California Burns As Newsome And The Watermelon Environmentalists Fiddle

First, I have to apologize for a lack of posts this week as I have been under the weather.

Now, on to more important issues.

Seeing the fires being fanned by the Santa Ana winds, more blame is being heaped upon PG&E by Governor Newsom and the various climate alarmists infesting state government. One fix being proposed by the increasingly irrelevant governor?

Enticing multi-billionaire Warren Buffet to by PG&E.

Once again we have a socialist proposing an old solution: Capitalism solving socialism’s many problems.

There’s only one problem with this solution, that being that no capitalist in their right mind would go anywhere near such a self-destructive solution. Why would anyone want to buy an asset that has multiple lawsuits filed against it and is going through bankruptcy in order to protect itself from those same lawsuits? Why would anyone in their right mind want to take up ownership of a utility that is so hamstrung by overregulation and profit-killing state mandates that there’s no way the utility will be able to meet the needs of its customers, maintain its facilities, and not lose millions of dollars in the process?

Warren Buffet isn’t that insane. I can’t picture any other financier doing anything like that…except maybe Tom Steyer. After all, he’s always talking about bring back “power to the people”. Maybe it’s time for him to put his money where his mouth is. But the chances of that happening are…umm…zero. Even Steyer, Progressive as he is, isn’t that stupid.

Maybe.

PG&E has been stuck in a lose-lose situation for some time. As I have written before, PG&E has been fighting California environmental roadblocks that have made it difficult, if not impossible to cut back brush and tree limbs away from their power lines. Those same roadblocks have made it difficult for the utility to maintain their powerlines because they cannot get easy access to them. Then there’s the state mandates requiring PG&E to invest funds in “green” energy projects and rebates, funds that would have been better spent maintaining and upgrading their facilities.

Who ends up paying the price for these problems? Everyone except those in power.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a rainy and cool day here in the Lakes Region today, the antithesis of Saturday. That fact makes me glad that the WP Mom and I visited the farm stand of the farm where BeezleBub works yesterday.

It is the last weekend of the farm stand’s operation for the year. That doesn’t mean the farm work itself is done for the year. There’s plenty to be done before winter arrives, including making sure the farm’s turkeys are well taken care of until the week of Thanksgiving and the rest of the livestock – cows, pigs, and chickens – will have the food and shelter they’ll need for the coming winter.

Planning for greenhouse operations are also under way, making sure the right crops will planted and that there will be enough firewood to fuel the wood furnace that heats the greenhouses through the winter. Work on sawing the timber that has been felled for use in a new barn will also be taking place, with enough being milled to start construction next spring.

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Yet another institution of higher indoctrination learning has learned the hard way that going “woke” is going to cost them plenty. In this case, the University of Michigan has spent $2.25 million in legal fees in defending itself in two “Dear Colleague Letter” kangaroo court cases.

How many millions have been spent by colleges and universities defending themselves against such lawsuits because they abandoned due process at the behest of the aforementioned “Deal Colleague” letter? How many of those lawsuits were won by the plaintiffs? (Hint: All of them.)

Will colleges and universities learn the lessons the others have learned and change how they handle sexual assault allegations, adhering to due process rather than their unconstitutional kangaroo court rules and investigation processes? Maybe. But until then they will continue to be sued and will continue to lose.

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Here’s yet another example of a college’s incompetence and malice when it came to convicting a male college student for a sexual assault.

In this case, Boston College convicted a male student of a sexual assault even after a police investigation proved the accused student couldn’t possibly have committed the assault.

Doe was a senior in 2012 when he went on a student-sponsored cruise for the school newspaper. With more than 600 passengers on board, the cruise dance floor was crowded. According to court papers, as Doe made his way across the floor, a female student, “AB,” started screaming at him. Doe’s acquaintance, “JK,” who had been walking in front of him, turned to him to say, “Sorry dude, that was my bad.”

Within minutes, the ship’s security guards detained Doe, placing plastic bags on his hands to preserve evidence and keeping him in custody overnight. The following morning, he was charged with indecent assault and battery; AB had reported that someone had digitally penetrated her anus. When Doe later phoned JK about what had happened, JK responded, “What a b-tch! What kind of girl goes to a dance floor like that and doesn’t expect to get touched or grabbed?” according to the recording of the call.

None of the evidence pointed to Doe. Footage of the event showed Doe several feet from AB. Forensic testing showed none of her DNA on Doe’s hands. So the district attorney dropped all charges. Boston College, however, proceeded to investigate on its own under Title IX and held a hearing within a month, where the adjudicating panel was told to put JK “at ease” when he testified, establishing that JK was only a witness and not a suspect. It then found Doe responsible and suspended him for more than a year, postponing his graduation until 2014.

