Saturday 'Stuff'

Seeing the debacle that was the Harris-Walz interview on CNN I have to wonder what Kamala’s campaign managers were thinking. Her 18 minute dog-and-pony show, shepherded by her running mate was total cringe, from beginning to end. Do they really think this was a winning move for her?

I have to think this ‘performance’ will motivate her campaign to try to weasel out of the upcoming debate, either by coming up with some ‘emergency’ which would ‘prevent’ Kamala from participating, or trying (again) to change the conditions of the debate which would allow her to know what questions will be asked ahead of time, have the carefully crafted answers on hand via her notes, and to keep the microphones live all the time which would allow one candidate to interrupt the candidate speaking, whether to deflect one candidate’s answer or to shout over their response. You know the campaign is in trouble when even die-hard Democrats are slamming the Harris-Walz ticket, seeing them as out of touch with the middle class, pushing unconstitutional tax plans and price controls that would devastate the economy.

While I did not watch the Biden-Trump debate because I knew it would be a total sh*t show from the beginning, I will watch the Harris-Trump debate, assuming it actually takes place, and will do so with fascination to see just how much Kamala will destroy her chances of being elected. I have a feeling it will be a train wreck.

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One thing that surprised me today was the lighter traffic than I expected, seeing as it is a holiday weekend. While I didn’t expect to see a lot of people at Walmart when I shopped there at 7:30 this morning, there were more than a few. A second shopping trip at one of big box discount stores around lunch time showed not nearly as much traffic as I would have expected. Even the big box discount store didn’t seem to have as many people in it as I would have expected, even for a normal non-holiday weekend. Not that it was deserted by any means, but there were no long lines to check out, no queue of vehicles waiting to get in or out, no queues at the big box discount store’s gas pumps. The only traffic hold up seen was after we had left the store with our groceries, coming to a two-lane to one-lane merge a bit up the road as people jockeyed into position for the ‘zipper’ merge, the hold up lasting about 15 seconds or so. That was it. The rest of the way was clear sailing.

While it was cloudy through most of the day, there was no rain, so it wasn’t the weather affecting traffic. It wasn’t that the ‘usual suspects’ coming up for the holiday weekend never made the trip as the parking lots and driveways at the various summer homes, condos, restaurants, and beaches were as full. I’m not sure why folks weren’t out on the roads for their usual ‘summer weekend at the lake’ activities.

It was really weird.

==****==

NOTE: This post was delayed a bit as I did not craft it on my usual ‘writing’ computer, but on one of my new miniPC Linux boxes.

I have to give a mea culpa for this as I didn’t do quite enough homework before I started a backup on my laptop, not realizing the initial backup on that computer would take hours...and hours...and hours. It is presently in its eighth hour of the backup process, though not because I have so many files and data that needs to be backed up, but because it is so damn slow! The app that performs the backup is excruciatingly slow and is also quite thorough which is why it is taking so long. What I should have done is merely copy the data files onto the external drive I use for backups. It would have taken all but 20 minutes at most to copy what I wanted to backup.

Lesson learned.

I performed the backup because I was preparing to update the O/S from Ubuntu Linux 22.04 to 24.04. I will usually backup or copy my important files before doing any such update. Not that I have ever had a problem when updating Linux in all the years I’ve been using Linux. But I am a firm believer in Murphy’s Law and I know that if I didn’t backup my files that something would happen.

Friday Funny - Beer vs Women

Thoughts On A Sunday

As I mentioned in last night’s post, it was Old Home Day in our little town yesterday, a celebration of our town by residents past and present. It is not unique to just my home town, but is quite common all across New Hampshire and likely much of New England, though perhaps known by other names. While this year’s celebration wasn’t one of the biggest by any means, it was still a lot of fun. There weren’t quite as many food vendors or craft booths as we sometimes see, there were a lot more amusements and games for the kids.

