Let The Budgeting Begin!

The budget season has started here in New Hampshire, with towns, cities, and the state working to put together budgets for the upcoming fiscal year.

It may be the recent win by self-declared fiscal conservatives in state and national elections that have driven home the point that the taxpayers have had enough of profligate spending and will be watching their elected officials much more closely than they have in the past.

Our little town has been way ahead of the pack, with the selectmen and the budget committee scrutinizing every penny and making cuts to keep spending in check during these difficult economic times. Should both entities get their way, our town's budget for the next fiscal year will be smaller than this year's, the third year in a row for that trend. The same is true of the school budget. (Like most towns and cities in New Hampshire, the municipal and school budgets are entirely separate. But in towns like ours with an elected budget committee, the committee reviews and votes whether or not to recommend the warrants articles from both.)

At the state level the governor has already warned state agencies to prepare for tough choices they'll have to make.

The previous two budgets increased spending by more than 30% over the past 4 years (New Hampshire has a two-year budget), but this time around the Democrat governor has to deal with an overwhelmingly Republican legislature (74.5% of the seats in the 400 seat New Hampshire House are in the hands of the GOP, as are 79% of the seats in the state Senate). During the previous two budgets the governor had a Democrat majority in the legislature to back up his spending plans. Assuming the Republicans in the legislature follow through on their promises to keep spending in check, if not roll back some expenditures and the taxes that go with them, it can be expected that state spending will remain flat, if not decrease from the present biennial budget. And should the governor veto a lean GOP budget, both chambers of the legislature have the votes to override it.

It will be interesting to watch the budget deliberations at the local and state level and compare it to what will be going on in Washington during the 112^th Congress. Our Representatives and our Senators in Congress know we will be watching closely and will be more than willing to throw them out if they don't do as so many at the state and local level have done: keep spending and taxes in check.

Homeowner Imprisioned For Defending His Property

Is Ward Bird a gun-toting criminal nutcase or a citizen defending his property against an intruder?

According the both the Carroll County (New Hampshire) Superior Court and the state Supreme Court, he's a criminal.

The case, in which Bird was accused of criminal threatening, pits the rights of gun carrying homeowners against criminal statutes that could easily see them prosecuted and convicted for protecting their property. Bird was convicted of threatening his accuser after the women drove on to his property and to the front of his house despite numerous No Trespassing signs posted along the edge of his property and along his driveway.

I have to ask this: What part of No Trespassing did this woman not understand? The 'No' part or the 'Trespassing' part?

What makes this case more controversial is that Bird had never been in trouble with the law before this incident while his accuser had a criminal history. Even more tragic, the presiding judge in the criminal trial wanted Bird to have minimal incarceration (30 days) in the county jail and then work release or home confinement. But the law tied his hands and the Department of Corrections said Bird has to serve a minimum of two years of his mandatory seven year sentence before he's eligible for release. He'll be serving his time in the state prison.

Quite a few people believe there has been a miscarriage of justice and that Bird should be pardoned. Count me as one of them.

Credentialed, Not Educated

Over the past few months leading up to the mid-term elections, Glenn Reynolds, amongst others, have been writing about and commenting upon the “Credentialed, not educated” meme in regards to the mass of nattering elite.

The Barrister over at Maggie's Farm takes a slightly different tack, asking the question “Which would do more for your career: A Princeton education but no diploma, or a Princeton diploma but no education?”

I have a feeling the answer is the former.

I've seen far too many people with diplomas from Ivy League schools and other high level educational institutions that haven't got the capability of actually doing the jobs they were hired to do. Some don't even have the sense to come in out of the pouring rain, metaphorically speaking.

I tried to post a comment to the Barrister's post about a fitting movie quote, but apparently the spamment system didn't like what I had to say. So I'll reproduce it here:

This reminds me of the scene in Good Will Hunting where Will (Matt Damon), goes head to head with a Harvard student at a Cambridge pub, leaving him with this thought:

“To think you blew $150 grand on an education you could've gotten from the public library for a buck-fifty in late fees.”

Heh.

Let's Play The "Balance The Budget" Game!

Everyone seems to think it will be difficult to cut government spending enough to trim, if not eliminate the federal deficit. The thing is that belief is true...if you leave it to no one but the politicians in Washington to do so. But more than a few of us unenlightened mortals (meaning everyday folk) seem to have little problem with cutting spending.

Believe it or not, the New York Times has an interactive budget simulator that lets us take a crack at cutting the budget. One journalist, James Pethokoukis, took a stab at it and managed to balance the budget in one minute. One minute!

Glenn Reynolds took a shot at it and it took him two minutes. By his own admission it took that long because, unlike Pethokoukis, he's not a money guy.

While the budget simulator does limit the choices you can make, it still shows it can be done as long as you insulate yourself from outside forces (meaning special interests and lobbies).

