Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a cloudy and cool day here at the lake. Things have been pretty low key today with our two most important things today being attending church and having a visit from my Dear Brother and his missus. About the only other thing the WP Mom and I did today was watch the New England Patriots play the Las Vegas Raiders down in Foxborough. The rest of the day was taken up with a little TV, some YouTube videos, and some reading. And seeing that I have Monday off I will likely be busy as all get out doing things I would likely have gotten done today.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, plans for pulling the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water are being made. I expect it will be safely ensconced at The Farm (the official name of BeezleBub’s new home) long enough to be cleaned up and all of the boating gear pulled out and stored away. Then it will make its way to the boatyard for winterization and shrink-wrapping before returning to The Farm for the winter.

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You would think that after all these years we would know how to bathe, and more specifically, how to take a shower. Apparently that is not always the case.

Turns Out There Really Is a Right Way to Shower

I am one of those adults who much prefers showers to taking a bath. Mostly, it has to do with the fact that it takes a lot less time to take a shower than to take a bath. I can generally perform all of the showering “tasks” in less than 10 minutes including turning it on, stepping into the shower, cleaning myself, shutting off the shower, and drying myself.

I am not going to delve into all of the recommended steps and how they should be performed, but I will say that I have been doing them for most of my life. But I am going to mention one that I didn’t expect:

Showering thrice a week is optimal, but seven times is the limit to avoid stripping skin of essential oils.

I will admit that I do not shower every day. I do skip a day now and then, so I’ll shower four, five or six times a week. Most of that depends upon the time of year as I may shower less often over the winter. However, when I was doing heavy physical labor back in my youth I showered every day, usually after work.

Every time I think there’s nothing new to learn, I find I’m wrong.

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The Winter Is Coming! The Winter Is Coming!

Yes, I know we’ve not even made it through the first month of autumn, but we do need to start thinking about the coming winter. Winter up here in New England can be harsh with lots of snow, sleet, freezing rain along with sub-zero temperatures and high winds that can cause problems with power outages and wind chill factors that are well below zero.

However, it seems that 19 states may be seeing heavy “snow blasts” this coming winter.

A recent long-range forecast model from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revealed a massive shift in the bands of heavy precipitation between December 2026 and February 2027.

That map shows a growing chance that the entire US East Coast will see above-average precipitation this winter, from southern Maine to the tip of Florida and stretching across the country into Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas as well.

On the West Coast, California is also expected to see above-average precipitation this winter, which likely means feet of snow in the Sierra-Nevada mountains and other high-altitude areas out west.

I remember more than a few winters with heavy snows. One of them was when I still resided at The Manse where one winter we saw 150 inches of snowfall. We usually see an average of 60 inches. In any case I think we’ll be okay as we’re used to severe winters around here. The only concessions I will make will be ensuring I have enough propane on hand for the Official Weekend Pundit Portable Generator to operate for 5 days straight, dig out my tire chains in case I need them for the trusty RAM 1500 pickup, and make sure the winter emergency kit is checked and stored in the pickup as well.

Other than that I doubt I will need to make any additional changes to the usual winter preparations.

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When I first heard about this, I wondered if they had the age of the schoolchild involved wrong. But it turns out it was correct and it is disturbing to no end.

The Six-Year Old Psychopath

You may have come across this video of a 6-year-old who shot and almost killed his teacher:

🚨 A 6-year-old shot his teacher. Richneck Elementary, Jan 6, 2023. Court unsealed Officer Brian Torrez's bodycam Oct 6, 2026. 🎥 The Virginian-Pilot / Daily Press https://t.co/TPphaycltx

— Patriot (@_Patriot1776Q_) October 7, 2026

--snip--

It seems this child was already lost at the age of 6. Can a child who clearly has been exposed to terrible parenting be saved if rescued at that age? I would say it depends. It depends on whether he’s a psychopath. Let’s just say I wouldn’t want him mainstreamed. But what to do with a child who’s already shown such a propensity for evil?

Listening to how this child acted and how he spoke he sounded more like a hardened street thug rather than a six-year old. It begs the question whether or not this is something he hears and sees at home. If so, it seems he’s been learning the wrong things. If not, then it has to be determined if the child is a murderous psychopath. Either way, this is scary.