Boston College convicted and suspended the student even though there was unequivocal evidence he couldn’t have possibly committed the assault. So the student did the only thing he could do.

He sued Boston College for malicious prosecution and won. The jury awarded him $100,000 for lost income and a semester’s tuition.

This is an example of how the “porous Title IX processes at Boston College and around the country fail to protect against malicious or false accusations.” The “Dear Colleague” letter strikes again and another college has to pay out due to its own malfeasance.

Boston College didn’t get a fraction oi the abuse it deserved.

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"If you only listened to MSNBC, you would never know that the United States currently has the strongest economy in the history of human civilization." - Scott Adams

(H/T Maggie’s Farm)

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Do you want to see what our ‘betters’ in New Hampshire have planned for we Granite Staters in regard to energy? Then all we have to do is to look towards California’s present situation (minus the brush fires) to see where we’re headed, both energy-wise and politically.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom is warning citizens that they could be in for a long weekend as the state’s public utility announced Saturday plans to shut down huge sections of the electric grid.

The Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s move could black out an estimated 940,000 homes and businesses in parts of more than 30 counties up and down California. PG&E is trying to prevent potential wildfires from spreading through the state while keeping tabs on downed power lines.

Newsom, who is under pressure as gas prices increase, told Californians things are going to be tough for the next few days.

Next few days? I have a feeling Californians will be having these problems for years and they’re only going to get worse. All these problems can be laid at the feet of years of California’s Progressive government overreach and their kowtowing to watermelon environmentalists, basing decisions on ‘feelz’ or ‘how it should be’, and not on hard science and how it really is.

This is the fate that many of the same forces wish for us here in New Hampshire, including business-killing taxes and regulations, removal of local control and imposition of state control from top to bottom, and dismantling of our energy infrastructure and increasing dependence on unreliable and inadequate energy supplies, be it electricity or natural gas. (Certainly our US Senators, Shaheen and Hassan, have been working hard to destroy the New Hampshire Advantage and make us just another failing Blue State.)

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It appears the only way the Democrats can pull of their coup is by using secret proceedings in their “star chamber” impeachment inquiry, preventing the public, and just as importantly, Republicans from having access to testimony transcripts even though House Rules state quite clearly all members of the House “shall have access thereto”. But Schiff has such a hard-on to get Trump he’s willing to violate House Rules, ignore ethics rules, and toss the Constitution out the window. I have a feeling that Schiff and other House members as well as former and present DOJ, FBI, and State Department staffers are going to go to jail because of their illegal activities leading up to and after the 2016 and 2018 elections.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it’s raining heavily, the leaves are coming off the trees in large numbers, and Halloween is this week!

Lay The Blame Where It Belongs

In light of the latest round of brush fires in California, one has to look at the causes, both natural and man-made, to determine why they happen and do the work needed to prevent them from happening again, at least to the magnitude we’ve seen over the past couple of years.

California’s government and the media (there really isn’t any difference at this point), have laid the blame entirely at the feet of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), saying they’ve been negligent. According to Sacramento, PG&E hasn’t been performing enough maintenance or clearing the brush from their rights of way to help prevent brush fires. With the lengthy drought being experienced by California literally adding fuel to the fire, it’s been a perfect storm of conditions to make even small brush fires potentially disastrous.

Anyone paying attention to the situation out there knows that PG&E has been taking precautions to help lessen the danger, though those precautions are drastic – shutting down the power into areas experiencing high winds to prevent the power lines from sparking and igniting fires.

The big problem has been that the state of California has been laying the blame on the wrong party – PG&E – when the blame should be laid entirely at the feet of Sacramento. (Link is paywalled.)

Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to deflect political blame. “It’s about dog-eat-dog capitalism meeting climate change. It’s about corporate greed meeting climate change. It’s about decades of mismanagement,” Mr. Newsom declared. But Democrats for years have treated PG&E as their de facto political subsidiary. The wildfires and blackouts are the direct result of their mismanagement.

The state Public Utilities Commission is in charge of enforcing state safety laws and regulations, which can carry penalties of up to $50,000 per violation per day. Yet PG&E received no safety fines related to its power-grid management over the last several years. The commission has instead focused on enforcing the Legislature’s climate mandates.

State law mandates that utilities obtain 33% of electric generation from renewables such as wind and solar by 2020 and 60% by 2030. Utilities must spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to reduce the cost of green energy for low-income households. PG&E has prioritized political obeisance over safety.