If you're not beholden to them then you can make the choices dispassionately, unemotionally, and logically. But once you let them start playing the “But it's for the children!” game, the choices would become more difficult. And once you make one compromise, others become easier. Eventually you'll reach the point where you'll find you can make few, if any cuts because someone has convinced you that someone else somewhere will suffer. But what they won't tell you is that they'll suffer anyways but far worse than if you'd made the cuts. Emotion rather than logic rules and that's always the worst way to make the decisions like this.

If you want to see if you can balance the budget, give it a try.

Dispelling The Myths About The Tea Party - Part VII

Bill Whittle tackles yet another myth about the Tea party, specifically immigration and racism. As Bill tells us, far too many Tea party detractors have labeled us “stupid uneducated Neanderthals. We're white trash rednecks, knuckle-dragging proto-Nazis, KKK-loving violent extremists ready to execute anyone who won't bend their knee to the upcoming Christian theocracy...Oh, and we're domestic terrorists.” We've also been accused of being anti-immigration. We're not. We're anti-illegal immigration. There's a big difference.

I'll let Bill explain it as he does so far better than I can.



I must admit I like his suggestion about going to Jessica Alba or Lady Gaga's house and showing them up for the hypocrites they are.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was a nice weekend weather-wise, allowing us to attend to stacking the last of the fire wood and moving The Boat moved next to the garage in preparation for winter storage.

BeezleBub had today off and only had to work on school work and his share of the outdoors work. Both of us even managed to watch the Patriots game this evening without having to resort to using the DVR for anything other than replaying a particular play now and then.

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It's been a week since we made the change back to Standard Time and it's still throwing us off. At first I thought it was just me having those “It's 4 in the afternoon?!” moments, but I've found everyone is still dealing with it. I don't recall having the effects of the time change lasting quite this long.

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Is California destined for bankruptcy? A number of people including California residents Allysia Finley and Victor Davis Hanson think so.

What's telling is reading the comments to both of their pieces and finding a number of other Californians believe it should be allowed to happen because they see it as the only way to restore fiscal sanity to California's government at state and county level. A few opposing the idea keep trying to play the “California pays far more in federal taxes than it gets back” card, using it as justification for the other 49 states to bail out its unsustainable spending. Not one of one of those trying to sell that idea included any mention of slashing government spending. Not one.

California is learning the meaning of Maggie Thatcher's warning: “Socialism works until you run out of other people's money.”

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Greg Sullivan tells us about the New Prohibition: No Icky Boys, Please.

The thought of boys actually being boys is anathema to some parents, and the results of their efforts to change the nature of their sons are likely to be highly negative. At worse, they may be condemning them to a mateless life as most women like manly men (all claims otherwise to the contrary), not ambiguously gendered 'men' who avail themselves of the same pampering as women (mani/pedis, facials, hair highlights, waxing, etc). Women (for the most part) are looking for mates, not girlfriends.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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Is President Barack Obama a malignant narcissist? You be the judge.

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Could it be Democrats want to make sure any spending cuts made by the new GOP-majority Congress will be as painful as possible?

If I had to guess, I'd say the answer is an unqualified “Yes.”

I get the impression they want to ensure the American taxpayer receives the maximum amount of pain possible in order to keep as many of their tax-and-spend policies in place as they possibly can.

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It sounds like the owner of this upscale grocery store in the South End of Boston has decided to borrow a page from Obama's book by placing the blame for its failure upon their customers.

Or maybe it could be because they were charging too darn much for their food in the midst of a recession. Nah, that can't be it. It must be because their customers were too stupid to realize they needed to spend a lot more for their groceries than they would shopping at the local supermarkets.

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I wouldn't mind one of these on the trusty F150!

Maybe we can convince the New Hampshire Department of Safety to do likewise. I'd get one.

(H/T Instapundit)

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Kathleen McKinley comments on (and links to) John Stossel's latest jab at affirmative action.

While Stossel's stunt was not original (a number of university students at various schools have tried the same thing over the past few years), he did make his point about affirmative action being inherently racist. Kathleen also offers a story about a friend of her son becoming a victim of affirmative action.

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It looks like the voter fraud virus has spread from the general population in Minnesota to the campus of the University of Minnesota.

This from the same folks who managed to get Al Franken 'elected' to the US Senate.

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

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Cap'n Teach catches the New York Times committing yet another hypocritical pot-calling-the-kettle-black faux pas.

Their arrogance (or maybe it's a case of short-term memory loss) never ceases to amaze me.

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Our favorite Texan in the UK makes some disturbing discoveries in a British grocery store.

Rachel, we hope you'll come home soon!

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the last of our firewood is finally stacked and under cover, The Boat is in its winter storage spot, and where we're still trying to adjust to the 4 months of Standard Time.

Marx, Global Communism, And the Left

Guest blogger Bill has contributed a few more thoughts definitely worth sharing.

