Friday Funny - Half Glass Of Water

I have also seen the third option state "Engineer: The glass is twice the size it needs to be."

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s a much better weekend this weekend in light of the fact that the boatyard where the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout is stored has been informed by yours truly to have it ready to launch by the second weekend of May. It does need a little work, specifically the ring anode on the stern drive as I noticed it was broken before the boat was stored for the winter. Fortunately it is an easy repair, one I would have done myself if I still lived in The Manse, but because there is no room to work on the boat here at The Gulch it has to be done at the boatyard.

So if all goes well I can get all of the gear stored here at The Gulch cleaned up, removing the over-the-winter storage dust and grime before putting it back into the boat prior to launching it.

The only thing I can hope for is that this year’s boating season weather will be much better than last year’s, meaning we will actually have one.

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A great question I saw posted on the ‘Net that certainly had me thinking:

In the word “scent” which is the silent letter, the “s” or the “c”?

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As much as Biden, WRBA, and the Climate Change faithful keep pushing EVs as the “only way to save the planet”, motorists aren’t buying into it. Yes, some people are wholeheartedly in favor of EVs and have bought one, but most of the rest of us want nothing to do with them. There are a whole host of reasons why running the gamut of the expense, the need to install a charger in/near one’s home, the higher repair and insurance costs, concerns about the propensity for EVs to ignite themselves, just to name a few.

One of the biggest concerns, even from people who like and own EVs, is range anxiety. Range is a big issue when it comes to EVs. What causing this anxiety?

...for many EV owners or intenders, charging at home or work just isn’t that easy.

I am a perfect example of the urbanite with limited access to charging. I live in a multi-unit, high-rise condo building, sharing a garage with many other residents. It’s an older building, built long before electric vehicles were on the market. So unlike with many new-construction residences, there are no fast chargers in the garage. I can charge using the 240V outlets, sure, but it’s slow.

There are some fast-charger options nearby, at least. I can walk/drive about 5-10 minutes to a new mixed-use development that has two ChargePoint chargers in the parking garages, or go a bit farther to a Whole Foods that has a couple of chargers. It’s not the biggest inconvenience in the world, but it is still a pain.

It also means that I have to plan my charging a bit, to bake in time to drive to the charger, hook up to the charger (assuming there’s one open), pay, lock the car, and walk home. And reverse those steps when I need the car again.

How often do any of us think about having to set aside time and effort in order to refill the tank of our ICE car or truck? Even if anyone does, how much time? It takes a few minutes to fill a gas or diesel tank and then we’re on our way again. How long does it take to recharge an EV? A lot longer than it takes to fill a gas tank.

I know I can’t speak for you, but I know I don’t want to have to allow time to charge an EV, to make plans in order to charge an EV. I just want to fuel up and go, something that is impossible to do with a EV...or at least a battery EV. If we’re talking a fuel cell EV, then refueling won’t take long at all, probably no longer than it takes to fill a gas tank. FCEVs are also greener than BEVs.

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Then there’s this, the other side of the EV debate, that being the lack of capacity of our electrical grid to supply the electricity needed to meet the demand. The problem is such that even the Washington Post is noticing the grid is being pushed to the brink.

Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid.

In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of new electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent major upgrades.

Northern Virginia needs the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve all the new data centers planned and under construction. Texas, where electricity shortages are already routine on hot summer days, faces the same dilemma.

--snip--

The situation is sparking battles across the nation over who will pay for new power supplies, with regulators worrying that residential ratepayers could be stuck with the bill for costly upgrades. It also threatens to stifle the transition to cleaner energy, as utility executives lobby to delay the retirement of fossil fuel plants and bring more online. The power crunch imperils their ability to supply the energy that will be needed to charge the millions of electric cars and household appliances required to meet state and federal climate goals.

I love it when I hear so many ‘greens’ say we can meet all of our energy needs with renewables when the numbers don’t even come close to adding up. The amount of land needed for renewables that can meet the demand is far more than the greens say it will take. (I’m not even going to get into the instability and variability of renewables or the need to have lots of storage to make it even close to viable.) What we really need is nuclear and a lot of I...but that’s a post for a different time.

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I have to agree with the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler that some people just need to be killed.

Seattle police unveiled fresh bodycam footage on Friday evening, revealing the moments preceding the fatal shooting of a suspected child molester at a Tukwila hotel earlier this week.

Chief Adrian Diaz of the Seattle Police Department (SPD) disclosed that the 67-year-old shitstain, believed to be a child predator, arrived at the DoubleTree Suites hotel around 3:13 p.m. on Wednesday, under the false impression that he was meeting two young girls, aged 7 and 11.

Unbeknownst to the suspect, multiple SPD officers from the Washington State Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce were undercover and poised to apprehend him.

The task force, operating under the SPD, specializes in investigating cases of Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE), which encompass activities such as the production, distribution, or possession of materials used to exploit children sexually, as well as the utilization of service provider systems in perpetrating such crimes.

The newly released video footage depicts the officers opening the door for the suspect, who promptly brandished a firearm. A struggle ensued, culminating in the fatal shooting of the suspect by the police. The suspect was pronounced dead at the scene, according to authorities.

It’s like they say in Texas, “Some folks jus’ plain need killin’”, a legal justification for putting a miscreant down for good.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it’s beginning to feel more like spring, the sun is setting later and rising earlier, and where once again Monday is returning.

Surface Temperature Measurements Are Still Inaccurate

About ten years ago I wrote about problems with the reporting stations used to measure temperatures around the US and how that problem was skewing the temperature readings. Comparing the readings from pristine stations, meaning “none of the stations are situated near urban areas, parking lots, HVAC exhausts, or other artificial means that will skew the temperature readings,” shows that temperature readings were suffering from the effects of Urban Heat Island effect.

One would think that with it being known that efforts would have been made to move the poorly positioned stations to better locations to get them away from the factors making accurate temperature readings impossible. But an across the US survey recently performed by Anthony Watts has shown that if anything the problem has gotten worse.

In 2009, and then again, as a follow-up, in 2022, detailed inspections with station location data and photographic evidence the problematic stations were done. Stations providing official climate data that were sited in locations where surrounding surfaces, structures, and equipment radiated stored heat or emitted heat directly biasing or driving the recorded temperatures higher than were recorded at stations in the same region, uncompromised by the well-known UHI (that is widely ignored by alarmists and official government agencies).

Of the sampling of hundreds of stations across the country Watts and his volunteer team documented in 2009, 89% were out of compliance for proper measurement practices. In 2022, with the second inspection, that number rose to 96%. The trip last week, while taking a smaller sample than the two previous efforts, approached 100% as out of compliance.

The video is lengthy, but is well worth the time to see how we really can’t trust the temperature data the “We’re All Gonna DIE!” climate cultists use to tell us we have to go back to an 18th Century existence or the Earth will become a second Venus.

Friday Funny - Voting Locations For November

Thoughts On A Sunday

I have to admit to feeling a little traumatized today seeing as I filed my Federal Income Tax return this morning. Not that it was difficult or time consuming. It was more seeing just how much of the pay I earned went to the Feddle Gummint, knowing it will be spent on stupid things while ignoring the important things. I did do a decent job ‘tuning’ my W4 a couple of years ago to ensure the amount of any refund (or additional taxes owed) would be small. I would rather have my money in my accounts rather than Uncle Sam’s accounts to use interest-free. My refund this year was in four figures...if you count two of those figures as decimal places, so I’ll leave my W4 the way it is for the time being.

To change the subject (and to get away from the tax trauma), spring cleaning has started here at The Gulch. We’re starting small, cleaning out the coat closet by taking winter coats, boots, gloves, scarves and hats out and moving them to a storage closet. Then it was a matter of rearranging some of the other contents and getting rid of the winter detritus.

After that we went through the pantry/laundry room, removing some items that were better stored away in one of the attics. (Yes, we have two attics at The Gulch, one accessible from the house and the other from the garage.) These are things like Tupperware containers, pots, pans, and other kitchen related items that are used, but only once or twice a year during one of the holidays. This freed up space and the pantry is now less crowded and it’s easier to find things and keep things clean.

