ROGER SIMON: Say Goodbye to Experts (Mostly).

What in the Sam Hill is an expert, and why should we trust them?

Personally, I cringe when I see in a headline—in this paper and virtually everywhere else—the phrase “experts say.” My back immediately goes up and I do my best Yogi Berra imitation: “Sez who?”

This is especially true when the name of the expert is not specified. In some quarters (not here, as far as I can tell) it is deliberately omitted. The use of “experts say” then is often just a cover for what the journalist him or herself really thinks—a method of passing off opinion as news.

We see that almost every day at The New York Times and The Washington Post under such rubrics as “someone in a position to know.” Who, exactly? Well, that’s for me to know and for you to find out.

Some areas of expertise have long evinced skepticism. Five minutes watching a half-dozen economists on CNBC or Fox Business predict the direction of the stock market is a perfect example.

Even better might be the “foreign policy expert.” Who paying attention cannot recall decades of misguided nonsense emanating from Middle East experts after the Oslo Accords that never amounted to anything, or even exacerbated the violence?

Then along came the galumphing Donald Trump, expert in Fifth Avenue real estate, I suppose, who employed some common sense—you might say street smarts—allying the Gulf States with Israel against their common threat, Iran. And, voila—a huge step forward to peace.

The pandemic, needless to say, has thrown us all into the arms of warring medical and scientific experts. It has been quite a battle—much of it, I am pleased to say, engaged in with more clarity and usefulness than elsewhere on these digital pages.

One of the few positive things that has emerged from the COVID-19 awfulness is that our suspiciousness of experts has grown considerably, as it should. The intelligent person now knows to look past the label (institutes led, doctorates earned) on the supposed expert—who had a fancier vitae than Dr. Anthony Fauci?—to the true character, knowledge, and intentions of the human being beneath that label.

Related: The Suicide of Expertise.

BRAVES MASCOT OBLITERATES LITTLE KIDS DURING HALFTIME OF THE FALCONS/JAGUARS GAME:

Atlanta Braves mascot Blooper taught a group of young kids a very valuable lesson during the Jaguars/Falcons game.

In the era of handouts and participation trophies, kids have started to learn that nothing comes hard in life. Well, Blooper did a little educating for the children during halftime Saturday when a youth team was scrimmaging.

He unleashed some stiff arms that absolutely demolished the tiny children attempting to tackle him. Feast your eyes on an automatic first ballot hall of fame video below.

Football is a tough sport. It’s not easy. It’s an absolute war in the trenches and in the open field. Blooper – a baseball mascot – understood that better than the kids on the field.

Click over for the video. I’m not expecting the Cowboys’ mascot Rowdy to demonstrate similar moves anytime soon, which explains much about the Jerry Jones era.

UNEXPECTEDLY! Ford Electric Mustang Price Going Up After Biden, Dems Handed Out EV Tax Credit.

ROGER KIMBALL: Biden’s Debt Transference and Enforcement Arm.

I am not sure the Biden Administration has admitted yet whether the economy is in recession, but it is. And it is certainly suffering from inflation—or “Bidenflation” as some wags denominate it—the worst, we’re told, in 40 years. Gas prices have moderated a bit from their highs in May and early June, but they are still more than twice what they were when Biden took office, i.e., when Donald Trump was president, and everyone thinks prices will climb again this winter.

So, prices are rising, your money is worth less, and, oh, by the way, you have less of it. On Friday, the Dow-Jones Industrial Average lost just over 1,000 points, wiping out billions in value. And if the “Prosperity Reduction Act” (the real name of the inflationary “Inflation Reduction Act”) weren’t enough of a blow—raising taxes and weaponizing the tax farmers of the IRS—Biden has delivered another sharp jab to the solar plexus of the American taxpayer with his hare-brained student loan “forgiveness” scheme.

True, from time immemorial, the promise of debt forgiveness has been a powerful political gesture. But as has often been pointed out since the student loan subsidy was announced, Biden’s program is not really debt forgiveness. Rather, it is debt transference. That is, the debt doesn’t go away. It is just dropped in someone else’s lap. And that someone, Dear Reader, is you.

