Meet the New Year, Same as the Old Year, Don’t Get Fooled Again

Here are four stories that should make you feel that we are starting 2024 with the same stupidity and inanity the last few years have brought us.  Let’s start with Tiny Governor DeWine of Ohio (don’t how I originally wrote Florida, probably my thinking of the opposite of DeWine andwishing that DeSantis was President and running everything), a sanctimonious jackass.  He vetoed a bill to stop men from pretending to be women so they could actually win sporting events they would lose if their delusion wasn’t indulged, and that most importantly, would keep children from being preyed on by schools, supposed health care providers, the heartless transgender lobby and even their parents, and having their lives irreversibly ruined before they ever would be considered mature enough to make a decision to mutilate themselves.

DeWine is apparently ignorant as well; he fell for the despicable whacked lies that pro(re)gressives always tell to support any of their bad policies.  No lie is too shameful for that crowd.  In this case these disgraceful loons try to say that if you don’t mutilate a child it will commit suicide.  The research shows no change in suicide rates related to this topic, except that kids who do mutilate themselves are more likely to kill themselves.  If this grotesque lie were true, suicide rates among children would decline as gender-disaffirming treatment has spread, and they haven’t.  There is absolutely no evidence to support this nonsense, but DeWine says he relied on it.  Here is what he relied on–getting contributions from the facilities that perform these barbaric treatments and from the transgender lobby.  And the parents who push this stuff on their children should be charged with child abuse.

Next up, a story in the Wall Street Journal just repeats what has been apparent for years.  The rise in education costs isn’t due to hiring more teachers or doing anything that actually affects education.  It is the excessive hiring of administrative staff, particularly those engaging in racism and discrimination, also known as the DEI departments, along with adding buildings that are monuments to management at the school and donors.  More was spent on athletics as well, but those programs are typically money-makers for these large public universities.  The article singles out Auburn University, which more than doubled spending in 20 years, while tuition and other costs to students rose at a similar clip, but the same is true everywhere, and is also true in the public education system.  These college cost increases disproportionately affect poor students, even if they do receive more financial aid.  And they are one reason so many students have huge loans when they leave.  If these were private businesses they would be bankrupt and management fired.  The solution is obvious, force the universities to have a priority of reducing costs, including staff, other than teachers, and make teachers actually work a few hours a week.  Any university that doesn’t reduce costs should have its management automatically fired.  (WSJ Story)

The third one also comes from the WSJ.  It is a column pointing out what has been noted particularly in regard to jobs data.  You can’t trust the official stats any more.  It isn’t even the possibility of political fiddling; it is the diminished trustworthiness of the sources.  In particular, much government economic data is based on surveys and response rates have plunged, making the results highly susceptible to bias and error.  But beyond that, the constant revisions, almost always in a “worse” direction, during the Biden administration speak either to incompetence or intentional reporting of better than reality numbers.  So no reason to think what we are told about the economy in 2023 or 2024 reflects the true state of affairs.  (WSJ Story)

Finally, we can’t avoid the unilateral decision by Maine’s deeply partisan and dumb secretary state to remove Trump from the ballot there.  The only good thing about this is that it makes it even more likely that the Supreme Court will intervene to put an end to this banana republic craziness.  But the mere fact that public officials, like this knucklehead and those on the Colorado Supreme Court, would even consider this grotesquely undemocratic action, shows how low politics in our country has sunk.  And with each move like this the likelihood is increased that some Republican state will remove Biden from the ballot; with even more grounds since he has taken bribes and committed treason.  In fact, he has a long-running operation to enrich himself by taking money from foreign sources to influence the US government.

As I said yesterday, 2024 will be even worse that 2023 was, and I didn’t even mention Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Iran, or North Korea.  Where is the leader to get us out of this morass?