2/24/2019

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s a half-and-half weekend here in central New Hampshire, with really nice weather on Saturday and snow/sleet/freezing rain today.

While we haven’t had what I would call a typical winter weather cycle this year, we’re still seeing enough winter weather. There haven’t been any real major snowfalls in this area, with most storms dumping about 6 to 8 inches with a changeover to sleet or freezing rain at the end. We usually see a lot more snow and it isn’t typical to end with sleet or freezing rain.

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When I read this over at Instapundit my first reaction was that the inmates are running the asylum.

How stupid, intolerant, and ignorant is it to apply 21st Century “sensibilities” to 20th Century actions? (Notice I put sensibilities in quotes because what passes for sensibilities these days is intolerant, ignorant, and neo-puritanical. They have nothing to do with reality.)

When you have ill-educated college students applying those 21st Century “sensibilities” to things like a 1971 Playboy interview with John Wayne or an iconic picture from the end of World War II, you know things are seriously broken in this society. The typical response to be offended on the behalf of people who aren’t offended by what happened back then is the height arrogance and intolerance. They have become the very people they profess to ‘hate’ and they do not see it or their hypocrisy. In fact if they are aware of it they are proud of their willfully ignorant holier-than-thou take on life.

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Oh, lord, but AOC is the gift that keeps on giving!

Her latest contribution to the destruction of the Democrat party is her equating the border wall President Trump wants to build on our southern border with the Berlin Wall built along the border between East and West Berlin.

Either she really has no grasp of history (very likely, considering she has no understanding of the history of socialism) or she is willfully ignorant. To equate one wall that is used to keep illegal immigrants and smugglers from entering the US to a wall that was built to keep people from escaping a totalitarian state, a wall that had guard towers, guards with machine guns, and spotlights to deter people from leaving communist East Germany for free West Germany is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst. Many were killed by East German guards while trying to get across that wall. How many have been machined-gunned trying to cross from Mexico into the US?

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I’m glad to see that my home state of New Hampshire is only the 42nd most sinful state, at least according to WalletHub. I am disappointed that neighboring states Maine and Vermont scored better than we did. On the other hand New Hampshire has state liquor stores with their own exits off of the Interstates.

At least we’re 48th when it comes to violent crimes per capita, with Vermont and Maine being numbers 49 and 50, respectively. Then again all three states are constitutional carry states, have very liberal gun laws, and a relatively high percentage of gun ownership.

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Is it time to reconsider the Electoral College?

No. It works exactly as it was designed to work. If that is changed what’s to keep the same people hating the Electoral College for pushing to deconstruct the Senate and make it proportional like the House? At that point the “tyranny of the majority” would come into being and small states like mine will become political backwaters while states like California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Illinois will be making the decisions for the other 45 states. That way leads to rebellion.

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If they didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.

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The New Hampshire Democrats efforts to make our state less safe by implementing Gun Free Zones has some intended ‘unintended’ consequences.

The push to make one of the safest states in the country into one big free-fire zone for criminals is the intended purpose of the proposed legislation. With the definition of school property being so broad, just about every place where things like school buses, school books, and class pets are located would be defined as a Gun Free Zone. That will make every single law-abiding citizen of the state carrying legally owned firearms a criminal under the proposed law.

It’s yet another in an endless attempt to disarm law-abiding citizens.

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Could the reason so many Millennials seem to be willing to embrace socialism is because they have never heard of Lenin, Stalin, or Mao?

With no understanding of the past, and particularly the history of socialism, it’s no wonder so many seem willing to look at socialism. They don’t understand the dark history of that destructive ideology.

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I think the whole Robert-Kraft-Visited-A-Massage-Parlor-And-Asked-For-A-Happy-Ending scandal is a setup. It’s a conspiracy aimed at the New England Patriots in retaliation for their sixth Super Bowl win. The other NFL teams can’t seem to beat them on the field, so they’re going after the owner as a means of weakening the Patriots.

Too bad for them that it won’t work.

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No, cats aren’t psychopaths. But they have conquered the world using humans to do it.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow has been falling, the vacationers from Massachusetts have been departing for home, and where much colder temperatures and high winds are expected to arrive.

2/17/2019

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s another wonderful weekend up at Lake Winnipesaukee. Looking out from the deck at The Gulch I can see that the lake is fully frozen over and that fishermen and snowmobilers are making full use of the ice.

It’s also February Vacation week down in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, meaning a lot of folks from there are up here for the week. That means the ski slopes are busy as are the cross-country and snowmobile trails. It also means the cash registers are ringing as both restaurants and outlet malls are busy. (New Hampshire has no sales tax so a lot of people cross the border to shop tax-free. During this week a lot of visitors will take advantage of their time on vacation to ‘kill two birds with one stone’.)

With more snow on the way tonight and again on Thursday, the conditions will be perfect for those vacationing here this week.

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I have to admit that I was surprised to see a tweet from Sarah Jeong slamming anti-vaxxers. But the follow-on tweet from Brian Rockwell brings things back into perspective.

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You tell them and you tell them and they still refused to listen.