Money that was needed to perform maintenance and upgrades was diverted to meet the state mandates. Brush cutting that needed to be done to reduce the fire hazard was hindered by environmental regulations.

But PG&E's equipment couldn't start these huge wildfires without a bunch of dead brush fueling the flames. As Chuck Devore writes in Forbes, "the outrageous cost to remove a few dead trees from private land is a consequence of California's Byzantine environmental regulatory patchwork." It's not climate change that's responsible for these massive fires, "it's decades of environmental mismanagement that has created a tinderbox of unharvested timber, dead trees, and thick underbrush."

As Devore writes, "forest management is so bad on public lands that a new report, ordered by the California legislature in 2010, shows that the portion of California's National Forests protected from timber harvesting is now a net contributor to atmospheric carbon dioxide due to fires and trees killed by insects and disease." So if environmentalists really believed climate change was causing the fires, they would be calling for more timber harvesting to stop it.

Funding diverted from maintenance to state mandated feel good projects. Unnecessarily difficult environmental regulations severely restricting much needed brush cutting and tree trimming.

A perfect storm, indeed.

How Dare You Use The Law To Investigate Our Wrongdoing!

I find it amusing, but not unexpected, that Congressional Democrats are complaining that their machinations and those of their fellow travelers and Deep State operatives are now being investigated by a US Attorney as criminal activity.

That there were abuses of the FISA process by using unvetted opposition research which led to illegal surveillance (including wiretaps) of the Trump campaign is not in question. That there is criticism from those who either committed those acts or sanctioned them, the same folks who thought it was perfectly OK when AG’s Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch targeted Obama opponents and critics, are showing their hypocrisy. The only ones they want to see investigated and intimidated are their GOP opponents even if they have committed no criminal acts. (One must remember Obama used the IRS to punish and block conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, groups that were mirror images of progressive political groups that received their tax-exempt status with little or no delays.)

Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Adam Schiff are condemning the transformation of John Durham's investigation into the origins of the Russia probe into a criminal investigation.

When challenged, attack. The two issued a joint statement saying that the Justice Department has become a “vehicle for President Trump’s political retribution.”

Note that the congressmen are not talking about what Durham is investigating, only how he's doing it.

It seems they think that only they can disparage and investigate their political rivals. It is time they learn that they are as beholden to the laws of this nation as everyone else, even if they must learn it the hard way when a jury declares them “guilty as charged”.

Organic Farming Isn't All That Green

A lot of people have been pushing for more farmers to switch to organic farming because they believe it is greener, better for the environment, and produces superior quality food. But if you ask any farmer, they’ll tell you that none of these beliefs are true. The “organic” folks will try to sell you on the idea that farmers don’t want to be bothered with organic farming for several reasons, one of them being that they don’t want to make the effort. But if you talk to the farmers it tends to boil down to one specific reason: They make less money. In some cases, a lot less money. That’s a good way to go out of business.

While the big commercial farms might be willing to lose profit because they are such large operations, the smaller family farms don’t necessarily have that kind of financial wiggle room. However, there are other reasons why organic farming isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. One of the biggest: It isn’t as green as everyone believes it is.

Because yields per acre are lower using organic methods, more land is required to provide the same amount of food. One estimate is that between 16% and 33% more land would be required. That in turn means more labor, more energy (meaning more CO2 generated), and most important, more water.

So land that isn’t presently being used to grow food would need to be converted to farmland, be it grasslands or forests. That removes land acting as a carbon sink into one that will generate more CO2. More land will need to be tilled, planted, and weeded, more pests will need to be removed which means more pesticides (they can be used in organic farming if they are the proper non-persistent type) applied more frequently. More water will be needed to irrigate larger tracts of land, water that will need to be pumped from the source which means more energy to run the pumps. More energy to run the pumps, whether they are electric, or gasoline/diesel powered, means more CO2 generated. All of this only addresses the issues with growing crops. It doesn’t even touch upon raising livestock, assuming the farm is going to go organic in this area as well.

The emissions impact of the meat, milk, and eggs produced from organically raised livestock is more complicated. On the one hand, emissions can increase because animals don’t plump up as fast without hormones, supplements, and conventional feed. That, for instance, grants cattle longer lives in which to belch out methane, another especially powerful greenhouse gas. On the other, allowing animals to spend more of their lives grazing on open grasslands may stimulate additional plant growth that captures more carbon dioxide, while cutting emissions associated with standard feeds.

Raising livestock also requires more land because without using feed, the cattle, sheep, goats, and other ruminants require a lot of grazing land. Farmers will need to grow hay in order to feed the animals during the winter. That means even more land converted to agricultural use. Here in New Hampshire, that means cutting down trees since the state is 85% forest land.

