Thoughts On A Sunday

We have reached (or will soon reach) a couple of milestones here at Weekend Pundit, one blog related and one season related.

First, on June 8^th it will be the 15^th anniversary of this blog. It was started by my dear brother, partly as a means of resurrecting our old Geocities website, World Domination, Inc. (Our motto was “Subjugating humanity one individual at a time.”) It was started here at Blogger, then migrated to another host – Blogmosis – and then to yet another, courtesy of GraniteGrok, and then back here to Blogger. In that time there have been over 5,300 posts, with approximately 3,200 of them here on Blogger alone.

While I do not post nearly as often as I used to, I still post at least twice a week, mostly on weekends (hence the apropos name “Weekend Pundit”). Life intruded and other activities took precedence, reducing the amount of posts from daily to two or three times a week. I have no doubt that the level of posting will vary now and then, but I am still plugging away, adding my 2¢ worth on topics of interest (at least of interest to me).

Second, our boating season has officially started with the launch of the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout, aka The Boat. BeezleBub swung by The Manse after work early Friday evening with his semi-trusty F350 to tow The Boat and trailer to our town docks. By 8PM The Boat was tied up at its summer berth, ready for a spring/summer/fall of boating. The weather was cooperative early this afternoonn, meaning I was able to take The Boat out on the lake for an hour for its shakedown cruise, making sure everything worked and that nothing leaked.

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Is the US education system producing a society of “Smart Fools”?

Yes, says Cornell University psychologist Robert Sternberg.

...Sternberg sounded an alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society. Sternberg, who has studied intelligence and intelligence testing for decades, is well known for his “triarchic theory of intelligence,” which identifies three kinds of smarts: the analytic type reflected in IQ scores; practical intelligence, which is more relevant for real-life problem solving; and creativity.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

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Who says there's nothing new under the sun?

The combination of a modern ballistic fabric and a good old fashioned mixture of corn starch and water may be the answer to light weight body armor.

It was an Air Force cadet who came up with the idea, then presented it to one of her Air Force Academy professors.

[Cadet] Weir's idea was to combine anti-ballistic fabric with what's known as a shear thickening fluid to create a less heavy material to use in body armor. She demonstrated the principle to [Professor Ryan] Burke by combining water and cornstarch in a container and asking the professor to jam his finger into the paste-like goo.

"I jam my finger right into this bowl, and I almost broke my finger! Hayley's laughing because I've got this finger that I'm shaking and I'm saying, 'You know, that's pretty impressive stuff.'"

Once they had the proper combination they tested it at a firing range, using both 9mm and .44 Magnum pistols against the armor. None of the rounds penetrated the ¼ inch design. Considering the new armor weighs a third of that of contemporary body armor, it could be a real game changer.

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Reported by way of the Instaprof, it appears one of the first effects of America's withdrawal from the Paris Accords is being felt: Oil prices are falling.

The real, measurable impacts of Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement are going to be few and far between, but the first one we’ve seen thus far has been a drop in the price of oil. This won’t hurt Trump with his voters: market participants think that the U.S. will now pump more oil, leading to long term lower oil prices. . . .

Let’s not give the White House too much credit here, though. The Obama administration, for all of its gesturing towards renewables, was remarkably friendly towards the shale industry. The recent growth we’ve seen in American production is the result of innovation and falling costs in shale drilling, rather than the rolling back of regulations.

But perceptions matter to markets, and Trump’s announcement yesterday has further strengthened analysts’ belief that this Administration will do everything it can to help out America’s oil and gas industry (even though the natural gas boom is responsible for knocking Old King Coal off his throne in the U.S.).

Russia is paying close attention to U.S. oil production these days, and the CEO of the state-owned oil company Rosneft, Igor Sechin, publicly expressed concerns that surging American supplies could overcome petrostate efforts to cut production and push prices back up.

To quote the Professor Reynolds “That would be terrible.”

Heh.

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This certainly falls within the realm of something Glenn Reynolds has stated more often than not, that being “I'll believe it's a crisis when the folks who keep telling me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis.”

Moreover, many voters don’t see Democrats acting like people who believe we’re facing an extinction level event. For instance, why aren’t we talking about adding hundreds of new nuclear power plants to our energy portfolio? Such an effort would do far more to mitigate carbon emissions than any unreliable solar or windmill boondoggle –certainly more than any non-binding international agreement. Maybe there are tradeoffs, who knows.

Read the whole thing.

Skip Murphy shows us an image about the Paris Accord withdrawal that sums quite nicely why President Trump pulled the US out of that P.O.S. Agreement.

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And speaking of a crisis, remember when all of the warmists warned us ad nauseum that we'd see an increasing number and more powerful hurricanes because of AGW? I certainly do. All kinds of dire predictions were made about how bad it would be. But what's the reality?

There have been no increases in either the number or intensity of hurricanes.

In fact, the number of hurricanes has been decreasing, an 'inconvenient truth' for the warmist camp. But they will claim, if they haven't already, that the problem will develop some time in the future. That's what would be called a sucker bet because we know at some point that will be true....just as it was in the past. We've had more hurricanes and more intense hurricanes in the past which most folks would take to mean we'll likely have them again in the future. But attributing this 'future' to AGW is disingenuous at best, and a con game at worst.

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Steve MacDonald has coined a new phrase that is quite fitting for defining “pseudo-intellectual leftists that can be used in polite company”: Intelleftuals.

It's so good that it really doesn't need to be defined because it defines itself. I think I'll be using it from now on.

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Considering where this took place, it is not surprising to me at all. The only surprise was how long it took for someone there to actually come out and say it.

Apparently for some of the oh-so-tolerant Leftists in Seattle it is taboo to be friends with a Republican. One Seattle city council member has boasted in public that “she doesn’t have any Republican friends.” Isn't that special?

Kshama Sawant wasn’t having any of that. She stood up and said Burgess wasn’t speaking for her with this “our Republican friends” stuff. Because, she assured the crowd, she doesn’t have any Republican friends.

Yay, cheered the crowd.

Now it’s hardly surprising that Sawant, a socialist, isn’t having GOPers over for mint juleps. But it’s pretty unusual to my ears for a politician to boast that her tribalism excludes even the possibility of warm feelings toward political opponents, even as humans.

What I find ironic about Ms. Sawant's claim is that there is a heavily Republican neighborhood in the district she represents. Does she answer their phone calls or e-mails if they have questions about Seattle 's policies, spending, or other governmental duties? Or does she act just like Democrat Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter who has declared on more than one occasion that the Republicans in her congressional district aren't her constituents? If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably the latter.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where it's feeling more like October than June, the rain has returned (again), and where for once I don't mind going into work on a Monday because the weather is so cool and rainy.

Hysteria Abounds Around US Withdrawl From Paris Accords

Over the past few days I have watched the outcry from the “We're-All-Gonna-Die-If-We-Don't-DO-SOMETHING-Like-Impoverish-Ourselves-While-Everyone-Else-Eats-Our-Lunch” envirowackos after President Trump announced the US is withdrawing from the Paris Accords. You'd think he had ordered the Black Helicopters to swoop in, take away the envirowackos' children, and use them as fuel to power his financial empire.

More than a few of the more level-headed environmentalists have stated that even with all of the draconian measures we could possibly take will not affect the wholly unreliable pie-in-the-sky projection of a 2.0ºC increase in global average temperatures, with all of a 0.015ºC difference. In my profession, 0.015 out of 2.0 would be considered signal noise. One must also remember that the oft repeated 2.0ºC increase is based upon climate models that have already been shown to be absolute crap as they don't even come close to matching the actual temperature data, NOAA's 'massaging' of previous temperature data notwithstanding.

Many of these same hysterical envirowackos have also conveniently forgotten the outcome of the Kyoto Protocols. Even though President Clinton signed on to Kyoto, the US Senate refused the ratify the treaty by a vote of 95-0. We didn't even come close to implementing the actions to which we would have been obligated under the conditions of the treaty, but unlike the signatories to Kyoto, the US saw its CO2 emissions drop to a much greater extent than they might have under Kyoto. In fact, some of those signatory nations saw their CO2 emissions rise and others that had garnered exemptions from Kyoto, primarily China and India, saw their CO2 emissions rise at a rapid rate.

