Thoughts On A Sunday

I got a little bit of a late start on this week’s TOAS as I am still revering from my day trip down to Washington, DC late this past week. I can say that I did the appropriate precautions, mainly making sure that I had my Beltway Mind Alteration Force Field Protection Shield (i.e. tinfoil hat) in place before entering the Beltway environs. I know it was working because as I got closer to Washington, my shield became warmer.

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One thing I noticed from my single day down in Washington is that TDS is quite prevalent. About the only place I didn’t witness TDS was at the customer site I was visiting, techies like myself (but not like those seen in Silly Cones Valley).

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Bernie Sanders is still getting it wrong, just as he always has. In this case he is lambasting the “right-wing authoritarians backed by a network of billionaire oligarchs,” while ignoring the left-wing totalitarians backed by a network of billionaire oligarchs, totalitarians who would have no problem eliminating Bernie once he was longer of any use to them.

It doesn’t help things that Bernie’s definition of ‘democracy’ is different from most other folks. Why he would want to inflict that kind of democracy on people proves to me that he really doesn’t like people because he certainly is doing his best to make sure everyone is going to be equally miserable, equally fearful, and equally disposable by The State.

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If we need more evidence that even state level Democrats are totally effin’ clueless when it comes to guns and violence, all one needs to do is look to New Hampshire, where the Democrat-majority legislature has pushed legislation that will make schools and school-owned property “Gun Free” zones. The legislation is so broad that an otherwise law abiding citizen carrying a gun would be in violation of the proposed law if they passed a school bus out on the road. Anyone paying attention knows that Gun Free Zones are merely feelgood actions. They provide no security (other than a false sense of security), signal pissed off people with a grudge that there are plenty of free fire zones available to vent their rage.

The legislators have been acting as if gun violence is epidemic in New Hampshire, but New Hampshire is one of the safest states in the nation with a very low violent crime rate. It is a constitutional carry state and a large percentage of its citizens carry concealed. The only shootouts that have taken place in recent memory is one between a notoriously violent drug dealer and local and state police. The drug dealer didn’t survive, though he killed two fellow drug dealers and wounded two police officers before he was brought down by police.

Would Gun Free Zones have made any difference in this event? Of course not, but that wouldn’t stop our anti-gun legislators and their supporters from making a claim to the contrary. They don’t let data, facts, or statistics get in the way of their beliefs.

These ‘beliefs’ have also extended into other legislative areas as well, such as so-called ‘Red Flag’ laws that will violate due process for law abiding gun owners, increased fines and fees, increases in rooms and meal taxes, adding new licensing requirements for occupations that have not required them before, as well as downshifting more state costs to towns (something inherently unconstitutional) and trying to impose a stealth income tax by calling it a family leave fee to fund family leave for workers that do not already have such perks or insurance coverage. (Everyone knows the Democrats will then expand that ‘fee’ to pay for all kinds of nice-to-haves they deem as need-to-haves as a means staying in power.

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When is property tax relief not property tax relief? When Democrats (again in New Hampshire) raise taxes and fees by $417 million and then return $12 million (a measly 0.3%) of the taxes collected to the towns. I see that as an excuse to increase taxes, not the actual reason.

It’s the old bait-and-switch.

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And that the abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice still covers the lake, snow is predicted for Monday, and everyone is prepping for summer.

Thoughts On A Sunday

The weather here in New Hampshire was schizophrenic over the weekend, with temps in the southern end of the state in the 60’s and in the upper 30’s in the northernmost part of the state on Saturday. It reached 45° here at The Gulch.

Such is the weather here in New England.

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If you thought the Democrats focus on Trump would subside now that the Mueller Report has exonerated him in regard to Russiagate, you were wrong. If nothing else congressional Democrats are going to double down on stupid, continuing their witch hunt…er…investigation of Trump’s collusion with the Russians during his election campaign. The just know he had to have colluded with the Russians (even though it was Hillary’s campaign that did that). It is the only explanation for Hillary’s loss in 2016 they’ll accept.

As Senator Ted Cruz explained it to CNN’s Dana Bash:

“Yesterday, the Mueller report was going to be the end all and be all. It was going to be the salvation for the Democrats and destroy President Trump. Now, you can already see the Democrats pivoting away and saying, 'Okay, we need to do other investigations. There's gotta be someone else. There's gotta be the Southern District of New York. It's gotta be the New York Attorney General. It's gotta be Congress.'”

“But, Dana, my point is, you ask Congressman Nadler whether the House is going to impeach the president and I'll answer that for you. Yes. They fully intend to impeach the president and they don't care about the basis," Cruz explained. "Twice Congressman Nadler said something remarkable. He said, 'Listen, the special counsel's focused on crimes. We're not all that concerned with crimes. Our focus is – this is Democrats in the House – is much broader than crimes.' What they're basically saying is they're going to impeach the president for being Donald Trump and they don't care about the evidence, they don't care about the substance."

Cruz is absolutely right. The House is going to move forward with impeachment proceedings, regardless of what is found. Just remember: we had freshman Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) talk about "impeaching that mother f**ker" on her very first day in Congress.

Democrats won't be happy until Trump is no longer in office. And now their witch hunt will continue.

One has to wonder whether this obsessive need to “get Trump” will become so all consuming that House Democrats will abandon the rest of their congressional duties to do so. If so, President Trump will have them right where he wants them.

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Ed Driscoll gives is a Spring Fascism Preview, a head’s up for the upcoming Earth Day and Venezuela’s involuntary participation in Lights Out for Earth Hour.

Then again, Venezuela has been participating in Lights Out every day for weeks now and it looks like they will continue to participate for weeks to come.

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At least one prankster is finding out the hard way that “swatting” someone is not a prank.

In this case, Tyler Barriss, a gamer living in California, called the Wichita, Kansas police, “pretending to be a deranged man with a gun holding members of his family hostage, giving what he believed was the target's address.” The problem beyond trying to swat a fellow gamer, Shane Gaskill of Wichita, is that he gave the police the wrong address.

The police arrived at the home of Andrew Finch, someone in no way connected to the dispute between Barriss and Gaskill. In the end Finch was shot dead by Wichita police as one officer thought he was reaching for a gun as he came out of his front door.

Barriss was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for Finch’s death in a Kansas federal court. It seems like justice has been served, right? Maybe not.

It isn’t that Barriss is getting off easy. He’s not. Barriss isn’t going to a nice “country club” federal prison, but a “take it up the butt” federal pen. One other thing he’s not: remorseful.

"I love swatting kids who think that nothing's going to happen," Barriss said in a YouTube interview hours after Finch's death.

In April, the incarcerated Barriss briefly gained access to the Internet—and he took the opportunity to demonstrate that he had learned nothing from his time behind bars.

"All right, now who was talking shit?" he tweeted on April 6, 2018. "Your ass is about to get swatted."

Barriss is an ass, one that who still hasn’t learned that actions have consequences, that life isn’t a game of Call of Duty (which is what prompted the dispute between Barriss and Gaskill to begin with) where one can push ‘reset’ or start a new game if things don’t go right. I have a feeling he’s going to learn the hard way that he isn’t all-powerful in prison. Instead, he’s going to end up being someone’s “bitch”.

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Just when I think congressional Democrats couldn’t get any more arrogant (or clueless), one of them proves me wrong. In this case, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), one of my state’s senators, has decided that her Senate seat belongs to her and, more specifically, to the Democrat Party in perpetuity. She has also branded anyone that doesn’t support her as ‘thieves’. From Shaheen’s office:

This is it, friends. The GOP is starting to build up its operation to steal this seat and protect its Senate majority.

After CNBC one of the two most endangered Democratic senators in the country, an out-of-state, right-wing group started running attack ads against us. Not long after, Ted C ruz started trying to recruit a far-right conservative to run against me.