I will soon be starting on the house attic as there are lot of things there the WP Mom no longer needs and that she wants to give to Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul. There are also things I have there I should have disposed of prior to departing from The Manse but ran out of time to take care of prior to the move to The Gulch. Then it will be time to take care of the attic garage, but most of that work will be rearranging things that are already there, mostly Sterilite containers full of seasonal stuff. Winter stuff will go in as summer stuff comes out. (Some of that ‘summer stuff’ is gear for the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout which, if everything goes as scheduled, will be going back in the water sometime during the send full week of May.)

And so it goes.

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One has to ask how well California’s Fast Food Worker’s Minimum Wage law is working out for those who were supposed to receive the higher pay? So far, I’d have to say it isn’t working out at all, at least not for the fast food workers.

This week, your humble correspondent has witnessed another tranche of elitist Democrats ruin the lives of thousands of people and pretend everything's fine.

In California, Democrats forced a 25% pay increase for fast food workers and workers learned the hard way about being priced out of a job.

--snip--

Welcome to California, where between Bidenomics inflation and Gavin Newsom's new $20/hour fast food worker minimum wage has caused cheap fast food to become unaffordable, especially to the people who either got their hours cut or lost their fast food jobs completely.

Take a bow, fellas.

Hence, on March 25, Gavin Newsom plunged headlong into a 25% increase in the cost of labor for fast food employees.

This effort to kill small businesses and jobs harkens back to AB5, California Democrats' attempt to kill off private contracting for the sake of their union paymasters.

First, AB5 killed the so-called “gig economy”, something that didn’t need to be done. Carve outs had to be made for independent truckers because if it hadn’t been done California’s trucking industry would have collapsed and its economy with it. But still, a lot of jobs went away. Many of the ‘gig’ workers moved out of state and continued to do their work from their new homes in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

It seems all of the measures the California Assembly and Governor put forth keep punishing those who make the economy work, create job losses, falloffs in state revenues, generate huge budget deficits, and when that doesn’t work, they double down and make things even worse. However, for the California Democrats it’s working just fine because it allows them to virtue signal about how they’re helping the “little people”.

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Mike over at Cold Fury points us to a piece about The Elite War on the American Middle Class, or as Mike calls it, “another war in which there are no rules.”

Being middle class in America used to mean something—something socially transformative, something even revolutionary. The American middle class represented a form of national social order never before seen on this earth—cultural domination not by the very rich and very educated, or the political domination either by tyrants or the mob, but by a mass of people, relatively well-to-do, who felt themselves fortunate in their circumstances. That was what made the American middle class different from the French or English bourgeoisie. Its members believed, and the country believed, that they were the nation’s backbone, its true governing class, and its moral compass.

Throughout most of the 20th century, the term “middle class” signaled membership in an optimistic and growing group, most of whom had risen within memory from physically laborious jobs in farming or on factory floors to offices and small businesses they ran themselves. The middle class had enjoyed long periods of prosperity and stability, and each generation of politicians, on the left and the right, had enthusiastically pandered to it because they were the American majority, and it was from the American majority you could build a political consensus and a political coalition.

--snip--

Rather than be catered to by the elites who seek to make their living off their tastes and wants, the middle class is more likely to hear the elite talk about it as a problem: Middle-class Americans are racist, they complain too much about how expensive everything has become, and they won’t get on board either with the left’s social-engineering schemes or the populist right’s rage-driven apocalypticism.

They are told that “no human is illegal” and that their concerns about an open border are evidence of their own bigotry. They see the poor and other designated “oppressed” receive sympathetic elite attention and government subsidies and programs, and services aimed at helping them. The elite champion the rights of criminals, illegal immigrants, and destructive Black Lives Matter activists who want to dismantle the police. They tell the rest of the country that they must call the homeless the “unhoused” and ignore any quality-of-life effects from that population’s drug use or instability. When the middle class complains, the elite often chide it for having fallen prey to “misinformation” or excessive “right-wing” media consumption.

We’ve been hearing that Biden (or rather WRBA) is working hard to grind down the middle class, and while I originally thought is was rhetoric, I can no longer think that as action after action taken by the the Biden Administration continuously whittles away at the middle class.

As Mike writes:

As are we all—everyone, that is, foolish and/or naive enough to still believe, as patriotic dupes, in the essential righteousness of a nation which in actuality bears little if any resemblance at all to the nation its Founding Fathers—whom its middle-class posterity still nonetheless justly admire and take great pride in—brought forth originally.

None of this has happened by accident, mind. The assault on and dismantling of the American middle-class and the nuclear family which is its backbone and practical foundation is Item One in the Marxist playbook, the crucial first step without which all else is pointless and futile.

If the middle class is eradicated, that will leave only the new nobility – our self-anointed Progessive elite – and the neo-serfs – the rest of us. It is the neo-feudalism of Marxist ideology and the Progressives are using every step in the Marxist handbook to erase the middle class.

Of course that might not work out quite the way they want and it is they who might find themselves on the wrong side of history...or better yet, on the ash heap of history.

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Speaking of war, one has to look at the escalating war in the Middle East with Iran getting directly involved in the war between Israel and Hamas.

Iran fired 300+ cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and drones at Israel. 99%+ of those missiles and drones were shot down by Israeli and US Navy anti-aircraft systems. At least Iran targeted military targets unlike their Hamas, Hezbollah, and Russian allies who have no problem targeting civilian infrastructure, facilities, and residences.

Of course SloJoe is trying to talk Israel into not striking back, something that Biden should stay away from. If nothing else it makes him sound more like he is Iran’s ally rather than Israel’s. Why is it that Israel, the country against which Hamas started a war, is the one everyone says must restrain themselves while their enemies continue their attacks on Israel.

This is a stupid war, one made possible by the Biden Administration, one that would not have happened if Trump were still in office.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice and snow from the last storm has all but disappeared, the rivers and streams are running high, and where boating season starts in a little over three weeks...for me.

Is Another Blue City Falling Victim To A Doom Loop?

It looks like another blue city is being added to the ranks of those entering the so-called “doom loop”. Joining the list that includes places like San Francisco, Portland, and Detroit is St. Louis, Missouri.

First, we must as define ‘doom loop’:

A doom loop describes a situation in which one negative economic condition creates a second negative condition, which in turn creates a third negative condition or reinforces the first, resulting in a downward spiral.

How is St. Louis entering this condition?

“The office district is empty, with boarded up towers, copper thieves, and failing retail,” reports the Wall Street Journal of Democrat-run St. Louis, Missouri. “[E]ven the Panera outlet shut down. The city is desperately trying to reverse the ‘doom loop.’”

Let’s look at the mayoral history of the doom-looping St. Louis, shall we?

Oh, look, there hasn’t been a Republican mayor in St. Louis since — not a typo — 1949. For 75 years, the people of St. Louis have voted for More of the Same, so excuse me if I don’t whip out a violin over all this unavoidable doom looping.

“Cities such as San Francisco and Chicago are trying to save their downtown office districts from spiraling into a doom loop,” writes the Wall Street Journal. “St. Louis is already trapped in one.”

I think San Francisco is already sliding into a doom loop. If New York doesn’t change course soon, particularly in light of the sham of a trial against Trump, it too will enter a doom loop. It is already seeing falling commercial occupancy, one consequence of the overblown Covid ‘precautions’ as Work From Home which made going into the office less attractive, particularly since many office jobs can be done from home as long as the employee has a decent Internet connection. (The case could be made that the WFH precaution during Covid was the first negative economic condition that started the doom loop.) That has certainly been the case in San Francisco and Seattle. What’s worse is that the commercial vacancy rate keeps climbing in all three cities. It has certainly been that way in St. Louis and increasingly in San Francisco.

The question is will these cities do what is need to stop their descent into a doom loop, or will they keep doing economically stupid stuff that makes things worse?

Something To Keep In Mind Come November

I still have my regular Saturday post in the works, but when I came across the following over at Instapundit, I knew I had to add it here, "it" being the this:

Donald Trump had Iran broke.

Joe Biden gave the Iran Regime hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief, credit and cash.

Iran is now attacking Israel with Joe Biden’s money.

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) April 13, 2024

I’m getting angrier every hour with the Biden Administration.

They’ve ushered in multiple wars. They did this!

They must not just be defeated in November – they must be shown a humiliating defeat so that no Democrat ever supports radical Left policies.