What’s amazing about Marx is that he hit the nail on the head about Communism being Global. The reason is also a 100% exact parallel to Liberals. Marx did however wholly miss the nature of its world wide dominance.

Global Communism isn’t an inevitability, but it cannot exist in its self-conceived purity if there is any viable alternative. Its purity can only be achieved if no comparison can be had with a system allowing even remedial functional or inspired individuality. That is why Communist governments must keep its subjects as ignorant of the rest of the world as possible (North Korea, anyone? - ed.). Subjects of Communist rule cannot be trusted, only used and controlled. An Iron Curtain in any form is meant to enforce the captivity of its subjects. However it is easy to understand that it may actually be more important as a filter to keep the subjects ignorant of other peoples. After all “peace” for Marxists isn’t the absence of violence, only the absence of dissent.

Liberals congregate together not merely because they are like-minded, but because if they actually had to be “in” the world at large they would risk being cured of their self-centered intentions-based idealism. Insulation in all forms is the ever present requirement of a sustained Liberal environment.

Indeed.

Liberal 'Contributions' To American Culture

Occasional guest contributor Bill gives us these points to ponder.

What have Liberals contributed to the once proud American culture, aside from the HR 3200 abortion?

- “Putting others first” has become “Paying far more attention to how others live their lives than how they live their own.”

- Being open minded has become abject permissiveness.

- Deriding the smug holier-than-thou small-minded Christian faithful has been replaced with an ever increasing blind faith in anything wrapped up in saccharin faux-humanist pseudo-scientific garb. Genuine lack of critical thinking leads them to logic defying leaps of faith in the cult of Global Warming, and the wholesale unquestioned goodness of (of all things) Politicians. Boiled down, all the sins that some cast against Christians to discredit anything they have to say or believe, has come full circle to be held as badges of credit by those same people.

- “Question Authority” as a means of mutual recognition and respect on ethical, moral and functional grounds has become “Question It”. But if the answer isn’t served up to them on a platter and stated in kindergarten language, or challenges them in any way, then they never let the answer be tolerated.

- If history does not support their world view comfortably, then history must be changed.

- The phrase “a friend in need is a friend in deed” is utterly lost.

- They speak of the eternal myth of “fairness” as though it's not just real, but a cornerstone truth of morality. Their belief that earthly justice, real justice, is within mankind's ability to exercise regularly, let alone understand, is spoken of as though it should be as expected as the morning sun rise. It is delusional.

- They believe it's better to be a victim. It's easy, and morally righteous to boot.

- Having conviction in almost any belief is held in contempt as something selfishly fascistic. Ethical and moral ambivalence is the sign of real goodness and selfless thoughtfulness. To them it's much better to have a stalwart (and louder) conviction of being against others convictions.

- Having an opinion has become a tyrannically inspired judgment for no other reason than it's not couched in kindergarten-safe language, it's not Federation Starfleet approved (sorry Chan, Roddenberry didn’t do us any favors with that B.S.), UN sanctioned, or is a danger of possibly challenging anyone on any level...even if they are not in the room.

- “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” has become an all-consuming unquestionable moral good to not say anything harsh or uncivil to anyone at any time as you might commit the crime of hurting someone's feelings.

- It's acceptable to desecrate, warp or denigrate anything held as dear, sacred, or even functional by anyone espousing anything resembling a traditional American value, so long as the language used to do so is civil, i.e. politically correct.

- The phrases “Grow up!“, and “Get over it” has become instead “There there, it's OK. It's not really your fault.”

- Superiority by actual virtue rigorously exercised has become superiority by consensus of good intentions and emotional projections (and we all know where that road leads). However it's never actually tested lest it's proven fragile.

- Owning your life once meant acknowledging your place in your environment while understanding that God gave each of us enough of a spark of the divine so as to see our great individual potential, and actually setting yourself on a path toward it, beholden to none. Now we’re told it's defined by a collection of goods and 'service to our fellow man' that means “Shut up, do what your told, pay the government what we think you owe it, and maybe, just maybe we’ll keep patting you on the head and telling you how special you are.” Civilian defense corps my ass.

- Childhood now continues to age 26.…emotional maturity and personal responsibility is not required at any age.

- Ah yes, and my favorite: Liberals have given us the proof that it is actually possible to be strong in weakness. Various weaknesses can be maintained, cultured, and grown into a perceived strength given enough of a mindset constructed with tangential versions of actual virtues. They thrive in environments insulated against any challenges that allow such mental structures go unchallenged. Need proof? Just look at any environment where Liberal ideals are the mainstay: politics, academia, media, even science. It's nothing more than mental inbreeding.

- Journalism, once actually lofted as the crowning achievement of a civilized society, has become what is called the Lame Stream Media, a host infected with the virus of propaganda.

