Thoughts On A Sunday

The ice on the big lake is getting thinner, with much of it appearing dark blue. There are more openings in the ice sheet, with some areas being totally ice-free. Some of the small bodies of water are already ice-free, though one pond that I use as an early indicator of Ice Out on Lake Winnipesaukee still has a rather large ice sheet. (The pond is usually free of all ice about a week-and-a-half to two weeks before Ice Out is declared on the big lake.)

In anticipation of Ice Out and the start of the boating season, all arrangements have been made to get the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout ready with the anticipated launch date being early in May.

==+==

The rhetoric about Ukraine continues, with clashing news reports painting entirely different pictures about how well/poorly Russian forces are doing with their invasion. We are now 30 days into the 3-day “military operation” to ‘save’ Ukraine from its people and government. Things have not gone well for the Russians at all. Even Russian propaganda can’t paint their failure to achieve their objectives in a positive light. They can’t hide the casualties – wounded and KIA – no matter how hard they try. When sons and husbands stop writing, texting, or calling home, it’s a sure sign something is wrong.

Ukrainian troops have managed to push back Russian forces east of Kyiv while Russian forces to the north of the city appear to have made little or no progress toward Kyiv for weeks.

Then SloJo pays a visit to Poland and spouts things that are going to make things even worse.

==+==

Like Covid-19, the Joe Biden “I Did That!” stickers are evolving new variants.

==+==

By way of Powerline comes this thought from Kevin Sorbo:

“You think your job is hard? Try being the sign language interpreter for Biden.”

==+==

Senator Liawatha is at it again.

She wants SloJo to cancel student loan debt, all $1.5 billion of it. Her reasoning?

Student debt is a gender justice issue.

Umm, say what?

I tried to follow her ‘logic’ for making the claim, but it was seriously flawed. She states “Women owe over two-thirds of student debt”. Could it be because almost two-thirds of college students these days are women? Could it be because so many female college students got degrees in majors that are not what many would consider useful? (Most of those majors end in the word “Studies”.) It isn’t easy to pay off those student loans when working low paying jobs – barista, food delivery driver, waitress, etc. - the only jobs their degrees qualify them to work.

Considering a good percentage of male students enter STEM or Business majors, their ability to pay off their student loans is certainly better than the women with “Studies” degrees.

==+==

Remember when Coca-Cola announced their requirements for racial quotas for outside law firms representing them?

It appears the folks at Coca-Cola would like everyone to forget that. They now deny they had any such policy. The problem (for them) is that the Internet is Forever.

On January 29, 2021, we covered a new diversity plan implemented by then Coca-Cola General Counsel Bradley Gayton that imposed racial quotas for attorneys at outside law firms that wanted to do business with the beverage behemoth, Coca-Cola Imposes Racial Quotas On Outside Counsel Staffing.

The letter (pdf.) to outside counsel provided a chart and description of the quotas, including who qualifies as a “diversity” attorney and what the minimum percentages need to be...

It will be interesting to see how Coca-Cola is going make this go away. It’s almost as embarrassing as their “Try to be less white” diversity training debacle.

==+==

The evidence keeps mounting that lockdowns driven by Covid-19 didn’t work and haven’t prevented anyone from dying from Covid.

For the past few weeks, in a series of reports probing the science that has underpinned key pandemic decisions, The Mail on Sunday has investigated the accuracy of PCR tests and the chaotic way Covid-related deaths were recorded.

Today, in the final part, we talk to the growing number of experts who say that lockdowns had little benefit – a cure that was worse than the disease.

One of them is Professor Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, who has recently published a book, The Year The World Went Mad, about the UK's pandemic policy failures.

Speaking this week on The Mail on Sunday's Medical Minefield podcast, Prof Woolhouse said: 'I think that lockdown will be viewed by history as a monumental mistake on a global scale, for a number of reasons.

'The obvious one is the immense harm the lockdown, more than any other measure, did in terms of the economy, mental health and on the wellbeing of society.

But there will be those here who will insist we have to lock down to protect people. I can see that if you isolate infected patients, but quarantining healthy people makes no sense. Over 100 years experience with previous pandemics – the Spanish Flu and Hong Kong Flu, just to name two - has proven that. But The Powers That Be decided to ignore that experience and instead listened to those not-in-the-know. (Worse, they listened to Dr. Fauci, a bureaucrat that hasn’t practiced medicine for 40-some years.)

Those areas that didn’t lock down didn’t see more cases or more deaths from Covid-19. In many cases, they saw less. They also didn’t see the follow-on surges experienced by those that did, and if they did, they weren’t anywhere near as severe as experienced elsewhere.

Of course, I expect the Feds will ignore any such evidence and impose lockdowns should another Covid-like pandemic occur. The states, on the other hand, may be less likely to do so, seeing how much damage was done to their economies and the health of their residents the last time. Or at least I’d like to think so.

==+==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the temperatures are yo-yoing up and down, the ice is breaking up, and Ice Out and Tax Day will be vying for each other in the news headlines.

What A Buncha Maroons

I was in the midst of my regular weekend Wally World run this morning, picking up my usual goods – some frozen foods, a six-pack of Dr. Pepper, a gallon of spring water, some cat food, and a few other odds and ends – when I ran across a friend. We exchanged pleasantries and expressed our laments about skyrocketing prices, especially for cat food. She then said exactly what I was thinking.

“People wonder why this is happening. What’s happening is that we have morons running things in Washington. Biden’s the biggest moron of the bunch. He doesn’t have a clue that he’s the cause of our present problems.”

Indeed. What’s more telling is that it isn’t just we Deplorables saying this. The Saudi’s are saying the same thing.

In a March 22, 2022 article in Arab News, Saudi Arabia's leading English-language daily, the daily's editor Faisal 'Abbas states sarcastically that, if American author Toby Young ever wanted to write a sequel to his book 'How to Lose Friends & Alienate People,' he would find a rich vein of content in U.S. President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, which consistently contravenes the interests of America's allies and of American itself.

A blatant example, he says, is America's current eagerness to appease Iran in order to renew the nuclear deal with it. As part of this, the U.S. is even considering removing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the terrorism list, a move that is likely to embolden Iran rather than restrain it. "Declassifying the IRGC simply to obtain a new agreement would be the equivalent of trying to put out a fire by spraying it with aviation fuel," 'Abbas says.

When a nominal on-again off-again ally is telling us Washington is being run by morons, agreeing with a good portion of the American people, then one has to consider that both groups are right. The 2020 election was indeed a debacle for the the country and the people. All we can hope for is that the 2022 mid-term elections will help turn the tide, assuming SloJo doesn’t get us into World War III before then.

The Tables Turn?

I offer this with no comment as it speaks for itself.

Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is Climastrology

Here’s another one from the Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider Department comes this bit of nonsense.

It seems some genius over at the Cult of Climastrology has decided that an actual science discipline is contributing a ‘surprisingly high’ amount to climate change. That climate destroying discipline?

Astronomy.

Say what?

The aforementioned genius has decided that stargazing by astronomers and astrophysicists is contributing to the supposed human-caused demise of Earth and all life on it by looking up at the night sky.

This genius must be off their meds...again.

It’s hard not to love the Kepler Space Telescope. Launched in 2009, the venerable spacecraft discovered nearly 5,000 suspected or confirmed exoplanets—or worlds orbiting other stars—during its 11-year lifetime. Built and launched at a relative bargain price of $600 million, it generated 4,306 scientific papers written by 9,606 authors. So all good, right? Well, not entirely.

In that same 11 years, the telescope that discovered so many other worlds did no favors for our own, generating an annual total of 4,784 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, or a hefty 52,620 tons over its lifetime, mostly as a result of the electricity and supercomputing power it took to keep it operating. That also comes out to 12 tons of CO2 per paper and five tons per author.

Astronomy, in some ways, seems like the cleanest of sciences. After all, it costs nothing to look at the sky. But both ground-based and space-based observatories extract a huge environmental toll—in terms of construction, launch, energy generation and consumption, and even, at least before the pandemic, in the air miles burned as the world’s estimated 30,000 astronomers flew from conference to conference around the globe.

Does anyone see the sheer hypocrisy of this genius’s complaint?

He/she/it chooses to ignore the contributions to atmospheric carbon dioxide by members of that same Cult of Climastrology, between the thousands of papers written, the hundreds of global circulation models being run on similar supercomputers, and the thousands of attendees to various climate conferences around the world where no actual science is discussed.

Socialism Described

I wish I could remember where I heard this, but this is the best single-sentence explanation I have ever heard that so aptly describes socialism:

“Socialism is slavery by consensus.” - Unknown

Thoughts On A Sunday

Imagine my surprise to see gas prices have dropped about 10¢ a gallon across the area over the past few days. However, that drop in price applied only to Regular and not Mid-Grade or Premium.

