Thoughts On A Sunday

The weather here in New Hampshire was schizophrenic over the weekend, with temps in the southern end of the state in the 60’s and in the upper 30’s in the northernmost part of the state on Saturday. It reached 45° here at The Gulch.

Such is the weather here in New England.

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If you thought the Democrats focus on Trump would subside now that the Mueller Report has exonerated him in regard to Russiagate, you were wrong. If nothing else congressional Democrats are going to double down on stupid, continuing their witch hunt…er…investigation of Trump’s collusion with the Russians during his election campaign. The just know he had to have colluded with the Russians (even though it was Hillary’s campaign that did that). It is the only explanation for Hillary’s loss in 2016 they’ll accept.

As Senator Ted Cruz explained it to CNN’s Dana Bash:

“Yesterday, the Mueller report was going to be the end all and be all. It was going to be the salvation for the Democrats and destroy President Trump. Now, you can already see the Democrats pivoting away and saying, 'Okay, we need to do other investigations. There's gotta be someone else. There's gotta be the Southern District of New York. It's gotta be the New York Attorney General. It's gotta be Congress.'”

“But, Dana, my point is, you ask Congressman Nadler whether the House is going to impeach the president and I'll answer that for you. Yes. They fully intend to impeach the president and they don't care about the basis," Cruz explained. "Twice Congressman Nadler said something remarkable. He said, 'Listen, the special counsel's focused on crimes. We're not all that concerned with crimes. Our focus is – this is Democrats in the House – is much broader than crimes.' What they're basically saying is they're going to impeach the president for being Donald Trump and they don't care about the evidence, they don't care about the substance."

Cruz is absolutely right. The House is going to move forward with impeachment proceedings, regardless of what is found. Just remember: we had freshman Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) talk about "impeaching that mother f**ker" on her very first day in Congress.

Democrats won't be happy until Trump is no longer in office. And now their witch hunt will continue.

One has to wonder whether this obsessive need to “get Trump” will become so all consuming that House Democrats will abandon the rest of their congressional duties to do so. If so, President Trump will have them right where he wants them.

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Ed Driscoll gives is a Spring Fascism Preview, a head’s up for the upcoming Earth Day and Venezuela’s involuntary participation in Lights Out for Earth Hour.

Then again, Venezuela has been participating in Lights Out every day for weeks now and it looks like they will continue to participate for weeks to come.

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At least one prankster is finding out the hard way that “swatting” someone is not a prank.

In this case, Tyler Barriss, a gamer living in California, called the Wichita, Kansas police, “pretending to be a deranged man with a gun holding members of his family hostage, giving what he believed was the target's address.” The problem beyond trying to swat a fellow gamer, Shane Gaskill of Wichita, is that he gave the police the wrong address.

The police arrived at the home of Andrew Finch, someone in no way connected to the dispute between Barriss and Gaskill. In the end Finch was shot dead by Wichita police as one officer thought he was reaching for a gun as he came out of his front door.

Barriss was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for Finch’s death in a Kansas federal court. It seems like justice has been served, right? Maybe not.

It isn’t that Barriss is getting off easy. He’s not. Barriss isn’t going to a nice “country club” federal prison, but a “take it up the butt” federal pen. One other thing he’s not: remorseful.

"I love swatting kids who think that nothing's going to happen," Barriss said in a YouTube interview hours after Finch's death.

In April, the incarcerated Barriss briefly gained access to the Internet—and he took the opportunity to demonstrate that he had learned nothing from his time behind bars.

"All right, now who was talking shit?" he tweeted on April 6, 2018. "Your ass is about to get swatted."

Barriss is an ass, one that who still hasn’t learned that actions have consequences, that life isn’t a game of Call of Duty (which is what prompted the dispute between Barriss and Gaskill to begin with) where one can push ‘reset’ or start a new game if things don’t go right. I have a feeling he’s going to learn the hard way that he isn’t all-powerful in prison. Instead, he’s going to end up being someone’s “bitch”.