Flying monkey* Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) dramatized what is happening back in 2020 when, having touted the idea of forgiving students loans herself, she responded to someone who asked her if that meant he would be getting back the money he saved so that his daughter didn’t have any student loans. “Of course not,” was the squaw’s response. The moral of the story: “So you’re going to pay for people who didn’t save any money and those of us who did the right thing get screwed.”

Crisply put, that. Work hard. Save your money. Pay your debts. Then get saddled with someone else’s debts because you didn’t have the foresight to be improvident at the opportune moment.

Feel like a chump yet?

Biden might: Yikes! Yellen and Jill Biden advised him not to cancel student loan debt, but Joe listened to someone else.

* That’s a pretty racist thing to say about someone who was “Harvard Law’s ‘first woman of color'” — until she wasn’t: Elizabeth Warren in Iowa: ‘I am not a person of color.’

Speaking of whom, America’s Newspaper of Record “reports:” Harvard To Pay Elizabeth Warren $400,000 To Teach Class On Why College Is So Expensive.

THAT MUSHROOM CLOUD YOU SEE IS ANOTHER TRUMP MEDIA NARRATIVE EXPLODING BEFORE YOUR EYES:

Heh, heh. If you think the Fourth Estate being used as the Fifth Column is hilarious, it gets even “funnier.” The Post outed its own sources in its later story about being totally wrong. It came in a follow-up whoopsie-daisy story about the release of the affidavit.

Behold:

“In addition, the FBI believed that the material contained what it calls “national defense information,” or some of the most guarded secrets. (The Washington Post has reported the government feared nuclear secrets were at Mar-a-Lago.)

So all the Post‘s sources — who it nebulously described as “‘people familiar with the investigation” and “experts in classified information” and “former senior intelligence officials” and “a person familiar with the investigation” who said there were nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago — were “the FBI” and the “government.”

Please laugh.

Then vote.

Read the whole thing.

PENNSYLVANIA’S SENATE RACE TO THE BOTTOM:

Every election cycle has one. That absurd farce of a race that hardly seems like it can be real. This year the honors go to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and its clown car of a Senate campaign. There are 13 million people in the Keystone State and somehow it has come down to Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz and Democrat John Fetterman to serve in the upper house of the Congress. Where is DJ Jazzy Jeff when you need him?

By dint of a coin toss backstage, I’ll start with Dr. Oz. But where to begin? Oz is the Trump backed candidate, but he’s running like Mitt Romney, with all of the electric Utah energy that entails. There is a kind of Mid-Atlantic Republican who sort of apologizes for it — Oz oozes that. Because of this, there may be no other major GOP candidate in the entire midterm more out of step with the zeitgeist of the party than the mild-mannered, perfectly coiffed Republican.

Oz also has a demographic problem: as a daytime TV star and wellness guru, the group he should naturally appeal to is suburban women. The problem is that suburban women are the only group among whom Republicans have lost support in the past year. That’s not his fault, but it’s like being a fastball hitter who only sees breaking balls: you have to adjust — and Oz hasn’t. Even his viral crudités faux pas seemed directed at Martha Stewart-watchers, not NASCAR dads.

Now on to Fetterman. Let’s set aside the medical stuff for a moment and start from a baseline. He has the vibe of a Trump-endorsed Republican. He embodies the populist energy that Oz just can’t muster. With his gargantuan frame wrapped in a hoodie and bald head, he looks more like a guy you don’t mess with in a bar than a Senate candidate. But behind that facade lies some troubling insights.

Including: Hypocrisy: Fetterman Puts His Own Kids in Private School, While Standing in the Way of Vouchers.

UPDATE: John Fetterman: My Top Priority is Ending Life in Prison Without Parole for Convicted Criminals. “Fetterman, as Breitbart News reported, has overseen the release of 13 convicted murderers while heading the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons. Likewise, one of Fetterman’s appointees to the board sought to end mandatory life without parole sentences for first and second-degree murderers. In 2021, Fetterman advocated for eliminating the state’s mandatory life without parole sentence for suspects convicted of second-degree murder.”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: North Carolina’s New Wake schools’ diversity leader presented on ‘social justice’ in high school math.

A presentation obtained by North State Journal shows the new leader of Wake County Public Schools’ Office of Equity Affairs presented on “culturally responsive teaching and social justice in high school mathematics classrooms” at a 2021 Math Summit held at N.C. State University. 