I checked a half dozen gas stations in the area and confirmed that only the price of Regular has dropped. I would have expected the price of Mid-Grade to drop about 5¢ since it is usually made from mixing Regular and Premium grades at the pump. The price of Premium hasn’t dropped, Regular has, so I would have expected the cost of Mid-Grade to drop by some amount, but it hasn’t. (I have brought this up because the trusty RAM 1500 requires 89 octane. It will run on 87 octane Regular, but the fuel economy will drop by a couple of miles per gallon and its fuel economy is bad enough as it is.)

As an aside, yesterday I topped off the tank of the trusty RAM 1500 with gas from one of the gas caddies I have that is normally used to fuel either the Official Weekend Pundit Generator or the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout. Once boating season ends I cycle the gasoline in the caddies every couple of months or so to keep the fuel fresh. It was time to start cycling the gas in the caddies since the last time I filled them was in November. (Yes, I use gas stabilizer when I fill the caddies.) Once boating season starts they will be used regularly, particularly this coming season.

Buying gas at the gas docks of the marinas is always expensive. Marinas here on the Big Lake only sell 89 octane gas as there are a number of boats with high performance engines that can’t use 87 octane gas and providing more than one grade of gas is problematic. The Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout is one of those boats that only requires Regular, so BeezleBub and I buy 87 octane at one of our local gas stations for a lot less than we can buy 89 octane gas at a marina, the price differential being as much as $1.50 a gallon. Is it any wonder why we use the gas caddies to fuel our boat?

==++==

I am still getting used to the change back to Daylight Savings Time.

I am tired of making the change in November and March and would rather just stay on DST. I know a lot of other people feel the same way, particularly in this part of the US. Having sunset occur near 3:30PM during the depths of winter gets old real quick. Driving to work and back home again in the dark gets old really quick.

Year round DST was tried back in the early 70’s during the Arab Oil Embargo and it wasn’t popular. A good portion of that dislike was because it was imposed as a gimmick to ‘help’ save fuel. There was little support from the public.

The Senate recently passed legislation that will make DST year round and it’s headed to the House where it is expected to pass. The difference this time?

A majority of Americans support it, particularly those of us living on the eastern edges of the four time zones in the Lower 48.

Some folks have complained about DST causing children to have to wait for their school buses in the dark, overlooking the fix to that problem: start school later in the morning. The suggestion to make starting time for school later in the morning has been made for years, particularly in light of research showing later starting times for school improves grades and decreases absenteeism, particularly among adolescents. DST would be a good reason to make that change.

==++==

I have to admit that this is probably a great idea.

RNC Launches Voter Registration Drives at Gas Stations for Americans Who Are Fed Up With High Prices.

What better way to get the word out that there’s an alternative to the Democrats’ foolishness on inflation and energy costs than to register Americans to vote? That’s what the Republican National Committee is doing, and they kicked off a voter registration initiative at gas stations this weekend.

The Hill reports that the first voter registration event took place in the Phoenix area on Saturday afternoon, where staff and volunteers spent two hours registering Americans who are angry about gas prices.

As one commenter wrote, “There should also be a large supply of ‘I Did That!’ stickers available for those who register. They should also be applied liberally to the gas pumps in the area as a reminder.”

I have seen the stickers popping up all over the place. I have also seen the remains of stickers on gas pumps, usually partially covered by newer stickers. They’re being replaced faster than the gas station personnel can remove them. As the Instaprof has said, it’s a perfect guerrilla campaign. It’s cheap, it’s spontaneous, and it’s effective.

==++==

It seems Elon Musk has made it possible to for the Ukrainians to keep fighting and to keep information flowing in and out of their beleaguered country. It’s Starlink to the rescue.

I have to wonder if he’ll be able to smuggle Starlink ground stations into Russia to help maintain free exchange of information in and out now that Russia has been shutting down their Internet connections to the rest of the world. Call it a modern twist to the old samizdat during the Bad Old Days of the Soviet Union.

==++==

With this news, I can see that Putin has indeed gone too far.

Pink Floyd and David Gilmour have withdrawn their music from streaming platforms in Russia and Belarus.

David Gilmour said he and Pink Floyd are protesting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by removing a large portion of their music catalog from streaming properties in Russia and Belarus.

"To stand with the world in strongly condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the works of Pink Floyd, from 1987 onwards, and all of David Gilmour's solo recordings are being removed from all digital music providers in Russia and Belarus from today," an announcement shared Friday to the band’s Twitter account states.

No Pink Floyd or David Gilmour in Russia and Belarus? Putin is doomed...

==++==

Steve Earle at GraniteGrok delves into the continuing rewriting of recent history by the * Administration and WRBA.

It all comes down to this: Nothing Biden did is Biden’s fault.

Really?

Steve lists some for those of you who may have forgotten, a few which include:

Been reading that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has been recalibrating the COVID death counts. Apparently, there were considerable overestimations.

If so I would not be surprised at often the officials were asked how many died with Covid as opposed to from Covid?

--snip--

Remember “the border is under control” while over two million illegals, many criminals, none seeking to do America any good waltzed across? This was a bald-faced lie and said with straight faces while creating huge rises in crime and drug deaths.

--snip--

Recently propagandist Mike Luckovich had a cartoon published in the Laconia Daily Sun blaming “Big Oil” for the shortages and high costs of oil. Now can anyone not see the absurdity of such a position? We were energy independent under the Trump Administration, prices were low and stable, jobs plentiful. Then Biden cut our production, catering to environmentalists, and the moment he did oil prices began to rise because like anything that becomes less abundant its price rises.

--snip--

Let us not forget the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan which Biden tried to blame on Trump saying he followed Trump’s plan, a total lie. We left hundreds of American citizens behind and ten’s of thousands of our Afghan allies and their families who are being hunted and killed by the Taliban.

Steve could have spent a few thousand words listing the excesses of SloJo and WRBA, but I think those of us who are already cognizant of their sins can complete the list ourselves.

==++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the ice is slowly breaking up, the temps are rising, and Monday is once again arriving all too soon.

I Can't Argue With This

I was remiss in not having shared this on this past Monday as it was apropo for the date, but it is still just as valid today as it has ever been.

My only regret is that he hadn't passed before he damaged the world. One has to remember his adherents have killed 100 million+ people.

(H/T Knucklegraggin)

Thoughts On A Sunday

We experienced yet another snowstorm yesterday, seeing around two inches of heavy snow fall between late morning and mid-afternoon. The only issue we had with the storm was the high winds that followed the storm system.

I will admit I was lazy with this storm, not doing any shoveling until this morning because I knew the Plow Guys would be by to do 90% of the work. All I had to do was ‘clean up’ what they didn’t or couldn’t get and that took all of 10 minutes to take care of. Seeing that temps around here will be in the 60’s by the end of the week I figure everything that fell on Saturday will be gone, and then some. We still have three and four foot snowbanks here around The Gulch and I am hoping the warm temperatures will reduce them to almost nothing.

==++==

Speaking of warmer temperatures, I made arrangements with the boatyard that stores and services the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout to have it ready for launching by the second week of May. It helps that I am friends with the owners and have done business with them for almost 20 years, so there were no issues regarding getting the work done.

To think, boating season starts in a little over 7 weeks!

==++==

When I saw this, I realized it was so true.

Even incompetents can accomplish big things. In this case SloJo has managed to damage more than just our economy.

==++==

Have you noticed that climate change is being blamed for everything?

Claims have been made that it triggers earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, causes automobile accidents, male pattern baldness, high credit card balances, low marriage rates and related high divorce rates, Third Wave Feminism, the Red Sox not being in contention for the World Series, Tom Brady going to Tampa Bay, Hollywood putting out even worse crap than they usually do, cargo ships carrying $400 million worth of luxury vehicles (including some top end EV’s) to catch fire and sink in the Atlantic, discontent with the morons running the Feddle Gummint, voter fraud, erectile dysfunction, and a whole host of other ills.

Claims have also been made that the only way to reverse these ills is to impoverish ourselves and go back to living an Eighteenth Century lifestyle which also include reverting to technology and medical care from that time as well. The only ones exempt from those ‘cures’ will be those imposing those cures, of course. That’s the real motivation for pushing all of these cures for a problem that isn’t really a problem.

==++==

I wish I didn’t have to say this, but it bears repeating here: Americans Feel Less Free and Don't Trust Public Officials in Post-COVID Poll.

Considering how many times we’ve been lied to by the government (at all levels), how many times the so-called “experts” have been proven wrong, how studies have been proven that masks are all but useless and that lockdowns were equally useless and far more damaging than Covid itself, is it any wonder the feeling of freedom and trust in public officials is as low as it is?

While the legal basis for our rights is unquestioned thanks to the Constitution, how those rights are protected is causing people to question whether they mean anything anymore. The poll showed that 42% feel less secure about voicing their opinions, 43% feel less secure about their freedom to protest, and 36% feel less secure about their freedom to exercise religious beliefs.

While a healthy skepticism of government power is wise in a democracy, in a true crisis public officials must make snap decisions to protect the public. Whether people follow those decisions depends, in part, on their confidence in the leaders making them. Unfortunately, when asked about every single institution or office in the YouGov/AFP poll, the majority of respondents said their trust in those institutions had dropped.

