Thoughts On A Sunday

It was a gorgeous day yesterday, sunny, warm, and a little breezy. Today was different with rain starting early in the morning and not ending until early evening. The promised sunshine never appeared as the clouds that were supposed to clear of didn’t do so. Despite all of that it was a relatively quiet weekend.

Not many of the summer folk came up for the weekend, but that’s okay. One of my favorite ice cream stands is now only open on weekends and then, only for the next couple of weekends until it closes until next spring. Many of the summer attractions are now closed, with most of those closing after the Labor Day weekend. There’s still plenty of boats out on the lake and that will likely continue until the end of the month. Many of the die-hards will wait until after Columbus Day Weekend to finally pull their boats from the water. BeezleBub and I haven’t decided when we’ll pull the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout from the lake, but I have a feeling it won’t be pulled out early. We didn’t get out onto the lake nearly as often as we would have liked, but it was more a matter of being busy and trying not to venture out during the weekends.

And so summer is winding to a close.

==++++++==

I have to agree: The best political ad I have ever seen.

==++++++==

From one of the comments to the above post comes this challenge to “liberal White Women…who constantly complain about White Men.”

How many liberal White Women do you think would take her up on her offer? I’m thinking ‘none’.

==++++++==

Just when I think they can’t get any crazier or unhinged they prove me wrong.

Democrat Candidate Suggests Nazi-Style Death Camps for Trump Supporters

Anyone familiar with 20th century history can guess how ugly it will get if the maniacs who have been taking over the Democratic Party seize power nationally. Shelly Headen, District 62 Democrat candidate for the North Carolina House of Representatives, provides confirmation.

Via Breitbart:

Headen posted a Facebook story from a vacation showing her in front of ovens in a German concentration camp memorial, saying, “Visiting Dauchau [sic] Concentration Camp in Germany… This is where Trump supporters belong.” …

In social media photos, Headen is seen smiling as she stands in front of what appears to be crematorium ovens, which were used by the Nazi SS to burn the bodies of Jews and other prisoners who died or were murdered at the camp.

The concentration camps of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party were preceded by those of Hitler’s fellow socialist Vladimir Lenin, whose Soviet Union went on to kill far more people than the Nazis and to inspire the current generation of Democrats.

For folks who say they are antifascists, they’re certainly acting more like fascists every day.

Yeah, I’m sure the folks in North Carolina are going to flock to her banner.

==++++++==

This is something I have been saying for decades, yet I have been ignored. What is it I’ve been saying? Something right out of Santayana:

“Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.”

We see otherwise smart people ignoring the danger of the Democrat/Democratic Socialist/Progressive/Communist party even though history shows us what’s in store for our country if the gain power.

We see otherwise smart people ignoring the danger of the “Forever War” that has been going on between the US and Iran since 1979. Some say that it isn’t true despite Iran funding international terrorism, some of which has killed thousands of Americans over the past 47 years. At least one fellow Granite Stater sees that it is true, too.

...December 7, 1941 proved America’s vulnerability. Our Presidents mostly ignored Muslim terror attacks so we suffered the World Trade Center attack and 9/11/2001.

The lesson: believe and stop an enemy who hates you, attacks and kills your people, declares its intent to destroy you, and develops nuclear weapons capable of killing millions. This describes Iran’s actions and stated intent.

Iran has been killing and maiming Americans since 1979. Iran’s nuclear program exists to deliver “Death to America”.

As with North Korea, we unsuccessfully asked, negotiated, threatened, sanctioned, and bribed Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Every President since Carter has warned that Iran mustn’t get nuclear weapons.

Do we wait until there are nuclear mushroom clouds over New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, and so on before we believe Iran wants to destroy us? Or do we put up with the existing hostilities that have been destroying Iran’s ability to make war even though it does mean higher fuel prices? (I must note here that Don Ewing, the author of the linked and quoted post above has pointed to a website showing that after adjusting for inflation, gas prices are still lower than those during the Obama and Biden administrations.)

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where its been raining all day, the summerfolk were scarcem and where Monday is once again arriving to harsh our weekend mellow.

Now The Campaigns Begin

I spent this past Tuesday working at our town’s polling place for the New Hampshire State Primary. I spent about 13 hours on my feet helping people insert their ballots into the counting machine, directing them to voter registration, and answering questions voters may have had.

All in all, things went smoothly. Two things that were surprising was the voter turnout which was considerably higher than the NH Secretary Of State’s office had predicted. They were expecting between 10% and 15% turnout. In my town it was closer to 34%. That was seen across the state. Generally, a state primary which is for state level offices – governor, state House, state Senate, Executive Council – as well as Federal offices – US House and US Senate.

One thing that occurred that no one had expected was that a lot of towns, including mine, ran out of Democrat ballots. In my town’s case we took the unused absentee ballots after they were signed by the Town Clerk after striking out ‘ABSENTEE BALLOT’ at the top. We also had to run some off on a copier since we had a limited number of those as well. All of the ‘copied’ ballots had to be hand counted since the machine rejected them because the copying paper used was too thin as compared to the usual card stock the ballots are printed on. (In case you are wondering, all of this was done at the direction of the state’s Secretary of State office.)

A lot of ‘Independent’ voters participated since they can ask for either a Republican or Democrat ballot. That request is marked at the Voter Registration desks. After they vote they can “undeclare” at checkout desks if they wish to return ti “Independent” status.

Ironically, after the polls closed and all the votes were tallied up, the number of voters who voted Republican or Democrat were only a couple of voters off from being equal. Of course that begs the question whether or not a smaller number of Democrat ballots the Republican ballots were shipped to our town for the primary? If so, why?

Winning candidates didn’t waste any time starting up their campaigns for the November elections, particularly those for the US House and US Senate seats. It seems the most of the campaign ads are negative ads thrashing an opponent for things they did or failed to do in the past. They haven’t reached the point of condemning them for their choice of a wardrobe pallette or footwear, but I have a feeling it will get as ridiculous as that the closer we get to the November election. As it is I am seeing my Election Bingo Card filling rapidly with each ad or campaign speech. Even though the election is only two months away I have a feeling that it’s going to seem like forever by the time it takes place.

Was It 25 Years Ago? Or Was It Yesterday?

It’s hard to believe it was 25 years ago today that we experienced That Awful Day. I was thinking of writing something completely new but realized I had written something for September 11th every year after That Awful Day. After reading everything I’d written I realized I wouldn’t be doing it any justice as I would be regurgitating all of the things I’d written before, so I decided to look through the previous years postings and find one or two that say it better than think I could do today. Other than adding a few thoughts, I haven’t changed anything. Somehow I think this one says it all.

*************************

I have to start with saying that until September 11th, I never understood the folks who had experienced the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 saying that they remember exactly where they were when they heard the news, remembered their feelings on that day. The one thing that so many of them said that to them, it hadn’t happened ‘x’ years ago, but ‘yesterday’.

On September 12th, 2001, I came to understand what they meant. In the years since That Awful Day I know exactly what they meant when they said it didn’t happen all those years ago. To me That Awful Day happened yesterday.

All these years later when I see the Twin Towers on an old TV show or movie I catch my breath. I flash back to That Awful Day, remembering exactly where I was when I first heard of a plane hitting the North Tower and the subsequent report of another plane hitting the South Tower. I remember watching TV as the towers fell. I remember seeing the report of a plane hitting the Pentagon and another crashing in the town of Shanksville, Pennsylvania. I remember my pager going off again and again and again as I was called in to our state’s Office of Emergency Management. (I was a staff member back then.) I remember the faces of the people in my workplace and the Emergency Management office.

It was yesterday.

After 25 years It. Still. Hurts.

I remember what it looked like before That Awful Day, having visited the North Tower about 5 years prior to that day to visit with a friend of mine and to pick up some equipment he’d obtained for one of the organizations I belonged to at the time. I remember what it looked like after it had been struck by the two airliners. And I remember what Ground Zero Looked like two days after, having been there as part of an emergency response team.

*************************

I have visited the 9/11 Ground Zero memorial in New York. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I got there, what I was going to feel being there again after all those years. I saw the footprints of the North and South Towers, the metal panels surrounding those footprints bearing the names of all of those who died there on That Awful Day. I read every name on those panels. Every name.

I couldn’t make myself go down into the museum. I could barely move. I could barely breathe. Then someone spoke to me.

“Sir, are you alright?”

I turned my head and saw a young women standing to one side, looking concerned.