And the worst part of it all? It’s working. A recent poll showed me tied with right-wing Gov. Chris Sununu. And if we lose, it will all but guarantee a Republican majority in the Senate for another two years. (emphasis in original – ed)

She only seems to dislike out-of-state groups if they aren’t supporting her. Double standard much, Senator? That she seems to believe that her senate seat belongs to her and the DNC shows her belief that the Democrats are a permanent ruling class and anyone that wants to disabuse her of that notion are criminals. The thing is, if she gets her way, anyone disagreeing with her or the DNC will become criminals and will be disposed of accordingly.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the lake is still iced over from shore to shore, more thoughts of the coming boating season are intruding, and where Mondays keep ending our weekends all too soon.

MSM-DNC And Their Lackeys Scrambling To Find Something On Trump

After watching a couple of days worth of the MSM-DNC reactions to the Mueller Report and all I can say that it appears the media is trying to spin things around to still make President Trump guilty of something. They couldn't get him on collusion with Russia (though it looks like that might be something Hillary and the DNC might have to worry about), so now they want to see him fall based upon obstruction of justice charges, something Mueller couldn't pull off after 22 months of investigation.

Of course the Congressional Democrats want to pick up the mantle, desperate to find something with which to charge Trump and members of his administration. That they hate Trump with a passion, are pissed off at him because he beat Hillary (How dare he!) is not in question. It is something they cannot hide, nor have they tried very hard to do so.

Those who lambasted Trump, wringing their hands at the prospect of impeaching him are now scrambling, trying to change the narrative to make it seem as if they weren't really after Trump's hide. Some have even gone as far as to condemn their brethren for the rhetoric they spewed over the past 22 months.

It's been pathetic.

In response to Hillary's loss in 2016, the Democrats are trying very hard to change election law to make sure that no one but Democrats will ever win the White House or Congress again. Democrats on the state level have been trying to subvert the Electoral College with legislation that basically strips the voters in their states of their voices. As I have mentioned in other posts, Colorado has pushed legislation that will award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of the election results in Colorado. The Democrats in Colorado have basically just told their citizens that their votes for president don't count anymore, that heir electoral votes will be decided by voters in other states. I have to ask yet again, how can that be constitutional?

I see a trip the United States Supreme Court in the future for the Attorney General of Colorado to defend such an anti-American piece of legislation.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s frost heave and pothole season here in New Hampshire and it’s a bumper crop of both. With the wet winter and the few bouts of warm weather (defined as any time the temps are above freezing), our roads have taken a beating. Even the state roads are pretty beat up. Most of the local roads are posted with weight limits to keep heavier vehicles from tearing up the already damaged roads.

With warmer temps (50’s) forecast for the coming week, there will be a lot of snow melt. Night time temps will be below freezing, meaning the frost heaves and potholes are only going to get worse. The only ones that might like those conditions are the tire stores and repair shops who will be replacing bent wheels and performing front end alignments.

This is one of the seven seasons we experience here in northern New England. Right now it’s mud/flood season, to be followed shortly by spring, black fly, almost summer, summer, fall, and then winter.

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I was going through the Weekend Pundit archives and came across this post from 2006 that addresses the Electoral College and the efforts by the Leftist know-nothings to do away with it, either through ignorance or malice aforethought. I’m inclined to think it’s both, with the malice having helped create the ignorance of the importance of the Electoral College and the reasoning behind it.

The arguments made back then to abolish the Electoral College are the same ones being made today, except that the people making the argument today are even more willfully ignorant than those 13 years ago and their arguments are even less logical, at least to me.

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Want to know just how bad the affordable housing problem is in California? It’s this bad.

California has seen a proliferation in RV and vehicle living in some of the state’s most expensive areas and cities, such as Palo Alto, in recent years. (Palo Alto is the Silicon Valley area – ed.

The rise of mobile homes lining streets has been fueled by excessive rents and house prices, though numbers are hard to pin down.

I have read about and heard first hand accounts from people I know talk about making six-figure salaries but not being able to afford to buy or rent anyplace anywhere near work. Two or three hour commutes aren’t the answer. Who wants to spend 4 to 6 hours a day on the road? It doesn’t help that the various communities have very restrictive regulations that make building new affordable housing difficult, with lengthy application, review, and permitting processes. Those processes tend to preclude building affordable housing because the return on investment in both time and money isn’t worth it. Upscale housing is one of the few places where the time and effort pays off.

Is it any wonder why otherwise well off professionals are reduced to living in RVs, campers, or their cars?

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I have seen the Mueller Report described as many different things, but this one is the best: A giant crap sandwich for the Democrats.

It’s not often I, like most of America, make a point to watch MSNBC or CNN. If I want to know what leftists are thinking I just imagine something so incredibly insane that there’s no way an educated adult would actually believe it, then double it and I’m there. But Friday night was an exception, I had to see how they responded to the news of the Mueller Report’s submission to the Attorney General and no further indictments coming. It was glorious.

You rarely get the chance to watch someone have to choke down a crap sandwich of their own making in front of the people they’d been force-feeding one to for years, but that was Friday night on cable news.

--snip--

Everyone on those two channels should have been apologetic, gaslighting the country for 2 years before having the curtain ripped back so thoroughly should have been met with some humility. They should have been begging their audience for forgiveness. They were not.

I’m still waiting for heads to start exploding.

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Nikki Haley has the right of it in regards to the Mueller Report. The problem is that the Democrats just won’t let it go and want to continue their own investigation. As if they will do any better job than the 22-month long Mueller investigation. They won’t, and they won’t be unbiased by any means. They aren’t looking to see if Trump violated the law. They’re looking to prove what they think (or hope) he did. Basically, they want to continue the witch hunt they’ve been supporting over the past 22 months. They want Trump’s head and will not stop until they get him, even if they need to make stuff up or twist innocent events into something sinister.

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It looks like Washington State is working hard to make itself over as a northern version of California, in this case by expanding their existing sanctuary state rules. This shows me they are as shortsighted as California’s state government and are only borrowing trouble at the expense of their citizens. It also makes me wonder if the various county sheriffs will choose to not enforce the law just as they have announced they will not enforce Washington’s unconstitutional gun laws.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where warmer weather has returned, March Madness is getting interesting, and where we have to play very close attention to what our Democrat majority legislature is trying to take away from us this time.

Any Minute Now - The Mueller Report

Now that the Mueller Investigation report has been handed over to the Attorney General, and the AG is going to present the findings of the report to Congress, I expect there will be tearing of hair and rending of clothing by those who were licking their chops at thought the report would show collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

That not one jot of that report has been leaked to the media so far tells me that the report is not the so-called smoking gun the Democrats, 'Democratic' Socialists, Progressives, Never-Trumpers and anti-fascists have been so desperately hoping for. If it did implicate Trump and prove (or at least imply) that he was guilty of such a transgression, illicit copies would have made their way to ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, the New York Times and Washington Post and would be the top story 24/7. That not one word has made its way to the MSM/DNC from Deep State operatives in the DOJ is telling. The report is likely a great big juicy nothingburger.

Once the report is finally made public as President Trump wants, I expect to see heads to start exploding...


'Nuff said.

Why You Need A Gun - A Short Story

As the gun-grabbers dial up the rhetoric, trying very hard to disarm law-abiding citizens while ensuring gun-toting criminals will have free reign in government imposed gun free (aka free fire) zones. They try very hard to convince people that no one needs guns and that the government can protect them. But they can't. The question also begs, who will protect us from the government?

By way of The Smallest Minority comes this piece that was originally posted on Facebook that delves into the “Why do you need a gun” question.

A couple years ago I was working security at a bar in northern Virginia. I overheard a table of college kids arguing about gun rights and gun control and it was getting far too emotional so I did what any sane combat veteran would do and attempted to exfiltrate. I must not have withdrawn as surreptitiously as I intended, because I was stopped in my tracks when a 5-foot-nothing brunette seemingly leapt in front of me and blurted out "Excuse me, can you help us?"

I'm sure I must have looked irritated as I cycled through the possible quips and excuses I considered available to me but being uncertain that she wasn't some Senator's daughter, I caved: "What's up?"

She basically leads me to this table of two other females (probably both named Karen) and a very soft looking male.

Becky: "So, we were just talking about current events and, you know. So, you look like you're probably in the military, right? Like the Army?"