Nearly three in five Americans said the government did a “somewhat” or “very poor” job clearly communicating to the public about data or reasoning regarding any pandemic restriction or requirement. And 54% thought government officials did a “somewhat” or “very poor” job applying any restrictions or requirements to all people (including themselves) equally.

None of this is much of a surprise except, perhaps, the margins that say they feel less secure in their rights. When more than four in ten Americans feel less secure about speaking their minds or protesting, the essence of freedom is under attack.

It’s even worse when one looks at the government’s crackdown on “misinformation”, meaning they only what their view about what’s true or not to be heard. That view is what is called propaganda and truth rarely has any relation to what is being peddled in that propaganda. The American people, at least those not under the thrall of our wannabe totalitarian masters, understand that “it’s hard to trust a government that doesn’t trust its citizens with the ability to tell the difference between misinformation and the truth.” The government doesn’t want the citizens to have the truth. The truth won’t let them get away with what they’ve been planning for us.

==++==

This is an abbreviated TOAS as I have work-related duties to attend to, specifically at the lab, and will shortly be on my way. I will endeavor to make up for it in the next day or two.

The Propaganda War Rages On

The propaganda war between Russia and Ukraine continues, with conflicting stories about victories and defeats. But then propaganda is always part of war. Watching the numerous videos of attacks by Russian forces, counterattacks by Ukrainian forces, and drone strikes by Ukrainian drones taking out Russian tanks, tracks, and trucks.

Watching video of Russian helicopters attacking Ukrainian positions and being shot down in turn by US-supplied Stinger missiles was reminiscent of similar scenes of Soviet helicopters and strike aircraft being shot down in Afghanistan by earlier generation Stingers supplied to the majuhadeen by the US. (As a side note, one of the missile programs I worked on back in my defense days was the FIM-92 Stinger MANPADS missile system. My work dates back to the early 1990’s and I have to assume there have been at least two or three generations of the Stinger since then.)

As much as the Russians try to make it sound as if everything is going swimmingly, reports from inside Ukraine from foreign media tell a different story. So who do we believe? I know I am disinclined to believe anything coming from Moscow, particularly in light of their more recent attempt at a false flag operation to drag Belarus into Ukraine. (The Russians really like using false flag operations to justify actions they want to take or to force others to act in ways they want.)

I Speak In English....

I saw this over at Knuckledraggin and it brought back memories, particularly of a little TV series called All In The Family on CBS that debuted back in 1971 and was an immediate hit. It crossed a lot of lines, spared no one, broke a lot of rules. Carroll O’Connor played the bigoted and opinionated head of the family, Archie Bunker.

While the meme below may not have been said by Archie, it certainly could have as he made his disdain of liberals known, particularly his liberal son-in-law, Mike ‘Meathead’ Stivic, played by Rob Reiner.

‘Nuff said...

This Is The Real Reason Our Gas Prices Are So High And Will Continue To Go Up

We keep hearing all kinds of reasons from WRBA why gas prices have risen so dramatically. But we never hear the real cause of the meteoric rise in gas prices from WRBA...because it was caused by WRBA. Below is a graphic which certainly backs up that claim. The included chart comes from GasBuddy.com.

With three of the numerous Executive Orders SloJo signed on his first day in office, he set into motion the inevitable rise in oil prices and the loss of our energy independence. He purposely destroyed our energy independence and made us beholden to countries that are not our friends - including Russia - for oil to make up for the supplies we used to get from our own oil fields.

Yes, I have mentioned the above more than once and I am going to continue to repeat it until it sinks in. This is something we need to keep repeating over and over again until after the 2024 elections.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was while I was out having breakfast with the WP Mom at one of our favorite diners yesterday when Katy texted me. She wrote, “So gas prices went from $3.66 to $4.04 within 36 hours this week. Didn’t look yesterday.”

I realized I hadn’t bought gas for the trusty RAM1500 for almost two weeks so I hadn’t been paying too much attention to gas prices around here.

I had errands to run after breakfast so I had the opportunity to check gas prices (and gas up the pickup). About a week and a half ago gas was going for $3.55 at my ‘reference’ gas station in my town. Yesterday it was $4.09. Mid-grade was $4.39. (The trusty RAM 1500 requires 89 octane.) I did not gas up there as I did find mid-grade for $4.30 one town over when I was running errands and topped off the tank. With prices this high I don’t like to let the gas tank get much below a half tank because if it does the total can exceed $75 and the pump will shut off, meaning I’ll have to run my debit card through the pump...again.

I figure we’re nowhere near seeing how high gas prices will go. (Thanks, SloJo and WRBA!)

At least I don’t need to drive anywhere near as much as I used to since my employer has made our hybrid work schedule – Mondays and Fridays working from home and Tuesdays through Thursdays at the lab – permanent. That knocks my commute down by 40%. (Not that it’s all that long to begin with, being a little over 9 miles door-to-door.) So between trips to and from work, running errands, and occasional town duties to attend to, it takes about 2 weeks for me to use a little less than a half tank of gas.

Update: I noticed the price of regular at my reference gas station went up another 8 cents to $4.17, seeing the new price this morning on my way back to The Gulch after finishing my pre-church run to Walmart.

==++==

Has Putin bitten off more than Russia can chew?

Seeing what has been happening to Russian forces in Ukraine I’d have to say the answer is yes. They expected a quick “Shock and Awe” victory but what they have instead has been an “Aww S**t!” slog.

While some folks have been pointing out that Russia is huge, and it is as far as land area is concerned, it doesn’t have the economic power it needs, nor is its military nearly as capable as they would have you think. The comments in this Instapundit post make the case that Russia has seriously misjudged their ability to take Ukraine and to do so quickly. They may find holding it will be even more difficult.

You would think they would have learned that lesson in Afghanistan in the 1980’s.

==++==

President * is told a hard truth by the President of Finland..

Biden, speaking on the current situation [in Ukraine], said “You know my predecessor who sat in this seat, President Obama, used to say it would be alright if we left everything to the Nordic countries.”

Niinistö, responding, then said, “Well, we usually don’t start wars.”

Touché.

I am proud to see the president of my mother’s homeland willing to not pull punches, particularly when it comes to SloJo.

==++==

I would have expected this is Russia, not in the US...well, except maybe California.

It looks like the totalitarians in New York, specifically the Rochester, New York school district totalitarians have decided they are going to disabuse parents of the notion that they have a right to freedom of speech, particularly parents of students within the Rochester School District.

It looks like the school district has been monitoring the social media of conservative parents, collecting information and then using it to silence those parents by trying to get them fired from their jobs. Just who the hell do these people think they are?

A New York school district has caused outrage among parents after it was discovered that the district set up a program to monitor the social media of conservative parents and then took that info to the parents’ employers in hopes of having the parents fired.

The spy program was created by the Rochester Community School District, according to a lawsuit filed by parent Elena Dinverno, according to The Center Square.

Dinverno said in her lawsuit that the school’s spy program caused her to lose her job in 2021.

Supposedly, posts by conservative parents, and particularly Elena Dinverno, critical of the school districts decision against returning children to in-school education were seen as physical threats against members of the school board by calling for protests outside the board members’ homes.

This isn’t the only report I’ve heard of school districts/school boards trying to intimidate parents who didn’t agree with the school district administration decisions and policies that parents saw as damaging to their kids and to their education.

Heck, one Wisconsin school district has decided that parents don’t have the right to know their children’s gender identity, taking the stance that children do not belong to their parents, but to the state in the form of the school district.

That proves to me that we have some major problems with our ‘betters’ that could be solved by kicking them out voting them out of office and replacing them with people who fully understand our rights, the rights of parents, and understand that children do belong to their parents and that the parents are responsible for raising and taking care of their children, not some self-important politically ‘woke’ moron with the morals of a pimp.

==++==

Anyone who has taken an economics course understands what causes inflation: a shortage of goods, an increase in the money supply, or both.

When goods are in short supply, the cost goes up because the people are willing to pay more to get those goods. Sometimes the shortages are caused by weather, transportation issues, raw materials shortages, natural disasters, war, and so on.

When the money supply is increased more quickly than an economy’s expansion, you have too many dollars chasing the same amount of goods and services. Prices go up to ‘absorb’ the extra money supply.

When both happen at the same time the inflation can be mindboggling. We’ve seen that at an extreme when hyperinflation occurs because the government cranks up the printing presses and cranks out bills that become worth less and less as the money supply explodes. (We’ve seen that recently in Venezuela and earlier in Zimbabwe.) As the money becomes worth less the cost of goods and services goes up. It can get to the point where the money’s value becomes so low that goods and services can no longer be produced or purchased.

But inflation isn’t caused by greed…except when it’s being used as an excuse by economists and politicians infected with the Marxist Economics virus.

We listened carefully to President Joe Biden’s Tuesday night State of the Union speech for what he plans to do about our growing inflation disaster. We were not impressed. Apart from paying lip service to inflation’s impact on working families, Biden’s proposals will, if anything, make the problem far worse.

