For those of you who know my family; my mother passed away over the weekend after a long battle with Alzheimer’s.

Mom was Janice Brooks.

Before that, Janice Berg.

And before that, Janice Hall.

Like me, Mom was the oldest of three kids. I never knew much about her childhood – that’s a conversation I need to have with my aunt and uncle, sooner than later.. I wasn’t the only one to get the impression she got a little restless being a young mother of three in a small town in North Dakota. She had been an art major, loved painting, craved travel, and probably had had many other plans before she wound up as Mom.

She was born in Devils Lake North Dakota, grew up in Bismarck, lived in Jamestown throughout my childhood and young adulthood , spent several years in Ankara, Turkey, and then most of the past 25 years in Minot.

Kids – at least, the ones who are lucky enough to have two functional parents – grow up as little melting pots of different combinations of their parents traits. Things I got from my dad should be fairly obvious; dad was a speech teacher, I speak a lot.

From my mom?

It’s funny. I just got off the phone with one of my mom’s old friends, someone I’ve known since I was, well, old enough to remember humans outside my family.. One of her memories of mom is her running into groups of people and getting into long, involved discussions with them, just for the fun of it.. When I was in college, she ran for the North Dakota State House of Representatives, as a Democrat – in one of the most Republican places in the world. She didn’t win – but I think she enjoyed the battle just fine.

Where did I get my contrarian streak from, you ask?

And to the extent that I don’t sweat the small stuff in life, to the extent of sometimes very studiously ignoring the small things?.

That’s mom as well.

But I do know that, along with my dad, she gave me one of the great gifts a child could ever have; a completely unremarkable childhood, where the three of us – my little sister and brother and I – pretty much just got to be kids, without having to deal with a whole lot of a crap that parents inflict on their offspring if they are not lucky. Tolstoy wrote “Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is different in their own way.” I used to complain that I had a “Beaver Cleaver“ childhood, especially when I was an angsty teenager; now I realize it was one of the greatest things a parent can give a child.

Years later, after my parents split up (10 days after my own wedding), she remarried, spent several years living in Turkey and indulging her latent travel bug, and finally moved to Minot when her second husband (who like my father was conveniently named Bruce), retired from the NSA.

(Side note: My extended family has two Bruces, two Jans, and a total of four Nicks – more than any non-Greek family in the world).

They built their dream house, which was like a little Turkish cultural center on the edge of town. One of my favorite enduring memories of both of them; meeting them on a visit to the Twin Cities, in the little Turkish restaurant down the street from our house; waiting with my kids, for them to come in, and watching the staff’s jaws drop as a couple of middle-aged Anglos would respond in fluent Turkish.

And while she sometimes may have bristled at the limitations of being mom, she loved being grandma. Some of my kids greatest memories, I suspect, involved trips to grandmas house, up over the creek on the southeast side of Minot. Watching those visits certainly stuck with me.

I’m not sure if it was a “pre-social media” thing, but she loved entertaining. She groused about it, of course, but she loved having people over; crowds of teachers, the book club she and her friends ran from probably 1970 to sometime in the mid-90s or early 2002s, and – during the epic Minot flood of 1997, when the city was flooded 15 feet deep, she and her house on the hill hosted probably a dozen people, on mattresses all over the place. It was her ultimate house party.

The picture below? She is sitting with her brother and sister and their spouses, at my fathers place in Jamestown, in September 2017. It was a mini “family reunion“ my brother and sister and I put together.

It was a wonderful couple of days, that brought together all of the branches of our (fairly small) family for the first time in decades. In retrospect, it was also bittersweet; it was the first time most of us noticed Mom‘s memory was misfiring a little too often, and too alarmingly, to be normal.

Her second husband passed away two years ago last month, right as the lockdown started. This left Mom alone in a memory care in Minot, for several miserable months during the lockdown. We have no idea how much damage being stuck, alone (despite the best efforts of an overstretched staff) was for her before the charnel house that was Minnesota’s long term care system settled down enough to move her here, but the ball of rage still burns.

But among the many things I’m thankful for are that we were, eventually, able to get her moved to the Twin Cities, to be back around family, my brother and I, after several difficult months.

Memory problems proceeded to dementia, which eventually turned officially into Alzheimer’s. And yet after 4 1/2 years, things resolved so quickly over this past week or so that I am still very much in shock.

Still, my mother was lucky; she never got to the stage of Alzheimer’s where the disease ate the part of her brain that contained her personality. She remembered me and my brother, and even as her mental loop dropped from 5 minutes to 3 to two down to simple responses to questions, she still remembered who we, her family, and the people around her were, up till the very end. For that, again, I am thankful.

So quit reading, and go hug your parents. Or your kids. Either, or both.

Some exciting news from sunny California… The power of the sun has now been harnessed.

Renewable electricity met just shy of 100% of California’s demand for the first time on Saturday, officials said, much of it from large amounts of solar power produced along Interstate 10, an hour east of the Coachella Valley.

While partygoers celebrated in the blazing sunshine at the Stagecoach music festival, “at 2:50 (p.m.), we reached 99.87 % of load served by all renewables, which broke the previous record,” said Anna Gonzales, spokeswoman for California Independent System Operator, a nonprofit that oversees the state’s bulk electric power system and transmission lines. Solar power provided two-thirds of the amount needed.

It is an achievement. However, Canary Media points out that there’s a bit more to the story…

Understanding the full picture requires first unpacking how CAISO calculated the 97% figure. California’s in-state renewable energy production was calculated as a percentage of energy demand after accounting for transmission losses. This demand figure omits demand met by rooftop solar, which generates power for more than 1 million California customers. Because large hydropower does not qualify for the state’s renewable portfolio standard, it is also not included in this figure.

