McVictim Syndrome

First it was McMansions. Now it's McVictims.

This crap is getting old. Call these folks what they are: self-indulgent fatties not willing to admit the reason they're fat is because they eat too damn much, eat the wrong things, and don't exercise. It's easier to blame someone/something else rather than take responsibility for their own actions.

But then that's been the way over the past 40 years or so – it's always somebody else's fault.

Chris Christie And Plain Spoken Truth

The more I read and hear about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie the more I like the guy.

Why do I like him? It's simple, really. He speaks his mind. He says what he means and means what he says. In other words, he's blunt. He doesn't use euphemisms to skirt around issues or situations others might fear to address. If only there were more like him in government.

We've seen the videos of him addressing teachers, state employees, journalists, and just plain folks and telling them things they may not want to hear but need to hear. We've read about many of these same encounters. And each time he comes out ahead of his detractors and gains support from the “just plain folks.”

With that in mind we should take a look at what the Philadelphia Daily News has dubbed “The Sayings of Chris Christie.” A few examples:

"Let me help you pack."

That's what N.J. Gov. Chris Christie said to an overpaid school superintendent who tried to front-load his contract so he wouldn't be subject to Christie's proposed salary cap. When Christie tagged the superintendent the "poster boy of greed and arrogance," the school chief noted that he didn't have to work in Jersey - he could go elsewhere.

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"Why would I want a less powerful job than the one I have now?"

Christie's tongue-in-cheek take on the notion that he might run for president. In fact, New Jersey's constitution grants the governor far more power than the governors of most other states. As for a presidential bid in 2012, Christie still says, "No way."

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"I didn't want to be governor to be something. I wanted to be governor to do something." Christie's self-proclaimed raison d'être. This goes with a story about how he doesn't care if he's re-elected, he simply wants to get things done.

You gotta love a guy like that. As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing. Pay close attention to the comments as I think you'll find more than a few people not liking the idea that their governor is willing to let New Jersey taxpayers keep more of their money.

Opting Out Of California

It's one thing to hear about the exodus from California, with more people (and businesses) leaving the Golden State than arriving. It's just a statistic. But when one of those people, and specifically a businessman, decides to opt out and pull up stakes, it becomes more personal and a little bit less of a statistic.

I am one of those evil “high-earners” in California with income over $200,000 per year. It is unimportant to state legislators that we high-earners pay most of California’s taxes. According to the Franchise Tax Board, in 2007 more than 87 percent of California capital gains taxes came from taxpayers with adjusted incomes of more than $200,000. Residents with incomes over $200,000 pay 66 percent of its income taxes even though [they] earn just 39 percent of the state's income. More important to California’s future, most of us are small businesses, which account for 65 percent of new job growth in the state.

Taxing the folks earning the most to the point where they decide it's better for them to leave rather than be treated as nothing more than the state government's ATM is not the way for California to balance its budget. Nor is it a move towards fiscal sanity. It's just a more modern version of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Apparently the folks in Sacramento and the people that put them there haven't figured out that if you punish people for being successful they will either work less hard and be less successful or they will pack up and leave for greener pastures. The net outmigration points to the latter. An already dire financial situation will become worse as the sources of revenue for the state depart.

Socialist California will fall prey to Thatcher's Dictum: “The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” That's evident since the people with the money are voting with their feet and taking their money with them, opting out of the California dream turned nightmare.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was a weirdly busy day for yours truly yesterday, taking care of a number of tasks but not really getting all that much done. It wasn't that I was lazy (though I am at times), it was just that these tasks took a lot of time but there wasn't much to show after all that effort.

I guess it just happens that way now and then.

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Who knew Winston Churchill was a visionary along the lines of Nostradamus? He certainly predicted previously free nations becoming more socialist little by little and becoming less free and weaker economically.

He warned us about the trend and what its outcome would likely be...and he was right.

(H/T Instapundit)

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No matter how hard the tax-and-spenders try to spin it, there's no way they can raise taxes above 19% of the Gross Domestic Product for any length of time. Goodness knows they've tried it again and again, but economic reality slaps them in the face when the economy (and therefore revenues) adjusts to the new taxes and the total collected remains 19% of GDP. Of course if they raise taxes high enough the economy contracts and revenues fall off, but don't try to confuse them with the facts...or history.

