Thoughts On A Sunday

It was another 50:50 weekend here at the lake, with Saturday being quite warm – in the mid-70’s – but cloudy with some sprinkles of rain now and then. We had the windows open, airing out The Gulch. Overnight them temperature fell into the 50’s and the winds picked up, making it feel a little cooler than it really was, with sunny skies replacing Saturday’s clouds.

Another thing that took place over this past week was road work along the state highway that passes near The Gulch, with contractors planing down the top layer of asphalt in preparation for some repairs and repaving. If things hold to schedule all of that work should be done well before the Memorial Day weekend, around six weeks away.

We have also seen the marinas and boatyards pulling boats out of storage and preparing them to return to the water. Some are already docked at their slips. The Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout will be joining them in about 3 weeks.

And so it goes for the start of the new boating season.

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Yesterday I posted about problems in China’s so-called “ghost cities” and issues with tofu dreg construction both in the ghost cities and elsewhere in China. However, it appears tofu dreg construction by Chinese firms is a problem in other countries as well, one of them being Thailand.


One has to wonder where else such construction practices are taking place by Chinese firms and how many people will be injured or killed by them.

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It’s time Leftist activists learn that acts of violence are not covered under the First Amendment. The latest activist to learn this lesson, a 19 year old UMass student, has been arrested for firebombing a Tesla dealership in Kansas City, Missouri.

Owen McIntire is charged with one count of unlawful possession of an unregistered destructive device and one count of malicious damage by fire of any property used in interstate commerce, according to the 21-page criminal complaint.

Federal officials allege that while McIntire was on spring break in his home town in mid-March he used homemade Molotov cocktails to spread a fire that damaged two Cybertrucks valued at $105,485 and $107,485; two charging stations were damaged.

“ATF’s Special Agents and forensic experts recovered and analyzed key evidence—including Molotov cocktails—used in this deliberate and dangerous arson attack,” Acting Director Dan Driscoll of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms said in a statement. “This wasn’t vandalism — it was a violent criminal act. Thanks to the relentless work of ATF special agents … we now have a suspect in custody.”

Seems they believe their anger about what they think is true somehow gives them the right to act like the Sturmarbeitlung back in the bad old days of the Third Reich. Their actions remind us of a modern day Kristallnacht.

It seems that TDS – Tesla Derangement Syndrome – is the new rage.

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Is the “Maryland father” deported to El Salvador just an innocent illegal immigrant as Democrats and activists claim he is or is he a member of MS-13 and a human trafficker as the Department of Homeland Security has stated after a 2022 incident in Tennessee?

Either the guy’s a saint, even though he does have a domestic violence complaint was filed against him in 2021, or he’s a member of a murderous gang designated a terrorist organization, no different that Tren da Araugua of Venezuela.

Which is it? If he is indeed a mostly innocent guy with no actual ties to a violent international gang then he should be allowed to come back. If he isn’t then he should be brought back and deported right and proper to a different country.

I just want this to be settled once and for all, period.

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It looks like another school system has decided that electric school buses aren’t all they’re cracked up to be and are, in fact, dangerous.

Electric vehicles are not just excessively expensive and bad for the environment. They are also a safety hazard — and not only because they spontaneously burst into flames (and people get locked inside them).

A Kansas school has stopped using its electric school buses out of an abundance of caution after reports of the buses losing steering and braking, posing a threat to student safety.

Guess who paid for the buses? That’s right: you did. Federal funding was used to purchase them from Lion Electric.

Kansas was not the first state to have problems with the buses:

In May 2024, the Winthrop school district in Maine reported it took four of the Lion Electric school buses out of commission after a bus suddenly stopped working while driving. Another superintendent in Maine reported the buses can have critical battery failures, blown compressors or loss of power.

I remember the issue with the buses in Maine. What surprises me is that they would consider using battery electric buses in a state that can see winter temperatures that are well below zero, something that affects the range of the buses.

