Thoughts On A Sunday

We experienced a blackout here at The Gulch Friday evening, the lights going out just past 7PM. It had been very windy and cool all day and apparently a tree limb decided it was time to break loose and take down some power lines on the other side of the shoreline road. After a call to the power company to report the outage, apparently limited to just our small neighborhood here around The Gulch, they contacted me a few minutes later to let me know it was going to be at least three hours before power would be restored.

It was time to break out the Official Weekend Pundit Portable Generator.

This would be the first time it was used to power The Gulch as we hadn’t had any outages requiring me to take it out of storage. It has been run a few times in the two years I’ve had it, either as a test or to power equipment at a remote project.

I pulled the genset out of the garage, retrieved the 40lb propane bottle, connected it to the genset, switched off the main house breaker, connected the genset to the outside house connector, fired up the genset and then flipped on the breakers on the genset. The lights in The Gulch came on.

The genset handled the power draw of The Gulch without a hitch. The only things the genset couldn’t handle were the stove and clothes dryer, but it wasn’t like we would have needed to use either of them over that short span of time. For a longer outage it still wouldn’t have been an issue because I can use the microwave or cook with the Official Weekend Pundit Gas Grill and take any washed clothes down to the laundromat to dry them, assuming I couldn’t use a laundry rack and dry them out on the porch.

All in all, it was a good full-up test of the generator’s capability to power The Gulch.

==++==

It now officially being Fall, foliage season around here can’t be too far behind.

We’re already seeing the swamp maples changing color to their brilliant red. They start a few weeks ahead of all the other trees, a harbinger of what’s to come.

Peak foliage color around here usually occurs between October 10th and October 20th. Some have been concerned the drought experienced in New England will affect both the intensity and peak foliage timing, but central and northern New Hampshire weren’t affected by the drought – rainfalls were normal or slightly below normal – so there are expectations the brilliance and timing of the foliage will be normal as well.

==++==

I don’t see how anyone but the willfully ignorant or the deluded couldn’t see this coming.

Why the mass exodus of law enforcement from blue cities? Blame the blue city officials driving it.

Democratic city mayors continue to complain about astronomical police overtime expenditures and dismal recruiting numbers in the post- George Floyd era of unrest. But this is a Frankenstein monster of the " progressive " Left’s own making. For the past two years, leftist activists have relentlessly vilified law enforcement and pushed policies to strip them of their funding and authority. So it’s no mystery why many are retiring or leaving hostile jurisdictions for a more hospitable environment in the suburbs.

Now that the extent of the damage the Left has wrought is becoming apparent, the same mayors and city councilmembers who voted to slash police budgets are backtracking and suddenly acting to increase funding. It’s no coincidence that their change in heart occurred during a consequential midterm election year. President Joe Biden, for example, is calling for more police funding. This is curious, especially since he delivered an insulting diatribe at the Police Week memorial ceremony last year, in which he chose to highlight police abuses and misconduct rather than the sacrifices made by officers.

This mass exodus has had the expected side-effect in those urban bastions of blue-think: rising violent crime rates, dropping property values, an exodus of businesses and workers along with a similar exodus of residents seeking a safer living and work environment. Yet those same blue city officials are baffled by the results of their actions and the anger being directed towards them by their subjects. (I refuse to call them constituents since so many of these officials treat them more like subjects.)

==++==

Is conservatism being prohibited?

Yes. Yes it is.

First, Scott Adams’ “Dilbert” comic strip has lost 77 newspapers, apparently because it ridiculed “woke” doctrine…

A second case comes from the U.K. and involves PayPal. The Telegraph reports:

It all moved up a gear this week when PayPal closed the accounts of the Free Speech Union and the anti-lockdown Daily Sceptic with no explanation given. The latest victim is the UsForThem campaign, which sought to highlight the impact of school closures during lockdown. They use PayPal to fundraise, but the account has been suspended. Given PayPal’s dominance of the market, it’s quite a problem.

Tech giants are universally hostile to free speech, so shutting down the Free Speech Union–which gets a third of its membership fees through PayPal–is no surprise. The other two are anti-lockdown and anti-school closure organizations.