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Is this the first sign the machines are starting to push back?

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

(H/T Vermont Tiger)

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Gregory Sullivan gives us a brief primer on Maine politics and his thoughts on last month's election results.

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Fellow Granite State blogger Dan Pierce will be filling in for talk-show host Bradley Jay tonight between 10PM and midnight EST on WBZ-AM (1030 on your AM dial). Since WBZ-AM is a 50,000 watt clear channel station you should be able to hear the show from just about anywhere in North America.

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Moonbattery points us to this fine video comparing Republican women to Democrat women.



“Fine” versus “Fugly” indeed.

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Cap'n Teach gives us a lesson about how Obamanomics works at the state level. Hint: It doesn't.

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It's one thing to try and put some restraints on food being sold in schools. But once you start messing with bake sales it means war!

Surely, President Obama has more important things to do than to micromanage school bake sales. Afghanistan is having issues, the economy is tanking, and the unemployment rate went up to 9.8 percent. Everyone can see that these problems are all much more significant to the nation at large than school kids indulging in cookies and brownies from school bake sales, right?

Apparently not everyone. A child nutrition bill that is on its way to President Obama's desk for signing would put the federal government in charge of bake sales.

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The Jawa Report makes some interesting comparisons I think you'll enjoy. (No, I'm not going to spoil it for you.)

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And last, but not least, there's this from Glenn Reynolds Sunday column in the Washington Examiner where he compares the Obama presidency to Nigel Tufnel.

The more I watch this administration at work, the more I think we're seeing the first Nigel Tufnel presidency.

Nigel Tufnel, many will remember, was the fictitious heavy metal guitarist in the fictional "rockumentary" "This Is Spinal Tap." In a classic scene, he displays his guitar collection and his special amplifier that -- unlike all other amplifiers in existence -- has knobs that go all the way up to 11, instead of just 10.

And that's what Obama has done: In his first two years as president, he's taken us to 11 in so many ways.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where winter has still made only a momentary appearance, the snowblowers are being pulled out of storage and tuned up, and where the cord wood stacks have started to shrink.

The National Maximum Speed Limit And the Long Term Aftereffects

I will be one of the first people to admit that I rarely do the speed limit on limited access highways like the Interstates. I know I'm not the only one otherwise I wouldn't be getting passed all the time when I'm on them. (I won't do over 65 in the trusty F150 because at the moment it needs a front end alignment and at that speed it shimmies a bit.)

The speed limits on most of the Interstates is still too low. Here in New Hampshire the speed limit was 70 MPH until the National Maximum Speed Limit (NMSL) was imposed upon the motoring public back in 1974. The speed limit is presently 65 and it's too low. I know of few motorists that travel that speed on I-89, I-93, or I-95. Most are doing 70 or even 75. That tells me the speed limit is too slow,. Apparently. The NMSL became one of the most ignored laws on the books since Prohibition because it artificially lowered the speed limits on highways designed for much higher speeds. It was changed in 1985 to allow speeds of 65 MPH and repealed in 1995. Yet the speeds are still too low on some highways. To illustrate this, here's a little video showing exactly that, by way of Say Uncle:

Unemployment Rate Is Up Again

The unemployment numbers are out for November and, not surprisingly, they aren't good. While the previous few months the unemployment rate held steady around 9.5-9.6%, last month it rose to 9.8%. You wouldn't know the unemployment numbers are up considering the Dow closed up 19.68 today. Is this a disconnect or what?

Regardless of how Wall Street responded, the response of Congress makes me wince, it being something along the lines of “Unemployment nears 10%. Hey, let's raise taxes!” Yeah, that will work.

On Capitol Hill the House, controlled by Democrats for one more month, took swift action to make the economy worse. By a vote of 234-188 yesterday, the lame lawmakers approved a "Motion to Concur in the Senate Amendment with an Amendment" to the Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2010, Part III. Believe it or not, that's Beltwayese for "tax increase."

Is it any wonder the economy isn't recovering? Businesses are holding on to their cash and not hiring because they have no idea what to expect from the government (and particularly Congress) over the next few months. With that kind of uncertainty is it any wonder businesses are not expanding and not eating up their cash reserves in case things get worse?

