Milton Friedman On Inflation

Not only did he predict what we're going through now; in fact, he even correctly predicted the excuses the government "leaders" would use to explain and excuse it!

Inflation is blamed on many things. But it has only one cause: It is a monetary phenomenon. Inflation occurs when the quantity of money increases faster than the quantity of goods. Why does the money supply increase? Very often, it does so to enable the government to pay its bills without raising taxes. There's only one real cure for inflation. It is a cure that's easy to describe but difficult to apply: The government must reduce spending and print less money. The alternatives are both recession and double-digit inflation. Recorded at University of San Diego & San Diego Chamber of Commerce ©1978

This is the man about whom Joe Biden said, "Milton Friedman isn't running the show anymore."  Whom do you trust more?  Who has turned out to be right again and again, and who has turned out to be wrong?

Firearms

When Darrell Brooks drove his SUV through a crowd at a Christmas parade in Waukesha, WI, last November, killing six and injuring 62, no one called for banning SUVs.  When Osama bin Laden and his gang flew airplanes into buildings over 20 years ago, no one called for banning airplanes.  We're coming up on the 100th anniversary of the worst school massacre in US history, and it wasn't perpetrated using firearms.

It's common knowledge that firearms were much more prevalent at schools 50 years ago then they are today.  Heck, I have a friend who took his rifle to high school for marksmanship instruction in PE class.  Schools in hunting areas had parking lots full of vehicles with full gun racks.

"Yes, but..." is what the lefties will say, then their words will dissolve into emotional goo.  "If it saves just one life", they'll say, despite the fact that we can rattle off hundreds of unpalatable things that will save more lives than we lose at schools, where the chances of a child's being killed is still on the order of being struck by lightning.  Seeing that argument fail, they'll switch to, "Law enforcement is trained to...", despite watching law enforcement sit around on their hands (sometimes under orders, sometimes out of fear) in Parkland, in Uvalde, in the George Floyd riots, and despite the fact that it was the left that wanted to "defund the police" less than 2 years ago.  Getting more anxious and less reasonable, they'll try to argue the "well-regulated militia" clause of the 2nd Amendment, interpretations of which can reasonably be argued by both sides.  At this point they'll scream that firearms supporters are just white supremacist Trump supporters who don't deserve to live, ignoring that the origins of gun control laws were attempts to disarm black Americans so they could not defend themselves; I doubt all supporters of firearms are Trump supporters.

Do you notice how every time, every. single. time. there's a mass shooting, lefties almost salivate with the anticipation that the shooter is a white male Republican NRA member?  And every single time when it isn't, they instantly change their narrative, and somehow white male Republican NRA members are at fault?  I meet three out of four of those criteria, and the left's lies tick me off.

I wasn't always such a strong supporter of an individual right to own firearms.  Thirty years ago I had drunk the gun control kool-aid.  I believed that government was best suited to keep order, and that individuals owning firearms were a risk that could reasonably be controlled.  Heck, Communism ended without a shot being fired!  Then came the Rodney King riots, and the video of Reginald Denny.  Then came Bosnia.  And the dominoes started falling.  

I guess I should thank America's left for demonstrating the true wisdom of the Founders.  It was their own words, actions, and hypocricies that caused me to change my views.

Two quotes come to mind, the second because of the first:

“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”     Daniel Webster

"I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery."     Rousseau

I don't want to get rid of the firearms, I want to get rid of the people who use them to commit atrocities.  But lefties don't want that, they want to release accused criminals without bail and, in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, not even to try accused criminals.  I do not understand such a warped mindset.

Update:  I find this to be true:

But it’s easier to focus on firearms than it is to talk about the other cultural factors at play, which we tend to avoid because they reveal difficult truths about our society and the ways in which it has failed.

Movies

I can't tell you who was president the last time I went to a movie theater 2 consecutive weekends.  It's possible it's never before happened.

Last weekend my mother and I went to see Downton Abbey: The New Era.  Not a bad movie at all, thoroughly enjoyable if a little disjointed, I gave it a B.

Yesterday a friend from work and I went to see Top Gun: Maverick.  Also thoroughly enjoyable, almost as good as the original--and that's high praise, indeed.

Is This Really In The Best Interests of the Country?

