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.