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) April 13, 2024

It seems the Democrats are good at getting us involved in wars, directly or indirectly...and then abandoning the people we were helping (Afghanistan).

This pisses me off to no end.

(Delayed) Friday Funny - Firetrucks

Sorry about the delay but I had a bit of a brain fart and didn't realize that yesterday was Friday. I kept thinking it was Thursday...though I don't know why.

Without further delay:

Thoughts On A Sunday

The clean up after this past week’s Nor’easter continues as does efforts to restore power to the last of those still without it. Surprisingly the snow has been melting away pretty quickly, not unlike the snowstorm we had a couple of weeks ago. That we’re going to have temperatures in the 60’s on both Monday and Tuesday is certainly going to help speed things along.

One of the other things we’ll be dealing with on Monday is the total eclipse that will sweep across northern New Hampshire. Traffic traveling north is expected to be heavy both today and tomorrow as folks wishing to experience the total eclipse head into Grafton and Coos Counties to be in the path. Fortunately most of those affected by this past week’s Nor’easter were south of there so there shouldn’t be many problems caused by the storm up in those areas. It does mean lodgings are fully booked and restaurants, stores, and gas stations will be having well above normal patronage. It also means traffic will be well above normal as well.

I’ll be here at The Gulch as the eclipse starts. While not in the path of totality we will see a partial eclipse and that’s good enough for me. If I really want to see it I can catch it on our local TV channel. As long as I don’t have to travel to see it I’m good.

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One subject of discussion that has popped again in the aftermath of the widespread power outages is why New Hampshire hasn’t buried its power lines to help reduce the probability of future outages. I can explain that with one two-word phrase:

Granite State.

New Hampshire’s nickname – the Granite State – exists for a reason, that being we have a lot of granite…everywhere. That means burying things like power lines can be difficult because in a lot of cases it will mean digging, drilling, and blasting to cut the trenches needed to bury those lines. They can’t be shallow in order to ensure safety as many of the distribution lines run at 3800 volts or more, something that can ruin your whole day if that electricity ‘escapes’ because someone did something stupid. It could require thousands of miles of trenches to be dug and cut through the rock in order to bury all of those power lines that can be buried.

While it would be nice to see most of the power lines and poles that go with them disappear, the question is whether it is worth the time, and more specifically, the money it would take. Then there’s a follow-on question that needs to be asked: Who would be paying for all of those power lines to be buried?

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I found this rather amusing considering it is likely accurate.

Democrats Warned Not To Register Young Voters, ‘They’re Going to Vote for Trump.’

If that is indeed the case it means the Democrats will have to work harder to register the dead and non-citizens.

A confidential memo circulated among top Democratic donors has sparked a furious debate in Democratic circles about whether to narrow the focus of voter registration efforts to avoid signing up likely Republicans.

For decades, nonpartisan groups allied with the Democratic Party have run wide-ranging efforts aimed at increasing voter registration among people of color and young people — groups that tend to lean Democratic but have historically voted at lower rates than older and White people.

In recent years, however, there has been a marked shift among the roughly 1 in 5 citizens of voting age who are unregistered toward Republicans, raising fresh questions about how much boosting nonpartisan voter registration could help presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump heading into November.

[Strauss] also warned that efforts to gain Democratic votes among younger and non-Black people of color were often expensive — costing more than $1,200 per net vote in 2020, by one estimate — because the groups now include so many non-Democrats. Among voters of color, he wrote that “only African American registration is clearly a prime opportunity,” adding that netting Democratic voters among Black people cost approximately $575 per vote in 2020.

And where did the DNC get the money to offset those costs?

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A great quote from Lincoln Brown that gets right to the point:

What irks us is that you [Progressives] are not content to live your lives as you see fit. You demand that we live our lives as you see fit.

They want us to sit down, shut up, and do what they tell us to do. We won’t do that because we know they are mentally ill, live in a delusional world of Marx’s making, and will have no problem eventually imprisoning or murdering us to get their way. Sic semper tyrannus.

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Common Cents Blog asks the question “Is California Going Red?”

Possibly...but I always figured that would happen by the coastal counties being kicked out of the rest of California once they had enough of the delusional Marxists presently running the state into the ground. Every time I’ve thought the California Assembly and the Governor couldn’t get get any crazier/stupider, they prove me wrong. At some point the sane people have got to reach the point where they’ve had enough and they make those blue counties a separate entity – preferably a foreign entity – and let the red counties get back to business without interference from their self-anointed ‘betters’.

However, one thing that is giving some people hope is that a Republican – Steve Garvey – is leading the vote count in the primary race for the upcoming US Senate race in November. Could this be but the first step in California shifting back to the right?

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It looks like yet another blue city is learning the lesson of the Law of Unintended Consequences, that city being Minneapolis and their making sure Uber and Lyft drivers lose their jobs with an ill-advised ordinance that was supposed to ‘help’ those same drivers.

I want to strike a Nietzschean note in this comment on the rideshare ordinance enacted by the City of Minneapolis this past month. Under the ordinance, Uber and Lyft would be required to pay drivers a minimum rate of $1.40 per mile and 51 cents per minute to ensure that they earn the equivalent of local minimum wage of $15.57 per hour — effective May 1. The city council overrode the mayor’s veto to enact the ordinance.

Uber and Lyft would be required to comply with the ordinance, that is, if they are still around on May 1, but they will both be out of Minneapolis by then. Indeed, Uber will depart the entire Twin Cities metropolitan area.

The ordinance represents an exercise in the pure Nietzschean will to power. It resolves a nonproblem with a law that destroys thousands of jobs providing millions of rides. NRO quotes a local Lyft drivers speaking of his fellow contractors pushing the ordinance as “just absolutely lazy people.”

Yet another example of the willfully ignorant making economic decisions they are not qualified to make which have real world consequences for constituents they care nothing about...until the next election cycle. Uber and Lyft will be pulling up stakes with Uber also pulling out of neighboring St. Paul.

One of the ironies is that just over 60% of the drivers are immigrants, with most of them being male and African. Now their jobs are going away courtesy of the Minneapolis City Council. (The mayor vetoed the ordinance, but the city council overrode his veto.)

Another irony is that Minnesota’s governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, sees the problem and has excoriated the Minneapolis City Council for “magical thinking” that a new rideshare app will just appear out of thin air to replace Uber and Lyft.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the clean-up continues apace, preparations for the upcoming boating season have resumed, and where Monday is going to show us just how bad it can get by making sure the sun goes out in the middle of the afternoon.

Non-Winter Winter Weather

This winter that just passed was a one heck of a disappointment as we didn’t see nearly as much winter weather as we usually do up here in New Hampshire. There wasn’t nearly as much snow as is normal. We didn’t have the usual sub-zero temperatures. Instead we had warmer than normal temps and quite a bit of rain. (Actually, a lot of rain.)

Then in a period of not quite two weeks we had two snowstorms, each dropping about 18 inches of snow. The first one wasn’t all that bad with the snow being ‘normal’ snow – not the supper fluffy really cold weather type of snow but still light in weight. The second one was nasty with heavy wet snow and high winds which took down trees and power lines all over the state, with around 200,000 customers without power at one point. We here at the The Gulch were one of them. Almost 85% of our town lost power.

Our power went out around half-past 7am Thursday morning before the height of the storm. Fortunately I had prepared the Official Weekend Pundit Portable Generator ahead of time and it only took about 2 minutes to get it up and running and the power switched over. Fortunately we still had cable so the WP Mom could catch her TV shows and I could continue working from home. And then the cable went out and TV and Internet went away that afternoon. (Fortunately for me I had the foresight to be working from local copies of the documents I was creating so the loss of the ‘Net didn’t prevent me from continuing my work).

Friday morning dawned and power was still out. I had to venture out to get more propane for the generator and fortunately the roads were in good shape. The only time I had to use 4WD was getting out of the driveway.

Driving down to our local Tractor Supply Company store to refill the empty propane tank was easy...but the number of trees I saw that had torn free from the ground or broke off above the ground was mind boggling. That certainly explained the power/cable/telephone outages. (Yes, I called the TSC store on my cell phone to see if they were open and able to fill propane tanks before I left The Gulch.)

