Thoughts On A Sunday

We finally got the rain we've needed for some time, keeping this May from being the driest on record. Saturday was nice, bing sunny and quite warm. The rain moved in over night and is expected to continue through Tuesday at least.

No yard work was done, but not from lack of trying. There were just too many other things needing to get done and the yard work could wait.

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One has to wonder about former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley's announcement that he's running for President. While I am glad Hillary is getting more competitors, I don't see O'Malley as a good candidate. All one has to do is look what he did for Maryland and figure he'll try to do the same to the rest of the country.

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I knew Nancy Pelosi was off her rocker, but to claim Marco Rubio is a “bad catholic” because he supports traditional marriage shows us the depths of her madness. Then again, her home district is San Francisco/Berkeley which certain explains why she's so out of touch with reality.

Then again, she's never really given a damn for any of the traditional American social mores.

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Ian McEwan delves into the issue of First Amendment rights during his commencement speech at Dickinson College and pulls no punches.

[F]ree speech was, is and always will be, under attack – from the political right, the left, the center. It will come from under your feet, from the extremes of religion as well as from unreligious ideologies. It’s never convenient, especially for entrenched power, to have a lot of free speech flying around….

It’s worth remembering this: freedom of expression sustains all the other freedoms we enjoy. Without free speech, democracy is a sham. Every freedom we possess or wish to possess (of habeas corpus and due process, of universal franchise and of assembly, union representation, sexual equality, of sexual preference, of the rights of children, of animals – the list goes on) has had to be freely thought and talked and written into existence.

And never has free speech been under attack here in America as it is today, with the call by many of the arrogant elite in academia and politics calling for curbing speech with which they disagree, trying to minimize it by calling it “hate speech” and therefore trying to delegitimize it.

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The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler opines on the hypocrisy of the labor unions in regards to LA's vote to increase the minimum wage there to $15.

Frankly, none of this surprises me as unions lost their moral center a long time ago.

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Cap'n Teach tells us about Obama's continuing efforts to disarm the American public by trying to push through ever more restrictive regulations to make it difficult, if not impossible for Americans to keep their guns.

Then again, the states could just tell Obama and the rest of the federal bureaucrats to “piss off” and refuse to enforce them in any way, shape or form. It's time for the states to exercise their rights under the Tenth Amendment and remind The One that he is not a king and that the federal government has no right to curtail any of the rest of our rights.

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Noah Rothman slams the present-day Cassandras of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change.

Writes Rothman:

The latest fad that has come to dominate the attentions of our would-be Cassandras is the matter of climate change, and specifically the immediate threat this phenomenon poses to American national security. Washington Post opinion writer Catherine Rampell is the latest to submit a classic example of partisan agitation disguised as dispassionate analysis related to this vogue subject on Thursday. She contended in that essay that the Republican 2016 presidential field, one primarily composed of various breeds of hawks, are so blinkered by their ideology that they have thus far refused to address at least one glaring national security threat: That posed by global temperature fluctuations and the chaotic weather patterns the result.

I've heard a number of acquaintances and even a few family members blithely mouthing the words of those Cassandras without once thinking about whether they are accurate or merely rhetoric meant to push an agenda that will neither “save the Earth” nor serve anyone any good in any way.

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No one really needed to tell me this: Bernie Sanders' ideas about economics and market forces stink, literally.

He's mouthing phrases and ideas right out of Marxist economic theory, not understanding that freedom to choose among many different items from competitors is what keeps the cost of goods down. When on limits such choices, particularly when government does so, the cost of those goods goes up even as the supply shrinks. We certainly saw that during the bad old days of the Soviet Union and now unrepentant socialist Bernie Sanders wants to make us suffer under the same unworkable and bankrupting economic system.

Someone should by Bernie a book about the rise and fall of the USSR and its bankrupt ideology and economic system.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the rains have arrived, the summerfolk have left early, and where the call of summer is getting louder.

More On The Minimum Wage Side Effects

As a follow-up to my previous post on the subject, many of the unintended consequences of raising the minimum wage to $15/hour in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, and Seattle are continuing to come to light. One of the biggest effects still being ignored by those who successfully convinced the powers-that-be in those cities to more than double the .federal minimum wage is the damage it is doing to businesses, particularly small businesses.

The pending 67% minimum wage hike in LA (from $9 to $15 per hour by 2020), which is the same as a $6 per hour tax (or $12,480 annual tax per full-time employee and more like $13,500 per year with increased employer payroll taxes. (Emphasis in original post.)

Call it yet another unintended consequence, that being the employer isn't just paying the employee even more money, but has to pony up even more cash to pay the payroll taxes - meaning social security - as well as state disability and unemployment insurance costs. (Those costs go up as wages go up.)

Let's see how one small business owner is reacting to LA's move.

I will be moving my two companies out of Los Angeles when the lease is due to renew. I’ve been here since 1966, grew up in L.A., but I cannot make it anymore. When the city compels me to pay employees $15 per hour, it comes out of my pocket. Last year, my employees made more than I, the owner, did. I am still trying to pay off the line of credit that got me through the recession.

I am not a charity. I can’t raise my product prices because of pricing pressure. I can’t reduce my expenses; in fact, salaries are my greatest expense, and $15 per hour increases my expenses and reduces my profit.

Just when small-business owners were clawing out of the recession’s devastation, the L.A. City Council hits us with this. We are the ones who hire people, expand the economy, market our products or services, risk capital for research and development, and buy inventory.