Wake County’s new Office of Equity Affairs leader Dr. William Chavis gave the presentation alongside Dr. Kevin Bullock, Executive Director for Equity Affairs for Durham Public Schools. Bullock is also the husband of Ronda Bullock, the founder of Working Towards Anti-Racist Education (WEARE) which is an organization that openly supports the use of Critical Race Theory in K-12 education.

The 25-page presentation is titled “Is Culturally Responsive Teaching even Possible in Mathematics Classes?: Equitable Teaching Practices in Integrating Culture and Social Justice in High School Mathematics Classrooms.” 

The slides include discussing, engaging and applying “tenets of culturally responsive teaching through high school mathematics standards and the framework for social justice,” as well as increasing the “understanding of social justice issues and how they play a critical and pivotal role in teaching mathematics.” 

Much of the material and themes included in the presentation mirror that of “Equitable Math,” a project aimed at dismantling racism in math instruction that has $1 million in grant backing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.   

One of the core guides followed by Equitable Math includes a framework with approaches for “antiracist math educators” for “dismantling white supremacy in math classrooms by making visible the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture with respect to math.”  Toxic characteristics in the guide include getting answers right and teaching “real-world math.” 

I had no idea that math classes in (presumably) leftist dominated high schools were such a cesspit of racism and white supremacy.

FIELDING MELLISH, CALL YOUR OFFICE:

GOODER AND HARDER, SAN FRANCISCO: I tracked thieves stealing my car in S.F. Then I saw firsthand what police can — and can’t — do next.

In San Francisco, a city rife with gadget-lovers and plagued by high property crime, the technology would seem to be a game changer. But in reality, situations like my stolen Subaru can often be mired in unforeseen complications.

The response by police has at times been thwarted by legal constraints — for example, an officer generally can’t enter a home just because the Find My iPhone app says your cell is inside — and at other times by what victims say feels like apathy.

Police officials say the reality is that a stolen phone, bike or even car is not as high a priority as a violent crime, so cops don’t always have time to get involved and stay involved.

The result can be maddening for victims armed with case-cracking evidence. And while police say they always advise these victims against following their valuables into potentially dangerous situations, many people told me they felt they had no choice but to go cowboy.

Looking back at Miguel’s texts from May 19, it’s easy to see how the specter of danger immediately enters the equation.

“Be careful!!!!!” “It says the car is on!” “There could be someone in the car.” “MEGAN DO NOT CONFRONT ANYONE.”

I’ll admit, the possibility of vigilantism had crossed my mind. But the SFPD jumped on our case, even though it had no idea I was a member of the media.

It’s tough to picture a Paul Kersey figure emerging in San Fran*, but not impossible — as Glenn has written, “the breakdown of law and order won’t go as [leftists] hope. Ultimately, the police are there to protect criminals from the populace, not the other way around. Get rid of the police, and armed vigilantism is what you’ll get. And what you’ll deserve.”

It’s also likely that private security forces will be on the rise, as this 2013 Reason TV video about such forces working in another leftist hellhole, Detroit spotlights:

* Classical reference.

VDH: Elites’ divide & conquer failure: How middle class now view their rulers with rightly earned disdain.

The elite found in the truly poor — neglecting their old union-member, blue-collar Democratic base — an outlet for their guilt, noblesse oblige, condescension at a safe distance, call it what you will. The poor if kept distant were fetishized, while the middle class was demonized for lacking the taste of the professional classes and romance of the far distant underclass.

Second, race became increasingly divorced from class — a phenomenon largely birthed by guilty, wealthy, white elites and privileged, diverse professionals. For the white bicoastal elite, it became a mark of their progressive bona fides to champion woke racialism that empowered the non-white of their own affluent class, while projecting their own discomfort with and fears of the nonwhite poor onto the middle class as supposed “racists,” despite the latter’s more frequently living among, marrying within, and associating with the “other.”

The net result was more privilege for the elite and wealthy nonwhites, more neglect of the inner-city needy, and more disdain for the supposedly illiberal clingers, dregs, deplorables, chumps, and irredeemables.

