Thoughts On A Sunday

It was another of those fifty-fifty weekends in regards to weather, with Saturday being almost in the 60's but today barely making it out of the 30's. At least it's been mostly sunny both days.

I am still working on getting The Manse squared away for the winter. Hopefully I'll get a chance to finish the last of work necessary by next weekend.

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Have you been as annoyed by Tom Steyer's “Let's Impeach Trump” ads as I have? He keeps saying it isn't political, but of course it is. It's purely political.

Where were his “Let's Impeach Obama” ads when The Won blatantly violated the separation of powers and ignored the constitution when Congress didn't give him what he demanded? Absolutely nowhere because Steyer didn't care since Obama was 'his' guy.

Of course Steyer never really comes out and states which “high crimes and misdemeanors” Trump has supposedly committed that would warrant impeachment. It's just that he doesn't like Trump or the things he says and that's all the reason he needs. By that criteria alone Obama should have been impeached as well.

As long as we remember it's not about facts, but entirely about 'feelz' it all makes sense.

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Being an aviation aficionado and a student of World War II, this piece about Pratt & Whitney's Wasp engine is quite enlightening.

The large version of this radial 9-cylinder engine powered many a fighter and bomber during the war, with some variations stacking three of these engines together to create a 27-cylinder engine capable of producing well over 2,000 horsepower at high altitude.

It is one of the engines that helped win the war.

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You've probably heard the claim from some of your 'greener' friends that organic farming can feed the world. Too bad that the claim has no basis in fact...unless everyone became vegetarians and no animals were ever raised for food and that we eliminated some portion of the human race.

So how do the authors achieve their headline conclusion? By combining a worldwide conversion to organic agriculture with a heroic parallel worldwide conversion to vegetarianism, allowing them to assume (in some scenarios) a 100 percent reduction in land-area competition from animal production. This is combined with a similarly heroic 50 percent reduction in global food waste.

In other words, what the researchers actually show is that 100 percent conversion to organic can only feed the world if two — frankly impossible — other conditions are met. That gives a very different headline from the one they chose to lead their study with.

You can prove almost anything as long as you ignore the negative effects or data that disproves your claims. Then again, isn't that the 21st Century way?

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I find it interesting that feminist Emily Lindin is more than willing to let the present witch hunt taking place on college campuses and elsewhere within our society that falsely accuses men of sexual assault to go forth, all in the interest of smashing the “worldwide, systemic oppression of half the population.”

Really? For how long? When would enough be enough? Or would her preferred method be open-ended which would allow decades, if not centuries of the oppression of men in order to balance the books? It it appears that is indeed the case as she also stated “ If some innocent men's reputations have to take a hit in the process of undoing the patriarchy, that is the price I am absolutely willing to pay.”

Umm, here's a clue for you, Emily - YOU won't be the one paying the price.

I would also expect that you will also learn the hard way that it won't work the way you think it will because all the men being persecuted will have to do is to go Galt and leave it to you and all those other third-wave feminists carrying a pathological hatred of men to do the jobs that men are no longer willing to do for you. Or will you decide that perhaps slavery is also “a price I'm willing to pay” to make sure that all of the wonderful things that make your life so much easier to live will continue? If I had to guess you're one of those who would be more than happy to do so.

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Math is Racist!

Wait...what??

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Oh, and here's another helpful hint from the People's Cube to make it easier to identify and know the differences between fascists and anti-fascists.

Yeah, it makes it easier to know who is trying to bash your brains in before you let loose with some .45 ACP.

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I love it when the foaming-at-the-mouth SJW's learn that the First Amendment they use doesn't prevent them from being charged with other crimes while they try to stifle other people's First Amendment rights.

The example shown in the above linked post shows what happens when one of those aforementioned foaming-at-the-mouth SJW's commits grand larceny all while letting loose a profanity laced rant against free speech. I hope she'll get plenty of practice while she serves a term in one of California's finer correctional institutions. My only question is whether it will be a regular prison or a secure psychiatric facility as it is quite evident she's out of her friggin' mind.