As a result of this decision, L.A. will have a mass exodus of employers from the city, leaving increased unemployment, less tax revenue and increased city debt in its wake.

KEVIN McNAMEE
Woodland Hills, Calif.

Now multiply that by hundreds, if not thousands of small businesses who cannot foot the bill for even higher labor costs. How many will lose their jobs? How many businesses will close their doors or move out?

How many minimum wage earners will actually benefit from a $15 minimum wage? I bet the number will be much smaller than the Minimum Wage Social Justice Warriors believe it will be. Much smaller.

In the end unemployment will go up as jobs will disappear because entry-level employees will have been priced out of the market.

Unintended But Not Unexpected

The buzz about LA's decision to boost the minimum wage in the city to $15 per hour hasn't died away, but more than a few folks have been finding out the hard way that it's going to have unintended consequences, much as has been seen in Seattle and San Francisco.

One of the biggest side effects is that it will cost a lot of people their jobs because many businesses employing people at minimum wage cannot justify paying the higher wage when their margins are already razor thin. This is a lesson the oh-so-helpful-and-compassionate Left never seems to learn despite many examples provided over the past few decades. Controlling the price of a commodity, be it something like gasoline or the cost of labor, always ends up increasing the costs and reducing the available supply. In the case of artificially boosting the cost of labor, the supply of jobs will decrease.

In 1971, in an attempt to tame inflation, Republican President Richard Nixon imposed controls on almost all prices. By 1974, he had lifted most of them. But those on gas remained. Under Democratic President Jimmy Carter, they led to widespread shortages and long lines at service stations -- and didn't keep prices from rising. But the controls lasted until his successor, Ronald Reagan, lifted them in 1981.

Liberals learned an unforgettable lesson: Price controls on gasoline don't work. In recent decades, when gas prices have soared, Democrats have shown no desire to repeat the lesson.

But they embrace a similar approach for another problem: low pay for many workers. Chicago decided last year to boost the minimum wage to $13 an hour by the middle of 2019. Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles have gone even higher, raising the floor to $15 an hour in the next few years, and other cities may follow suit. It's a price control on labor.

The problem is that a higher legal minimum wage is at odds with the prevailing supply of and demand for labor. If you set the minimum too high, you will get a shortage of jobs. Forbidding employers from paying $9 or $12 an hour means that many of their workers won't get $13 or $15 an hour. They will get zero per hour, because those jobs will disappear.

But unlike the lesson about gas prices and supplies, they've chosen to ignore the old lesson, thinking that it doesn't apply because they're talking about people, not gasoline. But they fail to understand that labor, meaning people, are a commodity just like any other. Try to artificially boost the cost of a commodity and you end up with less people willing to pay the price for it. The result – the demand for labor goes down. But that doesn't seem to worry the Minimum Wage Social Justice Warriors one bit.

Minimum-wage laws are another issue where the words seem to carry great weight, leading to the fact-free assumption that such laws will cause wages to rise to the legally specified minimum. Various studies going back for decades indicate that minimum-wage laws create unemployment, especially among younger, less experienced, and less skilled workers.

When you are unemployed, your wages are zero, regardless of what the minimum-wage law specifies.

There's the rub. Ask someone who is unemployed if they'd rather have a job at $7.25/hour or no job at all and the chances are they'd take the $7.25/hour job. It won't matter if the minimum wage is raised to $15/hour because they'll still have no job because many of them don't have the job skills or experience to make them worth hiring. This is particularly true “among younger, less experienced, and less skilled workers.”

And while the oh-so-helpful-and-compassionate Left has succeeded in pushing higher minimum wages in LA, Seattle, and San Francisco/Oakland, it appears they can't be bothered to answer questions being asked by the numerous business owners who are being drastically affected by their 'compassion'.

A recent story in a San Francisco newspaper says that some restaurants and grocery stores in Oakland’s Chinatown have closed after the city’s minimum wage was raised. Other small businesses there are not sure they are going to survive, because many depend on a thin profit margin and a high volume of sales.

At an angry meeting between local small-business owners and city officials, the local organization that had campaigned for the higher minimum wage was absent. They were probably some place congratulating themselves on having passed a humane “living wage” law. The group most affected was also absent — inexperienced and unskilled young people, who need a job to get some experience, even more than they need the money.

They almost never consider the consequences of their actions because, after all, they know better and can safely ignore the laws of economics, particularly when it comes to market forces. Their understanding of what drives prices is almost non-existent as is their understanding that artificially controlling the costs of much needed commodities always has a negative effect because it short-circuits the feedback mechanisms that indicate what various goods and services cost to provide. A perfectly good present day sample of that is Venezuela, where goods are scarce and the costs have skyrocketed despite the government's total control of prices and wages.

In regards to the push by these oh-so-helpful-and-compassionate founts of economic wisdom to help the folks making minimum wage, they'll be able to see the effects of their compassion and it will look like this:

Thoughts On A Sunday

This is a rather abbreviated TOAS this weekend as it has been quite busy, between a heavy dose of yard work and preparations for our town's Memorial Day celebration.

We had a few friends over to help with the more labor intensive yard work – a lot of weeding, trimming, and mulching – something we normally handled ourselves. But due to an incident I experienced a little over a week ago, I have found myself quite incapable of performing my regular landscaping duties, hence the help from friends.

I also found I needed to make an appearance at our little town's memorial Day celebration, something the townsfolk hereabouts take very seriously. Basically it has to do with my new position within town government, hence my participation was expected. Let it not be said I was unwilling to do what I would have done voluntarily.