- Instead of accepting that God challenges each of us to be stronger in the blessed virtues, God must be challenged because, well, its far easier being pathetic and cozy.

- Somehow, somewhere, the word “humanism” changed markedly. It went from meaning a fan of mankind's innate good virtues along side all of its shortcomings, with a healthy respect of both. And though some innate virtues are not ascribed as coming directly from any godly belief system, they never directly opposed a belief system. Such virtues were in parallel. However, today the word has an undeniable dedication and near dogmatic belief in mankind's greatness, period. A belief its followers maintain less by action than by rigorous pursuit of insulated good intentions, hopefulness and large scale visions of some untethered joy and happy state created by means of some “thing”.

- It's actually possible to be a person motivated to help others while projecting virtuous attributes, and at the same time have a crippling self-centeredness that poisons those around them.

- Everyday words and phrases of the American lexicon have nearly disappeared. Some of those include “humility”, “the American way”, as well as “the American spirit”, “God-given”, “virtue”, “sin”, and to our own devastation, “sovereignty”. That word by itself on the tongue of an American once had tremendous power.

- Individuality was once consisted of basic decency and accountability before man and God. Individuality is now principally marked by self-gratification through commercial consumerism and reveling in the edginess of base impulses.

- God gave us free will so that our lives may have value. Liberals believe God was wrong. They believe free will is over-rated at best, dangerous at worst. Value is in the eye of the law holder.

- It's better to place all possible aspects of humanity under the jurisdiction of some law rather than letting humans and Humanity figure itself out.

I must agree with Bill's points.

His last one peeves me more than many of the others because Liberals have come to believe all that's needed to correct some perceived ill or injustice is to create new legislation to outlaw it. The only problem with that belief is that there are already so many laws that are poorly enforced or universally ignored (mostly by the Left) as to make any new ones just as meaningless. Frankly, we have better things to do with our time and our efforts than to deal with useless and toothless laws, or worse, laws that have far reaching consequences that go way beyond what they were supposed to fix.

And so it goes.

Dispelling The Myths About The Tea Party - Part VI

Far too many people really have little understanding of the Second Amendment and why the Framers of the Constitution included it. And many of those same people have the mistaken belief that disarming a law abiding citizenry will somehow lead to less crime and violence despite abundant evidence to the contrary.

In the next is his series, Bill Whittle explains why 'they' are mistaken and why so many of the rest of us own and carry guns.



As the old saying goes when it comes to dealing with violent criminal miscreants, “Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.”

Thoughts On A Sunday

Like many of the rest of you in the US, we've made the switch back to Standard Time. For the life of me I can't figure out why we even bother making the change any more. Standard Time only lasts a little over 4 months and Daylight Savings Time lasts just under 8, so why bother making the change at all?And since Standard Time isn't really 'standard' anymore, why call it that?

Yet another of the great mysteries of life to ponder.

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I think everyone's heard about sore losers, but sore winners? It seems the Democrats have had more than their share of them over the past few years, with the latest being Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA4) who had a rambling, vitriol-filled 'victory' speech. It seems he was angry because had to spend his precious time actually campaigning in order to keep his job. I guess he felt he shouldn't have to because, after all, he's entitled to his Congressional seat.

What a twit!

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Talk about sending mixed messages!

“Obama calls for compromise, but won't budge on tax cuts.”

It sounds a lot like his version of “bipartisanship” which he defines as “Sit down, shut up, and vote the way I tell you to vote!”

Yeah, that ought to work...

(H/T Instapundit)

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David Starr has a few suggestions about what the incoming Congressional Republicans should do once they're in office.

One of my favorites:

Refuse to pass omnibus spending bills. Each executive department (Defense, State, HHS, Energy, and so on) get one, separate, budget bill. If the bill fails to pass, that department can no longer write checks. This way the voters and the newsies have some idea of how much money gets spent on what. An omnibus spending bill for the entire federal government is so damn big that nobody can figure out how much is going where. Break it up into smaller pieces and it becomes manageable. Divide and conquer still works.

That works for me.

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Will Connecticut become the next New Jersey? If the election results are any indication the answer is yes.

Solid Democrat majorities in the state legislature and a Democrat governor-elect beholden to the unions does not bode well for Connecticut taxpayers.

This good old independent Yankee state is now entirely in the pocket of the unions - especially the government unions - and the three corrupt urban train wrecks which, instead of being the dynamic centers of job and wealth creation that they once were, have become insatiable sponges for dollars: Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport. Their declines have been dramatic: In the late 1950s, Hartford was voted the most pleasant medium-sized city in America to live in - higher than Boston - and I was told about the lines of limousines parked in downtown Bridgeport.

Replace the three cities named above with Trenton, Newark, and Jersey City and you've got New Jersey. Too bad Connecticut doesn't have also have its own Chris Christie.

