Tom Lehrer - one of America’s greatest satirists - passed away a few months ago.

A Harvard math prof, he also had a talent for writing truly hysterical, truly cutting music in the 1950s and 60s.

He gave up performing a bit after he moved to California to take up a new professorship - which was sad.

But it also means that all of his recordings are of “peak Lehrer,” something some other certain musicians may want to emulate.

Apropos of the title, let’s start with this:

This is from one the few remaining full concert performances of his on video.

Here’s the full list from that evening, during which he notes that Werner von Braun only built bombs and didn’t care where they came down - not his job - and that “the protestants hate the catholics, the catholics hate the protestants, the muslims hate the hindus, but everbody hates the jews.”

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1C68974C982CBA68

And here is his astonishing recitation of the periodic table:

Dark, funny, but fair and oddly good natured - that’s the kind of satire we are missing today.

This piece involves multiple thoughts on the history of political revolutions.

First, we have a new vid - see directly below.

I’m not at all sure I agree with everything in this piece and the jumpy “revolutionary) timeline (the Russian, American, and French revolutions did happen at the same time) and shortage of significant context are a bit distracting.

That being said, it is a rather fascinating piece, specifically as it notes how – except in America – almost every revolution ever has involved an drift from “let’s change things” to “let’s blow up everything and destroy people who disagree with us (example – the Bolshevik/Menshevik, um, argument.)

As noted in the video, that tends to lead to the revolution to eat its own and eventually replace its own dictatorship with a new one after the public gets tired of the chaos.

Anyway, here is the link to the video – again, a bit scattered and it definitely assumes a certain detailed knowledge of the French revolution – that you may find interesting:

Additionally, here’s a quite interesting BBC documentary specifically about “the Terror.”

As to further information on the Russian revolution, this vid is rather good:

I’ve left the comments open for all on this post, specifically to ask if y’all like the idea of my occasionally posting vids and to get your feedback on the conspets discussed (yup, homework,)

I’m also adding this piece I previously wrote on coups and such for a broader context:

And here is “Outsourcing Robespierre,” a piece I wrote previously that hopefully encaapsulates many of the thought threads.

From lawyer to revolutionary to tyrant to butcher to victim of the forces he himself had unleashed – that was the arc of the life of Maximilien Robespierre.

The architect of The Terror that engulfed France from 1792 until 1794, Robespierre may have been the first despot of the mind – throughout history, of course, kings and emperors and such had raged across the world killing people for power and land and glory and to obliterate opponents.

If he were alive today- as the recently Twitter files, the FBI “warning” to Facebook about possible “Russian disinformation” dumps prior to the 2020 election, the reaction of the swamp media to this information et. al. show - Robespierre would not even have to use the government guillotine to force people into line…he would just outsource the revolution.

Robespierre’s elected dictatorship was the first - theocracies aside - to systematically kill people in its own territory for not thinking the right way, for not blindly following his lead, for not fully engaging in the mechanisms of their own oppression, and to make them better.

He was the direct precursor of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and too many others – the list is sadly too long – that saw the state as a single self-defined monolith that must, should, and had the absolute right to destroy anything or anyone it perceived as a threat, as being not committed enough to the state itself, and as even being potentially capable of possessing a self-image and self-worth separate from the state – and its leader.

In his view, the Revolution was to not only overthrow the oppressive calumnies of the past but to create a new man, a new citizen of public virtue and that process must, by necessity, include terror. He laid this principle out quite clearly in a speech to the National Convention:

If the spring of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the springs of popular government in revolution are at once virtue and terror. Virtue without terror is fatal; terror without virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing other than justice: prompt, severe, inflexible. It is therefore an emanation of virtue… a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country’s most urgent needs.

Robespierre and his Jacobin faction were the French Revolution’s equivalent of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution, with the Girondins playing the role – and meeting the same bloody end - of the Mensheviks. The difference between the two revolutionary groups came down to a simple argument: The Jacobins maintained that free speech and liberty must be suspended so France could win the external (and eventually internal) war it was fighting because, otherwise, there would be no Revolution left to defend, while the Girondins believed that destroying the liberties the Revolution was based on in fact destroyed the Revolution itself.

Some arrests and some trips to the guillotine later, the Jacobins could stop worrying about the Girondins and Robespierre’s ideals were now unfettered.

Robespierre had a personal “catechism” he followed; though a noted public speaker who was normally willing to tell the world exactly what he thought, he did keep this to himself:

What is our aim?

It is the use of the constitution for the benefit of the people.

Who is likely to oppose us?

The rich and the corrupt.

What methods will they employ?

Slander and hypocrisy.

What factors will encourage the use of such means?

The ignorance of the sans-culottes. (The people must therefore be instructed).

What are the obstacles to their enlightenment?

The paid journalists who mislead the people everyday by shameless distortions.

What conclusion follows?

That we ought to proscribe these writers as the most dangerous enemies of the country and to circulate an abundance of good literature.

What other obstacles are there to the achievement of freedom?

The war at home and abroad.

By what means can the foreign war be ended?

By placing republican generals at the head of our armies and by punishing those who have betrayed us.

How can we end the civil war?

By punishing traitors and conspirators … and by making a terrible example of all the criminals who have outraged liberty and spilled the blood of patriots.

He concluded this list with a rather chilling (partially edited) codicil:

What other obstacle is there to the enlightenment of the people?

Misery.

When will the people be enlightened?

When (they) will have bread, and when the rich and the government will stop paying for perfidious pens and language in order to deceive (them).

When will their interest be confounded with the one of the people?

NEVER.

In other words, the Revolution can never end, liberty and free speech can never be restored, the Terror – if the nation is to be transformed – can never stop.

While physical guillotines are not falling across the country now, figurative and social guillotines are as the woke follow Robespierre’s justifications and strategies to change the very nature of America.

Never ending? That’s called “doing the work” now (or, ironically, virtue signaling to make sure others think you are doing the work.)

Perfidious pens? That’s those who dare question the unthinking bilge spewed forth the capitol, its bureaucracy, and its collaborationist media.

The people must be instructed? That’s the wholesale social/educational upheaval taken place in schools across the country today.

Making terrible examples of those who have outraged liberty? That’s cancel culture, the FBI raiding homes, people getting sentenced to years in prison for trespassing on public property, and the overt criminal targeting of anyone who is perceived as an enemy.

Slander and hypocrisy? That’s the justification for the elimination of dissent on various internet and social media services.

The ignorance of the sans-culottes (peasants, farmers, the typical middle-class)? That’s the “public is too stupid to understand anything” line now heard over and over from our betters.

Circulate an abundance of good literature? That’s the absurd propaganda the public is inundated with every day on COVID, election security, the economy, new cultural “norms,” and just about everything else coming from on high.

A terrifying aspect of the current “soft Terror” is that the government has outsourced the imposition of much of it to all-to-willing third parties who aggressively implement its goals in order to prove their worthiness to the cause - and by extension, the extant power structure - for personal gain.

Transforming education? Teachers unions. Controlling the public mood? Collaborationist media. Choking means of dissent? Social media censorship and vocabulary modification to make even the ability to think differently more difficult:

Enforcing the new cultural norms? Cancel culture and its horde of self-righteous private minions. Controlling personal actions? “Third party validators” in the form of compliant doctors and economists and professors and professionals to explain and enforce government edicts. Thought itself? The encouragement of the pervasive societal use of terms like “disinformation,” “conspiracy theory,” “extreme,” “wrong side of history,” “oppressor,” “racist,” (insert topic here)phobe,” and “fascist” to immediately tar as other and vilify any different way of thinking as essentially unthinkable.

Eventually, after about 50,000 people were killed, for Robespierre their came what we would now call a “tipping point.” He ordered the execution of a very popular former ally, Georges Danton. After establishing the Cult of the Supreme Being to replace the Cult of Reason, he led a public celebration at which he appeared, to many who attended, that he seemed to think he himself was the Supreme Being. He then pushed a new law that would actually expand the Terror but failed to ‘socialize” the idea amongst supporters he would need. Then news came the French army had pushed back invading Austrians, undercutting the external need for Robespierre’s Committee for Public Safety and the Terror itself. Then, his enemies and those exhausted and petrified by the Terror, shouted him down as he tried to give a speech to the National convention, a heretofore unheard-of act. Days later he was arrested and shortly thereafter guillotined – that entire process had taken less than two months.

The dam had broken, the people woke up from their coma of fear, the Terror subsided, and Robespierre was no more.

The end was sparked by a simultaneous collective realization– a unplanned change of mood that swept through the Convention and Paris – a sudden mass epiphanal moment that the people didn’t have to tolerate oppression anymore – that, in a sense, if you ignored Robespierre except to shout down and mock him the Terror might just go away.

And it did.

A lesson to be learned.

Note - I noticed on a couple of other sites this was picked up by a comment or two on the “typo” of “confound” at the end of the catechism. So - not that I’m pedantic in any way - I thought I’d address the matter:

As for the “confound” issue, it did cause me pause though I don’t think I would classify it as a typo. I found the word in a couple different versions of the document and I thought of parenthetically changing it to “coincide” or “concomitant with” or something similar. But changing the source text made me uncomfortable so I left it alone.

I hope I just didn’t miss it when searching for another version, but I think it may have made more sense when it was written – true, the etymology for “confound” points directly to definitions like “confuse,” but words do change meaning over time. For example, 99 percent of the time when the word “peruse” is currently used it is meant as “lightly skim” a document when in fact it also technically means “to read deeply,” a meaning that was used more in the past.

So the Latin “con-“ meaning “with” (again an oddity that it can also mean “against”) and “found” one can tease out an appropriate “to join” meaning. That definitional interpretation would make it make sense.

Either that or the translation from the original French was wonky or, again, I’m an idiot who can’t figure out Google.

It’s the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend and the TV is flooded with car dealership ads.

President’s Day rolls around and everyone is told George Washington cannot tell a lie about amazing deals.

For the Fourth of July, some appliance stores will let you can declare independence from state sales tax.

But for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the public is told to somberly reflect on the importance of the man and his accomplishments and how one can make an impact on the community by volunteering and engaging in thoughtful discussions with friends about the work that still needs to be done.