There hasn’t been much of a fall-off in boat traffic on the lake even though I have been seeing boats being pulled from the water in increasing numbers. During and after Labor Day weekend that number will increase dramatically. It will also see me out on the lake a lot more often now that the less well behaved summerfolk - aka “Cap’n Boneheads” - will be gone for the most part. It will be ‘our’ lake again.

Our town beach dialed back its operations last weekend, primarily because the lifeguard staff had to get back to high school or college. People are still using the beach, but doing so at their own risk. Labor Day weekend will see the beach close for the season and some much needed demolition and construction start as the town beach bathhouse, a badly deteriorated relic from the early 60’s, is being replaced. That pretty much puts the wraps on the summer season for us. It also means we’ll start getting ready for foliage season, the reappearance of Pumpkin Spice everything, and the invasion by leaf peepers that will start arriving near the end of September.

Oh, joy…

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I have noticed this, just as Glenn Reynolds has and have seen more than a few real life examples.

People Without Meaningful Lives Seek Power Over Others.

One student shared that he would prefer to live in 1700, if he had more money than others and power over them. My first reaction was amusement; I thought the student was practicing his deadpan humor skills. He wasn’t. For him, having power was an attribute of a meaningful life.

If only my student’s mindset were an aberration.

During the reign of Louis XIV, French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal diagnosed why some lust for power. In his Pensées, Pascal wrote, “I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” Pascal explained that, out of the inability to sit alone, arises the human tendency to seek power as a diversion.

“What people want is not the easy peaceful life that allows us to think of our unhappy condition.” That is why “war and high office are so popular,” Pascal argued.

Pascal argues individuals seek to be “diverted from thinking of what they are.” I would argue a better choice of words is what they have made of themselves.

Some of those include people seeking revenge from past wrongs, in some cases dating back to their childhoods. They want to make sure it never happens to them again and, at some level, to get some revenge against those that wronged them. How better to do that than to obtain power?

==++++==

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

Massachusetts advising residents to stay indoors and imposing a 6 p.m. curfew until October because of mosquitoes.

Why?

Because of a single human case of Eastern Equine Encephalitis – EEE – which is spread by mosquitoes.

A curfew? Really? That seems like an over-the-top response for something that could be just as easily prevented by judicious use of one of the many mosquito repellents containing DEET which are available in just about in every store.

==++++==

When discussing the mRNA COVID vaccines, we need to be careful about dividing people into the two broad groups of the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.

The truth is that many vaccinated people didn’t want to be injected and now deeply regret it.

Consider me one of those. At least I only got the first couple of injections and after an adverse reaction to the second shot my physician strongly suggested I receive no more. I followed his suggestion. I regret I ever got even one shot.

==++++==

Bird Dog over at Maggie’s Farm writes about outdoor showers, something we had at the Official Weekend Pundit Long Island Sound Beach House for decades, even after the WP Parents remodeled/renovated it in the mid-1990’s. It came in handy during summer because it let us wash off the sand, salt, and sun tan lotion once we walked back from the beach. All of the homes in that neighborhood had them. Friends I visited regularly out on Martha’s Vineyard also had one for the same reason.

We used it even if we were taking a regular shower as it was nice being able to shower outdoors. If thought I could get away with it I would build an outdoor shower stall here at The Gulch. I was going to build one on the new house I’d planned to build – The Redoubt – until materials cost doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled which made the new house unaffordable to build. (I was pretty much locked out of building once costs doubled. The tripling and subsequent quadrupling of materials costs merely added insult to injury.)

I do agree with Bird Dog on his observation about using an outdoor shower: It just feels amazing.

==++++==

This should surprise no one as we know the “swamp dwellers” say it doesn’t matter who gets elected in November as it is they who run the show and that they’ll do what they want no matter what. These are the same nation-destroying bureaucrats – the so-called Deep State – that will bring this nation to its knees and they will delight at its destruction...as long as they can remain in power.