I think the Trump did the right thing in withdrawing from the Paris Accords because as best I could see there was nothing but a downside for the US if it were to abide by them while giving our economic rivals a pass. And if history is any guide, I have a strong suspicion that we will again outpace the signatories of the Paris Accords in reducing our CO2 emissions footprint without the need to hobble our economy to do it.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It's been very busy up here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, what with it being Memorial Day weekend and all. Between folks opening up their cottages and camps, launching their boats for the season, or just generally dubbing around, traffic has been heavy, the stores and restaurants have been busy, and the mass of summerfolk just hanging around, it's been a bit crazy around here.

One of the biggest events of the weekend has been the opening of the concert season at our local venue, with the first act playing here being the Zac Brown Band. That they're playing here for four nights straight also makes the crowds larger as many of their fans will attend two or more performances. If nothing else it's made both vehicular and air traffic around our local airport pretty busy. (The venue, Meadowbrook Farm, is next to the Laconia Airport.)

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One task I had hoped to accomplish either prior or during this long weekend was launching the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout, aka The Boat. However, between an emergency job at one of the local farms (their computer system for their point-of-sales system crashed big time), it taking longer for me to take care of the final clean up of The Boat and loading all of the gear on board, a missing anchor (which I found just a short while ago), and nary a mooring line in any kind of shape to be found anywhere, it didn't get done.

Hopefully I can swing by one of the various ships stores at a local marina and pick up some new mooring lines and a new anchor rode for one of our secondary anchors some time tomorrow or Tuesday. Then we'll see about launching The Boat some time Wednesday and get it to its summer berth.

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It does not surprise me that all it takes for the Left to push for Trump's impeachment are unsubstantiated allegations and outright rumors that Trump has [fill in the blank for the allegedly 'treasonous act' du jour]. Considering much of those allegations seem to come from one of two sources, the New York Times or Washington Post, one should take anything coming from either one of those formerly prestigious publications with a huge grain of salt. So far they've been exactly wrong on just about everything they've claimed that Trump has done that was supposedly against the law. Or worse, they've tried to claim he doesn't have the power to do what he's done even though the US Constitution delineates that he can or that law and/or prior court decisions say a president does have the power to do what Trump has done. (The Left conveniently ignores Obama's forays into this area, even when he did things that weren't constitutional or allowed by law.)

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You know PC has gone over the edge into full blown lunacy when the PC Police decide that cultural appropriation is verboten. It doesn't matter to them that cultural appropriation is a natural course of action, that all cultures incorporate bits and pieces from other cultures and have always done so. Instead, they want to pigeonhole the various cultures and punish anyone who tries to get out of those PC defined pigeonholes. In other words, they want to Balkanize culture,making sure no one can ever 'leave' their culture. They want to keep things static, to never change.

The one thing I learned in school (and in life) is that stasis is death. They don't want to 'preserve' the various cultures (as they define them). They want to kill them off. Oh, they will say that isn't their intent, and it may not be, but it will be the result. Every stagnant culture dies, as history has shown us.

The latest lunacy: 'shaming' restaurants because white people own and run restaurants that serve Asian, Latin, African, or Indian cuisine.

I recall reading a piece about a pair of women in Portland, Oregon who were attacked on social media because they ran a food truck and restaurant that made some of the best burritos. The problem? They weren't Mexican. How dare they make and serve Mexican food considering they were white? (As a side note, burritos aren't Mexican. They come from Texas originally. The only places in Mexico that serve burritos are tourist areas that cater to people from El Norte, meaning Americans.) So what happened?

The restaurant closed.

Some of the SJW's claimed these women 'stole' business from the women in Mexico who should have made money from making burritos. OK, fine. But where were those women? Back in Mexico. So the two politically incorrect white women making and serving burritos in Portland didn't steal anything from anyone, claims by the oh-so-PC SJW's to the contrary.

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Bill Whittle deconstructs the 'science' of Bill Nye, The Science Guy (who isn't really a scientist, by the way).


Indeed.

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Ben Carson is back in the limelight, this time for speaking an obvious truth about poverty, after which “the moonbats went ballistic”.

Mr. Carson, who oversees a department that handles housing for millions of low-income Americans, made the comments during a radio interview on Tuesday with Armstrong Williams, a friend and conservative media personality. During the talk, Mr. Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, said he thought some people were poor because of their outlook on life.

“I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind,” he said, according to a transcript of the interview that was released on Wednesday. “You take somebody that has the right mind-set, you can take everything from them and put them on the street, and I guarantee in a little while they’ll be right back up there.”

He added that helping people may not better their lives.

“You take somebody with the wrong mind-set, you can give them everything in the world — they’ll work their way right back down to the bottom,” he said.

It is human nature that some will consistently make the wrong choices, sending them down the wrong path. No matter how much help you give them, they won't stop making those choices. And to top it off, they'll hate you for all the help you give, and then demand even more. Carson knows this as he grew up poor, saw what happened to those who made the wrong choices, and wanted nothing to do with it.

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It's interesting to see what happens to indoctrinated college students when they are tricked into rejecting a socialist ideal – redistribution of wealth.

Many students at Davidson College recently responded in anguish and outrage after some conservative students filmed a video asking people on campus if they would sign a petition to redistribute GPAs for the sake of “education equality.”

Many students refused to sign the petition, saying it wasn’t fair for a variety of reasons, including that people who earned their As should keep their As, and that students who are given good grades without hard work might not be inspired to improve.

But after students discovered later the petition was a hoax played on them by conservative students in an attempt to illustrate the unfairness of wealth distribution, they hastily called a teach-in at the campus union at which they denounced the effort and vented their frustration.

It's interesting to see how their viewpoint changes when it's their 'wealth' – be it grades or money – is being redistributed. It's supposed to be someone else's wealth being taken from them and given to the less deserving...as decided by those same indoctrinated college students.

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Is this the New Puritanism? Or is it a perverse and bizarre mirror image of the original Puritanism? Of the two choices, I'd have to say it's the latter.

What we are observing is a bizarre form of Puritanism. The visceral yet denied fixation on sexual expression and behavior that we associate with the Puritan sensibility, especially as it manifested in the Salem witch trials, has morphed into its opposite, namely, a lubricious fixation that has become publicly endorsed and applauded. The gender mavens of our time are as prurient as the witch hunters of old.

They are the Puritans of the modern age who see sex under every stone while at the same time unleashing a campaign against all that is normal and fruitful in the relation between men and women. The delusion in which they have invested -- that sex and gender are conceptually unrelated and the latter trumps the former -- is not only an affront to common sense but leads by unrelenting increments to the displacement of the usages and conventions on which normative life and societal flourishing depend.

Eventually that is going to come back to bite them, hard. The “normal is abnormal and perverted and must be stamped out” movement will come to and end after the rest of us have had enough and turn on them to stop such foolishness. Hopefully it won't be violent and bloody when it happens, but I have my doubts.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we got two out three days of good Memorial Day weekend weather, the cash registers are ringing up sales, and where boating commences anon.

Unemployment Rate Is Down...Or Is It?

The news has been reporting that the unemployment numbers are down to the lowest point in 28 years. As of April, the national U3 unemployment rate is 4.4 percent, with my home state of New Hampshire seeing an unemployment rate of 2.8%.

Sounds great, right? Too bad the numbers the government is using doesn't tell the whole story.

The U6 unemployment rate which includes both those who are still collecting unemployment benefits as well as those whose benefits have run out, those have taken jobs that are well below those they held prior, and those who are working part time while still looking for full time employment, and those who have given up looking for work shows us things aren't all that rosy.

The U6 unemployment rate is always higher than the U3 rate, but historically has been about 3 percentage points higher than the U3 rate. Right now it stands at 4.2 percentage points higher, though one non-governmental organization – Gallup – puts the U6 rate as high 14.1%, or 9.7 percentage points higher than the U3 rate.

We still have a Labor Participation Rate that is as low as it has been for 40-some years. Our workforce is also aging, with more Baby Boomers not retiring, either through necessity or because they don't want to retire. We have the millennials, probably one of the least ambitious generations entering the workforce, who are either unwilling to get jobs or are woefully unprepared for the jobs that are out there. (Useless degrees whose title ends with the word “Studies” usually leaves such a college grad qualified to work only as a barista, pizza delivery driver, or Uber/Lyft driver – assuming that even own a car - and not much else.)

What will truly turn around our unemployment problems? All it takes is a couple of things, the biggest getting government off the backs of businesses, particularly small businesses. Another – drop the confiscatory corporate tax rate to be more in line with the rest of the world and let the American businesses with trillions of dollars sitting in banks overseas to repatriate those funds. That kind of money pumped back into the economy through investment would do more to grow the economy, and the jobs that go with that growth than any new 'programs' that regulate the bejeezus out of businesses, big or small.

