Thoughts On A Sunday

Yesterday was our little town’s Old Home Day, a day set aside for present and past residents to come together to celebrate our town. There’s a parade, activities which include games and attractions for kids, numerous vendors of all kinds of goods, crafts, food, drink, as well as music acts. The local church also has it’s ‘fair’ at the same time, selling all kinds of items in order to raise money for the church’s charitable activities and events throughout the year.

In the evening there are fireworks. Over the past few years the fireworks have been spectacular. I know I look forward to them every year.

I do have to admit I had some concern about the weather as it looked as if we would have to deal with rain. But the weather pattern shifted just enough to give us great weather all day – mostly sunny and warm. It certainly helped attendance as I think we had one of the bigger crowds I’ve seen in a while.

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It seems that statistics are now racist because they “serve white racial interests”.

Uh huh. Yeah. Right. *sigh* Here we go again...again.

Science is racist. Math is racist. Philosophy is racist. What isn’t racist these days?

Three British professors recently claimed that statistical analyses have been weaponized to “serve white racial interests” within academia and beyond.

--snip--

To address the racism numbers reinforce, the professors advocate for the adoption of “QuantCrit”—a portmanteau for “quantitative analysis” and “critical race theory.” Quantcrit, they say, has five key tenets, including that “numbers are not neutral.”

Numbers are not neutral because “quantitative data is often gathered and analyzed in ways that reflect the interests, assumptions, and perceptions of White elites,” they contend, adding that even so-called objective analysis fails to take the pervasiveness of racism into account.

Other key tenets of QuantCrit theory include realizing that math tends to legitimate existing racial inequalities, acknowledging that numerical analyses disadvantage minorities, and understanding how numbers play to the benefit of white interests.

In the postmodern tradition, Gillborn and his team also argue that racism can be reinforced through numbers because they are social constructs.

“Numbers are social constructs and likely to embody the dominant (racist) assumptions that shape contemporary society,” they write. As a consequence, they assert that “in many cases, numbers speak for White racial interests.”

The professors also acknowledge the tension between social justice and quantitative analysis, saying that while statistics can be used to point out the failures of social justice programming, “data is often used to shut down, silence, and belittle equity work.”

It seems these professors have never heard the old saw about “Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics”. Statistics can be manipulated to prove all kinds of things, true or not. QuantCrit won’t solve that as it can also be used to manipulate statistics and anyone thinking otherwise, including the British professors, are lying to themselves.

Yet more useless lamentations about racism.

It looks like I need to paraphrase The Incredibles again: “If everything is racist, then nothing is racist.”

==+++==

Something I saw in the comments of today’s Day by Day cartoon had me thinking “This guy is exactly right!” I think you’ll agree.

I was born in the 1950s. I’ve lived in seven decades, two centuries, and two millennia.

My generation had the fastest cars, the prettiest girls, drive-ins, soda fountains, and happy days.

You could understand the words in our music, and you could dance to it.

We carried knives in our pockets, and guns in our pickup trucks, and nobody got killed.

I have seen the past.

And it works.

Amen.

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Talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences coming home to roost.

The push by climate cultists to replace plastic straws with environment-friendly paper straws has backfired because it turns out those environment-friendly paper straws may contain toxic ‘forever chemicals’.

Belgian researchers tested 39 straw brands from restaurants and retailers for synthetic chemicals known as poly and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The study found that the majority of straws contained those chemicals, but they were most common in those made from paper and bamboo.

The chemicals are referred to as “forever chemicals” as they can remain for thousands of years in the environment. The chemicals have been associated with health issues including thyroid disease, increased cholesterol, liver damage and kidney and testicular cancer and can harm the environment as well.

Just because something is made from natural materials doesn’t automatically mean it is safer.

==+++==

U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) is raising warning flags about the return of mask and vaccine mandates.

“It’s alarming that the mandates are kicking in again,” he said. “It’s like, OK, we noticed masks didn’t work, particularly for children. We always knew they didn’t work for kids.”

Morris Brown College in Atlanta has reinstated a mask mandate, while Rutgers University in New Jersey continues to enforce both a vaccine mandate and a mask mandate nearly four years after the first COVID-19 case emerged in China.

“Masks might have some marginal impact. We can’t deny that fact,” Johnson said. “N-95 masks can have some marginal benefits — but not to deny people freedom.”

