This is quite different from what we experienced last year since we had a lot of rain all summer and through early fall which meant muted colors. (If my understanding is correct, this was due to a fungus that grew on the leaves because of the wet conditions that caused the colors to appear ‘dusty’ – the expert’s words, not mine.)
While we haven’t seen the leaf peepers – foliage tourists – in large numbers, that will change shortly as the colors appear. This will be the ‘last gasp’ for tourist dollars for the year, though a lot of those tourists will be from overseas. Then when foliage season ends we won’t see much in the way of tourists until winter when the ski areas and snowmobile open. Even then we won’t see nearly as many visitors as we do during late spring, summer, and early fall.
Not that we mind all that much as we do need a breather between tourist seasons to recuperate. It allows us to visit our favorite places without the folks from away being there.
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It seems we’re getting conflicting information (or dis-/misinformation) from the media and the Harris campaign. We see MSM outlets like CNN – once fully in the pocket of the DNC, particularly during the Obama administration – slamming the Harris campaign for an increasing number of falsehoods being sold in campaign ads and speeches.
Then add on the Biden administration’s double ‘F’ grade on the White House Report Card from both conservatives and Democrats. We have to remind potential voters that Kamala Harris is part of the Biden administration and has failed to deliver (or even perform) two duties assigned to her – Border ‘Czar’ and Broadband Expansion – with the border being wide open and unvetted illegal immigrants flooding across the border with many of them being members of violent criminal gangs and other criminals that then commit crimes here, and billions of dollars in BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment) program funds sitting idle because she can’t be bothered to do that job either.
It seems the Harris campaign is trying to do as Victor Davis Hanson has posited: It’s trying to run out the clock and do as little actual campaigning as possible in order keep Kamala away from unscripted Q&A sessions because they know she’s an idiot.
Cynically running out the clock has been the overarching principle of the entire abbreviated 105-day presidential campaign of Kamala Harris—ever since Joe Biden, at the 11th-hour, dropped out in July.All we can do is hope the ‘run out the clock’ strategy fails and Kamala will be fully exposed for the lying Marxist she is.
Harris seems unwilling or unable to answer any impromptu question that she has not been previously prepped for. Her answers at the debate were memorized and canned. They never addressed the questions asked.
Her single, 11-minute post-debate Philadelphia interview was a shipwreck of dodging and dissimulating—even though the host was sympathetically left-wing.
Even socialist Bernie Sanders pointed out that for Harris to get elected, she must temporarily disown her lifelong leftist credentials.
As vice president, she must further deny co-ownership of the unpopular record of the Biden-Harris administration.
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And then there’s this, just to add insult to injury:
The Biden/Harris administration is suing the state of Alabama in order to prevent it from removing illegal immigrants from their voter rolls.
WTF?
"The Justice Department announced a lawsuit Friday against Alabama, arguing the state’s effort to remove noncitizens from its voter rolls came too close to the November election," reports the Washington Times. "The department asked a federal judge to order Alabama to put the names — which the state says are ineligible voters — back on the active voter lists. The department said some actual citizens were sent notices that they had been moved to the inactive voter file."One has to wonder how states are supposed to remove ineligible voters, dead voters, inactive voters, or voters who no longer live in the state from their voter rolls? Removing them certainly makes it harder for Democrats to cheat during an election.
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Alabama announced its plan to purge noncitizens from the rolls last month.
Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen said at the time that his office had identified 3,251 names of people on the lists to whom Homeland Security had issued what he called a “noncitizen identification” number. His office instructed registrars to inactivate those names and “initiate steps” to remove those who were found to be noncitizens.
Mr. Allen said Homeland Security refused to cooperate with his efforts.
He said it’s “possible” that some of the people the feds had issued the numbers to had later achieved citizenship and the process he started would allow them to verify their citizenship status.
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I think anyone who paid attention to this politically motivated case was expecting this:
NY Judges Scrutinize ‘Troubling’ $450 Million Penalty In Trump Fraud Case: ‘No One Lost Any Money’
A New York appellate court is raising questions regarding the penalty and the justification under which AG Letitia James brought the case.The process described above is pretty standard. Even the banks have said so which is why they do their own evaluation of properties to come up with an unbiased value of the properties in question. Sometimes they match. Sometimes they don’t.
Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron ordered in February former President Donald Trump to pay an approximate $450 million penalty in a civil fraud case in which there were no victims. Now, a New York appellate court is raising questions regarding the “troubling” penalty and Attorney General Letitia James’ justification for bringing the case in the first place.
James accused Trump of inflating his personal wealth to get better loan terms. Trump, for example, valued his Mar-a-Lago estate at between $427 million and $612 million, Forbes reported. Engoron, however, cited a one-off local Palm Beach County appraiser who valued the property as low as $18 million. Some experts have reportedly valued the sprawling property in the hundreds of millions.
As my colleague Mark Hemingway explained earlier this year, “Trump took out loans over several years, as real estate moguls are wont to do. For him to get approved for those loans, the banks did their own due diligence about Trump’s finances and ability to pay back the loans and decided to give them to him. Trump paid back the loans, and everyone made money.”
The verdict in the trial, one that Letitia James said she’d pursue when running for the office of NY AG, sent shockwaves through the commercial real estate market in New York. Despite assurances from New York Governor Hochul that no one else would be targeted, investors didn’t believe those assurances which puts billions of dollars of investments in the Metro New York City area at risk. One such investor and “Shark Tank” host, Kevin O’Leary, said he will no longer invest in “loser” New York.
O’Leary issued his warning to real estate investors following [the] decision by Judge Arthur Engoron that Trump and his two eldest sons lied about his wealth and inflated the value of his assets.That the commercial real estate market in New York has tanked since then is an indicator that this may be a side effect of the Trump verdict. New York City has other issues that have negatively affected the real estate values in the city, the large influx of illegal immigrants, a D.A. choosing not to prosecute criminals, and a bail reform law that allow criminals arrested for crimes to walk out without bail being among them.
“This award, I mean, just leaving the whole Trump thing out of it and seeing what occurred here … And I’m no different than any other investor, I’m shocked at this,” O’Leary told Fox Business Network…
O’Leary, a judge on the hit reality show known as “Mr. Wonderful,” said he “can’t even understand or fathom the decision at all.”
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O’Leary said that he has heard from peers in the business world who have pledged to shun New York, which “was already on the top of the list of being a loser state.”
“I would never invest in New York now,” O’Leary said, adding: “And I’m not the only person saying that.”
It will be interesting to see what the NY Court of Appeals decides in the Trump case. I have a feeling they will overturn the verdict, and if not, reduce if not eliminate the unconstitutional penalty imposed by Judge Engoron. There have also been questions about Judge Engoron’s impartiality during the trial, seeing many of his statements during the trial showed a blatant bias against Trump.
It would be interesting to see the effects if the NY Court of Appeals were to rule in favor of Trump prior to the November election. I would expect the Democrats would express outrage and Kamala Harris would generate yet another word salad meant to express her disappointment that the politically motivated lawsuit failed in the end.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the leaves are turning, the weather has been nice, and where Monday will once again screw up the weekend.