It has been quite a reversal from last weekend's weather, at least in part. It was warm and summerlike last weekend. Half of this weekend was similar, though a little bit cooler. Today it's been rainy, with heavier rain and high winds expected starting early Monday morning.
Yesterday's weather was perfect enough to throw one of the WP Cousins a surprise birthday party. He thought he was going to a party to celebrate the recent wedding of one of his friends. That this party also took place two weeks before his actual birthday also threw him off track. The look on his face was priceless!
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I received this threat warning from McAfee in regards to the so-called KRACK hack that can threaten your WiFi security. Best to look it over or look it up on other antivirus vendor sites as to the steps you should take to protect yourself from this threat.
Because they can set up and take care of people who would rather pay for services now then waiting a long time to get taken care of in the Canadian system. And perhaps get things taken care of in a manner than the Government system won’t take care of. For all the rah rah from Progressives about how great the Canadian system is, lots of people actually come across the border to the U.S. for care. Remember when a baby was brought because there were no beds available?
While not has bad as the UK's NHS, Canada's health care system will be soon enough. As the joke goes , “85% of the British/Canadians love their national health care system. The other 15% are sick.”
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Pam Geller has a story about a former Antifa who finally woke up and realized he'd helped create a terrorist organization in his home country of Australia, one he calls “more dangerous than ISIS.
Read The Whole Thing.
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To quote Wirecutter, “I think he's done this before...”
Very cool!
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Just a quick return to the world of The Manse (before I forget).
We finally managed to get the rest of our roof (the mudroom and garage) completed, making the entire roof match. This was done it preparation for putting The Manse on the market as we have decided it's time to downsize. The two of us are rattling around here and it's getting more of a chore to maintain the yard as it has a rather steep slope.
The pavers are arriving later this coming week to remove the old pavement on the driveway, regrade it, and lay down new asphalt. At least three painting contractors are going to be here to give estimates as to what it will cost to paint a number of rooms and ceilings.
All in all it's going to be a busy week here at The Manse.
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I am going to end this a bit early as I still have chores to finish before the heavy rains and winds start later this evening – things to batten down and other things to make sure their covers are secured.
Yes, it's quite late for me to be taking care of that (~8:20PM EDT), but it needs to be done and I didn't have the time to do it earlier, so I'll be off.
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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the leaves are finally coming off the trees, the rains are picking up, and where we hope to see a return to sunny weather later this week.
The summer-like weather has continued up here in New England and no one is complaining. While the warmer than normal temps have delayed the foliage color-shift and leaf drop, we are enjoying the weather knowing what will be coming in a few short weeks.
Some are saying the warm October temps are making up for the much cooler than normal August temperatures we experienced this past summer. Who am I to argue with that?
While I wish I could have kept the boat in the water another week or so as a means of taking advantage of the warm weather, my misadventure last week prevented that. BeezleBub and I pulled the boat out of the water during the week and the prop was indeed damaged, with one blade having taken the brunt of it. The boat is presently at one of the local boat yards awaiting winterization and storage. Prior to winterization they will swap out the damaged prop for my spare prop and send out the damaged prop for repair and reconditioning.
So ends Boating Season 2017.
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It's amazing what happens to one's perceptions when one leaves the isolated enclave of the coastal elites. In this case, former NPR CEO Ken Stern found his understanding of those of us in 'flyover country' was seriously flawed and colored too much by liberal groupthink.
Most reporters and editors are liberal — a now dated Pew Research Center poll found that liberals outnumber conservatives in the media by some 5 to 1, and that comports with my own anecdotal experience at National Public Radio. When you are liberal, and everyone else around you is as well, it is easy to fall into groupthink on what stories are important, what sources are legitimate and what the narrative of the day will be.
This may seem like an unusual admission from someone who once ran NPR, but it is borne of recent experience. Spurred by a fear that red and blue America were drifting irrevocably apart, I decided to venture out from my overwhelmingly Democratic neighborhood and engage Republicans where they live, work and pray. For an entire year, I embedded myself with the other side, standing in pit row at a NASCAR race, hanging out at Tea Party meetings and sitting in on Steve Bannon’s radio show. I found an America far different from the one depicted in the press and imagined by presidents (“cling to guns or religion”) and presidential candidates (“basket of deplorables”) alike.