But that's just my opinion, backed up with decades of historical perspective that too many of our tax/spend/regulate-to-death “betters” choose to ignore.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It's hard to believe that Memorial Day weekend is almost here. Where has the time gone?

Preparations for launching the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout (aka The Boat) continue. The winter cover has been removed, the interior and the hull cleaned, the various drain plugs reinstalled, the batteries charged, and some of the gear has been stowed on board. The rest of the gear will be put on board over the upcoming week, the gas tank will be filled, and given the time and good weather conditions, The Boat will be launched and will be berthed at its slip before the holiday weekend arrives.

The summerfolk have been making their presence known as they gear up for the upcoming summer. Camps and cottages have been opened up and aired out, boats have been launched or prepped for launch, and a good number of summer businesses have opened their doors.

While the calendar says summer doesn't officially begin until June 21st, for all intents and purposes it's already here. While the water temps in the lakes, ponds, rivers and streams are still quite cold, that hasn't stopped some folks from enjoying themselves, even though briefly, in the water. We have certainly seen a lot of boat traffic out on Winnipesaukee and 'official' summer is still over a month away.

I'm not complaining.

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One has to wonder what the next thing the friggin SJW's are going t0 declare as racist? They've already said that math is racist. And so is wood paneling, apparently.

I have a solution for them if they really want to eliminate racism: go gather all of your like-minded SJW brethren, move to an island large enough to sustain you, and live the lives you are trying to impose on everyone else. Then we'll see if you can really actually survive.

My guess – most of you will be dead, killed off by one set of SJW's who feel the rest aren't really SJW's.

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And speaking of Social Justice Warriors, here's one who finally took a close look at the entire movement and decided it was nothing more than yet another religious cult, one becoming increasingly violent and dehumanizing, and decide it was time to divorce herself from it.

I see increasing numbers of so-called liberals cheering censorship and defending violence as a response to speech. I see seemingly reasonable people wishing death on others and laughing at escalating suicide and addiction rates of the white working class. I see liberal think pieces written in opposition to expressing empathy or civility in interactions with those with whom we disagree. I see 63 million Trump voters written off as “nazis” who are okay to target with physical violence. I see concepts like equality and justice being used as a mask for resentful, murderous rage.

How easy is it for ordinary humans to commit atrocious acts? History teaches us it’s pretty damn easy when you are blinded to your own hypocrisy. When you believe you are morally superior, when you have dehumanized those you disagree with, you can justify almost anything. In a particularly vocal part of the left, justification for dehumanizing and committing violence against those on the right has already begun.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

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This article points to a growing trend amongst millennial women – dating up. In this case it means dating men who are older than they are.

The reason? Here's a clue:

More and more women I know are dating men twice, yes twice, their age. In her...film, The Intern, Anne Hathaway stands with Robert DeNiro and a bunch of young male colleagues in a bar and draws a harsh comparison: “How in one generation have men gone from guys like Jack Nicholson and Harrison Ford to . . .?” She gestures despairingly at the four men in front of her, archetypes of my generation in their hoodies, craft beer in one hand, iPhone in the other, with their untrimmed beards and general lack of ambition. I see what Hathaway means: Why put up with Tinder when there’s a whole generation of men out there who wouldn’t dream of using it?

In other words, they want real men, not a bunch of horny beta males.

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I have brought this up more than once and to this day no one from the “Tax The S**t Out Of Everyone” Left has been able to explain this away, at least not to my satisfaction. Too many times I've heard them bleat about feelz and little else. They are sure want to be pretty free with the money they want take from the rest of us who earned it.

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This is all too true. Too bad too many of our youth end up learning this years too late, if at all.

One of life's most important rules: You Must Learn To Live With the Consequences of Your Decisions…

She has a future working at Starbucks as a barista, or if she's really willing to dig deep, as an exotic dancer in a male privileged, misogynistic “gentlemen's” club...or a homeless bag lady.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where wet weather is arriving for Monday, Memorial Day is just around the corner, and everyone's grill has been getting a workout regularly.

A View From Edinburgh

From author Christopher G. Nutall comes this observation* about the reaction to Donald Trump's election, specifically the reaction from those whose candidate lost.

Writes Nutall:

Shortly after it became clear that Donald Trump had won the 2016 election, a campaign started in an attempt to convince the Electoral College to declare Hillary Clinton the President instead...on the grounds that Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote. This attempt failed and rightly so – the victory condition for a US Presidential election is not winning the most individual votes, but winning in the majority of the states. The President must command a broad swath of support from all over the country, not just the highly populated states. Like him or hate him, Trump won by the rules.

Indeed, if the rules were different – if an election could be won by individual votes – both candidates would have campaigned differently. Neither of them did because they both knew the rules.

--snip--

The point here is that the people involved – the political candidates as well as chess players and everything in-between - must have a shared understanding of the rules. If you go into a game of chess without that agreement, you're likely to run into arguments about legal moves or sensible tactics.

--snip--

In chess, the rules exist to allow two players to share a game without disputes; in politics, electoral rules exist to determine who actually wins and why. They impose order on a chaotic system. Breaking the rules – either by sweeping the pieces off the board or trying to redefine the victory condition when you're losing – should be punished. Why? Because if one side shows no respect for the rules, and if there is no punishment, why should the other follow the rules? And if neither side is willing to follow the rules, we have chaos.

Indeed. When many of Hillary's supporters tried to get around the rules inveighing the electors to ignore them and declare their candidate the winner, they were in effect saying to everyone “If you don't change the rules so I win, I'm gonna hold my breath 'til my face turns blue!” They also showed themselves to have little understanding about our electoral process, ignoring the fact that it is the states that determine the winner, not the individual voters.

The Framers of the Constitution understood the dangers of the tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of the minority which is why they designed Congress to have both a population-proportional chamber – the House of Representatives – and an equal-state chamber – the Senate. The two balanced each other so it was difficult for either a tyranny of the majority or the minority. It was also why they created the Electoral College and made the same arrangement – so that the large population states could not bully the smaller population states and force them into situations that was to the detriment of their citizens. Yet it it appears that's just what the folks complaining about Hillary's election loss want and are willing to abandon the rules to get their way.

I doubt any of them have thought what the outcome would be if they did get their way by throwing out the rules they don't like – a Second American Civil War. Of course if there was such a war, I have no doubt they would think that they would be the victors despite the fact that most of their opponents are better armed and that it is unlikely that most of the states themselves would go along with such an usurpation of the Constitution.

*This was in the afterword of his novel The Long Road.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was an exciting weekend, with the missus and our son, BeezleBub, graduating from the same college at the same time.

Today they headed to Vermont for a 'gathering of the cousins' for a chance to meet up with family they don't often have an opportunity to get together. It certainly offset the heavy rain we had overnight and into this morning.

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It looks like California is shooting its small businesses in the foot, again.

This time around the want to impose very strict rules on autographed books, requiring the same kind of measures usually reserved for sports memorabilia or classic items. The one side effect will be the virtual shutdown of book signings and yet another nail in the coffin for small booksellers.

Is there nothing the California legislature can't screw up while makes sure that the small business owners get the shaft? I would think they would focus on the important things like the huge pension deficit, crumbling infrastructure, and diminishing electrical and water supplies rather than trivial crap like this.

My message to the sane people still living in California: Get out now while you still can!

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Skip Murphy over at GraniteGrok has covered an idea put forth by Representative Steve Pearce that I can certainly get behind, that being allowing a “virtual” Congress.

Rep. Steve Pearce, after more than a decade in the House, thinks he knows why people are so unhappy with Congress. Once elected, lawmakers become creatures of Washington and lose touch with the people who sent them there. To fix it, the New Mexico Republican has proposed a resolution that would let lawmakers work the way millions of others do: remotely. His resolution, H.Res. 298, encourages the House Administration Committee to explore ways to let members work in a “virtual setting.” That would include letting members debate, vote, and even attend hearings while they’re home.

As Skip mentions, he and millions of other Americans do it every day. Since this past January I have been doing so (in my case due to an injury that severely limit my ability to travel or negotiate stairs), and I found it worked pretty well for me.

If members of the House and Senate could telecommute to sessions, committee meetings, and hearings, it would allow two things that I think would help insulate members of Congress from falling under the sway of the so-called Beltway Mentality: maintain a close connection with their constituents because the would remain amongst them; be less influenced by lobbyists and rent seekers.

That would be fine with me.

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Yeah, like this is the way for Democrats to win back the hearts and minds of rural American voters.

