Thoughts On A Sunday

This was a fifty-fifty weekend, with cold temperatures on Saturday and warm ones today. Not that I'm complaining, but I almost wish the order had been reversed because most of my outdoor activities were yesterday.

One thing that took place yesterday was the 25th Annual New Hampshire Pumpkin Festival which, for the first time, took place in the city of Laconia. In previous years the festival took place in southwestern New Hampshire in the city of Keene, but the riot in one of the local state college's off-campus housing areas not far from where the festival took place caused Keene's city council to not license the festival for 2015, hence the move.

There were a few glitches at last night's festival, but minor in nature and to be expected for the first one held there. That Laconia has plenty of experience in handling large events, specifically the annual Motorcycle Week held in June, made organizing for the Pumpkin Festival easy in comparison.

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Zero Hedge has a post that tells us how to stamp out cultural Marxism in a single generation.

There are very few legitimate cultural divisions in the world. Most of them are arbitrarily created, not only by political and financial elites, but also by the useful idiots and mindless acolytes infesting the sullied halls of academia.

It is perhaps no mistake that cultural Marxists in the form of "social justice warriors", PC busybodies and feminists tend to create artificial divisions between people and “classes” while attacking and homogenizing very real and natural divisions between individuals based on biological reality and inherent genetic and psychological ability.

We've certainly seen that done by the present occupant of the White House, saying one thing - “I'm a uniter, not a divider” - while doing everything possible to create rifts within our society which he then exploits to justify more draconian measures, usually by fiat rather than legislation.

It's time to stop the madness.

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Gee, could it be the changes we see in climate has more to do with the sun, specifically the Gleissberg Cycle, than anything we Evil Humans are doing?

Of course I expect it to be ignored by the Warmists because it doesn't fit their narrative and upsets the “Science Is Settled” apple cart.

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Speaking of climate, it's been 10 years since a hurricane Category 3 or higher has made landfall in the US.

And, no, you can’t deflect to Hurricane Patricia. Even NPR knows that it really had nothing to do with “climate change”. It virtually mirrored a storm from 1959, when CO2 was at a “safe” level of 315ppm.

That little fact will be ignored because once again it doesn't fit the narrative. An example: Slate's article stating just the opposite.

You know it's coming apart when two different media outlets on the Left take diametrically opposed viewpoints on the same issue.

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What if I told you....

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Those who believe in our First ans Second Amendment rights can strike another restaurant off their list of places to go, that being K. O'Donnell's in Phoenix, Arizona.

Apparently one of their 'tolerant' patrons didn't like the topics of discussion at the local “Breitbart's Meetups” held at the restaurant and prompted a call to the local PD. Both the Phoenix and nearby Scottsdale police showed up, including a police helicopter. The police were confused as to why they had been called to what was by all accounts a peaceful gathering.

I guess the PC disease has so infected the Phoenix area that a single patron can dictate to 200 others what they can and cannot discuss. Any establishment that allows a few 'tolerant' PC buttheads to dictate who they will and will not tolerate deserves to see its number of customers dwindle away as they take their money elsewhere.

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Ed Driscoll delves into the dearth of affordable housing the San Francisco Bay area, pointing to a number of initiatives pushed by environmentalists that took a lot of land off the market and severely restricted construction of new housing. It's the same type of feel-good crap that infected Portland, Oregon and choked off the housing market by making it impossible to build any new housing.

We have a descriptive term here in New Hampshire that explains the phenomenon: drawbridge mentality. Once the folks move in they don't want any changes to be made, in effect raising the drawbridge to prevent change or anyone else from moving in and 'ruining' things. The difference here is that we don't tolerate any such foolish notions and make sure they die aborning.

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This is yet another sign that the New York Times is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Through twisted logic the Paper of Record is implying that people are advocating for non-consensual sex, something no one can take seriously. Do they really think there are people out there supporting rape?

“Students advocate for consensual sex,” reads the current subhead of a New York Times article. The article’s URL indicates this was originally the main title, but was changed to “Making consent cool.” The implication from the original title is that there are those out there advocating – or at the very least, tolerating – non-consensual sex.

This is simply not true. No one is advocating for non-consensual sex. The fact that that even needs to be said shows just how extreme and dishonest activists have become.

There are those out there, however, who are advocating against a narrow definition of consent that defines nearly all sex as rape by default unless a specific and unworkable set of rules are followed. High school students can’t figure out those rules. The person teaching those high school students can’t figure out those rules. Vice President Joe Biden can’t figure out those rules.

And yet, those rules will be used to brand as rapists those students who fail to adhere to them perfectly. The Times article even addresses the difficulty students are having in parsing the new rules.

Many of these so-called consent rules and laws are nearly impossible to enforce and are so narrowly defined as to make any form of sex, consensual or not, a form of rape.

I could have sworn the Left, who supports these non-nonsensical requirements, fought very hard decades ago to get government out of our bedrooms. Now we know what they meant was to get government other than that run by them out of the bedroom. Frankly, many of the Left I know are some of the biggest prudes I've ever come across.

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Related to the above, Margaret Wente asks the question: “Why are young feminists so clueless about sex?”

Ironically, today’s feminists are serious about consent but casual about sex. And to their shock, they’ve discovered that there’s an awful lot of bad sex out there. They did not expect this. They’ve been told they are supposed to be having a super-positive sex life – unconflicted, joyous, casual and abundant. They’ve been told they should be able to have as many partners and initiate sex just as often as men do. And they’ve tried that. And it hasn’t worked out very well. Instead of feeling super-positive, they feel sexually dissatisfied, emotionally disconnected and more than a little used.

The surprise is that so many young women are surprised by this.

The trouble isn’t men, of course. Nor is it the culture. The trouble is that these women have been sold a lie. They’ve been told that the profound sexual and behavioural differences between men and women are merely matters of individual preference, which would largely dissolve if we ever managed to shed our noxious cultural baggage.

Much of this expectation ignores the hard truths of biology, that being no matter what drivel has been pushed by Third Wave Feminists, men and women are different and no amount of propaganda and close-minded ideology will change that. I'm not claiming one sex is better than the other because each has its strengths and weaknesses. It's merely that they are different and always will be.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where warmer temps have returned for a while, the leaves are still turning (and falling), and where Halloween is less than a week away.

Cat Bohemian Rhapsody

By way of Facebook:

Modern Day Salem Witch Trials

The ongoing battle on college campuses between those who fervently believe there is an epidemic or rape and those who are firm believers in the rights enumerated in the Constitution rages on.

It seems that ever decade or so some new social evil comes to light that must be addressed “by any means necessary” and the usual suspects – our so-called Social Justice Warriors – go into full combat mode. This in and of itself is not the problem and never has been. It is the “by any means necessary” mindset that takes them down the wrong path.

We've seen examples of this over the past 323 years just in America, the first being the Salem Witch trials starting in 1692. Hundreds were accused during the hysteria and 20 were put to death. Then there was the Red Scare in the 1950's where innocent and guilty alike were accused, blacklisted, and in some cases, imprisoned. Then there were the daycare child abuse witch hunts in the 1980's and early 1990's that destroyed reputations and sent innocent people to prison.

And what do we see today? The Campus Rape Culture where the Social Justice Warriors claim that 1 out of every 5 women will be sexually assaulted on college campuses even though the study cited as proof doesn't claim that. (Most people misread or chose to ignore the study's authors' disclaimer about drawing any conclusions based upon their study because the respondents were self-selecting and the number of respondents was small.) What's worse is that a bureaucrat within the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights took it upon herself to issue a directive – the so-called “Dear Colleague letter – that instructed our institutions of higher learning to start trying and convicting more students of sexual assault or lose federal funding.

It was a call for a modern day witch hunt, something right out of Arthur Miller's The Crucible. All that was required was the allegation. No proof. Little or no investigation, and any 'investigation' was performed by someone not competent to do so, and in many cases, by someone who would also stand in judgment of the accused. No right to legal counsel. No right to cross-examine witnesses or the accuser. And worst of all, in many cases no right to even know what charges were being brought against them or by whom. But it led to numerous suspensions and expulsions, something the colleges and universities to point to and tell the OCR that they were now doing something about the 'problem'.

What made this even worse is that the definition of sexual assault was so broad on many campuses as to be meaningless. But it made it easier to accuse and convict all of the rapists running around on campus.