I genuinely don't understand how anyone can think this is a good idea unless they benefit from it personally--and even then, they must know they'd be stepping on others:

White House officials are planning on canceling $10,000 in student debt per borrower, a central campaign promise by President Biden that would relieve debt for millions of Americans, The Washington Post reported. Biden’s proposal, however, is still not finalized.

The announcement of the president’s plan to address the $1.7 trillion currently owed to the federal government in student debt had been speculated by many to come as soon as this Saturday, when Biden will be making a commencement speech at the University of Delaware. According to the Post, the timing of the announcement has been delayed after the mass shooting in Texas on Tuesday.

I hope it's just a bad rumor, but with this administration you never know.

Happy Anniversary

35 years ago today, I think it was a Wednesday, my class graduated from West Point.  I may not think of that day very much, but I always think about what it represented.

A Constitutional Dialogue

I haven't watched the entire thing, and I certainly don't agree with everything I have seen, but it's an interesting intellectual exercise:

Two Weeks From Today...

...will be my last full day of work, then summer vacation.

Am I excited?  Oh yes!

They Went So Far Down, So Fast

Too many Canadians didn't see a problem with handing over their freedoms so cheaply:

Two decades ago, when I was 4 years old, my parents immigrated to Canada from India in search of greater freedoms, autonomy and economic opportunities. They’re core Canadian values — enshrined in our national anthem, which gloriously heralds “The True North strong and free.”

However, the past two years have seen a near complete erosion of the foundational liberal values that have attracted millions of immigrants like myself to this country.

Under the once-righteous guise of COVID safety and online protections, the Canadian government has taken its power to extreme levels once only imaginable — let alone permissible — in a dissent-stifling authoritarian state...

The internationally recognized trucker protests earlier this year were the most flagrant display of political control ever witnessed within the ranks of the Canadian government. After trying to dismiss the truckers as a “fringe minority” of “swastika wavers,” Trudeau manufactured a National Emergency in order to justify truly outrageous tactics. Not only did he suspend the insurance of the truckers’ vehicles, he regulated the cryptocurrency transfers and froze the bank accounts of folks simply donating to the trucker cause.

In my own small British Columbia town, Chilliwack (about an hour and a half from Vancouver), a single mother earning minimum wage who donated $50 to the Truckers Convoy allegedly had her bank account frozen...

But the crackdowns on truckers were just the tip of the iceberg...

More than 15 years after arriving in Canada to secure a more open and rewarding life, I must now consider the possibility that my civil rights might have been more secure back in India. Once a vibrant, liberal democracy, Canada is now becoming an authoritarian state.

I can't believe how fast it happened.

The Star Spangled Banner

I don't know how long this will last before going behind their paywall, but this link has a video showing the following:

See this Elk Grove teen play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ on his 100+ instrument collection

Neil Kayyar, 16, who set a world record in 2019 as the youngest multi-instrumentalist, plays "The Star Spangled Banner" on May 6, 2022, at his home in Elk Grove. He collects musical instruments from around the world and currently plays 114.

An Equity Issue

Here's an equity issue for you:  around 1/3 of our staff has gotten free, uncharged, paid time off just because they pass a 'rona test, whereas I've been to school every day this year.

That's not equitable.  I should get free, uncharged, paid time off, too!

Countdown

5 working days this week.

4 working days next week.

3 working days the last "week" of school.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

The Content of Their Character, Not The Color of Their Skin

UC Davis Students Finally Do Something I Can Support!

Being one of the nation's premier agricultural schools, UC Davis (aka Berkeley-lite) students are known as Aggies--but their mascot is a race horse.  Perhaps that will change:

Davis students have always loved our cows — perhaps, dare I say, much more than our confusingly blue mustang, Gunrock, based on a racehorse of the same name that lived on campus in the 1920s. Why do we have a mustang mascot when the real Gunrock was a thoroughbred and our Cal Poly rivals have a much more legitimate claim to the horse...

The irony of our love for cows but rejection of the bovine as mascot has rightly upset UC Davis students for decades. In 1993, Davis students voted for a cow to become the school’s official mascot. The vote was successful — until then-UC Davis chancellor Theodore L. Hullar and his administration rejected it. 

