Thoughts On A Sunday

The humidity that has been hanging over New England over the past week has finally departed, with some of that ‘departure’ taking place as heavy rain. There was some flooding here and there in Vermont and parts of northern New Hampshire over Friday and into early Saturday. By Saturday afternoon the air was drier and the A/C was shut off, at least here at The Gulch. It’s going to be nice over the most of the week, something all of us will appreciate.

We’re coming to the last few weeks of summer and it seems folks are trying to squeeze in as much vacationing as they can before the kids return to school. Our town beach closes at the end of the day on Labor Day, though there won’t be lifeguards on duty past the 25^th of the month. Some of the summer businesses will remain open until the end of September and others until Columbus Day, being open only on weekends until then.

Of course by then we’ll be at the beginning of leaf-peeping season and we’ll be dealing with a different tourist demographic…

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This perfectly explains our younger generation’s lack of understanding about how communism actually works.

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Hmm, it seems the British Crown Prosecutor has decided has warned that he might extradite Americans who have the audacity to express their disdain for the UK’s shift to a totalitarian state.

Yeah, like that’s going to work...unless the Biden Administration will hand over Americans who disturbed their sensibilities by pointing out how the UK is becoming to resemble the dystopian hell described in Orwell’s 1984.

==+++==

Was a photo showing a crowd waiting for Kamala Harris in Detroit as she stepped off of Air Force Two faked? Snopes is ‘unsure’ whether or not the photo is real or had been manipulated to add people that weren’t actually there.

Some people zoomed way in on the camera phones the crowd were holding. But the thing that got me was the absence of any reflection of the crowd on Air Force Two.

--snip--

How did Harris and Tim Walz even make it through that huge crowd that isn't reflected anywhere on the plane? We certainly hope Snopes doesn't give up trying to find a source for this photo and let us know for sure it's real.

One has to wonder why, if this photo was faked, someone thought it was necessary to do so. Did they think they had to make Kamala seem more popular than she really is, particularly at the airport in Detroit?

I think I can safely state that I won’t be wasting any more of my time on this matter. I have other things more important to ponder, great and small.

==+++==

To give you an idea just how odious the Harris-Walz ticket is we must ponder Tim Walz’ lack of understanding of the First Amendment, something he showed when he said “There's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.”

The Supreme Court has held that labeling speech as hateful does not render it unsayable. Indeed, the First Amendment is specifically designed to protect speech in the event that government authorities attempt to suppress it on such grounds. As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his opinion on behalf of a unanimous Court in the 2017 case of Matal v. Tam: "Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express 'the thought that we hate.'"

Walz is hardly the first political figure to make this mistake; high-level government and media actors who ought to know better frequently suggest that bad, wrong, and hateful speech is illegal. But his invocation of the dreaded specter of misinformation is especially concerning, given the current moral panic around the concept.

The Left seems to think the First Amendment only protects speech they approve of, period. However, the Founders and the Supreme Court thought differently and it pisses off the Left.

One of the arguments the Left uses is that the First Amendment does give anyone the right to yell “Fire!” in a theater. However, it does, particularly if the theater is on fire whether the Left thinks it’s on fire or not.

==+++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather is even better than it has been, summer is passing by far too quickly, and Monday is coming back again far too soon.

Tired Of It Yet?

I didn’t think it was possible, not so early. But here it is and I am already tired of this election season.

No, strike that. I am sick to death of it.

It isn’t the campaigning. I expect that.

It isn’t the BS being sold by the media. That’s nothing new. I’ve seen it for decades so I have a pretty decent media BS filter.

It isn’t all of the “impartial” polls that are totally meaningless at this point, even the ones that oversample from one one political party which no one can deny skews poll results.

It isn’t the speeches as they pretty much go with any election season, whether they are great, awful, or somewhere in between.

It isn’t even the in-person glad-handing by candidates wanting my vote (or my money) that bothers me.

What it is that I am tired of is all of the political ads, the many many many ads showing up everywhere...and I mean everywhere. I’m used to seeing them on TV or hearing them on the radio, but they pop up on my computer when I’m on the web or even worse, when I’m browsing YouTube for funny/interesting videos or watching dash cam videos of people doing really dumb stuff on the road. They are friggin’ everywhere.

What’s bad is that, as usual, so many of them are misleading, with some of them lying by omission. Sometimes they’ll say “So-and-so voted for/against This, That, and The Other Thing, something against what we believe!!”, but when you check (many times those ads will show a reference to the legislation if it’s a video ad), you find out that the legislation they were talking about wasn’t exactly about the subject the ad claimed. That’s bad enough, but not unexpected.

It’s that they are far more numerous than in the past, particularly now they they are showing up in places I’ve never seen them before like my work laptop (which uses Chrome), my tablets, and even my phone. I don’t get them on my home computers, thank goodness, but then I use Linux on those (including the one I am using to write this post) and they all use the Brave browser which has a built-in ad blocker...which doesn't work on ads on YouTube, unfortunately.

I’m not sure how much longer I can stand this seeing as we’re still about three months away from the election in November. It’s only going to get worse between now and then and I have no doubt I am not the only one that will be wholly sick and tired of it all well before November.