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One downside to the more efficient lighting provided by LEDs? More people are lighting the exteriors of their homes and businesses because LEDs use very little electricity. This in turn has caused a 2% increase in outside artificial light intensity across the globe. Somehow I think this was not what the Greens wanted when they used things like laws to push people into getting rid of their incandescent light bulbs. Call it Yet Another Example Of The Law Of Unintended Consequences coming into play.

I know a lot of communities have passed what are called 'Dark Sky' ordinances that limit where the light from outdoor lighting fixtures can go, usually meaning only downwards and not past the horizontal. While I didn't like the idea of such ordinances at first, I have come to see the wisdom and advantages of 'Dark Sky' lighting – you can actually see the night sky; you are not lighting up your entire neighborhood when you only want to light your doorway; the cost of lighting decreases because you're only lighting the area you want, not trying to signal the aliens in orbit above our planet.

While I can put a lot of light on the driveway and area in front of The Manse and beside its garage – usually for the purposes of snow removal or making sure visitors can see where they are going – for the most part I rarely have any exterior lights on. If I do they aren't on for more than a few hours and never past midnight.

And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather can't quite make up its mind, turkey sandwiches will be the lunch of choice for the next week or so, and where we're tuning up our snowblowers for the coming winter.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Things were less hectic this past week, meaning I wasn't running myself ragged much as I did last week.

The driveway of The Manse was reconstructed during this past week, with the pavers coming in and removing the old broken up pavement, regrading the driveway to correct some drainage issues, and then laying down new asphalt. This will make two things much easier this coming winter – snowblowing, as it will no longer be throwing chunks of asphalt, and actually being able top make it up and down during the inclement winter weather.

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One of my big pet peeves is the whole concept of virtue signaling. It is described thus:

Virtue signaling is the popular modern habit of indicating that one has virtue merely by expressing disgust or favor for certain political ideas, cultural happenings, or even the weather.

It's also seen by way of where one shops, what one buys in the way of food or clothing, or by what causes one supports. Frankly, it is quite annoying and, in the end, quite stupid. I can cite a perfect example, one that I've used before.

In this case my good friend Farmer Andy posted a sign outside his business stating that he had “organically grown, solar dried” firewood for sale at a price of $275 a cord, and “regular' dried firewood at $225 a cord. He did it as a joke, figuring no one would take it seriously. Ironically, he sold more of the “organically grown, solar dried” firewood then he did of the his regular firewood. The joke?

Both types of firewood came from the same lot and same pile of wood. All of his firewood is “organically grown, solar dried”.

So what explains the sale of the higher priced firewood? Virtue signaling.

Those who bought the higher priced firewood would be able to claim that their firewood was better and therefore more virtuous because it was organically grown and solar dried. They paid an extra $50 a cord just so they could make that claim. Stupid, right?

And so it is with virtue signaling across the board.

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The rising tide of black-on-white violence is being dutifully ignored by the MSM-DNC. Whether they believe, like the city leaders of some of the more violent cities like Chicago, Baltimore and a whole host of “Chocolate Cities around the country”, that “they are not going to arrest their way out this mess”, a horrible precedent is being set as those same cities leaders will talk and talk and talk about the problem until it goes away. When you have a DA in Chicago who has decided to 'decriminalize' things like carjacking, keeping her promise to “stop over-policing, halt mass incarceration, and begin an ew era of arresting fewer black people in Chicago,” you have to wonder if she's actually an attorney or a racial advocate who is willing to give people of one race a free pass when it comes to violence against whites.