Johnson was always highly suspicious of the federal vaccine mandate and has advocated for those who have suffered an injury from the COVID-19 vaccines. He has attributed those positions to helping him win reelection last year.

The Wisconsin senator has also called on the Biden administration to admit its pandemic policies were a failure.

As I covered in yesterday’s post, masks are useless, something even the CDC agrees with. But that isn’t stopping some colleges from re-instituting mask mandates. Why mandate something known to be ineffective? Will government do the same stupid thing...again?

==+++==

I paid a visit to The Manse and its present owners this afternoon. It was a combination of business (town related) and personal.

I was pleasantly surprised to see they had made very few changes to The Manse, mostly minor things like some paint, replacing one screen door, and re-staining the decks. The said they loved the place and I told them I had too during the 13 years my family had lived there. I have a lot of good memories of our time at The Manse.

However, The Manse is no longer a part of my life. It’s part of the past. My focus is now on The Gulch and making plans for building The Redoubt in the future.

The town-related business dealt with changes in zoning that might have had some effect on them as they do rent out The Manse on an occasional basis via AirBnB. Fortunately it turned out there was nothing to worry about in that regard because they don’t rent it out very often during the year.

And life goes on.

==+++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where we had a great time at Old Home Day, I have no meetings to attend this coming week, and we’re fast approaching the unofficial “Last Weekend of Summer” all too soon.

A Return Of Useless Mask Mandates?

UPI reports that US Covid cases are up and mask mandates have been imposed in some places.

Neither bit of news surprises me in the least.

That Covid cases are up is something I expected would happen, just as we see with influenza every year. Why would Covid be any different?

But what disappoints me is that mask mandates are returning even though it is now widely understood that masks really don’t help and in some cases causes non-Covid illnesses in numbers greater than Covid. So why impose mask mandates that won’t actually help anything? Is it merely another means of virtue signaling? Is it an exercise in controlling part of the population? Or worse, is it a conspiracy by the mask manufacturers to stimulate sales?

We’ll have to keep an eye open to determine which of the three is the truth...unless its a combination of all three!!

Friday (Not So) Funny - 23 Years

Thoughts On A Sunday

Another weekend is winding to a close, the weather being iffy – some sun, lots of clouds, and light showers now and then on Saturday, with Sunday staring partly cloudy but later becoming sunny. It was cool, with highs not quite reaching 70ºF on Saturday and almost reaching 80ºF today. It felt more fall-like yesterday, a little early for that as we still have about one month of summer left, at least according to the calendar.

This past week as seen some changes, with one of the biggest ones being BeezleBub’s departure from the farm he’s worked for over the past 16 years. While I do not know the details behind his departure, I am not going ask him or his former employers. That’s between them. He started a new job this past Tuesday, one that has him spending most of his time outdoors, something he prefers. He figured he needed a break from farming for a while. One of the nice things is that he can use his experience running heavy equipment at the farm at his new job.

==+++==

Is Newt Gingrich right that the Fulton County DA’s office was pressured into indicting Trump as a distraction, a way to pull attention away from Special Counsel David Weiss’s screw up?

Knowing how the Biden Administration works, I’d have to say the likely answer is “Yes”.

It’s just another in a string of actions taken that show me the Administration (or WRBA) is doing its best to whittle away one Constitutional Right after another. One of the more recent actions taken by the Administration is the ATF pulling the licenses of hundreds of gun shops “amid [a] Biden administration crackdown”. The ATF never said why those firearm dealers licenses were revoked. It also appears the gun shops weren’t informed why either. To me and many others this is a backhanded way to squash the Second Amendment. But then we know WRBA has no use for the Bill of Rights as we’ve been seeing efforts to whittle away at the First Amendment, the latest effort bymaking normal political activities criminal. Goodness knows the Democrats want to make all political activities and speech by Republicans a criminal act as a means of keeping Democrats in power, something John Yoo, a law professor at Berkeley, and John Shu, an attorney, both say “is very, very dangerous.”

In their quest to sink Donald Trump, state prosecutors have expanded the criminal law dangerously far into the realm of politics, and have threatened legitimate First Amendment activity. District Attorney Fani Willis' use of the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations ("RICO") Act to charge a political campaign with conducting a criminal enterprise makes innocent political activity into fodder for prosecutors, all without providing defendants a clear guide as to what conduct violates the law. While Democrats may cheer Willis on in her effort to convict Trump and his hodgepodge of allies who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election, their triumph may turn to regret when Republican prosecutors turn these tools on their own political campaigns.

