A Visit, A Discussion, and A Definition

I had a visit from the younger WP Niece today, something I’d been looking forward to for some time. She’s been a reader of this blog and has, on more than one occasion, texted me about one post or another. While we don’t always agree on one political viewpoint or another, we do agree on many others. Part of the problem has been that we’ve tried having discussions electronically and we have found that really doesn’t work all that well, at least not for us. Face-to-face discussions always work better for us and lead to far fewer misunderstandings and the ability to debate things both profound and trivial without the inherent lag of electronic communications and inability to hear or see nuances that escape us when all we have to go by are words on a screen.

One thing that was mentioned was how many people will use labels for people they disagree with without actually understanding the meaning of those labels. One of those that are thrown about when describing Trump is ‘fascist’. Most of those using that term haven’t a friggin’ clue what that word means or what it entails. But they’ve heard others use it and so they do too.

What triggered me to write about this topic rather than some other topic? This picture. (Sorry, I still can’t embed pictures as Blogger is still ‘broken’ and I can’t seem to get any help fixing the problem.)

Do those calling Trump a fascist even know what the definition of fascism is? I’m making a SWAG here, but I’m guessing a large majority of them don’t. So here’s one definition from the American Heritage Dictionary:

A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

Does that really sound like the Trump Administration? It sounds more like the Biden Administration to me. If it’s Trump, then he’s doing it all wrong.

Friday Funny - Anatoly The Gym Cleaner

Thoughts On A Sunday

I will admit some disappointment that there wasn’t more new snow on the ground when I got up this morning. I expected to see somewhere between 4 and 6 inches. However, it was closer to 3 inches, hence my disappointment. But Mother Nature follows her own rules and by the time I was imbibing in my second cup of coffee a couple of hours later there was another 2 inches on the ground. It appears that when I got up there was a lull in the snowfall so I thought it was pretty much over and the only thing we had to look forward to was some sleet that was forecast to follow later in the morning and through the afternoon.

Like many others up here in New Hampshire, we had thought the below normal snowfall and warmer than normal temperatures in late December and into mid-January were what we would be seeing throughout the rest of the winter. We were wrong. Not that we’re upset now that we’re experiencing a more ‘normal’ winter with cold temps and regular snow. Quite the contrary.

While we haven’t experienced any big storms to this point, we have seen snow about every 3 or 4 days in amounts running between 2 and 5 inches. We did have one storm that dropped about 8 inches about a week ago, but that’s been the exception. Not that I’m looking for a big storm. They can be ‘exciting’ but they are also more difficult to dig out from afterwards. The smaller storms every few days make it easy to get everything shoveled out, usually taking time but a lot less effort to take care of the snow.

There’s still a month to go before the Spring Equinox and we can see big storms well into April up here. In fact, we had one of out biggest storms of last winter in April, a big Nor’easter that dropped a lot of heavy snow and caused widespread power outages. The Gulch was without power for almost 2 days, but at least we had the Official Weekend Pundit Generator to rely on to keep the lights on and the heat running. I’m hoping we won’t need to do so this winter, but it is ready just in case.

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I covered the electric school bus debacle in Maine two weeks ago, but it seems there are more repercussions to this major fail.

As one commenter so aptly put it:

A lot of comments on electric vehicles and winter performance, but that's really not the point. If the $365k buses worked just as well as a conventional $150k school bus it's still not the point. The point is they made the buying decision based on the fact that they were electric instead of on performance requirements (with safety margins), reliability, and lifecycle costs.

If the bus couldn't handle the worst route on the worst day at the end of its 10 or 15 year service life, with plenty to spare, and at a lower cost than other options, it should have never been considered.

A bus failure in the middle of winter is something that does happen now and then. But if your entire bus fleet - electric bus fleet – can leave students stranded in sub-zero weather or during a snowfall, you are endangering those kids due to a decision made based on ‘feelz’ and not facts. I have to echo the sentiment of other commenters that the folks who made the decision to buy these buses should be fired or removed from office.

==+++++==

I have a feeling this topic is going to have long legs, the topic being DOGE and what it has been exposing. I have a feeling we’ve seen only the tip of the proverbial financial iceberg and that, in the end, a lot of people are going to be investigated and in some cases imprisoned for their misappropriation of funds.

When Americans learn that their tax dollars are going to fund egregious projects around the world, it lays a foundation for the public relations framework needed by the Trump administration to bring American public opinion along on the necessary journey of restructuring the government. It makes people’s blood boil. And it sets the tone for the effectiveness, and need for, the entire Trump efficiency program, even though the spending in absolute monetary terms on these insane USAID projects is fairly minor compared to the overall $6.9 trillion federal budget.

--snip--

Trump recognizes, as Ronald Reagan did, the importance of galvanizing American public opinion as an integral part of carrying out his agenda. By inflaming the public, he puts pressure on the craven Congress to go along with his efforts to enact sweeping changes that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to achieve.

No doubt when Musk sets his genius young elves to work applying their AI algorithms on the Department of Health and Human Services and the Defense Department’s budget data, they will find waste so massive that it dwarfs that of USAID’s $40 billion annual outlay. But it’s a bit harder for the public to grasp the wastefulness of the government paying many times the price that it should be paying for anti-aircraft missiles, say, or ineffective vaccines. From a public relations standpoint, it’s much easier to see the lunacy of the US taxpayer shelling out $2.5 million for an electric vehicle project in Vietnam or $1.5 million to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in Serbian workplaces.

Cleaning the Augean Stables of government spending is truly a Herculean task, but I think DOGE as it is constituted now is up to the task. It is something that is long overdue as we can’t keep running multi-trillion dollar budget deficits every year. (Thanks Joe/WRBA!)

That some of the first federal employees being let go are those who are newer employees, with many of them still within their probationary periods, is something that makes sense. They can be laid off for any reason with little or no recourse. Will there be some disruptions because of these layoffs? Sure there will, but that’s no reason to not shed employees from bloated agencies, bureaus, and departments. If we hand it over to Congress as many Democrats had suggested, any workforce reductions will be token amounts so the Democrats can claim they’ve gotten something done. But we don’t need a 5% or 10% reduction in the federal workforce. We need to see 30%, 40%, or even 50%, even if it means shuttering some of those federal agencies, bureaus, and departments which serve no purpose other than spending money the government doesn’t have on things that aren’t needed.

Some people think it it can’t possibly be done, but Javier Milei, President of Argentina, has done just that, cutting the size or Argentina’s government by 50% and seeing a revitalization of his country’s economy as the government deficit spending has been cut to zero. Even if we can’t reach that level of cuts, every dollar saved counts.

==+++++==

Hmm, I have to wonder if this has anything to do with Trump and his “DOGEs of War” going over the books in every government office?

It seems the housing market in the DC area is seeing a “massive sell-off”.

The most expensive housing markets in the US, the burbs of DC, is suddenly taking a beating. The moochers, the looters, the criminals are fleeing in a major housing sell off.

“Of the top seven wealthiest counties in America, 4 of them are suburbs of Washington DC. These counties have no major industries of note other than the federal government, lobbying the federal government and selling things to the federal government.”

--snip--

“This is a major reason why the vast majority of Americans have zero sympathy for defunded NGOs, terminated federal employees, cut-off journalists and suddenly irrelevant lobbyists.”

They are running scared...

Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

Take a look at the postings and listings for properties in the Washington DC area. It’s the rats deserting a sinking ship.

Good riddance.

==+++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the sleet is slowing increasing, there’s still plenty of snow to move, and where folks from Massachusetts will be spending this coming week since it’s the February vacation down in the Pay State.

DOGE Isn't New

We have been hearing the laments and cries of outrage from the Democrats and the embedded Left in government, with some claiming what Trump is doing via the Department Of Government Efficiency is illegal and doesn’t have the power to do what it’s been doing. Nor are Trump’s actions based upon DOGE’s findings. But they are wrong...and they have Barack Obama to thank for that.