You know they're damn clueless when Democrat Representative Anna Eshoo (California) denigrates Middle America as “Podunk USA”.

I will admit to considering giving Democrats a pass since Eshoo is also from California, so it could be prejudice is based more upon the fact that she's from California and less that she's a Democrat.

No, just kidding!

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This is no surprise to me, having been a former union member.

It turns out that union presidents are most often paid more than CEO's, with their average salary being almost $60K higher than that of chief executives.

Leading union officials earned an average salary of $252,370 in 2016, outpacing the average salary of private sector chief executives, according to a new report.

The Center for Union Facts compiled the salary information from federal labor filings of 192 of the largest national, state, and local unions. The report found that labor presidents enjoyed nearly a $60,000 advantage over the take-home pay of the nation's business leaders, who earned an average of $194,350, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I think it's ironic these union leaders are making many times that of their rank and file, and more than the 'greedy' CEO's from which the union is supposed to defend their union members.

What a friggin' racket!

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This is a question that must be answered.

How the heck did climate scientists miss 5 million square kilometers of forests and trees? That's an awfully large amount of carbon sinking vegetation to just misplace, particularly when it can have a net positive effect in regards to carbon sinking. That would certainly affect the assumptions they used to create all of their grossly defective climate models that predict climate Armageddon (even though their models couldn't seem to predict what actually happened over a span of two decades, let alone 100 years).

Then again, could those newly 'discovered' 5 million square kilometers of trees actually be the result of the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? (Don't say that too loud, otherwise Michael Mann might come by your house and beat you senseless with one of his hockey sticks.)

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This overly sensitive SJW triggered into a mental meltdown over a pro-Trump sign on campus doesn't need a 'safe space'. She needs a nice long stay in a mental facility and all of the anti-psychotic drugs they can pump into her before she is allowed to return to campus. Now we know where all of the people who used to be institutionalized went after the homeless people kicked them to the curb.

What a friggin' Looney Tune.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the rains will be ending soon, the temps are forecast to get warmer, and where yet again Monday has come to damned soon!

Bring Sanity Back To Setting The Speed Limits On Our Highways

Like the classic Sammy Hagar song, I always found it difficult to drive at the speed limit on our highways when Congress made the mistake of making the temporary 55MPH speed limit permanent back in the mid 70's. The excuses used to justify the permanent 55MPH National Maximum Speed Limit, or NMSL, were based upon false and misleading statistics compiled by what were later come to be known as the Safety Nazis, or more facetiously, the Anti-Destination League.

The argument was made that “55 Saved Lives”, using data that showed the number of traffic fatalities declined when the speed limit was dropped by an executive order issued by President Nixon after the Arab Oil Embargo in 1973 as a means of reducing fuel consumption. What those statistics used didn't show, and for good reason, was that the fatality rate itself didn't change, meaning the number of motorists killed per millions of passenger miles traveled. What caused the drop in fatalities was the drop in the number of miles being driven by the American public. With a decrease in the number of miles traveled the number of traffic fatalities also decreased.

That was then and things have changed considerably.

For one thing, cars and trucks are much more fuel efficient than they were 40-some years ago. They are also a heck of a lot safer, between structural changes affecting crash survivability, better safety design and equipment such as 3-point seatbelts and airbags, and better tires and braking systems. That maske much of the “55 Saves Lives” mantra even more obsolete.

Around 1985 the NMSL was modified to allow states to set the speed limits in their highways up as high as 65MPH. Then Congress got around repealing the NMSL in 1995. The hew and cry form the Safety Nazis was loud and long, with claims that “blood would cover our streets and highways” with the higher speed limits. The reality – the number of traffic fatalities dropped.

Some states raised the speed limits on their highways back to what they had been before the NMSL. Some almost did so. (My home state of New Hampshire has a maximum speed limit of 70MPH on the Interstates, though in some sections it used to be as high as 75MPH.) Some of the western states have no daytime speed limit on their highways other than “safe and prudent for the conditions”.

But are the speed limits set according to what this post by Erik calls Traffic Engineering 101? The answer is, unfortunately, no.

Every year, traffic engineers review the speed limit on thousands of stretches of road and highway. Most are reviewed by a member of the state’s Department of Transportation, often along with a member of the state police, as is the case in Michigan. In each case, the “survey team” has a clear approach: they want to set the speed limit so that 15% of drivers exceed it and 85% of drivers drive at or below the speed limit.

This “nationally recognized method” of setting the speed limit as the 85th percentile speed is essentially traffic engineering 101. It’s also a bit perplexing to those unfamiliar with the concept. Shouldn’t everyone drive at or below the speed limit? And if a driver’s speed is dictated by the speed limit, how can you decide whether or not to change that limit based on the speed of traffic? The answer lies in realizing that the speed limit really is just a number on a sign, and it has very little influence on how fast people drive. “Over the years, I’ve done many follow up studies after we raise or lower a speed limit,” [Lieutenant Gary] Megge [of the Michigan State Police} tells us. “Almost every time, the 85th percentile speed doesn’t change, or if it does, it’s by about 2 or 3 mph.”

 … Years of observing traffic has shown engineers that as long as a cop car is not in sight, most people simply drive at whatever speed they like.

It all comes down to this: people drive at the speed at which they feel comfortable regardless of the posted speed limit.

Our town had a number of people that demanded that a approximately 1.5 mile portion of one state road that passed through our town have the speed limit lowered from 50MPH to 35MPH because of one intersection towards one end of that 1.5 mile stretch. The intersection was on the other side of the top of a hill and getting out was sometimes problematic with cars coming over the rise and down the hill at 50MPH. So their solution was to lower the speed limit almost a mile and a half away just to lower the speed at that one intersection.

At the public hearing held by our town selectmen, a number of people spoke in favor of lowering the limit. I was one of the few who spoke out against it and for one very good reason, that being that it would be universally ignored because that stretch of highway was four lanes wide with an unobstructed view, and driving that stretch at 35MPH would appear to be ludicrously slow. Not too many people liked my comment, but more than a few nodded their heads in agreement.

In the end the public hearing had no effect. The state DOT denied the request, stating the lower speed was too low for the road design and would likely see only a small percentage of motorists adhering to the lower limit. The rest would still drive up and down that state road at 50MPH just as they always did. The DOT understood the principles of Traffic Engineering 101 and used it to justify their rejection.

They did the right thing.

Now if they would only apply Traffic Engineering 101 to the Interstates and state highways and reset the speed limits to what they were before NMSL made driving so miserable for everyone.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was a fifty-fifty weekend here at The Manse, with the weather being a bit schizophrenic – warm and sunny part of the day, rainy, cool and damp another part of the day, and back again. Both Saturday and Sunday repeated this pattern, leaving little time to really get a good start on some of the yard work as the ground was still wet. The coming week is going to be rather damp, reducing the chance for outdoor work until next weekend.

And so it goes in New Hampshire.

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As a follow on to yesterday's post about the passing of the AHCA and the long overdue repeal of ObamaCare, there's this little tidbit about how ObamaCare would have lead to the death of one woman's husband if it had been in effect when he suffered his heart attack.

I doubt anyone can tell me it hasn't led to countless deaths since it went into effect.

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Dr. Helen comments upon the Netflix show 13 Reasons Why, the story of a teenage girl who commits suicide and leaves behind audio tapes of the 13 reasons why she killed herself.

While she is concerned that it glorifies suicide, I don't see it that way. Then again, I am an old fart who hasn't had to deal with teen angst for over 40 years. The responses in some of the comments are telling, many of them pointing out that while the show deals with the suicide of a teenage girl, a vast majority of teen suicides are commented by teenage boys, by almost a 3-to-1 margin. But most of the focus seems to be on girls killing themselves. Boys appear to be ignored. But then that's what the focus has been on over the past few decades. One comment hit the nail on the head:

Boys today are indoctrinated that they are worthless to the human species. They are constantly harangued for acting like adolescent hormone driven males, even when they have done nothing to deserve scorn. Hopeless and despondent, they fall into depression which leads to a lose, lose situation. What they see is, no matter what they do, it is wrong. So, after contemplating this very uneasy position, that they have been forced into, they opt for the easiest way out to end their suffering. They are not mentally ill, they just want their suffering to stop and cannot see the alternative way out.

Then again, maybe the gender feminists see teen boy suicides as an answer to their prayers. I wouldn't put it past them.

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I can agree with this: Get the US Government out of Washington DC.

As the Instaprof suggests, “...make the move in a way that takes federal employees out of Virginia, and puts them in the run-down parts of blue states. Fresno! Bakersfield! Utica! Lower costs, and a firsthand view of economic decline.”