This alone should be a major motivation for Trump to start dismantling the administrative state and to do so with a chainsaw. He should follow Argentina’s President Milei and clean house, firing the overwhelming number of needless federal government bureaucrats and paper-pushers whose only purpose in life seems to be to perpetuate and expand their various agencies, departments, and bureaus while at the same time intruding deeper into people’s lives for no other reason than they can and that it fulfill their need to have power over others.

It could also save us a trillion dollars a year or so. Goodness knows we need to stop wasting money we don’t have on things we don’t need or want. Getting rid of a good-sized portion of our federal government bureaucracy which contributes nothing to our nation or its economy would be a good start.

==++++==

Okay, I haven’t quite figured how this would possibly work, but apparently someone who doesn’t really understand economics claiming that if gas prices fell back to what they were during the Trump Administration it would cause the economy to crash.

Of course the person making that claim is assuming that Trump would just command the price of gas to go down rather than ridding the energy industry of the burden laid upon it during the first few days of the Biden Administration as well as the follow-on rules, regulations, and restrictions imposed upon the industry. Lower energy prices aren’t likely to cause a crash, particularly if the prices go down gradually, unlike what we saw during the Biden Administration which saw the rising energy prices trigger inflation across the entire economy.

==++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the summer is winding down, the summer businesses are doing likewise, and where Labor Day weekend is only a week away.

A Busy Day

As you may have noticed there's no post tonight. It's not from disinterest. Rather, this was a the day our town celebtated what is called Old Home Day, a day for present and past residents to celebrate our town. For me the day started well before 6AM, getting ready to to take the WP Mom to our church for an 8AM start of the festivities. Later there was a parade, then the opening of the field where the various food vendors, crafts stalls, games, and so on. There was live music. Oh, and did I mention there was food?

I also managed to squeeze in a run to the dump between the morning and afternoon activites.

And then there were the fireworks!

I just got back and realized I hadn't queued a post ahead of time and I am too tuckered out. So I will have to make up for it in Sunday's post!

Friday Funny - Twilight Zone...Southern Style

Thoughts On A Sunday

While the calendar says it still two weeks until Labor Day weekend we’re still seeing the summer season winding down. In some places school starts after next weekend. For those families with children involved is school sports, those sports have already started practice. That certainly limits the time those families can visit the Big Lake. Other than Labor Day weekend, I doubt we’ll see the usual summer traffic over the next two weeks.

I have to say I am surprised just how quickly summer has passed. It feels like the Fourth of July was just last week and Memorial Day two weeks ago. I haven’t been out on the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout nearly as much as I had hoped though I expect that like last year I will more than make up for it after Labor Day weekend. Most of the summerfolk will be gone and the lake won’t have nearly as many boats (and Cap’n Boneheads) on it, making it nicer (and safer) out on the lake. That seems to be how it’s worked out for me the past few years, some of it caused by weather and some by being busy with other things.

One of the other signs of summer’s end is the number of boats I see being pulled out of the water and prepared for storage. The boatyard that maintains and stores the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout has been busy, getting boats prepped for winter storage. They won’t be seeing my boat until late October, as per usual. Until then I plan to spend quite a bit of time out on the lake.

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One thing that I dislike about this campaign season is the number of single issue voters out there, more than I remember seeing in the past.

I don’t dislike single issue voters. I pity them. Too often they don’t think things through. They tend to ignore the downsides of other positions the candidate(s) they support may have that are detrimental to their family, their town, county, state, or the country as a whole.

One of those single issues that blinds voters to other positions held by a candidate is abortion.

I have heard so many campaign ads pushing a candidate’s pro-abortion stance while ignoring the other positions a candidate holds, even those that are clearly destructive to things like our economy, our legal system, and our rights, just to name a few. Certainly the Democrats have been trying to push abortion as the Number 1 issue of this year’s election. It isn’t. To quote Frank Zappa, “It ain’t even Number 2.”