(When you accuse someone of being in the military you probably don't need to give an example.)

Me: "Similar.. yeah."

Becky: "Right. Okay. So, do you think civilians should be allowed to own guns?"

Me: "Most of us. Yes."

Becky: (Clearly not happy with my answer) "Okay, so, why do you think you need a gun?"

(At this point it's almost 2AM and I've just given up on patience. Hold my beer.)

(With intentionally overt condescension): "Oh, honey, I don't. I don't need a gun."

Becky stares at me blankly, so I continue, but with a more serious tone: "I could follow you home, walk up your driveway, and beat you to death with the daily newspaper. I could choke you to death with that purse. I could take a credit card, break it in half, and cut your throat open with it. With enough time and effort I could beat your boyfriend here with a rolled up pair of socks. I could probably dream up six dozen other ways I could easily end your life if you gave me an hour or so. If I wanted to, I could wrap my hand around that beer mug and kill all four of you before you could make it to the exit. The worst part is, in your Utopian little fantasy land, there ain't a thing any of you could do about it.”

“I don't need a gun. You need a gun. You need a gun because of men like me."

Call me a jerk, but if you want to keep your guns, these are the conversations we all need to start having.

(Formatted and edited for clarity – ed)

Here in my home state of New Hampshire, the Democrat gun-grabbers have been writing and passing legislation to make buying and owning guns very difficult. What's ironic is that New Hampshire is a constitutional carry state, has a high percentage of gun owners, has one of the lowest crime rates in the nation, and doesn't suffer from mass shootings and wholesale slaughter seen in places like Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and a whole host of other blue state cities with highly restrictive gun laws. Our 'compassionate' legislators are incapable of seeing that they are trying to impose solutions for problems that do not exist. Our only hope is that our governor, a Republican, will veto all of the legislation and preserve our Right to Keep and Bear Arms under our state constitution. It is far more detailed than the US Constitution's Second Amendment and more restrictive of government's power over the right of our citizens to own and carry guns.

Only time will tell if these legislators will succeed or if our citizens will finally tell them to “Sod off, Swampy!”

Renewables Aren't Going To Save Us

We've been hearing for some time now how the only answer to save the planet was to switch all of our electricity over to renewables, ditching coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power. Most of those making such claims obviously haven't done the math, haven't figured out that it is impossible for all of our energy needs to be met with renewables unless they are willing to allow widespread ecological damage that will be required in order to realize the 'dream' of renewable energy. An example I used in one of the Disqus comment threads laid out the problem, running a rough calculation of what it would take to replace a single nuclear power plant, specifically the Seabrook Nuclear Plant in Seabrook, NH with solar.

Seabrook is a 1300MW plant. The grounds take up about a square mile of land on the New Hampshire seacoast. A 1KW solar panel is about 18 square feet in area. It would take 1,300,000 panels to equal the output of Seabrook. But that would only be the instantaneous output.

To provide the equivalent of a Seabrook 24 hours a day, 7 days a week would require many times that number, assuming that sufficient power storage capability existed. For the purposes of this exercise we will assume that it is close to the equinox, so there would be 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness. We can assume that maximum effective generation takes place for about 4 hours every day, but to be overly generous, we'll assume 6 hours. To provide enough power for 24 hours you would need 4 times as many solar panels since you'll need to generate a full 24 hours worth of electricity in only 6 hours, with one-fourth for immediate use and the other three-fourths being stored for use later in the day when there is little or no sunlight. So that increases the number of panels needed by a factor of 4 which brings the total needed to 5,200,000. But wait, there's more!

You also have to take into account that it isn't always sunny during daylight hours, so there will be a less than 100% sunlight available during the 6 peak hours. Again, we'll be generous and assume that any deficit will be only 30%. That means there will need to be 30% more panels to make up the deficit. That takes us to 6,760,000 panels. There are still a lot of other factors that would need to be taken into account, but I'd need a bigger blog to address even a few of them, so we'll go with the 6,760,000 panels for the rest of our calculations.

Since each panel is 18 square feet in size, that means the total area of the solar array will be 121,680,000 square feet in size. That equates to 4.36 square miles, and that assumes all of the panels are built with no gaps between panels. Since that isn't practical, it's more likely that there will need to be space between rows of panels to allow for maintenance, rain and snow run off, as well as thermal expansion. So let us assume that there will be one panel's length between rows. That doubles the area covered to 8.72 square miles. So in order to replace a Seabrook, we'll need almost 9 times the land area, and that's assuming almost ideal conditions. Seeing as we are almost halfway between the equator and the North Pole, the useful amount of sunlight available to the solar arrays will be less than what I've calculated here. The area needed to provide adequate electricity equivalent to the Seabrook nuclear power plant, at least during the winter months, is likely to be double of what I've already calculated, meaning 17.44 square miles. Now multiply that by the number of Seabrook power plant equivalents – nuclear, coal, and natural gas plants, and you'll see the problem.

There's also the matter of severe weather that can damage or destroy large portions of the solar arrays.

Then there's wind, something I've always found intriguing, but also troubling considering the large amounts of land they require, the documented health problems associated with them, and their deleterious effect on birds and bats.

Keep in mind that my calculations above are merely back-of-the-envelope estimations. I know I've left out a number of factors that can affect the numbers. But when the We-Can-Replace-All-Of-Our-Energy-Needs-With-Renewable-Energy believers choose to ignore major factors, including the vastly increased demand for electricity that is supposed to replace fossil fuels, I have to get my three cents worth in. (Where do they think all of the electricity needed to charge all of those wonderful electric vehicles is going to come from?)

Then there's this:


'Nuff said.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Our first hint of spring weather – two days of temperatures in the 50’s and 60’s – has ended and we’re back into more winter-like temperatures. The colder temps will slow the melting of ice and snow, reducing the possibilities of ice dams and flooding in the area.

The ski areas in New Hampshire have reported that business was up this year with the weather cooperating by providing more than sufficient snowfall throughout the ski season. While there were no big storms dumping feet of snow, the series of small storms with snowfall totals between 3 and 8 inches gave us more than enough snow to keep ski conditions perfect throughout the season. Our local ski area will be closing on April 7th, a bit earlier than some of the other areas in the state. Since it is a three-season resort they close earlier in order to start making preparations for the summer season.

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It didn’t take long for the clueless Progressives to lay blame for the mass shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand on both Donald Trump and Chelsea Clinton. (I never thought I’d use those names together in the same sentence because of their identical experiences.)

First, Alexandria Occasional-Cortex blames Trump and the NRA for the actions of the racist Maoist-leaning Australian. Then Chelsea Clinton is accosted for her condemnation of anti-Semitism which her pro-Palestinian accoster equated to Islamophobia, and hence the cause of the shooting in New Zealand. (No, I don’t understand that logic chain either, but then a lot of Progressives don’t really ‘do’ logic, they do ‘feelz’ and programmed talking points. No thought required...or tolerated.)

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New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern figures she knows how to prevent another such shooting: ban all semi-automatic rifles.

The problem?

While the guns used by the shooter were legally purchased, they were illegally modified. This goes to a problem that many in government always choose to ignore, that being if someone really wants a firearm, there are always ways to get them, legal or not. If the shooter in this case hadn’t had access to legal firearms he could modify, he could have gotten them through illegal means. Most gun control laws apply to law-abiding citizens, not criminals. Criminals don’t care about the law and won’t be cowed by such laws.

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Is CNN doomed?

Yes. Yes it is.

Keep in mind that a lot of its viewership is captive audiences at airports. That is not a formula for continued survival.

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It seems that one effect of the Trump economy is that the number of job openings is greater than the people available to fill them. But don’t worry, the Democrats have a plan to fix that problem and reverse the dynamic, returning us to the bad old days of the Obama economy – high unemployment, low economic growth, high taxes, and business-killing regulations.

But don’t worry, the Democrats will find some way of telling you you’ll be better off with the loss of jobs and confiscatory taxes.

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Are things falling apart in France? If what’s been going on in Paris is an indicator, it’s quite possible.