I could barely choke out my reply.

“No. No I’m not...”and that’s when I broke down. I don’t know how long I stood there, tears running down my face. That young woman came over to me and hugged me, just holding on while my grief overwhelmed me.

Once I regained some semblance of control of myself, she let me go and told me that she witnessed something like this almost every day, people coming to Ground Zero and grieving, each in their own way. She asked if I would be alright and I told her I would. I thanked her and left.

*************************

Over the years we have heard the stories of the heroes, both individuals and groups, who did amazing things to help the people they didn’t know under daunting circumstances. But it is those stories that have been a silver lining on an otherwise horrific and horrifying day. It is something that when the memories and feelings start weighing me down, I watch this story, one that exemplifies the selflessness of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. It allows me to see the good things that happened on That Awful Day.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was a mixed day here at the lake, at least when it came to the weather. It started pouring around 3am and continued until just before 7am. By 10am the overcast had changed partly cloudy and by 5pm it was just a few stray clouds here in there in a blue sky. At least the temperatures were decent with it reaching a high of 72 degrees here at The Gulch.

It was a good day to be out and about, something the WP Mom and I were doing from about 9:30 this morning until 2 this afternoon. This included attending church, stopping at a bank ATM and a gas station, and then heading south to the “big city” of Manchester to have lunch with the youngest WP Sister, her husband, and their youngest daughter who was home from overseas for a short visit before she flies off to yet another country for her employers later this week.

All in all it’s been a good day even though this weekend marks the semi-official End Of Summer.

Yes, I know it actually ends later this month as far as the astronomical calendar defines it, but most of the summer activities are coming to an end and summer attractions are either closing after this weekend or will remain open only on weekends for the next few weeks.)

==++++++==

Just a quick note that today’s TOAS will be a bit abbreviated as my day is not quite over and I still have things to take care of.

==++++++==

Normally I wouldn’t care about this one way or the other, “this” being a major company that has so offended its customer base that it has seen its stock value decline 80% from its 2021 peak. However, seeing as all of this damage was self-inflicted much like Gillette’s self-immolation when they did something similar to their customer base, I do have to ask “Just what the heck was Nike management thinking?”

How bad is it?

This bad.

Nike is set to leave the S&P 100 before U.S. trading opens on September 21, 2026, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. The change was announced on September 4 as part of the index provider’s quarterly rebalance.

If you want to see what has brought Nike to this sad state, what their management team did to cause Nike’s fall from grace, just Read The Whole Thing.

==++++++==

Another thing, something I’ve known for a long time, that ‘thing’ being LBJ’s so-called War On Poverty was a lost cause. Why?

Because after 62 years, poverty won.

==++++++==

Is Canada doomed? If you need an example that something is seriously wrong, here it is:

Dad stabbed to death in front of his toddler at Starbucks for asking stranger to stop smoking weed… now Canadian judge has let killer off lightly.

A Canadian man who fatally stabbed a father in front of his three-year-old daughter has been convicted of manslaughter rather than second-degree murder.

British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Ker made the shocking decision on Wednesday in the trial of Inderdeep Singh Gosal, 34, who has admitted to stabbing Paul Schmidt, 37, six times in the torso and neck on March 26, 2023, CTV News reports.

It has been reported that there is security camera footage showing Schmidt was the initial aggressor, but it seems that stabbing him six times is a bit much. When does it stop being self-defense and starts being murder? I haven’t seen the footage so I cannot comment whether Schmidt had gone so far that Gosal felt he had to kill him or whether Gosal overreacted. I don’t know if Gosal was under the influence of marijuana (though he’d been smoking some which led to the confrontation), but that certainly could have been a factor in his response.

==++++++==

The price of allowing illegal aliens to remain in the US keeps going up.

Illegal Alien Charged in $1.3B Medicare Fraud Scheme

An illegal alien from the country of Georgia allegedly spent five months running a Pennsylvania medical equipment company that filed $1.3 billion in fraudulent claims against Medicare and private insurers, then funneled the proceeds to a Russia-based criminal network. Federal prosecutors say this is the largest health care fraud case the Justice Department (DOJ) has ever prosecuted.

Erekle Gugava, 33, was indicted in Massachusetts on one count of conspiracy to launder money. The case arises from Operation Gold Rush. The criminal organization behind it was based in Russia and elsewhere.

Gugava purportedly owned ND Medical Solutions LLC from February through July 2025. In those five months, the Pennsylvania durable medical equipment company allegedly submitted at least $1.3 billion in fraudulent claims to Medicare, Medicare supplemental insurers, employer-sponsored health plans, and other insurers.

$1.3 billion (with a ‘b’) in fraud? How much was the fraud discovered in Minnesota between the ‘Learing centers’ and health care companies and such that existed only on paper? Some estimates say up to $9 billion. Again, something that has been run by ‘refugees’ and illegal aliens.

This crap has got to stop.

==++++++==

And that is the (abbreviated) news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has been pretty good, we’ve been taking advantage of some of the last of the summer fare, and where this week Monday is a holiday!

The Computer OS Battle Continues

I have written about computer issues on and off for years. My most recent scribblings dealt with restoring two Linux desktops and one laptop that suffered catastrophic failures that finally got restored. None of the failures were the fault of the OS as I was using two different distributions of Linux – Linux Mint and Ubuntu. While Linux Mint uses Ubuntu as a base, both desktop failures turned out to be hardware issues with one desktop suffering a power supply failure and the other an improperly secured NVM card – basically a solid state drive (SSD) – that finally loosened to the point that the desktop wouldn’t boot. The laptop failure was also a hardware issue, in this case the hard drive failed.

Now that all but one of the Linux computers are up and running (I have a newer laptop that has not yet had Linux installed), I wanted to dive a little deeper into why I no longer use Windows at home. (My work laptop uses Windows 11 and I truly have come to intensely dislike it.)

One of the complaints about Windows 11 that I hear again and again is that everyone fears updates because it seems every update breaks something. For instance, one of of the most recent complaints I heard that the VLC media player now takes a long time to load and run a media file. This occurred after a recent Windows update that appears to block access to some Windows resources that were readily available in the past.



There’s also the increasing number of ads that show up on Win 11, as well as the notification that insists that users must have a Microsoft account to even use Windows 11. There’s also been the push for users to put all their files on Microsoft’s One Drive, a cloud service that allows Microsoft to scan all of your files whether you want them to or not. My work laptop has ‘forced’ this which can mean that if I don’t have an Internet connection I can’t see my own files. I certainly didn’t like this and set up to make sure I have copies of my files on my laptop’s hard drive and our local file servers. My employer’s IT department has pushed to maintain our own file servers and so far the corporate guys have agreed to this. I also keep copies of my files on an external hard drive, a ‘belt and suspenders’ precaution that I am glad I have used because it has saved me all kinds of grief on more than one occasion.

I have been using Linux for years now and I have no complaints. I have found it to be easy to use. This is particularly so for more recent versions and distributions. Some distributions are almost indistinguishable from Windows when it comes to how some of them look and their ease of use.

There are two I recommend if someone is interested in trying them out. (One of the beauties of Linux is that you can try it out without having to install them as they’ll boot from a USB key.) One of them, Linux Mint, is one that I have been using for a couple of years now. The other is Zorin OS. They both have a look and feel that is similar to Windows 10, but better. (I must mention here that Hewlett Packard has been shipping an increasing number their computers with Zorin OS installed as they have found it to be an excellent alternative to Windows 11. It has also reduced the number of customer support calls they have had to deal with due to Win 11 being so awful.)

I find it telling that Linux has a rapidly growing portion of the OS market with over 10% of computer users in the US using Linux. If Microsoft keeps doing everything it can to make using Windows ever more miserable than it already is, I expect that percentage will hit 25% within 2 years...if it takes that long.

Friday Funny - This Is How You Party In Your 50's

Thoughts On A Sunday

It looks to another nice day here at the lake, though with more clouds and slightly lower temperatures. That suits me fine as I am still recovering from a very long day yesterday as our town celebrated Old Home Day, a topic I covered in yesterday’s post. It was one of those days where I was on my feet most of the day, sitting down only when I was eating something or talking to friends who were sitting down and eating. Mostly it was walking from one part of our town’s ‘downtown’ to another and back again.

What makes this a little less fun was that sometime during yesterday morning I tweaked my knee and woke up this morning with it aching and not wanting to cooperate when I needed to walk from one room to another here at The Gulch. I still don’t have any idea how this happened.