There are parades, but few sales and almost no one talks to their co-workers the Friday before about their “plans for the three-day weekend” because that would seem crass.

Does this difference in approach actually limit the impact of Dr. King’s message? In other words, does making it so different from every other holiday create an additional distance – a counter-productive otherness – that diminishes its breadth and meaning? Does the holiday become a chore?

Would it not fit more closely to King’s vision to celebrate the day the same way – equally, that is – as Americans celebrate every other holiday: by yelling from screens and spending money? If George Washington can be used to promote discount lawnmowers, why can’t Dr. King? That, it seems, would not diminish King or insult his legacy but in fact raise him up and secure his presence in the nation’s pantheon.

King’s importance in our nation’s history is set in stone; his work paved the way to the ending of actual (sorry, Joe Biden) Jim Crow laws, uplifted an entire nation, and instilled true dignity to the process of protesting government wrongs. He put himself in harm’s way for others and America changed.

But the sense of awe promoted during the day could, in a way, dissuade others from picking up his mantle by convincing themselves they are not worthy of such a task, they’re not as great as Dr. King.

Role models are important, but if role models become ethereal beings they stop being real and relatable and can lose their ability to impact everyday life.

It is quite possible that one ends up thinking theay cannot be as impactful so why try?

For comparison, here is a typical MLK “ad” –

So staid, so sober, so…much.

And here are three very much more typical holiday ads; we’ll start with Memorial Day, a day on which we remember those who fought and died for our country:

And here is a Honda ad featuring cooool presidents:

And, finally, in honor of the American worker who built this nation:

The ads are clearly not “uplifting,” but they are an integral part of the warp and weft of the nation, which is a place Dr. King needs to be.

Shifting gears, it must be noted that the ad copy potential for MLK day is enormous as, like with Washington, Lincoln, et. al. his quotes can be easily modified for commercial purposes:

Free at last, free at last – thank God almighty, we’re free at last!… no! not free, but we have incredibly low low low prices throughout the store!

Or

I have a dream…of deep mattress discounts at Sleepytyme Warehouse!

Or

Darkness cannot drive out darkness…only these low-priced LED bulbs can!

Or

We shall overcome bad credit!

Or

(We shall) live in a nation where grapes shall not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their sugar.

Or

A sale delayed is a sale denied.

Or Patagonia could license “I have been to the mountaintop” and even the “Letter from the Birmingham Mall” could lead to a multi-store effort - the positive earworm possibilities are out there.

While some of the above ad copy may seem a bit much, ads like these or something similar could break down another barrier to achieving Dr. King’s dream of content of character becoming the sole manner by which Americans are judged.

It is true that an argument can be made for the unique aspect of the holiday that intentionally sets it apart as a day of reflection, but it may be that apartness that confirms a gulf that should never have existed.

And maybe a celebration of commonality is what we need now.

I originally posted this two years ago and it seems some movement has occurred, though still not nearly at the level of other holidays: https://www.cnet.com/deals/best-buy-launches-mlk-day-sale-with-huge-savings-on-tech-and-more/

But even this article seemed a bit sheepish, starting off with: Martin Luther King Jr. Day has arrived and it’s a great time to educate ourselves on racial injustice across America.

When I was a reporter in Louisiana I once asked my hard-drinking editor (seriously, put me to shame) what he was doing for New Year’s Eve.

He looked up, scowled, and said “Amateur night? We stay home.”

That is advice I have taken to heart since, especially because my birthday is January 2.

The worst – the absolute worst – day to be born.

As a kid, the calendar worked out that from first to fifth grade, it was the day we went back to school.

Grr.

The date also gave my cheap relatives the opportunity to give “combination presents” – yup, its proximity to Christmas somehow justified one box of Legos instead of two.

Bastards.

And as a grown-up, it’s the day everyone goes back to work, so that’s no fun.

Obviously, when little I could not have a birthday party – a dozen or so neighborhood friends and fellow hockey players – on my actual birthday. I assume it could have been done on the First but even at that early age I understood that having a dozen screaming kids over while fighting pounding hangovers was too much of an ask of one’s parents.

So the party would have to be a week before or a week after or whatever – as long as I got ice cream cake, that was not that big a deal – except once, when scandal occurred.

We had dogs and horses (and cats, um, ish - the less said about them the better) and the dogs were not fixed. Buffy (really) the girl dalmatian happened to go into heat around the beginning of each year. Beaver, the golden retriever (by the way the smartest dog ever and leader of the neighborhood house pet pack which he would take hunting in the game preserve beyond the horse paddock – really, deer were brought down) was relatively free with the affections of his wife. When Buffy had spring puppies, we could pretty much be sure one would be jet black and we would bring that one to the owners of the black lab down the street, etc.

That being said, he would make sure he, um, got his own…

Knowing Buffy had gone into heat and a bunch of kids were on their way, my mother kept Beaver inside and put Buffy out on the deck and all seemed okay.

And then all us kids were sitting at the kitchen table eating ice cream cake and one looked out the big window on to the deck and saw…Buffy and Beaver, in flagrante delicto.

On top of the picnic table – quite a balancing act.

I think we were all about eight years old.

I was kinda used to it (at least twice a year for them, plus the other animals) to forces of nature, but the other kids?

Beaver had been kept inside for the party, but became more and more insistent about being let out as the time passed. So my father let him out and, of course, reproductive hilarity ensured.

Mother was irked/mortified that my friends were being given a free sex show and demanded my father try to separate them.

While we lived in the exurbs, my father was not naturally a, um, country person. Brooklyn born and bred, he was city through and through so I do not think it occurred to him that once dogs are actually doing it that separating them is more than a challenge – it’s impossible until everything’s, um, done.

They also get rather irritated by any attempt, especially when it involves being doused with water.

Again, through the kitchen window, hilarity ensued.

So anyway, the kids – not sworn to silence, wouldn’t have mattered anyway - were picked up by their parents after the party and thank God cell phones didn’t exist then so my mother had at least about 10 minutes until each of the other mothers called to inquire about what the HELL HAD JUST HAPPENED?!? at the birthday party.

Dogs will be dogs, um, at least it wasn’t the horses, um, sorry, sorry, I blame my husband.

And blame him she did – what were you thinking, letting Beaver out?!? You knew Buffy was in heat?!?

And the very Irish-Catholic city boy just looked at her and said “I didn’t think they would do anything in front to the kids.”

And he was serious. Actually truly honestly serious.

And my mother just stopped, mid-rant, and stared at him and realized that he really meant it – he really didn’t think they would do that in front of the kids. She just giggled and turned around.

Oddly enough, my future birthday parties become the ticket of the season…actually no, but at least two mothers mentioned the incident when I was over at a friend’s house months later,

Anyhoo, if went out for amateur night and are feeling a bit rough, I have the best recipe ever for a Bloody Mary – psych, I’m taking that to my early grave; BTW, the NY Times food critic said (unofficially) it was best he ever had.

Of course, if you happen to know anyone in the mixer business, have them shoot me an email.

Happy New Year!!!

Sending seasonal emails is so dismissive, almost as hopelessly idle as recycling content for your Substack page.

Sure it’s easy to just put “Merry Christmas” in the header and be done with it but it’s just lazy.

And sometimes it can be just plain rude, especially when you’re telling your friends and family that you’re “doing emails” and not sending gifts or cards this year but instead you are using all of that money to make a donation to some charity.

First, no one believes you really did that and when they are at your house for New Year’s your friends will - under their breath - point out to one another the existence of the surprisingly expensive and unnecessary new food processor you just got. Second, kids would prefer to get socks - yes, socks - than to be told their gift money went to stop climate change.

That being said, it can be rather amusing to inform that Gaza activist acquaintance of yours that you have had a tree planted in her honor on a kibbutz (it’s moves from rather amusing to really funny if you actually do it).

But that’s more of a Hanukah gift.

And then the emails always end up being cloyingly sweet and/or the writer tries to make them “wacky” with a throw away closing line like “Santa has left the building!” It may have sounded funny in their head, but its only relevance lay in its confusion.

Or even worse, the emails are a crushingly tedious recitation of what an AMAZING year they and their family had, sprinkled with such astonishingly world-changing nuggets like how their problematic, Hazelden-frequenting teenager Billy “just got his license back!” and how “Janey got a double smiley face in finger-painting class for her Christmas elephant! Sure it has two trunks but it’s soooo adorable it went right on the fridge!” Good for her - Mozart was composing symphonies by that age.

Worst of all is when people try to “go all meta” on the season by sending out a seemingly endless rant that can only be deemed clever if you dismiss its hypocrisy about how Christmas emails are so dismissive.

But I digress.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

And to make the subhead make sense, try this:

Hey everyone!

As this post is rather non-political, I thought I would continue the annual tradition of posting my recipe for the best cranberry sauce in the history of planet.

Here you go:

First, pour and enjoy a glass of white wine - sweet but not too sweet (maybe a reisling?)

Then put two unopened cans of Ocean Spray Whole Berry cranberry sauce in the fridge to chill it a bit (yes, I know you shouldn’t put cans in the fridge but this will be fine.) Make sure it’s Ocean Spray Whole Berry and not some knock-off brand and if you make your own cranberry sauce and think you can use that you would be wrong – I have tried that and it doesn’t work; the resulting sauce tends to get waaay liquidy (same with the cheap stuff.) It seems the pectins in Ocean Spray are perfect for heating … go figure (and if you know someone who works for Ocean Spray forward them this recipe and have them send me a check.)

While the cans are in the fridge, dice - nearly mince but not too too small (half an Advil-ish size)– jalapenos. If you are spice tolerant do three large, if less so do three medium sized peppers. In the end, they should be basically small enough to blend nicely in the finished sauce but big enough to still catch the heat and not simply melt.

(Note – wash your hands after dicing the jalapenos, especially if you have to go pee – trust me on that.)

Then dice (about the same size but they can be a bit bigger) a thumb and two fingers of fresh ginger (peeled, of course.)

In the end you want about the same amount of ginger and jalapeno.

Pour some of the wine in a glass and drink it.

Then roughly chop a half bunch of dill – if you buy it in a plastic container, say about two-thirds of that. Either way, strip the stalks before chopping but don’t worry if some of those bits end up in the sauce.