If someone wanted to generate even more racial hatred between blacks and white, this DA is doing exactly the right things to promote it. Then she'll be surprised as the continuously rising violence escalates to the point where people of all races won't take it anymore and will take things into their own hands. I can guarantee that won't end well. A lot of people are likely to die and too many of them will be innocents caught in the proverbial crossfire. And then, of course, those very same members of the MSM-DNC will decry the violence and will wonder why no one is doing anything about it, choosing to ignore that is they who are the guilty party.

So what else is new?

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Oh, this is going to work out well...NOT.

It appears that a stuffy old college in Oxford, England, specifically Magdalen College, has introduced mandatory classes on cultural appropriation.

Will this drive to balkanize nations and try to place cultures into stasis ever end? Do these idiots really understand what it is they're trying to do? The answer to both questions is a resounding “Hell, no!”

Cultural appropriation is in truth a false crisis. It is invented nonsense that has taken on all too much importance on college campuses.

As anyone with even a small understanding of history (with a dash of anthropology) knows, cultural appropriation is what helps cultures grow, to become stronger and more resilient. Trying to keep a culture pure, something that has been attempted again and again throughout history always fails. There are usually one of two outcomes: either the culture stagnates and dies, or they give up trying to remain pure and end up both importing and exporting cultural ideas, foods, art, music, and so on and thrive.

However none of that will stop these lamebrain idiots from trying to pigeonhole every single one of us and making sure that “we know our place”. And if we won't willingly bow to their beliefs, then they will make us do so by indoctrinating our kids and turning them into willing drones to carry on this silliness.

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Unfortunately I must bring forth a bit of bad news, something that has affected the WP Clan, that being the sudden passing of one of the WP Nephews. While not exactly unforeseen, it is still shocking when it happens no matter how prepared one thinks they are.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where preparations for the coming winter continue, the last of the outdoor projects are being completed, and where almost everyone has a short workweek this week.

Lying By Telling The Truth

Here's an interesting article dealing with lying with the truth, something politicians do all the time. It even has a name: paltering.

While paltering uses true answers to questions being asked, the truth being told usually has little to do with the subject of the question. So in effect paltering is really nothing more than another version of deflection.

When it comes to lying, I have found there are three different means of lying, those being:

-Telling the lie in such a convincing fashion that it makes the person receiving the lie to perceive it as truth. This usually takes great skill and most people can't pull it off.

-Telling the truth, but leaving pertinent information out. In other words lying by omission. A lot of folks can pull this off.

-Last, but not least, there's lying by telling the absolute truth, leaving nothing out, but telling it in such a way that the person(s) hearing it believe you are lying. Like the first means of lying, this one takes considerable skill, equal to or greater than that required to tell a total lie convincingly.

Of the three, I prefer the third for a number of reasons. Probably the biggest is that it takes no effort to remember the lie or lies you are telling because they aren't lies. There's no way anyone can trip you up because you told the truth. It will be their fault that they didn't believe you, not yours.

Not that I am advocating anyone telling lies. I'm not. But if you have to do it go all out.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

Thoughts On A Sunday - Monday Edition

OK, here it is. A day late. So sue me.

It seems Old Man Winter gave us a bit of a preview the day after Sunday, with snow that accumulated just enough to make some of the roads rather greasy. More than a few folks ended up off the road, at least from what I saw on my way back from a work related trip to the Boston area.

I wouldn't have minded this all that much if I had some decent winter tires on the trusty Ram 1500, but I didn't. Even with 4WD there were a few places where I couldn't get reasonable traction and had to work my way slowly home.

What really bothered me were some of the drivers going way too fast for conditions along some stretches of road and others going way too slow. The latter seemed to thing that the slick road conditions were everywhere when they weren't. A large majority of the roads were just wet with no snow or slush accumulation. However that didn't stop some of these drivers from going 20 to 30mph below the posted limits, meaning they crawled along at 15 MPH. They wouldn't drive that slow if it had been just raining. It wasn't like they had to worry about black ice because the road surfaces were too warm for that and there was little if any snow accumulation on the grass. That's usually a good indication that the road surface is just wet, not slick.

