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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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…

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.