--snip--

To begin with, he blamed corporate “greed” for inflation, which is scapegoating of the worst sort. To fix this, he proposed price controls and government subsidies on “computer chips, prescription drugs, health care premiums, weatherization projects, renewable energy, electric vehicles and child care” to get companies to boost output.

Corporations don’t suddenly get “greedy.” And greed isn’t the cause of inflation, as Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman noted in perhaps his most famous pronouncement: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Many others have said the same thing.

Despite being in Washington when the last great inflation occurred, Biden is about to make the same mistakes made by multiple presidents that let the inflation problem go from being a brushfire to an all-out conflagration.

So SloJo, DaHo, Pelosi, Schumer, and the usual suspects wanted to severely damage the US economy. This is how they can go about it and do so while claiming they are doing everything they can do ‘save’ it. And once the economy is damaged, they can then implement new directives that will leave our ‘betters’ in charge and those of us not ‘them’ will be the new serfs in their new feudal state.

Sounds paranoid, right?

Then how does one explain the eight years of economic insanity during the Obama years and the stupid and ill-advised actions SloJo, Pelosi, and Schumer have been shoving down our throats since SloJo took office?

But one thing I have been keeping in the back of my mind about is an old saw that, knowing SloJo and the gang in mind, more likely applies:

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.

These days I am more inclined to believe it’s stupidity, particularly in light of the SloJo’s/WRBA’s mis-steps since he took office.

And so it goes.

==++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where it’s almost 50ºF and sunny, there’s more open water appearing on the lake, and where Town Meeting season is upon us.

A Quagmire For Russia?

I have no doubt you’ve been paying some level of attention to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I have, though not to the level of some folks.

There are a number of things I’ve heard about the battle between Russian and Ukrainian forces, with little of it showing the Russian military in a good light, specifically when it comes to their war-fighting capabilities.

It appears Putin and the military planners expected a quick and decisive victory in the manner of the US military’s “Shock and Awe” victory over Iraq’s forces during Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. However, their “Shock and Awe” plans turned into “WTF?!!” when their expected cake walk into Kyiv turned into pitched battles against Ukrainian forces and experiencing destruction of tanks, armored vehicles, trucks, helicopters, and attack aircraft with progress towards Kyiv slowed to crawl, with some columns halted due to lack of fuel, ammunition, and fuel.

The Russians didn’t have their logistics in order for lengthy operation, basing it on the “cake walk” scenario. (That’s a mistake US forces didn’t make with any of their operations, be it in Iraq or Afghanistan.) So when things bogged down and the various Russian units didn’t meet their objectives there wasn’t enough materiel – gas, food, and bullets – in the supply chain to resupply them adequately. Trucks, tanks, and tracks were either parked or abandoned when they ran out of fuel and the troops ran out of food and were low on ammunition. Logistics can win or lose battles or wars. As anyone familiar with military operations knows, “Amateurs talk about strategy. Professionals talk about logistics.”

During World War II, the one thing that won the war, particularly in the European Theater, was logistics. The ability to get what was needed where it was need when it was needed in the quantities needed is what defeated Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The Allies could build ships, planes, trucks, and tanks faster than the enemy could destroy them. They could make bombs, bullets, and artillery shells and get them where they were needed in very large quantities. The could get food, fuel, and ammo where it was needed when it was needed. Germany and Italy couldn’t even come close to doing that, particularly after Normandy.

The Russians used to understand that lesson, but have forgotten it.

It also appears the Russians didn’t use their best trained troops for this operation, with a majority of the troops being conscripts and poorly trained ones at that. Highly trained Spetsnaz and paratroop units were going to be used to seize the Ukrainian government in Kyiv and the ground troops were supposed to support them. But between the paratroops being unable to reach their drop zones and the ground troops being bogged down and failing to reach their objectives due to the Ukrainian forces opposing them, the cake walk scenario died a much deserved death.

Because of this, the Russians now have to slog it out, reverting to old Soviet tactics of bludgeoning the Ukrainians with artillery, more artillery, and even more artillery, hitting all targets, military and civilian. (It seems artillery shells and rockets are about the only thing the Russian troops have in large enough numbers...for the moment. That can change at any time.) They will be stuck with ground action as the only way to ‘win’, and even then it will cost Russia dearly since the military will be destroying the very things Putin wants to control. Putin could end up taking control of a wasteland.

There’s also the question of just how long the Russian military will be able to sustain operations considering they do have a limited amount of funds to finance the war. The sanctions are hitting Russia harder than many, including the Russians, have expected. How much longer can Russia continue this war if it ends up destroying their economy in the process?

Putin is also making the mistake of trying to intimidate NATO, setting his sights on the Baltics (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) once he’s taken Ukraine, and then perhaps Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. It wouldn’t surprise me if he wanted Hungary as well. That he’s threatened Sweden and Finland doesn’t bode well for him either.

If he needs more troops, where will he get them? He can’t really strip them from Russia’s southern border with the ‘Stans’ and China. Despite Putin and Xi being ‘buddies’, Xi wouldn’t hesitate to exploit any of Russia’s weaknesses if it was to his advantage. Some of Russia’s putative allies have already declined to provide troops to help Russia take Ukraine since they see Russia’s imperial ambitions as Putin’s problem, not theirs. (Kazakhstan didn’t just say ‘no’, they said ‘Hell, no’.)

If Sweden and Finland decide to join NATO, what will Putin do? What can he do? He has threatened economic and military consequences, but just how much can he realistically do to them?

I find it interesting that an increasing number of Russians who oppose Putin are leaving Russia. It appears a lot of them are crossing into Finland on their way elsewhere because they don’t want to end up in a gulag...or an anonymous grave.

This whole Ukrainian debacle seems so 20^th century. Perhaps the ghost of Stalin is looking over Putin’s shoulder. It certainly seems that way to me...and many others.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It looks like we’re in for a little more snow today, adding to the foot of snow we received two days ago.

One would think we wouldn’t have to deal with much more in the way of snow now that we’re edging into March in a couple of days, but it turns out that March is the snowiest month of the winter on average in this part of the country. Some of the storms that dropped a lot of snow we’ve experienced have taken place in March. (One of the biggest I remember is the Superstorm of March 1993 which started in Texas and dropped snow from South Carolina up to the Maritime Provinces in Canada. We received around 2 feet of snow in the Capital area where I lived at the time.)

However, all of that aside, I have already contacted the boatyard where I store the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout – aka The Boat – about preparing it for the upcoming boating season. I generally have to call right around now to get into the queue for removing it from storage, performing any preseason maintenance, and making sure it is seaworthy before it is put into the water in early May.

It’s still February, yet arrangements for the upcoming boating season are already being made.

==++==

Sanctions against Russia have been imposed for its unwarranted (and greed driven) invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions are being imposed even at the state level.

New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu has ordered the State Liquor Stores and supermarkets to stop selling and clear their shelves of Russian liquor products. While my home state only sells about $20 million worth of Russian booze each year, it is still income the Russians won’t see.

==++==

Another blow that will weaken the Russian economy is a move by a number of countries to block selected Russian banks access to the international SWIFT global financial messaging system and to impose ”restrictive measures” on its central bank in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine.

This would in effect block Russian banks from sending or receiving funds between them and other banks worldwide.

The measures were announced jointly as part of a new round of financial sanctions meant to impose a severe cost on Russia for the invasion.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she would push the bloc also to “paralyze the assets of Russia’s Central bank” so that its transactions would be frozen.

Cutting several commercial banks from SWIFT “will ensure that these banks are disconnected from the international financial system and harm their ability to operate globally,” she said.

Regardless of the Russian cash reserves, something Putin bolstered in light of his invasion plans, being cut off from the electronic transfer system can seriously cripple their ability to do business outside of Russia.

==++==

It looks like the Russians are on the receiving end of cyber-attacks, with Russian state websites have been taken down and TV stations hacked to broadcast Ukrainian songs.

While the attacks could have targeted infrastructure, these attacked websites that propagandized the attacks on Ukraine and, in part, turned them against the Russian government, and more specifically, Putin.

Russian government websites including the official Kremlin and media regulator pages are down, in what could be the first round of tit-for-tat cyberattacks after the West furiously condemned warmonger Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s telecoms agency also announced that Russian TV channels had been hacked to broadcast Ukrainian songs, the Kyiv Independent reported on Saturday afternoon.

Just hours before Russia’s tyrant launched his aggressive war to ‘demilitarise’ and ‘de-Nazify’ Ukraine, Kyiv was hit by a ‘massive’ cyberattack targeting its government and banks.

Propaganda only works if it can get out to the people for which it was created. If it is blocked, or even better, turned against those who were using it, so much the better, at least in this case.

==++==

This is something you won’t see anywhere on the DNC-MSM.

Trump Was Right: Europe’s Reliance On Russian Oil and Gas Emboldened Putin.

Those of us who have been paying attention have known this for a long time. Anyone placing their energy supply in the hands of an adversary which would then give that adversary control over those nations, directly or indirectly, must be considered mentally ill. Trump warned the nations of Europe that making themselves dependent upon Russian natural gas and oil would make them vulnerable to Russian extortion. He was right.