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It seems the GPS Fusion dossier issue just won't go away for the Democrats.

As much as they hoped it would sink Trump, it has come back to bite them because it points to things the Democrats paid for that have ties to the Russians as well as other unsavory (and illegal) actions taken at the behest of the DNC and Clinton campaign.

Between the so-called 'opposition research' and contacts with the Russian lawyer who was supposedly going to give the Trump campaign dirt on Hillary (which was rejected by the Trump organization), it looks like the Democrats ended up in a trap of their own making.

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To quote Cap'n Teach, “Goodness, law enforcement officials wanting to enforce the law? To get tough on crime and criminals? To make punishment painful? How terrible!!!!!!!!!”

That's right. It appears a growing number of local law enforcement officials are ignoring 'sanctuary city/state' declarations and informing ICE of the arrests of illegal aliens on their wanted lists, as well as enforcing other laws that municipal or state officials have chosen to ignore. In other words, they're being tough on criminals which is exactly what they're supposed to do.

Good for them.

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This is something you won't see in the LSM.

Reductions of CO2 emissions in US dwarf that of the rest of the world.

In fact, it has reduced its CO2 emissions more than the rest of the world combined. What's even better is that we didn't need Kyoto or Paris to make it happen.

For those of you not aware of it, the US Senate didn't give their consent to President Clinton's signing of the Kyoto Protocol, rejecting it by a 97-0 vote against. (This is part of Article II, Section 2, second clause of the US Constitution). President Obama didn't even bother to bring his signing of the Paris Accords before the Senate because he knew it wouldn't happen, thus violating the US Constitution.

So while people bemoan the CO2 emissions by us Evil Americans, they choose to ignore that we have done more to reduce our emissions than any other nation. They also choose to ignore the issue of both China and India greatly increasing their CO2 emissions.

What hypocrisy!

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And the witch hunt(s) continue.

Victor Davis Hanson delves into the present day witch hunt which consists of “about six months [of] cable news shows, the internet, and the major newspapers ginned up the charge of “Russian collusion”—as a means of explaining the otherwise inexplicable and unacceptable defeat of Hillary Clinton by someone without either political or military experience.”

Like all witch hunts, it will continue until they find a witch, even if they have to find an innocent person to immolate so they can say “See! We found one!” That is the nature of witch hunts.

So far this one has been a abject failure and the people are rightfully sick of it. Even some of my more avid Democrat friends an acquaintances are saying that this one is really a “nothingburger” put forth by the DNC to shift blame for Hillary's campaign misjudging the mood of the voters. It didn't help that she characterized half of them as “a basket of deplorables.” But that won't stop the DNC and Hillary Faithful from continuing the hunt.

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Then there's these anti-rape tips from the two sides of the political aisle. Which one would you prefer?

(H/T VictoryGirls Blog)

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we've had our upcoming winter preview, work around The Manse is coming to a close for the year, and where Monday returned all too soon.

It's Almost Thoughts On A Sunday

It's been a busy day here at The Manse and in central New Hampshire. Because of these various chores and duties, I did not make it back home at a reasonable hour, so my usual Thoughts In A Sunday post will be delayed until tomorrow.

I hate doing this, but I'd rather do it right than throw a half-assed, lame post together that informs or intrigues no one.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was an 'interesting' week here in New Hampshire this past week, with widespread power outages after a heavy rain and wind storm. Our neighborhood was without power for three days and others didn't have power restored until late Friday. There are still a few scattered outages across the state.

Normally we see this kind of widespread outage due to heavy snow or ice storms, the last one being in 2008 that had much of New Hampshire in the dark.

While this storm didn't have nearly the number of outages as back in 2008 (400,000+ then versus ~200, 000 now), just the magnitude was surprising considering the time of year.

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Even with power restored, Internet access didn't automatically follow. It took another day for ours to come back to life. Others within my town are still waiting as the local cable company works to repair damage to fiber cables, in-field electronics, coaxial cables, and cable drops to homes.