Take a sauté pan, put a bit of butter in it, heat it up high, wait a few seconds, put some wine in the pan, then add the ginger and jalapeno.

Once the aromatics have become noticeable and the bits have turned just a bit dark, add a little more butter and a little more wine and if you have some turkey drippings you aren’t using for the gravy, add a small ladle of that as well. If you don’t, don’t bother - it’s nice to have but not crucial.

Then add the cranberry sauce.

Pour some of the wine you have left (maybe) in a glass and drink it.

Then smoosh the goop around the pan – mixing it in with the ginger and jalapeno - until evenish. Bubble, bubble heat for a bit, then add the dill, maybe some wine if there is any left, and then cut the heat to keep the concoction at a high simmer. You will see the sauce reduce and get darker – that is good and this whole process should take about six minutes.

It’s done when it looks maybe maroonish and pretty molten.

Put it in a dish and bring it to the table and people can use it as they wish!

If you have a bunch of people, simply double the ingredients.

And if you have any leftover, it’s great on turkey sandwiches!

It really is King Nummy!

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Four years and four score days ago, I started writing The Point as a way to talk about important things, have a bit of fun, and maybe just maybe launch a new (well, re-start an old) career.

And now all three of those have been accomplished, meaning The Point (and sister site Checkmate) have reached the end of their lifespan.

Not that I do not want to continue writing – it’s been really interesting. But I have a new job that requires me to dormantify both sites.

Last week, I finalized the rather long process (hence no posts for the last few weeks) of officially becoming the Director of Strategic Communications for the National Institutes of Health.

Yup – that NIH.

The post is a presidential appointment – thanks President Trump! – and obviously means no more columns full of my trademark sledgehammer wit, made-up words, actual facts, excessive typos, and pithy (okay, mean but funny) commentary.

My career – for now – as an analytical polemicist has come to an end.

I want to thank every subscriber for their support, especially the paid subscribers (of which there were admittedly few – my net pay was about $80 a month.)

The comments have been great, the re-posts have been beyond appreciated, and hopefully I was able to create a few smiles (albeit of the terrified kind when one looks at the EDD and the pandemic and the labor department and, well, everything else) along the way.

Never forget that a person is more likely to agree with you if they are smiling…unless they are a sociopath.

I want to also thank (good lord, sounding like an Oscars speech) every site that either published my work directly or picked it up later (would have been nice to get paid for the millions of clicks generated – really – but oh well.)

These sites include:

RealClear Politics/Science/Policy

California Globe

Brownstone Institute (actually that one’s important as it led to my new job)

Lew Rockwell

Mises Institute

Issues and Insights

Zero Hedge

Heartland

Daily Sceptic

California Policy Center

And many, many others

Between The Point and Checkmate, I published more than 1,150 pieces, which works out to be a post every working day…and more than about 1.6 million words.

Probably should have made more than $4 grand but oh – lol – well.

A quick technical note – I have been trying to access Substack support but that has been an accursed failure (the support/help is really really bad) to “turn off” the paid subscriptions as I cannot earn any more money from the sites (a government ethics – yeah, I know, contradiction in terms - requirement.)

So, if you are a paid subscriber please do cancel out/transfer to free subscriber (I’ll keep trying on my side.)

The articles will remain up on both sites – people who scrub their internet writings have something to be ashamed of – but I will not be checking in on comments, etc. after tomorrow.

To every source, every reader, every commenter, every subscriber I want to say thank you.

You made my new endeavor possible.

Ps – I left comments for this final post so you can yell at me for joining the big bad government…or leave a suggestion …or a dirty joke…or whatever.

The tariff fight is still going on, bureaucrats across the country are trying to dodge the changes being wrought at the federal level, many judges seem to think their robes make them omnipotent, and Rory McIlroy won The Masters in rather epic fashion.

There – you’re all caught up about what happened last week.

But I want to focus on two wonderful long clips I stumbled across from the Aussie TV show “Utopia.”

No, the other show named Utopia and actually called Dreamland in the US and other places to avoid confusion.

It involves the goings on at Australia’s Nation Building Authority, a fictional agency that is in charge of infrastructure development across the country.

Sounds like a laugh riot, huh? Watching government workers approve airport plans and such…

Well, it actually is and not only is it funny it is terrifyingly real.

It is a show where it’s not quite clear where the satire ends and the real and actual direct quotes and actions of government workers begins.

Recently, the folks behind the show have begun posting truncated versions of older episodes. Truncated, not edited – in a typical 30-minute show there are two seperate but related story lines occurring with one of them being dominant. So these clips are not full episodes but everything in the episode that directly relates to that storyline.

I think that makes sense.

First, we have Australia considering building high speed rail.

To be blunt, it’s as if they had a mole at the California High Speed Rail Authority.

And the ending is one of funniest takes on how media reacts to clear absurdities.

“it will carry 54 million passengers a year!!!” says the reporter. The entire country has a population of half that…but the line is classic hyperventilating blurge.

Next we have the Authority trying to deal with a local council RE: a new development.

This is an area I actually have some experience in, having been a mayor/councilmember myself. The process typically involves a semi-visionary concept – how many units can we get on the property, what does the city need for infrastructure, amenities, schools, etc.

That’s all relatively informal at the elected level – basically the developer checking out that if something like they have in mind would work.

The next step is working with staff to flesh out the idea and get to what is called “30%” drawings. These are more detailed plans but not final blueprints; in other words, this is what it will look like but we still have to figure out details like where the rivets go, the construction type, etc.

Then the final plans are approved (or not, but that is relatively rare.)

This clip shows what can happen when one faces a DEI nightmare of a city.

What is shown is a completely conceptual plan – even before the “30%” drawings. Nothing is set in stone – it’s essentially a marketing tool.

However, the local council has some concerns…hysterical concerns.

But these are perfectly emblematic of the incredibly real concerns that really do come up in larger cities that have fully functional (and typically omnipotent) diversity departments, etc..

Remember when watching the clip, the complaints are not about the project as such but about the conceptual, years before approval, animation alone.

As to the beginning of the final meeting, note the land acknowledgment and, as to the end, remember that no one in the room is deaf.

Complete episodes can be found in various places around the internet as it is no longer on Netflix…that’s actually been years…

This week’s epigram:

The center can only hold when it has become a black hole.

Thanks for subscribing!

Happy Easter, even though I have an odd relationship with the holiday.

When I was younger, I drew an Easter picture as part of CCD class (for those non-Catholics, CCD is like Sunday school on Saturday or various extra classes other religions make children take when they would rather be home watching cartoons or football or doing pretty much anything else) that featured a sun, a ground line, and half a person coming up from the ground line smiling and saying “Hi There!”

The picture raised certain concerns amongst the adults in my life about my psychiatric state.

I also once got an entire white chocolate bunny in my basket – not even a hollow one – and proceeded to eat it very very quickly and then, um, un-eat it almost as fast. To this day, even the smell of white chocolate makes me nauseous.

So forgive me if I tell a rather sacrilegious joke about where the idea of guests becoming terribly tiresome after three days – and taking a look at Easter through a more typical Father/Son relationship.

It’s Friday and the crucifixion has done its job and Jesus is back up in heaven with Dad.

Dad says “Hey, you did a great job down there – sorry about the ending bit, but, you know, Romans, whatta ya gonna do, amirite?”

Feeling much better since his ascension, Jesus decides to have a bunch of angels over to celebrate his return – a party, as it were, for the very definitely not prodigal son.

Saturday morning finds a rather worse for wear Jesus (the human part was rather hungover) on the living room couch - surrounded by overflowing ashtrays and half-empty pizza boxes – quietly turning water into beer (and rather shortly thereafter back into water again.)

Dad is understanding so he just stays VERY quiet - ixnay on the hunderstormstay for the rest of the iday.

But that night, Jesus is back at it again, inviting literally everyone in heaven over for a rager for the ages.

It gets wild – think Coachella times Burning Man times Animal House times Woodstock. And Dad’s cherried-out 1963 Dodge Charger has ended up totaled in a thundercloud, His Pliny the Elder beer He hid in the back of the fridge was discovered and was drank, and His pet unicorn’s horn has been tie-dyed rainbow.

Enough is enough.

So Sunday morning a very pained Jesus is back on the couch, turning water into beer again, when an exasperated Dad walks in and says: “Hey, I get the last couple of days – I was a kid once.”

“No, You weren’t,” says Jesus. “You’ve always Been and shall always Be.”

“Admittedly so, but just trying to connect to you. But come to think of it, I don’t think you’re quuuiiite done on Earth. So here’s a bunch of Advil and off you go back to your apostles – and their plus-ones – so you finish the job. Your hangover will go away, and I’ll have some time to fix up the guestcloud so we don’t get underneath each other’s feet, okay? See you in a few weeks!!”

And the rest is history.

Clearly blaspehmous, but Jesus Christ – sorry everyone else – is the most important person in history, just like the Bible is the most important book in history.

It’s like The Beatles and popular music – no matter if you like them or not they are- and shall remain - the most important thing in pop music ever because they essentially wrote the base DNA code.

No matter how much you disagree, there’s will never be a time that one can “get around” Jesus Christ, the Bible, or The Beatles.

It just is, so deal with it.

So – does the three-day rule originate from Easter?

No, of course not. That’s a really stupid joke, but it has one definite and one other possible origin:

First, everyone who has ever hosted a house guest hits the “I wish you would leave!!” after about three days. A ridiculously expensive dinner, doing the dishes, tutoring the idiot nephew in history – all could mean an extra day or two.

Second, when a person traveled from monastery to monastery on a medieval European pilgrimage, the stay limit was three days…unless you had LOTS OF MONEY or the weather was so bad it would actually kill you if you left.

By the way, if you found anything today silly and offensive, I’m sorry…ish.

Being able to laugh at your own beliefs (good Lord does the Catholic church make it easy – hey-ooo!) is the sign of someone with an actual brain, unlike those who profess belief in (the now waning, maybe, hopefully?) religion of woke or other go-along zombies.

So I’ve left the comments open to accept a torrent of torrid of abuse but still have a great Easter!

And this week’s epigram is a meme – first time, maybe…no, probably not- that is truly hysterical:

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And of course, a little fun from Archer and it’s take on Easter:

And you thought I was bad…

When the caffeinated crew at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) recently released that it had found $400 million in pandemic unemployment fraud something seemed a bit off.

