It’s Columbus Day Weekend and the leaf peepers have arrived in droves. It isn’t near peak here at the Big Lake but it is up north in the mountains. We knew it would be a busy weekend for traffic when the youngest WP Sister made the drive up to The Gulch from her home in Massachusetts, a trip that normally takes about 2 hours. This time it was a 4 hour marathon as traffic was heavy and bumper-to-bumper...and she left her home at just past noon on Friday. Between the leaf peepers heading up early – the weather for it being very good on Friday and Saturday but not so great for Sunday and Monday due to rain – and other folks coming up to finally close up their cottages and summer homes and pull their boats from the water, get them winterized and into storage for the winter, there’s been a lot of heavy traffic. (My boat comes out next weekend as I didn’t want to get anywhere near the docks and boat ramp in our town this weekend.)
The restaurants have been busy, even here in the Lakes Region. While the summer businesses have been closed since just after Labor Day, the year round businesses are seeing plenty of customers, a bit more than I recall seeing this time of year. It’s the “last gasp” of the tourist season and once the fall foliage is gone so will the tourists. It will be quiet until ski season arrives around Christmas time.
And so it goes.
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One thing I have mention is that the younger WP Sister is our family’s token liberal. Talking to her while she was here made me realize she’s imbibed in too much of the Kamala Kool-Aid, as she thinks that she’s been an effective Vice President, US Senator, California AG, and District Attorney. It tells me she really hasn’t bothered to do her own research, looked at Kamala’s record, and is swallowing the MSM propaganda whole. To my dear little Sis, she walks on water and is akin to the Second Coming.
I can only hope that when or if she realizes that Kamala’s image is as real as a cartoon that it won’t crush her.
We’ll be here for her should that happen.
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I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d like Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance. After hearing about this little back and forth between Vance and ABC’s Martha Radditz, I can say I do like “the cut of his jib”.
Raddatz: "The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes… A handful!"
Vance: “Do you hear yourself? Only a handful of apartment complexes were taken over by Venezuelan gangs and Donald Trump is the problem and not Kamala Harris' open border?"
I suffer from mental illness...not mine, but other people's. This is particularly true of the woke whose delusions about themselves drive me to distraction, if not a little crazy.
I'm too busy to spend time feeding other people's delusions.
As we all should be.
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One thing that shows the election is less than a month away?
The explosion of campaign signs.
While they have been around here since mid-August due the state primary, it seems like they have multiplied by an order of magnitude since then. They’re everywhere, particularly the ubiquitous 2ft x 3ft campaign signs that line every road and intersection.
The wide range of offices up for grabs running the range between some county offices like Clerk of Probate, to the NH House, NH Senate, Executive Council, Governor, US House of Representatives, and President and Vice President, of course. (Neither of our US Senators are up for reelection this year, but one will be in 2026.) The local office campaign signs far outnumber the rest, but then I would expect nothing less.
One of the more interesting things about all of the signs will be how long it will take before all of them have been taken down. They are supposed to be taken down within 7 days after the election, but more often than not it takes a little longer than a week for them to disappear. Some reappear come spring when the snow is finally gone, though those are few and far between.
All I know is that I will be glad when the calendar says November 6th and this election foolishness will be past us...until Town Meeting in March.
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We keep hearing that the only way to “Save Democracy” is to elect Kamala Harris. But we’ve been mishearing what Kamala and her ‘supporters’ have been saying.
We think they’re saying “democracy” when what they’re really saying is “democrisy”. The definition of “democrisy”?
A fusion of democracy and hypocrisy, something that has little to do with freedom.
This is what the Democrats and their puppet Kamala Harris have in mind for us.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where mid-fall weather has arrived a little early, the leaves still haven’t changed here yet, and where we don’t have to worry about Monday this week because it’s a holiday.
I came across this about mental illness over at Instapundit and I have to say it immediately had me nodding my head as I had to agree with the premise, that being mental illness is more prevalent today than in the past, and that too many people their mental illness “is an important part of [their] identity.” As I saw in the comments:
My generation grew up looking for frogs and sh*t.
Your generation grew up looking for a WiFi signal.
We are not the same.
I have to think that might have had something to do with it. And then there’s this:
Boomers were free-range children, outside in the sunlight.