In other words they are warning Democrats that “What goes around comes around”.

I have a feeling the warning will be ignored because too many of the Democrats figure it doesn’t apply to them...or they think they will have total control of everything so only their political opponents will have to worry about having their doors kicked in and being hauled away to the gulags.

==+++==

For once it seems Europe is ahead of the US when it comes to Green Energy, in this case “putting the brakes on it” because they’re finding that it isn’t all that green, it’s expensive, it can’t meet the energy needs of the EU, and the overly ambitious emissions goals can’t possibly be met.

. . . Britain and the European Union have pledged to go “net zero” by 2050, with steep cuts by 2030. But across Europe — where this summer has brought brutal heat waves and raging fires in the Mediterranean region—a backlash is simmering against some of the world’s most ambitious green targets.

Last week, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak traveled to Scotland to announce with a big splash his decision to open the North Sea to more oil and gas drilling.

. . . . Sunak’s gambit to commit to more domestic drilling was inspired in part by the results of a one-off parliamentary election in the London suburbs—for the seat that former prime minister Boris Johnson abandoned when he quit the House of Commons. There, voters signaled they were opposed to the pollution charges ordered up by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, from the opposition Labour Party, to limit the number of petrol cars allowed into the central city.

--snip--

. . . The proposed Euro 7 regulation [which tightens vehicle emission limits on nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide] was “clearly wrong” and not even helpful from an environmental pint [sic] of view, said Italy’s Transport Minister Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League coalition party in Italy’s right-wing government.

“Italy, with France, Czech Republic, Romania, Portugal, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary, has the numbers to block this leap in the dark,” Salvini said during an automotive dealer conference in Verona.

“We’re now a blocking minority, we want to become a majority,” he added.

European carmakers have been fighting back against the proposed emission regulations they argue are too costly, rushed and unnecessary. The European Commission says are needed to cut harmful emissions and prevent a repeat of the Dieselgate scandal.

Things went very wrong in Europe the deeper they got into Green Energy. Electricity rationing, insufficient heating in the winter, and in light of the hotter than normal summer, insufficient cooling (mostly fans since A/C isn’t all that common across Europe), has shown Green Energy can’t meet the energy demands. Then add in the overly ambitious emissions regulations and things will become increasingly worse.

Is it any wonder European nations are backing away from it? Sweden has already abandoned Green Energy and is going nuclear. I have to wonder if Germany will recommission its nuclear power plants it shut down, particularly in light of the coal plants Germany has been forced to use to make up any generating capacity deficit.

==+++==

It seems ‘woke’ is losing its luster, is in decline, and becoming passé.

It’s about time.

The original meaning devolved into something closer to ‘delusional’ as so many of the present day ‘woke’ become offended over all kinds of things, usually on the behalf of people they think should be offended by “This, That, and the Other Thing”...and become offended by those on whose behalf they are being offended because they aren’t offended. Like I said, they are delusional.

Sultan Knish has his take on ‘woke’:

‘Woke’, the term, peaked in 2020. In 2017, it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary and appeared as a category on Jeopardy. Next year, Essence magazine announced its list of ‘Woke 100 Women’. In 2020, Disney’s Hulu aired ‘Woke’:, a tedious series about a college activist.

By 2023, wokeness has come to mean leftist extremism. It’s most often used by Republicans and hardly ever by Democrats who act baffled at the idea that there was ever such a thing as wokeness. Much like ‘Defund the Police’, a set of sounds that once defined lefty culture, has been flushed down the memory hole and everyone is pretending they never heard of it.

“That word has been taken,” Erin Jones, a DEI consultant who charges $1,000 an hour for her workshops, admitted. “There’s no good way to use that term. I think it’s been so weaponized at this point that there was not a positive way to use the word ‘woke.’”

What happened to ‘Woke’ is the same thing that once happened to ‘Liberal’. Conservatives seized on it and used it to sum up everything wrong with leftist extremism. Before long, no one wanted to identify as a liberal because it meant being seen as a lunatic fighting for sex ed for kids, free needles for addicts, political correctness in the office and surrendering to enemies.

Leftist support for these policies never went away, but leftism underwent a rebrand.