If these weren’t such dark times, it would be rather amusing how completely wrong Democrats and their media stenographers continue to be about President Trump. They are busily swooning onto their fainting couches over Trump reportedly stating that he thought the war-mongering Putin was “smart” to take “over a country for $2 worth of sanctions.”

Anyone who has listened to President Trump blast Russia, China, and/or try to reason with the Europeans/NATO knows that this is a comment not about how “smart” Putin is but about how incredibly, unbelievably, shamefully weak and feckless Biden is.

As Trump later explained:

In a telephone interview with Fox News late Wednesday night, as Russia launched its invasion, Mr. Trump called the unfolding events a “very sad thing for the world and the country.” He said Mr. Biden hadn’t done enough to dissuade Mr. Putin from invading.

“He was going to be satisfied with a piece and now he sees the weakness and the incompetence and the stupidity of this administration,” Mr. Trump said on Fox News on Wednesday night.

Trump supporters got that immediately, of course, before he spelled it out for them.

The woke partisan media, though, can’t help themselves. Everything that is wrong in the entire world is all down to Orange Man Bad.

Yup, everything that has transpired before and after Trump was in office is his fault. That is the party line the DNC-MSM must toe or be declared non-persons. It doesn’t matter that Trump has been right time after time. We also know that if Trump was still in office Putin wouldn’t have undertaken his Ukraine debacle.

==++==

In little over a week a number of New Hampshire towns will be going to their voting booths to elect town and school officials, vote for/against town and school budgets, and a number of other issues of importance. It will be Town and School District Meeting day.

Some New Hampshire towns hold traditional Town and School District meetings where registered voters attend the meetings to discuss budgetary and other items on the Town and School District warrants, and then vote on them. Others use the option to have two different sets of meetings with the first session being the deliberative meeting(s) to discuss and, if so desired, amend articles on the Town and School District warrants. A month later the second session, the actual elections and voting on the various articles on the Town and School District warrants, takes place. This is also known as the SB2 option, named after New Hampshire’s Senate Bill 2 that gave towns the option to use either system for their individual Town and School District meetings.

The SB2 option was seen as a way to garner more participation by townsfolk to decide how their tax money would be spent on various things. Attendance at traditional town meetings had been falling for quite some time, particularly in the larger towns, particularly because those meetings could last all day if the warrant had a large number of articles, or if there were controversial articles that garnered a lot of debate and amendments before attendees would vote on them. It was thought that splitting the Town and School District meetings might generate more participants if the deliberative and voting sessions were split. SB2 was aimed at the voting sessions – aka Town Election Day – since voting doesn’t take long, even with a lengthy town or school district warrant.

Over the years I have seen the number of interested townsfolk attending our town’s deliberative sessions dwindle – our last one had 24 registered voters not counting town officials and the school district deliberative session saw a few more than that – but voter turnout has hovered around 1,000 to 1,300 out of the approximately 6,000 registered voters in our town of 7,200. (The worst one for voter turnout saw about 800 voters and that was in the midst of a blizzard with heavy snowfall.) Occasionally the voter turnout will be higher, particularly if there are one or more controversial articles on the town or school district warrants.

It is small town democracy, with the people in the town deciding how their town and schools will be run and how much they will spend over the coming year.

One thing I ask when I hear some of my fellow townsfolk complaining about one thing or another going on in our town or our schools: “Did you vote at town meeting?”

If the answer is no, I usually will tell them they have no right to complain since they couldn’t be bothered to vote on the town and school warrants.

==++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where a little more snow is on the way later today, work is going to keep me very busy this coming week, and where February is almost over.

Random Stuff On Saturday

It was a typical winter storm we experienced yesterday here in New Hampshire, with 12 inches of snow falling here at The Gulch. It was only in the teens which meant that the snow was light and fluffy which also meant it was easy to move when it was all done. Since there was little wind the snow pretty much stayed put once it fell or was shoveled away. The lack of drifting meant we didn’t have to deal with shoveling the same snow over and over again. In fact, the snow was so light that I was able to use a push broom to move the snow to one side of the driveway and then a snow shovel to finish the job by moving the piled show to the other side of the snow banks. I had the driveway in front of the Gulch done in less than 15 minutes, with 5 minutes of that time spend cleaning off the trusty RAM 1500.

It isn’t often we get that much snow without there being considerable amount of effort to move it. Even removing snow from the roof with the roof rake was easier than usual!

By 2PM today the driveway was clean and dry and water from the melting snow on the roof could be heard running through the gutters and downspouts.

You could almost think there hadn’t been all that much snow at all.

+++

I thought I’d mention the goings on in Ukraine, seeing that the Russians are seeing increasing resistance, both on the ground and the air. But to hear it from the DNC-MSM, you would think the Russians are running freely rolling over Ukrainian forces. But seeing reports from non-US news sources we’re finding out that isn’t the case. Some reports have stated that Russian armored units are seeing their T-80 tanks and other armored vehicles being hit with effective anti-tank fire. There have also been other reports that the Ukrainian Air Force have shot down a number of Russian fighters and helicopters, putting a dent in air support for Russian ground forces.

What’s surprising is there is also resistance to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine from some of Russia’s allies. Kazakhstan refused Putin’s request for Kazahk troops to bolster the invasion as it has bogged down. What’s even more surprising is the protests against Putin and the invasion of Ukraine in Russia. It looks like Putin doesn’t have the support of many of the Russian people for his ill advised invasion.

This does not bode well for Putin.

+++

I have to keep wondering how long the rabid Dems are going to keep ignoring the fact that the reason our energy prices have risen is Joe Biden’s ill-advised Executive Orders that shut down a needed oil pipeline, banned any new oil and gas leases on federal lands, and severely limited fracking on existing leased land?

The results are easy to see: Rapidly climbing oil and gas prices as domestic supplies were choked off by Presidential decree. This left us vulnerable as we went from being energy independent to needing to import increasing amounts of oil and distillates from foreign sources that are not known for being friends of the US. That it happened as quickly as it did is not surprising to anyone paying attention and not blinded by their ‘good intentions’, as ignorant as they were.

They have blamed everyone but Biden. They’ve pointed their fingers at Trump, Putin, DeSantis, Abbot, Republicans in general, and anyone else, even those who had no connection in any way to the energy policy or the energy industry.

But everyone else knows exactly why we’ve seen oil, gas, and natural gas prices have skyrocketed. It might explain why the guerrilla campaign against Biden and his energy dictats have been so effective.

+++

And so it goes...

What's Up With The U.S. Postal Service?

At first, I thought it might just be me. I understand that sometimes there are periods when someone might not get much in the way of mail. But when neither my mother or I don’t get mail at the same time, that tells me it isn’t happenstance.

For some time now we’ve noticed that we don’t receive any mail every other day. Occasionally we only get mail every third day. Asking neighbors, I’ve found that they are experiencing the same thing. Today I asked some of my co-workers, most of them living in other nearby towns, if they have experienced the lack of mail delivery.

Every single one said yes.

I don’t know if it’s a problem beyond our immediate area or if it’s widespread, but it seems the USPS may be having problems with staffing. If they don’t have enough letter carriers to cover all of the delivery routes every day, even with overtime, then moving to every-other-day deliveries make sense. It would have been nice to have received notice that the USPS was moving to every-other-day delivery rather than leaving us wondering what the heck was going on.

Checking the ‘Net, I’ve seen dozens of articles and announcements about delivery delays, but many of them date back to prior to Christmas and are aimed at informing customers to allow longer delivery times due to both Covid and heavy online order volumes.

We aren’t seeing delays here, per se, but non-delivery. No mail one day, then twice the mail the next day. That tells me it’s probably a mail carrier issue, at least on the local level, and not a distribution problem. I have yet to determine if anyone else in the area is receiving mail every other day, but on the days that I am not. That would certainly indicate it’s a lack of mail carriers and not a distribution problem.

Thoughts On A Sunday

This past Friday was a transition day here in N’Hampsa.

When I woke up that morning – just a few minutes before 5:30am – the temperature outside was an unseasonable 59ºF and it stayed there until about 7am and stared to drop. Two hours later it was 34ºF and by noon it was 25ºF.

It had rained the day before and through the night. Between the warm temperatures and the rain, much of the snow and ice on the roof here at The Gulch and on most of the neighboring homes was gone. Maybe 5 to 10% of what had covered the roofs remained. The ice and compacted snow on the driveways was gone. A good portion of the snowpack on the ground was still there after the rain and warm temperatures. With the rapid drop in temperatures, a good portion of that snowpack froze into a solid mass.

On Saturday it was sunny, on and off. It was about 7ºF when I got up, having slept in to 6:30am. We had some light snow in the early afternoon, with just enough to give a very thin coating on the driveways and roofs.

We did see a few minutes of very heavy snow as a squall line came through late in the afternoon, with the visibility dropping to zero. Just as quickly as it started it faded away and stopped, leaving a little more of a coating on the driveways and roofs.