--snip--
...the media should acknowledge its own failings in reflecting only their part of America. You can’t cover America from the Acela corridor, and the media need to get out and be part of the conversations that take place in churches and community centers and town halls.
I did that, and loved it, though I regret waiting until well after I left NPR to do so. I am skeptical that many will do so, since the current situation in an odd way works for Trump, who gets to rile his base, and for the media, which has grown an audience on the back of Washington dysfunction. In the end, they are both short-term winners. It is the public that is the long-term loser.
I was at one of our local eateries this morning and struck up a conversation with one of the other patrons. Our discussion covered good ideas and bad ideas put forth by government and how people perceive those ideas depending upon who presents them. Too much political ideology gets in the way in regards to parsing the good ones from the bad ones.
So it's not the message, but the messenger that determines whether an idea or a plan is good or not? That doesn't bode well for our future leaders. Oh, heck, it doesn't bode well for many of our present 'leaders'.
I knew things were effed up in Oregon, but now we see just how bad it is. Then again when the city of Portland has become a den of sexism, racism, and fascism, so what would you expect?
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A story that isn't being covered by the media: When it comes to crime, London beats New York. So London now has a higher crime rate than New York City. That isn't all that surprising considering the laxity of the UK government towards criminal activity by Muslim immigrants who refuse to assimilate.
Of course if Bill deBlasio gets his way and continues to undo many of the reforms of Rudi Giuliani (continued by Mike Bloomberg) New York will quickly surpass London in crime stats and become a crime-ridden hellhole again, and it won't be because of immigrants.
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Having mentioned above the eye-opening experience of the former CEO of NPR, there's this story of Lloyd Marcus relocating from Florida to West Virginia and “experiencing wonderful culture shock.” Writes Lloyd:
The post office and public library closes for lunch. I stopped in the town hall to purchase a permit for the fence I planned to have installed. The clerk looking a bit puzzled said, "We're pretty laid back here. You don't need a permit." The police department consists of two patrol cars. The school's marching band of about 15 students marches past our house practicing. They sound good.
On Sundays from our front porch, we sometimes hear the choir of one of the five churches in town. Mary and I attended a fundraiser at the fire hall for a needy family. The elderly husband has terminal cancer and wants to make sure his wife has a new roof on their home. The fire hall was pretty full.
Contrast my daily heartland experience with the putrid-smelling Leftist hate dominating the airways and national political arena.
What makes this even more remarkable, at least it should be to Leftists, is the Mr. Marcus is black, one of 20 blacks living in a town of 500 people. Yet there's no mention of racism or racial strife. The Marcuses are merely “the folks that bought the white house.”
Maybe the coastal urban elites need to get away from their enclaves and find out what a majority of America is really like.
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One last thing before I close this week's edition of TOAS:
The outcomes of our housing policies fly in the face of our ideology. For those in need, we support providing supplementary income, health insurance, educational support, and other social welfare programs—and then we erase their value by making our cities too expensive for those most in need of these benefits. Either low income residents can’t afford to live in the city at all, or the cost of housing is so high that the value of the benefits is exceeded by the added cost of rent.
By doing essentially nothing but letting things happen, conservative America is kicking our ass at providing opportunities for low income and working classes to build wealth and get ahead. Cities like Dallas, Phoenix, and Atlanta have managed to stay affordable by simply allowing housing to continue to be built as their populations grow, and the result is that people keep moving there.
As long as Liberal housing policy continues to make it unaffordable for many Americans to live in cities like San Francisco, New York, and Washington, DC, the cities will continue to see a decline in the number of middle and lower class citizens. Those cities which have none of those soul-killing policies will continue to see their middle and lower class populations grow and see them thrive.
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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer is hanging on, no one is complaining about it, and the sound of silence from our furnaces is money in our pocket.
