Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s the last day of June which makes me wonder “Wasn’t Memorial Day just last week?” With July 4th just four days away it seems that June slipped away on the blink of an eye.

Other than tomorrow, I have the coming week off, so I will be spending time out and about visiting friends in a number of towns as well as being out on the lake from time to time. I might even catch a fireworks show from the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout, weather permitting. I will also be attending chores here at The Gulch, said chores helping to free up more attic space so I can empty out what remains in my rental storage unit.

My ex and I still have to sort through some items in the storage unit to determine what will be done with them – take home, sell, donate, or dump. If we can get through all of that I can have the storage unit emptied by Labor Day weekend and I can save myself $170 a month in rental fees.

Speaking of rental storage, I don’t know what all 15 or so of my readers are seeing where they live, but there are a lot of self-storage units being built, at least in this part of New Hampshire. I’ve seen large number of storage units being built in my town and in three surrounding towns. Is this a nationwide event or is it limited to certain parts of each state or to certain regions of the country?

Storage in this area – a very popular seasonal tourist area – makes sense, at least in part. I know a lot of folks with vacation homes have storage units to store summer items that it may be difficult to store at those vacation homes. This is particularly true at dual-season vacation homes – summer and winter – where items for summer are stored in the winter and vice versa. (My town is one of those towns which has two and a half tourist seasons, those being summer, foliage, and winter. Foliage season only lasts a few weeks, hence its ‘half season’ designation.) At least some of our storage facilities look nice, with one new site using buildings that look like large barns rather than the single-story beige boxes with white, orange, blue, or tan overhead garage doors, such storage buildings spreading like weeds on an unattended lawn.

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In yesterday’s post recounting my impressions about the debate I mentioned there were times when Joe Biden didn’t blink for extended periods of time. It turns out that it wasn’t just me who noticed that as Glenn Reynolds linked to a TikTok counting the seconds between Biden’s eye blinks which proves something just wasn’t right. One has to think he was juiced to the gills.

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This isn’t exactly news as a number of news outlets and blogs have been brought it up, “it” being a poll showing that about half of present EV owners stating they want to go back to gas/diesel-powered cars and trucks.

The CEO of Toyota has reported most of his colleagues do not think EV-only transportation is sensible, practical, or realistic. EV drivers are experiencing “range anxiety,” and short trips have doubled or more in time due to charging times. Blackouts, especially during the summer heat waves, make reliance on EVs impractical.

Now, a new study shows that a significant share of Americans who own an EV have buyer’s remorse and want to switch back to vehicles with traditional internal combustion engines (ICE).

EVs are not the panacea proponents try to make them out to be.

They aren’t eco-friendly by any means, particularly in light of the materials needed to manufacturer the EVs and the battery packs. That one of those materials – cobalt - is mined using both child and slave labor is something being devoutly ignored by those same proponents. That mining for the other materials would need to be expanded by an order of magnitude or more to meet the demand is ignored, such expansion having negative environmental issues exceeding that of ICE vehicles.

Then there’s the issue of being able to charge those EVs, something that has been an increasing problem. There aren’t anywhere near enough working charging stations available and the electrical grid couldn’t handle the load of the mandated EVs as it isn’t being expanded to meet future needs. And don’t think that renewables will be able to handle the load because the numbers don’t add up. Oh, and there’s a big competitor for electrical power that has been coming to the forefront, that competitor being data centers, and more specifically, those data centers supporting AI. Which of the two do you think will take priority? Hint: It won’t be the EV charging.

Then there’s the second part of charging EVs, specifically the amount of time it takes to charge an EV versus filling the gas tank.

How long does it take to charge an EV, even with a super-charging station to travel 200 miles? 20 minutes? 30 minutes? An hour?

How long does it take to put enough gas – less than 10 gallons - into a pickup like my 2014 RAM 1500 to go the same distance? Less than 3 minutes, including the time it takes to use an ATM card and pump the gas. If I fill the tank – which takes just under 30 gallons – it will take maybe two minutes longer, I can travel another 600 miles before I need to fill up again. The EV would require at least 2 more stops and maybe another hour of time. How many people would be willing to add that much time to their driving during a vacation or business trip just to be ‘green’? My guess – not too many.

EVs sound good. But aren’t really. It’s like Thomas Sowell said, “The past [few] decades have seen things that work being replaced by things that sound good.”

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I have to agree with Chicks On The Right that AOC is “being all around insufferable human”. Then again, she’s always been that way.

Her latest bit of (racist) nonsense?

In today’s episode of AOC is insane and needs to be voted out in November, she has a breakdown about how there are too many white men in Congress. This is not satire. This is real life.

--snip--

I don’t want the people representing me to be diverse just because it hurts AOC’s feelings that it’s not. I want the people representing me to be the best people for the job and who are going to get stuff done, no matter what they look like.

We have to remember that AOC is a deluded ‘woke’ piece of work who really doesn’t care about what’s actually important, only about what appears to be important...but isn’t.

Here’s hoping the voters in her congressional district wake up and kick her out bag and baggage and let her get back to her real calling – bartending. Goodness knows she’s not very good at being a Congresscritter. She’s not even all that good at being a bad Congresscritter.

Need I say any more?

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where June has fled, the weather is going to see thunderstorms later today, and even though Monday is returning it is the only day this week that I am working.

It Was Painful

I listened to the debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump this past Thursday and my first impression was that it was painful to watch...which is why I was glad I was just listening to it. I’m glad I’ve had a day or two to ponder this debate as I think we can all agree that it was a proverbial sh*t show, pretty much as I expected it to be. Have my impressions or opinions about it changed in the two days since it took place?