The youth today are over scheduled and inside too much.
I have to wonder if mental illness is just another way for some people to claim victimhood, perhaps as a means of not having to grow up and be an adult.
It being a holiday weekend and having family coming up for a visit kind of screwed up my day yesterday and I didn't get around to posting my usual Friday humor post. It happens now and then, this being one of those times. But better late than never.
And now, without further delay. I present a (rather) late Friday Funny:
Being an engineer, I find I agree with everything he listed.
We’ve been seeing fluctuating temperatures here at the lake, with them swinging between above normal and below normal high temperatures. In other words, a typical fall weather pattern. The foliage colors are changing across the area and I expect them to hit peak here right around the coming holiday weekend. This also means that my boating season has only a couple of weeks to go before the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout is pulled from the water, a couple of weeks earlier than usual.
Normally the boat would be pulled out at the end of the month, but the boatyard I use to winterize and store the boat has changed hands as the original owner retired and sold his business. The new owners have a ‘cutoff’ date which is two weeks before I would usually pull the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water. However, I am not complaining as there have years when I’ve pulled the boat out of the water earlier than usual.
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Reading about and listening to reports on TV about the inadequate government response to Hurricane Helene, particularly when it comes to western North Carolina, has me wondering just what the hell is going on. With FEMA officials threatening volunteers with arrest if they try to get aid and help to the areas requiring such help and the FAA issuing NOTAMs (Notice To Airmen) banning flight operations in the affected area by civilian aircraft capable of delivering supplies to affected areas, I have to wonder if it is incompetence or malice driving this.
Knowing the Biden-Harris administration as we do and seeing how they have handled everything since January 2021, I have to say it’s both. Nothing else explains the weak and wholly inadequate response. Both President Biden and Vice President Harris had more important things to do than deal with the widespread destruction, like vacation and a Nevada fundraiser, respectively.
Government nonfeasance and interference reached the point where reports were appearing the North Carolina State Police and/or a number of Sheriff’s departments were threatening to arrest federal government officials interfering with ongoing emergency operations. Whether this is accurate is not known (at this point), but it sounds like a darned good idea, particularly if it’s true that FEMA has been “actively blocking shipments” of relief supplies.
The GOP should be hammering the Biden-Harris administration for its weak response and the apparent lack of interest in getting help to a disaster zone. Trump should keep reminding people at every rally and speech about the administration’s disdain for people who aren’t “them”.
And then there’s this as a possible motive for slow-tracking relief efforts, “this” being that most North Carolina voters back Trump, but will have a hard time voting come November, something which will work in favor of Kamala Harris.
Am I being cynical about possible motives to leave those North Carolina residents in dire straits? Or am I on target?
Axelrod noted that many victims of Hurricane Helene in the region are primarily Trump supporters, which could impact their ability to vote in the upcoming 2024 election. He mentioned that while Democrats in Asheville are likely to find ways to vote, those who have suffered extensive losses in western North Carolina may not be as easily mobilized for the Trump campaign.
--snip--
A number of communities in Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee have been devastated by Hurricane Helene, including massive structural damage and flooding in Ashville, known as the San Francisco of the South. The fact that Axelrod would even raise this, instead of expressing concern for the welfare of hurricane victims, speaks volumes in which he has essentially said the quiet part out loud.
It is abundantly clear that the Biden-Harris administration is deliberately delaying or preventing recovery efforts in North Carolina and other swing states as Election Day approaches. This done in hopes of gaining some sort of electoral advantage come November 5th.
Of course this could backfire, particularly if Trump makes it a topic during his campaign over the next four weeks.
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Seeing Kamala Harris’s frozen teleprompter moment reminds me of Obama, someone who was quite articulate...as long as he had a script, but foundered when he had to speak off the cuff. It seems to be a common problem with the previous Democrat president as well as the present Democrat President and Vice President. (At least SloJoe has the excuse of dementia. Harris does not...which might explain why she never speaks unscripted.)
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I saw this video this morning and I have to admit that if the woman in this video was for real, then we have a real problem.
Talk about a self-centered and selfish individual!
The YouTube guy lambasting this woman put his money where his mouth is. He understands what’s happening in western North Carolina. She’s friggin’ clueless...and entitled.
