Thoughts On A Sunday

What a difference a day makes!

Yesterday was hot and humid, 88ºF and a 71ºF dew point, with afternoon showers and thundershowers.

Today has been more normal with temps in the 70’s and low humidity. The windows are open, the A/C is off, and there are no chances of precipitation over the next few days. I plan to make use of the weather and get out on the lake after work the next few days. With the weather we’ve been experiencing over the past two months, heading out onto the lake has been a non-starter as being out there during the rain or shower or thunderstorm is not a good idea. It is also not a good idea to be out on the lake on the few weekends when the weather was good because of all the Cap’n Boneheads out on the lake. Having to be hypervigilant all the time is tiring and under those circumstances boating is not an enjoyable experience.

One upside to all of the wet weather despite the high temps and humidity has been that no one is talking about drought.

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As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I had thought about delving into the health problems linked to use of the mRNA Covid vaccines. Imagine my surprise when I see PJ Media beat me to it, though their post focuses primarily on what is being called “turbo cancers” rather than premature ovarian failure incidents I had come across.

I’m old enough to remember when the worst thing we had to worry about with mRNA vaccines was blood clots and myocarditis. Sadly, there’s a new concern with the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines: cancer.

According to a report, experts have observed a surge in cancer cases in people under 50, and it appears to exhibit distinct biological characteristics compared to cancers typically seen in older age groups.

While some experts believe that cancer rates have been increasing over the years due to factors such as lifestyle and diet, others believe the administration of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines may have led to the emergence of what they call “turbo cancers.”

There is no official medical definition for the term “turbo cancer,” but it is commonly used in reference to aggressive, rapidly developing cancers that show resistance to standard treatments. Turbo cancers particularly affect young and otherwise healthy individuals who have received a COVID-19 vaccination. It presents late, at an advanced stage, and quickly becomes fatal. (Emphasis mine.)

It should come as no surprise that regulatory agencies in the United States have yet to address this issue.

Ironically, these cancers are being blamed on “missed screenings”, but how many young people are routinely screened for cancer? In general, none. Only those with a predilection for cancer such as those who previously had cancer are routinely screened.

Another concerning thing is that this is not just being seen in the US, but worldwide.

As expected, the government and public health officials are telling us “Nothing to see here! Move along! Move along!”

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Another fallout from Covid – E-mails showing Fauci knew masks were ineffective against something like Covid but pushed their mandatory use anyway.

Former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci knew as early as October 2020 that masking was ineffective at preventing the transmission of Covid-19 after he read a Federalist article about it, emails obtained by the Functional Government Initiative (FGI) and shared with The Federalist reveal.

Despite showing awareness of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study — which showed a majority of Covid patients in the study became ill despite always wearing face coverings — and The Federalist’s reporting on it, Fauci published a paper weeks after the story that made no mention of masks’ shortcomings. In fact, for two more years, Fauci demanded universal masking and encouraged mandates requiring face coverings despite their uselessness.

Yet another thing to pin on Fauci.

How many deaths related to Covid are we going to be to lay at Fauci’s feet? If it wasn’t the untested vaccines, it was the lockdowns, the misguided ‘quarantines’, and knowingly misleading the public about the efficacy of masks, said masks causing problems of their own.

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How does one define irony? We’ll let Greenpeace Co-Founder Dr. Patrick Moore explain:

The reason the oil & gas companies are rolling in $$ is the Net-Zero fantasy that has restricted fossil fuels and made a windfall for the fossil fuel companies, all at our expense, due to Greenhouse etc. policies. Wake up citizens, you’ve been conned.

— Patrick Moore (@EcoSenseNow) July 27, 2023

And so it goes.

Moore is a big proponent of nuclear power, seeing it as one way to ensure carbon-free power in abundance while keeping the footprints of the power generation systems to a minimum. Wind and solar take up a lot land, causing the destruction of ecosystems that would have been better left alone and allowed it to continue sinking carbon from the atmosphere.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has approved, people are out boating again, and where I don’t care if it’s going to be Monday again because I’m taking the day off.

Nuke 'Em!

I had thought to address the ongoing problem of the health issues connected to the mRNA Covid vaccines, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it as it kept drifting back to a post I read on Instapundit about nuclear power and how it is one way to ‘save the planet’.

To be honest, I didn’t read the linked article as it was the comments to Glenn Reynolds post that were more telling.

There were almost 100 comments with most of them in favor of reviving the nuclear power industry. As often happens, there were also a couple of trolls trying to throw a monkey wrench into the discussion. (Fortunately they were well known trolls so pretty much everyone ignored them.)

One of the common threads in the comments dealt with the use of small modular reactors (SMRs) rather than returning to the One Big Reactor paradigm. There was also a lot of discussion about using Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) and Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs) which have a number of advantages, particularly when it comes to safety and their ability to ‘burn’ nuclear waste from existing Generation I and Generation II nuclear power plants as fuel, reducing the amount of high-level nuclear waste in the process. (This is a short 5 minute tutorial on LFTRs.)

One of the upsides to SMRs is that they aren’t built like ‘traditional’ nuclear reactors. Instead they are factory built, trucked to the power plant site, then offloaded and installed. SMRs can be clustered together to provide a lot of generating capacity at a single site or installed in a number of different sites, creating a distributed power generation system. Such a system wouldn’t require nearly as much in the way of high capacity transmission lines as needed in the traditional One Big Power Station model.

The great thing is that nuclear provides carbon-free, dispatchable, weather/time-of-day independent, and reliable base load power. The argument will be made by the Greens and Watermelon Environmentalists that nuclear isn’t carbon-free due to the construction required, but the same argument can be made for wind and solar. All of them will generate CO2 during construction, maintenance, repair, and decommissioning, but the argument can be made that nuclear generates a lot less CO2 throughout its service life and generates a lot more power than the two favorite renewables of the Greens.

That modern nuclear power won’t generate the high-level waste that present nuclear power plants generate, a big plus. That it can also be used to ‘burn’ existing nuclear waste is another big plus. Another plus – between the spent fuel (the high-level nuclear waste) and the amount of thorium available, we would have enough fuel to last for a thousand years or more. And maybe by the time we run out of fuel, fusion will have been perfected!

It’s time to turn our attention back to nuclear power if we want to be able to keep living a modern life, one of abundant clean energy and a 21^st Century way of life rather than being forced back to an early 18^th existence so many of the Greens and Watermelon Environmentalists want for us.

Friday (Not So) Funny - Medieval Tech Comes Of Age

If WRBA decides they need to take away all of our firearms, we have an answer.

Thoughts On A Sunday

For the first time in weeks we aren’t seeing rain on the weekend.

Friday afternoon and evening we were treated to a number of thundershowers, but since then it’s been sunny, warm, and dry. Even the smoky haze from the Canadian wildfires is gone...for now. I wish I could say I spent some time out on the lake, but one thing I try very hard to avoid is being out on the lake on weekends as there are so many people out there which makes it a less than pleasant experience. Most of my boating is restricted to the week, usually late in the day after work. However, this year it seems to have been raining or threatening rain every afternoon I tried to head out on the lake. As such, I have made it out onto the lake only twice since the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout was put in the water back in May. That’s pretty pathetic.

Still, compared to other parts of the US, we’ve had it easy. Friends in Florida have been dealing with triple-digit temps and to hear it from the “We’re all gonna DIE!” media hysteria, people will burst into flames should they venture outside. (Yes, a bit of hyperbole, but it sounds like something they would do.)

On the other hand it is summer and we’re also dealing with El Nino, or in this case, a ‘super’ El Nino. From what I’ve seen on some sites elsewhere, this weather isn’t unprecedented, the world having experienced something like this back in the 1930’s. (Does the term “Dust Bowl” ring a bell?)