So today is going to be a low key day for me, foregoing some of my usual Sunday activities. I did not perform my usual “pre-church” shopping at Walmart early this morning. I also did not attend church though I did watch it on Facebook.

And so August is winding to a close. Where did the summer go? Wasn’t July 4th just a couple of weekends ago?

==++++++==

I could have commented on this last week, but I was distracted by something far less important.

Does it seem suspicious to anyone else that Hillary is already planning Bill Clinton’s funeral?
Is he going to be ‘arkancided’ when she feels the time is right?

==++++++==

Just when I think California can’t possibly get any worse, I’m proven wrong.

In this case, it’s lawmakers are pushing a law that will give businesses yet another reason to leave the Pyrite State.

What sort of nonsense are they pushing on businesses this time? Get a load of this:

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) may soon receive a bill requiring major companies to swear, under penalty of perjury, that they searched generations of corporate records for ties to slavery.

WTF? Just how woke are these numb-nuts legislators going to go? Too far, apparently.

This bill, upon appropriation by the Legislature, would require any business or enterprise that is doing business in the state that was in existence or whose predecessor company was in existence on or before December 31, 1964 and has annual worldwide gross receipts that exceed $100,000,000 to complete an affidavit, under penalty of perjury, verifying that it has searched through any and all records in its and its related entities, as defined, possession, control, and knowledge for records that the in-state covered entity or its related entities bought or sold persons subjected to slavery, used persons subjected to slavery as collateral, provided loans to purchase persons subjected to slavery, insured such transactions or the persons subjected to slavery, or provided related or other services to aid or otherwise facilitate those transactions. The bill would set forth the contents of the affidavit, the timeline and manner of submission, and reporting requirements.

And how much will this cost those businesses or enterprises to meet the requirements of such a law? Will it affect those businesses one way or the other...unless this is going to be used as a means of extracting “reparations” payments from those businesses to be forwarded to those they deem to be victims of that long past transgression or transgressions? I wouldn’t put it past them.

Even though I and others have used this phrase facetiously here and there, now and then, I am nor thinking we should now seriously consider consider taking it to heart. The only way to stop this twisted nonsense is to “Nuke it from space. It’s the only way to be sure…”

The level of asininity from the Pyrite State is growing at an exponential rate and it needs to be stopped, now.

==++++++==

Somehow, this seems entirely appropriate.

Hamptons Yacht Club Cancels Restaurant Service After Staff Deported

Oh my!! Whatever will they do?

The swanky oceanfront Devon Yacht Club in Amagansett — which reportedly charges around $100,000 in initiation fees — canceled its Wednesday night dinner service after its foreign cooks had to leave the US because of problems renewing their H-2B temporary work visas, according to a letter sent to members the same day.

Food service was also canceled Thursday and was not expected to be back up and running until Friday’s lunch service, the club informed its deep-pocketed members — a group that once included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s parents.

[…] “It seems that an oversight either by the agent or attorney responsible for submitting our petition or perhaps by the US Immigration Office itself has resulted in a situation where our H2B kitchen staff must leave the country immediately and return to their home countries for at least 60 days before their visas can be renewed.” (read more)

The author of the post recognizes that removing a lot of the foreign workers, be they legal or not, will have an impact on economics in a number of ways, some good and some not so good.

As a ‘let’s get on with it’ proponent of deporting all illegal aliens, cancelling H1B and J-1 visas as well as removing all Temporary Protected Status populations from the USA, we must also accept the very predictable consequences.

There are a lot of businesses that may fold because they are so heavily dependent upon foreign workers, but those businesses are “operating on an inorganic business model, that could never have been sustained without massive import of cheap foreign labor.”

Maybe it’s time to stop that kind of economic nonsense and get back to “organic business models” that will work for domestic labor.

Read The Whole Thing.

==++++++==

As bad as Detroit came to be, Gary, Indiana is far worse.

Former Gary Resident Explains Why the Lights Have Been Off

We are told that when the lights don’t come on in nearly all-black Gary, Indiana, this is due to “environmental racism.” Black former Gary resident Kira Davis reveals the real reasons residents are miserable:

First, people literally shot at the power company. NIPSCO (Northwest Indiana’s energy provider) has reported that multiple bullets struck their vehicle as employees tried to navigate the streets of the city and make repairs….

This lazy and corrupt leadership barks that whites are to blame for the failure of a city run entirely by blacks. Turns out Critical Race Theory does not keep the lights on.

This is quite telling, particularly since it doesn’t support The Narrative in any way shape or form.

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the summer tourist season is coming to an end, schools are opening, and where even Monday can’t change that.

Another Little Piece Of Life In Small Town America

It was a gorgeous day here at Lake Winnipesaukee today with comfortable temperatures, low humidity, and clear skies. It was a perfect day for my home town’s Old Home Day, a celebration of our town by residents past and present. This year’s theme was “There’s No Place Like Home”.

It started with a pancake breakfast at our community center next to our church, followed by a 5K footrace and then a parade. The parade participants included some of our town officials, both the police department and fire department color guards, numerous community organizations and businesses, a couple of bands, a number of classic cars, some equipment from our Public Works department, some beauty queens, dance troupes, veterans organizations, and a number of candidates running for public offices in our upcoming state primary in a little over a week.

Once the parade was concluded the food vendors and crafters were open for business in our village field. There were also games, contests, music acts, and some sports activities. (I will admit to having a ‘basket’ of french fries and chicken tenders for lunch...consumed for quality control purposes, of course.) There was also a used book sale along with pie and ice cream at our library and a white elephant sale and raffles at our church. (The WP Mom has been working at the jewelry tables for a number of years now.)

Earlier this evening there was a band concert at the bandstand at our village field followed by fireworks.

It was a chance to meet friends and neighbors past, present, and future. Two of my long time friends came up from their home in southern New Hampshire to attend Old Home Day as they have been planning to make the move up here sometime, hopefully in the near future. This is the fifth or sixth time they have come up for our Old Home Day and I’m hoping that soon they won’t have travel so far to attend.

This was just a small slice of life in a small American town, one that was an absolutely wonderful time for those who attended and/or participated. I couldn’t think of anything better to do during a beautiful late summer Saturday.

Friday Funny - Why Nerds Aren't Good At Jeopardy

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s a gloomy-looking day here at the lake. Cloudy, some light showers here and there, and heavy or severe thundershowers forecast for late in the day. All in all, not a bad day to stay close to The Gulch. Not that any of that would preclude the WP Mom and I from attending church or helping to get things prepared for our small town’s Old Home Day next weekend.

The only thing that might get interrupted by the weather is today’s running of the NASCAR Dollar Tree 301 at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway south of here this afternoon. If I heard correctly NASCAR will be starting the race 1 hour earlier then scheduled in order fit it in before the thunderstorms move in.

==++++++==

I was saddened to learn of the passing of a friend of mine, Charlie St. Clair, who is the driving force behind the annual Laconia Motorcycle Week which takes place every June. He’d been involved in a motorcycle accident in Ohio on August 4th after a tire failed, passing away from heart failure while being treated in the hospital.

I mostly knew him through the motorcycle rally, though he also served as a representative in the New Hampshire House, representing Laconia. He was one heck of a guy and he will be missed.

==++++++==

We’ve been hearing an increasing number of ‘stories’ and observations about how more men are “ditching the workplace”, particularly younger men. What we haven’t been hearing?

The reason or reasons why.

Here’s one take by Auron MacIntyre:

Men did not “ditch the workplace”

They were literally discriminated against and exiled by woke hiring standards under the Civil Rights Act

The fallout from the #MeToo and “Believe All Women” movement has also helped create a hostile work environment, putting many men in a situation where even saying “Good morning” to a female co-worker can be reported as harassment or as making the victim feel ‘uncomfortable’. Little or no proof is required and men can see their careers damaged or reputations besmirched if HR does not perform their due diligence and investigate complaints filed.

Men have responded to this in some workplaces by not interacting with women at the workplace with other than work-related discussions, withdrawing socially. In some workplaces men are wearing body cameras as one means of protection, so if any allegations are made there is a record of any interactions that took place.

Such work environments men that men are wending their way through a minefield. Who wants to deal with that day after day? In some cases men decide not to put up with it anymore and leave, distancing themselves from such an environment.

Are these scenarios actually occurring in the workplace? Yes.

Do they happen to level that some men are saying? I haven’t any idea.