If this isn't the weirdest (and one of the stupidest) ideas that someone has come up wit, I don't know what is. While I have no idea whether this is a tongue-in-cheek proposal (something I think that is likely) or the real thing makes no difference. It's a totally unworkable and unenforceable idea.
The question many of those who commented asked, “Who would enforce such a curfew?” Seeing as the men on the police forces and federal law enforcement agencies would also likely be affected by such a curfew, will it be the women who will do so? I doubt that would work all that well. Even if there were a exemption for male law enforcement officers, how many would actually enforce such a law? Would we see a boycott by those officers? Or would men across the US merely refuse to abide by it, overwhelming the police trying to enforce it?
While the proposal is based upon the idea that it will make women safe, I can make the same argument that I and others have made about the issue of gun ownership, that being that the true miscreants – specifically those who commit sexual assaults – won't be stopped by such laws. They will commit them no matter what. After all there are already laws against sexual assault, but that certainly hasn't stopped sexual assaults from taking place.
All in all it feels more like a 'feel good' idea that is neither practical nor serious.
It was a last trip out on to Lake Winnipesaukee yesterday afternoon, taking an old friend out on to the lake for the first time. Considering the weather was more summerlike than one would expect for mid-October, it made for a great time out on the lake...until the very end.
I know this happens to boaters all the time, but it still made me mad at myself when it happened, 'it' being not paying enough attention to where I was in a channel and going too shallow, meaning the prop started chewing rocks! It isn't the first prop I've dinged and I doubt it will be my last. But the fact that it was my fault for being distracted just pissed me off.
That the prop got bent a little didn't put a premature end to the boating season as I had planned to pull the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water later this week in any case. This isn't the latest I've had the boat in the water, that being the first weekend in November, but I usually pull it out right around the weekend after Columbus day. But now I have to see about changing the prop before I store the boat for the winter. Fortunately I have a spare prop so it won't be a big deal. I'll send the damaged prop out for reconditioning and have it as my spare prop next year.
From what box office numbers have shown this past summer, a lot of other people's answers have been 'no' as well. What does the movie industry expect? Once they start making good movies again their customers will return. But as long as they keep doing the remakes and making 'social message' movies, we'll be staying away in droves.
“Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth … then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity... From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.”
After reading the above, you'll come to realize that AntiFa should remove the “anti” from their name.
My take: So many have had all of the conveniences of modern living handed to them that they feel entitled to them. Why would they feel grateful for things that they believe are owed to them?
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What do Dutch women know that American women don't? A whole lot, it appears, particularly when it comes to things like careers, families, and a whole host of other things American feminists think they know, but don't.
Maybe it's time for American feminists to stop drinking the feminazi kool-aid.
I certainly agree with Numbers 1, 2, 5, 7, 8 and 12. I also agree with Numbers 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, and 11 as well.
The science is settled!
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As a follow on to the above, there's this little gem of wisdom.
If men need yet another excuse not to marry a feminist, then I'd say this pretty much is a good one.
The feminist worldview is antithetical to love because its focus is solely on women: their needs, their wants, their desires, and their rights. Love can’t possibly be sustained with an attitude like that. (emphasis mine – ed)
Yeah, I'd say that about covers it.
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You can't tell me this isn't yet another step in an effort by the Progressive Left to further destroy society and replace it with an all power dictatorship of the elite.
And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the boating season is still in full swing, cooler weather will be here for a day or two, and where Monday is yet again returning to screw up the weekend.
It is said that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. I can see that it is obvious that someone in France doesn't know their history. The proof?
A proposed bill to institute a heavy tax on luxury cars, boats, and planes, something that has been tried twice before here in the US and had just the opposite effect intended by those who crafted the tax legislation. As Eric The Viking recalls, the last time such a tax was instituted here in 1991, the government didn't see nearly the revenue it expected and the 'unexpected' jump in unemployment by makers of those luxury goods cost the US government more than they took in from the luxury tax. It was a net loss for US tax revenues. Explains Eric:
In 1990 there were no luxury excise taxes, all of them having been repealed in 1965. But perhaps every quarter-century or so government--it cannot help itself--must go on a "fairness" bender, the memory of the hangover from similar misadventures having faded.