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Just when the media is telling us we’re seeing unprecedented temperatures this summer, temperatures we’ve never seen before, an article from Real Clear Science calls such media claims “Unprecedented Propaganda”, and with good reason. A number images and one chart in the RCS piece present historical temperature data up to present day and show the unprecedented temperatures aren’t unprecedented at all.

This chart shows an interesting view of the percentage of US reporting temperatures above 95ºF:

The above isn’t something I would have expected. One does have to keep in mind that we’re still in the middle of summer so I expect we’ll see more stations reporting 95ºF+ temps before the summer is over.

Keeping in mind the same caveat, here’s a graphic showing US station locations seeing temperatures above 100ºF and 110ºF so far this year:

The following graphic shows the same type of data, but for the year 1936:

This shows that those “unprecedented” temperatures the media is crowing about aren’t so unprecedented after all. But they do fit the narrative they’re selling.

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My first thought upon reading this was “What a bunch of crybabies!”

What is “this”?

74 percent of college students would report professors for saying something offensive.

The problem is that college students, particularly ‘woke’ students, are so easily offended by the littlest thing these days. Trivial things are blown so out of proportion that the offended student sounds deranged, yet the college administration is likely to sanction the professor. Instead, the administration should be telling these snowflakes “Grow up, you wuss!!”.

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It seems some people are never satisfied, even when it comes to history. The latest target of such dissatisfaction is the movie Oppenheimer, the history of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project.

It seems one feminist academic has criticized the film because no women speak until 20 minutes into the film. Considering the actual Manhattan Project personnel were primarily white men 50 years of age or older, why would a women’s speaking role matter?

Another complaint from the same feminist academic: “No people of color appear for at least 30 minutes, and I believe there are 2 black men in the entire movie.” So? How many ‘people of color’ were directly involved in the Manhattan Project, particularly at the Los Alamos site?

Oh, we should also add the Indians as yet another group being ‘victimized’ by the movie.

As the main article states, “Apparently, the race to be victimized by ‘Oppenheimer’ is on.”

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather is nice for a change, the A/C is off, and where I wish Monday wasn’t coming again so soon.

The 'Woke' Strike Again

Unless you have been avoiding social media in it’s entirety you may have heard about how some woke a**holes became offended about the new music video by Jason Aldean called “Try That In A Small Town”, claiming it’s racist. They went so far as to bully the CMT network into pulling the music video from its rotation because of it’s allegedly racist lyrics and images.

It is as one commenter to the video posted below wrote, “It seems the only people angry about the video are Guilty White Liberals and Angry White Female Liberals, both of which are usually ‘the racists in the room’.” Certainly the people on whose behalf these woke folk are being offended are wondering what the heck these idiots are talking about since they don’t see it as racist in any way shape or form.



It seems the woke are wearing out their welcome, ‘canceling’ people and companies they see as unworthy...though they are the only ones who believe that. The attack on Jason Aldean’s video as racist is yet another lie by these disingenuous and self-righteous busybodies with nothing better to do than make other people miserable, even those they are supposedly ‘helping’.

Friday Funny - Think Of Others' Suffering!

Thoughts On A Sunday

We’re back into the rain, with flash flood watches posted over last night and watches and warnings posted as of this morning as heavy rain makes it way through the area. On top of that, tornado warnings were posted in three southern counties this morning. We generally will see a tornado watch posted a couple of times during the summer and a warning posted maybe once every few years. But two tornado warnings at the same time is something I can not recall ever seeing in over 40 years of living here, let alone two three four on the same day.

The heavy rains are going to cause problems, not so much today as down the road. Lakes and ponds are full, with some being well above their nominal ‘full’ level. Even Lake Winnipesaukee is at least a half foot above full level and is expected to get even higher. If it does, I have no doubt the Marine Patrol will declare all 72 square miles of the lake one big “No Wake” zone. That will certainly make recreational boating problematic as no one will be allowed to go more than 6 MPH which will make travel to anywhere on the lake slow and lengthy. They won’t be able to lower the level of the lake until those downriver have had their levels lowered.

One thing I feel safe in saying about all the rain we’ve received over the past couple of months:

The drought up here in northern New England is definitely over.

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Is SloJoe done?

There have been some reports that a number of top Democrats know Joe Biden will not run for a second term. Why this is a surprise puzzles me. Considering Biden’s continuing metal decline, there should be no question that SloJoe will be in no condition to campaign, let alone serve a second term in the unlikely scenario of him being re-elected.

The [CNN] report states that “top Democrats and donors” are having conversations with potential presidential candidates within the party because the pace of Biden’s apparent campaign is so slow.

The report cites “almost two dozen current Biden aides, top Democratic operatives and donors, and alumni of other recent campaigns,” who are concerned that “multiple big donors aren’t locking in,” and that “Grassroots emails are sometimes bringing in just a few thousand dollars.”

The piece adds that “Those who are placing the calls to the prospective Democrat candidates are telling them that despite what 80-year-old Biden has said, and despite launching his campaign, he actually will not run for president.”

As we highlighted earlier this week, even leftist shills for the Democrats are raging about how dodderingly foolish Biden is appearing on a daily basis.

WRBA can only go so far to prop up SloJoe and make him seem cogent and lucid. It will soon reach the point where it will be impossible to hide it any more. Biden certainly won’t be able to repeat the “Campaign From The Basement” as was pulled off in 2020.

That CNN is reporting this makes me wonder if “The Fix” is in. I have to wonder if SloJoe will even realize he isn’t running…

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Since we’re on the topic of Joe Biden, there’s this:

Just how creepy is Joe Biden?

This creepy.

“Finland will never be the same.”

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We’re at one weather extreme here in New England while Arizona is at another. Of the two, I’m not sure who’s getting the better end of the deal.

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Is there anything that can’t be claimed to be racist?

Apparently not.

The latest “racist” thing?

Home security cameras.

Do you have a home security system? Well, gosh darn it, you are an evil white supremacist racist because a black guy might be arrested for breaking into your home.

According to Wired, home security systems do not make your property and family any safer, but they are used to “target certain groups for suspicion of crime based on skin color, ethnicity, religion, of the country of origin.”

Really? And here I thought that things like home security cameras just record and don’t make decisions whether or not to record based on anything. They record everything, period. How is any of that racist?

But wait! There’s more!

It’s also about vigilantes (which knows are racists) and how home security cameras turn homeowners with them into vigilantes. As one commenter wrote about the ‘stupid’ of this claim:

"Homeowners shouldn't be able to act as vigilantes"?

Sending something recorded on their property to the police isn't acting as a vigilante.

Hanging someone from a tree or street light or summarily executing them with a shot to the back of the head is acting like a vigilante. Beating someone for committing acts of violence against a neighbor is acting like a vigilante. Sending something recorded on their property to the local "Vigilance Committee" so they can administer street justice is acting like a vigilante.

Criminals need to be reminded that the police aren't there to protect the people from criminals. They are there to protect the criminals from the people who will exact a justice of their own.

It sounds more like they want to make it easier for criminals to commit and get away with criminal acts. But if law enforcement cannot act because of such stupidity, I expect the vigilantes the moron who made this claim is afraid of will do exactly what it is he/she/it is afraid they will do.

I guess this is also racist. But if everything is racist, then nothing is racist, right?

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the lake level is rising, the rain is still falling, and where we’ll be filling in the washouts on Monday.

Traffic Woes

I spent that last couple of hours pondering which subject I should cover tonight. There are so many, but most of them I find it difficult to find a different take to pontificate with. Others would likely take me a few days to do even a poor job. Then after running some errands it came to me.

Traffic.

I have to admit to being spoiled when it comes to traffic, living in a semi-rural area in a rural state. It isn’t often I have to deal with city traffic, or city-like traffic. However, over the past three days I have had to deal with, and worse, traffic like what one would see on a late afternoon/early evening on the Friday of a holiday weekend...but on a Thursday.