What's ironic is that this Department of Education bureaucrat had no power to issue the directive, no actual means of enforcing it, and didn't care that it was not within the scope of Title IX, outside the Department of Education's charter, and thoroughly ignored the Bill of Rights. But that didn't stop colleges from running their tribunals and kangaroo courts and convicting students, male students, based purely on accusations and very poor definitions of sexual assault. This same bureaucrat is also responsible for the growing total of lawsuits against colleges and damages being paid out to many of these 'convicted sexual assailants' because of the hostile and prejudicial tribunals that violated due process and damaged the reputations of these students.

Even the few cases where these tribunals found the accused was not culpable, the accused student was still harassed, libeled and slandered as a rapist, which made continuing their studies difficult, if not impossible. Call it the “Guilty until proven innocent, and even then still guilty” mentality that pervades many campuses.

With time this latest witch hunt will end, leaving behind large numbers of innocent victims and destroying any trust between students and college administrators as well seriously dampening trust between the male and female students on campus. Eventually another round of hysteria will bring about yet another witch hunt and the cycle will start all over again.

Mike Rowe Compares The "Modern Man" And "Man's Man"

The derision heaped upon the New York Times for their piece on what it means to be a “Modern Man” was well deserved seeing as it described an emasculated man that no woman would want to have in her life as anything but a friend. (I can't speak for Third Wave Feminists, but I have a feeling even they would not be inclined to have such a wimp in their lives because 'he' isn't really male despite having a 'Y' chromosome.)

As much as I wish I could have had the time to do a thorough fisking of the the NYT piece, I find that Mike Rowe has done a far better job of it than I could.

A few of my favorite excerpts:

New York Times: When the modern man buys shoes for his spouse, he doesn’t have to ask her sister for the size. And he knows which brands run big or small.
Mike Rowe: A Man’s Man would not buy shoes for his spouse, or be familiar with the vagaries of various female footwear brands. He might offer to pay for them, and he would definitely compliment her choice. And if he knows the size of her feet, it’s only because he rubs them from time to time.

NYT: The modern man never lets other people know when his confidence has sunk. He acts as if everything is going swimmingly until it is.
MR: A Man’s Man feels no shame in admitting uncertainty, because he knows that doing so will make him more certain. He’s transparent about his flaws and shortcomings, and makes no attempt to be more secure or knowledgeable or competent than he actually is.

NYT: Before the modern man heads off to bed, he makes sure his spouse’s phone and his kids’ electronic devices are charging for the night.
MR: A Man’s Man knows that self-reliance is born of experience. He encourages his kids to look after their own stuff, and suffer the consequences when they do not. The wife is another matter.

This last one is something all kids should learn. It is something both his mother and I have instilled in BeezleBub from the get go. Does he still forget to take care of things now and then? Sure, but he doesn't do it nearly as often as he did when he was younger and he rarely makes that mistake twice. That's sign he's grown up.

Another:

NYT: The modern man uses the proper names for things. For example, he’ll say “helicopter,” not “chopper” like some gauche simpleton.
MR: A Man’s Man is less worried about using the right word, and more concerned with being understood. But under no circumstance, does he “dumb down” the language.

I have always disliked it when people dumb down their language because they think we won't or can't understand. When they go too far it's condescending and doesn't win them any friends. While I won't often use terms, phrases, or slang that someone not in my line of work would have no way of understanding, I will put them into plain English that, even if they don't fully understand, won't leave them feeling ignorant. That isn't dumbing down the language. That's courtesy.

A few more:

NYT: The modern man doesn’t get hung up on his phone’s battery percentage. If it needs to run flat, so be it.
MR: A Man’s Man prefers his gas tank full, his weapon loaded, his pantry stocked, and his checkbook balanced. He also likes his phone sufficiently charged, and takes the necessary steps to accomplish that.

NYT: The modern man has no use for a gun. He doesn’t own one, and he never will.
MR: A Man’s Man owns at least one firearm. He knows how to use it, clean it, and store it properly. He understands it’s importance, and sees it for what it is - a tool that can protect him and his family.

That last one almost had me cringing, but Mike explained the reality well enough. Then again I had to force myself to remember that the Modern Man more than likely lives in a high rise with a doorman and armed security guards. A Man's Man lives where he wants, more often far away from anywhere the Modern Man lives, and he doesn't depend upon someone else he doesn't know to defend him and his family from criminal miscreants. A Man's Man also makes sure his missus and kids learn how to handle firearms and use them properly.

Mike has the right of it.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Very cool weather has arrived in New Hampshire, motivating me to fire up the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove for the first time. It wasn't until early evening the temps dipped below freezing and the time to fire it up arrived.

There were a few last minute tweaks needed to ensure everything would work correctly, then I laid in the firewood, newspaper, and kindling, set the damper, and then set the newspaper alight. Within a very short time the popping sounds of expanding cast iron could be heard and the first rays of radiant heat could be felt.

Enough wood was brought in to keep it going overnight and to stoke it first thing in the morning.

The feline contingent here at The Manse were happy to see it working again as they arrayed themselves around 'the warm box' and soaked in the heat it provided.

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There's poor. And then there's “poor”.

It's ironic that the poor here in the US are wealthier than the middle class in much of Europe.

Another factoid: The poor in the US today are wealthier than much of middle class in the US back in the 1970's and early 1980's. They have material wealth unimagined back in the Old Days^TM.

'Poor' is a relative term. No matter how wealthy a society has become there will always be those at the bottom of economic ladder. That they might be wealthier than Croesus* means nothing because the SJW's will find some way to make them out to be victims of the “greedy 1%”.

*For those of you who might be products of our modern educational system, Croesus was the King of Lydia from 560 to 546BC and was known for his extreme wealth. If you need more info, there's always Google. It must also be understood that my comparison of our 'poor' to Croesus is rhetorical, not literal. There, glad that I cleared that up for you?

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The Democrats/Leftists/Progressives are always preaching about diversity to we poor deluded greedy racist conservatives. But the message might have more of an impact if those same Democrats/Leftists/Progressives practiced what they preached.

So far it appears they have far less diversity than the GOP, particularly in regards to their presidential wannabes.

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Why carry a gun?

I agree with every single one.

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After watching the Gop debates and the recent Democrat debate on TV, I have to say I agree with David Starr on this one: The Parties should not let TV people control the debates.

Writes David:

The newsies are hugely partisan, and they rig things to help their candidates and hurt the other sides candidates. I see no reason why such poorly educated, biased, and ignorant people should be allowed to influence the elections.

Indeed.

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By way of a commenter on today's Day By Day cartoon comes this quote from Vox Day's SJW's Always Lie: Taking Down The Thought Police in regards to Marvel's changes to some of its characters to make them more politically correct and appealing to SJW's.

They are the Social Justice Warriors, the SJWs, the self-appointed thought police who have been running amok throughout the West since the dawn of the politically correct era in the 1990s. Their defining characteristics:

• a philosophy of activism for activism’s sake
• a dedication to rooting out behavior they deem problematic, offensive, or unacceptable in others
• a custom of primarily identifying individuals by their sex, race, and sexual orientation
• a hierarchy of intrinsic morality based on the identity politics of sex, race, and sexual orientation
• a quasi-religious belief in equality, diversity, and the inevitability of progress
• an assumption of bad faith on the part of all non-social justice warriors
• an opinion that motivation matters more than consequences
• a certainty that they are the only true and valid defenders of the oppressed
• a habit of demanding that their opinions be enshrined as social custom and law
• a tendency to possess a left-wing political identity
• a willingness to deny science, history, logic, their past words, or any other aspect of reality that contradicts their current Narrative.

After reading the list would those symptoms be found in the DSM under dissociative disorders or perhaps some kind of psychotic break.

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I would have thought that cases of Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) would have fallen to almost zero after all this time.

Apparently that's not the case.

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A survey run by Chapman University has the gun-grabbers swooning as it shows that Americans are more concerned about gun control than mass shootings.

That makes sense to me because if there is less gun control, and particularly if that lessening of control makes gun-free zones illegal, the incidents of mass shootings are likely do fall, if not end altogether. A potential mass shooter would be met with deadly force meted out to him by his potential victims. You can't have a mass shooting if the shooter is shot dead by the armed citizens he intended to kill.

