Author: thependulumswings staff

Has? Or, How Has?

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Is the question, “Has America failed today’s youth?”  Or, is the question, “How has America failed today’s youth?”

It starts in the home.

The percentage of two-parent households has fallen significantly in the last half-century.  Between 1970 and 2022 the percentage of white children living with two decreased from 90 to 77%, Hispanics from 77 to 67%, and blacks from 59 to 42%.

Aren’t the ages from birth to five the most formative years?  More single-parent homes mean more daycare or preschool.  Isn’t a parent more attentive to their child than a daycare worker is to a multiple of them?

Many more families need two breadwinners to provide enough income to stay afloat.  This means more children head to daycare or preschool as well.

And, now two handfuls of states have rushed legislation to ensure the child’s right to decide which gender they want to be when they grow up.  Hormone blockers and gender reassignment follow, perhaps?

Video games lead to isolation.  Isolation leads to the internet.  The internet leads to social media where all hell really can break loose.

The need to belong is innate.  It raises self-esteem.  If you sit in the basement what do you belong to?

In 2020 and 2021 we decided that the only way to protect children from that deadly virus was to keep them out of school.  Decades back parents rushed kids to school to get sick to bolster their immune systems.  Further isolation for two years (think ages 12-14 for example) is bad for multiple age groups.

What do you study when you get to college?  Whatever you want.  But before you get there, you must excel at one or more standardized tests to prove your worth.  Well, you used to.

Now these pesky competence tests are biased, racist, or deemed out of step.  Remember, everyone gets a participation ribbon.  DEI folks step to the front.

If you are still looking for a cause, dye your hair half-blue and pick up a pro-Palestinian/Hamas/Antifa sign at your convenience.  It’s a cause to get behind if you feel oppressed.  Never mind that you are protesting for oppression.

Professors(read as teachers that hide in school basements) will give you an A after skipping finals if you feel terrorized by police coming to campus to take back what you took that doesn’t belong to you.

Everyone graduates!  Ask Oprah.

That mostly worthless degree in anthropology, art history, philosophy, or ethnic and civilization studies can send you back to your bedroom at your mom’s house. With the school administrator-to-student ratio at nearly one-to-one on campuses such as Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia(to name but a few) you’d think they would steer you towards something that would pay to have studied.

What did the degree cost?   More than ever, just like the administrators.

Can’t pay for your student loan? Uncle Joe the former 18-wheeler driver, Amtrak conductor, and Penn Professor, whose Uncle 2nd Lt. Ambrose J. Finnegan Jr. was consumed by cannibals, will transfer your debt obligation back to the government after he returns to the White House from the black church he regularly attends.

Is Joe Biden an enabler or a buyer of votes?  Both?

See a shrink.  They love half-dyed hair and nose rings.  After all, nose ring rhymes with cha-ching!

They’ll tell you that the American dream is still attainable.

Don’t worry about that 7% mortgage interest rate, you won’t qualify.

Upon further review, “It’s how.”

 

 

 

Thank You Sir! May I Have Another?

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Once achieved a masterpiece is best left as the only one.  Those who signed up for Caddyshack II can readily attest to that.

But, the young are unimpressed.  They’re auditioning on college campuses across the land for roles in Animal House II.

The would-be actors are smart we assume, but too dumb to know any better.

Those at Columbia University, not Columbia Pictures, reached new theatrical lows yesterday.  Playing the role of persecuted Palestinians while studying for finals and paying 96k a year for the privelege requires balance.  They tried.

But, Dean Wormer was watching back in 1978.  He admonished the Delta House leadership, “Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way of going through life.”  Then he placed them on “double secret probation” threatening to kick them off campus altogether.

So, when the bad actors took over Hamilton Hall late Tuesday night Columbia’s leadership(a great example of an oxymoron) did a double take.

By midday out from the occupation of the hallowed hall emerged PhD student Johannah King-Slutzky(yes that’s her name) with an urgent request.  The oppressed within the structure needed food and water.  “Does Columbia want its students facing hunger and dehydration?” she postured.