It started with a trip to a town next to Manchester, NH to meet up with the older WP Sister. I was taking the WP Mom to meet up with her so she could spend a few days with her and the younger WP sister. Traffic on the way south was very heavy and I could see the traffic heading the opposite direction was even heavier. Heading home was an adventure, taking almost twice as long to get home as it took make the meet with my sister,and that trip took 50% longer than it should have. It was bumper-to-bumper traffic most of the way back until I was able to bail off the highway and take back roads that paralleled the the highways but were carrying normal traffic.

It was certainly unexpected for a Thursday.

Yesterday was a repeat, but this time going to a place I visit regularly to meet up with a work friend for lunch. A trip that normally took 20 minutes to make, even on a Friday, took me 45 minutes. It took almost that long to make the trip back. Again, traffic was bumper to bumper and for no reason I could discern. Even close to The Gulch traffic was quite heavy.

Today I had a number of errands to run. I usually run them starting just after 7 in the morning, finishing the first batch by 8:30. I start the second batch just after lunch.

The reason for the gap is that normally traffic gets heavy, at least heavy for around here, starting around 10 as people head out to go grocery shopping or hit Walmart or have breakfast at a local diner or run other errands. It stays that way until just after noon. But it didn’t happen that way today.

As soon as I left The Gulch the traffic was heavy. This was at 7:15. I got to my first stop – Walmart - and found I had to park quite some distance away as the lot had far more cars and trucks than I usually see. It was not the quick 20 minute ‘in-and-out’ shopping trip it usually is for me. Rather, it took almost twice as long. The trip to my second stop was usually 5 minutes, but it took quite a bit longer as traffic was backed up at each of the three traffic lights I had to go through to get to my next stop. Then it was off to my last stop before returning to The Gulch, a trip that normally takes 10 minutes took twice that long as yet again the traffic was backed up, but this time through the five traffic lights along the route. At least the trip between my third stop and home wasn’t too bad.

In the 18 years I have lived in my town and all the times I have run those morning errands I have never seen traffic like this.

And then there were my afternoon errands which saw pretty much the same kind of traffic.

Is this just an anomalous phenomenon that won’t be seen again until Labor Day weekend, or is it becoming the new normal, at least here? I hope it isn’t the latter.

I certainly can’t speak about traffic elsewhere in the state, but here in central New Hampshire it’s not what I normally see, even on holiday weekends.

Friday Funny - Pepperoni

This proves there is no such thing as too much pepperoni when it comes to pizza.

Thoughts On A Sunday

I was hoping we’d have a full weekend of sunny weather but Mother Nature decided otherwise, giving us hot and humid weather for Saturday and cloudy/humid/warm/rainy weather today. Very heavy rain is expected for tomorrow, with a possibility of up to 5 inches of rain in New Hampshire and Vermont. Lake levels are already above normal here in central New Hampshire, with Lake Winnipesaukee being a half foot above the nominal ‘full’ level. One lake downriver from Winnipesaukee has a lake-wide ‘No Wake’ zone declared by the NH Marine Patrol because the water level is too high.

I haven’t seen anything like this for a number of years, the last time being 2007 when there had been so much rain and snow melt during spring that many docks on Lake Winnipesaukee were under water and there was a lot of debris floating in the lake. Going at anything above headway speed would have caused erosion along the shores and also put boats in jeopardy if they hit any of the floating debris.

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Speaking of the heat and humidity, whenever I hear the media crowing about temperatures across the globe being the highest on record, I cringe. As I said to the youngest WP Sister (who is visiting The Gulch this weekend), “on record” doesn’t really mean much because those records go back about 160 years, a proverbial ‘blink of an eye’ in meteorological time. The ‘record’ doesn’t include the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, or the Roman Warm Period, the two warm periods being warmer than the present “highest temperatures on record”. Hence the cringe whenever the media makes that claim. But then, it’s the media’s job to support the Climate Change narrative no matter what.

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Have you noticed there are times when the ‘woke’ would be better served by saying nothing but can’t help themselves, and by opening their mouths end up having karma slap them in the face?

This has been seen recently when Ben & Jerry’s released a statement “calling for the return of ‘stolen indigenous land’ in the United States.” It didn’t take long before that statement came back to bite them.

If Ben & Jerry’s wants to really put its money where its mouth is, it would give back the land upon which Ben & Jerry’s headquarters is built. In fact, that’s what members of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation are calling for.

“We are always interested in reclaiming the stewardship of our lands throughout our traditional territories and providing opportunities to uplift our communities,” Chief Don Stevens of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation told Newsweek when asked if his tribe would like to see the land returned.

Is Ben & Jerry’s serious, or were they just virtue signaling?

My thought - They were virtue signaling and were figuring it would have to be others who would have to give back the indigenous lands, if at all. They weren’t expecting the Abenaki to call their bluff. What has Ben & Jerry’s done in response to the Abenaki’s response?

Absolutely nothing.

I think that would be the definition of hypocrisy.

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If we needed yet another sign that Portland, Oregon needs to be destroyed, this is it:

Portland Govt Tells Staff Not to Say ‘Pregnant Women’, ‘Breast Feeding’ and ‘Citizens’ in “Woke” Language Directive

As Portland struggles to manage crime and an increase in homelessness, city staff members are being told to adopt a more “culturally conscious” vocabulary that includes not using words such as “women,” “Caucasian” or “citizen.”

The Office of Equity and Human Rights pushed an Inclusive Writing Guide in June as part of a “city-wide collaboration” to alter commonly used terms that they feel have evolved.

The guide suggested removing femininity from terms commonly used for women, including replacing “pregnant women” with “pregnant people” to be inclusive of those “who have this experience [pregnancy] but do not identify as women.”

Portland officials also advised staffers to “instead of women’s health rights, say reproductive rights, instead of feminine hygiene products, say menstrual products or period products, and instead of breastfeeding, say chest feeding.”

I wonder how long it will take them to force languages with gendered words like Spanish or French, just to name two, to create gender neutral words to replace them. Yeah, I’m sure that will go over well with the millions and millions of people who speak those languages. I expect the response to such demands will be along the lines of “¡Oh diablos, no!” and “Oh putain non !”

Have you noticed that the “inclusive, non-offensive” language is neither inclusive or non-offensive. It offends me to no end. It offends a very large percentage of the population all in the name of not offending an extremely small percentage of the population, many of whom could care less.

The only safe option is to nuke Portland from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure we destroy the xenomorphs running the city.

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Is Hollywood finally waking up to the fact the DEI, a racist, leftist, anti-American movement that poisons everything it touches is a loser when it comes to the bottom line? Are they learning the lesson so many other woke corporations have learned, that being “Get woke, go broke”? Or are they gonna stay stupid?

An example of what’s happening:

Hollywood is suffering “diversity fatigue”, insiders have said, after four leading inclusion executives left high-profile roles in the space of 10 days.

The departures came at three major studios and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Commentators in Hollywood suggested it showed “diversity fatigue” and it led to complaints that the entertainment industry was not fully committed to implementing inclusivity policies.

--snip--

Among those leaving was Disney’s chief diversity officer Latondra Newton.

Her job was to produce entertainment that “reflects a global audience and sustain a welcoming and inclusive workplace for everyone”.

Disney has produced one bomb after another, losing something like $900 million on its last eight releases. Disney’s losing streak is generally attributed to its left-wing, “woke” ideology. Are companies still trying to fulfill their legal duty to make money for their shareholders? If so, heads needed to roll at Disney.

