Recently in Thoughts On A Sunday Category

Our non-winter winter continues, with above average temperatures and, for the time being, below average precipitation (we're about 20 inches below the 'normal' snowfall for the beginning of February). In light of this past week's focus on AGW, maybe someone will claim it's global warming. (Never mind that both the Farmer's Almanac and NOAA predicted a rather mild winter and below average snowfall for northern New England.)

We're not complaining all that much. The mild winter has meant we haven't used nearly as much fire wood as we might have and the Official Weekend Snowblower has spent most of its time in the garage. (I think I've used it all of three times this winter.)

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It's Super Bowl Sunday and the New England Patriots are playing the New York Giants in a rematch. The Patriots are hoping to make up for their loss against the Giants at their last Super Bowl appearance, one that ruined their perfect season. (The Patriots had a 16-0 record during the regular season, and an 18-1 record overall.)

And again the Giants won. (I still find it difficult to believe a 9-7 team even qualified for the Super Bowl, let alone won it.)

But I have to hand it to the Giants - they wanted it more than the Patriots and worked harder for it.

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I have to agree with Bogie on this one: Thank god for AAA!

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Here's another favorite blogress I have to agree with, particularly in regards to not learning the proper lessons from the movies. Hasn't anyone down there ever seen The Thing?

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By way of Maggie's Farm comes this explanation of the Eurozone bankruptcy.


While it does cover the basics, it does overlook why the Eurozone got into this mess to begin with: promising more to their citizens than they could deliver, particularly in the way of social services they had no means to pay for. Now that the bill has come due they expect others to foot the bill. The problem is that "the others" are reluctant to do so.

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It appears income tax evasion increases during times of rising income tax rates, rising unemployment, and/or decreasing per capita real GDP.

Gee, not a surprise to me. How many otherwise unemployed or underemployed folks are willing to work "under the table" in order to feed their families during tough economic times? How much bartering of goods and services takes place under those same conditions?

The underground economy almost always flourishes during tough economic times, particularly when the government itself one of the main causes. (The underground economy in the old Soviet Union was the only thing that let it continue as long as it did, seeing it was thought the GDP of that underground economy was greater than that of the official Soviet GDP.)

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Glenn Reynolds links to Russ Douthat's piece on the 'outrage' of pro-abortion advocates due to the decision by the Susan G. Komen Foundation - a private organization - to cease its funding Planned Parenthood. To hear the media tell it, it's tantamount to murder.

The Komen Foundation made it's reasons clear - PP doesn't do mammograms. The Komen Foundation's raison d'étrè is fighting breast cancer by funding research and helping to provide support services, period.

Writes Douthat:

Three truths, in particular, should be obvious to everyone reporting on the Komen-Planned Parenthood controversy. First, that the fight against breast cancer is unifying and completely uncontroversial, while the provision of abortion may be the most polarizing issue in the United States today. Second, that it's no more "political" to disassociate oneself from the nation's largest abortion provider than it is to associate with it in the first place. Third, that for every American who greeted Komen's shift with "anger and outrage" (as Andrea Mitchell put it), there was probably an American who was relieved and gratified.

Ironically, with all the media brouhaha about the Komen Foundation's decision, donations to the foundation increased dramatically.

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Also this from Glenn Reynolds: It's takers versus makers and these days the takers are winning.

In today's America, government benefits flow to large numbers of people who are encouraged to vote for politicians who'll keep them coming. The benefits are paid for by other people who, being less numerous, can't muster enough votes to put this to a stop.

Over time, this causes the economy to do worse, pushing more people into the moocher class and further strengthening the politicians whose position depends on robbing Peter to pay Paul.  Because, as they say, if you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can be pretty sure of getting Paul's vote.

It's a nightmare scenario right out of Atlas Shrugged. The only thing missing is Directive 10-289, but I figure that one is only a matter of time unless we change our course.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice on the lake is still dark blue, warmer weather is on its way, and where we have to swallow yet another Patriots defeat at the Super Bowl to the Giants.

The winter weather pattern continues, with snowfalls ranging between 2 and 6 inches followed by sleet, freezing rain, and/or rain. It makes for one heck of a mess on the streets, and particularly driveways.

Here at The Manse this mixture has made it difficult to keep the driveway passable. Thursday night's snowfall, though totaling only about an inch and a half, was followed the next day by rain and freezing rain. This turned the snow into a slushy mixture with the consistency of soggy mashed potatoes. It also made it very difficult to remove, something that needed to be done because once the temperature fell below freezing overnight it would leave an icy mess that would make the driveway nearly impassable. No amount of sanding would help at that point.

This has been the pattern since late December and frankly I think we're all getting tired of it. A straightforward snowstorm would be a relief because then all we'd have to do is move the snow, something easy to do with the Official Weekend Pundit Snowblower.

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Two of the big winter events here at Lake Winnipesaukee have been disrupted due to the mild winter weather.

The annual Rotary Ice Fishing Derby is questionable this year because the lake froze over only last week, meaning the ice is very thin and won't support vehicles, bob houses, or people. If we have a few weeks of below freezing temps the ice might be ready by mid to late February.

The annual Pond Hockey Tournament has been moved from Meredith Bay on Winnipesaukee to nearby Lake Waukewan. At least Waukewan has been frozen over for some time and the ice is thick enough to support the tournament.

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Scary Yankee Chick has this one right:

Calling mommy cause you don't know what to do when your dorm catches on fire may be a sign that you're not ready to live on your own.

Heh.

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This is scary. A man was held for two years in solitary confinement in New Mexico's Dona Ana County Jail after a drunk driving arrest. No arraignment. No trial. No conviction. Jail personnel denied him medical treatment. At one point he had to pull his own tooth in his cell when he was denied dental care.

A jury awarded him $22 million after he filed a civil rights suit against the county in federal court.

It took them two years to figure out he wasn't even supposed to be there, let alone that he never saw a judge or went to trial? $22 million isn't enough by half!

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Gee, it seems the MSM can't even get their hit pieces right. In this case Reuters went after Sen. Marco Rubio, trying to paint him as unfit to even be considered for a vice-presidential nod. The only problem with the article is that none of it was fact checked and glaring errors were found by a number of readers, including the Daily Caller's Matt Lewis.

One of the most telling:

"Rubio also voted against Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's Supreme Court nominee who is of Puerto Rican descent..."

There's only one problem with that claim, that being Rubio didn't enter the Senate until the year after Sotomayor was confirmed.

A number of other claims were made about financial difficulties or improprieties and investigations by the IRS, all of which were proven to be false.

Is it any wonder why more people have a growing distrust of the MSM?

As one commenter to the Lewis post wrote, "This kind of hit piece is just more evidence that Rubio is someone the left fears. And it's pretty pathetic, really. Rubio owes more on his home than it's worth? Welcome to the collapsed housing market! If anything, this smear piece makes Rubio come off more as a regular joe than anything."

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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Why doesn't this surprise me?

The most popular online newspaper read by Americans is not the New York Times or the Washington Post but the Daily Mail in the UK.

This does not bode well for the US print media. They had better change their ways and actually start reporting the news rather than editorializing under the guise of reporting or they're likely to go the way Oldsmobile, Studebaker, and the dodo.

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The National Association of Realtors seems to be think the housing market will recover in 2012. But Megan McArdle points to a StreetTalk Advisors piece by Lance Roberts that begs to differ with that assessment. Even with historically low interest rates, too many Americans do not have the wherewithal to get financing due to their debt-to-income ratio.

That's not the only thing that can put the kibosh on a housing market recovery.

With the large amount if shadow inventory waiting in the wings, there are far more properties waiting to be listed than there are buyers with the means to purchase them.

Shadow inventory is properties held by banks or other institutions that have been foreclosed upon but not yet listed for sale or auction. No one really knows how much shadow inventory is out there, but some have estimated it could be quite large. If all of the shadow inventory were to hit the market over a very short period of time, the already weak real estate market would collapse and with it, property values. Just about everyone with a mortgage would end up being underwater.

When will the shadow inventory hit the market? Nobody knows.

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Go see Wirecutter's Quote Of The Day.

'Nuff said.

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Dems to Republicans: Do as we say, not as we do, at least when it comes to financing campaigns.

But then the Dems have always been more than willing to apply a double standard to everything their opponents do.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice still isn't thick enough, last week's snow and ice have melted away from our driveway, and where I refilled all eight sand buckets just in case.

We dodged a bullet, weatherwise. It snowed yesterday in New England, but for the most part we were on the fringes of the storm and got about an inch of snow. But because it was so fine (due to the well below freezing temps), the roads got pretty slick in a short period of time. The few errands I had to run yesterday required me to use 4WD most of the time while I was out on the road.

The small snowfall didn't mean I didn't have to clear off the driveway as the few inches of snow we received Friday was still there.

Call me lazy, but I didn't want to clean the driveway twice. Clearing off 4 inches of snow is actually easier than clearing 1 inch, so I waited until the snow stopped Saturday afternoon before finally firing up the snowblower.

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It appears Chicago-style politics has made its way to Iowa, with a former Obama staffer and Democrat Party apparatchik arrested for identity theft. In this case the identity he tried to steal was that of Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz. His plan was to use the stolen identity to frame Schultz (a Republican) for unethical behavior in office.

It sounds like a play right out of David Axelrod's Chicago politics playbook.

As an aside, I have to wonder whether it might be fun to start a betting pool whose sole purpose will be to bet how many Obama staffers, czars, and cabinet members will be investigated, indicted, or convicted and sent to prison.

Nah, probably a bad idea. It will be a sucker bet.

(H/T Instapundit)

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Victor Davis Hanson likens Greece to a modern day Cassandra, showing us the future but being ignored.

The United States should pay heed to the modern Greek Cassandra, since our own rendezvous with reality is rapidly approaching. The costs of servicing a growing national debt of more than $15 trillion are starting to squeeze out other budget expenditures. Americans are no longer affluent enough to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to import oil, while we snub our noses at vast new oil and gas finds beneath our own soil and seas.

In my state, Californians for 40 years have hiked taxes; grown their government; vastly expanded entitlements; put farmland, timberland and oil and gas lands off limits; and opened their borders to millions of illegal aliens. They apparently assumed that they had inherited so much wealth from prior generations and that their state was so naturally rich, that a continually better life was their natural birthright.

It wasn't. Now, as in Greece, the veneer of civilization is proving pretty thin in California. Hospitals no longer have the money to offer sophisticated long-term medical care to the indigent. Cities no longer have the funds to self-insure themselves from the accustomed barrage of monthly lawsuits. When thieves rip copper wire out of street lights, the streets stay dark. Most state residents would rather go to the dentist these days than queue up and take a number at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Hospital emergency rooms neither have room nor act as if there's much of an emergency.

And his list goes on and on. These scenarios are being played out in Greece today, and California is following not too far behind. To say the Greek/Euro debacle can't happen here is just another form of denial, one we cannot afford to ignore.

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R.L Polk reports the average age of a car on the roads of America is just under 11 years.

This is not as much as a surprise as it might have been considering cars are better built than they were in the past, meaning they last longer than they used to. The ongoing recession hasn't helped things either because people are less likely to buy a new car when they can't be sure whether they'll still have a job six months down the road.

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The New England Patriots played the Baltimore Ravens for the AFC Championship in Foxboro today. The hype leading up to the game kept mentioning it was the #1 offense (Patriots) against the #1 defense (Ravens). Most folks would agree that it's defense that wins championships.

But as more than one commentator has mentioned, even though the Patriots have the #31 defense in the league due to the amount of yards they have allowed, passing and rushing, they don't let their opponents score very often. As some of those same commentators have said the scoreboard doesn't show the yards, only the points scored.

From watching some of the press conferences over the past week, neither team has been taking anything for granted. Both teams appear to have great respect for the other, knowing the game would likely be a tough one.

In the end the Patriots won it, 23-20, in a squeaker of a game. Only a missed field goal attempt by the Ravens with 51 seconds left in the game kept the game from going into overtime.

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Bogie shares a picture of her three cats enjoying a treat of canned cat food.

We do something quite similar here at The Manse, with all 6^3/4 cats sharing a can of "wonderful food" in the late afternoon/early evening. It's not meant to be a meal, just an appetizer before their regular evening meal.

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John Stossel makes the case for his claim that everything we know is wrong, at least when it comes to trusting our instincts in regards to our increasingly complex world. As he says, simple answers are satisfying, but often wrong.

Simple answers are so satisfying: Green jobs will fix the economy. Stimulus will create jobs. Charity helps people more than commerce. Everyone should vote.

Well, all those instinctive solutions are wrong. As Friedrich Hayek pointed out in The Fatal Conceit, it's a problem that in our complex, extended economy, we rely on instincts developed during our ancestors' existence in small bands. In those old days, everyone knew everyone else, so affairs could be micromanaged. Today, we live in a global economy where strangers deal with each other. The rules need to be different.