In 1990 the Joint Committee on Taxation projected that the 1991 revenue yield from luxury taxes would be $31 million. It was $16.6 million. Why? Because (surprise!) the taxation changed behavior: Fewer people bought the taxed products. Demand went down when prices went up. Washington was amazed. People bought yachts overseas. Who would have thought it?
As Eric also reminded us, France just finished learning a hard lesson from trying to tax the rich at a confiscatory level – the rich started leaving and taking their money with them. Now they're going to try the same thing the US tried (and failed at) and I expect the same thing will happen in France as happened here – sales in those items will plummet and the wealthy will mere start buying their luxury items elsewhere. As Eric states it, this legislation should be called “The American Boating Employment Act of 2017” as I have no doubt a lot of French buyers will be more than happy to buy their yachts here.
Of course we can expect Emmanuel Macron to say something along the lines of “We'll do it better then the crass Americans.” But of course they won't. No one ever does. But that's something the French will have to learn (again) if Macron's proposed tax goes through.
It's been one of those weird weekends, weather-wise, looking like it should be cool. Instead is has been cloudy, slightly breezy, and quite warm and humid. There have been some periods of very light rain usually lasting for only a few minutes. There is some rain in the forecast for later today and heavy rain starting some time Monday, that rain being the remnants of Hurricane Nate.
The weather has precluded some activities like painting our decks here at The Manse, but nice weather is forecast for most of the week and into next weekend. Hopefully we can get the last of the outdoor painting done over that time.
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If you need yet another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences biting someone in the ass, then all one has to do is look at San Francisco and the effect of the $15/hr minimum wage has taken on the restaurant industry there. There has been a wave of restaurant closures that have a lot of San Franciscans pissed off. But what did they expect when they greatly increased the cost of one of the biggest commodities that affects restaurant profitability?
In a note that we'll file away under the definition of 'irony', Bloomberg wrote today that the fun-loving, free-spirited socialists of San Francisco are suddenly really pissed off that their liberal economic policies have resulted in a wave of restaurant failures, making it nearly impossible to find good food at an 'affordable' price.
We would be pissed too...who could have guessed that artificially raising wages well above market supported rates would result in business failures?
Hmm, I don't know. Maybe anyone who has run a business or understand real economics, not the marxist economics that so many of the Left have pushed all these years?
Anyone paying attention to the debate understands why fast food chains like McDonald's and Wendy's have been installing ordering kiosks all across the US. Why pay a human being an overly inflated wage to do something an ordering kiosk can do for a fraction of the cost? Kiosks don't goldbrick, they don't show up late for work, and they don't need time off.
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Speaking of McDonald's, it seem corporate HQ is doings its best to make sure McDonald's will lose more market share by moving farther away from its core products and focusing on the fringes of the market. Any business that does that will eventually fail as their core customer base will abandon them and go to a competitor that still provides those amenities.
As I have mentioned before, I recall a recent experiment (recent being within the past year or so) where a McDonald's franchisee went back to the menu choices from the 1970's. They had lines out the door. They had nothing fancy on the menu, used beef tallow to fry their french fries, and they couldn't keep up with the demand. Then corporate stepped in (of course) and forced them to go back to the approved menu and the lines disappeared. That right there should have been a lesson corporate should have embraced, but they ignored it and continued to embrace their Progressive ideals. In this case it boils down to “We know what's best for you and that's what we're going to give you. The customer is always wrong.”
That will end up being a pitiful but fitting epitaph for a once fine business giant.
Maybe it's time for Trump to work towards re-establishing the USFL or create the IAFL (International American Football League) to bring in franchises from the CFL and perhaps some teams in the UK. Just make sure no political BS will be allowed on the field as part of the franchise agreements.
In any case I think he and the state assembly may have grossly underestimated the consequences and it's going to come back to bite them, hard. Yet another fine example of the Law of Unintended Consequences coming into play.
As I have mentioned a small number of times in the past, I have seen the phenomenon of “phubbing”, defined as snubbing the people around you because you have you nose buried in your smart phone. Your only social interactions are through your phone. You rarely speak to people face to face, even when you're in the same rook with them.
