Engage. Enrage. Enjoy.

If You Fall Off of a Horse

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

During one of the Democratic Party’s nomination debates, then-candidate and now President, braggadocious Joe Biden claimed that he was the one that Vladimir Putin wanted nothing to do with.  “I’ve stood toe to toe with him and looked him in the eye,” he said, or words similarly intended, but a bit garbled.

He also told us that he had a plan to combat the coronavirus while the sitting president did not.   Though for better or worse, Trump’s Operation Warp Speed was full speed ahead by the fourth quarter of 2020.

Soon enough thereafter, also for better or worse, 81 million votes were counted for Joe.  “The most ever,” we’ve been told.

Fast forward to today, 18 months after he took office, and take a look around.

Shaking in his boots, Putin invaded Ukraine right away.  Biden has sent well over $40 billion in aid and weapons as he continues to stand toe to toe with Putin. Then, in a late Friday news dump, the Biden administration said that it will send another $400 million in military equipment to Ukraine, including four more advanced rocket systems.

What’s the end game?  “I don’t know how it’s going to end, but it will not end with a Russian defeat of Ukraine in Ukraine,” Biden said last week.  Eye to eye, this guy is.

Just wait till we get the bill to build Ukraine back better.

On the virus front, it seems like the man with the plan has seen the plan go awry.  He’s weirdly whispered into the mic a few dozen times, though not recently, “Get vaccinated, get boosted.  Now!”

We wonder if it works, why do we need to keep taking it?  If it doesn’t, why do we need to keep taking it?

Apparently, mothers (you can still use that word in the safe space of BBR) are questioning it as well.  The approved vax for 6-month to 5-year-olds has plenty of supply and little demand, unlike baby formula.

Will we have another variant creep into our lives before the midterms?

Old Joe swears that he’s running for reelection in 2024.  Given the above and throwing in Afghanistan, Wall St, and crime he has a tough hill to climb.

An in-depth Civiqs poll now has Biden with a historic low 29% approval rating.  Only 63% of Democrats and 36% of Hispanics approve of the job he’s doing.  Artificial intelligence aside, getting back to 81 million is going to be a stretch.

But, never count the career politician out.

As the old saying goes if you fall off of a horse, you get right back on it.

It’s the same as if you fall off of a bike, you get right back on it.

Joe remembers the old saying.

He’s living the new one.

 

 

 

 

Island Getaway

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Oprah really knew how to capture an audience.  Way back on December 22, 2010, her spell may have reached its zenith when she shouted out to her live audience, “you get a car, and you get a car!  Everyone gets a car!”

Just about a decade later our president channeled that giving feeling as well.  President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan(ARP), a coronavirus relief package, in the Oval Office of the White House on March 11, 2021, in Washington.

It was a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package passed without one “yea” vote from the stingy Republicans.  The Democrats, fresh off of a Capitol and Oval Office sweep felt compelled to give back.

Not everyone in America got a car to help beat that pesky virus.  But, some institutions and good citizens got more, way more, after having to shove a Q-Tip halfway to some remote island.

Take the Oral History Association for example.  They received $825,000 in ARP funds for a grant-making project titled, “Diversifying Oral History Practice: A Fellowship Program for Under/Unemployed Oral Historians,” which provided eleven year-long fellowships of $60,000 each for oral historians “from communities that have been historically marginalized in the field,” such as “Indigenous peoples, people of color, people with disabilities, and working-class people.”

Are you wondering what exactly is an Oral Historian?  Let Google be your friend.  Oral historians document the past by preserving insights not found in printed sources. The skilled practitioner must remain impartial, listen, and stay in the background.  Got it?

One of the recipients of the 60k giveaway was Elizabeth “Beth” Castle, a “Shawnee-ancestored anti-racist educator.”  This inspired her to create “A Collaborative Oral History of the Fight Against Mineral and Uranium Mining in the Black Hills, the Origins of the Global Indigenous Movement, and the Ongoing Struggle to Protect the People who Protect Mother Earth.”

We kid you not.

Want another? And, another?

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) received $135 million from the plan and proceeded to hand out half of the handout.  The NEH awarded $50,000 in ARP funds to a nonprofit organization in the Northern Mariana Islands called 500 Sails for “reopening programs that teach Indigenous canoe-building and explore pre-colonial sea life.”

The NEH also helped the Science History Institute in Philadelphia.  They were awarded $359,097 by the NEH to create a “multiplatform project exploring the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine.”

As inflation hit 8.6% in May some economists, including former Obama administration economic advisers, have blamed the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package for overheating the economy.