Finally, Mike Lindell is back in the news. You may remember that the FBI caught Lindell red-handed driving through a Hardee’s and confiscated his cell phone. The warrant supporting that seizure has now emerged.

--snip--

Of course the “identity theft” and “damage to a protected computer” have to do with Lindell’s role in questioning the integrity of 2020 election results.

Mike Lindell is a wealthy man who wasn’t trying to steal someone else’s identity for fraudulent purposes, and he doesn’t go around bashing computers with a baseball bat. This all has to do with his opposition to the regime.

I think Lindell’s theories about Dominion are probably wrong. Dominion has sued him and others, I believe, for vast amounts of money. Those issues presumably will be thrashed out in court. But why does the FBI swing into action to suppress any suggestion that our loosest election ever might not have been on the up-and-up?

Then you have Twitter and Facebook declaring verifiable facts and events as mis-/disinformation, even info that came from the US government because it doesn’t fit the Progressive narrative. Any questioning of the narrative must be quashed and those doing the questioning must be silenced, or worse, prosecuted and imprisoned.

It looks like the Democrats are trying very hard to make any opposition to their political ideology be declared ‘extremist’ and therefore illegal.

That whirring sound you’re hearing? That’s the sound of the Framers of the Constitution spinning in their graves.

==++==

The electricity rates here in New Hampshire went up 100% last month, much of it attributed to the spike in natural gas prices. Much of the natural gas in New England comes from overseas – Libya and Yemen – thanks to the efforts of the NIMBY’s, BANANA’s, and Watermelon Environmentalists block construction of a new pipeline into New England. The foreign natural gas costs a lot more than US natural gas and has to shipped across the Atlantic.

These same folks also blocked transmission line construction that would have brought cheap green hydro power into New England from Quebec.

Now it’s Massachusetts’ turn to deal with higher electricity rates, with rates slated to increase by 64% on November 1st and for the same reasons.

It doesn’t help that the natural gas prices have spiked due to actions taking by SloJo his first day in office and much later, the sanctions placed on Russia after they invaded Ukraine. (To be fair, most of the price increases happened well before Russia invaded, Biden’s claims notwithstanding.)

==++==

I guess it’s never too early to start with a disinformation campaign based upon TDS.

In this case it’s focused don Ron DeSantis and it’s claiming he’s “worse than Trump”.

I figure this theme will soon be cranked up to ‘11’ the closer we get to the Presidential primaries which start in January 2024.

==++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where Fall has finally arrived, there’s still plenty of boating to do, and the foliage will start changing in a couple of weeks.

Indeed

We had a power outage in our little neighborhood last night so I didn't have a chance to post anything as I was busy dealing with the outage. I came across this image over at GraniteGrok and, having showed it to a co-worker, he spewed coffee all over his computer screen because he couldn't help but laugh.

Thoughts On A Sunday

We’ve had a short preview of fall weather over the past few days, with nighttime temps in the 40’s (and some up north in the 30’s) and daytime temps in the upper 50’s and low 60’s. However, today we’ll see temps in the 80’s. But we’ll be back in the 60’s tomorrow with rain all day and 60’s the rest of the week.

I have already seen the swamp maples turning color, but they are usually a good month ahead of most of the other trees when it comes to the fall foliage color. I expect we’ll see heavy tourist traffic with the so-called “leaf peepers” arriving from all over the world. Colors are expected to be a bit muted in the southern part of New Hampshire due to the drought stress the forests have been subjected to, but central and northern New Hampshire should see spectacular color since there was little if any drought stress. I know I will be using the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout to view the foliage colors when they are close to peak, something that I look forward to every year.

==++==

The TV media has been busy covering the preparations for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Seeing the lines of people waiting to pay their last respects to the only monarch many of them have ever known has been eye-opening.

I will admit to feeling sorrow at her passing. She always reminded me of my own grandmother, and I’ve thought of her as “America’s Grandmother”. Yeah, it sounds strange, I know, but that’s how I’ve thought of her.

She was gracious, but she also had a wicked sense of humor which she showed the world now and then.

I will miss her.

==++==

It’s interesting seeing Bill Maher’s ‘awakening’ to the perfidy of the Left. While still a Leftist himself, he has been pointing out the extreme views and measures of the radical Left that had had him rethinking his positions and questioning the motives of those presently running the nation.