Indeed. Now that ‘woke’ is a loser of a term, I’m sure they’ll come up with a new one that will become as equally reviled.

==+++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer is trying to hang on, the summerfolk are starting to dwindle away the closer we get to Labor Day, and school up here starts after Labor Day weekend...just like the old days.

Hilary Versus Hillary

I will admit the first time I heard the Weather Guys^TM talking about Hillary, I thought they were talking about Hillary Clinton. It had me wondering why they were talking about her. What did she have to do with weather reports?

It wasn’t until the third or fourth time I heard a weather forecast make mention that I realized they were talking about Hurricane Hilary. (Yes, the hurricane has one “l” in its name while the destruction that is Mrs. Clinton has two “l’s” in her name.”)

This had me contemplating how much damage the hurricane will do to California as compared to the damage Hillary Clinton has done to California...and the rest of the nation. I expect the hurricane will cause considerable flooding due to heavy rains forecast to fall in some areas. One forecaster stated some areas of California will receive a year’s worth of rain in only a day or two.

I will admit my first thought was “Oh, so some places might get up to an inch of rain!”, a bit of a snarky response because some parts of California – in other words some of the desert areas - might only get that amount of rain each year. But up to 12 inches of rain have been forecast in some areas.

There is the storm surge some of the coastal areas will have to deal with. One of the TV reports showed coastal communities preparing sand and gravel berms on the beach and filling thousands of sandbags in preparation for both storm surge and flooding from the heavy rains. It isn’t often you see people filling sandbags in places like San Diego and Los Angeles.

Now if they can only keep Hillary Clinton out of California during this otherwise I expect her presence will trigger the San Andreas Fault on top of everything else.

Friday Funny - Saturday Edition (Again) - It's All About The Cats

I can't believe I did it again. Create the post, preview it, then forget to click on the 'Publish' button. I think I need to start doing my Friday post much earlier since it appears if I wait until late evening I skip a few steps.

Without further ado,here we go:

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a 50-50 weekend here at the lake, with Saturday being quite nice with some late night/early morning showers to close out the day, and Sunday being nice in the morning and early afternoon and showers/thundershowers the rest of the day. I had hoped to get out onto the lake on the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout this afternoon, but being out on the lake during thundershowers is not high on my list of things to experience...again.

Instead, today was focused on work around The Gulch – getting more containers from the Official Weekend Pundit Storage Unit stored away in the attic above the garage, getting other things stored away in a different attic space, going through stuff in the ever ubiquitous ‘junk drawer’ (I think every home has one) and getting rid of things we no longer need, doing some cleaning, some laundry, washing some windows, adjusting the screen slider between the living room and screened porch, installing some hook hangers in the garage and then hanging up the things I put the hooks in to hang, and last, going through some of the other containers in the attic to ‘compress’ some of my belongings and shed myself of the rest – some to sell, others to be donated, others to go to our town’s ‘goody shack’ at the dump...er…Solid Waste Center, and the remainder into the trash. (Why I saved that stuff escapes me entirely, stuff I should have thrown out when I moved from The Manse to The Gulch almost 4 years ago.

I wish I could say I got everything done, but there is never ‘done’ when it comes to household chores.

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From the “Just When I They Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” department comes this:

California Supreme Court rules that there is no right to in-person cross examination of an accuser during campus sexual assault proceedings.

So in effect what it means that all that’s needed for someone to be convicted by a college tribunal is the accusation. Great.

And then there’s this, yet another bit of California insanity:

California bill would make questioning school board members a crime.

California is poised to codify at the state level what the feds were once requested to do — that is, turn inquisitive parents into criminals for daring to question their school board representatives.

[The proposed bill] adds a penalty for creating a “substantial disorder” at any meeting of a public school board, charter school board, county board of education, and the California State Board of Education.

“Substantial disorder” has a broad scope which we know would be interpreted to include asking school board officials uncomfortable questions. Should the bill pass, be signed into law, as well as passing constitutional muster, I would expect similar legislation to shield other government officials from being asked questions to quickly follow. Our ruling elite feel they shouldn’t have to answer question that bring their nonfeasance, misfeasance, and malfeasance to light. They want the peasants – that means us – to be silenced.

If it gets to that point I would expect to start seeing armed rebellion.

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Is it time to invade Canada?

Yes. Yes it is.

==+++==

Why doesn’t this surprise me...or anyone else?