As if the unemployment news bad enough, we must remember that there are a number of unemployed who have dropped off the roles because they've given up looking for work or have exhausted their unemployment benefits. If we include them in the unemployment numbers the actual unemployment rate is closer to 18%.

There's a side effect of all of this economic turmoil many are be ignoring: Some people are offered jobs but they can't take them. Here's why:

A local employer has been having problems finding the personnel needed in order to expand. A number of well qualified people have applied, been interviewed, and offered positions. But they've turned them down because it wasn't going to be possible for them to relocate because it was likely they wouldn't be able to sell their homes. Also the distance their commute would be far too long. Who wants to spend 4 hours a day on the road commuting to and from a job if it's more than likely they'll find a job much closer to where they presently live?

How do I know this? Because the local employer is the company I work for. And if my company moved closer to where some of these applicants lived? Then the present employees would have exactly the same problem. It's a no win situation until the economy and by extension, the housing market improves. Until then we're dead in the water.

Goodbye, Sweden. We Hardly Know You Anymore

The always eloquent Pat Condell bids farewell to Sweden, which he says will likely become the first European Islamic State because somehow the Swedish government has somehow convinced itself that being anything other than a Muslim immigrant is somehow being un-Swedish. Never mind that a country that rarely experienced violent sexual crimes is now a free fire zone for immigrant rapists.



(H/T Maggie's Farm)

Death Knell For Ethanol?

First it's Al Gore turning his back on ethanol and the government subsidies supporting it. Now it's a bipartisan group of Senators looking to kill ethanol subsidies and the prohibitive tariffs keeping foreign ethanol and feedstocks out.

It has become increasingly apparent ethanol, or at least corn-derived ethanol, is not the answer to our energy problems or the efforts to reduce our carbon footprint. Ethanol as it is presently produced here in the US is anything but carbon neutral and creates a net energy loss, meaning it uses more energy to produce it than it returns. As any economist can tell you, negative returns is one of the quickest ways to go bust and ethanol is nothing but negative returns.

If the ethanol industry can't stand on its own then it's time to stop wasting taxpayer dollars trying to prop it up, EPA mandates not withstanding.

When 2 - 1 Doesn't Equal 1

When is 0.01 not 0.01?

When Microsoft Excel says it's really 0.009999937.

I found out the hard way that's what Excel has been doing to data I've been analyzing at work. I kept getting inconsistent and outright incorrect results when I was trying to generate a histogram, used to show the distribution of the measurement errors in a circuit. This little problem kicked my butt for over two hours towards the end of my work day. What's worse is that when I went over results I'd charted last week and the week before I realized the same thing happened with those as well.

The only way around the problem was to manually enter the data values rather than using a formula to generate them. (I can see a formula causing rounding errors, but not when the formula is straight forward arithmetic and all the numbers entered have only two decimal places.)

I haven't tried this using Open Office Calc yet, but I'll be curious to find out whether this is specific to Excel or to spreadsheet applications in general.

Has Al Gore Converted?

You know the winds have shifted when Al Gore says the ethanol industry serves no useful purpose.

What? The sainted AlGore is against all these government subsidies for ethanol because it's a fraud?

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm stuck in an episode of Fringe.

Said AlGore:

"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Al Gore told a gathering of clean energy financiers in Greece this week. The benefits of ethanol are "trivial," he added, but "It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

That's true of any government subsidy. All anyone has to do is look at farm subsidies in general, a practice that has been going on for generations. All such subsidies do is waste tax dollars propping up some operation or industry that will no longer feel the need to change or innovate to the point where it no longer needs subsidies.

All of that aside, one must wonder if Al Gore has realized the error of his ways, or is he positioning himself to make another few hundred million dollars with government subsidies for yet another alternative energy scheme?

Only time will tell.

Food Court Flash Mob

I guess this must be a day for videos.

We've all heard of flash mobs and the like. This is one I think you'll enjoy, particularly in light of the coming Christmas season.



Awesome!

TSA Incompetence On Display

It is becoming increasing apparent the TSA has no regards for their own rules. This video is but one example of the ignorance of some TSA personnel when it comes to their own procedures. What's worse is the TSA supervisor seen in this video is the worst of the bunch, ignoring federal law and imposing his own rules.