We can only hope that some of them will wake up before it’s too late and will look at the entire picture before voting.

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You know things aren’t going well when a campaign official for Harris admits they’ve blatantly lied about Trump’s connection to Project 2025.

From USA Today comes this tidbit:

Project 2025 is a political playbook created by the Heritage Foundation and dozens of other conservative groups, not Trump, who said he disagrees with elements of the effort.

Steve MacDonald adds:

There is nothing new here, but the slip of this other mask—someone admitting the Harris campaign was deliberately deceptive—is surprising and may have to be memory-holed. Let’s not let them get away with that.

I have to wonder what else the Harris campaign has got up its sleeve between now and the election. If nothing else, it’s going to be ‘interesting’...and not in a good way.

This isn’t new news as it’s been out there for a few weeks now, but it bears repeating as I have recently been hearing the “Trump is fully in on Project 2025 and all of his proposed policies are based on it” meme again...and again.

==++++==

If we need more proof that renewables aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, here the latest: SunPower Corp., a major, nationwide provider of residential solar panels and helped build the largest solar plant in the country has filed for bankruptcy.

The company is laying off its employees and is ceasing direct sales. What does it mean for their residential customers who bought their products?

The warranties and maintenance they depend on are now history...and they still have to repay the loans they took out to pay for their solar panels even if the company is bankrupt and closing its doors.

This is a large well-known solar company yet it hasn’t survived. How many other companies are in the same boat?

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I expect this is one paper that will be devoutly ignored, if not attacked and castigated because it doesn’t meet The Narrative^TM. What does the paper say?

A Chinese group has looked at all the different kinds of 2,000 year long proxies in the PAGES dataset and found that history looks quite different depending on which proxy you pick. Only the tree rings show the HockeyStick shape that matches the climate models. In other proxies, temperatures have fallen for most of the last 2,000 years, especially in the Southern half of the world. And even after the recent warming, we are not yet back to the temperatures the Romans lived through.

So yet again, we see that that current temperatures are not unusual except according to tree rings, which we know are affected by rising levels of CO2. (The paper does not mention CO2 or carbon or fertilizer).

I figure the Climate Change faithful will be attacking this paper in 3...2...1…

And while we’re at it let’s add this to the mix just for fun: Number Of Typhoons In The Pacific Trending Downward Over 70 Years!

Of course this must also be devoutly ignored because it also doesn’t meet The Narrative^TM.

==++++==

Just how petty can Facebook get? How about this petty:

It is now censoring ads for the new “Reagan” movie.

Dennis Quaid was on with Joe Rogan talking about his new movie, Reagan, coming out on August 30th and how Facebook is now censoring the advertising for the film. The film looks incredible, and I cannot wait to see it. The trailer gives you all the patriotic feels, and the Facebook Commies don’t want you to see that. Because we can’t have you feeling patriotic about the country you live in. What do you think this is, a free country?

According to Dennis Quaid, Facebook says that it’s because the film is trying to “sway an election.” Which is really rich coming from Facebook, who literally censored half of America during the last election to help…sway an election. Once again, lefties are just projecting.

Talk about hypocrisy! And people wonder why I don’t like Facebook. Yes, I use it, but minimally and only for keeping in touch with family and friends. Even then I only check in once or twice a month.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it’s rained all morning and a good part of the afternoon, weekend traffic is trailing off a little earlier than usual, and yet again Monday is returning to harsh our mellow.

Lord, Save Us From Kamala's Dangerous Economic Ignorance

Listening to Kamala Harris’s economic plans, there wasn’t one that I hadn’t heard of before. Of course she’s going to crib from others because she really has no idea how to fix the economy. It seems she started by peeking at Donald Trump’s paper and stealing his idea for not taxing tips. This from a woman who supported adding 80K+ IRS agents and wanting to tax the bejeezus out of the rich, the ‘rich’ being anyone with a job.