This is the week of the big Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota. Hundreds of thousands of motorcycle enthusiasts are gathered to enjoy the events, music, food, and drink along with their fellow enthusiasts. However, there’s one business that usually cleans up at these rallies that isn’t doing so this time.

This year the Bud Light stand is empty.

This time of year, the Sturgis motorcycle rally takes place in South Dakota. The left tried to stop in in 2020 during the pandemic, but couldn’t even them. Sturgis is even bigger, featuring thousands upon thousands of bikers throughout the country. But one thing very different this year…. The Bud Light stand, usually crawling with people looking to cool down from the heat is completely empty. I guess that Dylan Mulvaney thing still isn’t working out eh?

Worst marketing decision of all time? Worse than “new Coke”?

Yes, it was worse than “new Coke”. Much worse. And the damage isn’t done yet.

==+++==

It’s bad enough when SloJoe damaged the US Energy sector with his Executive Order signed his first day in office, taking us from energy independence for the first time in decades and back to dependence on energy sources from countries that are not known as being friends of the US.

It’s going to get worse.

It seems the EPA is now pushing new rules regarding CO2 emissions from the energy industry, rules the U.S. energy industry is warning is will cripple the sector even further.

U.S. power plant owners warned the Biden administration on Tuesday that its sweeping plan to slash carbon emissions from the electricity sector is unworkable, relying too heavily on costly technologies that are not yet proven at scale.

Top utility trade group the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for revisions of the proposed power plant standards, which hinge on the widespread commercial availability of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and low-emissions green hydrogen, adding the agency’s vision was “not legally or technically sound.”

“Electric companies are not confident that the new technologies EPA has designated to serve as the basis for proposed standards for new and existing fossil-based generation will satisfy performance and cost requirements on the timelines that EPA projects,” EEI said in a public comment released on Tuesday on the agency’s deadline for feedback.

This is not hyperbole either. North Dakota recently hired the Center of the American Experiment to test whether the EPA’s proposed rules could still enable for electricity to be delivered reliably to states that make up the MISO (Midcontinent Independent System Operator) grid. The organization concluded that the new rules would result in the grid’s destruction.

Somehow I get the feeling the grid’s destruction is exactly what Biden (or rather WRBA) wants. They don’t seem to care if millions of Americans who aren’t ‘them’ end up in the dark as long as they get to claim they’ve reduced CO2 emissions. That they also have chosen to ignore that China’s skyrocketing emissions, or worse, are trying to get the US to offset those emissions at the behest of their Chinese masters.

It’s a clusterf*ck. Intentional or accidental doesn’t matter.

It’s time to either rein in or get rid of the EPA. The same to applies Biden.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it’s been a busy weekend, the summerfolk are trying to jam in as much summer activities as they can before school starts, and where Monday is returning all too soon...again.

Is The Higher Education Bubble About to Deflate, Or Worse, Burst?

It looks like the so-called Higher Education bubble has started deflating. That’s not surprising now that colleges are having increasing problems making ends meet. The seas of cash that became available as student loan programs expanded had colleges expanding their curricula, their campuses, and their student populations. But that can only go on for so long, and as the Instaprof has said more than once, “That which can’t go on forever, won’t.” At least one university is finding that out the hard way.

[West Virginia University] announced in July that 128 programs would be reviewed for possible discontinuance or reduction. The decisions regarding which programs to discontinue were based on student enrollment trends, enrollment in majors and departments, and department-level metrics including full-time faculty-to-student ratio and programs’ financial status. . . . The university has already cut staff and raised tuition almost 3% in an effort to make up its budget deficit. University leaders have also pointed to a recent price hike in state health insurance premiums as a reason behind the financial crisis. WVU has received less funding from the state legislature, too.

Of the 32 programs dropped so far, they average 13 students each. Others are expected to be dropped going forward. The university has stated that at this point “147 undergraduate and 287 graduate students will be affected by the upcoming reductions.” As more programs are dropped more students will be affected.

How many other colleges and universities are in the same boat? How many of the ‘woke’ colleges are in similar straits? Are STEM focused institutions seeing the same problem?