--snip--

It's not what people don't know that gets them into trouble. It's what they know that isn't so.

That certainly seems to be the case today, where more often people will support programs, laws, ideas, spending, and "revenue enhancement" without having a clue about the effects of any of them, intended or otherwise. That's true from the local level all the way up to Congress. That's why we're in the trouble we're in now.

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You can't say we didn't see this coming.

Labor union quits alliance with greens over Keystone pipeline.

While some unions still support the greens opposition to the pipeline, a number of large labor unions see Obama's decision against it as costing jobs their members badly need.

Some unions, like a couple of the transit workers unions, support the green position. (There's no word whether the SEIU supports the greens or the laborers, at least not yet. But I expect they'll end up supporting the greens on this one because they have no real skin in the game.)

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The Obama Administrations plan to destroy the economy continues apace, with the closing of the oil refinery at St. Croix, USVI, and the continuing delays and increasing legal maneuverings upon at least one new refinery slated for South Dakota.

By destroying the energy infrastructure and reducing the supply of crude and refined products by fiat, Obama's EPA is doing a great job dismantling the US economy one power plant, one refinery, one pipeline at a time. If I didn't know better, I'd say this was a long term plot by the old Soviet Union to destroy the West. But then we've had far too many of their programmed "useful idiots" getting involved with government for decades. So even though the Soviet Union is gone, their drones are carrying on with their mission.

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Democrat racist wacko Shiela Jackson Lee is at it again, claiming Newt Gingrich is using "secret racist encryption" because he called Obama the "food stamp president".

As Doug powers writes:

And "Sheila Jackson Lee" is poorly disguised code for "pathetic race baiter."

Yeah, I'd say that about sums it up.

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

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Somehow California's Governor Jerry Brown thinks that more of the same failed policies of the past that have brought his state to the brink of failure will miraculously fix the Golden State's economic problems.

He's rightly earned the long running sobriquet of "Governor Moonbeam" because he's still living in the past.

I wonder when that acid he dropped back in the 70's will finally wear off?

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At least someone in New York is paying attention to the coming state pension debacle. Believe it or not, it's (Democrat) Governor Andrew Cuomo.

There may be hope for the Empire State yet...but I'm not holding my breath.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where winter has finally arrived, snow is covering the ground, and where the lake has finally frozen over.

BeezleBub spent the weekend split between work at the farm and his high school's FIRST robotics team...for the most part.

He tried to do some work at the farm this morning. With temps well below zero he couldn't get any of the tractors started even with the block heaters plugged in overnight. No tractors meant no work. He was home from work this morning by 9:15AM. After warming up and indulging in a couple of cups of coffee he was off to robotics for a couple of hours.

At least it keeps him off the streets.

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Today was Deb's birthday and BeezleBub and I split the cost of her birthday present: a Kindle Fire.

I think she really likes it!

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The New England Patriots pounded the Denver Broncos down in Foxboro last night, 45-10.

The Patriots face the Baltimore Ravens next weekend.

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Apparently the New Hampshire League of Women Voters didn't care very much for the voter fraud sting run by James O'Keefe's Veritas Project. From reading their reaction it appears they really didn't understand the problem O'Keefe was exposing. It doesn't help their cause that they keep repeating the oft debunked claim that requiring voter ID prior to voting will disenfranchise the poor and minorities. The poor and minorities already have to provide proof of identity for a whole host of other activities in their lives, so we have to ask why this is any different?

It's simple, really: It isn't.

Then there's this - Dead Voters Of New Hampshire Unite!

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The so-called PissGate scandal has assumed the mantle of an event of great significance. However, it isn't. As Col. Allen West says, "Shut your mouth. War is hell."

As I recall a commenter on another blog (I can't remember which one) put it in perspective, stating "Our enemies behead people they don't like, including Americans. What is this compared to that?"

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I have to agree with Gerard Vanderleun on this one: "This is not a "Vote-For" election. This is a "Vote-Against" election. This is not a "Sit-It-Out-And-Pout" election. This is a "Get-Obama-Out" election. That is what it is about and that is all it is about." (emphasis original)

(H/T Instapundit)

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Is the fact that more cities in the US are shutting off or removing streetlights because they can no longer afford to run them a sign that they have their priorities wrong?

As Glenn Reynolds comments, "...it's either that or lay off some drones working in City Hall. Guess which one they pick . . . ."

It's always about protecting those patronage jobs, isn't it?

Another reader at Instapundit adds "I seem to recall a president who told us that our electric bills would necessarily rise. This is just another consequence, though I'm not sure it was unintended."

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In light of the snowfall we had last week, I have to say I wholeheartedly agree with Bogie on this one.

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Is the answer to the "problem" of income inequality really a rehash of something that has been tried before (and failed)? I think Eric the Viking has the right of it:

What can be done to reverse this, short of a modern-day techno-Luddite movement? People really seem to like their iPads.

Income inequality can't really be solved by government except by impoverishing everyone. Even Maggie Thatcher understood that and wanted no part of it.

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This is wrong on so many levels.....

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Pat Austin has a nice blog roundup for the weekend despite her Saints losing to the 49'ers yesterday.

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The American Perspective gives us a list of a number of 'firsts' achieved by the present occupant of the White House.

A few of my favorites:

First President to have a social security number from a state he's never lived in.

First President to Require All Americans to Purchase a Product From a Third Party.

First President to Spend a Trillion Dollars on 'Shovel-Ready' Jobs- and Later Admit There Was No Such Thing as Shovel-Ready Jobs.

First President to Abrogate Bankruptcy Law to Turn Over Control of Companies to His Union Supporters.

And the hits keep on coming...

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

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Apparently Tammy is craving some sugar cookies.

I think I could go for a few of those as well!

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Steven Hayward makes the case for the need for a new "Laffer Curve". The existing Laffer Curve shows the relationship between tax rates and tax revenues in the form of a non-linear parabola. While many (primarily on the Left) have criticized it, it is an accurate representation of that relationship.

What Hayward wants is a Laffer Curve that shows the effects of government regulation.

Here's where we need the regulatory equivalent of the Laffer Curve. Take the Keystone pipeline as an example. The pipeline is likely to be approved eventually, but only after more years of review and litigation. Certainly measures will need to be taken to reduce the environmental risks of the pipeline, but is there any safety measure that we will eventually impose that we didn't recognize in the first six months of the review process? It's not like we've never built a pipeline before, or learned from previous pipeline accidents (like the one in Montana last summer). Are there really any potential environmental impacts of deepening a harbor in South Carolina by five feet that require six to ten years of review and litigation, and a three-thousand page Environmental Impact Statement?

Clearly the review process we have now is largely deadweight loss, just as high marginal tax rates discouraged capital formation, investment, and productivity improvements in the high-inflation 1970s. We can arguably afford the extravagance of regulatory suffocation when the economy is booming at 4 percent growth a year or better (as in the late 1990s) and unemployment is 5 percent. We cannot afford it under the current stagnant circumstances. A Laffer Curve for regulation will explore just how much economic growth and how many jobs were are sacrificing for this artificial punctiliousness.

I think a lot of the problem can be laid at the feet of the BANANA environmentalists. (BANANA = Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.) They want zero risks and want project proposals to estimate the effects of those projects up to 100 years in the future. That 'need' is an automatic loser because no one is capable of making those kind of projections.

How many needed projects will die or have died due to bureaucratic red tape foisted upon project developers for no legitimate reason other than someone somewhere didn't like it?

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the cold weather has finally arrived, the ice in the lake is starting to form, and where keeping warm is going to be costly.

It's been a quiet weekend here at The Manse, with the most exciting thing being the kickoff for the annual FIRST robotics competition. BeezleBub is participating again this year, and he and some of his teammates made the trip down to Manchester to attend the kickoff activities. About the only other excitement was the trip Deb and I took to Center Harbor yesterday to do some yarn shopping. (Yes, I did enjoy the trip. The place we stopped was amazing. I learned more about yarn than I ever thought possible.)

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The big GOP debate before the New Hampshire primary took place last night at St. Anselm College in Manchester.

The top three performers last night in my opinion: Romney, Paul, and Gingrich, with Romney and Paul edging out Gingrich.

The losers: Santorum, Huntsman, and Perry. These three needed to do well last night and as far as I can see, they fell short. I expect at least two of them to drop out after Tuesday's primary.

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I have to agree with Steve MacDonald on this one.

As he writes:

You are more than welcome to visit us on weekends. We'd love to have you stop buy, spend a few bucks, and enjoy what we have to offer. But if you were thinking about turning New Hampshire into another progressive wasteland, no thanks. We're all set. We'd rather you didn't.

So that is what we mean when we say, "Welcome to New Hampshire. Now Go Home." The water is fine, and everyone is invited for a swim, but if you have come to pee in the pool, we are going to have to ask you to leave.

Over the past 30-plus years I've seen people move here from away and enjoy the low taxes and lack of government bureaucracy. But then they start asking for the same things they had 'back where they came from.' When they found out they would have to pay for them directly through their property taxes, they rebelled. Where did they think the money to pay for all that stuff was going to come from? If they expected the the state to pay for it, they found out it wasn't going to happen. (There were a few close calls when the Democrats held majorities in both the New Hampshire House and Senate, but common sense finally reasserted itself and the voters kicked out the tax-and-spenders lock, stock, and barrel.)

We'd love to have you come visit. But leave your nanny-statism back home. We neither need it or want it.

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Bogie tells us about a break-in at her place of employment. From what she describes, it had to be an inside job.

And they did something odd, which points to it possibly being an inside job; they broke into the IT guys desk, which had been locked. The IT guy had just moved over to that building the previous Friday. The IT guy had no sign pointing to which was his desk (and no, he doesn't have an office), so it is rather odd that someone would pick his desk at random to break into. They didn't try to break into any of the other locked desks.

I think that certainly narrows down the list of suspects. It goes to show you, criminals really aren't all that smart. That's why so many of them get caught.

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As I wrote earlier this past week, gas prices have taken a big jump recently. The prices have gotten higher since then. Yesterday I filled Deb's car and paid $3.329, up an additional 3¢, giving a total increase of 25¢ per gallon since just before Christmas.

I still believe it's the end of the ethanol subsidies driving the price. I wonder how long it will be before Brazilian ethanol starts making inroads into the fuel supply chain? Considering it costs a lot less than our corn-derived ethanol, it probably won't take long. But the question begs, how will it affect gas prices. If the past is any indicator, fuel prices will go down very slowly, if at all.

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Is the Green movement dead? If Amanda Carey is right, it's breathing its last gasps.

While the original intent of the environmental movement was good, it has devolved into a purely political operation that has little to do with environmental issues. These days it's more about control of the populace through environmental 'protections' rather than the environment itself. Many of the proposed protective measures will waste hundreds of billions of dollars yet add little actual benefit to the environment. (Many of these proposed measures deal with issues that have already reached or passed the point of diminishing returns, meaning spending more money will have little if any impact on anything but your wallet.)

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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Both Bogie and I agree: George Foreman Grills are awesome. Right now Amazon has them for 40% off.

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Obama as Pharaoh. "So let it be written. So let it be done."

Heh, indeed.

(H/T Instapundit)

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Scary Yankee Chick laments the lack of real winter weather. Not me.

Though I am a hardy Yankee through and through, I am not missing the traditional northern New England winter weather. Not one bit. While it is true that we scrambled to get the new Official Weekend Pundit Snowblower into the garage this fall, we've had occasion to use it only twice - once at the end of October and again just before Thanksgiving. Since then it's been sitting in the garage unused. The fact that I haven't had to go out at O'dark thirty in the morning to clear our rather treacherous driveway doesn't upset me one bit. I also haven't had to do much in the way of sanding the driveway either, something else that is not upsetting to me in any way.

While there has been a few brief blasts of frigid temps, with only one night getting below zero, I'm not missing them. With the warmer than normal temps I haven't had to stoke the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove nearly as often, meaning the supply of cordwood will last just that much longer and will let us get by on just three cords rather than the more normal four cords for the heating season. That's $250 that stays in our bank account, thank you very much.

There is a downside to this, I admit, that being the ice is not forming on Lake Winnipesaukee as it usually does. During yesterday's trek up to Center Harbor I was able to look at many of the bays and inlets to the lake. For the most part all I saw was open water. There were a few rafts of ice in one or two of the bays (Paugus Bay had a few sheets of ice at its northern end and Meredith Bay had a little ice along the shore of Hesky Park). What happens if the ice doesn't form? The annual Rotary Ice Fishing Derby may be postponed, if not canceled. No ice means no ice fishing.

