Thoughts On A Sunday

It was a trip to New Hampshire’s Seacoast for me and the WP Mom yesterday.

We attended the 80^th birthday celebrations of my Dear Brother’s In-Laws since their birthdays were only a couple of days apart.

Traffic down and back really wasn’t bad considering the hot day and the open beaches. Then again, not too many people were partaking of swimming since the water temps are still in the 40’s.

All in all, it was a good day and it was nice to see some family members we hadn’t seen for a while.

==++==

Katy informed me that she had pulled her convertible out of storage Thursday morning in order to take advantage of the great weather. I have to admit that I am a little envious of her seasonal set of wheels. On the other hand I have the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout...and she doesn’t.

It all balances out in the end.

==++==

Dr. Helen has been promoting a dual camera dash cam via Amazon on and off for the past month or so and I can say I ordered one.

Why did I order a dashcam?

I guess I have to blame watching the plethora of dashcam videos on YouTube as a motivation. Seeing the accidents, dumb moves by clueless drivers, dangerous conditions created by dangerous drivers, and road rage incidents convinced me it was time to break open the Official Weekend Pundit Wallet and obtain one. It is now ensconced in the trusty RAM 1500.

Laissez le bon temps rouler!

==++==

I stopped at my local “reference” gas station/convenience store to pick up a few items (including a couple of lottery tickets) this morning on my way back from my “before church” run to Walmart. Imagine my surprise to see Regular was now $4.699 (up 40¢ since last week), Mid Grade was $4.899, Premium was $5.099, and Diesel $6.399. It is prices like this that make me glad I can work from home two or three days a week – reducing my commuting mileage by 40 to 60 percent. Not that I have all that long a commute – just under 10 miles one way – but the trusty RAM 1500 isn’t exactly fuel efficient. Then again, it is a work truck and is used to haul all kinds of stuff.

Seeing the prices at my reference gas station I had to check the price of gas at the gas docks around Lake Winnipesaukee and what I saw confirmed what I expected: even higher gas prices. (It must be understood that marinas tend to sell only one grade of gas, either 89 octane mid-grade or 93 octane premium.) Two of the marinas I sometime use for fueling up the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout listed 89 octane for $5.099 on the south side of the lake and $5.799 on the north side of the lake. It isn’t often that I buy gas at a gas dock as I tend to fuel my boat using a couple of gas caddies I filled up at a local gas station (but not my “reference station”), using 87 octane since that’s all my boat requires and saving anywhere from 40¢ to $1.50 a gallon. That’s anywhere from $10 to $45 I won’t have to shell out to fill the tank. That may not seem like a lot to some folks, but to this cheap...er...frugal Yankee, that’s a lot of my money I don’t need to give to someone else.

==++==

The following story certainly falls under the Treacher adage: “When Republicans screw up, that’s the story. When Democrats screw up, the Republican’s reaction is the story.”

AP Is Aghast That the GOP Would Use Biden's Failures as a Political Weapon. Aghast!

We already know if the parties were reversed we would not see such a story from the AP. Instead, the AP would be slamming the GOP for the failures of an under-performing GOP president directly, and not the Democrats’ reactions.

Double standard much?

The Associated Press is well known — and rightfully so — for writing long, detailed articles on “what it all means.” They’re called “thumbsuckers” in the news business, and the AP has perfected them.

A thumbsucker article presupposes that the reader is an ignorant rube and needs to be guided from Point A to Point B of a topic in order to have it explained to them. The problem for the reader is that the AP reporter writing the story — or most other mainstream reporters writing the story — almost always allows his or her own bias to permeate the story, making a “what it all means” story into a “what it should mean to you, you ignorant wretch.”

But the AP’s latest thumbsucker — “GOP’s new midterm attack: Blaming Biden for formula shortage” — makes a silly attempt to guide the reader to the conclusion that the Republican attack lines are politically motivated.

OMG! Really?

As long as one keeps in mind that much of the media are nothing more than part of the propaganda wing of the DNC, the AP’s reports make sense.

==++==

Speaking of the media, Powerline delves into just how much the American public distrusts the “credentialed media”.

...Rasmussen finds that “[e]ighty percent (80%) of voters believe ‘fake news’ is a serious problem in the media, including 56% who say the ‘fake news’ problem is Very Serious.” Not surprisingly, 89% of Republicans think fake news in the media is a serious problem, but 75% of Democrats also say that fake news in the media is at least a “somewhat serious” problem.

Did Donald Trump ever say that the news media are the enemy of the people? What I remember him saying is that the “fake news media” are the enemy of the people.

One thing Rasmussen found that surprised some people is that 58% of the poll respondents agree the media are the enemy of the people. “It is hard to imagine how any industry could so disgrace itself in the eyes of the American people.”

What does the media expect when they stop reporting the news and start ‘creating’ the news or generating spin that changes the meaning of events until they no longer resemble what actually took place or why?

==++==

This isn’t exactly new, but the story is still telling and points to problems the have created for that Utopian bastion of environmental wokeness, California. One of the biggest problems?

Lack of sufficient generation capacity to meet demand, particularly if there are any “heatwaves, wildfires, or other extreme events” this summer.

The update from leaders from three state agencies and the office of Governor Gavin Newsom comes in response to a string of challenges with the ambitious transition away from fossil fuels, including rolling blackouts during a summer heat wave in 2020.

California has among the most aggressive climate change policies in the world, including a goal of producing all of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2045.

In an online briefing with reporters, the officials forecast a potential shortfall of 1,700 megawatts this year, a number that could go as high as 5,000 MW if the grid is taxed by multiple challenges that reduce available power while sending demand soaring, state officials said during an online briefing with reporters.

The plans to go green looked great on paper, but as often happens reality doesn’t care what anyone’s plans may say. The plans make assumptions that should not be made, many of those assumptions requiring suspension of disbelief in order to make them come to fruition. Some of those assumptions included wholly unrealistic projections about how much energy would be available if energy production switched to green sources. California is a living example of how not to make the transition. It is also an example of how wrong the definition of green energy is as it is applied by the Green Energy True Believers as they ignore sources like modern nuclear which emit no carbon dioxide, are reliable and unaffected by weather or time of day, and can even be used to dispose of nuclear waste from older reactors, ‘burning’ that so-called waste for fuel.

And so it goes.

==++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer has arrived, my boat still isn’t in the water, and Monday has arrived all too soon...again.