And we want to entrust our safety to these people? Frankly, they make it less likely that I'm going to take a commercial flight anywhere, even for work.

(H/T GraniteGrok)

Wikileaks - I Have To Wonder....

With the Wikileaks controversy growing and their determination to publish classified State Department and US military documents regardless of the cost in human lives and international relations, I have to wonder whether it's time to classify Wikileaks as a hostile foreign intelligence operation and to sanction them just like any other such operation.

They have certainly shown disregard for international law and have worked with anti-American elements within this country, trying to cover themselves as some kind of journalism organization. If I recall correctly, using a cover as a journalist in order to perform espionage is a hostile (and illegal) act. Maybe it's time to be hostile in return and to terminate their operation “with extreme prejudice.”

Thoughts On A Sunday

We experienced a brief preview of winter yesterday by way of some snow squalls that covered the ground with white and made the roads slippery. Fortunately for me I had already completed what outside work I wanted to get done so I was able to watch it from the warm confines of The Manse while sitting near the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove. Unfortunately BeezleBub was working outside in the midst of the squall, splitting firewood for next year's heating season.

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Glenn Reynolds links to and comments upon the question of allowing states to declare bankruptcy and the consequences of such a move. A number of suggestions by readers and from other blogs include breaking up larger defaulting states into two or smaller states. And then there's this:

“Any law that lets states be bailed out should require them to renounce their state status and revert to being territories, to be reorganised by the federal government as new states. That has the advantage of getting rid of the old, dysfunctional, state government, removing the state and its inhabitants from national influence until they’ve had a chance to learn some wisdom, and being enough of a penalty to make bailouts unattractive to other states.” I see many problems with this approach, but I admire its spirit.

Indeed.

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At least we don't have to worry about how the New England Patriots will do today as they're off until next week following their Thanksgiving Day pasting of the Detroit Lions.

From the score at the end of the first half I thought the Lions were going to make a game of it, but the second half belonged to the Patriots alone.

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It appears that Iran's nuclear program has suffered a number of setbacks due to a rather vicious computer virus known as Stuxnet. While I've heard the buzz about Stuxnet over the past couple of weeks, I didn't make the connection between it and Iran's nuclear program until reading this piece describing the havoc created by the virus. As the article states, it wasn't created some hacker sitting in his parent's basement.

Welcome to the world of cyber warfare.

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Isn't it interesting to see yet another doomsday prediction about global warming fall by the wayside? In this case claims about California's giant redwoods being negatively affected by increased CO₂ and the reduction of fog the redwoods need in order to thrive, all due to global warming have been found wanting. Scientists have found just the opposite is occurring, with redwood growth increasing due to increased CO₂ and more frequent fog.

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

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And that's the abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where winter weather has made its presence known, there's still some fall yard work to do, and where Christmas is coming all too soon.

Dispelling The Myths About The Tea Party - Part VIII

Bill Whittle addresses American Exceptionalism, something we know our present President doesn't like and has been working hard to destroy. But I think Obama will find that while he may dent it a bit, he doesn't have the wherewithal to overcome the sheer inertia of American Exceptionalism. American know-how and those providing it will always find a way around those in this country working hard to bring about its downfall.

One thing I found interesting: With only 5% of the world's population, American produces 24% of the world's GDP, which is 3 times more than China produces even though it has over 4 times as many people.

Thoughts On A Sunday - Black Friday Edition

Here it is, the day after Thanksgiving, and we're still feeling the after-effects of the Thanksgiving repast.

BeezleBub and I spent Thanksgiving Day down at the WP In-Laws, while Deb was at work at the local Veterans Home.

Our trip down to the In-Laws and then back to The Manse was incident free as traffic was almost non-existent. I guess everyone got to where they wanted to be on Wednesday.

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One thing that greeted us this morning that we could have done without: freezing rain.

The roads are nothing but sheets of ice, leading to accidents when the laws of physics – specifically friction and inertia – asserted themselves and reminded drivers that they aren't necessarily in control. There were a number of accidents overnight, including a multi-vehicle pileup on one of the Interstates early this morning.