Then she talks about subsidizing first time home buyers, giving them $25,000 to help with the down-payment. But she doesn’t mention where she’ll get the money to do that. I guess she’ll just have the Treasury crank up the printing presses and add even more to the $3.5 trillion annual deficit being run by the Biden-Harris Administration.

Another thing she brings up is price controls, something that has never worked, ever. You’d think she would have learned that from history, particularly when President Nixon tried it, imposing wage and price controls in 1971 as a way to fight inflation. It failed spectacularly and fueled worse inflation than if he had done nothing. (Yes, there were other measures he took that also added to the problem, like taking the US off the gold standard, in effect rendering the Bretton Woods system inoperative.)

The long defunct Soviet Union used wage an price controls which made the Soviet economy unresponsive to changing economic conditions, even regular cyclical changes caught the Soviets off guard and they couldn’t seem to adapt because their economic bureaucracy was laden down by inertia. Does Kamala think it will be any different here? Of course she does...and she’s wrong.

She’s also going after businesses, particularly food retailers, for “price gouging” even though I doubt she could point to any supermarkets that have done so. I’ve even heard references to dealing with “looters and hoarders”, something right out of Das Kapital and Atlas Shrugged. (I have no doubt she’s familiar with the first, but not the second.)

So many of the things she’s talking about doing that have been tried before, but they didn’t work. They sounded good, but in real life they made things worse.

Do we really want someone who has no understanding of economics, is ignorant of history, and will do as much damage as she can to the American economy all in the the name of “equity”?

Friday Funny - Southern Woman

Trying some stuff from YouTube. This one has always made me laugh...and shiver.

Thoughts On A Sunday

The humidity that has been hanging over New England over the past week has finally departed, with some of that ‘departure’ taking place as heavy rain. There was some flooding here and there in Vermont and parts of northern New Hampshire over Friday and into early Saturday. By Saturday afternoon the air was drier and the A/C was shut off, at least here at The Gulch. It’s going to be nice over the most of the week, something all of us will appreciate.

We’re coming to the last few weeks of summer and it seems folks are trying to squeeze in as much vacationing as they can before the kids return to school. Our town beach closes at the end of the day on Labor Day, though there won’t be lifeguards on duty past the 25^th of the month. Some of the summer businesses will remain open until the end of September and others until Columbus Day, being open only on weekends until then.

Of course by then we’ll be at the beginning of leaf-peeping season and we’ll be dealing with a different tourist demographic…

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This perfectly explains our younger generation’s lack of understanding about how communism actually works.

==+++==

Hmm, it seems the British Crown Prosecutor has decided has warned that he might extradite Americans who have the audacity to express their disdain for the UK’s shift to a totalitarian state.

Yeah, like that’s going to work...unless the Biden Administration will hand over Americans who disturbed their sensibilities by pointing out how the UK is becoming to resemble the dystopian hell described in Orwell’s 1984.

==+++==

Was a photo showing a crowd waiting for Kamala Harris in Detroit as she stepped off of Air Force Two faked? Snopes is ‘unsure’ whether or not the photo is real or had been manipulated to add people that weren’t actually there.

Some people zoomed way in on the camera phones the crowd were holding. But the thing that got me was the absence of any reflection of the crowd on Air Force Two.

--snip--

How did Harris and Tim Walz even make it through that huge crowd that isn't reflected anywhere on the plane? We certainly hope Snopes doesn't give up trying to find a source for this photo and let us know for sure it's real.

One has to wonder why, if this photo was faked, someone thought it was necessary to do so. Did they think they had to make Kamala seem more popular than she really is, particularly at the airport in Detroit?

I think I can safely state that I won’t be wasting any more of my time on this matter. I have other things more important to ponder, great and small.

==+++==

To give you an idea just how odious the Harris-Walz ticket is we must ponder Tim Walz’ lack of understanding of the First Amendment, something he showed when he said “There's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.”