Friday Funny - Not Happening, At Least Not Tonight

OK, it seems Blogger has become hostile, at least to me. I can't post pictures to my blog, even pictures that I can prove are mine. Support is non-existent. The only 'help' I can find is a FAQ which doesn't address the issue I'm having.I'm going to keep digging to see if this problem can be resolved.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a weird weekend with a mix of thunderstorms and sunny skies. Saturday started with a thunderstorm just past midnight and rain that was on and off until mid-morning. It became sunny in the afternoon but the clouds returned late in the day and the rain returned in the evening and again lasted until mid-morning. I am not really complaining about the weather as it gave me a good excuse to do an overdue major cleaning in and around The Gulch. The only time I left was to do a little shopping at Walmart early Saturday morning and to go down to one of the local general stores to get a BLT for lunch. (They have great BLTs.)

I have also been nursing an ailing member of our feline contingent, Pip. She’s the last of the original feline contingent from The Manse. I won’t go into the details about her ailment other than to say it has caused some swelling in one ear which is causing her some discomfort. I wish there was more I could do for her, but all I can do at the moment is make sure she’s comfortable and that she has enough food and water.

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Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that Donald Trump is doing his best to lose the election? After his debate with Joe Biden I thought that Trump understood that keeping his mouth shut was the best strategy, one that had the Democrats confused and unsure about what to do.

After the assassination attempt he was again much quieter than many expected, as if contemplating how close he came to dying and taking stock about what was important. This lasted through most of the RNC convention, and then the “old” Trump reasserted itself. I don’t think he could help himself.

I would like to think his campaign advisors were telling him “Don, less is more. You don’t need to comment about everything, particularly about things that the Democrats are already damaging themselves with. If nothing else, the low-key approach is driving them crazy! So keep your trap shut, okay?” But he couldn’t help himself.

He’s back to pissing off people with his off-the-cuff remarks, alienating the very people he needs in order to win. Heck, he’s pissing me off, and I support him. He’s his own worst enemy. He has to remember that this isn’t his TV show The Apprentice, but real life.

Donald, I like you. I support you. But you need to learn when to shut the hell up!

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To steal a quote from the Instaprof: Compare and contrast.

This man went to a Kamala event wearing a Trump shirt, and a Trump event wearing a Kamala shirt. The difference in how he was treated was stunning.

This isn’t the first time I have seen something like this. The differences between the two parties is stark – one is accepting of those who disagree with them and is willing to converse with them while the other is intolerant, hostile, confrontational, and in some cases, violent.

I’ll leave it to you to figure which party is which.

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This is one thing I hope will be brought forward during the Presidential election campaign: Kamala Harris is hostile to the Second Amendment. She wanted to use an illegal registry to harass gun owners and confiscate firearms.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris once threatened to use databases of gun owners to send police to their homes to confiscate firearms.

Ms. Harris described her gun control stance in August 2019 at a Democratic presidential primary forum that took place shortly after two deadly mass shootings in California and Texas.

She said she was “prepared to take executive action” to implement comprehensive background checks, crack down on gun dealers and ban the import of so-called assault weapons.

“Take executive action” means she knew there was no way she could get legislation passed to do those things because it was likely the Supreme Court would strike it down as violating the Second Amendment. We already know Harris has little use for the Constitution, seeing it more as an impediment to the state taking complete power over our lives from cradle to grave.

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Is Canada on the verge of collapse and dissolution? If things keep going as they have under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, I’d say the answer is ‘Yes’.

Between whittling away at Canadians’ civil rights, heavy deficit spending and the confiscatory taxes that go with it, Ottawa’s willful neglect of the country’s citizens and “sit down, shut up, and do what we tell you” attitude, is it any wonder Canadians have had enough of Justin “Castreau” and the Leftists that keep him in power? What will be the tipping point that will have Canadians saying “Enough!” and will move to dissolve the Dominion of Canada?

There is a very real fear and presentiment across the land that the country is disintegrating, Many Canadians now feel, whether implicitly or overtly, that Canada is on the cusp, teetering on the verge of collapse and dissolution. The National Post reports that “A majority of Canadians looking at the country they see around them say everything seems to be broken. Concerned about rising costs, the state of health care, affordable housing, jobs and more, half of us are also angry about the way Canada is being run.” Similarly, an Ipsos poll found that 7 in 10 Canadians agree that “Canada is broken.” As Lee Harding writes in the Western Standard, our rulers “in our own capital city [are] full of self-aggrandizement, handing out contracts to their friends, serving foreign interests, burying us in public debt, and laying heavy taxes on people.” Sounds like it could be the U.S. under Biden and Harris.

Nine years and three terms of Liberal rule under the incompetent and scandal-ridden Marxist prime minister Justin Trudeau have led to a state of affairs in which, as one representative young woman lamented, “This country is falling apart. There’s no more freedom. Everyone is working just to survive and everyone is miserable.” Another concurs: “Every single system is flawed in Canada and it’s so sad, this used to be the best country in the world, now everything is backwards.” “Canada feels Like a house of cards waiting to collapse,” says the Jacobin, “Canada is in deep crisis. It's unfashionable in centrist circles to say so, but it's true. The country is literally on fire.” The Financial Post, for its part, defines Canada as “A leader among the so-called ‘breakdown nations,’” with the worst rate of growth among 50 developed economies.

It’s even worse that what’s laid out above due to an incompetent government and a Marxist Prime Minister who managed to criminalize so-called “hate speech”, said hate speech to be defined by a censorship bureaucracy with penalties for such hate speech going up to and including life imprisonment.

Hmm...where have we seen something like this before? Maybe the old Soviet Union? Or present day Russia? Or Cuba? (Could it be that PM Castreau is taking after his biological father. Fidel?)

