Thoughts On A Sunday

There’s no doubt the ‘official’ summer season has started. Traffic coming into New Hampshire has been heavy since Thursday evening. Grocery stores have been seeing a higher than usual number of customer visits since Wednesday, at least according to some of the cashiers I talked to yesterday morning. Local traffic was very heavy most of the day yesterday, particularly at our town’s public boat ramps and docks. The line of vehicles hauling boats to the ramps for launching stretched out between the road to the ramps and the nearby state highway. This is nothing unusual as we see this almost every Memorial Day weekend.

The local restaurants were much busier than they were last weekend, not that it surprises anyone. It will be like this until after Labor Day. Then and only then will we get our restaurants back. At least the seasonal restaurants are now open to help take up some of the load.

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As if we need any more proof the Greens hate us, there’s this example (by way of Instapundit) via the Wall Street Journal (paywalled) covering the side effects of Green policies on our electrical supply.

One of the incredibly stupid and avoidable side effects is New York’s actions which will ensure blackouts.

One state that hasn’t learned from California’s green-energy folly is New York. A new state regulation will force 627 megawatts of gas and oil “peaker” plants—which can rapidly ramp up to provide power in a pinch—to shut down this year. That’s enough to power 470,000 homes. This year’s state budget requires the New York Power Authority to retire all peaker plants by 2030. New York plans to compensate by building more offshore wind farms, but they face permitting challenges and don’t provide reliable power.

One does not replace peaker plants used to fill the capacity gap when demand spikes with wind turbines. Wind turbines won’t fill the role of peaker plants for a number of reason, the two biggest being wind is not dispatchable and is not stable.

Wind doesn’t work when there is no wind blowing, so how will wind farms be able to take up the load when there’s no wind?

Power output can vary from moment to moment as wind speed varies and wind direction changes. It takes time to adjust wind turbines to compensate for the changes in speed and direction which can add to grid instability.

Then there’s Texas, an energy ‘giant’ state suffering from the nonsensical Green policies.

Texas last summer narrowly averted a power outage by leaning on businesses to curtail operations. The state has since added enough solar to power about 200,000 homes. But demand has grown by even more, and the sun doesn’t shine at night. NERC forecasts a 19% probability of a grid emergency at 8 p.m. Do Texans feel lucky?

Power plants are being shut down and, in general, being replaced by nothing...just as the Greens want.

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Speaking of Greens, they are why we can’t have infrastructure.

California’s high-speed electric train has burned through nearly $10 billion, far more than its original $9 billion bond, without building a single mile of track.

Where did that money go?

$1.3 billion was spent on environmental impact clearances.

--snip--

Every time presidents make a pitch for an infrastructure bill, they visit the Brent Spence Bridge over the Ohio River for a photo op.

“Mr. McConnell, help us rebuild this bridge,” Obama declared with his back to the bridge. “Help us rebuild America.

After Obama, Trump came to the bridge, and more recently Biden claimed that his infrastructure bill, which spent nearly three quarters of a billion on electric cars, and little on infrastructure, would finally fix the bridge. Over $10 million has been spent on environmental impact studies going back 18 years to explain why nothing much was being done about the bridge.

--snip--

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, $5 million was needed to fund an environmental impact study to build a new bridge, another $5 million to consider building a bridge in Mission, Texas. The current status of that bridge is unclear. After wasting millions and years on environmental impact studies, projects often never move forward due to changing finances or circumstances.

The endless environmental studies drain massive amounts of taxpayer money. For example, the Yeager Airport in Central West Virginia needed a $5.6 million grant for its environmental impact study. And the sheer scale of taxpayer money stolen by the green industry is not being tracked.

Millions, if not billions of dollars spent on endless environmental studies that never seem to come to any conclusions, or worse, end up requiring further “study” which costs more millions/billions. In the mean time needed infrastructure is stalled, in some cases cause far more environmental degradation that the new infrastructure would have reduced or eliminated. The same is true of much needed electrical infrastructure, particularly in light of the need to double or triple both the average and peak capacity in order to support all the EVs the Greens have been ramming down our throats.

Yet we’ll still spend billions of taxpayer dollars on even more environmental studies that will resolve nothing, no infrastructure will be built, or if it eventually is, it will cost many times the original project cost, and will not meet the needs it was originally designed to meet.

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Just when I thought MSNBC couldn’t sink any lower, they prove me wrong.