==++==

Have you noticed that YouTube has been increasingly censoring videos? It seems some subjects and content that was devoutly ignored in the past have become taboo, either limiting the age of people allowed to view them, delisting them so the don’t show up in a search (but they can still be viewed if you have the link), or deleting them entirely. They have also gone so far as to demonetize some YouTube channels because the busybody (and woke) censors don’t like the content. There is nothing wrong or prurient about the content, but the knownothing censors disagree with the content and spike it. (This is the same thing that has happened on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, just to name two.) This has led more content providers to move to other platforms like BitChute, Rumble, or Locals.com, just to name a few. While not as large as YouTube nor quite as user friendly, they are not censorious like YouTube. (There is some content these sites will not allow. You can probably guess why.)

Some of my favorite YouTube channels have already made the move though they still post content on YouTube, but they don’t post nearly as much as they have in the past and what they do post tends to be heavily edited so they don’t offend the perpetually offended censors.

As more social media sites become ‘woke’ and increasingly stifle free speech, I expect we’ll see more folks moving to sites like the YouTube alternatives and others like MeWe (a Facebook alternative) and Gab or Parler (Twitter alternatives).

==++==

Seeing the standoff between Russia and Ukraine, I have been wondering if any of this would have taken place if Trump were still president. My gut reaction is “Nope. No way. Putin knows Trump isn’t a pushover.”

I can’t get past the idea the reason Putin is making this move because he knows SloJo and WRBA are weak and will likely fold. He understands our leadership is a paper tiger and that the only place they are ‘strong’ is with harsh language.

One of the side effects of the standoff? Rising oil and natural gas prices.

We have to keep in mind that should hostilities start and the West slaps sanctions on Russia, Russia can retaliate by choking off energy supplies to Europe by more severely restricting natural gas flowing through their pipeline. They can restrict oil and LNG shipments.

We have already seen the effects of the possibility of hostilities at the gas pump, with my local station (the one I use as my reference) listing regular at $3.559. Two weeks ago it was $3.329. Two weeks before that it was around $3.159.

Gee, if only we could supply our own oil and natural gas so overseas actions wouldn’t affect the supply and costs of those commodities. Oh, wait! We used to be able to do that until SloJo signed the Executive Orders which made that impossible and took us from being energy independent to dependent on foreign oil and natural gas supplies from countries that don’t like us very much!!

If anyone were a stooge for Putin, I’d say it is SloJo and WRBA. They certainly seem to be doing what Putin wants, despite the claims by the DNC-MSM that former President Trump was supposedly in Putin’s pocket.

==++==

The Winter Olympics have ended. From what I can tell most people don’t care. Most didn’t care that they took place. I know I haven’t.

One of the ‘controversies’ had nothing to do with China or athletes or judges or the IOC. Instead, it was the Climate Change faithful who decided they had to stir things up by pointing out there was no natural snow at the Beijing Olympics, in turn blaming man-made climate change. The problem?

There usually isn’t much snow in that part of China, with maybe an inch or two each winter. But it’s quite cold there so making snow is easy, which is exactly what the Chinese did. This certainly made some things easier since they could control the amount of snow at each venue and didn’t have to deal with the vagaries of Mother Nature.

Call it Yet Another Climate Change Fail.

==++==

Are Justin Trudeau’s days as Prime Minister of Canada numbered? If a petition to the Governor General of Canada goes through, Parliament could be dissolved and new elections would have to take place.

That would also mean that Trudeau would likely lose his position as PM, something he has proven should happen.

The worst thing that could happen for Canada if things go sideways is a number of Provinces decide they’d be better off becoming independent or petitioning the US for statehood. (The maritime provinces – New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI, and Newfoundland - had threatened to petition for statehood in the past when Quebec was seeking independence from Canada a few decades ago. Alberta had also expressed interest of joining the US at one point when they felt Ottawa was ignoring them and their problems.)

I am hoping the Canadian patriots succeed with their petition to the Governor General and new elections will take place.

==++==

Just a reminder: Neither Jeffrey Epstein or Jean-Luc Brunel killed themselves.

Neither will Ghislaine Maxwell.

Even the family of Ghislaine Maxwell, who is still imprisoned, now allegedly "fears for her safety" after the second death of a high-profile offender related to the case who was in a highly secure facility.

The NYPost reached out to Maxwell's brother, Ian Maxwell, who told the New York tabloid that his family is extremely concerned after Brunel's death - allegedly suicide by hanging, circumstances similar to those surrounding the death of Epstein himself.

Maxwell is due to be sentenced in June. The family added that it's unconscionable that Brunel wasn't on suicide watch, and reiterated that Maxwell has never expressed being suicidal.

Epstein had never expressed being suicidal, either.

==++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the temperatures are cycling up and down like a yo-yo, the ice on the lake has become problematic regarding safety, and where tomorrow is a holiday...for some you.

Canada - The Anglosphere's Second Dictatorship

First, Australia went fully Covid totalitarian, whittling away at one right after another. Covid was used as the excuse to make the Australian people prisoners in their own country and their own homes. Nearby New Zealand almost went as far, but has backed away from full totalitarianism.

Next, it’s Canada, with the PM invoking the Emergency Act, unleashing the police on peaceful protesters - actual peaceful protesters rather than the mostly ‘peaceful’ protesters we’ve seen here in the US – with police using horses to move them and, in a few cases, trampling some of them. Police struck others with batons while they were trying to help those who had been trampled In another case a trucker was struck by a police officer with the butt of his rifle. Threats have been made against some of the pets the truckers have with them, in this case confiscating and euthanizing them.

It seems Prime Minister Fidelito Trudeau cannot fathom the idea that there are Canadians who actually believe in freedom, in making their own decisions, in their rights, and questioning the government when they believe it’s wrong.

This begs the question, “Are we next?”

Goodness knows we’ve seen the governors in a number of states have used Covid to exercise powers that have not been granted to them by their state constitutions. The people in their states have pushed back, sometimes with lawsuits, and in at least one case, a recall election to unseat their governor. Washington has also tried to flex its muscles as well, trying to curtail the rights and freedoms all in the name “the public good”. The problem is that none of those things do the public any good.

We’ll have to wait until this coming November to see which direction our nation will take.

This Certainly Explains Things

(H/T Knuckledraggin)

Thoughts On A Sunday

We had three days in a row that saw temps near or at 50ºF. It made for a lot of melting, specifically of the ice and compacted snow on driveways and some lesser traveled roads. I used the warm temps to chop away and shovel the now loose snow/ice off of the driveway at The Gulch as well as cut back the berms and snowbanks to make room for more snow. (As Katy texted me about that yesterday, “It’s only mid February. There will be more [snow].”

Of course temps today never made it above freezing and we’ll be back below zero tomorrow morning. However we may see the mid-40’s towards the end of the week.

==++==

Another thing I did yesterday that I would have normally done this morning - due entirely to the above normal temperature – was run pre and post church errands. An early morning trip to Walmart and early afternoon trip to BJ’s (an equivalent to Sam’s Club and Costco for those unfamiliar with the chain). All kinds of chores were completed yesterday that would have been spread over two days. There are still a few chores that need to be done today, but they are short and minor in nature.

I certainly don’t mind.

==++==

I don’t know about you, but I know I have been devoutly ignoring the Winter Olympics. The WP Mom has been watching, but most of her attention has been towards the figure skating events.

I haven’t feel the need to support either NBC or the genocidal CCP by watching the Olympics.

There was a time when our family spent hours watching the Olympics. (That was back in the days when ABC was the go-to network, covering the Olympics start to finish.) It was an exciting time and we watched American and Finnish athletes compete in the various summer and winter games.

But over the past few decades the games became more politicized, the coverage less complete and spottier, and the commentators less restrained. With the games having lost the luster they once had, we became less interested as they aren’t what they once were.

Have I seen any of the Olympics? Sort of, and then only because I was in the same room as the WP Mom as she watched skating. I was usually reading, watching movies on my tablet, or writing on the Official Weekend Pundit Laptop. The Olympics were more in the way of background noise rather than something to which I needed to pay attention.

==++==

Oh, it’s SuperBowl Sunday? Really? Hmm. I hadn’t noticed.

Like the Olympics, I shall be devoutly ignoring the SuperBowl. I haven’t been paying attention to the NFL since it caved to a small vocal minority and went woke.

The NFL has been losing fans and TV viewers as they shifted their focus from football to placating people who aren’t fans and never will be. They made the stupid decision to change the name of the Washington Redskins because the woke a**hats decided it was denigrating and racist despite the fact that Native American groups and the tribe who created the logo (based upon one of their historical figures) didn’t want the change and resented the a**hats pushing this down everyone’s throats. But the woke and the NFL knew better.

You don’t remain successful by pissing off your fan base. The NFL is learning that lesson the hard way.

==++==

Is it just me, or does it seem our electrical grid has been becoming less stable and less reliable?