Before someone goes off on how this mild winter (so far) is obviously a sign of global warming, let me remind you that last winter was bitterly cold, with a lot of snow and ice. This is merely a mild winter (as predicted by the Old Farmer's Almanac), something that has happened numerous times since people have been living in this portion of North America. It's weather, not climate.

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One little leftover from our Christmas decorations that will be remaining for the time being: a candle in the window.

While Deb, BeezleBub, and I were taking down the Christmas tree and other decorations last weekend, the subject of the WP Niece came up. (She's presently deployed in Afghanistan.) We decided we would leave one of the candles that usually grace the windows of The Manse during Christmas in place for her. It burns 24 hours a day and will remain there until she is safely home.

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The Lonely Conservative tackles the spin the White House has applied to the 'recess' appointments to the NLRB. As he says, the White House's claim they were necessary due to obstruction by Senate Republicans is a blatant lie.

There wasn't even enough time to conduct routine background checks on the individuals. But I'm sure the media will continue to give Obama a pass as they tout his "We Can't Wait" power grab.

"So let it be written. So let it be done."

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the temps are above normal, the ice is below normal, and we're not minding it at all.

We here at the Weekend Pundit Manse celebrated the New year's quietly, with Deb arriving home from work about 10 minutes before midnight.

For the most part New Year's Day has been quiet, with the most exciting thing being watching the New England Patriots overwhelm the Buffalo Bills, 49-21 in Foxboro.

The rest of the day was pretty mundane, with laundry and taking down the Christmas tree being the most ambitious things we tackled today.

All in all, not a bad start to 2012.

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We get a two-fer from Bogie to start out the new year.

First there's this First Cuteness of the New Year with two Whack-A-Kitty videos.

Then there's her Happy New Year post that includes her first use of her new George Foreman Grill.

I have one I received for Christmas years ago that I use on a pretty regular basis when it's too inconvenient or time consuming to fire up the gas grill out on the deck, particularly if I'm cooking just for myself. I'll keep using this one until it wears out or breaks, and then get a new one. That's how much I like it.

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Eric The Viking gives us his reason(s) for not going to the movies as much as he used to: cell phone users.

He also brings up lack of quality, and I have to agree with him. The graphics are flashier and the action is greater, but for the most part the movies just aren't that good. Far too many of them these days are remakes of classics (many times under a different title) and the remakes aren't very well done or lose the point of the original entirely.

About the only movie I have any intention of seeing any time soon is The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Both Deb and I have read the book and are curious to see how well it translates to the screen.

The last movie I saw in a theater was the final Harry Potter flick (Imax in 3D), and then it was because Submarine Tim and his bass Dawn took me to see it for my birthday.

Unless Hollywood get's it s**t together, it's going to keep heading downhill and soon be replaced by something else.

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Speaking of remakes, it appears TV isn't immune from this phenomenon.

We've seen resurrected versions of 90210, Charlie's Angels and Hawaii Five 0. Dallas will soon be coming back. There's even a remake of Bosom Buddies coming soon (retitled, but I don't recall it off the top of my head). For those of you too young to remember, Bosom Buddies was one of Tom Hanks' first regular starring roles before he became a movie hit.

That which is old is new again.

I'm just waiting for them to drag out the old scripts for Dragnet, Emergency, and maybe Have Gun Will Travel. I figure they've just about run out of original ideas.

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So it looks like the Powers-That-Be in Connecticut are about to pull a Granholm.

Former Michigan Governor Susan Granholm basically allowed the SEIU 'organize' day care providers and babysitters into the SEIU with no vote by the affected 'employees'. They had to start paying union dues even though they had no say in the matter and are not public employees. It was a pure power and money grab by the ever more criminally minded union bosses.

Now Connecticut's wholly union-owned puppet, Governor David Malloy, is about to allow these SEIU thugs to pull the same thing in the Nutmeg State.

These folks do not belong in power. They belong in prison, just like many of their mob predecessors.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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Cap'n Teach has a New Year's prediction challenge for Climate Alarmists.

Writes the Cap'n:

For a long time, the alarmists have been making predictions as to what the climate will do. They say in 10 years, 50, 100. Instead, why not, say, make predictions for......2012! What I want for them to do, from the biggest of big climahypocrites, such as Al Gore, James Hansen, Barack Obama, and Leonardo DiCaprio, to the smallest climate dupes, is tell us exactly what the climate will do this year. For some of these questions, I'm using the USA, but, alarmists from around the world can use their own country/region, if they like.

Read the whole thing.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the unseasonable warm weather has been hanging on, Lake Winnipesaukee is still mostly open water, and I'm not caring as I see the woodpile shrinking very slowly.

We pretty much managed to make it through Christmas unscathed. (One exception. See below.)

Deb had to work Christmas day and BeezleBub had animals to feed at the farm, so we did not travel on Christmas Day. However we do plan to pay a visit to the WP In Laws this coming Wednesday, one of the rare Wednesdays that Deb has off (her schedule was juggled around because she worked Christmas Day).

BeezleBub scored a real haul for Christmas this year. Unlike other kids, he actually likes getting clothing. He's not a clothes horse by any means. Rather his tastes run to the practical, with a good portion of his wardrobe coming by way of Duluth Trading Company. Much of it leans heavily towards the plaids, with heavy duty work pants being a close second. (He really likes the Fire Hose Canvas jeans [this year] and work coat [last year], both of which are perfect for working on the farm during the winter.)

He did end up with one non-clothing gift - a laptop - something he can use for school for the next few years. (I have to admit to scoring a real coup on that one, getting a discontinued model that had been hidden away by newer laptops. The retailer cut us a heck of a deal just to get it off their inventory.)

We spent part of the morning getting it all set up. I figured he'd be off surfing the 'net or checking out his Facebook account. Nope. Instead, he loaded Farming Simulator and spent hours on his virtual farm.

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The New England Patriots cinched a first week playoff by on Saturday be defeating the Miami Dolphins in Foxboro, 27-24. If the Pats can beat Buffalo next weekend then they'll have home field advantage for their playoff games.

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After almost 40 years of affirmative action the results have not been what proponents had hoped. It turns out it has hurt the very people it was intended to 'help'.

That's not surprising considering its stated purpose was to level the playing field in academia to promote minority achievement, but as it was practiced it let unqualified students into college.

Call it yet another example of liberal policies coming under the sway of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

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NOTE: This was written much later (Tuesday). As you've seen, there was no post on Sunday or Monday. It wasn't from lack of trying. What happened was an unexpected 'gift' from the WP Parents, who previously received it from one of the WP nephews.

Late Christmas evening I came down with a stomach bug that has been making the rounds. Between the vomiting, diarrhea, and severe dehydration, I was left totally bed/bathroom ridden. I was not a pretty sight (not that I am under normal circumstances). Even now I am not 100% and feel as if I've been through a boxing match...and losing.

All I can hope is that neither Deb or BeezleBub will come down with it. I took what precautions I could, in effect isolating myself by sleeping in a different room and using a different bathroom (which shall be disinfected from floor to ceiling sometime later today or tomorrow).

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This story begs the question "How many more crimes will become capital crimes as the demand for transplant organs increases?"

It's right out of the pages of Larry Niven's Gil "The Arm" Hamilton series.

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As conditions in Egypt continue to deteriorate and Christians there come under increasing harrassment and persecution, is it possible they will seek asylum in the US?

As Glenn Reynolds writes: "I predict a chilly reception from the Obama/Clinton State Department."

Unfortunately, so do I.

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Ed Driscoll covers the decline of civilization in California, between increasing thefts of things like wiring in street lamps and bronze plaques on public buildings to the ever more confiscatory taxes and anti-business regulations.

It seems that through our history that what happens in California tends to migrate to the rest of the nation, whether it is a fad, new educational theories, or outright lunacy. Let us hope that this dissolution of the miracle that was California doesn't spread like a cancer to the rest of the nation. (We've already seen some of the disease in places like New Jersey, Michigan, Ohio, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.) Unfortunately it is likely to do so unless state and local governments are willing to make some hard choices and the changes that go with them.

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David Starr makes the case for open primaries, where non-declared voters can declare for a party at the polls and then vote. We have open primaries in New Hampshire, with one addition- after voting we can "undeclare" upon exiting to return to our independent status.

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Jeff Soyer tells us about proposed gun rights legislation in Utah, an open carry state. Apparently otherwise law-abiding citizens carrying their firearms within the guidelines of Utah's open carry statutes have been harassed, arrested, charged with "other" offenses like disturbing the peace or disorderly conduct solely because they had their weapons. The proposed legislation would hopefully reduce such incidents.

We'll see.

New Hampshire is an open carry state and I've never had a problem wearing my sidearm. But then I haven't gone places where I am unknown to the local gendarmerie while wearing it.

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And that's the much delayed news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where I am still feeling the effects of the stomach bug, people are still recovering from Christmas, and where New Year's is just around the corner.

The computer problems continue, with the monitor on my machine unwilling to display anything other than the power up screen before going to sleep. Even the forums have been unable to help me figure out how to wake it up. I think it's going to require a call to HP Tech Support, meaning I'll be in phone tree hell.

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As Christmas approaches I have to admit to my annual Christmas anxiety/angst. While I love Christmas Day itself, it is the time leading up to it that I find so disquieting. It's like everyone around me has unminded themselves are driven to get their Christmas shopping done to the point where they are no longer sane.

It's scary.

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The New England Patriots played the Denver Broncos in Denver today. The Pats record against Denver has never been stellar and they struggled against them during the first quarter, but turned it around during the second and blew them away in the second half.

Tim Tebow had a heck of a game despite the Broncos loss, proving he's someone to contend with.

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While the rest of us are struggling to make ends meet, Obama has no problem with taking ever more costly Hawaiian vacations. Funny that the MSM rarely makes a big thing about that as compared to the heat Dubya took for his vacations to his ranch in Crawford. (At least while he was on his ranch he was working, cleaning things up and getting the chores done.)

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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Also by way of Maggie's Farm comes this from Glenn Reynolds, covering the exodus of people and businesses from Illinois.

As Glenn warns, "If you want to come to Tennessee, fine. Just don't come here and then vote for the same policies, and clowns, that ruined the state you came from."

We have the same attitude about people from Massachusetts fleeing the high taxes and social engineering experiments and relocating to New Hampshire. Here we usually have to school the folks about how things work, particularly in regards to taxes and spending at the local and state level. We work hard to break them of the "back where we come from" syndrome.

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I have to agree with Tom Bowler in regards to Mitt Romney: "This is no time for Republican or Libertarian purity and no time for tossing away the good in a futile quest for the perfect."

There is no perfect candidate, regardless of party. What we need is someone good enough. I'm coming to believe Romney just might be it.

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And that's the computer-problem caused abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it was a whole lot colder than Denver, the lakes isn't showing any signs of ice, and where Christmas is fast approaching.

The impromptu Christmas party at The Manse was a success. I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

I dealt with the aftermath this morning, cleaning up the leftovers, washing dishes, and getting everything else squared away.

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The New England Patriots played the Washington Redskins in Maryland, defeating them 34-27.

While I hope the Patriots keep winning, I don't think they're ready for a playoff season with all the players they have out injured, particularly in their secondary.

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Is the Eurozone finally tipping over the edge? The idea of the Eurocrats taking even more control over member nations' economies are causing Britain, Sweden, the Czech Republic, and Hungary to back away to take a second look at where the EU is headed.

I don't blame them. Why would they want to tie themselves to an economic system that is increasingly being run by Brussels, and poorly at that?

Maybe it's time for these 4 nations to pull the plug and get out of the EU while they still can.

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Ace of Spades asks, "What has Obama learned in office?" The answer: not much.

Obama is supposedly a learned man. We are told he is a rara avis, in Chris Buckley's dribblings, a true intellectual.

When was the last time Obama actually learned something about the world?

Did he, as the book's title might have it, Learn Everything He Needed To Know By Second Semester Sophomore Year?

Rather I'd say he hadn't learned enough then and stopped learning since then.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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Let's hope that more progressives will take the red pill.

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Scary Yankee Chick unfriended a dyed-in-the-wool closed minded vegan uninterested in any studies or evidence that contradict her Eating-Meat-Is-Evil/Bad-For-You/And-So-On rants.

I have to agree with Ruth on this one. Why waste your time on someone so closed minded?

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Bogie tells us about seeing a Boeing Dreamlifter, used to haul 787 Dreamliner assemblies to the Boeing factories for final assembly.

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Only in California...

Apparently Glendale, California has banned the use of artificial turf on front lawns "due to the potential for hazardous compounds, such as lead, that are used in the making of the fake turf." But it's perfect OK to use on back lawns, the very same back lawns where children play and would be more likely to be exposed to the potential hazardous compounds.