Maher also had strong words for Leftists who refused to consider the possibility that what he was saying was true: “And that’s why you seem like you have such contempt for half the country. I don’t think that’s going to get us where we need to go.” Speaking about the deep political divisions in the country today, he asked: “I think we’ve crossed this line and now the question is, how do we walk it back? How do we walk it back from, ‘I hate you so much that I can’t live with you?’ And we have to live with each other. This is not an apartment where we can put the tape down the middle of it. We have to find a way.”

--snip--

In other words, Leftists have completely departed from reality and from a rational assessment of the contemporary scene. While Maher is correct that we have to live with them, it’s like having to live in a house with an insane person: one must always be on guard, for one never knows what the insane one is going to do, or how much damage he is going to cause. It is at least refreshing that a committed Leftist such as Maher can show signs of waking up from the insanity and deciding that he doesn’t want to along with it any longer. Maybe others will follow. We can hope.

If committed Leftists like Maher can see that he path other Leftists are leading us down will lead to the destruction of the United States and to a ‘woke’ totalitarian state, then there may be hope that just a few more like him will also wake up and realize where we’re headed down the wrong path.

==++==

We keep getting the “We all have to switch over to EVs” meme rammed down our throats. Of course those saying we have to make the switch are ignoring the downsides to EVs, one of the biggest being the cost of replacing the battery pack when the time comes. Just one example: The cost to replace the battery pack for a Tesla is $26,000.

That’s not a typo.

It will cost $26,000 to replace the battery in a 2014 Tesla. That’s more than I spent to buy the trusty RAM 1500. I could replace the engine and transmission and gas tank in the RAM for what that battery pack costs and have a lot of money left over. (Not that I should ever need to do so. As long as regular maintenance is performed, they should last another 10 years or so.)

Numbers-wise, EVs make no sense to me. The cost of battery pack replacement makes those numbers make even less sense.

==++==

I wonder if they realize just how stupid they sound?

NY Times: American Democracy Is In Crisis From Republicans Adhering To The Constitution.

Apparently the NYT doesn’t like things like the Electoral College, something that helps prevent a tyranny of the majority, or Freedom of Speech, or the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, or protection against Unreasonable Search and Seizure and so on. It gets in the way of creating the “Perfect Socialist Utopia”, also known as Hell on Earth.

Those of us in the know understand what really needs to be done to save our nation from those who hate it so much:

1- Repeal the 17th Amendment, allowing state general assemblies to appoint senators to represent the will of the state, ambassadors to the federal government, as intended. They will do what their states say, not what the big money donors.

2- Term limits for Representatives. Eight years.

3- Federally elected positions and appointed administrators will not be allowed to trade stock while in office. Period. No trading stock for any federal employee if it is related to the agency they work for Balanced budget amendment.

4- Those running for the House may not take in more than 10% of their campaign donations from outside of their district. How does it help the people of that district when a goodly chunk comes from outside?

5- Allocation to federal agencies will be based on what the agencies need, not what they want, reducing overspending, just like at private sector companies.

6- No more allowing cost over-runs when contracting something, unless the agency requests it. If the contractor is running late and over-budget, tough. Fulfill your contract, eat the money.

7- Fed govt needs to stop funding everything local. Which gives them power over the towns and cities. Such as all the money to police depts, giving the feds power over the police.

8- Lower taxation. Money should be going to your town and state, not so much to feds.

I would probably change #2 to incorporate one of my suggestions, that being members of the House of Representatives should be drafted, not elected. We’re likely to get a better class of people that way.

==++==

By way of Maggie’s Farm comes this image:

What’s scary is that this is closer to the truth than most people realize. But there there’s also this truth:

‘Nuff said.

==++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where most of the summerfolk are gone, die-hards are still plying the waters of the lake, and where we’re waiting for foliage change to take place.

Let's Call It What It Is

I found it interesting to see the outrage of some of the residents on Martha’s Vineyard when they got a taste of what so many others have had to deal with regarding illegal immigrants being shipped into their neighborhoods.