However I keep hearing the stories, in some cases first person stories, about how someone’s job was lost and their reputation demolished due allegations made. What’s worse is that even if after an investigation it is shown no such transgression took place, the subject of any such investigation will still be seen as guilty.

Is the situation out of hand everywhere in the US? No. I have a feeling it is a problem primarily in the cities, particularly blue cities. But the fear is still there.

And then there’s the tacit discrimination that has some businesses that they would not even consider hiring a straight white male. But that’s for another time.

==++++++==

I have asked this question, too.



Maybe there’s nowhere near as much money in it anymore?

==++++++==

This is something I noticed years ago and it’s only gotten worse.

Europe In Free Fall

1. [T]he terrifying fact [is] that Europe's erasure as a civilization is underway.

2. Economically, Europe is in ghastly shape.

3, For nearly five decades, the European Union's economic growth and productivity rates have lagged behind those of the United States.

4. European Union countries have established welfare states that have steadily expanded since 1980 and stifle economic growth.

5. The European Union has also proliferated stifling regulations that place a heavy encumbrance on businesses. Restrictions on gas and electricity production, combined with a drive for a rapid and extremely costly transition to "renewable energy", have resulted in natural gas prices in Europe that are now three to five times higher than in the US, and electricity prices that are 2 to 4 times higher than in the US. To survive, many European companies have relocated production outside Europe.

6. International investment is turning away from Europe. Nine of the world's top ten tech companies are American; the tenth is Taiwanese.

(Note: The formatting for the above was modified to add the ‘point’ numbers for my convenience, not yours!)

There are six other factors on the list, all of with which I agree. (See the others in the linked post.)

As I have mentioned more than once the EU environmental regulations have been placing increasingly heavy burdens on businesses in the EU or those doing business in the EU. (See point 5 above.) I know because I have to deal with them every day at my job. There’s nothing wrong with such regulations...unless they have gone well past the point of diminishing returns. The EU has gone well past that point even if you ignore the whole “Net Zero” push for energy. I used to spend maybe 5% to 10% of my time dealing with various national and international environmental regulations that deal with electronic equipment. Most of my efforts dealt with making sure the electronic, optical, and electro-optical components that go into our equipment met the various environmental requirements that ensured hazardous or toxic materials were not used in our products. (There were exemptions for certain substances under very specific conditions, but there weren’t too many of those.) Today I spend closer to 40% of my time dealing with them as the EU has expanded the scope of those regulations. To give you and idea of just how crazy it’s gotten in the EU they are now implementing regulations on shipping materials...like corrugated cardboard, i.e. cardboard boxes, shipping labels, the ink used on shipping labels, and so on.

The above is but one example why it is becoming more difficult to do business in or with the EU. The other factors are piling even more reasons why Europe is coming apart.

I have to wonder if this might be a reason we’re seeing more Europeans looking to move to the US? I have certainly seen that sentiment in countless YouTube videos of European tourists who visited the US during the World Cup expecting to find a crime-ridden disaster area and found just the opposite. Many apologized about their previous feelings about the US, explaining that their media has been lying to them about the US for years now.

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the NASCAR race managed to finish even with the rain still hanging around, and where the Day That Shall Not Be Named is returning.

It's Yesterday Once More

Normally my Saturday scribblings deal with some social issue or train of thought that have me cogitating about “The Meaning Of It All” or “Just How Silly Is This” or...well, you get the idea. Sometimes it’s something like a new article or Letter To The Editor in my local newspaper or a discussion I’ve had with someone or something I see on TV or the Internet that gets me thinking. However, this week’s Saturday scribblings deal with something I came across on YouTube that caught me off guard, and in a good way.

Unless you’ve never read anything I’ve posted you know I am an ‘old geezer’. I was born in the 1950’s, grew up in the 60’s and attended high school and college in the 70’s. I was exposed to a wide range of music over those years. Certainly my parents had quite a bit to do with that as I remember listening to Classical music and “Big Band” era music (Glenn Miller, Harry James, Kay Kaiser, Bennie Goodman, and so on) as well as pop music as I grew up. I’d like to think that it gave me an appreciation for a wide range of music.

One of the many music groups I listened to back then was The Carpenters. I have to admit to a bit of a crush on Karen Carpenter, but then I know I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

I have heard more than a few covers of some of the more well know Carpenter songs and they ran the range of awful to pretty decent. Recently I ran across a young woman who absolutely blew me away with her covers of a number of Carpenter songs as well as a number Olivia Newton John songs.

I have to admit that the first Carpenter song I heard her perform was We’ve Only Just Begun and I am willing to admit it literally brought tears to my eyes as it had me flashing back to the first time I heard it playing on the radio. I am including that video below. I think you will be amazed.

This video dates back to 2 years ago and it has over a million views.

One thing I did was check out an ‘analysis’ video from Wings of Pegasus which dug into the cover and found that it didn’t use auto-pitch correction. It’s all Tori.

I have checked out some of her other covers and they are no less amazing. She also has some originals you might want to check out. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Friday Funny - Doctor's Orders

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a gorgeous weekend here at the lake with somewhat cooler temperatures and very little humidity. It’s made for nice days and cool nights, perfect for sleeping without the need for fans or A/C. It certainly has brought out the tourists.

One thing I noticed over the past few days is the large number of motorcycles making their way around the lake, mostly traveling in groups. At first I thought it was just me, but after talking to neighbors and friends around the lake I found they had noticed the same thing as well. I am not complaining by any means as have as much right to be touring around as anyone. They just happen to be more noticeable and are a pretty good indicator of tourist traffic in general.

The restaurants have certainly been busy as signified by full parking lots and lines at the local ice cream stands. What’s hard to fathom is that Labor Day is only three weeks away. Wasn’t the Fourth of July just a couple weeks ago? Where has the time gone?

==++++++==

Honestly, this doesn’t surprise me in the least as it isn’t something new in Lawrence, Mass.

He’s Just Doing The Hit-And-Runs Americans Won’t Do

It seems the soon-to-be former mayor of Lawrence, Massachusetts isn’t just guilty of stealing $1.5 million in COVID relief money, he also capable of of ramming another car after leaving court and leaving the scene.

That’ll look good on his resume going forward.

==++++++==

Seen on ‘X’…and so true:

Things that are now rightwing: Investigative journalism
Academic rigour
Scientific dissent
Nature
Facts
Biology
Politeness
Punctuality
Normality
Free speech
Individual rights
Rationality
Objectivity
Self-reliance
Emotional restraint
Delayed gratification

That shows just how far left the Left has shifted over the years.

==++++++==

Every time I think the EU can’t do something even stupider to hasten their fall, they prove me wrong. In this case it’s the EU’s push to reduce nitrogen emissions and the Netherlands’ increasingly draconian regulations to force those reductions that are seriously and negatively affecting farms and farmers there.

Thousands of Dutch farmers assembled with their tractors in Schermer in preparation for a large protest in Den Bosch. They are opposing the Netherlands’ nitrogen regulations and policies that threaten livestock operations.

Farmers and agricultural organizations contend that the farms possess fully legal permits and have already put forward plans to lower their emissions. They further state that with Dutch government’s proposals farmers may have to cut their herds by more than 50 percent, with no compensation for the lost animals. In North Brabant, officials intend to withdraw permits from five poultry farms, heightening tensions. Not surprisingly, Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten condemns the farmer’s efforts demanding they end their highway protests.

--snip--

This is not surprising. Two years ago, E.U. president Ursula Von der Leyen assured farmers that the body’s nitrogen proposals would not be as heavy handed. After last year’s Dutch elections where globalist parties won a majority in parliament, Von der Leyen and other EU bureaucrats obviously now see it fit to stab Holland’s farmers in the back.

I deal with increasing smothering and detailed EU environmental regulations that are making it more difficult to meet them and still make it worth doing business with and in the EU. They have gone well beyond the point of diminishing returns. The above is just hastening the end of the EU as I doubt the European economy will be able to withstand such willful destruction from within.

==++++++==

I have to agree:

We Don’t Hate These People Enough

[Terry Moran] admits that he was censored by the government and he willfully followed along with the censorship because he’s a partisan Democrat hack.

--Fmr. ABC News’ Terry Moran Says Fauci Shut Down Their COVID Lab Leak Story--

This just demonstrates the lack of journalistic integrity in spades. They have no problem reporting entirely false stories from anonymous sources and based on hearsay but when they have some facts and the guilty party says it’s not true they shut it down. He is an absolute embarrassment to the profession. Another brave journalist determined to get to the truth no matter what….when it’s politically and professionally safe to do so.