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Just when I think congressional Democrats couldn’t get any more arrogant (or clueless), one of them proves me wrong. In this case, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), one of my state’s senators, has decided that her Senate seat belongs to her and, more specifically, to the Democrat Party in perpetuity. She has also branded anyone that doesn’t support her as ‘thieves’. From Shaheen’s office:

This is it, friends. The GOP is starting to build up its operation to steal this seat and protect its Senate majority.

After CNBC one of the two most endangered Democratic senators in the country, an out-of-state, right-wing group started running attack ads against us. Not long after, Ted C ruz started trying to recruit a far-right conservative to run against me.

And the worst part of it all? It’s working. A recent poll showed me tied with right-wing Gov. Chris Sununu. And if we lose, it will all but guarantee a Republican majority in the Senate for another two years. (emphasis in original – ed)

She only seems to dislike out-of-state groups if they aren’t supporting her. Double standard much, Senator? That she seems to believe that her senate seat belongs to her and the DNC shows her belief that the Democrats are a permanent ruling class and anyone that wants to disabuse her of that notion are criminals. The thing is, if she gets her way, anyone disagreeing with her or the DNC will become criminals and will be disposed of accordingly.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the lake is still iced over from shore to shore, more thoughts of the coming boating season are intruding, and where Mondays keep ending our weekends all too soon.

MSM-DNC And Their Lackeys Scrambling To Find Something On Trump

After watching a couple of days worth of the MSM-DNC reactions to the Mueller Report and all I can say that it appears the media is trying to spin things around to still make President Trump guilty of something. They couldn't get him on collusion with Russia (though it looks like that might be something Hillary and the DNC might have to worry about), so now they want to see him fall based upon obstruction of justice charges, something Mueller couldn't pull off after 22 months of investigation.

Of course the Congressional Democrats want to pick up the mantle, desperate to find something with which to charge Trump and members of his administration. That they hate Trump with a passion, are pissed off at him because he beat Hillary (How dare he!) is not in question. It is something they cannot hide, nor have they tried very hard to do so.

Those who lambasted Trump, wringing their hands at the prospect of impeaching him are now scrambling, trying to change the narrative to make it seem as if they weren't really after Trump's hide. Some have even gone as far as to condemn their brethren for the rhetoric they spewed over the past 22 months.

It's been pathetic.

In response to Hillary's loss in 2016, the Democrats are trying very hard to change election law to make sure that no one but Democrats will ever win the White House or Congress again. Democrats on the state level have been trying to subvert the Electoral College with legislation that basically strips the voters in their states of their voices. As I have mentioned in other posts, Colorado has pushed legislation that will award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of the election results in Colorado. The Democrats in Colorado have basically just told their citizens that their votes for president don't count anymore, that heir electoral votes will be decided by voters in other states. I have to ask yet again, how can that be constitutional?

I see a trip the United States Supreme Court in the future for the Attorney General of Colorado to defend such an anti-American piece of legislation.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s frost heave and pothole season here in New Hampshire and it’s a bumper crop of both. With the wet winter and the few bouts of warm weather (defined as any time the temps are above freezing), our roads have taken a beating. Even the state roads are pretty beat up. Most of the local roads are posted with weight limits to keep heavier vehicles from tearing up the already damaged roads.

With warmer temps (50’s) forecast for the coming week, there will be a lot of snow melt. Night time temps will be below freezing, meaning the frost heaves and potholes are only going to get worse. The only ones that might like those conditions are the tire stores and repair shops who will be replacing bent wheels and performing front end alignments.

This is one of the seven seasons we experience here in northern New England. Right now it’s mud/flood season, to be followed shortly by spring, black fly, almost summer, summer, fall, and then winter.

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I was going through the Weekend Pundit archives and came across this post from 2006 that addresses the Electoral College and the efforts by the Leftist know-nothings to do away with it, either through ignorance or malice aforethought. I’m inclined to think it’s both, with the malice having helped create the ignorance of the importance of the Electoral College and the reasoning behind it.

The arguments made back then to abolish the Electoral College are the same ones being made today, except that the people making the argument today are even more willfully ignorant than those 13 years ago and their arguments are even less logical, at least to me.