It seems most of the outrage is coming from people who own second homes on the island rather than year-round residents. Of course the hypocrisy is strong considering Martha’s Vineyard is allegedly a sanctuary community. But once illegal immigrants actually arrive there, their virtue signaling sanctuary status magically disappears...at least until the illegals are kicked off the island.

I had the chance to ask a friend of mine who is a native Islander (fifth generation) about her reaction to what happened out there and she was not surprised at the outrage. However, she did mention that most of those expressing outrage are from “off-island” (the Martha’s Vineyard equivalent of New Hampshire’s “folks from away” or more derisively “flatlanders”). They have vacation homes on the island and don’t live there. They tend to be the most vocal when things don’t go the way they think they should.

I have dealt with some of those folks on Martha’s Vineyard in the past, having spent a lot of time on the island in my teens, 20’s, and 30’s, mostly during the off-season. I’ve been dealing with the equivalent up here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire for the past 30 years. The only difference between the two is the folks on Martha’s Vineyard have even more money and tend to be snootier and more entitled than the folks here.

Why do folks who think being a sanctuary community is fine...until actual illegal immigrants show up? Let’s call it what it is:

Hypocrisy.

Red Pill Blue Pill Choice

“Take the Blue Pill and you’ll wake up in your bed and will live an 18th century life in California, believing you are living a virtuous life of onerous labor, privation, illness, and premature death. Take the Red Pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes, finding a long and healthy life in a modern, clean, high energy technological society in Florida that will someday reach the stars.”

“Choose wisely, for once you take the pill there’s no going back.”

A Remembrance Of That Awful Day

This past Friday I was speaking with one of my co-workers about the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, someone we both admired. We talked about how she had been the only Queen we had known all our lives. We talked about the things we remembered about her and since September 11th was only a couple of days away, I mentioned seeing the Guard at Buckingham Palace play the Star Spangled Banner at her request, the day after the September 11th attacks. Just talking about that moment had tears brimming in my eyes as they did my co-worker. Even writing about it has me feeling a little choked up.

Seeing as today is the 21st anniversary of That Awful Day, I thought it fitting that I replace my usual Sunday post with this remembrance.

I have to start with saying that until September 11th, I never understood the folks who had experienced the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 saying that they remember exactly where they were when they heard the news, remembered their feelings on that day. The one thing that so many of them said that to them, it hadn’t happened ‘x’ years ago, but ‘yesterday’.

On September 12th, 2001, I understood what they meant. In the 21 years since That Awful Day I know exactly what they meant when they said it didn’t happen all those years ago. To me That Awful Day happened yesterday.

Twenty one years later when I see the Twin Towers on an old TV show or movie I catch my breath. I flash back to That Awful Day, remembering exactly where I was when I first heard of a plane hitting the North Tower and the subsequent report of another plane hitting the South Tower. I remember watching TV as the towers fell. I remember seeing the report of a plane hitting the Pentagon and another crashing in the town of Shanksville, Pennsylvania. I remember my pager going off again and again and again as I was called in to our state’s Office of Emergency Management. (I was a staff member back then.) I remember the faces of the people in my workplace and the Emergency Management office.

It was yesterday.

Over the years we have heard the stories of the heroes, both individuals and groups, who did amazing things to help the people they didn’t know under daunting circumstances. But it is those stories that have been a silver lining on an otherwise horrific and horrifying day. It is something that when the memories and feelings start weighing me down, I watch this story, one that exemplifies the selflessness of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. It allows me to see the good things that happened on That Awful Day.

Thoughts On A Sunday Saturday

This is a special Saturday edition of Thoughts On A Sunday, the reason being that Sunday is September 11th and I will be dealing with that anniversary on Sunday.

As such, I am going to mention that even with the nice late summer weather, much of the usual weekend visitors we would see have not been here. I’m not complaining as it means we have fewer clueless boaters on the lake and we can actually enjoy some weekend boating again.

It hasn’t lessened the lines at the seasonal restaurants, at least on the weekends. But the usual 10 AM Saturday morning traffic ‘crush’ didn’t materialize. It is usually caused by locals taking care of their grocery shopping and other errands and seasonal renters departing or new seasonal renters arriving. While there will still be a couple of weekends that will see that type of traffic crush, it still won’t be anything near what we see during the June, July, and August.

