However, this morning did bring a nice sunrise with a cloudless blue sky and the fall foliage at peak with the full range of reds, oranges, and yellows among the greens of the pines and some of the ‘slow’ deciduous trees. I have been sending pictures of the fall foliage colors around New Hampshire to friends and colleagues in the UK and South Carolina. More than a couple thought they had been edited for more color saturation, but they weren’t.
Unfortunately, from here on the colors will start to dull and the leaves will start falling in greater numbers going forward. It also means cleaning out the gutters along the front of The Gulch in order to make sure they don’t get clogged with leaves. The gutters at the rear of The Gulch all have leaf guards installed since they are unreachable by any of the ladders I own. At least the gutters on the front only require a step ladder to reach them.
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Sorry, but I believe that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, to borrow an old phrase. To what am I referring?
Obama, Whose Own IRS Targeted the Right, Clutches Pearls Over Ilhan Omar Raid and Wow, That Was DUMB
Barack Obama just posted a lengthy defense of Ilhan Omar, solemnly lecturing the country about how the government must never selectively target people for their political beliefs.So it’s only the Democrats that can do what Obama did to Republicans but when one of their own is investigated it’s somehow wrong? Really?
--snip--
Can't help but notice he omitted the part where his own administration used the full weight of the intelligence agencies and Justice Department to spy on Donald Trump’s campaign and push a fabricated Russia collusion narrative that consumed years of American politics. The same man who green-lit the Crossfire Hurricane operation and watched the FBI cook the Steele dossier into something resembling an investigation now wants everyone to clutch their pearls over questions about whether Omar was actually 18 when her father naturalized.
Yeah. Right.
FLASHBACK: Obama’s IRS singled out Tea Party and other conservative groups for heightened scrutiny based on their names and political positions, delayed tax-exempt applications for years and demanded unnecessary donor information. The IRS ultimately admitted wrongdoing and apologized. Obama insisted there was “not even a smidgen of corruption.”
— Will Ricciardella (@WillRicci) October 18, 2026
‘Nuff said.
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From the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department comes this winner:
Rutgers Scholar Opposes Integrated Churches Because Black People May Vote Republican
Oh my Goodness! Black people voting Republican?! This just can’t be!!!
Black people should mainly attend churches with just other black people so that they keep voting Democrat, according to a Rutgers University professor.It’s obvious to me that Professor Cobb hasn’t bothered looking at history to see how the Democrat party no longer represents the working man and is still the party of racism, more specifically the party of the “soft racism” of lowered expectations and the belief that Blacks, Hispanics, and other racial/ethnic groups can’t possibly advance without their guiding hand. Far too often that “guiding hand” is used more to hold them back rather than help them advance. After all, if they do advance they may find that they don’t need the Democrat Party or its demeaning and totalitarian viewpoints and policies. Heaven forbid that Blacks ‘leave the plantation’ without their political leaders’ permission.
Professor Ryon Cobb argues “while 84% of Black adults identify as Democrat or lean Democratic, that number hides what congregational diversity costs Black politics.”
“Among Black nondenominational Protestants, that figure drops to nearly 60%, with one in three calling themselves independents,” Cobb wrote in an essay for the Brookings Institution.
Cobb, an “inclusive excellence in research” scholar considers it a “loss” when black people vote Republican.
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Tell us something we don’t already know.
Blue States Have Highest Electricity, Gas, And Taxes Across The Board
We are now less than a month out from the mid-term elections, and the single biggest theme that the Democrats have chosen to run on appears to be “affordability.”My home state is what some people consider a ‘purple’ state despite having a Republican governor, a Republican majority state House, a Republican super-majority in the state Senate and Executive council. Our Congressional slate is made up of Democrats, two in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate. (It is one of the ‘weird’ things about New Hampshire.)
How can this possibly be? We live in the age of immediate availability of information, let alone artificial intelligence to track down anything that might previously have been challenging to find. If you want a state-by-state comparison of costs for any particular thing, you can get it in a fraction of a second. The results are in: the Democrat-run states are less “affordable.”
The Democrats and Republicans propose opposite strategies for dealing with the economy. The Democrats advocate for higher government spending, higher taxes, and more regulation of business; and the Republicans advocate for lower spending, lower taxes, and less regulation of business. The states are the “laboratories of democracy,” where we get to see the consequences of disparate policies play out, and to evaluate the results. Neither party is perfect in implementing what it advocates, so there are always some complexities. But in the main it is easy to collect data that give a relatively clear picture of the results of Democrat versus Republican policies.
We do have problems with high energy prices, much of which of the blame can be laid at the feet of the governor of the state directly south of New Hampshire, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, who made sure we would suffer a deficit of natural gas by blocking not one, but two different natural gas pipelines that would have brought abundant (and cheap) natural gas into New England from Pennsylvania. (By cheap, I mean US natural gas rather than the natural gas New England has to import from foreign countries at world market prices rather than domestic prices. The problem is that even with these foreign imports demand is outstripping the supply.) That certainly drives up both heating and electricity prices.
One thing we do not have that is a good thing are lots of taxes. We have no income tax. We have no sales tax. We have lowered business which actually resulted in an increase of revenues. Yes, we have high property taxes, but when one looks at the overall burden from state and local taxes are some of the lowest in the country ranking either 48th or 49th as it seems to vary a little from year to year. We have more people (and businesses) moving here.
Is it perfect here? Oh, heck no. It’s not even close. But as compared to the other states here in New England, all Blue states, we’ve got it good. As compared to Blue states elsewhere line New York, California, New Jersey, Illinois, and others, we’re golden.
Now if we could just solve the housing prices problem around here…
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This next item is near and dear to my heart, that being LED headlights and just how awful they are. I certainly have a great dislike for them because they are just too damn bright and blinding. I do have so-called ‘night driving’ glasses which have yellow lenses which help cut down the glare, but they aren’t perfect.
The reason they are so awful? The inaction by U.S. Government to fix the problem. But it looks like the Feds are finally catching up with the rest of the world when it comes to making the use of LED headlights far less problematic.
While this change won’t fix the problem of those vehicles already on the road with ‘awful’ LED headlights, it will help solve the problem going forward...but only if they allow the needed changes.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the foliage colors are brilliant, the weather has been a bit cooler, and where Monday is coming around all to soon.