Not in the least.

My first impression was that much of it seemed to be a repeating loop of “He’s a liar!” “No, he’s a liar!”

Biden couldn’t seem to remember what he was supposed to be talking about from one minute to the next. Trump didn’t seem to be willing to stay on topic, not answering questions he was asked but instead returning to comments Biden had made and that Trump had already rebutted.

I later watched some of the video of the debate, not so much to rehash anything in the debate itself but to see body language and facial expressions. One the first things I noticed was Biden’s eyes since at times he looked like he was giving a glassy-eyed stare as he was addressing the moderators. Another thing that I noticed, though it took a while, was that when he was addressing a question by the moderators his eyes didn’t blink.

It may be just me, but if it wasn’t for the fact that it was Joe Biden I was looking at, I would immediately made the assumption that this person was ‘juiced’ by a cocktail of pharmaceuticals to keep him upright and semi-cogent. That is not good. With that in mind I know that members of governments around the world, both allies and adversaries, were seeing a man who was not competent to be in office, let alone up on that stage. He wasn’t really there.

On Trump’s side I have to think he made a ‘yuge’ mistake in not prepping for the debate. His responses and rebuttals were too off the cuff and in too many cases were incomplete, not germane to the topic at hand, or an emotional outburst. He seemed to be playing a game of “Got ya last!”, not something that should be part of any presidential debate. He should have addressed the questions of the moderators, shown that he knew what he was talking about and that Biden didn’t. But instead he got into that “You’re a poopyhead!” mindset and couldn’t seem to put it aside.

Frankly, I expected much better from Trump.

If this first debate is an indicator, I have to think that there won’t be a second debate between these two in September for a number of reasons, the biggest being that Joe won’t be capable of handling it. Then there’s the possibility that Joe will make the decision, or have the decision made for him, that he will not run for re-election. From what I’ve seen in the media from the usual suspects – CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and others – the Democrats have realized they have a major problem on their hands.

If they do keep Biden, they’ll need to find someone other than Kamala Harris as the VP because it’s likely Biden won’t finish out a second term. Harris is an idiot and always has been. At least Biden has his dementia to blame for his idiocy. I always saw Harris as a ‘Poison Pill’ VP, meaning someone absolutely no one (including the Democrats) wanted to see become President as a means of keeping Joe in the Oval Office.

If Joe ‘decides’ not to run, then who would replace him?

We already know that Gavin Newsom is waiting in the wings so he can do to the US what he’s already done to California – turn it into Venezuela del Norte. Hillary is a non-starter because too many people in both parties hate her and no one wants to be ‘arkansided’ if she takes office. (It also doesn’t help that she apparently has health issues of her own.) I have no idea if the Democrats would try to get RFK Jr. to fill in even though he isn’t nearly as far Left enough as some in the DNC would like to him to be.

It looks like we may be living out the reality of that old Chinese curse – “May you live in interesting times.”

Friday Funny - Math

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a wet weekend here at the lake, with rain on and off yesterday, some steady rain this morning followed by thunderstorms this afternoon. The way the Weather Guys^TM were talking about the severity of the storms, I moved the Official Weekend Pundit Generator to make it easy to access should the power go out. The thunderstorms were forecast to be spotty and hit-or-miss, but with high winds, heavy rain, hail, along with the possibility of tornadoes. So, better to be ready and not need it than need it and find you know have to move all kinds of stuff out of the way to get to it.

One of the effects of today’s forecast was NASCAR moving up the start of the race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway to just after 2pm, a full hour earlier than originally scheduled.

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Need any further proof that the Biden administration is spending money it doesn’t have like a drunken sailor on shore leave? The federal budget deficit forecast has jumped an additional $400 billion, approaching $2 trillion. (That’s trillion, with a ‘t’.) What’s driving this increase?

Biden’s unconstitutional student loan forgiveness program.

I think it’s time to end the student loan program as it exists because it’s so ‘easy’ that college students will take on loan debt equivalent to a home mortgage for degrees that do not prepare them for the real world. (Those particular degree programs most often end in the word “Studies”.) It makes no sense to take on $100,000+ in loan debt to find that after they receive their degrees that the only jobs they are qualified to hold are as a barista at Starbucks, a Door Dash driver, waitstaff at a restaurant, or checkout clerk at a convenience store or supermarket.

That it also adds to the budget deficit which has been out of control for years, with the largest deficits in US history taking place during the Biden Administration. And people wonder why inflation is not going away.

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I remember when NASA was a “can do” agency, doing things that had never been done before and getting us to the moon in 1969. They managed to cobble together repairs and make-do modifications to help the Apollo 13 crew make it back to Earth after the service module explosion. Then there was Skylab, the Space Shuttle, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the ISS. However, these days NASA can’t seem to find their collective butts with both of their hands. It doesn’t help that part of their problem ties in with Boeing’s woes, with the latest being the Starliner.

Years behind schedule and well over budget and they couldn’t get it to work. After years of delays they finally got its first manned flight, a mission to the ISS, off the ground. But now there’s a question whether or not it will be able to make the return trip to Earth’s surface.

As one commenter wrote:

SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endeavour is currently docked at the ISS and could be used to return the astronauts or SpaceX might be able to reconfigure Polaris Dawn, which is scheduled to launch in a couple of weeks to accommodate extra passengers for return.