The Supreme Court has held that labeling speech as hateful does not render it unsayable. Indeed, the First Amendment is specifically designed to protect speech in the event that government authorities attempt to suppress it on such grounds. As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his opinion on behalf of a unanimous Court in the 2017 case of Matal v. Tam: "Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express 'the thought that we hate.'"

Walz is hardly the first political figure to make this mistake; high-level government and media actors who ought to know better frequently suggest that bad, wrong, and hateful speech is illegal. But his invocation of the dreaded specter of misinformation is especially concerning, given the current moral panic around the concept.

The Left seems to think the First Amendment only protects speech they approve of, period. However, the Founders and the Supreme Court thought differently and it pisses off the Left.

One of the arguments the Left uses is that the First Amendment does give anyone the right to yell “Fire!” in a theater. However, it does, particularly if the theater is on fire whether the Left thinks it’s on fire or not.

==+++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather is even better than it has been, summer is passing by far too quickly, and Monday is coming back again far too soon.

Tired Of It Yet?

I didn’t think it was possible, not so early. But here it is and I am already tired of this election season.

No, strike that. I am sick to death of it.

It isn’t the campaigning. I expect that.

It isn’t the BS being sold by the media. That’s nothing new. I’ve seen it for decades so I have a pretty decent media BS filter.

It isn’t all of the “impartial” polls that are totally meaningless at this point, even the ones that oversample from one one political party which no one can deny skews poll results.

It isn’t the speeches as they pretty much go with any election season, whether they are great, awful, or somewhere in between.

It isn’t even the in-person glad-handing by candidates wanting my vote (or my money) that bothers me.

What it is that I am tired of is all of the political ads, the many many many ads showing up everywhere...and I mean everywhere. I’m used to seeing them on TV or hearing them on the radio, but they pop up on my computer when I’m on the web or even worse, when I’m browsing YouTube for funny/interesting videos or watching dash cam videos of people doing really dumb stuff on the road. They are friggin’ everywhere.

What’s bad is that, as usual, so many of them are misleading, with some of them lying by omission. Sometimes they’ll say “So-and-so voted for/against This, That, and The Other Thing, something against what we believe!!”, but when you check (many times those ads will show a reference to the legislation if it’s a video ad), you find out that the legislation they were talking about wasn’t exactly about the subject the ad claimed. That’s bad enough, but not unexpected.

It’s that they are far more numerous than in the past, particularly now they they are showing up in places I’ve never seen them before like my work laptop (which uses Chrome), my tablets, and even my phone. I don’t get them on my home computers, thank goodness, but then I use Linux on those (including the one I am using to write this post) and they all use the Brave browser which has a built-in ad blocker...which doesn't work on ads on YouTube, unfortunately.

I’m not sure how much longer I can stand this seeing as we’re still about three months away from the election in November. It’s only going to get worse between now and then and I have no doubt I am not the only one that will be wholly sick and tired of it all well before November.

Friday Funny - Not Happening, At Least Not Tonight

OK, it seems Blogger has become hostile, at least to me. I can't post pictures to my blog, even pictures that I can prove are mine. Support is non-existent. The only 'help' I can find is a FAQ which doesn't address the issue I'm having.I'm going to keep digging to see if this problem can be resolved.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a weird weekend with a mix of thunderstorms and sunny skies. Saturday started with a thunderstorm just past midnight and rain that was on and off until mid-morning. It became sunny in the afternoon but the clouds returned late in the day and the rain returned in the evening and again lasted until mid-morning. I am not really complaining about the weather as it gave me a good excuse to do an overdue major cleaning in and around The Gulch. The only time I left was to do a little shopping at Walmart early Saturday morning and to go down to one of the local general stores to get a BLT for lunch. (They have great BLTs.)