Does that sound like a five-year-old screaming for more pizza rolls?

It’s a Hamas thing to attack something and then demand humanitarian aid while making zero concessions.

Slutzky is no Bluto Blutarsky.  Her biography states she is “working on her dissertation of fantasies of limitless energy of the transatlantic Romantic imagination from 1760-1860.  My goal is to write a prehistory of the metabolic rift, Marx’s term for the disruption of energy circuits caused by industrialization under capitalism.”

But they are similar.  Blutarsky, realizing the end was near bemoaned, “Christ. Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f**king Peace Corps.”

You’ll be paying Slutzky’s student loan back soon.

By nightfall the occupied space became occupied by NY’s finest and then unoccupied.  The city of CHAZ in the summer of love lasted longer.

One student, seconds from being cuffed and stuffed screamed, “We have finals this week.  Can’t we go home?”  Hopefully, when booked into the jail he/she was not misgendered.

Otter uttered, “I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.”

Mission accomplished.

Before Columbia, Slutzky, in her own words, worked as a political strategist for leftist and progressive causes and remains active in the higher education labor movement.  Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.

Thomas Sowell opined, “We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did.”

Bluto had sage words for us nearly 50 years ago.  “My advice to you is that we all start drinking heavily.”

 

 

 

 

Ten Piece Nuggets

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

It has been a minute and a half since we dropped 10 in the grease.  Without further delay your order is below.

  1.  Michigan is a major battleground state in November.  Polls have it as a dead heat at this moment.  Who can get out the vote?  Michigan has a sizeable pro-Palestinian population.   One by one the chameleon Dems are turning their backs on Benjamin Netanyahu.  Yesterday it was teflon Nancy Pelosi who said he should step down.
  2. But, help is on the way.  The Senate quickly approved the bill that the House approved last week.  The foreign aid package consists of $61 billion in aid for Ukraine, roughly $26 billion in military assistance to Israel, $9 billion for humanitarian efforts in Gaza, and $8 billion to Taiwan and efforts to counter China’s threat in the Indo-Pacific.  None of that 9 bil for the Gaza area will fall into the hands of Hamas, will it?
  3. Former Speaker Paul Ryan praised Mike Johnson for collapsing and giving the Dems and Biden everything they asked.  Deep state work at its finest.  Do you know what time it is when former Speaker Ryan praises a current speaker?  It’s time to get a new speaker.
  4.  The University of Michigan, Columbia, and NYU(overrun with protests) are three universities that have put more time, effort, and money into creating a DEI community.  What the heck is going on?  The results suggest there is much more work to be done.  Or, not.
  5. The 2024 tuition for a full year at Columbia is 98k.  Yes, $98,000.  Yesterday they announced that, with all of the unrest, classes will be taught remotely until further notice.  In Bidenomics times the old dollar doesn’t stretch as far as it used to.
  6. If you are scoring at home five of eight Ivy League and 12 of 18 (as of this fall) Big Ten schools are listed by the Dept of Education as under investigation for antisemitism.  The old backwoods, prejudicial, racist, homophobic, misogynistic SEC schools come in last at 0 out of 16.
  7.  If this makes you feel unsafe(r) in NY leave the gun at home.  “Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom.  It doesn’t exist here.  So you can’t argue the Second Amendment.  This is NY.”  So said Judge Abena Arkeh, NY Criminal Courts, to a citizen who was arrested for assembling guns from legally purchased parts.  Justice is not blind.
  8.  Yesterday, Joe Biden hit another two out of the park.   Reading from teleprompter in an address Biden asked, “How many times does Trump have to prove that we can’t be trusted?”  The funniest part of it all is that the crowd of few roared.  Then, the man with thin hair stepped away and tried to shake hands with thin air.
  9.  Biden went to another whistle stop in Tampa, and claimed “I used to drive an 18-wheeler.”
  10.  And on a lighter but louder note, trillions of evolution’s bizarro wonders, red-eyed periodical cicadas that have pumps in their heads are about to emerge in numbers not seen in decades and possibly centuries.  Call it cicada-geddon.  Get some earplugs South Carolina.