So what happens if Canadians do reach the point where they’ve had enough? Will Canada fracture and the various provinces will go their own way? Will Quebec finally become an independent nation? Will other provinces apply for statehood in the US? Will others band together to form their own nation?

I can see Alberta, Saskatchewan, and maybe Manitoba applying to join the US. In some ways they are more like the bordering US states than they are the rest of Canada. I have no idea about the Maritime Provinces or what they would do, though I know two of them had considered applying for statehood if Quebec voted for independence from Canada, those two being Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. What would Newfoundland and Labrador do? Which way would Prince Edward Island go?

As far as the rest, who knows? I doubt Ontario would join the US as it seems to be the ‘California’ of Canada. I have no idea if British Columbia would do so or go their own way. Then there’s the question of the Territories – the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and the Yukon - and what their status would be.

What’s the chance that this will happen? I haven’t a clue.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has been schizophrenic, people are still driving stupid, and where Monday is looming large...again.

Paternity Fraud - Something That Must Be Addressed

While I haven’t been keeping all that much attention to the issue of paternity fraud, I did find it interesting that one state has decided to try to nip this problem in the bud, having passed legislation that makes paternity fraud a crime.

Tennessee passed two laws addressing paternity fraud, the first making it a Class B misdemeanor and the second removing the five year statute of limitation to “challenge an acknowledgment of paternity on the basis of fraud, duress or mistake.” While neither is quite as powerful as some would have liked, it is a step in the right direction. One proposed bill that failed would have made paternity tests mandatory at birth, but it died before making it through committee.

Some think mandatory paternity testing at birth would eliminate paternity fraud. Others think it is an invasion of privacy. I’ll admit I am not sure one way or the other but I do understand why some people are in favor of it, particularly men who found out well after the fact that children they thought were theirs were fathered by someone else.

There have been some claims that 30% of all children born in the US are not the biological children of the reported father, but that number seems way too high. However I can believe that 30% of all children tested for paternity aren‘t related to the man thought to be the father. It makes sense because if a child us being tested it’s likely because there is some question as to the child’s paternity. If every child was tested at birth I think the percentage would be a lot lower.

You may ask what got me on to this topic? Simply, it was this video, something I came across while browsing YouTube earlier today:


After watching this video I must admit that I was pissed off. That this woman seemed to show little shame for having deceived her now ex-husband about the paternity of their two children just made it worse to me.

I think it’s time for states to pass legislation to make paternity fraud a crime. I also think paternity fraud should be considered a factor when it comes to things like child support after a divorce. Why should a man pay child support for kids that aren’t his? Let the mother go after the real father for that.

Is it harsh? Yes. But why should the man who was deceived be punished a second time for this fraud committed against him?

Friday Funny - The Final Exam

It appears the party that 'owns' the video I would have embedded doesn't allow it, so instead I will place the link for the video here: Final Exam.

Thoughts On A Sunday

I was pleasantly surprised when I woke this morning, feeling refreshed and with no aches or pains. After yesterday’s Island Cleanup Day I thought I’d have a few, even if minor. But none were evident, so I consider myself lucky. Considering I was the oldest person there offloading island residents’ boats of all their junk, demolition debris - lots and lots of old wood, much of it rotted - microwave ovens, window air conditioners, stove parts (including one cast iron potbelly stove), old windows, more than a few lengths of galvanized iron pipe, copper pipe, PVC pipe, braided steel cable, copper wiring, gas grills, charcoal grills, countless broken Adirondack chairs, a couple of canoes of which one was in pristine condition, a couple of paddleboards, more than one sailboard, swim raft floats, mattresses, bed frames, dinged up cookware, chairs, lamps, picture frames, toilets, sinks (including one kitchen sink), small outboard motors, 20lb and 40lb propane tanks (empty, thank goodness), more than a few gas cans and outboard motor gas tanks, a lawnmower, an electric chainsaw, and on and on. More than a few island residents made more than one trip, with one making 4 trips with her boat filled with demo lumber.

All in all it was a good day and while not one of the biggest Island Cleanup Days we’ve seen, it did keep everyone busy.

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I don’t know about you, but I am already tired of the Lame Stream Media’s fawning over Kamala Harris. I know they are trying to promote her nomination, but considering just how awful she’s been, I am surprised they are doing so. The DNC seems to be doing its best to memory hole her history in California, in the US Senate, and her pronouncements, speeches and Twitter posts as a means of making it difficult for the GOP to use it against her. The problem is that the “Internet is Forever” and so many people have screenshots of her posts, copies of video, and of course, posts made by those who have never been been a friend of Kamala, be they Democrats, Independents, or Republicans.

I think the DNC is making a mistake placing their hopes on such an odious candidate like Kamala Harris, considering that, in my opinion, she was more of a ‘poison pill’ VP choice rather than someone who could step into the role of President if the need ever arose.

If nothing else it’s going to be interesting over the next couple of months...as in “May you live in interesting times” old Chinese curse kind of ‘interesting’.

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Sorry, but I saw this headline and couldn’t resist adding it:

Meghan Markel Urged Not to Endorse Kamala

This might be the funniest story since Kamala Harris took over as the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee. According to a report from Newsweek, Meghan Markle, who was reportedly an actress once, is being urged not to endorse Kamala Harris because it "would have a negative impact on both women."

They say this like this is a Bad Thing…

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Speaking of Kamala, it seems that GOP VP candidate J.D. Vance has no use and no respect for her, particularly after she had the ovaries to question his and Trump’s loyalty to our country. That’s rich, coming from a Communist-in-all-but-name.

