The up and down weather continues here in New Hampshire, with warmer weather moving in to replace the cold weather, to in turn be replaced by colder weather and snow/ice/freezing rain. It seems to be the pattern this winter.

The warmer weather does allow the road surfaces to melt, leaving bare pavement before the next round of snow.

At least New Hampshire isn't supposed to be pounded with snow as badly as it was last winter, at least according to the Farmer's Almanac. Instead, southern New England is supposed to receive the lion's share of the snow this time around.

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You know Senate Democrats are in trouble when Democratic Underground is slamming them for being racists. It also appears those same Senate Democrats don't understand the Constitution when it comes to seating Senators.

Harry Reid's actions to prevent the seating of Roland Burris, selected by embattled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to fill out the term of President-Elect Barack Obama, is unconstitutional on the face of it. There's no provision for doing so unless Burris does not meet the constitutional requirements to be a senator, and Burris does without a doubt.

But we know from experience that many Democrats like Reid don't let little things like the US Constitution get in their way when they run the show. After all, laws and the Constitution are for the "little people."

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It's no surprise to me more Americans are saying "no" to building casinos in their states.

The push to allow limited gambling in the form of slot machines and video gambling here in New Hampshire is being sold as a way to fill in part of a $200 million+ budget deficit created by the legislature. So far the taxpayers aren't buying it, knowing the problems that come along with gambling establishments can outweigh the benefits.

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One of my favorite refugees from the People's Republic of Massachusetts - Meninostan reviews some crime statistics, comparing the entire state of New Hampshire (population 1.32 million) to the city of Boston (population 600,000).

New Hampshire had 20 homicides last year. A couple were justifiable, i.e. self-defense. Two homicides were committed with guns.

Boston, on the other hand, had 60 homicides in 2008, of which 46 (77%) were committed with guns.

The big difference between the two? New Hampshire allows law abiding citizens to own and carry guns. Boston only allows criminals to carry guns, leaving the average citizen unable to defend themselves.

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I have no disagreement with Branford Marsalis on his assessment of students he instructs these days:

What I've learned from my students is that students today are completely full of sh*t.

That is what I've learned from my students. Much like the generation before them, the only thing they are really interested in is you telling them how right they are and how good they are.

Far too many have come to believe they are entitled to good grades, good jobs, and good lives with little effort on their part. How many of them are traumatized when they find out life doesn't actually work that way?

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As much as we hear about the financial trials and tribulations of American families from the media, it isn't as real as when you hear it from someone you know. In this case a family member speaks about tightening the belt, looking at cutting expenses, and paying down debt. He also talks about the nervousness he feels about his job, knowing no one's job is really safe in times like this.

Even though the industry in which I work tends to be less affected by drops in the consumer side of the economy, it isn't immune. Deb and I have been working to cut down our debt and have been succeeding, for the most part. At least we don't have car payments to worry about. There's just the mortgage, a couple of credit cards (with low credit limits, thank goodness), and a business loan (yes, we are small business owners).

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Our state legislature opens the first session of the 2009/2010 Legislature this coming week, and they will have a lot of work to do, trimming the state budget to eliminate the existing $200 million deficit. At least our governor has shown some backbone, telling the members of the New Hampshire House and Senate that raising taxes and fees will not be tolerated. All we can do is hope he'll stick by his guns and veto any spending or tax increases.

One thing that helps: New Hampshire Republicans picked up a number of seats in the House during the November elections, shrinking the Democratic majority.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the kids return to school tomorrow, the legislature will soon be in session, and where I have to go back to work tomorrow, too.

Does this really surprise anyone?

Poll: 77% of Americans Blame the media for making the economic crisis worse.

How many times in the past have we seen media coverage make a marginally bad situation worse by hyping it to death? Quite a few, in my memory.

Does anyone remember Senator Chuck Schumer's declaration last year that West Coast bank Indy Mac was in trouble and was likely to fail? If the media hadn't played this up as they did, Indy Mac would likely have survived. But because the media gave it a full court press, customers of Indy Mac panicked and withdrew $1.8 billion (that's billion with a 'b') in cash, leaving the bank with little or no liquidity. The bank failed. Chuck Schumer and the media created a bank run that destroyed an otherwise healthy bank. If the media had been more responsible, Chuck's words would never have made it into the papers or on the air, the bank run would never have happened, and Indy Mac would have been just fine.

Of course the media always plays the old "The people have a right to know" card, even if that 'knowledge' is harmful, misleading, or even worse, false. They use it as a shield to deflect accusations that they themselves are the guilty party. The people may have a right to know, but who says they have to know right now? It seems that over the last couple of decades or so the media's need to be the first to break a story has replaced the need to be accurate, to check their facts, and not to report hearsay or second/third hand information as gospel.