Morons.

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

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To quote Cap'n Teach, here's a little traffic bait: leaked pictures of Lindsay Lohan's Playboy shoot.

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By way of Instapundit comes this Frank J. Fleming opinion piece making the case for anti-intellectualism, particularly as it applies to those who think that because they're 'smarter' they should be the only ones allowed to run the country.

Now, I don't ever want to be accused of arguing that any politician is anything other than a useless nitwit who gets in the way of people who do real work, but there does seem to be some trouble in this country in judging who is smart and who isn't. The main problem may be confusing "simple" with "dumb."

If something is simple, then dumb people will believe it. And if dumb people believe something, then soon some conclude that smart people should believe something else. There's a flaw in that philosophy.

Why shouldn't you touch a hot stove? There's no complex, smart answer to that. You'll get roughly the same answer from Stephen Hawking that you'd get from Forrest Gump: It's hot, and it will hurt.

But say you were going to argue that you should touch a hot stove. That would have to be a very complex answer, since it defies basic logic. And some people could run with that, talking in detail about pain receptors and the brain's reaction to stimulus, and come up with a very smart-sounding argument on why touching a hot stove is a great idea.

Others will go further and mock all those ignorant people in the flyover states for their irrational fear of hot stoves and announce, "The most enlightened thing to do is to press one's face against a hot stove." Those people are what we call intellectuals.

Not very flattering, is it? But then I've come across far too many of that kind of intellectual. Unfortunately a lot of them were in government or education.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where cold temps have arrived, people are still scrambling to get the Christmas shopping done, and where the end of the year is approaching too quickly.

Yesterday BeezleBub experienced the trial most college-bound students must endure: taking the SATs. While he doesn't think he did all that well, we really won't know until we get the results. I did tell him that he can take them again if he doesn't like his scores from this one.

Frankly, the SATs aren't as important as they used to be as more colleges no longer require them. The school BeezleBub is planning to attend doesn't require the SATs. He won't be going the Big State University until his junior year because he'll take his freshman and sophomore prerequisites at the local community college, which is part of the state university system here. (It helps that by the time he graduates from high school he'll already have a number of college credits from the community college.) It will save us and him $30,000 or more compared to going directly to the BSU.

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The Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove needed a few repairs this past week. We were having problems getting a draft going, so the local chimney sweeps/woodstove guys came to fix the problem. It still isn't perfect, but BeezleBub and I know what we need to do to put it right, something we'll do when the next batch of warm weather arrives (tomorrow and Tuesday). This will allow us to let the stove go cold so we can reinstall the damper assembly that was removed. Without it we don't get nearly as much heat and we have to stoke the stove every 3 hours rather than every 6.

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The New England Patriots defeated the Indianapolis Colts 31-24 today down in Gillette Stadium.

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I have to say I was dismayed to see Herman Cain 'suspending' his bid for the GOP nomination. (I think in this case suspend means "dropping out.")

In the end, I'm not surprised. I have to hand it to David Axelrod - it was a perfect smear campaign. After all, there's no way the Dems, and particularly Obama, want a black Republican running against him.

I have a feeling that some time down the road the allegations will be found baseless, or they're just going to fade away and no one will remember them a year down the road.

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Staying on the Herman Cain theme just a little longer, John Hindraker gives us his view on the moral of Cain's story. It all boils down to this:

What happened to Herman Cain is what the Democrats intend to do to whoever the Republican nominee turns out to be. They know they can't win a debate on the economy or on President Obama's record, so they will do everything they can to distract the voters' attention from those matters, which should be decisive, and instead turn the focus to the GOP candidate and his or her alleged foibles. If Republican voters allow that to happen by nominating a candidate with baggage that permits the Democrats to turn him into the next Herman Cain, it is all too likely that President Obama will be re-elected, with consequences that can hardly be overestimated.

We saw that as soon as the allegations starting flying, all debate about Cain's stand on the economy ceased. The problem is that no candidate of either party will ever be perfect. Not one will be squeaky clean. Not one will have nothing in their past that might be embarrassing should it come to light.

Of course we know nothing about Obama's past, at least those things that give us a view of him that hasn't been heavily massaged, twisted, or outright buried. Obama is the only president in my memory that has been such a complete cipher: No school transcripts. No papers written or articles authored. No in depth looks at his accomplishments. (That could be because he has none.) He's the 'perfect' Democrat candidate because he's an empty suit. We've seen how that works for us.

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Even the Canada Free Press is saying the Democrat Party is likely to go the way of the dodo, considering its political shift away from American ideals and towards statism.

In decades past, the Democratic Party was the party of the working man. It was the party that fought to even the playing field with unscrupulous and an all-too greedy American industry. Over time, real progress was made and working folks were paid a decent wage and afforded a lifestyle that many today would envy.

--snip--

Today the Party of the working man has become the Party of the non-working class.  The Democrats have devolved to become the Party of moochers, leeches, and victims. And this Party of hope and change has morphed into a Frankenstein that would turn FDR in his grave. The Democratic Party is an abomination that is slowly strangling the greatest country in the world: The United States of America.

While the author of the article resides in California, the fact that someone in Canada sees fit to post it must mean something.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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Also by way of Maggie's Farm comes this post about the "Eight Warning Signs of Junk Science."

AGW certainly fits the list of those signs, meaning to me that it is junk science. So far none of the theories are verifiable, most are not falsifiable, far too much of the publicly funded research data is being withheld or buried despite FOIA request both in the UK and the US, algorithms used to crunch data showing temperature averages over the past few hundred years have been found to provide similar results even when random data is applied to them, and the all so sacred climate computer models have been unable to predict past climate trends using even earlier climate data.

Check out the list and tell me if you think AGW doesn't fall under at least three of those signs.

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Why doesn't this surprise me?

It appears a 7-year old boy attacked by another boy that had been bullying him for some time. A t some point the bully tried to steal the boy's gloves by choking him. The boy resisted and defended himself by kicking his attacker in the crotch.

Now the Boston School System is saying the 7-year old boy is guilty of sexual assault. Excuse me?

The boy's attacker is guilty of assault & battery and attempted robbery, but the bully's victim is the one being up for discipline?

I'll say it again: The nanny state's justice system is seriously broken when it defends criminals and punishes victims.

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I missed this one from a couple or three weeks ago.

Apparently some know-nothing Harvard students in Greg Mankiw's Economics 10 class demanded that he stop teaching economic theories with which they disagree.

WTF?

So, they don't like Adam Smith and are only interested in Keynesian economics? Never mind that Keynes was covered later in the course. They didn't want to hear a valid economic theory that has proven itself correct far more often than the overused/misused Keynesian model. (I think even Keynes would be horrified to see how his economic theories have been twisted into something so damaging.)

Talk about being close-minded, arrogant, entitled pricks! It is elitist jerks like these who helped cause the economic malaise from which this country suffers in the first place. Who the hell do these kids think they are?

One commenter to Tom's piece nailed it.

So some Harvard students went there to have their prejudices confirmed rather than to learn anything. The professor is better off without them.

As Tom Bowler writes, "Scary thought, that students like these might someday have a major impact on public policy, free from the encumbrances of unwanted and distasteful economic theory."

Scary thought indeed.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the warm(er) weather is returning again, the woodstove has been dialed back, and where our Christmas shopping is almost done.

The warm weather here in New England has helped melt away the pre-Thanksgiving snow we received, leaving the roads, driveways, and rooftops clear. Not that all of the snow is gone. It's not by any means, but there is a lot more bare ground showing around here.

The ski areas up north are certainly happy, seeing as the 10" plus snowfall certainly helped them during this long holiday weekend.

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Cole still wanders around looking for Bagheera, something I didn't think would last this long. He's also become quite 'clingy', requiring constant attention when we're home. I don't know if this is insecurity on his part or some other feline condition that makes him appear emotionally needy. He's also been more affectionate, if that's possible.

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Wirecutter presents us with an interesting table showing the percentage of cabinet members under each president with experience in the private sector. The list goes back as far as Teddy Roosevelt up to present day. One of the commenters links to information for the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations.

Care to guess which president's administration shows the lowest percentage, by far?

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Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist - VT) wants to further burden those who help finance new jobs by increasing the capital gains tax from 15%to 20%, a 33% increase.

Yeah, that makes sense. Let's create even more disincentives for people to invest in businesses by punishing them for doing so. That ought to help the unemployment numbers.

NOT.

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Now the SEIU is stealing Medicaid money from Michigan families with disabled children. If it weren't a state employees union doing this they would be considered mobsters and prosecuted under the RICO Act.

Unions served a useful purpose in their time. Public employee unions have served no other purpose than to siphon taxpayer money into Democrat campaign coffers. It's time for them to go.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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Some people are just too damn stupid or too damn corrupt to hold public office. One of them is Grant County (Wisconsin) District Attorney Lisa Riniker, who is pressing felony sexual assault charges against a 6-year old boy for playing doctor with the 5-year old daughter of a well know political figure. (The girl's brother, who was also playing doctor with them, has not been charged.)

Should the boy's family knuckle under to prosecutor's demands he will have to register as a sex offender once he turns 18.

Riniker's defense for going forward with the charges? "The legislature could have put an age restriction in the statute if it wanted to. The legislature did no such thing."

To me (and many others) this proves the legal system is seriously broken as common sense no longer exists within it.

Were I the judge involved with this case I would dismiss the charges out of hand and censure the District Attorney for wasting the court's time with something that should have easily been handled by the parents.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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It's not all that surprising to me that jobs are going unfilled despite the high unemployment rate. It all comes down to applicants having the required skills needed to fill the jobs. Unfortunately there appears to be a dearth of workers in the trades needed to fill those positions, but plenty of people with college degrees in subjects that do no make them any more employable than someone without any education beyond high school.

My soon-to-be ex-brother-in-law is having problems finding experience machinists for his shop. That means he ends up taking on inexperienced people and training them on the job. That takes time and money and raises his costs. What's worse, as soon as someone is trained to a level that allows them to work independently there's nothing stopping them from leaving and going to another machine shop. It can be a lose-lose situation for someone like him.

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Being an RF kind of guy, the fact that Smart Meters may interfere with other wireless devices in a home is not surprising by any means. Seeing as they use a couple of what are called ISM bands (Industrial/Scientific/Medical), basically radio frequency bands that allow low power unlicensed operation of various transmitters for a variety of purposes, interference is to be expected.

Considering one of the bands being used is 2.4GHz, interference to some cordless phones, home wireless networks, and other wireless devices like computer keyboards and mice is inescapable. One solution is for the phones and wireless routers to use a different ISM band, like 5.8GHz, a band that for the moment is underused. (There are plenty of these devices available and most laptops of recent vintage, tablets, and smart phones are capable of using this band.)

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I had no intention of writing or posting anything more about the OWS protests, but I'll make an exception in this case, where the unhappy, miserable souls have decided it's perfectly OK to disrupt Christmas shopping at Union Square in San Francisco.

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

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There are more shenanigans coming from the NLRB branch of the AFL-CIO, with a new rule that subverts the right of employers to have adequate time to respond to unionizing efforts. The lone Republican on the NLRB has considered resigning in order to force the two Democrats (and former union officials) to stay within the law while denying them the quorum required for them to pass the new rule. (One of the two Democrats was a recess appointment by Obama and that appointment expires at the end of the year, hence the haste to ramrod the rule change.)

We must also remember that this is the same NLRB contingent that has decided Boeing doesn't have the right to build new factories in right-to-work states even though such a move has not affected union employment in their factories in Washington state. In fact, Boeing hired an additional 2500 employees in Washington even though they're opening a new plant in South Carolina.

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You may have seen the story about a New Hampshire soldier's death in Iraq and the puppy he'd adopted on ABC's 20/20 this past Friday night. The soldier's family worked to bring the puppy to their home and with the help of then Congressman Paul Hodes, succeeded in doing so. They named the dog Hero. But that's not the crux of this story. Rather, it's this.

As ABC reporter Kimberly Launier wrote, the photo she took of Hero was not Photoshopped.

Go see this for yourself.

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The New England Patriots play the Philadelphia Eagles late this afternoon. It will be interesting to see if the Patriots can handle the Eagles despite the long list of first-string defensive players out due to injuries.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the warm weather continues, the shopping centers are mobbed, and where our long holiday weekend has ended all too soon.

It's been more firewood stacking here at The Manse.

Farmer Andy delivered another cord of wood yesterday afternoon, meaning we had two cords to stack in the garage today. That leaves one more to be delivered, probably next weekend.

If nothing else we'll have enough to keep us warm until next April.

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Last night was the final performance of our local high school's rendition of Sound Of Music.

I know BeezleBub is glad it's over, with the only thing left to do is strike the sets and clean up the detritus of this fall's performances.