In remarks Saturday evening at President Trump’s campaign rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, Trump’s running mate Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio scorched presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris for questioning his and Trump’s loyalty, saying, “What the hell have you done to question our loyalty to the United States of America?”

--snip--

“I saw the other day, Kamala Harris questioned my loyalty to this country. That’s the word she used, “loyalty.” And it’s an interesting word (Semper fi), loyalty. Because there is no greater sign of disloyalty to this country than what Kamala Harris has done at our southern border.

And I’d like to ask the vice president what she has done to question my loyalty to this country? I served in the United States Marine Corps. I went to Iraq for this country. I built a business for this country. And my running mate took a bullet for this country.

So my question to Kamala Harris is, “What the hell have you done to question our loyalty to the United States of America?”

And the answer my friends is, nothing.

Indeed. This is something else that has to be hammered home again and again and again. Don’t let Kamala get away with it.

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Kamala has been a failure as the border czar despite her claiming she was never assigned that task (overwhelming evidence to the contrary). Another failure that can be laid at her feet?

Broadband czar.

Biden tapped Kamala Harris to serve as the rural broadband czar in 2021. Part of her task was overseeing the implementation of a $42 billion program to connect Americans in rural and remote parts of the country to the Internet. According to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) member Brendan Carr, however, after almost 1,000 days, not a single person has actually been connected to the web.

Internet service providers (ISPs) and lawmakers on Capitol Hill contend the Biden-Harris government’s burdensome regulations—including climate change mandates, union worker requirements, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies—have brought progress on expanding rural Internet access to a halt.

Note:Links in the original post were not included in the quote above as there were too darned many of them. If you want to see them all please go to the original post. - ed.

I suppose she’ll deny she was ever named as the Broadband czar as well. So, what the hell has she been doing the past three-and-a-half years?

OK, enough of Kamala for now. I’m starting to feel a little nauseous.

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I’ve wondered this, too.

How can every country be warming faster than all the others, at the same time?

The answer is simple: It’s all a con. Such claims fit the Climate-change-is-all-the-fault-of-the-Evil-Humans narrative. And as we all know The Narrative must be supported at all times. It doesn’t matter if it’s a lie or makes no sense or has absolutely no data to support it in any fashion. The Narrative is all that matters.

Well, I have three words that challenge that narrative: Hunga Tonga-Hunga.

‘Nuff said.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather’s been great, the drivers have not, and where the islands of our little town are just that much cleaner!

People Driving Stupid - Part Eleventy-Eleven

Today was spent down at our town docks for Island Cleanup Day, a day for island residents in our town to load up their boats with junk and demo detritus from their island homes and bring it to the town docks for our DPW to offload and dispose of. This is an annual event and one I have volunteered for pretty much every year I’ve lived in my town. I only missed one year – last year – due to a family gathering to celebrate the first birthday of my great niece. I more than made up for it this year.

However, this post isn’t really about Island Cleanup Day as it is about a discussion that took place during the day, that being about whether others have observed more people than ever “driving stupid”. That expanded to also cover people out on boats “driving stupid” as well.

As I have mentioned in a few other posts, since mid-Spring I have noticed a lot of people driving erratically, poorly, or outright dangerously. Too many of them I have found are driving distracted, usually paying more attention to their smart phones rather than the road. More than a couple of people I was working with today have seen the same thing. The other thing that goes with that is there have been more traffic accidents, with more than a few of them being fatal.

Our town saw two fatal accidents within a few days of each other, one being a head-on collision where both drivers died when one car crossed over the double yellow line. No report has yet been issued about the cause, but if it were due to distracted driving it wouldn’t surprise me. The other accident was a hit-and-run which killed a pedestrian, the driver later being found to be suffering from dementia and shouldn’t have been driving in the first place.

New Hampshire has seen a lot of fatal traffic accidents, with one in a neighboring town that was very similar to the one in our town where one car crossed over the double yellow line and hit the other car head on. In this accident an 8-year old girl died from her injuries. Again, no accident investigation report has yet been issued, but again it wouldn’t surprise me if it were another case of distracted driving.

One of the other people I had the opportunity to talk with was one of our town’s police officers. I asked him if he was seeing a lot of people “driving stupid” today and his immediate response was to roll his eyes and say “You have no idea!”. He related a couple of the stupider things he’d seen that day...and it was still well before noon.

A number of us also described some of the stupidity we’d seen out on the lake, and while distracted driving of the kind seen on the roads may not have been the cause of what we’ve seen, there were still too many “stupids” out there. Considering the heaviest boat traffic is during weekends it isn’t a surprise that we see so many “stupids” during the weekend. It’s one reason I tend to do all of my boating during the week.

On those few occasions when I do go out during the weekend it’s usually because I have guests. While I do enjoy the company, I find that I get back to the dock at the end of the cruise feeling exhausted because it takes a lot of work to keep me and my friends safe while we’re out on the lake. Talking with the others working at Cleanup Day, they have experienced the same thing.

How about you folks? Have you been seeing a lot more people “driving stupid”? It wouldn’t surprise me if you have.

Friday Funny - A Total Bust

It seems Blogger, or more accurately, Google, is still blocking any attempt to upload pictures on my blog. The Powers That Be at Blogger have been absolutely no help whatsoever. Blogger keeps telling me to log off and then log back on, but that's a non-starter since I also cannot reach the Log Out link in order to log out. It's Blogger's version of Catch 22 and I hate it.

It looks like I will need to figure out a workaround.

In the mean time I will see if I can switch over to more text-based humor.