Their latest bit of journalistic malpractice?

Demanding Republicans denounce a story that doesn’t exist.

The latest bit of fake news to come out of Florida was that teenager Amanda Gorman’s 2020 Inauguration poem was banned from a school library when the reality was it was moved to the middle school section for “vocabulary” reasons. Not that MSNBC Deadline: White House host Nicolle Wallace cared. She teamed up with twice failed Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee and election denier Stacey Abrams and PoliticsNation host Al Sharpton on Friday to decry the fact that Republicans have not denounced a story that doesn’t exist.

During their conversation, Wallace mourned to Abrams, “But to take a poet and a poem that should be held up across partisan lines and demonize the piece itself and the creator of it, I mean understand from reporting this week it was one parent that complained, but I have not seen one Republican defend Amanda Gorman or her poem.”

Then they had perpetual sore loser Stacy Abrams comment on the story that wasn’t a story which just made things worse.

So much for journalistic integrity. But then, what did we expect from a morally bankrupt and ethically deficient ‘news’ organization?

==+++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the summer season has started, the Greens are in hiding (for now), and where preparations for Memorial Day continue unabated.

Target Doubles Down On Stupid

Just when I thought Target couldn’t get any stupider after their ‘Pride’ products debacle which seemed to push a Trans agenda, something that has already cost the retail chain over $9 billion in sales and valuation, there comes this news about Target doubling down:

Target Donates To Group That Promotes Secret Child Gender Transitions, LGBTQ Books In Schools.

Really? It’s bad enough the corporate leadership has decided to “Get Woke”. Now they are trying hard to “Go Broke” due to an even stupider move.

Target has repeatedly boasted about efforts to support the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, also known as GLSEN, an entity which helps teachers place LGBTQ books in school libraries and hide their students’ so-called gender transitions from parents.

Conservatives have launched a boycott against Target after the retail behemoth marketed a female swimsuit as “tuck-friendly” and with “extra crotch coverage,” as well as hired an artist who creates Satanic items to make various designs for the company. Links between the company and GLSEN, which supports “affirming learning environments for LGBTQ youth” and activates “supportive educators,” resurfaced amid the backlash against Target.

The retail behemoth boasted last year about donating more than $2.1 million to GLSEN over the past decade, lauding the group’s mission to create “affirming, accessible, and antiracist spaces for LGBTQIA+ students.” Target also actively promotes GLSEN on its online store.

Target has no issues with interfering with parents’ rights and pushing an LGBTQ agenda in schools, yet they think there will be no repercussions for doing so?

The entire board of directors and C-level executives need to be fired.

Friday (Kinda Scary) Funny - Arnold Bueller's Day Off

This video has been making the rounds and I found it both funny and intriguing.



This is a so-called 'Deep Fake' where the face of the original actor, Matthew Broderick, was replaced with an appropriately aged Arnold Schwarzenegger. While the voice was done by the video creator, the impression was very good.

I have seen some deep fakes that were also able to recreate the voice of the person being 'faked'. This is both neat - I'm a tech geek and like stuff like this - and scary at the same time. Being able to create convincing videos of anyone saying anything means it would be easy to destroy reputations and end careers - political or otherwise - something that should scare everyone.

Thoughts On A Sunday

This week’s TOAS got a late start as I spent a good portion of the day working on the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout, basically cleaning it up, loading the gear – cushions, PFDs, transom light, spotlight, mooring lines, fenders, air pump (for the 3-person tube), fire extinguisher, charts, Marine radio, and so on – and getting the new registration stickers on the bow.

I wish I could say the boat was perfectly clean but it needed a lot more cleaning than I expected, meaning I still haven’t finished it. I had hoped to have the boat in the water before this, but between other folks having better use for my time and a heavier than usual workload, I wasn’t able to get the prep work done in a timely fashion. That the boat needed a lot more cleaning than I expected also set me back. I’m hoping to get the boat launched later this week, well before the upcoming Memorial Day Weekend.

==+++==

Most of the summer businesses have reopened, mostly for weekends until after Memorial Day. One of our favorite seasonal restaurants has been open for the past few weekends though they have only been serving ice cream. The rest of the restaurant doesn’t open until Memorial Day weekend.