The results of these contortions were surreal. The twenty-something who coded a video game that went viral globally became a master of the universe, while the brilliant carpenter or electrical contractor was seen as hopelessly trapped in a world of muscular stasis. Oprah and LeBron James were victims. So were the likes of Ibram X. Kendi, Ilhan Omar, and the Obamas, while the struggling Ohio truck driver, the sergeant on the front line in Afghanistan, and Indiana plant worker became their oppressors. Or so the progressive bicoastal elite instructed us.

Read the whole thing.

MEGHAN MCCAIN SLAMS N.H. LIBERTARIAN PARTY FOR CELEBRATING DAD’S DEATH:

Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is calling out the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire for tweeting a photo of her crying over her father’s flag-draped coffin with a caption reading: “Happy Holidays.”

The tweet came on Thursday, exactly four years after John McCain died.

“This is the official twitter account of the state of New Hampshire’s Libertarian political party,” Meghan McCain tweeted. “I really fear for the future of the world and how we have come to treat each other – especially on social media. I hope no one ever does anything like this to any of you.”

In another post, she said: “This photo is the most pain I’ve ever been in – physically, emotionally – worse than any moment of childbirth. I thought it was going to kill me. But I didn’t and it made me the woman I am today. I’m made of steel. To anyone who feels like I did here, it passes, I truly promise.”

Not that big a fan of either McCain, but this is in appalling taste; the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire aren’t making many new fans with this tweet.

HOW IT STARTED: Global warming is killing the Great Barrier Reef, study says.

—CNN.com, April 18^th, 2018.

How it’s going: Parts of Great Barrier Reef record highest amount of coral in 36 years.

—CNN.com, August 4^th, 2022.

LET ME JUST GET OUT AHEAD OF THE STORY AND SAY THAT GHISLAINE MAXWELL DID NOT COMMIT SUICIDE: Former Phoenix reporter who broke story of Clinton-Lynch tarmac meeting found dead.

Related article from America’s Newspaper of Record: Apple TV+ Announces New Show ‘Clintons In Cars Killing Witnesses.’ “‘Get in the car! We’re going suiciding!’ yelled Hillary Clinton to her daughter as the cameras began rolling. ‘You got the snacks, right? Faking a hanging always makes me hungry. Bodies are so heavy!’”

(Via Small Dead Animals.)

AGING ROCKER LOBS ‘FASCIST’ GRENADE AT ‘MAGATS’ – IT BLOWS UP IN HIS FACE INSTEAD:

Dee Snider took aim at former President Donald Trump’s supporters, claiming that “MAGAT FASCISTS” and others like them were the reason behind Twisted Sister’s iconic anthem “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”

Snider alternated between all-caps and normal text in a tweet that mirrored the tone of the angry protest rock for which he is famous.

“ATTENTION QANON, MAGAT FASCISTS: Every time you sing ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ remember it was written by a cross-dressing, libtard, tree hugging half Jew who HATES everything you stand for,” he said. “It was you and people like you that inspired every angry word of that song! SO F*** OFF!”

But as critics quickly noted, Democrats were the driving force behind the effort to censor bands like Snider’s — and that song in particular.

Aldous Huxley’s Ghost (@AF632) responded to the tweet, saying, “I remember you in Congress, Dee, arguing in favor of free speech because Democrats wanted to censor you. Now you’re shilling for those same Democrats in power.”

He’s not the first to have a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome – even after Frank Zappa spoke out against Tipper Gore and other censorious Democrats in the 1980s, during the following decade, his widow was still donating to them: Gail Zappa Sends GOP a Message With Hefty Donations to Democrats.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Average Lifetime Earnings Of A Gender Studies Grad Rise To $10,000.

#AMAZONSHITCARSHOW: The Grand Tour “Scandi Flick” Special Looks Packed With Rallying Fun.

After releasing the “Carnage A Trois” special last year, The Grand Tour trio is back. This time they are making a journey through Norway, driving across “Europe’s last great wilderness.” The show hits the Amazon Prime Video streaming service on September 16, when we’ll watch Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May trek across the frozen landscape.

The special is called “A Scandi Flick,” named after the driving technique. The show will have the three engaging in a ton of snowy fun, with much of it revolving around rally racing. James May will pilot a Mitsubishi Evo VIII, while Hammond drives a Subaru Impreza WRX. Clarkson is the odd one out with the Audi RS4 B7.