Thoughts On A Sunday

I mentioned last week how more people seem to be “driving stupid” this summer. The “stupid” continues unabated with even more traffic deaths, with some of those being due to distracted driving.

Another thing I’ve seen that I haven’t noticed before is a huge increase in roadkill, with over a dozen deer killed along a 2-mile long stretch of state road that passes by The Gulch’s neighborhood. Do you know how many roadkill deer I’ve seen on that stretch of road over the prior 5 years?

One.

I know we’ll see even more over the next few months, but I have to ask why the big increase? Is it that there are suddenly that many more deer? It’s a possibility considering last winter was rather mild. Is it that there’s more traffic and more of that traffic has more people “driving stupid”? Sure. Could it be a bit of both? Absolutely.

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One thing I’ve been hearing about is how this summer proves that human-caused climate change is real, between the record heat waves and heavy precipitation. Those making those claims would be right...if they can prove humans caused the eruption of the Tonga-Hunga volcano in the South Pacific two-and-a-half years ago.

The amount of water that undersea volcano threw into the atmosphere was unprecedented, adding between 100 and 150 million tons of water into the atmosphere, with much of it going into the stratosphere. The water vapor content of the atmosphere increased 13%. As water vapor is an efficacious greenhouse gas, more so than CO2, all that water vapor was going to have an effect on climate.

Some may think that the water would already have been ‘squeezed’ out of the atmosphere much like ash finally settles out of the atmosphere, but unlike other volcanic eruptions, this one didn’t throw a lot of ash into the atmosphere. It is the ash that can have effects on weather, usually causing cooling as the ash reduces insolation. Two of the largest volcano eruptions recorded - Tambora and Krakatoa – each caused a “Year without Summer” due to the sheer volume of ash ejected into the atmosphere. We saw a similar effect after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, but nowhere near the magnitude seen with the other two eruptions.

Tonga-Hunga threw a lot of water into the atmosphere. That water vapor took considerably longer to circulate around the world than any ash cloud. The year after the eruption saw some increased temperatures and higher than normal precipitation. This year, two-and-a-half years after the eruption, we are seeing the full-blown effects of all that extra water vapor with record high temperatures/heat waves and well above normal precipitation. This past winter was also affected.

Here in New England we saw warmer than normal temperatures and precipitation, though most of that precipitation was in the form of rain rather than snow.

One study suggests the effects of the Tonga-Hunga eruption on the climate will be felt for the rest of the decade.

That does imply we’ll continue to see above normal temperatures and above normal precipitations for at least a few more years.

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It looks like Biden is still trying to buy votes by yet another student loan forgiveness program, even though such loan forgiveness programs have already been stuck down by courts as illegal. SloJoe wants taxpayers to bail out people who took student loans to pay for their degrees, all as a means of buying their votes. Yet the courts keep denying him.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration is doing its best Billy Mays impersonation, announcing, “But wait — there’s more” student loan forgiveness.

“President Biden has announced a new student loan bailout for 35,000 borrowers through ‘Public Service Loan Forgiveness,’ a program that Biden says has brought the total number of people getting debt relief from his administration to 4.76 million,” reported Fox Business on Thursday. “Under the new plan, eligible public service workers get an average of $35,000 in debt relief, a statement from Biden's administration said, totaling about $1.2 billion.”

"These 35,000 borrowers approved for forgiveness today are public service workers – teachers, nurses, law enforcement officials, and first responders who have dedicated their lives to strengthening their communities," read a White House statement. "And because of the fixes we made to Public Service Loan Forgiveness, they will now have more breathing room to support themselves and their families."

Okay, so it’s hard to oppose forgiving the student loans of people like police officers and nurses without sounding like a jerk, but this latest move is so galling because it comes after the White House has tried so many times to pander with student loan forgiveness. How much more obvious can these people be?

I have to wonder what bribe...err…incentive Biden (or WRBA) will try offering next?

==++++==

There’s something to be said for the old Commodore 64 computers. Yes, indeed.

==++++==

Another sign that the Biden-Harris campaign has entered the doom loop?

Kamala’s inability to to reassure major campaign donors that Joe Biden has a chance of beating Trump, or that he will even be compos mentis by the November election. But it’s even worse than that.

Vice President Kamala Harris tried to buck up the Democratic Party’s biggest donors on Friday, telling about 300 of them that there was little to worry about in President Biden’s campaign.

Ms. Harris spoke to the group at a time of extraordinary turmoil among Democrats, with many hoping that she will replace Mr. Biden as the party’s nominee. But several listeners said they found the meeting overall to be of little value and even, at times, condescending, believing that the message ignored donors’ legitimate concerns about the Biden-led ticket.

Ms. Harris, of course, is in a delicate position: She must demonstrate loyalty to her boss but also be prepared to jump immediately to the top of the Democratic ticket if Mr. Biden were to withdraw.

“I will start by sharing something with all of you,” Ms. Harris told the donors, according to a listener on the call who described her remarks on the condition of anonymity, “something I believe in my heart of hearts. It is something I feel strongly you should all hear and should take with you when you leave. And tell your friends, too. We are going to win this election.” …

Some listeners said they did find Ms. Harris’s delivery to be strong, even if it offered little reassurance, and did not place the blame on her. And some of the donors who were disappointed with the call had preexisting concerns about Mr. Biden’s candidacy, which is why they had requested the briefing.

After the call, one group that had promoted it in advance apologized to its members for having done so.

That is not a good sign for the Biden campaign.

