Some of it might be attributed to my very busy and lengthy day on Friday which included dinner at BeezleBub’s followed by the Rod Stewart concert at Meadowbrook that evening. (The opening act was Cheap Trick.) It was an awesome concert and Rod looked fantastic for performer in his 80’s. I was up early yesterday morning and was pretty much busy all morning and afternoon. It was not like one of my usual summer weekends.
The weather this weekend has been less than optimal, being cloudy and cool Saturday and the same this morning. However, the sun did make its appearance this afternoon and it actually reached 80º. Monday is going to bring us heavy thundershowers, particularly in the afternoon. Then we’ll be back in the heat with temps in the 90’s and high humidity...again.
==+++++==
I have to wonder how those with student loans feel about starting to make payments again? How about those who will see the Feddle Gummint coming after them for defaulting on the loan payments they hadn’t made prior to those payments being suspended by the Department of Education in 2020 “due to Covid”?
I have to wonder if the latter were hoping they wouldn’t have to pay back their loans in light of Biden’s unconstitutional loan forgiveness move? Heck, it shouldn’t be a surprise that even those who haven’t defaulted feel the same way.
I’ve been listening to the debate between those who believe student loans should be forgiven and those who don’t. Despite what the first group wants, those loans do have to be repaid but they will be repaid by the American taxpayers. That’s you and me, boys and girls. It’s ironic that some of those loans paid for useless college degrees that qualified the recipients to be baristas at Starbucks, bartenders, Uber or Lyft or DoorDash drivers, convenience store clerks, or wait staff and those who took the loans owe as much as some people owe on their mortgages. It’s equally ironic that those holding those degrees could have worked those same jobs without a degree and without the 6-digit loan debt that went that degree. They also would have had 4 years more earnings if they hadn’t wasted those four years studying for their useless degree.
I have to lay some of the blame for this on the colleges and universities that created many of the useless courses of study as so many of them saw the oceans of cash made available by the student loan programs and wanted some of it.
==+++++==
Umm...really?
It appears that Israel had supernatural help overcoming Iran’s defenses which allowed it to prevail in its recent 12-day war with Iran as well as the success with the US taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities, at least according one senior Iranian official. That help?
Jinn. (Link may be paywalled.)
How did Israel, a country of fewer than ten million people, prevail in the recent twelve-day war over the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has nine times more people and thirty times more land than Israel? A senior Iranian official, Abdollah Ganji, who formerly headed a daily newspaper, Jovan, that was a primary mouthpiece of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), is convinced that it wasn’t simply a story of Israel’s having a superior strategy, better weaponry, and help from the U.S., with its bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Ganji contends that the Israeli secret weapon had supernatural help, and not the good kind.So we’ve been wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on defense spending when we could have been using the jinn, aka genies, to defend ourselves?
Iran International reported Friday on what Ganji called “a strange phenomenon.” Ganji claimed that “after the recent war, several pieces of paper were found on the streets of Tehran containing talismans with Jewish symbols." Uh-oh. And as if that weren’t enough, he added: "A few years ago, the Supreme Leader said that hostile countries and Western and Hebrew intelligence services use occult sciences and jinn beings for espionage."
Indeed he did. Back in March 2020, the Ayatollah Khamenei told his countrymen in a televised address that the Islamic Republic was facing “enemies from among both jinn and human beings.” This apparently inspired a good deal of ridicule, as Iran International notes that “the quote was later removed from some official transcripts.”
Another prominent Iranian ayatollah, Hojatoleslam Mehdi Karami, said in Oct. 2024: “Given the Zionists’ history of controlling jinn, many of their missions are carried out through them.”
Yeah. Right.
==+++++==
This doesn’t surprise me in the least.
I’ve been hearing the stories about the problems that are occurring for those wishing to rebuild their homes in the Pacific Palisades and Eaton areas of Los Angeles that were devastated by the fires that destroyed thousands of homes an businesses. Permitting is taking a long time and can cost $20,000 or more, a cost that isn’t always covered by insurance. Insurance payouts have been iffy as so many homeowners lost their insurance prior to the fires. But don’t worry, Governor Newsom has the answer!
Slums! Or as I saw it written in the linked post “Gentrification in reverse.”
Six months after the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires, California Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled $101 million in funding Tuesday for “multifamily low-income housing development” that will “contribute to a more equitable and resilient Los Angeles.” The priority is for “geographic proximity to the fire perimeters of the Eaton, Hughes, and Palisades fires.”So by using county level income data rather than neighborhood level income data, California taxpayers will be on the hook to build low income housing in areas that used to have million and multimillion dollar homes. Does this mean that some of the former homeowners will be lucky to lose only a portion of the value of their homes rather than all of it?
--snip--
California state law and a local Los Angeles ordinance require fire-destroyed rent-protected housing — which includes all apartments in the city built before October 1978 — be replaced with low-income housing. Because the affordability requirements use county-level income data, not more local incomes, definitions for “low” and “very low” income housing reflect much lower incomes than the norm for the affluent Palisades community.
--snip--
What a beautiful locale to build an equitable slum at public expense.
To qualify as Supportive Housing Multifamily Housing, a project must provide at least 40% of its units for the homeless, or individuals who have spent at least 15 days in “jails, hospitals, prisons, and institutes of mental disease.”
As the article states, does this mean “California has succumbed to the Democrat Death Spiral”? It certainly seems so as government at the state and city levels appear to have been doing everything they can to make sure California becomes unaffordable and unlivable.
==+++++==
Better late then never.
It appears the UK newspaper The Telegraph has discovered that wind farms don’t work when the wind doesn’t blow.
This is something Germany discovered both during heat waves and cold spells when there wasn’t much wind that wind could not be counted on to provide needed electricity. Britain is finding out during the recent heat wave that wind farms cannot be counted on to provide electricity when it is most needed. (It actually isn’t the first time, it’s just the most recent one.)
It isn’t just in Europe that this lesson is being learned.
Texas found out during one particular cold snap a few years ago that their huge wind farms in west Texas couldn’t provide power because the cold affected the wind turbines, particularly when the blades on some of the turbines needed to be de-iced before they could be used, which meant they couldn’t be used as they had no means of doing so. At times there also wasn’t much in the way of wind to turn the turbines in any case. Call it another lesson that is being ignored by the climate change cult.
==+++++==
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where thunderstorms are in the forecast, another heat wave is on its way, and where we’re trying our best to ignore Monday.