Now, a group of about 30 UC Davis students are again attempting a mascot coup. Their efforts have thus far paid off: On Monday, the “Cow 4 Mascot” campaign was victorious in an undergraduate vote. With student support, Team Cow will now meet with the Cal Aggie Alumni Association and school administrators to talk next steps. 

The Cow 4 Mascot group has settled on a name for our new mascot hopeful: Aggie the Cow. It’s a nod to the school’s rich agricultural history, merging the mascots of yesterday with those of today. It’s perfect.

They can still screw this up.  In true UC Davis fashion they could make Aggie the Cow a differently-abled left-hooved lesbian of color cow, but let's hope they just heed the paraphrased words of Freud:  sometimes a cow is just a cow.

BTW, I didn't know the horse mascot had a name.  Gunrock is kinda cool.

Mosquitos Love Me

I'm like a charcuterie board for those damn insects:

You come in from a hike covered with itchy red mosquito bites, only to have your friends innocently proclaim that they don’t have any. Or you wake up from a night of camping to find your ankles and wrists aflame with bites, while your tentmates are unscathed.

You’re not alone. An estimated 20 percent of people, it turns out, are especially delicious for mosquitoes, and get bit more often on a consistent basis. And while scientists don’t yet have a cure for the ailment, other than preventing bites with insect repellent (which, we’ve recently discovered, some mosquitoes can become immune to over time), they do have a number of ideas regarding why some of us are more prone to bites than others. Here are some of the factors that could play a role...

Oddly enough, most of those factors don't seem to explain my deliciousness to the bloodsuckers.

Gotta Get Your Math Straight

In school, you get the wrong answer on a test.  In the real world there can be geopolitical ramifications:

The Biden administration privately acknowledged in late April that a mathematical error is delaying the federal offshore oil and gas program, in a letter to industry leaders.

Richard Spinrad, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said a subagency “discovered a miscalculation” that has caused a massive backlog in permitting, in the April 29 letter obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. Spinrad acknowledged the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) — the subagency tasked with analyzing the impact of offshore drilling projects on wildlife — has used faulty modeling on such impacts and, as a result, overestimated wildlife effects, delaying permitting on existing leases.

Why Is Canada Euthanizing The Poor?

What is going on up there?

As with most slippery slopes, it all began with a strongly worded denial that it exists. In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada reversed 22 years of its own jurisprudence by striking down the country’s ban on assisted suicide as unconstitutional, blithely dismissing fears that the ruling would ‘initiate a descent down a slippery slope into homicide’ against the vulnerable as founded on ‘anecdotal examples’. The next year, Parliament duly enacted legislation allowing euthanasia, but only for those who suffer from a terminal illness whose natural death was ‘reasonably foreseeable’.

It only took five years for the proverbial slope to come into view, when the Canadian parliament enacted Bill C-7, a sweeping euthanasia law which repealed the ‘reasonably foreseeable’ requirement – and the requirement that the condition should be ‘terminal’. Now, as long as someone is suffering from an illness or disability which ‘cannot be relieved under conditions that you consider acceptable’, they can take advantage of what is now known euphemistically as ‘medical assistance in dying’ (MAID for short) for free.

Soon enough, Canadians from across the country discovered that although they would otherwise prefer to live, they were too poor to improve their conditions to a degree which was acceptable.

Not coincidentally, Canada has some of the lowest social care spending of any industrialised country, palliative care is only accessible to a minority, and waiting times in the public healthcare sector can be unbearable, to the point where the same Supreme Court which legalised euthanasia declared those waiting times to be a violation of the right to life back in 2005.

Many in the healthcare sector came to the same conclusion. Even before Bill C-7 was enacted, reports of abuse were rife. A man with a neurodegenerative disease testified to Parliament that nurses and a medical ethicist at a hospital tried to coerce him into killing himself by threatening to bankrupt him with extra costs or by kicking him out of the hospital, and by withholding water from him for 20 days. Virtually every disability rights group in the country opposed the new law. To no effect: for once, the government found it convenient to ignore these otherwise impeccably progressive groups.

The article is disturbing.

If It Can't Work At UW-Madison...

...it can't work anywhere:

There has been no improvement in the UW-Madison campus climate over the last six years despite the public university pouring millions of dollars into programs and staff positions to support diversity, equity and inclusion.