I have to wonder if NASA will make the call to SpaceX to ask if their two astronauts can hitch a ride home? If they do, then what to do with the docked Starliner? As another commenter wrote: “Yeah just fill the Boeing capsule with trash and jettison the thing.”

How much do you want to bet that is a more likely scenario than the Starliner being able to return to Earth in one piece?

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Is SloJoe going to use reparations to bribe black voters into voting for him?

I certainly wouldn’t put it past him (or WRBA) to give it a try.

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Another SloJoe-related item we need to consider, that being his upcoming debate with Donald Trump later this week. I have to say I have been of two minds about watching the debate: watching it because I think it will be a slow-motion train wreck, or not watching it because it will be a slow-motion train wreck and that is time I will never get back.

All that aside, one has to wonder how SloJoe is prepping for the debate. We must assume that prep will go beyond just the regular study and mock debate type of prep. Word has it that part of that prep includes practice standing up for 90 minutes.

I had low expectations for Joetato’s debate performance, but this is ridiculous… Joe Biden’s “debate prep” includes practicing how to stand up straight for 90 minutes. I kid you not, they even admitted this on corrupt left wing biased ABC “news”.

All Biden has to do is not fall over or fall asleep during the 90 minutes and the corrupt media will consider the debate won by Joetato. This must be a part of it.

I have to wonder if he also has to practice not wandering off stage in the middle of the debate?

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New Hampshire has been considering making recreational marijuana legal. It looks like that won’t happen this legislative session as there were too many differences between the two different versions of the enabling legislation. But before it is tried again the New Hampshire legislature should see how things have worked out for other states that have done so. It hasn’t worked quite the way so many proponents said it would. One of the biggest examples of reality not meeting the expectations of those who pushed for legalization has been California. The state hasn’t been seeing the expected windfall from sales nor has it seen a drop off in drug-related crime.

Six years after California legalized marijuana, the bodies keep piling up. Earlier this year, six men were murdered in the Mojave desert. Four of the Latino men had been burned after being shot with rifles. In 2020, seven people were killed at an illegal pot operation in Riverside County.

Violence like this was supposed to disappear after legalization. Legalization advocates argued that making the drug trade legal would end the grip of the cartels. Instead the legal market has failed and the cartels are taking over sizable parts of California and the rest of the country.

California’s legal drug revenues have fallen consistently as have those in other legal drug states including Colorado whose model helped sell the idea that drug money would fix everything.

Despite falling revenues, Colorado legislators brag about $282 million in drug revenue. That number may sound high, but it’s a drop in the bucket considering the money that the state and cities like Denver are spending on homelessness, drug overdoses and law enforcement.

While the legal drug business is also collapsing in California, the state is spending a fortune fighting marijuana even as it tries to tax it. Gov. Gavin Newsom paradoxically promised to close the budget deficit with $100 million in drug revenue meant to be used to fund law enforcement and fight substance abuse. The state seized over $300 million in illegal pot this year and uses satellite imagery and heavily armed raids to fight untaxed marijuana.

But despite all those efforts, illegal marijuana has won and legal marijuana has lost.

One of the reasons legal pot sales aren’t meeting projections is because illegal pot is a lot cheaper. It isn’t taxed and regulated to death like legal weed. So economy-minded customers seek lower cost marijuana from the same sources they always did, bypassing the state dispensaries and their high prices. Anyone with even a little bit of common sense could figure it would be a likely outcome, and particularly in California.

So maybe New Hampshire should reconsider legalizing marijuana and keep it as it is now – for medicinal purposes only.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the weather is reminding us it runs the show, has us looking to the skies all afternoon, and mentally preparing us for Monday...again.

Is California Circling The Drain?

It’s been sad, watching the decay of California over the past 40-plus years. What’s worse is that its decaying state was self-inflicted. What was once the Golden State has gone through radioactive decay to become the Pyrite State. The politics has shifted from a nominally conservative state to one that appears to be to the left of the old Soviet Union. I swear it is even beginning to look something like the old Soviet Union.

I’m not the only one who sees California’s continuing transformation into something from a dystopian ‘future history’ novel. Victor Davis Hanson sees how California’s paradise has become purgatory.

California has become a test case of the suicide of the West. Never before has such a state, so rich in natural resources and endowed with such a bountiful human inheritance, self-destructed so rapidly.

How and why did California so utterly consume its unmatched natural and ancestral inheritance and end up as a warning to Western civilization of what might be in store for anyone who followed its nihilism?

The symptoms of the state’s suicide are indisputable.

Governor Gavin Newsom enjoyed a recent $98 billion budget surplus—gifted from multibillion-dollar federal COVID-19 subsidies, the highest income and gas taxes in the nation, and among the country’s steepest sales and property taxes.

Yet in a year, he turned it into a growing $45 billion budget deficit.

At a time of an over-regulated, overtaxed, and sputtering economy, Newsom spent lavishly on new entitlements, illegal immigrants, and untried and inefficient green projects.

A once vibrant state, both economically and culturally, is becoming a hellhole where infrastructure is failing, either due to neglect or “green” initiatives. The homeless population is skyrocketing and have taking over increasing amounts of the streets, parks, and the areas below the overpasses. It’s gotten so bad in San Francisco that there is a “Poop Map” app to warn residents about where the homeless have been relieving themselves.

Businesses are fleeing the downtown areas of San Francisco leaving much of the storefronts and malls empty. Even tech companies are leaving, with Google recently announcing it was leaving its 300,000 square foot office tower on the waterfront in less than a year. Other corporations and their employees have been making the move out of California as the business environment has become so hostile due to increasingly heavy regulation and constantly rising taxes and fees.