Some of that push to be first may be blamed upon the advent of electronic news gathering, making breaking stories available instantly. The time available for fact checking and background has shrunk to almost nothing, meaning far too many reports are aired or put onto news websites before all the facts are available. This has lead to an increasing incidents of erroneous reporting.

But to get back to the main subject, it appears the media revels in the impending doom of economic downturns, massive job losses, and hardships brought to American families. Panic sells, and the media is very good at selling panic. Economic problems are the easiest to sell since they can affect everyone, rich and poor.

For the past two or three years they media has been trying to sell a recession, even though until recently there wasn't one, nor were there signs of one. But they kept making the claim, and eventually people started believing them. And once that happened, and the people started acting as if there was indeed a recession by cutting back on expenditures, lo and behold, a recession arrived. Why? Because people started cutting back on expenditures, which dropped sales, which in turn caused a cut back in orders from manufacturers, which in turn led to layoffs, which caused more people to cut back on expenditures. It was self-fulfilling prophecy made by the media.

Some may claim it was the meltdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led us to this point, but they were but one more symptom of the problem, not necessarily the problem itself. The media was also one of those in the cheering section for those supporting more loans to low-income families wanting to buy their own homes. But when those families started defaulting on the loans because they really couldn't afford them, the media acted surprised.

Is it any wonder most Americans don't trust the media and blame them for the economic problems we now face?

2008 is gone and 2009 has arrived. Thank goodness.

With the arrival of the new year, it's time once again to make my resolutions. Here's but a few of them.

Gain back the readers this blog had before the major meltdown of the old site. While Weekend Pundit had nowhere the readership of blogs like Instapundit, it did have about 1000 hits a day. Since the meltdown back in May 2008 readership is only a few dozen a day. The former readers haven't found the new site.

Get back to fightin' weight. I'm ashamed to admit I tip the scales at 245 pounds. Four years ago I was at 195. The change since then? Marriage. Deb is a great cook, but she goes heavy on the pasta and sauces, something that always packs the weight on my frame. It's time to get away from the carbs!

Spend more time out on the lake this summer. Our family didn't get nearly as much time on the lake this past summer, partly due to the weather and partly to our schedules.

Stain the decks and stairs of The Manse...again. The rather wet weather late last spring and through the summer last year made it impossible to get it all done. All I need is three weekends without rain.

Take more photos. 'Nuff said.

Write posts much more betterer.

Cut down on my dark chocolate consumption. Yeah. Right. Like that's gonna happen.

Pay closer attention to the legacy media, particularly the big city media. We shouldn't let 'em slide on anything. They've gotten away with it for far too long.

I could continue, but the post would be a few thousand lines long. I can't in good conscience expose what few readers I have left to such drivel.

There are lots of topics I could cover this evening, this being the last post of 2008. I could list my New Year's resolutions, but that will wait until New Year's Day. I could write about 2008's biggest stories, but that topic has been beaten to death by the print and electronic media, so why go there?

Instead, I will go in a different direction and cover a subject near and dear to my heart: ugly houses.

Obviously this isn't an original subject, seeing as I linked to a post over at Sippican Cottage about the subject. But it is one that seriously needs to be addressed considering how many homes built over the past ten years or so I've seen that never should have seen the light of day. I'm not the only one.

Here's a house for sale in the town I grew up in.

Everyone looks around and sees houses like this. They pass unremarked now. After a while, if it doesn't look like this, people are going to think a house looks strange. And it's wrong, wrong, wrong. The situations where a house nailed on the ass end of a garage are appropriate are so few there's no use talking about them. Never do this.

There's Postmodern evil afoot here. Everything is boiled down to a pastiche, and you put all these disconnected totems into a blender and put the mixed up parts on a concrete rectangle. It's making us all crazy in a very subtle but profound way.

There has been a concerted effort to dismantle all standards of right and wrong and beauty and truth. If ever truthiness was put into sticks and bricks, this house is it. When you rebel against standard things, sooner or later you run out of ways to be original, and all that is left is to do the exact opposite of good. It's the only permutation of new that's left to you after a while. The American house is becoming that perfect distillation of bad ideas. Everything exactly at cross-purposes with its stated purpose.

Indeed. I have seen far too many homes built that look like they came out of the mind of a schizophrenic off their meds. There's little thought to the layout, no logic that dictates what the floorplan should look like. Such homes are soulless, having less character than a refrigerator box one of the homeless would use to shelter themselves from the cold. The exteriors look bland, almost sterile, even though they have the vague form of houses we call Cape, Victorian, Ranch, Saltbox, Colonial, Federal, and so on. They are boring. Those designing them, whether professional architects or the future homeowners themselves, prove the only taste they possess is in their mouths.

