3/16/2025

Thoughts On A Sunday

While the calendar says spring doesn’t start until the end of the week, spring weather is certainly here. We saw almost 60ºF yesterday and might see that today despite the cloudy weather and rain we’re going to experience today. It’s meant I haven’t had to crank up the temperature on the thermostat nearly as high as usual, and not at all on the second floor thermostat.

However, I know that Old Man Winter can throw us a curve now and then with a Spring snowstorm. We certainly saw that last April when we experiences a Nor’easter that dropped almost a foot of snow here at the lake. It knocked out power here at The Gulch for almost two days. (Thank goodness for the Official Weekend Pundit Generator which kept the lights and heat on!)

But for now it looks like it will be pretty decent weather with rain here and there over the next few days. The snow banks are melting away, but I think they’re still going to be around for a couple of weeks at least.

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This certainly doesn’t surprise the Conspiracy Theorists in the least.

It turns out the lockdowns during Covid were neither needed or effective.

That isn’t news to me seeing as how countries that neither locked down or took draconian measures such as mandatory masking and vaccinations to prevent the spread of Covid - Sweden and Denmark coming to mind – had nowhere near the number of cases or deaths seen per capita that were seen in countries that did.

‘Nuff said.

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Yeah, this isn’t good news.

Syria’s President Signs New Constitution Establishing the Country as an Islamic State

There is not much that can be said in favor of the Assad regime in Syria, but it did generally protect the rights of Christians, Alawites, and others who were not Sunni Muslims. Those days, however, are gone forever. In recent weeks, every day brings new evidence of the violent persecution of Alawites and Christians in Syria, and there is no end in sight. And now the country’s interim president, former (and possibly current) jihad leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, has signed a provisional constitution that could seal the second-class status of religious minorities in Syria, as it establishes the country as an Islamic state.

I figure the persecution of Alewites and Christians will continue, if not escalate. I figure we’ll also start seeing public executions of members of the LGBTQ+ community, be it by hanging or being thrown off a roof like happens in Iran.

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Has the federal Department of Education actually improved educational outcomes?

This is a question I would like to see answered, too. As I have read in a couple of different places, the US used be be #1 in education in 1976. This is before the Department of Education came into being. Almost 5 decades later we’re now #40 and falling.

What evidence is there that the federal Department of Education, or that the Democrats being in charge of education, has had any positive effect on actual student achievement? We previously noted then candidate for the Democratic mayoral nomination Helen Gym, who was supported by the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, campaigning in front of the Edward T Steel Elementary School, telling us how she saved that school from ‘going charter,’ but Steel Elementary, was ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools. 8% of the students scored at or above grade-level proficient in reading, and a whopping 1% of students scored at or above in math.

There is simply no evidence that the education bureaucracy in this country has improved actually educating students.

The left love the federal Department of Education for two main reasons: it has enabled the policies from liberal districts to be imposed on schools in conservative areas, and has allowed the liberal advocates to have to lobby only one set of bureaucrats, at the federal level, rather than fifty state education boards and thousands of local school districts for the policies they prefer.

It seems the Department of Education has little to do with actual education and more with indoctrination. After all, it is easier to program and indoctrinate students if they remain deficient in reading, writing, arithmetic, and critical thinking skills.

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You’ve probably heard that a US District judge has ordered the government to stop deporting illegal immigrants, particularly violent criminal members of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua.

On Saturday, without giving the Trump administration any time to respond, Judge Boasberg issued an immediate temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking DHS, Customs and Border Patrol and ICE from deporting illegal aliens and narcotrafficking gang members belonging to Tren de Aragua (TdA), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Boasberg ordered the flights of criminal gang members to turn around and immediately bring the criminals back to the USA to enjoy a life of criminal conduct and terrorism in the USA. National security is secondary to the rights of criminal aliens to sell drugs, continue child/sexploitation, murder American citizens and rape their targets.

The problem with Judge Boasberg? He is apparently as corrupt as the system he’s protecting.

This is the same Judge Boasberg who sat as presiding judge on the FISA court. The same Judge Boasberg who gave FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith a slap on the wrist for manufacturing evidence used in the Carter Page FISA application that defrauded the court. The same Judge Boasberg who appointed former DOJ-NSD head Mary McCord as amicus curiae advisor to the court, after she knowingly and fraudulently submitted the FISA application to the court.

This is the same Judge Boasberg gave J6 FBI agent provocateur Ray Epps a sentence of probation. This is the same judge who, on his vacation, went to sit in the DC courtroom to observe defendant President Trump who was forced to appear in DC court. This is the same Boasberg who established a horrible precedent in forcing Vice-President Mike Pence to testify before a DC grand jury about his conversations with President Trump (breaking executive privilege).

It appears Judge Boasberg twists the law into an unrecognizable shape in order to let the Deep State get away with actions and crimes that would get anyone else sent to prison. It seems that The Narrative must be preserved even if it means ignore the law, ignoring the Constitution.

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I have to wonder if the following is a case of “Too little too late.”

Colleges are finding out they are in trouble and that they don’t have many allies.

What did they expect after years of supporting causes many Americans find abhorrent, protesting on behalf of regimes, organizations, and ideologies that are murderous, genocidal, and would have no problems killing the very people protesting on their behalves?

Columbia University is just the start of a long-brewing backlash. On Monday of this week the Trump administration's Department of Education put 60 schools on notice that they will lose federal funding if they don't do more to crack down on antisemitism on campus.

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On Friday the DOE sent another letter to more than 50 schools warning them that discriminatory DEI programs would no longer be tolerated.

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Colleges are clearly getting the message which is why many of them put hiring freezes in place this week, in anticipation of being short on cash very soon.

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Unfortunately for many of these schools, they are only now realizing that they don't have a lot of friends to take up any slack if their budgets are cut.

When alumni with deep pockets start backing away from supporting their alma mater because it has become too radical, have lost their reason to exist, you know a college is in trouble. We saw that happening at Harvard as alumni stopped funding endowments because of its apparent support of blatant antisemitism. How many other colleges will see donors stop giving because those institutions of higher learning have instead become institutions of indoctrination for heinous ideologies and wholly against Western Civilization?

Are our colleges finally learning there is a price for taking and supporting such positions?

Let us hope so.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow banks are rapidly melting, thoughts of the upcoming boating season are starting to intrude, and where we’ll see plenty of rain on Monday.