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This is another thing I had to read more than once to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood what it said. What is “this”?

The City by the bay admitting it f**ked up?

You see what I mean?

Did you know the Mayor of San Fransisco is a jewish son of a Rabbi Democrat Capitalist? Yeah try and string that sentence together in another context. Anyway, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie blamed the city’s progressive politics for fueling its homelessness, drug overdose and business exodus crises, admitting in a new interview that the city had “lost its way.”

Lurie, who has made restoring San Francisco’s battered public image a priority since taking office, told CNN’s Dana Bash that his administration is taking a more hard-nosed approach to crime while working to make the city friendlier to businesses. But Bash pressed the mayor on why San Francisco needed a turnaround in the first place - prompting a blunt admission about the city’s far-left reputation.

“We lost our way as a city. We were focused on the wrong things and today we’re focused on common sense,” he said. “I mean, we got so, entrapped in our progressive values and talking about progressivism that, we weren’t taking stock of what was happening on our streets,” he added.

If Lurie is serious it may be possible that San Francisco can be saved from itself. If he can change the focus of San Francisco government and political policies in favor of “things that work” rather than those Progressive things that sound good but don’t work, there may be hope for the City By The Bay.

It’s been years since I was in San Francisco, the last time I was there being 1996. Back then things weren’t all that crazy and SF was one of the places to be. However, over the past 30 years it has deteriorated to a place most folks don’t want to visit, businesses and residents have been leaving, and nothing seems to work anymore. (Two friends of mine who escaped from San Francisco years ago for the freedom of New Hampshire stopped going back there to visit friends and family because it was too depressing to see the city where they were born and raised turned into a Third World s**thole. They took to the New Hampshire way of doing things not too long after they arrived here.)

Of course, the mayor will have to fight the Leftist establishment and the Progressive lock on California’s state government to make progress, but who knows what will happen at the November elections. Maybe California could end up with a Republican governor.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the foliage colors are approaching peak, the weather is cooperating, and where I won’t have to deal with Monday this week...

Random Thoughts While Out And About

I took a ride around some of the local towns with my 92-year old mother, something she asked to do to “just get out of the house for a while.” It was certainly a nice day for it with blue skies, some wind here and there and cool temperatures. All in all, it was a great day for taking a ride.

While it is fall the fall foliage colors are still developing here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire and probably won’t be at peak for another week. However, that didn’t diminish what foliage we did see with a lot of reds and yellows mixed among the leaves that are still green. Traffic wasn’t all that bad, particularly once we got off the main roads and onto the back roads that still got us where we were headed even though they were a more roundabout way of getting where we were going.

Like the main roads, the back roads were festooned with campaign posters for state offices in the legislature – the House, Senate, Executive Council, and Governor – and federal offices – two House seats and one Senate seat, all of which will be voted on this coming November 3rd. (I have to admit that the TV ads have reached the point where I no longer hear or see them as it’s the same campaign rhetoric over and over and over again, ad nauseum.)

There were plenty of leaf peepers out and about. (Leaf peepers are what we call foliage tourists up this way.) Unlike the summer tourist, most of these folks are well behaved and cordial. They want to drive around and look at the landscapes bright with reds, oranges, and yellows of the leaves. Certainly the local restaurants and hotels are loving the influx of tourists. Though not quite to the level we see in the summer, there are more than few up here in the Lakes Region and large quantities of them up the White Mountains and North Country where the foliage is at peak.

I have been considering pulling the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water sometime over this coming week. The weather is expected to be rather nice and will give me time to remove all of the boat gear and give the boat a good cleaning before I have it winterized and shrink-wrapped for the winter. There are still a lot of boats in the water from what I’ve seen at the local marinas, but not for much longer.

One thing I did notice during our trip around the area – gas prices have fallen a bit more. Towards the end of our trip today I stopped by my go-to gas station and filled up the gas tank of the WP Mom’s car and paid $4.06 per gallon. That’s down 5 cents from last Wednesday.

I did have to put on the heat here at The Gulch the other morning to take the chill off the inside. Not that I needed to leave it on for very long, but it had reached the low 40’s outside overnight and the heat was on just long enough to get the temp inside up to 69ºF. It took less than 15 minutes and then I shut the heat off. I will have to do that every now and then until we get into the consistently colder weather.