Another important caveat: The figure does not account for all demand in California, even leaving aside demand met by rooftop solar. CAISO’s system does not include the areas served by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, two publicly owned utilities that together make up roughly 10 percent of electricity sales in the state.

April 3 was a big wind and solar day for California, coupled with relatively low demand due to mild spring weather. Across the whole day, wind contributed 24% toward meeting demand and solar contributed 22%, followed by large hydro at 8% and geothermal at 4%. Add in minor contributions from biomass, biogas and small hydro projects, and the total renewable percentage for the day was 61%.

But even on this banner day for renewables, 39% of CAISO’s demand was met by non-renewable sources. And even at the 3:35–3:40 p.m. interval when CAISO hit 97% non-hydro renewables, other power plants in the state were running, including gas, nuclear and hydro facilities.

That means California still burned enough gas to meet about 15% of demand at the same moment that it had enough non-hydro renewable production to meet 97% of demand; again, the excess was exported to other states.

Adding large hydro and nuclear into the CAISO mix during the renewables peak yields a maximum of 107% carbon-free power that day, as shown in the chart below. During the three hours when clean electricity was being produced in excess of demand, California was exporting its carbon-free energy to neighboring states, almost certainly offsetting fossil power.

I’ve spent the majority of my career in the employ of Fortune 500 corporations, including my current employer. In the early years, those companies would sometimes make a show of their social goodness but they weren’t particularly wedded to a lefty agenda. That’s changed in the last 10-15 years, but recent events have some C-suite grandees thinking twice: 

The fallout from the recent political spat between Disney and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has alarmed leaders across the corporate sphere, according to executives and their advisers, and heightened the challenges for chief executive officers navigating charged topics.
At many companies, vocal employees have in recent years pushed bosses to take public stands on social and political issues. Florida’s pushback against Disney has raised the stakes.

Yeah, it certainly has. You have to wonder why a company would choose to make their appeal, ahem, more selective, but the instinct is strong:

“The No. 1 concern CEOs have is, ‘When should I speak out on public issues?’ ” said Bill George, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic PLC and now a senior fellow at Harvard Business School. “As one CEO said to me, ‘I want to speak out on social issues, but I don’t want to get involved in politics.’ Which I said under my breath, ‘That’s not possible.’ ”

It’s not possible. Put more simply, it’s dumb. A CEO who spends more than a passing moment thinking about social issues isn’t paying attention to what really matters. Younger employees, who have gone from participation trophies to believing their opinions are probative without much active contradiction, are difficult to manage, so the urge to mollify them is strong.

My current company has a full range of employee groups that cater to the constellation of grievances of the modern Left. These groups regularly get a moment to hold forth in the latest Zoom Town Hall or on the company intranet page. There’s not a lot of evidence these groups actually improve the conditions they decry, but never mind that. It’s a chance to wave the freak flag, and as an overall strategy it makes sense:

Some executives say they have learned to monitor issues that could consume public attention and increase pressure for some response. Some use employee affinity groups to help flag potentially troublesome issues. “You make it a safe forum where people feel comfortable talking about concerns or whatever, and out of that, there’s really a kind of responsibility on our part to pick up on things that really do demand some attention,” said Nancy Langer, CEO of Transact Campus Inc., a financial- technology company based near Phoenix. “I look at that as a feedback loop for us.”

The challenge, as always, is to ensure the loop doesn’t become a noose.

Monday we took a look at the unfolding economic crisis in Sri Lanka. Yesterday then, some news that India heaved a life vest into the water, while China tied a concrete block to it…

Sri Lanka has extended a credit line with India by $200 million in order to procure emergency fuel stocks, the country’s power and energy minister said on Monday, as China said it supported efforts for the island nation to restructure its debt.

Colombo was also in talks with New Delhi over extending the credit line by an additional $500 million, minister Kanchana Wijesekera told a news conference, with four fuel shipments due to arrive in May.

Beijing’s ambassador Qi Zhenhong told Sri Lankan Finance Minister Ali Sabry at a meeting on Monday that China – one of the island’s largest bilateral lenders having extended about $6.5 billion in loans – supports its decision to work with the IMF to restructure its debt.

“Ambassador Zhenhong also assured Minister Ali Sabry that as a major shareholder of the IMF, China is willing to play an active role in encouraging the IMF to positively consider Sri Lanka’s position and to reach an agreement as soon as possible,” Sri Lanka’s finance ministry said in a statement.

In other words, China is saying “Sri Lanka, you’re already into us for six and a half large. Before we send more good money after bad, you can go to the IMF, but as for what you owe us, we’ll see if we can come to an “agreement.””

In return for China playing the role of angel investors, what sort of repayment might China look for from Sri Lanka?

On the southern tip of Sri Lanka, China helped finance and build the Hambantota Port project. The port opened in 2010. Often cited as an example of China’s “debt trap” approach to its victims, er, partners, China lent truckloads of money to Sri Lanka in the decade that followed, and in 2017, China Merchants Port was granted 70% of the port, as well as a 99 year lease.

The port is part of China’s so-called “string of pearls,” a chain of China-financed ports stretching from Africa to Gwadar to Sri Lanka and around SE Asia and up to Hong Kong.

In addition to that, China is building and financing the Colombo Port City in the capital city, on the west side of Sri Lanka. The project, on reclaimed land, is meant to be an international finance and economic center. It will be interesting to see if China pushes for outright ownership of one or both of these projects as Sri Lanka’s ability to pay its debt plunges.