The WP Parents left Connecticut for New Hampshire 6 years ago after selling the family beach house when the ever increasing tax burden started eating into their retirement savings at an alarming and unsustainable rate. I have a feeling there are going to be a lot more people (and businesses) fleeing Connecticut for similar reasons, just as happened in New Jersey.

As George Santayana said, “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.” And so it appears the people of the Nutmeg State have failed to learn the lesson of New Jersey.

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It's well past time for me to correct an oversight in my blogroll.

There are two New Hampshire bloggers that are long overdue for adding to the New England Blogger list even though I've been reading and linking to them for quite some time.

Say hello to David Starr of News From The Northwoods and Dan Pierce of Granite Pundit.

It's been a while since I've gone through the entire blogroll to update things so I'll be spending some time over the next week or so doing just that.

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Indian Parliamentarians to Obama: “WTF?”

This is in regards to his proven inability to give speeches without a teleprompter. Apparently members of India's Parliament have no problems giving long speeches without the benefit of electronic aids. Even Dubya was able to do so without teleprompter (though he did use them now and then).

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

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I watched the New England Patriots play the Cleveland Browns today.

It. Was. Pitiful.

I had to stop watching towards the end of the 3^rd quarter otherwise I was likely to throw something at the TV screen in frustration. (I did record the game so I can go back and watch the rest of it after I calm down a bit.)

I don't know who those guys in the Patriots uniforms were, but they sure as heck weren't playing like the Pats. Cleveland ran roughshod over them right from the first play. The Pats defense wasn't working. Neither was their offense. In fact, nothing was working for them. It was like they were just going through the motions.

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Cap'n Teach comments upon the latest plea by “globull” warming alarmists to convince Conservatives it's in their best interest to bankrupt the nation in order to save the world.

Yeah. Right.

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Maybe it's time to outsource some of the day-to-day government operations to WalMart. After all the guys running WalMart seem to have it all figured out, while the government can't seem to do anything well except spend even more taxpayer dollars while getting less in return for the money spent.

Goodness knows WalMart can't do any worse.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has been a bit schizoid lately, the woodpile has started its inevitable shrinkage, and where yet again Monday is returning all too soon.

Bruce Wins!

I am pleased to announce that one of our better known New Hampshire bloggers, Bruce (MacMahon) of No Looking Backwards fame, won a seat in the New Hampshire House, representing the town of Brentwood in Rockingham County District 10. Bruce defeated incumbent Democrat Don Petterson.

Not bad for someone who just 4 years ago fled the tyranny of the People's Republic of Massachusetts, smuggling his family across the border to freedom.

Congrats, Bruce!

Not So Much Voting For As Voting Against - Rasmussen

As I write this the polls in my home state of New Hampshire open in 12 and a half hours. I have a feeling the results are going to be shocking to some (particularly Democrats). But even if the Republicans do well and take control of the House of Representatives and make a dent in the Democrat majority in the Senate, it doesn't mean the GOP has a carte blanche to go back to the old way of doing things. Just as in the previous two elections, minority party victories can't be taken as the people voting for them so much as voting against the majority party.

But none of this means that Republicans are winning. The reality is that voters in 2010 are doing the same thing they did in 2006 and 2008: They are voting against the party in power.

This is the continuation of a trend that began nearly 20 years ago. In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected president and his party had control of Congress. Before he left office, his party lost control. Then, in 2000, George W. Bush came to power, and his party controlled Congress. But like Mr. Clinton before him, Mr. Bush saw his party lose control.

That's never happened before in back-to-back administrations. The Obama administration appears poised to make it three in a row. This reflects a fundamental rejection of both political parties.

More precisely, it is a rejection of a bipartisan political elite that's lost touch with the people they are supposed to serve. Based on our polling, 51% now see Democrats as the party of big government and nearly as many see Republicans as the party of big business. That leaves no party left to represent the American people.(emphasis added – ed.)

If neither party can shake itself of the political and philosophical dead weight that has made both parties disliked by the American people, the people themselves will push them aside. The GOP has already started seeing this, with what is in effect a civil war going on within its ranks.

The GOP establishment was being ignored by the rank and file (many of whom support the Tea party) during the various state primaries, electing candidates the establishment didn't want and wouldn't endorse, in turn knocking out a number of RINO incumbents. The same will likely be true during tomorrow's elections. If the GOP establishment doesn't start listening to the rank and file, they will either be replaced or the GOP will find itself going the way of the Whigs. The same could be said of the Democrats, too.

Far too many disaffected Democrats see the party they grew up with and supported being taken over by far left elements that also do a pretty good job of ignoring the American people. Is it any surprise there a number of Democrats supporting the Tea party as well?

It will be interesting to see what happens in Washington after the 112^th Congress is sworn in and gets to work. (It will also be interesting, and a little scary, to see what Pelosi, Reid, and Obama will try to pull off during the lame duck session of Congress after the elections.) Both will bear watching. And if the Congresscritters haven't learned their lessons, we'll be more than happy to throw them out bag and baggage.