And so it goes.

Friday Funny - And They Say We Don't Listen

Thoughts On A Sunday

There have been two big events for the WP family that have taken place over the past few days. The first?

On Wednesday BeezleBub closed on the farmhouse he bought here in town.

The second?

It was 21 years ago yesterday when I adopted BeezleBub as my son. It was one of the best days of my life and I am very happy that I’ve been able to be his dad.

Today was the day that BeezleBub picked up the trailer for the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout from the boatyard. It will reside at his new house until we pull the boat from the water in a couple of weeks and it makes the trip to the boatyard for winterization and shrink wrapping. Then it will return to BeezleBub’s to be stored for the winter.

A lot of boats have already been pulled from the water as can be attested to by empty slips and a lot of boats on trailers waiting at marinas and boatyards fro winterization and storage. However, there is still plenty of boating activity seen on the lake. From prior experience it is likely lake area residents enjoying the lake and the coming foliage colors without having to worry about summerfolk being out on the lake, too.

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I saw this over at Instapundit 10 days ago and it took me a while believe that it wasn’t a joke. Kamala Harris is really that clueless.

@LeadingReport https://t.co/dgHWny6Ljo

— Bored Certified (@Bored_Certified) September 23, 2026

To quote the late great Kevin Samuels, “You can’t make this s*** up!”

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I’ve been having discussions with folks about high gas prices and many of them are surprised when I tell them prices were higher about 4 years ago. They didn’t believe me. I showed them a picture on my phone taken at a gas station in my area from about 4 years ago showing the prices or Regular gas and diesel and they saw that the prices back then were indeed higher. (I wish I could post pictures here on Blogger, but I still can’t as something is still broken and Blogger has been absolutely no help in fixing the problem. However, I can embed posts from ‘X’.)

This is something I also saw on Instapundit recently and it addresses some of the gas price issues.

Wow I can't believe Diesel is over $9/gallon Wait nevermind this was 2022 under Biden https://t.co/YzxSsFjeaN

— RightWI (@RightWI1776) September 19, 2026

Yes, this is California and prices still aren’t as high today as they were 4 years ago despite its efforts to make sure it will be a dwindling supply over time.

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From the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department comes this little gem:

White Paint is Racist

My first thought was somebody must be off their meds or has escaped from a mental institution. But this appears not to be the case as Associate Professor Wendy S. Walters at Columbia University has actually written about this.

According to Professor Walters, there are “black transwomen murdered with alarming targeted frequency”. When she saw the walls of her children’s school, she felt “apprehension” and wrote, “I could not stop thinking about the walls. I said to myself: They are so very white.…”

Oh The Horror!

A less sensitive person might assume that white is the most reflective color and painting walls white maximizes the effectiveness of natural and artificial light. But that person is probably a white racist who drinks milk, lives in a house with white walls and has never even thought about the targeted campaign of mass murder against “black transwomen” by Sherwin-Williams.

What gets me the most is that other people are taking her seriously. Really? White paint is racist? This is effin’ ridiculous.

It’s getting to the point where everything is racist. But if that’s the case, then that means that nothing is racist, right? The folks that believe this tripe need to give it a rest because this has slid from the sublime to totally and inequivocally insane.

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It seems Hollywood is about to prove that they’ve lost their ‘mojo’ if what I’ve heard about Tom Cruise’s latest movie is true.

Tom Cruise’s Global Warming Propaganda ‘Digger’ About to Lose $100+ Million

Based on several reviews, even from leftist critics, Tom Cruise’s Digger is a shrill, unsubtle, 129-minute attack on those of us who dare to use oil to better our lives.

And it’s about to lose a fortune.

--snip==

“Endless speeches, most involving the horrors of Climate Change and how dern evil oil is. Cruise’s Digger gets an extended close-up where he rants, raves and reveals the truth about oil and culture,” warns Christian Toto. “We need it. We crave it. We’ll risk everything to burn it. So this is all our fault.”

“Digger is bloated, dull, obvious, utterly lacking in self-awareness and, yes, exhausting. Would you want to spend two hours with grown men screaming at the top of their lungs?” Toto asked.

