Being a rainy day I expect we’ll be inside all day – except for church, of course – so we have an excuse to not partake of any spring cleaning. Not that there’s much that really needs to be done with the exception of cleaning windows and screens, something that isn’t in the cards this rainy day.
==+++==
It’s hard to believe that my boating season starts in a little more than three weeks. All the arrangements have been made, bills have been paid, and the only things I’ll need to do before putting the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout back into the water is clean the cockpit and cuddy cabin, then load all of the gear – anchors, mooring lines, PFDs, cushions, and so on – then haul it to the town docks and launch it.
==+++==
I lifted this entirely from Instapundit because there’s no way I could make it any better with commentary of my own.
Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.She’s let everyone know just what she thinks of the ‘woke’ activists with that one tweet, i.e. not much. And why should she give them any more power than they think they have? It isn’t like they’re rational human beings. What they are is delusional narcissists who let feelz drive them rather than logic, reason, or facts.
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 21, 2023
==+++==
Who says there’s no such thing as justice even if it isn’t through the justice system?
BuzzFeed destroyed the media. The media returned the favor.
It was never a viable operation, meaning it never made money. Investors spent hundreds of millions of dollars ‘investing’ in a media operation that couldn’t seem to get its financial house in order. Then again it seemed more interested in sensationalism than actual news. It was this that led to its downfall, a fate it deserved.
However, there is a larger narrative implicated in BuzzFeed News’ collapse, and it inevitably returns to that decision to publish the Steele dossier. BuzzFeed News was a beautiful idea that failed, not just because of the financial model, but because BuzzFeed News itself could never differentiate itself as being more trustworthy than either its parent company or the rest of the media. Why not? Because by publishing the Steele dossier — which we now know to have been partisan bunk concocted and spread with malevolent intent — BuzzFeed immediately rendered itself the least trustworthy news organization in America.The more arrogant they are, the harder they fall.
I, for one, will not be lamenting its demise. Now we have to see about the propaganda organs of the DNC like CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post….
==+++==
News reports that Joe Biden will be announcing his run for re-election has me dismayed considering his obvious and continuing mental decline. My ex works in the dementia ward of our state institutions and has been saying he exhibits many of the signs of dementia. (One of the WP Sisters got angry when I mentioned that, rebutting by asking “Did she or anyone else examine him? If not, how can anyone say that?”) I’d say working with dementia patients for almost 15 years gives her insight that the ‘man on the street’ doesn’t have.
I am not the only one questioning the wisdom of Biden running again. So is the Wall Street Journal. (This link is paywalled, but you can see much of what was in the editorial by going here.)
The White House is whispering that next week President Biden will announce his intention to run for a second term, though the polls say that even most Democrats hope he doesn’t. The public understands what Mr. Biden apparently won’t admit: that electing an octogenarian in obvious decline for another four years could be an historic mistake.And unless the Democrats decide that Kamala Harris is more of a liability than a help and replace her as Biden’s running mate, we could easily end up with Harris as President, someone who is nearly as clueless as Biden, but can’t use dementia as an excuse for her behavior. I think WRBA would have an extremely difficult keeping Cackling Kamala reined in.
--snip--
But asking the country to elect a man who is 80 years old and whose second term would end when he is 86 is a risky act that borders on selfish. It’s impossible to know Mr. Biden’s real physical and mental state because the White House goes to great lengths to hide it. But his decline is clear to anyone who isn’t willfully blind. He rarely holds a press conference, and his words are as scripted as possible to avoid embarrassing stumbles that he nonetheless continues to make.
Different people age at different rates, but the risk of an accelerated decline for Mr. Biden is considerable. The chance that he could serve a full second term is hardly assured.
==+++==
I have to wonder how the Climate Change faithful and watermelon environmentalists are going to explain this away.
New NOAA STAR satellite temperatures only show half the warming that climate models do.
An all new reanalysis of the STAR satellite data finds markedly lower temperature trends for the last 40 years. The big deal about this is that this third dataset suddenly supports the original UAH satellite data, not the other RSS system, and not the “surface thermometers” sitting near hot tarmacs and absolutely not the climate models.The satellite data didn’t match the data from ground stations, many of those stations improperly sited or correction factors not properly applied or not applied at all. When a survey was performed by BEST (Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures), it was found that pristine surface stations – properly sited and isolated from Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect – were not showing the temperature increases being seen at ‘dirty’ stations. The UAH satellite data mirrored the findings of the BEST survey, yet the Climate Change faithful ignored it as the data didn’t fit the narrative they’ve been selling.
Will we ever have enough data to end this climate version of Lysenkoism?
==+++==
Have you noticed that rich people, more specifically the rich Left, talk about how they’re all for being taxed more? However, when it comes to actually cutting a check, they’re a no-show.
I have long been bemused by rich liberals like Warren Buffett, who tell us their tax rates are too low. Really? Guess what: the IRS will cash your check! If you seriously think you aren’t paying enough taxes, or you actually believe the government spends money more wisely and effectively than you do, there is an easy solution. Write the IRS a check, I guarantee they will cash it.So, they talk the talk, but don’t or won’t walk the walk. It’s just another bit of virtue signaling as best I can tell. After all, it isn’t like they actually have to cut a check to the IRS, right? It doesn’t cost them a penny to talk about paying more taxes, does it?
Yet, strangely, I have never heard of a rich liberal doing this, even though most of these people are second or third generation beneficiaries who cannot comprehend how hard their ancestors worked to accumulate the wealth that they enjoy.
==+++==
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where it’s raining, where we’re being a bit lazy, and once again Monday will be returning with its usual malice.