If the government can shut down your scoop, you're not in news; you're in advertising.

Or more accurately, propaganda. They toe the government line and the truth be damned.

And they wonder why the American people are increasingly distrustful of the media.

How many people were hurt because the media pushed the story that Covid vaccinations were the only thing that would save lives, that masks and ‘social distancing’ were the only effective means of preventing the spread? It was all lies. The conspiracy theorists were correct all along.

==++++++==

Today’s TOAS is slightly abbreviated as I have had a busy day helping the WP Mom get The Gulch ready for her to host her book club and it took longer than I had expected.

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the weather has been marvelous, the goodies at one of my favorite farm stands have been incredible, and Monday is once again messing up our weekend.

The Political Silly Season Is Back

While we’ve been hearing about various state primaries over the past couple of months, said primaries to select who will be running for various state and national offices, I have found that much of it has been “all hat, no cowboy” to borrow a phrase from Texas.

We’ve seen the disaster in Maine where that state’s Democrats can’t seem to find a candidate without a lot of baggage to run against Republican Susan Collins for the US Senate. We’ve seen Democrats in Wisconsin working hard to successfully kill off Francesca Hong’s run for governor there. There’s also been so many revelations about ineligible voters on voting rolls in too many states, with some having been dead for a long time and others not being US citizens.

This and many other stories leading up to the mid-term elections in November make what’s happening here in New Hampshire look tame by comparison.

We’re seeing and hearing lots of TV and radio ads aimed mostly as the Congressional races with New Hampshire’s two House District races slowly warming up and the race for the open US Senate seat starting to gain a little traction. On the GOP side we have two former US Senators running against each other – John E. Sununu and Scott Brown. Sununu served in the House for six years starting in 1997 and for one term in the US Senate after that. Scott Brown was US Senator from Massachusetts, filling the seat left vacant after the death of Ted Kennedy in 2009 after a special election. The different histories of these two men certainly make for interesting reading. At this point I think either one would serve my home state well. One of them will likely be running against present House Representative Chris Pappas (D-NH1) who is seen to be the Democrat favorite.

The race for the two House Districts is where the fun is going to be as there are a lot of people from both parties running. Only one incumbent - Maggie Goodlander (D-NH2) - is running to retain her seat. But that doesn’t mean she won’t be facing challengers. With the First District seat open there are plenty of candidates from both parties working to run in November. It is here that we’re seeing a lot of ads that seem to split time touting the qualifications of a candidate or castigating an opposing candidate for “This, That, and the Other Thing.” Seeing as the state primaries are taking place the day after Labor Day I expect the ad intensity and numbers to climb precipitously over the next three weeks. They will also be out glad-handing the voters and giving interviews and showing up at town events (like my town’s Old Home Day). I expect there will also be a few more debates.

Even with that coming up, I expect the rhetoric will really crank up once we get past the primaries and the silly season will go from being tame (and a bit bland) to full on Thunderdome-like campaigning and attack ads and “Ain’t I Frickin’ Great?” ads and so on. If nothing else, the debates will certainly be interesting.

I have no doubt it will be much the same in other states, be it for local races or Congressional or gubernatorial races.

And so it goes.

Friday Funny - Tires

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s the last day of the ‘Hot and Humid’ days today. We’ve been in them for four days and of course they will end just in time for us to go back to work tomorrow. Not that I’m really complaining as it is summer, after all. The A/C has kept the WP Mom cool as she doesn’t always deal well with the hot and humid weather when temps are in the 90’s and the dew points are in the upper 60’s/lower 70’s. We do have drier air moving in late today which will help things a bit.

Speaking of summer, I have to ask the same thing so many others have asked, and that’s “Where did the summer go?” It’s hard to believe it’s already August and that school starts in a few weeks. Our town also has what is called Old Home Day on the last Saturday of the month and it’s rapidly approaching.

Old Home Day is a celebration of the town by both present and past residents and the activities run the gamut of a pancake breakfast and a 5km road race that morning followed by a parade which in turn is followed by games for the kids along with vendors selling food and crafts in our village fields near our town center. There is also a concert later in the day which is then followed by fireworks in the evening.

This will be my 25th Old Home Day here in my town and I am looking forward to it even though it does signal the coming end of summer. Of course the ‘official’ end of summer is Labor Day which is on the following weekend.

==++++++==

I agree with this 100%.

The WNBA is what the entire country would look like if it were run by liberal white women.

Ayuh.

==++++++==

I find the supposed controversy about Trump’s choice to be the US Attorney General to be a “ho-hum” issue at best. One has to remember that JFK’s choice to be the US Attorney General was his own brother, Robert.

As one commenter put it:

His former personal attorney?

That’s a plus.

Because Trump’s standards are a lot higher than the U.S. Senate’s.

So we’re JFKs for that matter - even 65 years ago.

We have to remember that JFK would be considered a right-wing extremist by today’s Democrat Party standards.

==++++++==

It seems there are some job numbers that might upset some people, particularly Democrats. What might thos ‘upsetting’ job numbers be?

The shrinking number of government jobs.

John mentioned the July jobs report yesterday, which showed a net reduction of 23,000 jobs, driven by a monthly 53,000 loss in government jobs at all levels. The bulk of that reduction came in the category of local government, namely public schools. Overall employment at the federal level also dropped slightly in July.

Let me pause to savor that.

Digging into the numbers, overall employment at the federal and state government levels and with local public schools, are all down for the past year. That means hundreds of thousands of workers are now available for more productive pursuits. The number of federal workers has dropped by almost 11 percent since last July.

Frankly, I am not displeased to see this.

While the linked post mentions that some of the job loss is seen in public schools, I have no problem with that in light of the fact that many schools have been seeing a shrinking student population. If there are fewer children in the schools then wouldn’t one of the side-effects be a shrinking number of school staff? (That certainly hasn’t happened here in my town as our student population has shrunk about 33% over the past 15 years but the staffing levels have increased over that same period of time. Why?)

Some more of that shrinkage in government jobs can be linked to DOGE and it’s previous efforts to trim federal government job numbers by getting rid of redundant or unnecessary jobs, including so-called ‘patronage’ jobs that fill no useful purposes.

I think we’ve barely scratched the surface regarding elimination of unnecessary or unneeded government jobs.

==++++++==

For some reason this does not surprise me in the least.

More Than Half Of New York City Students In Grades 3-5 Failed Basic Reading Tests This Year

Considering the state of the education system in New York, is it a surprise?

More than half of students in grades 3-5 in New York state failed basic reading tests this year. It’s an absolute disgrace.

In New York City, they spend upwards of $40,000 on each student per school year. What is the money going to? Lessons on critical race theory and gender studies topics? Social justice activism?

Reading is one of the most basic and necessary skills that schools are expected to teach children. People who cannot read are absolutely doomed in adult life.

Part of this can be blamed on draconian school shutdowns during Covid but not all of it.

--snip--

Preliminary results released this week by the state Education Department that 57% of 3rd graders, 52% of 4th graders and 57% of 5th graders failed to make the grade on their 2025-26 English Language Arts tests.

City kids in grades 3-8 saw a 6% drop in their ELA scores from last year, with just about half overall rating proficient.

Elsewhere in the linked post it does bring up something that could certainly have a major effect on readings scores, brought up by Stephen Miller on X:

Nearly 40% of children in New York State are foreign-born or the children of migrants. Of that group, about 85% are migrants from the third world. The education debate (like so many others) often disguises the real debate.

I’d have to say that is a big contributing factor, particularly in New York City. It is something often overlooked. Of course the answer to solve this problems is the same whenever it comes to problems with the educational system here in the US: Even More Taxpayer Money.

==++++++==

And lastly, there’s this I came across while indulging in one of my guilty pleasures, that being dashcam videos on YouTube.


Two things I don’t miss from the 1970’s?

Paneling and shag carpets.

The rest was pretty cool, though!

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the last of the hot and humid weather is departing...for now, the ice cream stands have been doing really well, and where the Day That Shall Not Be Named is returning all too soon.

Relationships Between Men And Woment Getting Difficult...If Not Worse

This is not the first time I have delved into this topic and I doubt it will be the last, that topic being how relationships and social interactions between men and women have been deteriorating.