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Want to know just how bad the affordable housing problem is in California? It’s this bad.

California has seen a proliferation in RV and vehicle living in some of the state’s most expensive areas and cities, such as Palo Alto, in recent years. (Palo Alto is the Silicon Valley area – ed.

The rise of mobile homes lining streets has been fueled by excessive rents and house prices, though numbers are hard to pin down.

I have read about and heard first hand accounts from people I know talk about making six-figure salaries but not being able to afford to buy or rent anyplace anywhere near work. Two or three hour commutes aren’t the answer. Who wants to spend 4 to 6 hours a day on the road? It doesn’t help that the various communities have very restrictive regulations that make building new affordable housing difficult, with lengthy application, review, and permitting processes. Those processes tend to preclude building affordable housing because the return on investment in both time and money isn’t worth it. Upscale housing is one of the few places where the time and effort pays off.

Is it any wonder why otherwise well off professionals are reduced to living in RVs, campers, or their cars?

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I have seen the Mueller Report described as many different things, but this one is the best: A giant crap sandwich for the Democrats.

It’s not often I, like most of America, make a point to watch MSNBC or CNN. If I want to know what leftists are thinking I just imagine something so incredibly insane that there’s no way an educated adult would actually believe it, then double it and I’m there. But Friday night was an exception, I had to see how they responded to the news of the Mueller Report’s submission to the Attorney General and no further indictments coming. It was glorious.

You rarely get the chance to watch someone have to choke down a crap sandwich of their own making in front of the people they’d been force-feeding one to for years, but that was Friday night on cable news.

--snip--

Everyone on those two channels should have been apologetic, gaslighting the country for 2 years before having the curtain ripped back so thoroughly should have been met with some humility. They should have been begging their audience for forgiveness. They were not.

I’m still waiting for heads to start exploding.

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Nikki Haley has the right of it in regards to the Mueller Report. The problem is that the Democrats just won’t let it go and want to continue their own investigation. As if they will do any better job than the 22-month long Mueller investigation. They won’t, and they won’t be unbiased by any means. They aren’t looking to see if Trump violated the law. They’re looking to prove what they think (or hope) he did. Basically, they want to continue the witch hunt they’ve been supporting over the past 22 months. They want Trump’s head and will not stop until they get him, even if they need to make stuff up or twist innocent events into something sinister.

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It looks like Washington State is working hard to make itself over as a northern version of California, in this case by expanding their existing sanctuary state rules. This shows me they are as shortsighted as California’s state government and are only borrowing trouble at the expense of their citizens. It also makes me wonder if the various county sheriffs will choose to not enforce the law just as they have announced they will not enforce Washington’s unconstitutional gun laws.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where warmer weather has returned, March Madness is getting interesting, and where we have to play very close attention to what our Democrat majority legislature is trying to take away from us this time.

Any Minute Now - The Mueller Report

Now that the Mueller Investigation report has been handed over to the Attorney General, and the AG is going to present the findings of the report to Congress, I expect there will be tearing of hair and rending of clothing by those who were licking their chops at thought the report would show collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

That not one jot of that report has been leaked to the media so far tells me that the report is not the so-called smoking gun the Democrats, 'Democratic' Socialists, Progressives, Never-Trumpers and anti-fascists have been so desperately hoping for. If it did implicate Trump and prove (or at least imply) that he was guilty of such a transgression, illicit copies would have made their way to ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, the New York Times and Washington Post and would be the top story 24/7. That not one word has made its way to the MSM/DNC from Deep State operatives in the DOJ is telling. The report is likely a great big juicy nothingburger.

Once the report is finally made public as President Trump wants, I expect to see heads to start exploding...


'Nuff said.

Why You Need A Gun - A Short Story

As the gun-grabbers dial up the rhetoric, trying very hard to disarm law-abiding citizens while ensuring gun-toting criminals will have free reign in government imposed gun free (aka free fire) zones. They try very hard to convince people that no one needs guns and that the government can protect them. But they can't. The question also begs, who will protect us from the government?