President Biden didn’t feel that way when he signed the bill.

“We need Congress to pass my American Rescue Plan,” the president said at the time. “Now, critics say my plan is too big, that it costs $1.9 trillion. So that’s too much. Well, let me ask them: What would they have me cut?  What would they have me leave out?”

Where are the Northern Mariana Islands anyway?

Here is a hint.

Five dollars per gallon of gas and a free car from Oprah can’t get you there.

And, the freebies should have been electric vehicles.

 

Very Interesting

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Way back when people now in their seventies watched a #1 rated TV show in the early 1970s called Laugh In.  The fast-moving, one-of-a-kind show featured never-ending quick skits, one-liners, and brief physical comedy performed by a troupe of talented actors.

One such actor was Artie Johnson.  Like the others, Artie played a wide range of characters.  But, without doubt, his two most famous were 1) a soldier who emerged from a bush to utter the line, “very interesting, but stupid!” and, 2) a grown adult on a tiny tricycle who “biked” briefly until he always unceremoniously crashed.

This brings us to the 46th President of the United States- Joseph Biden.  How?  Well, he’s in his seventies.  Sunday while biking at roughly two miles per hour he fell down.  And, later that day safely away from the bike he uttered something very interesting, but some say stupid.  Actually, he uttered some things, plural.

When doting reporters following his every Delaware vacation move asked about inflation and the economy, Biden bristled.  “A recession isn’t inevitable.  We have a chance to make a fundamental turn toward renewable energy, electric vehicles, and not just electric vehicles but across the board,” Biden countered.

Inflation is at a 40-year high.   The national average of gas prices crossed over the $5/gallon threshold, the highest ever.   Second place was $4.11 back in 2008.

Post-Covid transitory inflation that transitioned to Putin’s price hike is now not leading to an inevitable recession.  Unless we are already in one we suppose.

Biden followed up this exchange in Delaware by telling a reporter that “his team” would sit down with oil executives to demand they produce more oil and question their high profits.

The great unifier, who suspended multiple domestic oil leases, is now blaming greedy oil companies. So, while none of this is his fault, at least it gives us a chance to buy an electric car with batteries made from fossil-fueled plants.

But wait!  There’s more!

The President said Monday he is considering creating a federal gas tax holiday, which could save Americans as much as 18.4 cents per gallon.  His ex-boss, former President Barack Obama, was against such a move on the campaign trail back in 2008, the last time prices were near this high.

Obama said at the time that a gas tax holiday was a “gimmick” to save Americans half a tank of gas over the summer so that lawmakers could “say that they did something.”

With gas at five bucks a gallon, the tax is not even 4% of the total cost to Americans to fill up.  Gimmick indeed.

It also suspends the collection of said tax money that is supposed to keep up the nation’s roads and bridges.  There go the roads that we can’t afford gas to drive on!

At least we printed a trillion a year ago that we don’t have to repair our infrastructure.  That trillion wasn’t inflationary either, was it?

We have windmills to fall back on.  We do unless the wind isn’t blowing.

Not to worry, in Washington the political winds are always blowing.  At the moment they’re straight out of the left.

Maybe we should all just try to ride bikes from here on out.  How about that idea?

Very interesting.

But………….

 

 

Get Your Popcorn

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Lights!  Camera!  Action!

That’s what is going down tonight up on the hill.  The curtains go up at 8 pm EST.  It’s a political play directed by James Goldston, a former president of ABC News.  Prime Time.

It’s not really very different than what happened on 1/6/2021- a day that will live in infamy according to some.  It’s been compared to Pearl Harbor, Watergate, and 9/11 as one of the darkest days in our country’s history.

The House convenes tonight for its committee hearing on Insurrection Day.

What happened on 1/6 was bad for America.  It was ugly, too.  But, insurrection?  Busting through the doors and windows of The Capitol Building was dumb and unlawful.  But, it wasn’t an insurrection.

Usually, malcontents bring guns to an insurrection.  You know the ones- weapons of war as the Democrats now collectively and harmoniously call an AR-15 and the like.  And, they usually put up more of a fight.  Often they try to stay longer.

Nonetheless, it was stupid when it crossed a line.  And, tonight’s hearings, led by the Dems and Dem wanna-be Liz Cheney will cross a line or two as well as they try to deliver a line that makes it to the evening news as a favored sound bite.

Grab the remote, relax in your favorite recliner, and pop some kernels.