It was orders of magnitude too low and focused on a rather odd subset of fraud cases – improper birthdates.

The Government Accountability Office had already estimated that the total amount of pandemic unemployment fraud was well above $100 billion nationally, with California already shown to have accounted for half that figure.

That’s a lot more than $400 million.

What DOGE said it found were thousands of unemployment claims with absurd birthdates, from one-year-olds to 105-year-olds to people who said they were born in 2154.

It now appears that either DOGE misinterpreted certain data, failed to follow up properly, or – if one is of a cynical mindset – was purposefully given data that could immediately be disproved, thereby embarrassing the entire government-wide cost-cutting effort.

At issue is a memo written in the fall of 2023, stating that certain fraudulent accounts were intentionally modified by the Department of Labor (DOL) to have impossible birthdates so as protect potential identity theft victims.

Really.

In response to a damning report by its own Inspector General, the DOL “explained” the process thusly:

Many of the claims identified in this draft alert memorandum were not payments to individuals over 100 years of age, but rather “pseudo records” of previously identified fraudulent claims, where the date of birth was changed significantly to help the state identify these records and protect innocent victims from having future claims denied.

The memo continued, one supposes as an attempt to justify the process:

In alignment with the Department’s guidance, states often transfer the fraudulent claims information to a “pseudo record” to prevent automated systems from flagging future legitimate claims by the claimant. According to the state, approximately 90 percent of the records that the OIG reviewed were “pseudo records.” To make these known fraudulent “pseudo records” easier to identify, the state intentionally used significantly older dates of birth. These “pseudo records” were created to protect the rights of victims on claims that had already been determined to be fraudulent—they were not claims paid to individuals who are over 100 years old.

In other words, according to the DOL that $400 million or so in fraud DOGE referred to was actually fraud that was stopped.

I think.

Note – I’ve left the comments open to everyone for this piece to allow accountants and bureaucrats to try to explain the idea of creating fake accounts – off the books, as it were – as a way to combat fraud. Please add your thoughts below.

I’ve become rather adept at translating bureaucrat into English, but this entire concept has me rather baffled. It appears that the feds spent massive amounts of time and effort individually changing birthdates to create fake accounts but failed to spend enough time to actually prevent the fraud from occurring in the first place.

The term bass ackwards comes to mind.

The idea that the memo was kept in “the back-pocket” by certain bureaucrats who are not at all on board with the new administration as a way to humiliate DOGE becomes even more likely, a red herring used to deflect attention from the actual problem of pandemic unemployment benefit grift if at all possible.

That particular memo made its way somehow to many members of the press a couple of days ago. For example, the Associated Press issued a piece entitled “DOGE trumpets unemployment fraud that the government already found years ago” just yesterday, which included the following quote:

“They’re trying to spin this narrative of, ‘Oh, government is inefficient and government is stupid and they’re catching these things that the government didn’t catch,’” says Michele Evermore, who worked on unemployment issues at the U.S. Department of Labor during the administration of former President Joe Biden. “They’re finding fraud that was marked as fraud and saying they found out it was fraud.”

That statement – in the reporting business – is called “a quote looking for a story.”

Keep up those standards. AP.

Beyond this latest Mobius twist, pandemic unemployment fraud is the theft that keeps on thieving.

During the pandemic, unemployment agencies were put under great stress and most had to turn to a federal back-stop plan (funded by the fed portion of the unemployment insurance tax everyone pays – it’s 0.6% of – and only of – the first $7,000 a person earns, hence it being about $42 bucks a head each year) and borrow to make sure they could meet the government created (lockdowns etc.) demand.

Once the pandemic ended, it turned out that the various states that had had to borrow from the fund had extra “pandemic” money floating around (very separate and very depressing story in and of itself) and chose to use at least some of that to pay off that debt entirely.

But two states (and the Virgin Islands) didn’t pay it off – for example, California had at that time a $79 billion budget surplus and an unemployment debt of about $20 billion.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state legislature decided to put aside about $3 billion to repay the debt and spent to rest of the surplus on a dizzying array of absurd progressive projects.

By not paying off the debt an automatic increase in federal unemployment taxes kicked in. Essentially, the feds will tax already beleaguered business owners in California and New York and the VI extra that each year until the debt is paid.

That may not seem like a lot, but imagine you own a 12-employee restaurant – that’s $5,000 a year that will not be available to grow, buy extra stuff, maybe add a weekend busboy, etc.. So it matters.

Right now, California businesses are paying seven times the usual federal unemployment rate, a rate that will soon increase to about $420 per employee per year and remain in place until the debt is paid. Here’s a chart from a couple years ago - not exactly accurate timing wise but it shows the set increase:

Exactly what that final date will be is unclear – in theory it was supposed to be by about 2030 (the differences in the state fiscal, federal fiscal, and calendar years make that calculation a bit murky) but that target date is no longer even remotely possible because the state’s debt has actually increased since the end of the pandemic.

As of today, California owes $21,861,947,564.04 in principal and $335,510,957.48 in this year’s interest. By law, the state must cover the interest each year but NOT the principal – it’s like paying your loan shark the “vig” to make sure you get to keep your thumbs. In fact, the state keeps borrowing every month from the same fund to meet its current unemployment obligations – California is tied for having the nation’s highest unemployment rate right now at 5.4%, hence the increased borrowing.

In other words, imagine a credit card without a limit or payment schedule that you can “pay down” when you feel like it with extra money from other people and still keep getting credit line increases whatever you want.

Or – considering the intentional decision to dump the fraud debt directly on the state’s business community - taxing Peter to pay Paul and then getting Paul to give you the money back to pay Patrick because you couldn’t pay Pam in the first place.

New York’s current debt is $6,420,728,473.11 in principal and another $101,134,265.48 in interest (the VI has about $55 million in debt total.)

That means California accounts for 77% of the outstanding debt owed to the federal unemployment system.

How did California become the poster child for benefit fraud? Here are a few hints:

A customer service philosophy of having no customer service, antiquated steam-powered tech, a workforce that is considered a joke even by other Sacramento bureaucrats, dismal politically-driven leadership, and no need to actually be better - to this day it is not clear if anyone was actually fired for the wave of fraud – California was prime for pandemic pilfering.

And pilfer people did. From rappers to prisoners to global cybergangs, it now appears that at least a very large percentage of that $55 billion “overpayment” was due to fraud.

Put it this way: California has 12% of the nation’s people. It got 21% of the federal unemployment money.

In addition, California sent out nine million benefit cards. At the height of the pandemic, there were only 3 million unemployed people in the state. In other words, one office was tracking unemployment figures while, down the hall, another department was sending out three times that number of cards. Instead of investing the labor in changing birthdates by hand, maybe take a minute to pick up the phone to the office down the hall or have a chat in the break room about how 9 is bigger than 3.

Those cards carried at least $105 billion dollars already pre-loaded on them, so two-thirds would have carried about $70 billion, a number that is closer to the $55 billion “overpayment” (plus the $7 billion or so in state money lost.)

The other Shaq-size shoe to drop is the issue called “finality.”

For example, California – while Julie Su was still in charge of the federal Department of Labor (she was in charge of California’s Department of Labor and unemployment agency during the pandemic) – received essentially a waiver for $32 billion in other debt/fraudulent payment problems.

That debt is separate from the $21 billion mentioned above, by the way.

Regarding finality, the current administration would not confirm if any other state had been granted such a deal and said the entire unemployment fraud issue remains under investigation:

“States continue to work through compliance findings for claims filed in 2020 and 2021 related to the now-expired temporary pandemic unemployment programs. Some of these findings require states to take retroactive action, including, in some cases, to reconsider prior determinations of eligibility or ineligibility.

As described in the Department’s guidance (see Unemployment Insurance Program Letter No. 05-24, available at https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/advisories/uipl-05-24), there may be certain findings where a state is prohibited from taking the retroactive action of redetermining eligibility because of a constraint in state law related to the finality of a previously issued determination. If state law prohibits an agency from taking the action of reconsidering a prior determination after a certain period from when the original determination was made, the state is instructed to provide an explanation of their state law to the appropriate ETA Regional Office to close the outstanding compliance finding. We note that this application of state finality laws does not apply to active appeals of prior determinations.

This remains an ongoing and dynamic situation. The Department is gathering an inventory of all states who have invoked their finality laws related to compliance findings to date and looks forward to sharing soon.”

In other words, um, maybe-ish but we’ll keep poking around…I think.

California’s request for finality was four pages long and did not include any details as to any particular fraud or account.

But that was good enough for Su who essentially said that if California pinky-swore it tried and tried and tried to find fraud money but couldn’t find the rest they would be forgiven that part (it’s a very odd legal issue, actually – the state allowed massive fraud to happen but technically it was the fraudster an not the state that stole the money so that $32 billion had been kept “off-book” anyway – California is morally responsible, ethically responsible yes, but legally?...that seems to be the justification for the concept of finality.)

Interestingly, a spokesman for California’s unemployment agency – hysterically named the Employment Development Department or EDD – said the state “doesn’t process claims this way when administering the UI program, and we have rigorous identity verification systems that have blocked hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud attempts over the years” when asked about the birthdate issue. Meaning none of DOGE’s $400 million could have come from California, even though DOGE said (almost certainly accurately) that California and New York accounted for more than half of all the fraud nationally.

Interestingly, the EDD spokesman also claimed the state has “recovered more than $6 billion in stolen funds,” a number that has been bandied about Sacramento for some time and is almost certainly true (an outside counsel headed up the effort, not an EDD cubiciloid.)

Interestingly, the EDD has always been leery of confirming the recovered money, most likely to avoid the simple question of “if that’s what you got back how many more billion did you not?!?”

At least a good $40 billion – most of which went overseas and large amounts went to gangs and even the North Korean nuclear missile program is the answer to that question, by the way.

While this specific effort may have gone sideways/been a set-up, DOGE must continue its work not only throughout the government but continue to deeply delve into the rat’s nest of pandemic unemployment fraud.

Just be aware of the red herrings.

If anyone had heard anything the Trump administration said before the imposition of the tariffs, they would have spotted multiple – many multiple – references to the concept of “negotiation points.”