On my second foray out later that morning I did a little exploring and found the where the power lines and fiber optic cables that feed out part of town were taken out. A huge tree had broken off about 8 feet up the trunk and took out the lines...and the two power poles to either side of where it came down.

It was amazing to see what heavy wet snow and wind can do between downed trees and power lines, blocked roads, and damaged homes.

We were fortunate that our power and cable were restored early yesterday evening so we were out for a day-and-a-half. Others are still without power and many will not see power back until Sunday at the earliest.

This is one of the problems with spring snowstorms, particularly if they are Nor’easters. They are often just like what we experienced on Wednesday and Thursday – heavy wet snow, high gusty winds, and widespread power outages.

Hopefully we won’t see any more between now and when I put the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout back into the lake in mid May.

Friday Funny - What Is This "We" You're Talking About?

This post almost didn't take place as we were still recovering from a Nor'easter that dumped 19 inches of heavy wet snow and knocked out power and access to the Internet. Fortunately both were restored a couple of hours ago after being out for a day-and-a-half.

Thoughts On A Sunday

This is an abbreviated edition of TOAS as I spent today with members of the WP Clan celebrating Easter.

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A week ago we were cleaning up after receiving 18 inches of snow here at The Gulch. Today, much of that snow is gone, between warmer temperatures and a couple of says of heavy rain. Not that the snow is gone, but there isn’t a lot of bare ground showing. Driveways and roads are clear and most roofs are also snow free.

Yesterday saw high winds with gusts of 40-50 mph. The winds generated white caps and two foot swells out on the lake.

I wish I could say we’re past any winter weather, but the Weather Guys^TM have said we’re likely to see snow starting Wednesday and on and off on Thursday and Friday. Winter isn’t over yet...at least according to Mother Nature.

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Oh good grief!! Is there nothing global warming can’t do?

First, it’s going to turn Earth’s surface into something that will resemble Venus and we’re all gonna die. Then it’s going to usher in another Ice Age...and Venus-like temperatures at the same time and we’re all gonna die. The latest claim about the power of global warming?

Global warming will increase plastic pollution.

This is what is going to kill us this time:

Typically viewed as unrelated problems, global warming and plastic pollution are instead inextricably trapped in a “vicious circle” where one feeds the other, researchers in Sweden report in Nature Communications. The mutually-reinforcing relationship escalates global warming, the degradation of materials, plastic waste and the leaching of toxic chemicals into the biosphere.

Plastics that we rely on every day will deteriorate more rapidly because of rising global temperatures, and one effect will be a demand for more plastics. Xinfeng Wei, a researcher in polymeric materials at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, says meeting that demand will further compound greenhouse emissions that drive up the global temperature.

“A self-reinforcing cycle is formed, creating a vicious circle between climate change and plastic pollution,” Wei says.

In 2019, plastics generated 3.4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, or about 1.8 billion tons, mostly on account of their production and conversion from fossil fuels, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). By 2060 that amount is expected to more than double.

Everything generates greenhouse gases, not just plastics. But one has to ask whether plastics can be re-engineered to reduce emissions as well as toxic chemical runoff? Do all plastics cause this problem or just some of them? If plastics were actually capable of being properly recycled would this reduce the problem, have no effect, or make the problem worse?

==++++==

Equity Based Algebra?

Just when I think California can’t get any stupider it proves me wrong.

When the woke claim things like math is racist, one has to figure they’ll also come up with some nonsense as a means of fixing the problem, one that doesn’t exist. So here’s California’s latest bit of delusional silliness – equity based algebra.

The CMF (California Math Framework) is a series of policy and curriculum "suggestions" designed to bring "equity" to the math scores of minority students. Some of [the] outrageous suggestions already adopted are almost beyond belief. Julia Steinberg has listed a few in The Free Press.

-Most students won’t learn algebra until high school. In the past, when that was expected of middle schoolers, the CMF tells us, “success for many students was undermined.”

-This means calculus will mostly be verboten because students can’t take calculus “unless they have taken a high school algebra course or Mathematics I in middle school.”

-“Detracking” (ending advanced courses) will be the law of the land until high school; students will be urged to “take the same rich mathematics courses in kindergarten through eighth grade.”

Also, "letter grades will be discouraged in favor of 'standards-based assessments.'" It's not very clear what "standards-based assessments" are, but it sure sounds academic and harmless, right?

The worst of it boggles logic and reason.

It only gets worse from there, pushing equity which in this case means pulling students down to the lowest common denominator. That is not how one ensures success of students. It just makes sure they all fail...but at least it will be fair, right?

What a bunch of pure, unadulterated woke bullsh*t.

Read The Whole Thing.

==++++==

And that’s the (abbreviated) news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re going to be swinging back and forth between spring and winter weather, there are already some boats back in the water, and where yet again we will not be able to escape Monday.

Yeah, Like This Is Going To Work Out

The Biden Administration (well, actually WRBA) keeps trying to ram electric vehicles down the motoring public’s throats. It’s using the EPA as a means of doing so.

But per usual the one thing that is being devoutly ignored is that electric vehicles require electricity to charge them.

Little mention has been made about where all this electricity needed to charge them is going to come from. Yes, some noise has been made about using renewable sources to do so, but the truth is that renewables will never be able to do so. Too many renewables true believers cannot seem to do math, cannot figure out that the amount of land needed to provide the electricity just to charge EVs, let alone for other uses also being mandated by WRBA. They can’t be built fast enough nor will they provide anywhere enough electricity when it’s needed.

Lo and behold, when you push people to electrify everything in their lives – cars, cookers, heating systems – while bribing them to go all-electric with lavish government subsidies, it turns out they use more electricity. Who would have thought? I guess this is why we need all those brainiac experts to analyse the ultra-complicated technical details of environmental policy.

One such expert worries in the Times: ‘The numbers we’re seeing are pretty crazy.’ America’s paper of record warns that in the past year the nation’s utilities have nearly doubled their estimates of how much more power they’ll need to provide in the next five years, during which an extra California’s worth of demand will be dumped on the US grid. So allow me to lead you through all the ‘well, duh’ bullet points of this hugely entertaining piece.

Electric vehicles need electricity. Surprise! Apparently simply stippling the landscape with new EV chargers, which Joe Biden’s farcically titled Inflation Reduction Act is meant to finance, isn’t quite enough. Gosh, darn it. Nobody pointed out that the chargers have to be connected to actual electricity. So far, it looks as if no one in government has worried about where it will all come from. Oh well. That’s understandable. These important people have so many other weighty matters on their minds.

Burning fossil fuels to not burn fossil fuels is a tad inconsistent.

Making electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines requires electricity.

When you throw trillions of government dollars at reviving manufacturing, you get more manufacturing.

Manufacturing requires electricity.

Intermittent wind and solar power require fossil fuel backup.

There are other points brought up that dismantle the argument for forcing everyone into EVs, and switching heating/cooling, stoves, clothes-dryers, and so on to electricity. Our electrical grid can’t possibly meet the demand all these changes require.

The environmentalists won’t let the utilities build the power plants we need to build – nuclear – be they SMRs of traditional design or molten salt reactors that are much safer to operate and can use ‘depleted’ fuel from older reactors – uranium and plutonium – burning them until all of the long-lived radioisotopes are gone. Generating electricity from diffuse sources is never cheap. It also isn’t reliable. It is also variable, something electric grids really don’t like. (This is something South Australia found out the hard way when they went full renewables after shutting down their last coal-fired plants.)

Friday Funny - Hunting Versus Assault

Here's a better way to explain the difference between a hunting rifle versus an 'assualt' rifle to anti-gunners in a way they might actually understand:

Thoughts On A Sunday

Just when we thought winter was in our rear mirror, Mother Nature decided it wasn’t quite over yet. We received a little over 17 inches of snow here at the lake, with areas to the west and north of us seeing over 2 feet of snow. (Ironically, the Weather Guys ^TM had forecast only 6 to 12 inches to fall here.) One of the saving graces was that there was little wind with this storm though there were times when the snow was falling at up to three inches an hour in some areas.

I did go outside to shovel a couple of times during the snowfall to keep the amount of snow I needed to move at any one time to a minimum. However, I still spent about two-and-a-half hours this morning shoveling. I also pulled out the roof rake to remove snow from the roof in order to prevent any ice damming.