Studios can only afford to lose money for so long before they go bankrupt or the shareholders start firing people on the Board and telling C-level executives they should “seek employment elsewhere”. Considering the stinkers that have been coming out of Hollywood for the past few years, the moviegoers staying away from the theaters in droves, and even streaming revenues for these stinkers in the cellar, is it any wonder that at least some of Hollywood has decided ‘woke’ isn’t working. Like what happened back in the 1970’s, Hollywood’s ‘message’ movies are box office bombs. Hollywood learned the lesson back then and stopped making them. The movie industry started making money again. Hopefully they’ll learn the lesson this time, too. If they don’t, they won’t be around too much longer.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the weather is weird, the summerfolk are weirder, and I’m actually glad Monday is returning for once.

Is The AirBnB Market Declining?

Over the past three years I have been watching the AirBnB and VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner) phenomenon explode, at least on a local level. A lot of houses, cottages, and condos were bought with use as short term rentals (STRs) in mind. While not all STRs fall into this category as sometimes people will rent out their own home for a few weeks every year, the ones I am talking about are used for this purpose year round. That certainly applies here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire where there are three tourist seasons – summer (boating, swimming, fishing, hiking, camping), fall (foliage), and winter (skiing, snowmobiling, ice fishing) – and AirBnB’s have been in demand, at least until recently.

Like many other towns and cities in other states, towns in this part of New Hampshire have been trying to deal with the impact of STRs on both the neighborhoods and the housing market. Our town started having issues with some of the STRs, specifically those which were consistently used as ‘party’ houses, which drove the town to develop some regulations. Ours aren’t draconian, aren’t onerous, and deal more with making sure the town knows who owns them as well as making sure they are safe. It took our town three years to come up with a set of acceptable regulations which were voted on and accepted at town meeting.

However, I have a feeling that some of those regulations will become moot. As I mentioned above, it seems the demand for STRs, specifically AirBnBs and VRBOs, have fallen off in my town. It’s even worse elsewhere like the Southwest and Mountain West where rentals have fallen by as much as 50%, and why some AirBnB owners are likely to sell their properties.

These Airbnb owners are getting ready to sell because of "Airbnb bust", a downturn in the short-term rental market that started in the second half of 2022, with Airbnb operators in some cities facing a 50% decline in revenue. These declining revenues are the result of a slowdown in post-pandemic travel demand to go along with a massive increase in Airbnb supply, trends which are now causing many Airbnb operators to lose money on their rental.

I believe these losses will cause a wave of distressed selling from Airbnb operators in 2023 and 2024, particularly in cities where:

1) revenue has crashed the most, and

2) Airbnb supply increased the most

If you're a homebuyer or real estate investor it's important to understand the exposure your city and neighborhood has to the Airbnb crash, particularly the timing and depth of the downturn. Because when it all shakes out, I believe that there will be some great buying opportunities for homebuyers and investors across the real estate spectrum.

The housing market around here was affected by investors buying up homes, paying above asking price and in many cases paying cash. Some investors got into bidding wars which drove the selling price through the roof. One such property I am familiar with – an 1800 square foot chalet - was listed for just over $300,000. It sold for $700,000. That is insane, particularly for that particular house. It is used as an STR and was renting for $2650 per week last year. There are others here in our town that are similar, including one that is just behind The Gulch. What surprising is that that particular one has only had two renters over the past six weeks – one during Motorcycle Week in mid-June and one which checked in just today. The place was empty during the week of Fourth of July as was the other AirBnB just down the road from The Gulch. That is unusual. Some other local AirBnB’s I have checked regularly were showing a few unbooked weeks between now and Labor Day. That’s entirely different from last year.

Does this indicate we’ll see the same level of booking fall-off as has been seen elsewhere? If so, when can we expect owners to drop their prices or sell their poorly performing investments? If they do sell, do they expect they’ll be able to sell them for whatever they overpaid to acquire them?

It will be interesting to see how all of this shakes out.

Friday Funny - The Irony Of Nature

Thoughts On A Sunday

As all three of my readers may have noticed, I didn’t post last night. It wasn’t from “lack of wanna” or having no subject worth posting about. It was more a matter of not getting back to The Gulch until quite late last night as I went to a concert at our local venue. Two old friends of mine and I went to see Chicago at the Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion at Meadowbrook Farm.

Other than a few people here and there, most of the audience were in their 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. As more than a couple of venue staff and security personnel said, “We don’t expect there will be any problems, at least not with this crowd. A lot of them will be staying up past their usual bedtime…”

It was a great concert and with only two exceptions I knew all the songs they performed.

A good time was had by all!

==+++==

It looks like Mother Nature isn’t going to play nice this weekend. It’s going to be raining, and when it isn’t raining it’s going to be warm and very humid around here. I’m not holding out much hope that there won’t be thunderstorms the evening of the Fourth, meaning it will be dicey catching the fireworks from the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout as the last place I want to be during the thunderstorm is out in the middle of a lake.

==+++==

To show you just how bad things have gotten, it seems that some of those deeply steeped in Progressive ideology have an unreasoning fear, distrust, and loathing of those whose beliefs differ from theirs. It even goes so far as to divide families. But the following example shows the hypocrisy of at least one Progressive...and her equally Progressive mother.

A Progressive bride feels uncomfortable with the idea of her conservative uncle attending her wedding, so asks her mother to write to the uncle (the mother’s brother) to explain why he’s not being invited to the wedding.

He did not reply. He also did not send wedding gift...and the bride’s mother is upset he didn’t send the $1000 he’s gifted to family members during their weddings.

[The bride] says she was counting on receiving the same type of gift.

My husband says I should drop it – but I can’t. Dave’s behavior is upsetting and embarrassing to me.

How can I get my brother to recognize and change his petty behavior?

Please don’t tell me that I’m the one who started this by not inviting my brother to the wedding. After all, he’s a grown man, while my daughter is young and just starting out.

So, they dis-invite an uncle they disagree with politically but otherwise get along with, telling him why he’s not welcome, but expect him to provide a wedding gift? They don’t want him, just his money.

The absolute gall of these people.

The advice columnist to whom this was addressed didn’t cut this woman any slack either, telling her “So far, your silent brother is the only family member who is behaving appropriately. He’s steering clear, which is exactly what you have asked him to do.”

Indeed.

(H/T Instapundit)

==+++==

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

Climate Cops Denounce Ice in Cocktails

For years the hospitality industry has seen diners clamoring for foods that prioritize climate-friendly practices, such as local and seasonal ingredients that are grown or raised with carbon footprints in mind. Yet cocktail culture hasn’t been hit with the same scrutiny. As the American West experiences water scarcity and energy prices remain volatile, the protocol for properly made cocktails doesn’t look sustainable. Is it possible to make satisfying cocktails without so much ice?

Really? Ice in cocktails is driving climate change?

Then I have a counter to that, that being that many of the alcoholic beverages the climate clowns like to drink are major contributors to CO2. The fermentation process generates a lot of carbon dioxide, so much so that buildings where the the various vats and barrels are housed need to be properly ventilated to keep the ambient CO2 levels from reaching lethal concentrations.

If there are no alcoholic beverages then there is no need for any ice, right? So we should ban those horrible alcoholic beverages outright if they are so concerned about climate change...right?

==+++==

Who’da thunk that teaching actual biological science could get one fired for “for ‘religious preaching’ in his class.”

A biology professor at St. Philip’s College in San Antonio, Texas claimed that he was fired after he taught a lesson explaining that sex is determined by X and Y chromosomes.

The professor, Johnson Varkey, claimed that he was let go from the college for “religious preaching” in his class. Over the course of 20 years, Varkey taught human anatomy and physiology to more than 1,500 students, according to the New York Post.

During a lesson on the human reproductive system on Nov. 28, 2022, Varkey made remarks about how X and Y chromosomes determine a person’s sex. Four students reportedly walked out of his class as a result of these remarks.

So, because the professor disdained the use of woke ‘science’, i.e. another version of Lysenkoism which has little to do with actual science, and stated something that any biologist knows is true, he’s been fired for preaching religion in a science class? How is that in any way ‘religion’?