The trailer shows a ton of action, including the three pulling makeshift houses across the snowy wilderness. It also appears to show the moment just before May crashes his Subaru. Earlier this month, May had suffered an accident during filming, crashing his Subaru into a wall at 75 miles per hour (120 kilometers per hour) during an event where the guys were racing down a tunnel in an old Cold War submarine base.

Amazon released the trailer on Thursday:

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Back to School Edition.

IN DEFENSE OF THE ‘CANCELED’ NATE HOCHMAN: His only crime was to engage critically with hateful ideas.

It’s no fun being canceled by a mob, but it is useful in one respect: it’s an easy way to tell who your friends are. Recently, a young conservative writer, Nate Hochman, learned this the hard way after a hit piece appeared on the Never Trump site the Dispatch that was in part about him and comments he made while on a Twitter Spaces call last winter.

Twitter Spaces, if you (like me, before this) are unfamiliar with it, is basically a group conference call platform. In the winter, Hochman hosted a Space about what role, if any, white supremacists like Nick Fuentes should have in the conservative movement. Fuentes then showed up and the Dispatch reported what happened next:

The Dispatch obtained an audio recording of the Twitter Spaces conversation from an individual who listened in. Hochman argued that Fuentes shouldn’t be a part of the conservative movement, quarreling with Fuentes about his tactics and understanding of racial politics in America. But he praised what Fuentes had accomplished throughout the conversation.

Read the whole thing.

OH NO! Laid-off HBO Max Execs Confirm Warner Bros. Is Ditching Wokeness and Embracing ‘Middle America.’

According to Deadline, 14 percent of the staff was laid off on WB’s streaming service, HBO Max. Those laid off include a lot of VPs:

Overall, 14% of staff — about 70 people — are being laid off Monday, the vast majority of them on the Max side. That includes in Max Non-Fiction Originals, International, Acquisitions, Casting and previously reported Live-Action Family Originals, which are all being either scaled back significantly or essentially eliminated, leading to the departure of the bulk of the the staffs, led by Jennifer O’Connell EVP, Non-Fiction & Live-Action Family Originals for HBO Max; Jennifer Kim, SVP, International Originals for HBO Max; Michael Quigley, EVP of Content Acquisitions at HBO Max; and Linda Lowy, EVP Casting for WarnerMedia’s HBO Max, TNT, TBS and truTV.

Some of these people who were laid off* were pretty loyal to radical leftism and woke culture, and naturally, the firings are being painted with racist intent.

The Daily Beast interviewed some of these former HBO Max execs and some were more than happy to say that now the staff at the streaming service is whiter than ever:

The layoffs have “amplified the lack of diversity at HBO,” another former executive told The Daily Beast. “HBO is the most homogenous part of this umbrella. Instead of trying to figure out how to integrate some of the [Max] executives into HBO, they just made this sweeping cut of three divisions: kids, family, and international. A lot of Black and brown people lost their jobs.”

However, one former exec gave the game away when they snidely derided the new direction as being one that doesn’t want to divide people based on politics and, instead, embraces middle America:

One former exec describes Discovery+ as a “more general audience platform that doesn’t have the specificity that HBO Max was tailored to. I think Discovery is just a very ‘all’ audience, [they] don’t wanna make things that are political, topical, alienate Middle America—more Chip and Joanna**,” they said, referring to the home renovation show Fixer Upper: Welcome Home hosted by Chip and Joanna Gaines.

“If David Zaslav had his wish, he would just program Chip and Joanna all day long,” the executive said. “There was just a massive, ‘We don’t need you. You’re not offering the things we’re focused on.’”

Oh no! Warner Bros. is stepping away from divisive politics and embracing content that pleases general audiences instead of pushing a message that only a very small group of people actually cares about. Better get the torches and pitchforks.

There’s a simple principle that has been proven true time and time again, and with few exceptions: Get woke, go broke.

* Will the laid off employees be learning to code, or building solar panels?

Flashback to an earlier Zaslav cut:

** Interesting reference if you’re claiming that the Warner empire is whiter than ever: Gaines’ “mother was Korean and her father was half German and half Lebanese.”