By way of The Smallest Minority comes this piece that was originally posted on Facebook that delves into the “Why do you need a gun” question.

A couple years ago I was working security at a bar in northern Virginia. I overheard a table of college kids arguing about gun rights and gun control and it was getting far too emotional so I did what any sane combat veteran would do and attempted to exfiltrate. I must not have withdrawn as surreptitiously as I intended, because I was stopped in my tracks when a 5-foot-nothing brunette seemingly leapt in front of me and blurted out "Excuse me, can you help us?"

I'm sure I must have looked irritated as I cycled through the possible quips and excuses I considered available to me but being uncertain that she wasn't some Senator's daughter, I caved: "What's up?"

She basically leads me to this table of two other females (probably both named Karen) and a very soft looking male.

Becky: "So, we were just talking about current events and, you know. So, you look like you're probably in the military, right? Like the Army?"

(When you accuse someone of being in the military you probably don't need to give an example.)

Me: "Similar.. yeah."

Becky: "Right. Okay. So, do you think civilians should be allowed to own guns?"

Me: "Most of us. Yes."

Becky: (Clearly not happy with my answer) "Okay, so, why do you think you need a gun?"

(At this point it's almost 2AM and I've just given up on patience. Hold my beer.)

(With intentionally overt condescension): "Oh, honey, I don't. I don't need a gun."

Becky stares at me blankly, so I continue, but with a more serious tone: "I could follow you home, walk up your driveway, and beat you to death with the daily newspaper. I could choke you to death with that purse. I could take a credit card, break it in half, and cut your throat open with it. With enough time and effort I could beat your boyfriend here with a rolled up pair of socks. I could probably dream up six dozen other ways I could easily end your life if you gave me an hour or so. If I wanted to, I could wrap my hand around that beer mug and kill all four of you before you could make it to the exit. The worst part is, in your Utopian little fantasy land, there ain't a thing any of you could do about it.”

“I don't need a gun. You need a gun. You need a gun because of men like me."

Call me a jerk, but if you want to keep your guns, these are the conversations we all need to start having.

(Formatted and edited for clarity – ed)

Here in my home state of New Hampshire, the Democrat gun-grabbers have been writing and passing legislation to make buying and owning guns very difficult. What's ironic is that New Hampshire is a constitutional carry state, has a high percentage of gun owners, has one of the lowest crime rates in the nation, and doesn't suffer from mass shootings and wholesale slaughter seen in places like Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and a whole host of other blue state cities with highly restrictive gun laws. Our 'compassionate' legislators are incapable of seeing that they are trying to impose solutions for problems that do not exist. Our only hope is that our governor, a Republican, will veto all of the legislation and preserve our Right to Keep and Bear Arms under our state constitution. It is far more detailed than the US Constitution's Second Amendment and more restrictive of government's power over the right of our citizens to own and carry guns.

Only time will tell if these legislators will succeed or if our citizens will finally tell them to “Sod off, Swampy!”

Renewables Aren't Going To Save Us

We've been hearing for some time now how the only answer to save the planet was to switch all of our electricity over to renewables, ditching coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power. Most of those making such claims obviously haven't done the math, haven't figured out that it is impossible for all of our energy needs to be met with renewables unless they are willing to allow widespread ecological damage that will be required in order to realize the 'dream' of renewable energy. An example I used in one of the Disqus comment threads laid out the problem, running a rough calculation of what it would take to replace a single nuclear power plant, specifically the Seabrook Nuclear Plant in Seabrook, NH with solar.

Seabrook is a 1300MW plant. The grounds take up about a square mile of land on the New Hampshire seacoast. A 1KW solar panel is about 18 square feet in area. It would take 1,300,000 panels to equal the output of Seabrook. But that would only be the instantaneous output.