In the end, the electric buses have ended up costing far more than the usual diesel powered buses and aren’t anywhere near as safe.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the weather is all over the place, the start of boating season is just that much closer, and where Monday is coming again...again.

Another Sign Of China's Economic Problems?

While the video below isn’t all that surprising, having seen video after video after video of China’s “ghost cities”, is it surprising to see that demolition of empty apartment buildings seems to be accelerating?


One has to wonder if some of this demolition is being performed because so many of them are structurally deficient due to what has come to be called “tofu dreg” construction and if they aren’t demolished they will fall down by themselves as some already have. This isn’t just a problem in the ghost cities, but elsewhere in China as well.

China has spent trillions of dollars building these ghost cities, money that would have been better spent elsewhere in the Chinese economy, perhaps expanding its infrastructure. Instead, both the government and individuals invested their money in real estate that is now becoming worthless. Those kinds of losses must have a huge effect on the Chinese economy as people who bought apartments in these ghost cities as an investment and developers who built these cities see their money disappear as the value of that real estate collapses and developers and investment firms default on the bonds that helped finance all that construction.

Now add in the effects of the tariff ‘war’ between the U.S. and China and one has to wonder if the Chinese economy is on the edge?

Friday Funny - New York vs Chicago

I'll Tell You The Story - Binky Is Old As Dirt

A story from New Hampshire raconteur Fritz Weatherbee:

Thoughts On A Sunday

Old Man Winter is reluctant to release his grip up here at the lake, dumping a couple of inches snow yesterday. Not that it was problematic as for the most part the snow melted on the roads and only the grass, ground, parked cars and trucks, and the roofs of houses seemed to collect snow. It was pretty much over by early afternoon, but it did remind us that we still get snow in April. Last year at this time we saw an April Nor’easter that dropped about a foot of snow here at The Gulch and knocked out our power for almost two days. (Thank goodness we had the Official Weekend Pundit Generator to keep the lights and heat on.)

We were back into more spring-like weather today and it will be warmer later in the week, a nice lead up to Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

On a side note, the trusty RAM 1550 has been in the shop over the weekend. It’s nothing major but the shop didn’t have the part needed to effect the repair. The problem?

The windshield wipers would run even with the wiper switch set to ‘OFF’ and the ignition key off. The only way to shut them off was to remove the fuse from the fuse panel under the hood, something that is very inconvenient.

The guys at the shop figured out what was causing the problem, something I had looked up on the Internet before calling the shop, and what they found matched what I found on the web. So the RAM will be stuck at the shop until they can get the new part as it isn’t prudent to drive during wet weather when your wipers don’t work.

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Was this a “mostly” peaceful protest as the Left has defined it? Or was it an act of attempted murder?

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s home set on fire by arsonist while he and his family slept.

I don't care what Shapiro's political or religious leanings are, this action is unforgivable. The arsonist should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, period.

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In line with the above, I have to wonder how it is that CNN can claim that “Only the Right has an ‘Extremism Problem’.”

I guess they can claim that if it is considered ‘extremism’ only when the Right allegedly does that but is ‘protest’ when the Left does exactly the same thing...or worse.

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Here are 10 of the over 30 pieces of evidence the climate scam is now collapsing:

1. “Huge: A powerful climate alliance of the World Economic Forum, major companies, the UN, and banks is “at an end“.

2. “Bill Gates is giving up on climate change…Breakthrough Energy, a joint venture between Bill Gates and a handful of other billionaires… is slashing much of its policy staff.”

3. NASA GISS funding “terminated”?: “New NASA Chief Will Wind Down Climate Alarm Shop”.

4. Delicious straight talk from U.S. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin: “We are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion”.

5. Wonderful straight talk from U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright: “2050” ; he suggests climate change alarmism is “a quasi-cult religion”.