Next weekend he gets back to work at the farm..at least until the spring drama program starts.

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It's no surprise to me that Connecticut is what the Institute For Truth in Accounting calls a "financial sinkhole."

It's like Governor Malloy is taking pages out of the California Financial Meltdown Playbook and upping the ante to make sure the Nutmeg State/Constitution State (when I grew up it was the "Nutmeg State") follows down the same path to increasingly unsustainable tax burdens and state spending, particularly when it comes to public employee salaries and benefits.

The WP Parents abandoned our family beach house - their retirement home - 7 years ago when it became too expensive to stay there, between the growing income and sales taxes, and exploding property taxes. It's only gotten worse since then.

While my home state of New Hampshire is fairing much better, there have been times over the past few years when it looked like it was going to go down that same sinkhole. Fortunately sanity returned (for the most part) and the state has been working hard to put its financial house in order.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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It seems wind turbines aren't all they're cracked up to be. Why else would there be over 14,000 abandoned turbines in the US alone? Once the subsidies run out or the turbines need heavy duty maintenance they're either shut down, cannibalized to repair other turbines, dismantled, or abandoned as is.

The costs of these things is far too high for them to be a viable alternative to existing 'old fashioned' energy technologies, and artificially raising the costs of existing energy sources will not promote the use or construction of these unreliable and expensive sources, particularly since they cannot be counted on to carry base load electricity demands.

I see no problems with smaller wind turbines of the types used to help power individual residences, but the power of scale doesn't seem to apply very well to wind farms.

(H/T also Maggie's Farm)

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It's bad enough the Eurocrats in Brussels have been mishandling the dire economic issues facing the Eurozone, they've also been meddling in internal British affairs, demanding that Britain let in more migrants from around the world.

Who the hell do these ass-hats think they are? Oh, yeah. I forgot. These unelected pseudo-intellectuals believe they know better than the British government and have decide they'll make them submit to their better judgment.

Is it any wonder more within the UK are demanding a referendum about their membership in the ever more heavyhanded EU?

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As if we need any more proof the EU is doomed let's add this to the list of stupid edicts, rules, and regulations strangling the Eurozone economy: EU bureaucrats forbid claim that water prevents dehydration.

The UK may be able to save itself if it divorces itself from the EU, but the rest of the EU is doomed if it puts up with this nonsense.

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I wish these guys would make up their minds.

Cap'n Teach shows us that the so-called Warmists are now claiming that AGW will cause fewer hurricanes to hit the US, just the opposite of claims they were making just a couple of short years ago.

It's still all conjecture based upon a very short time line and computer models so defective they can't even predict the past.

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As Mike over at Cold Fury laments, "The Constitution - nice while it lasted."

Mike is concerned that the latest decision by the U.S Court of Appeals in the D.C Circuit to uphold the ObamaCare mandate requiring citizens to purchase health insurance may seriously affect the US Supreme Court once it hears the case. It appears to me the three judge panel at the Court of Appeals has decided the Constitution no longer applies and that the federal government can no run roughshod over the states and the American citizen. This does not bode well for any of us.

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No Patriots game today. Rather they'll be playing Kansas City Monday night.

We'll see if they've got things figured out.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has been gorgeous, the tourists have been gone, and where preparations for Thanksgiving are proceeding apace.

It was firewood stacking time at The Manse yesterday.

Deb and I moved a pile of of our first cord of seasoned fire wood from next to the garage, stacking it inside the garage and out of the weather. We have three more cords to be delivered and then stacked before winter finally closes in.

There is one change I made inside the garage in order to make for a more orderly stack of cords wood. Rather than ending the stack with what is called a 'cobb house' (wood stacked crosswise in a 'tower' to act as a support at the end of a stack). This year I put together three floor-to-roof 2X6's crossbraced with a few 2X4's to act as a support for the end of the wood stack. This made it easier to stack the fire wood and allowed us to stack it higher than we otherwise would be able to using a cobb house. With this new end brace we can to stack two rows of fire wood up to the roof joists, allowing us to put almost all 4 cords of wood inside. That means we won't have to go outside to get wood for the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove during the heating season.

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More and more it seems there's less and less to the Herman Cain sexual harassment allegations. This is particularly so if one takes a close look at the accusers and their mentor, David Axelrod. Another suspicious thing - all of the accusers are from Chicago.

This looks to be just another chapter from the Axelrod Book of Dirty Tricks - The Chicago Edition.

Herman Cain has spent his life living and working all over the country -- Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Washington, D.C. -- but never in Chicago.

So it's curious that all the sexual harassment allegations against Cain emanate from Chicago: home of the Daley machine and Obama consigliere David Axelrod.

Suspicions had already fallen on Sheila O'Grady, who is close with Axelrod and went straight from being former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley's chief of staff to president of the Illinois Restaurant Association (IRA), as being the person who dug up Cain's personnel records from the National Restaurant Association (NRA).

--snip--

And now, after a week of conservative eye-rolling over unspecified, anonymous accusations against Cain, we've suddenly got very specific sexual assault allegations from an all-new accuser out of ... Chicago.

Herman Cain has never lived in Chicago. But you know who has? David Axelrod! And guess who lived in Axelrod's very building? Right again: Cain's latest accuser, Sharon Bialek.

Curiouser and curiouser...

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It appears the Atomic Nerds blog has been hacked. I wasn't able to reach it yesterday and it wasn't until I visited Scary Yankee Chick that I found out why.

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The more I read this guy's blog, the more I like him. Stop by and say hello to Wirecutter at the Knuckledraggin' blog. He's going directly to both New Finds and Regular Reads.

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I took a tumble this morning stepping out of the shower, spraining my wrist when I landed.

The cause of this mishap?

A poorly designed bathroom mat.

Generally a mat with non-skid properties has a textured rubber-like backing to prevent the mat from slipping even if there is water on the floor. But this one has a flat untextured backing. If/when water gets underneath it it acts like a lubricant, making the mat act more like a stereotypical banana peel in cartoon. It was this mat that dumped me on my butt when I stepped out of the shower.

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Have you ever wondered why McDonald's McRib sandwich appears and disappears at random intervals? Well wonder no more as Willy Staley has the answer: arbitrage.

Looking further back into pork price history, we can see some interesting trends that corroborate with some McRib history. When McDonald's first introduced the product, they kept it nationwide until 1985, citing poor sales numbers as the reason for removing it from the menu. Between 1982 and 1985 pork prices were significantly lower than prices in 1981 and 1986, when pork would reach highs of $17 per pound; during the product's first run, pork prices were fluctuating between roughly $9 and $13 per pound--until they spiked around when McDonald's got rid of it. Take a look at 30 years of pork prices here and see for yourself. Also note that sharp dip in 1994--McDonald's reintroduced the sandwich that year, too. Though notably, they didn't do so in 1998.

So when pork prices fall by a certain percentage, McDonalds brings back the McRib.

Makes sense to me.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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Also by way of Maggie's Farm comes this post by Martin Luther King's niece, decrying the Left's smear campaign against Herman Cain. As she writes:

There are two reasons the liberal media can't get enough of the Herman Cain smear campaign:

-They would rather report unsubstantiated allegations and gossip than report the real issues, because talking about the real issues would not be in the best interest of the president.

-The establishment is threatened by a strong conservative with such a large platform.

For many years, the Democrats have had a 90% stranglehold on the black vote. This is because many blacks feel that Republicans are racist and only care about the rich, while Democrats love them, give Blacks welfare, etc. When a strong, charismatic, BLACK conservative goes head to head with Obama, many blacks who have not yet done so will actually listen to both sides of the political argument.

Indeed. And that scares the bejeezus out of the Democrats and the White House.

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Will online public/private schools be the answer to the ever decreasing quality and increasing expense seen in public brick-and-mortar schools?

Like any educational institution, it depends upon those running it and the support given by parents. I can certainly see such online schools supporting the efforts of parents home-schooling their children.

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Glenn Reynolds and a number of others don't like the idea of regionalized federal income tax rates, primarily because it ends up subsidizing states with high cost of living to the detriment of low cost of living states. It might be germane that many of the high cost of living states are blue states and low cost of living states are red states.

Could it be envy, the mainstay of leftist ideology? After all, the blue states are running out of other people's money to finance their socialist agenda and now want to take money away from those living in states that have kept their fiscal houses in order.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we're in that in-between period where there are no tourists, political campaigns are heating up, and where Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away.

You did remember to turn your clocks back, didn't you?

Personally, I think this semi-annual clock change has outlived its usefulness. I don't have a problem with getting up when it's still dark out to start my day. I'd prefer to have the extra hour of sunlight in the afternoon during the short winter days, but that's just me.

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Almost all the snow that fell last weekend is gone, with the exception of some of the snow piles left over from plowing. Hopefully we won't see any more snow until just before Christmas, but I'm not holding my breath.

One thing I did this weekend was go back to the BBH/A/L/GS store to see if they had replenished their supply of snowblowers. They had indeed, but by a very small amount. So I talked with the OPE guy (OPE - Outdoor Power Equipment). I told him what I wanted, knew they'd had some there prior to the surprise Nor'easter, and wanted him to order another for me. After 30 seconds I knew this was going to be a long drawn out process.

To make a lengthy and boring story a lot shorter, I told him that if I didn't hear back from him or one of his co-workers by end of business Monday that I would take my business to one of their competitors even though it means a considerable drive towards the New Hampshire seacoast.

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I brought Bagheera's remains home from the vet's office late Friday. I didn't think taking the box with his ashes from the hands of the veterinary tech would affect me. But I almost lost it as I carried him back to the truck, and back home.

I miss him.

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Andy Rooney died on Friday.

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Some folks merely complain about the OWS protesters, and others actually do something about them, this time in Modesto, Kalifornia.

The best line in the post: "Better get used to that s**t son, if you want to be a real revolutionary."

Gotta love it...

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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Ineptocracy, indeed!

(H/T Instapundit)

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Skip Murphy reminds us about the strength of the "Army of Davids".

Indeed - an "Army of Davids" which is the name of the book that Glen[n] Reynolds wrote in describing how technology is shifting such that individuals can band together for a purpose via the 'Net, accomplish a voluntary goal, and then disband in ways that never would have been possible before. In fact, many Conservatives and TEA Partiers used the Internet to get their message (visual: Skip waving his hand!) out and coordinating with others in a joint movement.

--snip--

What the Left did was to finally push Conservatives "to the edge"; having tolerated behavior contrary to those above points, and not having ever gone "the protest route" before, we did not have the organizational baggage that the Left had. Thus, having no "legacy systems" in place, we utilized the newer ways of organization.

It is because the Left has that baggage, dating back to the 60's, that they couldn't conceive of the idea that the Tea Parties weren't organized by some overseeing organization or political party. Hence their claims of "astroturf" (artificial grass roots movement paid for by someone else). But their claims didn't hold water. And though the left has tried to 'create' its own grass roots movement - the so-called "coffee party" - their efforts failed and their movement disappeared. Now they've tried to co-opt OWS into their own astroturf movement, but the "Army of Davids" have exposed those efforts and made them look stupid.

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Daniel Foty looks into the story of who really broke the banks and the ensuing blame game that points the finger at everyone except those who actually caused the problem. (Hint: it isn't the banks or Wall Street.)

It's been rather unsettling to watch the various counter-factual attempts to heap all of the blame for the "financial crisis" onto "Wall Street" and "bankers." This sort of scapegoating requires willfully selective amnesia about a number of events going back years (and even decades) - and willfully lets a variety of major contributing actors off the hook. Even uglier have been calls for arrests and prosecutions without any indication of actual breaking of the law; even people you may not like are entitled to due process of law... and like free speech, in the case of due process, if you're not in favor of due process for people you happen to dislike then you are not in favor of due process.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

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Just a reminder: The 2012 national elections take place one year from today.

This means we'll have to put up with yet another 12 months of campaign ads and gladhanding politicians seeking our (monetary) support and votes.

It can't be over too soon.

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The New England Patriots play the New York Giants today in Gillette Stadium starting at 4:15PM. I'm just hoping they won't let their defeat at the hands of the Steelers affect their game today.

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Bogie has two related posts on smart phones, one dealing with what she calls Good Apps/Bad Apps and the other with smart phone drop tests.

On the first, she tells us she got suckered in to downloading a new version of an app that allows her to listen to the streaming audio from a couple of her favorite local radio stations. She had used the older app because radio reception where she works is spotty at best. The old app worked quite well.

Once she downloaded the new app all of that changed. Now she gets nothing because the app doesn't work. It doesn't even load properly, hanging up once it reaches a certain point.

She adds this warning:

Anyway, this is a word of warning for anyone contemplating downloading this particular app on an Android phone- stay away, it sucks!