“Students of color, students with disabilities, nonbinary students, transgender students, and other LGBTQ+ students responded less positively than their counterparts” when rating whether they feel welcome, safe and respected, according to the results of a recently released campus climate survey.

“The gap in reported perceptions between these students and other students did not change between 2016 and 2021,” the survey found.

Play up differences, and you won't have a team.  Leadership 101.  Then again, we know that "inclusion" and harmony are not the true goals of diversity, inclusion, and equity supporters.

Who, Exactly, Supports So-called "Replacement Theory"?

Hint:  it's not those of us on the right:

https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1526872005953429504

Is US Math Education Going To Improve?

Maybe, maybe not.  Here are the findings from a National Council on Teacher Quality report on teacher education programs:

Findings

• Undergraduate programs are dedicating significantly more time to elementary school mathematics 

• Many undergraduate programs are not making optimal use of instructional time 

• The average graduate program spends less than a single credit hour on math content

Read the whole report here.

Government in California

A California law requiring publicly-held corporations to include women on their boards has been declared unconstitutional by a Los Angeles judge.

Superior Court Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis said the law, which requires corporations with principal executive offices in California to include women on their boards, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the state’s Constitution.  link

Of course it's unconstitutional. But that didn't stop California's government from passing it, and our idiot governor from signing it, just so all the lefties could bask in their own virtue signaling for a few months.

Those Founders Were Pretty Smart

They certainly understood human nature and designed a system of government to curtail its worst excesses:

“The Federalist Papers” can be dry reading. Calm, scholarly, sometimes needlessly erudite, this classic examination of the U.S. Constitution by three of its foremost advocates—Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay—generally strikes a detached pose, focusing more on how bills become laws than on any specific political agenda.

But there’s an exception. In the middle of the book’s most famous essay—Federalist No. 10—Madison briefly drops his tone of political neutrality in order to call three kinds of laws downright “wicked.” These three are laws creating paper money, laws that redistribute private property and laws “for an abolition of debts.” This trio, he explains, are the types of laws the proposed Constitution is designed to prevent.

Today, as a loud minority of voters is calling for President Biden to “cancel” or “forgive” billions of dollars in federal student loan debts—shifting the costs of higher education onto the backs of working taxpayers—it’s worth pausing to consider why the Father of the Constitution reserved such harsh language for laws abolishing debts.

Remember, there's no such thing as "abolishing" or "forgiving" student debt.  The burden of paying it merely gets transferred to the rest of us.

Good.

We can't undo the wrong that was done, but at least he can sue for damages:

He Was Sentenced to Death After Law Enforcement Fabricated Evidence. A Federal Court Says He Can Sue.

A Great Movie Nobody's Heard Of

I loved this movie back in the 80s. Didn't know it was "made for TV"! 

Action, adventure, anti-communism, love story!  Those are incorporated into the "can we get the treasure!" story line.  I've seen other movies with the same premise as this one:  Triple Frontier, Black Sea, and one other that escapes me right now....

Need More Pollution?

Note that this story comes not from a right-wing news site, but from al-AP:

Cleaner air in United States and Europe is brewing more Atlantic hurricanes, a new U.S. government study found.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study links changes in regionalized air pollution across the globe to storm activity going both up and down. A 50% decrease in pollution particles and droplets in Europe and the U.S. is linked to a 33% increase in Atlantic storm formation in the past couple decades, while the opposite is happening in the Pacific with more pollution and fewer typhoons, according to the study published in Wednesday’s Science Advances.

When You're Intentionally Keeping Information From Parents, You Might Be One Of The Bad Guys

We're going to keep hearing stories like this:

Geary County teacher Pamela Ricard has won an initial victory in her lawsuit against her school district’s pronoun policy.

On Tuesday, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction against the Geary County Unified School District blocking them from disciplining Ricard if she were to intentionally disclose a student’s “preferred name or pronoun” to a parent.

Update, 5/15/22:  Middle schoolers?  Really?

Three Wisconsin boys are facing sexual harassment charges from their middle school over accusations that they used incorrect gender pronouns on a fellow student...

"It’s not sexual harassment under Title IX, under their own policy, under federal law, and it’s probably a First Amendment violation. Almost certainly, if that’s their theory, that solely using the wrong pronoun, that that would be a First Amendment violation," said Luke Berg, the attorney representing the boys.

Read what was actually said before you make a judgement.