Obama created the United States Digital Service (USDS) in 2014. It was meant as a bureaucratic patch job to fix the Obamacare website meltdown.

Fast forward to 2025. Trump rebrands it to DOGE (Unites States DOGE Service). Keeps the acronym, keeps the funding, but gives it a whole new mission: Find the Receipts.

Legally untouchable because it was already fully funded and operational. Trump evokes 5 USC 3161, which allows him to create temporary hiring authorities. DOGE teams get embedded inside every single federal agency. Each team consists of a lawyer, HR rep, a zoomer nerd, and an investigator. They report to DOGE, not the agency they’re embedded in.

But wait, there’s more! Trump invokes 44 USC Chapter 35, which governs federal IT and cybersecurity oversight. Since USDS was originally an IT oversight body, DOGE now has full access to all federal data systems. Yes, that’s right. All of them.

The Democrats keep thinking Trump is an idiot, but that persona they see is more like a costume an actor dons to play a role, and he shows them what they expect to see. But Trump was smart. He understands the mistakes he made during his first term and didn’t want to repeat them. This time he made plans well in advance, put together teams to bring those plans to fruition and to so constitutionally. That USDS was repurposed, it was still well within its original charter. Trump used The Won’s own creation against the Democrats.

One commenter wrapped it up perfectly:

The same people who scream fascism if the government tries to check the trash of a house of a suspected child molester will cheerfully give that same government the right to inspect the trash if they think the house is using plastic straws rather than paper ones in the name of fighting global warming.

Their only argument is "but it's different when we do it, because we're the good people."

I have to agree. If it were Kamala Harris doing this they’d be all for it and would do their best to shield their friends, family, and campaign donors from such investigations.

Friday Funny (Yet Another Saturday Edition) - Can I Clean Here?

If you're familiar with Anatoly the Gym Janitor you'll get this one.

Thoughts On A Sunday

We received a little over 8 inches of snow overnight here at The Gulch. The folks on the other side of the lake got around 10 inches. As I write this (a little past 8am), our road has not yet been plowed. I can’t say about the main road as I haven’t been down that way yet. None of this means that I won’t be heading out shortly to start shoveling the driveway, digging out the trusty RAM 1500, and breaking out the roof rake to pull snow off the edge of the roof. In other words, taking care of the usual post-snow chores.

At least I don’t have to worry about having to go anywhere today so there’s no rush to get things done. Church services were canceled (though our church is still holding online services) as the town and state highway crews are still out plowing.

==+++++==

If you want to see a perfect example of “Get woke. Go broke,” all one has to do is look at the debacle of how Anheuser-Busch took one of their most popular brands – Bud Light – and destroyed it by going woke and in-your-face by using the most inappropriate spokesperson they could find - Dylan Mulvaney – a transgender woman who helped turn off a lot of Bud Light drinkers.

Bud Light is still trying to make up with the customer base it alienated on April 1, 2023. On that day, a brand that had been the top-selling beer in America for over two decades launched a social media campaign that would rock its customers, and not in a good way. Starring a transgender activist, Dylan Mulvaney, it celebrated Mulvaney’s first year of “girlhood.” Bud Light even sent Mulvaney a personalized can to mark this milestone date in Mulvaney’s transition from biological male to transgender woman, which millions had already followed on Instagram and TikTok.

This was not an April Fools’ Day prank as some believed, but a serious effort by the world’s largest beer company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, to “rebrand” its product.

For Bud Light, the consequences were no laughing matter. Consumers immediately recoiled and targeted the beer with one of the largest boycotts in recent history. Bud Light sales declined 11 percent that week compared to the previous year. By April 15, 2023, sales were down 21 percent. In the ensuing months, the company shed billions of dollars of shareholder value, laid off hundreds of employees across the Anheuser-Busch ecosystem, damaged its reputation, and plunked itself in the middle of a highly contentious political issue. Almost every Anheuser-Busch stakeholder—wholesalers, employees, customers, and shareholders—lost trust in the company.

Why anyone at A-B or InBev thought this was a good idea baffles me. It’s as if they ignored the demographics of their customers and were aiming to gain customers in another demographic that was a fraction of the size of their existing one. Anyone with even a inkling of marketing knowledge would know that is a suicidal move. Did they think the move would merely add that ‘woke’ demographic to their customer base without offending their existing customer base?

I guess so...and they learned the “Get woke. Go Broke,” lesson the hard way.

==+++++==

I have to admit I like this take on DOGE.

DOGE has forced democrats into the position of defending waste, fraud and abuse.

Looking at just where taxpayers dollars are going via USAID has been eye-opening. Yes, much of the funds for USAID are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. But way too much is going to people and organizations and businesses that have absolutely nothing to do with USAID’s purpose, including some that feed funds to terrorist organizations. How can Democrats justify this?

It’s even worse with with the entrenched departments, bureaus, and agencies where the graft, payoffs, and “no show” jobs eat up hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, if not a trillion or more. Maybe if DOGE had been grafted onto the Inspector General’s office which would have possibly given it subpoena power.

Our federal government is fat, is wasting tax money on things no one but the bureaucrats, lobbyists, and grifters want or need. It’s time to clean house. And if you think we should leave it to Congress all that means is that nothing will get done, it will cost a couple of hundred billion dollars to get nothing done, and nothing will change...other than to get worse.

==+++++==

To anyone that has been paying attention this is no surprise. To those with a green scam...er...agenda to ram down people’s throats it is anathema.

New study Points To Hunga Tonga Eruption As Cause Of Global Temperature Spike.

In January 2022, a massive underwater volcano called Hunga Tonga suddenly erupted and shot so much water into the upper atmosphere that levels in the stratosphere rose suddenly by at least 10%. It was a genuine one in 100, even 200 year event and was reasonably expected to produce temporary weather changes around the globe. Sure enough, subsequent temperatures showed a 0.3-0.4°C upward spike. Needless to say, the Net Zero fanatics claimed the rise as their own and blamed it on humans controlling the climate by increasing the trace gas carbon dioxide. Today the Daily Sceptic can give wider publicity to sensational recent findings that suggest Hunga Tonga was the main culprit in producing the recent spike. The scientists directly link a dramatic cooling in the upper atmosphere of between 0.5-2°C to Hunga Tonga. It is generally held that there is an anti-correlation between the lower and upper atmosphere and cooling at the top produces warming at the bottom due to a number of complex atmospheric processes.

--snip--

This is dramatic stuff. It appears to promote Hunga Tonga as the prime cause in explaining the recent spike in temperatures. Indeed it could be concluded that the temperature rise should have been a little higher – and higher even still if the effects of a recent strong El Niño natural oscillation are included. Satellite observations, confirmed by computer analysis, shows stratospheric cooling of 0.5°C to 1°C in the middle and upper stratosphere during 2022 through middle 2023, followed by stronger reductions of 1°C to 2°C in the mesosphere after the middle of 2023, note the scientists. Last year, two distinguished atmospheric scientists observed the anti-correlation between the higher and lower atmosphere and suggested the lower stratosphere cooled by approximately two degrees per degree of warming nearer the surface. Where the troposphere has been anomalously warming, the lower stratosphere has been anomalously cooling “and vice versa”, note the scientists.

I found it interesting that a volcanic eruption that put 160 million tons of water into the atmosphere, thereby increasing the water vapor content of the atmosphere by up to 13% (depending upon which figures with which you agree), was minimized by the climate change cultists as “insignificant” and having little if any effect on global temperatures and precipitation.

It has also been devoutly ignored by the media since it doesn’t fit The Narrative and therefore must be wrong.

And so it goes.

==+++++==

As an aside I have been looking into the failure of my laptop to boot, wondering if it had been seen by others after the latest software update. I have found a couple that reported a similar problem and it turns out they were using similar hardware to mine, so I have to wonder if it is some kind of hardware incompatibility. I wouldn’t think that would be the case considering I have been using the laptop for years and I have seen no such incompatibilities before.