Happy Hump Day.

Oops! He Did It Again!

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Back then the hits kept on coming for Brittney Spears.  One of her smashes was “Oops! I Did it Again!”

Back then plagiarism turned lies kept on coming for Joe Biden.  One of his smashes was when told us he conducted an Amtrak train on numerous trips.  Oops!

Brittney stopped making new music years ago.  Biden continues to cook up one whopper after another.  You’d think he works for 20$ minimum wage at Burger King.

But Wednesday’s falsehood has to be his Billboard no. 1 greatest hit.

On the campaign trail in Pittsburgh across the state from Scranton where he grew up in an Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican neighborhood and attended black churches, Biden addressed some more staged enthusiasts.

“And my uncle, they called him – Ambrose, they called him Bosie… and he became an Army Air Corps before the Air Force came along, he flew those single-engine planes as reconnaissance over war zones,” Biden remarked.  “And he got shot down in New Guinea, and they never found the body because there used to be a lot of cannibals – for real – in that part of the New Guinea.”

They call his “for real” squeal a tell at the poker table.   I have nothing in my hand.

US official investigations concluded old Ambrose, er, Bosie was shot down well out in the ocean.

Karine Pepe Jean Claude Le Pew Van Dame Eiffel Pierre, the first ever female black lesbian press secretary, tried to deflect on Thursday.  She said Biden “simply expressed how ‘incredibly proud’ he was of his uncle’s service in uniform.”

We wonder if he was equally proud of his service out of uniform.  We digress.

Do cannibals eat at Burger King?  No one else does.  We digress again.

There’s a bit of humor in all of this.

There’s more than a bit of sadness too.

And, most of all, this 81-year-old serial liar is our President.  And, he might be again.

It’s would hard to watch Brittney warbling her golden oldies in some smoke-filled room near the slot machines in a Minot, ND casino when she’s 81.

One is reminded of Jeb Bush’s request, “Please clap.”

 

 

 

 

Make It All Make Sense

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

President Biden was multitasking yesterday.

That unto itself is a rarity.   After all, there’s only so much time in his four-day workweek.

He was taking a victory lap on student debt loan forgiveness that he calls cancellation.  At the same time, he was stumping in Wisconsin for votes in the critical 2024 swing state.

He likes to personalize things.  While addressing debt and college, Biden said, “I, like an awful lot of people in this audience, was the first in my family to go to college, and watch my dad struggle to help me get there.”

Let’s unpack this pack of falsehoods.

First student loan debt isn’t cancelled.  Its obligation for repayment is transferred from the borrower who agreed to repay(the student) to the citizens of the US who now have to repay.    Instead of cancellation, we should call it more of the same- another pile of debt to stack on top of a mounting debt obligation.

Also, Biden wasn’t the first in his family to attend college.  How do we know?   One of the reasons we know it’s a lie is because Biden has bragged several times in the recent past about how his grandfather played college football.

Another reason why we know is because he told the same fib way back in 1987.   That is when The New York Times caught Biden making the same two contrary claims.

He was making his first run for president that year.  Yes, the “big guy” first ran for the big job nearly 40 years ago.   The NYT employed actual journalists back then.

The nearly 40-year-old article stated, “Mr. Biden had said he was the ‘first in his family ever to go to university.’ Mr. Biden said today, ‘There are Finnegans, my mother’s family, that went to college.’”  It goes on to intimate that several falsehoods drove him out of that failed campaign.

You know that old saying, “If, at first, you don’t succeed, lie, lie again.”

How about when the supposed youthful Amtrack conductor aged to the point of reminding us, “We’ve reduced the deficit by 40 million, trillion, 80 billion, pick a number, come on man, you know, no joke.”

It is a joke, except it isn’t funny.

The oldest President has at least a 50/50 chance of adding to his age record with a second term as President.