Newsom’s California has spent billions on homeless relief and subsidizing millions of new illegal migrant arrivals across the state’s porous southern border.

The result was predictably even more homeless and more illegal immigrants, all front-loaded onto the state’s already overtaxed and broken healthcare, housing, and welfare entitlements.

Newsome raised the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $22 an hour. The result was wage inflation rippling out to all service areas, unaffordable food for the poor, and massive shut-downs and bankruptcies of fast food outlets.

--snip--

California’s universities are hotbeds of ethnic, religious, and racial chauvinism and infighting. State officials, however, did little as its campuses were plagued for months by rampant and violent anti-Semitism.

Almost nightly, the nation watches mass smash-and-grab attacks on California retail stores. Carjackers and thieves own the night. They are rarely caught, even more rarely arrested—and almost never convicted.

Currently, Newsom is fighting in the courts to stop the people’s constitutional right to place on the ballot initiatives to restore penalties for violent crime and theft.

Crime has been legalized, at least when it comes to theft, and as a result, crime has skyrocketed and the state’s government can seem to figure out why. I have no doubt that other crimes have increased as well, particularly in light of a number of communities defunding their police departments and DA’s refusing to indict or try miscreants.

It doesn’t help that California has dictated a wide number of environmental initiatives that have put increasing burdens on residents and businesses, increasingly restricted energy supplies which caused energy prices to skyrocket, adding an even bigger burden to those residences and businesses.

California is entering a “doom loop”, 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.” It seems everything the cities and the state is doing makes things worse. Businesses and residents leave and then the cities and the state double down which makes things even worse. More businesses and residents leave and the cycle continues.

One has to wonder how long this downward spiral will continue, how long it will be before the Pyrite State implodes. And when it does, we have to worry if it will take other states, or worse, the entire nation with it.

Friday Funny - The Irony Of Student Loan Debt

Thoughts On A Sunday - Part 2

The roar of motorcycles started a little earlier than I expected this morning, hearing the first batch of bikes heading towards Weirs Beach at 6 this morning. I figure the peak was sometime around noon and then many of the bikers who made their way to New Hampshire for the 101st Annual Laconia Motorcycle Rally headed home. The beer and vendor tents saw the number of customers fade away and by late this afternoon most of the motorcyclists were gone. Yes, there will be some who will wait until tomorrow before heading home, avoiding most of the homebound traffic. That pretty much happens every year.

While we both look forward to and dread Motorcycle Week every year, we understand that it brings a lot of people and their money to New Hampshire. We like it when people come up this way to enjoy themselves and to take in the beauty of this place. For the first time in a number of years it also looks like there have been no fatal motorcycle accidents. I know there were some accidents, something that is unavoidable - including one non-motorcycle related accident in my town at an intersection well known for accidents – but we never really like hearing about anyone having been involved in a traffic accident, particularly if it involves folks visiting from away.

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Speaking of traffic accidents, I think I have mentions one a couple of occasions that one of my guilty pleasures is watching dash-cam videos on YouTube. It never ceases to amaze me how many drivers make poor decisions when they’re out on the highways and byways. The same is true for incidents of road rage, with people getting angry at other motorists and doing dumb stuff that endangers everyone. It’s even worse when a road-rager is angry at another motorist for no apparent reason.

The most common accident I’ve seen on these videos is caused when a driver blows through a red light or stop sign and t-bones another vehicle. Sometimes its someone trying to beat a red light. At other times someone misreads a green light for a left or right turn as a ‘regular’ green light and go through the intersection and cause an accident. (I have personally experienced a close call when I was returning home with some friends and the driver of the car I was in blew right through a red light at the top of an off-ramp, mistaking the left turn green arrow as a regular green light. We were fortunate there was no traffic making a left from the opposite side at the time.) Other red-light runners were apparently paying more attention to something else...like their smart phones, rather than to the road.

In any case, seeing all of the hundreds dash-cam videos convinced me to purchase one and install it in the trusty RAM 1500. I also bought three front/rear dash cams for family members last Christmas. In my case I have caught a number of close calls – people doing dumb stuff and almost causing an accident – one such close call taking place in one of the local supermarket’s parking lot when a woman got out of her car after parking it and walked right into the path of the RAM, her attention on her smart phone and not the traffic in the lot. She started yelling at me and as she did so I pointed to my dash-cam ...and she stopped yelling and went on her way. (Yes, I saved the video just in case. I reviewed it later and it clearly showed her paying more attention to her phone than to what was around her and that if I hadn’t been paying attention I would have hit her.)

If you don’t have a dash-cam I strongly suggest you get one. There are a lot of them available and they run from the basic and inexpensive ones to full function voice-controlled multi-camera ones. They’re cheap insurance and they can eliminate the he-said/she-said accounts about accidents.

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We are still months away from the November elections but controversies about voting, or more specifically, voting machines as well as mail-in voting has returned to the forefront, and with good reason.

Puerto Rico’s primary elections just experienced hundreds of voting irregularities related to electronic voting machines, according to the Associated Press.

Luckily, there was a paper trail so the problem was identified and vote tallies corrected.

The comments address this in more detail as well as the election fraud pulled off in the past. Many believe the 2024 election will see this again, but on a larger scale. Like Glenn Reynolds, many of us are calling for a return to paper ballots. There also needs to be a complete ban on mail-in voting because it lends itself to massive fraud, one reason so many other countries have banned it outright.