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Sad but true:

In just 3 generations, our young men have gone from taking Normandy to Boy Scouts not being allowed to use WATER guns.

Call it the wussification of American boys, a goal the Third Wave Feminists have been working towards for decades.

Of course then we'll hear the refrain “They just don't make men the way they used to” after some of these so-called feminist find that men no longer measure up to their expectations. (Yes, despite their protestations to the contrary, many women do want good ol' American men of the type that existed in great numbers in even the more recent past.) What they're finding instead are men like the “onesie boy” in the ObamaCare ads. They want a man and what they get is a male 'girlfriend'.

Men who are still unafraid to be men are either already in a committed relationship with a woman who appreciates them, or they've decided they don't want to deal with the BS, heartache, and financial destruction getting involved with a TWF would impose upon them and have gone into stealth mode.

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Both Ted Nugent and Robert De Niro tell college grads some hard truths.

Too bad these grads were lied to during their entire collegiate 'experience' and too many of them are unprepared for the Real World. They're about top get a rude awakening.

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Speaking of the Real World, Ace of Spades delves into some harsh realities being devoutly ignored by the TWF and the leftist press. The press focuses on subjects and events that are, quite frankly, trivial and of no importance in the real world while choosing not to cover atrocities and real events that, had they happened here, would have them up in arms.

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The People's Cube covers the 7 Stages of the Progressive Agenda.

Yup. Sounds just about right.

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I could have told them this: The media is losing the War on Nerds.

They may have thought nerds are defenseless, but now they're finding out they pissed off the wrong bunch of people. They have forgotten that in the end, nerds run everything because chances are they created almost everything modern society uses.

What happens if nerds go on strike? All one has to do is watch Revenge of the Nerds – Part III to find out just how bad it can be for those of you who piss us off.

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And that's the abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the warm weather has returned, we still need rain, and the summerfolk have appeared in droves.

A Husband Abuser's Epiphany

Here's something that I think will strike pretty close to home for a lot of people in “21st Century Relationships”, as Instapundit puts it.

A women writes about her “Aha Moment” when she realizes she's been abusing her husband for years, recounting how it came to be, and just how easy it is to become an abuser.

My “Aha Moment” happened because of a package of hamburger meat. I asked my husband to stop by the store to pick up a few things for dinner, and when he got home, he plopped the bag on the counter. I started pulling things out of the bag, and realized he’d gotten the 70/30 hamburger meat – which means it’s 70% lean and 30% fat.

That’s how it started. I launched into him. I berated him for not being smarter. Why would he not get the more healthy option? Did he even read the labels? Why can’t I trust him? Do I need to spell out every little thing for him in minute detail so he gets it right? Also, and the thing I was probably most offended by, why wasn’t he more observant? How could he not have noticed over the years what I always get? Does he not pay attention to anything I do?

As he sat there, bearing the brunt of my righteous indignation and muttering responses like, “I never noticed,” “I really don’t think it’s that big of a deal,” and “I’ll get it right next time,” I saw his face gradually take on an expression that I’d seen on him a lot in recent years. It was a combination of resignation and demoralization. He looked eerily like our son does when he gets chastised. That’s when it hit me. “Why am I doing this? I’m not his mom.”

I suddenly felt terrible. And embarrassed for myself. He was right. It really wasn’t anything to get bent out of shape over. And there I was doing just that. Over a silly package of hamburger meat that he dutifully picked up from the grocery store just like I asked. If I had specific requirements, I should have been clearer. I didn’t know how to gracefully extract myself from the conversation without coming across like I have some kind of split personality, so I just mumbled something like, “Yeah. I guess we’ll make do with this. I’m going to start dinner.”

And then I sat there and thought long and hard about what I’d just done. And what I’d been doing to him for years, probably. The “hamburger meat moment,” as I’ve come to call it, certainly wasn’t the first time I scolded him for not doing something the way I thought it should be done.

There's the crux of the matter – scolding her husband for not doing something her way, as if it was automatically better her way and not his. What's worse her realization came over something that, in the bigger scheme of things, really wasn't important. It was trivial. It was minutia. It was petty.

How many relationships, how many marriages ended because of something that, in real life, should have been inconsequential but was blown way out of proportion? How many men gave up when they realized there would be no pleasing their spouse no matter what they did?

I would have posted this a couple of days ago, but I was curious to see the response in the comments. For the most part comments by both sexes agreed with this woman's sudden awakening to what she'd been doing. Only a few women blasted her for “come to Jesus” moment, all but calling her a traitor to the Third Wave Feminist ideology.

Lower Gas Prices Haven't Boosted The Economy As Expected

Unless you've been in coma over the last year or just returned from being off-planet, then you know gas prices plummeted and, even though they are creeping back up, are about $1 a gallon cheaper than this time last year.

One would think that with fuel prices in general being a lot lower than they have been that people would be spending some of the money they've saved because of lower fuel prices on things they've needed (or wanted) but had to put off when prices were higher. But that hasn't been the case.

...40% of Americans are using the money they’ve saved from lower gas prices to pay for necessities like groceries and rent payments.

Fewer than 20% of people are banking that extra cash, and fewer than 5% are investing it. Bankrate found that only about one in seven of people are spending that extra money on discretionary purchases like dinner out or a vacation. “Household budgets remain very tight,” McBride says. “People don’t have a lot of extra money to throw around, and that’s why we’ve had this slow growth.”