Social interactions seem to have become a minefield. This is even more so in a work environment where a thoughtless word, action, or a simple misunderstanding can end a career and damage a reputation beyond repair even if after an investigation it turns out that no such thing happened.

When we look at dating, things can be even worse because expectations can be too high, and just as bad, too low.

On more than one occasion I have mentioned that it seems to many young women have standards a man must meet before she’ll even consider dating them. There’s nothing wrong with that...as long as those standards are reasonable. But when young women keep talking about men who are now referred to as “Sixers”, meaning that are at least 6 feet tall, have a six-figure income, and have six-pack abs, they are deluding themselves because the number of men in the US that meet those criteria and are available is less than 1% of male population. Add in a few more ‘standards’ and that number gets even smaller. The problem is there are millions of women competing for that small number of men that meet their standards.

A related issue is what when the women who would like to meet a guy to settle down with, particularly those who have successful careers of their own, have their own money, their own homes, etc. but insist anyone they would consider dating must have more income and more net worth than they do. (This is an aspect of hypergamy where women want to marry up, not to an equal or someone who makes less than they do.) The problem is that the wealthier women become, the more their dating pool shrinks. While hypergamy is nothing new as it has been around throughout human history, it seems to have taken on a darker meaning as as it doesn’t deal with marrying up regarding wealth or social status. They also have to be good looking, ambitious (as if they aren’t ambitious even if they’ve reached the economic stratosphere), and be willing to lavish gifts and money and anything the want before they’ll even consider spending more than one minute to get to know them.

The question we seem to hear from many of these women again and again is “Where are all the Good Men?” The problems is that there are plenty of good men around, they just can’t (or won’t) see them because they don’t meet their standards.

For men, it seems to be a “Damned if we do. Damned if we don’t,” situation. We hear women’s complaint that men aren’t approaching women anymore and they wonder why. On the other hand many of those same women castigated men on social media about being approached and told men to leave them alone. Men listened.

I could go on and on about this but I would probably get depressed or angry or both. Instead I will leave you with this from the ‘manosphere’ that might explain some of the problems and why men are keeping their distance:

Friday Funny - Old Lady Scams Her Bank Manager

This one is NSFYE (Not Safe For Young Ears). You've been warned!

I'll Tell You The Story - Binky, Alone

Thoughts On A Sunday

The humidity has returned to the lake, something you feel the instant you step outside. However, isn’t nearly as humid as it will be over the next few days as the Weather Guys^TM have said we can expect ‘tropical’ levels of humidity. That also means we might see some thundershowers as well. Not that I’m complaining as it is summer, after all.

That does mean we are running the A/C here at The Gulch, more to keep the inside air dry rather to keep it cool. The higher temps don’t feel all that uncomfortable if the inside humidity is kept relatively low. Not that I’ll let it get into the 80’s inside, but the mid to upper 70’s feel quite nice if the relative humidity is 40% or lower. If the indoor temp gets down to the lower 70’s the WP Mom feels cold.

I’m just hoping I’ll be able to venture out on the lake sometime during the week after work. As I have mentioned before, I avoid being out on the lake during weekends because of the large number of boats and the large number of Cap’n Boneheads driving many of those boats. If the weather is good enough, meaning I won’t be dodging thunderstorms, I will be out there even if it’s only for an hour.

==++++++==

This is something the GOP should play up in the upcoming midterms:

Serial Criminal Murders Man Hours After Jail Release

About an hour and a half after a Charlotte jail, where he was being held on on weapons charges, released him on bond, David Simpson got into an argument that led him to shoot two people, killing one of them. Talk about a completely preventable tragedy.

Simpson is only 29 years old but already has a long rap sheet, according to Channel 9’s crime reporter, Hunter Sáenz. After his latest deadly rampage, authorities are holding him without bond, but had they simply done so in the first place, there would be no murder charge to worry about. They had good reason for doing so because this is not Simpson's first murder charge. He has a record of deadly rage outbursts over trivial matters.

This is the horrific reality of Democrat cities, where woke politicians and judiciary do everything they can to reward criminals for their crimes and ensure more victims.

So they let a violent criminal go on bail, a criminal with the lengthy criminal record, much of it dealing with violence including a previous murder? Who thought this was a good idea?

Considering how many blue states have ‘relaxed’ bail laws which allow violent criminals back onto the streets as if they are going through a revolving door, is it any wonder they have seen large increases in violent and property crimes? California also changed the limit on how much money or goods could be stolen so that what in the past had been felonies are now only misdemeanors. The result?

Shoplifting skyrocketed to the point were shoplifting ‘mobs’ would go into stores and dozens of thieves would grab up all kinds of goods and rush out the door. If they got caught and the value of the goods did not exceed a certain value – I believe it was $950 – they were charged with a misdemeanor. And with California’s bail reform laws, most of them would be released on their own recognizance meaning no bail. They would then go out and steal more merchandise. They cycle continues even today. New York City isn’t much better.

I have to wonder if Charlotte, North Carolina has one of the infamous Soros DA’s who are loath to prosecute criminals, even violent ones, because to do so goes against what Soros and all of the other Progressives/Socialists/Communists want, that being making sure that city after city becomes a hellhole that will be easier to take over.

I have to wonder how long it’s going to be before the populace starts handling this problem by both removing these deluded do-nothing DA’s and forming their own ‘Vigilance Committees’ to deal with criminals?

==++++++==

Yes, it’s a mystery indeed.

NOT.

If we want yet another example of just how vote fraud can influence the outcome of an election, there’s this:

Mamdani's margin of victory in the New York mayoral race was 207,570

The amount of votes in question, per audit, is 228,000

My question is if they find out that all 228,000 were fraudulent and the all were for Mamdami, will the GOP do anything about it? How about the DOJ? Will the results of the election be overturned?

People need to go to prison for crap like this.

And they wonder why we need the SAVE act to try to get this under control.

==++++++==

I have to say that I agree with Neo’s take on the following.

Regulating guns in the home: how far to go?

Many or perhaps most laws that restrict liberty are rationalized as being necessary and/or desirable in order to protect the innocent. The problem is how far to go, because at a certain point the infringements become unconscionable, and perhaps they don’t even prevent the behavior. These are constant issues, and not just in the field of gun control.

Arguments about the protective benefit of a restrictive law are nearly always used to justify infringements of personal liberty . There are terrible tragedies that appear to be preventable through restrictions on personal liberty. In the case of Colt Gray (the 14-year-old murderer) and his father Colin (who failed to lock up weapons), however, there was no law in Georgia that required such a locking-up. I see the harsh verdict in the Colin Gray trial as an attempt to rectify that, ex post facto, without actually passing such a law. In the service of this effort, another law – one I see as inappropriate to the facts of the case – was pulled into service in order to label one person, the father, as responsible.

Today, it’s guns. Tomorrow it will be the First Amendment, and we’ll see they kinds of restrictions here that have been imposed in the UK which has seen people be arrested and jailed because they expressed their opinions about how the government has screwed everything up by opening the migration floodgates and allowing the UK to become an Islamist state. Blogging or posting on ‘X’ or TikTok or YouTube opinions from your home here in the US that offend those in power, particularly the Communist wing of the Democrat Party (aka the DSA) will get one arrested and eventually imprisoned. The only freedom of speech that will exist is the freedom to parrot the Party line.

To roll back a bit to the new attack on the Second Amendment, anyone paying attention realizes that it is yet another step to stripping us of the right to keep and bear arms to make sure that if the worst happens and the ‘Feces Impact The Rotary Oscillator’ that we will be defenseless. That’s how totalitarians strip the ability of the people to defend themselves. We saw that in Venezuela when the Chavistas took power. We’ve seen that in every Socialist and Communist state throughout modern history.

Am I being over-the-top about this? Maybe...but maybe not. I’ve seen it happen again and again over the past 70 years and read the history books the described it decades before I was born. It’s the old story again and again and again. People here in the US may think “That can never happen here!” But they’re wrong. All it takes if for us to allow our rights to be stripped away a line at a time through the use of restrictive laws sold on the basis that they’ll protect the innocent. But in the end, they won’t. They certainly haven’t done so in the past. Why anyone thinks they’ll do so thisbaffles me.

==++++++==

It seems the side effects of Mayor Mamdami’s “Free S**t” campaign are already being felt and it’s not good.

Mamdani’s Free Ride Promise Drives Up Fair Evasion

Socialism destroys society not only economically but also morally. For example, the current de facto leader of the Democratic Party, Zohran Mamdani, promised to force other people to pay for bus rides. Whether enough money can be confiscated to finance this is doubtful, but already the notion has had an effect.