To provide the equivalent of a Seabrook 24 hours a day, 7 days a week would require many times that number, assuming that sufficient power storage capability existed. For the purposes of this exercise we will assume that it is close to the equinox, so there would be 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness. We can assume that maximum effective generation takes place for about 4 hours every day, but to be overly generous, we'll assume 6 hours. To provide enough power for 24 hours you would need 4 times as many solar panels since you'll need to generate a full 24 hours worth of electricity in only 6 hours, with one-fourth for immediate use and the other three-fourths being stored for use later in the day when there is little or no sunlight. So that increases the number of panels needed by a factor of 4 which brings the total needed to 5,200,000. But wait, there's more!

You also have to take into account that it isn't always sunny during daylight hours, so there will be a less than 100% sunlight available during the 6 peak hours. Again, we'll be generous and assume that any deficit will be only 30%. That means there will need to be 30% more panels to make up the deficit. That takes us to 6,760,000 panels. There are still a lot of other factors that would need to be taken into account, but I'd need a bigger blog to address even a few of them, so we'll go with the 6,760,000 panels for the rest of our calculations.

Since each panel is 18 square feet in size, that means the total area of the solar array will be 121,680,000 square feet in size. That equates to 4.36 square miles, and that assumes all of the panels are built with no gaps between panels. Since that isn't practical, it's more likely that there will need to be space between rows of panels to allow for maintenance, rain and snow run off, as well as thermal expansion. So let us assume that there will be one panel's length between rows. That doubles the area covered to 8.72 square miles. So in order to replace a Seabrook, we'll need almost 9 times the land area, and that's assuming almost ideal conditions. Seeing as we are almost halfway between the equator and the North Pole, the useful amount of sunlight available to the solar arrays will be less than what I've calculated here. The area needed to provide adequate electricity equivalent to the Seabrook nuclear power plant, at least during the winter months, is likely to be double of what I've already calculated, meaning 17.44 square miles. Now multiply that by the number of Seabrook power plant equivalents – nuclear, coal, and natural gas plants, and you'll see the problem.

There's also the matter of severe weather that can damage or destroy large portions of the solar arrays.

Then there's wind, something I've always found intriguing, but also troubling considering the large amounts of land they require, the documented health problems associated with them, and their deleterious effect on birds and bats.

Keep in mind that my calculations above are merely back-of-the-envelope estimations. I know I've left out a number of factors that can affect the numbers. But when the We-Can-Replace-All-Of-Our-Energy-Needs-With-Renewable-Energy believers choose to ignore major factors, including the vastly increased demand for electricity that is supposed to replace fossil fuels, I have to get my three cents worth in. (Where do they think all of the electricity needed to charge all of those wonderful electric vehicles is going to come from?)

Then there's this:


'Nuff said.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Our first hint of spring weather – two days of temperatures in the 50’s and 60’s – has ended and we’re back into more winter-like temperatures. The colder temps will slow the melting of ice and snow, reducing the possibilities of ice dams and flooding in the area.

The ski areas in New Hampshire have reported that business was up this year with the weather cooperating by providing more than sufficient snowfall throughout the ski season. While there were no big storms dumping feet of snow, the series of small storms with snowfall totals between 3 and 8 inches gave us more than enough snow to keep ski conditions perfect throughout the season. Our local ski area will be closing on April 7th, a bit earlier than some of the other areas in the state. Since it is a three-season resort they close earlier in order to start making preparations for the summer season.

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It didn’t take long for the clueless Progressives to lay blame for the mass shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand on both Donald Trump and Chelsea Clinton. (I never thought I’d use those names together in the same sentence because of their identical experiences.)

First, Alexandria Occasional-Cortex blames Trump and the NRA for the actions of the racist Maoist-leaning Australian. Then Chelsea Clinton is accosted for her condemnation of anti-Semitism which her pro-Palestinian accoster equated to Islamophobia, and hence the cause of the shooting in New Zealand. (No, I don’t understand that logic chain either, but then a lot of Progressives don’t really ‘do’ logic, they do ‘feelz’ and programmed talking points. No thought required...or tolerated.)

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New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern figures she knows how to prevent another such shooting: ban all semi-automatic rifles.

The problem?

