2/20/2022

Thoughts On A Sunday

This past Friday was a transition day here in N’Hampsa.

When I woke up that morning – just a few minutes before 5:30am – the temperature outside was an unseasonable 59ºF and it stayed there until about 7am and stared to drop. Two hours later it was 34ºF and by noon it was 25ºF.

It had rained the day before and through the night. Between the warm temperatures and the rain, much of the snow and ice on the roof here at The Gulch and on most of the neighboring homes was gone. Maybe 5 to 10% of what had covered the roofs remained. The ice and compacted snow on the driveways was gone. A good portion of the snowpack on the ground was still there after the rain and warm temperatures. With the rapid drop in temperatures, a good portion of that snowpack froze into a solid mass.

On Saturday it was sunny, on and off. It was about 7ºF when I got up, having slept in to 6:30am. We had some light snow in the early afternoon, with just enough to give a very thin coating on the driveways and roofs.

We did see a few minutes of very heavy snow as a squall line came through late in the afternoon, with the visibility dropping to zero. Just as quickly as it started it faded away and stopped, leaving a little more of a coating on the driveways and roofs.

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Have you noticed that YouTube has been increasingly censoring videos? It seems some subjects and content that was devoutly ignored in the past have become taboo, either limiting the age of people allowed to view them, delisting them so the don’t show up in a search (but they can still be viewed if you have the link), or deleting them entirely. They have also gone so far as to demonetize some YouTube channels because the busybody (and woke) censors don’t like the content. There is nothing wrong or prurient about the content, but the knownothing censors disagree with the content and spike it. (This is the same thing that has happened on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, just to name two.) This has led more content providers to move to other platforms like BitChute, Rumble, or Locals.com, just to name a few. While not as large as YouTube nor quite as user friendly, they are not censorious like YouTube. (There is some content these sites will not allow. You can probably guess why.)

Some of my favorite YouTube channels have already made the move though they still post content on YouTube, but they don’t post nearly as much as they have in the past and what they do post tends to be heavily edited so they don’t offend the perpetually offended censors.

As more social media sites become ‘woke’ and increasingly stifle free speech, I expect we’ll see more folks moving to sites like the YouTube alternatives and others like MeWe (a Facebook alternative) and Gab or Parler (Twitter alternatives).

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Seeing the standoff between Russia and Ukraine, I have been wondering if any of this would have taken place if Trump were still president. My gut reaction is “Nope. No way. Putin knows Trump isn’t a pushover.”

I can’t get past the idea the reason Putin is making this move because he knows SloJo and WRBA are weak and will likely fold. He understands our leadership is a paper tiger and that the only place they are ‘strong’ is with harsh language.

One of the side effects of the standoff? Rising oil and natural gas prices.

We have to keep in mind that should hostilities start and the West slaps sanctions on Russia, Russia can retaliate by choking off energy supplies to Europe by more severely restricting natural gas flowing through their pipeline. They can restrict oil and LNG shipments.

We have already seen the effects of the possibility of hostilities at the gas pump, with my local station (the one I use as my reference) listing regular at $3.559. Two weeks ago it was $3.329. Two weeks before that it was around $3.159.

Gee, if only we could supply our own oil and natural gas so overseas actions wouldn’t affect the supply and costs of those commodities. Oh, wait! We used to be able to do that until SloJo signed the Executive Orders which made that impossible and took us from being energy independent to dependent on foreign oil and natural gas supplies from countries that don’t like us very much!!

If anyone were a stooge for Putin, I’d say it is SloJo and WRBA. They certainly seem to be doing what Putin wants, despite the claims by the DNC-MSM that former President Trump was supposedly in Putin’s pocket.

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The Winter Olympics have ended. From what I can tell most people don’t care. Most didn’t care that they took place. I know I haven’t.

One of the ‘controversies’ had nothing to do with China or athletes or judges or the IOC. Instead, it was the Climate Change faithful who decided they had to stir things up by pointing out there was no natural snow at the Beijing Olympics, in turn blaming man-made climate change. The problem?

There usually isn’t much snow in that part of China, with maybe an inch or two each winter. But it’s quite cold there so making snow is easy, which is exactly what the Chinese did. This certainly made some things easier since they could control the amount of snow at each venue and didn’t have to deal with the vagaries of Mother Nature.

Call it Yet Another Climate Change Fail.

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Are Justin Trudeau’s days as Prime Minister of Canada numbered? If a petition to the Governor General of Canada goes through, Parliament could be dissolved and new elections would have to take place.

That would also mean that Trudeau would likely lose his position as PM, something he has proven should happen.

The worst thing that could happen for Canada if things go sideways is a number of Provinces decide they’d be better off becoming independent or petitioning the US for statehood. (The maritime provinces – New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI, and Newfoundland - had threatened to petition for statehood in the past when Quebec was seeking independence from Canada a few decades ago. Alberta had also expressed interest of joining the US at one point when they felt Ottawa was ignoring them and their problems.)

I am hoping the Canadian patriots succeed with their petition to the Governor General and new elections will take place.

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Just a reminder: Neither Jeffrey Epstein or Jean-Luc Brunel killed themselves.

Neither will Ghislaine Maxwell.

Even the family of Ghislaine Maxwell, who is still imprisoned, now allegedly "fears for her safety" after the second death of a high-profile offender related to the case who was in a highly secure facility.

The NYPost reached out to Maxwell's brother, Ian Maxwell, who told the New York tabloid that his family is extremely concerned after Brunel's death - allegedly suicide by hanging, circumstances similar to those surrounding the death of Epstein himself.

Maxwell is due to be sentenced in June. The family added that it's unconscionable that Brunel wasn't on suicide watch, and reiterated that Maxwell has never expressed being suicidal.

Epstein had never expressed being suicidal, either.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the temperatures are cycling up and down like a yo-yo, the ice on the lake has become problematic regarding safety, and where tomorrow is a holiday...for some you.