For months, Americans have displayed a reluctance to loosen their purse strings even as gas prices fell. The recent increase in prices at the pump has only confirmed what many people suspected — that those super-low prices weren’t here to stay. More importantly, paying for necessities or socking away those dollars isn’t helping the economy the way economists had hoped.

That wages haven't grown might also be a part of the problem.

While the government reports the Consumer Price Index hasn't changed all that much over the past 6 years or so, it must be remembered that things like the cost of food and fuel aren't part of the CPI calculations. Though the inflation rate has appeared to be low, the actual rate was quite high once those two commodities were figured in to inflation. Even though gas prices have fallen, the cost of food has not, some of that caused by the continuing drought in California.

The lower fuel prices have certainly helped families stretch their dollars a little farther, it hasn't been a boon to the economy. As fuel prices rise again, most families will go back into full austerity mode and rein in their slightly higher spending once again.

Thoughts On A Sunday

After the little bit of rain we had last weekend everything has 'greened' up over the past week. Bare branches with just some buds on them have sprouted leaves and the countryside has exploded with green, along with the yellows, violets, and reds of flowers blooming.

Spring has finally sprung.

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I saw this quote in a piece about another topic, but it perfectly illustrates my beliefs about sanity and insanity.

Insanity is the pursuit of delusion at all costs while sanity is the pursuit of reality at all costs.

That fit's in so well with Einstein's commentary on insanity:

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result this time.

That is indeed the pursuit of delusion at all costs. Too bad none of our Progressive brethren understand that's exactly what they're doing, trying the same policies and strategies again and again even after watching them fail time after time. The expect that it will work this time because, after all, they're on the side of all that's right and good.

Yeah. Right.

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Flopping Aces asks the important question: Who created ISIS?

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As per usual, Dear Leader took an event that involved the death of a public figure and made it all about himself.

So what else is new?

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Have you noticed that when climate scientists adjust climate data, they never explain why they need to adjust it? Could it be that without that 'adjustment', the data shows little or no change in things like temperature or sea level?

Why, exactly, is the satellite data “adjusted” in such a manner? The data is the data, yet, Warmist “scientists” will trot out all sorts of excuses as to why their adjustments are needed, though they never answer “why” the data ends up being so far above the reality of the raw data.

With no adjustments, there is no 'there' there.

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Bird Dog dusts off this oldie and updates a little bit to keep it current.

If nothing else it serves as a lesson that observations colored by emotion can be drastically in error.

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Some feminists really don't get it, nor will they ever get it because they live in an alternate universe of their own making where the laws of physics and biology are severely distorted out of all proportion.

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Airbus may be trying to create a competitor for the venerable C-130 Hercules (in service since the 1950's and through numerous revisions and variations), but it isn't as easy or as cheap as they may have thought.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where green is breaking out all over, Monday won't be as nice as this past weekend, and where Memorial Day weekend fast approaches.

'Rape Culture' Paranoia Affecting Congress

Wonder how far the paranoia has spread in regards to men being falsely accused of improprieties towards women?

Some male members of Congress are making sure they won't be alone with female staffers.

Can you blame them? Seeing how male college students are automatically assumed to be rapists, molesters, or unduly privileged due to their gender, it's no wonder male Congresscritters are taking the initiative before that sick psychopathy infects the halls of Congress as well.

One side effect of this CYA measure is that there are sure to be discrimination lawsuits filed against these defensive tactics because female staffers are not being allowed to spend one-on-one time with their male bosses. It's a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation where in the end everyone loses.

Thank the Third Wave Feminazis for this particular debacle as it is wholly of their own making.

Career Placement Tests

One has top wonder about the veracity of this video, specifically the one student who keeps changing the answers on the career placement test. Unfortunately I think it's probably accurate.


(H/T Maggie's Farm)

Unforeseen Circumstances

It is obvious to anyone readings this blog that posting by me has been sparse. A simple explanation: I had no connection to the 'Net due to circumstances beyond my control. Unexpected and unplanned time away from home, the lack of the laptop I usually use when I'm away, and no wired/wireless connection to the 'Net precluded any posting over the past three days.

It sucks.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was a busy day for the WP clan yesterday. We gathered in a church yard in Connecticut to inter the remains of the WP Dad.

Though he had passed this past fall, it wasn't until yesterday he was laid in his final resting place. And while a solemn and bitter-sweet event, we remembered him with joy in our hearts for he was finally home.

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It boggles my mind that there are so many people in America who seem perfectly willing to greatly restrict or even get rid of our First Amendment Right of free speech. They don't want speech they consider offensive to be uttered by anyone, with 'they' being the only arbiter of what's offensive and what's not.

Following their illogic on this matter, I feel it is their speech which is offensive, willfully ignorant, and purely emotion-driven. Should they succeed, they will find themselves in the cross-hairs of the state as there will be times they utter 'illegal' speech and find themselves locked away for 'counter-revolutionary and incendiary' speech. May the burden of their chains weigh heavily upon them.

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This proves that Noam Chomsky is doing his best to bring about Orwell's 1984.

Then again Chomsky's always been a fascist, so it's no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention.

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Maybe it's time to “tell [Ms.] Grundy to go fly a kite.”

It's bad enough when white heterosexual male college students are automatically assumed to be violent rapists, but when a college professor sees them as the cause of all problems, then one has to wonder whether she's qualified to teach them or is capable of keeping her biased in check when grading them.

My guess is “no”.

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Court orders are for the “little people”, not the US government.