Yet another ‘message’ movie that no one wants. Hollywood has indeed forgotten the lesson from the late 60’s to mid-70’s, that lesson being “No one wants ‘message’ movies. If people want to be preached to they’ll go to church.” Moviegoers avoided those movies like the plague. Studios lost money. Studios stopped making ‘message’ movies and started making movies that people wanted to watch again.

I just have to wonder if what’s left of Hollywood will learn that lesson again in time to save themselves. If I had to guess, and I do, I’m going to predict that they won’t.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the leaves are turning color, die-hard boaters are still out on the lake, and where Monday is showing up prematurely.

Educational Spending In New Hampshire - Who's Keeping An Eye On The Ledgers?

While the topic upon which I am pontificating about tonight is more New Hampshire-centric than it might otherwise be, I think it has some relevance in other states, too. To what am I referring?

Education funding.

I will not be getting into the bits and pieces about how it is handled in New Hampshire as there is already debate enough about it going on and there is one ballot question related to it that will be addressed during the election in November>

Instead, I have some questions for the school systems in New Hampshire that had some pretty large budget deficits over the past school year. One community, Claremont, has a $5 million deficit. Concord’s school budget deficit was almost $17 million back in February of this year. Yet another town, Milton, is also reporting that it has a $2.5 million school budget deficit.

Just what the heck is going on in these communities that is causing such large deficits? Haven’t there been any audits that show where the money has gone? When an audit of Windham’s school was performed a while back it showed all kinds of vulnerabilities which could lead to misspent funds. I have to ask just how often such audits are performed in our towns and by whom? My town’s school budget is around $32 million for the present school year. I’d like to make sure it is being spent properly and that we aren’t overpaying on some line items. I’d also like to see whether what are normally “Nice To Have’s” haven’t been morphed into “Need To Haves” when they really aren’t. That goes for our municipal budget as well.

Considering that the school budget in most towns ans cities are between 60% and 70% of all municipal spending, ensuring the spending of those funds is being handled properly is paramount.

Friday Funny - Dirty Old Lady

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a rainy and windy weekend up here at the lake. We’re at the northern edge of the Nor’easter that made its way up the Atlantic seaboard over the past couple of days. We haven’t had to deal with the heavy rains and wind being seen along the seacoast, but we are seeing some rain. The winds aren’t nearly as strong as seen elsewhere but there have been a few power outages due to the winds knocking down trees and tree limbs here and there.

If we’re lucky we’ll see about 1.5 inches of total rainfall here by the time this Nor’easter wraps up sometime tomorrow. Goodness knows we have certainly needed it.

At least once this Nor’easter has departed we’ll be seeing warmer temperatures.

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Just when I thought those running my alma mater couldn’t get any stupider they prove me wrong. What’s it doing that has me making this declaration?

The University of Connecticut will be holding three sex toy workshops this fall.

My first thought was that was an article from the Babylon Bee because it must be satire. But it’s the real deal.

The University of Connecticut (UConn) in Storrs will hold three workshops on Oct. 6, Oct. 22, and Nov. 16 where students can handle demonstration versions of sex toys, including vibrators and plugs.

The events, titled “Good Vibrations: A Pleasure Pop-Up Workshop,” will be led by the “Sexperts” student group and are being advertised by the university’s Student Health and Wellness.

Really? Is this something that really needs to be taught? Are student activity funds being used to pay for this?

This is the same university that wanted to bring back segregated dorms at the request of minority students but decided not to go forward when both the state and federal government reminded them that segregated housing was illegal and could mean the loss of both state and federal funds.

If I went back in time and visited the Storrs campus in 1978 and told the students, faculty, and staff that this would be happening in the future, I doubt anyone would believe me.

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By way of the comments to this Instapundit post – Why Are Heterosexual Women Attracted To Each Other – comes this comment that almost had me spewing coffee on my monitor:

As the joke (?) goes, “All women are bi. It’s up to you to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”

‘Nuff said.

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Anyone paying attention knows this was coming.

Trump Ends Joe Biden’s Electric Vehicle Mandate.

It’s about time. Such a mandate may have sounded good, but it wasn’t realistic for a number of reasons. Two that came to mind when I first head of it were these:

Where were we going to find the materials needed to manufacture the number of batteries that would be needed?