Another question that needs to be answered is how many potential college students are taking a look at the cost of tuition, the actual cost of student loans, and making the decision the cost is too high, particularly for majors that won’t really help them get jobs? Add in that some student loans will total as much as a home mortgage by the time the student graduates and suddenly that college degree doesn’t look as attractive. Certainly the number of male students has been dropping compared to the number of female students, with some of those men going into the trades. It can’t be denied that many of the trades pay as much, if not more than many of the ‘professions’. They also don’t cost anywhere near what it costs to get a college degree. It also helps that demand for tradesmen is high and has been for some time, particularly now that many tradesmen are aging out and retiring.

It’s going to be interesting times for our institutions of higher learning.

Friday (Not So) Funny - Saturday Edition - Deeds, Not Words

Note: I found out a little while ago that even though I created this post last night I neglected to hit the 'Publish' button when it was done. My bad.


This is a lesson we must learn over and over again, particularly when it comes to those in power:

Thoughts On A Sunday

I spent a small part of my time yesterday at the Official Weekend Pundit Storage Unit, removing some items and relocating them to The Gulch. One item was an old sideboard that has been in the family for over 240 years. It was replacing a table we gave to the older WP Sister, said table being used primarily to support a lamp, a few family pictures, and a cordless phone charger.

Other things removed were a number of Sterilite containers that made their way into the attic.

The storage unit is slowly being emptied out as things are moved, disposed of, sold, or given away. My ex still has some furniture and containers in the storage unit, but she will be removing them once she has moved to a new house.

While we managed to shed ourselves of a lot of ‘stuff’ before we sold The Manse, there was still enough ‘stuff’ left over that we had to rent a storage unit to store it. It hasn’t been easy to admit that we kept too much ‘stuff’, something I think we’re all guilty of at one time or another during our lives. I am hoping we will be able to reduce the amount of ‘stuff’ to a minimum so the need for the storage unit will no longer exist. That will be another $150+/month I won’t need to spend anymore.

==+++==

There appears to be a growing consensus that this year’s “unprecedented” warmth and humidity has not been caused by anthropogenic CO2 but by the Tonga-Hunga volcano eruption last year.

The underwater volcano put 161 megatons of water into the upper atmosphere, increasing the amount of water/water vapor by over 10%. In case anyone’s forgotten, water vapor is a particularly efficacious greenhouse gas, having a much greater effect on atmospheric and surface temperatures than CO2 could even hope to have. Both NASA and the ESA have been studying the effects of that much water being injected into the atmosphere.

One thing they both agree about is that this huge increase in atmospheric water will have a worldwide effect on climate for a number of years.

==+++==

I have to wonder if it’s time for Trump to say “No”? Athena Throne certainly thinks so.

For me, the no-longer-American justice system crossed the Rubicon when they raided a former president’s private home. That was unprecedented and tragic enough for me to lose my respect for the DOJ. And naturally, once our country tilted over the top of the waterfall, it has only picked up speed on its plunge to the disastrous chasm below.

It’s time for former — and possibly future — President Trump to grab that branch that’s sticking out halfway down and refuse to fall any further.

In Fulton County, Ga. — which was featured prominently in the film “2000 Mules” for likely illegal ballot harvesting — despicable and racialist Soros DA Fani Willis has been working on her own Get Trump! indictment.

--snip--

What if Trump simply says, “No”?

I would pay good money to see the look of frustrated rage on the Leftists’ faces when they realize he’s not coming. Trump should force their hand. Make them send armed forces to arrest him like the thugs they are. Show the captivated world that yes, it’s true — America is gone, replaced by just another failing fascist state.

I would also expect this would trigger a call for protests and perhaps even armed rebellion, something the Left automatically assumes would fail.

==+++==

There’s a new paper published by JAMA that delves into the efficacy of gun laws in reducing shootings. The paper’s conclusion?

Gun laws don’t matter...but race does.

The JAMA paper, which was quickly picked up by CNN as “Structural Racism may Contribute to Mass Shootings” and by Bloomberg as “Mass Shootings Disproportionately Victimize Black Americans”, acknowledged what conservatives have been saying about gun violence.

“There was no discernible association noted in this study between gun laws and MSEs [mass shootings] with other studies showing similar findings,” it noted.

The issue wasn’t gun laws, it was race. “The study found that in areas with higher black populations, mass shootings are likelier to occur compared to communities with higher white populations,” CNN reported. “The findings disrupt the nation’s image of mass shootings, which has been shaped by tragedies like the Las Vegas festival shooting and Sandy Hook in which most of the victims were not black,” Bloomberg added.