Our driveway was a sheet of ice and I must admit to a bit of laziness as I waited until early this afternoon spread sand and ice melt. (It wasn't like any of us needed to go anywhere this morning, so why bother doing it any earlier than necessary?)

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I have to admit I like Bobby Jindal's idea about making Congress part-time. It would solve a number of problems including the propensity for members of Congress to spend money we don't have because they feel they need to justify their existence. If Congress isn't in session year round then they won't have enough time to get into mischief.

Over the years my brother and I have discussed a number of ways to reduce the amount of time Congress meets, including the removal of the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems from the Capitol Building and all Congressional offices. That would mean there would be only a few months every year when the temperatures would not be unbearably hot and humid or frigidly cold, in turn limiting the amount of time Congress would be in session. That also means they would have to devote what time they did have to actually doing the work the were elected to do, not wasting time on things most Americans feel is a waste of time and tax money.

A number of states have part-time legislatures, including New Hampshire (though 'part-time' appears to mean they meet for 6 months every year rather than 5 months every two years as in the past) and Texas. For the most part states with part-time legislatures appear to be doing better than states with full-time legislatures. Maybe there's a lesson to be learned here.

(H/T Instapundit)

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Is it time for Great Britain to leave the EU? Taking a look at what's been happening over the past few years, the economic crises befalling a number of member states, and Brussels ever more heavy-handed dictats, I'd say the answer is not just “yes”, but “Hell, yes!” At least the UK didn't make the mistake of adopting the Euro and stayed with their own monetary system, which would make it easier for them to withdraw from the European Union.

If they desire to belong to a larger common cause group, then maybe some kind of Anglosphere union maybe be the answer.

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It seems the mayor of Burlington, Vermont is about to learn a harsh lesson about economics and the consequences of not making loan payments. Somehow he seems to think that some other lender will come to the rescue in order to save Burlington's municipal broadband network. He's about to find out they won't. Who wants to lend money to a city that has failed to make payments to a previous lender?

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Why is it I have no difficulty believing this?

Upper-class people have trouble recognizing other people's emotions.

[The study] results suggest that people of upper-class status aren't very good at recognizing the emotions other people are feeling. The researchers speculate that this is because they can solve their problems, like the daycare example, without relying on others -- they aren't as dependent on the people around them.

Interestingly enough, when many upper-class people were made to feel as if they were now in a lower social class, their recognition of other people's emotions increased. Could it be that money insulates them from the many social interactions that help promote emotional awareness, meaning their 'emotion translator' atrophies?

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Raising taxes to reduce the deficit? As Skip explains, it's a sucker bet.

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It appears Sarah Palin is kickin' elite asses...again. I guess some of them really don't understand things like copyrights, theft, and other laws dealing with intellectual property.

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After all the time, effort, and money spent on promoting solar energy, Spain is finding out that it doesn't pay for itself and will require continuous subsidies at a time when the Spanish government doesn't have the money to do so.

Have We Forgotten The Lesson Of Thanksgiving?

I could have gone with my traditional Thanksgiving Day post, a repost of one of Andrew Sullivan's Thanksgiving Day posts from long ago, but this year I felt I needed to take a different tack and remind you of the forgotten lesson of the first Thanksgiving.

Had today's political class been in power in 1623, tomorrow's holiday would have been called "Starvation Day" instead of Thanksgiving. Of course, most of us wouldn't be alive to celebrate it.


Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. But the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn't happen.

Long before the failure of modern socialism, the earliest European settlers gave us a dramatic demonstration of the fatal flaws of collectivism. Unfortunately, few Americans today know it.


The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally.

That's why they nearly all starved.

Is this Thanksgiving Day message a politically motivated one? Of course it is. After all, the history of the first Thanksgiving gives us much to ponder about present day conditions and those wishing to repeat the failed social experiment tried by the first English settlers in New England.

One of the reasons the Pilgrims nearly starved to death was because unlike today, they had no one else's largess to 'appropriate' in order to survive. It wasn't like they had the means to take what Indians had from them. (Yes, I wrote 'Indians'. I refuse to use politically correct terms just to not offend those who would gladly be offended on behalf of the original indigenous inhabitants of the North American continent.)

