Thoughts On A Sunday

We’re expecting a few inches of snow up here by tomorrow morning, nothing unusual for winter. But I did see something quite unusual at the dump yesterday, something so incongruous I didn’t remember to take out my phone and take a picture. What was this ‘something’ that I saw?

A pickup with a snow plow...bearing Florida license plates.

I kid you not. I even have a witness – the WP Mom – who was with me during the dump run.

I never knew Florida needed plow trucks. Could it be the climate change faithful are right, but in the wrong direction and the next Ice Age is coming?

Or maybe he was up here to earn some extra money for the winter?

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When I first read the following I laughed because I thought it was funny...until I realized it was true.

You could cure cancer while simultaneously saving a baby from a burning building and you will never get the boundless love, devotion, and compassion a journalist will show to a murderer.

— James Kirkpatrick (@VDAREJamesK) January 27, 2024

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You know Biden’s campaign for re-election is in trouble when even Obama is worried about Biden being able to beat Trump.

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I have to agree with Neo on this one, that being that Trump needs to stop doing this if he wants to win.

What is it he needs to stop doing?

Being petty and juvenile.

The thing is he doesn’t need to be this way in order to get his point across. He really doesn’t, but it seems like he can’t help himself. I know that’s the reason the WP Mom doesn’t like him. I have a feeling that’s true of a lot of people who might otherwise support him.

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It seems I am not the only one wondering what would happen when Texas stood up to the feds. It appears we now know.

They fold.

In defiance of the Biden Administration’s wishes, senior figures within Customs and Border Protection have stated that there are no plans to have Border Patrol agents remove razor wire barriers erected along sections of the border by the Texas National Guard.

Fox News reports that a high ranking CBP official told the network that their relationship with the Guard is “strong”.

“While this issue plays out in the courts, the relationship between Border Patrol, Texas DPS [Department of Public Safety], & TMD [Texas Military Dept.] remains strong,” the official said, adding “Our focus is and will always be the mission of protecting this country and its people.”

“On the ground, we continue to work alongside these valuable partners in that endeavor,” the official continued, adding “Bottom line: Border Patrol has no plans to remove infrastructure (c-wire) placed by Texas along the border.”

It’s been known for some time the Border Patrol has been frustrated by the Biden Administration’s choice to not enforce our nation’s immigration laws, allowing a flood of illegal immigrants to cross our borders in increasing numbers.

RTWT.

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It seems labeling Gen Z – Zoomers - as ‘snowflakes’ might not be a misnomer considering it seems a lot of them end up taking off one day every work week for “mental health” reasons. (The link is paywalled, sorry.)

Have we raised a generation of young who have been so sheltered and spoiled that they are incapable of dealing with daily work stresses that generations before them shrugged off as being “just a part of life”? It appears so.

For anyone willing to seriously consider the plight of Generation Z, it’s not sufficient to simply write them off as laughably broken, as if its members spontaneously emerged from the womb psychologically compromised, endowed by their creator with unprecedented neuroticism and limitless self-entitledness.

Rather, this is the result of a decadent, depraved, neurotic Western culture. They are products of their environment.

Of course there are other factors, some of it dealing with the measures taken during Covid that added to the stresses. (It must also be noted that some of the data quoted in the article was specific to the UK, but some of the findings also apply to the US.)

Have we made things too easy for our kids and grandkids? Have we made them so entitled and so emotionally weak they are incapable of handling stresses that previous generations handled without thinking.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where we’re waiting for the snow to start, watching the AFC and NFC playoffs, and getting ready to shovel snow...on Monday morning.

Are We Headed To Civil War...Or A Second American Revolution?

Is the US headed towards civil war?

If the Biden administration continues with its increasingly unconstitutional behavior, the answer is yes.

Certainly the Biden-caused border crisis in Texas is indicative of the Biden Administration’s disdain for the Constitution, its skirting of law and, as another indicator, its malicious pursuit and persecution of its political enemies. When twenty-five states support Texas’ use of its National Guard to help secure the border because the federal government refuses to enforce our immigration laws and neglects to vet the incoming illegal immigrants, and then a Democrat suggests the *Resident federalize the Texas National Guard as a means of preventing them from securing the border, one has to think SloJoe and WRBA has gone too far.