The Yellow Vest protests are again growing in size and the violence that goes with them is growing as well. When President Macron is only paying lip service to the issues that have fueled the protests did he really expect the protests and protesters to go away? That the protests have also spread to a few other countries within the EU is also telling anyone paying attention that the EU is in trouble.

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If the Democrats can’t beat Trump at the ballot box, they’ll do what they can to keep him off the ballot entirely by making it a requirement for presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns. While a federal law is unlikely to ever make it through Congress and past a presidential veto, that hasn’t stopped the Democrats in two states from trying do just that.

Donald Trump didn’t release his taxes. He refused to bow to liberal media pressure. Yet, for New Jersey, they’re advancing legislation to keep any presidential candidate off their ballot if he or she didn’t release their tax returns. In Washington State, they’re trying to do the same thing last week.

I’m not sure the legislation passes the smell test. Can states force candidates to divulge private information like tax returns as a qualifier for being allowed to run for public office? Is it constitutional? How far will the Dems take it? Will they require disclosure of phone records, text messages, and e-mails next? What about sexual history? How far with these butt-munches go in order to disqualify their opponents from running against their candidates?

One has to remember that the Progressives are all about power. They may use the language of democracy, free speech, privacy, and civil rights, but they are not in favor of any of those things. Their actions prove that want unrestricted power over the populace and will do anything to get it. We’ve already seen their street thugs, Antifa, use violence to intimidate or silence their opponents. Now making sure that only people they approve of can run in elections is another indicator of what they plan to do.

One has to remember that the first president to reveal their tax returns was Richard Nixon. There is no law or requirement for presidential candidates to reveal their tax returns. None. Nor should there be. All a tax return will do is allow the Democrats to point out every trivial ‘deviation’ as some kind of indicator of high level corruption even though those deviations are no different from those of millions of other taxpayers.

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If we need another justification of why we need to get our southern border under control, look no further than the latest outrage by way of MS-13. In this case MS-13 gang members stabbed a teen over 100 times and then set their victim on fire.

These are the type of immigrants congressional Democrats are ‘protecting’ with their opposition to tightening border security and extending the border wall. Even though the victim was affiliated with MS-13, that doesn’t give the Democrats a pass on stopping the flood of illegal immigrants crossing the border.

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If you need another indicator that spring is closing in, I just secured my boat slip for another boating season and have put in a repair order for work to be done on the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout, aka The Boat, before it goes back into the water in May. It doesn’t need a lot of work, just routine maintenance (oil change and tune-up) and changing the bar and ring anodes on the stern drive.

Hopefully The Boat will be back in the water by the second weekend in May.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where spring is just around the corner, the snow and ice are melting away, and thoughts of warm days out on the lake are starting to intrude.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a snowy day today here in New Hampshire, with about 4 inches falling here at The Gulch. It was also the day that Deb and I went to our tax guy to get our 2018 taxes done. Considering the heaviest of the snow was falling when we were on our way to our tax guy’s office, 4WD was a necessity. The roads went from barely dusted to covered in less than half an hour.

At least the a lot of the snow that’s fallen today won’t be around all that long as we’ll be seeing temps in the 50’s by the end of the week.

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It looks like the Left is working very hard to kill the economy, showing their animosity towards free enterprise.

The recent fiasco surrounding the building of Amazon’s partial HQ2 in New York is the latest development in the war against free enterprise. Because of opposition from anti-business politicians, notably Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Amazon decided to pull the plug on investing billions of dollars into the campus that was planned for construction in Queens.

The loss of the venture—which would have created 25,000 new jobs paying an average salary of $150,000 per year—marks a significant loss for the area economy and is a window into the future if the Left’s newly intensified anti-business canon is left unshackled.

Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” is a set of goals that embodies this extreme agenda—a platform comprised of socialist policies claimed to be silver bullet solutions to everything from climate change to income inequality. The resolution not only calls on Congress to eliminate a vast majority of current energy infrastructure and renovate or rebuild all structures in the country, but seeks to upend the U.S. Constitution as we know it—including its safeguards for free enterprise.

The history of the Left’s success when it takes control of economics is dismal. The most recent example of the Left’s failure is Venezuela. They took control of every aspect of the country’s economy and destroyed it. Venezuela was the wealthiest nation in South America. Now it’s the poorest. On top of that, they can’t even keep the lights on. That is the future the Left has in store for us if they have their way, AOC’s Green New Deal ‘utopia’ notwithstanding.

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As a follow-on to the above, there’s this from Steve Sheldon that shows us that the Left can’t do math. If they could, they’d realize that no matter how much money they take away from the wealthy they won’t have nearly enough to pay for all the socialist utopian things they’ve promised to deliver.

They won’t even be close.

Yet there are Leftists (like Kamala Harris) who think that the costs of things like the Green New Deal can be safely ignored. It has a price tag of $93 trillion. That’s trillion with a ‘T’. That’s almost 5 times the US Gross Domestic Product.

That’s not something cannot be ignored unless your plan is to destroy the US economy and return us to a hand-to-mouth existence. (Of course the Leftist Powers That Be won’t have to live that way, just the peons, meaning anyone who is not them.)

This is one of the things they have in mind for us:

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A lot of people would like to see the changes between Standard Time and Daylight Savings Time go away. I am one of them. So is the New York Times.

Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire are at the extreme eastern edge of the Eastern Time Zone. The Eastern Time zone is quite ‘wide’ at the northern latitudes in the US. Looking at a North American Time Zone Map one can see that moving the three states into the Atlantic Time Zone makes sense. Daylight Savings Time would go away and the need to change the clocks twice a year would do likewise.

I can certainly live with that.

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Town meeting is this coming Tuesday here in New Hampshire. It’s where voters in various towns will gather to vote on their town’s spending, zoning ordinance changes, and other issues. School district meetings will be a couple of days later for some towns. Both of these meetings determine how much the towns will spend and in turn how much the townsfolk will be paying in property taxes.

It is this last part that many Flatlanders have a difficult time understanding.

They move in “from away”, propose all kinds of spending for nice-to-haves to recreate what it has they had where they came from, and then get upset when their property taxes go up if they get their way. They have a total cognitive disconnect between spending and taxes. They don’t understand that there is rarely a source of funds outside of those from their town. The state isn’t likely to provide funds for nice-to-haves when they have so many need-to-haves to take care of first.

As an aside, if the state has surplus funds they tend to go one of two places: the state’s Rainy Day Fund or back to the towns in the form of additional funding for things like road paving/reconstruction, water projects, and other projects that have already been approved and are in progress. (No new projects can be funded this way.) The additional funding helps towns do more work on existing projects such as road paving and reconstruction. Towns usually have a list of roads that will be repaved/repaired each year and they budget for that list. If additional funds become available, some roads from the next year’s list are moved up to this year. So far I haven’t heard anyone complain because their road will be fixed and repaved a year earlier than originally planned.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow is still falling, dreams of the upcoming boating season are intruding, and where Monday has yet again come around too soon.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s another snowy weekend, with just a dusting on Saturday and more snow today with 3 to 6 inches of snow expected to fall by Monday morning.

While we haven’t had any big storms dumping large amounts of snow, there have been numerous small storms with snowfall amounts between 3 and 6 inches. The snow cover has been adding up and roads and driveways have been getting narrower with each snowfall. Snowbanks are frozen solid which means that cutting them back is difficult to do by hand or with a snowblower.

March is the snowiest month here in New England so if we have any big storms it’s likely some roads could become so narrowed that two way traffic will be difficult and driveways will become very narrow which will make it hard to get in and out of our vehicles.

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Speaking of snow and winter, the following be something only folks from the northern climes will get.

I received an urgent text from a friend the other day. The text read:

Some bozo put up signs advertising a local band or something called The Frost Heaves. Best get [the town Land Use officer] to take [them] down. That’s illegal, I hear.

Only in small towns….

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They can’t say they weren’t warned.

New York City experienced the worst decline in restaurant jobs since in 9/11 after the $15 minimum wage became a reality.