I have also been nursing an ailing member of our feline contingent, Pip. She’s the last of the original feline contingent from The Manse. I won’t go into the details about her ailment other than to say it has caused some swelling in one ear which is causing her some discomfort. I wish there was more I could do for her, but all I can do at the moment is make sure she’s comfortable and that she has enough food and water.

==++++==

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that Donald Trump is doing his best to lose the election? After his debate with Joe Biden I thought that Trump understood that keeping his mouth shut was the best strategy, one that had the Democrats confused and unsure about what to do.

After the assassination attempt he was again much quieter than many expected, as if contemplating how close he came to dying and taking stock about what was important. This lasted through most of the RNC convention, and then the “old” Trump reasserted itself. I don’t think he could help himself.

I would like to think his campaign advisors were telling him “Don, less is more. You don’t need to comment about everything, particularly about things that the Democrats are already damaging themselves with. If nothing else, the low-key approach is driving them crazy! So keep your trap shut, okay?” But he couldn’t help himself.

He’s back to pissing off people with his off-the-cuff remarks, alienating the very people he needs in order to win. Heck, he’s pissing me off, and I support him. He’s his own worst enemy. He has to remember that this isn’t his TV show The Apprentice, but real life.

Donald, I like you. I support you. But you need to learn when to shut the hell up!

==++++==

To steal a quote from the Instaprof: Compare and contrast.

This man went to a Kamala event wearing a Trump shirt, and a Trump event wearing a Kamala shirt. The difference in how he was treated was stunning.

This isn’t the first time I have seen something like this. The differences between the two parties is stark – one is accepting of those who disagree with them and is willing to converse with them while the other is intolerant, hostile, confrontational, and in some cases, violent.

I’ll leave it to you to figure which party is which.

==++++==

This is one thing I hope will be brought forward during the Presidential election campaign: Kamala Harris is hostile to the Second Amendment. She wanted to use an illegal registry to harass gun owners and confiscate firearms.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris once threatened to use databases of gun owners to send police to their homes to confiscate firearms.

Ms. Harris described her gun control stance in August 2019 at a Democratic presidential primary forum that took place shortly after two deadly mass shootings in California and Texas.

She said she was “prepared to take executive action” to implement comprehensive background checks, crack down on gun dealers and ban the import of so-called assault weapons.

“Take executive action” means she knew there was no way she could get legislation passed to do those things because it was likely the Supreme Court would strike it down as violating the Second Amendment. We already know Harris has little use for the Constitution, seeing it more as an impediment to the state taking complete power over our lives from cradle to grave.

==++++==

Is Canada on the verge of collapse and dissolution? If things keep going as they have under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, I’d say the answer is ‘Yes’.

Between whittling away at Canadians’ civil rights, heavy deficit spending and the confiscatory taxes that go with it, Ottawa’s willful neglect of the country’s citizens and “sit down, shut up, and do what we tell you” attitude, is it any wonder Canadians have had enough of Justin “Castreau” and the Leftists that keep him in power? What will be the tipping point that will have Canadians saying “Enough!” and will move to dissolve the Dominion of Canada?

There is a very real fear and presentiment across the land that the country is disintegrating, Many Canadians now feel, whether implicitly or overtly, that Canada is on the cusp, teetering on the verge of collapse and dissolution. The National Post reports that “A majority of Canadians looking at the country they see around them say everything seems to be broken. Concerned about rising costs, the state of health care, affordable housing, jobs and more, half of us are also angry about the way Canada is being run.” Similarly, an Ipsos poll found that 7 in 10 Canadians agree that “Canada is broken.” As Lee Harding writes in the Western Standard, our rulers “in our own capital city [are] full of self-aggrandizement, handing out contracts to their friends, serving foreign interests, burying us in public debt, and laying heavy taxes on people.” Sounds like it could be the U.S. under Biden and Harris.