One question I have to ask is whether or not the TNG commanders will acquiesce to that move should it come to pass? Will they tell Washington DC “Oh, HELL no!” Being Texans, it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s exactly what they do.

Oklahoma has sent some of its National Guard troops to help the TNG secure the border. How many other states will do so? Will SloJoe try to federalize those troops as well? Or will that trigger the start of a civil war?

The better scenario: It should trigger immediate impeachment proceedings against Biden, Harris, and any other elected officials behind such unconstitutional acts. They have violated their oaths, particularly the “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” part.

Or will this become more like the American Revolution where once again we will have to declare independence from those who have committed “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism”.

While the American citizen has been indoctrinated to view himself or herself as subservient to the federal Government, our Constitution clearly insists that it is our elected officials and Government, who are to be subservient to “We the People.” In fact, it is our Government which should fear the citizenry, rather than the other way around.

After decades of unconstitutional encroachment on the Rights of both American citizens and individual states, this true Constitutional crisis has now come to a head at the Texas border; where the Biden administration is actively sabotaging the state of Texas’ effort to protect its own border from an invasion sanctioned and facilitated by the federal government.

The escalating conflict between Texas Governor Abbott and President Biden is a manifestation and microcosm of a larger war brewing between a lawless and unconstitutional federal government and the American people. The Biden regime, in particular, has been completely unaccountable. But their arrogance and underestimation of the will of the American people will hopefully lead to their downfall.

With the aid of a symbiotic and propagandistic media machine, this Administration and the federal government at large commit crimes with impunity. Governor Abbott’s battle is the American people’s battle. His stance against the Biden Administration is cheered by tens of millions of Americans — and thus far a coalition of 24 Republican Governors who wish, and even demand, that the federal government be put in its place.

In any case, the party represented by Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and many others has shown again and again it has no use for the Constitution, sees We The People as subjects rather than citizens, selectively enforces or ignores or usurps the laws of the land to “get their way” and to hell with the will of the American people.

If the Founding Fathers could see what we’ve been experiencing under this administration I think they would be wondering why we haven’t already moved against such an increasingly tyrannical government.

Friday Funny - History

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a might chilly up this way, with night time temps in the single digits, both above and below zero. The day time temps were in the teens, but the wind chills have been like the night time temps – single digits above and below zero. While cold, at least we aren’t seeing the temps being seen to the west of us, with highs being below zero.

Ironically, even with these cold temps the Big Lake is still mostly open water. The smaller bays and coves have ice, but rest of the lake is still not frozen over. Usually by now most of the lake is frozen with the only an area known as The Broads being the last part of the lake to freeze over. If the lake doesn’t freeze over soon it could put the annual ice fishing derby in peril.

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It looks like yet another city is learning the lesson about the Law of Unintended Consequences, in this case it’s Boston’s turn as Walgreen’s has announced it is closing its location in Roxbury, the fourth closing in Boston’s black and latino neighborhoods over the past year, the other three closings taking place in Hyde Park, Mattapan, and another store in Roxbury.

Walgreen’s hasn’t come right out and stated the reason closing those stores is due to increasing losses - rising thefts of goods that has tipped the stores’ profits to losses. No, instead they make a reference to due to ‘demographic shifts’ which seem unlikely to me. No corporation will keep operations going that are experiencing increasing losses, particularly when it appears there’s little chance for the operation returning to profitability. Eventually they will cut those losses by closing the operation.

We see this pattern in a lot of cities, particularly in neighborhoods with large black and latino populations, but it’s not just pharmacies closing. It’s supermarkets, groceries, hardware stores and so on. Most (if not all) of the affected cities are run by Democrats.

Coincidence?

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SloJoe says the economy is booming! Booming, I say!!

Yeah...booming.

Or not.
Who are we going to believe, him or our lying eyes?