What is interesting about the paper is that it appears ‘woke’ medicine has infected as more than once it uses the phrase “structural racism” as the cause for of a majority of the shootings. “Such is the state of woke medical science which tries to fix racism with more racism.” Such it always seem to be with the Left that the solution to any problem is to double down by using the very thing they claim they are fighting against to cure the problem, real or imagined.

While the focus of the paper is the alleged structural racism that drives gun violence, the one thing the anti-gun and gun grabber groups will try very hard to ignore is the finding that gun laws have no effect on the mass shootings the paper covers. This is something the rest of us have understood for a long time. Then again, I think “the rest of us” have a better understanding of human nature than the Left.

I expect there will be a lot of back-and-forth between Second Amendment activists and the Gun Control advocates about this paper’s findings.

==+++==

Is it any surprise that voters are unenthusiastic about the upcoming presidential elections, particularly when it comes to donating to candidates’ campaigns?

We’ve known for quite some time that Democrats are, in the main, not super enthusiastic about Joe Biden. Despite more or less doing what he was nominated to do—defeat Donald Trump and restore a sense of relative normalcy to American politics—huge swaths of his partisans are naturally disappointed that, despite having control of the White House and House of Representatives and nominal control of the Senate for two years, they haven’t gotten everything they wanted. This was inevitable.

The lack of grassroots engagement is a warning sign for Biden ahead of a tough election cycle, raising questions about whether the 80-year-old incumbent is exciting the Democratic base the way he will need to win a second term. The new data also suggests that the threat of Donald Trump, once a huge driver of Democratic fundraising, is not motivating donors like it used to.

When a majority of the likely Democratic voters see the deteriorating Biden, their standard bearer, as decreasingly capable of performing the duties of his office, why would they give their hard earned money to support his reelection campaign?

==+++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re enjoying the cooler and drier weather, the lake is busy with a lot of activity, and where it’s hard to believe that we’re already in August.

Getting Tired Of It

After listening to the various national news media salivating over the news of yet another Trump indictment, I find I have reached the point that I really don’t care. It’s looking like most Americans have reached that point, too.

If one looks at the history of the Democrat Party’s war on Trump it looks something like this:

2016: “We’ve got the dirt on Trump! We’ve got him now! He’s going down!” Result: Nothing

2017: “We’ve got the dirt on Trump! We’ve got him now! He’s going down!” Result: Nada

2018: “We’ve got the dirt on Trump! We’ve got him now! He’s going down!” Result: Nuttin’

2019: “We’ve got the dirt on Trump! We’ve got him now! He’s going down!” Result: Zip

2020: “We’ve got the dirt on Trump! We’ve got him now! He’s going down!” Result: Zilch

2021: “We’ve got the dirt on Trump! We’ve got him now! He’s going down!” Result: Zero

2022: “We’ve got the dirt on Trump! We’ve got him now! He’s going down!” Result: Bupkis

2023: “We’ve got the dirt on Trump! We’ve got him now! He’s going down!” Result: Buffering…..

I have a feeling the last one will be the same.

I am not the only one getting tired of this endless, but in the end, meaningless and time wasting drama. It seems the Democrats have no other plan when it comes to countering Trump and, as Stacy McCain tells us, they’re doing so without regard for consequences.

Notice how Collinson pretends that all of this was Trump’s fault, as if nobody else involved — Attorney General Merrick Garland or Special Counsel Jack Smith — had any choice or discretion in the matter. No, they had to indict Trump. Because Trump “forced the country over this dangerous threshold,” which I suppose is pretty much how the Roundheads explained themselves after they beheaded King Charles I: “We had no choice! He made us do it!” The Roundheads then set up a “Republic” far more tyrannical than anything Charles ever did, much the same as those later regicides in France imposed a tyranny more brutal and repressive than the monarchy of Louis XVI, and likewise the Bolsheviks were infinitely worse than Czar Nicholas.

One might notice a historical pattern here, and then — since we’re speaking of ominous auguries — contemplate America’s future once Our Leaders save us from Trump’s alleged threat to “subvert democracy.”

Santayana warned everyone that “those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.” If this keeps up there will be no way for us to vote our way out of this incipient tyranny and it will be American citizens who will be forced to take up arms against a tyrannical government, but this time against a domestic tyrannical government rather than one across the Atlantic Ocean. Heaven help us all if that were to come about.

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