In this case, proponents for $15/hour minimum wage in New York were warned that there would be fallout if it ever came to be. Much of that fallout would be in the form of reduced hours or loss of jobs because of the artificial increase in the cost of labor.

Now that $15/hour has come to be in New York City, fast food workers are losing their jobs and the NYT is saying they are being laid off without “just cause”.

Did proponents really think that affected businesses wouldn’t take steps to deal with their greatly increased cost of doing business? With labor being a third to a half of a restaurant’s operating costs, is it any wonder they would try to reduce their costs when the cost of labor was artificially increased?

As far as the layoffs being called “without just cause”, does the NYT think the businesses should be forced to keep employees they can no longer afford just to make them and the $15 proponents feeling good about what they did? Isn’t “I can’t afford to keep you because I have to pay you more than I can afford” a just cause? How much will employees be paid when the business they work for closes its doors when it goes bankrupt?

That the NYT and $15 proponents chose to ignore the lessons of other places like San Francisco and Seattle when they imposed a $15 minimum wage shows they are either willfully ignorant of the side effects or didn’t really care because the whole thing was just a ploy to make them feel like they were “doing something” to help the poor and oppressed. Too bad their help had just the opposite effect.

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The Democrat-majority New Hampshire Legislature has put forth a list of gun control legislation that, as far as I can tell, does nothing but strip law abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights. This in a state with very low crime rate and constitutional carry.

They are trying to fix problems that don’t exist all in an effort to make themselves feel safe. But the proposed legislation will have just the opposite effect. While they may feel safer, the truth is that they will be less safe. This is particularly true for one law that will allow local school boards to ban possession of firearms on school grounds. It allows them to create so-called Gun Free Zones. Not that such designations have ever stopped anyone who ignores such laws (like criminals) from carrying guns in those zones. There are enough examples of just how much Gun Free Zones haven’t prevented anyone from entering them with their guns and shooting/killing people.

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Speaking of second Amendment Rights, it appears that a number of county sheriffs in New Mexico have already taken a stand in regards to a number of restrictive gun laws making their way through the state legislature. They plan to support becoming “sanctuary counties”, counties that will not enforce any state gun laws that are seen as violating the US Constitution’s Second Amendment.

This follows actions taken by counties in other states like Washington to provide sanctuary from state laws severely restricting the rights of citizens to bear arms.

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I have watched the feminist movement in the US since the late 1960’s and seen it devolve from an equal rights movement to a “We demand superior rights to those of those misogynist men because we’re helpless and need protection from the patriarchy even though we can do everything they can do” movement that has no grounding in reality.

Here’s a single photo that will show the difference between feminists here and in other countries:


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It has come to this in the Progressive World:

Comrade Vlad Linen has had to denounce new California Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision to cancel the $100 billion High Speed Train To Nowhere, which has upset AOC’s plans for her Green New Deal.

Ocasio-Cortez has said these would make air travel obsolete, which means she has a solution to take us to Hawaii and all the continents. Probably even the moon and Mars by way of train! Does anyone realize the harm to the climate that happens when people use a rocket to go to the moon?? So, naturally a high speed rail network to everywhere in the solar system would be the better option.

Commissar Newsom will now have to go the way of Debbie Whatshername-Schultz. Yes, still with a political position, but a non-person who will go nowhere nonetheless.

The Leftist autophagy continues!

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where winter is safely ensconced, winter activities abound, and where we have more snow on the way.

2/10/2019

Thoughts On A Sunday

An exciting week has come to an end, one that saw the New England Patriots triumphant (again), temps swinging from single digits below zero to above 50°F, rain, snow, snow & rain, as well as the exercise of small town democracy (town and school district meeting), and editorial sparring in the local paper’s Letters section.

We’ve also seen a number of possible Democrat presidential contenders visiting New Hampshire, trying to get a feel if there is any support for their possible campaign to become the Democratic nominee for President. It signals that the political silly season has started and that soon we’ll be seeing an increasing and endless train of candidates, camp followers, and press. It will be absolute madness as we get closer to the New Hampshire Primary.

This might be a time to start drinking heavily.

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This isn’t news to any of us engineering types.

It turns out that cold weather can have a negative effect on the batteries of electric vehicles.

Under ideal conditions, these [EVs] can deliver more than 200 miles per charge and, in some cases, even 300. But as many owners discovered last week as winter storms slammed much of the country, cold weather conditions do not qualify as "ideal." A new AAA study finds that when the thermometer drops to 20 degrees Fahrenheit, range falls by an average of 41 percent on the five models it tested.

"We found that the impact of temperature on EVs is significantly more than we expected," said Greg Brannon, AAA’s director of Automotive Engineering."

Some EV drivers — including this correspondent — recently found that range can drop by half when the mercury tumbled into negative territory. But the AAA study appears to be the first to have used standard, repeatable methodology to confirm the problem and compare the effect of winter temperatures on different models.

Once it gets below freezing the battery chemical reactions can slow down and the internal impedance can go up, meaning the battery can’t deliver all of its stored charge. While heating the battery system will help maintain the full capacity of the system, the extra drain placed upon the batteries to keep them warm decreases the energy available to drive systems. Now add the need for the environmental system to keep the passengers comfortable and the vehicle range will go down even more.