And, with yesterday’s CPI number, is it safe to assume inflation isn’t under control?  And, therefore, is it safe to assume that interest rates aren’t coming down anytime soon?  Bidenomics.

That leads us to sharply increased borrowing costs, which leads us deeper into debt.  Bidenomics.

What would George Washington have said through his wooden teeth about all of this?  It might have started with “Father, I cannot tell a lie…”

Maybe we should ask Biden what Washington said.

Surely met George during the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

No joke.

 

 

You Can’t Be Wimpy

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

What do you get when you mash up the following two expressions?

  1. When a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, is it sound?
  2.  That’s like shooting a BB at an aircraft carrier.

You get the elimination of the US Government Department of Education.

A few no-so-fun facts follow.

This federal-level department is money spent above and beyond the administration of schools for ages K-12 at the state and local school district level.  And, it’s budgeted by your president in fiscal 2025 at 84 billion dollars.

That’s nearly $1700 per child in attendance.  And, not a silver dime of it goes towards teacher compensation.  This is a Washington DC bureaucrat spend only.  When any president cries out on the campaign trail, “And I want to get teachers a raise,” everyone claps.  The reality is that he has zero control over teacher salaries.

If the average classroom head count is 20, this equates to 68k for every two classrooms in America.  Stated differently, if you wanted to continue to budget/collect the money but do so at the local level you could double the average US teacher salary.

We were doing just fine when there was a little red schoolhouse on the hill and no big brother watching over it.

President Biden has proposed a 7.3 trillion dollar spend in the 2025 budget.  His expected incoming tax revenue, per his Office of Budget and Management (OMB), is 5.5 trillion.

Don’t you hate the word “revenue” to describe taxes?  We digress.

This 1.8 trillion dollar deficit assumes an increase in the corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 percent.  It also assumes taxing the wealthy(over 100 million) at a minimum of 25%.  Good luck getting either of those passed.

Let’s get ready to mumble!  “In my first three years, I cut the deficit by 40 million, er, 800 billion, 34, um, well, you know what I’m saying.”

By year-end 2025 this would bring the federal debt close to 40 trillion up from 35 as of this AM.

So even eliminating the entire department reduces spending overall by just over 1 percent.  That’s the BB part.

That’s an outrageous idea you say?  Promising to pay you back Tuesday for a hamburger today isn’t?

We need to take a chainsaw to the spending.  A knife will no longer cut it.

The Department of Education would be a fine place to start.

 

 

Ruse

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

As the world rapidly evolves so does the attempt to redefine already-defined words or expressions.  It’s infuriating to some.

Below we decided to redefine some 24 redefined words, phrases, and people previously defined.  The previous word salad sentence was brought to you by our revered VP Kamala Harris.

hate speech-  any spoken or written words that someone gets offended by based on their own beliefs, yours be damned, free speech be damned, nebulous

misinformation-  any spoken or written words that someone arbitrarily decides are not true regardless of whether or not it is  It’s a run at controlling the narrative.

disinformation-  a kissing cousin of misinformation.  Try separating the two, we won’t.

women’s wellness-  abortion.

the right to choose-  abortion.

abortion-  abortion.

newcomers- a way of currying favor and votes from illegal migrants by making nice

Eric Adams-  the worst NY Mayor ever eclipsing Bill de Blasio, his predecessor, who was the worst ever

Fani Willis- political hack of a DA that has no business in any public office.

Leticia James-  see Fani defined above, drop DA, and add AG

homeless- mentally ill or chemically addicted

underserved- what Democrats call homeless

hobos- what everyone over 50 today called the homeless until it wasn’t correct to do so anymore

SAT scores-  a measuring stick of overall intelligence entering college soon to be a thing of the past

debt-  how much you owe

deficit-  how much more you spent than you collected

US debt-  on a collision course with insolvency   We should all be ashamed.