The plague of ‘wokism’ is spreading and has been infecting academia and society to the detriment of both.

If science is required to meet the political constraints of 21st century Lysenkoism, then it isn’t science, period.

==+++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the ran continues to fall, the prospects for fireworks on the Fourth seem dismal, and it appears too many people have forgotten how to drive in the rain.

Friday Funny - Electricity

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a 50-50 weekend with yesterday being rainy and today, well at least do far, being sunny. It’s been quite humid with dew points being in the upper 60’s yesterday and today, and expected to be in the mid to upper 60’s the rest of the week. It’s meant we’ve been running the A/C to dry things out which means it’s been on a low setting, just enough to drop the humidity while the inside temps are still in the upper 70’s.

It’s summer, so warm humid days are to be expected. However, it’s been so humid that we’ve been seeing a lot of rain. The upside to this is that no one is talking about drought anymore. The downside has been that neither BeezleBub or I have been able to get out on the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout as every time we planned to do so those plans were canceled by rain.

In other words, a not atypical summer in New Hampshire.

==+++==

It seems the LGBTQ+ community has to deal with yet another twisted individual who is certainly not helping their cause. One of our former state reps in New Hampshire – Stacie Laughton – is being charged with distributing child pornography.

Anyone familiar with Stacie Laughton, once known as Barry Laughton, is likely not surprised that she is once again in legal trouble. That it has risen to this level is something I never thought would happen. But then that she has gone down this far doesn’t really surprise me at all as it’s been a downhill ride for Laughton since the time I met him/her/whatever back in the mid-2000’s.

What a scumbag.

==+++==

Bird Dog over at Maggie’s Farm asks an important question:

Does anybody believe any news from Ukraine and Russia?

One has to remember the first victim of war is the truth.

Bird Dog also asks this related question:

Oh, also, where's the UN? Worrying about the weather, I guess. Mission creep - they do nothing.

Heh.^TM

==+++==

It seems like one country on this planet has decided the Green Nude Eel is a Bad Thing^TM.

Sweden has decided to scrap its green energy targets.

In a statement announcing the new policy in the Swedish Parliament, Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson warned that the Scandinavian nation needs “a stable energy system.”

Svantesson asserted that wind and solar power are too “unstable” to meet the nation’s energy requirements.

Sweden understands the weaknesses and pitfalls of wind and solar and wants nothing to do with them.

Smart move. Now if only other nations realized this...one of those nations being the US. (Actually, people in the US already understand this. It’s only the government, the watermelon environmentalists, and the True Believers who buy into the Green Nude Eel.)

==+++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it’s muggy, the skies are still blue (at the moment), and where we hope to get some boating time out on the lake this week!

Grand Theft...Real Estate?

While we don’t see all that much in the way of crime up this way, a property owner in our town nearly became a victim of a fraud scheme. By chance the property owner became aware of the scheme prior to the scammer being able to pull of their scam.

The target of the scam, a neighbor near my old domicile – The Manse – had come up to check on a house he owned and noticed there was a For Sale sign on an adjacent lot he also owned. He called the Realtor’s number on the sign and asked why their sign was on his property.

He was informed someone identifying as the property owner listed the property for immediate sale as they were having financial difficulties and needed to sell the property to raise funds. When he told the Realtor that he was the owner of the property and had no intention of selling it, he was told it was a good thing he had called when he did because there had already been offers on the property and a closing was imminent.

The supposed ‘owner’ – the scammer – called the Realtor from out of state and made all the arrangements for the sale and transfer of payment. The scammer had done their homework and knew a lot about the property in question as well as the next door property (with the house), and a lot about the actual property owner. (I have no doubt that if the the sale of the land had gone through without a hitch the scammer would have tried to sell the house next.)

It was only by chance the property owner found out about the impending theft of his property and was able to stop it.

The question begs “How many others have fallen victim to this kind of scam and didn’t find out until they found someone building a house on their property, or worse, occupying a home they owned?” I doubt my former neighbor is the only one who’s been a target of this kind of fraud here in New Hampshire and surrounding states.

Friday Funny - New McDonald's Menu Item

Thoughts On A Sunday

Note: This is an abbreviated TOAS post as there was a family medical emergency that took precedence over blogging.

==+++==

The rumble of motorcycles is slowly fading away as the last of the bikers depart central New Hampshire as the 100^th Laconia Motorcycle Week winds to a close. While the weather wasn’t fully cooperative – showers and thunderstorms on and off all week – there was enough sunshine to provide the visiting bikers with good weather to enjoy their time here. I haven’t heard any estimates about how many bikers actually made it up this way, but some were expecting to see 500,000 bikers since it was the 100^th annual rally.

The couple renting the AirBnB behind The Gulch departed yesterday, heading back to northern New Jersey. At least they trailered their motorcycles which meant they didn’t have to ride back home through the pouring rain.

==+++==

By way of Skip at GraniteGrok comes this, something I missed last week. He pretty much nailed this particular topic, “this” being Target (and other retailers) ignoring simple economics and common sense by pissing off their customer base at the behest of a very small percentage of the population, then that small percentage complaining about the inevitable backlash and the retailer deciding staying in business is more important than LGBTQWERTY ‘Pride’.

I’m sorry – am I missing something here? If the consumers that are paying for items no longer wish to purchase them, shouldn’t a store react in its own self-interest AND in protecting the interests of its stockholders? And why SHOULDN’T Target now allow itself to be “Bud Lighted” for a limited sexualized ideology?

--snip--

Seriously – you want them to “go down with their [economic] ship” simply to make you feel good about yourself? Are you that selfish? Through thick and thin, eh? Sounds like [clothes designer Erik] Carnell is looking to run a grift by using the old “all or nothing” logic to influence the tactic of guilt (“completely distance yourself….convenient”).

The Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, GLSEN, Family Equality, National LGBTQ Task Force, and approximately 200 other LGBT-allied groups signed a joint statement on Monday laying out a list of demands for Target.

Hmmm, is a demand list from groups that represent a tiny fraction of Target’s consumer base going to be valued over the billions of market capitalization already lost by conservative consumers voting with their dollars? WHO has the ability to do more damage to Target?

It seems the petitioning groups have no problem with destroying businesses who won’t voluntarily fall on their economic swords in support of a cause that incorporates a small percentage of the population, a part of that small percentage aiming at grooming children to become their sexual playthings. It seems they assume they can bully companies into working against their best interests and those of their stockholders and force them to commit economic suicide.

Some corporations went stupid and kowtowed to that small percentage of their customer base and saw their sales and valuation plummet. Gillette was one of the first and it still hasn’t recovered from its going stupid. Target is just the latest victim. We’ve certainly seen Disney imploding on a lot of fronts, having gone ‘woke’ across the board and seeing their customer base abandoning them. What did Disney think would happen?

The shakeout is going to be interesting.

==+++==

Illegal gun sales are now illegal?

Who knew, right?

==+++==

The Watermelon Environmentalists keep pushing the EV narrative as if they will fix all of our climate problems even though they know the narrative is a lie. Even the Chinese, who make more EVs than anyone else on the planet, are finding they aren’t the success they thought they would be, but not for the reason you might think.

The CCP was apparently determined to claim that they are making more EV’s than Tesla. But in order to get the EV subsidies, companies are producing vast numbers of cars no one wants to buy. It seems these cars are registered, falsely listed as “sold” and driven 30 miles to a graveyard to presumably rot, or spontaneously combust, whichever comes first. After thirteen years of one particular subsidy, supposedly only worth 3-6% of the best selling car, the government has paid out nearly $15 billion, which seems like it would buy quite a few fields of Neta V EVs.

--snip--

Who knows what the real price of an EV is in China?