Cameras will roll just like the body cameras on the police officers did during Paul Pelosi’s DUI arrest.  The difference is that you’ll see today’s video.

All of this has but one purpose.  It’s to take center stage and tell you how our democracy is at stake here and Donald J Trump is a bad guy.

Trump was a bad actor on that day as he could have done more to ensure that the crowd did less.  But, it was bad acting, nothing more and nothing less.

There will be more of that today-bad acting.

The further you suppress/impeach/impugn Trump and his followers the more likely you are to remain in power you see.  Dems fear people like Trump and DeSantis.  Why?  It’s because they actually appeal to what a lot of Americans want, not what the gullible are told what they want.

Dems embrace people like McConnell and Graham.  They’re really Dems acting like Republicans. They are necessary, good, obedient bit-part actors of a great production.

And they enjoy a good show.

Get your popcorn.

Swim Fast

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Here at the world headquarters of BBR.com is a rather attractive 175-gallon fish tank.  Mature fish of all shapes and colors are plentiful.  And, now we have the tiniest of babies.

It’s so small you can see straight through it.  Peril awaits behind every rock and plant.  So far so good for the young un.  You watch in wonder with each passing day as the odds are quite slim.

The odds for the average American human baby born in 2022 aren’t as slim, but you have to wonder if the big fish are out to get them as well.

The first obstacle is, of course, being born at all.  In 2019, the most recent year that we have a semi-accurate count, nearly 1 million abortions were performed in the U.S.   Apparently we count abortions as expeditiously as we count votes in Pennsylvania.

And, now we have a baby formula shortage.  President Biden, responding to questions yesterday about how quickly the administration acted, claimed: “I don’t think anybody anticipated the impact of one facility — of the Abbott facility.”

Pressed by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on the comments from manufacturers that they knew immediately what the impact would be, Biden responded: “They did, but I didn’t.”  Apparently we react to formula shortages as quickly as we do oil and gas shortages.

When the infants reach school age at least they can begin to learn which gender they are, aren’t, might be, or want to be one day when they grow up.  Our public school system sees to it.

That public school system, which you pay for, does not allow you to choose which school your children attend, however.  Apparently pro-choice and school choice have little in common in these 50 United States.

At least we took the worthless masks off of the little ones(except NY which knows better than the rest) late this spring semester.

We teach them science.  We follow the science.

And, we have a better science-based solution right around the corner.  News broke this AM that both Pfizer and Moderna have applied for final approval of their three and two-shot vaccine series for children aged 6 months to five years.  Science tells us that they aren’t actually vaccines, but we digress.

How timely?  How worthless you ask?  It’s estimated that 0.001 percent of children under 12 have any serious symptoms from the dreaded Covid-19.  That’s 1 in 100,000 if you do the math of the science.

Roaring ahead to middle and high school we have a safety problem that no one wants to address with any old school logic.  We have gun-free zones where only criminals have guns.  And, we have armed police officers who want no part of criminals with guns.  Uvalde wasn’t the first time for the men and women in the blue.

Well, at least we can take comfort that if the very young adults make it all of the way to and through college that they can emerge from the other side debt-free and ready to contribute to society.

How’s that you ask?  Prez Biden, “I am not considering $50,000 debt reduction, but I am in the process of taking a hard look at whether or not there will be additional debt forgiveness.”

That’ll usher the new graduates into a world of even higher inflation.  Biden’s plan to cancel student loan debt could lead to higher inflation and perceived inequality, several experts warned.

Inflation?  It’s likely transitory.

Inequality?  Jeez.  We’ve done so much good there, haven’t we?  Haven’t we?

If you paid off your loans you get nothing back except a pat on the back.  If you didn’t go to college but learned a valuable trade, you get to pay off the debt of those who did but haven’t paid it back.

If you haven’t paid a silver dime back, or are delinquent, you get a free pass.  That’ll teach them responsibility, won’t it?

That little fish has a lot of swimming to do.

At least fish swim in schools that aren’t controlled by the government.

Not yet, anyway.

 

Just Stand There!

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Don’t do something!  Just stand there!

We admit it.  We borrowed this line from an avid reader who borrowed this line from Jack Bogle.  Bogle is a sage old-school investor and founder of Vanguard Investments.

A lot has happened in the last week after Uvalde.  Nothing has happened in the last week after Uvalde.

A few examples of the diligence and inertia follow.

President Biden and the First Lady flew to Uvalde and said something like this can never happen again.  Then they flew back to Delaware to enjoy some fine BBQ and a day on the beach.