I certainly expect the boat ramps will be busy all weekend as a lot of summerfolk will be putting their boats in the water for the summer. Our restaurants, even the year-round establishments, will be busy until after Labor Day when we’ll get ‘our’ restaurants back.

==+++==

It seems that yet another corporation is learning the “Get work. Go broke,” lesson Anheuser-Busch recently learned the hard way. This time it’s retailer Target.

Target is already facing boycotts for selling "tuck-friendly" bathing suits and LGBTQ onesies for babies. Now it has been revealed that Target is selling LGBTQ Pride products from a designer that appears to promote violence, drug use, and Satanism.

Target sells three items by the brand Abprallen – a "We Belong Everywhere" messenger bag, a 'Too Queer For Here" messenger bag, and a "Cure Transphobia, Not Trans People" shirt. The LGBTQ items are available on the Target website and in its stores.

It seems Target is already starting to feel the heat and if it follows the path A-B did I expect we’ll see retail sales be affected as the 90%+ of their customer base decides they no longer want to do business with a company that supports more radical Trans agenda, grooming, violence, with Satanism thrown in for good measure.

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This seems to be a repeating headline in one form or another.

Is San Francisco Doomed?

I added my two cents worth in last Sunday’s TOAS post, but it seems the question about San Francisco’s accelerating decline won’t go away.

What makes this decline tragic isn’t something from outside the city. Instead it has been self-inflicted by the city’s government, the same government the people of San Francisco keep electing.

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Speaking of San Francisco - well, really the Bay Area - it looks like California jurisprudence has yet again been set aside by a woke DA who decided a “Person of Color” convicted of setting students on fire at UC Berkeley should be not be punished and released him.

A man who was found guilty of lighting UC Berkeley students on fire at a boba shop near the Cal campus in 2020 has been released from custody without prison time or probation after agreeing to participate in a diversion program for veterans, court records show.

In late April, according to records reviewed by The Berkeley Scanner, Brandon McGlone was convicted of multiple felonies in connection with the boba shop attack as well as felony assault and gun charges from a separate domestic violence case.

The resolution to the case was the result of a plea deal between the Alameda County district attorney’s office and the public defender’s office.

As a result of the deal, McGlone was referred to Veterans Treatment Court, according to Alameda County Superior Court records.

If he completes that program, Judge James Cramer said during the April 28 hearing, the cases against McGlone “would be dismissed.”

So a guy with a series of violent crimes to his name including trying to set people on fire is going into treatment. If he can control himself long enough he gets to walk. I’m betting he doesn’t make it though and will eventually kill someone.

The DA is not exactly held in high esteem, particularly by members of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. Two veteran prosecutors have recently resigned from their positions because of the DA’s overly woke approach to law enforcement.

Law enforcement and the justice system in California is being dismantled and the Progressives running things are cheering this from the sidelines.

==+++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summerfolk are being seen in increasing numbers, preparations for Memorial Day continue, and where Monday is already knocking on the door.

A Preview Of What We're In For

The EU went whole hog into their equivalent of the Green Nude Eel...er...Green New Deal, abandoning reliable stable power and energy systems that have been used for decades and replacing them with power generation systems that sounded good but turned out to be anything but reliable, stable, or abundant. Germany shut down its nuclear power plants, replacing them with wind and some solar. Natural gas fueled power plants were shut down because Russia shut off Europe’s natural gas supply in response to Europe’s support of Ukraine.

Electric rates skyrocketed as grid stability and capacity decreased. Ironically Germany recommissioned a number of coal plants to make up for the deficit, massively increasing their CO2 emissions, just the opposite of what they said they were trying to do. With a few exceptions, the rest of the EU is in the same. It appears the people have had just about enough of the madness.

That looks like what’s happening in Europe right now, almost across the board. The frenzied, climate hysteria engendered, end-of-days rush to save the earth from ourselves is finding its movement crashing under the weight of its own failures – both in promised results from imposed radical actions and predicted, repeatedly rescheduled (as they are yet-to-materialize) dooms. When the stated reason for extreme measures and mandates which have changed people’s lives exponentially for the worse fails to materialize, and then the end date shifts even as the misery index continually ramps up with no relief, a breaking point will be inevitable.

“Genug” is German for “enough.” And, with not a minute to spare, the zealots are going to have to give way. Perhaps even start answering for what they’ve done.