Wearing Yellow Stars of David

Today at our staff meeting some students discussed a new project that is being shepherded by our school's so-called Equity Team.  Teachers can choose to be "allies", to "demonstrate ally-ship", and will make themselves available to talk to students when students need someone to talk to but can't talk to their parents. 

But wait, it gets better.  Teachers who decide to do this will be sent to re-education training to learn how to talk to students without judgement and how to "be vulnerable" with students.  

And the best part is...those teachers who do this will get a sticker to put on their classroom doors to notify anyone and everyone that they are an ally.

I am not going to participate in this, in part because it comes from our "equity" team.  "Equity" is a word that has been co-opted by those of a certain political slant--and it's not my political slant!--and I don't support their interpretation of the word.  I want nothing to do with anything associated with so-called equity.  For those who don't understand why I would feel that way, imagine supporting something from the Liberty Team, the Patriotism Team or (gasp!) the MAGA Team.  I don't care if the "Equity" Team is cleaning up the campus or raising money to send arms to Ukraine, I wouldn't help.  Words matter, and if you're going to use politically-charged words in your organization's name to identify yourselves, and if I'm not "of" that political slant, then you've lost me.

To use the language of the Left, they're not being inclusive.  This use of stickers creates an us vs. them environment with leads to othering those without the sticker.

When they first mentioned the stickers, my first thought was, "Why don't they just have those of us without the stickers wear yellow Stars of David?"

Good Thing I Have A Generator

California, 2022:

Soaring gasoline and electricity prices may turn out to be only part of Americans’ energy woes this summer. In recent months, a host of power suppliers have issued warnings that millions of residents could endure rolling blackouts because of the growing inability of America’s evolving energy infrastructure to meet power needs. From western states like Utah, Colorado, and California to midwestern states like Illinois, energy providers have cautioned that rising prices, shortages due to the closure of some coal and nuclear plants, and the unreliability of renewables like wind and solar have reduced energy surpluses. That’s left some places with little margin for error during peak usage times in mid-summer—potentially prompting the kind of blackouts California saw last year. The warnings have spurred calls to slow down climate-change-driven efforts to retire nuclear and fossil-fuel generating plants. They have also emerged as an issue in local elections this November.

When generators are outlawed, as they're soon to be in California, only (we/us) outlaws will have generators.

"Equity" Has Nothing To Do With Excellence

Never has, never will:

Barrington, Rhode Island, public schools are among the best in the state. Many parents move to the district, and tolerate the higher taxes, because of the academic rigor that sets their children up for attending Ivy League schools or receiving academic merit scholarships. However, all of that academic appeal is being chipped away after the district brought in a so-called "equity and inclusion" agenda. 

De-leveling, or a system of universal learning, was first implemented in Barrington on the most vulnerable students—the students with learning disabilities and Individualized Education Programs (IEP). In February 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the school removed some conceptual classes. On the whole, parents of children in those classes were reluctant to speak out because they ran the risk of "outing" their child as having a disability or needing special accommodation...

Rage broke loose among parents of all political stripes after the honors students were targeted, parents said. The school announced that the days of honors English and social studies were gone. Parents protested, arguing that the move deprived their children of a competitive edge – and in effect – future opportunities such as merit scholarships...

Bill Jacobson, a long-time Barrington resident and founder of Legal Insurrection, said, "De-leveling is part of an agenda of equalizing outcomes. This equal-results approach stems from critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion, which posit that unequal outcomes are the result of systemic bias and discrimination. ‘Equity’ in particular is the codeword for bringing high achievers down to equalize outcomes," Jacobson said. "'Equity' has become an unhealthy obsession, and parents are seeing the impact."

They've given up trying to raise certain students to high standards, so instead they want to lower the rest of the students to lower standards.  "Equity" is the rhetoric of jealousy and failure.

It's Not "Learning Loss", It's Learning That Didn't Happen

In another installment of Red US vs Blue US, it looks like Red US had better educational outcomes (or, more accurately, not as bad educational outcomes) during the time of the 'rona:

A study shows remote learning led to large losses in achievement for students during the pandemic, with blue states and students from low-income areas hit the hardest by the losses.