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If the UK thinks 79ºF is a heatwave, then I wonder what they would think of temps close to 100ºF and high humidity here in New England? That’s what we’ll be seeing later this week, with the temp on Tuesday expected to be 94º, 98º+ on Wednesday and Thursday, and 92º on Friday. In other words, summer.

Temps are expected to be back in the 70’s and 80’s next week.

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It looks like the Democrats are learning an old lesson. Again. That lesson?

Be careful what you wish for...because you just might get it.

...the suburban traditional liberal continues to vote Democrat because of abortion. Or some nonsense about the rich paying their "fair share." Or climate change. Or any number of manufactured grievances designed not so much to solve a tangible problem than to make a certain class of educated voters feel righteous about themselves.

They cast their votes on the Machiavellian calculation that the mob was useful as a lever from which to derive unconditional surrenders from congressional Republicans (never a difficult feat to begin with). They calculated that such antics would never be allowed to fester uncontrolled so long as the victims were conservatives who deserved it. They calculated that, once the mob had served its usefulness, it would disperse, much as the German elitists and corporate leaders once thought they could do with their own street thugs.

Well, my friends. You miscalculated.

--snip--

- You supported the LBGTQ agenda without question when it was being shoved in the noses of uppity Christians.

- You supported Obamacare because it felt virtuous, and all the democrat socialists of Scandinavia were doing it, and you didn't want to side with Paul Ryan pushing a wheelchaired grandmother off a cliff (in reality, it's more likely a wheelchaired grandmother pushing Paul Ryan off a cliff).

- You supported open borders and sanctuary cities to entrench a permanent Democrat voting base.

You supported drug legalization on the farce that you cared about boosting tax revenues when in reality you just wanted to enjoy your daily edible because apparently your life in the first world, middle-upper class, most privileged society in recorded history is just too unbearable without cannabis to ease your omnipotent suffering.

- You supported "green energy," not because you really believed the end-is-nigh sidewalk prophets outside the Davos fleshpots but because it was trendy and hip and got you accolades at your neighborhood's fair trade coffee shop.

- You supported the draconian COVID mask mandates and travel restrictions because Science Is Real©, and the only opposition came from flyover state knuckledraggers who think the earth is flat.

- You supported the movement to defund the police, not because of any evidence whatsoever of systemic racism in policing, but because your life is a spiritual sewer and, to fill the void, you need a cause to cling to.

- You supported every act of violence, censorship, social coercion, government repression, and outright insurrection so long as it was seen as beneficial to advancing your agenda and, more importantly, as long as it never affected you personally.

--snip--

You are who Lenin accurately referred to as "useful idiots." But I'm not so sure that you still support what democracy "looks like," now that it "looks like" it has reached your front yard.

All those things they’ve supported have come back to haunt them, like “Frankenstein's monster always comes home to his castle” to destroy its creator. They are being plagued by the very things they supported as a means of “saving Democracy”. Some are coming to realize the very things they supported are now coming for them...and will destroy them, too. Others are still clueless...and will be destroyed by the monster they helped create, too.

Read The Whole Thing.

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OK, I have to wonder why people think that Republicans backing the Republican nominee is such a big thing?

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This is yet another reason we have to stop illegal immigration, to undo the damage Biden has done to this country with his “open borders” policy.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the roar of motorcycles is fading away, tillers are full of bikers’ cash, and where for once we’re glad Monday is coming around.

Thoughts On A Sunday - Part 1

Yes, there was no post yesterday. It wasn’t that I forgot or didn’t want to. Instead, it was a combination of two things, one that could not be ignored and the other being a family gathering for a celebration.

The first, and unavoidable thing – Motorcycle Week.

This weekend was the closing weekend of Motorcycle Week which meant up to 350,000 bikers were in New Hampshire, with most of them focused on the Lakes Region, particularly Weirs Beach in Laconia. That has meant very heavy traffic all around Lake Winnipesaukee. It had a personal effect as on more than one occasion it took quite a bit of time to leave my neighborhood, with the longest delay having me sitting at the end of my road for 15 minutes waiting for a break in the traffic. The only time I didn’t have to wait was early yesterday morning when I headed out to do my weekend Walmart run – this was at 7am – though there was a considerable wait when the WP Mom were heading out to attend the second thing.

The second thing, the aforementioned family gathering, was to celebrate BeezleBub’s birthday, his 30th! He was hosting a cookout for friends and family which started mid-afternoon and lasted until evening. Frankly, it was a long day between Saturday chores and the birthday celebration. By the time we got back to The Gulch we were tired, hence calling it a night earlier than usual. While I did think I should stay up to quickly write my usual Saturday post, I realized it would likely be lame and not well thought out, so I headed off to bed instead.

And so it goes.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, there will be a Part 2 to TOAS later today as about the only other thing I will be attending to today is laundry and little housekeeping.

Friday Funny - The Four Cats Of The Apocalypse

Thoughts On A Sunday

It is the first weekend of Motorcycle Week, the 101^st gathering of motorcycle enthusiasts, with many of the activities centered in Laconia. Bikers started arriving on Friday and the numbers being seen on the roads and highways is increasing by the hour. It looks like the weather will be cooperating for the most part, though we did experience occasional showers interrupting the otherwise plentiful sunshine yesterday, and heavy rain this morning. It then started clearing up in the early afternoon.

There might be some thundershowers this coming Friday, but they certainly won’t affect the festivities for the most part...I think.