As has been asked by Glenn Reynolds more than once, if the government doesn't feel the need to follow the law, then why should we?

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Despite decades of effort to stop the “blame the victim” tactic when dealing with rape – “The notion that a rape victim deserved to be raped because she was wearing a tight outfit” - something that has, for the most part has been accomplished, that principle was abandoned wholeheartedly in regards to the two Islamofascist pinheads who decided they were going to shoot up a gathering of First Amendment supporters.

That they ended up dead and their plot thwarted is not what the Democrats are talking about. Instead, they're blaming the organizer of the event for the attack, basically saying “She was asking for it!”

The ugly Democrat double standard asserts itself yet again.

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We finally got some rain this evening, the first appreciable rain in almost a month.

Like many areas around the country it's been dry, leaving the conditions right for brush fires. We've certainly experienced a few, though not like some parts of the country.

While the amount of rain we received won't solve the problem with dry conditions over the long run, it does mitigate them for the next day or two.

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And that's the travel and thunderstorm abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the the lawns are still a bit brown, the brush piles are growing at the local dump, and where summerfolk are busy working on getting their summer camps ready.

Something The Anti-Vaxxers Should Know

Something new to consider if you believe not vaccinating you children is the best thing to do: Measles makes you vulnerable to other deadly diseases.

Apparently the disease has two side effects:

First, it leaves the immune system in a weakened state for some weeks after the disease runs its course, assuming it doesn't kill the infected child.

Second, it gives the immune system “amnesia”, meaning that immunities to other diseases a child may have had are gone. In effect, it resets the immune system so it doesn't have any experience with other diseases. Any other vaccinations or immunities built up from exposure to diseases have, in effect, never happened.

Some 650 children a year used to die from measles in the US. When mass vaccination came in after 1960, measles deaths plummeted. But oddly, so did childhood deaths from infectious disease generally, in every country where the measles vaccine was introduced. This has been a major mystery in public health: the vaccine was supposed to protect you from measles, and nothing else.

[Michael] Mina [of Emory University in Atlanta, George] and his colleagues used a complex statistical model to analyze child mortality records from the US, UK and Denmark in the decades before and after measles vaccination began. They found that infectious disease deaths did rise and fall depending on measles cases. In all three places, the timing of this surge exactly matched what would be expected if immune amnesia after measles lasted on average 27 months. The biggest killer was pneumonia, followed by diarrheal diseases and meningitis. (Note: I changed the spelling of some words from British to American spelling. - dce)

This means that it leaves someone vulnerable to diseases to which they were previously immune. It also means that one would have to go through the whole host of immunizations again in order to be protected. But this is assuming, of course, that their parents believe in vaccinations to begin with.

Many parents who reject vaccination do so because they believe having measles is healthier than being vaccinated against it. They might, however, reconsider if there's clear evidence that measles leaves a child vulnerable to pneumonia, meningitis or diphtheria.

Or not. "People who reject vaccines don't think in terms of evidence, so knowing this might not change their minds," says Paul Offit of the University of Pennsylvania, who fights vaccine denial. But then, he says, "people are compelled by fear more than reason"

Ah, yes. The “feelings, not facts” logic that has caused more bad decisions, bad policies, and more harm than just about anything other than war.

A Definition Of Progressivism

Ludwig van Mises:

The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau.

Yup. I'd say that sums it up pretty well.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

Traffic Stupidity

At first I thought it was an isolated incident. However this morning the same thing happened in exactly the same place.

What am I talking about?

Traffic. In this case the traffic on a local bypass.

Part of my route to and from work is on a bypass that goes around the city of Laconia, eliminating the need to go through the city in order to get from one side to the other. There’s nothing new or exotic about that. What’s different is that lately it seems a number of drivers on the bypass have lost their friggin’ minds.

Generally when one is going to merge onto a limit access highway you are supposed to accelerate up to speed to match the speed of the traffic already on the highway. This is supposed to make it easier (and safer) to merge into traffic.

But what happens when one or more vehicles already on the highway decide they don’t want to be ‘stuck’ behind the merging traffic and accelerate hard, bring their speed up by 15 to 20mph? One of three things will occur: the person trying to merge will either have to brake hard in order to prevent a collision, accelerate hard to make the merge, or collide with the jerk trying to prevent the merge.

What is it in a driver’s psychology that makes them incapable allowing someone else to enter the highway without feeling the need to be in front of them? Is it competitiveness? Are they in some kind of hurry that even a few seconds delay will make them late? Or are they being jerks because they can be?

Let’s face it, visibility for the driver trying to merge is limited. It isn’t easy (or safe) to take one’s eyes off of the road ahead for more than a fraction of a second to check the traffic behind and to one side when trying to merge on to a highway. If the traffic is moving at a steady pace it’s easier to judge whether or not one can safely merge. But if the speed of the traffic changes as it approaches the on-ramp, it screws up the timing of the person trying to merge and creates a dangerous situation for both the person trying to merge and the idiot trying to make sure they stay in front. .
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I have seen this scenario three times in the past three days, one of which was me having to take evasive action when the person on the highway felt they absolutely had to be in front of me, punching the accelerator on their Mustang and forcing me to abort the merge with a heavy application of the brakes. What made this action even stupider is that the Mustang driver then had to apply their brakes to keep from running into the traffic already in front of them on the highway. In other words, that less than swift move on their part bought them all of a fraction of a second in the bigger scheme of things, traffic-wise.

