The January thaw is now just a memory. The open waters of Lake Winnipesaukee seen at the beginning of the week are now bearing a skim of ice from shore to shore. The roof rake has been used twice over the past three days to pull the snow off the roof of The Gulch. The snow shovel has seen more than its share of use as well.
Basically, we’re back to normal for winter.
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I cannot believe I am writing this, but we have lost yet another member of the feline contingent here at The Gulch.
Some time between 7 and 10PM last night our little three-legged cat, Miley, passed away. She had been to the vet earlier that day as she’d been having some health problems and the vet extended the duration of her medication we’d been giving her. She seemed to be on the mend.
It was as I was going to give her her evening dose of her medicine that I found she had passed away.
She was a sweet, affectionate lap cat. She loved to cuddle and everyone who met her fell in love with her. She had a beautiful continence.
Henry, another of our cats, passed away from lymphoma two weeks ago. Hilda, one of our Maine Coon cats, passed away unexpectedly last May.
The past nine months have not been good in regard to the feline members of the WP family.
This sucks.
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As much as many people have been worrying about the depressed birth rate in the US, it’s a bigger problem in China. They’ll see the same problems seen in Japan and soon to be seen here in the US.
Making matters worse, the slowing birthrate has meant that China’s main state pension fund, which relies on tax revenues from its work force, risks running out of money by 2035 because of a decline in the number of workers, according to research commissioned by the government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.Sound familiar?
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Call it yet another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences coming back to bite Progressives in the butt.
New York reformed its bail law, believing bail was a burden for poorer alleged perpetrators. So they did away with bail for a lengthy list of crimes. The result?
Crime committed by repeat offenders has skyrocketed, including one fellow who had committed four bank robberies and, after being released without bail, went on to commit a fifth bank heist.
How is it possible that the proponents of bail reform missed these possible consequences?
Another unintended consequence: The ill-conceived bail reform law has become an election issue.
That issue is the controversial bail reform law pushed through the New York State legislature by Governor Andrew Cuomo late last year. The law eliminates cash bail on the argument that cash bail discriminates against poorer defendants.I expect this will be a big election issue in New York come November.
But critics of the law have been warning for months that eliminating bail was sure to put too many criminals with violent tendencies back on streets, even if they weren’t currently under arrest for very violent crimes.
Less than three weeks after the law went into effect, it sure looks like the naysayers were right.
In what’s becoming an almost hourly stream of depressing updates, New York’s newspapers, local TV news shows, and news sites are posting story after story about violent crimes being committed by people instantly released after arrests because of bail reform.
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While the Democrats are focusing all of their attention on the impending impeachment trial, John Durham, the US Attorney from Connecticut, has been digging deeper into paper trail highlighting misconduct by federal law enforcement and intelligence officials that dogged the Trump campaign prior to the 2016 election and his administration after he took office.
I have a feeling a lot of Deep State officials and Democrats (but I repeat myself) will be facing a judge and jury sometime in the near future.
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Seeing how snowy it’s been since last night, this post and link by Eric the Viking is timely.
As Eric writes about a piece in MacWorld covering the topic of being without power for 72 hours:
Yes, it's awful to be off the internet for a couple hours. As somebody who has lived through several New England snowpocalypses, I would also recommend appliances that run off of camp propane canisters like a camp light, camp heater, and a camp stove. Personally, I also have a cord of hardwood to burn if things get a little rough. Think Frontierland.While the MacWorld article deals with the loss of power and Internet due to the wildfires in California, it applies equally to winter blackouts.
At our former Manse, we had a woodstove, four cords of wood, a generator, and 500 gallons of propane to run it. With judicious use of electricity and using the woodstove for heat, we could easily go almost 6 weeks before running out of fuel. Not that I would expect we’d ever have to do so for that long, but knowing we could was comforting. While The Gulch isn’t nearly as well appointed (no woodstove, cordwood, or 500 gallon propane tank), it does have a generator to keep the lights and heat on and the refrigerator running, with enough left over to power a microwave, TV, and to charge our cellphones/tablets/laptops. There may not be any Internet, but that is really a “nice to have” and not a “need to have”. We’d “rough it” and make do without.
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Elizabeth Warren’s economic policy proposal can be described with four words:
A Total Effin’ Disaster.
It would take us back to the bad old days of the Obama Recession, in spades.
How is it she can possibly sell this as a good thing?
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where everything is snow-covered as it should be, the ice has returned to the lake, and the local ski slopes are busy with holiday skiers.