==++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has been great, the summerfolk have been making the most of it, and where I can get out onto the lake on Monday afternoon since none of the weekend summerfolk will be around.

Data Centers Driving Increase In Electrical Demand

This isn’t news to anyone who’s been paying attention, but it looks like the growing number of data centers, particularly those hosting Artificial Intelligence, is straining the electrical grid. Electrical demand has been growing in general, but data centers are really adding to the demand, and more are being built every day. (For full disclosure, the corporation I work for has a “hyperscale” data center division and they are busier than ever, designing and building new data centers.)

Part of the demand is due to an increasing number of data centers across the country, along with the rise of artificial intelligence.

The nation's roughly 2,700 data centers are mostly run by big tech firms like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Apple, and consumed more than 4% of all electricity in the U.S. in 2022. It's projected to more than double to 9% by 2030, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a research organization and nonprofit focused on energy. It is not affiliated with any companies or type of technology.

But it's already taxing the U.S.' aging power grid, and the demands of AI are just beginning to grow. A ChatGPT query, for example, uses nearly 10 times the electricity of a typical internet search.

If AI continues to grow at the current rate the grid won’t be able to keep up, and the let’s face it, the grid capacity isn’t expanding anywhere near fast enough. This is particularly true of ‘renewables’ – solar and wind – because they can’t possibly meet the demand and they are too weather weather dependent, too variable. What’s needed is more nuclear, particularly modular designs that can be built quickly and installed just as quickly. It could be one reason Bill Gates has invested billions in one such company – TerraPower – to build small modular reactors (SMRs) to power all of these new data centers.

The nice thing is that SMRs and be built and installed almost anywhere, either clustered together like the traditional One Big Nuclear Power Station or spread out for a more distributed power generation architecture. The OBNPS design requires a lot of high capacity transmission lines to get all that power, 900MW or more, from Point A to Points B, C, D, E to Z. With the distributed design many of the SMRs would be located at or near Points A thru Z. There would still be a need for transmission lines, but they wouldn’t need to be the big heavy-duty lines like the ones used for the OBNPS configurations.

There’s one more thing to consider when it comes to electrical demand, that being EVs. SloJoe wants to force us into EVs against our will and all of those EVs will need electricity to recharge. So it will take even more expansion of the grid capacity to meet both demands. We know that’s not going to happen.

Of course the EV demand may not grow as the market for EVs has fallen off considerably and a number of automakers have stopped production on their EVs altogether. As one wag put it on one of the Disqus threads, those who want an EV already have one...or two. It appears no one else really wants them since they really aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, are too expensive to buy, own, repair, and insure. They also don’t hold their value like ICE vehicles. But that’s a story for another time.

Friday Funny - Greek Philosophers - Oh, Darn!!

Once again it seems that Blogger has decided I'm not allowed to post a picture and I can't even log out from Blogger in order to sign in again, so I can't fix it.

Instead, I will post the text within the photo I wanted to share.

"Eh, good enough..." ~Mediocrates

"How about a delicious frozen treat?" ~Popsicles

"Leave me out of this." ~Testicles

Now I need to get ahold of the folks at Blogger to see if I can get this problem squared away.

You Missed

This is an addendum to today's Thoughts On A Sunday as it appears Tom McDonald has his own thoughts about what took place in Pennsylvania yesterday. There's nothing I can add as he says it all.

Thoughts On A Sunday

I am not going to address the happenings in Pennsylvania yesterday, at least not in this portion of my TOAS post.

Instead I will do as I usually of, commenting on things happening locally, one of those things being how people – particularly an increasing number of summerfolk – are “driving stupid”. Just in this past week I have seen more examples of people driving stupid – something I define as some folks driving distracted or assuming traffic laws don’t apply to them – with an increasing number of drivers doing stupid stuff which endangers everyone. One of the more egregious instances that I witnessed (and caught on dash cam) on Friday afternoon was someone in a white Escalade with NY plates figuring they didn’t have to wait for the traffic light at a local intersection and went down the Left Turn Only lane and then ran the red light to get in front of the six or seven vehicles waiting for the light to turn green. This was a deliberate and incredibly stupid act.

There have also been two fatal accidents, one early Friday evening and one early yesterday evening, both caused when one vehicle crossed the double yellow line and hit another vehicle head on. Knowing where both of the accidents took place, my first thought was that it was highly likely both were caused by distracted driving.

Distracted driving has become a bigger problem than drunk driving and I expect it will only get worse. I don’t know how many times in just the past couple weeks I have seen people driving while paying more attention to their smart phone in their hand or fiddling with the touch screen in the center console of their vehicles rather than paying attention to the road and the traffic surrounding them.

==++++==

To put it as some other folks have, I wondered how long it would be before the numb-nuts and nitwits would say the assassination attempt on Trump was staged by his campaign. It didn’t take long at all.

Now, even the Bought-And-Paid-For Progressive media are piling on, blaming Trump for the assassination attempt.

What a bunch of scumbags.

==++++==

I’ve heard of all kinds of “privilege” – Male Privilege, White Privilege, Wealth Privilege, Beltway Privilege, Ivy League Privilege, and so on. But I have never heard of Angry Privilege. However, it does make sense that it exists.

Not all anger is created equal. Some anger is privileged rage.

Good anger gets you a gig as a CNN commentator. Bad anger gets you hounded out of your job. Good anger isn’t described as anger at all. Instead it’s whitewashed as “passionate” or “courageous”. Bad anger however is “worrying” or “dangerous”. Angry left-wing protesters “call out”, angry right-wing protesters “threaten”. Good anger is left-wing. Bad anger is right-wing.