Indeed.

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Cap'n Teach gives us observations by the NYPD in regards to OWS. As one officer put it:

"Every single night it's the same thing. I mean, some guy was a victim of rape!" an officer snarls. "There comes a time when it's over. This is a disaster. It's all we're doing, every two seconds, is locking somebody up every time. It's done."

"It's done," he repeats. "Occupy Wall Street is no longer a protest."

I'm not sure what it is either, other than a bunch of ignorant wanna-be revolutionaries trying to recreate the worst part of the 1960's radicalism, and failing. Or worse, maybe they're succeeding and we've just forgotten how nasty it was back then.

Cap'n Teach adds:

In all seriousness, I want the Occupiers to keep their little slice of insanity (violence, criminality, etc) up for another year and 2 days. The longer this goes on, the more people get an eyeful of what the Left, especially the Progressives, stand for, and, by extension, what Obama, Pelosi, and a good chunk of elected Democrats stand for.

Heh.

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Posting might be non-existent tomorrow as tomorrow evening I have a public hearing to attend in another town here in the Lakes Region.

A number of towns are in the process of renewing their franchise contracts with the local cable MSO and I am a technical adviser for the consortium handling the negotiations. I attend the meetings should there be any technical questions about the cable system and the services they offer or are planning to offer.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where Eastern Standard Time has returned, most of the 12"+ of snow that fell last weekend has all but disappeared, and plenty of outdoor work awaits as the warm temperatures have returned for the next few days.

The snow certainly arrived earlier than usual this year, at least snow with a substantial accumulation. The lack of a snowblower certainly made cleaning up after the 12+ inches of heavy wet snow deposited by the storm a rather difficult task. Bogie has even more snow to move than we do.

While Deb and I accomplished our primary mission, finding replacements for the furniture that was damaged when the bathtub in the master bath sprung a leak, we didn't get the chance to go out shopping for the new snowblower yesterday.

You know this latest weather 'calamity' will be blamed on AGW. It's only a matter of time.

UPDATE: See, that didn't take long.

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Considering most of the leaves were still on the trees here in northern New England the snow caused a lot more power outages than a snowfall like this would under normal circumstances. Over 200,000 were without power in New Hampshire, with the total number in the millions across the Northeast.

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It's Halloween tomorrow night, which brings to mind an old saw: "You know you live in New Hampshire when you make sure your kids' Halloween costumes will fit over their snowsuits."

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There is a rebellion brewing in rural California, with the ever increasing hardhanded edicts from Sacramento being felt by folks in rural counties causing them to fight back, along with help from their local law enforcement.

The state government decide to cave to the watermelon environmentalists and start destroying hydroelectric dams along the Klamath River, taking away both power and water resources from a number of farms and ranches in the area. (It seems hypocritical to me, destroying a renewable energy source all in the name of the environment.)

These rural folks, living in the shadow of the majestic Mount Shasta, believe that they are being driven away so that their communities can essentially go back to the wild, to conform to a modern environmentalist ethos that puts wildlands above humanity. As the locals told it during the Defend Rural America conference Oct. 22 at the Siskiyou Golden Fairgrounds, environmental officials are treading on their liberties, traipsing unannounced on their properties, confronting ranchers with guns drawn to enforce arcane regulatory rules and destroying their livelihoods in the process.

The evening's main event: a panel featuring eight county sheriffs (seven from California, one from Oregon) who billed themselves as "Constitution sheriffs." They vowed to stand up for the residents of their communities against what they say is an unconstitutional onslaught from regulators in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. In particular, they took issue with the federal government's misnamed Travel Management Plan, which actually is designed to shut down public travel in the forests.

Plumas County Sheriff Greg Hagwood related the stir he caused when he said he "will not criminalize citizens for just accessing public lands." Siskiyou County Sheriff Jon Lopey reminded the crowd that county sheriffs are sworn to uphold the Constitution "against all enemies, foreign and domestic." These are fighting words.

I think we always knew the lunatic fringe seemed to thrive in California, now we're seeing they've taken over the reins of government and are doing their best to destroy what little is left of liberty and rights in the Golden State.

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Bill Whittle schools the Progressives about the actual meaning of the Commerce and General Welfare clauses of the Constitution, and warns them that "if the social compact is broken by the government, then we don't have to live by their laws," something that could easily lead to rebellion and the end of the rule of law. But then Progressives seem to like that idea. They have certainly worked hard to make the Constitution nothing more than a worthless piece of paper interesting only in a historical perspective, and to replace it by the rule of the politically correct courts and edicts from politically correct Progressive leaders...like Castro, Stalin, Breznev, Chavez, Hitler, Mussolini, Obama, etc.

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Thought this is a little dated, it's still indicative of the problems facing a lot of American cities who for years spent far more than they could afford. In this case it's Detroit (again) having troubles keeping the streetlights on.

This is yet another ongoing example of the result of years of Democrat governance and union in the Motor City. I have a lot of sympathy for present Detroit Mayor Dave Bing seeing as he has decades of damage and neglect to undo.

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The liberal meme that supporting Herman Cain for President proves the Right's racism is growing. Never mind that they have to twist their logic in ways that would have caused such folks expressing it to be involuntarily committed to a mental institution only a few decades ago because they would have been seen as being totally disconnected from reality.

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Cap'n Teach tells about a woman who left her 11-year old son with strangers at a convenience store so she could go to the OccupyPortland site and wash dishes.

What a moron.

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Wizbang has an interesting and simple comparison by the numbers between the OWS and the Tea Party protests. OWS doesn't come out looking very good, but then I really didn't expect them to.

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Watching the New England Patriots play the Pittsburgh Steelers was painful. Neither the defense or the offense were working. During the beginning of the second quarter the only way the Patriots seemed to be able to get first downs was due to Steeler penalties.

The second half wasn't much better. In the end the Patriots lost.

Just before the game started one of the TV commentators mentioned that Bill Belichick had checked the stats of all 12 teams coming off a bye week and found that the win-loss records of such teams was only 3-9. It looks like the Pats fell victim to that statistic.

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Speaking of the Patriots, Bob Parks brings us this story of Marcus Cannon, whom the Patriots drafted even though he'd been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The thirty one other teams decided he wasn't worth it. Bill Belichick decided he was.

He was right.

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One thing I have to admit to: being weirded out by seeing all of the snow on the ground along with the trees still bearing green, red, yellow, and orange leaves. It was while BeezleBub and I were heading to the local Big Box Hardware/Appliance/Lumber/Garden Supply store to get a few 2X6's and 2X4's for a little project in the garage that we saw the paradox of snow and leaves.

As an aside, while at the BBH/A/L/GS store we decided to see what they might still have in the way of snowblowers. Last week they had a couple of dozen lined up out in front and another dozen just inside the main entrance. Today, they had four. And one of the helpful BBH/A/L/GS store employees tried to convince us to buy one of four the leftover snowblowers even though none of them were big enough to do the job at The Manse. Needless to say we took a pass.

We'll give them a few days to replenish their supply and then maybe we'll finally be able to replace our defunct snowblower.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow is melting away, the temperatures will be rising back into the upper 50's, and where we still need yo lay up our supply of firewood.

It's another typical fall weekend here in New England, with cooler days predominant and fast fading foliage colors.

The foliage wasn't as good this year as seen in past years, not so much for the actual colors than the scattershot timing of it. Usually the leaves will change in rough unison, but not this year. Instead the timing of the change has been far more random, as seen here in the Lakes Region. We still have quite a few trees sporting green that are just now beginning to change while others changed a couple of weeks ago, hit their peak color, and are now shedding their leaves.

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My dear brother and I were at the WP Parents yesterday, taking care of a number things that needed doing. John cleaned windows as I dealt with some minor computer issues.

When he was done with the windows, we both tackled a semi-daunting problem with configuring our parents' new Sony media player so they could stream Netflix movies. This required replacing an existing wireless router (an early version of an 802.11g wireless access point) with a new one capable of connecting to the media player. I also helped the WP Dad finish assembling his new computer desk and getting everything on his old one moved over to the new one. This move also allowed me to untangle the rat's nest of wires that seem to grow all by themselves as time passes. (This always seems to happen, no matter how careful we are to prevent it. Maybe we've discovered a new universal physical law or a new twist on an existing one.)

The first movie we watched once everything was up and running was The Expendables, with Sly Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, and Mickey Rourke. Lots of really neat explosions in that one! (A dislaimer: we watched that movie to test the system and make sure everything was working. No, really!)

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It looks like the conflict between Nevada and New Hampshire in regards to the Nevada caucuses has been resolved, with Nevada deciding to hold their contest in early February, negating the need for New Hampshire to move its primary to sometime in December.

This decision by the Nevada GOP may have had something to do with a number of leading GOP candidates stating they wouldn't participate in the caucuses if Nevada didn't back off.

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In regards to yesterday's post about the supposed dangers of Smart Meters, here's another large study showing no link between cell phone use and brain tumors.

Considering the RF field generated by cell phones is 125 times that of a Smart Meter (assuming the meter is transmitting 100% of the time, which it doesn't), I'd say the anti-Smart Meter folks have got some explaining to do.

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Reason presents a poll that asked Americans to state in their own words the biggest problems they are facing today. The three biggest in order were jobs, the economy, and debt/deficits/spending.

One thing that wasn't on the list? Climate change.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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Also at Maggie's Farm comes this analysis about the #OWS protesters and their lack of self-esteem. Most of them are young adults stuck in an extended adolescence with no real identity, many of them in college. As Bulldog writes:

[Eric]Hoffer pointed out that blue collar workers rarely joined protest movements. Since they tended to join the workforce at a young age, they developed their identities earlier than protesters. Their self-esteem was in place and didn't require an outlet for juvenile behaviors.

Indeed. RTWT.

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The We Are The 53% site is still quite active, with more posts from those who are the 53% paying the taxes for those 99%-ers who don't.

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You have got to be kidding me.

Is this yet another example of the failure of our educational system or is this guy just a moron?

Unfortunately the answer is probably both.

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It seems these days that if you want a shot at business success without all of the government roadblocks standing in your way, the place for you is Estonia.

[Spaniard Naphtali Peral] says that he established his company here in only half a day, mainly online. The record for establishing a company, he adds, is only 18 minutes. In other words, the government doesn't say: Hey, Peral, who do you think you are, starting a company, just like that? No, he says, the state actually encourages entrepreneurship, and says things like: So you have an idea, Peral! Go for it! And then he says that it takes him 20 minutes to prepare his semi-annual tax return, and that when it was time to slash the government budget, Estonia's cabinet ministers started with their own salaries.

I don't see anything like that happening here, even in my home state of New Hampshire which has less government regulation of business than most other states in the US. Starting a business in the US can be daunting, particularly in states with a heavy-handed bureaucracy, high business taxes and fees, and too many politicians more than willing to choose the business winners and losers. And since BHO has taken office it has become more so, with his blessing.

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This past Friday it became official: Deb and I are no longer small business owners.

We sold our business to one of our customers, someone who believes she can put the time, effort, and money to grow it even during these tough economic times. Both Deb and I will be working with the new owner to help her do just that. (I'll be handling tech support for the computer systems used by the business.)

It wasn't that we didn't want to do it. Quite the contrary. But Deb wanted to go back to school in pursuit of a nursing degree and between her regular job, our business, and school, she didn't have enough time to devote to all three. Giving up her 'regular' job wasn't an option as we receive our family's medical benefits through her job (one she absolutely loves, by the way), and our business wasn't making enough money pay anything more than the bills, payroll, rent, and franchise fees. There was nothing left over to pay ourselves. And with my job the hours didn't allow me to put in time at our business except on weekends and some evenings. In order for it to grow we each needed to put in more than 40 hours per week, something we just couldn't do. So we had only three options: keep limping along, close it, or sell it.

We didn't want to close it as we had a group of customers we didn't want to let down. We didn't want it to just keep limping along because we knew that eventually we would have to close it, just much later. So the only option was to sell it. Fortunately we had someone who saw the potential and made us a reasonable offer.

Deb admits she didn't expect the sale to be so emotional for her, but the moment she walked into the business for the last time she broke down. So did a number of our employees (friends she made while running and later owning the business) and some of the customers who were present.

But the business lives on. The new owner sees this as an opportunity for her and we're willing to help her succeed in any way we can.

And so it goes in small business America.

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While I and many of my fellow conservative bloggers have railed against the Main Stream Media and their all but publicly announced left bias, my fellow Granite Stater Jay Tea goes to town against the NYT and their attempted hatchet job on Senator Mark Rubio of Florida.

Then again, the Times lost all credibility years ago after numerous plagiarism scandals and episodes of reporters just making stuff up. You'd think they would have learned their lessons, but no, they pushed the Rubio story without doing any fact checking and now every claim they made about Rubio has been found wanting.