The Big Apple’s fast-food industry, The New York Times recently reported, has long served as a laboratory for progressive politicians and the nation’s labor machine.

But new economic research suggests their latest experiment is not going as planned.

Data show that following the labor movement’s “Fight for $15” victory, which imposed steep annual increases in mandatory wages for workers, New York City experienced its sharpest decline in restaurant jobs in nearly 20 years.

San Francisco tried it. Seattle tried it. Both saw the same effects – a loss in jobs – yet New York somehow figured it wouldn’t suffer the same fate as the other two bastions of Progressive thought.

They were wrong, as usual.

Here’s another look at the issue by way of The Lid.

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Of course Progressives want to apply 21st century ‘sensibilities’ to 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th century history. They also want to rewrite history, changing all of our achievements into examples of oppression by American white males and Western Civilization in general.

They best be careful because if they choose to ignore real history it may come back to bite them, hard.

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If we need any more proof of AGW, here it is:

Los Angeles didn’t see temperatures reach into the 70’s during the entire month of February.

So if we are to believe the warmists, AGW will trigger below normal temperatures. Does that mean it will bring on another ice age? If that’s the case, does that automatically imply that cooling the atmosphere will extend the Interglacial period we’re in right now?

The people want to know!

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Speaking of global warming and February, it appears the sun had absolutely no sunspots during the month. What’s also remarkable is the sun is the dimmest it’s been since satellite measurements began in 1978.

Hmm, could there be a tie-in between solar output and climate?

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As if we need any more proof that the Democrats in Congress do not understand the phrase “Shall Not Be Infringed”, all we have to do is look at the two “oppressive gun bills” they passed in two days.

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Believe it or not, there are people who firmly believe that toilet paper should be recycled.

I’m sorry, but some things should not be recycled. Soiled toilet paper is one of those things.

Sheesh.

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Did you know there are Three Rules of Hate Speech?

Rule 1. The First Amendment protects all ideas–loving, hateful, or in between.

In the United States, “hate speech” is just a political label, like “un-American speech” or “rude speech.” Some people use the phrase broadly, some more narrowly–but there’s no legal definition, because there is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment.

Rule 2. Some speech is not protected by the First Amendment, but that’s true regardless of whether it’s bigoted or hateful.

For instance, threats of violence are constitutionally unprotected.

Rule 3. Hate crime laws are constitutional, so long as they punish violence or vandalism, not speech.

The law often punishes people more because of why they did what they did. Killing someone for money will get you a harsher punishment than killing them out of momentary anger. Likewise, firing an employee because of his race will get you a civil lawsuit; firing an employee for most other reasons won’t.

Of course none of these rules will apply to the Progressive snowflakes because everyone knows that speech they don’t like is ‘literal’ violence, right?

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Like many of the Left, AOC is a firm believer in “Do as I say, not as I do.” This is particularly so when it comes to her hypocrisy in regards to climate change and her Green New Deal.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m not.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the lake is frozen over and snow covered, where thoughts of summer boating have started to intrude, and where visits to my storage unit to move my boat rigging from the rear to the front of the unit to make it easier to access when the time comes.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s a half-and-half weekend here in central New Hampshire, with really nice weather on Saturday and snow/sleet/freezing rain today.

While we haven’t had what I would call a typical winter weather cycle this year, we’re still seeing enough winter weather. There haven’t been any real major snowfalls in this area, with most storms dumping about 6 to 8 inches with a changeover to sleet or freezing rain at the end. We usually see a lot more snow and it isn’t typical to end with sleet or freezing rain.

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When I read this over at Instapundit my first reaction was that the inmates are running the asylum.

How stupid, intolerant, and ignorant is it to apply 21st Century “sensibilities” to 20th Century actions? (Notice I put sensibilities in quotes because what passes for sensibilities these days is intolerant, ignorant, and neo-puritanical. They have nothing to do with reality.)

When you have ill-educated college students applying those 21st Century “sensibilities” to things like a 1971 Playboy interview with John Wayne or an iconic picture from the end of World War II, you know things are seriously broken in this society. The typical response to be offended on the behalf of people who aren’t offended by what happened back then is the height arrogance and intolerance. They have become the very people they profess to ‘hate’ and they do not see it or their hypocrisy. In fact if they are aware of it they are proud of their willfully ignorant holier-than-thou take on life.

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Oh, lord, but AOC is the gift that keeps on giving!

Her latest contribution to the destruction of the Democrat party is her equating the border wall President Trump wants to build on our southern border with the Berlin Wall built along the border between East and West Berlin.

Either she really has no grasp of history (very likely, considering she has no understanding of the history of socialism) or she is willfully ignorant. To equate one wall that is used to keep illegal immigrants and smugglers from entering the US to a wall that was built to keep people from escaping a totalitarian state, a wall that had guard towers, guards with machine guns, and spotlights to deter people from leaving communist East Germany for free West Germany is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst. Many were killed by East German guards while trying to get across that wall. How many have been machined-gunned trying to cross from Mexico into the US?

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I’m glad to see that my home state of New Hampshire is only the 42nd most sinful state, at least according to WalletHub. I am disappointed that neighboring states Maine and Vermont scored better than we did. On the other hand New Hampshire has state liquor stores with their own exits off of the Interstates.

At least we’re 48th when it comes to violent crimes per capita, with Vermont and Maine being numbers 49 and 50, respectively. Then again all three states are constitutional carry states, have very liberal gun laws, and a relatively high percentage of gun ownership.

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Is it time to reconsider the Electoral College?

No. It works exactly as it was designed to work. If that is changed what’s to keep the same people hating the Electoral College for pushing to deconstruct the Senate and make it proportional like the House? At that point the “tyranny of the majority” would come into being and small states like mine will become political backwaters while states like California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Illinois will be making the decisions for the other 45 states. That way leads to rebellion.

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If they didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.

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The New Hampshire Democrats efforts to make our state less safe by implementing Gun Free Zones has some intended ‘unintended’ consequences.

The push to make one of the safest states in the country into one big free-fire zone for criminals is the intended purpose of the proposed legislation. With the definition of school property being so broad, just about every place where things like school buses, school books, and class pets are located would be defined as a Gun Free Zone. That will make every single law-abiding citizen of the state carrying legally owned firearms a criminal under the proposed law.

It’s yet another in an endless attempt to disarm law-abiding citizens.

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Could the reason so many Millennials seem to be willing to embrace socialism is because they have never heard of Lenin, Stalin, or Mao?

With no understanding of the past, and particularly the history of socialism, it’s no wonder so many seem willing to look at socialism. They don’t understand the dark history of that destructive ideology.

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I think the whole Robert-Kraft-Visited-A-Massage-Parlor-And-Asked-For-A-Happy-Ending scandal is a setup. It’s a conspiracy aimed at the New England Patriots in retaliation for their sixth Super Bowl win. The other NFL teams can’t seem to beat them on the field, so they’re going after the owner as a means of weakening the Patriots.

Too bad for them that it won’t work.

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No, cats aren’t psychopaths. But they have conquered the world using humans to do it.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow has been falling, the vacationers from Massachusetts have been departing for home, and where much colder temperatures and high winds are expected to arrive.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s another wonderful weekend up at Lake Winnipesaukee. Looking out from the deck at The Gulch I can see that the lake is fully frozen over and that fishermen and snowmobilers are making full use of the ice.

It’s also February Vacation week down in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, meaning a lot of folks from there are up here for the week. That means the ski slopes are busy as are the cross-country and snowmobile trails. It also means the cash registers are ringing as both restaurants and outlet malls are busy. (New Hampshire has no sales tax so a lot of people cross the border to shop tax-free. During this week a lot of visitors will take advantage of their time on vacation to ‘kill two birds with one stone’.)

With more snow on the way tonight and again on Thursday, the conditions will be perfect for those vacationing here this week.

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I have to admit that I was surprised to see a tweet from Sarah Jeong slamming anti-vaxxers. But the follow-on tweet from Brian Rockwell brings things back into perspective.

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You tell them and you tell them and they still refused to listen.