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The New England Patriots are playing the Indianapolis Colts in Indianapolis. The game won't finish until close to midnight so no results are available.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the leaves are at peak, the woodstoves are keeping us warm, and where preparations for winter continue apace.

From A Dictionary

Seen in the comics section of our local paper:

Silence: The logical conclusion of politically correct speech.

Indeed.

"I Do Not Consent To Being Called A Rapist"

The push-back against the hysterics driven “campus rape culture” is growing, particularly from male college students. While the first line of resistance was created when college men found themselves being suspended or expelled due to nothing more than an accusation, many times with absolutely no corroborative evidence, the second line is college men refusing to be involved in any way, shape, or form with so-called “consent classes” that pander to the well-discredited 1 out of 4 women will be sexually assaulted on campus statistic.

As one college freshman in the UK has made perfectly clear on this matter, “I do not consent to being called a rapist.”

I am not a rapist. But I’m in my second week as a university student, and already modern feminism and “consent culture” is trying to pin that label on me.

The University of Warwick Student’s Union has set up classes called “I Heart Consent,” apparently aimed at teaching young people about how to get it on without accidentally raping their partner. I say people, but what I mean is men, because as all of today’s mainstream leftist ideologues know, men cannot be raped by women. When women do it it's called “non-consensual sex.”

How many rapists are going to stop raping people because some pretentious student told them that “Yes means Yes”? Any at all? And why would any normal, right-thinking man attend a class that demonises them and normal, healthy male sexuality by pretending that all men are latent rapists who would take advantage of women if they thought they could get away with it?

Consent classes aren’t compulsory — yet — but it is heavily implied that attending them would be A Good Idea.

Anyway, I’m not going. I think we all know what goes down at these things anyway, don’t we? The male students will be bombarded with stats about “1 in 4 women,” bogus and offensive conspiracy theories about “toxic masculinity,” and suggestions that yes, all men are potential rapists.

Well, I’m sorry, but in case you didn’t know, pre-crime is sci-fi. Having a penis does not make me a rapist. In fact, the highest volume of domestic violence and sexual abuse is found in lesbian couples – you know, the ones that don’t actually involve men.

With this kind of crap being pushed as the truth on campuses, is it any wonder there's a growing push-back by men? The smarter men on campus are doing their best to stay as far away from the women. Why? To paraphrase “It’s just not worth the risk of jail time, expulsion, and a permanent blot on one's life because some batty, vindictive, or remorseful person decides the next day that maybe she wasn’t really into it after all.” It's better to stay away from all social contact with campus women and, if sexual relief is needed, use masturbation. While lonely and not nearly as satisfying, it's infinitely safer.

The spate of “Yes Means Yes” legislation meant to combat this non-epidemic is merely feel-good lawmaking that will do far more harm than good and will more often than not have dire unintended consequences. It is also virtually unenforceable because there are gaping holes that, in the end, will end up causing the law to be overturned in courts because the terms are so ambiguous and any evidence of consent will be totally lacking unless one of the participants in an intimate sexual encounter decides to record the entire encounter, even without the other participant's knowledge or consent. Of course that opens an entirely different legal can of worms.

Unfortunately the various “Yes Means Yes” laws won't be struck down or repealed until after it has hurt a lot of people, primarily men. And as the line in a movie whose title presently escapes me states so eloquently, a lot of the victims of these laws will be asking “Where do I go to get my reputation back?” Once branded a rapist, always a rapist. Even if one is found not guilty because there is absolutely no evidence of sexual assault, they will still be guilty and will be treated as felon.

All any of this will do is further poison relationships between men and women and for no other purpose than to bolster the egos of the latest bunch of batshit-crazy Social Justice Warriors.

Women In Combat - One Story

The issue of women in combat has come to the forefront again, with some saying “It's about time” and yet others opining “It's not a good idea.” I must admit that I am of two minds on this issue.

Part of that comes from the fact that one of those women who have been in combat situations was one of the WP nieces, serving a tour in Afghanistan in hostile territory and working as a buffer between Special Forces and Afghan women. The story of such missions can be found here.

Included is this TED talk video covering this program.


We kept a candle lit in our window for our niece until she came home safe. One of the happiest and proudest days of my life was the day we were able to take it out of our window because she had returned home to us.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Here it is, Columbus Day Weekend, and the leaf peepers are here in force.

While the Lakes Region of New Hampshire is nowhere near peak color, the White Mountains to the north are very close to peak and the Great North Woods are at full peak. Between the foliage and the holiday weekend the traffic hereabouts resembles that seen during a summer weekend, but with a lot more folks from farther away than southern New England or New York. In fact the number of tour buses being seen make it seem as if that's all that exists!

A stop at the farm yesterday saw the parking lot at the farm stand full and then some, with a lot of vehicles parked along the side of the road and at the edge of one of the farm fields. Between the corn maze, the large crop of pumpkins, and some of the fall specialties, the place was packed. Talking to Mrs. Farmer Andy let me know the place had been very busy from the time it opened that morning and that reservations for the night-time corn maze were full.

Welcome to fall in New Hampshire!

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Is the 'Thanksgiving' pumpkin doomed? So say the folks at Scientific American.

To what do they attribute this doom? Why climate change, of course!

As Cap'n Teach writes about this whole debacle, “By Monday they'll be telling us Halloween is doomed.”

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Another from Cap'n Teach blows the “1000 year flood” meme in South Carolina out of the water, so to speak.

USGS research has shown no linkage between flooding (either increases or decreases) and the increase in greenhouse gases. Essentially, from USGS long-term streamgage data for sites across the country with no regulation or other changes to the watershed that could influence the streamflow, the data shows no systematic increases in flooding through time.

A much bigger impact on flooding, though, is land use change. Without proper mitigation, urbanization of watersheds increases flooding. Moreover, encroachment into the floodplain by homes and businesses leads to greater economic losses and potential loss of life, with more encroachment leading to greater losses.

Anyone paying attention would have known that as we've seen that effect over the years – changes in land use altering runoff patterns, particularly when wetlands were drained and/or filled.

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As the number of victims of the Department of Education's “Dear Colleague” letter start adding up, more people are waking up to the fact that the kangaroo courts run by our institutions of higher education are both incapable of dealing with the issue and are unconstitutional as well.

The kicker is that the “Dear Colleague” letter does not have the power of law, is in no way binding or enforceable, and that the bureaucrat who issued the letter had no power to do so.

Unfortunately the damage has been done and has fueled the continuing War on Campus Men. Too bad it will be the colleges and their insurance providers bearing the brunt of the lawsuits and payouts to the victims of this illegal mandate.

Sexual assault should be handled by the police, not untrained and clueless college administrators.

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The EPA has been slapped down again by the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, issuing and injunction against the agency from enforcing its new rules based upon the Clean Water Act that to all intents and purposes was a land grab.

This isn't the first time a federal court has stopped the rogue agency. More than once courts have stopped implementation of new rules that have gone far outside the agency's charter, and in some cases, in violation of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

It's gotten to the point where I think the agency should be abolished because it appears that it is so far outside its charter that it can now be considered a criminal organization.

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Allen West's opinion on the new bill signed by Governor Brown in California that allows automatic voter registration?

State sanctioned voter fraud.

This law is supposed aimed at raising voter turnouts after a number of election cycles with dismal voter turnout. It also opens the way to all kinds of fraud because a lot of people who are allowed to get a drivers license in California are also ineligible to vote, but that doesn't seem to be a concern in the once Golden State.

I have two questions for the California Assembly and Governor Brown: 1) Did any of you ever think the reason for low voter turnout is because there's no one worth voting for during those elections? 2) Isn't this in effect Voter ID, something so many Democrat politicians and their handlers are against because it supposedly disfranchises minority voters?

Just asking...

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Sultan Knish has the right of this:

Of all the Alinsky rules, the most relevant one is, "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." But he simply codified and made pragmatic the most destructive of the left's rules which is, "Make the enemy live up to his ideals." Even if those ideals are often the invention of the left.

Ideals are by definition impossible to live up to. Human societies aren't ideal, they're real. Ideals are absolutes and an unflinching attempt to live up to them destroys individuals and societies. More subtly, the failure to live up to them justifies hatred and self-hatred toward nations and peoples.

Forcing your enemy to live up to impossible-to-meet ideals makes it easier to paint them as something less than human and allows you to take actions that would otherwise be considered barbaric and inhumane.

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Last weekend it was me and my friend Ev moving and stacking two cords of firewood inside the garage.