As a side note, I received this about Tuesday's elections from part time WP contributor Bill:

If it is truth that a strong centralized government of any kind can not occupy the same place as a strong self determined citizenry, then only one of two "fundamental transformations" will succeed: This Government's transformation of the American character and country, or We the People's fundamental transformation and restoring of the Government. There can be no middle ground, winner take all.

And then he ads this admonition to those not bothering to vote tomorrow:

Iraqi's and Afghani's risk being shot merely attempting to vote. What's our excuse? Voter apathy is, I believe, one of the most basic cornerstone's of the entire situation we find ourselves in.

Indeed.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Due to the outright business of the weekend, this will be a somewhat abbreviated post.

(Hey, sometimes things other than post take priority!)

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BeezleBub finished off the retail season at the farm yesterday, closing out the season with an evening working at the corn maze. He won't be working again until after Thanksgiving when he'll be back to work cutting, splitting, and stacking firewood for next year and the year after. (Some firewood takes a year to dry, other wood – oak and maple, to name two – take two years to dry properly.

I know the next month is going to be torture for him, but at least he knows he'll be back at the farm in December.

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The mid-term campaigns are coming to an end and I think we can expect a major push in campaign ads, telephone polls, and last minute campaign stops. It's going to be totally chaotic.

I can't wait for the quiet to return the day after the elections.

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The siding work at the Bogie Estates is finished and the house looks pretty spiffy if I do say so myself.

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If we need an example of why socialism should be considered a disease no different than alcoholism, then this one should do.

Some folks still haven't been able to figure out that socialism has to be paid for by someone and that once that 'someone's' money is gone, so is socialism.

Then again no one's ever said socialists are capable of the long view. History has certainly proven that one more than one occasion.

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One of the other reasons I'm not putting together my usual lengthy Sunday posts is, quite frankly, a problem with the cooling fan on the video card in my computer. You see, it doesn't work anymore. That means the GPU on the card will overheat after a while and cause the video card to fail forcing a reset on my machine. It's quite annoying and at the moment I can't justify buying a new card, particularly since I have the means of fixing the cooling problem. It's just a matter of actually getting to it...maybe Monday...or Tuesday...or some other day.

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Kathleen McKinley links to a letter by a life-long Democrat horrified by what Obama has done to the Democrat Party.

This reminds me of Ronald Reagan's explanation about why he became a Republican: “I didn't leave the Democrat Party. It left me.”

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And that's the (greatly abbreviated) news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the leaves are still on the trees, the woodstove has been running around the clock, and where there are still boats out on the lake!

Dispelling The Myths About The Tea Party - Part V

Bill Whittle continues with his series about what it is we believe and why in his efforts to dispel the myths about the Tea party and its supporters.



I particularly agree with his point about the economy, specifically that the recession was “created by bad law.”

Give Us A (Commercial) Break...Some More!

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, they prove me wrong.

As I wrote here, the ratio of negative to positive campaign ads is seriously skewed to the negative, with less than 4% of the ads I saw on TV being positive (or at least not negative).

Now that the campaign season is down to its last few days before the elections, the level of rhetoric and the demonizing of the opposition has reached deafening levels. Smear campaigns have teetered on the brink of libel and slander. Last ditch efforts to derail opponent's campaigns have also reached a fever pitch.

One of the latest here in New Hampshire has been an effort by the New Hampshire Democrat Party to goad the US Attorney into investigating Republican candidate for New Hampshire's First Congressional District for fiscal improprieties because he amended his financial disclosure form to include a bank account he hadn't disclosed previously. Never mind incumbent Democrat Carol Shea-Porter has had to amend hers over 30 times, 9 times at the insistence of the Federal Election Commission. Isn't that the pot calling the kettle an off-shade of gray?

I would think if there were any issues about the new disclosure that the FEC would have made an issue of it, wouldn't you?

Fact checking some of the various ads on both sides shows the truthfulness quotient has fallen precipitously as we get closer to November 2^nd and I have no reason to believe it won't continue its fall into the cellar.

And as bad as it is here in New Hampshire, it's far worse just south of the border in the People's Republic of Taxachusetts, and in California, Illinois, and Colorado. (Some of the 'super-stations' we receive on satellite include KTLA in Los Angeles, WGN in Chicago, and KWGN in Denver.) It's gotten to the point that I can't even watch the news without having to mute the sound every time a political ad airs. We've taken to recording any of the shows we'd normally watch and then zapping through the commercials just so we don't have to watch or listen to the crap pouring out of the TV.

Even listening to music on the radio has become problematic as the ads have intruded there, too, with political hopefuls in four states (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont) airing an increasing number of ads, most of them negative.