Socially acceptable displays of anger, from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter riots to the anti-Trump marches to the furious campus protests, are invariably left-wing.

Not all anger is created equal. Anger, like everything else, is ideologically coded. Left-wing anger is good because its ideological foundations are good. Right-wing anger is bad because its ideology is bad.

It’s not the level of anger, its intensity or its threatening nature that makes it good or bad.

And that is why the left so easily slips into violence. All its ideological ends are good. Therefore its means, from mass starvation to gulags to riots and tyranny, must be good. If I slash your tires because of your Biden bumper sticker”, I’m a monster. But if you key my car because of my Trump bumper sticker, you’re fighting racism and fascism. Your tactics might be in error, but your viewpoint isn’t.

The first means of justifying horrific actions like gulags, extermination camps, or at the worst, genocide, is to dehumanize the targets of your anger. Then it makes it easy to eliminate them because they aren’t real people in the eyes of their executioners. Their ‘righteous’ anger, their privileged anger makes all of their horrific actions justifiable even though they are the ‘monsters’ despite their claims that it is their victims who are the monsters.

==++++==

Considering the media and blogs have been covering nothing but the assassination attempt on Trump ad nausem, I figure this might be a good time to bring this week’s TOAS to a close. Maybe I’ll even make it out on the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout later today. So with that, that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where we’ve been seeing a lot of days in the 90’s, thunderstorms in the afternoons, and a lot of people driving ‘stupid’ on the highways and byways.

Heroes

I was planning to post this new music video from Tom McDonald for tonight's post. Now it seems it may be even more appropriate considering the extraordinary event that took place earlier today - the attempted asassination of Donald Trump - as heroes, some being just ordinary people attending the rally in Pennsylvania and others being the Secret Service agents, EMS personnel, local police officers, and a whole host of others who were there.

Trump Wounded At Rally In Pennsylvania

I am not going to delve deeply into this incident as the news coverage is ubiquitous. It appears Trump was grazed either by a round from the sniper's rifle or from shrapnel caused by one round hitting another object. One rally attendee was killed and two others wounded. The sniper was neutralized by the Secret Service.

Apparently the sniper was on the roof of a building outside the rally venue. There has been a lot of speculation about the sniper, but I am not going to add to that speculation as we'll (hopefully) find out more about him/her/it soon enough.

Instapundit has been covering this story since shortly after it occurred and has been updating information as it has become available.

Friday Funny - Uh Oh

It seems that Blogger has got problems as it won't let me upload this week's picture. It asked me to log out and log back in...but I couldn't even log out as it keep telling me it can't access my account in order to log out. So something is indeed "busticated" or Google doesn't like me any more. I will attempt this post this again tomorrow.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s the post-Fourth of July weekend and it’s been quite busy, something that was not exactly unexpected. Lots of fireworks just before, during, and after the Fourth, with some last night on the lake just below the Gulch. There’s been a lot of traffic, again not unexpected. At least it’s been heavy, but there have been very few people driving stupid, at least from what I’ve seen and from what I’ve been hearing from neighbors, friends, and townsfolk. It has been one of the better Fourth of July holidays over the past few years, even with the spate of showers and thunderstorms that graced us here and there. The only thing we have to deal with is the exodus as visitors head for home, something that started late this morning. It’s one reason I handled all of my Sunday errands early and had them done before 9am which means I shouldn’t need to head out onto the roads for the rest of the days.

One of the other things that has been different this summer also has something to do with traffic, but not in the way you might think. In this case the one that that stands out is the unusual number of deer I’ve seen lying dead on the side of the road that passes by The Gulch. Over a ~2 mile stretch the state road that can have a lot of traffic I’ve seen at least 8 dead deer over the past month. Eight. I haven’t seen that many dead deer along that stretch of road over the 20 years I’ve lived in my town. I don’t know if it means there’s been more traffic which could lead to more road kill or that there are just a lot more deer around this year. Perhaps it’s a combination of both. But it is disturbing to see a surge of deer being hit and killed along a road that hasn’t seen that many in the 20+ years prior to that.

==++++==

After the Debate Debacle I posted about last week the shockwaves about Biden’s disastrous performance at the debate. It has the Democrats scrambling, with some trying to explain away Biden’s poor outcome and others trying to find a replacement for the top of the ticket because they know Biden is only going to get worse. You know it’s really bad when even the usually Democrat-friendly media outlets – the NYT, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, and others – are making noise about Biden needing to drop out of the race.

Those pushing for Biden to drop out are also scrambling to find a replacement. The problem is that no one, including poison pill VP Harris, is likely to draw as many votes as Biden. Harris isn’t popular, even among Democrats, because she’s an idiot and everyone knows it. California’s Destructor – Gavin Newsom – isn’t a viable candidate because of the damage he’s done to the Pyrite State and wants to do to the rest of the US. Neither is Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer, one of the biggest reasons being that she isn’t well known. One possible replacement isn’t liked by the Democrats, RFK Jr., as he isn’t Progressive enough for the DNC.

Can the DNC come up with a candidate to replace Biden that won’t be buried by Trump in November and allow them to retain the White House? I haven’t a clue...but then, neither do the Democrats.

==++++==

On more than one occasion I have made mention of the problem with the locations of weather stations which record temperatures, humidity, wind speed and direction, rainfall, and so on, that problem being poor siting. A perfect example of this is the difference between two weather station locations seen here. Both of these locations are in the UK, but one is for the UK Met Office and one for the University of Hull’s Environmental Department.