As noted before ad nauseum, Trump is inherently a negotiator, he is transactional – he has certain core thoughts, but much of what he does is open for consideration.

In other words, Trump is not dogmatic, something that has served him well (for the most part) in life.

So the tariff timeline is this: they go into place, the stock world has 12 cows and 367 kittens, and then a couple days later some of the tarrifs seem to roll back a bit.

The media cries FOUL! -how dare you do something and then not continue to do it until the end of time?!?

Trump was therefore accused of being a “flip-flopper,” a weak confused president who didn’t understand what he was doing, a danger to babies and retirees and everyone else.

Now the Wall Street idiots who took this to heart and shorted a bunch of tariff-impacted stocks made money for about 27 hours – then, when the market rebounded they took it – literally - in the shorts.

Of course, accusations have been made Trump “flipped,” chickened out, and just maybe made sure his friends made money on the massive three-day swing.

As to the latter, any intentionality is very definitely doubtable because if you knew how to read PUBLIC STATEMENTS you knew exactly what was happening and about to happen.

The tariffs are/were/continue to be starting negotiating points open to tweaks and changes and have always been intended as such. For example, when – on the rare occasion – I have been offered a real job I say I want a billion dollars a year and a clone I can harvest for organs. I then immediately add that there may be some” wiggle room” to those demands.

Negotiating is not flip-flopping – it is a strategy to get as much as possible while understanding it will not always go exactly perfectly.

It’s astonishing that the media has – after a decade of Trump – not picked up on this fact.

Or maybe they have and just don’t want to admit it and need to keep their eyes and ears covered to the truth pretty much everyone else sees it order to justify the past ten years of abject lies.

Speaking of covering up, I pay for commercial-free YouTube.

I originally assumed that meant that no commercials would be aired (turns out to be true, save for the internal sponsor thingys) and that the vids would be shown unedited.

There I was wrong.

I watch a lot – I mean A LOT – of documentaries (and I know I should just get Magellan, or something so shut up) and have noticed that more and more and more things on YouTube are being pixelated of late.

A tiny side of me thinks that may be okay for some people, but 99% of me thinks that by literally covering up the video evidence of, for example, the Holocaust diminishes the suffering and makes it more difficult for people to truly understand the horror.

“Protecting” people from certain images is in fact protecting people from the truth.

An hysterically inappropriate example of this history cleanse is the following short from History Matters - a truly wonderful YouTuber – on post WWII Italy.

To ensure the vid was not demonetized by YouTube, he had to change “Mussolini” to “The Fez Wearing Italian Man!”

Without question, watch the clip – and “The Fez Wearing Italian Man!” Is not even the funniest bit…wait for” Whereas Italy was, just, well, Italy…”

As for this week’s epigram, I thought a discussion of punctuation made sense:

Truly inspired!

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It’s called GARE- the Government Alliance on Race and Equity – and more than 400 local cities and counties and other agencies are members.

What if Congress said no more and passed a bill that stated that any member of GARE is not eligible for any federal money?

That would be wonderful, considering GARE intentionally and programmatically – systemically, if you will – interferes in local elections, local opinion shaping, and local governance.

GARE is a monstrous fog – it consists of about 400 agencies scattered across the country, and offers training sessions, infographics, talking points to push “equity,” how to manipulate elections, etc. - straight out of a Stephen King novel – sure he won’t like that reference – that is aggressively working to keep as many local DEI programs in place.

By the way, the effort is intentionally and specifically in opposition to the administration’s efforts, which, of course, one can oppose but not with tax dollars.

Of course, it would be too mean to mention that that is where their funding comes from, but it would not be too mean to state they have been manipulating your city council members, your school board members, your county electeds and everyone in between to make them see their equity light.

This item is a direct call for Congress and the Trump administration – if they are serious about ending the malignancy that is DEI – to defund any local agency that agrees to be part of this underhanded, anti-democratic scam.

As we all know, government bills and actions include a series of “Whereas…” paragraphs to justify the actual law. While with GARE there are too many to list here, there is one very specific “whereas” that would completely and legally justify the de-funding of any local agency involved in the group.

“Whereas GARE – in its own words – has been shown to be an organization intent on manipulating elections, Congress can see no other option than to refuse to fund any jurisdiction that is a member of the anti-democracy group.”

It can, obviously, go on from there, but to justify that particular “whereas,” how about this, from the GARE’s local government communication guide (which you cannot find on the group’s website anymore.):

“The objective of this report is to show that we can and should talk about race explicitly

in order to move people’s hearts and minds to support progressive fiscal policies,” that “progressive messages about health care reform and subprime lending that addressed race prevailed over conservative messages that avoided it, and that “part of a collective movement to change people’s attitudes and behaviors so that we can garner support for progressive policy.”

Also from GARE’s “Communications Guide” for its member government agencies regarding elections:

“Our end goal is institutionalizing sustainable practices within our government toward more equitable outcomes and engaging the public to support their priorities around racial equity But, the natural ebb and flow of elected offices and politics will create more urgency, opportunity and challenges during some periods of our work. Here are some best practices for planning for these shifts — they are all inevitable.

If your racial equity initiative has been an executive priority, and not fully institutionalized, introducing legislation prior to an election to formalize your jurisdiction’s commitment can be a useful and strategic step. GARE can provide templates for such legislation that you can customize to your local conditions.

The guide also suggests that local governments use an “Affirm, Counter, Transform (ACT)” communications strategy to change residents’ political opinions. Here’s an example of ACT at work:

MYTH: Racism will end when individual people stop being racist.

FACT: Structural racism drives inequities in our communities despite the good intentions of individual people. We can have entire organizations made up of well-intentioned people who are operating within an institution and system that is perpetuating racial inequities. We must dismantle structural racism to achieve equitable outcomes.

SAMPLE A.C.T. RESPONSE:

Affirm: The personal is political, and identifying our own actions and inactions as individuals is critically important in racial equity work.

Counter: While individual acts of racism are destructive, fixing them will never be enough — structural change drives individual change much more quickly than the other way around.

Transform: As individuals, we all need to step up and be accountable for our own roles in ongoing issues of race. But our effort will yield the best results if we focus our interventions on institutional and structural change.

From a previous piece on GARE:

The guide encourages the creation of “shared stories” and community commonalities, disparages the concept of a “meritocracy,” notes that jurisdictions should get the press on board, advises that if a city cannot “convert skeptics into allies” it could at least “dissuade active resisters,” helpfully adding – very disturbingly – that an agency “doesn’t need everyone” to agree to move a given policy and that “30 percent” public support is more than enough to reach a goal.

A key part of the guide is the idea of the “A-Ha!” moment, when a member of the public finally becomes aware that “Government created and continues to perpetuate racial inequity. We must transform government to advance racial equity.”

Once that plateau is reached, public compliance follows.

Just to emphasize that statement:

“Compliance follows.”

GARE hosts conferences and calls and such attended by thousands of local officials - almost all staff members and contractors (GARE has a list of 13,000 consultants you can reach out to for equity help) each year. Everyone knows that staff is always a bit political, but there are some pretty clear lines around the country delineating staff from electeds and GARE is clearly crossing them.

There are countless other examples of the group’s absurdity, bordering on illegality, but because the internet is not big enough to hold all of them here are just a few:

First, being irked at Trump, whom they euphemize as “political disruption,”

Second, and of course, one must protect “democratic discourse” to combat (non-existent) divisive “misinformation and disinformation” by:

Assembl(ing) a Democratic Discourse team to effectively manage internal and external messaging campaigns.

Ensure the Democratic Discourse team works with experts and emerging research for debunking strategies.

Train jurisdiction staff on tiers of proactive and responsive debunking strategies for digital and interpersonal use.

The absurdities continue from there: later this month, GARE is hosting a conference on “Building Racial Equity,” and they remain partnered with RaceForward, (one of the more desperate and, to be blunt, absurd members of the equity oligarchy,) and the “Othering and Belonging Institute” (OBI) at University of California, Berkeley (of course) for help.

Note - this is how the OBI describes itself:

“The Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley advances groundbreaking research, policy, and ideas that examine and remediate the processes of exclusion, marginalization, and structural inequality—what we call othering—in order to build a world based on inclusion, fairness, justice, and care for the earth—what we call belonging…Belonging, as OBI defines it, means having a meaningful voice and the opportunity to participate in the design of political, social, and cultural structures that shape one’s life — the right to both contribute and make demands upon society and political institutions. At its core, structural belonging holds a radically inclusive vision because it requires mutual power, access, and opportunity among all groups and individuals within a shared container (such as a society, organization, club, etc.)”

And, of course, they are very worried about Donald Trump but they think that since they are centered and networked practitioners who act collectively (and tell everyone their pronouns) they might be able to ride it out.

And if you are wondering if your city or county of school board or what have you is a member, check out this only barely helpful map

Note - like a few other website pages, the simple list seems to have disappeared of late – three guesses why.

There has been much other activity in “this space” since the election of Donald Trump but the elimination of GARE cannot be forgotten.

GARE is made up of the foot soldiers, the make work cubicle dweller - the most virulent because their job depends upon on an inherent absurdity like the concept of DEI – and grifty manipulators that came together over the past few years to foist the nightmare on the nation.

GARE may not be very well known, but its shifty, sleazy, self-interested impact has been enormous – and that impact has been almost entirely funded by tax dollars.

And that’s why Congress and the administration must act and make GARE gone.

That, and you can’t spell deceive without DEI.

In its effort to combat homelessness, Los Angeles County and the city itself and other cities in the county will spend more than $2 billion dollars this year on its 70,000 or so vagrants.

That works out to be about $30,000 per drooping head.

And that does not include the state’s direct funding of anti(?)-homelessness programs or the food stamp and Medicaid (called Medi-Cal in California) and direct cash and Social Security disability and other benefits that total up to about another $24,000 a year.

And that does not include the value of the free rent provided to hundreds of people in a number of “permanent supportive housing” facilities, including those that have been recently built at a cost of between $700,000 and, in Santa Monica,$1 million dollars per 600-square-foot studio apartment unit.

Amazingly, in LA and throughout the state, spending on solving homelessness has more than doubled over the past decade or so. What else pretty much doubled while all this money was being spent? The homeless population.