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Yesterday was the first day of ‘full’ use of my new Linux miniPC which replaced my ancient HP Pavilion which ran Windows. The HP Pavilion has been decommissioned and is undergoing a thorough cleaning and adding the upgrades I mentioned in a previous post – more RAM and a new 2TB hard drive – and once done I will load Ubuntu Linux 24.04. Then the only computer I will be using at home that uses Windows will be my work laptop.

So far I am really liking a Windows-free existence at home, at least when I am not working.

I haven’t had any issues installing or using some of the Windows programs like LViewPro, an image editor that I’ve used for years that is easy to use for light picture editing jobs and has a number of neat features some others don’t have. (No, this is not a plug for program. In fact, it is now available for free from their website.) I have also installed PowerChute from APC, used to monitor and control the APC UPS I have for the miniPC, monitor, router, and a few other small peripherals and closes programs and shuts down the computer when the UPS has only a few minutes of power left before it shuts down. The other computers and the cable modem in the Official Weekend Pundit Office all have their own UPS’s running the same program. I’ve also loaded a couple of SPICE programs, used to simulate electronic circuit designs, and found they work better and faster on the new miniPC despite running Linux. There are a few more I’ll be trying out to see how well they work, but so far I have not been disappointed.

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It seems SloJoe can screw up things in other countries, too. In this case his speech in Normandy on the 80^th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, some of which was plagiarized from Ronald Reagan’s speech 40 years ago and some of which he managed to politicize.

Other than being increasingly demented, he’s just as much of a scumbag as he’s always been.

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I don’t know about you, but I know even the thought of buying a new vehicle, be it a car, SUV, or truck fills me with dread rather than excitement. I know I’m not the only one that feels that way. Even ignoring the costs of new vehicles, a lot of people just don’t like the changes that have taken place, particularly when it comes to how they work...or don’t work.

Many buyers are now surfing on waves of vehicle depreciation, picking up used and off-lease cars and trucks still under warranty for thousands less than new. That’s smart. Your Dutch uncle approves. But lately another, stranger element is showing up in the numbers: a motivated belief among consumers that automakers’ latest and greatest offerings—whether powered by gasoline, batteries or a hybrid system—are inferior to the products they are replacing.

--snip--

In fact, new-car deniers form a broad coalition of the unpersuaded. Some fear that new, digitally connected vehicles could expose their personal information to the Chinese—or worse, to their insurance agencies. Other modern marvels people seem eager to avoid include stop/start cycling systems, which shut off engines to save fuel when vehicles are stationary, now all but mandatory in new vehicles; continuously variable transmissions (CVTs), commonly found in compact vehicles with small-displacement engines; and diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), a post-combustion exhaust treatment that modern turbo diesel engines can’t live without.

Others are just trying to hang on to the good things they’ve got, like three-pedal stick-shifted manual transmissions, virtually extinct in new cars. Or built-in CD players. What unites them is the conviction that older cars are not just cheaper, but better—and that touch screens suck.

Touch screens do suck, particularly if you have to use them to control functions that used to be handled by switches, knobs, dials, and levers. If memory serves, a couple of GM pickups required use of the touch screen to turn on the headlights. That’s stupid...and dangerous. The same is true of a number of other functions that used to be controlled by the aforementioned switches, knobs, dials, and levers. It is something that requires a driver to take their attention from the road for something that in the past could be handled by muscle memory. Nobody I’ve talked to about this likes the shift to the touch screens for basic functions.

For full disclosure, my 2014 RAM 1500 has a 7” LCD touch screen, but it has limited control functions with most of them aimed at the radio/entertainment system. It controls the tuning of preset radio stations on AM, FM, and SiriusXM. It can link to and interface with my phone via Bluetooth so I can use my phone hands-free, something required in my state. It also allows use of a USB thumb drive to play music files. Oh, and you can set the clock! However, that’s as far as it goes. There’s no navigation function. No engine monitoring/diagnostics. And, if need be, I can actually shut off the screen.

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Watts Up With That delves into an L.A. Times editorial about how to deal with California’s high energy prices.

I suppose I could delve into the various means suggested by the L.A. Times, but I can solve the problem with ‘one weird trick’: Leave California. So many others already have and found their energy costs have dropped considerably.

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I have to admit that I am already getting tired of all the political rhetoric and it’s only June. I usually have more tolerance of the political B.S. that goes along with political campaigns, particularly of they are presidential political campaigns. That we’re also seeing show trials at the behest of the Democrat Powers That Be is making me even less tolerant than usual.

On the other hand, it pleases me to no end that those same Democrat Powers That Be are panicked because their puppet – SloJoe – is unraveling faster than the campaign calendar and they have no real replacement for him. Cacklin’ Kamala isn’t a viable candidate because even the Democrats can’t stand her. (SloJoe is a demented idiot while Kamala is just an idiot...and makes about just the same amount of sense as SloJoe.)

For the moment that level of insanity hasn’t infected our state politics, but I figure it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing that, particularly in the race for governor. But I’ll wait to become intolerant of that race until later.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the roar of motorcycle engines increases every day, the vendor and beer tents are in place at Weirs Beach, and where it looks like the weather is going to cooperate this week...for a change.

Government Sanctioned Racism

I admit I’ve spent a couple of weeks thinking on the post linked below, pondering the Constitutional implications and kept coming up with the same conclusion: If it came to be it would be headed to the Supreme Court immediately. What is “it”?

A race-based tax plan.

Do you like scary stories? How about this recent report from the United States Treasury, “Advancing Equity through Tax Reform: Effects of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2025 Revenue Proposals on Racial Wealth Inequality.”

