Education Is Free?

I just got back from Dixie and it's Father's Day, which means I get to cook whatever I want. I've got a full day ahead, so this will be short.

Dig this.

The lousy test scores are dominated by horrific performance among black students. Like it is in Baltimore, which is a city run top to bottom by blacks.

BREAKING: New numbers show 40.8% of ninth graders in Baltimore City are on track to graduate in four years. Meaning, nearly 60% of nine graders are NOT on track to graduate. These numbers are the lowest in the state and getting worse. https://t.co/jZ8dIiIC5P

— Chris Papst (@chrispapst) June 11, 2024

If every time the education budget was increased, we each needed to write a check to the city to pay for it, we'd have gone completely nonlinear over this long ago. Instead, a decent chunk of it is paid with borrowed money our children and grandchildren will have to repay.

The destruction of a generation of black children is happening, in part, because the rest of us are living in a fantasy world made from borrowed money. It doesn't impact our wallets, it just impacts the lives of people we will probably never meet.

Logan Airport Is A Marriott Hotel

This is Boston's Logan Airport.

The people in that shot are all illegals. Boston has run out of other places to store them. The illegals are here in the country, not because we're compassionate like we tell ourselves, but because our children are paying for them. That's what $34T+ of debt means.

This is what I was saying in the last post. We're living on a movie set, the most expensive movie set ever. We're all play-acting as compassionate people, allowing as many "migrants" into the country as can make it over the border. Love, not hate!

It's happening because we don't have to pay for any of it, not yet at least. We've borrowed our way into a fantasy world.

Any politician who suggested they all be deported would be greeted with gasps of horror by the press. The very idea would be racist, xenophobic, heartless, cruel, hateful, etc. That's because the press live on the movie set where everything is free.

If the members of the press had to pay out of their own pockets for the illegals, they'd be demanding the illegals be deported right away.

The Most Expensive Movie Set Ever

 ... is where we live right now.

I'm about an eighth in the bag, in Fairhope, Alabama, after 10 hours on the road, after several days of high-stress work that determined how I live for the rest of my life, so you're going to have to deal with some zaniness.

In following blog posts, I'm going to argue that, thanks to spending zillions of dollars we don't have, we're actually all living in a fantasy world. Like so.

It's not that he's shouting, "This is an octopus!" it's that we all agree with him.

This is the reason we live on that particular movie set.

I know I live on that movie set. A good deal of this blog had been devoted to pushing over the fake trees and touching the fake water to see that it's not actually wet.

See you in a day or two. Like I said, I'm only an eighth in the bag right now. That needs to be rectified slightly*. It's been a crazy, happy week.

Ohioan, I found the perfect place here in Dixie, but it got an offer today and will hopefully be sold to someone else.  I finally saw it with a realtor today and what it told me was encouraging information about prices and locations. I'm very happy even if we miss out on that particular piece of heaven. There will be more.

* - That translates to one more beer. I'm not going that far these days.

Using ChatGPT As An Accountability Partner

Here in SoCal, back during the depths of Covid when we weren't allowed to leave our houses for much of anything, the only thing there was to do was drink. Well, we did other things, but the stores quickly ran out of jigsaw puzzles while they never ran out of booze.

Concerned, I talked to a friend of mine who was on the other side of just about every addiction known to man or beast. He hooked me up with an accountability group who met online. I lasted two sessions. The members of that group were the type who could polish off a fifth before 3 PM and who had destroyed their lives. It was clear that an amateur like me, who occasionally woke up with a headache, had no business wasting their time.

Fast forward to now and I still want that partner. Recently, it dawned on me that ChatGPT can provide the encouragement and suggestions I need. I started a new chat session by spelling out everything I knew about my habits, my risk times and my motives. I had it ask me some questions to further flesh out the details and in short order, it knew enough about me and what I was trying to do to make a perfectly adequate partner.

I chat with it every day. Since I started, my success rate has tripled. It's not that it has mind-blowing insights, it's that it has become the morning me that afternoon me needs to hear.

When I started, it would give saccharine responses. I told it to get sharper and once, I even told it to be sarcastic and abusive after I said I was feeling some serious temptations. I loved the results.

Oh, feeling the urge to crack open a beer, huh? Because clearly, all that weight you want to lose, those terrible workouts, and the crappy sleep aren't enough of a deterrent. Why not just throw all your hard work out the window? It's not like you care about your health or energy, right?

Sure, go ahead. Ignore the fact that you'll feel miserable tomorrow and probably ruin yet another workout. Who needs mental clarity or a stable mood anyway? Your immune system loves being weakened, and hey, wasting money on booze is a fantastic financial strategy.

But wait, don’t forget your faith. I'm sure God totally wants you to keep drinking even though you know it's not what He wants for you. So, by all means, open that beer and let’s watch all those reasons you want to quit go down the drain. Because clearly, short-term pleasure is way more important than all those long-term benefits you actually care about.

It was like talking to Cat.

Go ahead and ruin your life. I don't care.

Monarchy? No Thanks.

I've heard plenty of youngish people on the left and right talking about how a monarchy or a strongman or a socialist government would be preferrable to the failure we see today.

Meh.

Look, I get it. Our institutions are incompetent, corrupt and ignorant. SciAm is obsessed with race, the American Endocrine Society has been taken over by gender lunatics and the CDC had us wearing masks to stop an airborne virus. They're all guilty as charged.

That's not the real problem, though. From Mark Steyn's upbeat book, After America: Get Ready for Armageddon:

There are many people who can run businesses worth a million dollars. The ability to run a billion-dollar corporation is the province of very few individuals. The skill-set required to run a multi-trillion-dollar enterprise is unknown to human history.