This experiment in socialism/communalism proved the innate falsehood of “From each according his ability, to each according his needs,” as well as hard proof of the tragedy of the commons. The first illustrates the shortsightedness of Marx and his followers who, either by chance or choice, ignored the one thing that made Marx's theories totally unworkable – human nature. The second defines that shortsightedness. If nothing else, the Pilgrims were the first society to try living under what would later become part of Marx's theory. Because they were an insular society at the time (there were no real neighbors to go to for aid as there are today), the falsity of the theory was there for everyone who survived the famine to see.

But do the modern day socialists/communalists/communists take a lesson from that failure? Of course not. Over the past 100 years or so they have tried to run the experiment again and again, which always ends with the same tragic results, but at the cost of millions of lives. Members of our own government seem to think they can make it work when history proves otherwise. They have refused to learn from lesson of the first Thanksgiving. I have no doubt they will continue to ignore it.

Is It Time To Do Away With Daylight Savings Time?

As I wrote here and here, I am not dealing well with the change from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time. I'm not the only one.

Frankly, I think the change back and forth between Standard and Daylight Savings Time has outlived its usefulness. Maybe it's time to do away with the time change entirely and stay with DST year round.

Historically, daylight savings time was proposed by Benjamin Franklin as a way to maintain agricultural productivity and reduce the need for costly candles (they really were a major household expense, back in the day). People rose and worked with the sun, and wound their days down as the sun set. As for resetting their clocks and watches: that wasn't a problem, since most people didn’t own one. They assessed time by the sun, or by the sound of church bells.

But that was then, and this is now. We live by electric lights, we live 24/7, we don't start our day with the sun and end it as darkness approaches. To steal a quote from Einstein: "Everything has changed, except our way of thinking."

So here's my proposal: do away with Daylight Savings Time altogether. It's an empty, possibly counterproductive gesture to "saving energy". If people in some areas are worried about the children waiting in the dark for the school bus, they can just start school an hour later. After all, the numbers we assign to the clock and to appointments are human creations and artifacts, which we can redefine and re-label as needed.

I know I prefer daylight later in the day, particularly during the winter months. If DST became the new 'Standard' Time, that would suit me just fine.

Ireland To Become Economic Vassal Of Brussels

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Morgan Kelly, an economics professor in Dublin, Ireland, warned the Irish government about the impending economic meltdown because of laws enacted to protect Irish banks from failure. He was derided as a crank and alarmist. Now that the meltdown has occurred just as he predicted, he's warned the government not to take a bailout from the EU and the IMF because in the long run it will hurt the Irish economy worse than if they did nothing and leave the economy under the control of Brussels. Did the Irish leaders listen?

Of course not.

After months of trying to go it alone, Irish officials have relented and are officially asking Europe for a bailout that could top the $110 billion dished out to stave off bankruptcy for Greece.

--snip--

The request for help was a humbling turnabout for Ireland, which just last week was insisting it could manage its own finances. It does not view itself as being as profligate or irresponsible as Greece was in running up deficits, and has been preparing a four-year budget plan filled with sharp cutbacks that is intended reduce its deficit from 32 percent of gross domestic product to 3 percent.

But the government has been sinking further and further into debt since its 2008 decision to protect its banks from all losses. The banking system had become so weakened that it could not afford to wait any longer for help.

Ireland is suffering from the Law of Unintended Consequences, where legislation designed to prevent bank failures and help prop up the economy had just the opposite effect. That's what happens when stopgap measures brought forward by those with too little understanding of economics and monetary policy try to fix a problem they don't understand.

Ireland's calamity should be seen as a cautionary tale, showing us how government intervention in markets as a means of protecting the economy quite often creates more problems than it solves.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Today I went to see the new Harry Potter movie with Submarine Tim and his boss, Dawn. That in itself isn't unusual as the three of us have always gone together to see each Harry Potter movie.

What was different this time was that the theater in downtown Plymouth where we've seen all the previous movies no longer shows first run films. It was a tradition we started when the first Harry Potter movie came out and we never missed a single one. Instead we had to go to the local 297-screen Mega-Cine-Plex not too far from The Manse.

While the movie was great, it wasn't quite the same as seeing it in the old theater.