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It looks like yet another business has fallen, killed by “Get Woke, Go Broke”. This time it’s Sports Illustrated.

The magazine’s owner, Authentic Brands Group, missed a payment to the Arena Group that was part of the 2019 sales agreement.

The mainstream media is claiming that the reason for the massive layoff stems from the revocation of this marketing license.

However, that license would not have been pulled if the $4 million dollars were paid. Now, why would the very famous Sports Illustrated magazine not be able to send a check?

The data suggest that the magazine publishers were not selling a publication that consumers wanted to buy.

When the magazine decided its subscribers wanted to see trans/obese/elderly swimsuit models, they made the wrong decision.

But it appears the people who were making the publication decisions decided woke messaging was more important than profits. Sadly for them–and their employees–the people they owed money to don’t have the same nonsense priorities.

They seem to forget that pandering to a small fraction of the possible market while ignoring or angering the other 90-95% percent of your present customer base is a losing move. If you lose your customer base you can’t pay your bills. If you can’t pay your bills you go out of business.

So endith the lesson.

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The Other McCain gets into how the Democrats believe their “voters are too stupid to understand how awesome Joe Biden is.”

Or maybe those voters have caught on to the fact Joe Biden is nothing more than a figurehead, a puppet being controlled by WRBA (Whoever is Running the Biden Adminstration) who is sinking deeper into dementia, and that the Democrats really don’t give a f*ck about them. They just want them to sit down, shut up, and vote the way the Party tells them to vote. Could the “sleepers be awakening” to who the Democrats really are and want nothing to do with them?

I would like to think that is the case. I really would.

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In light of yesterday’s post, I have to say that I am not looking forward to spending almost my entire day at the polls on Tuesday, performing my duties as an election official. Voter turnout is expected to be seriously skewed with a little less than 400,000 people casting votes in the Republican Primary but as few as 66,000 people casting votes in the Democrat “Doesn’t Really Count” Primary. Joe Biden isn’t even on the Democrat ballot.

It isn’t uncommon for more than half the registered voters in my little town to vote during the Primaries, with voter turnout regularly exceeding 65%. I seem to recall a couple which exceeded 70% turnout.

However, I have a feeling we won’t see anywhere near those numbers on Tuesday considering some of the observations I and others have made about the conditions under which this year’s Primary is running.

Time will tell.

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Is it possible the Democrats will dump the increasingly befuddled and unpredictable Joe Biden as the Democrat Presidential nominee and replace him with Michelle Obama? If the hubbub making the rounds in the media is an indication, I would have to say the answer is “yes”. In other words, the fix is in.

You may have noticed that the media has suddenly begun floating all sorts of stories about Barack and Michelle Obama? Some say that this is because Michelle is sending signals that she wants to replace Joe Biden as the Democrat Party’s 2024 nominee. And it’s hard to refute the logic.

Only last week, for instance, the media widely reported that Michelle Obama was “terrified” about Donald Trump retaking the White House.

“What’s going to happen in this next election? I’m terrified about what could possibly happen, because our leaders matter. Who we select, who speaks for us, who holds that bully pulpit, it affects us in ways sometimes I think people take for granted,” the former first lady told Jay Shetty on his On Purpose podcast.

If Michelle ends up replacing SloJoe, will we really notice the difference other than Michelle is cogent and won’t just wander off during public events?

Will policies change? No...unless they are designed to do even more damage than Biden’s policies already have.

Will the efforts to replace our Constitutional Republic with a People’s Democratic Republic (which has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with tyranny) continue? Yes.

Will more of our Constitutionally enumerated rights disappear? Absolutely. We’ve seen that the Democrats don’t really believe in the Constitution and have been working to make it nothing more than an old piece of paper significant of nothing.

The work of WRBA and the Obamas to demolish this nation will continue.

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And that’s the new from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it’s still cold, the lake has not yet frozen over, and where I am not upset that Monday is returning.

Enthusiasm For The New Hampshire Primary Is Underwhelming

I have personally experienced every New Hampshire Primary since 1980. Most have been pretty interesting. Some have be exciting. Some have been spectacular.