It seems that too many people do not think things through, one of those things being organic farming. They look at only the upsides while devoutly ignoring the downsides. Then again, that’s nothing new and it will continue to be the case as long as people exist.

Now, about that problem some people have with nuclear power……

Social Media Is A Disease And Smart Phones Are A Trap

Glenn Reynolds addressed Princeton’s James Madison program dealing with social media and how it has affected society.

One thing that The Perfesser addresses is how platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and others help divide people, promote anger and hatred, and have acted like a disease vector. But one thing that Reynolds didn’t address is the absolute addiction the people have to their smart phones. People feel uncomfortable if they don’t have their phone with them or nearby. I have seen people freak out if their phone isn’t readily available, be it because they’ve misplaced it, left it at home, or the battery has died and they don’t have the means of recharging the phone immediately. They feel isolated and alone even in a crowd of people. You can’t tell me that isn’t a factor in this social media dilemma.

One of the other things I have noticed is how often people have asked me why I didn’t answer their phone call or their text messages right away. As I had to remind them on more than one occasion, I have my phone is for my convenience, not theirs. I don’t always have it on my person, particularly at work. I don’t feel compelled to answer it every time it rings, particularly in light of the large number of annoying robocalls. Sometimes I am in the middle of something and I don’t feel compelled to answer the phone when it rings. The caller will either leave a message or call back later if it’s important. If it’s someone I know I’ll call them back when I’m finished whatever it is I’m working on. If it’s a text, I’ll answer it when I have time to do so. Again, my phone is for my convenience, not anyone else’s, period.

To close this out, there’s this by way of Powerline:

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was a quiet weekend here in central New Hampshire. The leaf peepers are still with us, foliage colors are at peak or just past peak, and the weather has been cool. The heavy rains and winds we saw late last week knock a lot of leaves off the trees, but there were plenty left to allow the leaf peepers to enjoy.

Late Friday afternoon saw BeezleBub and I moving The Boat over to the boat yard for winterization and storage, a full three weeks earlier than is usual for me. Normally it doesn’t come out of the water and over to the boatyard until the first weekend of November.

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It seems Progressives really don’t like Rand Paul.

First, he’s beaten by a neighbor, hospitalized due to the beating he received, taking months to recover from his injuries.

Then while having lunch with his deputy chief of staff he’s accosted by a couple of New York leftists “concerned about incivility”.

The incident occurred in California, but the woman screamed that Paul and [Deputy Chief of Staff] Gor had “just ran into two people from New York, kiddo, and we’re not putting up with your Republican bulls–t.” At one point, she circles around and flips Paul and/or Gor the bird. Charming.

The incident was captured on video and posted on Twitter. Senator Paul retweeted the video and said that “while ‘the left blames incivility’ on the president, he urges voters to ‘watch this video and decide who the rude ones are.’”

One must remember that one of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is to accuse your opponents of committing acts you yourself are committing. Could it be these New York Leftists are doing just that? They certainly were quite uncivil. If they weren’t exercising Alinsky’s rule, then they were totally clueless and did not recognize either their hypocrisy, their cluelessness, or their incivility.

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From the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department comes this:

New York Governor Cuomo orders utility to pump imaginary natural gas.

After banning National Grid’s new natural gas pipeline from New Jersey, Cuomo has ordered the company to hook up new gas customers despite its lack of gas supply caused by Cuomo’s ban.

The Cuomo administration is ordering National Grid to provide natural gas hookups to over 1,100 previously denied Brooklyn-based customers.

The Public Service Commission, the state body that licenses and oversees public utility companies, announced Friday that National Grid must provide service to customers or else face “millions of dollars in penalties.”

Previously, 1,157 customers had been denied service due to National Grid’s moratorium on all new gas hookups, announced in May.

Does Cuomo also think electricity comes from the wall socket and that Con Edison can create more electricity from nothing just because he orders them to do so? Obviously, he does because he’s trying to do the equivalent with National Grid and the natural gas supply.

He can blame National Grid all he wants, but the blame is his and his alone.

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The San Francisco city government still hasn’t glommed on to the fact that no one cares if they have banned travel by city employees to 22 states they see as Right To Life states. They have also banned doing business with companies in those same 22 states.

Do San Francisco bureaucrats really think anyone cares one way or the other? Considering what a s**thole the City By The Bay has become, all of it caused by those same bureaucrats and politicians doing their best to make their city into a politically correct ‘woke’ Third World city.