Second Amendment proponents hid behind the Second Amendment and like Puxatawny Phil seems content to stay underground for six more weeks while the rancor subsides.  Should an 18-year-old be allowed to buy a gun?  The argument that we send them to war with guns doesn’t justify individual ownership unto itself.  Eighteen-year-old sane males don’t make good decisions daily.

The Uvalde police were exposed.  The very ones with the guns that are supposed to protect the ones without failed miserably ever so slowly.  And, they lied about it as well.  Protect and serve they did not.

America actually has bigger murder number problems than mass shootings on school grounds.  They stem from too much domestic violence, drug-fueled violence, armed robbery, mental health issues, and on and on.

Frankly, as a society, we’ve failed miserably in addressing all of those issues.  The War on Drugs is a multidecade loser.  We spent two years yelling in city council meetings to defund the police. Three years ago we ended the three strikes and you’re out punishment for serial criminals.  Homelessness is near or at an all-time high.  Locking people out of their daily routines for two Covid-19 years has put more than one flying over the cuckoo’s nest.

But, one that we could address is the in-school one like Uvalde.

But, our leader Joe Biden has put forth no plan to help ensure “that nothing like this ever happens again.”  How about at the least forming a blue ribbon, bloated government committee to examine the cause and effect, and suggest a remedy or three?

Yesterday through his press secretary, the Biden administration shot down (bad pun) any desire to “harden” our schools.  What does that mean?  It means that he doesn’t support arming anyone on school grounds as a means to prevent anyone from coming onto school grounds armed.

Apparently, gun control is the problem, not controlling the behaviors of people who are armed.  He dove deeper yesterday.  He wants to ban “high caliber” 9mm handguns. “There’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of self-protection.”  Somebody should tell him that it is the gun of choice for the Secret Service.

Last week we wrote comparing the changes in the airline industry post 9/11 to make it safer vs. the “just stand there” mentality of the on school grounds problem.  There are some layups to be had.  America just has to take the shot (damn, again).

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is doing something.  Yesterday, he announced the introduction of a bill that would place a national freeze on handgun ownership across Canada.  Way up in our nation’s attic he’s riding on the tragic coattails of Uvalde. And, he’s after the handguns, not the long guns.

Trudeau subscribes to the “never let a good crisis go to waste” mantra.

To summarize: bad people have guns, police don’t use theirs when needed, good people rightfully aren’t letting go of theirs, Canadians are screwed, and Biden has no plan.

Don’t do something!  Just stand there!

 

 

 

The Public Sentiment Pendulum

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

For the public sentiment pendulum to ever so slightly move in a direction opposite of its current one it takes only one net change of opinion. This move is barely discernable to the eye much less the national polls.

For the public sentiment pendulum to reverse course and begin an accelerating descent for the opposite side of the bottom/center “it takes a village” as Crooked Hillary used to say.

This course reverse is always aided by influencers.  They’re the ones that millions listen to and follow.

Ninety-five percent of our population are followers.  They want to be led.

Almost daily more coals are being dumped into the steam engine.  One big one was Elon Musk when he started speaking his mind and decided to buy Twitter so others can freely as well.   Make no mistake about it, the left inside and outside of the company has roared its collective concern.

It’s two for one.  Elon is an influencer.   Twitter and its shaping algorithms, bots, and suppression of expression are another.

But looky here, last week Netflix told its employees matter of factly that they had a choice.  They could work on the content that they don’t approve of, or they could leave the nest.

And, of all people, a now buffed Jeffery Bezos started pulling a bit right. In a tweet, Bezos accused Biden of ‘misdirection’ in response to the President saying inflation could be tamed by making wealthy firms ‘pay their fair share.’  “Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection.”

Like Twitter and Netflix employees, the White House full of Biden handlers didn’t like the pushback from a man who they thought was bought and paid for.

“It doesn’t require a huge leap to figure out why one of the wealthiest individuals on Earth opposes an economic agenda for the middle class that cuts some of the biggest costs families face, fights inflation for the long haul, and adds to the historic deficit reduction the President is achieving by asking the richest taxpayers and corporations to pay their fair share,” deputy WH press secretary Andrew Bates said.  That’s a WhataSize bite of a nothing burger.

When your presidential approval rating is at a first term low of either 33% or 39% depending on which of the latest two polls you prefer, you see the pendulum coming right down the track at you.

Other presidents’ ratings have sagged early on including young Bush, Obama, and Trump.  What to do?  Fight back.  Regain the nation’s confidence.  Call it the war with words.