What’s ironic is that with the exception of a couple of snowbanks left over from winter, all of the snow was gone. Now it looks like we’re back in the depths of winter rather than the first week of spring.

At least I did not have to venture out on to the roads yesterday, having taken care of what little pre-storm shopping I needed to do early Friday afternoon. Not that I wouldn’t have if the need arose as the trusty RAM 1500 4x4 is more than capable of handling the weather. But why head out if there’s no need?

I figure this is likely to be a “last gasp” winter storm and that we won’t see any more accumulating snow again until next winter...or so I hope. I’d really like to get the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout ready for the upcoming boating season and get it into the water before mid-May.

==++++==

I find it ironic that the US warned Russia about an upcoming terror attack, likely from known Islamic terrorist group, and were ignored.

Or were they?

Knowing the Russian propensity to sacrifice their own citizens in order to fit a narrative they’re trying to sell, I wouldn’t put it past them to allow this attack to take place and then blame the attack on Ukraine as a means to garner continuing support for their war against Ukraine. Goodness knows Putin has shown he doesn’t care about the myriad of Russian men sent to the slaughter in so-called “meat assaults”, poorly armed, ineffective body armor, and lack of artillery or close air support while trying to break Ukrainian defenses. Why would he care for Russian citizens who might serve a better purpose as martyrs?

Such an attack is uncharacteristic of Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory. The Ukrainians focus on military targets – air fields, naval bases, navy dry docks, supply depots, refineries, tank farms, logistics centers, transportation infrastructure like bridges, factories, electrical substations and power plants – not civilian targets like apartment buildings, shopping malls, and public buildings like the Russians have.

==++++==

First, it’s shoplifting mobs hitting stores, overwhelming store security and absconding with thousands of dollars of merchandise in less than two minutes. They are gone long before police can respond.

Now it’s hundreds of teens storming malls in California, not to shoplift but blocking access to mall businesses, fighting, and “to raise holy hell”.

What started last summer as a social media challenge has morphed into a major challenge for California shop owners, police, and teens.

Hundreds or even thousands of teens descended on one mall and milled about, blocking access to stores, getting into fights and generally raising holy hell. One 16-year-old kid was shot during a disturbance involving hundreds of teens at the Pike Outlets in Long Beach. Another teen was stabbed in the Bay area as a mob of teens descended on a mall in Emeryville.

The sheer number of teens who show up at these "takeovers" is alarming. Thousands of teens confronted police at a fashion mall in Torrance, closing streets for hours. They planned to repeat the event this weekend.

--snip--

“Authorities, shop owners, and teens, alike, aren't quite sure why these unruly gatherings are happening with increasing frequency at malls around California. However, many signs point to a social media challenge inspiring large groups of teens to create the disturbances.”

“What may have started last summer as a nationwide social media challenge, has ballooned into a major problem for some Golden State shopping centers.”

It doesn’t surprise me this is a growing phenomenon in California considering how lenient the laws have become in the Pyrite State and with DA’s unwilling to prosecute crimes, even violent ones.

You notice that you don’t see things like this happening in the rest of the US, particularly in states where the citizens are armed and where laws are actually enforced. (Yes, there are shoplifting flash mobs in other states, but mostly in blue cities. I can’t picture something like that happening at the Mall of New Hampshire in Manchester. Too many shoplifters would likely end up getting shot.)

==++++==

Cannibalism isn’t just a problem in Haiti. Apparently it’s now a problem in California.

Who’da thunk it?

Yet another reason for us to kick the blue counties of California out of the US.

==++++==

Hmm, I have to wonder if any of this might have something to do with the unexpected amount of snowfall we got yesterday?

It seems there has been unprecedented cold in places like Saudi Arabia (where it also snowed), Australia, India, New Zealand, and really really really cold temperatures in Greenland and Antarctica.

It must be all that global warming that’s been taking place.

==++++==

Despite the cold temperature extremes mentioned above it actually appears the weather extremes have not become more common as many of the Climate Change faithful claim.

A new report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation challenges the popular but mistaken belief that weather extremes – such as flooding, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires – are more common and more intense today because of climate change.

Drawing on newspaper archives and long-term observational data, the report, written by Dr Ralph Alexander, documents multiple examples of past extremes that matched or exceeded anything experienced in the present-day world.

Dr Ralph Alexander said: “That so many people are unaware of past extremes shows that collective memories of extreme weather are short-lived.”

Indeed. So many people today seem to think that climate conditions they experienced during their youth were ‘normal’ and that what they experience today is abnormal. How many times have we heard stories about how “When I was a kid we had a lot more snow”? But back when the person was a kid they were maybe 3 or 4 feet tall, so of course there was “a lot more snow”. It’s a matter of perspective. Too many of the Climate Change faithful have no perspective, won’t question the claims of their fellow faithful. Even when presented with verifiable data disproving what they’ve been told they refuse to believe it.

And so it goes…

==++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the snow has returned with a vengeance, the snow is already melting, and where we’re still getting closer to boating season.

Is It Time To Switch From Greenbacks to Goldbacks?

I keep coming across something called “goldbacks”, a currency that contains 24kt gold leaf in various amounts. The most recent mention I’ve seen was in the comments in Chris Muir’s Day by Day cartoon.

There are four five states that accept goldbacks as legal tender – Nevada, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, and my home state of New Hampshire.

I’ve seen them available in a number of denominations depending on how much gold leaf they contain, with the available denominations running from 1, 5, 10, 25, and 50. The 1 contains 1/1000th of a troy ounce of gold, the 5 contains 1/200th of an ounce, the 10 contains 1/100th of an ounce, the 25 contains 1/40th of an ounce, and the 50 contains 1/20th of an ounce. The five states have individual versions of these five denominations but the amount of gold contained in each denomination is the same.

Considering the state of our economy it might be time to consider buying goldbacks as it is highly likely the same amount of goldbacks will buy the same amount of goods regardless of the inflationary devaluation of the US dollar.

Am I shilling for those who are selling goldbacks? Nope. I am not going to link to anyone selling goldbacks nor am I going to suggest anyone. That’s something you can search for on the ‘Net by yourself. But one of the things I will say is that it is less of an expense if you can buy gold by the 1/1000th of an ounce, not having to shell out large amounts of cash to buy 1/10th ounce coins.

Have I bought any? I ain’t sayin’.

Will I buy any? None of your business.

Friday Funny - Safe Space

Thoughts On A Sunday

Another Sunday is upon us and it is also St. Patrick’s Day. It is also one day closer to Ice Out being declared on Lake Winnipesaukee which also means it’s one day closer to our boating season starting.

March Madness also starts as the brackets are being announced. Both University of Connecticut Men’s and Women’s teams made the cut which pleases the WP Clan to no end. (UConn is the ‘family’ school.) It will be interesting to see how well UConn will do, with the possibility that both the Men’s and Women’s teams could make the Final Four.

==++++==

Over the years we Granite Staters have had to deal with folks who move into our towns “from away”. They are usually made up of people from one of three groups – the Kindred Souls, the Drawbridge Folks, and the Back Where We Come From flatlanders.

The first group – the Kindred Souls – will move into a town and after a year or so you’d think they’ve lived their all their lives. They fit in because they were looking for a town just like they one they moved to. They don’t really want to change anything any more than anyone else living in their town.

The second group – the Drawbridge Folks – will move into a town and then want to “raise the drawbridges” to keep anyone else from moving in and they work to make sure nothing changes at all and get upset if anyone even suggests something new. Most of them mellow with time and even though they will never be one of the Kindred Souls, they do love the towns where they now live.

And then there’s the third group – the Back Where We Come From flatlanders – who will move into one of our towns and immediately start trying to turn it into a copy of the place they fled, bringing with them all the things that made their previous place of residence a hellhole. They are rarely tolerated and more often than not manage to piss off just about everyone in town including town officials, the Fire Department, the Police Department, the DPW or Road Agent, the School Superintendent, and all of their neighbors. They bring their prejudices, intolerance, condescension, and delusional ideologies, demanding that everyone else live they way they think everyone should live.

It isn’t just us in New Hampshire who have to deal with the third group. A perfect example of this in East Nashville, Tennessee where a Blue State flatlander moved in and the first thing they did was sue a neighboring butcher shop because the newcomer “can’t stand the smell of meat”.