The end can't come too soon.

Rigging The Vote, 21st Century Style

Sometimes they get the dead to vote, in many cases more than once. Sometimes they find full ballot boxes in the trunks of cars or in garages, all of them marked for their favorite Democrat candidate. Sometimes they are able to get homeless people and illegal aliens to the polls. But now they've gone high tech, rigging voting machines in Nevada to set the default vote for US Senator to Harry Reid.

In this case who are 'they'?

Read on:

Since early voting started, there have been credible reports that voting machines in Clark County, Nevada are automatically checking Harry Reid's name on the ballot.

--snip--

Now there's absolutely no independently verified evidence of chicanery with the voting machines (yet), but it is worth noting that the voting machine technicians in Clark County are members of the Service Employees International Union. The SEIU spent $63 million in elections in 2008 and is planning on spending $44 million more this election cycle -- nearly all of that on Democrats.

Yup, just program the machines to pick the candidate of your choice and watch the votes tally up! And we thought the Chicago Way was corrupt.

Every So Often They Get It Right

It seems we always hear about how poorly government does just about everything. For the most part, that's true. But every so often they get things right.

In this case, it looks like government has managed to get at least 12 things right. What am I talking about?

Government websites.

The twelve sites honored in the linked article cover both federal and state sites, showing how good they can be.

Unfortunately government can also have some pretty bad websites, too.

Thoughts On A Sunday

The chilly fall weather we've been experiencing over the past week will be replaced by warm temps, with daytime highs in the 70's and nighttime lows in the 50's, giving us a brief respite before the cooler weather returns.

That means we won't need to use the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove for most of the week.

That's just fine by me.

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By way of GraniteGrok comes this excellent way to start your morning: Five minutes of Lieutenant Colonel Allan West.

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Apparently there are a number of Dems who really don't like Lieutenant Colonel Allan West and are working hard to paint him as the anti-woman Congressional candidate.

The question is, is going after Allen West a smart strategy or a sign of Democrat desperation?

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Bogie keeps us up to date on the renovations taking place at the Bogie Estates. This week: new siding and new windows.

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This doesn't fill me with confidence in the federal government.

It appears our benevolent and ever expanding government didn't have any idea how many data centers it really has, underestimating the total by over a thousand.

If a thousand were ten percent of the total, that's one thing. But in this case their estimate was off by almost 50 percent (47.7%), with a July 2010 count revealing there are actually 2094 federal data centers.

This doesn't bode well for anyone claiming the government is capable or competent to handle anything, including running our lives.

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I have to agree with fellow New Hampshire resident P.J. O'Rourke on this one:

They hate our guts. And they're drunk on power.

They don’t just hate our Republican, conservative, libertarian, strict constructionist, family values guts. They hate everybody’s guts. And they hate everybody who has any. Democrats hate men, women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, gays, straights, the rich, the poor, and the middle class.

Democrats hate Democrats most of all. Witness the policies that Democrats have inflicted on their core constituencies, resulting in vile schools, lawless slums, economic stagnation, and social immobility. Democrats will do anything to make sure that Democratic voters stay helpless and hopeless enough to vote for Democrats.

P.J. Also goes on to say this: “This is not an election on November 2. This is a restraining order.”

And then some.....

(H/T Instapundit)

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Here's yet another example of Democrats telling us “Do as we say, not as we do.”

While the President has been decrying the ability of corporations to donate money to political campaigns or pay for campaign ads through proxies, he's kept quiet about labor unions doing exactly the same thing.

Never mind that labor unions are, to all intents and purposes, no different from the very groups the President has been bashing. They are a business, despite what they may claim. The only difference? Labor unions unanimously support the Democrats. (Or at least the union leadership does. That's not necessarily true of the rank-and-file.) Therefore, they get a pass from the President, Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and the DNC. If the unions supported Republicans, you know darned well the union sponsored ads and campaign contributions would be condemned just as other corporate donations have been.

It's the double standard applied out in the open and publicly.

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Dr. Joy Bliss covers how the poor are different from both the non-poor and the poor of other countries. Some of it deals with the reasons for poverty:

Those without socialist ideologies know that poverty in America is often temporary, often by life-style choice, sometimes by bad luck, and often because of dysfunctional life choices and/or character flaws and mental disability and illness.

America's poor are significantly better off than the poor of other nations. In fact, many of our poor would be considered quite wealthy in other nations.

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Anthony Watts hosts guest blogger Thomas Fuller on what Fuller calls The League of 2.5.

Fuller makes one error that puts his entire post into question: using only 52 years of CO₂ and temperature data to make his case.