Thoughts On A Sunday

The summer-like weather has arrived, with temps in the 70's today and perhaps 80 tomorrow. We're not complaining by any means because it means the furnace won't be running again any time soon.

The weather has also meant more yard work, an ongoing task from now until fall. The harsh winter did far more damage to a lot of the perennial vegetation than I had originally thought, requiring a lot of pruning of tree limbs and removal of some shrubbery around The Manse.

Work has started on the boat, with the removal of the winter cover (again) and replacement of the canvas snap cover over the cockpit. Scrubbing away the inevitable mildew has also commenced, with a thorough cleaning of the carpet on the deck of the cockpit in the works.

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Elizabeth Price Foley wonders whether Obama is actually going to create his “national” police force in contravention of Congress and the Constitution.

Then again, we already know Obama has no regard for the Constitution and never has. I figure if he succeeds in creating his own Geheim Staatz Polizei that the Obamajugend won't be far behind.

What makes all of this incredible to me is that he has gone out of his way to make sure that relatively small civil/criminal matters have devolved into crises he can exploit. To borrow a term from yet another language, I have to wonder whether all of this is what the Russians call maskirovka, using it as a means to further erode our rights up until the point where he can declare a state of emergency, cancel elections, or if this takes place after the 2016 elections, declares that the state of emergency makes it “unwise” for a new administration to take over until the emergency is over. Of course we know the “emergency” will never end, meaning neither will his reign.

We have to remember that most dictatorships are not often imposed by armed revolution but by the process of open and free elections, whereupon the elected leader changes the laws, in many cases by decree, until there are no more rights for the citizens and the nation becomes yet another police state. And those who elected the leader will wholly support many of the leader's actions...until he starts imprisoning and killing them. Then we'll hear the refrain “But we didn't know!” Yeah. Sure.

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This makes me like Disney even less than I already do.

Walt must be spinning in his grave, knowing that his creation has become yet another corporation supporting indentured servitude of foreign workers.

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On the bright side, we can take a look at the Seven Big Failed Environmental Predictions to see just how far off the mark they were, (Hint: They weren't even close.)

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David Starr beats down the Sunday talking heads who bleated on about Baltimore and what needs to be done to fix the problem.

That Baltimore has been a one-party city (Democrat) since the Eisenhower Administration might have something to do with it.

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Bogie, the Model!

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Gateway Pundit asks “How does Barack Obama manage to insult and pi$$ off one group after another of working Americans?”

One has to remember he really doesn't give a rat's ass about working Americans despite the platitudes he's mouthed over the years. It's always all about him, period. If we keep those two points in mind it explains a lot.

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As if we need yet another reason to hate compact fluorescent light bulbs.

A study performed by Stony Brook University in New York has found “close, prolonged exposure to compact fluorescent bulbs “exacerbated skin conditions,” including skin cancer.”

Dr. Miriam Rafailovich, who conducted the study at Stony Brook...told First Coast News that she believes there are concerns with prolonged exposure to CFLs. “What we found was that these bulbs would emit radiation where if you were exposed to them you got your daily dose not in eight hours, but in minutes,” she says. Her research found that cells exposed to close range compact fluorescent bulbs, “stopped growing and changed shape.” The cause appears to be cracking or deterioration of bulb’s protective white lining, which the study found could allow UVA and UVC to escape.

Yet another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences coming around to bite our wonderful federal government in the ass.

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If anyone really needs to understand New Englanders, and specifically we tried-and-true old fashioned Yankees, this should give you some insight.

In regards to the picture accompanying the linked post, I think just about everyone in my extended family has a table and chairs very much like the ones in the photo. I even have a lot of the family pewter dating back to the late 1700's/early 1800's, much like what is seen in the background of the photo as well as an oriental rug also like the one in the photo. What I don't have (at the moment) is an old New England house. I have a new New England house built to look vaguely like an old New England house.

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The more I hear about Scott Walker, the more I like him.

The latest bit of news that has me liking him: He's in debt, just like me and millions of other Americans.

He's not living high off the hog, has bills to pay just like we do (mortgage, car loan, credit card, etc), which tells me he's much more in tune with the problems those of us in flyover country have to deal with every day. (Yes, I consider New Hampshire part of flyover country because we are looked down upon by the flatlanders from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York.) He's not wealthy (I'm probably a little better off than he is, financially, but that's not saying much), unlike many of his potential opponents for the GOP nomination. He doesn't have the financial baggage so many of the others do.

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Yet another victim of the 'living wage' movement comes to light.

I'm wondering how long it will take for this really bad idea to die the death it so richly deserves. This is an experiment that has been tried before and failed miserably. (France has found out that between the so-called living wage and draconian employment laws and regulations that neither has helped the chronically high unemployment rate, particularly among the young and immigrant population.)

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This shouldn't surprise anyone who's been paying attention.

It turns out that your 'green' cars won't actually save you any green and that they aren't as green as the Greens would have you think.

It's all about the narrative, not the facts.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the boat yards are busy prepping boats for the upcoming boating season, former frost heaves are slowly disintegrating into broken pavement, and where never-ending yard work continues.

Do We Really Make Our Environment Worse?

Alex Epstein explains why we are not destroying the environment, using a simple time-traveler from the 1750's to prove his point.


While we have had effects on the environment, in some cases very bad effects on the environment, we passed the point where we have been lessening the effects some 40 years ago. The air is cleaner than it was. The rivers, ponds, and lakes are also cleaner than they were. The effects of pesticides and fertilizers in use have been diminishing as we have become smarter in their use.