On Tuesday, the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka tweeted this.

This came right after a series of tweets celebrating International Workers Day, but this was the subject of the tweets.

Message received.

Sri Lanka is far away, it’s not an especially large country, but current events there may have lessons for us here at home.

Over the weekend, Sri Lanka’s president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, agreed to remove his brother, Mahinda, as Prime Minister. The Rajapaksa brothers have been at the top of Sri Lanka’s government for nearly twenty years, but this move is the fallout of a serious economic crisis in Sri Lanka that is getting worse.

Sri Lanka’s 26-year struggle against the Tamil Tigers ended in 2009. (At the time, Mahinda was President and Gotabaya was Defense Minister.) That civil war was extremely costly, and the roots of the current crisis go back to the struggle to recover from the civil war. Sri Lanka borrowed what for it was a great deal of foreign money. Today, debt has reached well over 100% of GDP. Combined with a series of tax cuts under President Gotabaya a few years ago, Sri Lanka’s ability to pay back its debt became increasingly difficult.

Beginning in 2019, two shocks served to push Sri Lanka closer to the edge. The Easter bombings in April 2019 targeted several churches and hotels and killed 265 people. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings. In the aftermath tourism, which is an important industry in Sri Lanka and and brings in a significant amount of foreign dollars which is needed to pay back the foreign debt, declined sharply, putting even more pressure on Sri Lanka’s distressed economy.

Then, COVID hit in 2020 which hurt tourism even more. By February of this year, inflation was running over 17%. There are shortages of fuel and electricity. Predictably, widespread protests broke out in March. On March 31 a large group of protestors tried to get to President Gotabaya’s home. A state of emergency was declared the next day.

Events have snowballed from there. Cabinet members began to resign as the Rajapaksa brothers were unable to hold a unity government together. The value of the Sri Lankan rupee dived, and interest rates have soared.

In mid-April, Sri Lanka said it would default on its foreign debt. Sri Lanka does not have the foreign cash reserves to make the payments due this year. What money Sri Lanka does have is needed for necessities.

Sri Lanka is seeking help from the IMF, and indeed from anyone who is willing. Sri Lanka has talked to India and China about loans as well as fuel shipments. Even medical supplies are starting to experience shortages. The social unrest is not going away any time soon.

Inflation, high debt, rising interest rates, shortages, social unrest. Are we looking into a crystal ball?

This blog hasn’t shown a lot of love for Ilhan Omar.

There are a lot of good reasons for that.

But as Greenwald points out, there’s more than one dimension to keep in mind:

The first point in particular – I was unaware of it, but am happy to see she stood on a principle most of us can agree on.

It almost physically hurts to say it, but ya gotta give her some credit.

The honeymoon won’t last, but let’s give her that.

Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past.
…
Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police.

-1984, George Orwell

On Wednesday at a budget hearing before the Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, DHS Secretary Mayorkas made some news in revealing a new Disinformation Governance Board. (His written testimony made no mention of it.) This came in an exchange with Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ohio). Video of the hearing is here, the exchange starts at about the 1:39:54 mark.

Underwood: Another huge threat to our homeland is mis- and disinformation. You noted that it’s a concern of yours at the border with human smuggling organizations peddling information to exploint vulnerable migrants for profit.

One of my main concerns about disinformation is that foreign adversaries attempt to destabilize our elections by targeting people of color with disinformation campaigns. After it became clear that there was more meddling in our 2016 election, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence authored a report on the disinformation tactics used by Russia’s Internet Research Agency, the IRA, to interfere in the election. The report found that “no single group of Americans was targeted by the IRA information operatives more than African Americans.”

A newer trend that we saw in the 2020 election and already in the 2022 midterms is that disinformation is being heavily targeted at Spanish speaking voters, sparking and fueling conspiracy theories. DHS and its components play a big role in addressing mis- and disinformation in Spanish and other languages. Can you share what steps you’ve taken and what future plans you have to address Spanish language mis- and disinformation throug department-wide approach?

Mayorkas: Our Under-Secretary for Policy, Rob Silvers, is co-chair with our principal deputy general counsel, Jennifer Daskal, in leading a just recently constituted Disinformation Governance Board. The goal is to bring the resources of the department together to address this threat. I just read a very interesting study that underscores the importance of the point that you make, the spread of mis- and disinformation in minority communities specifically, and we are focused on that in the context of our CP3 and other efforts.

When asked about it, the odious Jen Psaki let the mask slip and mentioned COVID as a topic where the heavy hand of the government may be needed to keep the peasants in line.

“We know there has been a range of [disinformation] out there about a range of topics, I mean, including COVID for example, and also elections and eligibility,” Psaki said, adding that she would check for additional information on what the board plans to do.

The American Experiment also points out that SitD’s own Senator Klobuchar is in on the act, tackling “health misinformation.”

At a recent conference hosted by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, Senator Amy Klobuchar failed to answer a reporter’s direct question about the nature of her proposed bill, the “Health Misinformation Act,” leaving open the possibility of government and bureaucratic control over what constitutes internet misinformation and who has the power to make that decision.

Sitting on a panel at the “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” conference on April 8, Klobuchar was asked a direct question about her proposed bill by Chicago Thinker co-founder and Managing Editor Evita Duffy: “If I were to say there are only two sexes — male and female — would that be considered misinformation that you think should be banned speech on social media platforms?” Klobuchar proceeded to give a light chuckle and insisted it pertained to vaccine misinformation during a “public health crisis.” She refused to define misinformation and the parameters under which the proposed bill’s carveout would go into effect.