Where were we going to get the electricity needed to charge all of those EVs?

To address the second question first, I (and others) figured it would require a doubling of the electrical grid capacity in the US to meet the demand. Anyone understanding how long it can take to expand grid and generation capacity knew that wasn’t going to happen. It didn’t help that a lot of the focus on new generation capacity in general was on renewables, something we have come to see isn’t workable. We have an endless number of examples showing renewables aren’t nearly as effective as claimed and are a lot more expensive per megawatt-hour than some of the more traditional generating technology. (I know from the options we have here in New Hampshire for electrical suppliers - not to be confused with the electrical utility companies that provide the transmission grids - the higher the percentage of renewables we select should we desire, the higher the price we pay for the electricity.)

As to first question, considering the materials needed to make the present generation of EV batteries, in this case lithium-ion batteries, both the cost and the means of obtaining some of the needed materials are too high.

Removal of the mandate is a move in the right direction. Let the market decide. If EVs are viable, let the market decide that question, not the government.

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Could the Governor’s office in Oregon flip from blue to red in November?

According to some of the latest polls the GOP challenger Kristine Drazen is polling 2% over the incumbent governor, Democrat Tina Kotek.

Two percent is within the margin of error for most polls. Seeing that the election is still over a month away that lead may not last long...or it could widen as more Oregon voters decide they’re tired of Kotek’s leadership.

Only time will tell.

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It appears the Governor Kotek isn’t the only one who may have a reason to worry about the November election. Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazer (FL-27) released a campaign ad that has been receiving quite a bit of backlash.

On September 17th, Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27) released a campaign ad in both English and Spanish in which she lectured President Donald Trump about immigration policy while standing in front of the White House.

In it, she suggested that some of his “immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” pointing to ICE data she claimed showed that 50% of detainees apprehended in July “had no criminal convictions or pending charges.”

“Be careful what your advisors are telling you on immigration policy,” she went on to warn, adding that “the same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”

Towards the end of the clip, Salazar stressed that she wasn’t “talking about giving them amnesty. I’m talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land, and only you can do that.”

--snip--

Salazar is facing a tough reelection fight in a midterm election year. The Cook Political Report noted that “though Salazar has a history of overperforming the top of the ticket, Trump’s sinking approval rating in South Florida will be an anchor on the congresswoman.” On September 25th, it changed its race rating for the district from Likely R to Lean R.

One has to wonder what the heck she was thinking. Her claim that Hispanics who help Trump gain the White House are feeling betrayed seems to go against polls and studies that show no such disatisfaction.

Again, only time will tell.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the wind and the rain have yet to depart, preparations are being made to pull the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water, and where Monday is yet again harshing our weekend mellow.

The Rhetoric Is Cranking Up

Watching the multitude of campaign ads on TV, Letters To The Editor in our local paper, posts on blogs and on Facebook, it is easy to see the political rhetoric has been cranked up to ‘11’. There’s a lot of opinion out there about various candidates or government policies and so on. There are plenty of reasoned opinions on both sides and well as wholly delusional and ignorant opinions, too.

However, one topic that has been very hot, specifically on Facebook, has been something I wouldn’t have expected, something that crosses political lines as those on opposite sides of this issue does not fall along political lines. What issue am I talking about?

Daylight Saving Time.

There has been a running debate between people who want to remain on DST year round and those who want to remain on Standard Time.

I have been passionate about wanting to remain on DST or , if not possible, switching New Hampshire (and Maine) to the Atlantic Time Zone. Then I would be quite happy to remain on Standard Time.

As I have mentioned now and then, here and there, I think the support for remaining on DST is probably heaviest for those who are on the eastern edge of the four time zones in the Lower 48. This also implies that support for remaining of Standard Time is probably heaviest from those who live on the western edge of the four time zones.

I dislike the idea of remaining on Standard Time over the summer because that means sunrise will be taking place at just after 4AM here at Lake Winnipesaukee on the first day of summer. Thanks, but no thanks. Sunset will be at 7:30PM. On the first day of winter sunrise will be at a little after 7AM and sunset will be at a little past 4PM. (Both of these times are a little misleading because with the hills and mountains around the lake, sunrise and sunset is a little later or earlier, respectively. Here at The Gulch the sun disappears behind the surrounding hills at between 2:30PM and 3:30PM during winter months.)