What's worse is when folks using their smart phones become “dumb”, meaning the only way they know anything is by looking it up online. They retain nothing and will look up the same thing again and again. This is not a good thing.
People laugh when I pull out my trusty flip phone, but it does what I need it to do, does it reliably, and is very difficult to hack. (Then again why would anyone waste their time?) Call me a Gibbsian throwback, but I don't care. At least I don't get lost in the digital abyss like too many of my friends and acquaintances.
I doubt the war would last long, between most of us non-antifa people being well armed, knowing how to use firearms, and a lot of us having had military training and combat experience.
The only advice I can offer these nitwits is to make sure they have some form of ID on them to make it easier to identify their remains. Better yet, use a sharpie to write that information on an arm, a leg, and one other location on their body just to make sure we'll be able to get their remains back to their families.
These assholes have no idea what real war is like. They assume that just because they can rough up and beat people during a demonstration/protest/riot with little consequence means that they're capable or competent enough to get involved in a real shooting war. Once the bullets start flying and the bodies start hitting the ground I think they'll find out they're wrong.
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Real or parody, this video is funny. If it is real, then that just reinforces my comment in the piece just above this one.
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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather is a bit weird, Columbus Day and the fall foliage approaches, and where the boating season continues.
After the shootings in Las Vegas, a lot of attention was paid to gun violence and, of course, the calls for more rigid (and unconstitutional) gun controls or bans. The one thing so many of those screaming for gun control as a means of reducing gun violence have always chosen to ignore is that gun control has never reduced the incidents of gun violence.
Two prime examples of this are the UK and Australia, two nations that have banned gun ownership, with Australia's ban being far more recent. The end result has been no discernible change in the 'gun violence' rate. So why focus on the 'gun' part of gun violence? As anyone paying attention already knows, the problem is the violence, not the guns.
I recall recently reading about one program that has been focusing on violence, period. The program worked to reduce the incidents of violence of all kinds, and if I recall correctly, it has worked. All kinds of violence decreased, including gun violence. So maybe the focus should be on the violence and not the tools used to commit acts of violence.
Guns are tools, no different than chains, knives, hammers, crowbars, and a whole list of other implements that can be used for good or ill. It is the intent of the one wielding the implement that defines whether it is a tool or a weapon. Change the intent away from violence and the implements are just tools. If you just ban the tools, the violence is still there and those wishing to commit those acts will find a way to do so, even if it means buying guns on the black market. (With the right connections one can get anything from a cheap Saturday Night Special to fully automatic machine pistols and assault weapons, to grenade launchers, RPGs, and anti-armor rockets. All it takes is money. As reminder, almost all of these weapons are already illegal, so laws against them certainly haven't stopped them from being brought into this country and sold to criminals.)
Solve the violence problem and the so-called gun violence problem solves itself. Do it the other way around and the problem will still be there.
It wasn't long after the nation woke up to the shootings in Las Vegas that both the best and worst of America made itself known. I don't need to go into the details of what happened as just about everyone has heard about the dead and wounded as well as the man who perpetrated this atrocity. Instead, I want to cover the actions of both those who were there as well as those who weren't>
Hillary Clinton didn't waste any time weighing in, blaming the NRA's support of the Second Amendment for the deaths and injuries in Vegas. What's worse is she stated in in a way thathave a noidse contradicted herself and showed herself to be a hypocrite in the second sentence of her tweet. Like many of the usual suspects, she's calling for tighter and more draconian gun control as if that will solve the problem. Somehow I doubt that the shooter bought his guns legally which means that more gun control would not have had any effect on the outcome – the same number of people would have been killed and wounded. Then she doubled down on stupid.
In a follow-on tweet she writes “Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get.” The thing that shows me that she's entirely clueless is when the Washington Post fact-checker took her down with this response: “Actually, even with a “silencer” it's pretty loud. An AR-15 rifle would have a noise equivalent to a jackhammer.” It is something I can attest to as I have seen and handled semi-auto and full automatic weapons with sound suppressors. Unless the ammunition being used is subsonic, meaning the rounds being fired exit the barrel of the weapon at velocities under the speed of sound, the report is still very loud. Since subsonic rounds don't have quite the range of normal rounds, I doubt the shooter would have used them as it's likely he wouldn't have been able to hit his targets as they would have been out of range.