While the guns used by the shooter were legally purchased, they were illegally modified. This goes to a problem that many in government always choose to ignore, that being if someone really wants a firearm, there are always ways to get them, legal or not. If the shooter in this case hadn’t had access to legal firearms he could modify, he could have gotten them through illegal means. Most gun control laws apply to law-abiding citizens, not criminals. Criminals don’t care about the law and won’t be cowed by such laws.

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Is CNN doomed?

Yes. Yes it is.

Keep in mind that a lot of its viewership is captive audiences at airports. That is not a formula for continued survival.

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It seems that one effect of the Trump economy is that the number of job openings is greater than the people available to fill them. But don’t worry, the Democrats have a plan to fix that problem and reverse the dynamic, returning us to the bad old days of the Obama economy – high unemployment, low economic growth, high taxes, and business-killing regulations.

But don’t worry, the Democrats will find some way of telling you you’ll be better off with the loss of jobs and confiscatory taxes.

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Are things falling apart in France? If what’s been going on in Paris is an indicator, it’s quite possible.

The Yellow Vest protests are again growing in size and the violence that goes with them is growing as well. When President Macron is only paying lip service to the issues that have fueled the protests did he really expect the protests and protesters to go away? That the protests have also spread to a few other countries within the EU is also telling anyone paying attention that the EU is in trouble.

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If the Democrats can’t beat Trump at the ballot box, they’ll do what they can to keep him off the ballot entirely by making it a requirement for presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns. While a federal law is unlikely to ever make it through Congress and past a presidential veto, that hasn’t stopped the Democrats in two states from trying do just that.

Donald Trump didn’t release his taxes. He refused to bow to liberal media pressure. Yet, for New Jersey, they’re advancing legislation to keep any presidential candidate off their ballot if he or she didn’t release their tax returns. In Washington State, they’re trying to do the same thing last week.

I’m not sure the legislation passes the smell test. Can states force candidates to divulge private information like tax returns as a qualifier for being allowed to run for public office? Is it constitutional? How far will the Dems take it? Will they require disclosure of phone records, text messages, and e-mails next? What about sexual history? How far with these butt-munches go in order to disqualify their opponents from running against their candidates?

One has to remember that the Progressives are all about power. They may use the language of democracy, free speech, privacy, and civil rights, but they are not in favor of any of those things. Their actions prove that want unrestricted power over the populace and will do anything to get it. We’ve already seen their street thugs, Antifa, use violence to intimidate or silence their opponents. Now making sure that only people they approve of can run in elections is another indicator of what they plan to do.

One has to remember that the first president to reveal their tax returns was Richard Nixon. There is no law or requirement for presidential candidates to reveal their tax returns. None. Nor should there be. All a tax return will do is allow the Democrats to point out every trivial ‘deviation’ as some kind of indicator of high level corruption even though those deviations are no different from those of millions of other taxpayers.

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If we need another justification of why we need to get our southern border under control, look no further than the latest outrage by way of MS-13. In this case MS-13 gang members stabbed a teen over 100 times and then set their victim on fire.

These are the type of immigrants congressional Democrats are ‘protecting’ with their opposition to tightening border security and extending the border wall. Even though the victim was affiliated with MS-13, that doesn’t give the Democrats a pass on stopping the flood of illegal immigrants crossing the border.

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If you need another indicator that spring is closing in, I just secured my boat slip for another boating season and have put in a repair order for work to be done on the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout, aka The Boat, before it goes back into the water in May. It doesn’t need a lot of work, just routine maintenance (oil change and tune-up) and changing the bar and ring anodes on the stern drive.

Hopefully The Boat will be back in the water by the second weekend in May.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where spring is just around the corner, the snow and ice are melting away, and thoughts of warm days out on the lake are starting to intrude.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a snowy day today here in New Hampshire, with about 4 inches falling here at The Gulch. It was also the day that Deb and I went to our tax guy to get our 2018 taxes done. Considering the heaviest of the snow was falling when we were on our way to our tax guy’s office, 4WD was a necessity. The roads went from barely dusted to covered in less than half an hour.

At least the a lot of the snow that’s fallen today won’t be around all that long as we’ll be seeing temps in the 50’s by the end of the week.