Once unthinkable articles are appearing in major media outlets, and they highlight just how deep the insanity has wormed it way into the consciousness of a good swath of impressionable…well…lemming-like idiots. High anxiety reigns among the meek-minded.

What’s ironic is that the Biden Administration (or WRBA) has been trying to do the same thing here, with one of the big differences being that it isn’t the Russians cutting off our natural gas supplies which has driven electricity and heating costs higher, but Biden...all while telling us “It’s for our own good”, something that is an outright lie. If you think problems like those seen in Europe won’t happen here, you’re wrong. We are already being warned our electrical grid doesn’t have the reserves needed to deal with seasonal heat waves and severe storms.

A worrying new report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) estimates over two-thirds of North America will see elevated risks of energy grid shortfalls and blackouts over the summer if faced with extreme temperature spikes and dire weather. While resources remain “adequate” for normal seasonal peak demand, the major non-profit international regulatory authority’s 2023 Summer Reliability Assessment warns most of the US—including the West, Midwest, Texas, Southeast, and New England regions—may not possess enough energy reserves to handle heatwaves, severe storms, and hurricanes.

--snip--

“This report is an especially dire warning that America’s ability to keep the lights on has been jeopardized. That’s unacceptable,” Jim Matheson, the CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, said in a statement.“Federal policies must recognize the compromised reliability reality facing the nation before it’s too late.”

Then add the push to replace all fossil-fueled vehicles with EVs and the capacity and reliability of our electrical grid is highly questionable. Renewables can’t meet the demand – they are neither reliable, stable, or dispatchable – and traditional powerplants are being shut down and replaced with nothing. But somehow we’re supposed to be able to charge an increasing number of EVs even as the grid capacity shrinks?

I would like to think this problem is being caused by the incompetence of the Biden Administration, but my gut tells me this is being done on purpose by people who don’t really care about the environment, but do care about controlling people, using environmental issues as a means of doing so.

And so it goes...

Friday (Not So) Funny - Dostoievski Was Right

He was ahead of his time, almost as if he had a way to see into the 21st century. I think he would be dismayed to find out he was right...in spades.

Thoughts On A Sunday

BeezleBub and I retrieved the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout from the boatyard Friday and hauled it to his place so we could prep it to launch.

‘Preparation’ is mostly cleaning the cockpit of the boat – vacuuming the carpet, wiping down the vinyl, and cleaning the windscreen – as well as cleaning all of the cushions and gear and stowing it away on the boat.

Once that’s done it will be ready to go back into the water.

It would already be there but life, as it is wont to do, had its own plans which included the Official Weekend Pundit Refrigerator breaking down. Fortunately I was able to make use of a neighbor’s “garage fridge” to store our food until the refrigerator is fixed on Monday (I hope).

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As we have seen again and again, the amount of school spending does not automatically equate to educational performance, be it big city school systems or small rural school districts. What’s disturbing is that spending and staffing has been increasing even as student enrollment has been decreasing. What’s even more disturbing is that scholastic performance has not increased. In many cases, it has declined.

Bloat – when adults get the money, and the number of kids getting an education drops like a kid going down a playground slide. Make no mistake, that drop in enrollment is happening here in NH as well.

And now you see why my question is so important. Sure, it is easier to point out in overly large school districts, but the scrutiny they receive is also too small for their size. Here in NH, the ordinary citizen CAN provide such oversight and suss out even small savings of the economy – if they bother to look for it.

The best example I can give you is Twitter. Before Elon Musk took over, it had 7.500+ employees. Afterward, head count (and cost) started to drop – dramatically. Much of the Left, who looked at Twitter as their “playground,” howled that Twitter would cease to work and then exist (both complaining and exulting at the same time). Now, the headcount and the commiserate cost are down to around 1,000. It’s still working – you can go and read tweets and create your own. That’s what it was meant for – everything else was “overhead.”

Perhaps y’all should be examining your districts more closely and asking what will be called “embarrassing” questions. Hold them accountable.

Indeed.

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Is San Francisco stuck in a so-called Doom Loop?

San Francisco journalist Elizabeth Weil asked that question in a piece she was writing “to debunk all the horrible right-wing talking points about her beloved metropolis.” How ironic she found out that all of those “horrible right-wing talking points” were true.

It was then she realized San Francisco was in a Doom Loop.