Klobuchar’s bill seeks to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives internet platforms protection from civil liability for published content. The amendment creates a carveout that would strike immunity from those platforms that use algorithms promoting content and permit the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), “in consultation with the heads of other relevant Federal agencies and outside experts determined appropriate by the Secretary, shall issue guidance regarding what constitutes health misinformation…”

Klobuchar’s evasive “answer” is not surprising considering the actual language of the bill has zero mention of vaccines and fails to define “misinformation.” But this lack of specific language and purpose in the bill — despite what Klobuchar may say at a conference — is very troubling. It leaves the door open for politicians and unelected bureaucrats in public health to determine what can and cannot be promoted on sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, harnessing the power of the federal government to punish platforms disseminating speech it deems “misinformation.”

As Scott Johnson pointed out at Powerline, there is clearly a coordinated effort going on that has led to the creation of this board. In early April, at a conference entitled Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy, at which Rep. Underwood was a featured speaker by the way, Barack Obama gave a lengthy address entitled “Disinformation Is a Threat to Our Democracy”. He said:

All right. With that as my starting point, I believe we have to address not just the supply of toxic information, but also the demand for it. On the supply side, tech platforms need to accept that the play a unique role in how we, as a people and people around the world, are consuming information and that their decisions have an impact on every aspect of society. With that power comes accountability, and in democracies like ours, at least, the need for some democratic oversight.

For years, social media companies have resisted that kind of accountability. They’re not unique in that regard. Every private corporation wants to do anything it wants. So, the social media platforms called themselves neutral platforms with no editorial role in what their users saw. They insisted that the content people see on social media has no impact on their beliefs or behavior — (laughter) — even though their business models and their profits are based on telling advertisers the exact opposite.
…
We do expect these companies to affirm the importance of our democratic institutions, not dismiss them, and to work to find the right combination of regulation and industry standards that will make democracy stronger. And because companies recognize the often dangerous relationship between social media, nationalism, domestic hate groups, they do need to engage with vulnerable populations about how to put better safeguards in place to protect minority populations, ethnic populations, religious minorities, wherever they operate.

For example, in the United States, they should be working with, not always contrary to, those groups that are trying to prevent voter suppression and specifically has targeted black and brown communities. In other words, these companies need to have some other North Star other than just making money and increasing market share. Fix the problem that, in part, they helped create, but also to stand for something bigger.

This announcement naturally gave rise to accusations that this board would be a new Ministry of Truth. I don’t think that is the right analogy, though. In Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth was the propaganda factory. It was responsible for spreading Newspeak and rewriting history.

I think a better analogy from Orwell would be the Thought Police. This organization was responsible for enforcing not only what people could say, but what they could think. It’s why the Thought Police needed to be the only effective organization. If the people are controlled, and there’s no outlet to inspire other people to action, all else falls into place.

Orwell’s insight about the Thought Police was that they knew the truth, they knew the past. They had to in order to know how to change it. Someone knew the lies, and spread them anyway.

There was no mention from Rep. Underwood about efforts to declare the Hunter Biden laptop story as disinformation, and how people and organizations have been thrown off of public platforms for mentioning it and other “unapproved” thoughts.

The threat from boards like this and where they can go isn’t that government official truly believe things such as the Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation, or that Trump colluded with the Russians, or that men can be women, or that America is a systematically racist country. It’s that they know these to be lies yet spread them anyway, and worse, work to suppress your opportunities to say otherwise.

The Minneapolis Police have problems.

It’s been the most open secret in the world for as long as I’ve lived in the Twin Cities. Minneapolis cops leaning on black and minority drivers, being more willing to take off the gloves when operating in black neighborhoods – this was news in the mid-80s. It’s like most police departments – a few bad apples among a lot of good cops – only seemingly moreso.

Minneapolis has problems.

If you didn’t see it three years ago, you should have noticed it in the past two years. They had a city council president who said in as many words that expecting law and order came from a place of “privilege” (a privilege she was happy to enjoy with $1K a day in taxpayer-funded private security, of course), and a council that backed that up with policy, to the point whereJacob Freaking Frey looks like a law and order conservative (whenever there’s not a crisis, anyway).

It’s a city that seriously believes the answer to crime is to transfer more taxpayer money to “community” “non-profits” – the same people who’ve been profiting from the status quo, and code for “the DFL’s political farm team”. (It’s the same answer they have for education, economic development, and pretty much everything else).

The Minnesota DFL has a problem.

Polling for mid-terms is abysmal – potentially catastrophic. Early signs are they could lose the House of Representatives and fall further behind in the Senate; it’s even hypothetically possible the hapless MNGOP could finally get a governor.

The economy shows every sign of starting to slow down (at best) – something the media will try to spin until after a new, GOP-controlled Congress and Legislature take over, but for now, things seem to be getting away from ’em.

But…

The DFL controls the state bureaucracy.

The report that was issued by the MN Department of Human Rights – which is like one of those non-profits we mentioned above, only part of the executive branch – earlier this week could have been issued at any time in the past 35 years. It should have been issued at any time in the past 35 years; you don’t have to be a black community activist to notice the MPD has issues. If the DFLers who created the Human Rights department, and who have always staffed it, had needed to issue it at any point in the past 35 years, they would have.

But they didn’t need to issue it then. It might be excessively cynical to say a city full of people angry about their police suited them, per se – but it wasn’t against their interest.

But now? As Democrats nationwide are being weighed down (justifiably!) by their performance on law and order issues – now the MNDoHR comes out with a report on the MPD?