This weekend it's Bogie moving 5 tons of wood pellets into her basement and garage.

Both of us are ready to heat our homes without using the dreaded (and still expensive) fossil fuels. Of course that's just a misdirection because both the firewood I have and the pellets Bogie has relied on fossil fuels for processing (kiln drying for the firewood, grinding/shaping/packaging pellets, and the fuel needed by the trucks to transport it all).

Still, I like the heat from a woodstove even if it isn't as convenient as turning up the thermostat on the wall. And unlike pellet stoves, it doesn't require electricity to work.

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Women in Blue are not Blue women!

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the leaves are staring to show their fiery fall colors, boats still ply the waters of the lake for leaf peeping, and where some of us still have to work on Columbus Day.

More Follies...Of The Congressional Type

The 'Speaker' follies continue, but Glenn Reynolds has had a splendid idea of a possible candidate to fill the slot, and it's someone we know who doesn't mind taking on a dirty job.

The problem? He'll probably turn down the job because it may be too dirty, even for him.

Recycling Follies - It Just Doesn't Pay

While the aims of recycling appear to be beneficial to the environment and the bottom line, decades of experience show that it is more a feel-good measure than an actual boon to the environment and has little if any return on investment.

Materials like glass, plastic, paper, and cardboard have very little real value in regards to recycling. They take up space, aren't in demand (except that demand generated by subsidies or 'feel-good' companies that have the money to waste on them). The only recycled materials that have been successful in generating high demand along with financial motivation are metals. The two most recycled materials in the world are steel (including iron) and aluminum, and it's been that way for over 100 years.

What I find amazing is that tipping fees for garbage - what landfills or trash-to-energy plants charge for taking your trash - are about $150 to $180 a ton (at least here in New Hampshire) but tipping fees for recyclables can run two to three times that much! So right out of the gate recycling costs more. If the recycler permits single stream recycling which means all of the recyclables do not need to be separated into metals, glass, plastics, and paper/cardboard, the processing cost is higher.

What's worse is that if the recycler cannot sell the paper, cardboard, or plastic it will likely end up in a landfill or trash-to-energy incinerator so it's likely that yet another tipping fee will have to be paid.

So between higher tipping fees, separation costs, and possible disposal fee if the recycled material cannot be sold, plus the added energy costs to haul all this stuff around, recycling seems to be a loser to me. Better to focus on recycling the metals because there's always buyers for it and we know it will be reused, unlike the other recyclables.

But if it makes you feel better to recycle, don't let me stop you. Just understand that it's really just a feel-good gesture and it really doesn't help the environment all that much.

Thoughts On A Sunday

The weather has certainly been cooler over the past few days. We've managed to dodge the “Joaquin” bullet, with the hurricane passing us far to the south and east. The leaves have started changing in noticeable numbers and the leaf-peepers are arriving in larger numbers.

The change has also brought about our first load of firewood, with two cords being delivered Friday morning and a second two cords schedule for delivery in early January.

One of our family friends, Ev, helped me move and stack those two cords yesterday. We got a late start because there were a few repairs needed in the garage, mainly the back wall which was damaged by yours truly when my big LL Bean boots hit both the brake and accelerator pedals at the same time, causing the trusty F150 to fracture a couple of the 2 x 6 studs. But once the repairs were finished, we knocked of those two cords in a little over 3 hours. If memory serves, that's the fastest I've ever been able to complete that task in all the time we've resided at The Manse.

So we're almost set to weather the winter cold. All that's left to do is to remove and clean out the blowers on the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove and we'll good to go. I figure we're probably a couple or three weeks away from having to fire it up for the first time this heating season.

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David Starr relates 'Halt and Catch Fire' incident with his DVD player.

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If the economy is so great after The One has supposedly led us from the depths of the Great Recession, then how can Democrats reconcile the fact that over 94 million Americans aren't in the labor force, creating the lowest labor participation rate in almost 40 years?

As I've heard more than one Democrat state, “The unemployment rate is down.” That's true, but only if you look at the U3 rate which tells us how many of the unemployed are receiving unemployment benefits. But once those benefits run out, the unemployed are no longer counted. One has to look at the U6 unemployment rate which includes both those collecting benefits and those who are no longer collecting benefits, as well as those who are underemployed (taking part-time jobs or jobs that are far below the level of job they held before, like a welder now working for just above minimum wage at the local 7-11). That rate stands at around 12%. During seven of the eight Bush years that rate ran between 7 and 10%, averaging around 8.9%. The U3 over those same seven years rate ran between 4 and 7%. The difference between the U3 and U6 rates over all eight years of Bush's presidency was about 3 percentage points. The difference during the Obama years so far: around 7 percentage points. That is not the sign of a healthy economy.

Despite what the White House says, most Americans know the economy still hasn't recovered and we're still feeling the effects of the recession.

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It appears the Europeans are kicking our ass when it comes to weather prediction models. (Notice, I wrote weather not climate prediction.)

In this case the European model predicted the correct track for Joaquin, just as it did for Sandy and a host of other tropical storms and hurricanes in the western North Atlantic and Caribbean.

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OK, first George Zimmerman was described by the media as a “White Hispanic.” Now they're calling the mixed race shooter in Oregon a white supremacist. Does that mean he'll be called a “White Black” by the MSM?

I expect nothing less.

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David Shribman opines that the three front-runners in the GOP presidential primary are proving that “It's amateur hour, again” for the Republican party. He certainly backs up his opinion with plenty of examples from the past, but he also wonders whether the days of political expertise as a requirement for higher office may be coming to an end.

The experts believe that Mr. Trump, Dr. Carson and Ms. Fiorina will fade as political forces. But the whole basis of the three candidates’ campaigns is that political expertise, like political experience, is a remnant of a time swiftly passing. If so, then one of these three may possess the face of the future, and the change they personify may represent a profound transformation of our politics. 

I happen to agree with him. At the beginning of our Republic, very few of those who held office in Congress or the Presidency had much in the way of political expertise, and they seemed to find a way to handle the nation's requirements. As time passed the need for such experience grew, but it didn't really solidify until the first 25 years or so of the 20^th century. When mass communications became the norm, those in office had to be more than just a representative of the people, they had to become actors on a stage. Such acting took experience.

But these days with mass communications orders of magnitude beyond what they were through the balance of the 20^th century and corporations that are larger than many countries and states, the experience needed to hold office no longer comes just from having run through the political gauntlet. Candidates can speak directly to the people without the traditional media. They can show that they do understand America's problems, understand the needs of the people, and all without ever having have served in political office prior to their decision to run.

Frankly, the people are sick and tired of the Same Old Same Old candidates mouthing the same political platitudes and making the same promises over and over again. Whether that leads to better candidates and, possibly, better performance of their duties in office remains to be seen.

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Does moonlight make things colder? An experiment shown on a video seems to show that it does.

However, after watching the video of the experiment, a few things become apparent, to biggest being that the IR thermometer being used to measure the temperature isn't just measuring that of the object in the experiment, but that of the near background as well which will be colder than the object being measured, giving a colder than expected reading.

Nice try, guys.

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Why does nuclear power still rule? It all comes down to this: E=mc².

This is why a nuclear reactor sitting on one square mile can generate 1000 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply a large city. To generate that same output from a wind farm you would need 40 square miles of windmills – and that would only work the 1/3 of the time when the wind is blowing. The same numbers govern hydroelectricity. The two biggest dams in the country – the Hoover Dam and the Glen Canyon Dam – each back up a reservoir of 250 square miles to generate 2000 MW and 1296 MW respectively. No one has yet figured out a way to harness tidal energy but if they do it is easy to calculate to calculate the territory that would be involved. To generate the same 1000 MW will require some kind of energy-capturing device deployed over a stretch 25 miles of coastline.

This “energy density” is what differentiates nuclear from the so-called “renewable” sources. Solar has about the same density as wind and would require the same 40 square miles or more to generate the output of one nuclear reactor.

No matter how good solar becomes or how many windmills are built, they cannot actually compete against nuclear, especially on the total cost per kilowatt-hour basis. Nuclear power has the energy density to power our increasingly technological civilization. With the newer Generation III and IV plants being built or developed, nuclear can become even better and cheaper while generating little nuclear waste as compared to the present Generation I and II plants presently online.