Is it any wonder why people distrust the media?

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One last bit of information before closing things out.

Repairs to The Manse started last week. A plumber was in to fix the leak that caused all the problems, and the main contractor has had his guys put up, tape, and mud the new drywall on the dining room ceiling. Half the hardwood flooring has been torn up with the rest to be pulled up starting sometime Monday morning. Once the ceiling has been completed the new flooring will go in and then the walls will be repainted. If things hold to schedule the work will be completed in another week and a half.

It will be nice to have everything back together as it was before the Great Flood.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the fall foliage is still changing, the weather has cooled somewhat, and where we expect to see our first delivery of firewood sometime next week.

It's been blustery all weekend, with the temps hovering at the point where you can't decide whether it's just a little too cool or just warm enough. The wind and the temperature allowed me to hang two loads of laundry on the Official Weekend Pundit Clothesline to dry, but I still had to put them into the clothes drier to 'finish' them.

For most of the day yesterday we had the windows open while we were cleaning up the inside of The Manse. Once we got into the late afternoon it had definitely cooled off and the windows were closed. Last evening it was quite windy with brief bouts of rain thrown in here and there just to make things interesting.

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Speaking of the Official Weekend Pundit Clothes Drier, it has been making ominous noises while running. I don't know if it's one of the rollers supporting the drum, or plenum rubbing against the inside rim of the drum. In either case, the drier is making a lot of noise that is quite annoying. I'm just hoping we can get it repaired for a reasonable price because we aren't in a position to replace it right now seeing as we need to get a new snowblower for the coming winter.

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The Occupy Wall Street protests have gone global, with protests in Germany, Italy, the UK, the Philippines, and a number of other countries. The protests in Rome became violent, with store windows smashed and cars burned.

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Glenn Reynolds has a number of links covering various aspects of the Occupy Wall Street movement throughout the US, covering everything from Al Sharpton, Nazis, Communists, Obama, Think Progress, and spreading anti-semitism.

This bodes well for the still unfocused anti-capitalist movement.

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The New England Patriots played the Dallas Cowboys this afternoon in Gillette Stadium. It was an ugly game, with the outcome decided by the defense on both teams. In the end the Patriots won it 20-16, the first time they haven't scored 30+ points in a game for some time.

Next week the Patriots have a bye week.

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One big surprise from this year's NFL season: The Detroit Lions are 5-1 after losing to the 49'ers 25-19 earlier today. Despite the loss, the Lions played a heck of a game and I think they'll do far better this season than they have in years.

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Liz Trotta shows up the oh-so-self-righteous Left as being the actual racists in this country.

That some are surprised that such a thing could be, all one has to do is look at the history of the Democrat party during the past 100 years or so to see that almost everything they've done to "help" black Americans has instead hurt them, keeping them in poverty and dependent upon them. How that isn't considered racism is beyond me.

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Smitty has some ideas about how we can make peace with stupid, in this case the Occupy Wall Street idiots.

One of his best suggestions is to "put the little jackwagons in a Gunny Ermey situation, where they can find out what real authoritarianism is like. I have it on some authority that a boot camp environment can be a great way to go 'cold turkey' on stupid."

Amen.

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As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago I have been going through the blogroll to find blogs that have either gone inactive or disappeared. I have been remiss in cleaning house for over a year so this is long overdue. This time around I've gone through the Wicked Good Blogs and found a number of blogs that need to be removed. These include:

The Truth Laid Bear (inactive), Tinkerty Tonk (inactive), OxBlog (inactive), The Middle Ground (inactive), Mean Mr. Mustard (gone), Innocents Abroad (inactive), INDC Journal (closed), The Happy Carpenter (inactive), The Chip Mathis Experience (inactive), Bad News Hughes (inactive), The Autonomist (rarely active), and Albion's Seedlings (inactive).

Andrew Olmstead is remaining on the blogroll even though he was KIA back in 2008. His Final Post remains as a tribute.

A number of blogs have changed their URLs and the blogroll has been updated accordingly. These include Risawn's Incoherent Ramblings, Pejman Yousefzadeh, and DaGoddess. Kami, aka Risawn, will be blogging intermittently as she is undergoing a rather difficult pregnancy. Pejman blogs as his time allows, meaning about once a week.

More changes, deletions, and additions will be made as time allows. I am in the process of 'reviewing' some possible additions to the blogroll. Primarily I won't add someone who blogs infrequently, or is too new to blogging (meaning someone with only a month of blogging under their belt), or someone who can't seem to make up their mind about what their blog is about. (For folks like that I suggest Facebook.)

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Our friend Ruth over at Scary Yankee Chick has learned about the meaning of "Harrop", or more accurately, "pulling a Harrop."

The term comes from Australian entrepreneur Barry Harrop, a staunch supporter of the "settled science" of Anthropogenic Global Warming, who comments regularly over at the Wall Street Journal Online opinion section whenever the topic of climate change comes up. His tactic is to constantly cut and paste his own comments on the subject matter in response to others' comments in opposition to his, figuring that by saying the same thing over and over again will somehow make it true. And so it goes for Ruth on one of the pets forums she reads.

I must mention that the Harrop is also a rating system used by commenters on WSJ Online, where the more "Harrops" one receives about one's comments, the more ludicrous and uninformed it is it is understood to be.

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Flopping Aces has a telling comparison between the Tea Party and the OWS mob. About the only thing I've seen that have in common is that they both protest, and that's about it. After that the differences are staggering.

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

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And also from Cap'n Teach comes this startling headline: 9 Billion People To Die From Climate Change Hoax.

As he writes:

So, 9 billion will die over the next 88 years. Apparently, Mankind will be unable to adapt to changing climatic conditions, after being able to do so for millions of years without the benefit of modern technology. We've survived warmer periods and colder periods. At this point, the AGW movement isn't jumping sharks: they're jumping rabid, blood covered unicorns the size of a T-Rex, with the same type of teeth.

Indeed.

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Wizbang catches the AP doing some creative editing about how part of the ObamaCare program was killed because it was unworkable. Paul provides the before and after showing how the issue was spun to blame Congressional Republicans for killing that portion of ObamaCare.

You can't tell me the MSM isn't firmly in the pocket of Obama and the Democrats.

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Here's yet another example of the Obama Administration's "smart diplomacy."

Yeah, let's keep insulting our allies and sucking up to our enemies. It's worked so well in the past.

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It's about time someone debunked the phony beliefs of the modern green movement, showing most of them to be based upon a quasi-religious ideology and gee-wouldn't-it-be-great belief rather than actual facts and science.

So much of the green meme is based upon conjecture, unsubstantiated theories, and outright greed and the quest for political power.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the foliage is approaching peak, the weather is schizophrenic, and where Monday has arrived far too early...again.

Summer weather has returned to Lake Winnipesaukee, with temps both yesterday and today well into the 80's. It has certainly had an effect on both the tourist trade, with leaf peepers showing up in increasing numbers, and summerfolk working to close up their camps and cottages for the winter.

Yesterday one of my friends posted on her Facebook page that it was what she called "a Donzi day", meaning rather than working to get her boat pulled out of the water and prepped for winter storage, she was going to spend the day out on the lake. It wouldn't surprise me is she spent today out there as well.

The vehicular traffic has been heavy since Friday for the aforementioned reasons. It certainly has been heavy at the public boat ramp and docks in our town, with a lot of people pulling their boats out of the water for the year and many of the islanders going back and forth between their cottages and their cars and trucks on shore as they move stuff out in preparation for shuttering their places for the winter as well.

It seems strange for them to be doing that considering the warm weather, but then that's New England for you.

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Speaking of the summerlike weather, you'll get no complaints for us in that regard. Last year we started heating The Manse with the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove at the end of September. This year we might make it until the end of October before we need to fire it up. In light of that, we do have an appointment for the chimney sweep to clean our woodstove chimney this coming Friday. We're also making preparations for the delivery of the first of the four cords of wood from Farmer Andy sometime later this month.

We still have just under a cord left over from last year that I'll need to restack in the garage to make sure it's accessible. And like last year we'll have at least a cord and a half stacked outside after all four cords are delivered. And like last year we will use the cordwood stacked outside first before pulling from the 3+ cords inside the garage. That way we won't have to go outside during the coldest and snowiest part of the winter to get firewood.

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Why doesn't it surprise me that solar panels don't work as well as the public has been told?

Like any product, particularly something as sophisticated as photovoltaic panels, the specifications tend to be optimistic, based on 'perfect' conditions. However there are very few places where perfect conditions exist for any length of time. For instance, here in New England we have to worry about obstructions such as leaves (shadowing the panels or covering them during the fall) and snow. The short daylight periods during the winter certainly decrease their capacity just when they're needed most.

Should we abandon such technology? No. I think there's still years of research and development needed to bring them to the point where they are more cost effective and efficient. Right now they aren't, despite the fact that they are being used across the globe, particularly in places where traditional power grids aren't available. But at the moment they require government subsidies to continue production, meaning they aren't ready yet. If they were, they wouldn't require any government incentives at all.

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Now that the media is paying more attention to the Occupy Wall Street protests, there's a few things I'd like to point the protestors are overlooking.

First, perhaps they should be protesting along K Street and the outside the Capitol Building in Washington DC. That's where all the problems started. Maybe they've chosen to ignore Barney Frank's and Chris Dodd's contribution to the whole mess, between Frank's denial and unwillingness to deal with Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's financial shenanigans and the horrid Frank-Dodd bill that pushed banks to do what they are now being demonized for.

Maybe they should protest outside Bill Clinton's offices (where ever they happen to be), because he helped set up the financial collapse by signing the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had kept commercial and investment banks as separate entities. Once that separation was removed, the funds and assets of the two operations could be blended, which in turn allowed the investment sideto use depositor money in risky investments, like the fatally flawed Mortgage Backed Securities being packaged and sold by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

And maybe, just maybe, they should realize it is corporations that create almost everything these protestors use every day. Make the corporations go away and all of their fancy iPads, smart phones, laptops, cars, trucks, lattés, blue jeans, and so on will go away, too.

Oh, and let's not forget the astroturf protesters. You know, the union folks out there with their union-shop printed signs bused in to the protests, as well as the non-union protesters hired by some of the protest organizers?

Doug Mataconis has his own take on the ongoing protests, wondering if it's really a protest or a temper tantrum.

One of those he quotes decries the fact that she will be thousands of dollars in debt with few job prospects once she gets her BFA degree. I have to ask her this question: "What did you plan to do with it once you got it?" Unless she was planning on a career in academia or a museum, I don't know if too many other businesses out there looking for someone with a BFA.

Cap'n Teach also adds his 3¢ worth on the subject.

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Harry Reid's problem? Like too many in Washington he's willing to give up long time Senate rules for short term gains. Now that he's pulled the 'nuclear' trigger, the Senate is now no different from the House, removing its oversight from House actions and silencing any minority opinions. It's become the House-Lite, with 335 fewer members. That's going to backfire on Reid in the Democrats in the future.

Maybe it's time to restore the Senate to its original function and repeal the 17^th Amendment. Or maybe it's time for Harry Reid to retire.

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The New England Patriots played the New York Jets in Gillette Stadium this afternoon.

There has been a long running rivalry between the two teams for years. Some of that may have to do with two of the Patriots head coaches - Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick- both came to New England from the Jets.

It was a back and forth game, with both sides making mistakes and drawing penalties that hurt them. In the end the Patriots won 30-21.

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Oh, yeah, like this is going to help the economy and consumers:

EPA regulations will shut down 28 Gigawatts of electricity production.

Maybe it's time to tell the EPA to shove it. After all the EPA has been told by both Congress and the Federal courts they do not have the power to apply the Cross State Transport Rule in the fashion they've been using it, giving unrealistically short deadlines (6 months) to implement changes to bring them within compliance.

Call it yet another FAIL for the Obama Administration.

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Can we now make sure that tolerance is a two-way street? At the moment, it isn't, as demonstrated by these two incidents.

First, a student at the University of Minnesota - Duluth was accosted by a Black Panther because he was handing out pocket-sized copies of the United States Constitution. This was followed up by the UMD Director of the Office of Cultural Diversity questioning the student about whether he was part of a white supremacist group. When he answered in the negative, she responded "It looks like one." (See the video at the end of the linked post.)

Second, in Wisconsin a man was attacked by a Muslim for supposedly criticizing Islam, which the victim denies. This begs the question: "Will the attacker be charged with a hate crime? Probably not. You see, he's really the victim here. Islamophobia and all that...."


Indeed. Like I said, it appears tolerance is a one-way street in America.