That sleep-inducing mouthful of grade-A bureaucratese may seem anodyne, the sort of thing that requires a surgeon general’s warning. But even a cursory trip through this twelve pages of reader-proof gobbledegook will be enough to give any sentient being nightmares. For what this malodorous blueprint aims at is nothing less than the confiscation of your wealth and property.

Beginning with its title, this report bristles with loaded buzzwords —“equity,” “racial wealth inequality.” Behind those abstractions, however, is a malevolent plan to destroy middle-class prosperity by brandishing the chief shibboleth of the age: race.

One thing I dislike intensely is how the word “equity” is being misused to make people think it has something to do with equality. Here’s a hint – It doesn’t. As a reminder, equality has to do with equal opportunities while equity has to do with equal outcomes, something no one (except our woke ‘betters) really wants for us. Keep this in mind: Equity = Lowest Common Denominator. That’s something we shouldn’t wish on anyone as it would create a hell world like the one described in Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Why the Biden administration thinks this would pass both Congressional and Judicial muster escapes me as it is blatantly racist. You know that if this tax plan were aimed at People Of Color we’d be hearing screams of outrage from Left, and particularly the delusional ‘woke’ drones infesting our nation.

If those pushing the idea of it think it’s aimed at just the wealthy whites and Asians, they’re right...but that will only be at the beginning. Eventually it will make its way down into every tax bracket. It always does.

The first sentence gives the show away. “For generations, entrenched disparities in our society and economy, at times facilitated by the federal government, have made it harder for Americans of color to have access to opportunity.”

“Americans of color,” forsooth. I am an American of color — a pleasing pink, if you must know — and so, even if you are an albino, are you. To distinguish among citizens on the basis of skin color — preferring some hues to others — is not only invidious, it is un-American. It should also be illegal.

But here we have the Department of the Treasury telling us about how the Biden administration has plans to tax Americans differently depending on their race. It is disgusting.

If they pull this off, what will be next? Race-based pricing for food, clothing, housing, vehicles, and other goods and services? How many other ways will they shred the Constitution, all in the name of equity? I shudder to think what the ever ubiquitous “They” have in store for us.

Friday (Not So) Funny - It's Dangerous

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been busy around Lake Winnipesaukee this weekend with an increasing number of boats being launched, seasonal summer businesses now open, as are town and state beaches. The school year will be ending shortly which means summer activities that are at present limited to weekends will be taking place all week. Ice cream stands are open. Lakeside restaurants are open. The food trucks are making their rounds to the various public beaches. The summer concerts have started at our local outdoor venue. It also means there’s a lot more traffic on our roads, the supermarkets are busy as are the nearby factory outlets.

I spent some time yesterday getting the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout squared away. Some of that was just stowing gear on the boat – PFDs, a new fire extinguisher (to replace the old one), a couple of additional mooring lines and fenders – something neither I or BeezleBub had done before launching the boat. It wasn’t because we forgot to do so, but because we realized we had too much stuff we usually put in there. We didn’t need a dozen life jackets. We didn’t need six extra sets of mooring lines. We didn’t need four tow ropes. We didn’t need two electric air pumps to inflate towables. We didn’t need eight seat cushions/throwable PFDs. Instead we launched with just the bare minimum of gear and without all that extra stuff and figured out what we really needed to have onboard. Too much stuff is just as bad as not enough stuff. It’s easy to get into the “We’ll put this one the boat, too, just in case we need it” mindset and the next thing you know every bit of storage is full of stuff we’re not going to use.

We aren’t the only ones guilty of this having this mindset as a friend whose boat is docked on the other side of the pier where mine docks has had the same problem. He bought a new boat over the winter, one bigger than his old boat. When I told him what I was doing he laughed and said “Yeah, that’s why I had to buy a new boat – I ran out of space for stuff!”

And so it goes.

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If only this could also happen here in New Hampshire, too. We have to deal with New York folks like that...and from Connecticut and Massachusetts, too.

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I have to wonder when New York City is going to institute a “Blade-Free Zone” after this.

Brutal Machete Attack in Times Square ‘Gun-Free’ Disarmament Zone.

Is NYC going to learn the same lesson as the British when they had to start instituting knife control when criminals couldn’t easily obtain guns and had to resort to using knives to commit violent crimes, that lesson being that it doesn’t work.

If civilians hadn’t been disarmed in Times Square when the attack took place it is likely the offender would have been stopped.

The brutal stabbing of a man in New York City’s Times Square on Thursday underscores the futility of public disarmament, which affects only law-abiding citizens, and proves the proponents of so-called “sensitive zones” are clueless, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said.

Several news agencies reported the incident, indicating three men were involved and they apparently used a machete to wound the victim in both legs. Police have detained three suspects, but CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb said the attack never should have happened in a place where honest citizens cannot legally carry firearms for personal protection.

“New York officials have declared Times Square and other public venues to be ‘sensitive places,’ leaving people vulnerable to attack by criminals who don’t follow the rules,” Gottlieb observed. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that disarming good citizens creates risk-free environments for dangerous thugs and crazy people to engage in savagery. The people responsible for disarming law-abiding citizens in Times Square are clueless when it comes to dealing with violent crime.

“Somewhere in city hall, or maybe up in Albany, somebody in government is probably working up a way to spin this tragedy so the mayor or governor can argue that at least a gun wasn’t involved,” he added. “Armed private citizens defend themselves or others upwards of a million times each year, often without firing a shot, but apparently in New York, government is on the side of the criminal element.”