The long running subsidy ended in January, causing a decline in sales, which was supposedly only 1.4% down, but was somehow so bad (whatever the real number was) that several cities leapt to offer their own subsidies of about US$1,452 per car, and now the government has decided to extend the “EV Tax incentives”.

Not surprisingly, given the waste, inefficiency, and purposeless grind, something bad is happening in the Chinese economy — all car sales (petrol and EV’s) are down nearly 20%.

EVs aren’t all that popular here either, at least not as compared to ICE vehicles. It doesn’t help that they are also a lot more expensive than equivalent ICE vehicles, are generally heavier than ICE vehicles, don’t have the range of ICE vehicles, take a lot longer to ‘refuel’ than ICE vehicles, and one of the biggest issues, are far less ‘green’ than ICE vehicles. Of course since none of those points fit the narrative, they are devoutly ignored, minimized, or lied about.

==+++==

And that’s the abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the rumble of thousands of motorcycles is fading away, millions of biker dollars are filling the coffers of businesses, and Monday is coming around...again.

This Is How You Get More Vigilantism

Is it just me (and Tyler Durden) who think that Blue city politicians who think “the solution to the crime wave is to help criminals commit more crimes.”

In order to fund their addictions, the addicts have to steal stuff. Retailers have become a primary target, and a new bill that has been going through the California legislature would actually “ban retail staff from stopping thieves stealing from their stores”…

Lawmakers in California are hoping to push through controversial legislation that would ban retail staff from stopping thieves stealing from their stores.

Senate Bill 553, which was submitted by State Senator Dave Cortese, has been passed by the State Senate and will now progress to policy committees in the State Assembly. Cortese hopes the proposed law will prevent workplace violence and protect staff from being forced by their employers to step-in during robberies. But some store bosses are furious about the plans, with the California Retailers Association mocking the move as an open invitation for thieves “to come in and steal.”

Seriously?

It is already ridiculously easy to shoplift in California, and the politicians want to make it even easier?

Are they insane?

The theory is that there will be fewer violent confrontations if the crooks are just allowed to do whatever they want.

Of course the overworked and overwhelmed police rarely get there in time either.

And the few thieves that are caught are let go with just a slap on the wrist as long as they keep their shoplifting under a certain dollar amount.

California is getting dangerously close to legalizing shoplifting, and I am sure that is what many of the politicians would like to see.

But if you use the wrong pronoun or make an “offensive” statement on social media, that could get you into really big trouble.

When the people decide the politicians they elected aren’t working in their best interests, or worse, are working against the them, the people are likely to be driven to take matters into their own hands. For instance, will street justice become the de facto justice system in these cities? Considering many of these same cities have a shortage of law enforcement officers caused by those same city governments defunding their police departments and so-called ‘blue flight’ as demoralized and denigrated police officers quit those police departments and either relocated to departments elsewhere or left law enforcement entirely, would the purposely crippled justice system be able to stop citizens from taking the law into their own hands? Somehow, I doubt it, particularly if 3’S’ justice – Shoot, Shovel, and Shut Up – is employed.

Nobody will have seen anything. No one will have heard anything. No one will know anything. It is likely video surveillance cameras will have malfunctioned. No forensic evidence will be found as the alleged street justice scene will be spotless.

And so it will start.

Friday (Not So) Funny - Opinions...Everybody's Got One

Our self-proclaimed 'betters' need to take this to heart...but they won't.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It is the beginning of the 100^th Annual Laconia Motorcycle Week and there is no doubt it’s going to be a big one. I don’t recall seeing the number of motorcycles that are already here this early in Rally Week. It isn’t really all that surprising considering all of the Covid restrictions are gone and that many will be coming to celebrate the 100^th Motorcycle Week. This is the longest running motorcycle rally in the nation so it’s not a surprise there will be so many attending this year. During a ‘normal’ Bike Week we see between 300,000 and 400,000 bikers visiting. I have no problem believing we could see 500,000 bikers this year.

The only downside is the noise, something no one can do anything about. Personally, I have no problem with the roar of the thousands upon thousands of motorcycles. It may sound corny, but along with the roar of those bikes we also also see lots of dollar signs. The hotels, motels, inns, B&B's, AirBnB’s, and campgrounds are full. (The AirBnB behind The Gulch is one of them.) The restaurants are certainly busy and the vendors selling various Bike Week wares have been seeing a lot of business...and it’s only Sunday. If things follow the usual pattern, most of the bikers will be arriving starting Thursday. (I will be working from home both Thursday and Friday so I won’t have to deal with the heavy traffic. It’s a sacrifice I am willing to make.)

==+++==

“Be careful what you wish for...because you just might get it.”

It is an old adage that far too many people ignore and they end up paying the price for doing so. Chris Queen is warning the Democrats they should be careful what they wish for after the latest Trump indictments.

Regardless of what you think about the Trump indictment, it’s hard not to believe that it smacks of the Democrats’ endless attempts to nail Donald Trump for — something. We’ve gotten used to it over the past few years, and these legal maneuvers always seem to play out the same way.

“We’re all familiar with the ‘Trump facing…’ news loop by now,” writes Freddy Gray at The Spectator. “America is stuck in Trump legal groundhog day — he’s remorselessly prosecuted, over and over, on so many fronts. He always responds the same way, protesting his INNOCENCE in capital letters on Truth Social, saying he can’t believe this is happening in America. Then his team fires out fundraising emails.”

Maybe they have him this time, but maybe not. After all, we’ve heard the rhetoric about the “walls closing in” on Trump for a long time now.

It seems every time they believe “We’ve got him now!” it turns into either a nothingburger or blows back on them and they come under scrutiny and investigation.

Should Trump get elected in 2024 I think we’ll see him go on a tear to give Democrats a taste of their own medicine.

==+++==

At least one governor is doing something about the negative effects of social media on children, something I’ve brought up more than once over the past few years.

New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu https://www.governor.nh.gov/news-and-media/governor-chris-sununu-signs-executive-order-2023-04>issued an executive order requiring a “statewide response to the impact of social media platforms on New Hampshire’s youth.”

Under the Executive Order, the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services are called upon to work collaboratively to create guidelines for a curriculum to be submitted to the State Board of Education to be included in all K-12 health education courses in the state that explains the potential negative impacts of use of social media platforms by children. These guidelines shall be submitted to the Governor within 90 days of the Executive Order having been signed.

As part of the initiative, state agencies will also promote a new GoPlayNH Initiative, encouraging kids and families to spend more time off their screens and outdoors. The initiative will highlight the various recreation opportunities available across the Granite State.

The effect of social media on children is profound, and in most cases, a negative effect. If everything they do becomes about what they see and read on social media the real world fades away and only the crap they experience via their smart phones, tablets, and computers is seen as real. But it’s smoke and mirrors, illusion, and lies, large and small. (My son BeezleBub didn’t get a phone until after he graduated from high school. He didn’t have the social anxiety or issues so many of his peers suffered. While he is on social media these days, it’s on an occasional basis and more often than not deals with his farming activities.)

Less screen time and more real life interaction with family and friends in and outdoors is one way to lessen the the increasingly invasive social media addiction.

==+++==

Oh no! People living in Singapore, an island city located only 85 miles north of the equator, are using air conditioners to beat the tropical heat and humidity! How dare they!

It’s obvious the folks living in Singapore don’t care that they’re contributing to climate change.

CNN Is claiming that the use of AC is a Bad Thing. When will the main CNN building, located in the hot, humid, and sweltering city of Atlanta stop using it? Even without the massive urban heat island effect of Atlanta, the area would be rough during large parts of the year.

It’s funny (but not surprising) CNN doesn’t see the hypocrisy of their report slamming Singapore for their ‘contributions’ to climate change because of the tropical city’s use of air conditioning.

When the temperature soared to 99 degrees Fahrenheit last month, Singapore resident Chee Kuan Chew saw just one option: cancel all plans and stay indoors in air-conditioned comfort.

