Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s very dry up here in northern New England as we haven’t seen any appreciable rainfall for almost two months. We’ve seen so-called ‘Red Flag’ warnings posted for the first time in a long time and no burn permits have been issued. We had a local resident decide he didn’t need to get a permit to burn and despite the high fire danger lit his burn pile. The local FD and police showed up, put out his burn pile which was on the verge of spreading, and cited him for ignoring the warnings. It’s a good thing the fire department was able to prevent any spread because if his burn pile flames had spread he would have been liable for the costs of extinguishing the brush fire he ignited. He would have also been facing jail time, too.

Some folks just don’t get it. Some folks just don’t care.

On top of that we still have a lot of leaves that have fallen and piled up as well as a lot of deadfall that was the result of last April’s Nor’easter which dropped heavy snow that damaged or brought down a lot of trees. That’s a lot of fuel just waiting for something or someone to ignite it. So far we’ve been fortunate and haven’t seen too many brush fires here in New Hampshire. It also looks like we’re in store for a couple of days of soaking rains towards the late part of this week.

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Steve MacDonald over at Granite Grok asks an important question, that being if not voting for Kamala is racist and misogynist.

If you can stand the sound of their voices or the inane things those voices say, there is a collective message to America coming from the left. If you didn’t vote for Kamala, it wasn’t because she was a lousy candidate (one of the worst ever). It isn’t her open embrace of the misery you are experiencing or the potential promise of more of that. You are a racist, a bigot, and perhaps even a misogynist.

I have a quick question for the Left and any Democrat who apes this narrative. Explain the 2020 race for me, please.

In a crowd of twenty-seven aspirants, there were six people of color. One Asian (whom you probably labeled as white), three black men, one Hispanic (not light-skinned), and Kamala Harris. The rest were white men, plus Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, and Lizard Warren (post-admission that she was less of a Native American than you are).

Before the smoke cleared, Democrats picked the oldest, whitest guy on the list. Joe Biden.

Racist? Misogynist? Bigoted?

The Democrats claiming racism and misogyny are pointing to the folks on the Right...but are forgetting the one finger they are pointing towards those they blame is being countered by the three fingers point back at them. There are none so blind as those will not see the faults in themselves and their beliefs.

Kamala was an awful candidate, period. When she ran for president back in 2020 she garnered support of less than 3% of likely Democrat voters and folded her campaign before the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primaries. Nothing really changed between then and 2024 other than her becoming a “poison pill” VP. She was just as vacuous in 2024 as she was in 2020...and even prior to that.

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Is Great Britain returning to Victorian era levels of poverty and hygiene?

Yes. Yes it is and it’s all being done on purpose in the name of the impossible to attain “Net Zero” energy policies.

People can live with wearing smelly, unwashed clothes and bad hygiene – our ancestors lived this way for centuries. But you cannot live without adequate warmth.

Thanks to Net Zero’s skyrocketing energy prices, Britain appears to be well on the way to establishing Victorian England levels of poverty in some communities. The poorest people in Britain have been forced to make a choice, between the humiliation of sending their kids to school in unwashed clothes, or risking their health in even worse ways by providing inadequate food and warmth.

In some ways it is worse today than it was in the late 1800s during Queen Victoria’s reign. At least the Victorian poor were allowed to burn scrap wood for warmth. Most homes in Victorian times had some kind of fireplace or hearth where people could burn wood or whatever else they could get their hands on to stay warm.

Too bad that they are no longer allowed to do so because burning wood is against the UK’s Net Zero policies. Renewable energy was sold on the basis that it was cheaper than ‘regular’ energy. However, the reality has shown that it is anything but. It also isn’t reliable, isn’t dispatchable, and is very weather dependent. Yet the UK has gone heavily into renewables and dialed back on abundant and reliable ‘regular’ energy and it is the poor residents there who are paying the price. This makes me wonder if some faceless and nameless bureaucrat, knowing that it is possible people will die because of this, is thinking like Scrooge that “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

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Is there a nuclear renaissance taking place in New Hampshire? If Governor-elect Kelly Ayotte has her way, the answer is yes.

Goodness knows we need it, particularly in a state that has some of the highest electricity rates in the US, particularly during the winter months.

Ten legislators, including two from the Concord area – Sen. Howard Pearl and Rep. Jose Cambrils – signed on to a piece of preliminary legislation “declaring the development of advanced nuclear energy technology to be in the best interest of the state of New Hamp shire and the United States.”

Ayotte, now the governor-elect, could have a chance to make strides toward nuclear energy with a newly expanded Republican majority in the House of Representatives and a supermajority in the Senate.

“This isn't an immediate play, right?” Ayotte told the Monitor in August. “But we have to position New Hampshire for these new technologies. If we don't think ahead and think forward, then we'll be behind as these newer technologies continue to develop.”

Nuclear power has emerged as a potential option to aid the energy transition; experts say it doesn’t directly produce carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas emissions. During her campaign, Ayotte proposed adding a small-modular nuclear reactor in the North Country, which she said would create jobs and stimulate the region’s economy. New Hampshire currently has one nuclear plant, in Seabrook.

While we do receive more than half of our electricity from Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant, the rest comes from a mix of natural gas, hydro, biomass, and coal, in descending order. The natural gas plants have an advantage since they can be brought online quickly, either for peak load handling or for base load. But natural gas is expensive in New England because during the cooler months much of it comes from foreign sources, primarily Trinidad & Tobago, shipped into the natural gas terminal in the Boston area. Rather than being able to use cheap domestic natural gas, New England has to use foreign natural gas because the natural gas pipeline into New England has nowhere near the capacity needed.

What makes things worse is that the one new pipeline project that would have increased the amount of natural gas needed was killed after a well organized opposition movement stopped it. The same happened when not one, not two, but three powerline projects that would have brought clean, renewable, and cheap hydropower into New England from Quebec were also killed. Ironically, many of the same people who protested against all of these projects were the first to complain about how much they’re paying for electricity. I guess they weren’t able to make the connection between their actions and their higher electricity bills. Then again, they rarely connect their actions with outcomes.

Such it is with ‘true believers’ of the climate cult.

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Is Whoopi Goldberg getting a taste of karma?

It seems the bakery on Staten Island Whoopi accused of refusing her service because of her political views did no such thing.

...Whoopi Goldberg suddenly went missing from The View today after the owners of Holtermann’s Bakery on Staten Island came out to tell their side of the story.. They didn’t “refuse” service to Goldberg because of her politics, they had a boiler break down and couldn’t make anything… Holtermann’s has been in business on Staten Island for over 145 years. I seriously doubt they would refuse service to ANYONE as that would not be a type of business model that keeps you in business since the 1800s.

If I were Holtermann’s I would sue Whoopi for defamation and take her for every penny they could get. She let her political beliefs cloud her judgment and either she read something into Holtermann’s not being able to take her order that wasn’t there, or she saw an opportunity to ‘punish’ someone she thought richly deserved it. I would like to think it was the former and not the latter. Or she’s slid so deeply down the Leftist slope that she’s seeing things that aren’t there and ignoring things that go against her viewpoint.

In either case, I lost respect for her a long time ago.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it’s very dry and we desperately need rain, the nice sunny and (relatively) warm weather continues, and where Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away.