Where is this flatlander from?

California.

Of course.

What would we expect from one of the Progressive Kalifornia anointed?

...California transplant Natalie Castillo relocated to a spot in East Nashville, Tenn. Her new home is next to Roy's Meat Service, a butcher shop that has been at its current locale for years. The family's presence in the neighborhood dates back to the 1940s. However, Natalie and her partner have decided that they cannot stand the smell of meat, even though they chose to move next to a butcher shop. In true progressive California fashion, they are suing to force Roy's to close.

--snip--

What is Natalie doing in Tennessee? Well, the policies and people she voted for and championed have turned her state into an over-priced sewer lagoon. Crime is everywhere, and one cannot walk down the street without tripping over human feces or drugged-out humans.

Nothing is priced within reach, and even fast-food joints are closing up shop. You can't get a taco, cheeseburger, can of creamed corn, or a box of drywall screws in California without getting overcharged, overtaxed, and possibly putting your life in danger. To steal a quote from Barack Obama, people like her DID build that. Just because these approaches to government and life did not work in California, they have to work in Tennessee, right?

Frankly, I doubt Natalie will win her lawsuit (though she might if it was taking place in the Pyrite State). That’s not much different than someone buying a house next to an airport and then suing to shutdown the airport because of the noise. I would like to think the courts in Tennessee haven’t been corrupted by the Progressive virus and the court will kick the lawsuit as trivial with no merit.

Only time will tell.

==++++==

Every time I think Scientific American, a once great science publication, couldn’t become any more woke and irrelevant, they prove me wrong.

In this case, the latest proof is their newest foray into gender-based science analysis.

It is proving once again that actual science must bow to the narrative, first, last, always.

==++++==

Hey, let’s add to the stupidity of the American population!

From the halls of George Mason University comes this latest bit of woke stupidity being perpetrated upon us.

“Marriage fundamentalism” advances “white supremacy,” according to a George Mason University professor.

“I theorize that marriage fundamentalism, like structural racism, is a key structuring element of White heteropatriarchal supremacy,” Professor Bethany Letiecq wrote in the Journal of Marriage and Family.

“Marriage fundamentalism can be understood as an ideological and cultural phenomenon, where adherents espouse the superiority of the two-parent married family,” she wrote.

What’s ironic about this is that “scholars say marriage benefits society, minorities included.”

So you have a woke feminist professor telling us yet another custom going back millennia is racist only when white people practice it? WTF?

This ‘academic’ needs to be fired and have her academic credentials stripped from her because she’s a ideologue, not an educator.

We need to end this woke bullsh*t now.

==++++==

It looks like the Left is finding out first hand what happens when you don’t lock up criminals:

More crime.

It is highly likely if the four criminals who committed a mass shooting in Philadelphia on March 6th had been locked up, the shooting that wounded 8 teenagers wouldn’t have happened.

It’s time for our Progressive ‘betters’ to relearn the lessons the rest of us never forgot – If you lock up the bad guys they can’t commit more crimes.

==++++==

One has to wonder what people in other countries think about America’s descent into ‘woke’ madness? I have seen a few videos and some blog posts opining that the US is now an insane asylum, one being run by the craziest of the inmates – the ‘woke’ Left.

They espouse ideas and narratives the people in other countries know are total unadulterated bullsh*t and they infect our children with that same virulent bullsh*t. They see our nominal leader is a clueless pedophile puppet sinking deeper into dementia who insults and abandons our allies while rewarding our enemies. These same leaders have made sure crime skyrockets by not prosecuting and incarcerating criminals while framing and imprisoning citizens who disagree with their bullsh*t.

Yup, America has become a lunatic asylum.

==++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has been all over the place as have the temperatures, road repair season will soon be starting, and spring will be arriving soon.

Recycling Plastics Isn't Working

I was making my monthly trip to our town’s dump...er…Solid Waste Center, dropping off some recyclables and trash. The recyclables are the usual – paper, cardboard, aluminum cans, glass bottles, and plastic. It was as I was offloading the huge container of plastics that I remembered reading a post about recycling, specifically about recycling plastic, and how it isn’t really worth it. Surprisingly, the article was on the NPR website (dated two years ago). It was the last thing I expected – an article telling everyone that plastic recycling isn’t worth it - from a heavily left-leaning media organization. As they stated, recycling plastic is practically impossible and the problem is getting worse.

The vast majority of plastic that people use, and in many cases put into blue recycling bins, is headed to landfills, or worse, according to a report from Greenpeace on the state of plastic recycling in the U.S.

The report cites separate data published...May [2022] which revealed that the amount of plastic actually turned into new things has fallen to new lows of around 5%. That number is expected to drop further as more plastic is produced.

--snip--

Waste management experts say the problem with plastic is that it is expensive to collect and sort. There are now thousands of different types of plastic, and none of them can be melted down together. Plastic also degrades after one or two uses. Greenpeace found the more plastic is reused the more toxic it becomes.

New plastic, on the other hand, is cheap and easy to produce. The result is that plastic trash has few markets — a reality the public has not wanted to hear.

My town limits what plastics it does take in, that being the #1, #2, #5, and #7 plastics, and on top of that they can’t take any of those plastics if they are black in color as apparently the laser scanners used to determine the plastic type doesn’t work on black/dark brown plastics. Seeing the physical amount of plastic at our recycling center is mind boggling. About the only other recyclable material I see with that kind of volume is cardboard.

There is one plastic our town takes in that has a high recycling percentage, that being #6, also known as polystyrene or Styrofoam. Our town processes it on-site, reducing it from the solid foam we know to ‘ingots’ that are as hard as rock. The processing heats up the polystyrene and removes all of the air. The ingots are stacked on pallets and picked up once there are enough for a full truckload. Our town actually makes money from this operation. Our town also takes in polystyrene from a number of other towns in the state as it is the only one recycling polystyrene. So we make money from other towns’ Styrofoam as well.

Do we make anything from the other plastics collected at our recycling center? Yes, but not a lot. At least we haven’t had to pay to have the plastic hauled away. At least not yet. But that could change.

If the percentage of plastics actually being recycled keeps shrinking, then where does all that plastic actually go? Around here it likely ends up at our local trash-to-energy incinerator, burned to generate electricity.

What percentage of the #1, #2, #5, and #7 plastics our town collects are actually recycled? At the moment I have no idea. I have a feeling the answer to that will not be easy to determine, but if it is anything like that mentioned in the NPR piece then it’s less than 10%. The rest is incinerated to make electricity. That also means it is more expensive for that plastic to be collected rather than to be put into the regular trash and then burned like the rest of our trash in the trash-to-energy plant.

What about the rest of the recyclables like paper, cardboard, aluminum cans, and glass? Our town does pretty well with those materials, with one of them, glass, being recycled locally. This came about because the last glass recycling facility in the Northeast closed its doors years ago and glass became nothing more than trash. However, our town still collects it and crushes/grinds it to create gravel-like pieces of glass to be used as fill and aggregate for construction and road maintenance, saving the town a lot of money in gravel costs.

It is well past time for all of us to take another look at our preconceptions about recycling, and specifically plastic, to determine if it is worth the time, effort, or money to recycle plastic. If the numbers in the NPR piece are correct then it is a money losing proposition and does not help the environment as has been claimed. It might be time to admit recycling plastics doesn’t work and stop wasting time and money pretending that it does.

Friday Funny - Twilight Zone

The problem is that I don't have to imagine. The world is being run by dumb f*cks.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It seems winter is winding down early this year, at least up here at Lake Winnipesaukee. The big lake never froze over entirely and Ice In was late. (Ice In is declared when all 5 ports of call for the MS Mount Washington cruise ship are iced over.) I have no doubt that Ice Out will be declared any day now as one of the predictors, a small pond near the airport, was ice free this morning. Ice Out is usually declared about a week after the pond is ice free. This most often occurs in mid-April, but there’s no chance it will wait that long this year.

While this ‘barely’ winter is almost over, it does mean that our boating season is going to start a few weeks earlier than normal. While it is unlikely I will get the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout into the water any earlier, usually towards the second week of May, there are plenty of boaters who will get their boats in as early as it is practical to do so.