However, this year’s New Hampshire Primary has none of the feeling of all those others. In fact, PJ Media’s Rick Moran has declared the New Hampshire Primary “a dud”.

Unfortunately I have to agree with him on this one.

The New Hampshire Republican primary of 1980 was one for the history books. Two presidents (Reagan and Bush) were on the ballot, along with the dynamic former Texas Governor John Connally, Rep. Phil Crane (who ended up writing the 1982 tax cut bill), and Senate Minority Leader (soon to become Majority Leader) Howard Baker.

It may have been the most talented, weighty group of Republican presidential candidates in history. Before cable news, there was fierce competition among the three networks for viewers, meaning the networks pulled out all the stops, sending their stars to traipse around the snows of the Granite State.

--snip--

The 2024 version of the New Hampshire primary may be the dullest contest in the storied history of the primary in the state.

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before in my 32 years of New Hampshire presidential primary experience,” New Hampshire GOP strategist Mike Dennehy, told Politico.

“You don’t see the frenzy, the frenetic activity,” said Dave Carney, a New Hampshire Republican strategist. “You don’t see the movements that are usually going on where you have folks crisscrossing the state, trying to get every last vote.”

That isn’t happening this time around. Instead it seems to be depending much more on mailings and TV ads rather than the old fashioned “retail campaigning” – meeting and talking to people face to face. Some of that might be attributed to the DNC’s stripping New Hampshire of its First In The Nation slot at the behest of Joe Biden as payment for South Carolina ‘saving’ his campaign with a win in 2020 after his drubbing in New Hampshire, losing to Bernie Sanders by a wide margin.

The enthusiasm usually seen during the lead up to the New Hampshire Primary hasn’t really been here. I haven’t seen it, at least not as I remember seeing over the previous 11 primaries. The traditional debate between the Primary candidates usually seen here on our local TV stations didn’t take place this time as two of the main Republican candidates – Trump and Haley – decided not to participate, leaving only Ron Desantis willing to do so.

With Biden not participating in the Democrat Primary since the DNC has declared it a non-event, that doesn’t leave much for the Democrat candidates with much to do. Biden isn’t even campaigning here, isn’t on the ballot, with the only way he’ll receive any votes being through a write-in campaign. (Frankly I’m surprised that New Hampshire Democrats would do so considering how he threw New Hampshire under the bus. Certainly the chairman of the New Hampshire Democrat Party – Ray Buckley - isn’t happy about how things turned out.)

I have to say I have been underwhelmed by this year’s Primary. It’s as if everyone is just going through the motions, those motions based on habit and not on actual feelings of support, excitement, or enthusiasm.

This year it feels more like grim determination driving the New Hampshire Primary, the need to get it over with as quickly as possible so we can return to dealing with the sh*t show that is the Biden Administration and all the damage it has done to the economy, our Constitutional rights, and our nation.

Friday (Ironic) Funny - Country Versus City

Thoughts On A Sunday

Yesterday saw a gathering of the WP Clan up here in New Hampshire to celebrate the WP Mom’s 90th birthday. Friends and family came from all over the Northeast for the party, said party put together by the youngest WP Sister. We managed to squeak the party in after some snow and heavy rain swept through New England.

It was nice being able to see cousins, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren we hadn’t seen in a while.

All in all, it was a great time and I know the WP Mom enjoyed the party!

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It looks like we’ll be experiencing a mixture of weather over the next few days between snow squalls (later today), below zero wind chills (tomorrow), more snow (Tuesday), and warmer temps (Thursday). In other words, a typical New England winter.

Having talked with a number of friends and acquaintances, we’d prefer to see more snow, a lot more snow as it seems we’ve been on the wrong side of some of the cold fronts which means we’ve gotten rain where normally we’d have snow. But there’s still a lot of winter to get through so we’ve got some time to experience more normal winter weather.

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It used to be Boeing was one of the premiere aircraft manufacturers in the world. That is no longer true and its slide was self-inflicted. The thing that started Boeing’s downfall was when it bought out McDonnell Douglas.