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What's ironic about the above is that so many people here in New England are vehemently against a new natural gas pipeline being built that will supply abundant and cheap natural gas. Instead, they'd rather pay many times the national price by importing it from Yemen on huge LNG tankers.

Every winter natural gas prices spike in New England because the tankers can't supply enough natural gas fast enough to meet the high demand in winter. It costs a lot to heat a home in New England and it's all because of the NIMBY's and BANANA's in the six New England states who don't want a cheaper and, in the end, safer means of bringing natural gas to New England.

I was listening to a group of anti-pipeline activists from some of the towns in southern New Hampshire where a portion of the pipeline would be built. One of the most ignorant comments I heard: “They want to build the pipeline just so they can make a profit!” Well, yeah. That's the point. Why would they build one to lose money? They want to be able to provide much needed energy to a region lacking it and they want to make money doing it. Otherwise, why bother?

Another thought: These same folks will be the first to complain when their heating bills and electric rates skyrocket, or worse, when they flick the switch and the lights don't come on.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the fall colors are starting to appear, the temps have cooled off, and where we don't have to worry about Hurricane Joaquin.

Science Fiction's Fall From Grace

David Starr and I share a love of science fiction. Then again, we're both engineering geeks and we both grew up on authors like Asimov, Dickson, Heinlein, Pournelle, Niven, and a host of other sci-fi greats. Too bad sci-fi has been reduced to a shadow of its former self, with the politically correct, the third wave feminists, and the Progressive Left trying to force more 'inclusive' science fiction.

The problem is that most of it stinks and a lot of it is boring as hell. Who wants to read a 300 page tome about some poor transgendered humanoid who is misunderstood and never really does anything of note? Who gives a rat's ass if the society where we find ourselves reading about is politically correct and so tolerant that nothing ever happens? Who cares how many lovers the lesbian protagonist has had over the years if it adds absolutely nothing to the story? Nobody...except them, of course.

As I mentioned to David, I've been checking out a lot of the indie sci-fi authors on Amazon and have found a lot of it is pretty good. Some of it is really good. And, not all that unexpectedly, some is awful. (Most of the 'awfulness' comes from poor/non-existent proofreading and editing.) One of the other niceties of the indie sci-fi is that it costs a lot less. I've been downloading some of it to our Kindle for between 99¢ and a couple of bucks.

Such are the renegades of sci-fi.

The One Shows His True Stripes...Again

The bodies weren't even cold yet in Roseburg, Oregon and The One was on TV, bloviating about how the US is the only country in the civilized world that has mass shootings on a regular basis (not true) and that we simply must “do something” about guns in the hands of killers. He denigrates those who, with plenty of evidence behind them, state that what we need is more people with guns even though it is a well-proven fact.

The place where the latest shooting took place, Umpqua College, was a gun-free zone, meaning no one had the means of stopping the gunman. The One mentioned a series of other mass shootings in the US and the one thing that they all had in common? All were gun-free zones. Every. Single. One.

What did that mean to the shooters? Simple – a free-fire zone where they had little to worry about because everyone there was unarmed.

So what does the Idiot-in-Chief want to do? Make sure even more law abiding citizens will be unable to defend themselves and others. And he goes so far as to call it “common sense” that somehow it will make everyone safer. Decades of history prove otherwise, but that won't stop The One from trying again.

The One even challenged the media to do a comparisons between how many Americans die in terrorist attacks versus in gun homicides. It sounds like a fair comparison, doesn't it? But what he fails to mention is that most of the people killed by gun violence are killed by people who aren't legally allowed to possess guns to begin with. He has a perfect example of that right in his back yard – Washington DC.

It still has the most restrictive gun laws in the nation (despite the Heller vs District of Columbia Supreme Court decision) and one of the highest number of gun homicides in the country. The people committing those homicides aren't the law abiding citizen carrying their firearms for their own protection, but people who don't care about the law and will carry guns and shoot people they don't like regardless of the fact they shouldn't have guns to begin with.

If the President really wants to lessen the problem of mass shootings, then all he has to do is one simple thing: outlaw gun-free zones and let the law abiding citizens carry their firearms wherever they go. As the good Professor Reynolds has stated more than once, “People don't stop killers. People with guns stop killers.”

Thoughts On A Sunday

It's NASCAR weekend here in New Hampshire, with 100,000 racing fans ready to fill the stands at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Deb and I got a chance to check out some of the racing team business jets at our local airport. While there were only a few there yesterday there should be 30 or more there today. I wish I could say I'll be watching the race, but the Patriot's game will be taking place the same time as the race and my priority will be the football game.

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Yet another case of a school zero tolerance policy punishing someone defending a helpless student being beaten by a bully has come to light.

In this case the student being beaten was blind, so he couldn't even defend himself. The hero? He was kicked off the football team and suspended from school.

What are we teaching our kids with policies like this? Nothing good: It's better to turn our backs and not get involved rather than put ourselves into harm's way while defend a helpless person being assaulted.

Yeah, that's just what we need.

This silliness has got to stop.

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For yet another bit of scholastic stupidity, a Seattle-area school has decided to ban “tag” because “school officials think it affects the "emotional well-being" of students.”

Earth to Seattle school administrators: It's a friggin' game kids have been playing for generations.

Really? Do they really think children are so fragile that they must be prevented from playing a game that they believe will permanently damage children? Really? I have to wonder whether some of these idiots are really banning it because as children they weren't any good at the game, driving them to become school administrators once they grew up.

It's obvious that none of these geniuses have actually talked to real, bona fide child psychologists because if they had, the kiddie shrinks would have said the administrators are the ones needing psychological help.

I like the next to the last line in the post:

I suppose eventually, they [school administrators] will come to the conclusion that school itself is dangerous to kids and shut themselves down.

That would probably be the best solution. The parents can then send their kids to good private schools that will not tolerate such foolishness or home school them so they get a real education and not end up becoming the neurotic fragile snowflakes these idiots are trying to create.

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I don't find it surprising that Donald Trump is starting to fade in the polls. While still in first place, he is presently in a statistical dead heat with Dr. Ben Carson. Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina are presently tied for third.

I expect a few more of the outliers are going to pull the plug on their campaigns over the next month or so.

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Call this yet another case out of the Rathergate files:

A 'hate crime that wasn't' at the University of Delaware is still being declared a hate crime by students.

The incident happened Tuesday night, when students thought they found several nooses hanging from a tree. Word quickly spread as campus officials swiftly released a statement condemning the foul hate crime. But come morning, police said a short investigation had led them to conclude the “nooses” were really just the remnants of paper lanterns from an event held all the way back in June.

So what kind of hate crime was it? No one seems to know.

I guess it's another “fake but accurate” report from the bastions of SJW group-think.

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Remember all the hoopla about the Ground Zero mega-mosque going to be built next to Ground Zero?

The project is now dead.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s proposal four years ago to create a 15-story Islamic cultural center near the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks sparked a national uproar. Developer Sharif El-Gamal of Soho Properties, who was originally on board with the plan, rendered the whole debate moot by opting to build a 667-foot condominium tower for the property instead, Crain’s New York Business reported Friday.

Many people saw the mosque as a poke in the eye of the people of New York City.

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Neo-neocon dares bring forth the question “When exactly did we lose the courage to see things as they are?”

There are too many warning signs we are ignoring, and specifically the Obama Administration is ignoring that will, like Neville Chamberlain did, bring about a greater evil by ignoring that which is right in front of it. What will it take for everyone to wake up to the danger, a mushroom cloud over New York or Washington or Los Angeles?

Probably.

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Christina Hoff Sommers tells us about the ongoing War against Boys.

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Now that John Boehner is stepping down as Speaker of the House and, in addition, leaving Congress, there are a few suggestions David Starr has for his replacement as Speaker.

One of his better suggestions that I can wholeheartedly agree with:

No more "continuing resolutions" no more "omnibus spending bills, no more"one-big-fund-everything" bills.  From here on in, we will pass single bills, one to fund each Federal government activity.  A defense bill, a highway bill, Justice department bill, a FAA bill, a HHS bill, a Homeland Security bill, and so on.

This is the way it was done from George Washington's time down to very recently.  Recently something fell thru the cracks and the necessary appropriation bills were not passed.  When the end of the fiscal year came up, Congress would pass a stop gap to keep the government running. One huge stop gap.  And they are still doing it. 