So it looks like I will need to reload the OS to see if I can regain function, something I will deal with next weekend.

==+++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re still cleaning up the snow, the skiers and snowmobilers are making the best of the new snow, and where Monday is returning yet again.

Bailey

I delayed posting this for a while but I wanted to share this news.

Two weeks ago we lost a member of the WP Feline Contingent, Bailey, a sweet and gentle giant. While we only had the privilege of knowing and loving him for not quite a year and a half, he affected us greatly and was a great companion for Pip, the last member of the original WP Feline Contingent. He took ill suddenly and the veterinarians down at the Capital Area Veterinary Emergency Service in Concord, NH diagnosed him with a pleural effusion which made it increasingly difficult for him to breathe. His prognosis was terminal and he wasn’t going to last out the morning.

I did what I had to do for him even though it was a heartrending decision.

He died as I held him in my arms, telling him that I loved him and what a good boy he’d been. I told him that I would miss him but that someday we would be together again and that it was time for him to cross the Rainbow Bridge.

It was this short video about the loss of a beloved cat that I saw on Facebook a little while ago that prompted me to finally post about Bailey’s loss. While the cat in the video does not resemble our beloved Bailey, the sentiment is the same.

Uh-Oh

My usual Saturday post died aborning as the Official Weekend Pundit Laptop is having problems. It seems that after a software update it will not boot to the login screen. Not that it stops me from posting, but I hadn't tried booting the laptop since I installed the update late last Sunday. (It did require a restart to take effect, but it has never been an issue in the past if I shut down the laptop and used the next start-up as the 'reboot'.)

Fortunately I do have other computers I can use but I didn't realize the laptop wasn't going to boot until about 30 minutes ago. I can fix it but it will take reloading the OS and that won't take place until tomorrow when I have the time. Downloading the OS, burning an image onto a USB key, and then booting to the USB key to load the OS doesn't seem to be something I should undertake at 10PM on a Saturday evening.

My usual Thoughts On A Sunday will be posted as I will use the Official Weekend Pundit Desktop Computer to craft it.

Oh, and it's snowing to beat the band, just as the Weather Guys^TM promised.

Friday Funny (Saturday Edition) - Rodney Dangerfield

Yup. I screwed up. I forgot that yesterday was Friday, particulrly in light of a meeeting that was scheduled for Thursday took place on Friday because of the snow we had Thursday, leaving me to think that it was Thursday. Mea culpa

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was yet another chilly night here at the lake, with the low hitting -10ºF and sitting at -2ºF as I write this (8am). At least there isn’t much wind so we don’t have wind chill to deal with.

We had snow into yesterday morning and we saw about 5 inches here at The Gulch. It wasn’t heavy so it was easy to shovel and to rake off of the roof, but it took almost 2 hours to get everything cleaned off including the trusty RAM 1500. We have more snow coming tonight, but only 1 to 3 inches are expected and it will end well before sunrise. I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow morning before breakfast…

Two things the chilly weather has helped bring about are two annual events we look forward to, the first being the New England Pond Hockey Classic on the ice at Meredith Bay which finishes later today and the Great Meredith Rotary Ice Fishing Derby which takes place next weekend.

Another thing with the snowfall we’ve had is that snowmobile trails are open!

==+++++==

Note: Looking at what I wrote below I realized that this is really a “Why Doesn’t This Surprise Me” edition of TOAS. So be it.

==+++++==

This doesn’t surprise me in the least.

79% of Americans say that biological men should not compete in women’s sports, according to an NYT/Ipsos survey.

As Glenn Reynolds comments:

Wokeness was always an elite preference only, rejected by the masses and maintained only through bullying and shaming tactics that no longer work.

Heh^TM.

==+++++==

This doesn’t surprise me either. In fact, I saw this coming a long time ago and all time has done is prove me right.

By way of DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) comes this revelation:

This is the split of administrators vs. teaching staff at the top 25 endowed universities.

We are investing in bureaucracy over actual education.

One must remember that the main function of a bureaucracy is to perpetuate itself and expand its power. Whether you are talking about a government bureaucracy or educational bureaucracy, it has the same purpose.

==+++++==

Here’s yet another thing that wasn’t surprising, that being someone on the Left blaming Trump for the mid-air collision at Reagan National Airport. All this proves to me is that the accuser is close-minded and woefully ignorant of how things work when it comes to the hiring of air traffic controllers.

A prominent Democrat, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), is blaming President Donald Trump for the recent devastating plane crash in Washington, D.C., suggesting that his action of freezing the hiring of federal employees played a key role in the tragedy. Crockett pointed to Trump’s political agenda, particularly in the aviation industry, as a contributing factor, arguing that the crash could have been prevented if stricter oversight had been in place. While the investigation is still ongoing, the remarks have sparked a fierce political debate, with Trump blaming the deadly crash on the left’s DEI initiatives, which hired based on gender and racial diversity rather than merit.

--snip--

However, the White House’s Rapid Response social media account put Crockett in her place.

“Wrong. Federal air traffic controllers are EXEMPT from the hiring freeze. Stop lying,” the account wrote on X.

This follows a Squad member's dramatic reaction after CNN’s Scott Jennings reported that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass requested the city appoint an entire LGBTQ leadership team for the Los Angeles Fire Department. He questioned how much it matters what color the firefighters are when someone’s house is burning down.

In response, Crockett suggested hiring unqualified people of color over qualified white men is more important.

So, she’s a racist and thinks people should be hired or not hired based solely on the color of their skin? I have to wonder if she has a KKK member somewhere in her family tree? (Yes, I know she’s black, but we all know that doesn’t mean anything, particularly after so many generations.)

So she thinks the way to combat racism is to use racism as a means of doing so? She has obviously been binge-drinking the hypocrite Kool-Aid.

But it still comes down to how air traffic controllers are hired and trained. It isn’t like they are hired on Monday and are sitting in an air traffic control center or control tower two weeks later. It takes months of classroom training and years of hands-on experience to become an effective air traffic controller, DEI not withstanding.

Not everyone who is hired makes it through the training, either because they do not have the ability or the mental and emotional fortitude to fill that role. Most people don’t have what it takes to be an air traffic controller as it can be a very stressful profession. In fact, the attrition rate for air traffic control trainees runs 40-50%. If you start limiting the people that are hired per Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s demand, will that attrition rate climb?

Of course it will.

==+++++==

Here’s yet another story that doesn’t surprise me in the least.

I have stopped trying to figure out why movie makers are working so hard to destroy themselves. I have better things to do with my time. But it looks like their latest attempt at destroying themselves is working. It seems their latest movie remake of the Three Musketeers, is a woke disaster.

The Disney formula of mixing a beloved classic with moonbattery to create an unwatchable remake does not make money. Yet the French decided to give it a try, wokifying The Three Muskateers into Toutes Pour Une. The result is as you might expect:

The heroine is no longer d’Artagnan, but Sara, a young girl who is shocked to discover that the three musketeers charged with looking after the Queen of France are in fact… women.

The Three Musketeers are no longer Frenchmen. They aren’t even Frenchwomen…

--snip--

Audience response: With just 1271 admissions for 564 screenings, the film maintained a very respectable average of 2 spectators per screening.

Anyone who sat through it was probably a movie critic. But the important thing is to strike a blow against the patriarchy, not to entertain the unwoke masses.

What makes this even worse is that this disaster of a movie was subsidized with with €10 million of French taxpayer money.

This is yet another example of “Get woke. Go broke.”

You have to wonder if these woke folks will ever realize the difference between their beliefs, as delusional as they may be, and the harsh reality of life and human nature.

Probably not.

==+++++==

Here’s yet another thing that was no surprise to me: Electric school buses aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Even big EVs aren’t “Ready For Primetime”.

It appears that the electric school buses purchased for use by the Yarmouth, Maine school system by the Maine Department of Education don’t work.

