union member (IBEW), I can say the Nissan workers dodged a bullet. I put up with 20 years of union BS, union support for political candidates I found to be abhorrent because they supported everything I was against, and a pretty crappy attitude towards hard work.

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They're surprised at this news?

Half of the candidates running for mayor of Detroit are convicted felons.

I thought it was a requirement!

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A lot of politicians in New Hampshire are upset that President Trump called our beloved Granite State a “drug-infested den”. Our Congressional delegation (Democrats all) and our Governor (Republican...sort of) blasted the president for that slam.

But here's my problem with their reactions: That's not the way to respond to someone who's telling you the truth.

It's a harsh truth, but it's the truth. We have a major drug problem here in our little rural state, one that has exploded seemingly overnight and led to hundreds of overdose deaths and thousands drug overdose calls made by EMS personnel. And with the more power opioids flooding the illicit drug market, the amount of Narcan needed to revive many of these OD patients has gone up as much as ten times, meaning ten times the amount of Narcan is required to overcome the effects of the overdose.

No amount of bleating or pearl-clutching is going to change the fact that New Hampshire has a major drug problem of a kind we've never seen before. Ignoring it or trying to downplay it doesn't change the fact that my home state is a drug-infested den.

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Has John Hawkins gone too far in calling liberals “hateful people”?

Most liberals are hateful people. As hateful as Nazis. As hateful as KKK members. As hateful as Fred Phelps and his God hates f@gs wackos, who are, come to think of it, Democrats. Liberals are as much defined by whom they hate as what they believe in.

They hate straight, white males and non-liberal white people in general. They hate Christians. They hate Republicans in general and conservatives in particular. They hate women who don’t toe the feminist line. They hate the wealthy, business owners, bankers and stockbrokers. They hate southerners, gun owners, soldiers and cops. They hate gay Americans and minorities who don’t want liberal help.

If anything, he's understated the case. Of course I am not sure he is referring to classical liberals, but to those that have taken on that mantle, 'those' being the oh-so-enlightened Progressives. In any case, no one should want liberal help because it always entails losing a piece of yourself – mostly self-respect – in order to be allowed to receive their help. That kind of help is in no one's best interests.

In any case, Read The Whole Thing.

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Hey, NC State! The 50's called. They want their segregation back!

Yes, there are university administrators that stupid.

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Talk about cognitive dissonance!

This is a perfect example from California.

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Since it is the 72nd anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, it seems fitting to address Liberal historical revisionism.


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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer continues, preparations on The Manse have commenced, and where Monday is once again getting in the way of an extended weekend.

8/03/2017

Portland Is Now Hell Indeed

Reading what's been going on in Portland, Oregon over the past few years I have thought that it was quickly going to hell.

Now I have proof.

The temperatures in Portland have exceeded 100 degrees F over the past couple of days, proof positive that it has become Hell On Earth. That's courtesy of the wackos that have taken over the city and have shown that they have absolutely no decency and no empathy for anyone but themselves and their morally bankrupt ideologies.