Obviously, no real dent has been made in the problem – the number of homeless people has only increased and, still, three or four homeless people die on the streets of LA every day.

The problem has only grown as the funding has grown - not in any way a coincidence and if you are wondering about the chicken and egg situation, don’t bother: the spending has essentially preceded the rise in the number of homeless people.

More homeless, more money…for the massive homelessness industry that has metastasized in California over the past decade.

The industry – made up of catastrophically, almost comically, inept theoretical non-profits that continue to fail miserably but pay staff very well, political cronies, and actual relatives of the government officials doling out the money – has done very well and made quite a bit of bank off of the suffering of others.

That, however, may finally be put under the microscope with the developments of the past week or so because people in a position to make changes have actually begun to notice the problem.

Well, it’s hard not to. An audit of the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority (LAHSA) – a joint agency of the city and county that is rapidly crumbling - showed the agency really couldn’t explain explain where billions of dollars went.

It got spent, of course, but no one seems quite sure on what; an audit of the state’s homelessness programs found a similar issue, again ranging into the billions of dollars.

Well, at least one expenditure is a certainty: $2 million dollars to a “non-profit” operated by the husband of erstwhile LAHSA chief Va Lecia Adams Kellum.

Before resigning, Adams Kellum said she was not part of the expense’s approval, absolutely did not recall approving the expense, let alone signing the check. Trust me.

Adams Kellum – hired in 2023 as a “change agent’ – was a close ally of Mayor Karen Bass. She advised her directly before and after the election and Bass’s daughter worked at the non-profit Adams Kellum ran before being hired to run LAHSA.

From an LA Times story on the appointment:

Getting a Bass ally into this role does potentially signal a change in the city’s orientation and attitude toward LAHSA — one that views the agency less as an obstruction that should be circumvented and more as one that can aid and augment the resources that city government is already putting forward.

Public officials and services providers — even harsh critics of LAHSA — indicated broad excitement over the appointment, stemming mostly from Adams Kellum’s work in various communities on street homelessness.

“It seemed like the most hopeful time to make change because as all of us have said, the key is the city and county working together,” Adams Kellums said.

Last week, the county pulled out of LAHSA after which Adams Kellum resigned (rather embarrassingly, actually – in defending the agency she was not even recognized as a fellow government person but relegated to the “public comments” period when all the crazies speak…and she had her mic cut off.)

And the other funder of the agency – the city – is almost about to do the same thing and pull out.

Now, fewer levels of bureaucracy are always a good thing, but the idiots who have run LAHSA over the past years will almost certainly be picked to run the separate programs (doncha love civil service protections?) and do not have to worry about soon becoming a client of the city and/or county.

Another nightmare for the homelessness industry is Judge David Carter, who sits on the federal bench and has been trying to act as somewhat of an overseer of the programs since a lawsuit was filed about five years ago (fyi – back then, the homeless lobby loved him because he ordered more beds be created, options given, etc. Now, not so much.)

As part of this effort, he ordered an audit of LAHSA. It did not go well.

In fact, it was so bad that when he asked various and sundry LA area officials to show up in his courtroom to explain themselves, they didn’t turn up (Bass eventually wandered in but said essentially nothing.) As to LAHSA’s efforts, the judge said this:

“If they were going to do it, they should have done it, or they should have given you a road map now of ... how they’re going to do it.”

In fact, the audit was even more worser – the judge openly wondered about whether he should put everything into receivership and essentially run everything himself.

But even more importantly worser than the implosion of LAHSA (by the way, it had an overhead budget of about $400 million alone) is the announcement from the new SoCal federal prosecutor Bill Essayli.

He has announced a federal criminal investigative task force to try to figure out the incestual rat’s nest that is LA’s (and California’s) anti(?)-homelessness funding systems.

Note – the question mark after “anti” has been intentional both times it has been used, because the people that pay their mortgages “fighting” homelessness would not be able to do that if they actually solved the problem.

“Taxpayers deserve answers for where and how their hard-earned money has been spent. If state and local officials cannot provide proper oversight and accountability, we will do it for them,” said Essayli, a Republican and former State Assemblymember who was appointed to his post by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi last week.

The Homelessness Fraud and Corruption Task Force will “investigate crimes related to the misappropriation of federal tax dollars intended to alleviate homelessness” in the Central District of California, which covers an estimated 20 million people across seven counties.

Along with reviewing federal, state and local programs that receive federal grants and funding, the task force will “investigate fraud schemes involving the theft of private donations intended to provide support and services for the homeless population,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

As the entire homelessness industry has been operating in the netherworld of political grease, outright graft, and devastating failure, Essayli’s new effort must have many poverty plutocrats shaking in their well-heeled boots.

Remember when, a few years ago, tens of thousands of people took to the streets demanding that oligarchs stay out of politics?

The protest of Mark Zuckerberg funneling aa half-billion dollars into the vote counting system, the fury over George Soros buying district attorney races across the country, the public anger at evil NGOs funneling millions into leftist political causes?

Well, neither do I.

That means they did not happen or – possibly – the media simply did not cover the events ad nauseum as has been regarding the Evil Elon protests.

“Scores of people took part in protests against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk across all 50 states and globally on Saturday, organized by a pro-democracy movement in response to what they call a “hostile takeover” and attack on American rights and freedoms,” blared and blathered CNN.

Note – using the word “scores” is a very odd choice because even I know thousands of folks (not as many as claimed, but still thousands” showed at the protests and a “score,” as we all remember from the Gettysburg Address, is 20 people. Hmm.

Anyway, the protesters demanded that Elon keep his “hands off” American democracy. If – when one considers Silicon Valley/FBI/Homeland Security/media censorship that has occurred over the past decade - there has never been a more ironic slogan in political history, I am unaware of it.

Maybe people didn’t protest Zuckerberg aggressive and flagrant election rigging effort because those concerned with the issue were too polite to publicly chant the obvious “Fuck Zuck!” slogan or maybe people were worried that even mentioning Soros in a negative way made them an antisemite (considering recent campus protests and on-going DEI issues, that, too, is deeply ironic.)

Either way, fun was had by all, the media will keep pushing the same concept because polls show that Musk is an even more polarizing figure than Trump (mostly because people think DOGE is stealing Social Security money somehow,) and the resistance will continue to be covered out of all proportion to its support.

If this weekend’s protestors were honest and consistent, they would have been out before when their “hands off!” democracy chant actually made sense.

Speaking of not actually making sense, California state Assemblyman Rick Zbur – arguing against a bill that would have boys out of girls’ sports – compared the ide – of course – to Nazi Germany and said trans people were sent to concentration camps.

We know gay people were, but trans as we know it today? Transvestitism, sure – everyone’s seen “Cabaret,” but actually trans?

"This is about this, this is about this bill," Zbur argued. "They were barred from public life. They were detransitioned. They were imprisoned and killed in concentration camps. And the way it started was the same kind of things that are happening in this country by the Trump administration."

“Detransitioned” – Zbur actually used that word. That’s like saying Moors were banned from space flight in the Middle Ages – it just doesn’t make sense.

Nasty things happened to gay people in Nazi Germany and that should never happen again? But to impose the current trans debate on the Holocaust is ludicrous.

The argument becomes even more preposterous when one considers what was being discussed – making sure boys do not play girls’ sports, thereby throwing off the entire competitive concept. Simply having to stay in your own gender lane when running track is not the same thing as, well, anything the Nazis did.

Speaking of ludicrous, one needs to always keep one’s ears open when taking public transit. A few days I heard a person LOUDLY discussing his father’s prison record before segueing into the crucial importance of getting a DJ for his cousin’s baby shower.

A “popping DJ,” actually.

I’ve never attended a baby shower and am pretty sure I have never caused one, but it would seem to me that a club DJ would be rather out of place at such an event.

Speaking of “Cabaret,” this week’s epigram is yet again not an epigram but the Wilkommen number from the film:

Speaking of transvestite, note the 27 second mark - I think it’s an homagee to a sort-of well-known painting and/or poster, but I just can’t place it.

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Beginning in 1965 and continuing for 20 years or thereabouts, the Italian government created and implemented the “strategy of tension.”

It worked – for the power structure if not the people - and could very well have provided the template for America’s “deep state” actions over the past decade.

At its core, the Italian strategy was meant to keep the public always afraid, always wary of yet another terrorist attack, either from the left or the right. Hence its version of the deep state – depressingly, pretty much the same organs that make up the United State’s version (intelligence, federal law enforcement, defense, dependent private entities, etc.) – funded/cooperated/encouraged both the far far left and far far right (the right more directly and more richly, the left getting winks and nods and the occasional tip off) to engage in terrorism to keep the public on edge.

From the Piazza Fontana bombing through the kidnapping of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigade and beyond, the real powers that be in Italy (just put aside the elected politicians creating and dismantling various governments every few weeks or months or so) were able to stay in place.

In theory, much of this strategy came about due to Italy’s place in Cold War politics, its having one of the largest national Communist parties, being on the literal front line of the conflict, and because of the residue of Mussolini (who were actual real fascists) supporters being scattered throughout the government.

In actual fact, the strategy was part and parcel of Operation GLADIO, a CIA “stay behind” operation in Italy that did everything – and that means everything – it could to keep Italy from going Red.

Side note - – a very funny episode of Archer references/explains GLADIO and deserves a watch – very NSFW but available on Netflix and Hulu – the episode is call “Lo Scandalo.”

In the end the “strategy of tension” was based on the tactics of terror, physical and psychological, economic and sociological.

So why does what a bunch of people in wonderful shoes did during the “Years of Lead” matter today?

Because: just how other deep state programs involving press manipulation, censorship social intimidation, physical unease, and financial pressure that were supposed to be only used overseas but ended up being used right here at home.

What happened in the U.S. over the past decade or so was the implementation, albeit in a somewhat softer vein, of the same strategy of tension.

There are many definitions and permutations of this strategy, a strategy that has been used by various governments of varying shades over centuries.

But the best description comes from someone who was involved: far-right bomber Vincenzo Vinciguerra.

He admitted his crime and was sentenced to life in prison – he killed three “Carabinieri” ( imagine the army plus the FBI) – but seemed to become disillusioned for the reason why, a reason he put down to manipulation by the state security apparatuses who were more interested in creating domestic tension rather than actually creating a new fascist state.