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I don’t know about you, but I’d be really happy if some of our household appliances would work as well as the ones we used before these more modern energy efficient ones. (Link may be paywalled.)

In the past I mentioned the time Deb and I were looking at replacing our tried and true Maytag front loading washer and clothes dryer because they were getting a bit long in the tooth. There was nothing wrong with them per se, but we were merely considering getting more energy efficient appliances. Deb checked with Consumer Reports and found that CR didn’t recommend any of the washing machines we were interested in. As I recall, CR stated something along the lines of “It used to be that any washing machine would do a pretty good job with enough warm water and a decent detergent. However, we cannot recommend any of the machines we reviewed as none of them adequately cleaned the test loads we washed.”

We decided to stay with our 20+ year old appliances because they worked.

While it has gotten a little better, there is still a problem with some home appliances, the latest being dishwashers.

It used to be dishwashers would take less than an hour to wash a load of dishes. Now it can take over two hours and the dishes aren’t totally clean. I know my mother’s Energy Star-rated dishwasher will take 2 and-a-half hours to wash dishes and there are still plenty of times when I have to follow up with handwashing some of them. That was never a problem with her old machine.

The dirty little nonsecret for years has been that modern dishwashers don’t clean dishes well. The culprit is federal efficiency standards, which have been tightened to use less energy. Dishwashers that once took an hour from wash to dry now average two hours and 20 minutes, and even then they don’t always do the job. A GE survey of 11,000 dishwasher owners reports that having to wait for hours for dishes to be done is a major consumer annoyance.

In March 2018 the folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, began a petition drive to do something about it. The Energy Department published the petition in the Federal Register with a request for comments.

With the almost 3,000 comments they received it was quite clear the American consumer wasn’t happy with their non-washing dishwashers. How energy efficient are these dishwashers if the need to run twice as long or you still have to hand wash the dishes you already ran through the dishwasher?

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the leaves are still brilliant red, orange, and yellow, the lake is untraveled as most of the boats are out of the water, and where cooler weather has been coming and going.

Very Cool Physics Demonstration - The Dzhanibekov Effect

I came across this on one of the industry newsletters to which I subscribe.

The video below demonstrates what is called the Dzhanibekov Effect, first demonstrated by Soviet Cosmonaut Vladimir Dzhanibekov in 1985. It is also known as the Tennis Racket Theorem and the Intermediate Axis Theorem.

It’s neat effect that can be described by a lengthy physics equation, but this video provides an much more interesting explanation and practical demonstration of the Dzhanibekov Effect



I thought it was kind of cool. Then again, I am a tech nerd and I find this kind of stuff fun.

End Of A Season

It was perfect weather – sunny with temperatures in the upper 50’s, no wind, and not a cloud in the sky.

It was a little past 4PM when I started the engine on the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout - aka The Boat - letting it warm up as I waited for my son and his girlfriend to arrive. The engine burbled quietly as I stowed the gear I’d brought onboard, making sure it wouldn’t be in the way. Fenders were removed and stowed, the mooring lines were prepped to be cast off, and then BeezleBub and his girlfriend arrived.

Once they were ready, lines were cast off, the throttle set to reverse, and we slowly backed away from the dock. Once clear, the throttle was set forward and the wheel turned to port, swinging the bow towards the channel that would lead out onto the main body of the lake.

It was quiet as we slowly made our way down the channel, the burble of the water being stirred by the prop and the low rumble of the engine being the only sound.

Once we cleared the channel and were outside the No Wake Zone I throttled up and the boat surged forward, slowly rising, then riding on top of the water as the engine RPMs wound up.

The water was smooth, with barely a ripple to be seen. Once on plane I trimmed the boat to raise the bow a little and the speed picked up. We cruised, heading east towards Alton Bay, the sun lowering towards the horizon behind us.

The breeze coming over the bow, caused by our passage over the lake, was cool. While not chilling, it did hold hints of the coming winter.

We came to the mouth of Alton Bay and changed course to the north, heading towards Wolfeboro for a while until we cleared the east end of Rattlesnake Island and turned west. Our course took us north of the island, well within a part of the lake called The Broads, the widest part of Lake Winnipesaukee.

The setting sun now sat just off our port bow, dipping above and below the hilltops as we headed back to home port.

Approaching Locke’s Island we turned south and entered into the cove where our town docks awaited. Rather than returning to our dock, we headed there instead. As we approached we maneuvered between two of the docks and finally tied up on the starboard side dock. This had been the last time out on the boat this year.

It was time to pull it out of the water and get it ready to store for the upcoming winter. Our boating season was done, ending weeks earlier than usual.