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It looks like the Left is working very hard to kill the economy, showing their animosity towards free enterprise.

The recent fiasco surrounding the building of Amazon’s partial HQ2 in New York is the latest development in the war against free enterprise. Because of opposition from anti-business politicians, notably Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Amazon decided to pull the plug on investing billions of dollars into the campus that was planned for construction in Queens.

The loss of the venture—which would have created 25,000 new jobs paying an average salary of $150,000 per year—marks a significant loss for the area economy and is a window into the future if the Left’s newly intensified anti-business canon is left unshackled.

Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” is a set of goals that embodies this extreme agenda—a platform comprised of socialist policies claimed to be silver bullet solutions to everything from climate change to income inequality. The resolution not only calls on Congress to eliminate a vast majority of current energy infrastructure and renovate or rebuild all structures in the country, but seeks to upend the U.S. Constitution as we know it—including its safeguards for free enterprise.

The history of the Left’s success when it takes control of economics is dismal. The most recent example of the Left’s failure is Venezuela. They took control of every aspect of the country’s economy and destroyed it. Venezuela was the wealthiest nation in South America. Now it’s the poorest. On top of that, they can’t even keep the lights on. That is the future the Left has in store for us if they have their way, AOC’s Green New Deal ‘utopia’ notwithstanding.

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As a follow-on to the above, there’s this from Steve Sheldon that shows us that the Left can’t do math. If they could, they’d realize that no matter how much money they take away from the wealthy they won’t have nearly enough to pay for all the socialist utopian things they’ve promised to deliver.

They won’t even be close.

Yet there are Leftists (like Kamala Harris) who think that the costs of things like the Green New Deal can be safely ignored. It has a price tag of $93 trillion. That’s trillion with a ‘T’. That’s almost 5 times the US Gross Domestic Product.

That’s not something cannot be ignored unless your plan is to destroy the US economy and return us to a hand-to-mouth existence. (Of course the Leftist Powers That Be won’t have to live that way, just the peons, meaning anyone who is not them.)

This is one of the things they have in mind for us:

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A lot of people would like to see the changes between Standard Time and Daylight Savings Time go away. I am one of them. So is the New York Times.

Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire are at the extreme eastern edge of the Eastern Time Zone. The Eastern Time zone is quite ‘wide’ at the northern latitudes in the US. Looking at a North American Time Zone Map one can see that moving the three states into the Atlantic Time Zone makes sense. Daylight Savings Time would go away and the need to change the clocks twice a year would do likewise.

I can certainly live with that.

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Town meeting is this coming Tuesday here in New Hampshire. It’s where voters in various towns will gather to vote on their town’s spending, zoning ordinance changes, and other issues. School district meetings will be a couple of days later for some towns. Both of these meetings determine how much the towns will spend and in turn how much the townsfolk will be paying in property taxes.

It is this last part that many Flatlanders have a difficult time understanding.

They move in “from away”, propose all kinds of spending for nice-to-haves to recreate what it has they had where they came from, and then get upset when their property taxes go up if they get their way. They have a total cognitive disconnect between spending and taxes. They don’t understand that there is rarely a source of funds outside of those from their town. The state isn’t likely to provide funds for nice-to-haves when they have so many need-to-haves to take care of first.

As an aside, if the state has surplus funds they tend to go one of two places: the state’s Rainy Day Fund or back to the towns in the form of additional funding for things like road paving/reconstruction, water projects, and other projects that have already been approved and are in progress. (No new projects can be funded this way.) The additional funding helps towns do more work on existing projects such as road paving and reconstruction. Towns usually have a list of roads that will be repaved/repaired each year and they budget for that list. If additional funds become available, some roads from the next year’s list are moved up to this year. So far I haven’t heard anyone complain because their road will be fixed and repaved a year earlier than originally planned.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow is still falling, dreams of the upcoming boating season are intruding, and where Monday has yet again come around too soon.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s another snowy weekend, with just a dusting on Saturday and more snow today with 3 to 6 inches of snow expected to fall by Monday morning.