In a prison interview (see video above) he said the entire strategy was about creating fear in order to allow the Italian deep state to step in and offer more security – in exchange for less freedom.

Author Giovanni Fasanella offers a background theory as to why the concept “worked,” as it were.

In order to regain entry into the western club, Italy had to at least “appear to be a normal democracy,” even though – due to the control still exerted by the United States and other Ally victors – it really wasn’t as its intelligence and military communities were not under the actual control of the government but operated essentially independently (and/or in coordination with outside forces – think the CIA and MI-6 then, the WEF/globalist/socialite socialist statists now.)

Which the rest of the west knew and seemed to think was just fine and willing to go along with the charade.

The reason the strategy of tension has so much relevance in the United States now is tri-fold.

First, many of the less blowy-up but still direct public control strategies were put in place during the pandemic and, informally, before with the nightmare of woke cancellation, a movement supported by various government agencies (State, USAID, etc.) through their support of “private” groups.

Second, this tension still exists despite the election of Donald Trump. While right now a rear-guard action, the public deflections and obfuscations to protect the deep state at all cost are coming fast and furious, from Democrats defending absurd waste to government health officials who resign being made martyrs by the press even though they were actually dangerously unethical, to the continuation of the years of lawfare, save this time it’s not about Trump personally, just every policy he tries to enact.

Oh - and Tesla fires and “resistance” protests and…

The deep state fears that maybe Trump has figured out how to end their Gordian Knot grip on perma-power –just cut it. (i.e. the 11 week maelstrom.)

Third, and most succinctly, we go back to Vinciguerra’s description of the heart of the strategy of tension:

“Destabilize the public order in order to stabilize the political order.”

Sound familiar?

Hopefully for not much longer.

One of the many cuts the DOGE dozers have made in DC involves snakes.

No, not Congress, but actual snakes – the brown tree snake to be specific.

While DOGE is doing amazing work they are, by necessity and one presumes by design, using chainsaws to cut when – on a few very rare occasions – a scalpel is needed.

Or maybe a Tylenol.

If that makes little sense now, it will shortly.

The brown tree snake is an invasive and devastating creature that – after it got into plane wheel wells and cargo containers during World War II – made its way from its native habitat of northern Australia and Papua New Guinea (where it actually has predators to keep it in check) to other Pacific islands that have no such defense.

Hawaii, Okinawa, and countless other islands were invaded by the snake, but no island has suffered more than Guam.

Since it literally landed on the island, it has driven at least a dozen native bird species to extinction, caused countless power outages (it’s in the name – tree snakes climb,) and bitten more than a few – well, really tens of thousands – of people.

Note – the snake is venomous but only slightly; adults can easily survive a bite, but small children have a much nastier reaction – people have died.

After years of testing and trying every other solution they could think of, vector control scientists finally figured out how to kill the snakes – acetaminophen.

Turns out that giving a snake Tylenol is like handing a human three shot glasses full of liquified strychnine – they dead.

So the question became how does one get a snake to take a Tylenol?

The solution was truly inspired – kill a bunch of mice, stuff them with 80 milligram pills, and drop them from helicopters into the tree canopy where the snakes are and hope they eat them.

And this was in 2010, well before DoorDash.

It actually worked, but not quite as well as hoped as too many of the mice tended to – rather float gently into the trees – plummet to the earth where the snakes spend less time.

But vector people are nothing if not resourceful; I know this because of my work with my local vector control district - which also happened to be the headquarters of the international Society of Vector Ecologists - as a board member.

A solution was eventually found to the problem and in 2013 – and ever since – the Tylenol-filled mice are kept as warm as possible to attract the snakes and stapled to a piece of light cardboard before they are dropped.

The cardboard acts as a bit of windscreen so instead of falling directly to the ground they tend to float in a leafy/whirligig and settle nicely in the treetops.

As silly as dropping acetaminophen-filled mice stapled to pieces of cardboard sounds, it actually works.

And while much of the DOGE cuts in this area – the USDA’s biosecurity office – are really about office space leasing and such, there is a possibility the cuts could bleed over into the actual work being done and that would be problematic.

One hopes this tiny glitch will be figured out soon and the mice can start falling from the skies again.

Squeaky death from above!

Obviously, the whole issue of animals plummeting to earth cannot go without a reference to one of the funniest moments in television history – WKRP in Cincinnati’s Thanksgiving promotion.

So here you go:

I wish it had not been on April Fool’s Day, but it was a long time coming.

New Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced the elimination of thousands of bureaucrats today.

They were, needless to say, stunned. The Washington Post reports that the CDC and NIH are experiencing ‘havoc” because of the cuts.

Note that the Post story says little, pretty much nothing, about the actual state of public health…just that fed workers are getting the axe and that’s the really bad thing. And that’s because they are a company town paper, in this case the company is the federal givernment (typo intentional.)

It is, of course, what the Post would say as it stopped being a newspaper and became a mouthpiece for the entrenched bureaucracy many many years ago.

Others put forth a whimpering that if there is no such thing as an “assistant deputy director for interagency outreach” millions of children will die.

It seems the higher-ups being let go/re-assigned/sent home with a paycheck/put on an ice floe/etc. do have a certain thing in common – they were part of the catastrophically damaging covid “effort.”

For example:

At the National Institutes of Health, a nearly $48 billion biomedical research agency, at least five top leaders were put on leave. Among those offered reassignment were the infectious-disease institute director Jeanne Marrazzo, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post and multiple people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Marrazzo had succeeded Anthony S. Fauci as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which helped lead the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and later became a target of Republicans. An internal email showed that two other leaders there, Cliff Lane and Emily Erbelding, also lost their jobs, and the agency had no advance notice of who had been targeted for layoffs through the reduction in force, or RIF.

Note that eliminating the egregious Faucists was blamed on Republicans. Maybe the disastrous response to covid may have had something to do with it, but that was never even alluded to by the Post.

But one can understand the blathering pan faced confusion occurring at the NIH, CDC, ETC. now amongst the employees.

They never ever thought they could lose their jobs and/or be held accountable. For almost all of them, today was the same as having aa child you actually birthed – you were there of course – come to you and say they are not really your kid.

Simply inconceivable.

No fooling.

As it is April Fool’s. I thought of writing something silly and odd to see if anyone would bite – but knowing my readers that seemed fruitless. You know better than to believe that spaghetti trees exist and you know better than the possibility that Barack Obama’s library project is being sued for discrimination.

Oh wait. That’s true.

Well, since truth and fiction and silliness have become an everyday occurrence, then what is the point of April Fool’s Day?

Well, how about calling it April Foolish Day and nearly ending with this from Lewis Carroll:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

It’s brillig indeed.

Funny note – I left the “n” off of “human” in the second graf and the Word editor didn’t notice because it spelled “Huma.”

Huma Services…I think that’s a Soros gig now…

And that is no foolie.

PS – Sen. Booker will still never be president, no matter how long he talks…

Texting while bombing seems to be, politically that is, as dangerous and stupid as texting while driving.

The first question that should be asked is why were the Houthi attack planners texting in the first place?

I mean just out of politeness to reflect the gravity of the situation, it seems inappropriate to text message a bombing raid. It’s like faxing your girlfriend to break up with her – very déclassé.

And they all have taxpayer funded cars and drivers, so they can’t blame traffic and they all have actually really secure phones so they could actually talk with one another – you know, like humans – if they couldn’t all get in the same room.

So the leak of the battle plans to a guy from The Atlantic – he hit the stupid lottery on that one – was not only bad and incompetent it was very icky.

Was it a massive security breach? No, not really. Jefffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic didn’t forward the plans with an FYI to the Houthi, but he did something almost as damaging: he gave them to the rest of the press.

Would Goldberg have splashed the issue publicly four months ago during the Biden administration? Absolutely not, but that’s comparing rotten apples to orange man bads and ultimately meaningless.

Was it as bad as what occurred during said Biden administration, i.e. the intentional information/influence peddling for money that went on? No, of course not.

But it does reinforce – or allows to be reinforced – a certain perception that the Trump team is a combination of amateurs and lunatics.

Everyone has accidentally hit “send all” at one time or another in their life or sent an email to the wrong Jeff or accidentally added someone to a group chat – usually, the person you add is someone you owe money so that gets really awkward.

Therefore, the public will have a bit of understanding about the matter – not enough to ignore it but enough that the story will not have significant “legs.”

But it was an unforced error that actually gave the press something real and actually damaging to the administration to harp on for a bit and that’s never good.

Speaking of bad, I think I have come up with a way to solve the dangerous illegal alien deportation kerfuffle. Don’t send them to El Salvador, but ask Vladimir Putin if he wants them for Ukraine cannon fodder.

Have them all enlist while in custody and the deportations become willing departures, Putin gets a little help – WHICH WE ALL KNOW IS THE ONLY REASON TRUMP IS PRESIDENT, TO HELP PUTIN, or at least that’s what the New York Times says – and the courts have nothing left to adjudicate.

As for the deportees, they may have a shot at a longer life in Ukraine than in that prison in El Salvador, so it could be publicly sold as a humanitarian gesture.

This week’s epigram requires some context.

It’s a joke line from Rifftrax’s skewering of the very very bad movie “Samurai Cop:”

“Remember folks, it’s not racist if it’s incoherent.”

For the full context, here is the line – it’s at the 37-minute mark but if you have time do watch the whole thing. Assassins hide in hampers, drug lords have grandma curtains, and no one – absolutely no one – knows how to swear like a human being.

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Ten thousand years from now, future archaeologists will be allowed back into the wasteland that was once known as California.

They will find many wonderous things but what they come across in Central Valley will astonish them – mile after mile after mile of concrete pillars, crumbling decks, arched bridges seemingly connecting nowhere to nothing and straight line after straight line.

Some will state that it must have been an attempt to create an alien spaceport, others will note that the various segments point to different constellations in the night sky and posit that it was an effort to tap into the great universal presence.

Digging will uncover broken fragments of bronze plaques, leading one archaeologist to insist that all of the structures need to be looked at as one monument, a vast linear temple to the god Hi-Spe.

Then another will neuralink into the tattered and tawdry remains of what is now called the internet and, after months of searching, find the California High Speed Rail Authority’s 2008 Business Plan read it and say:

“Are you kidding me? Really? No wonder the civilization collapsed.”