US deficit- Biden’s ability to process information and communicate the same

Elon Musk-  a chess grandmaster of multiple boards simultaneously while others struggle at a single board of checkers

social justice-  the redistribution of wealth attained through capitalism

fair share-  never defined in measured terms,  a rallying cry for those who have less, nebulous as well

student loan debt cancelation- a transfer of burden from those who agreed to repay but don’t, to those who now must repay, also known as a vote-getter

wealth tax-  see social justice above, also banned in our Constitution

fair elections/ election integrity-  remember the Edsel?

DEI- the opposite of meritocracy,  a ruse that hopefully will DIE

 

Good day- It still means have a good day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EV Anyone? Everyone?

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Are you still driving that big gas-guzzling, fossil fuel-emitting vehicle?   Shame on you, Joe Biden says.

Even if you were not one of the early pacers (not the car itself), didn’t you take advantage of the 10k incentive provided by your government to convert to an EV? No?

Well, if the obvious benefit of clean air and the financial incentive didn’t work, the Biden Administration has come up with another conversation starter.

Never mind that over the weekend the Hertz Car Rental CEO lost his job making a too-big bet on EVs.  Never mind that multiple (Audi, Ford, Mercedes, etc) car manufacturers reported disappointing earnings, high EV inventories, and factory cutbacks on production.

This week, the Biden administration is expected to finalize highly anticipated regulations targeting gas-powered vehicle tailpipe emissions, considered the tip of the spear in its efforts to electrify the transportation sector.

The Environmental Protection Agency is slated to issue the final rulemaking — which officials have boasted will incentivize greater adoption of electric vehicles, but which opponents have criticized as a de facto mandate.

We tried to sell you, incentivize you, and now we’ll force you.

“It certainly won’t do anything to improve human health. It won’t do anything to reduce pollution,” American Energy Institute president and CEO Jason Isaac, who has researched the EV market, said in a Sunday interview. “We’ve proven in this country that we’re already a world leader in clean air.”

“All it’s going to continue to do is push the costs of electric vehicles on to purchasers of internal combustion engine vehicles.”  Ah, there it is.

Mind or not, over 75% of the global emissions come from India and China combined.

But, but, BUT!  We have to do our part.  Others will follow.  Surely they will.   Won’t they?

Does this have anything to do with election season being upon us like smoke emanating from an exhaust pipe at a red light on Wilshire Blvd?

“This is purely being done for campaign reasons — to appease the leftist large donor base that are the climate alarmists that are driving this movement towards really what is a forced energy transition,” Isaac added.

“This policy is bad for consumers, the economy, and national security. It will sacrifice our hard-won U.S. energy strength for even greater dependence on China and the EV battery and mineral supply chain China controls,” opined American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers president and CEO Chet Thompson.

So who is right?  Father Biden and our government know best.  Remember how well they nailed that COVID thing?  Boosters and batteries are good for you.

Regardless, we have a ways to go.  According to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an industry group representing major automakers, 9.3% of total car purchases in the U.S. last year were electric or plug-in hybrid, up from 7% in 2022.  Most of those were in LA or similar urban areas with short-range driving needs.

EVs remain far more expensive than traditional gas-powered cars. Even factoring in generous federal and state subsidies, the average cost of an EV is about 52k while the average subcompact car costs 24k.

Well, in a Bidenomics sort of way at least they are affordable.

Maybe after we tackle shrinkflation we could tackle EV costs.

Maybe not.

 

2,4,12,14—16?

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Once upon a time, there were a couple of dozen bowl games at year’s end.   Afterward, the “best” NCAA football team of the year was voted on by a bunch of 65-year-old dudes from around the country.

Opinions mattered.

The format changed around the turn of the century.   The BCS computer program determined the final two “best” NCAA football teams to square off for the national championship.

Opinions no longer mattered.

Then man decided that the computer didn’t know diddly squat about football.  An esteemed panel would select the best and final two for the BCS.  Opinions mattered all over again.

Then humankind decided that deciding on two teams was not inclusive enough.  The College Football Playoff system replaced the BCS beginning with the 2014 season. The CFP puts the top four ranked teams in a single-elimination bracket with semifinals being played in bowl games.