In this case, proponents for $15/hour minimum wage in New York were warned that there would be fallout if it ever came to be. Much of that fallout would be in the form of reduced hours or loss of jobs because of the artificial increase in the cost of labor.

Now that $15/hour has come to be in New York City, fast food workers are losing their jobs and the NYT is saying they are being laid off without “just cause”.

Did proponents really think that affected businesses wouldn’t take steps to deal with their greatly increased cost of doing business? With labor being a third to a half of a restaurant’s operating costs, is it any wonder they would try to reduce their costs when the cost of labor was artificially increased?

As far as the layoffs being called “without just cause”, does the NYT think the businesses should be forced to keep employees they can no longer afford just to make them and the $15 proponents feeling good about what they did? Isn’t “I can’t afford to keep you because I have to pay you more than I can afford” a just cause? How much will employees be paid when the business they work for closes its doors when it goes bankrupt?

That the NYT and $15 proponents chose to ignore the lessons of other places like San Francisco and Seattle when they imposed a $15 minimum wage shows they are either willfully ignorant of the side effects or didn’t really care because the whole thing was just a ploy to make them feel like they were “doing something” to help the poor and oppressed. Too bad their help had just the opposite effect.

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The Democrat-majority New Hampshire Legislature has put forth a list of gun control legislation that, as far as I can tell, does nothing but strip law abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights. This in a state with very low crime rate and constitutional carry.

They are trying to fix problems that don’t exist all in an effort to make themselves feel safe. But the proposed legislation will have just the opposite effect. While they may feel safer, the truth is that they will be less safe. This is particularly true for one law that will allow local school boards to ban possession of firearms on school grounds. It allows them to create so-called Gun Free Zones. Not that such designations have ever stopped anyone who ignores such laws (like criminals) from carrying guns in those zones. There are enough examples of just how much Gun Free Zones haven’t prevented anyone from entering them with their guns and shooting/killing people.

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Speaking of second Amendment Rights, it appears that a number of county sheriffs in New Mexico have already taken a stand in regards to a number of restrictive gun laws making their way through the state legislature. They plan to support becoming “sanctuary counties”, counties that will not enforce any state gun laws that are seen as violating the US Constitution’s Second Amendment.

This follows actions taken by counties in other states like Washington to provide sanctuary from state laws severely restricting the rights of citizens to bear arms.

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I have watched the feminist movement in the US since the late 1960’s and seen it devolve from an equal rights movement to a “We demand superior rights to those of those misogynist men because we’re helpless and need protection from the patriarchy even though we can do everything they can do” movement that has no grounding in reality.

Here’s a single photo that will show the difference between feminists here and in other countries:

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It has come to this in the Progressive World:

Comrade Vlad Linen has had to denounce new California Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision to cancel the $100 billion High Speed Train To Nowhere, which has upset AOC’s plans for her Green New Deal.

Ocasio-Cortez has said these would make air travel obsolete, which means she has a solution to take us to Hawaii and all the continents. Probably even the moon and Mars by way of train! Does anyone realize the harm to the climate that happens when people use a rocket to go to the moon?? So, naturally a high speed rail network to everywhere in the solar system would be the better option.

Commissar Newsom will now have to go the way of Debbie Whatshername-Schultz. Yes, still with a political position, but a non-person who will go nowhere nonetheless.

The Leftist autophagy continues!

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where winter is safely ensconced, winter activities abound, and where we have more snow on the way.

Thoughts On A Sunday

An exciting week has come to an end, one that saw the New England Patriots triumphant (again), temps swinging from single digits below zero to above 50°F, rain, snow, snow & rain, as well as the exercise of small town democracy (town and school district meeting), and editorial sparring in the local paper’s Letters section.

We’ve also seen a number of possible Democrat presidential contenders visiting New Hampshire, trying to get a feel if there is any support for their possible campaign to become the Democratic nominee for President. It signals that the political silly season has started and that soon we’ll be seeing an increasing and endless train of candidates, camp followers, and press. It will be absolute madness as we get closer to the New Hampshire Primary.

This might be a time to start drinking heavily.

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This isn’t news to any of us engineering types.

It turns out that cold weather can have a negative effect on the batteries of electric vehicles.

Under ideal conditions, these [EVs] can deliver more than 200 miles per charge and, in some cases, even 300. But as many owners discovered last week as winter storms slammed much of the country, cold weather conditions do not qualify as "ideal." A new AAA study finds that when the thermometer drops to 20 degrees Fahrenheit, range falls by an average of 41 percent on the five models it tested.

"We found that the impact of temperature on EVs is significantly more than we expected," said Greg Brannon, AAA’s director of Automotive Engineering."

Some EV drivers — including this correspondent — recently found that range can drop by half when the mercury tumbled into negative territory. But the AAA study appears to be the first to have used standard, repeatable methodology to confirm the problem and compare the effect of winter temperatures on different models.

Once it gets below freezing the battery chemical reactions can slow down and the internal impedance can go up, meaning the battery can’t deliver all of its stored charge. While heating the battery system will help maintain the full capacity of the system, the extra drain placed upon the batteries to keep them warm decreases the energy available to drive systems. Now add the need for the environmental system to keep the passengers comfortable and the vehicle range will go down even more.

EVs will be fine when the weather is warm, but for places like here in New Hampshire we might find that EVs are a not a viable means of transportation during the depths of winter.

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As if we need yet another in an endless series of proofs that socialism just doesn’t work, there’s Panera Bread’s experiment in socialism that has ended in a dismal failure.

Panera Bread’s ‘pay-what-you-want’ socialist program goes totally belly-up.

Panera Bread will be closing its last pay-what-you-can restaurant, located in Boston, on Feb. 15.

The move comes after the business’s “nonprofit” restaurant concept became unviable. On Tuesday, Eater reported that none of the restaurant’s five locations was self-sustaining.

Better that an experiment in socialism be a small one that affects a single business (Panera) rather than a big one that ruins an entire nation (Venezuela, for instance).

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One of the things that at least one potential Democrat Presidential contender has put forth as part of their platform is the oft-touted Universal Basic Income. While it may sound like a good idea at first glance, once one delves into it and takes human nature into account, the idea falls apart. That’s certainly what Finland found out when it tried as an experiment.

When it launched the pilot scheme back in 2017, Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income. It was run by the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), a Finnish government agency, and involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits.

It immediately attracted international interest – but these results have now raised questions about the effectiveness of such schemes.

Did it help unemployed people in Finland find jobs, as the...Finnish government had hoped? No, not really.

Mr Simanainen says that while some individuals found work, *they were no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren’t given the money. They are still trying to work out exactly why this is, for the final report that will be published in 2020.

I can explain why they saw what they did: human nature. It always wins in the end.

But will that stop the experiment from being tried again? Unfortunately the answer is no. It seems the city of Chicago wants to give it a go.

Giving people something for nothing and not expecting anything in return gives you... nothing in return. But it sure makes lefties feel good to be giving out other people's money for such a good cause.

I expect the experiment will show the same results as the one in Finland.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the poster child of today’s biased colleges.

Considering her disdain for anything not of a socialist bent, her willful ignorance of socialism’s history, let alone history of any kind, and her stunning lack of knowledge of economics despite an Economics degree from Boston University.

Do you think AOC has read one word of Friedrich Hayek? Do you think that she has even heard of him? What do you think she knows of history in general? We already know how informed she is about the Middle East.

This is a new form of proud Know-Nothingism. We can't even say it will come back to haunt us because it already is doing just that. Reforming our educational system is the most important mission of our time. Presidents come and go. Even media grandees come and go — after a while (too long a while). But education remains, shaping our future. Change it or everyone sitting in Congress will be AOC. (No it doesn't stand for All-Out Communist. But wait long enough and it could.)

And people wonder why she is disparaged with the moniker Alexandria Occasional-Cortex. It’s because she only uses her brain oh a now and again basis.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re expecting some more snow later this week, thoughts of the coming boating season in 3 months, and the realization that Monday is coming upon us once again is disturbing to no end.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Super Bowl Sunday has arrived (also known as New England Patriots Invitational Sunday).