6. The Tories have ditched Net Zero by 2050.

7. Remarkably, Just Stop Oil just announced “the end of soup on Van Goghs, cornstarch on Stonehenge and slow marching in the streets”.

8. Shellenberger/Pielke Jr: “Climate change is going to fade from view like overpopulation did…Lack of protests over Trump’s action on energy shows how little anyone every really cared about global warming”.

9. One of the longest running climate cases, Juliana v. United States, just ended in rejection at the Supreme Court.

10. A climate startup that boasted a roster of celebrity backers and arranged carbon credits for Meta, Microsoft and other large companies just filed bankruptcy.

Read The Whole Thing.

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This is not exactly news to me or anyone else paying attention:

There is a looming energy crunch facing the US, specifically in electrical capacity.

Major US grid operators are raising the alarm about the looming capacity crunch.

Power has the story:

“Six major U.S. grid operators have raised a unified alarm about an impending capacity crunch, warning that the pace and scale of explosive demand—including from data centers, manufacturing, and electrification—poses a precarious misalignment with accelerating generator retirements and transmission constraints.

At a March 25 hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy, the nation’s top grid officials testified that the U.S. power system is under mounting strain—and that without urgent structural reforms, the ability to maintain reliable electric service could falter. Their message was unusually direct: demand is accelerating, supply is lagging, and current tools may not be enough to bridge the gap.

--snip--

All of the ten regional grids seem to be facing the same problems of increasing demand and closure of dispatchable capacity. ERCOT, for instance, who run the grid in Texas, forecast that peak demand will increase from 86 GW to 106 GW by 2030.

PJM in the Mid-Atlantic and Mid West anticipate a rise in peak demand of 47% in the next 15 years, and California’s CAISO are looking at an increase of 33% in the next ten years.

This is not a new problem. It was brought up when the ill-advised EV mandate by the Biden Administration was announced. Considering the amount of electricity that would be needed to charge all of those mandated EVs there was no way the nation’s electrical grid would be able to meet the demand. Capacity would need to be at least doubled. Then there’s the rapidly increasing electrical demand from hyperscale and AI data centers which would require an equal amount of grid expansion and you can see why there is a problem.

While the EV issue seems to have been diminished as the mandate has gone away, that leaves the expanding data center electrical demand that still needs to be met. Unless there is a concerted effort to update the electrical grid and build new generating capacity, those needs won’t be met. Yet it seems to me that the problem is being devoutly ignored, or if not ignored, being downplayed. Neither solves the problem.

One thing we should not do under any circumstances is follow the examples of either Germany or the UK and push renewable energy upon the populace. As we have seen there, renewables cannot meet the demands as it is neither reliable or dispatchable. Germany went so far as to shut down its nuclear power plants and replace them with wind turbines which have shown they cannot meet their electrical demands. The UK has had similar problems though as best I can tell they haven’t decommissioned any of their nuclear plants.

We should focus on things like nuclear power, particularly Gen III and Gen IV SMRs – small modular reactors – which can be quickly built in a factory, employ up-to-date nuclear technology, can use ‘depleted’ fuel from older nuclear plants as fuel, and are considered “Walk Away Safe” because they can’t melt down like the Gen II plants being used worldwide.

The question is whether we will do so or not.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where winter is on retreat again, warmer weather is on the way, and plans for launching the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout are in the works.

Chinese Port Shipping Throughput Numbers Suspicious?

I was perusing YouTube earlier today and came across this video from the China Observer channel and came across the following video that I found quite illuminating, one indicative of some of China’s economic problems.


The part about China’s numbers not matching the activity at origination and destination ports implies the China may be lying about the actual shipping activity, something that also implies that trade is down as well. Another video delves into that aspect, stating the shipment of goods to the US from China is down 90% since the imposition of the 145% tariff on Chinese goods.

Even before this, China’s economy has been weakening with shutdowns and closures of some factories and scaled back production by other factories. How bad it really was before this is unknown so such claims should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. But if it is indeed the case then losing almost 50% of its overseas trade certainly won’t help China’s economy.