As one commenter explained it:

The only thing Boeing has in common with the company of 25 years ago is the name. They are two very different companies. The old Boeing that created such high quality aircraft was destroyed by the McDonnell Douglas merger in the late 1990's.

The move of the HQ from Seattle was to get rid of all the high level old schools engineering focused upper management to be replaced by the bean counting bottom feeding management sharks from McDonnell Douglas. The same management who made McDonnell Douglas's civil aircraft such a disaster they had to abandon the market. After a whole bunch of crashes.

Once all the old school Boeing senior management was pushed out all the engineering experience walked out the door in the next decade. The reason for the 737 Max and other Boeing disasters over the last two decades is there are no longer enough experienced engineers and engineering management left in Boeing to actually produce a new aircraft from scratch. Or at least one as good as anything Boeing produced pre merger.

So just like IBM, AT&T etc Boeing is now just a brand names with little or no real connection to the company of decades ago that actually produced very high quality technical products which made them so trustworthy in the first place.

First sign the bean counters run the show - stock buy backs. And sooner or later follows Chapter 11. Which will be Boeing's fate. When the McDonnell Douglas management kill enough people in enough aircraft crashes.

One thing my late father, a consultant, told me more than once was that once the beancounters start replacing experienced managers in a company, the company is doomed. All of their decisions are based upon the bottom line, on their spreadsheets. The problem is their spreadsheets don’t include factors that are just as important as the bottom line, things like morale and quality. They ignore those factors at their peril because they can both adversely affect the bottom line.

And so it goes at the once great Boeing.

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It looks like EV disasters come in threes.

I covered one of them – Hertz selling off a good part of the EV inventory – yesterday. The other two are also showing the public’s dislike of EVs, with a survey showing that dislike being one and yet another electric vehicle immolating itself.

Deloitte’s Global Automotive Consumer Study found: “Consumer interest in Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) vehicles is rebounding in some markets surveyed as affordability concerns continue to weigh heavily on forward intentions.”

Specifically, in the United States, 67% of consumers said they prefer an internal combustion engine in their next vehicle purchase – up from 58% last year. Just 6% prefer pure EVs and 21% prefer hybrids…

--snip--

Then to top it all off, an electric double-decker bus burst into flames in London causing rush hour chaos and what the Daily Mail called “an inferno.” It took three fire engines to put out the blaze. There you have it folks: the cars and trucks of the future.

Yeah, everyone wants EVs...yeah...everyone.

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Rice University is offering a class in “Afrochemistry”.

WTF?

According to the university the purpose of the class is to explain “alleged ‘inequities in chemistry and chemical education.’ ”

“Students will apply chemical tools and analysis to understand Black life in the U.S. and students will implement African American sensibilities to analyze chemistry,” the course description states. “Diverse historical and contemporary scientists, intellectuals, and chemical discoveries will inform personal reflections and proposals for addressing inequities in chemistry and chemical education.”

What’s next, a similar class to deal with racist math?

When will this nonsense end?

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow is coming again, windchill is gonna get bad, and where Monday is returning...again.

Hertz Bailing On EVs

As much as the Biden Administration is trying to force us to abandon fossil-fueled cars and trucks in favor of EVs, the motoring public is stiffening its resistance as EVs are increasingly found to be problematic. Proponents keep ignoring the safety, utility, and environmental issues with EVs. No matter what anyone claims they “aren’t ready for prime-time”. And it isn’t just the motoring public who are turning their backs on EVs.

Car rental giant Hertz is selling off a large portion of their EV fleet because “[e]lectric vehicles have been hurting Hertz’s financials.”

...despite costing less to maintain, they have higher damage-repair costs and, also, higher depreciation.

“[C]ollision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle,” Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said in a recent analyst call.

And EV price declines in the new car market have pushed down the resale value of Hertz’s used EV rental cars.

The used EV market is almost non-existent. Who wants to buy a used EV knowing it’s highly likely they will have to shell out $10,000 or more to replace the battery pack a few years down the road? No one.