Right around the time the DFL statewide needs to deflect the “conversation” about crime away to…anything but six decades of failed DFL rule?

• DFL-caused problem (problems, really – crime in Minneapolis is the DFL’s baby, and the DFL has controlled the MPD for three generations).
• DFL-controlled bureaucracy.
• Report that tries to shift blame for crime away from the DFL, which has controlled literally all the factors leading to the problem since Eisenhower was President.

Seeing a pattern, here?

Minneapolis extremists and the DFL – pardon the redundancy – are going to start portraying themselves as the victims of this past couple of years:

Note to Minneapolis progressives: whatever the Minneapolis Police Department’s problems, your “progressive” council members were not the ones being “victimized”.

What kid hasn’t dreamed about having his own private air force?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

So let’s get Brandon’s energy policy summed up: oil that Americans aren’t allowed to drill but must be imported from nations that hate or are actively planning war against us, can be given away to “allies” who’ve spent the past three decades actively making themselves dependent on our (and, unbeknownst to them, their) enemies, that being preferable to America drilling its own oil (forget about building more nukes).

I think I got it.

The 1st Biden Air Cav will soon start spraying Agent Green, exfoliating with borrowed dollars whatever canopy of fiscal sanity still remains below.

President Biden told reporters on Thursday that he is considering taking executive action to broadly cancel student loan debt, and a decision may be imminent.

“I am considering dealing with some [student] debt reduction,” Biden said today. However, he appeared to conclusively rule out $50,000 or more in student loan forgiveness. “I am not considering $50,000 [student] debt reduction,” he said. His comment confirms his earlier statements rejecting larger amounts of student loan forgiveness, and would seem to contradict suggestions made earlier this week by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that Biden was seriously considering cancelling $50,000 or more in student loan debt.

Biden did not specify an exact amount of student loan forgiveness that he is considering, although clearly it would be under $50,000. He also did not address rumors that he is considering imposing income restrictions on student debt cancellation.

The proposed debt cancellation would “only” be for the federal student loan program. Even the Socialist Squadrons at Camp Joe don’t yet dare force private lenders to forgive debt.

Schumer wants the $50,000 per snowflake. Biden may opt for $10,000 per, another number mentioned as a possibility.

Whatever the final number, there will be a cost to the taxpayer. Whatever Treasury bonds were used to lend the money still exist, and would need to paid back and are still charging interest. A freebie amount of $50,000 would cost around a trillion.

Then there’s the moral hazard. If the debt can be forgiven once, it can just as easily be forgiven again. Students will start to borrow with the expectation they won’t have to pay back the loans.

So, this is a step out the back door towards “free” education.

Another aspect that Biden needs to tap dance around is a means test, or some kind of income limit. Student loans are held by more higher income people than lower income. Biden can’t be seen to be handing stacks of cash to “rich” kids. (A lot of student debt goes for graduate schools.) So, he might just make it a welfare program and forgive debt only for lower income people.

Perhaps with their free money, the kiddies can take an economics class or two and discuss the idea that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

A heavy fog had enveloped Ville-devant-Chaumont, just north of Verdun, obscuring the view even just meters away for the American troops of the 313th Infantry Regiment of the 79th “Liberty” Division.  The regiment, called “Baltimore’s Own” due to the high number of locals from that city, was utterly exhausted having been on the front lines of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive for nearly two months.  They could hear the crackling fire of German machine guns ahead of them, but were more interested in the running footsteps to their rear.  It was a communique from their commanding officer to hold their position and to neither advance nor retreat until following orders were given.

The 313th was relieved, with one exception – 23 year-old Private Henry Gunther.  Gunther had left a fiancé and a successful early career as a banker in Baltimore when he was drafted.  The son of German immigrants, Gunther arrived in France eager to prove his patriotism yet quickly became discouraged amid the slaughter of the trenches.  Gunther wrote to a friend complaining of his life in France and encouraging his friend not to volunteer.  Army censors read the letter and demoted Gunther.  In response, the former banker began to volunteer for dangerous assignments to prove his loyalty, even being hit with shrapnel as a runner that could have sent him home.  Gunther refused; he still hadn’t regained his honor.

Injury and risky service didn’t return his rank or apparently his unit’s respect and it cost him at home.  Gunther’s fiancé wrote that she was ending the relationship, further sending Gunther into a spiral of reckless heroism.  His fellow soldiers noted that as the war seemed to be coming to an end Gunther became more and more withdrawn, perhaps knowing that his opportunities to find redemption or meaning amid the bloodshed were dwindling.  Gunther wasn’t going to obey any orders to hold his position on this day – he was going to attack.

On the other side of the line, the German machine gun nest saw a figure emerge from the fog, charging at them with a fixed bayonet.  They fired, careful to avoid hitting him, hoping that he’d stop or retreat.  Gunther jumped to the ground but quickly rose again, resuming his charge.  In broken english, the Germans yelled at Gunther, frantically waiving their arms to tell him to stop; “Baltimore’s Own” wouldn’t be discouraged.  At last, fearing for their own lives, the German machine gunners fired off a five-round burst, striking Gunther in the head, killing him instantly.

It was 10:59am on November 11th, 1918.  The last combat casualty of the Great War had fallen.