Our local farm stand was a busy as ever and will likely stay that way until Halloween.

==++==

From the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department comes this gem from Illinois. The only thing I can think of is that the Illinois legislature is working their hardest to make their state as bad as California. Certainly their latest bit of legislation is going to spread the misery already being felt in Chicago to the rest of the state.

The legislation that will add to Illinois residents’ misery is called the “SAFE-T Act”. It was passed in the middle of the night after only 40 minutes of review. Forty minutes.

This is what the misnamed bill will do to help spread violent crime through the entire state, with the three main points being:

- The new law eliminates cash bail for almost every crime, including 2nd-degree murder, kidnapping, and armed robbery.

- Criminals with ankle bracelet locators who don’t show up to court can’t be pursued for 48 hours, giving them ample time to drive almost anywhere in North America.

- Police will no longer be able to remove trespassers from your property.

We already know the first point hasn’t worked out anywhere it’s been implemented. All it has done is allowed violent criminals back out on the streets to re-offend. The second point is just outright stupid.

I could get behind the third point if it the law also allowed property owners to use the force necessary to remove trespassers, up to and including lethal force, without consequences. Otherwise the third point is going to be used to embolden squatters, burglars, and a whole host of other miscreants.

I think we’ll see a rise in gun purchases in The Land Of Lincoln going forward.

==++==

By way of Libs Of TikTok we find out that the MSM isn't mad about gender surgeries on teens, they're mad you found out.

Two weeks ago you may have seen a lot of news segments surrounding Boston Children’s Hospital. Deleted videos and archived web pages pointed to the fact that they were providing “gender affirming” care to young people including puberty blockers, double mastectomies, phalloplasties, and hysterectomies.

The Left immediately seized upon the wording of one tweet in regard to hysterectomies and argued that it’s only done on 18-year-olds. Because they apparently think that’s okay.

This week we learned that that’s not the case. I dropped a bombshell report with a recording of 2 hospital employees admitting in no uncertain terms that they do hysterectomies on 16-year-olds and younger kids in the name of transgender healthcare. There were also archived web pages alluding to that fact. The media panicked. I couldn’t wait to see how they would spin this one.

We can’t trust the hospital, we can’t trust the media, we certainly can’t trust the more radical members of the LGBTQ community.

==++==

This is something I can wholeheartedly agree with. I think most people would also agree with it, that being the world is not going through an energy crisis but a ‘crisis of common sense’. Goodness knows we’ve seen more than enough blatant and very public evidence that the totally clueless have been making decisions about energy policy that are devoid of a lick of common sense.



We have certainly seen that since SloJo took office, issuing Executive Orders that have crippled our energy industry and then goes begging for more oil from the Saudis. The Germans decided to dismantle their nuclear plants and make a deal with the devil (Russia) for natural gas despite warnings the Russians would use that natural gas as a weapon. They also went heavy into renewables, specifically wind, which has left them with electrical supply shortages. Despite their severe electrical supply shortage, they have not stopped their plans to decommission their last operating nuclear plants. We have seen California make many of the same mistakes which has left them with extreme electricity supply shortages during a heat wave all while passing legislation that will mandate the sale of EVs only starting in 2035. They have also made sure their grid won’t have enough capacity to charge all of those EVs...unless they can drive 13 million people out of the Pyrite State before then which might leave them enough power to do so...unless they do even more to cripple their electrical grid between now and then.

It seems that so many energy policies are being driven by feelz rather than data, logic, and reason. Now that more of those policies are making their effects known we’re finding out those polices are incredibly deficient of common sense. Unfortunately, I see even more such energy policies being developed and implemented.

==++==

And that the ‘early’ news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re enjoying the departure of the regular summerfolk, our restaurants are slowly being returned to us, but our boating is getting better.

Unconditional Versus Conditional

Call me a surly curmudgeon, an unabashed cynic who has earned his right to be cynical over almost 70 years on this earth, someone who has seen social mores eroded away, ethics cast aside for expediency’s sake, the relationships between the races torn asunder by the intolerant woke, and the covenant between men and women destroyed by those who see no issue with tearing apart families all in the name of ‘equality’ that has nothing to do with actual equality.