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Speaking from an engineering point of view, more people need to be aware of the downsides of EVs, particularly when it comes to safety and specifically when it comes to the batteries. EVs have their issues, one of them being that they aren’t really “green” considering the the environmental issues with the extraction of the materials needed for the batteries and the electric motors. And then there’s the human cost considering one of the materials used to manufacture the lithium-ion batteries – cobalt – is mined by children and slaves. This is something devoutly ignored by EV proponents because it is inconvenient to The Narrative.
It is now, or should be, common knowledge that electric vehicles—cars, trucks, buses, bikes, scooters—under conditions of even low humidity or water damage, are prone to catching fire, owing to the unstable nature of the lithium-ion battery. As Chris Morrison writes at The Daily Skeptic, EVs are known to explode “with the force of a bomb blasting super-heated jets of flame, melting and decomposing nearby structural materials including metal and concrete, and sending vast amounts of toxic fumes into any enclosed atmosphere.”
Jammed into underground parking garages or packed in ferries, EVs are harbingers of almost unimaginable disaster—ecological and safety menaces to which the Net Zero fanatics among our political leadership are comatosely indifferent.
We have witnessed lethal battery explosions in South Korea and elsewhere with significant loss of life. QBE Europe reports that such fires are increasing at a worrisome rate and explains: “Lithium-ion fires are the result of thermal runaway, where batteries start to irreversibly overheat, usually due to impact damage, over-charging or over-heating... The resulting explosive fire incidents are significantly more energetic [than ordinary fires], causing extensive damage, and potentially injury or even death.” They cannot be readily put out and will often re-ignite.
While proponents claim EV fires aren’t nearly as numerous as claimed, one has to remember that there aren’t all that many EVs on the road compared to ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) vehicles. As mentioned in the quote above, “they cannot be really put out and will often re-ignite”, something local fire departments have found out the hard way when dealing with EV fires. They have to douse the burning vehicles with tens of thousands of gallons of water, not to extinguish the fire but to keep it from spreading to other vehicles or nearby structures until it finally burns itself out. That the number of EV fires has been increasing doesn’t help.
A lot of parking garages won’t allow EVs to park on lower levels, requiring them to park on the top level if it is open to the sky in case there is a fire. Chargers are located on the top level for the same reason.
As I have mentioned on more than one occasion, a work I am the “Battery Guy” in our engineering department. I remind my colleagues the lithium-ion batteries we use in our instruments are really unstable incendiary grenades with a loose pin. We over-designed the battery charging, management, and safety systems to help reduce the possibility of a catastrophic battery failure, and even then we wonder if it will be safe enough. Those are generally single cell battery packs.
Now picture EVs with thousands of battery cells, and all it takes is for one of those thousands of cells to fail, overheat, and ignite to start a cascade failure that turns the EV into an incendiary bomb. That cell can be one that is weaker than the thousands of other cells, was damaged while the battery pack was being built or installed in the EV, or was ‘tweaked’ during an accident that eventually caused it to fail and ignite.
Yeah, I think I’ll stick with ICE vehicles as they seem to have less of a propensity to spontaneously ignite.
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That’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the leaves are continuing their change to their fiery fall colors, the traffic on the lake is a fraction of what it was a month ago, and where we’ll be spending as much time out on and around the lake looking at the colors as we can.
When I heard the September jobs report on last night’s local news, my first thought was “Oh, how convenient for the Harris campaign.” Considering how many times over the past three-plus years jobs reports have been revised downwards, in some cases by quite a bit, I am skeptical that new jobs are suddenly well above expectations. The timing is suspicious, at least to me. I have to wonder if those wonderful September jobs numbers will be revised heavily downwards the day after the election?
If those job numbers are not artificially inflated, then I have to ask whether they were because of the actions of the Biden-Harris administration or in spite of them? Seeing the employment numbers track record of the present administration I am heavily inclined to believe it is the latter rather than the former.
The latest report states the U3 unemployment rate is ~4.1% and the U6 rate of 7.3% which includes the U3 rate (unemployed but collecting unemployment benefits) plus those who are unemployed but no longer collecting benefits and those who are underemployed (working but in jobs that pay less then their previous jobs or only working part time).
It will be interesting to see what the job numbers look like after the election on November 5th.