Henry Gunther’s grave site in France.  Gunther is widely acknowledged as the last combat death of the First World War before the armistice.  More would die in accidents or sporadic fighting after 11am, to say nothing of the war in the East

Four days earlier a far different sight could be seen by French soldiers in their trenches near the town of La Capelle.  Three large cars, each with the black eagle of Imperial Germany on their sides, approached the front lines with their headlights on. Two German soldiers were perched on the running boards of the lead car, one waving a white flag, the other, with a long silver bugle, blowing the call for ceasefire – a single high tone repeated in rapid succession four times, then four times again, with the last note lingering.  The German delegation to discuss an armistice had arrived.  Read the rest of this entry »

Erin Murphy – who was too extreme even for DFL Primary voters, after being endorsed for Governor four years ago – apparently held off on giving Twitter the ol’ heave-ho long enough to dump this bit of brilliance onto the world:

Saint Paul’s gullible and illiterate voters – many of whom vote for Murphy – believe city government has the legal prerogative to tell landlords what they can charge for their property. Checking and balancing that overreach is the same as trying to nullify an election (for sake of argument) by force.

It’s not just metro demigogues like Murphy:

So someday when a referendum in a western state bans abortion, Murphy and Port won’t support litigation?

Because it’d be “overturning an election”?

Tens of thousands of blue-checks who were supposed to have moved to Canada in 2017, and who threatened to leave Twitter if Elon Musk managed to buy the platform, are apperently still there.

As of last night, Mr. Blow has not, er, blown this pop stand.

Weird.

As noted in countless other venues, the cognitive dissonance among the blue-checks nearly violates the laws of physics:

Infinitely more dangerous than peeish blue checks? A bureaucracy run amok.

The EU wants Big Tech to do its censoring for it.

Out: Russian Bots

In: EUBots.

This piece from the NCR highlights one of the factors in the upcoming election, the Latino Catholic vote.

This disconnect with immigrant voters and their values accounted in large part for the most remarkable fact about the 2020 election: Donald Trump did better among Latinos than he had done in 2016, and also among Black voters in some states.
…
He noted, too, that in any election, a Republican is likely to get at least 25% of the Latino vote, that the demographic has never been as monolithic as one might think listening to talking heads on television breezily pontificate on “the Latino vote.”

Fraga also noted that the disconnect between young activists and the voters they seek to reach can be “a very significant problem.” For example, the website at the voter mobilization group Voto Latino repeatedly uses the term “Latinx,” despite the fact that the Pew Research Center found most Latinos are unfamiliar with the term and do not use it.

“The best way to contact a Latino voter is with someone who is a co-ethnic and who refers to the demographic in the same way they do in the local community,” Fraga explained. In some areas, “Hispanic” is more common, and in others “Latino” is typical. Only among academics and students is “Latinx” even used.

Democrats need to figure this all out, and soon. According the projections from the nonpartisan National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund (NALEO), “At least 11.6 million Latinos will cast ballots in 2022, a 71.4 percent increase in the number of Latino voters from 2014.” That increase is expected to be in key battleground states where both parties have recognized the need to invest in voter outreach to the Latino community. “Latino voter turnout in 2022 is projected to increase from 2018 in the key battleground states Arizona (9.6 percent), Colorado (8.9 percent), and Nevada (5.8 percent),” the group said.

The Left has long had a problem talking to people of faith (ie people who actually believe something and take their faith seriously) because the Left’s default position towards such people is hostility. Biden’s campaign site had a long of list of “plans” that were going to solve everything everywhere. One such plan was for Catholics. It reads like someone who forgot to complete the essay assignment due later that same day, and so just grabbed another document out of the policy filing cabinet, erased “Labor, Women and Minorities” and penciled in “Catholics.”

First of all, the second paragraph:

Vice President Joe Biden believes that in America, no matter where you start in life, everyone should be able to live up to their God-given potential. He knows that we need to rebuild the middle class, and this time make sure everybody comes along—regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.

While that laundry list might make the ladies of the ELCA swoon, it’s not an especially Catholic-specific conversation, is it. Then, the points that follow are:

Build an economy where everyone comes along and we protect the “least of these”
Respect the dignity of work and give workers back the power to earn what they’re wort
Ensure that affordable, quality health care is a right for all Americans
Pursue a humane immigration policy that keeps families together, strengthens our economy, and secures our border
Serve as stewards of our creation and protect our planet against climate change

(And in case you were wondering, not a hint of abortion.)

Nice try. And good luck fooling those Latino Catholics who take their faith seriously. The kind of young people that David Shor wrote about last fall, the ones who have yanked the steering wheel of the Democrat Party far to the left and are standing on the gas pedal, have no idea how to reach faith voters, and it shows. Predictable results to follow in November.

Name something a Republican governor – especially a conservative woman, given how Berg’s 16th Law works – can do that a Democratic governor can’t?

Easy – get “journalists” to report on government!

In this case, the relentlessly Democrat Sioux Falls Argus Leader:

If a Republican beats Tim Walz this fall, I suspect the Strib will develop a similar interest.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

An individual who kills an eagle can be fined $100,000 and sentenced to a year in jail.  An organization, $200,000.  Penalties increase for subsequent offenses.

But a windmill energy company will be paying less than $30,000 each for dead eagles, with no jail at all. 

Quite a deal:  a bulk discount on dead birds and immunity from imprisonment.  I guess that’s the price Mother Nature pays for saving the planet from global warming. 

Joe Doakes

I’m imagining people working on wind farms playing games with “perverse incentives”, trying to maneuver the windmills to knock off eagles on the cheap.

I’m weird like that.

The answer may be “in a cave up in the mountains, taking a guard duty shift at the mouth of the cave, projecting how long the canned food can last before another supply run is needed.”

Here is a screen capture from the White House proposed budget for 2022. It shows “accounts payable” and “accounts receivable” over the next nine years. It projects budget deficits in the 1.3-1.5 trillion dollar range.

