Nov
3
2025

Some People Have Nothing Better To Do Than Retweet 10-Year-Old Memes

And others of us have nothing better to do than to point out that they were wrong then, and still are:

(I saw this because it was reposted by Don Winslow, whom I follow. He's a talented crime writer, but as a political activist, he's about as brilliantly insightful as your average earnest sophomore majoring in Communications at a local admit-everyone state college.

Also of note:

  • The book-banners are at work. Liberty Unyielding reports on their latest efforts: State university to 'audit' its library collections to remove books that are not 'inclusive' or are deemed racist.

    Librarians, who are overwhelmingly progressives, routinely engage in censorship, weeding out factually-accurate books in their collections that offend woke sensibilities or use terminology considered outdated (such as old books that refer to “negroes” or “homosexuals” because that was the term used in the era the book was published).

    The state university at Binghamton furnishes a recent example. “The library system at Binghamton University released an anti-racism statement in which it called itself part of a ‘predominantly White institution,’ or ‘PWI.’ It also announced a plan to ‘audit’ its content for racism,” reports Campus Reform:

    BU Libraries said that the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others are “the result of a white supremacist society in which violence is both enabled and effaced by structural racism.” The system therefore acknowledges its “institutional responsibility for addressing racism” and need to leverage resources in order to “advance other anti-racist work ongoing at the University and beyond.”

    BU Libraries Assistant Head of Reader Services Timothy Lavis said that the term “PWI” was used to explain the predominant perspectives within the institution.

    “When a PWI simply ignores systemic racism, [its] inaction is not actually a neutral position,” Lavis wrote…“Rather, that inaction serves to support the existing power structures that underpin and enable systemic racism.”

    I note that, at some point in the last few months, the University Near Here memory-holed its "Diversity, Equity, Access & Inclusion" page to "Community, Belonging, Access & Inclusion". And they have always been at war with Eastasia.

  • "Blue City Bailout" would be a good name for a rock band. But, alas, it's just one more reason we're headed for fiscal disaster, described by Allysia Finley: The ObamaCare Blue-City Bailout. (WSJ gifted link)

    Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago was scrambling to close a $369 million deficit in 2013. The inception of ObamaCare offered an enticing target for cost shaving: retiree health coverage.

    The city expected to spend $194 million that year subsidizing health insurance for its retirees, many of whom were too young to qualify for Medicare. Such costs were projected to increase to $540 million by 2023 at the same time as pension payments were ballooning. While courts in Illinois and other states have held that public employee pensions are legally protected, governments have more latitude to make changes to medical benefits.

    So Mr. Emanuel dumped his city’s retirees onto the nascent ObamaCare exchanges, where federal subsidies can reduce premium payments. Voilà, Chicago’s $2.1 billion unfunded retiree healthcare liability vanished. Now U.S. taxpayers pick up the tab for Chicago’s retirees in their 50s and early 60s.

    Allysia also mentions a likely scenario: "New York City last year spent $3.7 billion on retiree healthcare, money that a Mayor Zohran Mamdani might want for free child care or government-run grocery stores."

    As Maggie Thatcher once famously said: The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."

  • Speaking about running out of other people's money… Jessica Reidl deflates some wishful thinking from a onetime George Soros employee: Scott Bessent Is Wrong About Deficit Reduction. (archive.today link)

    One hallmark of the presidencies of Donald Trump is surging budget deficits. Another is repeatedly claiming that drastic deficit reduction is just around the corner. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump famously promised to pay off the entire $19 trillion national debt within eight years. Instead, the debt jumped by $8 trillion, thus missing his target by a mere $27 trillion.

    A new Trump presidency has brought additional empty deficit reduction boasts. Before the election, he suggested that the budget deficit (and Social Security) could be fixed by selling oil and gas reserves. In a March address to Congress, Trump pledged to eliminate the entire $1.8 trillion budget deficit while offering no path to accomplish such a monumental task. Not to be outdone, DOGE director Elon Musk initially pledged to save $2 trillion from administrative reductions in waste, fraud, and abuse. Over the summer, Trump promised that tariff revenues would leave federal coffers so awash in money that tax rebates would be necessary. And now, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is claiming the budget is on “solid footing” toward his deficit target of 3 percent of GDP, thanks to substantial deficit reduction.

    Unfortunately, Bessent’s deficit reduction boasts continue the trend of propaganda over progress. Tariffs are providing modest fiscal savings, although the deficit remains on track to continue rising steeply.

    Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any major political incentive to call bullshit on Bessent.