And while costing less to maintain – no oil changes, tune-ups, exhaust system or catalytic converter replacement, coolant flushes, transmission service, etc. - repairs, even small ones, can be expensive and in some cases can take weeks as parts aren’t readily available. Maintenance and repairs for EVs generally can’t be performed by your local mechanic, requiring them to be taken to a dealer or authorized service center. That always costs more.

As such, Hertz’s decision to cut back on the size of their EV fleet makes sense.

One commenter brought up a good point when it comes to customers renting EVs which also bolsters Hertz’s decision:

Would anyone on a vacation or business trip who has never driven an EV want to waste time trying to figure out how to use one? If you've never had to figure out where charging stations are (download and install an app then figure out how to use it), have no idea how long it takes to charge one, and deal with range uncertainty, why would you risk your limited time doing this?

We've had linked stories on here where people who have owned EVs for a while share their less that stellar experiences when going on EV trips. Imagine trying that when you've never driven one before.

No thank you.

I would expect the only people who would want to rent an EV are current EV owners, and there aren't a large number of those at the moment.

Driving around a place you don’t know in a vehicle you don’t really know while adding on the issue of “range anxiety” isn’t a winning combination. Gas stations are ubiquitous. Charging stations, particularly those that are functional, aren’t.

Filling a gas tank in a couple of minutes versus charging an EV battery for an hour plus? That’s a no-brainer, particularly for long trips. Is it any wonder EVs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be and aren’t seen as a viable alternative by a majority of the motoring public?

Friday Funny - Deep Thoughts

Click on image to embiggen

Thoughts On A Sunday

A 'almost' Nor’easter has graced us with its presence, arriving last night and dumping snow across most of New Hampshire, with the heaviest snowfall occurring in the southern and central part of the state. It is the first substantial snowfall we’ve had this winter.

There was a little over 6 inches of snow on the ground when I got up this morning and we’ll easily get another 6 inches before it all winds down. It finally feels like winter.

One concession to the storm is that I did my normal Sunday morning before church shopping trip to Walmart on yesterday morning instead. I got there a little past 7am and surprisingly the parking lot was full. At that time there’s usually only a dozen or so cars in the lot, even on Saturdays.

Once I got inside I saw people stocking up as if we were going to have a four day long blizzard rather than a typical New England snowstorm that would last less than a day. I bought my usual items. The only concession I made to the storm was picking up an extra pint of Half-and-Half at the WP Mom’s request.

The snow is expected to end by 6pm and then I’ll go out, clean off the trusty RAM 1500, shovel the driveway, and use the roof rake to clear some of the snow from the roof.

Believe it or not, I am looking forward to doing so. Of course I will be sick and tired of doing so by March.

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The January 6th ‘insurrection’ was back in the news, briefly, as if it is something that should now be ignored, particularly in light of more evidence that the insurrection was nothing of the sort. It has served its purpose, allowing a number of states to attempt removing Donald Trump from the ballot using Section 3 of 14th Amendment. The Democrats know that if Trump ends up being the GOP presidential candidate he’ll crush Biden in the November elections.

That this issue is now in the hands of the US Supreme Court has the Democrats nervous. It is highly likely the court will find Section 3 does not apply as Trump has not been arrested, indicted, tried, or convicted of insurrection. One has to ask whether just an accusation, one not backed up by actual evidence, is enough to invoke Section 3? I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but I am guessing SCOTUS will find that it does not apply and cannot be used to ban Trump from appearing on the ballot. That will invalidate the moves by various states and private citizens to do so.

I expect the Democrats will go nuts if that happens and will start making plans (again) to expand the number of justices and make the Supreme Court a wholly owned subsidiary of Democratic Socialist Party of the Democratic People’s Republic of Amerika.

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Here we go again, in this case gun owners having to prove they’re innocent rather than the authorities having to prove they’re guilty. In this latest case it’s about Minnesota’s blatantly unconstitutional red flag law.

Yesterday – four days after the DFL’s vaunted “Red Flag” swatting-enablement and gun confiscation bill came out – the form to file to appeal a Red Flag order is out.