BURIED LEDE: Don Lemon Actually Commits Journalism: Don Lemon and Karine Jean-Pierre Clash Over Biden’s ‘Semi-Fascism’ Comment Against GOP.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre joined CNN’s Don Lemon for a heated exchange on Biden’s direct attack towards Republicans.

“What exactly is semi-fascism, Karine?” Lemon asked.

During a fundraising event in Maryland, Biden told the crowd that America is under threat, blaming the GOP for supporting former president Trump’s MAGA movement, linking their ideology to “semi-fascism.”

“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy… it’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism,” Biden said.

However no one, including Jean-Pierre, seemed to know exactly what Biden was trying to say by this comment, and frankly the president himself probably didn’t even know.

“The American people have a choice in front of them and the president laid that out very clearly, very powerfully tonight. When you look at what Democrats are doing and what they are delivering, and what they have done, Don, in less than two years, which is lowering costs on prescription drugs, lowering the energy costs, making sure that we have this historic legislation to really deal with [the] climate crisis. All of these things are important,” Jean-Pierre told Lemon.

Lemon was less than satisfied with her answer, asking once more what Biden meant.

“And they are,” Lemon interrupted, adding “Karine, I want to get to all of those things with all due respect, but we have a short time. I’m going to get to all those things, but if you’ll answer my question.”

“I am… I was just about to get to your question. I really was… You brought me on the show for a reason. And I have to talk about,” Jean-Pierre said just as Lemon interrupted for a second time.

Jean-Pierre is frustrated by having to submit to actual journalism — doesn’t Lemon know that she works for his boss?

HMMMM: Ro Khanna’s Apology Tour. And Why Trump Voters Love It. The congressman from Silicon Valley is pressure-testing a message that he thinks could save the Democratic party in the industrial Midwest.

For Ro Khanna, the progressive Democrat and third-term House member who represents the district singularly synonymous in the country with big money and high tech, this was the first stop of a four-day, three-state tour through the more downcast Midwest, meeting with local officials, factory workers and union retirees in perennially depressed one-time auto-industry strongholds.

Khanna, who turns 46 next month, is still young, but he’s been at this a long time. He worked as a volunteer on Barack Obama’s first state senate campaign before eventually working in his presidential administration. He modeled Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential run in his own precocious, even pushy initial try for Congress going on 20 years back. He was a national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 bid, and his new book got kudos on Twitter from Bill and Hillary Clinton. And in the conference room here at New Castle Stainless Plate, the audience made up of the company’s CEO plus a clutch of his right-hand men, Khanna had road-tested pieces of a message he’s been honing for years. “Make more stuff here,” he said. “Build our productive capacity,” he said. “Buy American,” he said.

* * * * * * * *

Khanna was sitting in a meeting room in a Hampton Inn most specifically because of Robin Johnson. A part-time political science professor, the host of a radio show called “Heartland Politics” and an informal adviser to outgoing Democratic congresswoman Cheri Bustos of Illinois, Johnson earlier this year had read something Khanna wrote for the Wall Street Journal. It piqued his interest, so Bustos connected him with Khanna, which led to Khanna coming to talk at the college where Johnson teaches and eventually this convening of a handful of mayors from the area and from both parties. The subject line of Johnson’s emailed invites: “Bringing tech jobs to the Heartland.”

Pavey, the mayor from Rushville, admitted during introductions he and the two city and county officials who joined him had made the hour-or-so drive somewhat skeptically. “I said, ‘What’s he up to?’” granted the local economic development director. Another Republican mayor Johnson had approached but who had not come, Pavey said, had been blunt: “Why would a representative out of California come to Indiana to take jobs away from his area and promote them here?”

Khanna was sitting in a meeting room in a Hampton Inn most specifically because of Robin Johnson. A part-time political science professor, the host of a radio show called “Heartland Politics” and an informal adviser to outgoing Democratic congresswoman Cheri Bustos of Illinois, Johnson earlier this year had read something Khanna wrote for the Wall Street Journal. It piqued his interest, so Bustos connected him with Khanna, which led to Khanna coming to talk at the college where Johnson teaches and eventually this convening of a handful of mayors from the area and from both parties. The subject line of Johnson’s emailed invites: “Bringing tech jobs to the Heartland.”