In addition, it shows expected mandatory outlays. These start at 4 trillion and go to about 5.5 trillion. Dollars. These are things like Granny’s social security check.

Discretionary outlays are in the 1.6-1.8 trillion dollar range.

So, a little back of the envelope math. Public debt is “officially” around 23 trillion dollars, and as seen here only continues to increase at a yearly clip of over a trillion dollars.

How might we get the debt and deficits under control? Well, we could take an axe to discretionary spending and just completely wipe it out. No defense spending, nothing. Does that sound likely? No.

Or, we can cut social spending by a trillion and a half each year. Does that sound likely? No.

Trouble is, reality may do that for us, though. And how smoothly do you think those social changes will go? This from a 2020 SS Trustees report:

Under the Trustees’ intermediate assumptions, OASDI cost is projected to exceed total income starting in 2021, and the dollar level of the hypothetical combined trust fund reserves declines until reserves become depleted in 2035. Figure II.D2 shows the implications of reserve depletion for the combined OASI and DI Trust Funds. Considered separately, the OASI Trust Fund reserves become depleted in 2034 and the DI Trust Fund reserves become depleted in 2065.2 In last year’s report, the projected reserve depletion years were 2035 for OASDI, 2034 for OASI, and 2052 for DI.

2021 was last year by the way, and just after these budget projects run out, Social Security keels over.

How about Medicare? Same story.

The trust fund for Medicare Part A will be able to pay full benefits until 2026 before reserves will be depleted.

That’s the same year as predicted in 2020, according to a summary of the trustees 2021 report, which was released on Tuesday. If the reserves run out for the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, then the program’s income should be able to cover 91% of scheduled benefits. Medicare Part A covers hospital care for enrollees.

Then there’s interest on the debt. From projections, just the interest on the debt runs from about 8% of net mandatory outlays up to around 17%. And that doesn’t take into account interest rates going higher.

Then there’s interest on the debt. From projections, just the interest on the debt runs from about 8% of net mandatory outlays up to around 17%. And that doesn’t take into account interest rates going higher.

The roughly $300 billion the federal government will spend on interest payments this fiscal year is more than it is expected to spend on veterans’ services and military retirement ($185 billion); transportation ($188 billion); food and nutrition services ($172 billion), including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“food stamps”); housing ($100 billion); K-12 and vocational education ($77 billion); and higher education ($42 billion). By FY 2031, interest costs are projected to be larger than federal spending on Medicaid and unemployment compensation, and over 90 percent as large as defense spending.
…
Under current law, we project interest spending will total $5.1 trillion over the 2021 to 2031 budget window. If interest rates on the projected annual debt stock were 50 basis points (0.5 percentage points) higher than CBO currently projects – reflecting the continuation of the current disparity between projections and reality – interest costs would increase by $1.7 trillion, to $6.8 trillion total. If interest rates were 100 basis points (one full percentage point) above CBO’s forecast, interest costs would total $8.6 trillion over that period, which is a $3.6 trillion increase over current law.

If interest rates begin at 50 basis points (0.5 percentage points) above CBO’s projections and gradually rise to 200 basis points (2 percentage points) above CBO’s forecast – bringing ten-year rates to just above their 30-year average of 4.3 percent by 2031 – interest costs would total $11.1 trillion over the 2021-2031 budget window, which is $6.0 trillion more than under current law.

The asteroid is heading for Earth. Impact is projected to be smack in the middle of North America. And no laser in existence is going to deflect it.

So, be careful on that supply run down into the valley. The cannibal gangs are merciless.

Asking for voter ID is the next step toward a government run by the KKK.

Unless you’re actually a DFLer.

Then…:

To be a delegate at DFL State convention, you need:

Photo ID, proof of vaccination, and qa negative test result?

The DFL does know that Black men are the least-vaccinated population in Minnesota, right?

It’s almost as if they’re trying to…

…keep black men from participating?

Mid-2010s. Democrats chatter up a storm about Kansas, whose conservative governor and legislature lowered taxes without cutting spending, leading to all sorts of financial issues. Democrats (pointedly ignoring the success of many conservative states that held lines on both taxes and spending with superlative results) railed on Kansas as a sign that conservative governance couldn’t work.

2022: Democrats cut taxes for short-term gain, ignoring spending.

But this runnin’ with the Bidens, boy, just ain’t where it’s at:

Hunter Biden’s closest business partner made at least 19 visits to the White House and other official locations between 2009 and 2015, including a sitdown with then-Vice President Joe Biden in the West Wing.

Visitor logs from the White House of former President Barack Obama reviewed by The Post cast further doubt over Joe Biden’s claims that he knew nothing of his son’s dealings.

If Biden claims he knows nothing about such things now, I tend to believe him. He doesn’t appear to know much of anything. That ol’ historical record is an issue, though:

Eric Schwerin met with Vice President Biden on November 17, 2010 in the West Wing, when he was the president of the since-dissolved investment fund Rosemont Seneca Partners.

The logs also reveal that Schwerin met with various close aides of both Joe and Jill Biden at key moments in Hunter’s life when he was striking multi-million dollar deals in foreign countries, including China. Yet President Biden has long insisted he had no involvement in his son’s foreign affairs. “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” he said in 2019.

Does Biden’s denial beggar belief? Of course. If Hunter Biden’s surname had been, I dunno, Doakes, a guy like Schwerin would have been as welcome roaming the halls of power as the guy with the facepaint and the Buffalo headgear was on Jan. 6. But as an associate of Biden the younger, he had the golden ticket. 