And it’s worse than you might have expected:

The form is now available, and it isn’t good.

It requires the accused to prove that they aren’t violent or suicidal. In other words, you must prove your innocence instead of your accuser proving guilt.

This isn’t due process. This is guilty until proven innocent.

— MN Gun Owners Caucus (@mnguncaucus) January 4, 2024

By the way – as bad as you think the new ERPO law is, it’s actually worse. The MN Gun Owners Caucus explains it here.

I expect this one will end up in front of SCOTUS, just like so many other 2nd Amendment cases have.

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Here are some predictions for 2024. I will say here that I do not agree with all of them.

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We understand the Southern Poverty Law Center has devolved into a haven for leftist thought and Constitutional Rights be damned. If anything they’re worse than the ACLU.

SPLC’s latest addition to their enemies list? Americans who accept biology.

As far back as the 1980s, Dees was openly admitting that he saw the fight against poverty as passé, and admitted that the “P” in SPLC was an anachronism. Jaded staff began ruefully referring to their own flashy headquarters as the “Poverty Palace.”

Dees and Cohen may have left the Poverty Palace, but the SPLC’s tendency to betray its founding principles clearly remains a problem, as illustrated by a new SPLC report released under the auspices of what the group dubs “Combating Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Through Accessible Informative Narratives.” (This verbal clunker seems to have been reverse-engineered in order to yield the acronym, “CAPTAIN.”)

The report purports to demonstrate “the perils of anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience” and “anti-trans narratives and extremism.” Much like the dramatically worded hard-sell direct-mail campaigns that the SPLC started up under Dees, it’s marketed as a matter of life and death: According to the deputy director of research for the SPLC’s “Intelligence Project,” the “anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience” uncovered by the SPLC has “real-life, often life-threatening consequences for trans and non-binary people.”

--snip--

But the SPLC’s report hardly confines itself to such unassailable liberal principles. The real point of the project, it seems, was to catalogue and denounce public figures who’ve expressed dissent from the most extreme demands of trans-rights activists—specifically, (1) the demand that children and adolescents who present as transgender must instantly be “affirmed” in their dysphoric beliefs, even if such affirmation leads to a life of sterility, surgical disfigurement, drug dependence, and medical complications; and (2) the demand that biological men who self-identify as women must be permitted unfettered access to protected women’s spaces and sports leagues.

The SPLC’s authors seek to cast their ideological enemies as hate-addled reactionaries whose nefarious activities must “be understood as part of the historical legacy of white supremacy and the political aims of the religious right.” And it is absolutely true that some of the organizations they name-check are hard-right, socially conservative outfits that endorse truly transphobic (and homophobic) beliefs.

It only gets worse from there.

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Here’s a perfect example of Liberal cognitive dissonance:

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow’s still falling, we’re waiting for it to end so we can start shoveling, and where Monday doesn’t care if the snow is cleared away.

Peaceful Men Are Not Harmless Men

I comment I wrote elsewhere had me thinking about a number of issues plaguing our country today, with one of most troubling is the US sliding deeper into tyranny, driven by people who see themselves as the elite even though they have the morals and ethics of gutter snipes.

What brought this up was a discussion where I mentioned it will be the peaceful men will be the ones to settle the problems, particularly should the feces hit the rotary oscillator.

My discussion companion was obviously confused. I think he may have confused ‘peaceful man’ with ‘harmless man’, so I explained it to him.

A peaceful man is not a harmless man. Quite the contrary.

A peaceful man is not harmless. He is dangerous. He will do what is necessary to maintain a peaceful life. If the peace is broken he will do whatever is necessary to restore it, including committing acts of violence in order to do so. If those acts of violence are directed towards a dysfunctional and increasingly tyrannical government as a means of restoring the peace, then it shows just how bad things have gotten.

Let’s pray that the peaceful men amongst us won’t have to go that far. But let us also be thankful that such men are amongst us should we need them.

Friday Funny - The Truth About Bidenomics

This would be funnier if it weren't true.