The doom-loopy vision laid out for downtown SF was not pretty: Workers don’t return, offices remain empty, restaurants shutter, transit agencies go bankrupt, tax bases plummet, public services disappear. According to research from the University of Toronto, cell-phone activity in downtown SF is 32 percent of pre-pandemic levels. That number is 75 percent in New York.

The night the Chronicle published its doom-loop article, Manny’s, an event space in the Mission, hosted a public discussion on what to do about the death spiral. The panelists tried to sound optimistic. “We just need to fix San Francisco’s dysfunctional permitting system!” “We can find an affordable way to turn some of the office space into housing.” “We should fund artists to repopulate downtown!”

I think it will take much more than that to fix San Francisco’s problems. Many of those problems are self-imposed, something neither the city government or many of the prominent and influential residents seem willing to admit.

As two close friends of mine who escaped San Francisco for New Hampshire almost 4 years ago have told me more than once, the only thing they regret is that they hadn’t left San Francisco years earlier.

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What happens when the results of a poll don’t give you the answers you expect?

The poll ‘disappears’.

When Americans are asked directly, without euphemisms, a majority are against medical interventions that could permanently affect children.

Who says so? A new poll from an outfit called Change Research, based in San Francisco, which per their website, works with left-wing organizations like Planned Parenthood, NARAL, Emily’s List, the American Federation of Teachers, many state Democrat groups, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. This is a leftist polling outfit who is dedicated to leftist causes. And they conducted a poll on how Americans view gender ideology, transgenderism, and their favorite term, “gender-affirming care,” which in this case means how the American public sees medical and surgical procedures for children, like puberty blockers, hormone treatment, and sex change surgeries.

The poll results did not reflect what Change Research wanted them to say, to their great disappointment.

Apparently the results of the poll “were so bad that Change Research has no plans to release the results at all.” That there wasn’t widespread support for that “gender-affirming care” doesn’t surprise me. There is nowhere near the support of trans ‘causes’ regarding children as many trans activists claim. The last thing they want is poll results that are the opposite of what they want to be made public. It doesn’t support the narrative they’re pushing. Therefore the poll results have to go away.

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I doubt the Powers That Be in New York are going to be able to explain this away.

NY Hotels Evict Struggling Homeless Veterans to Make Room for Illegal Aliens.

Homeless vets are being evicted from hotels in order to house illegal aliens that shouldn’t be here to begin with? What the eff is wrong with the buttheads running New York?

According to a non-profit foundation helping veterans, twenty homeless and struggling veterans have been evicted from upstate hotels to make rooms for the incoming illegal immigrants, as reported by the New York Post.

The outlet added that the hotel staff told a former military and a 24-year-old man who had served in Afghanistan and was in serious need of help that their temporary housing was being taken away and they would have to find another place to stay.

“Our veterans have been placed in another hotel due to what’s going on with the immigrants,’’ said Sharon Toney-Finch, the CEO of the Yerik Israel Toney (YIT) Foundation.

Vets who served this nation, put their lives on the line and are now struggling are getting kicked to the curb to make room for people who broke the law in order to get here?

I have but one thing to say about this: FJB.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the leaves have created a ‘green explosion’ on the trees, the green and yellow tree pollens are coating everything so much my black RAM 1500 isn’t black anymore, and where I still have work to do to on the boat to get it ready to launch.

Just When I Thought They Couldn't Get Any Stupider...

Just when I thought no one could possibly be stupider than AOC, someone comes along to prove me wrong. In this case it’s Denver City Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca who wants to impose a racist and wholly unconstitutional tax on white businesses, the revenues to go to minority businesses as some form of reparations.

A Denver councilwoman caused a stir when she declared that white-owned businesses should pay reparations.

Candi CdeBaca, a 37-year-old Democratic Socialist who is facing a run-off election in June, told a business forum Thursday that white-owned businesses should pay an additional race-based tax, which would be given in turn as reparations to minority-owned businesses.

“Capitalism was built on stolen land, stolen labor, and stolen resources,” CdeBaca told the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance, 9 News reported.

She said business improvement districts could levy the racial tax.

‘You could be collecting those extra taxes from white-led businesses all over the city and redistributing them to black and brown-owned businesses,” she said.

I doubt something like this would have to go beyond a state court to be struck down as unconstitutional should it ever come to be. But since this AOC wannabe has no understanding of economics, history, and just as important, no understanding whatsoever of human nature, none of this is surprising.