Pavey, the mayor from Rushville, admitted during introductions he and the two city and county officials who joined him had made the hour-or-so drive somewhat skeptically. “I said, ‘What’s he up to?’” granted the local economic development director. Another Republican mayor Johnson had approached but who had not come, Pavey said, had been blunt: “Why would a representative out of California come to Indiana to take jobs away from his area and promote them here?”

Khanna had anticipated that wariness. “Look, you people in this room will disagree on where I stand on abortion, on gay marriage. But why can’t we find the place where we do agree?” he said.

You people? Language warning, needless to say:

HOW IT STARTED: Joe Biden vows to ‘unify’ country in victory speech.

—The BBC, November 6th, 2020.

How it’s going: Joe Biden, How Dare You Compare Me To Hitler.

Biden’s misunderstanding of MAGA isn’t what angers me. It’s his inappropriate use of Fascist (semi-fascist). If you asked 100 Americans to name a Fascist, I suspect that 90-95 of them would answer either the Nazis or Adolf Hitler.

As someone who believes in the MAGA objectives no matter which candidate I support, my anger comes from the fact that I am a Jew with family who suffered through the Holocaust. Those and other references to Hitler and the Holocaust Biden made cheapen the memory of the actual horrors that millions of people suffered through.

It used to be a basic rule of American politics*. Never use the Holocaust or any related terms, such as Fascist, Nazis, or Hitler, for political warfare. The Holocaust is a singular event in world history, not just because of its scale and inhuman horror. There have been, and sadly will be, other genocides of other groups. And there have even been other atrocities against the Jewish people. But generally, genocide is waged to suppress a group, keep them out of a country’s politics, take their land, or some other economic reason. The Holocaust was different– the Jews were targeted by Hitler, and the Fascist Nazis had no desire to take over the country’s land and held relatively little power–they were just hated. The Nazis took Jews from all over Europe and killed them.

—Jeff Dunetz, The Lid, yesterday.

* The DNC-MSM has always given Democrats a pass on this, especially during election season.

FEDERAL COURT BLOCKS BIDEN ADMIN FROM FORCING DOCTORS TO PERFORM GENDER TRANSITIONS.

ROGER SIMON: Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Among the Greatest Partisan Rip-Offs of All Time.

Remember 1773’s Boston Tea Party and “taxation without representation” that led to the American Revolution and our ultimate separation from Britain?

I imagine you do, but perhaps not if you are one of our younger readers and all you were being taught in one of our woke schools that skin color and gender identity were far more important than reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Nevertheless, Joe Biden—quite possibly, even likely, illegally and certainly as the most obvious kind of vote grubbing—has gone one (or multiple times) up on King George in the “taxation without representation” department with his student loan forgiveness, partial though it may be.

Consider this: The gullible poor slob (aka good citizen), whether parent or graduate, who has been paying or has fully paid his/her student loan is being asked to pay for someone else’s, once again through taxes, even though the recipient of this largesse may be less needy than the benighted taxpayer.

He or she is paying twice, rather like the estate tax but worse because it taking the money of yet more people that can ill afford it.

How much will this loan forgiveness cost all of us taxpayers? Estimates vary, of course. The other day Penn Wharton put it at $300 billion after 10 years. That translates to $2,000 per taxpayer, according to the National Review.

But those are not the most recent figures. Fox Business on Aug. 25 is estimating between $440 and $600 billion over the same time frame. Something called the Committee for a Responsible Budget has now put it at $500 billion.

In most of our experiences, these estimates tend to go up, often also in multiples, so no one knows what it will actually cost, but we can be sure it’s a stupendous amount.

Driving home from my early morning stint on the Tennessee Star Report today, I heard Glenn Beck—who immediately follows on the same station to his national audience—mention ever more disturbing numbers, comparing the expenditure to the annual cost of the U.S. Military and to the gross national product of over a hundred countries.

No wonder: Democrats in tough races distance themselves from Biden’s student loans decision.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE:

● Shot: Biden Laments the Demise of ‘Real Republicans’: ‘I Respect Conservative Republicans, I Don’t Respect These MAGA Republicans.’

—Mediaite, today.

● Chaser: Biden: Romney’s approach to financial regulation will ‘put y’all back in chains.’

—The Washington Post, August 14th, 2012.

● Hangover: Sources: Biden likened tea partiers to ‘terrorists.’

—Politico, August 1st, 2011.