Are we done in regards to reversing the effects of our past sins? No, of course not. But we are making progress.

However we must not buy the clap-trap passing as wisdom that we must hie back to the “good old days” of the 18th century in order to “save” the Earth. That way lies death, disease, and privation. Then again, some of the so-called environmentalists would see that as a feature, not a bug...unless they were also forced to live that way.

(H/T Walter Hudson)

A Good Comment

A great comment to this post about the Five Answers Liberals Never Give Us:

You can’t solve problems if you don’t learn anything, and you can’t learn anything if you never admit there’s anything to learn. If there’s a problem and you want to fix it, obviously something will have to be changed, and you can’t change anything with any deliberate intent or achievement, if you don’t identify what that thing is. “There is racial and gender bias” is not a statement that provides any functionality toward these ends. Therefore, proving it is not useful in the achievement of the stated goal.

Indeed. Merely stating the problem doesn't solve the problem. Too often statement of the problem is used as an excuse for causing other problems. You also have to do the follow up, in this case ask why there is such a bias, and then offer a solution.

Notice I didn't say the solution as quite often there is more than one solution to a problem. Some solutions may solve the problem but create even bigger ones in their wake. You have to offer workable solutions that others can agree with and embrace and not solutions that will make you feel better but won't solve the problem at hand. (That's a big problem these days.)

Thoughts On A Sunday

Looking at the temperatures and the type of precipitation we've seen over the past few days you'd think it was the middle of March and not the end of April. Night-time temps have been near or just below freezing and day-time temps in the 40's, though some 50's did make their appearance in the southern tier of the state.

Ice Out on Lake Winnipesaukee was announced last Friday, more than a week later than the average Ice Out date. While nowhere near the latest date (May 5th), it was still late and if it hadn't been for the high and shifting winds breaking up the ice, it easily could have been a week later than it was this year.

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This is a sad commentary.

An MRCTV reporter ventured on to the University of Maryland's campus and showed students pictures of the 40th President on the United States. Very few could identify him.

To think that college students don't know who Ronald Reagan was is disturbing on so many levels I don't know where to begin. How much of our history, and the world's history, do they not know?

To think that our nation will be in their hands some day fills me with dread, knowing they will likely fall prey to Santayana's axiom.

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There is a growing movement Down Under to “Reclaim Australia” from the insidious spread of Islamism within Australia and all it entails.

“Reclaim Australia” rallies were held in 16 different locations across Australia Saturday [April 11, 2015]. Billed as a call for “patriotic Australians” to “stand together to stop tax, Sharia law and Islamization,”. the rallies provoked violent encounters with counter protesters who billed the events as racist and anti-Muslim.

Reclaim Australia, a community organization, denied the accusations. “We’re not against any particular race or any particular religion,” John Oliver, an activist with the organization, said. “We’re against the extremists of one particular religion. I know in Sydney and Melbourne they’ve got Muslims already signed on to attend because they can see what’s happening and they don’t like what’s happening.”

The group is being “mocked by the elite press and derided as racist...sort of the same way [the] Tea Party was mocked when we dared to protest government policies.”

Indeed.

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Talk about hypocrisy! And I'll bet the party involved really doesn't see it as such.

Then again, they never do.

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This is the face of modern day fascism: destroying a family's lives and business because of 'hurt' feelings.

After reading the story it seems this was less about hurt feelings than about a quick way to make a buck while imposing their own close-minded views upon their victims.

I have two words of advice for the offended lesbian couple: Grow up!

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I find it interesting that the Hollywood Leftist Elite are not upset that Bruce Jenner has talked openly about his transition from male to female. Nope. But they are “shocked and dismayed” that he came out as a Republican.

Oh, the horrors!

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Yet another Obamacare state exchange domino is about to fall, in this case Covered California.

Can anyone tell me honestly that they thought this would work when there's years of evidence proving just the opposite?

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David Starr adds his 2¢ worth to the minimum wage debate and brings up a number of points proponents are choosing to ignore.

As I've said more than once, labor is a commodity just like any other, and when it costs too much businesses won't buy as much as they might have when it cost less.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where warm temps are elusive, Ice Out has been declared, and where tons of yard work still needs to be done.

More On Minimum Wage Logic Fallacies

The minimum wage/living wage debate continues, with many of the proponents for more than doubling the minimum wage choosing to ignore the consequences of doing so. They believe they can ignore the law of supply and demand by way of legislation, something that has been proven many times in the past to be immune from such legislation or executive order. And so it is with the present day demands for a living wage.

If all other factors remain equal, the higher the price of a good, the fewer people will demand it. That's the law of demand, a fundamental idea in economics. And yet there is no shortage of politicians, pundits, policy wonks, and members of the public who insist that raising the price of labor will not have the effect of reducing the demand for workers. In his 2014 State of the Union address, for example, President Barack Obama called on Congress to raise the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. He argued that increasing the minimum wage would "grow the economy for everyone" by giving "businesses customers with more spending money."

Many of the theories put forth about how raising the minimum wage will benefit everyone tend to ignore a number of factors that will blow them out of the water. One of the first is that business owners aren't likely to adhere to the theories. They will cut costs in order to maintain their bottom lines, meaning if their labor costs double, they will likely cut staff not raise prices. That right there illustrates the first point brought up in the quote above: the higher the price of a good, the fewer people will demand it. Labor is a good. It is worth what employers are willing to pay for it. Artificially raise the price of labor and the demand for it will fall. With some businesses already having razor thin margins, doubling the price of one of their more costly aspects of business will cause one of two outcomes: they'll cut the number of employees or they'll raise prices...and go out of business.