The administration of now-former President Joe Biden tried to bankroll the use of electric school buses at government schools across the country.

But as the electric buses continue to have massive reliability issues, some schools regret taking the federal handouts and now want help from the Environmental Protection Agency to get themselves out of the program.

--snip--

There are at least six districts reporting massive problems with Lion Electric school buses they bought through the federal program.

The two electric buses received by Yarmouth Schools have been with the district for a year and a half, but they have only been used a few times because of functionality issues, per WGME-TV.

“We are trying to work with Lion to have those buses replaced, or to receive compensation for those buses, but really not making much progress at this point and time,” Yarmouth Superintendent Andrew Dolloff said in comments to the station.

“We run them for a day or so and then we get error messages about engine failures or battery failures,” he described.

Dolloff reported difficulties in communicating with a representative from Lion Electric, which does not have any staffers in the area to handle bus maintenance.

“We are not able to run them until those messages are cleared,” Dolloff added.

School systems need reliable transportation and it appears these electric buses are anything but. That these buses were part of a federal program that used $1 billion taxpayer dollars to buy 5,000 electric buses as a means of pushing Biden’s EV agenda makes it even worse. Those buses cost $200,000 each while a new diesel powered school bus costs approximately half that, and the diesel buses actually work. They are made from long-proven designs and have shown decades of reliable service.

But wait, there’s more!

Even beyond the inflated cost, the poor reliability of these electric buses points to the folly of trying to manipulate the free market for political reasons.

While electric vehicles are advancing in their sophistication, they still have reliability issues that do not affect gas-powered alternatives, such as the fact that they do not charge as easily in the winter.

That is, of course, a relevant factor for Maine, which receives quite a bit of winter weather.

Indeed. When the temperatures are below zero like they were this past evening, charging electric vehicles is problematic. In Maine, just like here in New Hampshire, it gets below freezing from November to March and can get below zero from late December through late February. Of course it doesn’t matter if the buses aren’t functioning even if the batteries are charged.

These are our tax dollars at work.

==+++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ski areas are busy, there’s more snow coming, and Monday is coming around once again.

LED Headlights - A Bane Or Boon?

I have found LED headlights to be a problem. How about you?

They are a lot brighter than the ‘old fashioned’ incandescent headlights, even the halogens. Then add in the blue-white glare and they become annoying, if not dangerous to oncoming traffic. When I drive at night I have to wear the yellow “night driving” glasses that do a pretty good job of reducing the LED headlight dazzle. I am not the only one who wears them for that reason. Fortunately they aren’t expensive. But that it is necessary to wear them in order to be able to drive at night is a pain.

The amount of light LED headlights provide do make it easier for the drivers of vehicles equipped with them to see the road at night even though they do tend to blind oncoming drivers. This is an ongoing problem and it’s only going to get worse.

Is there a solution to this problem in the offing?

Now most new cars have the much stronger LED lights. How much stronger? Well, the brightness of light is measured in lumens. A halogen bulb puts out about 1,000 lumens. An LED bulb puts out about 4,000 lumens. Some aftermarket LED bulbs, many illegal, advertise an eye melting 12,000 lumens!

Schieldrop says those aftermarket bulbs are a huge issue, but overall LEDs offer a big advantage. "It's a double-edged sword," he said. "The reality is very bright headlights are actually much safer. It significantly improves how much can see on the road."

The size of vehicles is another factor. The three bestselling vehicles in America are pickup trucks and trucks, really all cars, have gotten much bigger and taller.

--snip--

A remedy might exist in Europe where many cars use advanced adaptive headlights. Also nicknamed "smart headlights."

AAA research found they illuminate the road 86% better than what we have in the U.S. without the glare. Basically, these smart headlights make about 5,000 adjustments per second to curve light around the part of the road already lit up by an oncoming car. So, there's no direct beam in the face.

Craig Fitzgerald, an auto writer for many different publications, says those lights being used in Europe are a huge improvement. "So that's the idea with the smart headlights is they dip away a little bit and that is enough to keep it from really bothering your eyes," Fitzgerald said.

But we have been stuck with our "not as smart" headlights because way back in 1967, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ruled all cars in the U.S. must have separate high beam and low beam bulbs.

"So that really negates these smart headlights. You have to have these specific headlights for the United States. So, we are behind Europe and the rest of the world by 10 years at this point," Fitzgerald said.

Two years ago, the NHTSA finally gave the green light to smarter headlights lights but no carmaker in the U.S. has them yet and the switch could take years.

I have seen demonstrations of the smart headlights and it’s a solution that makes sense. It would certainly reduce the issues with LED headlights blinding oncoming drivers. I don’t know if it would eliminate the need for the yellow night driving glasses as the blue-white LED dazzle may still be a problem here and there.

I must admit that I have been tempted to change the halogen bulbs in the headlights of the trusty RAM 1500 to LEDs. Of course that would mean that now my pickup would become a source of the blinding glare other drivers would have to deal with. But that was not the reason I balked at making the change. Instead, it was the cost as it could cost up to $800 to make the change. Replacement halogen bulbs cost just under $40 each.

I have considered replacing the fog light bulbs with LEDs because they cost a heck of a lot less and they do throw a lot more light, but the pattern is much closer to the ground and provides a lot of light along the sides of the road. I don’t use them often, but when I do I am glad I have them.

In the end, I hope the smart headlights do become more common even though I know they are more expensive than regular headlights, be they halogens or LEDs.

Friday Funny - Things That Dona't Make Sense To Engineers

The above is very true...and I can say that because I am an engineer.

Thoughts On A Sunday

I can say winter has definitely settled in here at the lake. With very few exceptions, mostly pressure ridges and water inflows, the lake is frozen over. Bob houses have appeared on the ice and the ice runway in Alton Bay has opened with almost 200 aircraft having visited since it opened a few days ago. The four evenings this past week where temperatures were just above or just below zero and daytime temps barely reached the 20’s certainly helped the ice thicken to the point where it’s safe to be out on the ice.

We might see a little snow later today and the Weather Guys^TM are saying we’ll have some snow on Wednesday as well.

==+++++==

Now we know we’re doomed, DOOMED I say. (Actually it’s not me, it’s the NYT saying we’re doomed.)

NYT Writer Relays Inaugural Plea from Birds: Trump Spells Doom for Climate Change.

Umm, no.

==+++++==

The Oscars are still on TV?

Not that I really care, particularly in light of the fact that I don’t go to the movies anymore. I tend to watch them on Prime or Netflix, and then not when they are first available on those services.

Just for grins I checked the list of nominees and I recognized very few of them. I don’t know if that means I’m old or if I am smart enough to stay far away from the drivel coming out of Hollywood these days. It’s probably both, but with the latter being the most prominent. Frankly, I have better things to do than waste my time dealing with anything coming out of Hollywood.

==+++++==

Yesterday I mentioned a number of Executive Orders issued by Trump since his inauguration that rescinded some of Biden’s Executive Orders and mandates. One I should have included in my abbreviated list rescinded Biden’s ill-advised Energy Standards for Household Appliances, something I’ve thought was based more on feelz and less on actual science. It appears Trump agrees with me.

Among the flurry of executive orders handed down by President Trump related to the energy sector, he not only put the brakes on funding Joe Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, but also sacked Creepy Joe’s household appliance regulations.

Trump’s executive order requires the EPA to use real science for its rulemaking.

How many times have we seen EPA regulations overturned by federal courts, including SCOTUS, for their overreach?

==+++++==

Hmm, this sounds interesting.

It looks like California Leftists are taking yet another step to ensure that it becomes a failed state, that step being a ballot initiative to seceded from the Union and become its own country.

If only.

A California ballot initiative proposing that the state become its own country and secede from the United States has been filed and cleared for signature gathering.

If the measure makes it onto the November 2028 ballot, it would ask voters: “Should California leave the United States and become a free and independent country?” local news outlet KCRA3 reported on Friday.