Indeed.

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One has to wonder how long those in power in Venezuela will stay in power as the country implodes around them? To hear NBC tell it, the problem isn't because of socialism.

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As much as the greenies decry the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity, they always choose to ignore the actual efficiencies between the coal and gas-fired power plants and solar generated electricity. One of those efficiencies is the number of workers it takes for each source to produce the same amount of electricity.

Here are the cold hard facts: What takes 1 coal worker or 2 natural gas workers take 79 solar workers to produce the same amount of electricity. How is solar efficient at all, considering the amount of labor it takes compared to coal or natural gas?

I wonder how many nuclear workers it takes to produce the same amount of electricity?

If I had to guess, it's probably close to coal, if not better.

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I've read this a couple of dozen times and I still don't understand how these idiots can possibly believe the horses**t they're trying to pass off as being thoughtful, being considerate of the feelings of others, or politically correct.

The scientific journal Pediatrics has published a study that claims “It’s “ethically inappropriate” for government and medical organizations to describe breastfeeding as “natural” because the term enforces rigid notions about gender roles.”

Really? So what is it, unnatural? Seems to me that it's perfectly natural for all of the other mammalian species on the planet, but somehow it isn't for homo sapiens?

These folks need to get psychiatric help before they can do any more damage.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where our boat's launch will be delayed a week, the college graduation of my son and my wife take place next weekend, and where we're planning a big party to celebrate.

Fatally Flawed ObamaCare Is Repealed - Let The Bleating Begin

The fallout from the passage of the ObamaCare repealing AHCA continues. While some are decrying the possibility of many people losing the health insurance covered provided to them by the fatally flawed ACA, those same people have chosen to ignore the millions of Americans who were hurt by the ACA. Millions lost their affordable “junk” health insurance plans, only for them to be replaced with very expensive and unusable plans that bent or broke many a household budget.

One such victim of ACA was Mary Katherine Hamm.

You may know me as a political pundit and writer who has spoken publicly about how the Affordable Care Act negatively affected my family. What you might not know is two years ago, I was a seven-month-pregnant widow with one toddler who got a letter two weeks after my husband died, informing me I’d lost my third or fourth health insurance plan since the Affordable Care Act passed. If you’ll remember, the promise was that I could keep my plan if I liked it. I could not.

--snip--

It has come to my attention that, even among those who should know, or assert they know a lot about health care policy and the market, many don’t know that people like me exist. But there are many of us, many with far fewer resources than I, who now have much more expensive, less effective, junkier, nearly unusable plans than we had back when our allegedly “junk” plans were outlawed. Again, we are not the only ACA story. But we are part of the story, we were sold a bill of goods, and we’re often overlooked.

A family member of mine saw their health insurance premiums skyrocket along with the out of pocket deductible, meaning they would shell out for over $12,000 between the two before their insurance even kicked in. Considering that was about a fifth of their annual income, that's one hell of a kick in the teeth, financially. How was this either affordable or health care?

Those screaming the loudest about the passage of AHCA are those enamored by the possibility of losing yet another outlet for “Free S**t”. A close friend of mine had thought his 'free' health insurance was great...right up until the point where he wanted to use it and couldn't find a doctor who would take him on as a patient because the practices he called couldn't afford to take on any more of the folks who were now covered by the expanded Medicaid program.

As I wrote some time ago about this particular problem, having health insurance did not guarantee health care. My friend was living proof.

I expect we'll soon be hearing about millions 'dying in the streets' because AHCA passed.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It's been quite a change in weather over the past 48 hours, with Saturday seeing temps in the upper 70's while today's temps were in the upper 50's. A little rain has rolled in after a mostly sunny day, so there are no complaints to be made about this weekend's weather.

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The more I hear people opine that if we don't “do something” about climate change that we're all going to be doomed, the more I come to the conclusion that AGW faithful are not really interested whether or not human-caused climate change is real. For them it is their new religion.

They don't want to be confused with the facts or shown data that places doubt upon their firmly held beliefs. Even when confronted by the hard evidence that the sacred climate models upon which they base the faith are shown to be wildly inaccurate, meaning the projections don't even come close to matching the observed data (even the data conveniently 'adjusted' with no justification or methodology provided by NOAA).

They will go out and protest the so-called “climate-deniers”, make lots of noise about how we're all gonna die if we don't impoverish ourselves, and then go home feeling better about themselves for having “done something” about the issue. Of course they haven't really done anything to alleviate what they see as the problem. On top of that, most of them will make very few if any changes to their lifestyles to lessen their carbon footprint, except maybe for buying some LED light bulbs or some carbon credits. They won't reconsider taking their vacation in Cabo San Lucas or Key West, both of which would require them to catch a flight from where ever they live, giving them a huge carbon footprint. After all, they protested against climate change, so they've done their part.

Yeah. Right.

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Speaking of the AGW faithful, why is it that they leave so much trash behind for someone else to pick up rather than doing it themselves? It would certainly reduce the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere because cleanup crews using gas and diesel powered vehicles wouldn't be needed to pick up after these hypocrites.

Then again, we've seen the difference between rallies held by Left and those held by the Right, and for the most part there's very little to clean up after the latter. For the former, it's up to “someone else” to clean up their messes as that's what they've been taught. It's always up to “someone else” to clean up this, fix that, or to make the sacrifices they deem necessary to maintain the status quo.

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Sometimes Reality slaps some of the deluded Left in the face in a fashion they cannot ignore.

The latest example is the lesbian couple from London who found out that being lesbians in a Muslim country is a very dangerous thing.

I didn’t plan to preach a sermon when I started writing this post, but the escape of this naïve couple from the trap set for them by [one of the couple's] father is a latter-day parable, a warning to those in the West who think they can advance “human rights” by destroying Western civilization. Your rhetoric about “human rights” is utterly worthless in those parts of the world where the brutal regime of Islamic sharia law is enforced. If you want to preserve your life and liberty, you may need to reconsider your politics, because modern liberals are never going to summon the courage necessary to stand up to the Islamic menace.

Heh.

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Is Fox News slated to become the next MSNBC or CNN?

If what I've been reading is even half true, yes it will.

With Rupert Murdoch having turned the reins over to his liberal son, James, the purge of conservatives has already begun. First, Bill O'Reilly. Next they've set their sights on Sean Hannity, using the false and misleading reports of his supposed sexual harassment of a woman, something the woman in question has strongly denied ever took place.

Not that I have been a regular viewer of Fax News, but to lose one of the last conservative news outlets to the likes of James Murdoch and his very liberal wife, Kathryn, a former Director of Strategy & Communications for the Clinton Climate Initiative, is disturbing.

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Hey, Colorado did something that was actually smart! And to top it off, even the more liberal politicians (formerly from California) agreed I was a smart thing.

What was this miracle thing that the state pulled off?

Abolishing free speech zones on college campuses.

But taking a closer look, did they really pull it off?

One part of the legislation, Senate Bill 62, still allows public universities to impose “reasonable time, manner, and place” speech policies. Like that isn't going to be twisted and abused by the college policy makers and the usual PC crowd in the institutions of higher indoctrination.

I'm not holding my breath on this one.

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Is there another American Civil War in the offing?

According Faith Goldy, that war is already been here and it will be one fought by the Millenials.


Faith states it all started back in the 60's, the movement by the Cultural Marxists, but it's coming to a head now.

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By way of the Jeff Reynolds come this little tidbit of advice when it comes to arguing with Liberals, that being the Eight False Pretenses Liberals Use to Frame an Argument.

Keep them in mind and you will be able to demolish any argument they put forward, and make them look deluded while you're doing it.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where more boats are making an appearance on the lake, summer businesses are gearing up for their openings, and where we're looking forward to even more great weather.

Measles Outbreak In Minnesota - Anti-vaxxers Stike Again

It looks like the anti-vaxx chickens have come home to roost, with 32 children now suffering from measles in Minnesota. (The linked post states 28, but that number now stands at 32. I expect we'll see more.)

While a majority of the affected children are those of Somali immigrants, it isn't limited to just them, nor is it limited to just the US as over 1500 cases have been reported in the EU.

As I have written before, though measles itself can be a killer, it is the aftereffect of measles that tends to kill those affected, that being a reset of the patient's immune system. Most or all of the acquired immunity of the patient can be wiped away, leaving them vulnerable to the infections and diseases to which the once had immunity. That has been a bigger killer of measles patients than the measles itself.