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We survived the arctic blast that afflicted the Midwest, though it was attenuated as compared to what was seen in Fargo, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Chicago. We’ll be seeing temps swing into the 50’s by Tuesday, meaning we should be able to get some of the accumulated ice and snow to melt away, making room for more snow slated to arrive next Friday.

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Seeing as it is Super Bowl Sunday, it’s time to address the myth about sex trafficking and domestic abuse increasing during this particular weekend.

Police reports do not show an increase in either. However there are more incidents of drunk and disorderly as well as DWI.

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It’s one thing to make promises during an election campaign, and another thing to find some way to keep those promises and pay for them. That’s something rookie governor Gavin Newsom is learning the hard way.

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Why doesn’t this surprise me?

CBS has rejected an ad from Line Nine Apparel that is the antithesis of Nike’s Colin Kaepernick ad.

I guess patriotism is out of fashion at CBS. I wonder how long it will be before CBS cancels shows like NCIS or Blue Bloods because they are two patriotic?

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Steve MacDonald will get no argument from me on this one.

Anarchists and Leftists share a common blind spot – Ignoring Human Nature.

The always do which is why the fail again and again and again. Human nature is stronger than either anarchist or socialist theory. It always wins in the end.

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“Right to be Safe” is more important than the “Right to Bear Arms”? That’s what California Democrat Eric Swalwell believes. Remember him? He’s the one who threatened to use nukes against gun owners.

One commenter to the above post had a suggestion to make those like Mr. Swalwell feel safe. However I doubt he’d ever be willing to give up everything just to feel safe.

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This is irony, squared.

Cory Booker (D-NJ) was the first mayor of Newark in over 45 years who left office without being indicted.

Was it because he was a straight arrow or that he left before they found any evidence of corruption? Considering every one of the indicted mayors was a Democrat I’d say it was more the latter rather than the former.

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And that’s the abbreviated Super Bowl Sunday news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather is warming up, the supermarkets are full of people stocking up for the big game, and where just about every TV in New England will be tuned to the game.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a quiet weekend for a change, with no real chores needing attending to or places I needed to be. There’s also no football games other than the Pro Bowl and I have no plans to watch it. Weekends like that don’t come along very often so I am enjoying it as much as I can.

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Seen at Powerline:

NFL has changed the name of the Super Bowl to New England Patriots Invitational!

Hmm. Seems about right considering that out of the 53 Super Bowl games, the Patriots will have played in 11 of them.

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Some people are saying that President Trump has caved in to Pelosi and Schumer, funding the government without any promises for funding a wall. But others are saying he has done no such thing because the funding Trump has signed is only good for three weeks and that it is a calculated move on his part.

Of the two options presented, I am more inclined to go with calculated move as Trump is not one known to cave when there’s something he really wants. Too many people are judging Trump as if he were the usual Washington politician. After two years in office one would think that the Washington establishment/media/insiders would have stopped trying to fit Trump into the usual political pigeonholes because he doesn’t fit into any of them. But they haven’t which is why they constantly underestimate him.

Keeping that in mind, what Trump has shown is that he’s open to compromise and negotiation and that Pelosi and Schumer are not. He’s the adult in the room and they’re the spoiled children throwing temper tantrums unless they get their way.

Should the Nancy & Chuck show drive the government back into shutdown it will be them taking the heat, not Trump. He’ll be able to show he made the effort to solve the impasse and Pelosi and Schumer are being closeminded and stubborn, not for the benefit their constituents but for their egos.

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Are we seeing another victim of the Mueller investigation’s overreach in the person of Roger Stone?

Yes. Yes we are.

Has he been charged with activities that could be part of the alleged collusion between Trump and the Russians? No.

Has he been charged with crimes that are tied in to Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016? No.

Was he charged with helping the Trump campaign ‘steal’ emails from the Democratic National Committee or their publication by Wikileaks? No.

So what’s he being charged with?

There is nothing wrong with what Stone did. Mueller charges, rather, that Stone lied to a Congressional committee about his actions. If that is true, Stone is in trouble. But the charges against him do not support the theory that the Trump campaign colluded with Russians to invade the DNC’s email system. On the contrary, the Stone story is just more confirmation that the Trump campaign had nothing to do with it.

That’s it? He allegedly lied to Congress about his actions even though those actions weren’t themselves crimes? So as it has been pointed out before, he’s possibly guilty of a process crime, not an actual crime.

That’s pathetic…and desperate on the part of the Mueller investigation.

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Here’s yet another history lesson that will be devoutly ignored by the socialists amongst us. The latest lesson? Another nation having run its course of socialism – Venezuela.

A very wise person once said that "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." Venezuela has reached that point and now is paying the price, for once you're out of money in a socialistic country the only thing left of value is blood. It is indeed a tragedy as this nation was once South America's wealthiest.

Venezuela's dictator, Nicolas Maduro, is fighting to retain power. At least four people are dead in rioting that broke out today. Millions have left the country due to a failing economy, hyperinflation, no food, no medicine … you know, socialism at its best.

Fraudulent elections have a way of supporting socialism and Venezuela is no different. The Presidential elections last May were plagued with allegations of fraud and rigged voter registration.

This is the path that those like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Occasional-Cortex, and Nancy Pelosi would like to see the US go down. But of course they believe it won’t happen like that here because they’re smarter than the others that have gone before them.

Yeah. Right.

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I don’t know if you have experienced this:

You get a call from a phone number you don’t recognize and when you answer it you find you are being asked if you are in pain.

I certainly have, sometimes as many as three times a day. So has David Starr and he’s tired of it.

I am getting a phone call every other day now. It's a robocaller who starts out asking if I am feeling any pain, and goes on to point me toward a pain clinic that will prescribe any kind of happy pill I might want. I wonder how many opioid addicts get started by such drug pushing robocallers. For that matter how many opioid addicts get started at those pain clinics…?

Another question to ask: Who is paying for these robocalls?

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It looks we’ll be heading back into the deep freeze later this week. While we won’t see the kind of temps that the upper mid-West will be experiencing – they’ll be experiencing temps as low as -30°F, and that’s before any wind chill is factored in – and we’ll be seeing temps in the single digits below zero. Though with wind chills we might see down to -20°F. It will mean I might need to start up the trusty RAM 1500 a few minutes before I depart from The Gulch for work.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where bobhouses are dotting the ice, ice fishing has been increasing daily, and where we’re looking forward to the Ice Fishing Derby in a couple of weeks.

Thoughts On A Sunday

As I write this we are still experiencing snow, now mixing with sleet. We got about 10 inches of snow before the sleet started mixing in. While I have shoveled around the environs of The Gulch, there’s still more to move.

I did leave some snow behind, but it was with a purpose in mind, that being as a buffer should the sleet change over to freezing rain. That snow will make it easier to keep the driveway and walkway from becoming a sheet of ice, allowing me to remove it once the snow/sleet/freezing rain ends this afternoon.

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It’s Playoff Sunday, with the NFC and AFC championship games taking place today. These games decide who will be playing in the SuperBowl in two weeks.

I am not as interested in the NFC game because my favorite NFC team, the Philadelphia Eagles, isn’t playing this year, having been eliminated last week. However the AFC game is one the WP Mom and I will be watching intently as it’s between the New England Patriots and the Kansas City Chiefs.

The Chiefs are three point favorites, but as many have learned over the years, never underestimate the Patriots.

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Since Trump has called the Democrats’ bluff, offering a compromise in regards to the DACA and TPS programs in regards to illegal immigrants, one they rejected out of hand, it appears the Dems are ready to double down on stupid.

At a Thursday conference, some Democrats floated the idea of forcing cancelation of the SuperBowl as a means of ending the government shutdown.

Yeah, that’ll work…NOT.

One way to make sure a good portion of Americans never vote for Democrats again is to screw around with the SuperBowl.

