I have been seeing signs of the upcoming Memorial Day weekend with a lot more traffic as folks get their cottages ready for the summer. Lots of cars seen with out of state plates, parking lots at stores and shopping centers being more crowded, particularly during the Saturday morning “rush”. Our seasonal restaurants have been open, though some of them only on the weekends until Memorial Day weekend, one of my favorite ice cream joints being one of them. A large number of boats are now back in the water with quite a few more waiting to be launched, the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout being one of them.
This weekend has also been “Getting Ready for Summer” cleanup around The Gulch, with the last of the winter stuff being stored away and the summer stuff coming out of the attic. Windows and window screens have been cleaned, the last winter drapes have been swapped out with some of the ‘sheer’ drapes we for the larger windows. (They let in a lot more light!) The annual “Let’s get this stuff to the dump” pile is growing, with yours truly going to make that dump run next Friday. (I swear, that stuff grows on its own as I don’t remember nearly that amount junk being stored away in the attic last fall!)
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I admit I feel of two minds about this.
German Chancellor Merz promises to “build Europe’s strongest military.”
Reading the comments in this referring Instapundit post I see that quite a few others have been having some of the same thoughts as I.
One of my first questions was “How is Germany going to do that? Between Net Zero, non-Net Zero related energy shortages, Increasingly draconian EU environmental regulations, and Germany’s industrial decline, how can they possibly do that?” At the moment I would have to say that Poland is one of the stronger military powers in Europe. They don’t want a repeat of their WWII and post-WWII history so they are making sure if anyone gets any ideas that they will pay a heavy price for doing so. I have no doubt that Poland is looking closely at Ukraine’s war against Russia to see how more can be done with less. The only countries with a military stronger than Poland are the UK, Italy, and France, and I have my doubts about them. (There are a couple of different lists out there about European military power by country and they don’t agree...or are outdated.)
In light of Russia’s continued occupation of Ukrainian territory and its not-so-subtle hints that they “want to get the old gang back together...whether they want to or not”, it’s not surprising the European nations are seeing that they need to start addressing their defense needs. For too long they have been letting Uncle Sam pick up the tab as they have been decreasing their defense spending as a percentage of their GDP despite their commitment under the NATO treaty.
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Should Biden’s “Autopen” pardons be declared null and void? If it can be proven that Biden did not authorize such pardons (this assumes he would remember even if he had), than all such pardons should be revoked as they were never legitimate.
This brings us to the issue of Biden’s pardons, especially those granted to his family and public figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci. Put simply, did Biden have any idea what he was doing when his autopen scratched the surface of those presidential papers?If those Autopen pardons were not signed with Joe’s knowledge or consent, then that pushes the narrative that maybe he was never in charge of anything during his administration. Rather it was the WRBA (Whoever is Running the Biden Administration) cabal running the show...and the Autopen. It makes us wonder if Joe was nothing more than a “John Gill” figurehead. Even now that the MSM is admitting it did cover up Joe’s increasing mental decline, they aren’t willing to actually own up to being complicit in the cover up by offering all kinds of lame excuses for doing so. One has to wonder if they knew about the abuse of the Autopen as well.
In the case of the pardon for his son Hunter, Biden is on the record just months earlier saying he would never ever do that. Sure, it’s possible that he was lying, but he did give us his word as a Biden.
If, as Democrats and their media allies insist, Biden’s decline was so swift, starting in 2023, that it caught everyone off guard, then shouldn’t we question whether the Joe Biden who signed Hunter’s pardon wasn’t deeper in the throes of dementia than the one who promised not to?
The worst part of the mendacity from the Biden administration is that all those smarmy spokespeople like Ian Sams and all his bosses knew that the harm they were doing probably could not be undone, even if the actions were born of lies.
They knew that, as a practical matter, it is likely impossible to deport 10 million illegal aliens, and they knew that it would be almost impossible to challenge Biden’s pardons, even if he thought he was signing a pool pass for Corn Pop.
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Uh oh, they’re planning the Greatest Looting Spree in History, also known as Reparations.
If they get away with it it will be never-ending and it will bankrupt this nation.
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It looks like yet another European nation is finding out that renewable energy isn’t the way to go. A few months ago it was Sweden announcing it was “going nuclear” because they didn’t see any future in renewables. They already have two new nuclear power stations planned. Today, it seems that Denmark is going to follow Sweden’s example and go nuclear which makes sense, particularly in light that a large percentage of Denmark’s power comes from wind, something they are finding isn’t working as promised.
Most of the renewed interest in nuclear seen around the world stems from the expected growth in electricity demand from AI data centres, but Denmark is different. The Danes are concerned about possible blackouts similar to the one that struck Iberia recently. Like Spain and Portugal, Denmark is heavily dependent on weather-based renewable energy which is not very compatible with the way power grids operate.The loss of synchronization of the 50Hz alternating current was one of the causes of the major electrical blackout in Spain, Portugal, and portions of France earlier this year.
Conventional generators produce alternating current, creating a stable output of current and voltage that alternates at a frequency which is directly – synchronously – linked with the rotating turbines which drive the generators in gas, coal, nuclear or hydropower plants. All of these turbines rotate at a speed of 3000 revolutions per minute, so producing electricity with current and voltage that varies in a sine wave shape with a frequency of 50 cycles per second (ie 50 Hz).
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Electrical equipment is highly sensitive to this frequency and can break if it deviates too much from 50 Hz. For this reason, power stations, substations, switching equipment and other devices in the grid have fail-safes which will cause them to trip out should frequency fall outside acceptable bounds.
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However, wind and solar do not produce synchronous alternating current. Although wind turbines rotate, they do not do so at a constant speed, and solar has no moving parts at all. They produce direct current which is converted to alternating current using electronic devices known as inverters. Wind and solar also have no inertia.
Weather also plays a part when it comes to renewables, particularly when the weather doesn’t cooperate and renewables generate little or no electricity. We saw that in Texas a couple of winters ago when the grid almost collapsed because there was no wind and power demand was very high due to sub-freezing temperatures.
The case with Denmark is that it has too much wind as part of its generation portfolio and that has caused problems, particularly as electrical demand grows, so they are looking to nuclear power as a solution.
The US is seeing steadily growing electrical demand and renewables cannot possible meet the needs, particularly in light of their dependence upon weather (and sunlight). Demand is growing as data centers are being built since those data centers use a lot of electricity. I won’t get into the EV demand because as it stands now EVs are not ready for the real world despite claims to the contrary. If we had to expand the electrical grid to cover both we would need to increase the generation and transmission capacity by a factor of three in order to meet the demand. That’s not going to happen, at least not without a lot of new nuclear power plants being built.
Let’s just hope that happens, both here and in Denmark...and Germany...and the UK...and…
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather is being a little schizophrenic, the cleanup and prep of summer cottages continues, and where Monday is having a decreasing amount of power over us as summer gets closer.