If she got her way I would expect white businesses to close up shop and flee, just as businesses in general have been fleeing California due to the incentives provided by government at state and municipal level. However, California’s taxes and regulations have gone after everyone while CdeBaca is going after the paler citizens of Denver. But then we must remember that Colorado has been infected by the California sickness, and particularly the political virus infecting the populace.

Friday (Not So) Funny - Oh, The Irony!!

I have witnessed this in person, seeing the anger and incredulity of those who went through hell being lectured by closeminded know-nothings.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s the second day of great weather that’s expected to last all week. It’s promising since Beezlebub and I plan to get the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout back into the water before next weekend. All of the arrangements have been made, all the bills paid, and the only thing left to be done is clean the cockpit – vacuum the carpet, clean the windscreen, and wipe down the vinyl surfaces – and load all of the gear which includes two anchors, PFDs, the cushions in the cuddy cabin, mooring lines, paddles, tow lines, a spotlight, the marine radio, an updated nav chart of the lake, and a host of other small odds and ends.

One of the big problems I’ve had in the past is loading too much stuff into the boat, so BeezleBub and I made a list of stuff that needs to be in the boat versus stuff that should be left back at The Gulch unless it would be needed during a specific trip out onto the lake. Doing this reduced the amount of stuff stored on the boat by more than half. One can’t get tripped up by the “We might need this” trap if a list of “must haves” and “nice to haves” are put together. Then and only then can we prevent all of the “might need this” stuff from being loaded on the boat and filling every bit of storage space.

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I have to say I like the cut of Ron DeSantis’s jib, particularly when come to schooling the media about their inappropriate use of euphemisms as a means of trying to diminish the reality of the surgical mutilation of children.

WATCH: DeSantis interrupts reporter on sex transition for minors.

"Seriously? … I know people in your industry will dress it up with a euphemism, and they'll say it's 'healthcare' to cut off the private parts of a 14 or 15-year-old. That is not healthcare, that is mutilation." pic.twitter.com/Nok2YuYmbk

Transitioning kids when they really don’t know what they want, or worse, they are being pushed into it by a mentally ill mother – Jazz Jennings being but one example – or trans activist sickos that do not have kids best interests at heart is not a good thing. The kids are an ends to a means for them, period.

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I’d like to think that corporations are leaning the “Get Woke, Go Broke” lesson, particularly after the example of Bud Light’s fall from grace. It took 20 years for AB to take “Bud Light beer to the No. 1 beer in the country, and it took them one week to dismantle it.”

AB didn’t learn the lesson of Disney or Gillette or any of the other businesses who found out the hard way that pissing off the majority of their customer base they rely on in favor of trying to capture a very small percentage of the population is a good way to lose customers and go broke.

At least it appears someone at AB realizes what’s happened:

Robert Lachky, a former chief creative officer at Anheuser-Busch, said the decision to work with Mulvaney was a mistake, according to the Post-Dispatch.

“The minute you step into the political or religious spectrum, when you know your target audience is going to have a real issue with this, you know you’ve alienated at least half of your target audience,” he said. “People don’t like getting preached to, especially when it comes to drinking beer.”

One has to wonder if the other corporations contemplating targeting marketing towards the woke will reconsider after seeing what happened to Anheuser-Busch. But my guess is they won’t because to them being woke is more important and they couldn’t possibly make the same mistake all of their predecessors made.

Yeah. Right.

==+++==

China has its ghost cities, with some claiming there may be as many as 50 of them. Modern cities built to house millions of people, trillions of dollars invested by banks and Chinese citizens buying apartments unseen, yet they are all empty, the only occupants being the caretakers, government functionaries, and a few residents who actually moved into their new digs.

While the US doesn’t have new-built ghost cities, it does have cities that are increasingly looking like ghost towns, particularly those cities under the control of increasingly Leftist Democrats.

The Democrat Death Spiral has been destroying American cities. Democrat policies drive out productive citizens, resulting in a population that elects increasingly left-wing Democrats, resulting in still more insane policies in a vicious circle. Eventually, no one is left but a core Democrat constituency living like rats and cockroaches amid decaying ruins (e.g., our formerly wealthiest city, Detroit). Covid tyranny has accelerated this tragic process…

The downtown areas of San Francisco, St. Louis, Portland, Oregon, and other North American cities remain deserted months after the pandemic waned, despite many urban areas bouncing back to life, new data show.

