6/13/2021

Thoughts On A Sunday

The roar of motorcycles filled a good portion of last evening, just as they did during the day today. The weather has been great all weekend and looks to be good all week (except for Monday, maybe). That will certainly help the visiting bikers plenty of time to enjoy the amenities (and spend a lot of money). It does mean the rest of us will likely be avoiding our usual haunts, giving them over to the visitors. (This is nothing new. While we love our local restaurants, we don’t always like dealing with the folks from away, so we tend not to visit them nearly as often between mid-June and Labor Day. The one exception is the seasonal restaurants that are only open during the summer.)

One of the important tasks I did take care of this weekend was assembling the new Official Weekend Pundit Gas Grill. I have been without a grill since we sold The Manse (the new owners wanted to keep the grill, so I left it behind), and the WP Mom convinced me it was time to bite the bullet and acquire a new one. A George Foreman grill can only go so far when it comes to grilling some nice marinated sirloin tips. A good flame does it better. All I need to do now is pick up a 20lb bottle of propane and it will be ready to go.

==+==


By way of Instapundit comes this confession by one of the people responsible for the kangaroo kourt konvictions of young male college students on vaguely defined sexual assault/sexual harassment charge, asking “How much damage have me and my colleagues done?”

The possibility that this young woman held in her hands the power to derail their son’s education, something these parents might have been imagining since he was in utero, was untenable. The possibility that the process designed to respond to exactly these sorts of accusations already appeared to presuppose his guilt — that was unimaginable.

No amount of assurance on my part convinced them that their son would be treated fairly. If that were the case, why were they already being told he had to leave campus and his classes before there was so much as a preliminary hearing? . . .

“My son’s hearing was a joke,” she said. “He never stood a chance. Do you know that the hearing officer and the investigator are good friends? And that the ‘advocate’” — she practically spit out the word — “they assigned to him was also a friend of theirs? I found them all on Facebook, attending the wedding of the person who is supposed to hear appeals. All friends. I saw them leaving together after the hearing, and in the parking lot of a restaurant heading in together. We decided to eat somewhere else.”

Thus was the “presumed guilty until proven innocent...and are still guilty even if proved innocent” attitude that came to exist on college campuses due to that damnable “Dear Colleague” letter. It also led to lawsuit after lawsuit against colleges and universities for ‘convictions’ based on nothing but an accusation, the so-called courts ignoring due process, meaning the accused was always assumed to be guilty, had little or no opportunity to question the accuser or present exculpatory evidence. The telling event about these kangaroo courts is that the plaintiffs won case after case after case against those institutions of higher learning, in some cases receiving millions of dollars in damages. Yet the kangaroo courts continued unabated and an untold number of young college men have seen their lives turned upside down based solely upon an accusation, no proof required, no actual investigation performed.

==+==


More counties (and states) are declaring themselves Second Amendment Sanctuaries, a growing trend as Americans see the federal government (including Congress and especially the President) willfully ignoring the Constitution by trying their best to eliminate one of our enumerated rights. If the feds succeed in this effort, the next one in their sights will be the First Amendment, and after that maybe the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. (Remember that President * has stated that a constitutional amendment isn’t ‘absolute’, meaning he believes the Constitution can be ignored by the government as needed. Then again we know the extreme Left Wing of the Democrat Party doesn’t believe in the Constitution and would love to be able to ignore it entirely.)

The legislature in my home state passed a bill that makes New Hampshire a Second Amendment Sanctuary state. We’re just waiting for our governor to sign it. (We expect he will as he has been a strong advocate for the Second Amendment, for the most part.) If he does sign it, I would push to see an amendment in the state constitution to strengthen the Second Amendment sanctuary status so a future Democrat majority legislature can’t remove it at whim.

If we don’t defend our Rights now, there may not be a later to do so, or it will require armed rebellion, bloodshed, and a lot of death, something none of us wants.

==+==


For anyone who’s been paying attention over the past year, this won’t be a surprise.

It turns out everything President Trump claimed prior to the election last November was true. Even the DNC-MSM is now admitting he was right, though reluctantly.

==+==


You know it’s bad when a member of a foreign government friendly to the US states Biden “is so senile that he probably won’t remember what we tell him.”

Those of us paying attention have known that for well over a year, ever since SloJo started running for the Democrat nomination. He’s displayed classic symptoms of dementia, has had limited exposure to the public, calling a ‘lid’ on his appearances early in the day. He has memory lapses that can’t be covered up, even by the leftist DNC-MSM. He appears confused, doesn’t seem to know where he is from one moment to the next, and has difficulties with his vocabulary, and you rarely, if ever, see him evenings. (Those suffering from dementia tend to be worse late in the day/evenings, something called ‘sundowning’ or ‘sunsetting’.)

How can anyone believe SloJo is running anything if he’s having problems dealing with everyday activities? When our allies comment on SloJo’s diminishing capacity, one has to think they are seeing the same things we are, but up close and personal.

==+==


I’m sure the business owners in San Francisco are pleased as punch about the ‘new normal’ when it comes to selling their goods, that being looting/shoplifting. California’s changing the definition of felony theft by setting a much higher felony threshold for the value of goods stolen ($950) has certainly helped fuel the problem. Then there’s also this:

An organizer for Black Lives Matter has informed us that such activities are to be regarded not as theft but as “reparations” owed to those who are oppressed according to liberal doctrine.

What has been the unintended consequences of the new normal?

Walgreens has been closing stores because it is effectively legal to shoplift in Democrat-dominated California. Thieves are expected to limit themselves to swiping less than $950 worth of merchandise at a time. However, if you allow any crime, you get a lot.

This was the insight behind the Broken Windows approach to police work that allowed Rudy Giuliani to clean up New York City, which has since slipped back into dysfunction thanks to liberal rule. The current War on Police and ever more lenient treatment of criminals puts Broken Windows into reverse by encouraging crime.

Then when crime is rampant and society is coming apart, they will ‘crack down on crime’ using draconian measures, with crime being redefined to mean anything they want it to mean, including exercising the freedom of speech. Then again, that’s exactly what they want, as most incipient totalitarians do.

==+==


And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the rumble of motorcycles is constant, the weather is great, and where The Day That Shall Not Be Named has returned...again.