While I haven’t seen any major outages here for a number of years, I have seen warnings by the local Independent System Operator (ISO), ISO New England, warning about increasing demand and decreasing generation capacity. Baseline capacity has been decreasing as various generating facilities have been decommissioned. New ones aren’t coming online at a rate that replaces the lost capacity. Some renewables – wind and solar – have come online but neither can make up for the capacity lost.

It doesn’t help that New England has an inadequate natural gas infrastructure, with only a single pipeline providing natural gas coming in from Pennsylvania. All of the rest comes in via LNG tankers bringing natural gas from hostile nations like Libya, Yemen, and Russia, and doing so at prices well above those of US natural gas. The ‘green’ morons have blocked every attempt to construct a new pipeline, in some cases using the claim that the only reason for the pipeline was “to make money”. Really? It wouldn’t be likely anyone would build a pipeline to lose money, right?

In any case, the increasing instability/unreliability of the electrical grid has been driving sales of generators in the US, both portable and standby types. While the generator manufacturers have no issues with increased sales, the reason for those increased sales does not bode well for us.

One of the people aiming to get a new generator for their home is my friend, K., who lives near Houston. (K. asked me not to use her full name.) She and her husband are spending $11,600 on a new 24-kilowatt Generac generator. (She sent me the receipt.) They put half of the money down last December, but don’t expect to get the machine delivered and hooked up to their home until the end of this year. They recently got an email update telling them that more than 2,500 people are in line ahead of them.

The reason why K. and so many other people in Texas and across the country are buying generators is obvious: the reliability of the electric grid is declining. According to data from the Department of Energy, between 2000 and 2020, the number of what the agency calls “major electric disturbances and unusual occurrences” (read: blackouts) on the U.S. electric grid jumped about 13-fold.

I learned the lesson of having a generator decades ago when I lived in an old farmhouse in a town near Manchester, NH. I and two of my roommates were renovating that farmhouse for the owner and in return we had extremely cheap rent. The farmhouse was on a back road in the hinterlands of the town and whenever there was really bad weather we lost power. That meant no water since the farmhouse used a well for water. After a lengthy power outage that lasted 4 days, we decided it would be a good idea to get a generator. Since then I have always had a generator of some kind. At The Manse we had a standby generator that ran off the 500 gallon propane tank which would give us weeks of run time if needed. Here at The Gulch it’s a portable 7kW dual fuel (gasoline and propane) genset which will handle a good portion of the electrical load. It won’t cover the oven or the clothesdrier, but it takes care of the lights, furnace, refrigerator, chest freezer, microwave, TV, and computers with some capacity left over.

The new house (tentatively named ‘The Redoubt’) will also have a generator, a standby generator setup similar to the one at The Manse.

Unless the trend for dismantling power plants and replacing them with unreliable non-dispatchable sources ends, everyone is going to need a generator. Ironically, these generators will create more CO2 than the ‘green’ energy sources are supposed to eliminate. (The same thing has been seen in South Australia in great numbers because the grid has become so unreliable.)

==++==

After some shenanigans at Dartmouth College where the antifa a**hats decided they weren’t going to allow the Dartmouth Republicans to hold an event which author James Lindsay to speak, the college Republicans moved the event off-campus and over the border in Vermont. The same group of a**hats also blocked journalist Andy Ngo from speaking on campus recently.

To those closeminded intolerant wannabe totalitarians I can on offer the following:

(H/T Knuckledraggin)

==++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has been shifting from moment to moment, the annual Ice Fishing Derby is winding to a close, and where it’s going to get even colder on Monday.

The Canadian Trucker Protests

Watching the trucker protests in Canada it has become quite apparent to anyone paying attention that it is more than just a protest about Covid vaccination mandates. It’s also about basic human rights the government has been eroding away over the past decade. The trucker protest is just one symptom of Canadians disdain for that erosion.

The freedom of speech has been diminished one step at a time, using the ‘hate speech’ excuse to whittle away the ability to express dissent, disdain, or dislike. One grievance group after another has appealed to the Leftists in the government, demanding the government limit free speech and the government has done just that.

The trucker protest has been vilified as racist, a tool of the extreme right, and worse, the action of terrorists wanting to overthrow the government. But what it is is a signal to the government that they have gone too far and the folks have had enough.

The ability to defend themselves has also been greatly diminished, with a defacto ban on the ownership of many types of guns. Canadians are now dependent upon the police to defend them, an impossible task. The government knows this but doesn’t care because the Leftist narrative must be maintained at all costs. (We’ve seen the same thing in Australia, only it’s worse there.)

The trucker protest appears to be crossing the border with a number of protest convoys supposedly planned for the US. One is reportedly targeting LA during the SuperBowl tomorrow. Others are supposedly going to head for Washington DC.

It will be interesting to see if those protests will actually materialize.

Small Town Democracy - 2022

It was the start of our annual exercise in small town democracy.

Tuesday night saw the deliberative session of our little town’s School District Meeting. The members of the School Board and the School Moderator presented the warrant articles, with all but one of the warrant articles dealing with our town’s school budget. Considering there were only six warrant articles presented, the deliberative session didn’t last long. Only one person asked questions about the monies being spent, and then for clarifications. (This was her first time attending the School District Meeting as best I could determine. She did the right thing, asking questions about things she didn’t quite understand.)

In about half an hour it was all done and the session adjourned.

Then on Thursday night our town held its deliberative session of our Town Meeting. The members of the Board of Selectmen, the Town Administrator, and the Town Moderator presented all 26 warrant articles. Most dealt with the town budget, funding of outside agencies, and fiscal items outside the annual budget like capital reserve funds for a number purposes, including the Department of Public Works for highway equipment purchases, the Fire Department for things like fire engines and tankers and related equipment, building repairs for town buildings, maintenance and repair for our town’s public docks on the lake, and so forth. Some of the non-monetary warrant articles dealt with changing a town ordinance and two about selecting an official town flag. (The flag articles garnered the most discussion and even a couple of amendments.)

With the exception of these last three warrant articles, only one person asked any questions about some of the budgetary items, in this case the same women who asked questions during the School District Meeting. A few other attendees spoke, either answering her questions or asking for a clarification of her question(s) or the answers given. Again, she did the right thing by asking questions about articles she didn’t quite understand. I believe her questions helped some of the attendees attain a better understanding of the articles in question.

After about an hour and 20 minutes our Town Meeting adjourned.

Neither of these meetings decided anything but were held to present the school and town warrant articles for discussion, and if needed, amendments.

The real decisions will be made on the second Tuesday of March when the townsfolk will vote to elect town officials and school board members and for or against the school and town warrant articles. The townsfolk will decide how much the town will spend this year and on any changes in town ordinances.

Some folks may not be pleased with the outcome of the second sessions – voting day – but that’s not unexpected. But as I have asked anyone who has gone so far as to complain about what the town or school district is spending or doing, “Did you vote at Town/School District Meeting”? If the answer is ‘No’, I tell them that if they couldn’t be bothered to vote then they forfeited any right to complain.

They usually don’t like hearing that.

A Sign Of The Times

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was another below zero night here at The Gulch. It helped freeze the sleet and snow that fell on Friday into a solid mass which means that moving any more of the last storm’s leavings more difficult. It will take more than just a snow shovel to move it, meaning a spade or ice chopper to break the mass of snow and sleet into pieces that can be moved. Not that I really need to do any more of that since I took care of it yesterday, scraping the driveway in front of The Gulch down to the pavement and pulling snow down from the edge of the roof to prevent ice damming. (We had a problem with an ice dam earlier last week which cause water to leak inside our home.)

The Weather Guys^TM have said we have some more snow coming on Monday or Tuesday, though they haven’t said exactly how much we might get.

==+==

It was 44 years ago the Blizzard of 78 hit New England.

I remember the high winds, whiteouts, high snowfall rate, snowdrifts that reached the eaves on some houses, roads that remained impassible for days, a town on the Cape Cod coast (Hull) that became an island when the only bridge in and out of the town was under water because of the storm surge, summer homes on the Manomet cliffs being washed away when the stormy seas undermined the cliffs and they collapsed which too the homes on top with them, Route 128 – the circumferential highway around Boston – turning into a parking lot with thousands of cars and trucks stuck in the snow and drifts.

I was living just south of Boston back then I was busy during the storm and the days afterwards, working with the state civil defense and local amateur radio groups to coordinate transportation to and from the local hospitals, delivering medications to snowbound people, and manning one of the shelters for those who lost power and had no heat.

I and the others were busy for five days dealing with the blizzard and its aftermath.

While the blizzard’s impact here in New Hampshire wasn’t quite what was seen in the greater Boston area, there were still the heavy snows, wind, and snowdrifts to deal with. There wasn’t nearly as much snow, but what’s the difference between 1-1/2 feet and 3 feet of snow if there’s a lot of drifting snow?

==+==

Will Washington State try to go the route California has talked about and try to impose a ‘Wealth’ tax as a means of taking even more money to spend on things those outside of the greater Seattle area could not care less about? It looks like they are.

They are going to make the same mistake a number of other countries have and drive the wealthy out of the state, the wealthy who will also take their wealth (and the jobs they provide) with them.