BeezleBub retrieved his truck and the boat trailer, backing the trailer down the ramp and into the water. The boat was untied from the dock and maneuvered to the boat trailer, the winch attached to the bow eye, and the winch cranked to pull the boat into position on the trailer. A few moments later BeezleBub pulled the trailer up the ramp, we secured the stern of the boat to the trailer, and then were on our way away from the lake.

Another summer has faded away. Another boat has been pulled from the water until next spring. All that remains are our memories of our time on the lake, and photos and videos taken during our excursions out on the water. They will have to suffice until we’re back out on the water next spring.

We're Done Being Suckers

With the continuing Washington soap opera of the “We’re Gonna Get Trump No Matter What, Even Though We Need To Make S**t Up” impeachment circus getting more ridiculous and insane, is it any wonder the average Joe and Jane Q. Public have been fed up with the whole thing and a sick to death of our supposed “betters” trying to overturn the 2016 election? I call it the “We’re Done Being Suckers” election. (Yes, I stole that line from the piece I’ve linked below, but it fits.)

Why are we seeing this ongoing farce? Because the elite hate the Trump doctrine: Put America first. Anything that diminishes their influence and power must be destroyed, and Trump is doing just that. Therefore he must be destroyed.

The elite scoffs at the notion of a “Trump Doctrine,” imagining that no one but them could construct a coherent geopolitical paradigm. Of course, their neo-Wilsonian faculty lounge geopolitical paradigm has been a disaster, but if there’s one thing our garbage elite is good at – it is certainly no good at its core responsibilities of preserving American power, prosperity and freedom – it is weaseling out of accountability for its myriad failures.

Yet the Trump Doctrine – the notion that American power should be directed toward serving the interests of the American people – is a coherent foreign policy vision of the kind we have not had in the United States for decades. For the last 35 years, since the Reagan Doctrine of using American power to bring down the Soviet Union, we have had no coherent framework within which we could develop sensible national strategies.

If the average American has to pay the price for the ‘ideals’ of the political elite, the elite are perfectly fine with that. After all, we’re just deplorables who are undereducated, inbred, mouth-breathing morons with no political savvy who require leaders who “know better” what the deplorables need. Not that their superior ‘knowledge’ has anything to do with reality. Not that their policies will help insure the health and welfare of the country. THEY. DON’T. CARE.

Their attitude can all be summed up with a single phrase: “Screw you buddy! I got mine!

As long as you keep that in mind, everything the elite does makes more sense. We aren’t going to be suckers for their long con game anymore.

To delve deeper into this, make sure to Read The Whole Thing.

Thoughts On A Sunday

The fall colors are very close to peak and the leaf peepers are everywhere, though they aren’t crowding our restaurants like the summerfolk do. But since they’re only here for a week or two, we can deal with it.

I was hoping to get at least one foliage trip out on the lake this weekend, but a busy schedule and not always optimal weather prevented a timely cruise. It’s also a bit frustrating as the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout will be pulled from the water this coming Tuesday, almost a month earlier than usual.

I stopped by the boatyard which handles the winterization and storage of the boat for me, making an appointment to have the boat serviced and stored. The proprietor told me he was seeing a lot of boat owners pulling their boats much out earlier than usual this year which has meant he and his staff have been overwhelmed and his itinerant boat trailer lot is full, leaving no room. He’s had his crew working overtime to stay ahead of the workload. Could this be some subconscious reaction to a possibly harsher (and earlier) than normal winter?

Only time will tell.

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Speaking of a harsher than normal winter, it might be time to for all of you to consider getting snow tires for the upcoming winter, at least in areas that see regular snowfall. While all-season tires are a decent compromise in some parts of the country, honest to goodness snow tires can make the difference between getting stuck and getting home in the northern climes.

If predictions about an extended solar minimum are correct, we are likely to see colder and longer winters for the next few decades. Winter tires will become a necessity for more of us as time goes on.

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One thing anyone considering creating Gun Free Zones has to keep in mind before doing so is what kind of obligations and liabilities they will likely be taking on, particularly as lawmakers in Michigan consider legislation to make commercial property owners declaring their properties gun free zones liable for security and any injuries on their property. It makes sense when you think about it.

If property owners (including government) strip away the right of patrons and visitors to protect themselves by bearing arms, then it should be up to them to provide protection. Those failing to do so should be held liable, period.

How many would declare their operations gun free zones under those conditions? My guess: very few, if any.

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Women are finding out that they can’t have it all, despite what they’ve been told.