Roe v Wade is a firestarter.  But PR agencies are strongly advising major companies to go quietly into the night on this.  They saw the Disney melt.

And, now unfortunately so is the Buffalo mass shooting.  As with all mass murders, this one is uncalled for and terrible.

But, Biden sees light where others see darkness.  And, he’ll tell you so today from Buffalo.  He’ll wax on about the progress made against racism during his 40 years of public service(as if he had something to do with it), but tell you how far we still need to travel.  He didn’t travel to Waukesha, but we digress.  He’ll castigate Congress, demanding a call to arms to call some arms too dangerous to be sold anymore in the US.

Then, he’ll board Air Force One and be back at the big house in time for dinner and Matlock reruns.

The nearing midterms will be the ultimate judge of where the sentiment pendulum is.  But, for Biden and the left that pulls his strings, if they want a last two-year rerun of the first two years, they have a lot of ground to make up.

And, dangerous big guns like Musk and Bezos are firing in the wrong direction.

 

iPods, Smoking, and Combustion Engines

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Did you or do you own an iPod?  Did you ever smoke cigarettes?  Will you trade in your gas guzzler when the time comes for an electric vehicle(EV)?

Yesterday the mother of all companies in tune with what people want/need, Apple, ended production on the tunes machine that changed how we listened to music-the iPod.

Why did they discontinue the iPod?  It’s pretty simple.  Apple and its competitors innovated.  You can listen to music, podcasts, etc. right from your phone from a variety of sources better known as apps.   The sound quality is amazing.

The life span of the iPod was a short but successful 20 years or so.  Innovation changed the game.

Cigarettes, regardless of brand, went from “smoke them if you got em” during WWII, to sexy in the ’60s, to the surgeon general warning us in the ’80s about how bad they were for your health, to frowned upon in the ’00s, to almost extinguished in the ’20s.

The lifespan of Winston, which “tastes good like a cigarette should,” was multiple generations.  Medical science changed the game.

In 1886, Carl Benz began the first commercial production of motor vehicles with internal combustion engines. By the 1890s, motor cars reached their modern stage of development.

The gasoline-powered car stands as one of the great inventions ever.  It revolutionized how we got around, how far we could go, and who we were.

And, a quick 130 or so years later it’s in the fight of its life.  EVs cometh.  And so does the government.

Sure, EVs are innovations to gas-powered cars and trucks like the phone is to the iPod.  Sure(we presume), EVs are healthier for our planet like not smoking is to smoking.

But this one feels forced.  Shouldn’t we let nature, innovation, education, and consumer preferences take their course?

“Biden admin’s new NEPA permitting rules will basically stop new oil and gas production,” wrote renowned economist Larry Kudlow yesterday.  “The Keystone XL pipeline is gone.  Alaska drilling is gone. Other smaller pipelines are gone. Those decisions have already been made by Biden’s Energy and Interior departments and his EPA.”

And, now new leases in the Gulf of Mexico have been canceled.  Additionally, Russian oil is off-limits and gasoline at the pump is already at an all-time high.

These new NEPA rules are so restrictive that they will slow down the $1 trillion infrastructure bill they passed including the green infrastructure (windmills, solar).  All projects will be subject to direct, indirect, and cumulative environmental impact reviews.

So while we are in a rush to go green, far-reaching regulations were passed that will now make us inspect the government-funded (read as you funded) green infrastructure projects to ensure they’re green.  We’re spending a lot of green for all of this.

Are you seeing red yet?  Your eyes are fine.  It’s probably just all of that government red tape that you are seeing.

Like baby formula, we’d like to see the supply of gas catch up with the demand for gas.  It would lower prices.  That would allow us to keep a bit of what we earn so that when taxes are raised to pay for all of this that government can’t afford, we’ll be able to afford to do so.

Eventually, won’t EVs win out? Capitalism drove us this far so to speak.

Until then, we’d like to “fill er up” a time or two more without going into what’s left of our savings accounts.

 

 

 

 

A Leak Like No Other

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

In 1973 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on the case of Roe v Wade.  The majority opinion of the court made abortion legal nationwide.

Emotions about abortion ran high.  It was and is a nasty word for many.  So abortion was rebranded as pro-choice.  Pro-choice morphed into woman’s health.  Woman’s health was then repackaged as woman’s wellness.  It’s harder to debate woman’s wellness.

Eventually, the government was so concerned about women’s wellness that Planned Parenthood (founded in 1916) became a partially federally funded abortion, and woman’s wellness clinic.

Since we’re changing what we call things, should that part of the organization be renamed Not Planned Not Parenthood?