I have seen what we used to call dating devolve into what has become to be called ‘Hookup Culture’, with dating apps used not to meet up with potential romantic partners but for casual sex. I have heard more than a few young women state openly “The first marriage is for money. The second marriage is for love.” They were not being funny or facetious. I have heard young men declaring they have no desire to date or get married because they don’t trust women and have decided they have better things to do with their time.

Probably one of the worst things I have seen is the increasing divide between men and women, driven by those who see men and women as different species, with men being monsters who cause all of women’s ills. But men and women are human and like all humans there are differences between them. Yes, they communicate in different ways and that sometimes causes misunderstanding, but that’s something that has been understood for generations. Yet some folks try very hard to increase the misunderstanding and the negative emotions that go with them.

Then there’s love, something that has also been under attack. I could try to explain it, but I think that would be better explained by this meme rather succinctly:

How sad is that?

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a busy weekend for yours truly, and it’s still only Sunday morning when I wrote this.

Yesterday saw a gathering of the WP clan to celebrate the wedding of the the older of the two WP nieces. For reasons I won’t go into, the wedding was held at a beer garden in the the town of Oxford, Maine. This meant a 2+ hour trip from The Gulch, though it wasn’t a bad trip since most of it was cross-country that stayed away from the main highways. I know the WP Mom enjoyed the trip, particularly since there was a lot of beautiful scenery.

The wedding itself was a lot of fun, a non-traditional one in some ways. I could go into a lot of detail, but frankly I doubt anyone would be interested...except for the fact that the food was pizza. Lots of different pizzas. It helped that there was a portable wood-fired pizza oven at the venue that made all of the pizzas we consumed.

I can safely say everyone had a great time!

It’s also a reason why there was no post last night as we didn’t get back to The Gulch until late in the evening.

==++==

It being Labor Day weekend, I can say I have seen the summerfolk making the best of it. Even here at The Gulch I have seen everyone’s homes with extra cars in the driveway.

I did swing by the town beach (purely for research purposes) late this morning and it was already crowded. (Some of that may be due to the fact that rain is expected later today, but not until very late afternoon/early evening.) There were a lot of boats out on the lake at 9 this morning, far more than I would have expected. During our travels to and from Maine we saw a lot of folks making the best of the beautiful weather, the last blast of summer. It makes sense considering that Monday is supposed to rainy all day.

==++==

To quote The Won, “Never underestimate Joe’s ability to f*ck things up.”

We can certainly apply that quote to Biden’s Reichstag blunder. Seeing the staging for that gawdawful speech had me wondering if someone was borrowing heavily from Leni Riefenstahl’s book regarding imagery. It was not a good backdrop for Biden’s hateful speech.

President Joe Biden’s Thursday speech in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall would have been a disturbing abuse of presidential power had it not been so ineptly bungled in every phase of execution.

Paid for by taxpayers as a supposedly nonpartisan speech, Biden attacked half the country as extremists who "threaten the very foundation of our republic." Sure, Biden tried to limit his attack to just MAGA Republicans. But this is the same Joe Biden who insisted every Republican in the Senate who voted against the Democratic Party’s anti-voter identification bill were domestic "enemies" who were trying "to suppress your vote and subvert our elections."

Biden can’t travel down to Georgia and label the election integrity laws supported by all Republicans "Jim Crow on steroids" and then turn around and say he is only trying to demonize a small section of the party. That’s malarkey. No Republican has fought against the lawlessness of former President Donald Trump harder than Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. Still, given the opportunity to praise Kemp’s integrity and honesty, Biden called him a neosegregationist instead.

Biden went on to say that MAGA Republicans want to take us "backwards to an America where there is no right to choose." This is how Democrats describe anyone who wants to regulate abortion a single second before a mother gives birth. But again, restricting abortion is a position held by the vast majority of Republicans. Biden can’t pretend he is only attacking a small minority of the Republican Party when he labels a mainstream policy position a threat to "the very soul of this country."

He decided a winning strategy is to demonize half the American people, to paint them as “the other”, all while borrowing heavily from Nazi imagery? I figure it’s only a matter of time before he starts referring to that half of the American people as untermenschen.