At least I had 'Net access at work!

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Seeing the reports of the assault on Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) by a neighbor outside his Kentucky home, one would think the newsies would be all over that.

Nope. Not a peep, at least not until about 9:15AM this morning when a short blurb appeared on GMA.

Somehow I think if there had been a 'D' after Paul's name, the MSM-DNC would have been all over it, deploring the attack by a 'right-wing' extremist. But because the victim had an 'R' after his name and the alleged perpetrator is a registered Democrat, it is a non-news item in the eyes of the media.

If the MSM-DNC didn't have double standards they'd have no standards at all.

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Truer words were never spoken.

You know it's bad when even a columnist for the New York Times, in this case David Brooks, comes right out and states on PBS NewsHour “Those of us trying to rebut Trump have the disadvantage that 'our elites really do stink'.”

Maybe you need a better class of elites. Did you ever think of that? The ones you have now are clueless and out-of-touch with a large majority of the American people. They assume too much and listen too little.

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It seems the 'popular' uprising that Antifa called for yesterday failed to materialize.

That's what happens when you isolate yourself into your own snowflake-hugging pissed-off reality.

“Here's a buck. Go buy yourself a clue...”

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The People's Cube shows us a new game called Islamic Roulette. It's like Russian Roulette but you load the revolver with all six bullets.

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Also by way of The People's Cube comes another exciting game: Diversity Visa Lottery 2.0

In the new system, titled "Diversity Visa Lottery 2.0," special military units will be instructed to randomly place explosive devices in highly populated areas. These bombs will then explode at intervals calculated by a Harvard computer algorithm, amounting to an average of once every two weeks.

It eliminates the need to wait for lone wolf terrorists to come to this country and blow stuff up, shoot people, or run them down with trucks. This way we still receive the 'benefits' of the Diversity Visa Lottery without actually allowing any of these guys into the country. It cuts out the middle man.

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While I haven't yet seen the proposed tax cuts put forth by the GOP and the behest of President Trump, I have to say I am already tired of the people bitching about it. The biggest problem I have with the bitching?

It's almost entirely uninformed bitching.

Most of those bitching have picked up on only one or two talking points brought up by people who have an obsessive hatred of Trump and the idea that anyone would be allowed to keep more of their own money.

Is it likely the realignment of the tax code is going to hurt someone? Yup. That's inescapable. No matter what is done it's going to inconvenience or hurt someone somewhere. All I'm asking is that people don't go off half-cocked because one small portion of the tax code change might inconvenience them while ignoring another part that benefits them. Is it stupidity or willful ignorance that drives this? Maybe a little of both?

One of the stupidest complaints I heard dealt with how those who don't pay any taxes won't gain any benefit from the tax plan. Well, yeah. In many cases they already receive an Earned Income Tax Credit, meaning they get a tax 'refund' from the government even though they didn't pay any taxes. So what's the problem?

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Skip tells us the story of a guy who “works just to pay his ObamaCare premium.”

Everyone touts just how wonderful ObamaCare is for those with lower incomes, but totally ignores those who in the past could afford their health insurance, but can't any more. As Skip put it, “...this is a perfect example of the actual purpose of Obamacare – a MASSIVE wealth transfer from one class to another.”

Yup. I'd say that sums it up rather nicely.

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I came across this just after Halloween and knew I had to share it, 'it' being Michael Jackson's Thriller, something that hadn't been available on YouTube the last time I looked for it.

You have to admit, the man was talented.

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Camille Paglia gets it.

Then again, she always has. Too bad that many of her acquaintances don't and likely never will.

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BeezleBub and I went to see Thor – Ragnarok this evening.

I liked it.

It was campy. It was funny. It was entertaining.

That's all I ask of any movie, to be entertaining.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where fall weather has returned, so has Standard Time, and where no one seems to be particularly fond of it.