I just hope this means we’ll have a better summer and boating season than we did last year.

==++++==

I’ve seen signs of this, too, right here in my home town.

See the Future of Global Depopulation – a Giant Empty School.

While the post linked to in the Instapundit link above deals with a Japanese elementary school, school systems all over the world – and here in the US – are seeing a shrinking enrollment. Some of that is due to demographics as the number of children being born is declining. (Some of that is due to the shrinking number of families as fewer adults are getting married, let alone even dating.)

Some of the school enrollment shrinkage is due to more families homeschooling, a trend that accelerated during the Covid lockdowns. Some of the shrinkage is due to more parent enrolling their kids in private schools. But overall, the trend is downwards and it is expected that trend will continue.

As I mentioned above, I have seen that trend in my home town as school enrollment in our school system has been shrinking for at least 15 years even as our town’s population has been slowly growing.

==++++==

I had no plans of watching the horror show that was the State Of The Union address because I pretty much knew it was going to be more of a campaign speech and there was going to be a lot of bullsh*t spewed as if it were true. Yet despite my not watching it, I did hear some of it which merely confirmed my suspicions.

One of the claims the Joetato made was how much better the jobs market was, something I’ve known has been a claim he’s been making that anyone paying attention knows is not even close to being accurate. The only jobs part of the jobs market that has been doing well is the government sector, which doesn’t add to the nations GPD. In truth, the job market has been losing jobs.

Every month, the Biden regime’s job report is revised DOWN by 20-50%. It bears noting that it’s the government sector that continues to dominate the new jobs reports.

Rich Baris posts: “Another MASSIVE downward revision to the prior monthly jobs report. These people are lying to us, and covering their tracks a month later. We’ve now had downward revisions for 10/12 to 11/12 on the 12-month for nearly two years.”

Government statistics, once a tool to measure the health of our economy, are cooked and created – weaponized as a campaign tool.

Over the last 3 months the US economy has shed 1.87million full time jobs. That's the largest decline since the GFC, outside the covid lockdowns. pic.twitter.com/9h8JfSHtUP

— steph pomboy (@spomboy) March 8, 2024

Every claim made by Biden and WRBA must be looked at askance as so many of them have turned out to be good sounding prevarications that in no way reflect reality. This was just one of them.

==++++==

Just when we thought the media couldn’t be any more in the pocket of the DNC, they prove us wrong.

Only the MSM can describe the low turnout for Biden’s Georgia “rally” as “a very intimate setting” as if it were set in a cafe or roadhouse. What it was instead was a rally with a lot of empty seats.

That’s a hell of a lot of spin.

I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot of that between now and November...and I’m already tired of it.

==++++==

I have to agree with Scott Johnson that 1976’s Network was a perfect movie.

Almost 50 years later I remember Howard Beale’s rant on TV, Beale played by the great Peter Finch. I keep waiting for one of the network talking heads to speak the truth much as Howard Beale did when he finally had enough of the bullsh*t.



This was then surpassed by his “I’m mad as hell!” rant that is a masterpiece and still rings true today.

==++++==

And that’s the (alleged) news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where most of the ice has fled, thoughts of the upcoming boating season fill our heads, and Monday once again comes around to give us a kick in the teeth.

Renewable Energy Is A Taxpayer Funded Scam

I will unabashedly admit that I am heartily sick and tired of the whole climate change and “green” energy scam that has been perpetrated against us. Pseudoscience and outright lies have been used for years in order to sell the public on the idea that we must make all kinds of sacrifices in order to “Save The Earth”.

One of those sacrifices?

Reduction of CO2 emissions here in the US to offset the exploding emissions generated by China. China’s emissions are many times that of the US, yet somehow it is the US has to make the ‘sacrifices’ to offset China’s emissions? Really?

That’s a ‘sucker’ move and the climate change and “green energy” proponents know it. We shouldn’t be crippling our nation and its economy to offset China’s increasing emissions.

I have to say the “green” energy scam has been one of the more effective cons played on the American public. According to the scammers, solar and wind energy were supposed to replace most of our traditional energy sources like oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear. The only problem with that claim?

It’s a complete and utter lie.

We’ve seen other countries go all in on renewable energy and every single time that they couldn’t even come close and fossil fueled backups were required to meet energy needs. In at least two cases – Germany and the UK – those backups being fueled by coal. Yeah, like that’s going to help reduce CO2 emissions. (It didn’t help that Germany shut down all of its nuclear power plants, something that made no sense to me whatsoever.) We’ve been having similar problems here in the US.

... in California, where politicians now require all new homes to have solar panels, all new cars sold in 2035 to be zero-emission, and all the state's electricity to come from carbon-free resources by 2045.

They're getting results, but not good ones: California's cost of electricity increased three times faster than in the rest of America.

People in Washington State pay about 11 cents per kilowatt-hour. In Oregon, 13 cents. In California, now almost 30 cents.

Do they at least get reliable energy for that? No.

The big problem with wind and solar power, of course, is that they don't work when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine. Sometimes that happens when people most want heat or AC.

Increased use of "renewables" is why blackouts are more common in California. Bloomenergy says there were over 25,000 in 2019 -- thousands more than the previous year.

"We failed to predict and plan," said Gov. Gavin Newsom. Right.

Instead, they embraced unscientific green fantasies.

Requiring all new homes to have solar panels is a big reason California has the most expensive housing in America. The average house costs almost $800,000.

And let’s not even get into wind which has turned out to not be all that great either. Between service life and maintenance intervals being shorter than promised, capacity factors being less than a third of the plate capacity, and the fact that wind farms can take up a lot of land area for the amount of power the generate. The same can be said for solar, if not more so.

Read The Whole Thing.

Friday (Ironically) Funny - Environmentalism vs The Environment

Some folks need to be shown the difference between the two because they ain't the same thing.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It seems winter has fled, whether for but a couple of weeks or until next winter is unknown. I know it has been a disappointing winter for me, not seeing the temperatures or snowfall we usually see during a New Hampshire winter. Some will say “It’s climate change!” even though if one goes a little over 150 miles to the west of us you’ll see winter has been normal – cold and lots of snow.

We haven’t been seeing the usual winter weather patterns – coastal storms driven by the jet stream which give us the Nor’easters which dump a lot of snow and pull a lot of frigid air down from Canada. Instead most of the systems we’ve seen this winter have swept in from west to east, generating a lot of snow from the Sierras through the Great Lakes, but fizzling out by the time it reaches New England. It has also pulled warmer air in from the South which has given us spring-like weather a couple of months earlier than usual.

I do have to wonder if this means I might be able to get the Official Weekend Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout into the water a couple of weeks earlier than usual. (See? There’s always an upside to something like this.)

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I keep seeing stories about CNN and every time I do my first thought is “They’re still on the air?”

The once-great cable news station has deteriorated, particularly after it’s founder, Ted Turner, sold it to Warner Brothers in 1991. It is a shadow of its former self.

A number of its offerings such as its CNN+ subscription streaming service crashed and burned. It didn’t help that CNN went full left and become more about telling viewers what to think about the news rather than just reporting like they used during its Ted Turner days. Is it any wonder they’ve been shedding viewers like cats and dogs shed their fur in the spring?

“CNN is trying to keep up with the news landscape and become a digital-first provider,” a source said. “It makes sense for them to pursue anchors who have already established a presence there — especially if TV becomes history in their portfolio!”

--snip--

Something tells me CNN is going the way of the Hindenburg.

Yeah, hence the “crash and burn” I mentioned above...though to be accurate, the Hindenburg burned then crashed.

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First, it’s “White Rural Rage” is a danger to Democracy. Now it’s “White Rural voters”. I wish the Left would make up its mind.

Forget the deplorables. What we have here is the REAL threat to our Democracy. Which is, drumroll please, the rage of the white rural voters.

No, I’m not kidding. That’s according to two very VERY liberal writers, one of whom used to write for the Washington Post. Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman wrote a book titled: “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy.” Isn’t that such a darling title? Well, Paul wrote an op-ed for MSNBC in which he informs us that the real danger to this country is because of the rage embedded into the psyche of the WHITE rural voters.