Researchers tracked smartphone use across 63 cities and found that San Francisco, which is battling waves of crime and homeless addicts on its streets, only has 32 percent of the activity that was recorded before the pandemic.

Other cities not under the thumb of Democrat leadership bounced back after Covid. Then again, those cities haven’t being doing their best to make themselves unlivable, haven’t gone out of their way to be soft on crime, haven’t tolerated lawlessness, haven’t crippled their police departments by defunding them, haven’t had their justice system crippled by Soros bought-and-paid-for District Attorneys.

The big difference between the ghost cities in China and those coming into being in the US is that the ones in China are clean and don’t have lawlessness while the ones in the US look increasingly like movie sets used in a post-apocalyptic film.

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This is not a surprise to me or anyone else who’s been paying attention to SloJoe, the present Resident.

It looks like the meds they’ve been using on SloJoe to slow the progression of his dementia aren’t working any more.

Joe Biden’s idea of engaging directly with the media is submitting himself to the rigors of MSNBC “reporter” Stephanie Ruhle, who is an unusually lightweight and ideologically partisan media figure. But even she managed to summon up the moxie to ask Biden about his age. His answer belongs in the museum exhibit for “old man yells at cloud” phenomena—he’s just so darn much smarter than anyone else in the country…

When they have to vet questions the media is going to ask and make sure Biden has a ‘cheat sheet’ so he can answer those questions without having to think about them, you know it’s getting bad.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer weather has returned, more boats are appearing at the lakeside docks, and Monday is returning too soon...again.

It's All Whirlpool's Fault!

Note: I've got to remember to actually hit the 'Post' button when I'm done uploading a post. I didn't realize I hadn't until I looked at the blog a few minutes ago and realized last night's post wasn't there.

++++++++++

I read Megan Fox’s PJM article about the wrong turn made by humanity with great interest. I think we all can agree that something has gone wrong and humanity is heading down the wrong path. There are a number of causes posited for this wrong turn. The cause put forth by Ms. Fox?

Washing machines.

We like to think we’re very advanced, but is that true? Has innovation brought us the freedom it promised? Are human beings the happiest we’ve ever been? Considering that more than 37 million Americans are on antidepressants, I doubt it. Teen suicide rates are skyrocketing. Drug use, violence, despair, isolation, and loneliness are completely off the charts. No one is okay.

But life has never been easier for human beings. Everything can be accomplished with the touch of a button. Everything is instant and automatic. We should have more free time than ever, be happier, and be more content than ever before. Look around. Is that what you observe? All I see are sick, miserable people who don’t know what gender they are.

Mr. Fox and I are watching 1923, the Yellowstone spinoff starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren (a great show). In the episode we watched last night, the Dutton family, ranchers who work from sunup to sundown caring for animals, fighting rustlers, and trying to survive the harsh Montana conditions, take a trip into town and see a sidewalk salesman with the electric company showcasing a new invention: the electric washing machine.

Under a sign that says “housecleaning made easy” stands a bright and shiny washing machine that catches the ladies’ eyes. “What is that?” asks one of the young women in the group. “That’s a washing machine,” says the salesman, eager to make a sale. After informing the group that it’s for washing clothes, the women exclaim, “Can you imagine?”

Ms. Fox uses this tale to illustrate the beginning of where we went astray. As you continue to read her narrative you come to realize that it is a proper logical path showing the train of events that have brought us to this place. As Megan writes, “[I]t has been women throughout our history who are at the root of all foolishness. So many cultural ills we face are the direct result of women gone wild and the men who didn’t stop them.”

Is she serious about her analysis? Is it more tongue-in-cheek, or is she serious?

This is just my opinion, but I think it’s a bit of both. Too much leisure time can lead to people getting themselves into trouble, be it legal, social, or otherwise. As the Bible-inspired saying goes, “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.” There’s a lot more free time than there used to be and people need to fill that free time with something. It appears a lot of that ‘something’ is coming up with new ways to damage our societies.

Do I agree with all of Ms. Fox’s conclusions? No, but I agree with enough of them to think she might be on to something. It’s up to you to make up your own mind.

Read The Whole Thing.

A suggestion: You’ll find comments from a number of readers have equally interesting takes on what has set us on this path to self-destruction.

Friday Funny - Chuck Norris

I don't need to say anything else.