The guidelines would require 50 percent of registered voters to participate and a “yes” vote from 55 percent of voters, which would indicate “a vote of no confidence in the United States of America,” according to the report. The measure would further show that the “will of the people of California” is to become a country.

I think there should be a separate ballot initiative that would separate Left California from Right California, or more accurately, the Blue coastal areas (except San Diego but including Sacramento) from the Red and Purple areas. I doubt the non-Blue areas would want to be part of a socialist ‘utopia’ that will in actuality be a living hell in the tradition of the old and long defunct Soviet Union. After all, I think we would see constitutionally enumerated rights disappear. Property rights will also likely disappear, though not all at once. Somehow I think electricity will end up being rationed since California’s power grid and generation capacity have been in decline for years.

Should the partition ballot initiative pass and the secession initiative fail, the folks in Right California still win because they will no longer be under the thumb of the Progressive government in Sacramento.

==+++++==

On a personal note, early this morning one of the WP Feline Contingent passed away unexpectedly. Bailey, who we adopted from the local Humane Society almost a year-and-a-half ago, wasn’t his usual self Friday evening. He wasn’t really hungry and he didn’t hang around in his usual haunts. However, he seemed to be a bit better yesterday morning. But, then in the late afternoon it was obvious he wasn’t really feeling well. By late evening it he was now in distress, his breathing labored and shallow.

A phone call and a trip to the emergency veterinarian at 1am this morning and my worst fears were confirmed: Bailey was very ill and there was little they could do other than make him comfortable. I held him in my arms, talking to him, telling him that he was loved and that Pip, my mother and I would miss him because he was such a Good Boy. At 1:50am Bailey departed this world and crossed the Rainbow Bridge.

This isn’t the first time I’ve lost a furry family member. It won’t be the last. But for some reason this time it bothered me much more than it ever has before.

Pip knows something is amiss, but I don’t think she realizes that Bailey is gone, at least not yet. I think she’ll realize it soon enough when he doesn’t show up for dinner and she can’t find him. I know I felt it the most when I was getting ready for breakfast and pulled out a couple of bowls to feed the cats.

Two bowls.

Obviously it was habit because I always pulled out two bowls. But I only needed one...and would need only one from now on. That’s when I knew he was really gone and that it hadn’t been just a bad dream.

I’m going to miss you, Bailey. Until I see you again on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge…

==+++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice fishing is great, the temperature has actually gotten above freezing today, and where more snow is on the way later this week,

Hitting The Ground Running

It’s been six days since Donald Trump took office...again. And on his first day he hit the ground running and has been in high gear since. His Executive Orders seem to coming out and signed every 15 minutes or so. Some have been desperately needed to undo some of former President Biden’s mistakes that helped fire up inflation, made us dependent on foreign energy supplies, made it more attractive to not work which has ended up leaving a lot of jobs going unfilled, and so on.

One of the biggest was issuing a blanket pardon to all J6 participants. However, I think he made a mistake on this one, pardoning those who committed acts of violence. If their acts would have been considered crimes even if they hadn’t taken place at the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, then they shouldn’t be pardoned just because they did commit them at the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. The backlash on that one has already been seen and heard.

Doing away with the totally stupid and unrealistic Electric Vehicle Mandate was a master stroke. Meeting the deadline on the mandate was totally unworkable and everyone knew it, even the most rabid proponents. Our electrical grid wasn’t up to the task of providing the needed power and wasn’t likely to be upgraded to meet that demand, that increased demand also being a part of the growing number of data centers.

In line with that is his decision to have the US withdraw from the Paris Accords which has been hamstringing us and forcing us to reduce our carbon emissions even as China’s keeps growing by leaps and bounds. We have already reduced our carbon emissions considerably and it isn’t up to us to destroy our economy just to offset China’s emissions despite that many of the Greens believe we should do just that.

I was also pleased to see that he visited western North Carolina to see just what FEMA hasn’t done, with people in that area still having not received help or assistance. Accusations have been made by FEMA insiders that this lack of aid was deliberate because the people in this part of the disaster area were Trump supporters. (If true, a number of people need to go to prison.) He also visited Los Angeles to see the devastation there. While TV reports and videos can give one a feel for the destruction, seeing it for oneself is the only way to understand the extent of the damage. Hopefully Trump won’t pull a Biden (or WRBA) and leave those in southern California without resources or redress.

This is all but a fraction of what he’s done since January 20^th. What will he get done in the next 94 days?

He put together a group of people for his cabinet that will help achieve his goals and keep the promises he made to the American people. That it seems he’s done over two months of work in only a few days tells us he’s serious about getting things done.

The next four years are going to be interesting.

Friday Funny - An SNL Classic

I was just heading to bed when I realized it was Friday night early Saturday morning and hadn't made my usual Friday Funny post. So here it is at just a few minutes after midnight.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It looks we’re finally going to be getting some snowfall above a nuisance amount. The Weather Guys^TM have predicted we’ll see between 4 and 8 inches overnight here at the lake, with 8 inches being more likely than 4 inches. At least it will be a light fluffy snow which means we probably won’t have to worry about power outages. It will also be easier to move when the time comes to shovel out tomorrow morning. Not that the snowfall will cause much in the way of disruptions since it is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day tomorrow and quite a few folks have the day off and schools are closed.

This will also be a chance to try out the Toro Power Shovel I purchased at an end-of-winter sale late last winter. It’s been sitting in the attic since then and I pulled it out this morning, plugged it in, and tested it to make sure it worked. (It does!)

One thing I have to say about this snowstorm is that the local TV stations aren’t sowing panic, making it sound as if it could be “The End Of The World As We Know It!” I haven’t seen the ‘Storm Center’ logos or heard the ominous sounding music intro, or at least not as much as is usually seen or heard.

The only downside to this weather is what follows: sub-zero temperatures on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. We will also see sub-zero wind chills on those days as well.

In other words, it’s winter.

==+++++==

It isn’t as if we need proof that more spending per student doesn’t equate to a better education, but here it is.

NY teachers unions pump school spending to highest in the nation at $36K per kid — yet they rank low in reading and math: report.

New York funnels more money into its schools than any state in the nation — with only mediocre results to show for it, a withering report released Friday reveals.

Spending on education has gone up — to a whopping $89 billion on New York school districts this academic year — even as both enrollment and test scores have plummeted, according to the analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission.

The statewide average of spending per student came to an eye-popping $36,293, a 21% increase since the 2020-21 school year, the report by the budget watchdog group found.

That’s even as the scores of New York schoolkids on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — the one common test taken by students from across the US — dipped further than the national average.

In my home state, New Hampshire, the average cost per student is $20,323. Some communities in New Hampshire have much higher costs, but they aren’t so much educational costs as they are transportation costs. One such town is New Castle which has a per student cost of $44,375, but much of that is transportation costs as some students attend school in another town. That’s true of most towns sending students to a regional school or towns with a very small number if students. Yet despite the lower level of student spending, New Hampshire has a pretty good education system.

Too bad New York can’t do likewise.

==+++++==

I’ve heard TikTok has gone dark in the US.

It’s not like I noticed it all that much before it went dark.

==+++++==

Just when I think they can’t get any woker stupider, they prove me wrong.

In this case, it looks like the Denver public schools are going to dump Girls bathrooms for “All Gender” bathrooms.

Why is it always women who must sacrifice their rights to accommodate the gender confused?

Female students attending East High School in Denver returned from Winter break to see one of their private spaces demolished. Their girl’s bathroom on the building’s second floor has been converted into an “all gender” restroom.

Now girls will have to share one of their few remaining spaces with men so the virtue-signaling “adults” in charge of Denver’s school district can feel good about themselves.

It’s a self-serving move that “has sacrificed the comfort of these young females for this dubious change,” according to one East High School parent, Lori Ramos.

"We, as adults, should be protecting students at all costs. Not using minors for this social experiment,” she told members of the school board during a recent meeting.