In case you're wondering, BeezleBub didn't come with us. Instead he went to see the movie with some friends from school (though we saw him there).

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Jim Simpson wonders whether Gadsen flag license plates are becoming a national movement. I can see where they would become quite popular, particularly in red states. As I wrote lase Sunday, I'd gladly get one for the trusty F150.

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Bogie's making plans for Thanksgiving. She's actually going to be staying home an preparing a traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner, something she says she rarely does. But this year she has a good reason.

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David Starr questions the problems with the Rolls-Royce Trent jet engines used on the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 787. But it looks like the problems may not reside just with Rolls-Royce. As David mentions, when the crew of that Qantas A380 that blew an engine tried to shut down the fuel flow to the disabled engine, the flight control computers wouldn't let them.

That's not a hardware problem. That's a software problem, something Airbus has had to deal with in the past.

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At least one Democrat says he isn't going to underestimate Sarah Palin.

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Even as we read about California's economic suicide versus the economic resurgence of Texas, we can't forget that another much smaller state is also surging forward as well.

The WP home state of New Hampshire has managed to keep some semblance of a business friendly state despite four years of Democrat tax-and-spend policies doing its darnedest to change that. Now that the GOP has control of both chambers of the state legislature it's possible that much of the damage of the four past years of profligate spending can be undone and, perhaps, prevented from happening again any time soon.

New Hampshire has been one of the economic powerhouses over the past 40 years or so, with low taxes, small government, and business friendly policies. While many of the other states in the Northeast suffered the vagaries of the series of recessions since the 1970's, New Hampshire managed to avoid them for the most part. And when it still felt the sting of economic turmoil, it felt it to a much lesser extent than the rest of the Northeast, coming out of the recession many months ahead of its neighbors.

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As if we need even more evidence that the Progressives in our country have no problem with using totalitarian means to achieve their aims, there comes a call from the George Soros funded Center for American Progress for President Obama to use the US military to push the Progressive agenda, bypassing Congress and the Supreme Court.

I believe that's called a dictatorship. But then again, Progressives love dictatorships. Witness how the Left has sucked up to fellow Leftists like Castro, Chavez, and a host of other Central and South American leftist dictators or dictator wannabes.

Of course the Progressives may have forgotten something: there's no guarantee the military will follow orders that contradict the oaths they took to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Under the above circumstance, I think the Progressives and the President would qualify as domestic enemies.

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Victor Davis Hanson explains why the world we read of does not resemble the world we see about us.

At least the Internet has made it more likely we will question reports and claims made by government and the media when we can see for ourselves that what they tell us must be taken with a very large grain of salt.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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Eric the Viking sends an open letter to NASCAR explaining why he will no longer attend or watch any more NASCAR races.

While I won't necessarily stop watching the races, I do agree with his reasons.

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It is often said that a prophet is never honored in his own country. That is certainly true of Morgan Kelly, a professor of Economics at University College in Dublin, Ireland.

The so-called “nutty professor” had been warning the Irish government for some time that Ireland's economy was headed for a meltdown. He was derided as “of being ridiculous, alarmist, a scare-mongering Jeremiah. He was laughed at, even sneered at, by other financial experts who regarded him as a maverick.” Despite the claims of his detractors, it turns out he was right. Those same detractors are now curiously silent.

It makes one wonder if they will listen to his latest warnings about accepting an EU/IMF bailout which will have the effect of turning control of the Irish economy over to Brussels. If history is any gauge, the answer is “no”.

(H/T Vermont Tiger)

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Despite claims to the contrary, it appears Sarah Palin is far more popular with the American people than some are willing to admit.

As many of us have asked since the 2008 Presidential campaign, if she is so bad and so incompetent, then why have so many – particularly Democrats - been working so hard to discredit her? It seems there's a disconnect there somewhere.

At least Joe Biden appears to take her seriously (see above).

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

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The New England Patriots managed to hold off the Indianapolis Colts today down in Foxboro, beating them 31-28, giving them an 8-2 record.

Hopefully the Pats will be able to rest up enough as they'll be playing again on Thanksgiving Day, taking on the Detroit Lions in Detroit.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the temps have been below freezing (at least at night), the woodstove has been running 24-hours a day, and where we're looking forward to a very short work week.