The problem with omnibus budget bills is that there are usually too many hidden 'gotcha's' that obligate the government to do something the lobbyists have paid for, even if it is detrimental to the well-being of the American people and/or the economy. As David states, the One Big Bill approach is the lazy way out and it makes it difficult to look at anything in detail to find out what's really being budgeted. It's but one reason why we have an $18 trillion plus debt and trillion dollar deficits. There's no accountability with omnibus bills.

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And that's thenews from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the “moon is the color of blood”, the slightly warm weather has returned, and where we shan't hear another thing about NASCAR until next year.

For Our Own Sakes Institutionalize The Fragile Snowflakes

I have started this post many times and every time I get close to finishing it, another example of just how pathetic our society is becoming makes itself known in the news or on the Net.

Reading the endless parade of people who are offended by the littlest things, who require 'protection' from anything that disagrees with their belief du jour, or worse, don't want to be exposed to anything that contradicts their make-believe world view makes me want to scream at the top of my lungs “GROW UP, you pathetic babies! The world is not all kittens and rainbows and unicorns! It's mean. It's nasty. And there are people out there that, no matter how good and nice you believe yourself to be, have no problems with killing you, robbing you, raping you, enslaving you, or worse, saying something that offends only those of you with your “whining fragile snowflake” knob set to 11, just because that's what they want! You're fragile feelings don't mean s**t to them and no amount of sitting in a circle and singing Kumbuya will stop them from doing what they want to you! It's time to grow a pair, you sissies!”

Of course my rant would have many of them curled up in a ball in some corner, whimpering about how mean and nasty I am, that I am “double-plus ungood”, and they need their mommies to make them feel safe. And, of course, I. DON'T. FRIGGIN'. CARE!

Earlier this month I read a piece by Mytheos Holt that stuck a chord with me that stated quite plainly that people who require trigger warnings or other such 'accommodations' to protect them from every day life should be expelled.

While Holt was talking primarily about colleges, I think it could be applied to a lot of the perpetually offended crybabies throughout society demanding all kinds of concessions that everyone else finds ludicrous and, quite frankly, deserving of scorn and ridicule.

As Holt writes about the fragile snowflake community inside our colleges and universities:

In other words, how can you be so cruel as to expect these students to engage with knowledge as it actually exists? They’re just trying to get the degrees they paid for in peace. Leave them alone.

In case you missed it, Holt is being sarcastic, throwing the idiocy of these people back in their faces. College is supposed to prepare you for “life's slings and arrows”, not coddle them and leave them unprepared for the real world outside of academia. If they can't handle reality in college, there's no way they'll survive once they graduate. As anyone can tell them (assuming they'll actually listen), 99.999% of the workplaces will not waste their time or money trying to accommodate the snowflakes and are more likely to fire them for creating a hostile work environment. There are more than a sufficient number of examples over the past few years showing how one toxic snowflake can create chaos within the workplace. Most employers will not put up with that for long. I know of two personally, where a new employee started complaining about fellow employees - many who had been there for years without any problems - reporting them for 'harassment' and other imagined sleights and driving HR crazy. In the end, the new employee was booted before the end of their probationary period because they were the one harassing the others, damaging morale, and negatively affecting productivity. It won't be any different with any other employer.

Holt also shows how coddling the college snowflakes tends to hurt others, either directly or indirectly.

Let’s get back to Myers’ “just let the poor traumatized kids get the degrees they paid for” argument. No, don’t let them get those degrees. The whole point of those degrees is to signify their bearers possess qualities beyond merely the credit rating to take out vast amounts of student loans. The entire reason college degrees are supposed to be valuable is that they signify a capacity to absorb and process specialized knowledge beyond what non-degree-holders have. This is, in fact, the whole purpose of education generally.

This means if some troubled or weak students have allowed their mental illness to preclude them from absorbing such knowledge, the fault lies not with the college, but with them. Such people are as ineducable as an illiterate English major. The solution is not to expel knowledge from the classroom that is disagreeable to these feeble and fragile minds. It is to expel them. Their place is in a psych ward, not a school, and their money (or, more likely, their parents’) is better spent seeking treatment there than spoiling education for everyone else.

Should a college punish the majority of its students just to make allowances for someone who shouldn't even be there to begin with? Of course not. Furthermore, should society be forced to adhere to increasingly restrictive rules and regulations meant to ease the suffering of these overly sensitive people? Absolutely not. If they cannot live in the real world without ending up being emotionally paralyzed or catatonic, then they do not belong out in the real world. They should be cloistered in some institution that will keep them shielded from all of the trigger words and microaggressions they find it so difficult to live with. They are not well people and need treatment for their mental illness. The should not be indulged because it only encourages their delusions and increases their fragility.

Apple Did What?

I have but one thing to say about Apple's decision to not allow walk in sales of their new iPhone 6 in states without a sales tax: WTF?

Their excuse: scalpers.

Because Apple limits the number of unlocked phones, the brokers – sometimes called "sharks" – recruit homeless people and the elderly to wait in line and buy phones on their behalf. The phenomenon lasted for months outside Apple's downtown Portland Apple Store after last year's September launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

While sharks patrol Apple stores all over the country, they are especially visible in Portland. That may be because Oregon doesn't have a sales tax, so sharks operating here can add several percentage points to their profits by getting their phones.

Well, if they really want to solve the problem I have another solution for them. Rather than screwing the residents in the four out of the five states without sales taxes that have Apple stores (Montana has no sales tax, but it also has no Apple store), I suggest they close their stores in the those states. That way they never have to worry about the problem ever again. It's obvious to me that if they do it this time that they'll do it with other products in the future. So why bother having a store location where their most popular products won't be available to those walking in? If they have to order it, why not just go online and do it and don't waste the time or gas to go there? The very reason for a store in New Hampshire no longer exists if their customers can't buy what they want from them.

I think Steve Jobs would be pissed that someone in Apple would pull this stunt. After all, Apple still gets the sale. But with this giving a high hard one to those folks fortunate enough to live in states with no sales tax (like me), I think some of the people in those states might tell Apple to 'piss off'. One acquaintance of mine changed their mind about buying one when they realized they would have to go out of state and pay their sales tax just to be one of the first to get an iPhone 6. Said she “Screw it. If they don't want to sell me a phone I'll oblige them. They lost me, period.”

I know Apple won't care, but it is making them look like buttheads.

Small Town Government - The Budget Process

It's been a busy week for me, hence the dearth of posting.

One of the more interesting events that has taken up my time has been the start of the budget process for our little town.

For the most part folks don't think much about the town and school budgets until the look at them during Town Meeting in February and March. Even then they don't always understand the various budget items, but they do pay attention to the bottom line. Getting to that bottom line starts in late summer when the various departments put together their budget proposals for the coming year.

From there they go to the town administrator who goes through every line item and suggests cuts, increases, or the status quo. From there it goes to the selectmen who go over them again and make further adjustments to budget items.

Sometimes the budget proposals ask for large increases in spending. Others are quite modest. Yet others request no increase, requesting level funding for the new fiscal year. (Those are either the departments with only one or two personnel like our Parks and Recreation Department or the elected officials like myself who only receive a small stipend for our service. We sure as heck aren't doing it for the money.)

If the selectmen, town administrator, budget committee members, and department heads do our jobs, we see small increases in the town budget. Sometimes there are no increases, and even more rarely, budget decreases. (This sometimes happens when debt service on a bond ends or a multiyear appropriation for some service, purchase, or lease expires and is not renewed.)

I can tell you that it's easy to say “Oh, cut this and cut that” but it's not always easy to actually make it happen in such a way that doesn't cause more harm than good. An extreme example: cutting the police department budget to zero would save our town a big chunk of money, but we'd have no police protection. None. That isn't a good thing.

If we know revenues are going to be a problem the budget must be constrained to prevent undue increases in property taxes. After all, if the economy is in the dumps, just as it has been for the past 7 years, some folks will have problems paying their property taxes, particularly if they go up due to the town spending unwisely.

I should take a second to explain that most of the revenue in our towns come from property taxes and fees for various town services. They receive very little money from state government. Then again, we don't have a state income or sales tax, so the state government doesn't have that much of money to give to the towns to begin with. It also means the state cannot use such funds to 'encourage' the towns to do what it wants by withholding funding if they don't. This reliance on property taxes drives most towns to be frugal with the taxpayers' money. Here and there, now and then, the town government goes on a spending spree and, if not stopped by the voters at town meeting, property taxes skyrocket. When this happens it's not unusual to see selectmen being voted out of office for their spendthrift ways the following year.