Paid ridership plummeted 7.7% last month compared to June 2025, when there were 1.32 million paid bus riders, according to the records — while May saw an even sharper 10.4% decline compared to a year earlier.

[Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO Janno] Lieber suggested that free bus promises that the social media-focused socialist made during his campaign last year helped normalize the idea that riders did not need to pay.

Despite seeming to grasp the pernicious effects of moonbattery, Lieber implies that it’s okay to freeload so long as you have less money than others, demanding “the people who are on their way to office jobs, who are making a good income” pay their fare and threatening to create a system that “feels a little fairer with enforcement.”

Yeah, like “We’re gonna make others pay for you to ride the bus or the subway even though those who we will force to pay for your fare will soon be leaving and then we’ll have to find other people to steal from because you don’t want to pay the fare yourself” is going to work. To paraphrase Princess Leia in the first Star Wars move, “The more you tighten your grip, the more the people with jobs and money will slip through your fingers…” Eventually Mamdami will run out of ‘other people’s money’ and everything will fall apart. If it happens during Trump’s term we know the federal government (meaning the rest of we taxpayers) won’t be bailing out New York City.

Mamdami keeps making promises he knows he can’t possibly keep, then blames the “other people” who will no longer fund his socialist dystopia because they are either broke or have left ‘Detroit On The Hudson’.

Hmm. I think I’m going to need to buy more popcorn because this is going to get interesting to see.

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the humidity is going up, so is the possibility of some thunderstorms rolling through tomorrow, and The Day That Shall Not Be Named returns to harsh our weekend.

I Wouldn't Have Thought Of This

It seems all the war news is focusing on the situation the Persian Gulf and the ongoing war with Iran. I do hear passing references in the news about the 4-year long war between Ukraine and Russia and how it doesn’t seem to be going in Russia’s favor.

As Ukraine’s capabilities expanded, it made it easier for them to hit targets deeper inside Russia, most of those targets being oil refineries, factories, airfields, trains and trucks carrying military personnel and materiel, ships, bridges, and other targets that degrade Russian logistics and their economy. All of this affects Russia’s ability to fight their war against Ukraine. The Ukrainian aerial campaign has been intensifying even as Russia’s ability to defend against it seems to be waning.

I have to admit that one thing that caught me off guard was Ukraine’s latest targets of interest, that being the Russian equivalent of Amazon, known as Wildberries. But once it was explained, it made perfect sense.


While the Russians have been claiming Ukraine’s attacks against Wildberries is a war crime because it is a ‘civilian’ infrastructure that adversely affects Russian civilians, it must be understood that Russia has been hitting civilian infrastructure and targets from Day 1 of its ‘Special Military Operation’. These include supermarkets, hospitals, apartment buildings, malls, power stations, and so on. The list is lengthy. So how is it Russia can say that what they’ve done is not a war crime against Ukrainians while what Ukraine has done is even if a small fraction of what Russian has done is a war crime against Russians? At least Ukraine has not been targeting civilian targets like those the Russians have been hitting.

As to taking out Wildberries, I have to admit that I probably wouldn’t have thought of doing so. That Wildberreis appears to be shipping dual use goods, much of it going to the front lines, certainly makes me think it’s a legitimate target. That it also weakens the Russian economy in the process makes it a twofer.

Friday Funny - Live, Freeze, Then Die

Considering we are in the middle of summer, I thought something delving into winter might be appropriaate if for no other reason than to remind us that we complain about every season, at least here in New England.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a beautiful weekend up here at the lake. Warm temps, low humidity, and just enough of a breeze to keep thinks comfortable. It certainly made it easier for the folks who attended last night’s concert at out local venue. Both Styx and Chicago performed last night, the latest acts from the Before We Get Too Old Or Die tour.

The weekend traffic here has been quite heavy, more than I recall from last year. I have also noticed that air traffic at our local airport (which happens to be right next door to our local concert venue) has also been quite heavy. I haven’t seen that many business jets parked on the airport’s itinerant ramp that I can recall. I know the FBO’s at the airport are selling a lot more Jet A fuel than they ever have. (It also helps that our airport has the lowest Jet A prices in New Hampshire.)

The WP Mom and I made a trip to out local Dairy Queen to avail ourselves of their Blizzards. I prefer the Oreo Blizzard and she prefers a Butterfinger Blizzard. This we do a number of times during the season, visiting all of the local ice cream establishments and sampling their wares...for quality control, of course.

==++++++==

Why doesn’t any of this surprise me in the least?

It seems that a lot of conspiracy theorists who delved into the Covid fauxdemic were right, and that Fauci had a lot more to do with it and that he knew his ‘recommendations’ were absolute BS.

How much unnecessary suffering and economic disruption can be laid at the feet of Fauci, the CDC, etc. forcing us to take precautions they knew were worthless?

==++++++==

Tell us something that we don’t already know>

It’s Hollywood’s fault that Hollywood is dying and the proposed merger between Paramount and Warner Brothers has nothing to do with it.

Far from “thriving,” theaters sold roughly 770 million tickets last year — down 37% from 2019 and less than half the 1.57 billion sold at the 2002 peak. The share of adults who see a movie at least monthly has fallen by more than half. Receipts hold up only because the average ticket now runs north of $13. Charging ever more to ever fewer people is not a thriving business; it is a shrinking one, repriced. And moviegoers will tell you why they stopped coming: nearly 2 in 5 adults who attend less often say there is simply not a good enough variety of new films worth the trip.

Count me among those who think movies are not good enough anymore. The last movies I saw in a movie theater were Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), Yesterday (2019), and Downton Abbey (2019). I haven’t set foot in a movie theater for almost 7 years. These days I tend to stream them even if I have to wait for a few months before I can do so. It’s cheaper. I also already know if it’s a decent movie. Refreshments are cheaper (and abundant), and I can pause it any time I want to to either get more snacks or go to the bathroom. I don’t have to worry about loudmouths or people who are incapable of putting their damn phones away which can spoil my enjoyment of a movie.

I think Hollywood as we have known it is doomed, if not already dead. More production has been taking place well outside California because the producers don’t have to answer to the self-important ‘wokerati’ who have worked so hard to make movies unwatchable.

==++++++==

It appears the ‘wokerati’ are also busy in Washington D.C., specifically at the Smithsonian Institute where they are trying very hard to ‘Erase our Founders and Reinvent American History’. After all, if they don’t there’s no way the Communists presently masquerading as Progressives and Democratic Socialists can take over and turn the US into a new version of the USSR.

The Smithsonian is supposed to be a place where America’s history is celebrated and taught. It is not a place where history is censored, reshaped, reinvented, and our Founders vilified and erased. But that is what has been happening over the last few years.

“At a time when the soul of our country is being tested, our Talking About Race portal will help individuals and communities foster constructive conversations and much-needed dialogue about one of our nation’s most challenging topics: racism and its corrosive impact,” the museum began in a July 15, 2020, Twitter thread. “As an institution devoted to learning and education, we welcome those discussions while also encouraging the public to take a holistic approach and read the information in its full context,” it concluded.

Yes, that was at the same time riots over fentanyl-riddled criminal George Floyd and his 4 funerals were taking place. Democrats were kneeling and evidently the Smithsonian museums were working behind the scenes to redesign American history into their favored DEI woke narratives, which includes an inability to define what a woman is.

If they want to destroy America, first they have to destroy our Founders, paint them as criminals, judge them against 21st Century ‘sensibilities’ which is designed to reduce their stature, if not their eliminate them entirely.

The Smithsonian needs to be revamped, purging the ‘wokerati’ who have absolutely no intention of preserving our history.

==++++++==

You know that judges are getting uppity and are ignoring the law when they decide they do not have to abide by the Constitution or US Supreme Court decisions because they consider themselves The Law In And Of Themselves. The latest example of that is a Biden appointed federal judge who ignored a Supreme Court ruling regarding Temporary Protected Status terminations.

A Biden-appointed judge completely ignored the Supreme Court ruling from last month which affirmed that the law does not allow for judicial review of these TPS terminations, and blocked DHS trying to end TPS for Ethiopian nationals.

This is the same judge who left ICE agents stranded in Africa last year when he blocked a plane of criminal illegals from being deported to South Sudan.