Fall-like weather returned with a vengeance, with temps that had been in the 80's dropping into the 50's and lower 60's, meaning I up the thermostat to keep The Manse at a comfortable temperature. Overnight temps that had been in the 50's and 60's dropped to the 30's and 40's. Along with that drop came rain, something that fell on and off all throughout the day yesterday. It did put a damper on some of the activities I'd planned.
However the sunshine returned this morning and temperatures are headed back into the 70's and 80's over the next few days or so.
I started reading Heinlein as a teenager as the world around me fell into dual madness, because more and more of my teachers were boomers full of the ideas of the late sixties early seventies, and the country itself was spiraling further and further into Marxist insanity.
Heinlein’s books were a refuge, where logic made sense, things worked, and I often found that he could explain things I couldn’t. Or not explain exactly, but get beneath the level of indoctrination and slogans, to make people understand the other point of view.
--snip--
And all through it, the idea of TAANSTAFL (There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch) first made my mind explode, and then made sense of the world for me, for once and all.
When I was offered “free” goodies by leftist candidates; when people told me they were entitled to others’ money or time; when parasites of various kinds reared their ugly bloated heads, I thought TAANSTAFL, because that’s the ultimate truth of the universe. There is never something for nothing.
That's something the Bernie Bros and those like them still have to learn. Someone somewhere has to pay for all the 'free stuff' that would be handed out. (Need a quick lesson how the 'free stuff' doesn't work? Then look to Venezuela. Once they used up every dime of “other people's money”, the 'free stuff' gravy train screeched to a halt...and then the wheels fell off.)
Sarah goes on to explain how much of what Heinlein wrote opened her eyes and those of many others to what was and not what others thought they should be. As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.
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What is “white privilege”? People seem to know what it means, but the question is do they actually know what it is as compared to what many of the racist 'non-racists' tell what it is?
I'd grant that there exists something akin to "white privilege" in the USA, as in all of the western world. It happens to be more like "cultural privilege" than anything to do with skin tone. I am talking about individual qualities which are most in demand and most effective in western cultures.
The markings of cultural privilege are most easily internalized by upbringing, and secondarily by good examples (eg coaches, relatives) and formal education. Good socialization. Wealth is only incidentally associated, not causal, because lots of rich kids are complete a-holes. The western world (except for England) has no caste system, but it has an informal cultural caste system and everybody is aware of it. It has nothing to do with IQ or where you grew up or went to college, but it has to do with how you comport yourself, how properly and grammatically you speak and write, manners and grace, dress, good humor, level of sophistication, being a good dinner companion, playing sports, staying out of trouble with the law, being able to discuss books, and other sorts of things that some people sum up as "presentable."
One of those things that “white privilege” promotes is a work ethic, something else that has come to be called racist.
Just when I thought they couldn't get any stupider.
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Despite the bleating of San Juan's Democrat mayor, Donald Trump has not been ignoring the catastrophe in Puerto Rico, nor has he botched the response.
A number of other Puerto Rican politicians have pointed out that the mayor's view on what's been happening (or not happening, according to her claims) do not match reality. Angel Perez, the mayor of Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, criticized Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz's remarks, stating “She's not participating in any meetings.” Perez hasn't seen any evidence of the lack of help, and has not seen Cruz meeting with any of the FEMA nor communicating with them.
That changes the picture of what's going on, doesn't it?
Many of them receive an Earned Income Tax Credit, meaning even though they didn't pay taxes, they get a 'refund'. Why would anyone think these same folks should receive even more than they do now when it's all of the rest of us who do pay income taxes that make it possible for them to receive the benefits they presently receive? It's always easy for folks like those at the NYT to offer our money rather freely to those who cannot (or worst, will not) work for a living. It's easy when it isn't their money they're giving away.
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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer weather is returning, the summerfolk aren't and the leaf peepers will make their presence known any time now.