While the NFL has tarnished its image by caving in to BLM protests, a lot of people will gladly back up the NFL if the congressional Democrats go full ‘stupid’. So will a lot of corporations that spent millions of dollars on ad buys for the big event. I would also expect millions of dollars of campaign funds to not make their way to Democrat coffers if they actually did this.

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I find it interesting, but not surprising, that US CO2 emissions have been rising as nuclear plants have been closed. What makes it worse is that some plants are being closed prematurely, not for technical or safety issues but purely political reasons.

Trying to force US energy production towards renewables, a technology that isn’t as green as proponents keep claiming, isn’t nearly as efficient as claimed, and is nowhere near as reliable as proponents want it to be. They have to be backed up by fossil-fueled plants using coal or natural gas, hence more CO2 being emitted.

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Is the whole kerfuffle about the border wall really nothing more than a Democrat scam? It is, according to Harry Reid.

What's in the news day and night? The wall.

It's all anyone talks about or thinks about or debates. Have you heard? The U.S. government is partially shut down over the wall.

But it's all a massive liberal scam. A Ponzi scheme. Pure fraud. Bernie Madoff couldn't come up with a better scam.

Because the same liberal politicians and donors who scream about the "racism" and "immorality" and "ineffectiveness" of a wall all live behind walls.

President Trump needs to buy TV infomercial time and run a 30-minute TV show in a Ross Perot fashion -- featuring aerial views of the mansions and estates of liberals, protected by walls, gates, and armed guards. You know, the exact same protections they don't want you and me or our children to have.

Exhibit A is Harry Reid, the Democratic former Senate Majority Leader from my home state of Nevada.

Read the whole thing.

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Does it really surprise anyone that families are pulling up stakes and leaving states like New Jersey, New York, Illinois, and Connecticut?

Considering the confiscatory taxes, business-hostile policies and regulations, profligate state spending, and willful lack of economic understanding, is it any wonder people are leaving those states? Why remain someplace where the government is doing everything it can to damage the economy, make it more difficult to do business, and make day to day living more expensive?

The thing that makes this even more ironic is that the governments in these states think that by doubling down on what they’ve already done they can somehow make things better, not understanding that their previous actions are the very things that caused the decay of their state.

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With the inclement weather we’ve experienced it behooves us to take a look at Skip Murphy’s take on the media feeding frenzy such weather events create.

It happens every time we have a significant snow event, one that most of we New Englanders see as part of a normal winter. To hear the news media you’d think snowstorms like these have never happened before and that everyone is gonna DIE unless we stay in and watch their news coverage.

Yeah. Right.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow and sleet are still falling, the temps are going to drop to single digits with well below zero wind chills tonight, and where dreams of this coming summer’s boating season fill our dreams.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Winter temps have returned with a vengeance, with our overnight lows in single digits above and below zero. The lake is quickly freezing, with the bays and coves already solidly frozen over and the main part of the lake following suit.

We did see one optimistic ice fisherman arrive at our town docks, towing his bob house behind his truck. But once he saw the ice wasn’t as far out or as thick as he might have thought it was, he decided it probably it wasn’t a good time to put it out on the ice and drove off, taking his bob house with him.

One positive thing about the cold temperatures – the LA Chargers aren’t used to playing in temps this cold which might give the New England Patriots an edge when they play them this afternoon.

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David Graham asks Why hasn’t Trump folded?

Why fold when he’s winning/

I have had conversations with a number of my liberal friends and they lay the blame for the government shutdown on Trump. But I reminded them that the story has two sides and that Pelosi has the mistaken impression that she runs the government. He knows that if he capitulates and gives Pelosi and Schumer what they want that they will kill any attempt to discuss funding the border wall. Everyone else knows it, too.

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I keep waiting for the miracles of the 21st Century to arrive and I have to admit to some disappointment that some of those miracles are nowhere to be found. Things like flying cars, colonies on the Moon and Mars, and nuclear power everywhere should already be here, yet we are without those things.

But every now and then one of those 21st Century miracles appears suddenly, catching us off guard. The latest ‘miracle’? How about wood that is stronger than most metals.

Engineers at the University of Maryland have found a way to make wood more than 10 times stronger and tougher than before, creating a natural substance that is stronger than many titanium alloys.

"This new way to treat wood makes it 12 times stronger than natural wood and 10 times tougher," said Liangbing Hu, the leader of the team that did the research, published in the journal Nature. "This could be a competitor to steel or even titanium alloys, it is so strong and durable. It's also comparable to carbon fiber, but much less expensive." Hu is an associate professor of materials science and engineering and a member of the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute.

This certainly looks promising.

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It’s one thing to be accused of fearmongering in the cause of promoting AGW, but it’s an entirely something else to be accused of ‘factmongering’, using facts to “cause irrational calm and complacency.” That’s so much worse than fearmongering, using misinformation to cause irrational fear and panic.

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The picture at Climatism should put the green energy scam into context.

Call it a perfect illustration of why green energy isn’t as green as proponents make it out to be.

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Then there’s another looming green energy crisis, in this case what to do with all of the solar panels out there when they reach the end of their useful life cycle? They cannot be merely disposed of in a landfill because they contain a number of toxic substances, meaning the panels must be treated as toxic waste. Did anyone think of this problem when they were promoting solar as an alternative energy source, or did they merely kick this problem down the road like so many others have been?

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And now it’s time for me to put down the laptop and pay attention to the Patriots/Chargers game, so that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the temps are frigid, the skies are bright, and where Monday is returning all too soon.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Here it is, the first TOAS of 2019.

I wish I could say that with the change from 2018 to 2019 that there have been profound changes for the better, but six days into the New Year it doesn’t seem that that’s the case. There appears to be a lot of the Same Old Same Old.

Even with the change of the majority in the House of Representatives down in the Swamp, or here with the New Hampshire legislature, I doubt we’ll see anything new. Only the faces and the names will have changed. For the most part it’ll be easy to predict what we’ll see both from Congress and from the state legislature.

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One thing the new members of the House need to learn is that the rhetoric they used while campaigning (and during their prior protests/community organizing/general PITA efforts) doesn’t always play well on The Hill. One thing that draws the wrong kind of attention is when a representative uses invective aimed at the President that would be better left to their constituents. They have to understand that the rules on The Hill are different from what they’re used to and that those rules won’t bend to their will. Flouting them is a great way to end up being censured by the very people they may consider their inferiors.

That’s not a good way start their congressional careers. Now if only some of the veteran Representatives (like Maxine “Mad Max” Waters) understood that.

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Is it possible Netflix could go the way of Sears?

The consensus appears to be “Yes”.

Unless it can rein in its debt and get its fiscal house in order it may find itself in financial trouble pretty darned quick.

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It seems that “Alex from the Bronx” Occasional-Cortex is the gift that keeps on giving.

She continues to display her expansive ignorance about how government works and keeps digging the proverbial hole even deeper with each tweet.

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It may be time to finally stick a fork in Twitter as it seems that posting facts is considered “hateful conduct”.

The victim of censorship by Twitter in this case is feminist Megan Murphy who had her account suspended because she tweeted that “men aren’t women”.

This is yet another example of “Just when I thought they couldn’t get any stupider…”

At this rate no one will be able to tweet about anything without running afoul of Twitter’s Terms of Use. So what use is Twitter under those conditions?

While this incident occurred a couple of months ago, it seems the problems with Twitter have only gotten worse since then.

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Is CNN going to go the way of the Dodo and Passenger Pigeon?

Their ratings continue to suck, with very few actually watching the news network by choice.

When CNN is being beaten by the Hallmark Channel, History Channel, and TNT you know they’re in trouble.

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The government shutdown is being blamed on President Trump when in fact that it can be laid entirely at the feet of the House. When they say it’s up to the President to compromise on this matter, they are reverting to the Obama definition of compromise – Sit down, shut up, and give us what we want.

But when the Democrats won’t even discuss the matter with the President and choose to ignore the realities of what’s been happening on the southern border, then the fault is theirs and theirs alone.

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This explains everything in regards to the Progressive Left.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the lake has not yet frozen over, our local ice fishing derby is less than a month away, and a lot of people are wondering if we’ll be able to pull it off.