I know I would much prefer to have light in the afternoon rather than the morning over the winter months. Those against the idea of DST year round keep bringing up the issue of kids having to go to school in the dark. During the depths of winter, quite a few of our school kids do that anyways because they have to catch a school bus at a little after 6AM which means they are going to school in the dark. It seems to me that in a lot of places kids are going to school in the dark, particularly places that even farther north than New Hampshire and Maine and they don’t seem to have problems doing so. Another solution is to start school later in the morning, something that a number of groups have been advocating for, specifically for teenagers as their circadian rhythms are off and they do better with a later starting time.

A number of states have already passed legislation to remain on DST year round, neighboring Maine being one of them.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out going forward. One thing that both the pro- and anti-year round DST folks do have in common is they both hate having to change their clocks twice a year and deal with the aftereffects of doing so. Count me as of those folks.

Friday Funny - Abandoning My Family

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a cool weekend here at the lake and rainy today on top of it. Of course ‘cool’ is a relative term. In this case it’s meant high temps in the 60’s (Saturday) and in the 50’s today. Overnight lows have been in the 40’s. And it’s not even officially Fall yet. We have also been seeing some of the trees starting to change color. Generally the first trees to change tend to be the swamp maples followed a couple of weeks later the other tree species.

We’ve barely recovered from summer and now we’re having to get ready for foliage season. A lot of the ‘leaf peepers’ will be heading up north of the lake into the White Mountains and the North Country as the foliage there is ahead of what we’ll be seeing here by a a couple of weeks or so. The leaf peepers will follow the colors as they make their way south through New Hampshire and Vermont and into Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

The leaf peepers are a different crowd as compared to the summerfolk being as they aren’t nearly as numerous and are from more diverse locations, with quite a few visiting from foreign countries. For the most part they won’t be flooding our roads, hotels, and restaurants to the level seen when the summerfolk are around and the won’t be here nearly as long, either.

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Why doesn’t this surprise me in the least?

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

— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) August 15, 2026

I remember when these were pretty much normal across all political and socioeconomic classes. And it wasn’t all that long ago.

Some of the follow on responses delve into that, too.

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Uh-oh. It seems that San Francisco has reached another tipping point.

It seems that robbers and thieves have announced they are going to be leaving the city because they’re running out of things to steal.

You know it’s bad when even the criminal element is leaving because of the effects of decades of bad government by California Democrats. Is Los Angeles next? It seems so as it appears Hollywood is packing up and leaving.

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I find this hilarious if for no other reason that I’ve been thinking this for some time.

Zero Hurricanes Formed By Peak 2026 Season.

I have been seeing claim after claim after claim that this lack of Atlantic hurricanes so far this year as all the fault of climate change. But, weren’t these the same folks claiming that climate change was going cause more hurricanes, with most of them being more destructive?

A former climate reporter said she deliberately avoided covering positive weather developments because doing so would have complicated the narrative that climate change posed an existential threat.

“When I was a climate reporter, I never covered positive climate stories because it would ‘muddy the narrative’ that climate change was an existential threat,” Lucy Biggers wrote Tuesday on X. “No one told me to behave this way. I chose to do this of my own volition.”

Biggers, who now works for The Free Press, pointed to the historically quiet 2026 Atlantic hurricane season as an example of the type of story she believes climate reporters may be reluctant to highlight.

“I think this is why we rarely see events like this year’s historically quiet eastern hurricane season covered widely by the news,” Biggers wrote. “Many reporters believe covering it will ‘give fodder to climate change deniers.’”

Yup. Can’t have any reports getting out that go against The Narrative that climate change is going to kill us all and that it’s All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans.

That much of the lack of Atlantic hurricanes can be laid at the feet of this year’s ‘Super’ El Niño is being ignored by the climate change faithful.

Meteorologists have largely blamed the unusually quiet season on a powerful El Niño, a climate pattern marked by an unusual warming of the Pacific Ocean’s surface temperatures. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said El Niño increases vertical wind shear over the tropical Atlantic, making it harder for hurricanes to form and organize.