All of this aside, one has to ask the question about what brought us to this point? Some are pointing fingers at Trump, but this problem predates him by over 4 decades when the US government, particularly Congress and the administrative ‘state’, made it increasingly difficulty and costly to manufacture here in the US while making it attractive to move manufacturing overseas.

All of this makes me unsure of how all of this will shake out. At times it makes me wonder if we’re living out the old Chinese curse – “May you live in interesting times.”

Friday Funny - Arguing With An American

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s a 50:50 weekend here at the lake, at least when it comes to the weather. Cool and rainy on Saturday and a little warmer and partly sunny on Sunday. This weather is certainly having an effect on the ice covering the lake. It’s pretty thin with a number of areas of open water getting larger. One of the indicators of Ice Out – declared when all 5 ports of call for the MS Mount Washington cruise ship are free of ice – is one of the ponds here in our town. In general, when it is finally free of ice it means Ice Out will occur about two weeks later. It was ice free as of Thursday so that indicates Ice Out may occur on April 17th. Only time will tell.

I did suffer a bit of trauma today, said trauma being filing my income taxes. It looks like I have my withholding set up properly as I should be receiving just under $200 as a refund. (I don’t like over-withholding as it means the federal government gets to use my money interest-free. I’d rather have it in my accounts rather than the Feddle Gummint’s accounts.)

Now that I’ve got that out of my way I can focus on the incipient property taxes on The Gulch which will be due in June.

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In relation to yesterday’s post comes this by way of BattleSwarm Blog: DOGE Discovers Giant Social Security Fraud.

One small excerpt:

Musk told the audience with Gracias on stage that DOGE found “20 million dead people marked as alive… Social Security database, this is too crazy, and then you’ll notice there’s a strange trend here.”

If each one of those 20 million people received $20,000 in benefits (Social Security, Medicare, and/or Medicaid), that’s $400 billion - with a “b” - of taxpayer money being eaten up by fraud.

Read The Whole Thing.

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You know they’re in trouble when even Bill Maher says they’re too biased.

It seems that both NPR and PBS have gone too far when even members of the Left are saying so. In this case it’s comedian Bill Maher pointing the finger at both tax-funded broadcasters.

Maher recently blasted the two networks for their extreme bias. “We’ve outgrown the era where these outlets made sense,” Maher said on his HBO show, Real Time.

“In a country this polarized, where Republicans and Democrats see each other as existential threats, there’s no room for government-funded media that clearly favors one side.”

Maher also blasted NPR CEO Katherine Maher.

“I also read my namesake, Katherine Maher — head of NPR — and, you know, she said, ‘We’re completely unbiased.’ Give me a break, lady,” Maher added.

“I mean, they’re crazy far left. So, I mean, I think we’re past, my view, we’re past the age really, where the government, first of all, why do we need to subsidize — why can’t we have outlets like this and we’re so polarized,” he added. “These outlets became popular at a time when Republicans and Democrats didn’t hate each other and weren’t at each other’s throats and didn’t think each other was an existential threat in that world. You can’t have places like this I think anymore; they have to be private.”

I agree.

Ironically, they don’t receive as much funding from the government as they have in the past, percentage-wise. They still are funded by the public through membership drives and grants. However, I have to agree with Bill Maher that maybe it’s time to stop using taxpayer money to fund media outlets that are openly hostile to the half of the population that disagrees with their political viewpoints.

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It is understood that elections have consequences and it looks like the taxpayers in Los Angeles are going to be feeling the effects of this past one, in this case one that affects their pocketbooks.

Consumers in Los Angeles County were shocked Tuesday as a new quarter-percent sales tax, ostensibly to raise funds for services for the homeless, went into effect following a referendum in November.

L.A. voters passed Measure A, which replaced and increased an earlier county-wide sales tax for the homeless. That tax, passed a decade ago, failed to stem the growth of the homeless population and may even have encouraged it.