What follows after that? A modern day Geheim Staatzpolizei? (FBI or the 87,000 new IRS agents?) Einsatzgruppen? Cattle cars and ‘relocation’ camps?

Or could it lead to a civil war, hot or cold?

==++==

I’m getting tired of saying this: Trump was right.

In this case, his warning to the Europeans about being dependent on Russian natural gas was right on target.

While he was President, Trump created an international furor when he told Germany they were vulnerable because of their dependence on Russian natural gas. Merkel, Macron, and the others thought he was a nutjob. But with the war in Ukraine and Russia’s constant shutdowns of the Nord Stream I Pipeline, they are singing a different tune. Trump was right again, and Europe is paying a frightening price as winter approaches.

Gazprom claimed it was a leaking turbine that had to be repaired, but Siemens, the company that manufactures the turbines, says it was likely political.

“Likely political”? It was purely political, as anyone who has been paying attention understands.

==++==

Here’s yet another story about an armed citizen who stopped a mass shooting in Detroit, a story that hasn’t made the national headlines.

The people who lost their lives are on the mind of neighbors on Pennington, where the gunman shot and tried to kill a fourth victim, but neighbors fought back. Detroit Police describe the man as an 80-year-old. He and his dog were shot but survived.

“He saw my weapon and he went from predator to prey. He had that look of shock,” said a neighbor who grabbed his gun and shot back, to protect his elderly neighbor.

“The neighbor, he fired a shot and the guy turned around and took off. He scattered like a jack rabbit,” said Wallace Pleasant, who witnessed it.

Self-defense narratives don’t fit the anti-gunner narrative and for the most part the media ignores such stories. There have been millions of defensive use of firearms in the US (‘defensive use’ includes actions that run from actual discharge of a gun to merely showing that one is armed), none of which make the news.

Three of those uses are mine, with one showing someone that wanted my money that I was armed, another time I actually had to draw my sidearm, and then another time I actually had to point my sidearm. Three uses, yet not once did I need to fire. That is the case with most defensive uses, yet they are dismissed as not relevant since they don’t fit the narrative. That serious skews the stats which makes them totally useless because they are a lie.

I’ve had discussions with acquaintances, friends, and family about this topic. One, I can’t remember who, asked me “Are you willing to kill someone to protect your (property)?”

My response was along the lines of “You have that question backwards. It should be ‘Are they willing to die to take my (property) from me?’”

That is the question more of us should be asking.

==++==

The New Republic asks the question “Can the American Mall survive?”

One of the problems of malls, like so many American things, is the discrimination embedded in them from the start. They originated in the suburbs, where white Americans fled in the postwar decades, building segregated communities in the process.

An interesting take, one I can neither prove or refute. But I remember when malls really started popping up all over New England. Some of those from the 1970’s are still operating. Others built in the 80’s and 90’s have closed, some repurposed and others abandoned.

Seeing some of the malls here in New Hampshire now being classified as ‘dead malls’, meaning they have either closed entirely or have a small occupancy with a lot of empty stores, shows us how much our ‘love affairs’ with malls have dwindled away.

One of the malls with which I am familiar, the Steeplegate Mall in Concord, NH, opened to much fanfare back in 1990. A number of stores in downtown Concord relocated to the mall, including Sears, probably the biggest retailer in the city at the time. Yet, despite the hype that went along with the opening, the mall never had full occupancy. The food court was never fully occupied either, with maybe 75% at best.

Today it is a shadow of its former self, with only 20 of its 62 storefronts still operating. The food court is empty and has been for years. The last time I was there – about three years ago – there were no kiosks. It is a dead mall.

Some dead malls are repurposed, being turned into business centers – offices and such – and others have become multi-use centers. Far too many are empty, unoccupied, and some are unmaintained and are deteriorating, abandoned by their owners. However other malls are still thriving. It may come down where they are located, keeping up with the times by shifting their focus as consumer tastes changed, making sure they stayed relevant.

There are a number of YouTube channels that cover dead or dying malls. They have highlighted some malls with which I was familiar and it was sad seeing some of those malls now just empty shells.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where everyone is trying to cram as much summer into these last couple of days of ‘official’ summer, the rain is coming, and fall isn’t all that far away.

Wise Advice

I cannot disagree with this sentiment.