"Interestingly, gaps in math achievement by race and school poverty did not widen in school districts in states such as Texas and Florida and elsewhere that remained largely in-person," Thomas Kane, a professor of education at Harvard and one of the authors of the study, said of the study's results in an interview with the Harvard Gazette last week. "Where schools shifted to remote learning, gaps widened sharply. Shifting to remote instruction was like turning a switch on a critical piece of our social infrastructure that we had taken for granted."

The study was conducted by Harvard University, the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research, and NWEA. The group analyzed data from 2.1 million students in 10,000 schools in 49 states, finding remote learning to be the primary cause for large losses of student achievement during the pandemic.

The researchers found that high-poverty schools were the most likely to spend more time in remote instruction, with high-poverty schools in some states outpacing others...

Kane warned that the achievement losses threaten the gains the U.S. has made in closing the gap between minority and white students, which had been narrowing for three decades.

(in deadpan voice) Shocking, I know.

Is It Still Mother's Day, Lefties?

https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/1523290484684206080

Masks Were Nothing More Than Submission Muzzles

Widespread mask mandates on mostly-healthy populations did nothing but destroy human rights and dignity:

However, an intriguing new study has been published showing that the data from 35 countries and 602 million people using face masks “failed to show a benefit” and “may have harmful unintended consequences"...

Correlation is not causation.  Unhealthy people and the more vulnerable may have opted to mask at higher rates than the healthy and the young.  However, face masks do not offer miracle protection from the virus...

When the final studies on covid are published, there will likely be one tragic conclusion: Never in history have so many been harmed by so few.

This Is California

From today's Instapundit:

NEED MORE WINDMILLS: California energy officials warn of possible blackouts this summer for up to 4 million people. “Gov. Newsom clearly got a preview of this presentation because last week he announced the state was reconsidering its decision to shutter the last nuclear power plant in the next few years.”

Now build more.

Recall that a few weeks ago I posted (see the comments) about not being able to have a generator shipped to California--because it's gas-powered.

Today's End To Teacher Appreciation Week

As a teacher I can find plenty to complain about.  This is not one of those posts.

Yesterday I wrote about how well our PTSA took care of us this week.  In fact, it was less Teacher Appreciation Week and more like Teacher Fattening-Up Week at our school!  I heard so many praiseworthy comments from my peers all week long about how generous the parents were.

Today, as we do just about every Friday, 10 or so of us met at a local restaurant after work for "7th Period".  Today's choice was a local Mexican restaurant that's quite popular in the community.  After we'd been there awhile, a student at our school stopped by our table with her parents.  They told us that as part of Teacher Appreciation Week, they'd covered our entire tab including tip.

What a nice way to end the work week.

Teacher Appreciation Week

One of the sites I follow on Instagram is Teacher Misery, which shows and discusses some of the outlandish or horrible things teachers have to suffer through.  My own district is run by idiots, but at least they don't (yet) seem malicious.

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week, and there are some posts on Teacher Misery that just strike me as complaining to complain.  Who among us hasn't gotten some cheesy piece of candy with a pun?  It's the thought that counts, right?  Such tokens may be silly, but at least they usually come from a good place.  I asked there, what would be a good gift?  What do you want?  I got replies like "cancel a meeting" or "cover my class so I'd get an extra prep period".

I thought about that last one.  My school has 4 administrators and 80+ teachers, 4 1/2 counselors, and dozens of aides and secretaries and other staff.  If those 4 administrators covered a class just for teachers, they'd have to cover 20+ classes each.  Doesn't that sound a bit unreasonable?  After all, they have their own work to do.  It would be a nice fantasy, but it's not realistic.

I don't know how much or how little my school's administration has worked with our PTSA this week, but those parents have been feeding us every day.  Today they held a barbecue after school for us!  I mean, come on, that's pretty generous!

This has been a relatively smooth week for me, and all the extra food has certainly helped.  Now I need to go get some steps in to work off some of those two burgers I had today.

Today's American Left

If I've said it once I've said it a hundred times:  consistency is not a strong suit of the Left.

SCOTUS leaks no big deal but election integrity efforts assault democracy.

Pandemic: the state controls your body

Abortion: full bodily autonomy (for one body)

Censor conservatives online but anything goes in the classroom

Fiery protests ok, but only for the Left.