While we haven’t had any big storms dumping large amounts of snow, there have been numerous small storms with snowfall amounts between 3 and 6 inches. The snow cover has been adding up and roads and driveways have been getting narrower with each snowfall. Snowbanks are frozen solid which means that cutting them back is difficult to do by hand or with a snowblower.

March is the snowiest month here in New England so if we have any big storms it’s likely some roads could become so narrowed that two way traffic will be difficult and driveways will become very narrow which will make it hard to get in and out of our vehicles.

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Speaking of snow and winter, the following be something only folks from the northern climes will get.

I received an urgent text from a friend the other day. The text read:

Some bozo put up signs advertising a local band or something called The Frost Heaves. Best get [the town Land Use officer] to take [them] down. That’s illegal, I hear.

Only in small towns….

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They can’t say they weren’t warned.

New York City experienced the worst decline in restaurant jobs since in 9/11 after the $15 minimum wage became a reality.

The Big Apple’s fast-food industry, The New York Times recently reported, has long served as a laboratory for progressive politicians and the nation’s labor machine.

But new economic research suggests their latest experiment is not going as planned.

Data show that following the labor movement’s “Fight for $15” victory, which imposed steep annual increases in mandatory wages for workers, New York City experienced its sharpest decline in restaurant jobs in nearly 20 years.

San Francisco tried it. Seattle tried it. Both saw the same effects – a loss in jobs – yet New York somehow figured it wouldn’t suffer the same fate as the other two bastions of Progressive thought.

They were wrong, as usual.

Here’s another look at the issue by way of The Lid.

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Of course Progressives want to apply 21st century ‘sensibilities’ to 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th century history. They also want to rewrite history, changing all of our achievements into examples of oppression by American white males and Western Civilization in general.

They best be careful because if they choose to ignore real history it may come back to bite them, hard.

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If we need any more proof of AGW, here it is:

Los Angeles didn’t see temperatures reach into the 70’s during the entire month of February.

So if we are to believe the warmists, AGW will trigger below normal temperatures. Does that mean it will bring on another ice age? If that’s the case, does that automatically imply that cooling the atmosphere will extend the Interglacial period we’re in right now?

The people want to know!

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Speaking of global warming and February, it appears the sun had absolutely no sunspots during the month. What’s also remarkable is the sun is the dimmest it’s been since satellite measurements began in 1978.

Hmm, could there be a tie-in between solar output and climate?

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As if we need any more proof that the Democrats in Congress do not understand the phrase “Shall Not Be Infringed”, all we have to do is look at the two “oppressive gun bills” they passed in two days.

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Believe it or not, there are people who firmly believe that toilet paper should be recycled.

I’m sorry, but some things should not be recycled. Soiled toilet paper is one of those things.

Sheesh.

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Did you know there are Three Rules of Hate Speech?

Rule 1. The First Amendment protects all ideas–loving, hateful, or in between.

In the United States, “hate speech” is just a political label, like “un-American speech” or “rude speech.” Some people use the phrase broadly, some more narrowly–but there’s no legal definition, because there is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment.

Rule 2. Some speech is not protected by the First Amendment, but that’s true regardless of whether it’s bigoted or hateful.

For instance, threats of violence are constitutionally unprotected.

Rule 3. Hate crime laws are constitutional, so long as they punish violence or vandalism, not speech.

The law often punishes people more because of why they did what they did. Killing someone for money will get you a harsher punishment than killing them out of momentary anger. Likewise, firing an employee because of his race will get you a civil lawsuit; firing an employee for most other reasons won’t.

Of course none of these rules will apply to the Progressive snowflakes because everyone knows that speech they don’t like is ‘literal’ violence, right?

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Like many of the Left, AOC is a firm believer in “Do as I say, not as I do.” This is particularly so when it comes to her hypocrisy in regards to climate change and her Green New Deal.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m not.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the lake is frozen over and snow covered, where thoughts of summer boating have started to intrude, and where visits to my storage unit to move my boat rigging from the rear to the front of the unit to make it easier to access when the time comes.