While much of the focus of the minimum wage/living wage proponents has been big corporations like McDonald's and Walmart, it is the small businesses that will suffer the brunt of this movement should the proponents succeed. That's a huge blind spot they choose to ignore. But then again, they aren't really concerned about the small business owners because there's no press opportunities to exploit like there is when they take on the “big greedy corporations.” So the small business owners are on their own.

Another downside, something I've mentioned many times, is that such a rise in the minimum wage will lock most teens out of the labor market. Minimum wage jobs are supposed to be entry-level jobs. Raise the minimum wage to $15 and hour and almost no one will hire teens with no job experience and no work history. For those kind of wages businesses will want experienced (read that to mean more mature) employees, ones with a good work record. Unless there is a two-tiered minimum wage structure – one for teens and another for 'regular' workers - teens will be out of luck in the job market. If history is any indicator, the minimum wage/living wage proponents will have none of that as they won't see it as being 'fair', giving businesses a preference for hiring teens rather than more expensive adults for what are unskilled entry-level jobs.

The argument has been made that raising the minimum wage hasn't caused disruption in the labor market in the past, but it has, though not as broadly as will happen if it is doubled. About the only time I can recall a rise in the minimum wage having little, if any affect on jobs was when it was increased at a time when there was full employment (meaning the U3 rate was around 4% and the U6 rate around 6%) and almost no one was paying minimum wage because there was a shortage of workers. Businesses were paying above minimum wage to keep what employees they had and to 'steal' workers from other businesses. It's a perfect example of the law of supply and demand. But raise the wage at a time when there is a large supply of workers and that supply will merely grow bigger as businesses shed employees. You don't increase the demand for something by increasing its cost, particularly when the supply is already too big. An example:

The Hanson/Hawley study takes into account how wages relate to the varying cost-of-living levels among the states. First they report the number of workers in a state who earn less than $10.10 per hour. Next they apply the widely agreed upon formula that for every 10 percent increase in wages there is a corresponding 1 to 2 percent decrease in demand for labor. They then straightforwardly estimate that boosting the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $10.10 per hour would result in the loss of between 550,000 and 1.5 million jobs.

Should the minimum wage be doubled to $15 does that mean we might see a 5 to 10 percent decrease in demand for labor? Probably. So how does that help anyone except those who are working towards creating total dependence upon government? It doesn't.

Another thing the minimum wage/living wage proponents ignore, particularly on the 'living wage' side of their argument, is the cost of living is different from state to state or region to region. An across the board increase to $15/hour will have disproportionate effects. Fifteen dollars an hour in North Carolina or Louisiana is worth more than fifteen dollars an hour in California or New York. This implies (to me) the negative effects of the living wage will fall more heavily on the lower cost-of-living states with more people losing their jobs in those states rather than the high cost states. Then again, isn't that what the proponents want – to increase the misery in low unemployment states so it's equal with high unemployment states? After all, fair is fair, right?

One more ignored consequence that can have a profound effect is labor union contracts with wage rates tied to the federal minimum wage. What happens if the living wage folks get their way and $15 an hour becomes the new minimum wage? The effects will ripple through the economy and everything will become more expensive, particularly housing, construction, and transportation costs. Those increased costs will affect other costs, like food, energy, clothing, medical care, and so on.

What about those who are presently making $15 an hour for their skilled or semi-skilled labor and they see less skilled and experienced workers now making the same as they do? Will they in turn demand much higher wages to compensate? Of course they will. That in turn will drive others above them to demand the same thing.

After it all works its way up the chain, will those at the bottom of the wage scale be any better off? No. They'll be right back where they started from and their wages won't be worth any more than they are now. They might even be worth less. Will the living wage proponents then demand yet another rise in the minimum wage and start the whole thing again? Probably. They won't have learned the lesson from the first round and will make the same mistake again, which will help nobody but will likely generate one heck of an inflation rate.

All in the name of 'fairness', of course.

The Fragile Snowflakes Are In For a Rude Awakening

Every time I think the “fragile snowflakes” couldn't get any more ridiculous, they prove me wrong.

Lately they have been equating speech, particularly speech they disagree with, with acts of violence, requiring the need for “safe spaces” to protect themselves from the 'violence' of someone's opinion that differs from theirs. But it doesn't stop them from threatening acts of violence against those who disagree with their morally bankrupt and ethically challenged ideology.

“The students were so carried away with the idea that I was a threat to their safety,” Sommers told the website Campus Reform, that Oberlin officials “arranged for security guards to escort me to and from the lecture to protect me from the safe spacers.”

What are these fragile leftist snowflakes going to do when they get out in the real world? Do they really think anyone is going to give a damn about “trigger warnings” or “safe spaces” or “traumatizing speech”? Hell no.

What is more likely to happen is that their employers will tell them to “Get back to work!” or “Gee, I guess that means you're FIRED!”

Oh, they'll complain about how their former place of employment was a hostile work environment, maybe file a lawsuit, and then lose when everyone at their former place of employment explains how it was the fragile snowflake who created the hostile work environment. They will curl up in a corner somewhere, semi-catatonic, unable to deal with conditions in the real world. The upside to this is that in this condition they will leave us alone and let us get on with making a living and living our lives free from the arrogance, derision, and scorn of these poor brainwashed drones.