Fifty years later, there is a public debate as to who actually is a woman at the same time that we put a woman, Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson on the Supreme Court.  Brown Jackson testified before Congress that she couldn’t define what a woman was either.  When pressed, she said, “I am not a biologist.”

So last night’s bombshell, the SCOTUS leak of the first draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito for the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization., has vaulted the issue to the front page of American discourse all over again.  Alito writes, “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

That there is a leak is a bombshell unto itself.  And, is a very dangerous threat to a very important pillar of US democracy-the Justice System’s impartial operational sanctity.  Start the investigation today.

So why the leak?  It’s pretty obvious, and serves a dual purpose, doesn’t it?

Can enough pressure be applied to those siding with Alito to swing votes the other way to maintain the status quo?  And can the current political landscape be reshaped with this polarizing issue to the extent that the party in power can maintain that power by inciting and galvanizing its base?

Inevitably, the leak will spur Democrats to push for the passage of a bill to codify Roe.  To do so they would need to bust the filibuster rule or lower the threshold to end a filibuster from 60 yes votes to 51. That means all attention will immediately turn to, you guessed it, Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

The midterm vote is on 11/8/22, or six months and five days from today.

If you’re the party from the left would you like to run on inflation, food shortages, Ukraine, Afghanistan, the southern border, crime, Biden’s poll numbers, and Kamala’s incompetence? Or, would you like to run away from all of that?

Or, would you prefer to watch “mostly peaceful protests” in this coming summer of love to combat that nasty “war on women?” You could then bank on that being the galvanizer to get the vote out and turned in your favor.

Is it a coincidence that Kamala Harris is the featured speaker tonight at the 30th Annual We Are EMILY National Conference and Gala, a pro-choice event?  Is it a coincidence that President Biden is scheduled to deliver his thoughts from the White House today on Roe V. Wade?

Or, is all of this well planned by the party that plans well?

One thing is for sure, the Supreme Court has reunited the nation on the question of which gender gets pregnant and gives birth.

Or, chooses not to.

For now.

 

Imagine That

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Imagine a country governed by people who feel like a five-year-old understands gender orientation/identification but an 18-year-old doesn’t understand that if you borrow money for college you have to pay it back.

But for that to happen you’d have to imagine a country that has a president who said yesterday to teachers about their students at the White House Teachers of the Year Event, “they’re not somebody else’s children.  They’re yours when you’re in the classroom.”

Imagine studying, for example, art appreciation, and realizing at 25 years of age that your degree can’t afford a tank of gas much less a loan payback.

Some wake-up calls happen later than others, but all are part of life’s lessons.

Imagine that the keepers of the taxpayers’ money think it’s actually a good lesson to teach loan forgiveness.  Do car or house loans in the future come equipped with a ripcord too?  Why would we teach anyone to live within (or preferably below) their means?

Is this a downpayment for a vote in the midterms?

Imagine the understandable outrage of parents who scraped to save for their child’s college while watching another handout.

Imagine the understandable outrage of valuable blue-collar workers who learned a trade at their own expense and now inevitably realize that the student loan debt is transferred to their backs.

Imagine a party currently out of power that could succinctly “sell” against the shell game above, get elected, and actually do right by the everyday working man and woman in this country.

To do that you’d need to imagine that “man” and “woman” are words still recognized by men and women.

To do that you’d need to imagine a party that was conservative, not Republican that spends like the party in power.

To do that you’d need to imagine a party that did not have people named McConnell, McCarthy, Graham, Cheney, and Romney in powerful positions.

To do that you’d need progressive (not that kind) thinking.

Someone better think like that and fast.  Because progressive(that kind) thinking, in less than one week after Elon Musk finalized an agreement to buy Twitter the Department of Homeland Security, created what they are calling a Disinformation Governance Board’ dedicated to “countering misinformation.”

Lose control of Twitter? No problem!  We’ll wield a word ax over any and all spoken and written words.

A Ministry of Truth is what opponents are calling it.  Will the Disinformation Governance Board deem the characterization “Ministry of Truth” as misinformation?

Imagine someone running the Ministry named Nina Jankowicz.  Last week, Jankowicz said she opposes The First Amendment for apparently being bad for ‘marginalized communities.’  We’d imagine marginalized communities is gobbledy gook for “minorities.”

Now that we forgave student loans, let’s get back to the real problems in this country-equity, inclusion, and diversity!

Jeez. Wasn’t it just last week that Disney execs reimagined their imaginary characters to do just that?

Imagine that.