California has talked about doing the same thing for a couple of years now but haven’t gone forward with it (yet), perhaps because the wealthy – including many Progressives – have told Sacramento they would pull up stakes and leave, taking their money and businesses with them if they were stupid enough to pass such a tax. We know that isn’t an idle threat as we’ve already seen the flight of capital, businesses, and people from the Pyrite State for friendlier business/tax climates due to the already confiscatory tax and regulatory environment. A wealth tax would have seen that exodus turn into a flood of people and businesses fleeing California.

Do the Washington State legislators think the same thing wouldn’t happen in their state if they impose a tax that will have such broad implications? It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that they are only paying attention to the piles of cash the millionaires and billionaires in Washington represent and ignoring human nature.

What a bunch of morons.

==+==

We’ve heard that the number of deaths attributed to Covid has passed 900,000 here in the US.

Sorry, but I’m calling Bulls**t on this one.

Again, the total includes the deaths for those who died who also tested positive for Covid (in other words with Covid), not just those who died from it. It would be easy to apply the same ratio Italy used when revising their Covid death total downward, reducing it by 97%. However, I will be more generous, using a 90% reduction for US deaths which would reduce the actual number of Covid deaths here to 90,000 over a 2-year period. That’s more akin to what we would see if we experienced two consecutive bad flu seasons.

I have to wonder if the CDC will revise the death toll by counting only actual Covid deaths?

Probably not. It wouldn’t serve the narrative.

==+==

Biden has replaced Jimmy Carter and Obama as the ‘worst president ever’ and he managed to do it during the first year of his (hopefully) only term.

Obama wasn’t kidding when he said “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.” If anything, he understated things. Then again, SloJo has been deteriorating at a faster rate than WRBA had planned on and their ability to cover it up has been dwindling, even with help from the DNC-MSM.

==+==

I don’t know about you, but I know I am sick to death of the whole Covid thing. I am tired of it. I am tired of people who don’t know me or my circumstances deciding for me what I can and can’t do regarding things they should have absolutely no say about.

They want us to wear masks that both we and they know really don’t work.

They want to push the idea that the latest Covid variant is more contagious (it is) and just as deadly (it isn’t) as the previous variants, a means of extending their control of an increasingly non-compliant population. This control includes everything from mask mandates to draconian measures to ‘control’ the unvaxxed and unmasked.

I am tired of the government overstating the number of Covid deaths, the sole purpose of which is to justify the very measures people are increasingly coming to resist or ignore because they are tired of them, too. (The only exception to that are the so-called Karens who love to lord it over the rest of us, using our non-compliance as an excuse to pester and harangue us and to virtue signal to the rest of the Karens.)

I am tired of hearing stories about parents/teachers/child care workers being condemned because they can’t keep masks on their two/three/four/five-year olds or businesses banning children under 5 if they weren’t vaccinated. (The only problem is that at the time this was happening no children under 5 were vaccinated because none of the vaccines had been approved for children under 5.)

I am tired of the two-year running commentary from the news media, the daily totals of new infections, new hospitalizations, and new deaths. Rather than being informative it is now macabre. You can almost hear the excitement in the news clone’s voice if there is an increase in any of those numbers.

I am tired of it all. I’m sure all of you are, too.

==+==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it’s been wicked cold, we have a little more snow on the way starting late Monday evening, and where a number of the towns around the lake will start their town and school district meetings to decide how much they’ll be spending in the coming year.

It Wasn't A Nor'easter

Here it is, another weekend, and we’ve had another storm.

While not anywhere near what we saw a week ago, it was still a dangerous storm. It was an entirely different storm, with the majority of the snowfall up north rather than the south and along the seacoast. This time there was also a lot of sleet and freezing rain. Here at The Gulch we saw a couple of inches of sleet before it turned to snow. It certainly made shoveling more difficult.

The sleet and freezing rain certainly made travel difficult, but we know how to handle it up here. That didn’t mean there weren’t accidents, but there weren’t as many as one might have expected. Then again most folks stayed home rather than venturing out. Because so many already had the means of working from home and a lot of schools were still set up for remote learning, it made sense for people to stay home.

It’s winter up here in New England, and we get snow, sleet, and freezing rain during the winter, so none of these things are surprising. They are things to be experienced and, for some, endured.

Thoughts On A Sunday

We’re still digging out from yesterday’s Nor’easter. We got about 10 inches of snow here, a not unusual amount. (The last big storm we had here took place about a week before Christmas 2020 and we got 39 inches at The Gulch.) My friends – refugees from San Francisco – got closer to 15 inches at their home near the New Hampshire seacoast. Katy saw about 10 inches at her place down in southern New England, though she did see some drifts of 18 inches or so on her property.

About the only problem we had here at The Gulch was not really storm related. I had to make some repairs to the drain for the kitchen sink as something clogged it and it wouldn’t drain. It wasn’t a food clog. Or rather, it wasn’t food or grease that was the ultimate cause, but objects that shouldn’t have been in the drain or drain trap to begin with. Since neither I or the WP Mom recognized the objects, we figured they had been in the drain since before the WP Parents had bought The Gulch. (There was a lobster/crab fork and pieces of a spoon or spoons in one of the traps.)

For the most part we just watched the snow fall, blow around, and accumulate. There was nowhere we needed to go (though if the need arose, we could have), nothing we needed to get, and nothing we needed to do outside other than clearing the snow from the driveway, the front steps, and the edge of the roof once the storm faded away.

==++==

This is a lesson that needs to be learned again and again: Get woke. Go broke.

The latest business to learn this?

DC Comics.

Who’da thunk that a woke, bisexual, climate-change fighting Superman would cause sales to drop off the edge of a cliff? Apparently everyone except the pandering woke morons running DC Comics.

==++==

Speaking of woke, this is something that needs to be repeated again and again and again:

I have come to define the woke thusly: People who are angry/outraged on the behalf of people who they feel should be angry/outraged about something, but aren't, and therefore they are angry/outraged at the people who aren't angry/outraged about the thing the woke feel they should be angry/outraged about.

It's why I ignore them and show my disdain whenever I can.

I have seen variations of this, but they all say basically the same time thing: The woke are nuts and they need to be disparaged and exposed for what they are whenever possible.

==++==

Here’s an example of the woke insanity I mentioned above: A Native American group has filed a lawsuit to block a Colorado bill that would ban the use of Native American mascots.

A Native American Group sought an injunction halting what they said was a discriminatory Colorado ban on the use of Native American Mascots.

--snip--

The group sought what’s called an “interlocutory” appeal and injunction, which means that there is no final judgment yet in the District Court. The group also an interlocutory injunction from the 10th Circuit, halting the mascot law pending the appeal.

The 10th Circuit just rejected the request.

So a group of woke asshats decided they needed to protect Native Americans from being offended even though those same Native Americans they say they are representing keep claiming they aren’t offended, and in fact, see the mascot names as honoring them, their history, and their culture. The woke asshats decided they knew better than the people they demanded should be offended and are offended by the fact that they weren’t offended. When will they learn that they’ve gone too far? Will they have to start dying at the hands of those they’ve decided aren’t offended enough to suit them? Or will we finally say “Enough! This far and no farther!”

==++==

Is the GOAT retiring?

There seems to be conflicting reports that Tom Brady, quarterback extraordinaire, may be retiring. The seven-time SuperBowl winning quarterback – six times with the New England Patriots and once with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers – is 44-years old, but plays as good if not better than quarterbacks 10 or 15 years his junior.

His stated goal was to play until he was 45, but if he pulls the plug early I doubt anyone will condemn him for doing so. That he could retire and still be in good shape is saying something considering how beat up many quarterbacks are when they finally hang up their helmet.

If he is indeed retiring I believe it will be a long time before we see another as good as he is and with his longevity.

==++==

Somehow, I knew someone was going to make this claim.

Nor’easter Snow Storm Being Linked To ‘Climate Change’.

What? Was there something different about this Nor’easter as compared to all of the previous Nor’easters? I can think of a couple right off the top of my head that were bigger, meaner, nastier, and with a lot more snow and wind.

The Blizzard of ‘78 is still used as a milestone to which all others are measured against up here in New England. So much snow fell and drifted that it shut down Route 128, the circumferential highway around Boston. Thousands of vehicles were buried by the snow and it took days for them to be dug out and towed off of the highway.

The Blizzard of ‘93 dropped heavy snow starting all the way down in Texas before it made its way to the East Coast and developed into a full blown Nor’easter that dropped snow from Georgia to Maine and well into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in Canada. (If I recall correctly, that storm dropped 2 feet of snow in the town where I was living at the time and there were drifts almost 4 feet high here and there around town.)

Yesterday’s Nor’easter was pretty typical with very few surprises. While we didn’t get quite as much snow as I would have liked to see considering we are still well below average for snowfall for this time of the winter, we still had enough for most folks. I know the local ski area here is more than happy with the amount we did receive.

==++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the skies are blue, the lake is frozen over, and where the new snow is still drifting.