To think that we have the means to prevent this and other diseases through immunizations, but parents have been sold on the idea that the vaccines are far more dangerous than the diseases they prevent. A bunch of pseudoscience and falsified studies made links to vaccines and autism, something that years of clinical studies have disproven again and again. What's worse is that this junk science has been sold to immigrants who are in no position to be able to tell fact from fiction, hence a higher percentage of infections by otherwise preventable diseases.

Jenny McCarthy and her fellow anti-vax idiots should be flogged in a public square for all the harm they've caused.

The Lame Stream Media Is Peddling Fake News...Again

It seems the 'fake news' onslaught from the Left has tried to collect another conservative scalp. However it seems that reality kicked in and showed the sexual harassment accusations against Sean Hannity made by the Lame Stream Media, a wholly owned subsidiary of the DNC, were totally bogus.

The plot is thickening in the Debbie Schlussel-Sean Hannity sexual harassment incident. Schlussel was interviewed this morning by Lawnewz and said she was never "sexually harassed" by Hannity, that he invited her back to his hotel, not his hotel room, but that she thought Hannity "weird" and "creepy."

--snip--

Note that anti-conservative media leaped to the conclusion that Schlussel was sexually harassed by Hannity despite her never using that term in her interview.

This incident says a lot more about those wanting to smear Hannity using spurious charges of sexual harassment than it says about Hannity himself.

I expect the 'usual suspects' will start bleating about how Debbie Schlussel is wrong and that she was sexually harassed, she just doesn't know it. This will be explained by them as one of two possible scenarios: 1) She was threatened by Hannity et al to keep her yap shut;or 2) she's too stupid or too 'indoctrinated' by conservative thought to understand that she's a helpless female victim of the patriarchy.

It still all boils down to this – The LSM ain't got nothing and the crap they make up is so blatantly false that only the other members of the LSM, their masters, and the Progressive lamebrains who slurp up every bit of dreck that flows from the LSM actually believe it.

Is it any wonder the LSM is losing readers and viewers at an increasing rate?

Thoughts On A Sunday

The warm weather has returned after a few dreary and wet days here in central New Hampshire. I wish I could say I made the best of it, getting started on the spring yard cleanup. But as I am still recovering from a knee injury I suffered just prior to Christmas, my mobility is somewhat limited. That certainly has limited my ability to do much in the way of yard work, particularly considering the wet ground and steep slopes upon which The Manse sits.

Looks like I’m going to have to hire some folks to help me out this spring.

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One of the latest SJW ‘causes’ – cultural appropriation – has gone from the merely ridiculous to the extremely ridiculous. Case in point, the Tiny House movement has been labeled as ‘poverty appropriation’ by the SJW idiots.

Yes, believe it or not, some of them actually believe that bulls**t. They want to enforce cultural balkanization as if it were some kind of sacred duty, not understanding that that kind of stasis is death for any culture, or worse, not caring. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s both. Then again most of these willfully ignorant morons seem to wish for the destruction of everything that has allowed them to become willfully ignorant morons.

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As if the SJW madness hasn’t infected colleges here in the US, the same virus has also made its presence known in the UK. The latest example comes from Cambridge University where students who do not make eye contact could be considered racist.

So what they’re saying is that someone who is somewhere on the autism spectrum is automatically guilty of racism? That someone who is deeply introverted and uncomfortable among people in general can be considered racist? What about blind people?

I have only one comment: WTF?!!

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I was going to opine about the so-called March for Science, but David Starr beat me to it.

I wonder how many of the marchers had a minimum of scientific education. I strongly feel that all high school students should take chemistry, physics, and biology. In the 21th century when so many policies and issues have science (or claim to have science) at their base, all citizens ought to have some science at the high school level in order to understand the arguments pro and con.

Too many haven’t had that education. What’s worse is that some that have had it still don’t understand that in regards to climate science that climate models aren’t science, but they base all of their closely held beliefs on the defective climate models that do not track reality. What’s worse is that many of the same climate scientists they believe wholeheartedly have no problems with ‘adjusting’ climate data to meet AGW theory rather than adjusting the theory to match the climate data. On top of that they will not release the reason why past data needs to be adjusted or the algorithm they used to adjust the data. In other words, they told the faithful “Trust us!”

But science isn’t based on trust. It’s based upon verifiable data, experiments, and the ability for others to reproduce the results. But too much science is based more politics and funding and not actual science.

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Speaking of (climate) science, it turns out the global warming hiatus is real, at least according to science.

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I think this explains it a lot better than I can.

Heh.

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This is just so cool!


I. Want. One!

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where boating season fast approaches, the yard work needs doing, and where the Boston Bruins are out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It is Easter Sunday and we've been blessed with excellent weather – warm, breezy, and sunshine with temps in the upper 70's.

One of the WP Sisters made the trip up from the People's Republic of Massachusetts for the weekend, allowing a mini-WP Clan gathering.

All in all, it's been a good weekend.

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Why doesn't this surprise me in the least?

Twenty-one arrested as hundreds of Trump supporters and counter protesters clash at Berkeley rally.

As one tweet stated, “The utterly predictable consequence of 'punching Nazis' as a strategy.” This is particularly true when the so-called “Nazi punchers” are themselves the Nazis despite their claim to be antifascist. It seems most of the antifascists seen running away in the distance are dressed in black.

Kind of ironic, eh?

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This is what can only be termed Nuclear Grade Stupidity.

Do these people actually believe that the very teachers, diplomats, 'culture', and aid they're demanding to be sent will turn ISIS or the Taliban away from their jihad? It is far more likely the teachers will be killed or sold into slavery, the diplomats will be gruesomely executed (seen on HD video), the 'culture' will be destroyed as “un-Islamic” and the aid will be taken by the jihadis and used for their purposes, that being buying more weapons.

The one thing that I find that is true about many of the people who believe that all that's needed to fix things in ISIS or Taliban held areas are those teachers, diplomats, 'culture' and aid have never been out of the US and their only exposure to other cultures is a visit to one of their local ethnic food restaurants.

Then again, for them it's all about feelz and not real life. They believe that everyone else, including those working so hard to destroy Western Civilization, believe exactly the same things they do. Too bad for the rest of us that it just isn't true.

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

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I've seen this before and I expect I'll see it again and again.

Some Times It's You.

I recall once having lunch with a female colleague who was complaining vociferously for the millionth time about not advancing fast enough in the corporation. Her boss was a misogynist, he was always giving the best projects to the men in her department – who only had engineering degrees while she held both an engineering degree and a law degree – both from the University of Michigan!

She had embraced the sisterhood of the traveling victims society long before it was so lucrative. Apparently mistaking me for a member of her sisterhood she seethed on and on about all the unfair exclusionary behavior her boss and male colleagues practiced, including never inviting her to join them for lunch. This was not a problem I encountered in my own department; not to boast, but I was a pretty popular lunch companion and in fact had passed up an invite to our Friday staff lunch in order to honor my prior commitment to Ms. Wendy of the Unwavering Whine.

So perhaps her complaint about never being invited to join the boys reminded me that I was missing the beer, pizza, jokes and good natured camaraderie that comprised Friday lunches back in the day. Whatever the reason, her complaint drew a rather direct (and, I acknowledge, probably insensitive) response: I heard myself saying to her  “maybe it’s nothing as pernicious as misogyny, maybe they just don’t like you.”  I can still see the stunned look on her face; she was a beautiful woman and quite smart but totally tone deaf to anyone other than herself. As a result she was quite lacking in the social graces.  I suspect nobody had ever spoken to her so bluntly in her entire life.

I once had a co-worker much like that. All she did was complain about how things were done differently where she had worked previously, that we were doing it (whatever 'it' was) wrong, that her co-workers weren't friendly, that it seemed all we wanted to do was work (while at work, something we were being paid handsomely to do), and that no one wanted to hang out with her outside of work. Like the aforementioned Ms. Wendy of the Unwavering Whine, the problem wasn't our employer or our co-workers, it was her. She was one of those toxic personalities that set everyone else on edge, was a total buzzkill in social settings, and did nothing but complain.

Her supervisor eventually suggested that she seek employment elsewhere and sent her on her way...just like voters this past November sent Hillary on her way.

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North Korea suffered a failed launch of yet another one of their ballistic missiles.

The Norks keep telling us they'll rain nuclear fire on the US, but one has to wonder it's merely bluster of if they believe their own propaganda.

Assuming they were able to launch a few nukes towards the US, do they think we wouldn't retaliate ten-fold or a hundred-fold and reduce North Korea to a radioactive wasteland? We wouldn't even need to launch missiles from the US mainland. A single US SSBN sitting somewhere in the Pacific Ocean could do that.