But protecting non-gender-confused students doesn’t fit the narrative and therefore must be ignored, nay, sacrificed to protect the narrative. Maybe those virtue-signaling “adults” have missed the signals that this kind of nonsense isn’t going to be tolerated by the public anymore.

Maybe it’s time for the public school administrators who put forth this discriminatory action to be fired.

==+++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the snow will soon start falling, the preparations for the storm are complete, and even though Monday is tomorrow I don’t have to work tomorrow...

Equal Rights Amendment Adopted By Fiat?

Is this for real - a big “F*ck You” from SlowJoe - or has one of his social media ‘handlers’ been eating too many magic shrooms and hallucinating? What makes me ask this question? This:

Presidentish Joe Biden declares the Equal Rights Amendment is now in effect as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.

I guess he forgot that the President doesn’t have that power. He has also chosen to ignore the fact that it failed to be ratified before the the 1982 deadline, or in this case he’s commuted the ERA’s deadline, yet another power the President doesn’t have. While he thinks Virginia’s ratification of the ERA in 2020 as the 38th state makes the ERA a legitimate amendment, it comes decades too late. It also ignores the fact that five states that had originally ratified the ERA ‘de-ratified’ it some years later.

The key point is whether the ERA, which was passed by Congress in 1972 and was sent to the states for ratification, has amassed the 38 states needed.

Just 35 had ratified the amendment by 1979, which was the deadline set by Congress. Capitol Hill then approved a three-year extension of the deadline, but that came and went with no new ratifications.

In 2017, Nevada belatedly voted for approval, followed by Illinois in 2018 and Virginia in 2020. ERA backers said that was enough to cross the finish line.

But that argument was rejected by federal courts that ruled the deadline had passed.

Mr. Biden’s Justice Department has also ruled that the deadlines are valid and the post-deadline ratifications cannot be counted.

As another part of one of the linked posts states, “Presidents don’t get to overrule the courts, nor do they get to declare what is and is not in the Constitution.” Of course that doesn’t mean that President John Gill...er...Joe Biden wouldn’t try to do just that. It isn’t like he’s all that cogent these days.

And then there’s the Law of Unintended Consequences coming into play that I believe would lead to chaos and overloaded courts as a lot of existing laws would either need to be changed or repealed by Congress and state legislatures or courts declaring those laws unconstitutional under the ERA. As I commented elsewhere:

If [an Equal Rights Amendment] were to be ratified I can see all of the lawsuits lining up to dismantle all kinds of laws that would then be unconstitutional, but it won't be the ones proponents think they'll be.

One of the first ones right off the top of my head will be about the Draft. Women would now be required to register for the Draft just like men...or the law mandating registering for the Draft would have to be either rescinded or declared unconstitutional due to its discriminatory nature.

I would expect all kinds of discrimination lawsuits to be filed against Family Courts because of the inherent bias against men in the laws administered in those courts. Family law would need to be rewritten.

What about all of the VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) legislation? It would be void because it discriminates in favor of women.

The list of laws that would need to be changed, rescinded, or declared unconstitutional would be lengthy.

One set of laws and court precedents that would need to change would be those involving divorces, and more specifically child custody decisions. Right now custody decisions heavily favor women even though there are numerous studies showing that joint custody tends to be better for the children. When fathers are removed from regular and constant presence in the lives of children, the children don’t do as well in life. Those laws and court precedents would need to overturned and 50-50 custody would need to be the default. Of course I would expect some women to fight tooth and nail to prevent such changes as it takes away their advantage over their ex-husbands. (It also means that any child support they might get would be minimized, if not eliminated altogether.)

Fortunately all of this is theoretical as the ERA is not part of the constitution. Though some laws should be changed regardless of the existence of the ERA as they do discriminate against men.

Friday Funny - Wolfman In New Hampshire

Thoughts On A Sunday

We had some more snow yesterday, though it was only a couple of inches. It was what we call a “nuisance” amount as it did make the roads slick but didn’t cause any other issues. One other thing that snowfall accomplished?

I showed that Lake Winnipesaukee had a lot more ice than we thought when the snow started accumulating on that ‘invisible’ ice. It was quite evident this morning as I was out running my usual Sunday morning pre-church errands. With the exception of some patches here and there, there was ice shore to shore, even in an area of the lake known as The Broads. The Broads are usually the last area to freeze over every winter, but there was a lot of ice there this morning.

One thing that delayed ice formation was the heavy winds that visited us over the past week. Those winds broke up what ice did form and piled it up against the eastern shores of the various islands, bays, and coves around the lake facing the main body of the lake.

Despite our weather we are suffering a snow deficit up here in the Northeast. The jet stream which usually steers snowstorms our way has shifted such that rather than directing storms up along the East Coast it sends them out to sea. It also means that areas of the mid-Atlanfic coast and down into northern Florida see snow, in some cases seeing snowfalls that we would normally expect to see up here.

==+++++==

As the saying goes, what goes around comes around. And so it is with the consequences of the L.A. wildfires and the conditions that led to them being so devastating.

Unlike some of the other wildfires that have taken place in California, the L.A. wildfires have struck the elite just as much as it has the “little people” (meaning working folks like the rest of us) and in this case that devastation can be laid at the feet of blue misrule.

Comedian Billy Crystal lost his home — all but its tennis court — in Pacific Palisades.

The homes of actors Anthony Hopkins, Miles Teller and John Goodman were wiped out there, too.

Heiress Paris Hilton said she saw her luxe Malibu vacation house “burn to the ground on live TV.”

It’s unpleasant to talk about the politics that led to the loss of entire neighborhoods, but it’s necessary to examine the terrible policies that led to this preventable disaster.

After over a decade of one-party rule, California has become the testing ground for the left’s most extreme ideas — and we are seeing the results in real time now.

Whether it was cutting the budget of fire departments, not refilling the reservoirs, ignoring deforesting guidelines under pressure from environmentalists or simply deflecting blame, California’s leaders are agonizingly inept — and it shows.

There were so many opportunities for those in charge to take measures that would have reduced the chances of wildfires like those still burning in Los Angeles. That also applies to most of the wildfires experienced in California. The question now is whether the Powers That Be will actually do anything or whether they will maintain the insane status quo. I’m guessing it will be the latter.

==+++++==

If this were to happen, it wouldn’t surprise me.

Biden May Blanket Pardon Those Who Targeted Trump and Those Who Weaponized Government

Joe Biden was asked yesterday if he would pardon anyone else. He couched his response, “it depends on some of the language and expectations that Trump broadcasts in the last couple days here as to what he’s going to do,” Biden told reporters at the White House. “There’s still consideration of some folks, but no decision.”

Now, think carefully about that response to the question. Biden handing out more pardons depends on what Donald Trump says he is going to do.

What exactly is the negotiating factor here? If Trump says he will hold people accountable for the weaponization of government, then Biden will preemptively pardon them. However, if President Trump does not say they will be held accountable, then no preemptive action is needed.

So Biden (or WRBA) will try to take the wind out of Trump’s sails if he decides to go after the cabal’s henchmen for trying to railroad him into prison and impoverish him as well? Not that it would stop Trump from having them investigated and exposed for their machinations. I am not sure on the law when it comes to civil law, but does a presidential pardon absolve such miscreants from being sued in civil court by an injured party?

==+++++==

Hmm. This sounds intriguing.

Could it be that Donald Trump wasn’t just blowing smoke when it comes to Greenland? After much back and forth and speculation about that arctic land as well as the dismissive rhetoric from a lot of Democrats in the US, it seems Trump may be on to something, particularly in light of Greenland’s Prime Minister Egede is “ready to speak with Trump as ‘the status quo is no longer an option‘.”

…Egede said that “the status quo is not an option” as he laid out the desire of the vast and geopolitically crucial island of 57,000 to have “its own voice” by gaining independence from Denmark and turning down Trump’s attempts to buy Greenland.