Even our Manse, a supposed Cape, suffers from this malady. The basic looks are there, but the details have been overlooked or ignored, making our home an ersatz Cape Cod at best.

First, the siding looks more like clapboards rather than shakes, and most Capes are sided with shakes. While I have no desire to pull off the vinyl siding and replace them with cedar shakes, I have seen siding that looks like shakes while maintaining the advantages of vinyl siding.

Second, our fireplace is in the wrong place. Capes have their fireplaces near the center of the house, allowing more even heating. Ours is located at the south end of The Manse. What's worse is that we don't even have a real chimney. Instead it's a chase covered with siding that hides the two vent pipes, one for the furnace and water heater and one for the fireplace/woodstove. So it's a chimney-looking construct without the brick or stonework.

Third, the front door doesn't really match the Cape décor. It has a large cut glass oval with brass highlights that fills half the door. No Cape worthy of the name I've ever seen has a door like that. Only ersatz Capes like ours bear doors like that.

Fourth, the front door to the mud room is solid, bearing not a single pane of glass. Not one. The back door has the proper lights in it, but not the front. That means we don't get much light in there until late in the day. That's poor design.

Fifth, our home has sliders opening out onto the rear decks. That's right, not one, but two sets of sliders on the rear of The Manse! Sliders are an abomination on a Cape.

Sixth, though not the last or least, our garage dominates the front rather than the house itself. It should have been set back 5 or 10 feet, making the house the focus of the front. Instead it is even with the front of the house, and because of the nature of Capes, the front of the garage looks larger than the rest of the house. That's plain wrong.

I could easily go on and on about the soulless design of The Manse. Whomever dealt with the details either got lazy or got a great deal on doors, sliders, and siding. It's ironic considering there's so much that's right with our home. Much of the interior finish is excellent, belying the blandness and poor layout of the exterior. The amenities are quite good, too. But still, the proportions aren't quite right due to the lack of attention to detail.

Since we live up here in the Lakes Region of central New Hampshire, we've seen more than our share of fine lake shore homes and cottages that have existed for generations being torn down and replaced with tasteless and bland monstrosities that look so out of place they should be made illegal and burned to the ground. The owners and the architects responsible for those eyesores should be ridiculed...or maybe flogged in the town square for the crime of poor taste.

Well, maybe not. Flogging might be too good for them.

I have to agree with so many others on the issue of the upcoming Congressional pay raises: the Congresscritters don't deserve them.

It seems everyone else must tighten their belts, to look for ways to cut costs. Pay raises aren't likely for many workers these days, and even if they are lucky enough to get them, they'll be a mere pittance.

Frankly, when it comes to Congress, they haven't earned a pay raise. With the soon-to-close 110th Congress having been one of the biggest do-nothing, ineffective congresses ever, they have yet to prove to me or the rest of the American people that they deserve their upcoming 2.8% raise (about $4700). They certainly haven't performed, passing little in the way of important legislation, fooling around with other legislation that does little if any good, all while wasting hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on bailouts that should never have made it through the House or Senate. Come to think of it, maybe we should consider cutting Congressional pay. Let them feel some of the average American's pain.

Due the last economic downturn back in 2000/2001, the so-called dot-com meltdown, no one within my company saw a pay raise for over 4 years. Since then we certainly haven't made up for it. It's likely we never will. But our representatives in Congress will receive a pay raise despite the economic conditions, the huge budget deficits, and the lack of anything useful from either chamber over the last two years? What's wrong with this picture?

I have to agree with Insty on this one:

The best TV commercial, ever.

Believe it or not, it's an ad for a Siemens washing machine.

Note: Not safe for work. See the video here or view it below the fold.

The long Christmas holiday winds to a close here at The Manse. The Christmas music has been stilled, and decorations and ornaments packed away carefully until Christmas once again fills our hearts and minds.

Our tree came down today, something that is always bittersweet for me. Deb and I removed the ornaments, the garlands, the lights, putting them away. The angel that adorns the top of the tree was carefully removed, wrapped, and placed in a box, not to see the light of day until after Thanksgiving next year.

All too soon we return to our daily lives, the magic of the season fading from our consciousness as our attention returns to living from day to day.

I have always found this saddening.

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This does not surprise me in least:

Americans give more to charity, per capita and as a percentage of gross domestic product, than the citizens of other nations.