--snip--

Because they used data in their book to make their case, this must mean it’s true that those of us who live in, or grew up in rural areas as I did, and have the audacity to be WHITE, are the very real threat to our Democracy. The two authors appeared on MSNBC last week and you REALLY need to watch, but also keep throwable things out of reach.

I guess they can’t help themselves, demonizing rural white people as if they are the cause of all the ills being suffered in the urban blue areas, particularly because they refuse to vote for Progressives.

Yeah. Right.

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Might ‘liberal fragility’ explain why liberals do what they do?

Liberals really are extremely fragile people. This helps explain why they need “safe spaces” with cuddly stuffed animals, grief counselors, and warning labels against “microaggressions.”

The latest evidence is a completely unironic and totally un-self-aware piece in the New York Times about the anguish of liberal law professors having to teach constitutional law at a time when the Supreme Court leans right. It’s so upsetting that some professors are moved to tears and can’t conceive of continuing. The New York Times thinks this is actually “a crisis.”

I think they need to “man up” or “grow a pair” or whatever it is they call it these days because from reading the rest of the article and linked columns tells me that far too many of these Progressives were coddled and never learned how to deal with adversity, even such ‘adversity’ that most people would merely shrug off and continue doing what needed to be done. No tears required.

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Have you ever wondered why college tuition is so high, having risen at a rate well above inflation? This may be one reason why: Yale University employs nearly one administrator per undergrad.

Other colleges and universities have ratios running between 1:1 like Yale, and 1 administrator to 4 undergrads for others like the University of Florida. Both ratios are far too high.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice has been disappearing, the temps are going to be in the 50’s, and where I don’t care (this time) that Monday is coming back again.

Gun Free Zones = Sitting Duck Zones

I find it hard to believe this debate is still going on, that being that banning guns from some areas – school grounds, shopping malls, public areas – will prevent gun violence. Yet we see again and again these “Gun Free Zones” become targets for those wishing to kill as many people as they can without worrying about being stopped by an armed citizen. The most recently updated stats dealing with Gun Free Zones and school shootings show an interesting correlation.

It’s tragic; people are tired of seeing the senseless loss of innocent lives in educational settings. Despite mounting gun control laws on the Federal and state level, school-related shootings continue to rise (2023 being the highest year yet, with 388 school shootings in only six months). Regardless of political affiliation or thoughts on well-regulated militias and the right to bear arms, one thing is clear; what we’ve been doing for the past forty years isn’t working.

Each school shooting incident in America reflects one thing, children are vulnerable. Schools tend to be easy targets while simultaneously producing mentally ill individuals with an unstoppable intent to harm others.

Unfortunately, we still have a lot to learn about school shootings. There are a lot of unanswered questions. But what we can do is investigate the changes between societal shifts and legislation over the years and spark meaningful conversations about stopping school shootings. Of course, the clock is ticking down to the next horrific headline, so we need to start these meaningful conversations now.

For more than a few mass shootings the people doing the shooting weren’t legally allowed to own or carry guns. Many others were ‘known risks’ – people whose family, friends, and others knew the shooter was ‘not right in the head’ well before they went on the attack. When it comes to school shootings one of those commenting on the linked post hit the nail on the head:

Three common factors in most (not all) of these rampage killings:

1. A broken home.
2. Shooter had been a victim of bullying.
3. Psychotropic meds like SSRIs and antipsychotics.

This list came from the book How To Make A Monster: A Sensible Look At Rampage Killers.

In “How To Make A Monster”, Paul Glasco performs a true root cause analysis of rampage killers - sometimes referred to as "mass shooters". The book looks at how broken homes, being bullied, and children on psychotropic drugs can affect personalities as young people mature. Previous killers from shootings such as Columbine, Virginia Tech, Las Vegas, and Parkland are broken down based on these causal factors.

Imposing nonsensical “Gun Free Zones” with no way to actually enforce them, though most law-abiding gun owners will not carry their firearms in those areas, is not the way to prevent mass shootings. If there were armed guards in those zones to protect the people in those zones, that would be one thing. However, that is rarely the case and that in turns means everyone in those zones is in a “Sitting Duck Zone” because they have no means of defending themselves, at least not legally. All these zones do is guarantee more casualties.

It’s time to rethink Gun Free Zones and do away with them.

PS - One last thought that seems true to me:

Friday (Not So) Funny

Thoughts On A Sunday

I can’t believe just how much this case of bronchitis has been kicking me in the butt, particularly yesterday. (Today isn’t much better...so far.) It seems I’ve been dealing with this for a month and every time I thought I was finally seeing an end to it it would return with a vengeance. About the only positive thing about this is that I know it isn’t Covid. (Three negative Covid tests tell me that.)

It has certainly affected me in ways I hadn’t expected it to and I’m not talking out the symptoms or their side effects. Its more to do with not wanting to expose anyone, particularly the WP Mom, to what I’ve been dealing with over the past month. That has meant working from home more than usual, foregoing meetings or attending them via Teams, Zoom, or GoToMeeting, and curtailing social activities. It has sucked. In some ways it was worse than anything we dealt with during the whole Covid pandemic scam.

It has also left me tired which has meant I haven’t had energy for many of my usual activities, including blogging. When I’m going to bed an hour or two earlier than usual it eats into what little free time I have and most of the time I blog it’s during the evening. (TOAS is an exception as I work on it here and there throughout the day.) It’s the reason my Friday post was delayed one day and why there was no Saturday post.

Hopefully I’ll get past this soon enough and everything can get back to normal.

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Is the outcome of yesterday’s GOP primary in South Carolina a surprise to anyone? That Trump won in all but three the districts in the state says something, particularly about Nikki Haley’s popularity. She was a pretty good governor from what I gathered and an equally good UN ambassador. (Ironically, she was appointed by Trump.)

Does Haley’s trouncing by Trump mean she’s ready to drop out? From what reports I’ve seen it appears she’s going to wait until after the Super Tuesday Primaries to make a decision about whether she’ll remain in the race or not.

I expect she’ll be spending a lot of time hopping from state to state over the next couple of weeks, attempting to visiting Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia if she can. The only place she definitely won’t be visiting is American Samoa, which is also holding its primary on that same day.

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It seems that Sweden’s “tolerance of diverse youth” has a problem, that problem being those diverse youth have no tolerance for the Swedes in any way shape or form.

It could be the reason a lot of Swedes would like to see those diverse youth and their families to go back to the Muslim countries from whence they came. Considering violent crime, particularly sexual assault, has skyrocketed in Sweden, most being committed by Sweden’s Muslim refugees, I can see why the Swedes would like them to leave.

If memory serves, Norway has been having a similar problem.

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

Seattle Public School Kids Being Told Proper English and Grammar is ‘White Supremacy’

This headline makes me want to ask this question: Is it only proper English and grammar that are ‘rayciss’? Or is it only Western languages – English, French, German, Flemish, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Portuguese, and so on – where proper usage and grammar are ‘rayciss’? Or is it all languages worldwide?

If I had to guess – and I don’t need to – it’s primarily the Western European languages, with the exception of Spanish, that are seen as ‘rayciss’.

Buncha’ friggin’ morons. They need to be fired, removed from any position with any connection to educating children because of their moronic ideology.

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Vegan leather? Really?

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What do the latest statistics tell us about gun ownership in the US? A lot.

In 2023, 32% of Americans own at least one firearm. There are approximately 259,000,000 adults, which equates to 82,880,000 people who own a firearm in the U.S.

Firearm ownership increased by 6.7% in the U.S. (all demographics) between 2017 and 2023. During that same time period, women increased ownership by 13.6%, and Hispanics increased ownership by 33.3%.

Not only is gun ownership on the rise, but some demographics are purchasing guns at higher rates today than ever before.

Furthermore, 7.5 million adults (2.9% of adults in the U.S.) became first-time gun owners between 2019 and 2021. Of those, 5.4 million did not have a firearm in the household before purchasing.

The post has a number of enlightening charts and statistics which will counter many of the claims of anti-gunners. It delineates the number of American households with guns, the number of guns an average gun owner has, as well as the primary reasons why Americans own guns.

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And that’s the (abbreviated) new from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the lake still isn’t frozen over, we’re going from single digit low temperatures (this morning) to high temps in the 50’s on Wednesday, and where Monday is (inevitably) arriving again whether we want it to or not.