The Met Office site reads two degrees Celsius warmer than the University site. Take a look at the photos in the linked post and I think you’ll be able figure out which site belongs to the Met Office and which belongs to the University.

This is a problem in the US to an even greater degree. I know one of the weather stations near The Gulch is located at the local airport amid the runway, taxiways, and aircraft ramps. In other words it’s surrounded by large areas of paving. That means any temperature readings from that weather station are suspect. The same is true of weather stations located on building roofs, next to parking lots, near HVAC equipment, and near buildings on the same side of the building with sun exposure. The number of stations with ‘pristine’ sites, meaning sites that aren’t anywhere near any of the influences listed above, has been shrinking as urban and suburban sprawl surrounded those locations over the years. That makes all of the readings from those stations suspect, something that has been devoutly ignored for years. After all, it helps sell the narrative of global warming.

==++++==

This can’t be repeated enough:

46% of American electric vehicle owners are considering returning to gasoline-powered vehicles for their next purchase.

So much for EVs being The Next Big Thing.

==++++==

In a related subject, it looks like the $7.5 billion set aside to build 500,000 EV charging stations across the nation has seen only seven stations built so far. It must also be stated that this is the second year of the program, yet only seven stations have been built so far. To quote the post, “At this rate, it will require thousands of years to build all 500,000 charging stations, assuming there are sufficient funds to do so.”

Global consulting firm McKinsey and Company estimates that the U.S. will need 28 million charging ports by 2030. There are just two million charging ports today. To meet the goal, about 12,000 new public and private charging ports will need to be added every single day to reach the goal by 2030.

It is true that significantly more government funded charging stations are in the works and will be opened. The stations completed so far cost significantly more than what has been promised. With retailers contributing land to the projects opened so far, the cost of each station has averaged one-million dollars, with the government participation of 80% of the cost. Eight-hundred-thousand dollars for each station is significantly more than the $15,000 committed by the administration. At this rate, the 500,000 charging stations will cost the government $400 billion, not the $7.5 billion the President has promised.

As it goes with any government mandated program, it always costs more and is always over budget. This is something that should be handled by the free market, not by government, and particularly through mandates. The government is ‘stupid’ when it comes to what is needed for some types of markets. EVs is one of those markets.

==++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the Fourth of July crowds have been departing, the lake is ours again until next weekend, and where Monday is coming up to ruin yet another weekend.

Restaurant Closings Increasing

I saw this over at Instapundit and I thought I had to comment on it, particularly since I live in a semi-rural area in New Hampshire that has a lot of seasonal tourist traffic. “This” is the increasing number of fast-food chain restaurants closing as a result of inflation/Bidenomics (aren’t they the same thing?) and California’s ill-advised increase in fast-food worker minimum wages to $20/hour.

While some of the focus of the post covered the issues in California, it isn’t just California seeing issues. It’s a nationwide problem which signals economic problems, not just ‘policy’ issues.

They have been putting up prices over the past two years – as they pass on higher costs to customers. But these price hikes have led to a fall in visitors.

Bigger chains like Applebee’s, TGI Fridays and Boston Market have have all recently shuttered restaurants, as have smaller chains like BurgerFi.

Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy in May and also shuttered almost 100 restaurants.

Chains have been worst hit in California where the minimum wage for fast food restaurants jumped to $20-an-hour from April 1. In early June, Mexican chain Rubio’s shut 48 locations in the state and also filed for bankruptcy.

Two weeks ago, it emerged that almost 150 Pizza Hut restaurants are set to close due to an ongoing financial dispute with one of its major franchisees.

McDonald’s is abandoning menu changes that were made in an attempt to turn it “into a ‘modern, progressive burger company’”, something that has seriously hurt their bottom line as no one, at least in the US, has been buying the new menu items.

‘And so if people really want salads from McDonald’s, we will gladly relaunch salads. But what our experience has proven is, that’s not what the consumer is looking for from McDonald’s.’

At the same time as he said the chain was ditching salads, [McDonald’s USA president Joe Erlinger] said that McDonald’s had given up on its bid to sell meat-free beef burgers in America.

He said the McPlant has been ditched because customers did not want fake meat.

The chain had been testing the McPlant at several hundred restaurants in California and Texas since trials began in late 2021.

Developed with Beyond Meat, it was made from pea and rice proteins.

At least McDonald’s is going back to a more traditional menu which may help slow or reverse the decline. If they really wanted to boost sales they should dump using vegetable/seed oils to deep fry their french fries and go back to using beef tallow. I remember when a number of McDonald’s franchises somewhere Down South offered such french fries for a limited time and they had lines out the door.

One restaurant chain that is in trouble that surprised me?

Hooters.

As one commenter put it:

Even Hooters is shuttering locations en masse. Hooters, for pity's sake.

If it's possible to lose money, in the United States of America, with a USP of wings, beer, sports on the tube, and curvaceous waitresses, you know the economy is officially going t*ts-up.

Indeed.

While I haven’t seen any of the chain restaurants closing in my part of New Hampshire, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened elsehere. I haven’t seen any of our locally owned restaurants closing either, but that also doesn’t mean much as it must be remembered that this part of my state is a popular tourist area, so we might not see much in the way of closures as might be seen in other parts of New Hampshire.

However, that doesn’t mean that it won’t happen here if our economy can’t get out from under the destructive effects of Bidenomics.

Friday Funny - Bacon!