L.A. residents recently learned that $2.3 billion spent on homeless services in Los Angeles had been unaccounted for — and the money had come from the same sales taxes that referendums like Measure A had been designed to fund.

How does the old saw go? “Subsidize something and you’ll get more of it. Tax something and you’ll get less of it.” In this case they’ve thrown money at dealing with homelessness...and ended up getting even more homelessness. Now they’re going to throw even more money at the problem and keep raising taxes to fund it all. It sounds like a vicious cycle to me.

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This was the perfect imagery:

Getting Rid of DEI Is Like “Getting Soap Out Of A Sponge”

“Trump is now squeezing that sponge and a lot of the easy stuff is coming out now…. But DEI is going to persist for the foreseeable future… Do this for six to 10 years. and I think you will deal mortal damage to DEI. Do it for two to three years, and they will hang on, like survivors clinging to a lifeboat, just waiting for help to arrive.”

Heh^TM

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When I read this I thought it might be a late April Fool’s prank...but it’s not.

It turns out that Democrats used to be all for tariffs until they were against them. What’s the difference between then and now?

I would have to say it’s those who are proposing them.

For five decades, politicians on both sides, but primarily Democrats and Independents, have called for America to take steps to equalize the “Free Trade,” which was not free or working for America. There is a video of Nancy Pelosi calling for tariffs against China in the 90s. Obama placed tariffs on Chinese auto tires during his term while Bernie Sanders urged Obama and Bush to even the playing field with tariffs against any country over-taxing us with double-digit tariffs or taxes. Even Joe Biden, or whoever was actually President, used tariffs.

Now that Donald Trump is taking tariffs to a new level with a wide-scale policy against nearly every country charging us unreasonable tariffs, Democrats are now apoplectic about how Trump’s economic plan is going to cause widespread inflation and layoffs.

Where were these people when it was Democrats pushing for these kinds of tariffs? Oh, wait. It was the same people, but they’re against them now because it’s not them – Democrats - pushing for those same tariffs.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the rain has ended (for now), the sun is peaking out now and then, and where Monday is just around the corner...again.

UPDATE: UConn Women's Basketball team won the NCAA championship!

They Got It Wrong

I have been watching (and reading) some of the reports about the protests against tariffs and other Trump actions. That doesn’t bother me as it’s everyone’s right to protest, whether I (and others) agree or disagree with them. I can’t tell from what reports I’ve seen how many have been at the protests.

However, the one thing I noticed was quite a few signs stating that Trump and DOGE would be cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits. That is partially true, but not the way I think these protesters are implying.

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits will be cut...for those who aren’t eligible for them, receiving them fraudulently. That includes those who are well over 120 years of age, illegal immigrants who aren’t eligible , and ‘ghost’ recipients who are collecting benefits for multiple people who are deceased, i.e. their deaths were never reported to federal government. The fraudulent payments are projected to total in the billions of dollars which means those who are receiving the benefits due to them are being ripped off.

Either those making these claims about cut in benefits to legitimate recipients are believing this erroneous information or are lying themselves.

I am not focusing on the tariff issue as I have already made my opinion about them known. But I am going to add this one last thing about DOGE that I saw elsewhere:

It’s wild to see people who have been robbing us blind trying to justify being upset at us catching them.

Is DOGE the only way we can get our federal spending under control? I hate having to say this, but it may be our last hope. Congress certainly isn’t going to do it as they have no real incentive to do so. Too many in Congress are compromised, not because they are evil but more that they ‘owe’ others ‘favors’ in exchange for helping them get elected. Some are evil, seeing the budget as a means of filling their pockets and those of their friends and families. I wish it weren’t so, but there are far too many members of Congress that have become quite wealthy, taking in far more money than their salaries and speaking fees can account for.

Call me cynical...because I am.

Friday (Scary) Funny - My Reflection Moves By Itself