“We don’t want to be Danish, we don’t want to be American, we want to be Greenlandic,” he told a news conference on Friday. Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at the same meeting that Greenland’s desire for independence was “legitimate and understandable”, while calling US interest in the autonomous territory “positive”.

Does this mean that he thinks Trump may be able to help Greenland achieve its independence? That would certainly be a ‘feather in his cap’ if Trump could do so while also making ties between Greenland and the US even closer. Might this be what he’s actually be working towards?

==+++++==

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

Environmental Experts To Rip Out Trees, Build Solar Electric Plant In Snow Belt To “Save The Environment”

So in some kind of backroom deal, Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources decided to auction off 420 acres of State forest on which a solar plant will be constructed. After the trees are cut down. The idea is to “save the environment”. Which you have to admit is a great joke.

It becomes a knee-slapper when you learn that solar plants result in a net increase in “greenhouse gases”.

--snip--

...Otsego county has about 26,000 people, and Gaylord itself is about 4,400. Gaylord has the largest snowfall in the lower Peninsula, a marvelous area for winter sports: I did a lot of cross-country skiing. Besides snow, except in the two to two-and-a-half month summer, there is not a lot of sun, and what little of it there is does not come direct, because the town is at the 45th parallel.

Solar, particularly large scale solar in places that far north that also have a lot of snowfall, don’t make sense to me. While where I live is just north of the 43rd parallel, we don’t see a lot of large scale solar here either for many of the same reasons. My state is over 80% forested and like the Gaylord, Michigan project it would require cutting down a lot of trees. It’s counterintuitive to cut down trees that are effective carbon sinks and replace them with something that will increase greenhouse gases.

During a back-of-the-envelope calculation about how much land area solar would be required here in New Hampshire to replace the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant, it came to approximately 120 square miles plus a lot of storage in order to provide the 1300MW of power generated 24/7/365 by Seabrook. At a minimum that would mean at least 96 square miles of forest would need to be cut down to provide the space needed for all those solar panels.

A note from the author of the linked post: I wrote the post...before learning the company that wanted the DNR’s land backed out (yesterday); however, the DNR has similar plans for other plots of land...so the details...still have value.

==+++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re watching the ice cover increasing, waiting for the winds to pick up again, and for the snows to return.

The Los Angeles Fires

Watching the coverage of the wildfires in LA has left me agog. Yes, wildfires aren’t unusual in California, but that these hit a major city and has destroyed an estimated 12,000 buildings so far is mind-boggling.

Like many of you I find the sheer scale of the destruction almost incomprehensible. What disturbed me were the recriminations for the inability of the fire departments involved to deal with these fires. That those fighting the fires were dealing with the hurricane force of the Santa Ana winds made the idea of being able to contain those fires absolutely ludicrous. As I heard one experienced firefighter who used to work for Cal Fire state it, they were having to deal with a “fire hurricane”. No amount of water or fire personnel or apparatus were going to be able out down those fires under those circumstances. At best they would be able to keep evacuation routes open and even then they were fighting a losing battle.

One of the videos I watched showed a recording from an exterior security camera as fire approached a home and what was seen was perfectly described by the “fire hurricane” label. It was amazing to see just how quickly the embers inundated the home that caused it to ignite. No amount of water would have been able to extinguish the flames.

However, both the state and city level government will need to be held responsible for the severity of the fires. In particular the state’s failure to mitigate the fuel load through brush cutting, controlled burns, and other measures. Building codes which would have required fire resistant construction methods and materials were quashed. Yes, they would have added to the cost of building homes, but what is the cost of rebuilding homes that were burned to the ground by wildfires? (In case you’re wondering, I saw more than a couple of reports showing a small number of homes in some of the burn areas that were unscathed because of the use of those construction methods and materials while homes surrounding them were all destroyed by the fires.)

The extent of the destruction so far is inconceivable. As much as the idea of extinguishing those fires is appealing, we just remember that in the case of wildfires it isn’t a matter of putting them out as much as it is containing them and letting them burn themselves out. Though these wildfires are urban, the same principle applies – contain them and let them burn themselves out. That thousands of more buildings may be lost before this happens is indeed a shame, but unless someone can come up with a more effective way to deal with fires like these, the present imperfect method is what we’ve got.

Once this is all over, it will take months, if not years, for Los Angeles to recover and for the investigations to figure out how to prevent something like this from happening again.

Friday Funny - Auto Parts

No video today and I still can't post pictures as Blogger still seems to buggered up. Instead I am including a link to O'Reilly Auto Parts, said link listing a part some of you might find useful.

Part# 121g.

Thoughts On A Sunday

I have to admit that getting back to work after New Year’s was a little daunting, though I did ‘cheat’ as I worked from home on Thursday and Friday, allowing me to edge back into work. Tomorrow I do actually have to go into the office. Some of my co-workers won’t be returning from their vacations until the 13^th of the month, so it is going to be quieter than usual in the office over the coming week. Fortunately there isn’t a lot of work waiting for me in the office as not a whole lot gets done during the last couple of weeks of the year which is one reason I take a majority of my vacation time at the end of the year.

If nothing else the three weeks I took off gave me a small view of what retirement would be like...and I didn’t like it in the least. Maybe I’m one of those folks who feel I should be productive and retirement means I would be just the opposite. I know more than a few folks who have voiced that sentiment, including a few who “unretired” because they had too much time on their hands and didn’t like it. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t consider changing careers or dialing back on the hours I put in for my existing job, but I would continue working.

Some people may think I and the others are crazy, but considering the present job situation in this country, there aren’t enough young people filling the jobs opened when someone retires. My employer has had open engineering positions that have gone unfilled for years. If it was just my company that had that issue I’d say the problem was with the company, but this has been an industry-wide problem and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be solved any time soon.

==+++++==

Now that “Congestion Pricing” is going into effect in New York City, it’s going to be yet another self-inflicted blow to the Big Apple, and it’s likely to have a major negative effect on its economy.

Conservatives joke that the left will eventually get around to taxing the air we breathe and the sidewalks we walk on. The obvious allusion is to the idea that nothing is safe from taxation in liberal cities.

Today, New York City plans to tax the freedom to move in the United States. For the first time in the U.S., a city will apply "congestion pricing" to charge commuters, partygoers, tourists, and drivers just wanting to get from Point "A" to Point "B" $9 for the privilege of driving through lower Manhattan.

CBS News reports, "Drivers will be charged when they enter the Congestion Relief Zone using the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queensboro or Williamsburg Bridges, or the Holland, Hugh L. Carey, Lincoln or Queens-Midtown tunnels. Drivers coming from the Bronx or Upper Manhattan will be charged once they reach 60th Street."

--snip--

... back in June, Governor Kathy Hochul scotched the implementation of congestion pricing when polls showed it would cost Democrats the House of Representatives and several swing seats in New York state. "Unfair to working people" was her excuse then. After the election, she suddenly decided that it was OK to be unfair to working people. She allowed the pricing scheme to move forward but lowered the tax from $15 a trip to $9 a trip.

New Yorkers shouldn't worry. It will be $15 a trip soon enough. The planned tax increase to $15 will take place automatically in 2031.

Does anyone really think that it will increase to only $15 or that it won’t happen well before 2031? I also have to wonder if at some point New York City will start charging an exit fee as well. I wouldn’t put it past them. And then we could see a real life version of the old movie Escape From New York as people try to avoid paying to leave Manhattan. It could also mean that people just won’t bother going into New York at all.

Another thing related to this was something I read about trucking companies being pissed off about congestion pricing considering how much they already pay in taxes, fees, toll, licensing, and so on just to bring cargo into and out of the city. Now add in the congestion pricing on top of that and it’s adding insult to injury.

How many more such ideas like this will it take before New York Democrats wake up to what they are doing or see the Big Apple collapse much as we’ve been seeing in Portland and Seattle and San Francisco?