I mentioned above voters stopping the proposed profligate spending. That's the beauty of our system – the townspeople have the right to vote down the budget and, if they do, a default budget takes effect. That default budget is usually the previous year's budget, minus the one-time expenditures it might contain. (A one-time expenditure might be for replacement of a town vehicle, equipment upgrades for the police or fire departments, new computers for or one of the town departments and the like.)

Another thing the voters can do to control spending: make and vote on a motion at town meeting to change the amount of funding on line items in the budget. They can increase them, decrease them, or even zero them out. This can be both good and bad because while most times it's used to cut spending, it can also be used to increase funding well beyond what the town government has requested. However, they cannot add new line items at town meeting, something that prevents unanticipated 'feel good' expenditures on services, products, or events the town cannot afford.

And so it goes in small town America.

Thoughts On A Sunday

This was a short weekend for yours truly as I only had Saturday off. At 7 this morning I was up and about and readying myself to head into work.

I don't usually work on Sunday's, but a conflict between work and some of my non-work duties made it necessary to ensure I got my requisite 40+ hours in this week. So my boss said he had no problems if I put in some time over the weekend, hence going to work today.

As a result, my weekly TOAS may not be as long as it usually is, but at least I'll get something posted, right?

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We've known for some time that Washington DC has a hard time learning things, but it's particularly true of the District's city government. One would think that after it lost in the Heller vs District of Columbia Supreme Court decision, the city would do as so many other cities and states have and follow the law. But it appears the District still thinks it can get around pesky little inconveniences like the Second Amendment by crafting gun registration requirements so restrictive that they in effect still outlaw gun ownership by District citizens. Too bad for them that the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled against such moves by the District after a follow-on suit by Dick Heller of Heller vs District of Columbia fame.

Somehow I doubt this battle between the law abiding citizens of the District and their city government is anywhere near over. I expect the government will find yet another way of throwing up yet another round of almost impassable roadblocks to prevent the citizens from being able to defend themselves.

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If this isn't the best smackdown of Common Core mathematics, I don't know what is.

As one commenter wrote:

Math was taught for thousands of years to students in the old way and the method resulted in Einstein, Turing and thousands of mathematicians and physicists who have brought our civilization this far.

What kind of ego and hubris do the developers of Common Core have to think they have discovered a better way?

Indeed.

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Call it The Revenge of Sarah Palin. What is it? Gas at $2 a gallon.

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It's one thing to for the warmists to try to explain what's caused the pause in warming as an anomoly. Now they're trying to say that it never happened and that an so-called pause was just a statistical error.

That might explain why they've been adjusting all temperatures prior to the 1950's downward and all temps after upwards because all temperatures measured since the 1850's or so have been wrong and needed 'adjustments' to fit the narrative. Too bad reality isn't going to follow their lead and temperatures will continue to do what they've done long before these self-deluded idiots came along.

This also begs the question of what happens if temperatures start falling and we enter another Little Ice Age because of a lengthy solar minimum? Or will they ask us ignore what's happening outside our windows and believe that warming has caused a global drop in temperatures?

Of course they will. In fact, they'll insist we do so or risk going to prison.

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And that's the abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it's going to be chilly tonight, warm tomorrow, and where some leaves are starting to change color.

Conservative Student Being Pressure To Leave Yale By The Tolerant Left

As if we need even more evidence of the 'tolerance' shown by the indoctrinated larval Progressives on college campuses, here's a beaut from Yale University, that bastion of free-thinking and tolerance for those who might disagree with certain viewpoints.

A conservative student at Yale University is being harassed for her beliefs; she’s been called a “bigot,” and has been encouraged by some peers to leave campus.

In an interview Sunday with Fox News, Yale sophomore Aryssa Damron said her views have not always been welcomed at the Ivy League institution.

“I’ve received some negative backlash from students,” she said. “I wear a lot of elephants and conservative apparel on campus, and I have been called a bigot from across crowded hallways simply because of what I was wearing. I had someone tell me last year they could not live with me because I was too conservative.”

Asked where the open-mindedness is on her campus, she replied: “I am still looking for it. I’ll let you know if I find it. It’s a very liberal campus. It’s a very liberal city. And as a conservative on Yale we are often minimalized.”

And like many liberal cities, New Haven, Connecticut has a host of problems after decades of Democrat rule. But that's small potatoes compared to the problem on the Yale campus, where those labeling Ms. Damron as a bigot are, ironically, the bigots.

They judge her because of her beliefs, not because of her actions or her character. They have in their minds what she is without even knowing her.

In case these close-minded morons don't know the definition of bigotry, perhaps it would help if they looked up the definition in the dictionary, or better yet, merely look in the mirror. If we presented them with a sanitized version of what they've been doing were presented to them, the story related to them in such a way that they would not see themselves in the storyline by swapping the identity of the victim to someone like themselves on a conservative campus, I'm sure they would claim the people prejudging the poor innocent Progressive are being close-minded and bigoted. If you then revealed the true identities of the people in the story, one of three things would happen: a few of those not truly and deeply brainwashed would realize they are the villains and were exactly what they accused Ms. Damron of being; some would deny that it was possible for them to be bigoted and intolerant and that we conned them with some kind of conservative mind trick, then denounce us and brand us “haters”; or their heads would explode.

Of the three scenarios, I expect the second one to be the most likely outcome of such a presentation. A single incident rarely tears away the veil of deception that has blinded someone to reality. Perhaps a very few, here and there, might stop and think about what happened and come to realize they've been lied to and have become exactly what they detest. But that would be rare indeed.

Don't Mess With The Ghurkas

As I've mentioned more than once, the fiercest fighting men in any military aren't US Navy SEALs, US Marine Corps Recon, US Army Special Forces, Rangers, or Delta Force. They aren't British SAS or SBS commandos, Russian Spetznaz, or German GSG-9 troopers.

They are the Ghurkas, part of the British Army since 1815. They are fearless fighting men. They do not know the meaning of surrender, and being out numbered merely means they have a target rich environment. Two of the more recent examples of their combat prowess showed everyone that no one f**ks with the Ghurkas, even when they're outnumbered, out of ammo, or retired.

In Afghanistan in 2010, Acting Sergeant Dipprasad Pun single-handedly fought off 30 Taliban soldiers. As Pun was keeping guard on the roof of a checkpoint, the attackers came at the complex from all sides with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s.

It took less than an hour for Pun to kill them all. He went through all of his ammo—400 rounds and 17 grenades, as well as a mine that detonated—to defeat each attacker. When he ran out of ammo, a Taliban soldier climbed up to the roof, only to be hit with a machine-gun tripod that Pun threw at him.

Pun's valor was rewarded with a Victoria Cross, the highest British military decoration awarded for bravery.

The Taliban learned the hard way that if they go up against the Ghurkas they're going to die.

Here's another example:

In 2011, 35-year-old retired Gurkha Bishnu Shrestha was riding a train in India when 40 robbers stopped the train and began stealing passengers' belongings. Still carrying his kukri knife, the Gurkha took on the robbers, themselves armed with knives, swords and pistols. Shrestha managed to kill three robbers and injure eight others, which persuaded the other robbers to flee. The retired soldier also saved another passenger from rape.

I think these guys would give the SEALs a run for their money and come away the winners. As the saying goes, “Mess with the Best, Die like the Rest.”

Tonight's GOP Debate

Here are some of my observations from tonight’s GOP debate from the Reagan Library:

First, Anderson Cooper looked as if he were trying to hide the fact there was some kind of unpleasant smell in the Library. Could that smell be Reagan’s conservatism that permeates the memorial to him?

I thought it was pretty neat to see Reagan’s Air Force One, a modified Boeing 707 that was replaced by a 747 after he left office, as the centerpiece of the pavilion where the debate was held.

I have to say I was disappointed at Carly’s non-response to the question about whether she would be comfortable with Donald Trump’s finger on the nuclear button. On the other hand I think she wanted to get to the more important issues that mattered to the American public and not get into the personalities.

The Donald had no problems insulting the other candidates on stage.

Walker had a pretty good comeback to Trump, stating we didn’t need an “Apprentice” in the White House as we already have one there.

