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.