EVs will be fine when the weather is warm, but for places like here in New Hampshire we might find that EVs are a not a viable means of transportation during the depths of winter.

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As if we need yet another in an endless series of proofs that socialism just doesn’t work, there’s Panera Bread’s experiment in socialism that has ended in a dismal failure.

Panera Bread’s ‘pay-what-you-want’ socialist program goes totally belly-up.

Panera Bread will be closing its last pay-what-you-can restaurant, located in Boston, on Feb. 15.

The move comes after the business’s “nonprofit” restaurant concept became unviable. On Tuesday, Eater reported that none of the restaurant’s five locations was self-sustaining.

Better that an experiment in socialism be a small one that affects a single business (Panera) rather than a big one that ruins an entire nation (Venezuela, for instance).

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One of the things that at least one potential Democrat Presidential contender has put forth as part of their platform is the oft-touted Universal Basic Income. While it may sound like a good idea at first glance, once one delves into it and takes human nature into account, the idea falls apart. That’s certainly what Finland found out when it tried as an experiment.

When it launched the pilot scheme back in 2017, Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income. It was run by the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), a Finnish government agency, and involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits.

It immediately attracted international interest – but these results have now raised questions about the effectiveness of such schemes.

Did it help unemployed people in Finland find jobs, as the...Finnish government had hoped? No, not really.

Mr Simanainen says that while some individuals found work, *they were no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren’t given the money. They are still trying to work out exactly why this is, for the final report that will be published in 2020.

I can explain why they saw what they did: human nature. It always wins in the end.

But will that stop the experiment from being tried again? Unfortunately the answer is no. It seems the city of Chicago wants to give it a go.

Giving people something for nothing and not expecting anything in return gives you... nothing in return. But it sure makes lefties feel good to be giving out other people's money for such a good cause.

I expect the experiment will show the same results as the one in Finland.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the poster child of today’s biased colleges.

Considering her disdain for anything not of a socialist bent, her willful ignorance of socialism’s history, let alone history of any kind, and her stunning lack of knowledge of economics despite an Economics degree from Boston University.

Do you think AOC has read one word of Friedrich Hayek? Do you think that she has even heard of him? What do you think she knows of history in general? We already know how informed she is about the Middle East.

This is a new form of proud Know-Nothingism. We can't even say it will come back to haunt us because it already is doing just that. Reforming our educational system is the most important mission of our time. Presidents come and go. Even media grandees come and go — after a while (too long a while). But education remains, shaping our future. Change it or everyone sitting in Congress will be AOC. (No it doesn't stand for All-Out Communist. But wait long enough and it could.)

And people wonder why she is disparaged with the moniker Alexandria Occasional-Cortex. It’s because she only uses her brain oh a now and again basis.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re expecting some more snow later this week, thoughts of the coming boating season in 3 months, and the realization that Monday is coming upon us once again is disturbing to no end.

2/03/2019

Thoughts On A Sunday

Super Bowl Sunday has arrived (also known as New England Patriots Invitational Sunday).

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We survived the arctic blast that afflicted the Midwest, though it was attenuated as compared to what was seen in Fargo, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Chicago. We’ll be seeing temps swing into the 50’s by Tuesday, meaning we should be able to get some of the accumulated ice and snow to melt away, making room for more snow slated to arrive next Friday.

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Seeing as it is Super Bowl Sunday, it’s time to address the myth about sex trafficking and domestic abuse increasing during this particular weekend.

Police reports do not show an increase in either. However there are more incidents of drunk and disorderly as well as DWI.

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It’s one thing to make promises during an election campaign, and another thing to find some way to keep those promises and pay for them. That’s something rookie governor Gavin Newsom is learning the hard way.

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Why doesn’t this surprise me?

CBS has rejected an ad from Line Nine Apparel that is the antithesis of Nike’s Colin Kaepernick ad.

I guess patriotism is out of fashion at CBS. I wonder how long it will be before CBS cancels shows like NCIS or Blue Bloods because they are two patriotic?

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Steve MacDonald will get no argument from me on this one.

Anarchists and Leftists share a common blind spot – Ignoring Human Nature.

The always do which is why the fail again and again and again. Human nature is stronger than either anarchist or socialist theory. It always wins in the end.

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“Right to be Safe” is more important than the “Right to Bear Arms”? That’s what California Democrat Eric Swalwell believes. Remember him? He’s the one who threatened to use nukes against gun owners.

One commenter to the above post had a suggestion to make those like Mr. Swalwell feel safe. However I doubt he’d ever be willing to give up everything just to feel safe.

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This is irony, squared.

Cory Booker (D-NJ) was the first mayor of Newark in over 45 years who left office without being indicted.

Was it because he was a straight arrow or that he left before they found any evidence of corruption? Considering every one of the indicted mayors was a Democrat I’d say it was more the latter rather than the former.

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And that’s the abbreviated Super Bowl Sunday news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather is warming up, the supermarkets are full of people stocking up for the big game, and where just about every TV in New England will be tuned to the game.