A number of reasons are cited, one of them being Americans usually have more money left in their pockets after paying taxes as compared to their contemporaries.

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Finally, the cause of anthropogenic global warming has been found: NASA computers used to plot global temperatures.

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It appears science illiteracy is the latest rage among celebrities, politicians, and other glitterati.

This is a disturbing trend.

How can we expect our so-called "betters" to make the right decisions about science and technology if their heads are filled with pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo and outright junk science?

Being of a scientific bent of mind (I'm an engineer), I don't know how many times I've come across people with little, if any understanding about how things in their every day lives actually work. Some of these people have been politicians tasked with deciding the path of research or spending on science and technology.

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While we did have a White Christmas this year here in New England, you wouldn't think so considering temps here have run from the lower 50's to the upper 60's today. The warm temps have allowed for melting of some of the ice and snow from the previous couple of weeks, leaving roads and roofs bare. Even the Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout's winter storage cover is clean.

It was warm enough to eschew use of the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove today. Deb even opened a couple of windows upstairs to air things out.

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The New England Patriots played and beat the Buffalo Bills in Buffalo, 13-0. In order for the Pats to make the playoffs, either the Jets must beat the Dolphins, or the Baltimore Ravens must lose to Jacksonville Jaquars. If that doesn't happen, the Patriots are finished for the season.

Frankly, I'd rather have the Patriots stay out of the playoffs this year. This will allow their hurt players more time to heal and/or go through rehab, allowing a fresh start come next season. The Patriots are hurting, with many of their first and second string players either out hurt or playing hurt.

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I've never doubted this, particularly when I've heard it from a liberal:

Conservatives love America more than liberals.

There are far too many examples for liberals to say otherwise.

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One of our feline residents has taken it upon herself to start her own blog. (No, not Bagheera. He posts here, feeling it is beneath his dignity to maintain his own blog. He has better things to do...or so he says.)

Hilda, our resident Maine Coon Cat, was pushed into it after curmudgeonly Bagheera made some disparaging remarks during one of his last posts.

You can find her not-so-daily posts at Hilda's Home. (Hey, she's a cat. She posts whenever the mood strikes her.)

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we've received a brief reprieve from winter weather, Christmas decorations have already started coming down, and where winter will return soon enough.

And the hits keep on coming.

It is no surprise to me and other Anthropogenic Global Warming skeptics that many of the predictions made by the AGW faithful have failed to materialize. As Andrew Bolt wrires:

If your current computer models can't predict the known past from retroactively entered data, then why, precisely, would you expect them to accurately predict the future.

You can't, of course.

Computer models--all computer models--do nothing more than produce an extrapolation from the assumptions that are programmed into them. The input always determines the output.

Moreover, when it comes to climate, the number of variables is so incredibly large, and often prone to chaotic effects--that I don't believe anyone has ever built, or realistically can ever build a valid computer model with our current state of computer technology.

I use computer models to predict the behavior of electronic circuits, and while they are not nearly as complex as climate models, they still have errors that will throw off the accuracy of the circuit model here and there. With circuit models we're only dealing with a few hundred well defined parameters with errors measured in fractions of a percent. With climate models, we're dealing with millions of parameters with a 1, 5, 10, 25 or even 50% margin of error. If a simple electronic circuit model can show a measurable error in its results with barely measurable errors in the input, how can anyone honestly say extremely complex climate models with wide margins of error on its inputs won't show large errors in its results? I guess it's easy if your one of the AGW faithful.

Despite increasing evidence their predictions about anthropogenic global warming are wrong, some of the biggest proponents are still making dire predictions about arctic ice being completely melted in 5 years and record high temps returning in 4 years.

These predictions have been put forth despite record cold temperatures and snowfalls in the northern hemisphere and rapidly growing arctic ice and resurgent glaciers.

As always, the dating of these predictions is just far enough ahead so should they not come to pass most people won't even remember them being made...except for many of us in the blogosphere.

Folks like NASA scientist James Hansen and former Vice President Al Gore keep cranking up the rhetoric even though their predictions have not borne fruit. Climate models used by the AGW faithful have been no more successful, yet many cling to them like an overloaded lifeboat, praying their flawed models will somehow and miraculously turn out to be right before the chilly waters of ridicule and hard evidence drowns them, figuratively speaking.

There's good reason for them to be doing this: they cannot afford to be wrong. If they are, their grant monies and world importance will slip away and they will join the ranks of the many other alarmists and crackpots that have gone before them into the "dustbin of history".

The Weekend Pundit family would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

We will be spending time with our families, meaning we will return to our regular blogging schedule on Friday, December 26^th.