As one of those engineering types who deals with data and data analysis on a regular basis, I can safely say that if I based any kind of 'trend' on such a tiny data set I'd quickly find myself called on the carpet, if not fired outright. When it comes to climate a 52 year, 100 year, or 200 year data set is far too small and should be considered a 'snapshot' at best. To get a better idea of an actual long term trend, the data set needs to span 1,000 or more years. (Even 400-some years of data would be far more indicative, something that is available via British Royal Navy logbooks dating back to the late 1500's.)

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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To add some fuel to the fire, so to speak, here's a speech by Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus addressing climate change and how science is no longer driving the debate, but politics.

Klaus is an economist by trade, considered by many to be absolutely first-rate. He understands modeling and the limitations of modeling. With economics you have large data sets covering hundreds of years and still the computer models used to predict economic activity get it wrong (though usually by a matter of degree, not magnitude). By comparison, climate modeling is crude, with questionable data sets and far too much political influence affecting the outcomes.

One thing I must agree with Klaus upon is this:

To reduce the interpretation of the causality of all kinds of climate changes and of global warming to one variable, CO₂, or to a small proportion of one variable – human-induced CO₂– is impossible to accept. Elementary rationality and my decades-long experience with econometric modeling and statistical testing of scientific hypotheses tell me that it is impossible to make strong conclusions based on mere correlation of two (or more) time series. In addition to this, it is relevant that in this case such a simple correlation does not exist. The rise of global temperature started approximately 150 years ago but man-made CO₂ emissions did not start to grow visibly before the 1940s. Temperature changes also repeatedly moved in the opposite direction than the CO₂ emissions trend suggests.

Or as one of my favorite nuclear physicists – Dr. Gregory Greenman – put it, “Correlation does not imply causality.”

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OK, I can understand this considering where it came from, but this person has got to get a grip.

If a judge faced impeachment every time they rendered an unpopular ruling we'd be so tied up with impeachment proceedings that nothing would get done, or judges would be so intimidated they wouldn't rule on anything at any time. Call it yet another version of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

So this Oregon Democrat Congressional bozo doesn't like the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizen's United case? Too bad. I'm not aware of any SCOTUS decision that's made everybody happy. It just doesn't happen. And to base his impeachment upon perjury about how Chief Justice Roberts would rule shows the level of asininity to which this Democrat has fallen.

I think this guy would have far better use for his time and our tax dollars than to pursue this doomed effort.

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There's nothing quite so powerful as the confessions of a former Leftist. Kathy Shaidle is one such Leftist convert to the Tea party, enlightening us with the 8 things she wishes she'd known (or remembered) when she was a Leftist.

Here's a peak at a couple:

#8: Ronald Reagan wasn't a total jerk.

#6: Michael Moore is a liar.

#2: A lot of progressive heroes were jerks.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing. She covers a lot of territory and her journey to enlightenment is eye-opening.

(H/T Vermont Tiger)

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I'd hoped to pull the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water today, but lousy weather conspired against me. Fortunately warmer/nicer weather arrives starting tomorrow (as I mentioned at the top of the post), making it far more likely BeezleBub and I will finally be able to get it out of the water and back to The Manse. I hope.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the fall foliage is past peak (but still beautiful), the weather has turned schizophrenic, and where Halloween is a week away.

Give Us A (Commercial) Break!

I don't know if any of you out there have noticed, but the ratio of negative campaign ads to positive ads is seriously skewed to the negative. It seems to me that they're all starting to blend together, making it difficult to differentiate one candidate's ad from another.

All I do know for certain is that I'm sick and tired of it and that I'm not the only one.

Over the past few days I've tracked the total number of ads on our local TV station and those south of the border in Boston, watching about 12 hours of TV over that time. There were an average of 5 campaign ads during every commercial break. Figured 4 commercial breaks every hour that gives us a rough total of 20 ads every hour and 240 ads over the 12 hours I watched TV. Of those 240 ads, only 9 were positive ads, and then only barely positive (meaning they didn't name a specific candidate's opponent and provide negative information about them). That means out of all the ads I tracked less than 4% (3.75%, to be precise) could have been considered positive ads.

That's pretty sad.

One thing I know for sure: I'll be darned glad when November 2^nd had come and gone because it means all those ads will disappear...until November of 2011, when the ads for the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries will start up. And if that isn't bad enough, presidential hopefuls from both parties considering a run in 2012 will start showing up here in New Hampshire and in Iowa on or sometime shortly after November 3^rd of this year.

Couldn't they at least give us a short break before starting their 2-year long bid for the Oval Office? We need time to recuperate from the campaign ad overload from the mid-term elections.

Dispelling The Myths About The Tea Party - Part IV

One of the great tenets of the Left is that wealth is a zero-sum game, meaning they believe that in order for one person to become wealthy that someone else had to become poor.

Those of us who support the Tea party know that belief to be a canard, an excuse to steal wealth from those who created it.

If you aren't sure you believe that, then Bill Whittle has a little lesson about wealth, how it's created, and who benefits. (A hint: Everyone benefits.)