7/10/2022

Thoughts On A Sunday

It seems the heavy weekend traffic has not been just a Fourth of July Holiday weekend phenomenon. Yesterday, the WP Mom and I had to head to the southern tier of New Hampshire to attend a baby shower for an expectant mother in our extended family.

Fortunately we were heading south because the northbound traffic was heavy – slow-moving and bumper to bumper for mile after mile after mile at 11 in the morning. A little less than 4 hours later we were heading north back The Gulch and the heavy traffic had dissipated, though there was still a lot of traffic heading north.

We stopped not too far from The Gulch to gas up the trusty RAM 1500. For the first time in a long time I had to wait in line to gas up. Most of the vehicles at the station had out of state plates. (It might also have been because regular was going for $4.079, about 52¢ less than regular at my reference gas station just down the road a piece from The Gulch. That’s one heck of a price difference at two gas stations only a few miles apart. I haven’t check prices on the lake recently, but maybe it’s time I do. That will be a sure indicator of where gas prices may be headed.

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Hearing about the wildfire at Yosemite National Park reminds me of the controversy that took place twenty-some years ago when a wildfire swept through a section of Yosemite, with some so-called environmentalists condemning the Park Service and Forestry Service for not doing everything they could to extinguish the blaze.

Forestry biologists condemned the ‘environmentalists’ for their ignorance of forest ecology, stating that the section of the park that was burning was moribund with a decreasing biological diversity and decreasing health of the existing forestland. (A note: that fire didn’t not take place anywhere near the Sequoias also located in the park.)

Who was right?

Hint: It wasn’t the ‘environmentalists’.

The year after the fires, the supposedly devastated area saw plants and wildlife that hadn’t been seen there in decades.

The above is one reason both states and the federal government perform controlled burns in state and national forests: renewal of forest ecology since some plants require fire in order to germinate and the fire returns nutrients to the soil on the forest floor.

Another reason for controlled burns is to reduce the underbrush which can become fuel in a much larger wildfire in the future. This is a lesson California has been refusing to learn for decades which is why so many of the wildfires there can grow so quickly and take out tens of thousands of acres, destroying homes, businesses...and towns.

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

It looks like Soros-funded DA Alvin Bragg is charging a 61-year old bodega clerk in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City with second degree murder after he killed a career criminal who came behind the counter and attacked him after the criminal’s girlfriend’s credit card was declined.

Watching the video of the attack it certainly looks like self-defense.

Considering DA Bragg’s background and political patron – George Soros - it is becoming clear that the only ones that don’t have to worry about being charged with crimes in New York City are criminals. Law-abiding citizens, on the other hand, are now in the cross-hairs.

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Everyone’s heard the story about the ten-year old, raped and pregnant, who had to travel to Ohip to get an abortion. It was even brought up by President * during his press conference about the EO he was about to sign. He was outraged by the story. The problem?

No one can confirm this ten-year old ‘victim’ even exists. This includes the Washington Post and Snopes. Nobody knows nuthin’ ‘bout nuthin’.

No one bothered to fact check the claim made by pro-abortion advocate Dr. Caitlin Bernard before it went viral after the story appeared in the Indianapolis Star. There are no records of a ten-year old being raped and ending up pregnant in Ohio. No records of a ten-year old receiving an abortion in Indiana, which would have been required to be reported to the police and Indiana’s version of Child Protective Services. (Yes, doctor-patient confidentiality is a thing, but if there is evidence of abuse physicians are required by law to report it. I’d say a pregnant ten-year old is evidence of abuse.)

All we have is the word of someone who cannot be considered unbiased in any way. Not one scintilla of proof exists to confirm Dr. Bernard’s story. Not. One.

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I keep saying they’re mentally ill. Here’s more proof that what I say is true:

You Know That Leftists Have Jumped Every Shark When They’re Even Confused About Their OWN Identities.

Need anything more be said?

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This resonates with me and a lot of other people who understand the realities of EVs versus gas/diesel-powered vehicles. ‘This’ is a head-to-head comparo between an electric Ford F150 pickup and a GMC Denali pickup, both towing identical travel trailers.

To say the electric F150 didn’t come close to meeting expectations would be an understatement.

The results of the electric Ford pickup remind me of the promises made by the COVID vaccine manufacturers: wildly exaggerated and probably more harmful than beneficial. As the video shows: you’d have to be a moron to buy either knowing what we know today.

I’d like to see a comparisons between diesel-fueled and electric farm tractors. That might prove to the EV proponents that EVs aren’t the answer to every ‘problem’ they see.

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Hmm. I thought California’s anti-gig economy AB5 legislation had already put a crimp into the trucking industry, but it turns out I had missed something.

California law, AB5 is about to make the already screwed up supply law problems get even worse. This draconian law will force independent truckers out of the workforce. Independent workers used to be considered independent contractors. Under this law, even though there are carve out for some industries to keep independent contractors, truckers will not be exempt. This means that truckers will be forced to be considered “employees” and companies wouldn’t want to pay out additional benefits to employees that they wouldn’t for independent contractors. Of course communist Newsom exempted Uber, Lyft, and Postmates.

This law was actually passed in 2019, and has been on hold because of a court injunction. There are reports that the injunction could soon be lifted. If that’s the case, get ready for shortages on basically everything.

The trucking industry serving California had already been injured when diesel trucks of 2011 and older vintage were banned in the Pyrite State. Now they’re going to add to the pain by doing away with independent truckers, so-called ‘owner-operators’. You think our supply chain problems were bad before? They’re going to get even worse.

As California does more and more to dismantle its own economy, destroy the middle class, and impoverish even more of its residents, it is starting to remind me more or two countries that have done likewise – Venezuela and Sri Lanka. The latter managed to do so in a very short period of time as compared to the decade and a half it took the former to destroy itself.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the summerfolk are enjoying the nice weather, there are a lot of boaters out enjoying the lake, and my week-long vacation is coming to an end...