==+++++==

Is woke dead? It would be nice if it was and disappeared from the face of the Earth. However, Mike Hendrix of Cold Fury fame shows us it’s hanging on on college campuses. One such campus is Tufts University in Boston.

Tufts University offering ‘Transcestors’ course next semester:

Two concepts for the course will be trans oppression and trans erasure. Other things included in the course description are book bans, transgender-identifying people playing in sports, and “access to trans-related healthcare.”

Tufts University is offering students a chance to study transgender-identifying persons throughout history in a course called “Transcestors: Trans History, Narrative & Influence” next semester.

According to the description, the course will prompt students with questions such as “How have transgender people been systematically misused, misunderstood, co-opted, and erased throughout history?”

It’s going to take a long time for the ‘woke’ madness to fade away and there will be some folks who will do what they can to keep it alive. However, they are members of an ever shrinking part of the population that tolerates such nonsense. It is my impression that the November 5^th election signaled the people’s rejection of the nonsense that’s been rammed down our throats the past few years, ‘woke’ being but one of those nonsensical things.

A meme that Mike included in his post sums up my feelings about the whole thing: “YOUR mental disorder does not constitute sufficient grounds for MY compulsory endorsement of it.”

Indeed.

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In line with the post just above comes this bit of moonbattery from Moonbattery:

Moonbat claims to be ‘oppressed’ by pink dresses.

[An] HMRC [Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs] worker who branded her female boss ‘sexist’ when she said in a meeting that she wanted a granddaughter so she could buy ‘pink dresses’ has lost a discrimination claim, an employment tribunal heard.

Rachel Gladstone demanded that team leader Sandra Edwards apologise, asking that she ‘keep the overt spoilt pink baby girl princess sexism for your private and family life’.

Ms Gladstone added that it was a ‘triggering’ subject for her as she had spent time while raising her own daughter to counteract the ‘pink is for girls’ culture…

Yet more delusion. As I quoted above, “YOUR mental disorder does not constitute sufficient grounds for MY compulsory endorsement of it.”

==+++++==

How long before the UK learns the lesson Germany has learned when it comes to wind power, that lesson being that it’s a scam that doesn’t work and costs consumers a lot of money?

Ponder for a moment how intrinsically unsuitable, maladapted, and worthless wind turbines are to a grid. Their failure is so comprehensive, multifaceted and inevitable, an entirely new and bizarre market was invented to reward their failures. Even when they generate electricity, if the time is wrong, the demand is low, or the network can’t handle it, they will still be paid. The grid can’t use the power, but the customer still gets slugged for something they didn’t use, or they couldn’t get. In the UK the costs for this useless power grew to nearly £400 million last year.

The largest provider of useless power was SeaGreen wind plant which made nearly twice as much from being “constrained” than from being of service. The Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) reports that SeaGreen earned £100 million for making electricity, and £200 million for being “constrained”. Effectively, the useful electricity it made costs a shocking £2.70 a kilowatt hour, after the other payments are included.

Obviously, when the government rewards failure, the market responds by planning to fail. It follows then that industrial wind plant developers would be bonkers if they weren’t looking for sites where their output would arrive at the worst possible time, or through the most remote and overloaded corner of the network.

Everything about the wind industry has “Rent Seeker” tattooed all over it.

And it’s going to get worse, not just in the UK, but everywhere that wind is being pushed as a path to Net Zero. The only ones benefiting from it are the wind farm owners.

Here in my home state – New Hampshire – our new governor, Kelly Ayotte, has been pushing for a renaissance of nuclear power, something that has a better chance of reducing carbon emissions while still providing all of the electricity needed to meet demand.

New Hampshire already receives ~60% of its electrical power from nuclear. The balance comes from natural gas, something that is expensive in New England because of the NIMBYs and BANANAs blocking a new pipeline, hydro, coal, biomass, wind, and solar. Since the aforementioned NIMBYs and BANANAs also don’t like power lines, New England can’t bring in cheap, plentiful, and green hydropower in from Quebec. Solar is a non-starter because, let’s face it, it isn’t available when we need it the most (winter). So nuclear is an option, particularly in light of advanced Gen III and Gen IV small modular reactors which keeps the construction costs down, are safer to operate, and some of which don’t have the nuclear waste disposal issues of old Gen II and early Gen III reactors.

Hopefully we can avoid the Net Zero scam of the kind being perpetrated by the wind power advocates in Europe.

==+++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the temps are cold, the windchill is colder, and where we’re still waiting for the main part of the lake to freeze over.

A Letter To The Public

I have commented now and then on this blog about how the relations between men and women have changed over the past few decades. Frankly, they aren’t as good as they used to be. I have mentioned that I have seen more young men and women going it alone, meaning they aren’t dating, aren’t getting married, aren’t starting families. I could point out a host of reasons why this is happening, and doing so, could make this post dozens of pages long. Some of those reasons I would cite would be based upon my observations, on my indirect experiences, and on numerous articles and websites. I could lay the blame for this situation on all kinds of social changes that have taken place, one of them being the disconnect that has been caused by social media, something that was supposed to bring people together but has had just the opposite effect.

When I see stats that say that 63% of single men between the ages of 18 and 36 are not dating, that’s a danger signal. That the marriage rate in the US has plummeted while divorce rates have skyrocketed is also a danger signal. I watch posts on YouTube and TikTok which see modern women disparaging men because thy don’t meet unrealistic expectations and those which see modern men disparaging women as self-important with inflated visions of their self-worth and who should be dating them – basically narcissism – and to whom the average man is invisibl. It’s gone too darned far. I could delve deeper into that and spend hours writing this post.

What brought this up at today’s topic? Simply, a letter in today’s edition of our local paper which was more of an advertisement and social commentary at the same time. Here it is minus a few identifying items at the end:

Chance for Love

Perhaps is is now as it has always been in part, some fault of my own that my dear boy, who is now a young man, is unable to find love. My heart aches every day at the concealed loneliness behind his steadfast routine. He is too humble to bestow accolades upon himself and is not well leveraged to meet women. As such, please consider my shameless proclamation herein notwithstanding his consent.

This tall and handsome lad is unique in this time for his genuine character, honesty and benevolence. Strong, healthy and fit, he does not drink nor smoke any variety. He bears a lifelong respect for Christian principles but is not settled on a religion. A constitution-loving American boy, he aligns with those who are proud of this country and its heritage. He has no offspring and no debt despite earning a difficult bachelor's degree and more. An intellectual homebody of sorts, he also enjoys working outdoors, seasonal activities, and playing with his dogs in his home state of (central) New Hampshire.

At age 28, my responsible and dependable son continues to add to his current savings that can easily secure a comfortable homestead. He has long conveyed his desire to marry a kindhearted and hardworking woman of similar values for the purpose of raising a family and mutual, lifelong devotion, adoration and happiness. His presence is always enjoyed and his character admired by those who come to know him, but he is not fluent at fostering these eventualities. Social enterprises and watering holes are not compatible with his reserved personality. Sound like your warm heart? Only if [you’re] true, take a chance and I will reveal to him this post and your response.

That it has come to this is disheartening, at least to me. Fifty, forty, thirty, even twenty years ago young women would be beating a path to this young man’s door. Today, he’s invisible to them because he’s not what have become to be known as a “Sixer” – at least six feet tall, six pack abs, six figure income, and and at least six inches where it counts. He also has to be at least ‘9’ in looks as well as meet a lengthy and unrealistic list of other “must haves” that no man on the planet can possibly meet. He’s not “exciting”, meaning he’s not a bad boy, not a so-called “Chad” or “Tyrone”. Today, he might be someone a modern young women might “settle” for, but that’s about it. That’s a sad commentary.

That this young man’s mother has had to resort to such a letter/advertisement in a newspaper shows us just how bad it’s become. Reading it, I know of a dozen or so young men that fit the description laid out by this woman concerned about her son’s non-existent love life.

‘Nuff said...

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