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The Left still tries to sell the lie that rent control will somehow lower the cost and increase the availability of affordable housing. This, despite that fact that it has been proven on more than one occasion that rent control doesn’t work, doesn’t lower the cost or increase the availability of housing. It tends to have just the opposite effect.

Reams of research show that removing rent control laws raises rental property values, encouraging construction and leading to an increase in the supply of rental housing. That increase in supply, if not artificially restricted, puts downward pressure on rents.

A Stanford University study published in March found that rent control in San Francisco reduced the supply of rental housing by 15 percent. “Thus, while rent control prevents displacement of incumbent renters in the short run, the lost rental housing supply likely drove up market rents in the long run, ultimately undermining the goals of the law.”

“In addition, the conversion of existing rental properties to higher-end, owner-occupied condominium housing ultimately led to a housing stock increasingly directed towards higher income individuals. In this way, rent control contributed to the gentrification of San Francisco, contrary to the stated policy goal. Rent control appears to have increased income inequality in the city by both limiting displacement of minorities and attracting higher income residents.”

With the state of Oregon imposing statewide rent control we are about to see a large-scale experiment in rent control, one fated to fail just like all of the others have. What’s worse is that one of the Democrat presidential candidates have proposed nationwide rent control (I don’t recall whether it was Sanders or Warren who suggested such a stupid thing), which will kill development of affordable rental housing everywhere. Then again, no one ever accused any of the Democrats of having any understanding of real world economics.

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I made a trip down to southwestern New Hampshire today, visiting the In-Laws and taking them out for lunch. I had to brave the leaf peeper traffic, but fortunately for me it was heading in the opposite direction, so I didn’t have to deal with much in the way of delays or slow traffic. It also helped that I knew many of the back roads, so I was able to avoid most of the tourist traffic. The fiery foliage colors certainly made the trip down and back worthwhile.

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Yet another clueless Democrat Congresscritter doesn’t seem to understand that Congress has no arrest powers. The clueless Democrat?

Rashida Tlaib.

As Rick Moran calls it, it is “a quick way to a major constitutional crisis and perhaps even civil war.”

What is “it”?

Arresting and jailing White House aides who refuse to comply with subpoenas and testify in the House impeachment inquiry.

One of my biggest problems with this is that Congress doesn’t have arrest powers. My next biggest problem is that there is no impeachment inquiry because the House never voted on the matter. No vote, no inquiry, period. So how can someone be arrested for refusing to comply with subpoenas for an inquiry that doesn’t exist?

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the fall foliage is spectacular, the lake is being emptied of boats, and where one of my favorite ice cream joints is closing for the season.

We've Seen This Play Before...Many Times

I’m tired.

No, I’ve been sleeping with no problem. I’m not overworked or overcaffeinated.

So what has me tired?

The so-called Impeachment Inquiry.

First, while the Democrats and the MSM keep calling it an impeachment inquiry, it isn’t. It isn’t an inquiry until the House votes to open such an inquiry. No such vote has taken place. So I am tired of hearing it called something it isn’t. It is an inquisition.

Second, because there is no inquiry, any ‘inquiry’ subpoenas are invalid. The White House is under no obligation to respond to any of them, period. If the Democrats don’t feel obligated to follow the rules in regards to such an inquiry, why should the White House be obligated to respond to any demands made by the Democrats?

Third, congressional Democrats seem to think that they operate under a different set of rules, rules that resemble those of Calvinball more than anything else. They change at whim, with things that were forbidden are now allowed and rules that were ironclad in the past can now be ignored…unless they apply to Republicans.

That gets old pretty darned quick. It’s frustrating. It’s just so much bulls**t and serves no purpose other than to make those who hate the President and Republicans feel like they’re in power.

It’s tiring and I’m fed up with it all.

Deep Fakes Are Getting Better

In an earlier post I wrote about “deep fakes”, videos that had been altered in such a way that it made someone in that video appear to be someone else.

Since then the deep fakes have gotten even better with not just someone’s visage being changed, but their voices as well.



While not perfect (yet), it will get there eventually. Once it reaches that point no one will be able trust anything they see on TV or YouTube or any other streaming video service.

Thoughts On A Sunday

The fall foliage color is getting closer to peak here in central New Hampshire. I figure it will reach peak just before the upcoming Columbus Day weekend.

We are seeing more leaf peepers making the rounds here as the colors move south. I figure we’ll see a lot of foliage tourists here next weekend, filling the restaurants and factory outlets, one last gasp of the summer tourist season. The last of the seasonal businesses still operating will be closing their doors after Columbus Day, not reopening until late spring.