--snip--

The Supreme court ruled, in the case of Syrian and Haitian nationals, that neither were “entitled to orders postponing the terminations during litigation” because “The TPS statute bars judicial review of non-constitutional claims.”

[U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy of the District of Massachusetts] will most certainly be overruled on appeal.

I have to wonder if he’s a buddy of Judge Boasberg who likes to order aircraft in international airspace to land in the U.S.?

It’s time to let these rogue judges know that they must follow the law, the Constitution, and the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, or be kicked out for violating of their oaths and judicial malfeasance. They cannot create laws by fiat just because they don’t like something.

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has been awesome as has the ice cream, much needed rain will be moving in starting Tuesday, and where Monday should be called “The Day That Shall Not Be Named”.

Small Town Doings

It was one of those small town America things that took place in my home town today.

There was nothing political about it, though there was talk about politics now and then.

It wasn’t something that made news headlines, nor can I think of why something like this would.

What is this “thing” I keep talking about?

Island Cleanup Day.

Every year our town sets aside one Saturday in July so folks from the islands on Lake Winnipesaukee that happen to be in our town can bring junk and stuff to our town docks so our DPW can dispose of it for them.

Items they bring include pieces of lumber left over from a demolition/renovations, an old charcoal or gas grill, old doors and windows, furniture that is either broken or of no more use, box springs and mattresses, bits and pieces of concrete or old bags of concrete mix that have solidified, old kayaks, jon boats, canoes, paddle boards, and even sailboats. (One islander brought in an old small catamaran sailboat, towing it behind his 26 foot runabout.) Sometimes it’s boxes of books, old TVs and radios, water heaters, sump pumps or well pumps, old pipes – both cast iron and copper, electrical cable (including old BX armored cable), and pieces of decking or from their docks. There have also been old lawnmowers, leaf blowers, and weed whackers.

This year the most common item we saw were old slider doors. Dozens of them. Why? I haven’t a clue.

Last year is was storm doors. The year before that it was old windows of the double-hung sash type.

Folks from the DPW as well as volunteers (like me) help unload the islanders’ boats and get the junk to the appropriate 30-yard dumpster or dump truck or trailer for proper disposal.

People get to hob nob, get to know the islanders and the DPW crew and volunteers. It’s something I’ve been volunteering for for over 10 years now and I intend to keep doing so for as long as I can.

I have to say that it was a perfect day for this event as it was sunny with temps in the upper 70’s/lower 80’s, low humidity and a slight breeze. I was glad to see the islanders made the best of this year’s Island Cleanup Day.

While not a town-wide event, it did show a little bit of small town America that so many of us yearn for.

Friday Funny - Hot Flashes

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a gorgeous weekend up here at the lake. Warm, not too humid, a little rain on and off yesterday, and most of the Canadian wildfire smoke diminishing yesterday and gone today. It has been quite breezy, starting sometime early this morning. I really have no complaints weatherwise.

There was another artist from the “Before We Get Too Old Or Die” tour who played at our local venue, that being Bob Dylan. I have no idea how it went or how many people attended. I can say with confidence that it is highly unlikely anyone got arrested at the concert for being too rowdy considering the age of the audience.

I can say that summer is definitely in full swing up this way and so far I am liking it. Yes, the traffic is heavy and the restaurants and attractions are busy, but it doesn’t seem quite as frenetic as I have seen over the past few summers. I wish I could say the same thing about the boat traffic out on the lake as it seems there are more than the usual number of Cap’n Boneheads out there on the weekends. It’s a price we pay for living up here.

==++++++==

I am generally pretty careful with my money. I’m not a Scrooge, but I try not to spend money without a lot of thought going into any purchases and so on.

One of the things I have done to help protect myself is freezing my credit reports, meaning anyone wanting a copy of my credit report from the three credit bureaus – Equifax, Experian, and Transunion – will be rejected because of that freeze. I did that some years ago because of some suspicious activity reported to me by those bureaus. I unfreeze it if I need to allow someone to pull a credit report, something I needed to do recently.

Have you ever put something away in a safe place and then forget where that safe place was? That happened to me, specifically when it came to my login name and password for access to my accounts on those three bureaus. It took a few days of looking before I found them.

You may ask why I had them written down rather than saving them using one of the password managers. There’s two reasons: 1.) I don’t trust them as they are storing the logins and passwords electronically. 2.) If I have a computer meltdown I may not be able to recover them. (I have experienced this already as I had a major computer meltdown a few years ago which is why all of this is stored on a piece of paper, handwritten, and stored “someplace safe”.)

Take this lesson for whatever you will, but that’s why I never save or create a login and password list electronically. I want them fully airgapped. Hence pen and paper. Sometimes old school works best.

==++++++==

I have no doubt the number they are reporting is too low.

250,000 Non-citizens Found Too Be Registered To Vote In Four States.

Considering just how lax some states are when it comes to registering eligible voters, it wouldn’t surprise me if millions of ineligible people are registered to vote here in the US.

From Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin comes this:

"We've identified 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in just four states… We also worked with proactive states to identify 28,000 noncitizens on their voter rolls, PLUS 400,000 individuals that are still registered to vote that are deceased."

Well, we know most dead voters vote for Democrats, a time-honored tradition in Illinois, specifically in the city of Chicago. How many times have we seen lawsuits by the Democrat Party or their mouthpieces to stop the purge of deceased voters from voter rolls? I’ve stopped counting.

It isn’t just non-citizens I have problems with voting, it’s non-residents. My home state – New Hampshire – allows non-resident college students to register to vote here which can (and has) affected elections in this state more than once. It is a loophole in state law that still needs to be addressed by our state legislature despite claims by Democrats that it would violate the students’ right to vote. Changing the law here wouldn’t prevent them from voting, it would just mean they couldn’t vote here. They will still be able to vote in their home state via absentee ballot.

==++++++==

The debate continues about the US remaining on Daylight Saving Time year round. Some are for it (like me). Some are against it. Some just want to stop having to change clocks twice a year and spend a week or two after the change dealing with the effects.

There's a bill sitting in Congress right now that could end the twice-yearly ritual of changing the clocks and keep us on daylight saving time. The strangest thing about it is that Democrats and Republicans actually agree on something. I’m almost shocked that Democrats haven’t come out to say that not changing clocks is racist or transphobic or something. But the bill passed with strong bipartisan support, the White House is on board, and after years of talking about this, it may actually happen.

But first it has to make it through the Senate and I don’t have much hope there. I figure someone there will make the point in the quote above that not changing the clocks is “racist” or is a “display of white supremacy” or misogynist or fattening or something.

As I have stated elsewhere, I am in favor of it because I live on the extreme eastern edge of the Eastern Time Zone. If you look at a Time Zone map for North America you will see that the Eastern Time Zone in the US is the widest one in the Lower 48 states, with New England being at the extreme eastern edge. I would rather see some sunlight later in the afternoon during the depths of winter rather than starting work in the dark and ending my work day in the dark. Folks at the western edge of the time zone would probably want to remain on Standard Time year round. Those in the middle of the time zone are probably of two minds about it.

One commenter brought up one of the arguments against the time change:

Us geezers may remember when the government tried permanent daylight savings time during the early 1970s energy crisis. Kids going to school in the dark did not work.

Another countered it with this:

Except it does in the northern latitudes both here and in Northern Europe and Scandinavia.

School districts can adjust their class schedules if the parents want them to.

I think that last was something that was overlooked when President Nixon order DST to remain in place all year as an energy saving measure. There wasn’t enough planning or thought put into the temporary measure. I can see pushing back the start and ending times for school, particularly for the elementary school children. In the depths of winter we do have some kids having to catch the bus in the dark and we haven’t seen any issues with that. Why would it be any different if we stayed on DST year round, at least up this way?

Both my state and neighboring Maine have talked about making the change to DST year round or switching to the Atlantic Time Zone and remaining in Standard Time year round. I do know that if we stated on Eastern Standard Time year round we’d be seeing sunrise at around 4AM during the summer. Thanks, but no thanks.

==++++++==

If anything, I think he’s underestimating the figure>

RFK Jr.: Medicaid Theft Costs $100 Billion a Year

Add into that SNAP fraud, CHiP fraud, Social Security fraud, and a few others and we’re probably talking closer to $500 billion a year.

We already know about the billion or so tax dollars being lost to non-existent child-care and “Learing Centers”.

==++++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather is nice again, the summerfolk are spending their money, and where the prospect of Monday’s return doesn’t seem quite as awful as usual.