Kasich nailed it, stating the backbiting going on during the debate was going to have people turning off their TV’s. I agree.

Trump made one good point – Why are we fighting ISIS in Syria when ISIS is fighting Syria? Why not let them fight it out and then take on the winner? Not that I agree with him, but it was a good point.

Fiorina’s response to Trump’s statement that he can get along with anyone and about Russia’s move into Syria was good – Putin understands and respects strength. We aren’t strong and Putin knows it, so he’s pushing the limits.

Jeb brought forth the issue of our deteriorating relation with Israel, one that Obama has worked hard to destroy, and that one of the things we need to do is reestablish our strong ties with them.

Just about everyone agreed the Iran deal was a bad idea. Most wanted to tear it up and start over again.

Kasich delved into defunding Planned Parenthood but didn’t want to shut down the government to do it. He said it would backfire on the GOP and that the responsibility should be pushed down to the governors.

Fiorina kicked ass on the subjects of Iran and Planned Parenthood, getting loud applause from the audience when she challenged both Obama and Hillary Clinton to watch the awful videos and the coldhearted ‘bargaining’ for fetal organs.

Trump and Christie agree on illegal immigration, though Christie stated he knew Trump’s timetable to deport them was unworkable due to lack of funding and personnel.

The issue of birthright citizenship came up, and Trump hit it right on the head, saying the 14th Amendment addresses the issue. Fiorina says Congress doesn’t want to cure the illegal immigration because it’s a perpetual campaign issue. Rand Paul backed up Trump’s statement, saying the 14th Amendment grants birthright citizenship to the children of legal immigrants even if they aren’t yet citizens, but not illegal immigrants.

Christie ‘bitchslapped’ Trump, and to a point Fiorina, for their “I am more successful than you” back and forth, saying the average American worker didn’t care about it one way or another and that they were more concerned about their jobs or the lack thereof.

Huckabee got into the Fair Tax “makes more sense” than the present income tax system. He also reminded everyone that while too many on the stage were talking about how great they were, Reagan talked about how great the American people were.

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At 10PM I had to step away from the TV because of chores needing to be done before retiring for the evening.

Overall, there wasn’t anyone who stood above the others, though I think Carson, Christie, and Fiorina did better than some of the others.

I Wanna Take A Ride In One

Seeing the interior of SpaceX's Dragon crew vehicle makes one believe we are actually in the 21st Century. As more than one person has noted, the interior looks more like something out of Star Trek rather than NASA. The interior is also bigger than I expected, with a lot more room even though it's supposed to carry up to seven crew.

Thoughts On A Sunday

I spent part of the day yesterday chopping out more sumac from around the grounds of The Manse. It is a never ending battle against that weed, something that spreads quickly and chokes out all other plant life. After filling the bed of the trusty F150, I hauled all that I cut out to our town's brush pile at the recycling center. I figure I've got at least two or three more weekends to get the easily reached sumac cut out and hauled away. The rest will have to wait until the leaves have fallen from the other trees and plants top reach the rest.

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You know our laws about sexual assault have passed the point of absurdity when a 13-year old boy is charged with second-degree sexual assault for kissing a 14-year old girl on a dare.

Seeing that it took place in school, the school administrators decided to report the incident to the police who then stated he will be charged with sexual assault. This is incredibly stupid and a bunch of people need to be fired, particularly the school administrators.

It's of course true that every 14-year-old has the right not to be kissed. I'm not saying the boy's transgression should go unpunished. What I'm saying is this: he should not be charged with assault. He's 13. Thirteen-year-olds do stupid stuff. They screw up. And when the consequences of their actions are as minor as this, it's better to reprimand them in a manner that does not involve the criminal justice system.

It's more than likely that if the charges go forward and the boy is convicted, he will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. He will be seen as no different as rapists, pedophiles, and other sexual criminals. His future will be destroyed before it's even begun because meat-head school administrators are incapable of making a judgment call and will most likely hew to the line that it's school policy leaving them no wiggle room, something I always see as a BS claim because administrators do have discretion in these matters, they are just to chickens**t to exercise it.

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Here's yet another example of things that have passed the point of absurdity:

A woman complains because a copies of the latest issue of New Scientist are in the “mens and motors” section of a supermarket's magazine aisle, taking it to social media and calling it 'sexist'.

Is there nothing that isn't offensive to anyone any more? These people need to grow up.

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You know it's getting bad in the Middle East when al Qaeda declares war on ISIS.

I guess al Qaeda thinks ISIS is giving Islamic Extremism a bad name or something.

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Unlike refugee migrations in the past, why are we seeing so few women and children in the Syrian refugee crisis?

Could it be that this migration has little to do with actual refugees and more to do with moving more Muslims into Europe?

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So those of us who are skeptical of AGW have “an intellectual stance that is uncomfortably close to Hitler's”? Really?

Who is it that has been calling for a drastic reduction in the human population to 'save the Earth' by any means necessary? It sure as heck hasn't been the skeptics.

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David Starr relates his latest encounter with a number of computer viruses that brought his desktop to a crawl.

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You know it's getting bad when a sitting member of Congress states that colleges should be able to expel students accused of sexual assault even when the college is only 20 percent sure such students are guilty.

So in a politically charged atmosphere such as we're seeing on college campuses, a murderer has more rights than someone accused to sexual assault, even poorly defined sexual assault?

That's effed up.

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Is a smaller and cheaper fusion reactor on the horizon? I'm all for it...if it works. But no one has been able to reach the break-even point yet. Maybe this one will.

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For the most part it's been quiet around the lake since most of the summerfolk have gone for the year. There's still plenty of summer activities taking place, but it's mostly the locals partaking of them. The water temperature at the lake is still well above 75 degrees, meaning we'll still be swimming for at least another couple of weeks.

If this is global warming, I'm all for it.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where there's much less traffic on the roads and lake, many of the summer businesses have closed, and where we're keeping thoughts of fall as far away as possible.

Don't Confuse Them With Facts

After every incident involving illegal guns or mentally ill persons shooting somebody, the call goes out to 'toughen' gun laws. What they really mean by toughen is to work towards banning gun ownership by law abiding citizens, not understanding that it's not the law abiding citizens committing these crimes.

Disarming the populace will not lessen gun violence, something we've seen proven again and again in this nation. Places like Washington DC are a perfect example, the city having banned gun ownership within the city. Washington DC, our nation's capitol, also became the murder capitol of our nation. Homicides committed with guns skyrocketed, proving that disarming the populace protected no one...except the criminals.

In states with high per capita gun ownership, violent crime rates are low. In fact, in those states, my home state of New Hampshire included, most homicides aren't committed with guns. (We have very few homicides in our state.) But that won't stop the so-called gun grabbers from trying to prevent people from owning them. What do you expect from people who base much of their argument on emotion rather than verifiable crime statistics?

Want an example of how high gun ownership rates affect crime rates? Then take a gander below:

'Nuff said.

9/11 Remembered

I had never seen this report, one that highlights yet another group of heroes on That Awful Day.

We were aware of the first responders, many who gave their lives while trying to save others. We heard the stories of people within the Twin Towers who led people to safety and those who refused to leave their fellow workers alone to face their deaths.

While it's been 14 years since That Awful Day, one that still haunts me, I knew I had to watch this video of the many unheralded heroes who risked themselves to help people flee from lower Manhattan.

A Comparison - Christians And Muslims

From Moonbattery by way of Maggie's Farm.

I thing this explains it all -

Summer's End

This is a post from 5 years ago and it is as true today as it was then.

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Here it is, the closing hours of Labor day, the unofficial end of summer.

It's always a bittersweet time for me, seeing the yearly wonders summer brings coming to an end.

In days the local beach will be closed.

The boating season may well run for another month or so, but it won't be the same. No one will be anchoring to do some swimming. Boats won't be towing waterskiers, wakeboards, or tubes behind them.

Many of the waterfront eateries and amusements will be shutting down during the weekdays and not long from now will be closed until next summer. And not long after that the diehard boaters (like me) will be pulling our boats from the water and getting them ready for winter storage.

Another summer will fade away, to live on only in our memories. It is these that will sustain us through the coming winter, reliving some of the great moments of this wonderful summer.

And as always happens this weekend, Don Henley's Boys Of Summer runs through my mind, with almost every line evoking the very feelings the end of summer entails.


It's been a great summer. It only ended too soon for many of us.