Ski areas have already started prepping for the upcoming winter, servicing and testing their lift equipment, snowmaking gear, and snowcats even as they dismantle and store all of the summer equipment and winterize their summer attractions.

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Oh, this will go over well with those who love their Big Macs.

A small number of Muslim activists are demanding McDonald’s change their menus to meet halal standards.

The company makes burgers, and earns billions of dollars in the process. Now, activists want them to change their business model to appease a small percent of the population.

When asked why their London branch did not serve food that met Halal standards, McDonald’s simply responded that it didn’t make financial sense to change things up…

Turn their supply chain and menus upside down to meet the demands of a very small percentage of their customer base? Yeah, that’ll work…and McDonald’s will fade away as the rest of their customer base dwindles away.

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The city government of San Francisco did everything it could to make it comfortable for the chronically homeless. The end result has been a huge increase in homelessness and drug use. (Link may be paywalled.)

This city has been conducting a three-decade experiment in what happens when society stops enforcing bourgeois norms of behavior. It has done so in the name of compassion for the homeless. The result: Street squalor and misery have increased, while government expenditures have ballooned. Yet the principles guiding city policy remain inviolate: Homelessness is a housing problem, it is involuntary, and it persists because of inadequate public spending. These propositions are readily disproved by talking to people living on the streets.

--snip--

The city sends the message relentlessly that drug use is not only acceptable but expected. The Health Department distributes 4.5 million syringes a year, along with alcohol swabs, vitamin C to dissolve heroin and crack, and instructions on how to tie one’s arm for a hit. Officials have installed 17 needle-disposal boxes and kiosks throughout the city, signaling to children that drug use is a normal part of adult life.

They subsidize the homeless and get more homeless. They subsidize drug abuse and they get more drug addicts. Don’t they see any connection between what they’re doing and what they’re getting in return? Obviously not. They keep talking about spending even more money to solve the problem they themselves have created and they’ll only make it worse.

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First they went after Uber and Lyft. Then they went after Juul pods. Now New York City is going after food delivery services.

Their excuse? Food delivery is bad for the city’s restaurants.

Hmm. I thought food delivery service like GrubHub delivered food for restaurants of all kinds. They aren’t part of any restaurant chain like Domino’s or Pizza Hut. They deliver for just about everyone. It’s true they charge a premium for doing so, but so what? If people are willing to pay it, why should the city care? If they aren’t, then they won’t use one of the delivery services, will they?

Does the city council think that such a service will keep people from going to restaurants? It appears it does. I’m not sure I understand their reasoning. Between a $15/hour minimum wage decimating the restaurants viability and trying to rein in food delivery services that provide them with more customers, one would think they’re trying hard to kill of New York’s restaurant businesses entirely.

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Democrats are trying very hard to ignore the debacle of the video of Joe Biden coming right out and saying he threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid to the Ukrainian government unless they fired the prosecutor investigating dirty dealings by his son in Ukraine. What they’re doing by ignoring it is telling everyone that it’s OK for Democrats to demand a quid pro quo from foreign governments, but fake quid pro quo demands from Republicans are illegal.

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

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Another note to the congressional Democrats: It’s perfectly legal to ask foreign governments to help in criminal investigations. It’s done all the time, and done so under the terms of treaties ratified by the Senate.

There’s no ‘there’ there.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the fall colors are getting brighter, the nights are getting colder, and boating season will soon be ending.

When Is Compassion Not Compassionate?

Have you ever noticed when some folks say we should help the less fortunate, to show compassion for the poor/homeless/mentally ill/addicted, they really mean that someone other than them should be the ones to do the work? Once done, they then feel good about themselves for having “done something”. But do they ever really see the outcomes of all those things they’ve “done”? For the most part, no.

If they do, more often than not they’ll see that what help was given did help for a while, but the problem they induced others to help with has not gotten better. The number of poor/homeless/mentally ill/addicted will have stayed the same, or worse, will have increased. This will require even more “compassion”, which usually translates as “more tax money”. Then that help is provided which in turn leads to even more people ‘needing’ help. Then even of more money will be needed to provide even more help, and the cycle will continue.

By providing help the way it has been done for decades, we have merely made the problem worse. To paraphrase someone somewhen, “If you subsidize something, you get more of it.” We have been subsidizing the poverty-stricken, the homeless, the mentally ill, and the addicted. And what have we received for all the money, time, and effort that has been put into solving the problems of those unfortunates? More of them. Call it the unintended consequences of compassion, specifically too much compassion of the type that solves nothing.

It's time we measure success by results, not intentions. We've failed enough times to have learned our lesson. And those we profess to care about deserve better.

Indeed.