“You can’t survive without air con in Singapore,” Chee said. “It’s impossible with the heat.”

The 20-year-old university student lives with his family in a four-bedroom flat in Ang Mo Kio, a bustling district that made headlines in the Southeast Asian city state when its temperatures hit a 40-year high in a recent heat wave. Thankfully, Chee said, his home has five air conditioners – one in each bedroom and a larger unit in the living room.

“I drank plenty of water, took cold showers and kept the air conditioning on for the entire weekend. That’s my way of managing the heat,” Chee said.

Taking solace in air conditioning in Singapore is hardly unreasonable behavior. Situated roughly 85 miles north of the equator, the island nation is famously hot and humid, with temperatures that stretch into the 80s year-round – a climate that has helped make it one of the most air-conditioned countries in the world, with more units per capita than any of its Southeast Asian neighbors.

But Singapore’s love affair with air conditioning has an enormous cost.

It has trapped a nation already hot – and getting hotter – in what experts describe as a “dangerous, vicious cycle.” It’s a climate change Catch 22 paradox that faces all nations which rely on air conditioning to make life just that little bit more tolerable.

Put simply: the warmer the world gets, the more people turn to their air conditioners. And the more they turn to their air conditioners, the warmer the world gets.

CNN makes the claim that A/C makes climate change worse, yet offers no proof...and makes no offer to shut off their own air conditioning to help fight climate change...”and CCN can piss off.”

==+++==

This is just plain stupid. But then what do you expect from a leftist court?

Court Decrees Women-Only Spas Unconstitutional

Despite the reasoning of the court, the decision was the wrong one. It was based on ‘woke’ and not law.

==+++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the roar of motorcycles is continuous, the weather is cooperating, and the sound or cash registers is getting louder.

Opting Out aka Goin' Galt

One thing I have been noticing over the past few years is the increasing difficulty in ‘finding good help’.

This problem isn’t limited to specific professions or industries or trades. It is an across-the-board problem that is getting worse. I have seen it where I work as it has been increasingly difficult to hire engineering staff. It isn’t limited to just my company as this is something I have been hearing from a number of friends and acquaintances also in the engineering field. I have also been hearing similar observations from people I know working in a wide range of industries. Stores are having problems getting checkout clerks and shelf stockers, restaurants are having problems getting wait staff and kitchen help, construction firms can’t find enough experienced personnel, and on and on.

Why is it becoming more difficult to find good help? There are a number of reasons, some of them self-imposed. One of the big ones: the competent opting out, aka ‘Going Galt’.

What happens with the competent retire, burn out or opt out? It's a question few bother to ask because the base assumption is that there is an essentially limitless pool of competent people who can be tapped or trained to replace those who retire, burn out or opt out, i.e. quit in favor of a lifestyle that doesn't require much in the way of income or stress.

The drivers of the Competent Opting Out are obvious yet difficult to quantify. Those retiring, burning out and opting out will deny they're leaving for these reasons because it's not politic to be so honest and direct. They will offer time-honored dodges such as "pursue other opportunities" or "family obligations."

One of the many reasons listed is one that I have found to be bothersome in the past, one that caused some issues in my company in the past.

The steady increase in workloads, paperwork, compliance and make-work (i.e. work that has nothing to do with the institution's actual purpose and mission) that lead to burnout. There is only so much we can accomplish, and if we're burdened with ever-increasing demands for paperwork, compliance, useless meetings, training sessions, etc., then we no longer have the time or energy to perform our productive work.

Healthcare workloads, paperwork and compliance are one example of many. Failure to complete all the make-work can have dire consequences, so it becomes necessary to do less "real work" in order to complete all the work that has little or nothing to do with actual patient care. Alternatively, the workload expands to the point that it breaks the competent and they leave.

I know in my case my workload kept increasing as my productivity fell as I had to spend more time on mostly useless paperwork and endless meetings. Most of the meetings could have been handled via e-mail as the info presented at the meetings was just for the director of our division. Fortunately, some of those issues disappeared when the director of our division was told it would behoove him “to seek employment elsewhere” as our division’s performance metrics tanked under his leadership.

One thing that still plagues me is dealing with compliance to state, national, and international regulations covering environmental, safety, energy efficiency, laser and radio emissions, and some performance requirements. The federal and international regulations can be troublesome, but are mostly boilerplate. State regulations, on the other hand, can be daunting and in the case of California’s Proposition 65, takes up more of my time than the US and international regulations combined.

No business likes having to spend any more time dealing with regulations than they absolutely have to. Yet more regulations – many nothing more than make work administrative law – are being created to help justify bureaucrats' jobs.

Then there’s this:

The politicization of the work environment. Let's begin by distinguishing between policies enforcing equal opportunity, pay, standards and accountability, policies required to fulfill the legal promises embedded in the nation's social contract, and politicization, which demands allegiance and declarations of loyalty to political ideologies that have nothing to do with the work being done or the standards of accountability necessary to the operation of the complex institution or enterprise.

The correct verbiage and ideological enthusiasm become the basis of advancement rather than accountability to standards of competence. The competent are thus replaced with the politically savvy. Since competence is no longer being selected for, it's replaced by what is being selected for, political compliance.

We’ve seen so many businesses become politicized and lose focus on their real reason to exist, and because of this they would lose customers, lose staff, and in some cases go out of business. If employees have to pass a political ‘test’ in order to remain employed, then those working there who disagree with the politics being shoved down their throats are likely to ‘pull the plug’ and leave. Who wants to stay at a job where no one likes them, and in fact, castigates and minimizes them? In some cases, those leaving took needed knowledge and experience that wasn’t easily replaced with them. Their departure further damaged the business and in some cases the businesses failed.

Some businesses realized they would fail if they didn’t depoliticize themselves. Elon Musk knew this when he purchased Twitter and one of the first things he did was purge the woke political employees because they really served no function other than looking down upon and judge fellow employees who weren’t as woke, censor tweets they disagreed with, and collect a salary while doing so.

This brings up the next point.

The competent must cover for the incompetent. As the competent tire of the artifice and make-work and quit, the remaining competent must work harder to keep everything glued together. Their commitment to high standards and accountability are their undoing, as the slack-masters and incompetent either don't care ("I'm just here to qualify for my pension") or they've mastered the processes of masking their incompetence, often by blaming the competent or the innocent for their own failings.

Hmm. This sounds familiar. Where have I seen something like this before?

Oh, wait...I know! Atlas Shrugged!

Rand knew it was but one element of the downfall of her fictional America, where the slackers and politically reliable were running things and more and more people decided to Go Galt. Eventually everything collapsed, the lights went out, and those who went on strike thrived in Galt’s Gulch, and the Powers That Be in Rand’s dystopian land lost all power, politically and literally.

There are a number of other points brought in the Zero Hedge post, so I suggest you Read The Whole Thing.

Friday Funny - Philosophy

I will admit to being an occasional adherent to this Greek philosopher.

Twenty One Years Ago Today

It really doesn’t seem like it was all that long ago.

It was 21 years ago today that the first posts of this blog were made, my dear brother making the first post at 11:15 in the morning followed by a second post at 3:03 that afternoon. I followed later that day at 7:39PM with my own first post to Weekend Pundit.

The blogosphere was never the same.

Weekend Pundit was hosted on three different platforms over the years, starting on Blogger, moving over to the now defunct Blogmosis (Thanks, Matt and Vicky!), then hosted by the folks at GraniteGrok, and finally returning to Blogger.

For the longest time it was just my brother and I, posting almost daily despite our blog’s name. We had a number of other contributors over the years, some proffering guest posts occasionally, and others contributing on a regular basis now and then. Then it was back to my brother and I. Then a few years later my brother was busy with a second blog he started with Dean Esmay as a means of writing a novel – Methuselah’s Daughter – leaving me as the sole author.