Four was better than two.  But, soon enough, controversy enveloped the committee as America felt that the first team left out had a reason to feel left out.

Viola.  As conferences devolved into a ratings war, geography be damned, a proposal came before the NCAA and their esteemed ADs and Presidents to expand to a 12-team format.  This format will start this year, 2024.

But, before we even find fault with the dirty dozen format, we have conscientious objectors yet again.

“How about 14 teams?” someone asked.  “Will that make us more money?” someone followed up.  “Sure!” came the confident reply.

And the confident conference power brokers weaseled in a proposed guarantee addendum.  How about we guarantee three spots for the Big 10 and the SEC, two spots for the Big 12 and the ACC, and one for the highest-ranked non-power five?

What about the PAC 2?  We digress.  What about Notre Dame?  Touchdown Jesus watches over them.  We digress again.

That leaves three at large bids.

So in our never-ending quest to find the best teams, more teams and more money will help us get there.  Or will it?

Follow the money, always follow the money.

What happened to choosing the best based on the on-field performance of the teams, conference affiliation be damned?  And what about those computer programs that are almost 20 years smarter than they were before?

For now Big 10 teams USC and UCLA, or new ACC teams like Cal and Stanford, they’ll have plenty of time to contemplate those questions when they fly coast to coast to try to get into the final 14.

Or, will it be the final 16 by the time they touch down?

 

Last Man Standing

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

The question is a simple one.  The answer is not.

Can the 45th President, Donald J. Trump, become the 47th President of the United States?

In 2016 it helped that he wore down a tired, old opponent who represented the swamp.  In 2020 an old, tired opponent who represents the swamp beat him. Now The Donald needs to unseat the man who unseated him.

And, Trump doesn’t like to lose.  In his mind, he never has.

The polls had it wrong in 2016.  The silent majority favored the outsider.  In 2024, the polls that constantly enter your medium of choice seem to favor Trump again.

And, the ones that examine the sitting President Biden conclude that he is an unpopular President that a majority feel is too old or unfit, or both to serve again.  And, boy does he sit a lot, especially when he visits the Delaware beaches each frequent three day weekend.  But, we digress.

Fox News, which used to be fair and balanced, trots out poll after poll showing Biden’s age a factor, the border is the biggest issue, inflation is a close second, his approval rating is lower than Jimmy Carter’s, the world is on fire, etc., and ad nauseam.

It’s over.  It’s a Trump landslide.  Except it isn’t.  It isn’t over, and it won’t be a landslide.

As an example of the hyperbole, more Michigan folks voted for Trump last evening in the Republican primary than all of the Democratic choices (Biden, some tool, and undecided) combined.

In Dearborn, where Biden hasn’t exactly endeared himself to the large Arab American and Muslim communities with his support of Israel, “undecided” beat Biden by 56 to 40 percent.  But, that doesn’t mean that they will show up in 8 months and vote for Trump, does it?

Remember, every vote counts.

A deeper dive will tell you that every vote doesn’t count.   Forty-something states are already decided barring something big changing the voting landscape.

And, when it gets down to the two, the DNC and Biden will launch a multifaceted negative campaign bigger than the daily one they preach now.  In November you have to count the folks that will never vote for Trump.  Are they the 2024 silent majority?

No current poll can accurately predict how many will hold their nose and vote for Biden because they can’t hold their nose and vote for Trump.

Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Arizona, and maybe Colorado will decide the race.  And it will be a small subset of the voters therein.

Forty-something percent of the voters in those states will vote for Trump.  Forty-something percent of the voters in those states will vote for Biden.  That will leave about 12 percent of the citizens who vote in a handful of states to decide the final electoral college tally.

Trump didn’t want to turn in his bike at the end of the rental term.  Biden falls off of his regularly.

Trump took his classified documents and went home.  Biden already had his.

Trump is headed to the border tomorrow.  Biden is headed to the border tomorrow.

This could get interesting if it wasn’t already.