Nine years and three terms of Liberal rule under the incompetent and scandal-ridden Marxist prime minister Justin Trudeau have led to a state of affairs in which, as one representative young woman lamented, “This country is falling apart. There’s no more freedom. Everyone is working just to survive and everyone is miserable.” Another concurs: “Every single system is flawed in Canada and it’s so sad, this used to be the best country in the world, now everything is backwards.” “Canada feels Like a house of cards waiting to collapse,” says the Jacobin, “Canada is in deep crisis. It's unfashionable in centrist circles to say so, but it's true. The country is literally on fire.” The Financial Post, for its part, defines Canada as “A leader among the so-called ‘breakdown nations,’” with the worst rate of growth among 50 developed economies.

It’s even worse that what’s laid out above due to an incompetent government and a Marxist Prime Minister who managed to criminalize so-called “hate speech”, said hate speech to be defined by a censorship bureaucracy with penalties for such hate speech going up to and including life imprisonment.

Hmm...where have we seen something like this before? Maybe the old Soviet Union? Or present day Russia? Or Cuba? (Could it be that PM Castreau is taking after his biological father. Fidel?)

So what happens if Canadians do reach the point where they’ve had enough? Will Canada fracture and the various provinces will go their own way? Will Quebec finally become an independent nation? Will other provinces apply for statehood in the US? Will others band together to form their own nation?

I can see Alberta, Saskatchewan, and maybe Manitoba applying to join the US. In some ways they are more like the bordering US states than they are the rest of Canada. I have no idea about the Maritime Provinces or what they would do, though I know two of them had considered applying for statehood if Quebec voted for independence from Canada, those two being Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. What would Newfoundland and Labrador do? Which way would Prince Edward Island go?

As far as the rest, who knows? I doubt Ontario would join the US as it seems to be the ‘California’ of Canada. I have no idea if British Columbia would do so or go their own way. Then there’s the question of the Territories – the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and the Yukon - and what their status would be.

What’s the chance that this will happen? I haven’t a clue.

==++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has been schizophrenic, people are still driving stupid, and where Monday is looming large...again.

Paternity Fraud - Something That Must Be Addressed

While I haven’t been keeping all that much attention to the issue of paternity fraud, I did find it interesting that one state has decided to try to nip this problem in the bud, having passed legislation that makes paternity fraud a crime.

Tennessee passed two laws addressing paternity fraud, the first making it a Class B misdemeanor and the second removing the five year statute of limitation to “challenge an acknowledgment of paternity on the basis of fraud, duress or mistake.” While neither is quite as powerful as some would have liked, it is a step in the right direction. One proposed bill that failed would have made paternity tests mandatory at birth, but it died before making it through committee.

Some think mandatory paternity testing at birth would eliminate paternity fraud. Others think it is an invasion of privacy. I’ll admit I am not sure one way or the other but I do understand why some people are in favor of it, particularly men who found out well after the fact that children they thought were theirs were fathered by someone else.

There have been some claims that 30% of all children born in the US are not the biological children of the reported father, but that number seems way too high. However I can believe that 30% of all children tested for paternity aren‘t related to the man thought to be the father. It makes sense because if a child us being tested it’s likely because there is some question as to the child’s paternity. If every child was tested at birth I think the percentage would be a lot lower.

You may ask what got me on to this topic? Simply, it was this video, something I came across while browsing YouTube earlier today:


After watching this video I must admit that I was pissed off. That this woman seemed to show little shame for having deceived her now ex-husband about the paternity of their two children just made it worse to me.

I think it’s time for states to pass legislation to make paternity fraud a crime. I also think paternity fraud should be considered a factor when it comes to things like child support after a divorce. Why should a man pay child support for kids that aren’t his? Let the mother go after the real father for that.

Is it harsh? Yes. But why should the man who was deceived be punished a second time for this fraud committed against him?

Friday Funny - The Final Exam

It appears the party that 'owns' the video I would have embedded doesn't allow it, so instead I will place the link for the video here: Final Exam.