While the Number One story (for me) was the sale of The Manse and the subsequent move to The Gulch until The New Manse is built, there were plenty of other events and stories that were more important in the greater scheme of things.
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One of the most annoying things I (and many others) have dealt with all year is the media’s constant barrage of the Orange Man Bad meme. It seemed to me that every news broadcast begins with three or four stories slamming President Trump for offenses real or imagined (mostly imagined). It got old after the second day. I have learned to not tune into the any newscasts for the first 5 minutes or so as they are usually reserved to bashing Trump.
This phenomenon is one I expect to continue during Trump’s entire time in office. After all most of the MSM have been a major part of the propaganda wing of the Democrat National Committee for years.
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One of the biggest non-stories of the year has to be Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations and unsubstantiated testimony against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. She couldn’t remember where or when the party took place thirty years prior where the alleged assault took place. Friends of Kavanaugh couldn’t remember any such party where the alleged assault took place. Two other men claimed it was they who were the ones who ‘felt up’ the young Christine Blasey at a party when they were all teens. (The assault that was alleged would have been considered fourth degree assault, a misdemeanor in the state of Maryland where the alleged assault took place. The statute of limitations for misdemeanors is one year and is not something that is extraditeable.)
Blasey Ford’s testimony was further debunked by an expert in reading body language that reached the conclusion that she had been coached, using facial expressions, poses, and changes in the pitch of her voice to portray herself as an “innocent young girl”. The expert caught on to expressions that indicated that she was ‘reading from a script’ and not actually addressing the memories about the assault.
It was the biggest ‘non-event’ to take place on national television.
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The new Congresscritter representing the Bronx, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (D), is the gift that keeps on giving. The freshmen representative has overblown expectations of the power she’ll be wielding, either not caring or not understanding that she’ll have little if any power during her first term. Of the two, the latter is the more likely as she has shown a particular lack of knowledge about how things actually work, a bad case of biblical illiteracy, and a troubling lack of understanding about economics considering her economics degree from Boston University. The fact that the only job she could seem to find after graduating from BU was as a bartender is an indicator that something doesn’t add up about Ms. Occasional Cortex.
She even plays the “I grew up a poor Latina in New York” game even though she and her family were and are quite well off.
I have a feeling she’s burning bridges she can ill afford to burn in her quest to turn the US into a failed socialist state.
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The “We’re All Gonna DIE!!” warmists are trying hard to ignore the 2018 weather record that shows there have been no violent tornadoes in the US. Zip. Zero. Nada. Not one. After all, that news doesn’t fit in with their narrative that hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, and all other kinds of weather events would become more numerous and stronger, causing far more damage than we’ve ever seen.
The only other news that is upsetting the warmists is Judith Curry’s study that shows that a lot of the supposed sea-level rise has less to do with actual rising sea-level and more to do with sinking land.
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Voter fraud was front and center this past November as a number of races were decided by ‘found’ ballot boxes, questionable absentee ballots, and ballot harvesting that singlehandedly changed the outcome of a number of congressional races all by themselves.
The one thing all of these ‘found’ ballots had in common? They always favored the Democrats. Every. Single. Time.
Statistically that’s impossible, particularly when it occurs in election after election. Yet the Democrats keep telling us that we’re just sore losers and that we should ignore any improprieties because SHUT UP!
We seriously need to do away with things like ballot harvesting, something that lends itself to voting fraud. Ballots need to be counted where they are cast, not boxed up and carted off to a central location for counting because it lends itself to voting fraud because it too often leads to ‘found’ ballot boxes. Absentee balloting needs better security because too many voters have been disfranchised when they show up at the polls and find out that they had already “voted” by absentee ballot, meaning someone else voted in their place and stole their vote.
Unless these issues are addressed, faith in our election system will erode to the point where no one will trust the system and elections will be meaningless.
But then, that’s what the Left wants, right?
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One has to wonder if the Mueller investigations will ever end. Two years plus and what does the investigation have?
Nothing.
What was supposed to be an investigation into possible collusion by the Trump campaign with the Russians has turned into a never-ending witch hunt that has only managed to trap some former Trump staffers with ‘process crimes’, basically made up crimes that were created just to get someone Mueller wanted to use as leverage against Trump.
This has to be the least productive and most expensive open-ended investigation in US history. Unless Mueller comes up with something that directly ties with the original purpose of the investigation it should be shut down.
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And that’s what I have for a look at ‘The Year That Was’ from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it looks like winter weather has finally returned, the shopping malls are back to normal, and where we’re hoping that 2019 will be even better than 2018.