So-called “Gun Free Zones” give the clueless a false sense of security. To criminal miscreants “Gun Free Zones” equate to “Free Fire Zones” because they know no one will be armed and it gives them free rein to commit violent crimes with impunity. Yet that doesn’t stop The Powers That be in New York City from declaring such zones...and then act surprised when violent and property crime goes up.

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I find it interesting to see the paradox of ABC News/Ipsos poll showing half of respondents think Trump should drop out of the presidential race because of his conviction after the kangaroo court trial, yet he also raised over $53 million in campaign contributions after the verdict.

The one thing I have learned is to take any ABC News/Ipsos poll with a huge grain of salt as I have seen polls from other polling organizations covering the same topic have entirely different results. Make of it what you will.

Seeing the huge boost in fundraising indicates to me that the ABC News poll isn’t to be trusted.

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To anyone paying attention over the past few decades, this isn’t exactly news:

Oops…Cleaner Fuels Mean Less Clouds, More Warming!

I seem to recall a similar ‘discovery’ was made a decade or so ago when sulphur-based atmospheric particulates were reduced when low-sulphur coal and smokestack scrubbers were employed on coal-fueled power plants – clearer skies made for temporarily warmer temperatures and fewer clouds, which also made for lower precipitation in some areas. So the ‘new’ revelation is nothing new, except this time it’s the cleaner fuel for ships that’s causing this problem. But is it a problem or is it an inconvenient fact that sometimes ‘clean’ isn’t always as much of a good thing as the Climate Change cultists keep try to convince us?

I have to wonder what they’ll want next. Maybe ‘scrubbers’ on active volcanoes?

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I have to admit that I am looking forward to seeing how the appeal process will go for Trump in both the alleged fraud civil case and the ‘bookkeeping’ criminal case.

That the alleged ‘victim’ in the fraud case has stated again and again that no fraud took place, that overstating the value of property to be used as collateral on the ‘first’ round is common practice and the borrower and lender go back and forth until they agree on a value of the collateral. Only then is a loan issued. That is not fraud, no matter what the prosecution or the presiding judge say.

One of the side effects of this trial is investors shying away from investing money in New York City property because they don’t want to be tried under the same conditions as Trump even though New York Governor Hochul ‘promised’ they wouldn’t go after them for the same fraud, that they were only interested in Trump. But investors like Kevin Leary don’t believe they won’t be targeted if they are seen as “enemies of the state” and will be railroaded like Trump.

In the Hush Money case no one seemed to know what crime Trump was being charged with until after the defense rested its case. It didn’t help that the presiding judge’s jury instructions basically told them they had to convict Trump even if they believed he wasn’t guilty. Talk about jury tampering! It’s no wonder that even the usual liberal media legal analysts have been saying this case never should have seen the light of day. Even those who wanted Trump convicted admitted that if the defendant had been anyone but Trump no trial would have taken place.

Do we need any more proof that these prosecutions have been purely political?

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer camps and cottages are open, the boat slips and marinas are full, and the restaurants are busy.

New Computers And Moving Away From Microsoft

We’re now into the third full week of post-Dell/HP computers and Windows 7 & 10 here at The Gulch. In an earlier post I mentioned how it came time to replace our ancient computers – one 10 years old and the other 12 – and after pricing their 2024 equivalents – expensive - decided to take a different approach, that being miniPCs.

The WP Mom’s computer has been up and running for a couple of weeks and it does everything she needs it to do. While I originally had plans load Linux Mint on her computer, a locked BIOS made that impossible as I could not change the boot sequence after I gained access to the BIOS. So it is using Windows 11, an operating system that many see as quite intrusive and has little if any regard for privacy, despite Microsoft’s claims to the contrary. That the WP Mom doesn’t use her computer for much more than e-mail, Facebook, and a few computer games like Solitaire and Mahjong, I am not as concerned as I might otherwise be.

I, on the other hand, was able to access the BIOS on the miniPC I acquired for myself and load the aforementioned Linux Mint and have spent time configuring the OS (basic settings and so on) and transferring all of the data on the old Official Weekend Pundit HP Pavilion tower to the new machine. It takes time to copy 400+GB of data from one machine to another as well as about 4GB of e-mail related data and settings. There was also additional software to load and configure. There are still tweaks I need to make and a couple of new peripherals to obtain, one of the most important being a powered USB 3.0 hub to expand the number of USB ports as well as making sure there is sufficient power to run whichever USB peripherals I connect to the new machine, such as an external CD-R/DVD-R drive, a microSD card reader, and so on. (USB ports on PCs can provide power, but only a limited amount, but the powered hubs can provide a lot more.)

My old HP Pavilion is going to be cleaned up, some more RAM installed (which I already have), a new 2 TB hard drive installed, and then have Ubuntu Linux installed. It will become a media server to store all of the music and videos I have which will then be accessible by our Smart TVs, tablets, PCs, laptops, and smart phones. Most of my music CDs and DVDs have already been ripped and copied onto an external drive. Between the new miniPCs, the new 2TB hard drive, and powered USB 3.0 hub, I spent about $600, a fraction of what the 2024 versions of our old Dell and HP would cost.

So far everything seems to be working well. The shift from Windows to Linux hasn’t been difficult, but then I have been using a Lenovo ThinkPad running Ubuntu Linux for a couple of years now, so other than a different look to the desktop and a few other quirks, it works very much like Windows. What’s neat is that if the proper software – called WINE – is installed, Linux can run Windows programs. (I have one I like for light photo editing that is easier to use than some of the ‘heavier’ programs like GIMP, Photoshop, and a few of others out there.)

Now we’ll get a chance to see just how well the new hardware and software work!