From today's Instapundit:

BILL AYERS SMILES: ‘MAGA is the most extreme political organization in American history:’ Biden warns of Republicans’ ‘ultra MAGA agenda’ and suggests they’ll ban LGBT children from classrooms if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Flashbacks:

● Nancy Pelosi tells 2020 Dems, “You have to be ready to take a punch. And therefore you have to be ready to throw a punch—for the children.”

● Sen. Rand Paul had part of his lung removed this weekend because of damage from 2017 attack.

● Actor Jeff Daniels to CBS’s Stephen Colbert: ‘We Need Someone That Can Punch Trump in the Face.’

● Ilhan Omar Retweet Suggests Rand Paul Deserved to Be Assaulted.

● Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) to 2020 Dems: Don’t Run Away from Trump — ‘Punch Him in the Face.’

● Parents cheer as kids bash an ICE agent piñata and throw balls at the painted image of President Trump.

● Joe Biden: I Want to ‘Beat the Hell Out of’ President Trump.

● Patti LuPone defends violent attack on Rand Paul.

● CNN Host Palled Around with, Promoted ICE Firebomber’s Antifa Group.

● Leftist Thug Caught on Video Assaulting Conservative Berkeley Student While Fellow Students Laugh.

● Journalist Andy Ngo Beaten Up at Portland Antifa Rally.

● John Dickerson, the host of Face the Nation and the “political director” for CBS, wrote an article for Slate in 2013 charmingly titled “Go for the Throat! Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.”

● Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History.

Hope You Had A Great Holiday Today

 May the Fourth be with you!

True Review in Statistics

I'm not teaching any new material in statistics this semester.  The entire month of May I devote to various forms of review.

The first project is the "Which test do we use?" project.  For example, Chapter 8 may deal with one-sample hypothesis tests for means, which means the Chapter 8 test will deal with one-sample hypothesis tests for means--the students know exactly which test to use!  In this first project, I give 17 scenarios (most are hypothesis tests, some are various probability calculations) and students have to determine which is the correct test (or calculation) to use, then review how to do that test (or calculation) on our advanced stats calculators.  You'd be amazed how much they've forgotten about something we learned perhaps 6 weeks ago!  They get mighty frustrated when my response to their questions is, "go back to the book and review".

After this first project we'll have a Hypothesis Testing Packet.  In this assignment students well determine which type of hypothesis test is called for in a situation, and then what its null and alternative hypothesis will be.  They don't have to do the test, just correctly identify the test and the hypotheses.

We'll also have a quiz on use of the stats functions on the calculator.

By the time the final exam rolls around, they should be recently refreshed and fluent on the material.  Let's see how that works out!

Today's Big Rumor

If it's truly a leak, it's one of the most malicious ever to happen to the Supreme Court.  Politico is reporting that the Court is preparing to overturn Roe v. Wade:

The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO.

The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” he writes in the document, labeled as the “Opinion of the Court.” “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives"...

The immediate impact of the ruling as drafted in February would be to end a half-century guarantee of federal constitutional protection of abortion rights and allow each state to decide whether to restrict or ban abortion. It’s unclear if there have been subsequent changes to the draft.

Bet you weren't expecting news like that when you woke up this morning, were you? 

Anyway, I would agree with this ruling.  Roe is bad law, was a product of its time, and needs to be overturned.  I see no protection for abortion in the Constitution, and the states are the appropriate place for this debate to be held.  To me that's a conservative view.

Update:  A friend texted, "You're about to see how truly evil the modern Left is at every level."  Yep.

Update #2:  From Instapundit:  

A friend comments: “Whatever position you may have on the issue, leaking a draft SCOTUS opinion to try to change the outcome of a case is a new level of brinksmanship that speaks to the hyperpoliticization of law schools and an accompanying valorization of ‘activism’ in higher ed.”

Assuming this was leaked by a clerk, the leaker should never work in law again. It’s a betrayal of the highest order. But, of course, professionalism has proven to be weak sauce indeed when it comes to restraining activism.

In Case You've Forgotten...

 ...today is Victims of Communism Remembrance Day.

25 Yards

When I went to Yellowstone a couple years ago, a couple rules were made abundantly clear:  stay at least 25 yards away from bison and elk, and at least 100 years away from bears and wolves.  These are wild animals.

Some humans, though, are stupid.  Dude got off with easy, with the bison equivalent of a warning.