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It is said in the Bible that the 'Wages of Sin are Death.” But what are the wages of someone whose minimum wage job are raised to $15/hour? That's easy:

ZERO.

Not long after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a law that will raise New York's minimum wage to $15 and 12 weeks of paid family leave, all of the food workers at one of the SUNY community colleges were laid off and were being replaced by food dispensing machines as a cost savings measure.

Call it yet another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences coming into play to bite the Progressive Policymakers in the ass.

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#Calexit is still a topic in California, with the Progressive coastal elite pushing for secession from the US.

However, before that happens it is likely some parts of the Golden State are working to separate themselves from California because they are sick and tired of being unrepresented in Sacramento and bullied by the ultra-Left Progressives in coastal California.

Efforts have been underway since before World War II to break off more than a dozen rural counties and combine them with a chunk of southern Oregon to form Jefferson, the nation’s 51st state.

The impetus is the same that drives backers of secession: the notion of a far-off government (in this case, Sacramento) ignoring local sentiments and a sense of being outnumbered and outvoted by a population whose social and political views are at odds with the prevailing (in this instance, conservative) culture. The proposed flag — a pair of Xs, or double cross — captures the animating sentiment.

“We really don’t have fair representation,” said Terry Rapoza, 67, a leader of the Jefferson movement in Shasta County...

He cited recent passage of a 10-year, $52-billion road repair and transportation bill; the hike in gas taxes, he said, will have much less impact in urban California than in rural stretches, where people might drive 20 miles to the grocery store, or a dozen miles to pick up their mail.

The rural areas of California, including much of the state's interior, have been marginalized by the Democrat's grip on the state Assembly and Senate for decades. Initiatives to remove dams in northern California may have sounded great to the tree-huggers in San Francisco, but caused havoc to people who needed the water in the northern parts of the state. Irrigation and process water was no longer available. Instead, it flowed into the ocean unimpeded. Taxes and fees that the coastal denizens shrug off cause hardship for those living inland. Laws that have little impact on urban areas generate even greater hardships in the rural area, but for no good reason other than some dimwitted Progressive thought it might make them feel better for having “Done Something” even though there was no 'something' that needed doing.

Better to break up California first, then let the coastal elite have their way with their remaining enclaves. Somehow I doubt we'll miss them all that much.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the warm weather has returned, boats are being shorn of their winter covers, and where Monday has once again returned all too soon.

The Dish Network - Hearst Feud Is a Symptom Of A Bigger Problem

While many of you out there may not know of the issue between satellite provider Dish Network and Hearst television, the ongoing feud between the two should stand as an object lesson.

Back on March 3rd, Hearst blacked out Dish from carrying its local TV stations in 26 cities across the US. That certainly affected us here in New Hampshire as well in Maine, Vermont, and Massachusetts as the local ABC affiliate stations, all owned by Hearst, were removed from Dish.

The issue?

Huge increases in the retransmission fee rate that Hearst demanded from Dish.

What are these retransmission fees? They are what local over-the-air TV broadcasters charge cable TV and satellite systems to carry their signals. These same signals are free to anyone who can use an outdoor antenna to receive them, signals transmitted over the publicly owned airwaves.

It used to be that TV broadcasters loved being retransmitted by cable TV and satellite providers because it increased the coverage area of their stations without them having to spend a penny to build additional transmitters. a definite upside for them. A second upside for them was that they could charge higher advertising fees because now they had more viewers and ad rates are usually dependent upon viewership. So, without having to invest their own money they saw their viewership greatly increased which in turn made them more money.

Then Congress effed it all up.

By allowing the over-the-air TV stations to start charging retransmission fees, they opened the door to abuse by those TV stations. This put them in the same boat as the 'regular' cable content providers like USA, A&E, ESPN, and so on.

Dish has not been the only system operator who has been negatively affected by these fees. DirecTV had the same problem with Hearst back in January, but DirecTV knuckled under to Hearst after a few days. The cable MSOs aren't immune to this as they have felt the wrath of other TV stations, cable content providers, and their parent corporations who have pulled the same stunt.

Whether the broadcasters and other content providers understand that they're reaching a tipping point where cable/satellite subscribers will finally have enough and 'cut the cord' is unknown. I do know that more people have been doing just that as they are tired of paying increasing amounts for TV, and particularly for channels they never watch. That streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, SlingTV, and a host of others are becoming more popular isn't surprising to anyone who has been paying attention.

I know the missus and I are pretty close to pulling the plug on our satellite subscription as we find ourselves using it less often than we have, yet paying more for it every year. We use Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu for more of our TV viewing and for a fraction of the cost of our satellite bill.

I figure we'll reach our tipping point soon.

White People are EVIL! Yeah. Right.

It seems the “white people are evil” meme on college campuses has reached the point of being ridiculous.

Every race or ethnic group has, at one point or another in their history, committed the very acts that whites are being accused of having committed ages ago. In fact, some races/groups commit many of those same evil acts today, yet do not get condemned for them.

Slavery still exists and is practiced in Africa and Asia. (Do you think it isn't? Then how do you explain the present day sale of black slaves in Libya?)

Genocide is still committed in Africa and Asia.

Writes Fred Reed:

If you are a white student in college, you doubtless hear daily that white people are evil, the principal cause of everything wrong with the world. Whiteness is bad, white people are bad. We are to blame for everything.

If you believe this, you are being gamed. What you are being told is nonsense. If you have the intelligence and self-respect to think for yourself, ask:

“What have other races and ethnic groups accomplished in the world compared to what we white people have?”

This question will be shocking to you because you have been carefully programmed not to think such things. But ask. I think you will find that the groups who complain the most have accomplished the least.

Sounds racist as hell, doesn't it? But is it? Is it a response to the institutional racism being force fed to college kids all across this nation, where they are being taught to hate white people even if they themselves are white? The latest PC bulls**t to come out of the colleges and related SJW groups is the notion of “white privilege”. What the hell is that? Hint – it's just another way of being racist against white people without worrying about being called a racist. In other words, it's hypocritical.

If think that white people are evil and have stolen everything that they have from all of the other races groups, then how do you explain this:

Euclidean geometry. Parabolic geometry. Hyperbolic geometry. Projective geometry. Differential geometry. Calculus: Limits, continuity, differentiation, integration. Physical chemistry. Organic chemistry. Biochemistry. Classical mechanics. The indeterminacy principle. The wave equation. The Parthenon. The Anabasis. Air conditioning. Number theory. Romanesque architecture. Gothic architecture. Information theory. Entropy. Enthalpy. Every symphony ever written. Pierre Auguste Renoir. The twelve-tone scale. The mathematics behind it, twelfth root of two and all that. S-p hybrid bonding orbitals. The Bohr-Sommerfeld atom. The purine-pyrimidine structure of the DNA ladder. Single-sideband radio. All other radio. Dentistry. The internal-combustion engine. Turbojets. Turbofans. Doppler beam-sharpening. Penicillin. Airplanes. Surgery. The mammogram. The Pill. The condom. Polio vaccine. The integrated circuit. The computer. Football. Computational fluid dynamics. Tensors. The Constitution. Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Homer, Hesiod. Glass. Rubber. Nylon. Skyscrapers. The piano. The harpsichord. Elvis. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. (OK, that’s nerve gas, and maybe we didn’t really need it.) Silicone. The automobile. Really weird stuff, like clathrates, Buckyballs, and rotaxanes. The Bible. Bug spray. Diffie-Hellman, public-key cryptography, and RSA. Et cetera at great length.

What do all of these things have in common? Do I really need to tell you?

Thoughts On A Sunday

Warm spring weather has returned, with temps in the 60's today and expected for tomorrow, and temps in the 70's expected for Tuesday and Wednesday. That has meant I've let the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove go out for now as it would easily reach the 80's inside The Manse should I keep it gong, even at its lowest burn rate.

None of this has prodded me to put up the Official Weekend Pundit Snowblower yet as I know Mother Nature can be a bitch and throw yet another snowstorm our way. I think I'll wait until the end of this month before I do so. However I did make arrangements for a slip for the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout (aka The Boat). I expect to get it into the water by mid-May at the latest.

One other milestone this weekend – We fired up the Official Weekend Pundit Grill for the first time since late fall, grilling some nice marinate sirloin tips!

And how was your weekend?

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If the Congressional Democrats didn't have double standards, they'd have no standards at all.