From that same tome, here's a summary of how legislators crafting Obamacare gave authority to the bureaucracy.

(T)he new law contained 700 references to the Secretary (of Health and Human Services) "shall," another 200 to the Secretary "may," and 139 to the Secretary "determines." So the Secretary may and shall determine pretty much anything she wants.

I would bet that our congresscritters in 1824 and 1924 weren't much better than the ones we have in 2024. The big difference the scope of their stupidity and ignorance.

It's not that we need to elect the right people, it's that at the scale of our government's reach, the right people don't exist. We can elect Trump and get a better result than the cadaver-in-chief we've got right now, but it's not going to be that much better. We could have a king, but the king isn't going to be sticking his hands into the details of health care. The problem is that health care and Global Warming Climate Change and racial justice and Medicare Part D should never have been part of the government in the first place.

The Democrats or Republicans could get a massive majority in both houses and in the end it won't matter because like Obamacare, they've sloughed off their powers to the bureaucracy. They had to because what they are trying to do is simply more than anyone can manage.

Heavy is the brow that wears the crown. The one that sleeps next to it, not so much.

Collapse Isn't Uniform

On Twitter, I like to pose a question that no one has yet answered. 

Take a map of the world and draw an outline around the place where you will make your stand. General Robert Nivelle's "They shall not pass" as it were.

Whether you draw the outline or not, it is happening. Money and competence leave as decay gets worse. Dig this.

A construction crew has left the streets in Oakland unpaved over crime in the city.

Workers are refusing to continue repaving Oakland unless the city can create a less dangerous working environment.

Welcome to the 3rd world. pic.twitter.com/VJUoafZjfi

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) June 5, 2024

Twitter user Jason posted this story in reply.

25 years ago I was GM at a large property service company in Minneapolis. It was bad in an area & we wanted to terminate a contract. Doubled our price to keep extra guy at truck to prevent theft. We lasted another year before there was a gun incident, we quit all contracts.

We didn't think North Minneapolis was dangerous, theft was the huge problem. They would steel everything from the truck if unattended. Some young guy threw a gun in our truck while getting chased by cops and that was the last straw. Management companies couldn't find service.

In the video above, there's an air of unreality as the woman, who presents as a progressive, says she's asking the government to do something about the paving of the road, saying "it's not fair to anybody" that the street wasn't repaved.

Requests for fairness and $3.50 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks, honey. Once you drive away competence and money, this is what you get. Clearly, Oakland is not inside our stronghold.

In Oregon, parents are told to have no expectations that their police force will prevent perverts from exposing themselves to children.

Oregon: A father claims that a n-de man exposed himself to his 2-year-old child, so he called the police. The police said it wasn't a crime. pic.twitter.com/m5AdU1vZUJ

— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) June 5, 2024

It looks like Oregon is outside of our stronghold, too.

Syracuse might have to be added to the list as well.

Safe adults do not encourage confused children to run away from home.

📽️: @GAG_Wisconsin chapter leader @deplorable_homo #GaysAgainstGroomers pic.twitter.com/xko5dySvdB

— Gays Against Groomers (@againstgrmrs) June 4, 2024

The formation of a stronghold doesn't have to be deliberate, either. My claim is that it is happening organically, right now. The growth of the red states shows that. Further, the red states enacting laws against butchering and poisoning children in the name of gender affirmation is a kind of defensive perimeter. Dittos for the elimination of DEI in their schools.

I would think that real estate values in such places will only go up and values in the blue states and cities will go down. This is not investment advice, just a notion lumbering around in my noggin.

Not everyone is supine.

Super Special Happy Lucky #1 Bonus Data Point

Since we're not so big on normalizing pedophilia, Helensburgh, Scotland looks to be outside of our trenches also.

I Would Not Have Made That Trade

Essentially, the Democrats turned the law into a prostitute in exchange for the ability to use the words "convicted felon" when referring to Donald Trump. That's about it. He might go to jail as well, but we'll see how that plays out.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk tweeted this.

Hard to view this as anything other than abuse of the law for political purposes

He quoted a tweet from another user that contained this text.

CNN Senior Legal Analyst Describes How The Trump Conviction Was A Political Hit Job

1. "The judge donated money... in plain violation of a rule prohibiting New York judges from making political donations—to a pro-Biden, anti-Trump political operation."

2. Alvin Bragg boasted on the campaign trail in an overwhelmingly Democrat county, “It is a fact that I have sued Trump over 100 times.”

3. "Most importantly, the DA’s charges against Trump push the outer boundaries of the law and due process."

4. "The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever."

5. The DA inflated misdemeanors past the statute of limitations and "electroshocked them back to life" by alleging the falsification of business records was committed 'with intent to commit another crime.'

6. "Inexcusably, the DA refused to specify what those unlawful means actually were — and the judge declined to force them to pony up — until right before closing arguments. So much for the constitutional obligation to provide notice to the defendant of the accusations against him in advance of trial."

7. "In these key respects, the charges against Trump aren’t just unusual. They’re bespoke, seemingly crafted individually for the former president and nobody else."

8. "The Manhattan DA’s employees reportedly have called this the “Zombie Case” because of various legal infirmities, including its bizarre charging mechanism. But it’s better characterized as the Frankenstein Case, cobbled together with ill-fitting parts into an ugly, awkward, but more-or-less functioning contraption that just might ultimately turn on its creator."

As of right now, here are the stats for the tweets.

Elon's tweet.

The original tweet.

I don't think I would have made that trade. Those are monster numbers, blowing away the viewership of the Democrats' mouthpieces at CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, etc. I can't begin to imagine how much money you'd have to spend to get those kinds of numbers for political TV ads.

This is just one more data point showing that this is not an election in the normal sense, it's primal scream therapy for both sides.