Wednesday, the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office drove the 48^th final nail into the coffin of the project, stating categorically that if the project cannot find another $7 billion dollars by next June it completely and utterly grinds to a halt.

“There is no specific plan to meet that roughly $7 billion gap, we also think there is some risk that gap could grow,” Helen Kerstein of the LAO told legislatures Wednesday. “This isn’t a way out in the future funding gap. This is a pretty immediate funding gap.”

She added that the project “could come to a complete halt in 15 months without the funding increase.”

The latest news even shocked some Sacramento Democrats. Well, not shocked (they already know) but at least caused them to actually criticize the project.

“The timing of the project review seems totally out of whack with when we need to be making decisions,” said Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris (D–Irvine.) “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.”

The rail Authority – which was supposed to present a fully updated business plan to the legislature but hasn’t yet - has exactly zero practical suggestions as to how to to find the money, saying under its breath that maybe the state (which already has a $76 billion deficit this fiscal year) should help or that maybe it could get some federal funding (actually, the feds are looking for ways to get their $4 billion back) or that private funding will finally – after 17 years of beating the corporate bushes to find anyone to invest and failing – come to fruition.

Even green obsessed companies and pension funds have turned their back on the project.

That the high-speed rail project will never be finished has been known for quite some time. In 2008, California voters approved a system that would run from Los Angeles (continuing on to Anaheim and San Diego) to San Francisco and on to Sacramento. It was supposed to cost $33 billion for the main LA to SF phases and about another $10 billion for the rest. In 2008 dollars – in today’s dollars that’s about $45 billion for phase one and $15 billion for the rest.

That’s a total of $60 billion for the whole thing. The latest estimate – just for the LA to SF bit because it seems that the other bits have been cut off like vestigial tails at birth – shows that cost to be at least $130 billion…in today’s dollars…on a good day.

It should be noted that the Authority has a history of upping costs and completion date estimates. Again, originally, it was $33 billion and to be done five years ago. It was also to make “high speed freight” a possibility: high speed freight exists nowhere on the planet because it doesn’t have to.

In 2018, the cost estimate went up to $77 billion and the opening date was pushed back to, well, this year, 2025.

Now we are at least $130 billion (again, no San Diego and no Sacramento) and maybe just maybe someone will be able to go from Shafter (just north of Bakersfield) to Madera (just north of Fresno) in about five years. LA and SF? Just pick a year – it doesn’t matter.

By the way, that first Central Valley segment was supposed to cost $6.34 billion and be the cheapest per mile – by far – to build. Now it’s $33 billion and a person right now can take Amtrak from Bakersfield to Oakland and on to Sacramento anyway – in fact, much of the high-speed train track is being built directly over the existing train tracks:

Irony is not just a river in Egypt.

In summation, the project was based on willful lies, absurd projections, and a belief that once big government things get started they are terribly hard to stop no matter the cost and time overruns.

As former San Francisco Mayor and Kamala Harris boyfriend Willie Brown said a few years back:

“In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there's no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.”

This is sadly true, though it need not be. For example, if any one of the dozen or so Democrats who are running for governor in 2026 said they would shut down the project they would win – easy (all the Republicans have said so but, well, this is California, so…)

So, what to do with all of those bridges and decks and pillars once the plug is finally pulled? The viaducts can carry significant loads and are rather wide, perfect decks for apartments actually so there’s a thought.

Or – as is far more likely – the edifice will crumble away until no one remembers what it was actually used for and then the future archaeologists will have a field day.

Note – the headline of the story was inspired by a song, or songs, actually.

Here’s the original Clash version of “Train in Vain”:

And here’s Annie Lennox’s astonishing cover:

If you let the popularity of an idea – no matter how silly - dictate your stance, then you are not a very good elected official.

If you completely ignore and shoo-away and disparage overwhelming public sentiment on an issue, then you are not a very good elected official.

And, in the latter case, doing so used to mean your job at risk. But that, in the large and depressing part, is no longer the case.

And that is a result of voting districts, at every level.

You can be consistently on the “20% side” of an issue, as it were, and defy the remaining 80% of public sentiment and not be too worried about losing your seat because the district you represent has been drawn in such a way as to make it nearly mathematically impossible.

You can be in favor of paying for trans surgeries, in favor of illegal alien criminals staying in the country, in favor of massive slush fund spending that only goes to your political cronies, you can be in favor of government censorship, and on and on and not worry even though the vast majority of the public – probably even your district – are opposed to them.

In other words, rotten districts are licenses to be crazy because you only have to get through the primary where the 20% miraculously becomes 50% because they are far more obsessed with their issues…they vote…or are voted for…or paid to vote…

Let’s start with Congress.

Out of the 435 seats, about 190 are Democrat automatics. If a combination of Albert Einstein, Cary Grant, and the Buddha challenged the incumbent in any of these seats he would lose, even if he ran as an independent (Run as a Republican? Don’t even bother.)

The same can be said for the 190 ribrock reliable Republican seats.

That leaves 55 seats, or only 13% of the entire House of Representatives, in play in any given year. (Note – if only legal residents and citizens were counted when creating congressional districts, it is estimated that at least 10 Democrat seats would slip at least into the “contestable” pile.)

And if you are in one of those safe seats you can do anything you want, no matter what the public thinks.

On the Senate side, it’s slightly different as they are statewide elections that far more closely represent the actual will of the voters. At this moment in time, about 15 states can reliably predicted to return two Democrats, about 18 to return two Republicans.

That leaves about 34 seats or so theoretically in actual play, a far larger percentage than in the House.

Of course, senate seats do turn on other issues – while money and personality are important in all elections, they are far more important in statewide (and national) elections than any at the district level.

Let’s turn now to a specific type of election – local school boards.

Typically, the winning candidate has the support of the local teachers union. That means money and people to knock on doors and all of the rest of the permanent organization the union has is at your disposal.

So, then you win? Whom do you owe?

The union. Imagine if you could pick your own boss and then imagine you can get your boss fired and then imagine what happens when you ask for a raise or demand a new policy or procedure?

You get what you want, and what teachers’ union want, beyond money, is astonishing:

From a previous story on a recent California Teachers Association convention:

The “So you Want to be an Anti-Racist Union?” program page leads the curious to at least one hint – stop embracing “white supremacy culture,” aspects of which include perfectionism (there goes math), objectivity (there goes history), individualism (there goes art), worship of the written word (there goes English) and urgency (actually this would have been handy if I forgot to do my homework) –see here for more detail.

Hence most school boards becoming covens of 20 percenters and, just to emphasize the issue, California is not an outlier in this respect.

Speaking of California, we come to its legislature.

There are 80 state Assembly seats and 40 state Senate seats. The Democrats have 60 Assemblymembers and 30 senators – literally 75% of the legislature.

What that means is that they can do anything they want – they could even override a Gov. Gavin Newsom, should the need ever arise (it hasn’t and won’t.) They have a super-majority.

In 2022, the state voted across the board for Democrats for each statewide office (governor, attorney general, etc.)

The average percentage of votes they each got was 57.7%, a bit different from the 75% (actually in 2022 it was 77%) in the legislative races.

In November’s presidential vote, Kamala Harris got 58.4% of the vote. Nice, one supposes, but far less than either Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton got.

But the more fascinating results were in the state proposition votes:

State voters took a hammer to the most progressive propositions. Allow cities more leeway to impose rent control? No. Allow cities and counties to have to get only 55% of the vote to approve new bonds? Hell no. Making it illegal (ish) for prisoners to work? Very no. Raising the minimum wage? You’re kidding, right?

And then of course there was Prop 36 that makes crime illegal again in California. 70% approval, a crushing defeat for the woke justice mob.

Each of these measures had the very strong backing of the governor, the legislature, public unions, and the Democratic machine yet they failed. Why?

Because at the statewide level, 75% of Californians are not lunatic leftist progressive determined to end policing, move abortion on demand to we demand you get an abortion, have the state take over local zoning, and give aggressively incompetent people like LA’s Mayor Karen Bass a standing ovation.

Yup, the Dems in the legislature really did that yesterday when she was in Sacramento asking for $2 billion to bail out the city.

Combine the above statistics with voter registration – 50% Dem, 25% Rep, 25% NPP (no party preference, like an independent elsewhere) – and the legislature number become even more of an outlier.

And typically the NPPs vote leans Republican by about two-to-one.

In other words, it is only how the districts are drawn and composed that’s keeping the legislature so far out of touch.

They’re like trust fund nepo-babies – they never have to face consequences so they can do whatever they want.

And in situations like that, even the stupidest most radical most unpopular policy or proposal becomes very possible, especially because it is rare that a Democrat will ever say or vote against anything another Democrat offers.

How did the districts get this way? First, the “independent citizen’s re-districting commission” has been anything but.

Second, districts are divided up by counting all the people, not just the legal residents.

An example from 2020:

An average district has about 275,000 legal voters. Districts that have more than 300,000 legal voters (about 10 percent higher than the average) returned seven Republicans, 16 Democrats, and one independent, results roughly in line with statewide party registration figures.

But districts that have fewer than 250,000 legal voters showed a very significant tilt, electing three Republicans and 17 Democrats, more than twice the difference that could be expected vis a vis statewide party affiliations.

It should be noted that the turnout and citizen rates appear to be intertwined. The competitive districts with the highest percentages of citizens had the highest turnouts, with the top eight turnout districts showing an average citizenship rate of 87 percent, while the lowest 10 districts by turnout carried a citizenship rate of 62 percent (Republicans and Democrats split the top eight districts four to four while the lowest went Democrat by nine to one).

Add those facts to boggling incompetence of the state Republican party, the leftist manipulation of the districting process (even ProPublica noticed how bad it is ) and the Dems cannot possibly lose.

And add that the political starting point for most members is somewhere to the left of Trotsky and the end result is foretold.

In other words, Democratic extremism (and in some case Republican silliness) is baked into the system which is why when people ask why so many take such extreme and extremely unpopular positions the answer becomes obvious.

If the districts were more representative of the population generally, the Dems would lose about 10 Assembly seats and 5 Senate seats and there goes the super-majority and the tempering process begins.

And that would be a start, at least.