First, they bitch at Donald Trump because he didn't consult with them first before taking out some of Syria's chemical weapon delivery systems. Not that he needed to. We certainly saw enough of that with The Won, with him notifying them well after the fact.

Second, they bitch at Mitch McConnell because he used the “Reid Option”, aka 'the nuclear option', to get around a Democrat filibuster in the Senate over Neil Gorsuch's confirmation. They seemed to be fine with it when it wasn't aimed at them, but now that the table has turned they're appalled and apoplectic.

As they're learning, “Elections have consequences” means that it cuts both ways.

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I think this charts says it all. No further explanation is needed or required.

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I find it interesting that many anti-Trump folks point to his failures to keep his campaign promises. I also find it interesting that these same folks have totally ignored those he's already kept and those he's still working to complete.

Yeah, the repeal of ObamaCare didn't come off as everyone who was against it had hoped. That doesn't mean the effort is dead, the anti-Trumpers and ObamaCare panderers beliefs to the contrary.

There are other things in the works, such as severely paring back the unauthorized and, in some case, illegal regulations and 'administrative' laws that have been an increasingly heavy burden on businesses, large and small. These regulations and laws protect no one (except the rent-seekers), cost businesses billions to implement, assuming they can even do so.

The unelected bureaucrats have somehow come to believe that they decide what the laws are or should be, not Congress, not the courts (not even the Supreme Court), and not the President. They seem to have forgotten that they work for the President, are bound by the laws passed by Congress, and cannot ignore court rulings that seek to limit their overreach.

That Trump has made moves to eliminate these rules and administrative laws, even if it means firing slews of self-important bureaucrats and eliminating departments and agencies that serve no useful purpose other than wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and hampering the lives of the American people with draconian rules and regulations, should surprise no one who has been paying attention. It is a long overdue action that needs doing, and quickly.

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I don't know how I missed this, but it seems there may be an issue with voter fraud here in New Hampshire that might affect the outcome of November's election, specifically for the office of US Senator.

NH1 was told about 6,000 who registered to vote and voted same-day using out of state driver’s licenses. Then, they claim that is legal under state law. I would like to know which state law lets a non-resident vote in NH because I have yet to find one. You can use an out of state driver’s license in the extremely rare case you are in transition from one state to another – but temporary non-citizens must still follow their home state’s laws. There are 49 other states with various laws regarding their citizens voting in another state. It is illegal in all the states I have checked, and in a Federal Election, it is illegal and unconstitutional as well.

Considering the Senate race between then-GOP incumbent Kelly Ayotte and former NH Governor, Democrat Maggie Hassan was decide by less the 500 votes, with many of those 6000 'new' out-of-state voters located in college towns, one has to wonder if the race would have gone in Ayotte's favor if it weren't for those college voters. I also have to wonder how many, if any of those out-of-state college students also voted in their home states via absentee ballot?

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Businesses are finding out the hard way that buckling to the demands of the perpetually offended SJWs almost always backfires, The latest two cases – Target and Starbucks.

Starbucks shot itself in the foot when it stated it set aside 10,000 jobs exclusively for refugees. The result – its stock price plummeted and it saw a falloff in sales. What about jobs for Americans? These jobs aren't the so-called 'jobs Americans don't want to do'.

Target also ran afoul of its customer base, costing it a fortune in lost sales. The trigger? The retailer stated in blog post about its policy change in regards to allowing bathroom access for its transgendered customers and employees, capitulating to SJW hysteria.

What does any of this mean? It's simple really – the SJWs and their 'supporters' are a very small minority and being cowed by their demands has a price, that being losing customers. They should learn the lesson that it is their customers who are important to their survival, not self-important crybullies who are offended by everything.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the warm weather has returned, the snows are rapidly melting away, and we're counting the days until we can remove the shrink wrap from out boats.

Thoughts On A Sunday

While we didn't quite as much snow as some had predicted, the 8 inches that did fall was a pain to move. It was a very heavy snow compared to that seen over a week ago, making it a longer task to clean off the driveway. What usually takes a little over an hour took over two and there were still a few things left undone. (I ran out of gas. No, not the snowblower, but me.)

Ice melt and sand didn't get laid down until this morning.

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This guy should just vomit and get it over with. Then when he explains why he vomited he should be beaten like the asshole he is. And then beaten again because he's such an asshole.

And to think he's teaching your kids at Drexel University. If your kids are going there you should seriously consider either having them transfer elsewhere, demand some of the tuition money you paid be refunded, or work to have this asshole fired.

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I like Rob Schneider's take on the Democrats' problem and who is to blame.

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Here's more on the SJW-motivated non-kerfuffle about why Mike Pence and other men won't have dinner alone with a woman who is not his wife or significant other.

From one comment to the Atlantic article linked in the above:

1. Greatly expand definition of sexual harassment.
2. Make any accusation of sexual harassment career-ending.
3. Proclaim that women should always be believed when they accuse a man.
4. Complain that men won’t have 1-on-1 meetings with women.

The so-called gender feminists have created the conditions listed above and they wonder why men won't put themselves into a position that leaves them vulnerable to extortion, or worse, loss of their careers. The gender feminists call it sexism. Men call it prudent means to survive a hostile business environment.

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Ed Driscoll drills down into the debacle that was 60 Minutes Scott Pelley's interview with with Mike Cernovich. To say that Pelley had his head handed to him by Cernovich would be an understatement.

Scott Pelley: You wrote in August a story about Hillary Clinton’s medical condition the headlines said, “Hillary Clinton has Parkinson’s disease. Position confirms.” That’s quite a headline.

Mike Cernovich: Yeah, Dr. Ted Noel had se-sent a story to me anonymously, that I checked out, analyzing her medical condition. And –

Scott Pelley: It isn’t true.

Mike Cernovich: How do you know?

Scott Pelley: Well, she doesn’t seem to have any signs of Parkinson’s disease.

Mike Cernovich: She had a seizure and froze up walking into her motorcade that day caught by a citizen journalist.

Scott Pelley: Did you, well, she had pneumonia. I mean –

Mike Cernovich: How do you know?

Scott Pelley: Well, because that’s what was reported.

Mike Cernovich: By whom? Who told you that?

Scott Pelley: Well, the campaign told us that.

Mike Cernovich: Why would you trust a campaign?

Indeed. Why would any journalist trust the campaign of anyone running for office? The answer to that is simple – because those same journalists were campaign supporters with bylines. At that point they were no longer journalists but apparatchiks. What makes this even worse is that the so-called journalists actually believe that that's what they are supposed to do.

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Take the Snowflake Test.

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First, Venezuela fell under the sway of socialism and it went from being the richest nation is South America to the poorest. Another country, Brazil, also fell under the sway of socialism and also saw its fortunes decline and almost collapse. But at least Brazilians realized what was going on and worked to change it.

Here's what happened:


Maybe it's time for both the Venezuelans and our country's millenials to wake up to the fact that socialism doesn't friggin' work, ever.

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One has to wonder whether there will be a Second Civil War in the US, seeing as Democrats is some states believe that foreign laws should somehow hold sway here in the US over our own laws.

I'm sorry, but if people want to be judged based upon the laws from the country or culture they came from, the perhaps they should return to those places so they can be granted their wish.

If you break US laws while here in the US then you should be judged based upon US laws. That is part and parcel of any legal system. If you let the laws of another nation or culture to override US law, then US law becomes meaningless and the legal system breaks down. That can lead to war, particularly if those who believe in law and order and the sanctity of US law and the US Constitution decide they've had enough and decide to do something about it.

That will get ugly real quick and those who believe foreign laws should reign supreme will find themselves on the losing side and, quite possibly, dangling from the end of a rope for treason.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow that fell on Saturday is melting away rapidly, the local ski area is closing for the season, and where thoughts of boating season have returned.

A Purely Defensive (And Understandable) Move

I find it interesting, but unsurprising, that the Left has lost its friggin' mind over the revelation that Mike Pence prefers not to dine alone with women who are not his wife.

Reading some of the tweets and comments about his choice, one has to wonder if those who lambaste him and call him sexist truly understand the reason why he does this. I certain do. Just about any man alive today understands.

While Pence has both religious and moral reasons for doing so, many other men understand the risk entailed by doing so. Considering the hostile environment created by the various feminist groups, SJW's, and the perpetually offended Left, it's no wonder no sane man would want to put himself into a position that has a high risk of destroying his reputation, or worse, his career. Call it a necessary defensive move in a situation created by the very same people who are now slamming Pence for publicly stating his preferences and the reason behind them.

These morons need to get a clue.