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Fred Lapides links to a great piece by Albert Clawson, explaining his job as a "closer", someone who inspects homes that have been foreclosed upon by a lender. As he explains:

I am the final period on so many significant chapters. I feign dispassion, but I'm not fooling anybody. There is no difference between myself and these people.

The house keys are peeled from a ring. Sometimes they thank me. Sometimes they cry. I wait for their car to vanish before I put up the sign. To most everybody else it is just another house on just another block in just another city in just another financial catastrophe.

But I was there. I saw the dream end.

At least I don't make them turn out the lights one last time as they leave. That's my job.

That's one job I'm not sure I could do. I would feel too much empathy, would be able to put myself into their place, feel their anguish, their sense of loss.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

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Now that he's settled any doubt about whether he will run for the GOP nomination for President, New Jersey governor Chris Christie has plenty of work to get back to in his struggling state.

There are still billions in pension shortfalls to deal with, a poor business environment due to the heavy taxation imposed upon businesses and residents, struggling schools, cash-strapped towns and cities now paying the price for decades of fiscal mismanagement at all levels, and unfunded state mandates.

If he can pull this off I'd say he'd be a shoe-in for the GOP nomination should he decide to run in the future.

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I plan on performing the last mow of the lawn for the year tomorrow. Normally I would have done it today, but there are one or two sections that require two of us to handle because of the steep slope. While mowing the slopes can be done by one person it takes a lot of extra effort and entails a lot more danger, and these days I much prefer the safe route. And since BeezleBub was working at the farm today and has the day off tomorrow, it seemed prudent to put it off until then.

We will also be trimming back the sumac along one edge of our lawn, It's been growing like a weed (because it is one), and it's been choking out the other trees we want to grow in.

After all of this is done, the Official Weekend Pundit Lawnmower will have its winter storage maintenance performed (change the oil, drain what little gas is left in the fuel tank, spray some Marvel Mystery Oil in through the spark plug hole on the cylinder head, replace the spark plug). After that it will be relegated to the basement until next spring.

One thing I have been considering doing that I haven't done the past few falls - install the driveway edge reflectors on our driveway.

We have a very steep driveway and unless you are familiar with it it can be daunting for someone driving down it the first time. For the uninitiated it can feel like you're driving off the edge of a cliff when you first start down the slope. With the reflectors in place a driver will have some feedback showing them there is actually a driveway on the other side of the dropoff.

The reflectors also serve a secondary purpose by showing us where the edge of the driveway is after a snowfall, giving us some guidance when were out clearing it with the soon-to-be new Official Weekend Pundit Snowblower.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the summer weather has returned, the summerfolk are leaving, and where I have the day off tomorrow.

I was solo today, with BeezleBub and Deb off to Vermont for the funeral of her Aunt Becky's mother. It wasn't that I didn't want to go so much as I really wasn't up to it.

I'm still feeling the aftereffects of a nasty chest cold that's been kicking my butt since last weekend. It was bad enough that I was out of work for two days, and would have been out for four, but I had a hard deadline to meet at work, so I dragged my sorry self into work the other three days and managed to get enough work done to file a preliminary report and meet my deadline. I've been paying the price for it all weekend.

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The weekend weather was a drag, with rain, rain, and more rain. It certainly put a damper on the Deerfield Fair, one of the annual events we try to attend. I guess we'll have to save our fair attendance to the Sandwich Fair next weekend, traditionally the last fair of the year.

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It seems Obama's team is doing everything they can to demonize those who actually produce the wealth in an effort to justify what he plans to do to them...or at least the wealthy who do not support him, meaning most of them. Call it class warfare instigated by those who will profit by it, meaning Obama and his fellow Marxists.

All we have to do is remember that the ideology of the Left is one of envy and greed, the very things they say is true of their opponents, meaning the rest of us.

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As I wrote three weeks ago, we had to replace our 20+ year old Electrolux Renaissance vacuum cleaner, not so much because it didn't work than because it didn't work the way it supposed to. We ended up with a new Kenmore model that was highly rated by Consumer Reports.

Bogie also had to replace a vacuum cleaner (back in July), and like us, she ended up going to Sears for a new one. But she also got a "twofer" bonus - a handheld vacuum - when she bought hers and recently had the opportunity to use it. Her verdict: It is awesome.

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It's time to make a few changes to the blogroll, removing some now dead blogs - either inactive for quite some time, or just plain gone - and adding a couple of new ones.

We say goodbye the following: COTErack (inactive), Scotto Bloggo (inactive), No Looking Backwards (inactive), Pardon My English (gone), Hub Politics (inactive and for sale), Hub Blog (gone), Ex-Donkey and by extension Llama Butchers (inactive), Dog Snot Diaries (inactive), ConChrist (inactive), Blogmeister USA (inactive), Bitter Girl (inactive), Ben Kepple's Daily Rant (inactive), and the Accidental Verbosity archives.

I still have a whole host of blog sites to go through, but I figured I'd start with New England bloggers and work my way up.

I will be adding: Gonzalo Lira, someone who can give us a viewpoint from the eyes of a filmmaker.

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It seems the so-called Verizon Curse is continuing to claim victims. First, it was HawaiiTel, then FairPoint, and now Frontier (again), this time with labor problems.

A word of advice to anyone thinking about buying any Verizon landline operations: DON'T.

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Isn't it interesting that Herman Cain is gaining momentum in his presidential bid while both Rick Perry and Mitt Romney seem to be standing still?

The only thing that can explain his rising popularity? Tea Party Racism. At least that's what that fount of Leftist wisdom, Janeane Garafalo, claims.

But seriously, I think the folks in Florida know something the rest of the GOP establishment still refuses to acknowledge - Cain is a contender.

I know I've been paying more attention to what he has to say than either Perry or Romney. And should he win the GOP nomination, the 2012 race will be between Cain and Unable.

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It looks like the Weekend Pundit Clan will be gathering here at The Manse for Thanksgiving this year. As I have mentioned more than once Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, beating out Christmas. (I find the time leading up to Christmas to be quite stressful, even though I enjoy the holiday itself.)

I expect the repairs to The Manse will be completed before then, but even if they are not they shouldn't interfere with our plans.

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By way of Glenn Reynolds come this prediction by ECRI: A new recession is unavoidable.

ECRI has never had a false alarm, so I'm inclined to believe them. However, like Glenn, I think we never really got out of the last one.

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And now for a small bit of drama. I have to admit I didn't know what to expect and I found it surprising.


Very cool.

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The New England Patriots played the Oakland Raiders in Oakland today. These two teams have had a long time rivalry, and some bad blood between them. (It was Oakland's Jack Tatum, aka "The Assassin", who ended Darrell Stingley's career when he broke Stingley's neck during a game, turning him into a quadriplegic. Tatum ended a lot of NFL careers during his tenure as an 'enforcer'.)

The first half was very back and forth, with Oakland receiving seven penalties for a total of 70 yards, three of which were personal fouls, which cost them 45 yards alone.

In the end the Patriots pulled it off, winning 31-19.

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Jay Tea gives us yet another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences coming back to haunt the Democrats.

This time around it's the Bank of America hitting up their customers for a $5/month fee for using their debit cards to make purchases because they've been limited by law how much they can charge merchants for debit card sales.

This is a great thing B of A is doing for us. They're reminding us of some very important principles.

First up, pretty much any time the government interferes in business to "help the little people," it's more than likely to end up boning the little people even worse.

Next, whenever the government decides that it needs to cut into business profits (either through increased taxes and fees, or limiting their ability to charge), the businesses will try to find a way to make up for the losses.

Finally, this presents a grand opportunity for other banks to steal away Bank of America customers by plugging how they don't charge such fees, and actually care about their customers.

Jay Tea also reminds us of this truth the Democrats are working hard to forget: "Under the law, corporations have a legal obligation to their shareholders to make as much money as they can. This isn't a question of morality or fairness, but legal duty." (emphasis added)

Folks like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd chose to forget that in their efforts to "make things fair." But as usual, they also have a skewed idea of what is fair. Then again, they never really believed in market forces or profits or the law.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the rains are still falling, the laundry is still in the dryer drying, and where we expect the leaf peepers to be showing up in strength in the next week or so.

It's NASCAR weekend up here in New Hampshire, with the second of two Sprint Cup races taking place today at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon.

While I am a NASCAR fan, I am also a New England Patriots fan, and there lies the problem. Both the race and Patriots game are taking place at the same time. I could easily record one while watching the other, but for events like these the last thing I want to do is watch a recording when I already know the outcome. So this time around I dumped NASCAR in favor of the Patriots.

I should have watched NASCAR. The Patriots tanked against the Buffalo Bills 31-34, after having held a 21-0 lead. The two biggest problems - rookies pulling down major penalties and a Bills defense that intercepted 4 Brady passes.

Once the Pats lost the momentum they couldn't get it back and the Bills stomped all over them. They won because they wanted it more and prepared better than the Pats had.

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We're only into our second full day of fall and already the foliage is starting to change. I noticed during my drive between our small business and my 'regular' job late yesterday morning that the ferns along the sides of the roads were already browning and the swamp maples and birches were starting to sport more red and yellow leaves, respectively.

It won't be too long before the hoards of leaf peepers will arrive to take in the fiery fall display.

At least these folks tend to be far more polite (and better tippers) than the now departed "summah people".

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Glenn Reynolds has a number of links about the whole Solyndra debacle and how it seems the White House is playing a game of CYA, with the help of the most disliked man in Congress, Henry Waxman.

Glenn also quotes an e-mail received from one of his readers that asks:

"The question I have not heard asked is, How many Solyndras are there? How many have already failed? Or on the brink of failure? How many are still being planned?"

Indeed.

And then there's the LightSquared scandal.

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Charles Krauthammer writes about "the return of the real Obama" - the redistributionist, share the misery, but not the power - socialist.

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To paraphrase Art Linkletter, "Liberals Believe The Darnedest Things."

One has to wonder whether at times they are looking into a parallel universe where the laws of that universe are different from ours rather than seeing what is directly in front of them.

Some of the things they believe that aren't so:

Myth #1: Conservatives are outside the American mainstream.

Myth #2: Conservatives represent special interests.

Myth #3: The Republican party is moving to the right.

Myth #4: The Tea Party is dangerous and extreme.

Myth #5: Ethnic minorities must be liberals.

Myth #6: Women are naturally liberals.

Myth #7: Liberals take the country forward and conservatives take it backward.

Myth #8: Liberals have moved beyond old-fashioned religion.

Myth #9: Good intentions are enough for liberals.

Myth #10: No logical arguments need be made against conservatives.

The rebuttals to each myth are quite good, though I don't necessarily agree with all of them.

I find myths 5 and 6 to be the most hubristic as they assume things that just aren't so and they always catch liberals by surprise during election season. Myth 9 is an arrogance of biblical proportions, considering where that road leads (and has led in the past). And myth 10 is self-contradictory since it is a rare thing when liberals of the type we're talking about use logic for anything.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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Though not exactly breaking news, I was gladdened to hear that Heathkit is returning to the kit business.

I've written before about Heathkit and its influence on a few generations of electronics and amateur radio enthusiasts. It's nice to see they're making a comeback. I wonder if at some point they'll bring back some of their amateur radio kits? They used to have a wide range of them from relatively simple meters to full-blown transceiver and power amplifier kits.

(H/T ARRL)

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Scary Yankee Chick is looking to buy a new snowblower for the upcoming winter and is looking for some comments and suggestions. She links one model she and her husband have been looking at as one possibility.

We here at The Manse are also in the market for a new Official Weekend Pundit Snowblower as the old one finally broke down and would have cost more than it was worth to repair. We've decided on one from John Deere, the 1330SE. As I wrote in my comments to SYC, it will throw snow farther than our old machine, something that is quite important for those winters with lots of snowfall, and will allow us to clear our rather treacherous driveway in less time.

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You can't tell me this isn't going to have unintended consequences, bad unintended consequences.

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While some in the GOP are hoping Chris Christie will change his mind and run for President, I don't think he will. As he's said more than once there's too much left to do in New Jersey and he wants to see it through.

I agree with him wholeheartedly. Better he finish the job in the Garden State and then maybe consider a run for the White House, but not one minute sooner.

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The Official Weekend Pundit Satellite Receiver/DVR has been getting a workout since the new fall TV season started. There are a couple of new shows that look promising, one of them being Person Of Interest. Of course the fact that I like it means it's probably doomed as the Gods of TV Networks like to be ironic, canceling good shows and keeping really trite dumbed down shows on the air.

At least the cable networks tend to give shows more of a chance than ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, or the WB.

I expect the first shows to hit the chopping block will be announced in the next few weeks as TV execs quickly kill off shows that don't immediately become smash hits.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the NASCAR folks have departed in their jets, summer weather has returned, and where I'm fighting off a cold...and losing.