I wish I could remember where I saw the following, but I did see an article that dove into the whole “Carbon dioxide concentration increase will destroy us” claim and finding the experiments that correlated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration with rises in global temperatures were flawed, not because anyone was trying to deceive anyone, but because the experiments only looked at one aspect of the effects of carbon dioxide – radiative heating – but ignored convective heating which counteracts a good portion of the radiative heating. Recent follow-on experiments show the atmosphere isn’t nearly as sensitive to carbon dioxide concentrations as was once believed.

In the mean time, I am going to enjoy what I hope will be a relatively quiet Atlantic Hurricane season which ends on November 30th.

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I’m sure just about everyone has been hearing the ongoing saga of the Lindsay Clancy case and particularly the revelations that have come from interviews with jurors which may end up with some of them being brought up on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. One YouTuber, a fellow I watch to from time to time, delved into this with the subtlety of a semi crashing the front of a toy store.


Do I agree with everything Dan brings up? For the most part, yes. And if I disagree it’s a matter of degree and not magnitude.

One thing he brings up is a question he asks right at the beginning of the video, that being “Were they actually looking for justice or were they looking for an excuse?” Listening to some of these jurors it seems they weren’t going to convict her no matter what. The had their minds made up before the trial even began. They were not impartial by any measure. They also seem to forget why Lindsay Clancy was on trial – she murdered her three children by strangling them to death. No one denies that, including her defense attorney. But these jurors, with one brave exception, chose to make this about her and not about her children.

I hope they decide to try her again, maybe with a change of venue to one of the rural counties in central or western Massachusets where this nonsense is nowhere near as prevalent. And this time voir dire has to be harsh and unforgiving to weed out the bias seen in the jurors of the first trial.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where it’s presently raining to beat the band, the weekend traffic was light, and where Monday is returning again all too soon.

They Just Don't Get It

After 70 years on this earth, I wish I could say that I not am surprised by the number of people, particularly those in government, that appear to have no understanding of economics. I’m not talking specifically about the various theories of economics like those of Adam Smith or of Marx and Engels or others. I am talking about basic economics such as bottom up free markets versus cronyism versus top down planned economics. Goodness knows we’ve seen more than enough examples of each throughout the past couple of millennia.

Free market economics such as those put forth by Smith have seemed to work pretty well, though like any system it isn’t perfect. We’ve seen the ‘socialist’ economics as outlined by Marx et al tried again and again and seen them fail...again and again. We’ve seen cronyism, often mislabeled “crony capitalism” even though it is an economic system in and of itself and can be seen as a parasitic entity in every economic system. (Yes, there is also “crony socialism”. Goodness knows we’ve seen it in a number of socialist and communist countries.)

But I am not specifically address those systems per se. Instead, I am addressing some of the street level economics that most people do not or will not understand. They don’t understand how the costs of everyday items is determined, what factors can affect costs and in their turn the prices everyone pays.
They don’t understand how taxes can affect an economy.

They don’t understand how regulations, be they economic or environmental, can affect prices across the board for the worst or the better.

They don’t know how prices are determined, how both demand and supply works and affects prices.

They don’t understand how government mandates can damage or cripple an economy, or how those who put those mandates in place don’t understand the effects of them either.

Too many people have no idea how money ‘works’, meaning they haven’t a clue about things like wealth or poverty. My biggest gripe is that so many people seem think the wealthy are just sitting on piles of cash stacked up in their basement, said cash just gathering dust. They don’t understand that cash is working by ways of investments – stocks and bonds – or venture capital to fund new businesses, and business loans or mortgages or auto loans and so on. They have no idea that diverting the working capital to fund someone’s dream government program can have a negative effect on the economy if it goes too far. (We passed that point a few generations ago which is why the US is $44 trillion in debt.)

None of this is a diatribe to say how gawdawful our economic system is. It’s about people’s absolute ignorance about how thing actually work and because of that ignorance they’re willing to believe the silliest and most unworkable economic theories even with all of the historical evidence of what works and what doesn’t.

Seeing what we’re hearing during the run up to mid-term elections in November has me worried to too many of the electorate will buy the ignorant BS put forward by one party as a solution to all of our problems despite hundreds of years of historical data showing they don’t really understand economics.

Friday Funny - Google Knows Everything

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.

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

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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’.

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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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I have asked this question, too.



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

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.