”Not everyone gets to meet the Vice President of the United States in the White House. The press should be asking why Hunter Biden’s business associates — like Eric Schwerin — had that privilege and were given access to the Obama White House,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin). “This is additional evidence that Joe Biden lied when he said he never discussed Hunter’s foreign business dealings. It’s well past time for the corporate media to demand the truth from Joe Biden. The corruption of Biden Inc. must be exposed.”

Strictly speaking, the logs don’t prove Biden lied, but it’s certainly the way to bet. And while Senator Johnson is correct in asserting the press ought to be asking questions, I would not count on any investigative reporting happening any time soon. There’s a lot more at the link, including this reminder of how incestuous the power structure is in Washington:

In October 2009, just months after Hunter co-founded Rosemont Seneca, Schwerin met with Evan Ryan, Vice President Biden’s assistant for intergovernmental affairs and public liaison, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building where the vice president’s office is based, according to the visitor logs.

While working in the halls of power Ryan acted as a conduit for Hunter Biden and his cronies, hard drive emails show.

Ms. Ryan is now the Cabinet Secretary for Biden. And speaking of Biden’s cabinet. . .

Ryan went on to marry Antony Blinken, who now serves as President Biden’s Secretary of State, while she herself was appointed to a plum gig as White House Cabinet Secretary in January 2021.

It’s all in the family.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Number of illegal aliens apprehended at the Mexico border during February: 221,000.

Number of people living in St. Paul: 285,068. Don’t panic – we’re nowhere near replacing every man, woman and child in the city with illegal aliens, every month.

Number of people living in St. Cloud, Moorhead, Austin, Marshall, Faribault, Thief River Falls and Winona combined: 219,000.

We’re replacing out-state Minnesota, instead.

But Title 42 expires soon and then . . . .

Joe Doakes

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Rule #8 in Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals is “Keep the pressure on.” In Florida, Gov. DeSantis is taking a lot of stick because he is turning that back on the radicals, and for the Left, this is an unforgiveable sin.

The Florida legislature recently fired two salvos against the advancing Forces of Wokeness. House Bill 7 was passed last month to ban “woke indoctrination.”

Today, Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill (HB) 7, to give businesses, employees, children and families tools to stand up against discrimination and woke indoctrination. The bill includes provisions to prevent discriminatory instruction in the workplace and in public schools and defines individual freedoms based on the fundamental truth that all individuals are equal before the law and have inalienable rights. This legislation is the first of its kind in the nation to take on both corporate wokeness and Critical Race Theory in schools in one act. Read more here.

“No one should be instructed to feel as if they are not equal or shamed because of their race,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida.”

The more publicized action was of course to pass HB 1557: Parental Rights in Education, taking a page from Virginia’s parental rights acts. The text of the bill is here. The core of the bill was to add Paragraph 8, which has 7 points under it. Five of them explicitly have to do with parental rights and what parents are to be informed of or give their consent to when it comes to their kids’ health or education.

Unless you’ve been vacationing on Pluto though, which is warmer than Minnesota these days, you know well that these have been overlooked and Point 3 is what set the fox among the chickens.

Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.

The Walt Disney Company, understandably playing by what it thought are the customary long standing rules where conservatives may not oppose any lefty advances on the culture front, lambasted the bill and the echo chamber weighed in with the entirely predictable suite of Dezinformatsiya, that Republicans are the ones driving the culture war, conservatives are hateful intolerant bigots and the rest. In a shocking creative story-telling plot twist, DeSantis did not lie down and grovel.

The Walt Disney Company’s self-described mission statement is “The mission of The Walt Disney Company is to entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling.”

Here’s an example of that “unparalleled storytelling.” Hulu is owned by the Disney Megacorp, and Hulu is home to The Hardy Boys, now in its second season.

I loved the Hardy Boys books as a kid, and still have a box in the basement with all the blue hardcover books in the series. Despite fears based on experience of what the modern day entertainment complex might do to a series of books that celebrated traditional values, I gave it a try. Alas, the Hulu show is the Hardy Boys in name only.

There was a supernatural element in the first season, which was fine, though an obvious attempt by these oh so creative and imaginative minds to go after the Stranger Things fan base.

The show inevitably features the rainbow coalition. The ethnic background of the cast is not the issue, but the casting was not done for story purposes, but for check-the-box purposes, and that is the issue.

The actress who plays Callie, Frank’s girlfriend, has family roots in Ecuador. Chet is black. Biff is now a girl.

Biff’s mom is an Asian woman. Trudy, the Hardy boys’ unmarried aunt, is white, and in the first season there were hints that Trudy and Biff’s mom were in a lesbian relationship. That was made explicit in season two. In addition, in season two there is a new character, a black girl who is shaping up to be Chet’s girlfriend, but she has been revealed to be bisexual. (This was the point where I stopped watching.)

This in a show about and geared towards youth, a show that shamelessly strip mines its namesake in order to attract an audience, then gleefully subverts it.

The culture war is widening. We may want to stay on the homefront and cheer on those at the front, like DeSantis, and send them care packages, but we will all need to do our part and serve in the resistance.

From the “Democrats can say anything they want, because they know their voters just don’t think very critcally” department.

Angie Craig is telling people that she gets most of her donations from small donors:

Well, duh.

And if you have 100 donors, and 99 of them donate $1 piece, and Michael Bloomberg donates $10 million, then 99% of your donors are “small” – and you’ve got $10,000,099!

Which pretty much describes the dishonesty of the DFL’s “we’re running on money from the little guy!” claim:

Looking forward to talking with Tyler Kistner, who was endorsed unopposed to run against her again at the CD2 convention a while back.