Ironically, around the same time another Weekend Pundit blog appeared, authored by a fellow from Texas. There were a number of times we cross-posted to each other’s blogs as The Other Weekend Pundit, but a few years later that blog went dark.

As time went on I didn’t post every day because life intruded and I didn’t have nearly the time to devote to blogging, so relegated posting to weekends – Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays - much as this blog’s title implied. The occasional during-the-week posts were made if something of import took place, but for the most part I limit posting to Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Looking over the stats from the three different hosts, it turns out that we posted well over 6,000 posts, have seen over 1,000,000 visits (close to 1.2 million), and have seen a few Instalanches.

How long will this blog continue? I have no idea. Frankly, I haven’t thought about. I have had a few offers to move my efforts over to a very well known blog, and I do contribute to it every now and then in an indirect manner, but this one is mine and after 21 years it would be difficult to abandon it. One thing I might try is to entice my dear brother to start posting again, even if only on an occasional basis.

For the time being this blog will continue and I will offer my thoughts, some humor, and maybe a thoughtful insight or two. Who knows, maybe I’ll write a post for the 42^nd anniversary of this blog.

Blog On, dudes!!

D-Day - 79 Years Later

The largest military operation in human history carried out by men of the Greatest Generation.

I saw this quote that said it best, which certainly applies to those who made the ultimate sacrifice during Operation Overlord:

“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died, rather we should thank God that such men lived.”– General George S. Patton

Amen to that.

Thoughts On A Sunday

We had mid-summer-like weather over the Memorial Day weekend and the week that followed, but that changed over this weekend as daytime temps plummeted from the upper 80’s and low 90’s to the lower and mid-50’s. We also went from sunny skies to clouds and rain showers. It’s supposed to ‘warm up’ into the mid-60’s through the coming week. We might see 70’s and sunny skies come next weekend, something that will be good since it is the opening weekend of the 100th Laconia Motorcycle Week up here in New Hampshire. (Oh, and despite a news report that the 100th Laconia Motorcycle Week would last 100 days to celebrate the 100th anniversary, it isn’t true...even though it sounds true.)

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Here’s one thing Anheuser-Busch wishes would go away: A new term that adequately describes consumer boycotts aimed at corporations that “that cater to various ‘woke’ causes, particularly transgender issues,” that term being “Bud Lighting”.

The term derives from the spectacular implosion of Bud Light in the wake of their decision in March to enlist transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote the brand. Bud Light’s sales have plummeted, averaging weekly declines of about 25 percent. Parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev has lost more than $15 billion in value. Sales of rival brands have soared, even as many retailers have slashed prices for Bud Light. Some stores are even giving Bud Light away for free—or trying to.

I am very skeptical that the Bud Light example can be replicated over the long haul, but I’m convinced that we are entering a new era of Bud Lighting on the right and left.

First, some background. The most remarkable thing about the Bud Light boycott is that it worked, because boycotts usually don’t—if your definition of success is actually affecting sales and stock price in a significant way.

I remember Gillette’s misstep with its ad campaign pushing a ‘woke’ view of toxic masculinity, insulting a majority of their customer base, leading to a loss of over $8 billion in sales and about $5.24 billion in valuation in a single quarter.

This was one of the first examples of boycotts against ‘woke’ corporations having a measurable effect. The people are sick and tired of agendas being rammed down their throats that they see as sick and degenerate. Boycotting these same businesses is one way to make them realize they are vulnerable.

Another corporation that’s made the mistake of going ‘woke’, angering their customer base and motivating them to take their money and go elsewhere – Disney. They’re losing billions in revenues, have angered Florida’s governor and legislature to the point where they removed Disney’s special tax district, all while trying pushing the LGBTQWERTY agenda in their movies, TV shows, and theme parks. Did they honestly think there wouldn’t be consequences from kowtowing to a small percentage of their customer base and slapping their main customer base in the face?

“Bud Lighting” appears to be a growing phenomenon, one that may be able to humble the ‘woke’, if not make them duck for cover.

Will Six Flags be the next corporation to learn the power of Bud Lighting?

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From the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department comes this from Stacy McCain:

Chicago Group Hired Gangsters to Be ‘Peacekeepers’ and It’s Working Out Just About the Way You Might Expect

Hiring foxes to guard the henhouse doesn’t make sense. The reasoning used to justify hiring these foxes seems seems logical...on the surface. But once you dig deeper you realize it’s a just so much mumbo-jumbo and won’t have the effect proponents say it will.

In 2016, with money from Steve Jobs’ widow, [Arne] Duncan started a group called Chicago CRED (Create Real Economic Destiny). Duncan has said that Chicago CRED “proceeds from the belief that the surest way to stop gun violence is engaging directly with those most at risk of shooting or being shot and giving them a reason to put down their guns.”

--snip--

So they’re paying people not to shoot each other, and hey, it’s a “comprehensive approach,” which explains the excellent results!

Those “excellent results” meant a rise in murders to over 700 per year. It also led to the murder of one of those working to reduce violent crime in Chicago.

A man who worked to stop gun violence was killed Wednesday in a shooting outside a community outreach center. Chicago police said they are looking for two people involved.

Police said 28-year-old Ronnie Roper was in a South Side parking lot at about 12:16 p.m. when two people walked up and shot him in the head.

The shooting occurred just outside Chicago CRED’s outreach center in the Roseland neighborhood. The victim was a member of that group that works to stop gun violence. . . .

Irony writ large.

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Oh, noes! It looks like the world is going to end in nineteen eighteen seventeen days!

So says Saint Greta The Green…

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Now that the latest round of “If we don’t allow the Feddle Gummint go deeper in debt Grandma won’t get her Social Security check next month” drama has been mostly concluded, we have to ask the question why this keeps happening.

Why does our government think it can keep spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need? I know the gazillions of bureaucrats think their particular bureaucracy is vital to the nation’s continued survival/operation/existence when anyone outside the Beltway knows that it is the opposite that’s true.

Do we really need the Department of Education? No. As best I can tell it serves no useful purpose.

Do we need an overbearing EPA that seems to have no problems creating administrative laws that conflict with federal law and the Constitution? Maybe in a severely trimmed back form.

I can keep going on, asking about federal agencies and departments and whether or not they are necessary to the efficient running of our government, but this post would be hundreds of pages long...and I would getting angrier with each one I listed.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer weather has fled for now, Motorcycle Week starts next Saturday, and where the hated Monday once again intrudes on yet another weekend.

Going Too Far?

It’s one thing when we tip servers at a restaurant. Considering their low base pay, tipping makes sense. The better the service, the better the tip. But automatic tipping at grocery stores when a customer uses self-service check-out? What the heck is that all about?

First, big box stores like Wal-Mart introduced self-service checkout stands. You know — the ones where we shoppers begrudgingly do the jobs of the stores for free while under intense electronic and in-person surveillance and all without so much as a discount or meaningful human interaction? Well, now — thanks to the Biden economy — the newest trend at restaurants and stores with self-service checkouts is to coerce and guilt consumers into adding unearned tips to their total.

I don’t know about you, Dear Reader, but I grew up in an era when tipping was in direct proportion to the quality of a service rendered. Better service was rewarded with a better tip, but the service component had to be there. Not so today. When did the simple act of buying a product become a service? And it’s especially baffling when a shopper goes to the store, finds and removes the item from the shelf, takes it to the checkout, scans, and bags the item all on his own. Where exactly is the service in that transaction? There isn’t any, and yet a tip is still expected?

One has to ask “What’s next?” Forced tipping at the gas pumps? What about convenience stores? Online purchases? Vending machines?

Where does it end?

I wonder if this should be filed under “Just when I thought they couldn’t get any stupider…”?

Friday Funny - Salad

Ah, yes! A perfect salad!